Technology | The Guardian

Fully fledged self-driving technology appears to be pepetually just around the corner. It is a promise that the Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, has made almost every year since 2013. But in the real world, it is still an open question whether level five self-driving automation is actually possible. Josh Toussaint-Strauss finds out how close industry frontrunners have come to full automation and assess the scale of the problems standing in their way

Multisport tracker packs maps, GPS and battery upgrade alongside advanced training tools, plus solar-charging optionGarmin’s new Forerunner 955 multisport watch looks to be the ultimate training tool for enthusiasts, packed with advanced metrics, onboard maps, higher-accuracy GPS and a solar-charging option.The watch is the firm’s top running and triathlon model, costing £480 ($500/A$800), sitting above the £300 Forerunner 255 and loaded up with additional features such as offline maps, advanced training tools and longer battery life for serious runners and triathletes.Screen: 1.3in transflective MIP LCDCase size: 46.5mmCase thickness: 14.4mmBand size: 22mmWeight: 52gStorage: 32GB (up to 2,000 songs)Water resistance: 50 metres (5ATM)Sensors: GNSS (multiband GPS, Glonass, Galileo, BeiDuo, QZSS), compass, thermometer, heart rate, pulse OxConnectivity: Bluetooth, ANT+, wifi, NFC Continue reading...

Always-on display lets notification addicts stay connected but only ‘pro’ models get the latest A16 Bionic chipIf you feel like you never look away from your phone, Apple’s newest iPhones are for you, with an always-on display letting notification addicts stay connected all day, every day.Exclusive to the iPhone 14 Pro, the display preserves power by dropping down to an ultra-low refresh rate of just 1Hz, dimming the screen, and handing updates over to a dedicated low-power coprocessor to keep the time, widgets and notifications up to date even with the phone in sleep mode. Continue reading...

Case will go ahead next month but his countersuit can be expanded to include whistleblower’s allegationsElon Musk has failed in an attempt to delay a trial over his termination of a $44bn (£38bn) deal to buy Twitter.A judge ruled on Wednesday that the case would go ahead in Delaware from 17 October after deciding that Musk’s request to push it into November would damage Twitter’s business. Continue reading...

Unearthing beloved old gaming consoles that have been languishing in a freezer bag is a lesser-known plus side of moving house, as Dominik Diamond discoveredI recently moved into a new house and faced that most terrifying of prospects: a few days without internet access. On top of all the other dependencies that this enriching, vile invention has created in us, all the games I’ve been playing required patches, updates, or someone to play against. I was – gulp – gameless!Luckily, I had found my old Game Boy Advance while moving, rejected and forlorn in a freezer bag in the bottom of a box with a handful of game cartridges, unfingered for nearly 20 years. It had been my constant companion on flights to from Glasgow to London back when we didn’t have phones with games, and I was appearing on what seemed like every single one of those Top 100 War Movies/TV embarrassments/Songs That Use Flowers As Metaphors for Sex. (And Richard and Judy.) Continue reading...

When users of the far-right forum harassed and stalked a trans streamer to the extent she fled her home, this is how Cloudflare pulled the plug … finally

Joe Sullivan’s trial is believed to be the first case of an executive facing criminal charges over such a breachUber’s former security officer, Joe Sullivan, is standing trial this week in what is believed to be the first case of an executive facing criminal charges in relation to a data breach.The US district court in San Francisco will start hearing arguments on whether Sullivan, the former head of security at the ride-share giant, failed to properly disclose a 2016 data breach affecting 57 million Uber riders and drivers around the world. Continue reading...

Twitter counters that Musk is using new claims to cover up buyer’s remorse as trial over broken deal set to begin next monthA trial over Elon Musk’s bid to end his $44bn deal for Twitter should be delayed by several weeks to allow him to investigate a whistleblower’s claims about security on the social media platform, Musk’s lawyer told a judge on Tuesday.“Doesn’t justice demand a few weeks to look into this?” said Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, at a hearing in Wilmington, Delaware. Continue reading...

Filing by ex-Theranos CEO says former lab director has misgivings after saying he had raised concerns about company’s techElizabeth Holmes requested a new trial on Tuesday, asserting in a court filing that a key witness for the prosecution now regrets the role he played in her conviction for investor fraud and conspiracy related to Theranos, her failed blood-testing startup.The petition centers on the reliability of testimony provided by the former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff, who said he repeatedly raised concerns about the accuracy of blood tests that were being administered to patients during his tenure in 2013 and 2014. It is typical for defendants to make motions for a new trial after a guilty verdict. Continue reading...

Indulgent, yes – but this PS5 update reminds me what a heartbreaking gamechanger the horror classic really is

Penalty follows investigation into Instagram setting that allowed teenagers to set up accounts that displayed contact detailsInstagram owner Meta has been fined €405m (£349m) by the Irish data watchdog for letting teenagers set up accounts that publicly displayed their phone numbers and email addresses.The Data Protection Commission confirmed the penalty after a two-year investigation into potential breaches of the European Union’s general data protection regulation (GDPR). Continue reading...

The tendency to be glued to bad news can spark a ‘vicious cycle’ that interferes with our lives, researcher saysThere’s no shortage of bad news in the media to “doomscroll”, from a global pandemic to the war in Ukraine and an impending climate crisis, but new research suggests the compulsive urge to surf the web can lead to poor mental and physical health outcomes.Doomscrolling is the tendency to “continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening or depressing”, a practice researchers found has boomed since the onset of the pandemic. Continue reading...

As upgrade season arrives, phone users have more options than ever for improving their handsets in environmental, cost-effective ways

I didn’t like the person it was making me, but a few strategic moves later, the calm and mystique of the game returnedPerhaps it was when I missed my bus stop so I could finish a three-minute game of online blitz chess that I realised I had a problem. Or when, instead of getting off at the next stop, I started another game on chess.com. I certainly had no qualms about the resulting half-hour walk home, narrowly avoiding lamp-posts as I continued to line up ill-fated pre-moves against anonymous opponents.Blunder. Resign. New game.Stuart Kenny is a freelance travel journalist and editorDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com Continue reading...

A gadget the size of a 10p coin, the AirTag was intended to help people find their keys. Instead it has facilitated a boom in terrifying behaviour from abusersIn March this year, Laura (not her real name) was in her car when a notification showed up on her phone, alerting her that an Apple AirTag had been detected nearby. “I didn’t know what it was or what it meant. I felt quite panicky,” she says. “I pulled over and still didn’t know what I was looking at. My phone was showing a map of where I was with a trail of red dots indicating the route I’d just followed. I think I was in shock. I drove straight to a friend’s house and we searched the car.”They emptied the glove compartment, opened the bonnet, checked underneath it and then behind the number plate. “Eventually we found it under the carpet in the back – a tiny gadget the size of a 10-pence piece. I didn’t want it anywhere near me.” Continue reading...

Refined phone-tablet hybrid is better all round – but still a gadget-lover’s dream and not for the mass marketSamsung’s cutting-edge Galaxy Z Fold 4 Android phone-tablet hybrid is back and here to prove that folding devices are the future.By putting both a powerful smartphone and 7.6in tablet in your pocket, Samsung has created the device of choice for gadget lovers. But the price means it is not ready yet for most consumers. Continue reading...

Since Roe v Wade was overturned in the US in June, there are concerns that law enforcement could request the intimate data users share with period tracking apps. Johana Bhuiyan reports on the privacy concernsMillions of women around the world use period tracking apps to understand their bodies and work out when their ovulation or period is due.While many people find these apps useful and empowering, there are concerns about where the data put on these apps goes. Continue reading...

When new versions are unveiled this week only ‘pro’ models will get chip upgrade, analyst reportsThe invitation to Apple’s latest iPhone launch event on Wednesday, at which the company is expected to reveal new versions of the iPhone and Apple Watch, shows a starfield in the shape of the company’s logo, with the caption “Far out”.The company’s event invitations frequently contain a gnomic hint at the forthcoming news, usually only visible in the rear-view mirror. But while some of the company’s expected announcements are likely to elicit a sense of amazement, they may not all be in the tone that Apple’s marketing team would hope. Continue reading...

Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers and hiring military security to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequencesAs a humanist who writes about the impact of digital technology on our lives, I am often mistaken for a futurist. The people most interested in hiring me for my opinions about technology are usually less concerned with building tools that help people live better lives in the present than they are in identifying the Next Big Thing through which to dominate them in the future. I don’t usually respond to their inquiries. Why help these guys ruin what’s left of the internet, much less civilisation?Still, sometimes a combination of morbid curiosity and cold hard cash is enough to get me on a stage in front of the tech elite, where I try to talk some sense into them about how their businesses are affecting our lives out here in the real world. That’s how I found myself accepting an invitation to address a group mysteriously described as “ultra-wealthy stakeholders”, out in the middle of the desert. Continue reading...

Amelia Tait talks to the people painstakingly scrubbing and restoring graves – and posting wildly popular footageThe gravestone in Helensburgh cemetery is in loving memory of someone, but it’s hard to tell exactly who. Exposure to 92 years of Scottish weather has rendered it grimy and grubby, but two small streaks of white at the bottom corner catch Ryan Nott’s attention on a rainy day in May. And so, the next day, the 31-year-old student accommodation manager comes back with a car boot full of equipment. He wears long sleeves to cover his arms and black rubber gloves. As the cemetery echoes to the cheers and chants of football fans watching a match on TV in the nearby flats, Nott starts to spray. The gravestone slowly begins to sizzle as the hydrochloric acid he’s splashed on the memorial stone creates a noisy, bubbling fizz. A grey smoke curls up towards the sky and as he scrubs the memorial with a steel brush, a light sweat beads his brow.The stone features four intricately carved roses and each one is speckled with green moss and white lichen splodges. Nott takes out another brush, not unlike a children’s paintbrush, and works the acid into the petals. Quickly – so quickly that it almost seems like a magic trick – it becomes apparent that the headstone is made of white marble. Gorgeous, glistening, gleaming white marble on which the names of three long-departed sisters appear. Continue reading...

Internet infrastructure company says it blocked Kiwi Farms because ‘the threats on the site escalated enough in the last 48 hours’

Research project aims to discover how age, size and shape of woodlands affect people’s happiness and wellbeingHow happy do you feel right now? The question is asked by an app on my phone, and I drag the slider to the space between “not much” and “somewhat”. I’m about to start a walk in the woods that is part of a nationwide research project to investigate how better to design the forests of the future.Volunteers are being sought to record their feelings before and after eight walks on a free app, Go Jauntly, which could reveal what kind of treescapes most benefit our wellbeing and mental health. Continue reading...

Highly profitable company paid out more than $500m to reclusive owner Leonid Radvinsky in last two yearsOnlyFans has paid out more than $500m (£433m) to its reclusive owner in the last two years, as the British-based subscriber platform synonymous with pornography reported record profits.Leonid Radvinsky, the site’s Ukrainian-American 40-year-old owner, is the sole shareholder in a business that has seen its profits boom, as users spent $4.8bn on the site last year. Continue reading...

Ban on Nvidia and AMD sales marks a major escalation of US efforts to restrict China’s military technology capabilities as tensions bubble over Taiwan

PC, Xbox, smartphones; Half Mermaid

Dramatic move shows Mark Zuckerberg ‘desperate to avoid being questioned over cover-up’, says Observer journalist who exposed scandalFacebook has dramatically agreed to settle a lawsuit seeking damages for allowing Cambridge Analytica access to the private data of tens of millions of users, four years after the Observer exposed the scandal that mired the tech giant in repeated controversy.A court filing reveals that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has in principle settled for an undisclosed sum a long-running lawsuit that claimed Facebook illegally shared user data with the UK analysis firm. Continue reading...

The Iranian photojournalist on a woman he spotted in northern AfghanistanIn 2015, Ako Salemi was on a photography trip to northern Afghanistan with fellow Iranian photojournalist Majid Saeedi. One day, the pair were exploring near the tomb of Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib, known locally as the Blue Mosque for its intricately detailed blue tiled domes and exterior. People feed the many doves – a symbol of peace – that gather around the tomb, and Salemi photographed this woman as she carved a path through the flock.“I didn’t notice it at the time, but afterwards I found the flash of red by her ankles amazing – almost reminiscent of defiance,” Salemi says. Unfortunately, he couldn’t interact with the passerby, or show her his photo. “A man can’t talk with a woman in the streets of Afghanistan. In the radical interpretation of Islam, women are believed to belong to their men, and nobody else should see or talk to them. If you speak with a woman who you don’t know, her father or brother or husband may get very angry.” Continue reading...

Ducky toast tongs, candle sharpeners and an apple tree … our writers name one gadget, gizmo or thing they didn’t know they couldn’t live without“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful,” William Morris said. I’m fussier. Have nothing in your wardrobe that you do not know to be useful and believe to be beautiful. Continue reading...

The four-year-old case alleged that the company had violated consumer privacy laws by sharing users’ personal data with third partiesMeta’s Facebook has in principle agreed to settle a lawsuit in the San Francisco federal court seeking damages for letting third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access the private data of users, a court filing showed.The financial terms were not disclosed in the filing on Friday that asked the judge to put the class-action suit on hold for 60 days until the lawyers for both plaintiffs and Facebook finalize a written settlement. Continue reading...

New technology meant to detect cheating by students taking tests at home could invade privacy, raise anxiety and be discriminatoryIn 2020, a Canadian university employee named Ian Linkletter became increasingly alarmed by a new kind of technology that was exploding in use with the pandemic. It was meant to detect cheating by college and high-school students taking tests at home, and claimed to work by watching students’ movements and analyzing sounds around them through their webcams and microphones to automatically flag suspicious behavior.So Linkletter accessed a section of the website of one of the anti-cheating companies, named Proctorio, intended only for instructors and administrators. He shared what he found on social media. Continue reading...

When comedian Jennifer Wong learned that AI was writing viral LinkedIn posts, she couldn’t resist going on a journey of discoveryI’m so humbled that the Guardian asked me to write an article about the LinkedIn Viral Post Generator. Humbled, but not surprised, if I’m honest, after so many years of grinding! #worthitIt’s a HUGE MILESTONE in my career to cover a story about AI that generates cringy viral posts for LinkedIn so you don’t have to (#winning). It just goes to show that if you put in the effort, you’ll be rewarded 10 times over. Continue reading...

As Biden eases student loan debt for millions, a simple phrase is puncturing criticism from conservatives like Marjorie Taylor GreeneConservatives are frothing at the mouth over Joe Biden’s decision to forgive $10,000 in student debt for millions, railing against what they call “student loan socialism”. But their carefully crafted tweets have been undermined over and over again with two words: “This you?”Were there ever seven letters more powerful? On Twitter, the phrase is an instant marker of hypocrisy, cutting down the mighty from politicians to celebrities to brands. It typically comes as a reply to an opinionated tweet, accompanied by a screenshot of an earlier remark from the same person endorsing the opposite point of view. Continue reading...

The company had said the information did not exist, but it sampled 9,000 users in order to estimate the number of spam accountsElon Musk may get access to Twitter data used in a 2021 audit of active users but other information the billionaire seeks in a bid to end his $44bn deal to buy the company were rejected as “absurdly broad”, a judge said on Thursday.Twitter must turn over data from the 9,000 accounts sampled in the fourth quarter as part of its process to estimate the number of spam accounts. Continue reading...

Investors see ‘existential threats’ to fitness company that saw popularity during early months of Covid pandemicPeloton recorded losses of more than $1.2bn in the past three months, the company announced on Thursday, frustrating investors looking for progress in the company’s efforts to revive sagging sales of its fitness equipment.The news sparked another selloff for the company’s shares as one analyst foresaw mounting “existential” threats to the company’s survival. Shares tumbled more than 19% to $10.88 in morning trade, adding to an 88% drop over the year. Continue reading...

Tweak to search engine effectively halves the environmental impact stated for each tripGoogle has been accused of airbrushing aviation emissions, after the company changed its flight search engine to halve the CO emissions attributed to any given trip.The change, first noted by the BBC, affects a feature on Google Flights that shows the estimated carbon emissions of each route. The company flags routes with higher or lower than typical emissions, and also reports the total CO emitted per passenger on any given journey. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: How did a beloved ape end her life a sad “shell of herself”? Find out in Fine Gorilla Person. Plus: five of the best podcasts on the British Asian experience

From WhatsApp to Instagram to texts and email, I was spending my life frantically picking up my phone. It had to stopIt officially started during that strange and mystical stretch of time now known as the first lockdown, when negative news notifications were at an all-time high and the only way to have a drink with your mates was through the Houseparty app, which would be inexplicably gatecrashed by strangers.I was inundated with infection stats, digital book club invites, viral memes that no one would have found at all funny at any other time, and work emails postponing just about everything. I wanted an off switch for the world – but I settled instead for switching off my notifications.Georgina Lawton is the author of Raceless: In Search of Family, Identity, and the Truth About Where I Belong Continue reading...

Like Carrie’s laptop dying in Sex and the City, my collection of seemingly insignificant moments suddenly mattered like a magnum opusI opened the notes app on my phone to find a blank screen. I froze, agape, like you do when you just realise you’ve sent an email to the wrong person or left your favourite item of clothing in a hotel room miles away.I’d gone to find something I’d written about my home town after a recent visit, a scant thought at the time. The app was empty. Continue reading...

Criminals took an average of $300,000 worth of non-fungible tokens per scam, says cryptocurrency firmMore than $100m (£85m) worth of non-fungible tokens were stolen in the year to July, research shows, with criminals making off with an average of $300,000 per scam.Criminals have stolen valuable NFTs – crypto assets that confer ownership of a unique digital item, often a piece of virtual art – in a variety of ways, according to a report by the cryptocurrency analyst Elliptic. Continue reading...

Pokémon – the highest grossing media franchise of all time – is hitting new peaks of popularity, with thousands of fans thronging to the World Championships in LondonI was 13 when Pokémon cards exploded on to the UK scene in 1999. I tried to be too cool and mature for the instantly popular collectables, born from the blockbusting video game. I hid my starter pack from friends and played with my younger sister and cousins. I was just humouring my relatives – that was the line anyway. But I would watch the animated series or play Pokémon Blue on my Game Boy Color in our council flat, away from the critical eyes of teenage friends.Short for Pocket Monsters, Pokémon was first launched on the Nintendo Game Boy in 1996. Players became Pokémon trainers, tasked with travelling through a fictional world to collect, develop and evolve the 151 original Pokémon, battling them, and competing in eight gyms to earn badges that would give them the right to compete in the Pokémon League and bid to become a Pokémon Champion. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Ethereum turning off its mining rigs and slashing the currency’s carbon emissions should be good news. But not everyone agrees

Director Josh Sawyer explains why developer Obsidian decided to make a narrative adventure about a painter-detectiveYou are Andreas Moller, an artist working in an abbey in 16th-century Bavaria. Over the course of 25 years, you must investigate a murder in a local town convulsed by the social changes of the era. Pentiment doesn’t sound like a typical video game, and it doesn’t look like one either, inspired as it is by late medieval art: the whole thing looks like a cross between a tapestry and an early-modern illustrated manuscript. The word pentiment means an earlier painting covered up by a later one, and the plot sees Moller scraping away lies to uncover the truth.The game’s director Josh Sawyer at developer Obsidian has a degree in history, and studied the Holy Roman Empire in particular. “I’d always wanted to make a historical game,” he says. “And around the time that Microsoft acquired us [in 2018], I thought it would be cool to try to pitch a very small-scale game.” He chose the 16th century because it was an era of great social upheaval, not unlike the period we’re living through today.Pentiment is out on Xbox and PC in November. Continue reading...

The bestselling computer made home gaming accessible for millions as it launched the industry toward the mainstream with classic titles such as Dropzone and The SentinelFor a period between the winter of 1983 and the summer of 1986, my life was completely dominated by the Commodore 64. The seminal home computer, launched 40 years ago this month, featured an 8-bit microprocessor, a huge 64k of memory and a set of graphics and sound chips that were designed by the engineers at Commodore’s MOS Technology subsidiary to power state-of-the-art arcade games. That didn’t happen. Instead, Commodore president Jack Tramiel ordered the team to build a home computer designed to smash the Atari XL and Apple II. So that’s what they did.I didn’t know any of this when my dad brought home a C64 one afternoon a year after the launch of the machine. Ours came with a Dixons cassette featuring a number of little demo programs and a copy of Crazy Kong, a version of Nintendo’s Donkey Kong, written entirely in Basic, and fairly mediocre. I played it to death anyway. That Christmas, I asked for some actual good games, which would include the legendary multi-stage shooter, Beach Head, the inventive platformer, Lode Runner and the footie game International Soccer, one of the few titles to come on a cartridge rather than a cassette tape. Continue reading...

A Silicon Valley startup offers voice-altering tech to call center workers around the world: ‘Yes, this is wrong … but a lot of things exist in the world’“Hi, good morning. I’m calling in from Bangalore, India.” I’m talking on speakerphone to a man with an obvious Indian accent. He pauses. “Now I have enabled the accent translation,” he says. It’s the same person, but he sounds completely different: loud and slightly nasal, impossible to distinguish from the accents of my friends in Brooklyn.Only after he had spoken a few more sentences did I notice a hint of the software changing his voice: it rendered the word “technology” with an unnatural cadence and stress on the wrong syllable. Still, it was hard not to be impressed – and disturbed. Continue reading...

Peiter Zatko, former security chief, brought allegations of widespread security threats and spam concerns against the companyNew whistleblower allegations of widespread security threats and spam concerns at Twitter may give Elon Musk ammunition in his fight to back out of a deal to buy the company.On Tuesday, an 84-page complaint written by Twitter’s former security chief turned whistleblower, Peiter Zatko, alleged that Twitter prioritizes user growth over reducing spam, did not have a plan in place for major security issues, and that half the company’s servers were running out-of-date and vulnerable software. Continue reading...

Researcher says social media app can collect keystroke information but ‘there is no way for us to know’ if or how data is used

Some superfans are so determined to prove that Elon Musk’s ‘autonomous’ driving technology works that they are willing to put their kids in harm’s wayI’ve been a mum for a relatively short time; I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to this whole parenting thing. Still, there is one piece of advice I can confidently dole out: don’t instruct your child to run in front of a moving vehicle so that you can win an argument with strangers on the internet. Elon Musk obsessives, I’m looking at you.This month, a software CEO called Dan O’Dowd, who is hellbent on trying to ban Tesla’s “full self-driving” programme, launched an ad campaign claiming that if you put a Tesla in this mode it will mow down children. He based this assertion on a test he ran using a child-sized mannequin dressed in a safety vest, which came to a sticky end in the middle of a road in California.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com Continue reading...

It doesn’t have the pizzazz of E3, but Gamescom in Cologne is a great place to check out the titles you’ll be reading about in future newsletters

New tech is promising to take rap artists to new lyrical heights. But will its algorithm be able to handle our novice writer’s rubbish rhymes?I may be many things, but I’m not a rapper. I discover this when I’m asked to freestyle a few verses on a visit to London’s Abbey Road recording studios. Immediately lines from famous rappers flood into my head – some classic Biggie, a few Young Thug yelps, the theme to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – but I’ve got to think up something original.Out of desperation, I decide to rap about my morning routine. Adopting a slow pace and simple rhyme scheme that even the Sugarhill Gang would disdain, I begin: “I wake up at seven and I brush my teeth.” Already I am at a loss. What rhymes with “teeth”? Panicking, I look at the computer in front of me, which is running a demo of iRap, AI software built to assist lyric writing in real time. It has been transcribing my words and offers possible rhymes I might want to use: “heath, sheath, underneath”. Could that work? “Make a bacon sandwich, put some cheese underneath,” I sigh. I have fallen short of even my own low standards. Continue reading...

UK consumer champion files collective redress case alleging the company has been abusing its market dominanceSony has been overcharging PlayStation gamers for six years, a new legal claim alleges, and could be forced to pay almost £5bn in damages if the claim succeeds.According to Alex Neill, the consumer champion who has filed the case with the UK’s competition appeal tribunal, Sony has been abusing its dominance in the British market to impose unfair terms and conditions on the PlayStation Store, where it sells digital games, downloadable content and subscriptions. Continue reading...