Technology | The Guardian

Followup to the DualShock controller adds haptic feedback, adaptive triggers and a built-in micSony has revealed the new controller for its forthcoming PlayStation 5 console. Named DualSense, the pad is a major departure from the DualShock series in design terms, with a two-tone body and chunkier form-factor breaking away from the slimmer look of the past two decades.The key new addition is haptic feedback – replacing the rumble feature of previous controllers– providing levels of resistance to player movement by simulating, for example, the slow grittiness of driving through mud in an offroad racing game. The two triggers will also feature adaptive feedback in the trigger buttons, so players can feel the tension and release when, say, firing an arrow from a bow. Continue reading...

Workers at facilities where there had been at least one coronavirus case said they were not being closed for deep cleaning

Company paid more than £1bn in wages but only £44m in UK corporation taxGoogle’s UK staff earned an average of £234,000 each last year as the tech firm paid more than £1bn in wages and a share scheme – but only £44m in UK corporation tax.Google, which increased UK staff numbers by almost 800 to 4,439 last year, footed its first £1bn-plus wage and salary bill for the year to the end of June. The £1.04bn total was a 25% increase on the £829m paid to staff in 2018, according to the company’s latest financial filings in Britain. Continue reading...

Restrictions on frequently forwarded messages intended to disrupt false Covid-19 claims

Updated processors, a price drop and an excellent new keyboard only add to this fantastic traditional laptopApple’s latest MacBook Air has a new, fixed and more satisfying keyboard, improved processors and gets a price drop.From the outside essentially nothing has changed. The new 2020 MacBook Air looks just like the revamped machine launched in 2018, except it costs £200 less than its predecessor, with the base model starting at £999. Continue reading...

A software developer’s epiphany inspires this admirable critique of capitalism, starting with the west coast tech tyrantsA month ago, when I began reading Wendy Liu’s polemic, I felt inclined to dismiss her as a millennial flibbertigibbet, motivated by a grudge against an industry that seemingly had no use for her. Liu grew up as a computing whiz-kid in Montreal and moved to San Francisco to develop software that aspired, a little tackily, to be “Tinder for advertisers”. When her entrepreneurial scheme fizzled out she transferred to the London School of Economics to study inequality, which turned her into an evangelising radical. In her book, she attacks the depressing doctrine of “capitalist realism” and its assumption that our current social and economic arrangements are unchangeable; with born-again zeal, she chastises her own “petty and narcissistic” nature and even laments “the tragedy of the human condition”. A bit excessive, surely, as a response to the failure of a startup?But as I read on, everything changed. We now have good reason to question the pursuits of the vaunted innovators with whom Liu consorted in California – the blissed-out cultists at Google, whose only worry is over “the wrong kind of sparkling water in the microkitchens”, or the manic experts who specialise in “envisioning hyperplanes in n-dimensional space”. As Liu came to see, techies like these were already living extraterrestrially, having opted out of the earthly, bodily necessities that currently weigh us down. A colleague of hers said he would happily volunteer to join Elon Musk’s projected colony on Mars, the “backup” planet for menaced humanity. “You know you can never come back,” warned another of Liu’s friends. “I’d work remotely,” grinned the would-be Martian. Continue reading...

Perfect storm of conditions helped nonsense theories about 5G and coronavirus to take holdA year ago, hoax theories about the dangers of 5G had barely pierced the public’s consciousness, largely remaining confined to serious conspiracy theorists such as David Icke.In recent weeks, baseless claims about risks associated with the next-generation mobile technology have gone mainstream. Claims linking 5G to the coronavirus pandemic have led to petrol bomb attacks on phone masts and rebuttals from the government. Continue reading...

Behaviour of some property owners labelled ‘incredibly irresponsible and dangerous’

Industry body assures people in open letter there is no link between 5G and pandemic

Airbnb created an industry and changed the face of many neighbourhoods. Now it’s facing the challenge of the coronavirusAirbnb was built on the premise of bringing the world closer together. Tourists could travel like locals, while locals could cash in on their desirable neighbourhood properties by letting those visitors in. Last year the company was estimated to be worth more than US$30bn. It is scheduled to go public in 2020. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic.Travel is suspended. Australians are almost entirely confined to their homes. Now the once heralded disruptor is seeing a collapse in bookings. The hosts who have become reliant on income-generating properties to pay their bills are being bled dry by a lack of business, and already-suspicious neighbours are up in arms over the potential that short-term renters may spread the virus. Continue reading...

Zoom is rapidly becoming a synonym for video conferencing – so it needs to grow up and take data security seriouslyIf a week is a long time in politics, then it’s an eternity in a pandemic. A month ago nobody – save perhaps employees of globally dispersed corporations – had heard of Zoom, the video-conferencing system. Now it has apparently become a critical part of our national infrastructure as many in the population try to work from home. Zoom is currently the most popular Apple download and second most popular Android download in the world. Just as “to Google” has become a synonym for “search online”, now “Zoom” has become a verb.This is, of course, great for Zoom Video Communications Inc. Its share price has more than doubled in the same few weeks that most stocks have plummeted. However, becoming top dog in a networked marketplace has its downsides. One of them is that journalists start digging into your past. Another is that you acquire new responsibilities. Continue reading...

Majority of UK adults surveyed want a law to protect web users, and a requirement on platforms to stop abuse

The short-let platform’s business model has been exposed. Bookings have fallen off a cliff but Airbnb simply can’t change tack“You would not have an empire without us,” an Airbnb host shouts down the lens in a video addressing the company’s billionaire co-founder and chief executive Brian Chesky. “It’s our homes on your platform. It’s our face on millions of listings. It’s our soul that brings the magic … It’s our place that makes you money.”lol airbnb landlords are losing their minds because people canceled their trips due to the uh. global pandemic pic.twitter.com/2DeNluRuie Continue reading...

EE suspects telephone mast engulfed by fire in Birmingham was an arson attack as celebrities claim Covid-19 caused by new networkTelecoms engineers are facing verbal and physical threats during the lockdown, as baseless conspiracy theories linking coronavirus to the roll-out of 5G technology spread by celebrities such as Amanda Holden prompt members of the public to abuse those maintaining vital mobile phone and broadband networks.Facebook has removed one anti-5G group in which users were being encouraged to supply footage of them destroying mobile phone equipment, with some contributors seemingly under the pretence that it may stop the spread of coronavirus and some running leaderboards of where equipment had been targeted. Continue reading...

A phone app seems better than a passport as a way out of the lockdown. This system will need to be temporary, installed at users’ discretion and have privacy at its core

Longstanding computer journalist and writer of the popular Guardian column Ask JackJack Schofield, who has died aged 72 after suffering a heart attack, was one of the outstanding computer journalists of his era, a reputation he established as editor of Computer Guardian from 1985 to 1994, and maintained until the end of his life. He never stopped working, recently filing the latest of his popular Ask Jack columns for the Guardian as well as a regular Just the Basics column for Which? Computing magazine, providing a masterly full guide to the arcane intricacies of file-wrangling.Jack’s lasting legacy is invisible – improving the computer literacy of thousands of readers over decades through his painstaking advice and his inability to refuse help to anyone who sought his guidance. Continue reading...

Sony has put its PlayStation title of the year on hold indefinitely. Are we likely to see the crisis disrupting other games – and even console launches?On Thursday night, Sony announced via its PlayStation Twitter feed that the long-awaited post-apocalyptic adventure sequel The Last of Us Part II will be delayed indefinitely. “Logistically,” the message read, “the global crisis is preventing us from providing the launch experience our players deserve.”The game’s developer, Naughty Dog, posted a longer statement, again putting the blame with the worldwide disruption caused by the Covid-19 outbreak. Continue reading...

New report finds company is running ads on videos pushing herbs and potentially unsafe over-the-counter treatments for virus

A good year for independent titles in the live-streamed ceremony hosted by Dara Ó BriainIndependent video games were the big winners at this year’s Bafta Games awards, which took place as a live-streamed event on Thursday evening after the planned ceremony was cancelled due to Covid-19.Sci-fi action puzzler Outer Wilds took the best game award, as well as game design and original property. Offbeat detective adventure Disco Elysium also won in three categories: debut game, narrative and music. Continue reading...

German true wireless earbuds deliver on sound, have noise cancelling and long battery life in fairly large bodiesSennheiser’s second-generation high-end true wireless earbuds gain noise cancelling and longer battery life to do battle with Sony and Apple.The German firm’s first earbuds were some of the best-sounding available. Now Sennheiser hopes its £280 Momentum True Wireless 2 can steal the show once again. Continue reading...

In meeting with CEO Jeff Bezos, general counsel suggested it would be good for company if media focused on Chris SmallsAmazon executives denigrated a fired warehouse worker as “not smart or articulate” in a meeting with Jeff Bezos, according to a leaked memo obtained by Vice News.Related: Dear Jeff Bezos, instead of firing me, protect your workers from coronavirus | Chris Smalls Continue reading...

Accounts also linked to Honduras and Indonesia violated policy and were ‘targeted attempt to undermine the public conversation’Twitter has deleted 20,000 fake accounts linked to the governments of Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Honduras and Indonesia, saying they violated company policy and were a “targeted attempt to undermine the public conversation”.Yoel Roth, the head of site integrity, said the removal of the accounts was part of the company’s ongoing “work to detect and investigate state-backed information operations”. Continue reading...

Video app has seen a surge in popularity for both work and private use during lockdown

Mobile advertising companies can collect detailed data about Americans’ movements

The company has seen a 535% rise in daily traffic in the past month, but security researchers say the app is a ‘privacy disaster’As coronavirus lockdowns have moved many in-person activities online, the use of the video-conferencing platform Zoom has quickly escalated. So, too, have concerns about its security.In the last month, there was a 535% rise in daily traffic to the Zoom.us download page, according to an analysis from the analytics firm SimilarWeb. Its app for iPhone has been the most downloaded app in the country for weeks, according to the mobile app market research firm Sensor Tower. Even politicians and other high-profile figures, including the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the former US federal reserve chair Alan Greenspan, use it for conferencing as they work from home. Continue reading...

PS4, Xbox One, PC; Capcom

Ask Jack comes to a close following the news that its long-running author has diedI am sorry to have to inform readers of the Guardian’s long-running Ask Jack column that its much-loved author, Jack Schofield, died on Tuesday.Jack was taken to hospital on Friday night following a heart attack and died on Tuesday afternoon. Continue reading...

Paper’s editor says Schofield was ‘one of the first true computing experts in British journalism’Jack Schofield, the Guardian’s former computer editor and author of its technology advice column, Ask Jack, for almost 20 years, has died aged 72.Schofield was taken to hospital following a heart attack on Friday night and died on Tuesday afternoon. Continue reading...

Technology is nearly ready for use and would also tell people when they should self-isolate

When the pandemic halted his war thriller, Timur Bekmambetov popped his leading actor inside a video game and completed the shoot from 1,200km away. Will other movies now be made this way?Who says everything in the film business has ground to a halt? Some directors are finding ways of keeping the cameras rolling. Timur Bekmambetov, best known outside Russia for making the Angelina Jolie thriller Wanted, was midway through filming his second world war fighter-ace film V2: Escape from Hell when the coronavirus pandemic broke. So the Kazakh-Russian sanitised his shooting schedule and, last week, pulled off what he believes was a cinematic first: a feature-film scene shot entirely inside a live video game.Bekmambetov had originally intended to shoot his dogfight the Howard Hughes way: real sky, real planes. But to minimise social mixing, he instead put his lead actor, Pavel Priluchny, in a plane cockpit on a St Petersburg soundstage with a skeletal crew – while he directed the scene remotely, from 1,200km away in Kazan, Tatarstan. Continue reading...

Estimated net worth of founder has increased by more than $4bn since coronavirus crisis startedFrom nursery school sing-alongs to FTSE 100 boardrooms and even UK cabinet meetings hosted by the poorly prime minister, a socially distanced world is reconvening in cyberspace with the help of Silicon Valley video conferencing app Zoom.As governments across the world have placed their citizens on lockdown, downloads of video conferencing apps have soared to record highs and the companies behind them have seen their share prices rise while the rest of the global stock market tanks. Continue reading...

The millions of Australians working and playing from home in the Covid-19 pandemic should be wary of how much information they give out

More than 100 workers went on strike at a New York City facility after reports of multiple employees testing positive for Covid-19Amazon workers walked out of a New York City facility on Monday, going on strike and demanding increased protective gear and hazard pay as they work through the coronavirus pandemic.“Since the building won’t close by itself, we’re going to have to force their hand,” Chris Smalls, lead organizer of the Staten Island strike, told CNBC. He added that workers “will not return until the building gets sanitized”. Continue reading...

As the British people fire up their laptops for virtual hangouts, some obvious personality types have already emergedIt’s hard to tell what day of the lockdown we’re on, but it’s clear that society is in a fascinating moment right now, due to the torrent of Houseparty invites, Zoom notifications and people calling without warning on FaceTime. It’s interesting that millennials – a generation so weaned on text-based communication that about 60% of them have a full panic attack every time they have to phone in a takeaway – have so fully embraced face-to-face video platforms, the “kissing with your eyes open” of communicative mediums, but here we are. The reality is that, between virtual pub quizzes and digital group hangouts, my social calendar is now busier than it was before The Fall of Society, and I don’t actually like it. I want more time to myself.Early Zoom adopters are offering kitchen cook-alongs. I’m still trying to work out whether to wear trousers on camera Continue reading...

From dark dungeons and the streets of Tokyo to enchanted forests and distant planets, here are the 100-hour games that you may finally have time to masterIt’s a popular refrain among video game players of a certain age. In our early 20s, we could spend whole days immersed in epic role-playing video games, sacrificing months to the demands of the latest Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest adventure. But, in our 30s and 40s, we’re lucky to catch 10 minutes of Fortnite here and there.However, now that many of us are finding we have time on our hands, it could be the opportunity we need to attempt some of the more chronologically demanding narrative video game masterpieces of the last decade. Here are 15 that should see you through the next six months – and beyond. Continue reading...

These fun-filled educational apps provide perfect brain food for children while schools are closedThe closure of schools across the UK has left many parents and carers in the sudden, unexpected position of being home-school teachers. Schools are providing support where they can, but there are also still plenty of smartphone and tablet apps that can be used as part of learning.It may be tricky to get some children to see these devices as good for more than TikTok, Fortnite and (adult) YouTube, but the positive side is that the best learning apps are interesting enough to – perhaps with an initial nudge – engage children. Here are 20 apps that may get parents off to a good start. The “younger children” apps are most suitable for preschool and early primary kids, while the “older children” apps are more for later primary and early secondary age. Continue reading...

The Body Coach TV has daily exercises for children to stay active in Covid-19 lockdown

Interior design apps are on the rise as homeownership rates among people under 35 have fallen by 20% in the last decade

The firm has no medical expertise but it does have some relevant experience

In the documentary Kill Chain, the weaknesses of America’s basic election infrastructure are laid bareEven as much of America grinds to a halt, coronavirus has yet to derail the date of the 2020 election. Which introduces a perhaps underestimated terror, as explained in one of the more deceptively scary documentaries to drop in recent weeks: the vulnerable voting machine. That seemingly benign piece of equipment – the hardware of American democracy – is, as several experts explain in HBO’s Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections, nothing more than an obsolete computer. And these machines’ vulnerabilities to hacking are “terrifying”, Sarah Teale, co-director along with Simon Ardizzone and Russell Michaels, told the Guardian. America’s current election infrastructure is, as Kill Chain explains, a prescription for disaster – an outdated, willfully naive system no more prepared for attack than four years ago.Related: After Truth: how ordinary people are 'radicalized' by fake news Continue reading...

Chris needs a tablet or video-calling device for his grandma’s Covid-19 isolation. What are the options?I want to get my grandma a tablet for easy video calling. She is elderly and needs to self-isolate, and she is already quite isolated after the recent death of her husband. I am not sure which tablet or which program to use. She isn’t very computer literate.This new Facebook thing looks good but I am sceptical of the brand. ChrisVideo calling used to be a futuristic topic. Today, it is readily available on most devices except, oddly enough, smart TVs. If anything, there’s a plethora of services, and I haven’t tried most of them. The options include Zoom, WhatsApp, Facebook, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, Skype and many more. Zoom is a business service but it works well and is clearly flavour of the month, with downloads up by 1,270%. Fake backgrounds are one of its winning features. Continue reading...

Companies the world over are directing their ingenuity at the fight against the coronavirus. Here are the front-runners, from sanitising robots to a 3D-printed hospital wardDesigners, engineers and programmers have heard the klaxon call. The last few weeks have seen a wave of ingenuity unleashed, with both garden-shed tinkerers and high-tech manufacturers scrambling to develop things that will combat the spread of Covid-19.Many of their innovations raise as many questions as they answer, though. Could 3D printing now finally come into its own, with access to open-source, downloadable designs for medical parts? If so, will intellectual property infringements be waived, or will altruistic hacktivists still face costly lawsuits? Could mobile phone tracking map the spread of infection like never before, keeping people away from virus hotspots? If so, might governments use the pandemic as an excuse to ramp up surveillance measures post-crisis? Continue reading...

PC (Oculus Rift, Valve Index, HTC Vive); Valve Corporation

The digital conferencing tool has taken off thanks to physical distancing across the globe. Just watch out for the 40-minute limit and pornography trolls

By defying the law to refuse their workers’ basic benefits, the giants of the gig economy are creating a heartbreaking crisis

If we let Amazon’s strength dominate our entire economy, we may just find out how weak we areIt is calling up 100,000 troops, extending grants to small businesses, prioritizing essential goods, and cracking down on profiteers.No, that’s not the United States federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic: it’s Amazon’s. The e-commerce behemoth is poised to become one of the major winners of the coronavirus crisis. As smaller businesses (even those that are not in any sense of the word small) falter and fail, Amazon is expanding its dominance over American commerce and society. Continue reading...

USB-C completes top Windows 10 tablet with great screen, design and kickstand, plus latest Intel chipsThe Surface Pro 7 is an update of the excellent Surface Pro 6 with new processors and, finally, a USB-C port.That means the design of the new Surface Pro 7 hasn’t changed since the 2017 Surface Pro 5, with Microsoft taking an “if it ain’t broke” approach. It’s competitively priced at £699 and up – but you have to pay at least £125 for the keyboard if you want one – which annoyingly is not included in the standard price. Continue reading...

As coronavirus forces communities online, support groups are realising Facebook’s promise to truly connect us• Coronavirus latest updates

Once seen as cutting edge, many of yesterday’s gadgets are – surprisingly – still in use or are making a comeback. Richard Godwin goes back to the futureImagine a start-up entrepreneur pitching the traditional milk round to a venture capitalist. “So we’re offering a local, sustainable, subscription-based protein delivery system. And get this: it’s all going to be powered by electric vehicles…” Back in the 1970s, 94% of British households bought their milk this way, but by the 2000s, for the vast majority, it was part of the weekly supermarket shop. It wasn’t technology that killed the centuries-old tradition so much as economic forces: deregulation of the dairy industry and supermarkets pushing plastic bottles. However, milk rounds still account for 3% of milk sales and they are growing in popularity. The revival is mostly down to the “Blue Planet effect” – glass is much more environmentally friendly than plastic. A typical glass milk bottle is reused 25 times. Come to think of it, why aren’t we reusing Coke bottles, too? Continue reading...

Our critic’s new weekly slot recommends games for seasoned players and beginners alike. This week, a virus strategy game banned by ChinaAnyone who has continued to play video games beyond childhood is used to the name-calling. Yes, in 2020, millions of thoughtful, otherwise usefully employed people enjoy video games (as well as a fair few thoughtless wastrels too, if Twitter is anything to go by). But away from the golf course or bridge club, adult play is still viewed, culturally speaking, with suspicion, pity or disdain. As a reporter for the Washington Post tweeted in 2017, in reference to the American chatshow host Jimmy Fallon, a keen fan of the medium: “At the heart of any banality is an adult male who plays video games.”Still, personally speaking, it took a pandemic to appreciate that the video game reviewer is truly the cockroach of arts and entertainment criticism. As cinemas, theatres, restaurants and concert venues close, and their remaining staff begin the sorrowful work of disinfection and grant application, writers who cover their industries are forced to glumly twirl their pens, waiting. The video game critic (and, breathe easy, the literary critic), by contrast, suddenly finds a near-captive audience that is, once Netflix has been plundered at least, just maybe willing to give video games a try. Continue reading...