Technology | The Guardian

Microsoft confirms key specs of games console plus new ‘Smart Delivery’ feature allowing one-size-fits-all game purchasesMicrosoft has confirmed that its next games console, the Xbox Series X, will feature a 12 teraflops graphics processor, eight times more powerful than the Xbox One graphics chipset.The announcement, made by the Xbox chief, Phil Spencer, via Microsoft’s Wire news site, confirmed recent rumours about the machine, which is launching this winter. Continue reading...

Cressida Dick defends tech after civil liberties groups raise fears over accuracy and privacyThe Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, has attacked critics of facial recognition technology for using arguments she has claimed are highly inaccurate and ill-informed.The Met began operational use of the technology earlier this month despite concerns raised about its accuracy and privacy implications by civil liberties groups, including Amnesty International UK, Liberty and Big Brother Watch (BBW). Continue reading...

Chinese firm also unveils updates to its tablet and laptop lines, plus new wifi speakerHuawei is launching a new version of its folding smartphone, the Mate Xs, alongside revamped tablets and laptops.Despite Mobile World Congress being cancelled owing to fears over the coronavirus, the embattled Chinese firm Huawei launched a series of high-end updates to its most ambitious products at a virtual press conference instead. Continue reading...

Media Molecule’s ambitious new PlayStation 4 release is a game development tool that allows you to be creative for the fun of itWe’re living in an age of mass, democratised creativity – or at least that’s what the technology industry likes to tell us. You can shoot a movie or record an album on a smartphone, you can become a household name with a webcam and a YouTube channel, and you can download any of a dozen applications and build a video game from nothing.But the latter is an intimidating notion. Games are ultimately complex mechanisms, constructed from code, involving physics, narrative, animation and audio. There has been a deliberate effort within the industry to make creative tools more accessible, arguably spearheaded by Unity, a technology that both powers games and lets users create them – and yet, designing and constructing a game can feel overwhelming. Even the first step, having confidence in your ideas, is a difficult one. It’s also where Media Molecule’s ambitious new PlayStation 4 release Dreams comes in. Continue reading...

After battling to stop a no-deal Brexit, the ex-MP has written a modern fable, Apocalypse How?, warning of the catastrophe our tech dependence could causeOliver Letwin’s strange and somewhat alarming new book begins at midnight on Thursday 31 December 2037. In Swindon – stay with me! – a man called Aameen Patel is working the graveyard shift at Highways England’s traffic HQ when his computer screen goes blank, and the room is plunged into darkness. He tries to report these things to his superiors, but can get no signal on his mobile. What’s going on? Looking at the motorway from the viewing window by his desk, he observes, not an orderly stream of traffic, but a dramatic pile-up of crashed cars and lorries – at which point he realises something is seriously amiss. In the Britain of 2037, everything, or almost everything, is controlled by 7G wireless technology, from the national grid to the traffic (not only are cars driverless; a vehicle cannot even join a motorway without logging into an “on-route guidance system”). There is, then, only one possible explanation: the entire 7G network must have gone down.It sounds like I’m describing a novel – and it’s true that Aameen Patel will soon be joined by another fictional creation in the form of Bill Donoghue, who works at the Bank of England, and whose job it will be to tell the prime minister that the country is about to pay a heavy price for its cashless economy, given that even essential purchases will not be possible until the network is back up (Bill’s mother-in-law is also one of thousands of vulnerable people whose carers will soon be unable to get to them, the batteries in their electric cars having gone flat). But Apocalypse How? is not a novel. It’s a peculiar hybrid: part fable, part fact. Aameen, Bill and all Letwin’s other characters exist only to illustrate aspects of his wider thesis, which is that our increasing reliance on integrated digital technology may be leading us, and ultimately every country in the world, in the direction of a catastrophe. I exaggerate a little, but think TV’s Survivors minus the mystery virus (though at the moment, we handily have one of those on our hands, too). Continue reading...

Small accounting firms are particularly at risk from bogus emails designed to steal lucrative personal informationIt’s not just accountants who are busy this tax season, it’s online hackers too – and they’re preying on both individuals and small businesses.This is “not from the ‘mob’ or street criminals,” writes Jess Coburn, a data protection expert, in CPA Practice Advisor. “These criminals are likely sitting behind a desk, glued to computer monitors, chugging energy drinks and developing the most effective ways to steal today’s version of gold.” Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg and Brussels both have ideas on AI regulation, but it’s a Cambridge statistician who has produced something intelligibleOn Wednesday the European Commission launched a blizzard of proposals and policy papers under the general umbrella of “shaping Europe’s digital future”. The documents released included: a report on the safety and liability implications of artificial intelligence, the internet of things and robotics; a paper outlining the EU’s strategy for data; and a white paper on “excellence and trust” in artificial intelligence. In their general tenor, the documents evoke the blend of technocracy, democratic piety and ambitiousness that is the hallmark of EU communications. That said, it is also the case that in terms of doing anything to get tech companies under some kind of control, the European Commission is the only game in town.In a nice coincidence, the policy blitz came exactly 24 hours after Mark Zuckerberg, supreme leader of Facebook, accompanied by his bag-carrier – a guy called Nicholas Clegg who looked vaguely familiar – had called on the commission graciously to explain to its officials the correct way to regulate tech companies. The officials, in turn, thanked him and courteously explained that they had their own ideas, and escorted him back to his hot-air balloon. Continue reading...

Video app’s most popular users could rake in millions by collaborating with brandsTeenagers used to aspire to become astronauts, firefighters, footballers or pop stars, but times change and so do career goals. Today, more than half of millennials and Generation Z-ers – those aged 13-38 – in the US aspire to become social media influencers, according to recent research by Morning Consult.The Chinese viral video app TikTok is the platform of choice for young people seeking to monetise their talents because it seen as rewarding anyone’s ability to entertain, whereas Instagram or YouTube tend to reward those who already have celebrity status. Continue reading...

Caroline Lucas urges move to help ease ‘intolerable’ pressure on availability of local housingLocal councils in England must be given powers to regulate Airbnb and other short-term letting sites in order to alleviate the “intolerable” pressure they put on the availability of local housing, the Green party MP, Caroline Lucas, has said.Her intervention followed a Guardian investigation that found one Airbnb listing for every four residential properties in some hotspots across Britain. Airbnb has disputed the finding. Continue reading...

Environmental group had challenged original ruling that carmaker could fell pinesA German court has ruled that clearing of trees from the site of Tesla’s first electric car factory in Europe can go ahead, days after it issued an injunction temporarily halting the preparatory work.The top administrative court in the Berlin-Brandenburg region ruled on Thursday that authorities had been within their rights to clear the way for work to start. Continue reading...

Draft of Brown study says findings suggest ‘substantial impact of mechanized bots in amplifying denialist messages’

With Didi launching in Sydney we weigh up each of Australia’s major rideshare platformsOn 16 March, Chinese ridesharing app Didi will launch in Sydney. Already available in Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth, the app promises “a safe, reliable and value-for-money way to get around”, according to Lyn Ma, Didi Australia’s general manager.That “value-for-money” statement will certainly be true in the first few weeks following the app’s launch – it is offering riders who sign up before launch a 50% discount on their first four weeks of rides, up to the value of $1200. Continue reading...

Scientist copied the printing technique of physically cutting and glueing printed textTributes have been paid to Larry Tesler, the computer scientist who introduced the cut, copy and paste commands, after his death at age 74. The Stanford University graduate, who was a pioneer of early computing, died on Monday in San Francisco.He worked for blue-chip firms including Apple, Amazon and Yahoo. Tesler appropriately began his Silicon Valley career at photocopying company Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (Parc) before being recruited by Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs. Continue reading...

Rental site has boosted tourism in Woolacombe - but some say housing is unaffordable

It is absurd – the phone was in my hands! How could it just disappear?I have my first appointment of 2020 with my life coach. Apart from suggesting I take up the xylophone as a relaxing hobby, we look at how I might break my four-hour-a-day phone habit. Continue reading...

Brexit prompts firm to move data and user accounts of British users from EU to USGoogle is to move the data and user accounts of its British users from the EU to the US, placing them outside the strong privacy protections offered by European regulators.The shift, prompted by Britain’s exit from the EU, will leave the sensitive personal information of tens of millions not covered by Europe’s world-leading General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore with less protection and within easier reach of British law enforcement. Continue reading...

An academic shares his name with a notorious drug dealer. Here’s how he can raise his profile so his name appears firstI’m a researcher at a major university. Unfortunately, I happen to share my name and middle initial with an unrelated drug dealer who has been in and out of prison. My name is sufficiently rare that I’m worried that confusion might arise, because a cursory Google search tends to give prominence to negative news stories that feature him.The standard advice online seems to be to open as many social media accounts as possible. I also have my own domain, but none of these has displaced the negative news stories in the search rankings. What should I do? Name withheldHow to get the top spot in Google’s search engine results has been a hot topic for years. It’s still vitally important to all types of business, to consultants and other professionals, bands and musicians, authors and journalists, politicians and many others. For those who can justify the fees, personal branding and “reputation management” companies do it for a living. Continue reading...

Chinese supplier won’t be able to take part in pilot exploring potential of the new technologyHuawei has been banned from participating in a £65m government scheme to explore how next-generation 5G technology can drive businesses and connect communities across the UK.The government set up the scheme last year, calling on businesses and communities to apply for funding to trial the vast potential of 5G technology. Continue reading...

Revamp of 2000’s flip phone means big screen folds in half into a compact clamshell that fits in small pocketsIt’s not often something comes along to genuinely change the game, but the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip does just that, bringing foldable displays closer to the mainstream and reinventing the flip phone for 2020 in the process.Screens that fold in half finally arrived last year with the Galaxy Fold, which was originally plagued by durability issues causing a delay and a reworking of the device. Continue reading...

I rented a car through the Gig app. But when I lost cellphone service, I found myself stuck by a remote highwayOn Saturday morning, I used an app on my phone to unlock a vehicle from Gig, a car sharing startup, and set off for a Valentine’s Day weekend trip to northern California with my partner.By late Sunday afternoon, we were sitting on the side of a remote highway, a software issue on our smart car rendering it unusable. It was getting dark, we had no way of getting home, and I was contemplating the limits of the sharing economy and the ultimate costs of convenience. Continue reading...

Robot is almost as fast as a real snake and can nimbly and stably climb large stepsA robot snake has been developed by scientists in the race to advance the abilities of search and rescue machines.It is hoped that the robots may some day help to explore inaccessible terrain, such as rubble after an earthquake. Continue reading...

Politicians from WikiLeaks founder’s home country have flown to UK to visit him in jailBoris Johnson should block attempts to extradite Julian Assange to the US, say two Australian MPs who visited the Wikileaks founder in prison, describing him afterwards as “a man under enormous pressure” and whose health and mental health had deteriorated.George Christensen, a Liberal National MP for the ruling party in Australia told a press conference outside the gates of Belmarsh prison that he knew of information, which would come to light during the start of the extradition hearing next week, that would make people in Australia “sit up and worry”. Continue reading...

The app sensation has drawn millions of players and awarded $6m in prize moneyOnline quiz app HQ Trivia, which at its peak was played by more than 2 million people a day, has hosted its last game – with inebriated hosts awarding a total prize pool of only US$5.Described as a “final drunken hurrah”, the app’s last broadcast was watched by 28,000 people after the company told employees last Friday it would shut down due to lack of funding. Continue reading...

Figures obtained by GMB show safety at its UK warehouses could be worseningMore than 600 Amazon workers have been seriously injured or narrowly escaped an accident in the past three years, prompting calls for a parliamentary inquiry into safety at the online retailer’s vast UK warehouses.Amazon, whose largest shareholder is the world’s richest man Jeff Bezos, recently launched an advertising campaign fronted by contented staff members, after a string of embarrassing revelations about working conditions. Continue reading...

Company hit by shutdown in China and says it will fail to meet quarterly revenue targetApple has warned of global “iPhone supply shortages” resulting from its Chinese factories being shut because of the coronavirus outbreak.The Californian company told investors on Monday night it would fail to meet its quarterly revenue target of $63-67bn (£48-52bn) because of the “temporarily constrained” supply of iPhones and a dramatic drop in Chinese shoppers during the virus crisis. Apple did not provide a new forecast for its second-quarter revenue. Continue reading...

Move comes a month after Amazon threatened to fire employees who spoke out about company’s role in the climate crisisJeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and Washington Post owner, announced on Monday that he was donating $10bn to save the Earth’s environment – barely a month after it was revealed Amazon threatened to fire employees who spoke out about the company’s role in the climate crisis.The new Bezos Earth Fund will start distributing the money this summer, the multi-billionaire said in an Instagram post to his 1.4 million followers. Continue reading...

Mick Mulvaney is expected to demand that UK drop Huawei from 5G networksDonald Trump’s acting chief of staff is set to meet Dominic Cummings in Downing Street on Wednesday, when he is expected to demand that the UK rethinks its decision to allow Huawei a role in supplying 5G technology.The critical meeting between Mick Mulvaney and Johnson’s chief aide comes amid speculation that the White House wants the UK to commit to removing the Chinese company from British mobile phone networks in three to five years’ time. Continue reading...

Exquisite sound, effective noise cancelling, long battery life, future-proofed connectivity and comfortable to wearThe PX7 are the latest flagship noise-cancelling headphones from upmarket British manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins, which excel on sound while giving Bose a real run for its money.B&W have long made excellent headphones. Its first noise-cancelling headphones looked and sounded great, but weren’t comfortable. The £350 PX7’s redesigned earcups fix that problem while offering Bose-rivalling noise cancelling and exquisite sound. Continue reading...

Ruling comes after state environmental office greenlit clearance of 92 hectares of forestA German court has ordered Tesla to stop clearing forest land near Berlin to build its first European car and battery factory, in what is being hailed as a victory for environmental activists.The US electric carmaker announced plans last November to build a “Gigafactory” in Grünheide in the eastern state of Brandenburg. Continue reading...

Expert says technology deployed is based on outdated science and therefore is unreliableArtificial Intelligence (AI) systems that companies claim can “read” facial expressions is based on outdated science and risks being unreliable and discriminatory, one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of emotion has warned.Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of psychology at Northeastern University, said that such technologies appear to disregard a growing body of evidence undermining the notion that the basic facial expressions are universal across cultures. As a result, such technologies – some of which are already being deployed in real-world settings – run the risk of being unreliable or discriminatory, she said. Continue reading...

Worried about the data collected about you? A new generation of startups is making apps to put your privacy settings straightTech companies don’t have favourite songs, but if they did, they would all pick Radiohead’s Just – “You do it to yourself, you do/ And that’s what really hurts,” they would croon, staring their users dead in the eye. And strictly speaking, they’d be right: many of the worst excesses of the industry are, technically, optional. The world isn’t actually a binary choice between living in a surveillance state and opting out of all technological development since the turn of the millennium. You can opt out – you just have to know how.Of course, that knowledge is not always easily acquired, nor is it necessarily easy to apply. So a new breed of services has arrived to try to help normal users take control of their digital lives. Companies including Disconnect.Me and Jumbo act as something like a digital concierge for their users, tweaking privacy settings, deleting sensitive data and throwing a spanner into the inner workings of surveillance capitalism. Continue reading...

Co-founder says site sits between telephone company and newspaper as content providerFacebook must accept some form of state regulation, acknowledging its status as a content provider somewhere between a newspaper and a telephone company, its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has said.He also claimed an era of clean democratic elections, free of interference by foreign governments, is closer due to Facebook now employing 35,000 staff working on monitoring content and security. Continue reading...

Some employers are not amused by viral videos shot in supermarkets, hospitals or police carsThey are some of the most popular videos on the shortform video-sharing app TikTok – clips of uniformed employees, from builders to nurses to supermarket staff, dancing and goofing around in their workplaces.But police forces and other employers are dissuading staff from posting videos, warning that they risk appearing unprofessional and urging them to not let social media “get in the way of doing their jobs”. Continue reading...

Mark Esper says countries using Chinese technology will put intelligence cooperation at riskThe US defence secretary, Mark Esper, warned that US alliances including the future of Nato were in jeopardy if European countries went ahead with using Chinese Huawei technology in their 5G networks.Esper also warned future intelligence cooperation would be at risk, as the US would no longer be certain its communications networks were secure. Continue reading...

Policy change involves what Facebook calls ‘branded content’, sponsored items posted by ordinary users who are typically paid by companies

It was the second most downloaded app of 2019 but in 2020 has acquired its first ‘why I deleted my TikTok’ essayPerhaps you’ve just barely wrapped your head around the existence and popularity of TikTok – something about dances? A young woman called Charli D’Amelio? Does the word “renegade” have something to do with it? Sigh.While you’re sorting that out, at least one young user is already over 2019’s second-most downloaded app. Last Sunday, Cornell University sophomore Niko Nguyen published an essay in the Cornell Daily Sun student paper detailing his personal decision to quit TikTok. According to the Verge’s technology journalist Casey Newton, Nguyen’s post is “the first known ‘why I deleted my TikTok’ essay. An important rite of passage for any social app.” Continue reading...

Washington calls for rethink and claims Chinese firm has ‘back doors’ to mobile networksBritain needs to take a “hard look” and reconsider its decision to allow the Chinese firm Huawei into the UK 5G network, US officials have said..The remarks, made on the margins of the Munich security conference on Friday, represent the most direct public warning from Washington to the UK that it should rethink and needs to recognise the high risk of exposure of the UK network to the Chinese state. Continue reading...

This mass surveillance is misguided and sinister. We must push back before it’s too late

Amazon requested the injunction after alleging that bias from Donald Trump caused the contract to be awarded to MicrosoftA federal court has ordered a temporary halt in Microsoft’s work on a $10bn military cloud contract that Amazon was initially expected to win. Amazon sued in December to revisit that decision, alleging that Donald Trump’s bias against the company hurt its chances to win the project.Amazon requested the court injunction last month. The documents requesting the block and the judge’s decision to issue the temporary injunction are sealed by the court. Continue reading...

Amazon founder purchases nine-acre estate once owned by Warner Bros president, Wall Street Journal saysJeff Bezos has set a new property price record in Los Angeles with the purchase of a $165m Beverly Hills estate, the Wall Street Journal reported.The Amazon founder’s purchase of the home from the media mogul David Geffen is the largest amount paid for a single-family Los Angeles-area home. The nine-acre estate originally belonged to Jack Warner, the late former president of Warner Bros Studios. Warner built up the estate’s 13,600-sq-ft Georgian-style mansion in the 1930s, reportedly with the wood floor that Napoleon was standing on when he proposed to Josephine. Continue reading...

Matthew Kabbabe wants to sue anonymous user who posted that procedure was ‘a complete waste of time’A Melbourne dentist has been given permission by the federal court to serve Google to attempt to find out the personal details of an anonymous account that left a bad review about his practice.Dr Matthew Kabbabe, a dental surgeon in Northcote, is seeking to sue a user known only as CBsm 23 for defamation over a negative review of his business in which the user claimed the dentist made the experience “extremely awkward and uncomfortable” and the procedure was “a complete waste of time”. Continue reading...

J-pop veteran Masato Nakamura’s soundtrack for the original Sonic game was an instant classic. Tom Holkenborg on reimagining that bold music for the big-budget film versionIf you’re a video game player of a certain age, the words Green Hill Zone will immediately bring to mind not only a certain blue spiky hero but also the sound of bright, crisp, high-tempo synth chords and a drum-machine beat. The music to Sonic the Hedgehog, composed by J-pop veteran Masato Nakamura, encapsulated the look and feel of the game, with its driving pace, luscious landscapes and azure skies.When soundtrack composer and electronic music producer Tom Holkenborg was brought in to provide the score for the new Sonic movie, it was Nakamura’s work that he looked to for inspiration. “I did a huge amount of research into the Sonic music and how it has developed over the last 30 years,” he explains down the line from Los Angeles. “A lot of the music is on YouTube, and it’s amazing how many views these pieces of music have – they really take people back to their first experience playing the games. For many, the Sonic music has the same nostalgic quality as an old Bing Crosby Christmas song – you can immediately picture yourself back there in front of your TV.” Continue reading...

Matt is resurrecting a 10-year-old laptop with only 4GB of memory. How can he make it run faster?I am trying to resurrect an old but good-in-its-day laptop for my son to use for his A-levels. I have bought a cheap 256GB SSD to improve the read/write speeds, but it seems I am stuck with the current 4GB of memory. Its two memory slots could support 8GB but 4GB DDR2 memory modules are prohibitively expensive at roughly £65 each. It doesn’t seem to make sense spending that sort of money on outdated memory technology for a 10-year-old laptop.What is the best way to set up Windows 10 so it runs fast on relatively limited memory? Is it worth using a different browser to Chrome? Is Microsoft Office too much of a resource hog?Chip costs are driven by production volumes, so obsolete types of memory are no longer in production, or are very expensive to produce. Often, there are alternatives, such as buying second-hand memory modules, and cannibalising laptops sold on eBay for “spares or repair”. Continue reading...

First Amazon true wireless earbuds offer a lot for the money but need attention in some areasAmazon’s first attempt at a set of true wireless earbuds gets a lot right, with Bose active noise reduction technology and hands-free Alexa.At £119.99, the Echo Buds undercut rivals, some of which cost more than twice as much. Their design is generic: large, kidney-shaped with a glossy touch panel on the outside and a standard silicone eartip on the inside. Continue reading...

Amazon, BT and Nokia among big names to pull out of mobile phone fair in Barcelona

Investors seek safe haven because of fears over the economic impact of outbreak

Competition regulator’s report takes aim at poor performance of controversial technologyAustralia’s competition regulator has said many people on fibre-to-the-node NBN connections are not able to get the speeds they are paying for, with nearly a quarter of people on higher-tier speeds found to have underperforming connections.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report for broadband speeds, released on Wednesday, showed similar average download-speed results for the month of November 2019 as the previous report, with users able to get at least 90.5% of their promised speed on fibre-to-the-premises, 91.4% on fibre-to-the-curb, 81.9% on fibre-to-the-node and 91.6% on cable. Continue reading...

Federal Trade Commission says its focus on smaller company takeovers will help clarify antitrust investigationsThe US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ordered five major tech companies to hand over detailed information on hundreds of acquisitions made over the past decade, it announced on Tuesday.As part of its continued antitrust investigations, the agency, which enforces consumer protection laws, has required Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook to provide documents and other information on the purpose and scope of their takeovers of smaller companies from 2010 to 2019. Continue reading...