Technology | The Guardian

The goodwill offer will buy temporarily for the tech behemoth which has wreaked havoc on democracies across the worldOn Tuesday, Facebook announced it would contribute $1bn toward fixing California’s existential housing crisis. This is a seemingly large number that will buy, temporarily, some goodwill for the tech behemoth, which has wreaked havoc on democracies across the world and hoovered revenue from news organizations.The $1bn in grants and loans would be used over the next decade. Elements include a $250m partnership with the state of California for mixed-income housing, $150m for subsidized and supportive housing for homeless people in the Bay Area, and $250m worth of land near Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters. It follows a $1bn pledge Google made earlier this year for a similar effort. Continue reading...

App users were able to see other customers’ data, including names, dates of birth and mobile numbersThe popular petrol-buying app run by 7-Eleven has suffered a data breach that allowed customers to view the names, email addresses, mobile numbers and dates of birth of other users.The 7-Eleven fuel app, which the company said this week has been downloaded two million times, was taken offline for a matter of hours on Thursday after a customer alerted the company to the fact that he was able to access the personal information of several other customers via the app. Continue reading...

Filming themselves brushing off threatening voicemails from their exes, these young women are telling each other that they aren’t aloneThis week, the social video platform TikTok unleashed a new meme: young women filming themselves dancing – interpretively – to a soundtrack of angry, abusive, emotionally manipulative or threatening voicemails left by their ex-boyfriends.The images of girls throwing gentle shapes through recorded monologues of hostile condemnation have understandably gone viral. If someone hasn’t dubbed them “scornstars” yet, they probably should. Continue reading...

Chuck Schumer and Tom Cotton urged inquiry, noting app reportedly censors material such as Hong Kong protest contentChuck Schumer, the most senior Democrat in the Senate, has urged the government to investigate TikTok, describing the China-owned social media app as “a potential counter-intelligence threat we cannot ignore” and warning it could be used to interfere in US elections.Related: Revealed: how TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing Continue reading...

Minister reveals sum paid to BBFC to implement age verificationMore than £2m of taxpayers’ money was spent preparing for the pornography block before the policy was quietly dropped in early October, the government has revealed.The bulk of the spending, £2.2m, was paid to the British Board for Film Classification to do the detailed work on the policy from 2016 onwards. Before then, additional costs were borne by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, where civil servants were tasked with developing the proposals as part of their normal work. Continue reading...

Firm reports ‘headwinds’ as near 20% hike in costs and advertising bugs dent profitsTwitter shares slumped on Thursday after the social network reported lower than anticipated revenues and higher costs and said it expected advertising technology bugs to continue to drag on profits.Shares fell by almost 20% in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange to a low of $31.10, the weakest since March. Continue reading...

Washboard existed for only six days. But unlike WeWork, it was profitable – and its founders knew when to give upThe summer of 2014 was a heady time in Silicon Valley. Cash was flowing as freely as Soylent as every Stanford graduate with a half-baked idea about a “pinch point” and a semi-plausible pitch book was lining up checks from venture capital firms. Into this mix came Washboard, a startup so utterly absurd that most of the news outlets that wrote about it (and boy did they write about it) took the trouble to clarify that it was, in fact, “real”.Washboard was designed to solve a real, if insubstantial, problem: it can be difficult for those who rely on coin-operated laundry machines to acquire enough quarters to run a load. Banks have limited hours, small businesses are not always obliging, and most apartment buildings don’t have change machines. Washboard offered a solution: $20 in quarters, sent to you by mail each month, for the totally normal and understandable price of $27. Continue reading...

PC, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One; Obsidian Entertainment

Len wants to replace a Samsung Tab S2. Should he buy the 11in iPad Pro or an iPad Air with extra storage?I use a 9.7in Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 tablet for general browsing, emails, reading digital magazines and some very basic photo editing. It only has 32GB of storage so some apps are installed on its 128GB SD card. However, the battery is no longer what it was, and Samsung has not updated its version of Android, so it is still running Android 7.I am thinking of getting a new iPad because Apple seems to support machines for longer, the apps seem better suited to my needs and, anecdotally, they appear to be more secure. On my budget, I can’t decide between an iPad Air with 256GB and an iPad Pro 11 with 64GB. Both will fit in my camera bag. Is it better to opt for a tablet with more built-in storage or one with a better processor? LenThe challenge for anyone designing a computing device – whether it’s a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone – is to create a machine that is properly balanced to meet its user’s needs at the price being charged. This is not an exact science. It depends on the cost of major components such as the processor and memory, screen, graphics, storage modules, operating system and so on. But you trust them not to saddle low-end devices with the cost of high-end processors, or to compromise high-end devices by providing too little memory and/or storage space. Continue reading...

Creating machines smarter than us could be the biggest event in human history – and the lastHere’s a question scientists might ask more often: what if we succeed? That is, how will the world change if we achieve what we’re striving for? Tucked away in offices and labs, researchers can develop tunnel vision, the rosiest of outlooks for their creations. The unintended consequences and shoddy misuses become afterthoughts – messes for society to clean up later.Today those messes spread far and wide: global heating, air pollution, plastics in the oceans, nuclear waste and babies with badly rewritten DNA. All are products of neat technologies that solve old problems by creating new ones. In the inevitable race to be first to invent, the downsides are dismissed, unexplored or glossed over. Continue reading...

‘Welfare robots’ | Privacy | Rugby | Norfolk Park in Sheffield | Sport and winningEd Pilkington’s reference to a “21st-century Dickensian dystopia” (The worldwide tech revolution digitising welfare systems and punishing the most vulnerable, 15 October) is spot-on. How prescient was Dickens’s depiction of the nightmare Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit. It’s hard to believe that common sense is so completely absent among those tasked with running the country and evolving systems, but sadly it’s all too clear.

The US, UK and Australia are taking on Facebook in a bid to undermine the only method that protects our personal information• Edward Snowden is a US surveillance whistleblowerIn every country of the world, the security of computers keeps the lights on, the shelves stocked, the dams closed, and transportation running. For more than half a decade, the vulnerability of our computers and computer networks has been ranked the number one risk in the US Intelligence Community’s Worldwide Threat Assessment – that’s higher than terrorism, higher than war. Your bank balance, the local hospital’s equipment, and the 2020 US presidential election, among many, many other things, all depend on computer safety.And yet, in the midst of the greatest computer security crisis in history, the US government, along with the governments of the UK and Australia, is attempting to undermine the only method that currently exists for reliably protecting the world’s information: encryption. Should they succeed in their quest to undermine encryption, our public infrastructure and private lives will be rendered permanently unsafe. Continue reading...

John Mullen believes Australia would have access to better broadband had the government not embarked on the NBNThe Telstra chair, John Mullen, has admitted the company must accept part of the blame for the NBN due to its “recalcitrance” in helping the then Labor government’s NBN policy a decade ago.Mullen told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting in Melbourne on Tuesday he believes Australia would have access to better broadband than is available on the NBN today, at no cost to taxpayers, had the government not embarked on rolling out the NBN. Continue reading...

Tired? Bored? Supremely unconcerned? Thanks to the latest rollout of digital icons, soon we’ll all be able to express our lack of enthusiasm in tiny circular formName: Yawning Face emoji.Age: Unveiled 224 days ago, as part of Emoji 12.0. Continue reading...

Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and eBay have withdrawn as sponsors – and it may face regulatory problemsPlans for Facebook’s proposed “stablecoin”, Libra, appear to be unravelling with the withdrawal of PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, eBay and Mercado Pago as potential sponsors. This is hardly surprising, given growing awareness of Libra’s potential adverse consequences. If it offers anonymity to its users, Libra will become a platform for tax evasion, money laundering and terrorist finance. If, on the other hand, its privacy protections are lax, Libra will give Facebook access to users’ most intimate financial details.Then there are the dangers Libra poses to economic and financial stability. Although Facebook’s stablecoin will be backed by a portfolio of “low-volatility assets”, anyone who lived through the 2008 global financial crisis will know that low volatility is more a state of mind than an intrinsic attribute of an asset. If the prices of the bonds in the reserve portfolio fall in response to an unexpected rise in interest rates, for example, those bonds may then be inadequate to redeem all the Libra in circulation. At this point, the reserve will be subject to the equivalent of a bank run. And because Libra operates like a currency board, there will be no lender of last resort. Continue reading...

DWP spending millions on ‘intelligent automation garage’ to develop welfare robots to replace humans

Ministers from several countries have written an open letter to the Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, asking him not to fully encrypt all of the company’s messaging services. This week, Jordan Erica Webber talks to the Guardian’s tech reporter Julia Carrie Wong and the security expert Alan Woodward about the implications of restricting end-to-end encryption Continue reading...

As Skoda’s bestselling model the Octavia celebrates its 60th birthday, it’s worth remembering why it has become such a firm favourite on British roadsSkoda Octavia

Constantly checking your phone? Sidetracked by apps? Use these tips to change bad tech habits to good

The behavioural scientist has advised tech companies on how to get people hooked – now he’s telling us how to break the habit• Follow Eyal’s guide to avoiding digital distraction I am 10 minutes late for my interview with behavioural scientist Nir Eyal, and run into the Manhattan cafe where we’re meeting, a dishevelled and apologetic mess. Being late is never ideal, but it’s particularly embarrassing because I’m meeting Eyal to discuss his new book, Indistractable: How To Control Your Attention And Choose Your Life, a guide to staying focused in an age of constant distraction. The hope is that he will teach me, a chronic procrastinator, how to stop wasting my life scrolling through my phone, and finally write that novel. Or, at the very least, be on time for appointments.Dressed in Tech Dad chic – a crisp button-down shirt and jeans – Eyal already has coffee and looks busy when I burst in. He dropped his daughter off at science camp this morning, he explains, which is why he picked this spot; he hopes it wasn’t inconvenient. And I shouldn’t worry about being late: “Maybe you can use it in your article, as your introduction.” Obviously, I will have time to think of a better introduction, but I thank him anyway. Continue reading...

Firm’s public calls for climate action contrast with backing for conservative thinktanks

Apple chief said in a letter HKmap.live was ‘used maliciously to target’ officers as claim was disputed by protesters on the groundTim Cook has written to Apple employees defending the company’s decision to remove an app used by Hong Kong protesters to coordinate movements and avoid concentrations of police.But the chief executive has been criticised for “taking at face value” the claims of the Hong Kong police, which don’t chime with the experiences of international observers on the ground. Continue reading...

Big tech isn’t interested in a better world, just a more profitable one. To beat it, we need to break its stranglehold on usThe climate crimes of big tech are legion. This summer the Amazon burned. Why? In part because of the policies of the new anti-environmental, anti-human-rights president, Jair Bolsonaro.Related: The great break-up of big tech is finally beginning | Matt Stoller Continue reading...

Billionaire Brexiter tells staff in email that project not commercially viableThe billionaire inventor Sir James Dyson has scrapped plans to build an electric car after deciding the project was not commercially viable.Dyson, who is one of the most prominent business figures to back Brexit, confirmed in 2017 that he planned to invest £2.5bn in technologies including a battery-powered vehicle, which was due to roll off production lines in 2021. Continue reading...

Creators of HKmap.Live accused Apple of ‘political decision to suppress freedom’ in Hong KongApple has pulled an app that tracked the movements of Hong Kong police through crowdsourced data, after it became the latest company to be put under pressure by China this week.The creators of HKmap.Live said the app was pulled after Apple found it was in violation of local laws and company guidelines. Continue reading...

Pablo asks if it’s worth patching up an old ThinkPad T510 or best to buy a new Windows 10 laptopI have a Lenovo ThinkPad T510 purchased about six years ago. I’m perfectly happy with it, except the keyboard needs replacing and batteries seem to lose their ability to charge within a couple of years. The keyboard and battery could be replaced for less than $100. Other than those factors, is there any reason to replace the machine? If I buy a Windows 10 machine, could I or should I continue to run Windows 7 on it? PabloThere is no universal answer to your first question. The time to sell, repurpose or recycle an old PC depends on a large number of factors. Some are technical, such as the specification, the build quality, and whether it will actually run Windows 10. Some are personal, such as what you use it for, how much money you can spare, and whether your time has any value. Continue reading...

Exclusive: algorithm may expose thousands of under-18s to harmful targeted advertsFacebook has marked hundreds of thousands of children as “interested in” adverts about gambling and alcohol, a joint investigation by the Guardian and the Danish Broadcasting Corporation has found.The social network’s advertising tools reveal 740,000 children under the age of 18 are flagged as being interested in gambling, including 130,000 in the UK. Some 940,000 minors – 150,000 of whom are British – are flagged as being interested in alcoholic beverages. Continue reading...

Sony’s PS5 will have haptic feedback, while Microsoft’s competing console will have four times the power of Xbox One. Here’s how the two high-end machines compareThe next console war has a start date – or at least a start period. Sony has announced that its next console, PlayStation 5 (PS5), will be launched next autumn/winter, putting it in direct competition with Microsoft’s forthcoming Xbox Scarlett, also due in time for the 2020 Christmas holiday period.In a post on the PlayStation site, Sony revealed that PS5 will have a new controller that replaces the current joypad’s rumble feature with more sensitive and contextual haptic feedback. Continue reading...

A great camera, screen and performance can’t save horrendous ergonomics, but at least it’ll last two days on batteryThe biggest, most expensive new smartphone from Apple is the iPhone 11 Pro Max, and you’ll need a small fortune to buy it.The new 6.5in iPhone 11 Pro Max costs from £1,149 and is in effect its smaller 5.8in iPhone 11 Pro sibling put in a photocopier with a 12% magnification applied. Continue reading...

Presenter Jessica Curry says she wants to prove it’s not all about soundtracking battle scenes – there are plenty of beautiful, relaxing sounds, tooRadio 3 is launching a new weekly programme dedicated to video game soundtracks. Running from Saturday 26 October, the hour-long show will be presented by composer Jessica Curry, who won a Bafta for her work with UK studio The Chinese Room and created and presented Classic FM’s video game music programme, High Score.“[BBC presenter and journalist] Tom Service and his producer Brian Jackson came to interview me for Radio 3 at Chinese Room a couple of years ago, and we all really hit it off,” said Curry. “Tom’s an avid gamer and there was a definite feeling of excitement about the gaming scene and the music that’s being composed for games. Continue reading...

There are more than 100m Alexa-enabled devices in our homes. But are they fun time-savers or the beginning of an Orwellian nightmareOne day in 2017, Alexa went rogue. When Martin Josephson, who lives in London, came home from work, he heard his Amazon Echo Dot voice assistant spitting out fragmentary commands, seemingly based on his previous interactions with the device. It appeared to be regurgitating requests to book train tickets for journeys he had already taken and to record TV shows that he had already watched. Josephson had not said the wake word – “Alexa” – to activate it and nothing he said would stop it. It was, he says, “Kafkaesque”.This was especially interesting because Josephson (not his real name) was a former Amazon employee. Three years earlier, he had volunteered to sit in a room reciting a string of apparently meaningless phrases into a microphone for an undisclosed purpose. Only when Amazon released the Echo in the US in 2014 did he realise what he had been working on. He bought a Dot, the Echo’s cheaper, smaller model, after it launched in 2016, and found it useful enough until the day it went haywire. When the Dot’s outburst subsided, he unplugged it and deposited it in the bin. “I felt a bit foolish,” he says. “Having worked at Amazon, and having seen how they used people’s data, I knew I couldn’t trust them.” Continue reading...

After two speakers were banned, a third says organisers tried to edit his presentationOrganisers at the Australian Cyber Conference in Melbourne asked a speaker to edit his speech on Australia’s anti-encryption legislation, after they had dropped two other speakers, who were delivering talks related to whistleblowing, from the line-up at the last minute.Guardian Australia has learned that Ted Ringrose, partner with legal advice firm Ringrose Siganto was told to edit his speech, and conference organisers had sent him an edited version of his slide pack on his talk stating that the original version was “biased”. Continue reading...

Ameen al-Jaleeli and a team of student translators are working to empower people with knowledgeWhen Islamic State overran the Iraqi city of Mosul, human life was not the only thing in peril. Knowledge was, too.Fortunately, Ameen al-Jaleeli understood this. He used a friend’s wifi to transfer a vast batch of Wikipedia files for offline usage. When the militants cut the cables in July 2016, he was ready. Continue reading...

Australia and the US are negotiating a deal to speed up information sharing about criminal suspectsAustralia and the US have begun negotiating a deal to speed up information sharing about criminal suspects between law enforcement agencies and tech giants such as Google and Facebook.But questions remain about the practical effects of such a deal, given the drive towards encryption of information that keeps data at arm’s length from the tech companies themselves. Continue reading...

Thomas Drake and academic Suelette Dreyfus were dropped from the line-up at a Melbourne cyber conference at the last minuteA whistleblower and an academic have said pressure from the Australian government’s top cyber security agency led to their speeches being cancelled at a conference in Melbourne.Former NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, and Melbourne University academic Dr Suelette Dreyfus were both due to speak at the Australian Cyber Conference in Melbourne on October 7-9. Continue reading...

New 6in Kindle Kids Edition comes with 1,000 books, word-building tools and parental controlsAmazon has launched a new version of its popular Kindle e-reader aimed at children, which comes bundled with more than 1,000 age-appropriate books.The new £99 Kindle Kids Edition is a special variant of Amazon’s latest, cheapest frontlit 6in Kindle with software designed to encourage reading through gamification and word building. Continue reading...

Payments company becomes first to withdraw from controversial digital projectPayPal has become the first company to drop out of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency, as the embattled project continues to face queries from regulators around the world.Libra is technically an association backed by 28 – now 27 – multinational companies and nonprofits, although Facebook takes the lead, and a Facebook subsidiary, Calibra, is intended to be the main way consumers will interact with the project. Each of the companies involved had to pledge $10m (£8m) into a common pot to join. Continue reading...

Ada Lovelace Day is in its 10th year, and to mark it, Jordan Erica Webber is joined by the founder of the event, Suw Charman-Anderson, to talk about why we need to do more to help support women working in STEM. She also talks to Dr Tilly Blyth, the head of collections and principal curator at the Science Museum in London, to learn more about why Ada Lovelace was a mathematician ahead of her time Continue reading...

UK technology editor Alex Hern joins Anushka Asthana to discuss the Chinese-owned social network that is growing its user base with shareable short videos set to catchy soundtracks. But is it also being used as a tool of Chinese foreign policy? Plus: Marie Le Conte on the role of political gossipIt’s the wildly successful Chinese-owned video-sharing app that is taking on the likes of Snapchat and Instagram. Its users share short videos, 15 to 60 seconds long, usually set to music or film dialogue. But its success comes with worries that it is being used to advance Chinese foreign policy aims and even export censorship.The Guardian’s Alex Hern tells Anushka Asthana about a series of leaked documents he has seen that showed the company’s moderation policies. They included guidance to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence and the banned religious group Falun Gong. Continue reading...

Public broadcaster launches show led by 20-year-old comedian with 7m followers aiming to attract younger viewersShe has 7 million followers on video app TikTok and the BBC is pinning its hopes on her new female-led sketch show winning it teen viewers but Amelia Gething says she still encounters “cavemen” comments about women comedians.The 20-year-old’s forthcoming BBC youth series The Amelia Gething Complex counters pre-conceived ideas about female comedians with its surreal Monty Python and League of Gentlemen style of humour. Continue reading...

Have the social media giants cleaned up their act since the scandals of 2016? We give the big names a healthcheck

Renault’s sublime racer finds the sunshine on the stormiest of drivesRenault Mégane RS 300 Trophy

The US president is a climate-crisis denier, but it is not the only field in which he is at odds with scientists and their workLast week, a report by US campaign group the National Task Force on Rule of Law and Democracy, compiled by ex-government officials, concluded that under the Trump administration that there were now “almost weekly violations” to the impartiality of scientific research. Continue reading...

It can pick out shoplifters, international criminals and lost children in seconds. But as the cameras proliferate, who’s watching the watchers?Gordon’s wine bar is reached through a discreet side-door, a few paces from the slipstream of London theatregoers and suited professionals powering towards their evening train. A steep staircase plunges visitors into a dimly lit cavern, lined with dusty champagne bottles and faded newspaper clippings, which appears to have had only minor refurbishment since it opened in 1890. “If Miss Havisham was in the licensing trade,” an Evening Standard review once suggested, “this could have been the result.”The bar’s Dickensian gloom is a selling point for people embarking on affairs, and actors or politicians wanting a quiet drink – but also for pickpockets. When Simon Gordon took over the family business in the early 2000s, he would spend hours scrutinising the faces of the people who haunted his CCTV footage. “There was one guy who I almost felt I knew,” he says. “He used to come down here the whole time and steal.” The man vanished for a six-month stretch, but then reappeared, chubbier, apparently after a stint in jail. When two of Gordon’s friends visited the bar for lunch and both had their wallets pinched in his presence, he decided to take matters into his own hands. “The police did nothing about it,” he says. “It really annoyed me.” Continue reading...

Group called ‘Phosphorus’ made more than 2,700 attempts to identify consumer email accounts and attacked 241 of thoseA hacking group that appears to be linked to the Iranian government has carried out a campaign against a US presidential campaign, Microsoft Corp said on Friday.Microsoft saw “significant” cyber activity by the group that also targeted current and former US government officials, journalists covering global politics and prominent Iranians living outside Iran, the company said in a blogpost. Continue reading...

Met apologises after local police passed on images for controversial surveillance schemeImages of seven people were passed on by local police for use in a facial recognition system at King’s Cross in London in an agreement that was struck in secret, the details of which have been made public for the first time.A police report, published on Friday by the deputy London mayor, Sophie Linden, showed that the scheme ran for two years from 2016 without any apparent central oversight from either the Metropolitan police or the office of the mayor, Sadiq Khan. Continue reading...

Firm quietly rescinds policy banning false advertising as UK general election loomsFacebook has quietly rescinded a policy banning false claims in advertising, creating a specific exemption that leaves political adverts unconstrained regarding how they could mislead or deceive, as a potential general election looms in the UK.The social network had previously banned adverts containing “deceptive, false or misleading content”, a much stronger restriction than its general rules around Facebook posts. But, as reported by the journalist Judd Legum, in the last week the rules have narrowed considerably, only banning adverts that “include claims debunked by third-party fact-checkers, or, in certain circumstances, claims debunked by organisations with particular expertise”. Continue reading...

It’s the most eagerly awaited game of the year – and it stars everyone from Guillermo del Toro to the Bionic Woman. We tell the inside story of the dystopian thrillerImagine a world where babies are stored in life-support jars, humans are stalked by oily ghosts, and the American president is played by Lindsay Wagner, the helter-skelter-haired star of 1970s cult TV show The Bionic Woman. This is the dystopian milieu of Death Stranding, which will hit shops soon, just in time for the hectic Christmas period. In this epic video game, by far the most controversial of 2019, players must traverse a future America to reconnect its “chiral network” (a posh internet), while dodging mysterious BTs (beached things). For reasons unknown, the living and dead coexist, with the protagonist able to connect to the “other side” via a “jar baby” in an artificial womb. One recent demo focused on such gimmicks as urinating to create mushrooms.Wagner is not the only star to feature. Acclaimed video game director Hideo Kojima and his team have also created incredible likenesses of The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus, who takes on the lead role of delivery man, as well as Mads Mikkelsen and director Guillermo del Toro. Most agreed to perform because they’re fans of Kojima’s work, especially his multimillion-selling Metal Gear Solid series. Wagner took more persuading, though. Continue reading...

Facebook says it opposes calls for backdoors that would ‘undermine the privacy and security of people everywhere’The United States, United Kingdom and Australia plan to pressure Facebook to create a backdoor into its encrypted messaging apps that would allow governments to access the content of private communications, according to an open letter from top government officials to Mark Zuckerberg obtained by the Guardian.The open letter, dated 4 October, is jointly signed by the UK home secretary, Priti Patel; the US attorney general, William Barr; the US acting secretary of homeland security, Kevin McAleenan; and the Australian minister for home affairs, Peter Dutton, and is expected to be released Friday. Continue reading...