This week, Jordan Erica Webber talks to Anna, whose ex-partner surveilled her every move by using ‘stalkerware’ apps. Jordan also talks to MIT Technology Review journalist Charlotte Jee about what tech companies like Apple and Google could be doing to stop the proliferation of these apps Continue reading...

AFP granted warrant to unlock smartphone but decision overturned on grounds device not covered by Crimes ActAustralian federal police are fighting a federal court ruling that a smartphone is not considered a computer, making a warrant it was using to force a suspect to unlock a phone invalid.In August last year, the AFP obtained a warrant under section 3LA of the Crimes Act to unlock a gold-coloured Samsung phone found in the centre console of the man’s car when he was pulled over and searched. Continue reading...

Campaigners say scanning faces as alternative to tickets would be intrusiveManchester City have been cautioned against the introduction of facial recognition technology, which a civil rights group says would risk “normalising a mass surveillance tool”.The reigning Premier League champions are considering introducing technology allowing fans to get into the Etihad Stadium more quickly by showing their faces instead of tickets, according to the Sunday Times. Continue reading...

Sarah T Roberts’s vital new study demonstrates how online content moderation is a global industry that operates on the back of human exploitation“All human life is there” used to be the proudest boast of the (mercifully) defunct News of the World. Like everything else in that organ, it wasn’t true: the NoW specialised in randy vicars, chorus girls, Tory spankers, pools winners, C-list celebrities and other minority sports. But there is a medium to which the slogan definitely applies – it’s called the internet.The best metaphor for the net is to think of it as a mirror held up to human nature. All human life really is there. There’s no ideology, fetish, behaviour, obsession, perversion, eccentricity or fad that doesn’t find expression somewhere online. And while much of what we see reflected back to us is uplifting, banal, intriguing, harmless or fascinating, some of it is truly awful, for the simple reason that human nature is not only infinitely diverse but also sometimes unspeakably cruel. Continue reading...

Peugeot’s comfortable new SUV offers cycling correspondent Jeremy Whittle a front row seat to all the action at this year’s Tour de FrancePeugeot 3008

Advertisers, tech giants and border forces are using face tracking software to monitor our moods – whether we like it or notIt is early July, almost 30C outside, but Mihkel Jäätma is thinking about Christmas. In a co-working space in Soho, the 39-year-old founder and CEO of Realeyes, an “emotion AI” startup which uses eye-tracking and facial expression to analyse mood, scrolls through a list of 20 festive ads from 2018. He settles on The Boy and the Piano, the offering from John Lewis that tells the life story of Elton John backwards, from megastardom to the gift of a piano from his parents as a child, accompanied by his timeless heartstring-puller Your Song. The ad was well received, but Jäätma is clearly unconvinced.He hits play, and the ad starts, but this time two lines – one grey (negative reactions), the other red (positive) – are traced across the action. These follow the second-by-second responses of a 200-person sample audience who watched the ad and allowed Realeyes to record them through the camera of their computer or smartphone. Realeyes then used its AI technology to analyse each individual’s facial expression and body language. The company did this with all of Jäätma’s list of 20 Christmas ads from 2018, watching 4,000 people, before rating each commercial for attention, emotion, sentiment and finally giving it a mark out of 10. Continue reading...

A dating sim with a difference, artist Angela Washko’s The Game: The Game exposes the manipulative horror of extreme seduction by getting the player to experience it from the woman’s point of viewIt’s Friday night, and it’s been a long day. You’re a young woman walking into a bar, looking for your friends, when a man you don’t know walks up to you, grabs you, and pulls you close. “SPIN,” he says intensely, turning you in a circle. It’s a command, not a request. When you try to pull away, he feigns sadness for a moment, furrowing his brow, and then declares his love for you, a look of pain in his eyes. “Don’t embarrass me,” the man growls, and tries to pull you towards the door, toward a cab, towards his apartment, even as you resist.Welcome to The Game: The Game, where a dating sim is transformed into survival horror by filtering “romance” through the lens of “pick-up artists”, a lucrative but emotionally deformed community where poorly adjusted and manipulative men teach others how to extract sex from women at all costs. In a traditional dating sim, you’d be presented with a variety of romantic interests, and encouraged to choose the one you like the most. In The Game, as in pick-up artistry at large, it’s not about what you want; instead, you’re presented with several men willing to do a wide range of things to get you into bed, each of them based on a real-life leader in the seduction community, and tailored to his specific approach. Continue reading...

Photographs used to be banned in exhibitions – now they’re encouraged. So why do some people get so snobby about them?While I was studying art history, my tutor once advised the class that when you want to take photos in a gallery, it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Later, when I started working in various galleries, I always felt bad when someone asked whether they could take photographs because I had to tell them no.Thankfully, things have loosened up – at least in UK museums and galleries – and personal photography is generally allowed and even encouraged. But have things swung too far in the other direction? This has been a heated topic of debate on social media this past week. Smartphones have made photography accessible to almost everybody, while social media provides somewhere for all those photos to go. As such, the phone has become a significant presence in the gallery, to the annoyance of some. Continue reading...

Petition demands that the company not provide any technical services to US immigration agencies, citing ‘system of abuse’Tech giant Google is facing a demand from hundreds of employees for an assurance that it will not bid on a government cloud computing contract that could be used to enforce US immigration policies on the southern border.A group of employees called Googlers for Human Rights posted a public petition overnight Thursday urging the company to resist tendering for a US Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement contract. Continue reading...

Investigation uncovers widespread use in museums and shopping centresPrivacy campaigners have warned of an “epidemic” of facial recognition use in shopping centres, museums, conference centres and other private spaces around the UK.An investigation by Big Brother Watch (BBW), which tracks the use of surveillance, has found that private companies are spearheading a rollout of the controversial technology. Continue reading...

In 1989, the machine the rest of the world called the Mega Drive was launched in the US with a new name and a bold new idea: that gaming could be coolThe US launch of the Sega Genesis, on 14 August 1989, probably didn’t seem like a huge deal outside the video game industry. The machine was launched in Japan the year before under a different name – the Mega Drive – and with a couple of decent arcade conversions, Space Harrier II and Super Thunder Blade, but not much in the way of fanfare. Nintendo utterly dominated the games business at that time, with a 95% share of the console sector and most of the biggest Japanese developers locked into exclusive deals to make games for its NES and forthcoming SNES consoles. The Mega Drive did OK in Japan but it was small fry – a cult machine.But David Rosen, who co-founded Sega after serving with the US air force in Japan during the Korean war, was determined to make a real event of the console’s launch in his native country. The first games machine with a 16-bit processor, and boasting beautiful, colourful visuals, excellent sound and enough power to handle accurate arcade conversions, it had all the credentials of a hit. All he had to do was get US gamers to recognise it. So he rebranded it Genesis – a name he thought was cool and symbolised Sega’s rebirth – and then he started building. Continue reading...

Ren Zhengfei confident of UK deal with Chinese company, but security concerns remainThe founder and chief executive of Huawei has said Britain “won’t say no to us” over the Chinese firm’s involvement in the rollout of 5G mobile internet infrastructure.The UK is considering the inclusion of Huawei equipment in the project after Donald Trump in May in effect banned the company from trading with American firms. Continue reading...

Facebook-owned company seeking to stem spread of misinformation by removing dubious posts from searchesInstagram is adding an option for users to report posts they think are false, the Facebook-owned photo-sharing site has announced, as tries to stem misinformation and other abuses.Results rated as false are removed from places where users seek out new content, such as Instagram’s “explore” tab and hashtag search results. Continue reading...

Privacy watchdog is seeking details of how technology is used at central London siteThe UK’s privacy watchdog has opened an investigation into the use of facial recognition cameras in a busy part of central London.The information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, announced she would look into the technology being used in Granary Square, close to King’s Cross station. Continue reading...

A team of researchers at Japan’s Keio university have built a robotic tail. Dubbed 'Arque', the grey one-metre device mimics tails such as those of cheetahs and monkeys, used to keep balance while running and climbing Continue reading...

Ruqayyah needs a laptop costing up to £500 for her teacher training course. What are her best options?I’m due to start my teacher training in September. Which laptop should I buy on a £500 budget? RuqayyahThis question comes up every year. Obviously, the answers change as technology moves on. What doesn’t change much, if at all, is the general advice. You can get most of it from last year’s answer, though a brief summary might be useful. Continue reading...

Critics say ‘proactive’ approach could make questionable content harder to detectFacebook is changing its rules on private groups amid growing criticism that some closed communities on the platform are uniting extremists and spreading fake news.The company announced in a blogpost on Wednesday that it would take a more “proactive” approach in detecting problematic content in groups and will work to enhance transparency surrounding them. Continue reading...

The platform made stars of Bria Kam and Chrissy Chambers. But now the duo, along with other gay content creators, say they are losing their voice and their living because of the unfair way an algorithm works‘It happened again today,” Bria Kam tells me, throwing her arms up in frustration. I am speaking to Kam and her wife, Chrissy Chambers, over FaceTime from their home in Vancouver, Washington. They are sitting in their workout gear, on the familiar grey couch where they record the YouTube videos that have turned them into stars. But there are no signature dazzling smiles today.This morning, the couple uploaded a video called Ten Ways to Know You’re in Love (Do You Want a Baby?), a benign collection of comedy sketches (including one in which Chambers falls asleep while Kam is talking, and another in which Chambers is going through her rock collection) followed by an interview with a lesbian couple who had conceived a child with donor sperm. Continue reading...

Office rental company filed for initial public offering, publishing statements showing loss of almost $700m in the first half of 2019WeWork, a company that has shaken up the sleepy world of office rentals by adding a hipster aesthetic and beer taps to office life, became the latest Silicon Valley “unicorn” to file for an initial public offering (IPO) on Wednesday, revealing huge losses and rapid growth.The nine-year-old company now runs offices in 111 cities worldwide with 527,000 members paying fees for access to a shared workspace in 29 countries across the world. Continue reading...

Capcom’s joyful, rule-breaking gameplay laid the groundwork for today’s multiplayer fighting games. Its producer and designer tell us how they did it

Fingerprints, facial recognition and other personal information from Biostar 2 discovered on publicly accessible databaseThe fingerprints of over 1 million people, as well as facial recognition information, unencrypted usernames and passwords, and personal information of employees, was discovered on a publicly accessible database for a company used by the likes of the UK Metropolitan police, defence contractors and banks.Suprema is the security company responsible for the web-based Biostar 2 biometrics lock system that allows centralised control for access to secure facilities like warehouses or office buildings. Biostar 2 uses fingerprints and facial recognition as part of its means of identifying people attempting to gain access to buildings. Continue reading...

True wireless buds are Sony’s best yet, but where is the volume control?Sony’s latest true wireless WF-1000XM3 earbuds offer both noise cancelling and top-end sound quality while undercutting premium rivals on price.The replacement for the WF-1000X, which were some of the first noise cancelling true wireless earbuds available, the new “M3” portion of the model number denotes the company’s third generation of active noise cancelling technology and the QN1e chip, which is rivalled only by Bose. Continue reading...

Company says ‘human review’ of audio conversations on Messenger has been ‘paused’Facebook has become the latest company to admit that human contractors listened to recordings of users without their knowledge, a practice the company now says has been “paused”.Citing contractors who worked on the project, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday that the company hired people to listen to audio conversations carried out on Facebook Messenger. Continue reading...

Fifteen-year-old resorts to drastic measures after action taken ‘so I’d pay more attention to my surroundings’A resourceful teenager has taken the rise of increasingly powerful smart home devices to its logical conclusion – tweeting from her family’s smart fridge after her mother confiscated her phone.The 15-year-old Ariana Grande fan known only as “Dorothy” was barred from using her phone but managed to find a number of innovative ways to reach her thousands of followers – a handheld Nintendo device, a Wii U gaming console and, finally, her family’s LG Smart Refrigerator. Continue reading...

One person reassured by the technology but most echo the complaint that ‘it’s unjustified’Members of the public have said there is no justification for the use of facial recognition technology in CCTV systems operated by a private developer at a 67-acre site in central London.Related: London mayor writes to King’s Cross owner over facial recognition Continue reading...

Are deepfakes a threat to democracy? The creator of a series of viral clips says he is raising awareness of their subversive potential

Committee chairman suggested staff knew Cambridge Analytica had misused data before Guardian revelation

Information commissioner says use of the technology must be ‘necessary and proportionate’The UK’s privacy regulator said it is studying the use of controversial facial recognition technology by property companies amid concerns that its use in CCTV systems at the King’s Cross development in central London may not be legal.The Information Commissioner’s Office warned businesses using the surveillance technology that they needed to demonstrate its use was “strictly necessary and proportionate” and had a clear basis in law. Continue reading...

Expanded program, announced at Black Hat conference, comes as governments and tech firms compete for informationApple will pay ethical hackers more than $1m if they responsibly disclose dangerous security vulnerabilities to the firm, the company announced at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.The new “bug bounty”, up from a previous maximum of $200,000, could even out-bid what a security researcher could earn if they decided to skip disclosure altogether and sell the bug to a nation state or an “offensive security company”, according to data shared by Maor Shwartz, a vulnerability broker at the same conference. Continue reading...

A satirical tale of a near future dominated by a single power-hungry firm is gripping and cerebralWhen Amazon was founded 25 years ago, its aims seemed benevolent – to be the largest bookshop on Earth, but also one that offered touch-of-a-button convenience to shoppers. How things change. Now, with its remit having long since expanded to include virtually every service and item one could wish for, the once-likable company has become a monolithic conglomerate, shutting down its competition mercilessly.It is surely Amazon that gave Rob Hart the idea for the all-powerful, omniscient company Cloud in his hugely engaging novel, even if one character dismisses it as operating on “a much smaller scale… their interests were too earthbound”. Continue reading...

At £99, Ikea’s wifi speaker provides a cheaper way to experience Sonos and sounds good tooThere’s a new, cheaper way to buy a Sonos wifi speaker and it’s from Ikea.The Symfonisk bookshelf speaker is the second of two new products born of a partnership between the Swedish furniture manufacturer Ikea and the American premium multiroom audio specialists Sonos. Continue reading...

High street bank says Google Home trial could let you do the banking as you make a cuppa or iron a shirtGet ready to say: “Hey Google. How much do I have in my bank account?” NatWest is to begin voice-only banking that will give customers direct access to their accounts by talking to the Google Home smart speakers now in millions of British homes.The trial – the first by a UK high street bank – will let customers ask Google “What’s my balance?”, “What’s my latest transactions?” and “What’s my pending transactions”. Google devices will answer verbally, and also flash the answers up on the customer’s smartphone. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber talks to Julia Carrie Wong about the extremist message board 8chan after the suspect in the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, used the website to post a manifesto on why he targeted those he murdered Continue reading...

Dating apps are a huge success – but people are looking elsewhere for the perfect matchOn paper, it’s a great time to be on a dating app. In the seven years since Tinder’s entrance on to the dating scene in 2012, it has gone from fringe novelty to romantic ubiquity; within two years of launching, it was seeing 1bn swipes a day. Other apps have similarly impressive stats: in 2018, Bumble’s global brand director revealed it had more than 26 million users and a confirmed 20,000 marriages.It’s a far cry from the considerably less optimistic response Tinder received when it launched. Many hailed it as the end of romance itself. In a now infamous Vanity Fair article, Nancy Jo Sales even went so far as to suggest it would usher in the “dating apocalypse”. Continue reading...

A stark polemic argues that social media may have unleashed an age of nihilism from which there is little hope of escapeBack in the blissed-out 1960s, Marshall McLuhan evangelised for the new electronic media by instructing us to “serve these objects, these extensions of ourselves, as gods or minor religions”. It was a prophetic glimpse of a future that has now arrived. People today are the slaves of their fetishised, deified smartphones; the religion is no longer minor, and, like the discredited cults it replaced, it doses the faithful with opium.Technology, as Richard Seymour says, always boasts of possessing superhuman powers, which is why it arouses our wary paranoia. In earlier times, industrial engines seemed like monstrous Molochs that gobbled up workers; nowadays we are unsure whether the magical gadget we hold in our hand is “a benevolent genie or a tormenting demon”. The twittering machine, as Seymour calls it, has no innate morality, but it preys on our weaknesses to monopolise our attention and modify our behaviour. We are left jangled, needy, constantly alert for the chirp that announces some new and unnecessary missive, ever ready to resume our chore of clicking the “like” button, surrendering to the advertisers who gather up the personal data we so guilelessly provide. Continue reading...

A chimera is an organism with genetic material from two or more sources. Experiments in the field may save lives but are ethically controversialLast week, researchers led by Spanish scientist Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte announced they had created the first human-monkey chimera embryos in China. The purpose of the experiment is to investigate ways of using animals to grow human organs for transplants. The organs could be genetically matched by taking the recipient’s cells and reprogramming them into stem cells. Continue reading...

Cadge a lift in a new Kadjar and you’ll surprise yourself – Renault’s reworked family car deserves to be enjoyed by more than just familiesRenault Kadjar

As the crisis-hit video site struggles to stem the flow of extreme content, the CEO talks about her role as the internet’s gatekeeperIn YouTube’s fashionable central London “space”, where good-looking young people mill around and help themselves to the well-stocked free kitchen, there is a noticeboard that asks staff and visitors: What could we do better? On one of the sticky notes, someone has written “Nothing!!” It would be reassuring for the executives who run the video site if that were true, although not many would agree that it is. Susan Wojcicki, YouTube’s CEO, who is in town for a three-week tour of Europe, is one of the most impressive and powerful women in tech – and also one of the most beleaguered.We meet in one of the studios, where YouTubers with more than 10,000 subscribers can make videos, and sit on sofas in a set with a faux brick-wall backdrop, which gives a slightly unnerving sense of fake cosiness. Wojcicki (pronounced “Wo-jisky”) seems friendly but businesslike; chatty, but is careful about what she says. There is a lot to talk about: sexism in tech, the power of social media, being a working parent of five – and especially the crises that have engulfed the company she runs, particularly this year. Continue reading...

Recent UK law bans online sellers sending knives to homes unless buyer verified as 18+

Could widespread feelings of anger and powerlessness be behind the astrology boom?A notification from the astrology app Co-Star recently told 27-year-old Bridget: “It’s OK to catch feelings.” Bridget knows how ridiculous that sounds, she says, and how baffled older people might be by the enthusiasm with which she follows its advice. But she believes the app’s tongue-in-cheek nature is tapping into something more profound: young people’s growing disillusionment with religious and political structures.Bridget is not alone. Astrology is without doubt having a cultural moment. As well as the rapid proliferation of apps such as Co-Star, which has been downloaded more than 3m times since 2017, astrology memes are a staple on Instagram and Twitter, and have sparked a huge boost in traffic to women’s news sites; a typical horoscope post on the Cut got 150% more hits in 2017 than in 2016, while gal-dem, which introduced a horoscope column in March, said posts performed consistently well. Continue reading...

Firm will appeal against action that could expose it to billions of dollars in potential damagesA US federal appeals court has rejected Facebook’s effort to undo a class action lawsuit alleging it illegally collected and stored biometric data for millions of users without their consent using facial recognition technology.The 3-0 decision from the ninth US circuit court of appeals in San Francisco exposes the company to billions of dollars in potential damages paid out to the Illinois users who brought the case. Continue reading...

The Wall Street Journal reported that the tech company was offering news executives as much as $3m a year to license storiesFacebook is reportedly in talks with news publishers to offer “millions of dollars” for the rights to publish their material on its site. The move follows years of criticism over its growing monopolization of online advertising to the detriment of the struggling news industry.The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Facebook representatives had told news executives that they would pay as much as $3m a year to license stories, headlines and other material. Continue reading...

Leaked documents show children as young as 16 recruited by Amazon supplier Foxconn work gruelling and illegal hoursHundreds of schoolchildren have been drafted in to make Amazon’s Alexa devices in China as part of a controversial and often illegal attempt to meet production targets, documents seen by the Guardian reveal.Interviews with workers and leaked documents from Amazon’s supplier Foxconn show that many of the children have been required to work nights and overtime to produce the smart-speaker devices, in breach of Chinese labour laws. Continue reading...

Second earnings report shows worse-than-predicted losses and revenue growthUber lost $5.24bn in the last three months, its largest-ever quarterly loss, news that sent the ride-hailing company’s shares sliding 10%.The company was reporting earnings for only the second time following its share sale in May. The latest losses were worse than analysts had expected and the company announced revenues that were also below predictions. Continue reading...

Digital video continues to power entertainment growth with gaming spend slightly upThe streaming revolution has notched up another milestone with UK consumers spending more than £100m a week on digital entertainment services such as Netflix, Amazon, Spotify and Apple Music in the first half of the year for the first time.UK consumers spent a total of £3.3bn on entertainment products in the first six months of the year, a 4.5% increase compared with a year earlier, as the popularity of subscription music and TV streaming services more than made up for the decline in sales of traditional CDs and DVDs. Continue reading...

Jaki has 11,000 photos on a USB drive but Windows 10 won’t recognise it. What can she do?My external USB hard drive, with 11,000 photos from Windows 7, isn’t recognised by Windows 10. How do I transfer them to Windows 10 for future safekeeping? JakiThe Universal Serial Bus (USB) connects billions of keyboards, mice, joysticks, printers, external hard drives and other peripherals to roughly 1.5bn personal computers, and more than 3bn mobile phones use the smaller Micro USB and newer USB-C versions. It generally works pretty well but most people have probably suffered from a USB device failing or not being recognised. Continue reading...

Luxury model has colour-changing frontlight that gets warmer as the sun setsAmazon’s most expensive, luxury e-reader, the Kindle Oasis, has taken a leaf out of the modern smartphone’s book for 2019 with a colour adjustable light that gets warmer as the sun sets.It’s a small thing that makes quite a difference to the reading experience, which is just as well as the rest of the £230 Oasis is basically the same as it was two years ago. Continue reading...

With increasing numbers of people bleeding to death in US streets, the president has to find someone – something – anything! – to blameScientific studies do not find any links between video games and gun violence. The claim that they do has been repeatedly tested, studied and debunked.Yet on Monday, US president Donald Trump insisted that “gruesome and grisly video games” were causative in the gun massacre deaths of 22 people in El Paso and another 9 in Dayton (not Toledo) Ohio. Continue reading...