Technology | The Guardian

A tale of two 12th-century French children confronting an ever more malevolent and verminous world casts a beguiling spellA Plague Tale: Innocence opens on a scene of idyllic playfulness: a teenage girl, Amicia, walking her dog through an autumnal forest in 12th-century France, bumping apples from tall trees using pebbles hurled from a homemade slingshot. If this is the “innocence” of the game’s title, it plays but a fleeting cameo role in the drama. Before the day is out, Amicia’s dog is dead – ripped apart by a thrashing mass of rabid vermin – along with her former life of privilege as a French noble, ripped apart by soldiers of the inquisition, thugs acting on behalf of an equally corrupt church.Amicia and her younger brother Hugo, a boy who suffers from a blood disease and has spent his days in jaundiced confinement, escape the family estate and begin to pick their way through a countryside turned hostile. This is, then, a story of innocence versus experience, of children versus the ruined world of adults, with all its plagues, both physical and ideological. Continue reading...

Will robots be the answer to labour shortages on farms? Our pick of the best planting, weeding and harvesting machinesLast week a startup based at Plymouth University unveiled the world’s first raspberry-picking robot. The machine can pick about 25,000 berries a day, which is 10,000 more than a human during an eight-hour shift. Raspberries are particularly challenging for machines to harvest because the robots have to identify ripe fruit and handle the soft berries without damaging them. The firm intends to lease the robots to farmers at a rate that would undercut the cost of employing human fruit pickers. Continue reading...

Don’t expect the Chinese government to roll over in the fight against the tech giantUntil recently, the only thing the average citizen could have told you about Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, was that s/he hadn’t the faintest idea of how to pronounce it (it’s “hwa-wei” btw, according to Wikipedia). And then, suddenly, this unpronounceable company seemed to be all over the news. Now it’s at the centre of a burgeoning geopolitical row. How did that happen?I blame the Australians, who have a government only marginally less dysfunctional than our own. According to a Reuters report, in early 2018 they asked their top spooks a question: “With all the offensive cyber tools at their disposal, what harm could they inflict if they had access to equipment installed in the 5G network, the next generation mobile communications technology, of a target nation?” The spooks came back with a sombre assessment: the offensive potential of 5G was so great, they reported, that if Australia were on the receiving end of such attacks, the country’s critical infrastructure could be seriously sabotaged. Continue reading...

As motorists slowly make the switch to electric cars, the multi-award winning Jaguar I-Pace proves that the future of motoring is different, but equally thrillingJaguar I-Pace

I love the idea of higher connection speeds – but should I wait until there’s more choice?Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it’s up to you to help him or her out – a selection of the best answers will appear in next Saturday’s paper.5G has been launched in the UK this week. I love the idea of higher connection speeds and I live in one of the areas where the new network operates. It is not cheap, however. So should I sign up now and buy a 5G phone or should I wait until there are more options on the market? Continue reading...

Failure to tip, a refusal to chat … even where you sit could influence how drivers rate you and under a new policy could see you bannedWill your Uber rating be docked if youdon’t tip? What side of the car should you sit on? Small talk or silence?Since Uber first began to allow users to check their ratings on the app in 2017, riders have harbored growing anxiety about how many stars their behavior in the back seat will earn them. Continue reading...

Consumer version of BBM will cease but app aimed at businesses will continueBBM, or BlackBerry Messenger, the encrypted messaging service that introduced many to the joys of mobile chat – and was blamed for the 2011 London riots – is finally shutting down on Friday.The Indonesian company that owns the service, announced its plans in April, giving users a month to migrate. Continue reading...

Fantastic screen, the fastest performance, a good camera and brilliant software in a massive phone that still undercuts the competitionThe OnePlus 7 Pro is the firm’s largest, most expensive and most premium phone yet. While not that cheap, it still undercuts the competition by some margin, while offering sheer speed and a stunning notchless display that even its most expensive rivals can’t touch.Starting at £649, the OnePlus 7 Pro is £150 more expensive than last year’s 6T or its 2019 refresh the 7 (non-Pro). It’s also significantly bigger. Continue reading...

Plan for cameras to track students in Lockport’s schools called ‘unprecedented invasion of privacy’ and ‘colossal waste of money’A school district in western New York is launching a first-of-its-kind facial recognition system, generating new privacy concerns about the powerful but controversial technology.The Lockport city school district is beginning implementation of the Aegis facial recognition system this week, officials said, with the technology expected to be fully up and running in time for the new school year in September. Continue reading...

Company said it now had 93 million customers who are active on a monthly basis, 33% higher than the same period last yearUber lost more than $1bn in the first three months of the year, the ride-sharing company announced on Thursday.Releasing its first quarterly report since it became a public company, Uber said it now had 93 million customers who are active on a monthly basis, 33% higher than the same period last year. The company’s revenues were $3.1bn for the three months, 20% higher but slower than the 25% annual growth Uber recorded in the prior quarter. Continue reading...

House speaker says ‘I can take it’ after site keeps doctored video up, but criticizes their role in spread of false informationHouse speaker Nancy Pelosi has strongly criticised Facebook for failing to tackle misinformation after the social media network refused to take down a video that had been doctored to make her appear drunk or ill.Pelosi, the highest ranking woman in Congress, is the most senior US politician to have accused Facebook of “wittingly” allowing the spread of misinformation promoted by Russia during the 2016 US election. Continue reading...

Brazilian landmarks’ entries were edited to push firm’s promotional photos higher in Google search resultsClothing firm The North Face has been accused of digital vandalism after an ad agency surreptitiously inserted the company’s products into Wikipedia articles about Brazilian mountains.In April, the ad agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made, filled Wikipedia entries of Brazilian landmarks with professional shots featuring the brand, with the intention of causing Google to display the same images in the top few search results. Continue reading...

Band argue that game ‘is attempting to trade off on Iron Maiden’s notoriety’ and is confusing customersIron Maiden are suing video game company 3D Realms over the game Ion Maiden, which they describe as an “incredibly blatant” infringement on their trademark.The lawsuit, which demands $2m (£1.58m) in damages, argues that the game’s title will cause “confusion among consumers”, “is nearly identical to the Iron Maiden trademark in appearance, sound and overall commercial impression”, and “is attempting to trade off on Iron Maiden’s notoriety”. Continue reading...

More than 130 residents at a Brooklyn apartment complex oppose plan to use the cameras, whose use, experts say, is quietly expanding in cities

GCHQ ‘ghost protocol’ would seriously undermine user security and trust, says letterA GCHQ proposal that would enable eavesdropping on encrypted chat services has been condemned as a “serious threat” to digital security and human rights.In an open letter signed by more than 50 companies, civil society organisations and security experts – including Apple, WhatsApp, Liberty and Privacy International – GCHQ was called on to abandon its so-called “ghost protocol”, and instead focus on “protecting privacy rights, cybersecurity, public confidence, and transparency”. Continue reading...

Support for regulation grows as 78% express concern over harmful experiencesBritish people are increasingly fearful of the risks posed by the internet, prompting greater support for more regulation following recent headlines about the theft of personal data and abusive online behaviour.Research by the media regulator Ofcom found 78% of Britons expressed unprompted concerns about potentially harmful online experiences, a substantial rise from the previous year. Continue reading...

Benefits should be great enough to outweigh any public distrust, says ethics reportFacial recognition software should only be used by police if they can prove it will not introduce gender or racial bias to operations, an ethics panel has said.A report by the London policing ethics panel, which was set up to advise City Hall, concluded that while there were “important ethical issues to be addressed” in the use of the controversial technology, they did not justify not using it at all. Continue reading...

PC; Blue Manchu/Humble Bundle

Elon Musk’s Starlink internet satellites ‘have no public consensus and may impair view of the cosmos’Mega constellations of human-made satellites could soon blight the view of the night sky, astronomers warned following the launch of Elon Musk’s Starlink probes last week.The first 60 of an intended 12,000 satellites were successfully blasted into orbit on Thursday by Musk’s company, SpaceX, which plans to use them to beam internet communication from space down to Earth. Continue reading...

Kingdom targeted satirist Ghanem Almasarir with Israeli malware, letter of claim alleges

Despite a well-documented gender imbalance within the tech industry, a recent survey suggests that when it comes to VR, women are starting to take up leadership roles in greater numbersWhen the Arab spring uprising began in 2010, film-maker Tamara Shogaolu was living in Egypt. As she travelled around the country collecting oral histories of people’s experiences, she realised the role virtual reality (VR) could play in showcasing these stories. Her VR documentary, Another Dream, debuted at the Tribeca film festival in April. It follows an Egyptian lesbian couple who, facing the post-revolution backlash against LGBT people, escape the country to seek asylum in the Netherlands.“When you’re listening to someone’s voice, to be physically present in their memories is so interesting,” explains Shogaolu. During the production, the characters would describe their feeling of difference as people of colour in majority-white spaces. And it was a feeling familiar to Shogaolu herself, as a black woman working in the male-dominated and white-majority world of tech. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Documents reveal rushed encryption legislation allows police to compel wifi providers to turn over information about usersPeople accessing the internet at McDonald’s and Westfield in Australia could be targeted for surveillance by police under new encryption legislation, according to the home affairs department.A briefing by the department, obtained under freedom of information, reveals that police can use new powers to compel a broad range of companies including social media giants, device manufacturers, telcos, retailers and providers of free wifi to provide information on users. Continue reading...

Social media cannot ensure they only publish truths. But what about deliberate falsehoods designed to damage?Are social media companies responsible for the lies their users tell? Both the obvious answers, “yes” and “no”, are clearly wrong. Complete responsibility is a bad idea, and impossible in practice: even in China, the home of the largest and most sophisticated censorship apparatus on the web, the internet is expected to slow down markedly in the coming weeks under the burden of combing through it to ensure that no references to the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre are published. And, as the Chinese example shows, there are also considerable difficulties that arise when any one organisation can decide what counts as truth or falsehood. Yet it can’t be right, either, to say that social media companies have no responsibility to exercise the powers they have to remove obnoxious material from their servers. Videos of murder, child abuse and other horrors are routinely and rightly removed. It will be objected that these are horrible precisely because they are not lies – they record things that really happened. But that doesn’t stand up. It is no defence, either in British law, or in any moral sense, to say that a video of atrocity is faked. If it works as propaganda for jihadis, or for child abusers, it will be censored and its originators punished if that’s possible.The platforms have been much more reluctant to act against lies which promote causes which are not in themselves criminal, however despicable. Google and Facebook are both advertising businesses, the biggest that the world has ever seen, and they depend on their ability to attract and to retain viewers. So the conspiracy theories of Alex Jones were tolerated for many years. So were the 9/11 truthers, the anti-vaxxers, and, on Twitter, Donald Trump’s campaign to suggest that Obama had been born abroad. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber and Graihagh Jackson team up for the latest instalment of Science with Everything to look at the history and potential future of weather forecasting Continue reading...

Spending too much time at home or in the office is confusing our bodies, which are telling us to get out moreAs a species we need to get out more. Humans now spend so much time indoors that many of us are cultivating a variety of serious health complaints, and for some they could be fatal. It is not so much that outdoor time is inherently good; more that our bodies are built to anticipate it and the way we live now is confusing to our systems. Nearly two decades ago a study published in Nature magazine concluded that the average American spent 93% of their time indoors. And that was before tablets and smartphones.In trying to cope with the shaded, sedentary world we have made, our bodies wage war on what should be harmless antigens; they fail to make bones strong enough to support our weight; even our eyes struggle to focus without the help of lenses. This incremental creep across the threshold to the great indoors began tens of thousands of years ago when the first settled communities emerged. Continue reading...

Autonomous machine expected to pick more than 25,000 raspberries a day, outpacing human workersQuivering and hesitant, like a spoon-wielding toddler trying to eat soup without spilling it, the world’s first raspberry-picking robot is attempting to harvest one of the fruits.After sizing it up for an age, the robot plucks the fruit with its gripping arm and gingerly deposits it into a waiting punnet. The whole process takes about a minute for a single berry. Continue reading...

It’s now the largest free urban motorsport festival in the UK and this year’s event in Coventry should prove to be spectacular – especially if you love CitroënMotofest

A mysterious column of smoke fills the London sky, in this stylish and funny tale about a journalist on the rocksAs Will Wiles demonstrated in his first novel, 2012’s Care of Wooden Floors, a stain is never just a stain. That novel was a Kafkaesque farce, set in an unnamed post-Soviet principality in which an accidental wine-spill provoked a full-blown existential crisis. The narrator of Wiles’s third novel appears no less neurotic and persecuted; though in this case it is a mysterious column of smoke that seems to be following him around.Jack Bick, a feature writer for an east London-based lifestyle magazine, finds himself staring idly out of the window during an editorial meeting when he notices a mysterious new landmark has appeared: “A column of black smoke arose from the ill-defined, low-rise muddle of the horizon city. Further out than the skyscrapers on the Isle of Dogs, it nevertheless bested them in height and weight, appearing as the most solid structure in sight.” Continue reading...

All you need to know about the next generation mobile phone networkAfter years of hype, the switch will be flicked on the UK’s first 5G network on 30 May. Network operator EE, part of BT, will be first out of the blocks. According to telecoms and phone firms the benefits of 5G are obvious – but what exactly is it, how can you get it and how much is it going to cost? Continue reading...

Footage of House speaker deliberately slowed down to make her appear drunk or ill

Digital artist Dan Hett explores the Dreamiverse, a galaxy of games, music, art and ideas created by players in a limitless virtual art studioAs a digital artist and experimental games designer, I was one of the first in line to dive into Dreams – a PlayStation 4 game that aims to give everyone the ability to unlock the potential artist within – when the developer Media Molecule opened up limited early access in April. From the breadth of its artistic toolset to the community of creators it is enabling, Dreams feels like the start of a genuine revolution in accessible, creative play. The promise was that Dreams would represent a space where almost anything is possible, and Media Molecule has somehow got closer than I ever imagined.Dreams is hard to sum up succinctly, but it sits somewhere at the intersection of art studio, game engine and vibrant creative community hub. Almost the first thing new players see is a fun video of the development staff, smiling together in their office and holding up handmade “Welcome” signs. This warmth permeates the rest of game, the friendly tone and slightly squishy visual style helping make the work of creation less intimidating. In my real-life work, I favour simple and efficient tools such as Processing, Pico 8 and Twine over sprawling complex packages, and the tools available in Dreams replicate them surprisingly well. Continue reading...

Amber wants her son to be able play Audible stories but does not want him to have internet accessAs a child I had a cassette tape player. I could choose the music and stories I wanted to listen to alone in my room without my parents worrying about me accessing the internet.My son loves listening to Audible stories on an old iPhone. I have blocked certain features but he keeps finding things to do that I haven’t blocked. I want a device that can download a lot of Audible stories so he can choose what to listen to, but without all the other temptations of an old phone or the risk of him going online. AmberThis is the age of the internet, and the trend is for every device to be online all the time. This started with PCs and then smartphones, followed by TV sets, games consoles and digital video recorders. Now we’re getting connected cameras, fridges, doorbells and smart speakers, and the choice of products that can’t connect to the internet is rapidly diminishing. Continue reading...

In 2017, I started getting regular messages from an anonymous Twitter user telling me my religion was ‘evil’. Eventually I responded – and he agreed to meet face to face. By Hussein KesvaniIn 2017, I started to receive messages from a Twitter user who called themself True Brit, telling me that my religion was “Satanic”, “barbaric” and “evil”. Bearing a profile image of the St George’s cross and a biography that simply read “Anti-Islam, stop Islamic immigration now”, True Brit often spammed me with pictures taken from anti-Muslim websites, blogs and Facebook groups. Sometimes they would be cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad as a sexual deviant. Other times, I would be sent memes I had seen circulating in rightwing communities online, depicting groups of south Asian men who had been arrested for child sexual grooming, or alleged Syrian refugees who were, supposedly, secret members of Isis. One meme showed a man with a long beard, in battle camouflage, brandishing a pistol in one hand and holding the hand of a woman wearing niqab. In bold white writing below the image were the words “EUROPE IN 2020”.True Brit never said anything directly to me to begin with. I had seen social media profiles like this one, and much worse, for years. Like those accounts, True Brit had few followers – 65 in total. Their activity on Twitter predominantly consisted of retweets from rightwing news sites such as Breitbart and Fox News. They frequently posted videos of online celebrities who were popular on anti-Muslim forums and Facebook groups, including Milo Yiannopoulos, a rightwing “provocateur” who has referred to Islam as “the real rape culture”, and Paul Joseph Watson, a UK-based YouTuber and editor of the conspiracy-theory website Infowars.com, who produces weekly videos about the “dangers of Islam” in the west, with titles such as The Truth About Islamophobia and Dear Gays: The Left Betrayed You For Islam. True Brit was also a fan of the British rightwing commentator Katie Hopkins, who in 2015 likened Syrian refugees to cockroaches, and who until recently produced anti-Islam videos for Canadian far-right outlet The Rebel Media. Continue reading...

Technology firm’s Ad Exchange processing of users’ personal data being investigatedThe Irish data protection commission has opened an investigation into Google over suspected infringements of European Union privacy rules.The statutory inquiry will probe whether Google’s online Ad Exchange violated general data protection regulations (GDPR) covering the sharing of personal data of internet users, the watchdog said in a statement on Wednesday. Continue reading...

EE is to be first next-generation mobile network in UK, going live in six cities on 30 MayThe mobile operators EE and Vodafone have dropped Huawei phones from their 5G launch plans, as the backlash in the UK against the Chinese company gathers pace.Huawei was then dealt a further blow on Wednesday when the British chip designer ARM said it would stop licensing its silicon chip technology to the company. Continue reading...

Virtual assistants such as Google Home and Siri only encourage the attitude that women exist merely to aid men in getting on with more important things.When women are over-represented in the workforce, it tends be in industries of assistance – cleaning, nursing, secretarial work and, now, the world of virtual assistants. Research by Unesco has shown that using default female voices in AI – as Microsoft has done with Cortana, Amazon with Alexa, Google with Google Assistant and Apple with Siri – is furthering the belief that women exist merely to help men to get on with more important things.There is no real reason for AI technologies to be gendered at all, but we are at the mercy of tech companies “staffed by overwhelmingly male engineering teams”, fixated on living out a Captain Kirk fantasy and delegating to the subservient, silky-voiced computers of Star Trek. These systems are unapologetically built by men, for men. They can even struggle to understand the “breathy” voices of women as software is often developed with male voice samples. Continue reading...

South Wales force defends use of technology after office worker claims rights breachFacial recognition cameras prevent crime, protect the public and do not breach the privacy of innocent people whose images are captured, a police force has argued.Ed Bridges, an office worker from Cardiff, claims South Wales police violated his privacy and data protection rights by using facial recognition technology on him. Continue reading...

Adam Koszary’s ‘absolute unit’ sheep led to a job at Tesla, but his new boss, Elon Musk, has had less social media success – with one missive landing him in court

Attack on city computers prevents employees from sending email and knocked out bill pay websites, as hackers demand $76,000Hackers have seized control of government computers for the city of Baltimore, demanding ransom and leaving the city locked out of basic technology for more than two weeks.The ransomware attack, discovered on 7 May, infected city computers, officials said, forcing the city to take down online services and systems to contain the extent of the damage. As of Wednesday, the city remains unable to send or receive email. Continue reading...

PlayStation 4, PC; No Code/Devolver Digital

PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch; Sumo Digital/Sega

UK workers must move to nine-hour week if carbon levels do not change, says thinktankPeople across Europe will need to work drastically fewer hours to avoid disastrous climate heating unless there is a radical decarbonising of the economy, according to a study.The research, from thinktank Autonomy, shows workers in the UK would need to move to nine-hour weeks to keep the country on track to avoid more than 2C of heating at current carbon intensity levels. Similar reductions were found to be necessary in Sweden and Germany. Continue reading...

Female-voiced tech often gives submissive responses to queries, Unesco report findsAssigning female genders to digital assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa is helping entrench harmful gender biases, according to a UN agency.Research released by Unesco claims that the often submissive and flirty responses offered by the systems to many queries – including outright abusive ones – reinforce ideas of women as subservient. Continue reading...

Ed Bridges, from Cardiff, says ‘intrusive’ technology is used on thousands of peopleAn office worker who believes his image was captured by facial recognition cameras when he popped out for a sandwich in his lunch break has launched a groundbreaking legal battle against the use of the technology.Supported by the campaign group Liberty, Ed Bridges, from Cardiff, raised money through crowdfunding to pursue the action, claiming the suspected use of the technology on him by South Wales police was an unlawful violation of privacy. Continue reading...

Huawei announces cut-price premium phones with quad cameras and top-end chipsHuawei’s Honor is trying to dominate the increasingly crowded cut-price premium phone market with the launch of two new top-spec phones, the Honor 20 and Honor 20 Pro, flying in the face of the US blockade.With Apple, Samsung and now Huawei ceding the space of the sub-£600 top-end phone as starting prices have risen beyond £900, Honor’s latest offering continues the winning trend of flagship hardware at more reasonable prices. Continue reading...

Announcement comes after Guardian revealed Google gave $150,000 in free ads to opaque anti-abortion groupGoogle has changed its advertising policy after facing scrutiny for providing tens of thousands of dollars in free advertising to an anti-abortion group that runs misleading ads designed to deter women from terminating their pregnancies.Google announced this week that starting in June, advertisers running ads “using keywords related to getting an abortion” will first have to distinguish themselves as an organization that “either provides abortions or does not provide abortions”, according to the new policy update. Continue reading...

PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch; Fallen Tree Games/Curve Digital

Ren Zhengfei says firm is fully prepared to face US bans and that 5G plans will be unaffectedThe founder of Huawei has said the US “underestimates” the Chinese telecom makers’s strength and that conflict with the US is inevitable in the quest to “stand on top of the world”.Ren Zhengfei said his company was fully prepared to face US bans on key components following new trade restrictions caused by Donald Trump’s declaration of a national economic emergency last week Continue reading...

Top executive says dispute is about trade, not security, as US temporarily eases some restrictions to avoid hurting US companiesThe US ban on sharing technology with Huawei is a “cynically timed” blow in the escalating trade war between the US and China, the Chinese firm’s top executive in the UK has said.Huawei denounced Donald Trump’s ban on the sharing of US tech with “foreign adversaries”, after a string of US tech companies followed Google in restricting the company’s access to their products on Monday. Continue reading...