Technology | The Guardian

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...

More than a dozen senators tell Amazon chief Jeff Bezos of their ‘serious concern’ about worker safety at the tech giantDemocratic presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are among more than a dozen senators telling Amazon chief Jeff Bezos of their “serious concern” about worker safety at the tech giant.Related: ‘I'm not a robot’: Amazon workers condemn unsafe, grueling conditions at warehouse Continue reading...

Firm’s second crack at folding screen reminiscent of mid-2000s clamshell devices

Federal judge rejected arguments that T-Mobile’s $26.5bn takeover would mean less competition and higher phone billsAnd then there were three. The number of US mobile phone provides looked set to shrink again on Tuesday as a federal judge rejected arguments that T-Mobile’s $26.5bn takeover of Sprint would mean less competition and higher phone bills.Though the deal still needs a few more approvals, T-Mobile expects to close it as early as 1 April. Continue reading...

Barcelona event to go ahead with measures including ‘no handshake policy’ for global attendees

USB-C, faster processors and new design options continue to keep Microsoft’s Windows 10 laptop near the top of the pileMicrosoft’s top-quality laptop is now in its third generation, with new ports, new processors and a slight redesign, with the option to ditch the unique Alcantara for plain old aluminium.The £999 and up Surface Laptop 3 is Microsoft’s vision of what a traditional laptop should be. For the most part that’s the same as everyone else, with traditional aluminium body, glass-covered screen and hinge that does not rotate all the way round to the back. Continue reading...

Company claims president’s interference harmed its chances of receiving military contract that was eventually awarded to Microsoft

William Barr says hackers spent weeks in Equifax system, stealing company secrets and personal dataThe United States has charged four Chinese military hackers in the 2017 breach of the Equifax credit reporting agency that affected nearly 150 million US citizens, William Barr, the attorney general, said on Monday.Related: Democrats go on the offensive ahead of New Hampshire primary – live Continue reading...

Consumer confidence in Europe suffers, with mobile sales in China forecast to fall

Computer scientist regarded as ‘the European father of the internet’The UK’s first connection to the Arpanet, a precursor to the internet, was made on 25 July 1973, when a computer at University College London transmitted packets of data to the Information Sciences Institute at the University of South California.The man behind this milestone was Peter Kirstein, who has died aged 86. Often regarded as “the European father of the internet”, Kirstein played a significant role in the technology’s early experimental period, helping establish and expand the internet in Europe and other parts of the world. Continue reading...

Microsoft billionaire’s innovative and eco-fuelled 112m Aqua vessel to launch after 2024This article is under review following a statement from the Dutch yacht design firm Sinot that its concept yacht is not linked to Bill Gates. See footnote

We are more connected than ever, but we rarely seem to really speak to each other. So, Rebecca Nicholson decided to tryLike most people I know, my Weekly Screen Report is obscene. Every Sunday, when the notification pops up to tell me the hours I have wasted, mostly texting, I think about all the things I could have done. Finished Middlemarch. Started Middlemarch. But as I have my phone in my hand, I scroll through Instagram instead. I send an article or a joke to a friend, a picture of the dog to the family WhatsApp, catch up on someone else’s night out. Recently, I clocked up – and I’m ashamed as I write this – six hours and 29 minutes of phone usage in a single day. I have had days where I’ve barely been awake that long. Messages is my most used app. I am talking all the time.But I am rarely talking. For the chatterboxes among us, this is a time of upheaval. The long, spontaneous chat on the phone is going the way of the fax. The percentage of households with a landline that’s used to make calls is declining every year, from 83% in 2016 to 73% in 2019; the number of calls made on house phones plummeted by 17% in 2018 alone. We still use our mobiles to talk – in 2018, Ofcom surveyed mobile users for three months and found only 6% of them never made a single call – but we are not talking in any great depth. The same study found that over 80% of calls were shorter than five minutes, and the majority were under 90 seconds. I looked at my own recent call list: three minutes, two minutes, five minutes at a push. What can you say in that time? You can only make the point you’ve called to make. Continue reading...

Experts say information sold on by Department of Health and Social Care can be traced back to individual medical recordsThe Department of Health and Social Care has been selling the medical data of millions of NHS patients to American and other international drugs companies having misled the public into believing the information would be “anonymous”, according to leading experts in the field.Senior NHS figures have told the Observer that patient data compiled from GP surgeries and hospitals – and then sold for huge sums for research – can routinely be linked back to individual patients’ medical records via their GP surgeries. They say there is clear evidence this is already being done by companies and organisations that have bought data from the DHSC, having identified individuals whose medical histories are of particular interest. Continue reading...

From bike mechanics to baking, the video-sharing site offers a goldmine of knowledgeHolding an Allen key in a grease-stained hand, João Cruz looks every bit the professional bike mechanic. Wind back five years, however, and this 39-year-old former journalist barely knew how to fix a brake cable.“To be a good mechanic, you need tools and knowledge; I had the tools, but I needed to get the knowledge,” said Cruz, owner of Velurb, a small bike rental business in the Portuguese city of Porto. Continue reading...

Letter from Iain Duncan Smith and other MPs requests that ‘high-risk’ vendors are ruled outA group of senior Conservatives have written to their fellow Tory MPs expressing concern over the government’s decision to allow Chinese technology company Huawei to have a role in building the UK’s 5G network.Iain Duncan Smith, who is among the signatories, said there was cross-party concern about the issue. Continue reading...

Teens, more than anyone, need time spent in solitude, where emotions are processed and the brain powers downThere are many reasons to fret about our relationship to technology, not least of which is the way smartphones, and their slot machine-like apps, have hooked us so thoroughly. Thanks to these miniature overlords many of us now boast the attention span (and manners) of a toddler, and, like prisoners on parole, are physically incapable of moving about without our electronic monitoring devices on us at all times.When adults behave this way it’s depressing and odd, but when teenagers step into this world – not having known an alternative reality – the problem becomes a social concern. Continue reading...

We have fallen for the idea that apps and artificial intelligence can substitute judgement and hard work. They can’tEvery four years, journalists from around the world are drawn to the Iowa caucuses like podcasters to a murder. The blatantly anti-democratic tradition appeals to certain journalistic biases: the steadfast belief of the political press that rural Americans are more authentically American than the vast majority of Americans who live in cities and suburbs – and the irresistible opportunity to pedantically explain arcane rules. You can also get something called a “pie shake” in Iowa, which is, truly, delicious.I understand the appeal. In 2008, as a graduate student at the University of Iowa, I was so enthusiastic about the caucuses that I stayed in town through winter break during the snowiest Iowa winter on record, rather than risk missing my chance to caucus for Barack Obama. (This was long before I had even considered journalism as a career.) The exercise in “democracy” that I ended up experiencing was patently absurd. Continue reading...

Firm that supplies Apple hopes to manufacture 2m masks after electronics production was hit

US president was reportedly furious about PM’s decision to use Chinese 5G expertiseDowning Street has sought to play down the significance of a difficult phone call between Donald Trump and Boris Johnson over the UK’s decision to allow Chinese company Huawei to help build its 5G network.Trump was reported by the FT to have been “apoplectic” about the decision taken by Johnson, and the phone call last week was said by one official to have been “very difficult” and tense. Continue reading...

Exclusive: NSO Group technology is allegedly used by autocratic regimes to spy on journalists and activistsThe British government is helping a controversial Israeli spyware company to market its surveillance technologies at a secretive trade fair visited by repressive regimes, the Guardian can reveal.The government will host the NSO Group, which sells technology that has allegedly been used by autocratic regimes to spy on the private messages of journalists and human rights activists, at the closed Security and Policing trade fair in Hampshire next month. Continue reading...

Harry has data backed up to DVDs, but wants to copy the files to a hard drive. Is there a quick way to do it?Over the years, I have been backing up files to writeable DVDs. I probably have around 1,400 of them. Now I want to transfer their contents onto a single 10TB USB hard drive. Can you and your erudite readers recommend the quickest solution?Is there a DVD recorder that can load 10 to 20 DVDs at a time and automatically copy them onto said 10TB hard drive? Also, are there any issues with the formats needed to ensure access to my data for another 10 years or more? HarryI expect many of us still have lots of optical discs stashed away, because CDs and DVDs were the most economical way to store data for 20 to 30 years. Just cutting one disc a week could get you over the 1,000 mark, though I assume most of them would have been recopied and recycled before now. Continue reading...

Social media platform refuses to remove or display warning on footage of C-130 crash that killed three US firefightersTikTok will not take action to remove or include a warning on a video on the social media platform of the waterbombing plane crash that killed three US firefighters because it does not violate the company’s community guidelines.Captain Ian McBeth, first officer Paul Hudson and flight engineer Rick DeMorgan Jr were killed when their C-130 Hercules crashed on 23 January while fighting a fire in the Snowy Monaro region of New South Wales. Continue reading...

Statement comes after leaked memo on use of technology in security provoked outcryThe European parliament has insisted it has no plans to introduce facial recognition technology after a leaked internal memo discussing its use in security provoked an outcry.A page on the European parliament’s intranet, seen by the Guardian, suggested that facial recognition could be used “in the context of biometric-based security and services to members [MEPs]”. Continue reading...

Government told to halt use of AI to detect fraud in decision hailed by privacy campaignersA Dutch court has ordered the immediate halt of an automated surveillance system for detecting welfare fraud because it violates human rights, in a judgment likely to resonate well beyond the Netherlands.The case was seen as an important legal challenge to the controversial but growing use by governments around the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and risk modelling in administering welfare benefits and other core services. Continue reading...

Co-writer of the multimillion-selling series to step down in March, leaving questions over long-awaited sixth instalmentDan Houser, a co-founder of Rockstar Games, is leaving his post in March, according to the developer’s parent company Take-Two Interactive. Houser was lead writer on the multimillion-selling Grand Theft Auto series, as well as other Rockstar hits including the acclaimed western adventure Red Dead Redemption.In a statement to investors on Tuesday, Take-Two stated that Houser, who was creative vice president at the studio, would leave Rockstar on 11 March after taking an “extended break”, which began in spring last year. Houser’s brother Sam, with whom he co-founded Rockstar Games in 1998, will stay on as company president. Continue reading...

Employees under pressure to work faster call on retail giant to improve conditions – and take their complaints seriouslyRina Cummings has worked three 12-hour shifts every week at Amazon’s gargantuan New York City warehouse, called JFK8, on Staten Island since it first began operations in late 2018. As a sorter on the outbound ship dock, her job is to inspect and scan a mandated rate of 1,800 Amazon packages an hour – 30 per minute – that are sent through a chute and transported on a conveyor belt before leaving the facility for delivery.Related: ‘The only ones not paying for Boeing’s mistakes is Boeing': laid-off supply workers voice their anger Continue reading...

Today’s young people are flocking to an egalitarian utopia where home ownership is available to all. There’s just one catch…One of the first decisions you make in The Sims is which house to buy. The 200m-selling life simulation series, which turns 20 this week, gives every player 20,000 simoleons, the game’s virtual currency, and they can use it to purchase anything from a ready-made four-bedroom townhouse to an empty plot of land on which to construct a dream pad from scratch. In this world, renting literally isn’t an option.For a generation of fans, that stands in stark contrast to real life. The Resolution Foundation, a housing thinktank, reported in 2018 that up to a third of millennials will rent for their whole lives, and the number of households privately renting in England rose by 121% in the 10 years after 1996, according to the most recent Labour Force Survey. With young people disproportionately more likely to rent than older generations, many have turned to The Sims to decorate a house that feels like their own. Continue reading...

Self-tracking tools are not troubling per se – but, having recovered from anorexia, I know how damaging it can be to fixate on dataIf you want to develop “obsessive tendencies”, there is an app for that. There are several, in fact. You may have downloaded a bunch of them on 1 January in a rush of resolution-making.Fitness apps such as Strava, MyFitnessPal and RunKeeper can be useful tools for motivating you to start and stick to a workout regime. But, according to a study at the National University of Ireland, Galway, these apps can also encourage obsessive attitudes towards exercise. The study, which observed 272 cyclists who use Strava, found that people who predominately use the tool to show off – posting their workouts to receive praise, for example – are more likely to develop an unhealthy compulsion and high stress levels. Continue reading...

Company, along with Google and Facebook, is under pressure to prevent interference in the 2020 US electionsTwitter will begin to label and in some cases remove doctored or manipulated photos, audio and videos that are designed to mislead people.The company said on Tuesday that the new rules prohibit sharing synthetic or manipulated material that’s likely to cause harm. Material that is manipulated but isn’t necessarily harmful may get a warning label. Continue reading...

Carmaker is world’s second most valuable despite never having made an annual profit

Bug affected users of Google Takeout exporting from Google Photos in late NovemberGoogle has said a software bug resulted in some users’ personal videos being emailed to strangers.The flaw affected users of Google Photos who requested to export their data in late November. For four days the export tool wrongly added videos to unrelated users’ archives. Continue reading...

Investigation finds 400-plus councils let at least one third party track use of their sitesCouncils are sharing information about users of their websites – including when they seek help with a benefit claim, or with a disability or alcoholism – with dozens of private companies.More than 400 local authorities allowed at least one third-party company to track individuals who visit their sites, an investigation has revealed. Continue reading...

Communications regulator allows Starlink satellites over Australian airspace, but Foxtel objectsElon Musk’s SpaceX satellite broadband service has taken its first step into the Australian market. The communications regulator has added the company to a list of satellite operators allowed over Australian airspace.But Foxtel has raised concerns the service might conflict with its subscription TV service. Continue reading...

Facial recognition technology is getting more sophisticated each year and is now being used commercially as identification instead of passwords as well as being adopted by the Metropolitan police in London. Our UK technology editor, Alex Hern, explores the questions it raises about privacy. Also today: Jamie Grierson on the security response to Sunday’s terror attack in south LondonCCTV cameras are a daily reality of life in UK cities, but advances in facial recognition technology are moving police surveillance into a new phase. The Metropolitan police recently announced the introduction of live facial recognition technology, which will be limited to specific locations in London. Now a leaked Home Office paper suggests 10 other forces are also trialling this technology.Police commissioners believe this could revolutionise the fight against crime, and after another terrorist attack this week public pressure for improved surveillance is likely to increase. However, campaigners warn that we could be ushering in the kind of society George Orwell envisaged in his dark novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Continue reading...

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced the revenues in his first quarterly earnings release as head of companyGoogle’s YouTube advertising revenues topped $1bn a month in 2019, the company announced on Monday, the first time it has revealed how much money the streaming service brings in.But the news was not enough to satisfy investors who sold off shares in Alphabet, Google’s parent company, when it announced revenues for the last quarter that were below expectations. Shares fell 4% after the markets closed. Continue reading...

Amazon knows more than just what books I’ve read and when – it knows which parts of them I liked the mostWhen I requested my personal information from Amazon this month under California’s new privacy law, I received mostly what I expected: my order history, shipping information and customer support chat logs.But tucked into the dozens of files were also two Excel spreadsheets, more than 20,000 lines each, with titles, time stamps and actions detailing my reading habits on the Kindle app on my iPhone. Continue reading...

Google Maps diverts road users after mistaking cartload of phones for huge traffic clusterA Berlin-based artist managed to create a traffic jam on one of the main bridges across the Spree with nothing but a handcart and 99 second-hand phones. But one other thing was unusual about the jam: it only existed on Google Maps.Simon Weckert’s artwork Google Maps Hacks involved the artist pulling a small red cart at walking pace down some of the main thoroughfares of Berlin. The 99 phones in the cart, all reporting their locations and movement back to Google’s servers, gave the search company the impression of a huge cluster of slow-moving traffic, which was duly reported on the company’s maps. Continue reading...

More and more people are using games like quiet background experiences, requiring minimal attention while they sew, cook or studyIn the recently released game Coffee Talk, you play a coffee-shop barista who stands at a counter, through long, rainy Seattle nights, making drinks for customers as they tell you about their lives. That’s it. That’s all you do. There’s no aim, no purpose. Your only interaction is pressing a button to move the conversation on and occasionally crafting a drink using the available ingredients. It’s barely a game.And yet, it’s a lovely, involving experience. The beautiful pixel art interior of your shop, the fleeting glimpses of passersby outside, and the jazzy soundtrack replicate things we love about hanging out in real coffee places. Also, this is an alternative version of Seattle populated not just by humans, but by elves, demons and other fantastical beings, so your clientele is pretty varied. Elves tell you about their love lives, insomniac werewolves seek calm and quiet – you listen and you try to make drinks that will soothe them. Continue reading...