Technology | The Guardian

Avaaz says firms are unaware commercials being played alongside misleading videosSome of the biggest companies in the world are funding climate misinformation by advertising on YouTube, according to a study from activist group Avaaz.The group found that more than 100 brands had adverts running on YouTube videos on the site that were actively promoting climate misinformation. The brands, including Samsung, L’Oreal and Decathlon, were unaware that their adverts were being played before and during the videos. Continue reading...

Judge orders NSO Group to fight case brought by Saudi activist and pay his legal costsAn Israeli judge has rejected an attempt by the spyware firm NSO Group to dismiss a case brought against it by a prominent Saudi activist who alleged that the company’s cyberweapons were used to hack his phone.The decision could add pressure on the company, which faces multiple accusations that it sold surveillance technology, named Pegasus, to authoritarian regimes and other governments that have allegedly used it to target political activists and journalists. Continue reading...

Support for Windows 7 has ended, leaving Marcy wondering how they can protect themselvesI do a lot of work on a Windows 7 desktop PC that is about five years old. I’m a widow and can’t afford to run out and get a new PC at this time, or pay for Windows 10. If I do stay with Windows 7, what should I worry about, and how can I protect myself? I have been running Kaspersky Total Security for several years, which has worked well so far. MarcyMicrosoft Windows 7 – launched in 2009 – came to the end of its supported life on Tuesday. Despite Microsoft’s repeated warnings to Windows 7 users, there may still be a couple of hundred million users, many of them in businesses. What should people do next? Continue reading...

Upgrade keeps what is good and improves sound for Google’s smallest, cheapest smart speakerThe second generation of Google’s smallest smart speaker gets a new name, more eco-friendly, a little smarter and more bass.The £49 Nest Mini replaces the Google Home Mini as part of a revamped and renamed line of Google smart home products under the Nest brand, pushing its predecessor to a clearance price of only £19. Continue reading...

Dating app accused of flouting GDPR law by passing personal data to ad firms but report says problem is endemicTwitter has suspended Grindr from its ad platform after a study claimed the dating app was passing significant amounts of private information to advertisers without explicit consent from users.The study, carried out by the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC), found that the online advertising industry was “systematically breaking the law”, transmitting personal data and tracking users in ways that are banned under the GDPR, the EU’s data law. Continue reading...

Last year, sector was larger than entire gaming industry combined, report findsThe vast majority of money spent on mobile app stores went to games, according to a report, as did the majority of time spent on phones, and the majority of advertising revenue.In 2019, more than $86bn (£66bn) was spent on mobile gaming, making the sector larger than the rest of the games industry combined. That revenue represented 72% of all App Store spend, according to data from the analytics firm AppAnnie, in its State of Mobile 2020 report. Continue reading...

US agency revealed flaw that could be exploited by hackers to create malicious softwareMicrosoft is rolling out a security fix to Windows 10 after the US National Security Agency (NSA) warned the popular operating system contained a highly dangerous flaw that could be used by hackers. Reporting the vulnerability represents a departure for the NSA from its past strategy of keeping security flaws under wraps to exploit for its own intelligence needs.The NSA revealed during a press conference on Tuesday that the “serious vulnerability” could be used to create malicious software that appeared to be legitimate. The flaw “makes trust vulnerable”, the NSA director of cybersecurity, Anne Neuberger, said in a briefing call to media on Tuesday. Continue reading...

The US has been trying to convince allies not to involve Huawei in their 5G upgradesThe Chinese company has two major businesses in the UK. One, a consumer-focused hardware arm, makes and sells smartphones, laptops and tablets. It has been struggling since US sanctions soured its relationship with Google, preventing it from offering customers access to apps hosted on the Play Store. Continue reading...

A source said the threat outlined by US officials had already been ‘factored into our planning’Britain believes the information dramatically presented by a delegation from Donald Trump’s administration about the risks of using Huawei technology in 5G networks contains nothing its intelligence agencies had not foreseen.The rebuff implies that British intelligence will not alter its assessment that the security risk the Chinese company’s technology presents to British citizens is manageable, as a final decision by the UK on whether to use Huawei looms. Continue reading...

In his first interview of the new year with BBC Breakfast, Boris Johnson stressed he would not put UK security at risk in upgrading the country's 5G network. Johnson is expected to make his final decision on whether to allow the Chinese technology firm Huawei to operate 'non-core' parts of the UK telecoms system within weeks, and said critics of the firm must come up with an 'alternative' provider.

PM stresses he will not put UK security at risk in upgrading UK’s 5G network

Wireless smart speaker with 10-hour battery, room-filling sound, wifi and Bluetooth is not your ordinary portable speakerSonos has finally made a portable wifi and Bluetooth speaker that sounds great – but it’s not quite what most will have imagined.For years Sonos has made some of the very best wifi speakers, recently adding optional voice assistants from Google and Amazon. But they have never been truly wireless, needing to be plugged in and on your home wifi network. Continue reading...

US officials fear the move would put transatlantic intelligence sharing at risk

British ministers told allowing Chinese firm access would put intelligence sharing at riskUsing Huawei technology in UK 5G networks would put transatlantic intelligence sharing at risk, senior US officials have told British ministers, warning that allowing the Chinese firm access would be “nothing short of madness”.The extraordinary American ultimatum came as a special delegation led by Donald Trump’s deputy national security advisor, Matt Pottinger, presented an incendiary dossier they said featured new evidence of the security risks of relying on Huawei technology in future phone networks. Continue reading...

Alphabet may join Apple, Microsoft and Amazon when it reports latest earnings, another sign of the unstoppable rise of techAnother tech behemoth is poised to join the club of Silicon Valley giants valued at more than $1tn. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reached a value of $993bn on Monday, with analysts expecting it to cross the $1tn mark soon.Alphabet would join a select club of tech companies to pass $1tn in value. Apple became the first tech company to pass the benchmark in August 2018 and has since risen to be valued at $1.37tn. Continue reading...

AI-generated fake videos are becoming more common (and convincing). Here’s why we should be worriedHave you seen Barack Obama call Donald Trump a “complete dipshit”, or Mark Zuckerberg brag about having “total control of billions of people’s stolen data”, or witnessed Jon Snow’s moving apology for the dismal ending to Game of Thrones? Answer yes and you’ve seen a deepfake. The 21st century’s answer to Photoshopping, deepfakes use a form of artificial intelligence called deep learning to make images of fake events, hence the name deepfake. Want to put new words in a politician’s mouth, star in your favourite movie, or dance like a pro? Then it’s time to make a deepfake. Continue reading...

Andrew Parker insists Chinese manufacturer’s 5G input is safe, contrary to claims of US lobbyists

O2 Academy, Brixton, London

Protest held before Cardiff v Swansea as fans say technology is taking away their rightsFootball supporters and civil rights activists have expressed anger and concern over the use of facial recognition technology for a derby match in south Wales.Two surveillance vans equipped with the controversial technology were seen patrolling around Cardiff City’s stadium before the club’s game against Swansea City on Sunday. Some fans donned masks, wore sunglasses and hoods, or wrapped scarves around their faces to disguise their appearances. Continue reading...

Even if travellers’ phones are in baggage and not used, they can link to a satellite network on premium ratesGay Haines had stowed her mobile phone in her hand baggage before her flight to Barbados and forgot to set it to flight mode. The mistake cost her dear. On arrival, she discovered that she had racked up charges of £1,095, twice the price of the transatlantic fare. “I had not used it to make or receive calls and when I opened it after landing there was no mention of any charges,” she says.Haines is one of dozens of air and sea passengers who have received shock bills after their phones connected automatically to a satellite roaming network. While EU rules cap roaming fees outside Europe at €50, the legislation does not apply to satellite networks on planes and boats, which charge premium rates for data, wanted or not, unless customers actively switch off data roaming. Continue reading...

Software that demands money with menaces has hit the big time. Here are some of its most lucrative formsCyber-attacks that threaten to publish a victim’s data or block access to it unless a ransom is paid have grown internationally since 2012. Continue reading...

Ever-faster processors led to bloated software, but physical limits may force a return to the concise code of the pastWay back in the 1960s, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, observed that the number of transistors that could be fitted on a silicon chip was doubling every two years. Since the transistor count is related to processing power, that meant that computing power was effectively doubling every two years. Thus was born Moore’s law, which for most people working in the computer industry – or at any rate those younger than 40 – has provided the kind of bedrock certainty that Newton’s laws of motion did for mechanical engineers.There is, however, one difference. Moore’s law is just a statement of an empirical correlation observed over a particular period in history and we are reaching the limits of its application. In 2010, Moore himself predicted that the laws of physics would call a halt to the exponential increases. “In terms of size of transistor,” he said, “you can see that we’re approaching the size of atoms, which is a fundamental barrier, but it’ll be two or three generations before we get that far – but that’s as far out as we’ve ever been able to see. We have another 10 to 20 years before we reach a fundamental limit.” Continue reading...

Gender-neutral voice assistants and accent recognition among projects in the pipelineTechnology that can understand regional accents and gender-neutral voice assistants are among the developments expected in the voice technology field in 2020.Products such as Alexa and Siri have faced mounting criticism that the technology behind them disproportionately misunderstands women, ethnic minorities and those with accents not represented in datasets that have historically favoured white and Chinese male voices. Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg’s new year’s resolutions show Facebook has no plans to change its ways. At least the lip service is overIn Silicon Valley, the first week of January is reliably bookmarked by two news stories: the latest absurd and amusing products at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of his new year resolutions, which he annoyingly persists in calling “personal challenges”.Zuckerberg’s resolutions have evolved in tandem with Facebook itself, from the domestic and human-sized (go running, eat less meat) to the global and unwieldy (“fixing” Facebook). So it seems worth noting that 2020 is apparently the year that Zuckerberg is officially giving up. Continue reading...

A year on from banning self-harm images, we’d like to hear your thoughts on how the photo-sharing platform has improved the situation for peopleLast year Instagram announced that it would ban all graphic self-harm images as part of a series of changes made in response to the death of the British teenager Molly Russell.

A new campaign that encourages parents to engage with games is long overdue. It’s time for parents to overcome technophobiaFor three years, I’ve spoken at schools about video games and social media. The small groups of parents who have attended often tell me similar stories: their sons and daughters are “addicted” to Fortnite, to Pokemon, to Minecraft, and they feel powerless about what they can do. When I tell them about parental controls – built-in tools on all games machines that let you limit access to games – many are bewildered or agitated, even though such controls have been a feature of console design for a decade.Video game trade body Ukie has launched a campaign to encourage more parents and carers to use parental controls, teaming up with ex-footballer Rio Ferdinand. The organisation wants to raise awareness that everything from screen time to in-game purchases can be monitored and controlled. Last year, an NSPCC study found that only 19% of parents with children aged five to 15 use family controls on internet-connected devices. Continue reading...

Also unveiled in Las Vegas: Hyundai’s flying Uber, Segway’s S-Pod and cooking machines

Exclusive: former Microsoft contractor says he was emailed login after minimal vettingA Microsoft programme to transcribe and vet audio from Skype and Cortana, its voice assistant, ran for years with “no security measures”, according to a former contractor who says he reviewed thousands of potentially sensitive recordings on his personal laptop from his home in Beijing over the two years he worked for the company.The recordings, both deliberate and accidentally invoked activations of the voice assistant, as well as some Skype phone calls, were simply accessed by Microsoft workers through a web app running in Google’s Chrome browser, on their personal laptops, over the Chinese internet, according to the contractor. Continue reading...

The Consumer Electronics Show opened this week in Las Vegas with more than 4,400 companies exhibiting, including 1,200 startups. CES 2020 features the latest transformative technologies, including 5G, artificial intelligence, vehicle technology and digital health. The four-day show is a place for companies to unveil their products and services for the coming year Continue reading...

After decade of setting individual goals, Facebook CEO weighs in on ‘next computing platform’ and ‘new forms of governance’It had almost become a tradition. For the past decade, Facebook employees and tech journalists closely monitored Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile at the start of January for signs of the CEO’s annual personal challenge. Zuckerberg’s goals have ranged from traditional new year’s resolutions like running, learning a new language or eating more vegetables to broader efforts veering on the political that fueled speculation he might one day run for office.Related: A brutal year: how the 'techlash' caught up with Facebook, Google and Amazon Continue reading...

Measure is aimed at preventing antisocial behaviour and improving quality of discussionTwitter users will be able to prevent others from replying to their tweets, the company has announced, in a move it hopes will prevent antisocial behaviour on the platform while improving the quality of conversation for all.But the new features could undercut the social network’s ambition to prevent the spread of misinformation. It is unclear how Twitter intends to reconcile the two goals. Continue reading...

Product search tools help you find a phone, PC or camera if you know the specs you wantMy Samsung S8 has given up the ghost, and the prohibitive cost of repair means I’m in the market for a new mobile phone. I’ve come up with a wishlist of specifications. Are there any phones due in the coming months that offer all of these? I don’t believe anything currently on the market does. DeclanThere are four obvious problems with having a list of specifications for the device you want to buy, whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, laptop, digital camera or whatever. The first and biggest problem is that it can easily eliminate most of the products on the market or, in your case, all of them. In fact, it’s a problem I share: nobody offers a laptop that meets my most-desired specification, though a few come close. Continue reading...

Top-end smart TV box can’t quite live up to the promise of the voice-controlled TV commanderThe Fire TV Cube is Amazon’s attempt to combine a smart TV streaming box with an Alexa-powered smart speaker, producing a small black box that doubles as an Echo device.The Cube doesn’t look like anything else. The combination of shiny and matt black plastic makes it stand out at first, but the 86mm-wide and 77mm-tall cube is small enough not to be distracting sitting next to your TV. Continue reading...

PC; Urban Games/Good Shepard Entertainment

North Wales police and crime commissioner criticises plans for Cardiff and Swansea clashOne of the most senior policing figures in Wales has warned that the use of facial recognition technology at the country’s biggest football derby this weekend could create miscarriages of justice.Arfon Jones, a veteran Welsh police officer and the North Wales police and crime commissioner, has expressed grave concern about the deployment of the surveillance technology at Sunday’s clash between Cardiff City and Swansea City. Continue reading...

From the Kama Sutra bed that helps you try out new positions to a robot that brings you toilet roll, this year’s consumer electronics exhibition in Las Vegas is full of bizarre inventionsName: Kama Sutra bed.Age: Well the Kama Sutra itself, the Sanskrit text on sexuality, is about 2,400 years old. This bed is more recent. In fact, it is yet to come on to the market. Continue reading...

Currency firm still offline as hackers demand $3m to stop release of customers’ dataTravelex staff have had to write out paper invoices for customers as the foreign currency firm continues to be without computer systems after hackers took control, demanding a $3m ransom.Travelex was forced to take down its global websites on 1 January after criminals attacked on its computer system on New Year’s Eve using Sodinokibi ransomware. Continue reading...

Male culture and a lack of role models are stopping female academics from launching companies based on their researchThe first time Olivia Champion pitched a business idea based on her academic research was so disheartening she nearly gave up. The 10-strong panel she faced were all men, bar a few women responsible for administration and taking minutes. Their first question was: “Why are you here?”“It took the wind out of my sails immediately,” she says. “I thought, ‘Blimey. This is going badly.’” Continue reading...

Decision to have president’s daughter deliver keynote invited scathing criticism, especially from women in the tech industryIvanka Trump’s appearance at a major technology conference in Las Vegas has been met with a backlash from industry figures, who denounced her “privilege” and lack of tech qualifications.Trump spoke in a keynote session on Tuesday afternoon at CES, a consumer electronics trade show, on “the path to the future of work”. In an interview with Gary Shapiro, the CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which organizes the show, she addressed technology’s role in creating and enabling the workforce of the future. Continue reading...

Aerial ridesharing would allow for a pilot and three passengers at speeds of up to 180mphUber has unveiled plans for a flying taxi at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The ride-sharing company on Tuesday showed off a full-size mock-up of the electric plane concept vehicle created with South Korean carmaker Hyundai, as it seeks to fly above traffic rather than add to it.Uber wants to offer aerial ridesharing, allowing a pilot and three passengers to take city trips of up to 60 miles at a speed of up to 180mph. Resembling a winged helicopter and featuring four propellers, Uber and Hyundai joined forces to design a personal air vehicle, or PAV, which can take off and land vertically. Continue reading...

Cyber-attack forced currency exchange firm to take down all its global websitesThe foreign currency specialist Travelex is reportedly being held to ransom by hackers who launched a cyber-attack a week ago that forced the firm to take down all of its global websites.Criminals are thought to be demanding about $3m (£2.3m) – to give the firm access to its computer systems after they attacked using the Sodinokibi ransomware on 31 December. Continue reading...

Royal Mail’s set of 12 postage stamps traces Britain’s role at the forefront of the games industry through the 1980s and 90sA new set of postage stamps will celebrate the history of the British video game industry, from groundbreaking space sim Elite to blockbusting action adventure Tomb Raider.Each of the 12 stamps in the collection features an image from a memorable and influential game, tracing the history of the industry from the 1980s. Also featured are classic titles such as Dizzy, Populous, Lemmings and Sensible Soccer. Continue reading...

Critics say policy does not cover ‘shallow fakes’ – videos made using conventional editing toolsFacebook has announced a new policy banning AI-manipulated “deepfake” videos that are likely to mislead viewers into thinking someone “said words that they did not actually say”, as the social network prepares for the 2020 US election.But the policy explicitly covers only misinformation produced using AI, meaning “shallow fakes” – videos made using conventional editing tools – though frequently just as misleading, are still allowed on the platform. Continue reading...

It claims to help New Yorkers ‘stay safe and informed’. But its constant updates play on our worst rubbernecking instinctsOn the second day of the new year, I awoke to the news that a man had been assaulted on 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue, and there had been a fist fight on the east side of Central Park. The previous day, the morning update featured an overnight fight at a Burger King in Hell’s Kitchen, possibly involving an ice pick, and an assault involving a knife 10 blocks south of my apartment. In both cases the news, which was reported to some 4,000 people in the vicinity with the Citizen app on their phones, was prefaced with demands from the app to turn on push notifications and the entreaty, “Keep your loved ones safe with urgent crime and safety alerts near them in New York.”Related: 'We will not let up': activists protest NYPD subway crackdown Continue reading...

Surge in processing industry will increase Ireland’s already too high carbon emissionsInside Digital Realty’s Dublin data centre, racks of shiny black servers throb and whirr as unseen fans cool machines that steadily process unending data.It operates 24 hours a day from the business park, sited on a former orchard, and the data joins a digital torrent in an underground fibre ring network that sweeps around the Irish capital and connects to undersea cables – the physical backbones of the digital world. Continue reading...

Ross LaJeunesse, former head of international relations, says he was forced out after reporting discriminatory practicesA former Google executive claims he was pushed out of the company over his advocacy of human rights, alleging in a public blogpost that the company is increasingly putting profits over people.Ross LaJeunesse, the former head of international relations at Google and now a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Maine, said he was forced to leave the company after reporting discriminatory practices, and that his work to combat censorship was at odds with Google’s desires to expand into a growing market in China. Continue reading...

City firms experimenting with tech that flags harassment but critics question effectivenessArtificial intelligence programmers are developing bots that can identify digital bullying and sexual harassment.Known as “#MeTooBots” after the high-profile movement that arose after allegations against the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, the bots can monitor and flag communications between colleagues and are being introduced by companies around the world. Continue reading...

Amid the calamitous effects of climate change, artificial intelligence could make the difference between a livable future or a dystopian oneFuturism is a mug’s game: if you’re right, it seems banal; if you’re wrong, you look like the founder of IBM, Thomas Watson, when he declared in 1943 that there is room in the world “for maybe five computers”.David Adams knew these risks when he wrote about the future of technology in the Guardian in 2004 – even citing the very same prediction as an example of how they can go awry. And from our vantage point in 2020, Adams certainly did a better job than Watson. When he looked ahead to today, he avoided many of the pitfalls of technology prediction: no promises about flying cars nor sci-fi tech such as teleportation or faster-than-light travel. Continue reading...

Currency specialist says no customer data appears to have been compromised by virusThe foreign currency specialist Travelex has been forced to take its websites offline following a cyber-attack.The group said it immediately took down its online systems to protect data and prevent the software virus spreading after discovering the attack on New Year’s Eve. Continue reading...

Revealed: emails show group of employees who called for stronger climate action by the company were told they risked dismissalAmazon has threatened to fire employees for speaking publicly about the company’s role in the climate crisis, tech workers at the retail giant have revealed.Related: Trump campaign credits impeachment for helping to fundraise $46m – live Continue reading...