Technology | The Guardian

The games world is awash with spiteful online appraisals – but what’s the point? A committed review-bomber tells allIn an age when everyone’s a blogger or social media influencer, it’s easy for traditional criticism to get drowned out. It’s at the epicentre of this din of competing opinions that Metacritic – a review aggregator owned by CBS that parses disparate media scores into round(ish) numbers – has flourished. Every game, album and movie that is released gets added to site’s gargantuan database, and review scores from tens or hundreds of publications are crunched into an easily digestible average.But on the right side of each product’s page is a separate score, a bane of developers, directors and record companies everywhere: the user reviews section. It’s a public forum where anyone who registers an account can jump into the discussion, leave their own score and heap praise on a release – or, perhaps more often, pour scorn on one. Continue reading...

Many of us rely on our devices for everything from rousing us in the morning to staving off boredom. But there are ways to break the habit Continue reading...

Alex Hern speaks to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, 30 years after the computer engineer sent the proposal for what would become the world wide web. Jordan Erica Webber chats to Elle Hunt and Alex about their earliest memories of using the webThis week, the inventor of the world wide web reflects on what he could have done differently all those years ago, and what we should all be doing to make the internet a safer and better place.Then, Elle Hunt and Alex Hern join Jordan Erica Webber to talk about some of the wackiest stories they heard when compiling the memories of people who used the web in the early days. Continue reading...

Huge screens, dynamic range, lots of pixels, OLED … cut through the telly jargon to find the right one for your homeLet’s face it. Your current TV is showing its age. Its resolution is resolutely HD (so very 00s) and it doesn’t even respond to voice commands, no matter how loud you bawl. Maybe the time has come to upgrade to something cutting edge.Connected smart TVs are now standard fare. With integrated streaming services, you can season binge from Netflix and Amazon Prime Video without the need for an additional set top box or dongle – or multiple remotes. Just connect the TV to your home wifi or router. Continue reading...

Tim Cook has made Apple the most valuable brand in the world – will this be a new success or a sign of the company’s problems?“It’s showtime,” reads the invite for Apple’s next big launch. It sure is. On Monday at the 1,000-seat Steve Jobs Theatre in Apple’s $5bn space-age campus in Cupertino, California, the company’s chief executive, Tim Cook, will unveil his big plans to become a modern media mogul.Details of the plans are sketchy but it appears Apple will be launching a new platform for news publishers with paywalls – the Wall Street Journal is in, New York Times and Washington Post are not – and announcing a series of new TV deals and original programmes that will put it head to head with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and their rivals in streaming media as they fight it out to be the new kings of Hollywood. Continue reading...

Scientists have discovered that humans may be able to pick up on the Earth’s magnetic field. Here are some other species with animal magnetismLast week, researchers from the California Institute of Technology announced that they believe humans have the ability to pick up on the Earth’s magnetic field – a power known as magnetoreception. In an experiment, participants’ brains were described as “freaking out” when the magnetic field was changed unexpectedly. Continue reading...

The all-conquering 4x4 hits an important milestone – and there’s no better place to join in the fun than BeaulieuThis year, Land Rover’s all-conquering go-anywhere Discovery celebrates its 30th birthday. Since its launch in 1989, the Disco has become synonymous with adventure. It’s been put to work in the most extreme locations, proving time and again that capability does not come at the sacrifice of comfort. It’s equally capable chugging across deserts, through jungles or up the M40. More than 1.7 million have been sold and in its 30 years it has won more than 300 awards. If you want to wish it many happy returns, Beaulieu’s Simply Land Rover is the place to go. From the minimalist Discovery Series I to the latest high-tech versions, all five generations of the Disco will be on display at the National Motor Museum. More than that, the event is a celebration of all things 4x4. More than 400 Land Rovers of every variety will be joining the celebration. Running alongside the event will also be Simply Rummage, where you can track down hard-to-find spares and accessories. You can also challenge yourself on the Forest Drive. The event is the first of a car-packed summer at Beaulieu: it’s followed by Simply Jaguar, Simply Japanese and Simply Mercedes.Simply Land Rover, 23 June, £12 or £10 if you go in a Land Rover (beaulieu.co.uk) Continue reading...

#NoAmazon, armed only with intimate knowledge of their home community, came together to take on an internet behemothOn the morning of February 14, Maritza Silva-Farrell was on a call in her Lower Manhattan office with a fellow climate activist when she noticed a New York Times news alert pop up on her phone.Amazon was pulling out of New York City. The tech behemoth had cancelled its plans to build a second headquarters, and create a reported 25,000 jobs, in Queens barely three months after choosing the city. The decision to select New York as one of the chosen cities – the Washington, D.C. suburb of Crystal City, Virginia was the other – had marked the end of the company’s two-year-long American-Idol style HQ2 contest where over 230 cities from across North America doled out major tax breaks and other corporate freebies to lure Amazon. Continue reading...

Rami Malek’s slasher horror, Bowie as a cyberpunk hacker, streetfighting Carmen Electra, and John Hurt down and dirty … improbable roles for A-listersIt’s no longer unusual to see big-name actors in video game roles – and usually it works out fine. Ellen Page in Beyond: Two Souls, Kristen Bell in Assassin’s Creed and Charles Dance in Witcher 3 were all perfectly cast, bringing their talent and star quality to fitting roles, and featured prominently in those games’ promotion. But sometimes, famous faces pop up in video games where you’re not expecting them, whether it’s someone at the start of their career who later turns into a huge star, or an ageing legend looking for a quick buck. Here are some of our favourite improbable appearances. Continue reading...

Iconic game about urban bloodsuckers is to get an unlikely sequel next year, from Paradox Interactive and Hardsuit Labs in SeattleVampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines is almost unique in video game history. It suffered a deeply troubled development involving turbulent clashes between developer Troika and publisher Activision, and was eventually released incomplete and deeply broken. And yet, the 2004 financial disaster of a game is adored and celebrated for its innovative dialogue, astounding characters and banquet of choice. Kept alive ever since by a dedicated group of fans who have patched it up and improved it multiple times, it’s a game now remembered for its huge ambition rather than its colossal failure.Fifteen years later, a sequel has just been announced. Created by Hardsuit Labs (Blacklight: Retribution), along with Bloodlines’ original writer Brian Mitsoda, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has secretly been in development for three years. It will be released in 2020. Continue reading...

Gaming requires my full focus and is one of the few activities that doesn’t encourage me to check my phone every five minutesI’ve heard that my generation spends about 10 hours online per day. If I’m being honest, that sounds a little conservative to me. When are you not online? Aside from face-to-face social interaction (say, coffee with a friend) or activities that force attention (the movies; gigs) I can’t think of a time when I wouldn’t at least be passively scrolling or using my phone in some capacity. I recently bought a pop socket – a small device that allows you to grip your phone better – so that it’s easier for me to hold while moving.I’ve grown up with computers, tablets and various other kinds of screen, and it seems unnatural that you would try to give them up in order to emulate some older generation’s way of life. But being connected all the time can get a little frenzied, and I’ve recently found myself needing to take some time out. It’s ironic that the one tool I’ve found most conducive for relaxing isn’t offline at all. Continue reading...

Company admits to mistake and says it has no evidence of abuse – but the risk was hugeFacebook mistakenly stored “hundreds of millions” of passwords in plaintext, unprotected by any encryption, the company has admitted.The mistake, which led to user passwords being kept in Facebook’s internal servers in an insecure way, affects “hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, tens of millions of other Facebook users, and tens of thousands of Instagram users”, according to the social networking site. Facebook Lite is a version of Facebook created for use in nations where mobile data is unaffordable or unavailable. Continue reading...

Museum of Modern Art, New York

Site says recently live streams are prioritised for review only when flagged for suicideFacebook has released more details of its response to the Christchurch terrorist attack, saying it did not deal with the attacker’s live stream as quickly as it could have because it was not reported as a video of suicide.The company said streams that were flagged by users while live were prioritised for accelerated review, as were any recently live streams that were reported for suicide content. Continue reading...

Chris wants to know if a Windows laptop with a 17in screen would be easier for his ‘pensioner eyes’

I taught my son how to play video games. Now he’s teaching meThere is a moment in parenthood when your child discovers you are not infallible, that you can be beaten. The first time a kid wins a game of tennis against their mum or dad, or solves a maths problem their parents can’t even begin to understand, it is profoundly bittersweet. While it is wonderful to see your child growing up and becoming independent, when they get good at things, they are a little bit less yours, and you are a little bit less heroic. It is sometimes hard to be the grownup in that situation and not deal with it childishly. I discovered this on Saturday when my eldest son and I were playing Apex Legends.My wife had taken our younger son to Jersey for the weekend to see her sister, and I thought it would be a treat to hunker down with our first born and spend a few hours fighting against strangers together in the battle royale shooter game of the moment. Players are automatically put into online groups of three, so we set up two TVs and two consoles so we could compete together in the same squad. My son and I have not played together much since the days of our epic Minecraft sessions or when we’d spend hours battling through every one of the Lego action adventures, dividing up the puzzles between us. That was when he was eight or nine. He’s 13 now, and plays with with friends he meets online. I hear them from the other room, sharing jokes and trash-talking through their headsets. Continue reading...

As my daughter kindly told me, I am only one of these things. But I was perturbed by how accurately I’d been microtargetedI read that Jeremy Wright, the culture secretary, is looking at “microtargeting” by online advertisers. I have a long list of stuff to worry about in my life, and the world in general. Microtargeting hadn’t made the cut. But it’s on there now, because something most odd has happened to me on the iPhone Maps app.I was staying at my friend’s flat in a big block in the middle of Birmingham last week. Lying in bed, squinting at the Maps app, looking for something, I chanced upon the name of a company located either in or next to the building I had woken up in: Dating Agency for Attractive People Age 52 Plus. What’s that all about? Why 52? Is 52 a thing, a significant milestone? Continue reading...

Higher contrast, better touchscreen and Paperwhite-like light among improvementsAmazon has released a new version of its cheapest Kindle e-reader with an improved screen and a reading light, a feature previously held back for its more expensive devices.Costing £10 more than the previous generation, at £69.99, the new Kindle has a 6in e-ink display with an adjustable front light that projects from the sides to make the screen readable in the dark. Continue reading...

Tech company has been fined €8.24bn by EU commission over past two yearsGoogle has been fined €1.5bn (£1.3bn) by the EU for abusing its monopoly in online advertising, bringing the total cost of punishments imposed on the search giant by Brussels to €8.2bn over two years.The latest ruling means that since 2017 the EU has found Google abused its power in shopping comparison services, its Android mobile phone operating system and now search adverts. Continue reading...

Games can offer a window on to other jobs as well as other worlds. Three players explain how their favourite games guided working life choicesBack in 2016, the current Manchester United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer revealed that his interest in the managerial aspect of the beautiful game came from a video game. Having led an illustrious career as a United striker, famously the super-sub who scored the winning goal in the 1999 Champion’s League final, it was Solksjaer’s experience with team sim Football Manager that encouraged him to continue a football career after he hung up his boots.He’s not the only gamer who ever discovered a real-world passion through playing. Games can often offer a window on to other careers as well as other worlds, and sometimes inspire people to explore options they’d never considered before. Here, three video-game fans explain how their favourite games guided their real-life careers. Continue reading...

A masterful edition of Storyville exposed the awful plight of the moderators tasked with purging tech platforms of violent and sexually abusive imagesOne woman wanted to quit her job as a moderator for an unnamed tech company during training, after hearing descriptions of the content and images she was likely to see. Once she had started, she came across pictures of a six‑year-old girl having terrible things done to her and asked to leave. Her manager told her this was what she had signed up for and sent her back to work. Her story was preceded by footage from testimony before a committee on child abuse images and exploitation by Nicole Wong, then a legal adviser at Google. “We’re doing the best we can,” she said.We don’t know the name of the woman haunted by images that still make her voice shake when she speaks of them. She is one of tens of thousands of moderators employed by companies in the Philippines, themselves hired by big tech firms, to purge social media platforms of the worst that humanity offers when you give it the chance. Like the rest of her colleagues, she could only speak without risk anonymously. Continue reading...

ACLU hails ‘sweeping changes’ after company criticized over ad targeting based on race, gender and ageFacebook is taking steps to block discriminatory ads for housing, employment and credit by preventing advertisers from targeting users based on race, gender, age and zip code.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other rights groups, which sued Facebook for violating civil rights laws with its ad practices, announced the “historic settlement” on Tuesday, saying “sweeping changes” would restrict illegal and discriminatory ad targeting. Continue reading...

Stadia, which will allow users to play games on any device, will launch later in 2019Google announced its entry into the video game market with Google Stadia, a service that will allow players to stream video games to any screen – phone, tablet, TV or computer.Google announced Stadia at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. The cloud-powered service will allow users to log in from any screen using the Chrome browser, a Chromecast device or a Google Pixel phone or tablet and play the same games across all of them, with all the computational heavy-lifting done by Google’s servers instead of a games console. It means that players won’t have to purchase a box that sits under the TV in order to play, theoretically liberating video games from hardware altogether. Continue reading...

Xbox One, PS4, PC; Ubisoft Massive/Ubisoft

LiveLeak removed the horrific footage but still caught up in ‘extraordinary’ effort to censor the webA site that explicitly stated it would not host the horrific Christchurch terror video has been blocked by Australian telcos in an “extraordinary” effort to censor dozens of websites.Telstra, Vodafone and Optus have all confirmed they are actively blocking Australian customers on their networks from accessing websites that hosted the Christchurch terror video. Continue reading...

San Francisco firm reveals figures for first time as it competes with Uber to be first with IPOLyft has officially kicked off the roadshow for its initial public offering, saying on Monday it plans to put more than 30m shares up for sale with an anticipated price of between $62 and $68 each.That would raise more than $2bn for the San Francisco ride-hailing company, pegging its market value at $20bn to $25bn, even though it has not been able to turn a profit yet. Continue reading...

Counterfeits worth $590bn a year made up 3.3% of global trade in 2016, report findsThe rise of online platforms for buying and selling goods has fuelled a rapid increase in fake merchandise sold around the world, the value of which has reached $590bn (£384.4bn) a year, according to a report.The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union’s intellectual property office (EUIPO) found illicit goods, from designer handbags to luxury watches, accounted for as much as 3.3% of total international trade in 2016, up from 2.5% ($461bn) in 2013. Continue reading...

Faulty server migration blamed for mass deletion of songs, photos and videoMyspace, the once mighty social network, has lost every single piece of content uploaded to its site before 2016, including millions of songs, photos and videos with no other home on the internet.The company is blaming a faulty server migration for the mass deletion, which appears to have happened more than a year ago, when the first reports appeared of users unable to access older content. The company has confirmed to online archivists that music has been lost permanently, dashing hopes that a backup could be used to permanently protect the collection for future generations. Continue reading...

Margot James says footage of Christchurch attack highlights issues around regulationThe digital minister, Margot James, has raised concerns about the regulation of online live streaming in the aftermath of the New Zealand shootings, in which an alleged terrorist broadcast footage of an attack on two mosques live on Facebook.James, whose department is preparing to unveil the government’s proposals on tackling online harms, said she was unhappy that footage of the attack, which could never be allowed on traditional television channels, was easily available on social media. Continue reading...

About 1,800 newspapers have closed in the US in the last 15 years, partly as a result of internet-based companies like FacebookFacebook’s effort to establish a service that provides users with local news and information is being hindered by the lack of outlets where the company’s technicians can find original reporting.Some 1,800 newspapers have closed in the US over the last 15 years, according to the University of North Carolina. Newsroom employment has declined by 45% as the industry struggles with a broken business model partly caused by the success of companies on the internet – including Facebook. Continue reading...

To celebrate 60 years of Barbie, Jordan Erica Webber looks back at some of the key moments in the history of the world-famous doll, and examines how Barbie became a representative of the tech worldThis month, Barbie turns 60. Beloved by generations of children, over the past decade her manufacturer, Mattel, also saw the need to introduce Barbie to the digital world.Barbie wasn’t just the star of her own video games and movies. In the noughties, Mattel was encouraged to design more diverse Barbie dolls, both in the way they looked and the careers they chose. So, in 2016, we welcomed Game Developer Barbie, a doll that could – like so many before her – inspire a younger generation and show them game development was a viable career for women. Continue reading...

A year after devastating revelations of data misuse, Mark Zuckerberg still hasn’t fulfilled his promises to reform

The Oscar-winning director presents a sympathetic portrait of the Silicon Valley CEO who fooled the world into believing she had built a better blood testWe can’t get enough of Elizabeth Holmes. The founder and CEO of Theranos once captivated the imaginations of venture capitalists and magazine profile writers with her too-good-to-be-true tale of a revolutionary blood testing technology. Three years, numerous federal investigations, and eleven felony counts later, our appetite has shifted to devouring the tale of how Holmes fooled the world. The Silicon Valley morality tale – a true crime saga with a dash of Fyre Fest-schadenfreude and the added bonus of an icy blonde with a mysteriously deep voice – has thus far inspired a best-selling book, a popular podcast, and two documentaries, with a feature film and real-life criminal trial still to come.One of the documentaries, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, debuts Monday on HBO. The film, by Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney, presents a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of Holmes as a modern-day Thomas Edison-gone-wrong. The Wizard of Menlo Park, Gibney reminds us, was a master of “faking it until you make it” who raised money off a promise long before he figured out how to make the incandescent light bulb work. Of course, Edison eventually came through, while Holmes is facing up to 20 years in prison, and her company was forced to void tens of thousands of blood tests for patients in Arizona. Continue reading...

A date will soon be set for the launch of a UK-wide age block on visiting adult websites – but campaigners fear a threat to privacyThe government will this week confirm the launch date for a UK-wide age block on online pornography, as privacy campaigners continue to raise concerns about how adult websites and age-verification companies will use the data they collect.The plan for implementing the long-delayed age block, which has been beset by technical difficulties, is expected to be announced alongside the government’s other proposals for tackling online harm, although it could be several months before the system is up and running. Continue reading...

It may look a little odd, but the Berlingo is bursting with lifeCitroen Berlingo

Allegations come as US prosecutors investigate claims of cover-upFacebook is facing explosive new questions about when senior executives knew of Cambridge Analytica’s abuse of users’ data, one year on from when the scandal first broke, as federal prosecutors investigate claims that the social media giant has covered up the extent of its relationship with the firm.The Observer has also learned of claims that a meeting was hosted at the office of Facebook board member and confidant of its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen with Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, in the summer of 2016 just as the data firm started working for the Trump campaign. Continue reading...

More work needed to see if wearables can help screen for heart problems, but researchers call study encouraging

Todd McLellan wants his photographs of disassembled gadgets to help people understand how stuff worksBy his own admission, photographer Todd McLellan was “kind of a weird kid”. As an eight-year-old, the Canadian had a workbench in his bedroom, where he would use a hammer, a soldering iron and an oscilloscope to tinker around with household objects. He particularly enjoyed taking apart his brother’s toy cars to try to see what was inside. “I thought the little seats were so cool,” he says now. “But it was so disappointing there were no pedals or steering wheel. I was like: ‘What – is that it?’”McLellan rarely experiences the same disappointment now. For the past decade, the 42-year-old has earned a name for himself by taking apart everyday objects, neatly aligning their components, and photographing the results. “Some of them, I think there’s going to be nothing to it, and I schedule two, three hours of my day to take them apart,” he says. “And then I get started, and it’s like: ‘Oh, no. So many pieces.’” Continue reading...

Blocking out annoying sounds on flights or the commute with these options priced from £80Daily life is stressful enough without being subjected to the noise of others. Thankfully noise cancelling headphones can help by actively blocking oppressive distractions, whether it’s for flights, the commute, or just in the office, with effective options costing from £80.Here’s a quick guide to separate the wheat from the chaff. Continue reading...

Democratic presidential candidate’s membership of group that invented the term ‘hacktivism’ may explain much about his approach to politicsBeto O’Rourke, the Democratic presidential candidate, belonged as a teenager to the oldest group of computer hackers in US history, he has revealed in an interview.Members of the influential, so-called Cult of the Dead Cow, jokingly named after an abandoned Texas slaughterhouse, have protected his secret for decades, reluctant to compromise his political viability. Continue reading...

From Neopets to Habbo Hotel, we’d like to hear your experiences and memories to mark the 30th anniversary of the webThirty years ago this month, Tim Berners-Lee filed his proposal for the project that would become the world wide web. To mark the date, we’re asking readers to share their favourite and formative memories of online communities from the 90s and early 00s. That could be a tale of relationships forged through forums that no longer exist, pivotal dramas on long-lost discussion threads, or long-distance friends introduced through niche online interests.Related: The Guardian view on the world wide web: we wove a tangle | Editorial Continue reading...

Chief product officer, who helped create news feed feature, was viewed as a possible successor to CEO ZuckerbergFacebook’s chief product officer and one of the primary architects of its signature news feed, Chris Cox, said on Thursday he was leaving the company, just days after Mark Zuckerberg revealed a plan to shift the world’s biggest social network to an encryption-focused messaging company.Cox, one of Zuckerberg’s earliest employees and closest lieutenants, said in a blogpost he made the announcement “with great sadness” and was leaving after 13 years with the company. Continue reading...

Company is banking on the new model to revive excitement about the brand as traditional carmakers expand their electric vehicle offeringsTesla unveiled a new electric crossover SUV, the Model Y, during an event at the company’s design studio in Hawthorne on Thursday evening.Chief Executive Elon Musk said the compact SUV would first debut in a long-range version with a range of 300 miles priced at about $47,000. Continue reading...

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds banned in Gujarat to combat spread of ‘violent traits’Police in the western Indian state of Gujarat detained 10 teenagers for breaking a newly announced ban on playing the online video game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) – the forerunner of global smash Fortnite.The ban was announced last week by local authorities to combat what they called the spread of “violent traits” in kids playing the game. Continue reading...

Instagram and WhatsApp were also hit. It wasn’t the apocalypse, but for some people, it felt like itWhen your grandchildren ask you how you made it through the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp outage of March 2019, what will you tell them? Did you Google “Facebook down” to ascertain whether Facebook was, indeed, down? Did you call the emergency services?Amid the breakdown of digital society, the Australian breakfast television program Sunrise publicised apparently official advice not to contact police over the mass outage. Continue reading...

Epic mythological fighting game picks up 10 nominations, chased by Red Dead Redemption 2, Return of the Obra Dinn and Florence with six nominations each. See the full list belowSony Santa Monica’s God of War has received 10 nominations for this year’s Bafta game awards, leading a diverse pack of nominees.Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 also picked up six nominations, as did Florence – a game about a relationship played from the perspective of a young woman – and Return of the Obra Dinn, a lo-fi monochrome mystery set on an abandoned ship. Continue reading...

PC; Tendershoot/No More Robots

David wants a new Mac Mini but doesn’t want to pay Apple’s eye-watering price for a 2TB SSDMy general question is: can a computer that has some of its storage on an external drive with a fast connection (such as Thunderbolt) perform as well as a computer with the same amount of storage inside the computer?To be specific, I have a 2014 Mac Mini, which is very slow. I am considering upgrading to the latest 2018 version, but I need at least 1TB of storage. Apple can supply the unit with up to 2TB of solid state drive (SSD) storage, but charges an eye-watering £720 per terabyte. If I bought an external Thunderbolt SSD for about £220 per terabyte, would I be likely to see any difference? DavidThe general question is easy: external drives are slower than comparable internal drives, because the interconnection itself adds an overhead. While you could have a faster external drive, it would be better to spend the money upgrading the internal drive, where possible. Continue reading...

Investigation by federal prosecutors adds to laundry list of inquiries since the Cambridge Analytica revelations one year agoFacebook is under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors examining its data-sharing deals with other major technology companies, according to the New York Times.A New York grand jury has subpoenaed records from “at least two prominent makers of smartphones and other devices”, the Times reported, citing two unnamed sources. Continue reading...