Technology | The Guardian

Sally Flood managed to claw two-thirds back, but says lenders should do more to protect customersA Manchester woman lost £95,000 she inherited from her father in a sophisticated bank transfer scam. After a year-long battle she has managed to retrieve two-thirds of the cash.Sally Flood enlisted the help of a law firm specialising in cybercrime and data breaches, and while she is pleased to have recovered a good chunk of what she had lost after “the year from hell”, she is furious about being left £35,000 out of pocket. Continue reading...

My father, David Aspinall, who has died aged 86, was one of a small group of researchers who founded the field of computer science in the UK. As an engineering research student he was involved in building the Manchester University Atlas computer which, when it was switched on in 1962, was the fastest in the world.In 1970, David moved to University College Swansea to become professor of electrical engineering and create a new course, a BSc in computer technology, based on the model designed by his boss Tom Kilburn whose computer science department at Manchester University was the first of its kind in the UK. These people were the pioneers of the new academic and educational field of “computer science”. Continue reading...

Computer scientist who made the cut, copy and paste commands simple to useAnyone who uses the cut, copy and paste commands on their computer or mobile device has Larry Tesler to thank for making them so simple and easy to use.Tesler, who has died aged 74, began his work on cut, copy and paste in 1973, when he was hired by Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (Parc) in California. Among other things he worked with a fellow computer scientist, Tim Mott, on the development of Gypsy, a “modeless” word processor. At the time most software had modes: for example, you might press I to enter the insert mode, or R for the replace mode. But Tesler’s research showed that non-expert users found modes confusing – and so he began to fight against them. He had “Nomodes” as his car numberplate and, later, a website at nomodes.com. Continue reading...

M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool

This is a genuinely fraught topic: is it generational, habitual, or explained by neuroscience? I asked the expertsImagine you are playing a video game where you’re looking out over an explorable world. You have a controller in your hand and you want your character to look or move upwards: in what direction do you push the joystick?If the answer is “up”, you’re in the majority – most players push up on a stick, or slide a mouse upwards, to instigate upward motion in a game. Most, but not all. A significant minority of players start every new game they play by going into the options and selecting “Invert Y axis”, which means when they push up on the stick, their onscreen avatar looks or moves downwards. To both sets of players, their own choice is logical and natural, and discussions about the subject can get quite fraught – as I found when I tweeted about it a few weeks ago. But why the perceptual difference? Is there anything definite that neuroscientists or psychologists can tell us about this schism? Continue reading...

Parliamentary committee hears state and government agencies sought data 8,432 times in 2018-19Federal government officials have been accused of a “cavalier disregard” for the dozens of state and federal government agencies accessing data retained under the mandatory data retention regime thousands of times a year despite legislation explicitly excluding them from access.Under the mandatory data retention legislation passed in 2015, the number of agencies allowed to access the data was narrowed down to just 21. But the telecommunications industry organisation Communications Alliance has revealed that at least 87 other state and federal organisations – including city councils, the RSPCA and the South Australian fisheries department – have accessed the data under section 280 of the Telecommunications Act. Continue reading...

Microsoft and Epic Games also announce they will not be attending this year’s Game Developers Conference in San FranciscoFacebook is canceling F8, its annual conference for developers, because of the new coronavirus.The conference was scheduled to take place in early May in the San Francisco Bay area. Last year’s event was attended by more than 5,000 people from around the world. Continue reading...

IT servers have been disabled for past three weeks, affecting website and phone linesA council in the north-east of England has admitted that it has suffered a cyber-attack that has disabled its IT servers for the past three weeks, leaving it with a steep bill and concerns among residents that their local government infrastructure is “in danger of collapse”.One Redcar and Cleveland councillor told the Guardian they had been advised it would take several months and cost between £11m and £18m to repair the damage -far more than the £7.4m funding grant the council is set to receive in 2020/2021 from central government. The council’s total annual budget is £279m. Continue reading...

Post-Brexit, Sean wants to keep his data protected by the EU’s GDPR rather than laxer US privacy lawsGiven Google’s recent announcement about moving UK users’ data to US jurisdiction, what’s the best way to migrate to EU-based services? Can you download+upload or crossload your Gmail to another service? And are we in for the same treatment by Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram et al? SeanLast week Google notified users that “because the UK is leaving the EU, we’ve updated our terms so that a United States-based company, Google LLC, is now your service provider instead of Google Ireland Limited. We’ve also changed our privacy policy to make Google LLC the data controller responsible for your information and for complying with applicable privacy laws.” Continue reading...

GCHQ and Ministry of Defence to roll out national task force of hackers after months of delayA specialist cyber force of hackers who can target hostile states and terror groups is due to be launched later in the spring, after many months of delays and turf wars between the Ministry of Defence and GCHQ.The National Cyber Force – containing an estimated 500 specialists – has been in the works for two years but sources said that after months of wrangling over the details, the specialist unit was close to being formally announced. Continue reading...

Child safeguarding at risk as police say lack of technology and time limits prevent device checksPolice are giving back to suspected paedophiles phones and computers that possibly hold child abuse images because they do not have the time or technology to search the devices, a report says.Prosecutions are being dropped because the technology that helps officers quickly scan devices to determine the likelihood of indecent images being present is not consistently available across forces, a policing watchdog finds. Continue reading...

Director Rian Johnson lifts lid on brand’s controlling use of product placement, which saw it ensure villains used PCsFilm director Rian Johnson has lifted the lid on a secret in the world of product placement – Apple will not allow its kit to be used by a villainous character on screen.“Apple, they let you use iPhones in movies, but – and this is very pivotal – if you’re ever watching a mystery movie, bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera,” Johnson, whose credits include Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Looper and Knives Out, revealed in a video recorded for Vanity Fair. Continue reading...

From doctored videos to fake quotes, the presidential candidate is muddying the water online – and it’s workingIf a dumpster is already on fire, is there any harm in throwing some more trash into it?Mike Bloomberg’s campaign has spent the last month unapologetically performing the digital equivalent of dumping buckets of fresh garbage into the trash fire that is internet discourse in 2020, apparently with little or no concern for the toxic side effects. Continue reading...

Filled with intrigue and drama, the Tekken games are like violent soap operas in which women are the complex starsA young woman stands at the grave of her recently departed father, her blond hair in a ponytail. After a quiet moment, she places flowers on the ground, then hears the crunch of gravel behind her. She whips around, pulls out her gun and finds a brunette woman of roughly her own age. The brunette smiles faintly and reassures the blonde that she’s not here to fight. She, too, is here to pay her respects. They walk past one another, visibly tense in blocky 1996 animation, and decide to let the feud rest. For today.This is one of the more conservative story endings for Nina Williams, a much-beloved combatant in the Tekken series of fighting games. In conversations around classic female video games characters, she often gets overlooked. Street Fighter’s Chun-Li is the first lady of the fighting genre (the Princess Leia buns, the thighs that launched a thousand “crushed to death” fetishes) and, although Peach wins the popular vote, no one has ever come close to stealing Lara Croft’s crown when it comes to overall iconic omnipresence. But growing up, Nina Williams was by far my favourite character, which naturally made Tekken my favourite two-player title. It wasn’t just that she was Irish – although I remember gasping the moment I read that in the Tekken 2 booklet, it being the first time I had anything in common with a woman from a video game – it was that I felt as if I knew things about her. Continue reading...

New hide-away design, great remote, top performance and impressive HD to 4K upscaling make for a killer smart TV boxThe Nvidia Shield TV is a refined version of the best Android TV box for years, packed with impressive new AI-based upscaling technology and a novel space-saving design.The new Nvidia Shield TV comes in two versions: a £149.99 media streamer and a “Pro” alternative for £199 that is aimed more at gaming. Continue reading...

Study of people across six countries finds German users would charge most for sharing personal dataGerman Facebook users would want the social media platform to pay them about $8 per month for sharing their contact information, while US users would only seek $3.50, according to a study of how people in various countries value their private information.The study by US-based thinktank the Technology Policy Institute (TPI) is the first that attempts to quantify the value of online privacy and data. It assessed how much privacy is worth in six countries by looking at the habits of people in the United States, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia and Argentina. Continue reading...

Two major shareholder groups backed proposal that would force tech company to make new human rights commitmentsApple could be forced to disclose details of censorship requests from China and other nations after two major shareholder groups backed a proposal that would force the tech firm to make new human rights commitments.The motion, set to be voted on by the company’s investors on Wednesday, was prompted by numerous allegations of Apple kowtowing to Beijing and blocking apps from being used by Chinese customers. Continue reading...

Microsoft confirms key specs of games console plus new ‘Smart Delivery’ feature allowing one-size-fits-all game purchasesMicrosoft has confirmed that its next games console, the Xbox Series X, will feature a 12 teraflops graphics processor, eight times more powerful than the Xbox One graphics chipset.The announcement, made by the Xbox chief, Phil Spencer, via Microsoft’s Wire news site, confirmed recent rumours about the machine, which is launching this winter. Continue reading...

Cressida Dick defends tech after civil liberties groups raise fears over accuracy and privacyThe Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, has attacked critics of facial recognition technology for using arguments she has claimed are highly inaccurate and ill-informed.The Met began operational use of the technology earlier this month despite concerns raised about its accuracy and privacy implications by civil liberties groups, including Amnesty International UK, Liberty and Big Brother Watch (BBW). Continue reading...

Chinese firm also unveils updates to its tablet and laptop lines, plus new wifi speakerHuawei is launching a new version of its folding smartphone, the Mate Xs, alongside revamped tablets and laptops.Despite Mobile World Congress being cancelled owing to fears over the coronavirus, the embattled Chinese firm Huawei launched a series of high-end updates to its most ambitious products at a virtual press conference instead. Continue reading...

Media Molecule’s ambitious new PlayStation 4 release is a game development tool that allows you to be creative for the fun of itWe’re living in an age of mass, democratised creativity – or at least that’s what the technology industry likes to tell us. You can shoot a movie or record an album on a smartphone, you can become a household name with a webcam and a YouTube channel, and you can download any of a dozen applications and build a video game from nothing.But the latter is an intimidating notion. Games are ultimately complex mechanisms, constructed from code, involving physics, narrative, animation and audio. There has been a deliberate effort within the industry to make creative tools more accessible, arguably spearheaded by Unity, a technology that both powers games and lets users create them – and yet, designing and constructing a game can feel overwhelming. Even the first step, having confidence in your ideas, is a difficult one. It’s also where Media Molecule’s ambitious new PlayStation 4 release Dreams comes in. Continue reading...

After battling to stop a no-deal Brexit, the ex-MP has written a modern fable, Apocalypse How?, warning of the catastrophe our tech dependence could causeOliver Letwin’s strange and somewhat alarming new book begins at midnight on Thursday 31 December 2037. In Swindon – stay with me! – a man called Aameen Patel is working the graveyard shift at Highways England’s traffic HQ when his computer screen goes blank, and the room is plunged into darkness. He tries to report these things to his superiors, but can get no signal on his mobile. What’s going on? Looking at the motorway from the viewing window by his desk, he observes, not an orderly stream of traffic, but a dramatic pile-up of crashed cars and lorries – at which point he realises something is seriously amiss. In the Britain of 2037, everything, or almost everything, is controlled by 7G wireless technology, from the national grid to the traffic (not only are cars driverless; a vehicle cannot even join a motorway without logging into an “on-route guidance system”). There is, then, only one possible explanation: the entire 7G network must have gone down.It sounds like I’m describing a novel – and it’s true that Aameen Patel will soon be joined by another fictional creation in the form of Bill Donoghue, who works at the Bank of England, and whose job it will be to tell the prime minister that the country is about to pay a heavy price for its cashless economy, given that even essential purchases will not be possible until the network is back up (Bill’s mother-in-law is also one of thousands of vulnerable people whose carers will soon be unable to get to them, the batteries in their electric cars having gone flat). But Apocalypse How? is not a novel. It’s a peculiar hybrid: part fable, part fact. Aameen, Bill and all Letwin’s other characters exist only to illustrate aspects of his wider thesis, which is that our increasing reliance on integrated digital technology may be leading us, and ultimately every country in the world, in the direction of a catastrophe. I exaggerate a little, but think TV’s Survivors minus the mystery virus (though at the moment, we handily have one of those on our hands, too). Continue reading...

Small accounting firms are particularly at risk from bogus emails designed to steal lucrative personal informationIt’s not just accountants who are busy this tax season, it’s online hackers too – and they’re preying on both individuals and small businesses.This is “not from the ‘mob’ or street criminals,” writes Jess Coburn, a data protection expert, in CPA Practice Advisor. “These criminals are likely sitting behind a desk, glued to computer monitors, chugging energy drinks and developing the most effective ways to steal today’s version of gold.” Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg and Brussels both have ideas on AI regulation, but it’s a Cambridge statistician who has produced something intelligibleOn Wednesday the European Commission launched a blizzard of proposals and policy papers under the general umbrella of “shaping Europe’s digital future”. The documents released included: a report on the safety and liability implications of artificial intelligence, the internet of things and robotics; a paper outlining the EU’s strategy for data; and a white paper on “excellence and trust” in artificial intelligence. In their general tenor, the documents evoke the blend of technocracy, democratic piety and ambitiousness that is the hallmark of EU communications. That said, it is also the case that in terms of doing anything to get tech companies under some kind of control, the European Commission is the only game in town.In a nice coincidence, the policy blitz came exactly 24 hours after Mark Zuckerberg, supreme leader of Facebook, accompanied by his bag-carrier – a guy called Nicholas Clegg who looked vaguely familiar – had called on the commission graciously to explain to its officials the correct way to regulate tech companies. The officials, in turn, thanked him and courteously explained that they had their own ideas, and escorted him back to his hot-air balloon. Continue reading...

Video app’s most popular users could rake in millions by collaborating with brandsTeenagers used to aspire to become astronauts, firefighters, footballers or pop stars, but times change and so do career goals. Today, more than half of millennials and Generation Z-ers – those aged 13-38 – in the US aspire to become social media influencers, according to recent research by Morning Consult.The Chinese viral video app TikTok is the platform of choice for young people seeking to monetise their talents because it seen as rewarding anyone’s ability to entertain, whereas Instagram or YouTube tend to reward those who already have celebrity status. Continue reading...

Caroline Lucas urges move to help ease ‘intolerable’ pressure on availability of local housingLocal councils in England must be given powers to regulate Airbnb and other short-term letting sites in order to alleviate the “intolerable” pressure they put on the availability of local housing, the Green party MP, Caroline Lucas, has said.Her intervention followed a Guardian investigation that found one Airbnb listing for every four residential properties in some hotspots across Britain. Airbnb has disputed the finding. Continue reading...

Environmental group had challenged original ruling that carmaker could fell pinesA German court has ruled that clearing of trees from the site of Tesla’s first electric car factory in Europe can go ahead, days after it issued an injunction temporarily halting the preparatory work.The top administrative court in the Berlin-Brandenburg region ruled on Thursday that authorities had been within their rights to clear the way for work to start. Continue reading...

Draft of Brown study says findings suggest ‘substantial impact of mechanized bots in amplifying denialist messages’

With Didi launching in Sydney we weigh up each of Australia’s major rideshare platformsOn 16 March, Chinese ridesharing app Didi will launch in Sydney. Already available in Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth, the app promises “a safe, reliable and value-for-money way to get around”, according to Lyn Ma, Didi Australia’s general manager.That “value-for-money” statement will certainly be true in the first few weeks following the app’s launch – it is offering riders who sign up before launch a 50% discount on their first four weeks of rides, up to the value of $1200. Continue reading...

Scientist copied the printing technique of physically cutting and glueing printed textTributes have been paid to Larry Tesler, the computer scientist who introduced the cut, copy and paste commands, after his death at age 74. The Stanford University graduate, who was a pioneer of early computing, died on Monday in San Francisco.He worked for blue-chip firms including Apple, Amazon and Yahoo. Tesler appropriately began his Silicon Valley career at photocopying company Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (Parc) before being recruited by Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs. Continue reading...

Rental site has boosted tourism in Woolacombe - but some say housing is unaffordable

It is absurd – the phone was in my hands! How could it just disappear?I have my first appointment of 2020 with my life coach. Apart from suggesting I take up the xylophone as a relaxing hobby, we look at how I might break my four-hour-a-day phone habit. Continue reading...

Brexit prompts firm to move data and user accounts of British users from EU to USGoogle is to move the data and user accounts of its British users from the EU to the US, placing them outside the strong privacy protections offered by European regulators.The shift, prompted by Britain’s exit from the EU, will leave the sensitive personal information of tens of millions not covered by Europe’s world-leading General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore with less protection and within easier reach of British law enforcement. Continue reading...

An academic shares his name with a notorious drug dealer. Here’s how he can raise his profile so his name appears firstI’m a researcher at a major university. Unfortunately, I happen to share my name and middle initial with an unrelated drug dealer who has been in and out of prison. My name is sufficiently rare that I’m worried that confusion might arise, because a cursory Google search tends to give prominence to negative news stories that feature him.The standard advice online seems to be to open as many social media accounts as possible. I also have my own domain, but none of these has displaced the negative news stories in the search rankings. What should I do? Name withheldHow to get the top spot in Google’s search engine results has been a hot topic for years. It’s still vitally important to all types of business, to consultants and other professionals, bands and musicians, authors and journalists, politicians and many others. For those who can justify the fees, personal branding and “reputation management” companies do it for a living. Continue reading...

Chinese supplier won’t be able to take part in pilot exploring potential of the new technologyHuawei has been banned from participating in a £65m government scheme to explore how next-generation 5G technology can drive businesses and connect communities across the UK.The government set up the scheme last year, calling on businesses and communities to apply for funding to trial the vast potential of 5G technology. Continue reading...

Revamp of 2000’s flip phone means big screen folds in half into a compact clamshell that fits in small pocketsIt’s not often something comes along to genuinely change the game, but the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip does just that, bringing foldable displays closer to the mainstream and reinventing the flip phone for 2020 in the process.Screens that fold in half finally arrived last year with the Galaxy Fold, which was originally plagued by durability issues causing a delay and a reworking of the device. Continue reading...

I rented a car through the Gig app. But when I lost cellphone service, I found myself stuck by a remote highwayOn Saturday morning, I used an app on my phone to unlock a vehicle from Gig, a car sharing startup, and set off for a Valentine’s Day weekend trip to northern California with my partner.By late Sunday afternoon, we were sitting on the side of a remote highway, a software issue on our smart car rendering it unusable. It was getting dark, we had no way of getting home, and I was contemplating the limits of the sharing economy and the ultimate costs of convenience. Continue reading...

Robot is almost as fast as a real snake and can nimbly and stably climb large stepsA robot snake has been developed by scientists in the race to advance the abilities of search and rescue machines.It is hoped that the robots may some day help to explore inaccessible terrain, such as rubble after an earthquake. Continue reading...

Politicians from WikiLeaks founder’s home country have flown to UK to visit him in jailBoris Johnson should block attempts to extradite Julian Assange to the US, say two Australian MPs who visited the Wikileaks founder in prison, describing him afterwards as “a man under enormous pressure” and whose health and mental health had deteriorated.George Christensen, a Liberal National MP for the ruling party in Australia told a press conference outside the gates of Belmarsh prison that he knew of information, which would come to light during the start of the extradition hearing next week, that would make people in Australia “sit up and worry”. Continue reading...

The app sensation has drawn millions of players and awarded $6m in prize moneyOnline quiz app HQ Trivia, which at its peak was played by more than 2 million people a day, has hosted its last game – with inebriated hosts awarding a total prize pool of only US$5.Described as a “final drunken hurrah”, the app’s last broadcast was watched by 28,000 people after the company told employees last Friday it would shut down due to lack of funding. Continue reading...

Figures obtained by GMB show safety at its UK warehouses could be worseningMore than 600 Amazon workers have been seriously injured or narrowly escaped an accident in the past three years, prompting calls for a parliamentary inquiry into safety at the online retailer’s vast UK warehouses.Amazon, whose largest shareholder is the world’s richest man Jeff Bezos, recently launched an advertising campaign fronted by contented staff members, after a string of embarrassing revelations about working conditions. Continue reading...

Company hit by shutdown in China and says it will fail to meet quarterly revenue targetApple has warned of global “iPhone supply shortages” resulting from its Chinese factories being shut because of the coronavirus outbreak.The Californian company told investors on Monday night it would fail to meet its quarterly revenue target of $63-67bn (£48-52bn) because of the “temporarily constrained” supply of iPhones and a dramatic drop in Chinese shoppers during the virus crisis. Apple did not provide a new forecast for its second-quarter revenue. Continue reading...

Move comes a month after Amazon threatened to fire employees who spoke out about company’s role in the climate crisisJeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and Washington Post owner, announced on Monday that he was donating $10bn to save the Earth’s environment – barely a month after it was revealed Amazon threatened to fire employees who spoke out about the company’s role in the climate crisis.The new Bezos Earth Fund will start distributing the money this summer, the multi-billionaire said in an Instagram post to his 1.4 million followers. Continue reading...

Mick Mulvaney is expected to demand that UK drop Huawei from 5G networksDonald Trump’s acting chief of staff is set to meet Dominic Cummings in Downing Street on Wednesday, when he is expected to demand that the UK rethinks its decision to allow Huawei a role in supplying 5G technology.The critical meeting between Mick Mulvaney and Johnson’s chief aide comes amid speculation that the White House wants the UK to commit to removing the Chinese company from British mobile phone networks in three to five years’ time. Continue reading...

Exquisite sound, effective noise cancelling, long battery life, future-proofed connectivity and comfortable to wearThe PX7 are the latest flagship noise-cancelling headphones from upmarket British manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins, which excel on sound while giving Bose a real run for its money.B&W have long made excellent headphones. Its first noise-cancelling headphones looked and sounded great, but weren’t comfortable. The £350 PX7’s redesigned earcups fix that problem while offering Bose-rivalling noise cancelling and exquisite sound. Continue reading...

Ruling comes after state environmental office greenlit clearance of 92 hectares of forestA German court has ordered Tesla to stop clearing forest land near Berlin to build its first European car and battery factory, in what is being hailed as a victory for environmental activists.The US electric carmaker announced plans last November to build a “Gigafactory” in Grünheide in the eastern state of Brandenburg. Continue reading...

Expert says technology deployed is based on outdated science and therefore is unreliableArtificial Intelligence (AI) systems that companies claim can “read” facial expressions is based on outdated science and risks being unreliable and discriminatory, one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of emotion has warned.Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of psychology at Northeastern University, said that such technologies appear to disregard a growing body of evidence undermining the notion that the basic facial expressions are universal across cultures. As a result, such technologies – some of which are already being deployed in real-world settings – run the risk of being unreliable or discriminatory, she said. Continue reading...

Worried about the data collected about you? A new generation of startups is making apps to put your privacy settings straightTech companies don’t have favourite songs, but if they did, they would all pick Radiohead’s Just – “You do it to yourself, you do/ And that’s what really hurts,” they would croon, staring their users dead in the eye. And strictly speaking, they’d be right: many of the worst excesses of the industry are, technically, optional. The world isn’t actually a binary choice between living in a surveillance state and opting out of all technological development since the turn of the millennium. You can opt out – you just have to know how.Of course, that knowledge is not always easily acquired, nor is it necessarily easy to apply. So a new breed of services has arrived to try to help normal users take control of their digital lives. Companies including Disconnect.Me and Jumbo act as something like a digital concierge for their users, tweaking privacy settings, deleting sensitive data and throwing a spanner into the inner workings of surveillance capitalism. Continue reading...