Technology | The Guardian

Figure, in written evidence to parliamentary inquiry, is almost £40m less than NextAmazon has confirmed it pays UK business rates of only £63.4m, almost £40m less than Next, despite clocking up more than double the sales in the UK of the clothing and home retailer.In written evidence to a parliamentary inquiry, the online specialist said its UK sales amounted to £8.77bn and it paid business rates on about 94 buildings and on a number of locker sites in the UK. Continue reading...

Sandy Parakilas, who worked at Facebook before opposing its use of personal data, ‘to work on data protection’Apple has reportedly hired a former Facebook employee who blew the whistle on Facebook’s data-sharing policies exposed during the Cambridge Analytica scandal.Sandy Parakilas, a product manager at Facebook in 2011 and 2012, once gave evidence to the Commons about privacy abuses at Facebook and has been outspoken about the reportedly lax approach to data protection he witnessed at the social network during his time there. Continue reading...

The Integrity Initiative debacle, in which this writer was named in leaked files, shows that western efforts to counter misinformation must be openHow do you respond when a principle that forms part of the bedrock of your society is used to undermine it?This is the question facing liberal democracies across the world as Russia and others exploit free speech and its institutions – especially traditional and social media – through misinformation and electoral interference. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch; Nintendo

Last year he focused on ‘fixing’ Facebook. Now Mark Zuckerberg plans to host talks about technology’s future in societyHe built one of the world’s most valuable companies, transformed the media and information landscape across the globe, upended elections, fueled ethnic violence, and helped your mom keep in touch with her high school classmates.Now Mark Zuckerberg is taking on a new challenge: podcasting (basically). Continue reading...

CES organizers withdrew an award for the Osé personal massager despite spotlight on male-focused sex techThe developers of a female-focused sex toy are alleging gender bias at the International Consumer Electronics Show after organizers revoked an innovation award honoring the company and prohibited it from showcasing its product.Lora Haddock, founder and CEO of Lora DiCarlo, said her team had been overjoyed when the company’s Osé personal massager was selected as the CES 2019 Innovation Awards honoree in the robotics and drone product category. Continue reading...

Tweets | TV licences for the over-75s | Peaky Blinders cap | Sack Marina Hyde | Divorce by text messageHaving only recently learned that a tweet is a social media message, I read that “White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, announced that Trump would be travelling to the southern border in a tweet” (Report, 8 January), which leaves me wondering if this useful neologism has also come to mean (a) a jiffy (b) a bullet-proof limo or (c) a fit of narcissistic presidential pique. Please help.

Surprise move signals wider opening up of Apple ecosystem as tech firm seeks new revenueApple has announced that iTunes films will be available on Samsung smart TVs, ending the company’s insistence that users buy an Apple TV to watch their purchases on a big screen.Fifteen years after Steve Jobs launched iTunes for Windows, quipping that he was “giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell”, the move signals a wider opening up of the Apple ecosystem, with TV manufacturers including Sony, LG and Vizio announcing integration with Apple’s AirPlay 2 streaming technology, to allow users to broadcast from their phones or tablets directly to their televisions. Continue reading...

Five hundred years ago, this swath of California was populated by the Ohlone, who survived without farming or animal domesticationThere was a point in time, before colonization, when the San Francisco Bay Area was dominated by a people with a way of life and philosophy that did not revolve around technology or technological improvement.Five hundred years ago, this swath of northern California was populated by the Ohlone peoples, about 10,000 of whom lived in the stretch of land that we call the San Francisco Bay Area. So rich in plant and animal life was this region that the Ohlone were able to survive without farming or animal domestication; indeed, western explorers, when they eventually arrived, were amazed at the quantity of wild animal life. Continue reading...

Harry Potter, The Last of Us and Kingdom Hearts are likely to be the stars of the year – but streaming could change everythingVideo games are a fast-moving form of art and entertainment, and that makes the games industry a notoriously difficult one to predict. Sure, new Fifa and Call of Duty games will arrive every year and sell predictably well, there’ll probably be a new Assassin’s Creed, and Nintendo will usually deliver a fresh take on Mario, Zelda or Pokémon – but who could have foreseen that 2018 would be obliterated by Fortnite, a colourful cartoon shooter that launched to little fanfare in 2017 but became a global phenomenon over the course of last year? Or that one of 2018’s most critically acclaimed games would be a psychedelic virtual-reality version of 80s obsession, Tetris?Games are now almost as varied as the people who play them – more than two billion of all ages, across the world, playing on phones or PCs or PlayStations. But apart from Rockstar’s western epic Red Dead Redemption 2, whose £550m opening weekend made the kind of splash seen only every few years, the biggest earners of 2018 were games that have been around for years: Clash Royale and Pokémon Go on mobile, League of Legends and Counter-Strike on PC, and the omnipresent Fortnite. The money that these established, evolving mega-games make is astounding: it’s estimated that Fortnite now earns its creator Epic Games about $100m (£78.5m) a week. In terms of revenue, any new game released in 2019 will struggle to compete. Continue reading...

Police will be able to land, seize and search drones, with exclusion zones around airports extendedPolice will be handed extra powers to combat drones after the mass disruption at Gatwick airport in the run-up to Christmas.Gatwick was repeatedly forced to close between 19 and 21 December due to reported drone sightings, affecting about 1,000 flights. In response the government has announced a package of measures which include plans to give police the power to land, seize and search drones. Continue reading...

Council members urge New Yorkers to demand concessions like labor standards before company gains foothold in cityTwo lawmakers from Amazon’s hometown in Seattle traveled to New York on Monday to warn the city of potential unintended consequences of the tech company’s planned new headquarters.Lisa Herbold and Teresa Mosqueda, members of Seattle’s city council, addressed a summit of activist groups fighting Amazon’s plan for a new campus in Long Island City, Queens. They told the New Yorkers that Amazon’s presence in the west coast city had driven up housing costs, that the company had ducked efforts to make them help pay to address the crisis, and that they should resist it. Continue reading...

Released on Bowie’s birthday and narrated by Gary Oldman, the David Bowie Is ... app intends to bring you the gift of sound and vision – but falls a little shortYou have to feel for anyone tasked with designing a David Bowie app, which launches on 8 January, his birthday, priced £7.99. Given the guy was a shape-shifting pop genius who worked 10 steps ahead of his peers, transformed our cultural landscape and even turned his own death into a piece of art, you’re probably not going to get away with throwing up a few annotated pictures. Bowie fans want something that lives up to the icon’s name. No pressure.David Bowie Is … is an app based on the V&A’s record-breaking 2013 exhibition of the same name, which toured the world before ending up at New York’s Brooklyn Museum last year. The rather ambitious plan is not just to recreate the experience of going to the exhibition – which focused on the colourful, theatrical side of Bowie and drew a staggering 2m visitors – but to better it. As the creators put it, the app gains you access to all the exhibits: “Without the entire exhibition in the intimacy of your own environment, without glass barriers, vitrines or throngs of visitors.” Who needs people when you’ve got a smartphone? Continue reading...

Bavarian interior minister ‘astonished’ at handling of biggest data leak in German historyThe German government and security agencies have been accused of not taking internet security seriously, following a huge data breach that affected hundreds of politicians and celebrities.Joachim Herrmann, interior minister for the southern state of Bavaria, said he was appalled at the way the federal government and information security agency, the BSI, was handling the scandal, the biggest data leak in German history, after it was revealed it had dismissed a breach in December as one-off incident. Continue reading...

A righteous polemic depicting the likes of Amazon as part of a military conspiracy just doesn’t hold waterYasha Levine, an American investigative reporter of Russian extraction, was born in the Soviet Union. His background is in a certain kind of fashionable radicalism, set on exposing liberal hypocrisy from an anticapitalist perspective. One of his previous books was entitled The Corruption of Malcolm Gladwell, which portrayed the celebrated New Yorker writer as a shill for big pharma and the tobacco industry.His polemical method is to assemble all the supporting evidence he can find for his thesis and skirt round or dismiss anything that gets in its way. His latest book targets the tech industry, which, let’s face it, is a massive and deserving target. But he’s less concerned about surveillance capitalism per se than what he sees as a weaponised front in the west’s battle for hegemony and control. Continue reading...

The interactive fiction of the latest Black Mirror episode is a thrilling indication of the direction games could takeA new episode of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror debuted on Netflix just before the new year. Unlike most previous examples, Bandersnatch is not a cautionary tale of how current technologies might evolve to further ruin our hearts, minds and communities. It is, rather, a period piece set in early-1980s Britain, when young video-game programmers were becoming millionaires selling their games in WH Smith. Unlike all previous Black Mirror episodes, Bandersnatch is a nonlinear film that allows the viewer to steer the plot using simple A/B choices at key moments in the drama. Like the Choose Your Own Adventure books of the period, these choices range from the mundane (“which cereal would you like for breakfast?”) to the life-imperilling, and each path winds to one of a number of possible endings.That Netflix should choose to invest in the required technology, then use it with one of its prestige shows is, regardless of how you judge the results, thrilling, and demonstrates that games still have the capacity to enter new rooms of culture to woo those who might otherwise reject the form. Bandersnatch may even prove a tipping point for interactive fiction. This year also promises Telling Lies, a pseudo-sequel to Her Story, one of the best games of the genre to date, which also uses filmed footage (clips of police interview tapes) to reshuffle the narrative in beguiling ways. Continue reading...

Developing markets offer growth: but the firm’s phones must become cheaper and its services must compete with local rivalsAfter years of boom, Apple looks set for a rockier road in 2019 – partly through faults of its own and partly through social and economic factors that are affecting all the big smartphone manufacturers.The company’s chief executive, Tim Cook, laid the blame for a shock cut in sales forecasts – and the subsequent share price tumble – on the economic downturn in China. A convenient excuse, but far from the whole picture. Continue reading...

With its snorkel at the ready, the Nissan Navara AT32 is a bathing beautyNissan Navara Off-roader AT32 Double Cab

Most popular mobile weather app misled users who shared location information, say Los Angeles prosecutors in lawsuitPeople relied on the most popular mobile weather app to track forecasts that determined whether they chose jeans over shorts and packed a parka or umbrella, but its owners used it to track their every step and profit off that information, Los Angeles prosecutors said Friday.The operator of the Weather Channel mobile app misled users who agreed to share their location information in exchange for personalized forecasts and alerts, and they instead unwittingly surrendered personal privacy when the company sold their data to third parties, the city attorney, Michael Feuer, said. Continue reading...

Rapper has become embroiled in the fallout over the CEO’s controversial tweet about taking Tesla private

From next to no value in 2009, it rose to $20,000 and crashed back to $3,000 within a decadeTwo years after its inception, 10,000 bitcoin was just about enough to buy a couple of takeaway pizzas. Today those bitcoin would be worth nearly $38m (£30m). That is a huge increase, but just a fraction of their $180m value only 13 months ago, because since its creation a decade ago this week, the digital currency has been at the centre of one of the biggest economic bubbles in history.Bitcoin has had a wild ride since its birth on 3 January 2009. Created as a digital currency to sidestep the traditional finance industry using encrypted code, it took until May 2010 for the first reported purchase using bitcoin to take place: those two large Papa John’s pizzas worth $30 for 10,000 bitcoins. Continue reading...

Huge cache of documents published daily in December but came to light only on ThursdaySensitive data belonging to hundreds of German politicians, celebrities and public figures has been published online via a Twitter account in what is thought to be one of the largest leaks in the country’s history.The huge cache of documents includes personal phone numbers and addresses, internal party documents, credit card details and private chats. Continue reading...

If you frequently fly drones professionally or as a hobby, we’d like to hear your experiences and any concerns about the technology

Almost two decades after the millennium bug failed to bite, Jordan Erica Webber looks at the potential consequences for big tech of the end of another era: Emperor Akihito’s reign in Japan

Firms with exposure to China hit over fears the Silicon Valley giant’s slowdown could spread

Higher price tags, competition, cultural differences and saturation in the west have led to longer replacement cyclesApple’s cut in its sales forecast was blamed almost entirely on the economic slowdown in China, but the real picture is probably far more complex, with high prices, cultural differences, fierce competition and consumers keeping their phones for longer all causing problems.Its chief executive, Tim Cook, said falling sales of iPhone, iPads and computers were primarily due to the “magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in greater China”. Continue reading...

As firm’s stock falls over sales warnings, it has competition in bid to be the best smartphone

Paul lives in a signal black spot where his wife’s smartphone still works. Is there a way to find if phone has good reception?I have a Moto 3 smartphone and my wife has a similar earlier model. We are right on the edge of reception from EE. I can just get a very weak signal if I attach my phone to a selfie stick and lean out of a window, or walk up the bank behind the house. This is not ideal.Away from home, sometimes my wife’s phone can get a strong signal whereas mine can’t get a signal at all. This made me wonder if there was a measurement to assess how good a mobile phone is at receiving signals in areas of poor reception before you buy it … and if there is an easy way for an ordinary punter to understand it. PaulPhone manufacturers and others can and do test their phones, usually for certification purposes. The performance test results you want, if you can get them, are the Total Isotropic Sensitivity (TIS) value for reception and the Total Radiated Power (TRP) for transmission. Continue reading...

Tim Cook cites unforeseen magnitude of economic slowdown in China in a letter to shareholders explaining the changeApple cut its sales forecasts for its key end of year period on Wednesday, citing the unforeseen “magnitude” of the economic slowdown in China.Related: US markets start 2019 with a whimper as Trump blames 'glitch' for 2018 losses Continue reading...

Civil engineer who oversaw the completion of the Sydney Opera House and went on to become chair of Ove Arup in LondonNo roof is more dramatic – or symbolic of a country, as well as a major city – than that of the Sydney Opera House in Australia. Yet it nearly did not happen and it is thanks to Jack Zunz, who has died aged 94, that it did.The young Danish architect Jørn Utzon had won a competition in 1957 with a scheme resembling a Mayan temple topped by petal-like shell roofs, which could be enjoyed from any angle, since the opera house’s exposed promontory site has no back and is overlooked from the Sydney harbour bridge and the Rocks. He desperately needed an engineer to realise such a unique vision. Continue reading...

Buzz Lightyear joins Kingdom Hearts, Harry Potter looks for the Pokémon Go effect, it’s party time down on the farm, and an avenging hero returns from the mists of Dreamcast time(PlayStation 4, Xbox One) Disney and Pixar icons meet Japanese video-game heroes in this long-awaited role-player. Featuring worlds themed around Toy Story, Monsters Inc and Big Hero 6, among much else, this huge crossover adventure will hold some appeal for anyone who’s ever loved a Disney movie, which is surely just about everyone. Forgive the hopelessly convoluted plot and just enjoy fighting dark creatures with Donald Duck and Jack Sparrow.

Workers announced launch of union push in response to working conditions as company says it does not recognize allegationsAs Amazon’s workforce has more than doubled over the past three years, workers at Amazon fulfillment center warehouses in the United States have started organizing and pushing toward forming a union to fight back against the company’s treatment of its workers. Continue reading...

The CEO sets himself a personal challenge every new year. But after a bruising 12 months, what should he do next?When Mark Zuckerberg began his annual “personal challenges” in 2009, he set the bar pretty low: he dressed like an adult every day for a year. Subsequent challenges were squarely in the realm of achievable New Year’s resolutions, from reading a book every two weeks and running a mile a day to starting to learn Mandarin and sending thank you notes.But as Zuckerberg has transitioned his public image from the kid cosplaying as a business executive to the no-longer-quite-a-kid cosplaying as a statesman, his personal challenges have become something of a bellwether for how he is thinking about Facebook’s future. In 2016, when it seemed that Facebook’s challenges were still largely technological, he set out to build his own smart home system. In 2017, when political polarization was still being chalked up to filter bubbles, he embarked on a road trip around the US. And in 2018, when fake news and foreign interference were dominating headlines, he promised to buckle down and “focus on fixing” all of the various “issues” that had left the one-time prodigy looking more and more like a pariah. Continue reading...

The luxurious 4x4 from Bentley is one of the fastest, most powerful, most luxurious SUVs ever made – but it may leave some of your passengers feeling a little queasyBentley Bentayga

Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal and New York Times among titles affected by virus that hit shared systemsA cyber-attack has caused printing and delivery disruptions to major US newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun.The attack on Saturday appeared to originate outside the United States, the Los Angeles Times reported. It led to distribution delays in the Saturday edition of the Times, the Tribune, the Sun and other newspapers that share a production platform in Los Angeles. Continue reading...

Cyber firm was able to post tweets on celebrities’ accounts without entering passwordsLouis Theroux and Eamonn Holmes are among celebrities whose Twitter accounts were compromised after a security company was able to post tweets on their behalf without entering a password.The documentary maker and the news anchor were two of the individuals targeted by Mike Godfrey, who runs the British cybersecurity business Insinia. Continue reading...

Wearable machines are gaining approval from medical insurers and state health providersCompanies that make exoskeleton suits are hoping the devices might soon become as commonly provided as wheelchairs.Private medical insurers and at least three state health providers have agreed to cover the cost of the cyborg-type wearables for people unable to walk. Continue reading...

Personal details leaked through malware-infected computer, says South KoreaThe personal information of nearly 1,000 North Koreans who defected to South Korea has been leaked after unknown hackers gained access to a resettlement agency’s database, the South Korean unification ministry has said.The ministry said it discovered last week the names, birth dates and addresses of 997 defectors had been stolen through a computer infected with malicious software at an agency called the Hana centre, in the southern city of Gumi. Continue reading...

After the notch, phone makers are turning to hole-punch selfie cams and bigger screensFrom the launch of 5G to phones with large folding screens, more cameras and fingerprint scanners under the screens, 2019 looks set to transform the smartphone in more ways than one.2018 produced phones with notches hiding selfie cameras and sensors in the top of the screen. While not quite the innovation most were likely seeking, notches allowed manufacturers to remove everything from the front that wasn’t screen. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber and the Guardian’s UK tech editor explore the biggest stories of 2018 and consider what 2019 may have in storeThis year has been an interesting one. Tech CEOs were brought in front of Congress; GDPR came into effect in June and our inboxes were never the same; Cambridge Analytica was accused of harvesting personal data without permission and using it to influence voting in the US election; Julian Assange is still in the Ecuadorian embassy, so no real change there, but he is apparently in hot water for not looking after his cat properly.The past 12 months have also been filled with tech highs and lows, so it is fitting that we end the year by reminiscing, laughing and perhaps trying not to cry over some of the biggest stories that we have seen in 2018. Continue reading...

Picture-sharing platform retracts horizontal-scrolling feature within an hour of ‘mistaken’ rollout to users

Lawyers say Musk’s comments about man who helped rescue Thai team were free speech protected by the first amendmentElon Musk has asked a US judge to dismiss a lawsuit by a British diver who helped rescue a boys soccer team trapped in a Thailand cave and said Musk defamed him by calling him a paedophile and child rapist.Related: Elon Musk apologises for calling Thai cave rescuer a 'pedo' Continue reading...

Our 20 favourite pieces of the yearMillions are robbed of the power of speech by illness, injury or lifelong conditions. Can the creation of bespoke digital voices transform their ability to communicate? Continue reading...

Number of users plugging in products using virtual assistant causes outage in EuropeThousands of people plugging in new smart speakers on Christmas Day were greeted by a less than smart response after Amazon’s voice-controlled virtual assistant Alexa crashed.Servers controlling the digital butler were overloaded with questions and requests, prompting Alexa to tell some users: “Sorry, I’m having trouble understanding you right now.” Continue reading...

Exclusive: Emails show how tech firm has tried to gain influence and potentially shape lucrative government contractsA top Amazon executive privately advised the Trump administration on the launch of a new internet portal that is expected to generate billions of dollars for the technology company and give it a dominant role in how the US government buys everything from paper clips to office chairs.Related: Alexa's advice to 'kill your foster parents' fuels concern over Amazon Echo Continue reading...

Police issue warning after crews hampered while battling blaze on Bruny IslandDrone operators are being warned about rules for flying after a drone forced the grounding of firefighting aircraft battling a blaze on Tasmania’s Bruny Island.Tasmania police said the aircraft had to be grounded because firefighting efforts at Conleys Point, south Bruny, were being hampered by a drone flown in the area, putting community safety at risk. Continue reading...

Libel lawyer says Paul Gait and Elaine Kirk could win £75,000 from newspapers who identified themThe couple arrested and released without charge in relation to the Gatwick drone incident could win at least £75,000 from the newspapers who identified them, according to a leading libel lawyer.Mark Stephens, head of media law at Howard Kennedy, said they had a strong legal case if they wished to pursue legal action. “Absent of a compelling reason and the police saying you can, you may no longer identify people who have been arrested. Continue reading...

In the first half of 2018 Australian authorities made 2,375 requests, more than China, Singapore or the UKApple received 2,357 “device requests” from the Australian government and law enforcement in the first half of 2018, the third-highest rate of requests in the world.The tech company published its twice-yearly transparency report on Friday, which reveals how many times governments asked Apple for data and information about iPhone, iPads, computers and Apple accounts. Continue reading...