Technology | The Guardian

Far-right activist wanted funds for comeback, saying: ‘I’ve had a miserable year or two’The far-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos has suffered a setback in his attempts to relaunch his career after being banned by the crowdfunding site Patreon.Yiannopoulos, recently revealed to be more than A$2m (£1.1m) in debt, according to Australian court documents, had been hoping to recruit people to regularly contribute funds to a planned comeback. Continue reading...

Quirky and egalitarian, Toca Boca’s games are a world away from the usual half-hearted or exploitative kids’ apps. We meet the Scandinavian company taking child’s play seriously

Meng Wanzhou, who faces extradition to US, said to have been investigated over alleged sanctions breaches

Refined design, water resistance and good screen makes latest e-reader about as good as a single-use device getsThe new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is thinner, lighter and now water resistant, setting a new standard for what an e-reader should be.There’s only so far you can push a single-use device. Technically the Kindle Paperwhite is more than just an e-reader, as it now has Bluetooth for playing back audiobooks too. But it’s still a book reader, plain and simple. Continue reading...

World’s largest telecommunications equipment firm has been blacklisted by several countries and its CFO arrestedHuawei (pronounced “Wah-Way”) is a telecommunications and electronics company based in Shenzhen in the south of China. Continue reading...

Emails show Zuckerberg targeted Twitter’s Vine and gave some companies special data access, among other revelationsThe UK parliament has published a cache of confidential Facebook documents it obtained from a plaintiff in a California lawsuit. The records, which have been under seal in US courts, provided a rare window into internal discussions at the social network about privacy, user data, the company’s handling of competitors and more.Facebook’s director of developer platforms and programs, Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, told the Guardian in an earlier statement that the documents from the lawsuit “are only part of the story and are presented in a way that is very misleading without additional context”. Continue reading...

Social network staff apparently conversed about removing data restrictions for big ad spendersFacebook staff in 2012 discussed selling access to user data to major advertisers, before ultimately deciding to restrict such access two years later, according to a tranche of internal emails released by the UK parliament.The internal emails were obtained by the House of Commons digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) committee last month after they had been disclosed, under seal, by Facebook as part of a lawsuit against it by the American software developer, Six4Three. Continue reading...

A Norfolk church is soliciting feedback on its choice of songs via a smartphone app. But, even with songs of praise, there’s no accounting for tasteWelcome to Ecclesiastical Factor, in which churchgoers in Aylsham, Norfolk, have been asked to use an app to give real-time feedback on their Sunday hymns. Rev Canon Andrew Beane hopes it will make services more interactive, but perhaps he hasn’t considered the potential for democracy to go wrong (hello, Brexit, Matt Terry*, Boaty McBoatface). Also, most hymns are not bangers. All it will take is for one voice to rise up against Morning Has Broken and he could have a revolt on his hands. Our music critic’s entirely subjective ranking of the UK’s Top 5 hymns (as determined by a 2013 BBC poll), gives a taste of what Rev Beane can expect.*The 2016 X Factor winner Continue reading...

Creative mode, to launch on 6 December, will let gamers construct and play in their own environments without fear of attack

A boy who reviews toys with his mum and dad has somehow become the world’s highest-earning YouTube star. What’s his secret?

Girls’ participation in esports outpacing that of boys, study of 5,000 children findsVideo games are increasingly popular with teenage girls, research shows, ranking in their top 10 hobbies just behind drawing and singing.Competitive gaming – esports – is also gaining ground among girls, with growth in participation outpacing that of boys in the 13-15 age group. Continue reading...

Ballet dancers also flagged up as explicit content under blogging website’s new rulesBallet dancers, superheroes and a picture of Christ have all fallen foul of Tumblr’s new pornography ban, after the images were flagged up as explicit content by the blogging site’s artificial intelligence (AI) tools.The company, which is owned by the US media conglomerate Verizon, said on Monday it would ban pornography from its site – and defined the term as covering any depiction of “real-life human genitals”, or “female-presenting nipples”. Continue reading...

Understanding voice personas: what their objectives are and how do they help to shape the experience?

Accusations of encoded anti-conservative prejudice are gaining traction, but experts say the claims are just a red herringIn August, Paula Bolyard, a supervising editor at the conservative news outlet PJ Media, published a story reporting that 96% of Google search results for Donald Trump prioritized “left-leaning and anti-Trump media outlets”.Bolyard’s results were generated according to her own admittedly unscientific methodology. She searched for “Trump” in Google’s News tab, and then used a highly questionable media chart that separated outlets into “left” and “right” to tabulate the results. She reported that 96 of 100 results returned were from so-called “left-leaning” news outlets, with 21 of those from CNN alone. Despite this dubious methodology, Bolyard’s statistic spread, and her story was picked up by a Fox Business Network show. Continue reading...

Those ‘geniuses’ in the bright, sleek Apple store are underpaid, overhyped and characters in a well-managed fiction storySteve Jobs wanted customers to understand the Apple store “with one sweep of the eye,” as if gods standing on Mount Olympus. Indeed, the outlets seem to speak for themselves. Bright, uncluttered, and clad in glass, they couldn’t contrast more sharply with the big-box labyrinths they were designed to replace.Neither could their profit margins. Since launching in 2001, the instantly recognizable stores have raked in more money – in total and per square foot – than any other retailer on the planet, transforming Apple into the world’s richest company in the process. Yet the very transparency of the Apple store conceals how those profits are made. Continue reading...

Site was platform for some in LGBT community to share their struggles and triumphsNyx Serafino says she spent most of her life feeling like she was society’s “dirty secret”. A gender-fluid sex worker struggling with her identity and childhood abuse, she said: “There is absolutely nothing about me that fits in a box.”When Serafino, 28, of Las Vegas, discovered Tumblr in 2010, it wasn’t the cure-all she sought. Continue reading...

A beautiful, crisp display, good performance and modern ports rejuvenate a classicApple has finally given the MacBook Air the update fans have been craving for the last three years: new processors and a vastly improved Retina display. But is this the new Mac laptop for most people or has it lost some of the desirability and shine while stagnating since 2015?When closed, the new MacBook Air looks pretty much the same as the old one. The aluminium frame is still wedge-shaped. It still has the cut-out in the deck to lift the screen and still has the Apple logo emblazoned on the lid, even if it is now metallic and shiny rather than being light-up opaque plastic. Continue reading...

Microblogging site says move reflects responsibilities to different age groupsTumblr will ban all pornography from its service this month, in a move that will alter how the social network is used and shows an increased desire by major media companies to restrict which content appears on their websites.Unlike most major websites, the microblogging outlet has always had a tolerant attitude to legal adult material since it was founded in 2007, gaining a reputation as a safe haven for adult-themed artists, sex workers and pornographers. As a result adult material has flooded the service, where it sits alongside other fandoms for everything from Harry Potter to anime. Continue reading...

New research suggests we’re getting increasingly annoyed with people taking photos and filming at gigs, but removing these rights would be utterly draconianIt reads like a particularly clumsy Black Mirror episode: a crowd at a gig all glued to the action on their phone screens rather than looking at the stage. But this is a common sight at live music events today, and one that the British public is getting more irritated by.New research by the ticketing website Eventbrite polled more than 1,000 UK gig-goers for their opinions on using mobile phones during concerts. Of respondents, 70% said they were annoyed by people constantly taking video or photos of the show, and 69% said they would support “more than minimal action to minimise the disruption”. Eventbrite’s suggestions varied in popularity: “no-phone zones” and audience spot checks received less than 20% support each, but the idea of “gentle nudges to make phones more discreet” received 41% support. Continue reading...

It’s just you and an awful lot of paperwork in Lucas Pope’s exquisitely realised seafaring mysteryWhen the Obra Dinn, a sizable merchant ship believed to be lost at sea, drifts into port one day in 1808, you, as a 19th-century insurance loss adjuster, are dispatched to figure out what happened. On board, you find rag-draped skeletons littered around, snapped rigging, and mysterious gashes in the deck. So begins the arduous but captivating task of reconstructing the ship’s journey, identifying the remains of the 60-odd bodies and, most challenging of all, the precise fate of each man and woman for whom the Obra Dinn offered a final voyage and resting place.As with Papers Please, the game for which designer Lucas Pope is best known – in which you play an eastern European border checkpoint agent deciding who to let into the country and who to turn away – the drama is viewed through an administrative lens. You must parse and document everything, ensuring the correct names are written into the appropriate blanks in the manuscript once you have deduced, for example, the identity of a sailor crushed by falling rigging, or a passenger who succumbed to disease. But unlike Papers Please, this grand puzzle is infused with a hint of the supernatural. Among the ship’s artefacts, which include a manifest, a crew list and a couple of hand-drawn sketches (all essential clues in your detective work), you also find a magical pocket watch inside a casket, which can be used to trigger a flashback whenever you encounter a corpse. Continue reading...

Space agencies around the world are set to explore the red planet, while Elon Musk has even grander plansLast week, Nasa successfully landed its InSight probe on Mars, as part of a two-year mission to study the planet’s deep interior. Nasa is also planning a rover mission for 2020, to investigate signs of life and collect data for future expeditions. Continue reading...

The warmth of a call with the ease of a text – or just a time-wasting nuisance? Either way, they are the new chatTrawl through social media or simply have the misfortune to be friends with an early adopter of tech trends and you’ll see that the next big form of communication is upon us. It isn’t a brand new app or some strange semaphore. In some ways, it’s a throwback to the 1980s era of answering machines. “Voice messaging” – sending recorded voice messages to recipients using apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram – is having a moment. Unlike with voicemail, there’s no opportunity for the recipient to pick up and chat, and you can mix voice messages in with regular chat messages. For those who haven’t yet had the pleasure of encountering them, here’s what you need to know. Continue reading...

As fast and powerful as it is beautiful, the new Speedtail from McLaren is all set to reduce grown-ups to tears of wonderMcLaren Speedtail

Instagram’s parent company faces international scrutiny while the photo app retains its charming reputationSix years ago, Facebook made the acquisition of a lifetime. Then it did something brilliant: nothing.Facebook left Instagram alone. The app was growing quickly, becoming more relevant each day, eating into rival Snapchat’s audience and threatening Facebook itself – just a few reasons why the tech giant dished out 10 figures for a company with no revenue. Continue reading...

Parliament seized confidential documents under scrutiny in Six4Three’s lawsuit against social networkA California judge sharply criticized the legal team of the app developer that turned over confidential Facebook documents to the British parliament, accusing the attorneys of behavior that “shocks the conscience” and ordering them to hand over their client’s laptops and other evidence.In a suburban courtroom in Silicon Valley – far from the jurisdiction of Westminster – Judge V Raymond Swope attempted to deal with the legal fallout from an extraordinary maneuver by the UK parliament, which last week seized highly confidential internal Facebook documents from Ted Kramer, founder of Six4Three, a former startup. Continue reading...

Authors claim hard Brexit or no deal threatens videogaming’s status as British success storyA hard or no-deal Brexit threatens to cause serious harm to Britain’s gaming industry, which contributes almost £2bn a year to the economy, a report says.Because the industry works across borders and competes for highly skilled international talent with other high-growth areas such as AI research, it stands to suffer in the event of a harsh Brexit that leaves the nation disconnected from the European economy, the campaign group Games4EU argues. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber dives down to the ocean floor to look at the fibre-optic cables that carry nearly 99% of all transoceanic data trafficIn July 2018, Facebook confirmed reports that it planned to launch an internet satellite called Athena into low-Earth orbit early next year. According to an application filed with the Federal Communications Commission, the goal is “efficiently providing broadband access to unserved and underserved areas throughout the world”.Early in November the FCC approved SpaceX’s request to launch a constellation of 7,518 satellites into orbit. Elon Musk’s private American space technology company now has the permission to launch its full satellite internet constellation, Starlink, which adds up to nearly 12,000 spacecraft. The two firms have ended up in a 21st-century space race, of sorts. Continue reading...

After backlash within gay dating app company, Scott Chen says he ‘supports gay marriage’ and was voicing his personal feelingsThe president of Grindr wrote on Facebook that he believes “marriage is a holy matrimony between a man and a woman”, sparking backlash inside the gay dating app company.Scott Chen, who became the president of Grindr after it was bought by a Chinese gaming corporation, wrote and later deleted a lengthy post on his personal page that criticized Christian groups fighting marriage equality, but also suggested that his personal beliefs clashed with gay marriage. Continue reading...

Democracies | Swallowing objects | Phone monsters | Pollution | Steve BellAung San Suu Kyi’s fall from grace tells us something about ourselves. We fetishise democracy. This is folly. All too often, democracies have resorted to rendition, torture, cyberwarfare, assassination, terrorism and war. We’ve got to start practising what we preach.

Social network to act against ‘dark adverts’ with compulsory disclaimers saying who paidEvery political advert on Facebook will now be required to come from someone who has proved they live in the UK, and carry a disclaimer revealing who paid for it, the site has confirmed.The requirement is the final step of a process started in October to crack down on political “dark adverts” on the social network. Initially, the clampdown was voluntary, with advertisers being offered the option to mark adverts as political. Now, adverts which do not come from registered advertisers will be removed from the site. Continue reading...

Sue knows some Windows keyboard shortcuts but is sure there must be more. Here are the ones I’ve found most usefulCould you provide some information on Windows keyboard shortcuts? I find them so useful, and am sure there are many that I don’t know about. I’m always shocked by the number of people who don’t even seem to know they exist. SueI recommend the use of keyboard shortcuts because they save a lot of time, and sometimes a lot of unsaved work. They are also important to people who cannot use a mouse for physical reasons, which can include repetitive strain injuries (RSI). Thanks to the “sticky keys” feature in Microsoft Windows, Apple’s MacOS and other operating systems, you can use keyboard shortcuts even if you’re typing with, for example, a head-mounted pointing stick. Continue reading...

City leader cites ‘continued scandals’, as others begin to question the reputational cost of taking philanthropic funds from Facebook

Neighborhood advocates argued that the underground project required an environmental review, the Los Angeles Times reportedElon Musk has scrapped his plans to dig through an affluent section of west Los Angeles after his tunneling company reached a settlement in an environmental review lawsuit.The Boring Company “is no longer seeking the development of the Sepulveda test tunnel and instead seeks to construct an operational tunnel at Dodger Stadium”, the firm announced in a statement to NBC News on Tuesday. Continue reading...

As Amazon looks to come to town, labor leaders tore into the company’s record on worker treatment in a new reportAs Amazon looks to come to town, New York labor leaders tore into the company’s record on worker treatment in a new report issued on Wednesday.The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) and city lawmakers said Amazon’s record of grueling conditions for warehouse workers and opposition to union organizing should make the tech giant unwelcome in the city. Continue reading...

In 1998, the Sega Dreamcast changed the whole face of console and games design, but it was haunted by an unbeatable competitorThe Dreamcast looked like nothing else out there. A lighter box than the uniform black or grey, four joypad ports, a bizarre controller with a memory card that had its own screen and worked as a separate miniature games console. The name – a portmanteau of Dream and Broadcast – was strangely ethereal for a games console (Sega had apparently gone through 5,000 possibile monikers to get here). When a prototype was shown to the press in the summer of 1998, there was no Sega logo. This was a new dawn. This was the future.Sega was the perennial underdog in the video game console market. When it launched its first consoles – the SG-1000 and Master System – in the early 1980s, it was dealing with a competitor that ruled 96% of the market via its ubiquitous Nintendo Entertainment System. Back then, people didn’t say they were playing on a console. They said: “I’m playing Nintendo.” The brand was utterly dominant. Continue reading...

Mark S Luckie alleges racism against African American employees and says site is biased against black usersA former Facebook manager has accused the company of “failing” its black employees, saying they face widespread discrimination and exclusion and that the social network is biased against its black users.A letter from Mark S Luckie, who recently stepped down as strategic partner manager for global influencers, provided a detailed account of racism and prejudice at the embattled Silicon Valley corporation, noting that “in some buildings, there are more ‘Black Lives Matter’ posters than there are actual black people”. Continue reading...

Social media firm claims no breach was found after it carried out investigationA Facebook engineer warned the company in 2014 that users apparently based in Russia were scooping vast amounts of data from the site on a daily basis, lawmakers from nine countries have been told, in heated exchanges about whether the social media company poses a threat to democracy.Facebook’s representative, Richard Allan, often looked uncomfortable during hours of questioning by members of the House of Commons, where he once sat as a Liberal Democrat MP, and parliamentarians from eight other countries. An empty seat was left for th e company’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, underlining the committee’s frustration about his refusal to appear. Continue reading...

Rolling updates as representatives from nine parliaments question the social media company, who refused to send CEO Mark Zuckerberg5.46pm GMTThis blog has wrapped up. We’ll have a story on the day’s developments very shortly. Thanks for reading.2.22pm GMTFacebook has said it has already investigated claims of Russian activity discussed during today’s hearing and found there was no concerns.Collins quoted an email seized from software company Six4Three alleging that a Facebook engineer had notified the company in October 2014 that Russian IP addresses were accessing “three billion data points a day” on the network. Continue reading...

Legislators from Argentina to Ireland feel the firm has failed to get a grip on the issue, and they are ready to step inLegislators from around the world have gathered in London for the “international grand committee session on fake news”. Led by the UK’s Damian Collins – as chair of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee – representatives from nine countries are grilling Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice-president of policy solutions, on Tuesday at the House of Commons.Here is why each country has questions for Facebook to answer. Continue reading...

Firm failed to tell 35 million users and 3.7 million drivers their data was hacked in 2016

Influencer Natalie Hintze paired a skateboarding selfie with a video of her falling over. But there’s no such thing as behind the scenes on social mediaInstagram influencers: flawless people doing flawless things in flawless places, right? Well, not anymore – or so they would like you to think. Now there is an increasing trend to offer behind-the-scenes glimpses of their “process”, a sort of social media blooper reel. Skateboarder Natalie Hintze this week coupled a typical selfie – bikini-clad, blond hair flowing behind her as she skates beneath a blue sky – with a video of her falling over (or stacking it, in skating parlance) at the bottom of the hill.There’s nothing wrong with self-deprecation online – it’s even endearing, compared to out-and-out arrogance. But this is the internet: do not think for a buffering second that appearances – ever – do not matter. Would Hintze have posted the video if she had collided with a garbage dumpster and been covered in four-day-old fast food? Probably not, unless she had factored in the down-to-earth points and felt it was truly worth it. Continue reading...

While the unusual technique reportedly employed by the MP Steve Baker does work, there are easier ways to ensure your privacy

Rockstar will invite players into the beta version of its evolving online western game from Tuesday 27 NovemberRed Dead Online, the multiplayer accompaniment to Rockstar Games’ old west masterpiece Red Dead Redemption 2, is set to launch this week. By Friday 30 November, anyone who has bought a copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 will be able to access it. Initially it will be a beta test, and will be developed and expanded gradually over the coming months as players test out the limits of the virtual frontier.Related: Red Dead Redemption 2 review – gripping western is a near miracle Continue reading...

New contract offer withdrawn after ‘Rashid’ complained that undercover project left him vulnerable to profilingGoogle was forced to settle a claim of race discrimination by one of its contractors after he claimed he was repeatedly treated as a terror suspect while working on a covert research project to navigate shopping centres for Google Maps.Ahmed Rashid (not his real name), a UK citizen of Moroccan descent, had an offer of a new contract abruptly withdrawn after he complained to Google about being frequently harassed, racially profiled, and accused of acting like a terrorist while conducting undercover research for Google in retail malls across the UK, he claimed. Continue reading...

All-glass design, face recognition and triple cameras are some of the innovations featured in the latest phones from Apple, Google, Huawei and Samsung£900 Continue reading...

This gleefully gory exploitation film sets out to shock, but smartly dissects our online-obsessed society along the wayBrash, violent and nihilistic, Assassination Nation feels like the product of a one-night stand between Spring Breakers and The Purge. A trigger warning flags up every conceivable hot-button topic – it’s a device that comes straight out of the Gaspar Noé playbook. This is pure genre exploitation – a gleefully gory revenge flick that leaves its small-town streets awash with blood. It may also be one of the smartest, most perceptive commentaries on a contemporary society distorted and magnified by online hysteria that you are likely to wince your way through.A malicious data breach causes a meltdown in the town of Salem, where at least half the residents have found their personal messages and emails hacked and shared. The people look for someone to blame, and virtual vigilantism soon spills out on to the streets; the result is like a Twitter pile-on armed with semi-automatic weapons. Four teenage girls (Odessa Young, Hari Nef, Suki Waterhouse, Abra) become the targets of the community, which masked, armed and pumped up into a frenzy, has collectively decided to mete out some justice. Continue reading...

Perfect for large families or parents of twins and triplets, the Multimac is a unique, sanity-saving, multiple child seat system, which fits into the back of almost any carI sometimes used to imagine parenting was a sort of extreme endurance sport. Throw in a few years of sleep deprivation and simple tasks like ‘feeding the baby’ (a teaspoon of slop inserted into a bobbing head) soon become hellish. Among the hardest challenges you face is ‘getting the baby into the car’. My wife and I used to have a strict ‘who touched the baby last clips her in’ policy. Our problem was self-inflicted. We had three children and a small car. As car seats became safer they became larger, which meant it became harder to get the seats into cars and the kids into seats.Now, 20 years too late for us, but hopefully in time for you, comes the revolutionary Multimac. It’s the world’s only one-piece car seat that now allows you to travel with up to four children (from birth to age 12) in a single row across the rear of almost any car. Unusually the Multimac doesn’t use Isofix points, but has its own super secure straps. You can fit these yourself or pay a Multimac agent, such as Halfords, a £99 one-off fitting fee. The bench is quite heavy so once you’ve installed it you’ll probably leave it where it is, but it can be moved if need be. It’s comfortable and hard-wearing, and anything that makes life easier for a new parent is a blessing… Continue reading...

This winning SUV has a secret... Beneath the bonnet, it’s a little bit FrenchVauxhall Grandland X