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Netherlands expelled four GRU officers after alleged attacks on OPCW and UK Foreign Office

Iain has an unusably slow desktop. Will a £300 upgrade revive it, or should he put the money towards a new machine?I have a Dell an all-in-one desktop PC from 2012. It has become painfully slow. It takes so long to boot up and run Google Chrome, Microsoft Office and Apple iTunes that it’s almost useless. (It also does photo and video storage, accounts and school work.)A local computer business will upgrade the hard drive to an SSD, and clone it so I don’t have to reinstall everything, for about £300. According to them, this should give it an extra year or two of life. I like the style of this machine, and discarding it would be a waste if it still worked fine. However, the poor performance is critical and I am worried the hard drive will die and I’ll lose everything.Your worry filled me with dread. Hard drives are increasingly likely to fail after five years of use. Every PC should be backed up, and you should have multiple copies of irreplaceable data. If you don’t, please buy a USB external hard drive as soon as possible and back up both your PC and your data – photos, music, documents, accounts etc. Continue reading...

The iPhone XS hasn’t broken mould like the iPhone X, and it has weaker battery life, but its camera, design and performance are class-leadingThe iPhone XS isn’t the only all-screen iPhone on the block this year, but with its balance of large screen and small body, is it still the iPhone to buy?To say that the iPhone XS looks exactly the same as the iPhone X is somewhat of an understatement. Apart from a pair of new antenna lines and asymmetric holes in the bottom, the phone is an identical metal and glass sandwich. Unless you buy the new gold colour. Continue reading...

Scott Morrison claims Russian intelligence agency GRU behind cyber-attack during 2016 presidential campaignAustralia’s government believes Russian military officials hacked and leaked the emails of senior US Democrats during the 2016 presidential election campaign, before the documents were published online.It claims the Russian operatives were members of the GRU, a Russian military intelligence agency, and the hack was not their only attack. Continue reading...

Foreign Office increases pressure on Russia after Skripal poisoningThe British government has directly accused Russian military intelligence of being behind a spate of “reckless and indiscriminate cyber-attacks” carried out on the orders of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, including the hacking in 2016 of the US Democratic National Committee headquarters.The claim is a precursor to the announcement of further UK intelligence revelations of Russian state involvement in the poisoning in Salisbury of Sergei Skripal, the Russian double agent. Continue reading...

Facebook slips in top 10 but US tech firms dominate Interbrand’s ranking againApple, Google and Amazon are the top three most valuable brands in the world, according to an annual report that underlines the dominance of the US tech companies.Interbrand, which assigns a dollar value to each brand based on factors such as financial performance and brand strength, ranked Apple first in 2018 with a brand value of $214bn. In August, Apple became the first public company with a trillion dollar valuation. Continue reading...

Online retailer hit headlines for pay award but GMB accuses it of ‘stealth tax’ on workersAmazon has been criticised for slashing benefits for UK warehouse workers, offsetting at least half of a big pay rise announced this week.The removal of employee share and incentive schemes could cost thousands of workers £1,500 in a single year, according to the GMB union, which accused the online retailer of imposing “a stealth tax on its own wage increase”. Continue reading...

Xbox One, PC; Playground Games/Microsoft

Latest Microsoft update comes with new emoji, smart keyboards, cloud-powered clipboards and faster, more considerate updatesThe next version of Windows 10 has arrived and is ready to download as a free update complete with a load of new emoji, better links to your phone and a smarter SwiftKey-powered keyboard. Continue reading...

Company also launches Surface Studio 2 PC, with all machines coming with improved processors and new colour optionsMicrosoft has launched new, faster versions of its popular Surface Pro, Surface Laptop and large Surface Studio PCs.The new models, announced in New York on Tuesday, continue Microsoft’s premium PC line, introducing Intel’s latest 8th-generation Core i5 and i7 processors to match competitors such as Apple’s MacBook Pros, Huawei’s MateBook X Pro and Dell’s XPS 13. Continue reading...

Giant’s minimum wage rise is down to a looming labour shortage and more stick from politicians, from Trump and Sanders to CorbynAmazon is a trillion-dollar company run by the world’s richest man. It has come from nowhere to be an online behemoth in less than one-quarter of a century. Yet even the biggest company, this behemoth of behemoths, is vulnerable to concerted political pressure and has to live with the basic laws of demand and supply.That, put simply, is the explanation for Amazon’s announcement of seriously big increases in minimum wages for its workers in the US and Britain. On the other side of the Atlantic, no worker will be earning less than $15 (£11.50) an hour – double the federal minimum. Here, the minimum has been raised by 28% for workers in London and 18% for those in the rest of the UK. Continue reading...

Unusual alliance calls on government to ‘slow down’ and listen to ‘legitimate concerns’Tech heavyweights Google and Facebook have joined civil and digital rights groups in an unusual alliance aimed at defeating Australia’s planned encryption laws.The Alliance for a Safe and Secure Internet brings together the disparate groups in a plea for the government to “slow down” and listen to “legitimate concerns” about its encryption bill. Continue reading...

The breach affecting 50m accounts took advantage of ‘tokens’, a system used by third-party platforms such as SpotifyRemember the Facebook hack last week that compromised at least 50m accounts? It’s worse than you think.Last Friday, the social media company revealed a vulnerability that allowed attackers to steal automated log-in credentials (or “tokens”). Continue reading...

Company says it has ‘listened to its critics’ as it increases US rate to $15 and UK to £9.50Amazon has raised its minimum wage for British and American workers, in a major milestone for campaigners pushing for pay increases to tackle rising levels of poverty and inequality.The company, which has become almost a byword for low-paid and low-quality work in recent years, said it would increase its US minimum wage to $15 (£11.57) an hour for more than 350,000 workers. In the UK 40,000 permanent and temporary staff will get an increase to £10.50 an hour in London and £9.50 across the rest of the country. Continue reading...

Site brought down for second time in 24 hours, with first attack traced to DoncasterThe UK Black History Month website has been brought down by hackers for a second time in 24 hours in what its editors believe to be a case of “cyber-racism”.The website, which includes resources for schools and details of forthcoming events, first fell prey to a cyber-attack at 8.45am on Monday. Its IT team worked through the night and the site came back online on Tuesday morning, but was attacked again. It was again restored on Tuesday afternoon, but the website’s editors warned that further attacks were possible. Continue reading...

Refreshed 8in tablet is hard to beat on price, comes with improved Alexa and new Show Mode excelsAmazon’s latest budget media tablet sticks with the winning formula that made its predecessor so good, but is it still the one to buy in 2018?The 2018 HD 8 is the third iteration of Amazon’s 8in tablet since it was first launched in 2016 to use the same design. It looks, feels and operates exactly the same as the 2017 version, but now with an improved camera and the latest software. Continue reading...

Heating controller cheaper than previous model and consumers will not require a boiler engineer to install itGoogle’s latest smart-home product is a cheaper smart thermostat that anyone can install themselves without the need for a boiler engineer.The new £199 Nest Thermostat E is a two-part system consisting of a battery-powered heating controller called the Heat Link E, which replaces an existing wired thermostat or heating controller, and a smart thermostat that can be placed somewhere else in your home. Continue reading...

Vinod Khosla bought $32.5m property south of San Francisco and cut off public access to popular surf spotBeach lovers were celebrating on Monday after the US supreme court declined to hear a case brought by the billionaire Vinod Khosla that threatened the public’s right to access beaches across California.Related: 'Privatizing the coast': are wealthy Californians seizing public beaches? Continue reading...

Apple users report some new models not charging if cable is inserted while device asleepOwners of Apple’s new flagship iPhone models are reporting that some devices have problems with the way they can be charged.The complaint, known as “chargegate” on social media, is that some new models do not start charging automatically when a lightning cable is plugged in if the screen is turned off. Continue reading...

From dystopian games to organised campaigns, the industry’s stance on the EU is clear. But is it too little too late?Brexit and Wetherspoons, Brexit and fashion, Brexit and bananas … It seems as if so much of our everyday lives will be affected by Brexit – and if you play video games, you can certainly expect changes. The British video games industry adds £5bn to the economy and employs more than 12,000 people, 35% of whom are EU citizens.While the industry has been campaigning for a Brexit least likely to wreck the status quo, some indie developers have responded with pro-remain games. Tim Constant’s Not Tonight offers a peek into a dystopian Britain obsessed with migration status: European citizens are segregated if they wish to continue living in the UK and constantly subject to document checks. The claustrophobic, pixelated setting suggests that post-Brexit Britain would succumb to paranoia. Continue reading...

In internet showdown justice department lawsuit is designed to quash a California law that restores protectionsThe US justice department has sued the state of California, just hours after the state’s governor, Jerry Brown, signed legislation to restore internet protections known as net neutrality.The justice department said it would take California to court on grounds that the federal government has the exclusive power to regulate net neutrality. Continue reading...

Anti-monopoly law has not kept abreast of social networks, leaving Facebook free to suck up any rivalsIs Mark Zuckerberg too powerful? The Facebook founder and chief executive is known to be a fan of the Roman emperor Augustus, though his modern-day empire stretches far further, and encompasses many more people: only China remains unconquered among his 2.2 billion supplicants.And like an emperor, Zuckerberg can ignore bad news. There was plenty last week. On Tuesday the Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger left Facebook amid suggestions that they were increasingly unhappy with Zuckerberg’s favouring Facebook over Instagram. Continue reading...

Technological advances and surgical developments are offering new hope to those with reduced or no mobilityThis week, two paraplegic patients were able to take steps again after researchers implanted an electrical device in their lower backs. Teams from the University of Louisville and the Minnesota Mayo Clinic used electrical stimulation to excite the spinal cord, helping signals from the brain reach the affected muscles. Continue reading...

You don’t see ‘No blacks, no Irish’ signs in real life any more, yet many are fed up with the racism they face on dating appsSinakhone Keodara reached his breaking point last July. Loading up Grindr, the gay dating app that presents users with potential mates in close geographical proximity to them, the founder of a Los Angeles-based Asian television streaming service came across the profile of an elderly white man. He struck up a conversation, and received a three-word response: “Asian, ew gross.”He is now considering suing Grindr for racial discrimination. For black and ethnic minority singletons, dipping a toe into the water of dating apps can involve subjecting yourself to racist abuse and crass intolerance. Continue reading...

A local election candidate in Belgium has been forced to change his name by the social network on the grounds that it is ‘offensive and inappropriate’. The cheek of it!Name: Luc Anus.Age: 26. Continue reading...

Share prices fell nearly 14% on Friday following a SEC suit accusing Musk of fraud and seeking to ban him from running a companyWhat is Tesla without Elon Musk? That was the question Wall Street was asking on Friday as the electric car company’s share price plummeted following news that the US’s top financial regulator was suing Musk for fraud and seeking to ban him from running a public company.For the billionaire entrepreneur, it was the latest self-inflicted wound from a series of car crashes that have battered Tesla’s share price and Musk’s reputation. On Friday, Tesla’s share price was down close to 14% as investors worried the car company’s leading light was finally out. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber looks at how the rise of the internet has put a strain on democracyIn March 1989, the British computer scientist, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, laid out a set of plans that would soon be known as the world wide web. It’s fair to say, the world was forever changed.An awful lot of good has come from the invention of the world wide web. The dissemination of information, in particular, has become incredibly easy. People living on opposite sides of the world can connect through email or on social-media platforms. We can apply for jobs or look for new places to live, or research for a homework project without having to find and trawl through books. Continue reading...

Musk suggested in August that he was preparing to take Tesla private and claimed he had ‘funding secured’Elon Musk and Tesla have been sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for fraud over the company’s aborted plans to take the electric car company private.The move could potentially lead to Musk being banned from leading a public company, or fines for him and the company. Shares of the automaker fell more than 4% in after hours trading Thursday once the news had broken. Continue reading...

Ruth wants to replace her old desktop PC and is trying to decide between one with an SSD and one with an Optane accelerator

The forthcoming PlayStation Classic has drummed up nostalgia for the olden days of 3D games, but most of them are unplayable now. Here are the 90s games you could still enjoyNostalgia can be a terrible thing. The stuff you loved when you were young doesn’t always hold up to modern scrutiny, as you will know if you have ever tried rewatching Knight Rider.Last week, Sony announced the PlayStation Classic, a mini version of the original PlayStation from 1994, complete with 20 built-in games. The full list has yet to be announced, but the five confirmed games are Final Fantasy VII, Tekken 3, Jumping Flash, Ridge Racer Type 4 and Wild Arms. And though we are all thinking, “Ah yes, I loved Ridge Racer; Final Fantasy was legendary”, the reality of early 3D visuals is gruesome and the absence of analogue controllers will seem like a cruel joke to our soft 21st-century hands. Continue reading...

Liam Williams’s well-observed mockumentary digs into the real-life furores surrounding vloggers like PewDiePie and Logan Paul in its daring second seriesSat somewhere between People Just Do Nothing and Nathan Barley, BBC Three’s Pls Like was one of the sharpest, strangest comedies of 2017. Helmed by its creator, deadpan comic Liam Williams, each of its six 15-minute episodes followed his fictive quest to become a YouTube celebrity, on the way encountering a stable of self-absorbed content-makers presided over by talent manager James Wirm (played to full, sleazy potential by Tim Key). At its centre is Zoella-like video-maker, Millipede, who, as Liam informed us at the outset, has “over 10 million subscribers, which to give you a sense of scale, is roughly the same number of military deaths in the first world war”. Over the series, Liam’s view on the “self-manipulating content puppets” improves, leading him to blackmail Wirm with a Fake Sheikh-style video and setting the vloggers free. Bizarre, empathetic and on-the-nose, the show earned a Bafta nomination in the short form category. Continue reading...

World’s largest lithium battery cost $90.6m but revenue is healthy, according to documents filed by French renewable company NeoenThe Tesla lithium-ion battery in South Australia is on track to make back a third of its construction costs in its first year of operation, new financial documents show.The 100MW/129MWh battery was switched on in November and is paired with the Hornsdale windfarm, about 230km north of Adelaide. Continue reading...

Its massive screen is beautiful, but has it lost some of the charm that made the iPhone X so good?Apple’s top of the line smartphone has been supersized in both screen size and price, but is the iPhone XS Max really worth the eye-watering £1,099-plus asking price?Last year’s iPhone X was a massive leap forward in design for Apple after years of resting on its laurels. This year the iPhone XS Max is essentially that winning design stuck in a photocopier on 112%, which doesn’t sound a lot but makes quite a difference. Continue reading...

Amazon, Apple, Google, and others endorsed federal data privacy laws Wednesday, but experts argue consumer voices were lackingIt seems Silicon Valley and Congress can finally agree on something after all – the need for data privacy regulation.On Wednesday, representatives from Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Charter, Google and Twitter appeared before the Senate commerce committee to endorse the notion of new federal data protection laws. Continue reading...

Failure to report 2016 data breach ‘one of the most egregious cases we’ve ever seen’, says Illinois attorney generalUber will pay $148m and tighten data security after the ride-hailing company failed for a year to notify drivers that hackers had stolen their personal information, according to a settlement announced on Wednesday.The company reached the agreement with all 50 states and the District of Columbia after a vast data breach in 2016. Instead of reporting it, Uber hid evidence of the theft and paid ransom to ensure the data wouldn’t be misused. Continue reading...

Sony finally ditches policy that prevented gamers on different devices from playing togetherSony has announced that it will be opening up cross-platform play on its PlayStation 4 console, beginning with Fortnite today.Until now, players on a PlayStation 4 console could only play multiplayer games with other PS4 owners, whereas Xbox One, PC, mobile and Nintendo Switch players were free to intermingle online. This has long been a source of frustration for players with friends or family who play on other consoles, and those who like to play the same game on more than one device. Continue reading...

Weird purple cubes, cowgirls, house parties … what will the next instalment of the blockbusting game bring? Here are the cluesEvery three months, a large number of Fortnite’s 125 million players begin acting like medieval religious fanatics, obsessively searching the game’s island map for esoteric signs and symbols that augur coming cataclysms – or just some nice new buildings. That time is upon us again as the hit Battle Royale game is gearing up for its sixth season, due to start on Thursday afternoon.With each seasonal instalment, Epic Games loves to foreshadow major changes to the island, new skins and fresh play modes through a combination of cryptic tweets and sudden scenic changes to the landscape. In the past, we’ve had cracks in the sky, comets and rocket ship launches, but what do we know about the game’s sixth iteration? Continue reading...

Jack Poulson criticized plans for a censored Chinese search engine in a letter to lawmakers before the Wednesday meetingAfter snubbing a hearing on election security earlier this month, Google will answer questions on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. If one former Google employee gets his way, those questions will tend more toward the company’s plans to launch a censored search engine for China than toward the hearing’s putative topic of consumer data privacy.Jack Poulson, who worked as a senior research scientist for Google until his 31 August resignation over the China project, urged members of the Senate commerce, science and transportation committee to demand answers on the censorship scheme known as Project Dragonfly, in a letter sent to the senators on Monday. Continue reading...

Artist’s stained-glass creation, The Queen’s Window, celebrates Elizabeth II’s reignA vibrantly coloured window designed by David Hockney on his iPad, showing blue skies and a red country path through blossoming Yorkshire Wolds hawthorn, has been unveiled at Westminster Abbey.The stained-glass window was commissioned to celebrate the Queen’s reign and has been installed in the north transept, above the statues of former prime ministers including Peel, Gladstone and Disraeli. Continue reading...

PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch; EA

A crop of dating simulations where the goal is to reach a virtual happily ever after have recently become hits. Are they a substitute for human companionship or a new type of digital intimacy?I recently met a young woman named Wild Rose on an online chat forum. We struck up a conversation and within the first five minutes, Wild Rose – who is married, has a daughter, and lives in Texas with her in-laws – started telling me about her lover, a man called Saeran.Saeran, she told me, is the illegitimate son of a politician who had grown up with an abusive mother. He is handsome, has white blond hair, golden eyes, a large tattoo on his shoulder. Wild Rose said that when she first met him, her “heart literally ached” and her cheeks “flooded with blood”. Continue reading...

Emails obtained by the Guardian raise questions about Marc Benioff’s handling of protests over links to US immigration agency

Tension with Facebook may have prompted Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger to leaveThe co-founders of Instagram have announced their resignation from the company, amid reports that their departure might be due to an increase in meddling by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the site’s parent company, Facebook.Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger did not say why they were leaving their positions as chief executive officer and chief technical officer, respectively, of the photo-sharing service, just that they were leaving to explore their “curiosity and creativity again”. Continue reading...

The latest title in the acclaimed open-world racing series takes players from Devon to the Scottish Highlands. But how did the developer get the feel of the country right?It’s the little moments that get you. The golden autumn sun glinting from the windows of Cotswold cottages. Sheep running across the road in the Scottish Highlands. Skeletal oak trees lining starkly frozen meadows. It is very strange to play a modern big-budget video game and to be taken back to childhood memories, to places that feel somehow imprinted on the psyche. In this way, Forza Horizon 4, the latest open-world driving sim from Leamington Spa-based developer Playground Games, may be the most emotional racing game I’ve ever played.Since the arrival of the first title in the series six years ago, each Horizon has featured a densely detailed, near photo-realistic reproduction of real-world geography. The first was in Colorado, the second was southern France and northern Italy, the third, Australia. The setup is always the same: players take part in a festival where they drive dozens of beautiful cars through a vast backdrop, getting involved in a range of races and challenges, but mostly just drinking in the exotic locales. This time, however, the team brought the game home. Forza Horizon 4 is set in an idealised Britain that, while not precisely based on real places (apart from a scaled version of Edinburgh), takes the geography, architecture, flora and fauna of each location and replicates them in gorgeous detail. Continue reading...

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger leave the social media company amid reports of tensions with Facebook founder Mark ZuckerbergInstagram co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, have announced their resignation from the company, which is owned by Facebook Inc, saying that they are leaving to “explore our curiosity and creativity again”.Systrom and Krieger did not say why they were leaving their positions as chief executive officer and chief technical officer, but there were reports that their departure might be due to tensions between the men and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Continue reading...

Contractors ‘irreparably traumatized’ by having to witness child abuse, rape, torture, suicide and murder, says former employeeA former Facebook contract employee has lodged a suit against the company, alleging that content moderators who face mental trauma after reviewing distressing images on the platform are not being properly protected by the social networking giant.Facebook moderators under contract are “bombarded” with “thousands of videos, images and livestreamed broadcasts of child sexual abuse, rape, torture, bestiality, beheadings, suicide and murder”, the lawsuit said. Continue reading...

It is two decades since Larry Page and Sergey Brin moved their fledgling startup out of their dorms. With threats to its power growing, how long can the company dominate?In the summer of 1995, a second-year grad student called Sergey Brin was giving a tour of Stanford University to prospective students. Larry Page, an engineering graduate from the University of Michigan, was one of those being shown around the Palo Alto, California campus.“I thought he was pretty obnoxious,” Larry Page said of the encounter. “He had really strong opinions about things, and I guess I did, too.” Continue reading...

The narrative designers behind Witcher 3, Alien Isolation and Destiny chat about bodies, comics and the future of video game story-tellingTen years ago, there was a revolution in the way video games told stories. Games such as Grand Theft Auto, Assassin’s Creed and Yakuza began to combine freely explorable open-world environments with story missions and side quests, allowing players to drop in and out of the main plotlines as they wished – or abandon them altogether. The experience of playing narrative video games changed forever.So where can we expect narrative games to go next? At the Celsius 232 festival, we sat down with five experienced narrative designers: Witcher 3 writer Jakub Szamałek, comic book and games writers Dan and Nik Abnett, Bungie narrative designer Margaret Stohl and Tom Jubert, writer of Faster Than Light and The Talos Principle. Continue reading...

Company says spoken word already essential in developing countries with low literacy ratesAI robots and self-driving cars might steal the headlines, but the next big leap in technology will be advances in voice services, according to Google’s head of search, Ben Gomes, who says that a better understanding of common language is crucial to the future of the internet.“Speech recognition and the understanding of language is core to the future of search and information,” said Gomes . “But there are lots of hard problems such as understanding how a reference works, understanding what ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘it’ refers to in a sentence. It’s not at all a trivial problem to solve in language and that’s just one of the millions of problems to solve in language.” Continue reading...