Technology | The Guardian

Ours is a desperate hour, we can try to learn to read phones, cynically and powerfullyThe Australian state of Victoria has just banned mobile phones in the classroom. This is a noble intention, but a missed opportunity. Really, they should have smashed the machines, every one.The logic of the state government’s decision is faultless. Mobile phones distract children from classroom learning, and undermine teacher authority. They are poisonous crucibles for bullying, the means of image-based abuse, and a popular media for peer humiliation. Much is being learned about the affect of the palm-held contagion on human cognition – the erasure of skills in basic orientation and location awareness, their addictive appeal to dopamine in the teenage brain, their nasty impact on body confidence and sexual perception. Continue reading...

ACCC report argues for an authority to monitor ads to ensure tech giants do not break anti-competition lawsFacebook and Google are likely to face a strong push for new regulators in Australia to oversee news and advertising on their platforms following the completion of the competition regulator’s inquiry into the tech giants.In December 2017, then-treasurer Scott Morrison directed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to look at the impact that search engines, social media platforms and other online aggregation sites were having on competition in media and advertising. Continue reading...

Ive to remain ‘very involved’ with Apple as he launches new creative companyJony Ive, the chief architect of groundbreaking and distinctive designs from the iMac to the iPhone, announced on Thursday that he is leaving Apple after nearly 30 years.Ive’s departure, which was announced in an exclusive interview with the Financial Times, is sure to set off shock waves in the tech and design worlds, but the 52-year-old Briton will remain involved with Apple. He plans to launch a new creative company called LoveFrom – and said Apple will be his first client. Continue reading...

Move is a shift in efforts to balance its ideological commitment to free expression with rules against harassment and hate speechCall it the Trump rule.Twitter will attach a special label to tweets by major political figures if their content violates the site’s rules but the deleting of them is not in the public interest, the company said on Thursday. Continue reading...

Firm had contested allegations but has reached undisclosed out-of-court settlementsUber has reached out-of-court settlements with two women who alleged they were sexually assaulted by the same driver in what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the UK against the company.The cases were taken by two women who had ordered vehicles using Uber’s app during nights out in Leeds in December 2015, but told police they were sexually assaulted by the driver. They are both five-figure settlements. Continue reading...

Ministers to be put in fictional scenarios after series of hacking incidentsThe EU is to conduct war games to prepare for Russian and Chinese cyber-attacks, in response to a series of incidents that alarmed European governments.Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s foreign minister, said an increase in the prevalence of meddling required a reaction from the 28 member states. During meetings in Helsinki in July and September, EU interior and finance ministers will be asked to manage fictional scenarios. Continue reading...

New functionality automatically deletes history of places users have visitedIt is now slightly easier to opt out of Google’s panopticon, with the introduction of new controls from the search engine to automatically clear your data after a set period of time.By default, Google saves a permanent history of everything a user has searched for, every website they have visited, activity from any other app, site or device that uses Google services, and a record of their physical movements gleaned from using Google Maps or an Android device. Continue reading...

PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC; Codemasters

Thomas needs a device to read A4 PDFs of technical papers that is cheaper than a good laptopI am looking for an e-reader for technical papers. These are usually only available in fixed, non-reflowable, PDF format and sized for printing on A4 paper. They cannot be read on a typical e-reader such as a Kindle because the text is too small. I don’t need the fancy note-taking capabilities of options such as the Remarkable PDF reader. Can you recommend something that doesn’t cost as much as a decent laptop? ThomasThe main attraction of Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) is that people can read the files on almost any kind of device. The corollary is that almost any device will work as a PDF reader, including smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops running almost any operating system. Indeed, so many people need to read PDF files for business and educational research purposes, there are e-readers designed for the task. Continue reading...

Abortion providers in Australia noticed a sharp drop in traffic from Google ads in the last weekGoogle says it has corrected a mistake that blocked ads for abortion providers from appearing in search results in Australia.Abortion clinics in Australia reported a significant drop in traffic in the last week, as first reported by the ABC, with clinics such as the Macquarie Street clinic in Sydney stating their bookings had dropped and the phones had stopped ringing due to their paid ads not appearing in Google search results. Continue reading...

Speaking at Aspen Ideas Festival, Mark Zuckerberg says private companies shouldn’t have ‘final word’ on such decisionsMark Zuckerberg has said Facebook cannot be expected to manage the crisis around election misinformation campaigns on its own.The Facebook CEO, speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Wednesday, said that while the company was focused on questions of election security and interference before the 2020 US presidential election, “those are really hard questions to answer”. Continue reading...

Executive of maker King tells MPs he does not believe there is addiction problemA top executive at the maker of the multibillion dollar Candy Crush Saga game has revealed that more than 9 million players a day spend from between three to six hours or more playing the puzzle game.Alex Dale, a senior executive at its maker, King, also told a Commons select committee investigating immersive and addictive technologies that last year one player spent $2,600 (£2,050) in a single day on the gold bar currency that can be used to propel players faster through the game. Continue reading...

Education secretary says guidance will help guard children against online harmsGuidance on teaching online safety in schools to make children more resilient to catfishing, fake news and other online harms has been announced by the education secretary.The guidelines will combine teaching on relationships, citizenship and computing to help students understand the technology behind targeted advertising, false profiles and other digital issues. Continue reading...

In Ubisoft’s forthcoming game, London has become a surveillance state run by authoritarian populists – and its citizens must come together to fight backThe virtual London of Watch Dogs Legion, the forthcoming sci-fi open world adventure by Ubisoft Montreal, is sometimes uncanny in its accuracy.For instance, while evading the police, and the private military forces working alongside them in the game’s dystopian future, I was able to use my knowledge of the layout of the real world’s Broadcasting House, headquarters of the BBC, to duck down a side street and avoid a drone that had been dogging me since Trafalgar Square. Continue reading...

Dominic Rushe has caught over 11,000 Pokémon, walked 1,841km in Poké-land, and doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon

Chair of Financial Stability Board says company’s plans could spark closer scrutiny of cryptocurrenciesFacebook’s Libra cryptocurrency is facing increasing skepticism from international regulators days after ambitious plans for it were unveiled by the social media company.On Tuesday, Randal Quarles, chair of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), a policy coordinator for G20 countries, said Facebook’s plan to expand into retail payments could lead regulators to take a closer look at such financial instruments. Continue reading...

Interpreting a spoken request isn’t magic, rather it has taken a team of underpaid, subcontracted linguists to make the technology possible“Do you believe in magic?” Google asked attendees of its annual developer conference this May, playing the seminal Lovin’ Spoonful tune as an introduction. Throughout the three-day event, company executives repeatedly answered yes while touting new features of the Google Assistant, the company’s version of Alexa or Siri, that can indeed feel magical. The tool can book you a rental car, tell you what the weather is like at your mother’s house, and even interpret live conversations across 26 languages.But to some of the Google employees responsible for making the Assistant work, the tagline of the conference – “Keep making magic” – obscured a more mundane reality: the technical wizardry relies on massive data sets built by subcontracted human workers earning low wages. Continue reading...

PC, Nintendo Switch; DeadToast Entertainment/Devolver Digital

New ‘influence operations’ will openly advertise participation in debate instead of hiding itThe next wave of “influence operations” like those that Russia used to target the 2016 US election will aim to destabilise debate by making voters think bots are everywhere, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy has said.Nathaniel Gleicher, who runs the company’s response to politically motivated malfeasance on its platform, said groups such as Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) were increasingly trying to manipulate public perception of themselves. “Not running a large network of fake accounts but just playing on the fact that everyone thinks there are large networks of fake accounts out there,” he said. Continue reading...

Landmark ruling set to change the way media companies engage with the social media giant

Feature-packed new software is out in beta, though users are reporting ‘tons of rough edges’Apple has released the public beta version of its much-anticipated free iOS 13 software update for iPhones and the first edition of its new iPadOS for tablets.Those eager to try the latest features, including the new dark mode, faster Face ID, Memoji stickers and smarter photo organisation, can now install iOS 13 on a compatible iPhone or iPadOS on their Apple tablet. Continue reading...

Carmaker to have 25 electrified models on sale by 2023 as strict new EU rules loomBMW is accelerating its push away from the internal combustion engine towards battery technology, as the German carmaker seeks to double the number of electric and hybrid vehicles it sells in the next two years.The company will have 25 electrified models on sale in 2023, two years earlier than previously planned, it announced on Tuesday. More than half of the vehicles will be fully electric. Continue reading...

Australian judge finds media companies have a responsibility to ensure defamatory remarks are not posted on social media

Vivian Ho befriended an electronic arm and grappled with a defunct tea maker during a trip through Silicon ValleyAround the world, an industry has emerged around automating food service through robotics, raising questions about job security and mass unemployment while also prompting praise for streamlining and innovation.In the epicenter of Silicon Valley, where innovation is exalted beyond all else, this industry has played out in various forms, from cafes, burger shops and pizza delivery to odd vending machines. Continue reading...

When computer assistants reply in female voices, are they saying that women lack power in their world?Within two years there will be more voice assistants on the internet than there are people on the planet. Another, possibly more helpful, way of looking at these statistics is to say that there will still be only half a dozen assistants that matter: Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, and Amazon’s Alexa in the west, along with their Chinese equivalents, but these will have billions of microphones at their disposal, listening patiently for sounds they can use. Voice is going to become the chief way that we make our wants known to computers – and when they respond, they will do so with female voices.This detail may seem trivial, but it goes to the heart of the way in which the spread of digital technologies can amplify and extend social prejudice. The companies that program these assistants want them to be used, of course, and this requires making them appear helpful. That’s especially necessary when their helpfulness is limited in the real world: although they are getting better at answering queries outside narrow and canned parameters, they could not easily ever be mistaken for a human being on the basis of their words alone. Continue reading...

The original cryptocurrency hits 15-month high as traders bet move will legitimise sectorThe price of bitcoin has surged above $11,000 (£8,600), its highest level in 15 months, amid renewed hype over cryptocurrencies after Facebook said it was planning to launch a digital currency next year.Bitcoin has risen in value by almost $2,000 in the week since the US technology firm revealed plans to create a cryptocurrency called Libra, in a move that could radically reshape the financial landscape with far-reaching implications for governments and central banks around the world. Continue reading...

Social video app uses machine learning ‘to automate the un-fun parts of video editing’A new app from the former head of video-sharing app Vine hopes to repeat the success of the cult social network by making it easier to shoot and edit short clips.Trash hopes that its secret weapon will be “computational cinematography”: the app, which entered closed beta on Monday, uses machine learning “to automate the un-fun parts of video editing”, automatically processing video to cut together short clips with a consistent mood and feel. Continue reading...

Tech firm’s communications chief says it found no evidence of Russian interferenceNick Clegg, Facebook’s head of communications, has dismissed allegations that misuse of the social network influenced the Brexit referendum result.Speaking on the BBC’s Today programme on Monday, the former deputy UK prime minister said the company’s investigations had found no evidence of Russian involvement in the campaign, unlike when it ran a similar inquiry into the 2016 US election. Continue reading...

By framing deepfakes as a tech problem we allow Silicon Valley to evade responsibility for its symbiotic relationship with fake news

Leyland Cecco and Lilian Edwards join Jordan Erica Webber to talk about the latest delays in plans to build a smart neighbourhood in Toronto. Continue reading...

Move could affect competition and data privacy, warns Bank for International SettlementsFacebook’s plan to operate its own digital currency poses risks to the international banking system that should trigger a speedy response from global policymakers, according to the organisation that represents the world’s central banks.Although the move of big tech firms such as Facebook, Amazon and Alibaba into financial services could speed up transactions and cut costs, especially in developing world countries, it could also undermine the stability of a banking system that has only just recovered from the crash of 2008. Continue reading...

Deepfake – the ability of AI to fabricate apparently real footage of people – is a growing problem with implications for us allThere exist, on the internet, any number of videos that show people doing things they never did. Real people, real faces, close to photorealistic footage; entirely unreal events.These videos are called deepfakes, and they’re made using a particular kind of AI. Inevitably enough, they began in porn – there is a thriving online market for celebrity faces superimposed on porn actors’ bodies – but the reason we’re talking about them now is that people are worried about their impact on our already fervid political debate. Those worries are real enough to prompt the British government and the US Congress to look at ways of regulating them. Continue reading...

From the Oculus Quest and Valve’s pricey Vive Pro to Nintendo’s family-friendly kits, a guide to what’s on offer in the world of virtual realitySix years after the first iteration of the Oculus Rift kickstarted the modern era of virtual reality, the now Facebook-owned company is back with not one but two new entries, joining a raft of big names from Valve’s Vive to Sony’s PlayStation VR and even Nintendo.With more options than ever to suit budgets, play styles – and games and experiences actually worth paying for – there’s never been a better time to don a headset and step into a new reality. Here’s a quick guide to five of the best on the market. Continue reading...

They started out as a joke – doctored videos of celebrities doing unlikely things, from a Nicolas Cage cameo in Friends to Mark Zuckerberg boasting about ‘stolen’ data. But as the technology improves, could deepfakes swing an election? Continue reading...

Marissa Fuchs posted photos of disbelief, but marketers were sent itinerary months beforeA public proposal is a risky thing to attempt. For every couple whose love for each other is perfectly in tune, there is a partner who has woefully misjudged their lover’s desire for public attention, grand romantic gestures, or simply marriage full stop.So Gabriel Grossman might have been taking a huge risk when he and his girlfriend, the Instagram influencer Marissa Casey Fuchs, embarked on not just a public proposal, but a 48-hour-long surprise holiday scavenger hunt, exhaustively documented by the couple on their respective Instagram accounts. What if she’d said no? Or decided that this precious moment was too personal to be shared with her audience of 193,000 people? Continue reading...

Chris Hughes says involvement of private companies is threat to autonomy of nation statesOne of Facebook’s co-founders has warned the social network’s plans for a digital currency called Libra could allow corporations involved in the scheme to wield power over nation states.Chris Hughes, whose role in the early days of Facebook has given him a net worth estimated at $430m (£340m), said global regulators should intervene to slow the progress of the cryptocurrency. Continue reading...

Customers urged to stop using limited number of machines sold between 2015 and 2017Apple is recalling some of its 15in MacBook Pro laptops over a battery fire risk.The company said on Thursday that a limited number of its largest laptop line, sold between September 2015 and February 2017, contained batteries that “may overheat and pose a safety risk”. Continue reading...

We spent two weeks with a 5G phone to find out if it really lives up to the hypeThe future of mobile phones is finally here. You can go out and buy a 5G phone, and if you happen to be in one of the six cities across the UK in which EE’s 5G network is up and running, you can get the blistering mobile broadband speeds we’ve been promised will revolutionise our mobile lives, again. But should you?I’ve spent the past two weeks equipped with the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G on first-out-of-the-gate EE’s 5G network. I streamed 2K HDR movies, downloaded whole albums in seconds and generally used it like I would on my extremely fast 350Mbps home wifi – data caps be damned. Continue reading...

The Big Apple has long had an infatuation with flying over the city, but there’s a risk in choosing the air over driving congested streetsWhile those taking a taxi from Manhattan to John F Kennedy airport this summer can expect a 90-minute-plus crawl at rush hour, more elite New Yorkers will have access to a new eight-minute ride – with a familiar brand attached.Scheduled to launch on 9 July, UberCopter – yes, that Uber, will offer a helicopter service between a heliport adjacent to Wall Street and JFK, from $200 per person each way. Continue reading...

With Mars in the 12th house at the time of the announcement, the new cryptocurrency should ultimately succeedWhen Facebook announced its cryptocurrency Libra, which shares its title with an astrological sign for people born approximately between 23 September and 23 October, people had a lot of questions.Will this upend the traditional banking system? Is Facebook going to sell my financial data to advertisers? And most importantly, what does an astrology-adjacent cryptocurrency name mean for us all? Continue reading...

San Francisco-based company sold shares in direct listing, following Spotify’s method, potentially ushering in new era of stock market salesWorkplace messaging service Slack became the latest hot technology company to sell its shares to the public on Thursday, soaring 50% higher than expected on its debut.The San Francisco-based company’s shares started trading on the New York stock exchange at $38.50 – well above the $26 guide price – and closed at $38.62 valuing the company at over $24bn, making a billionaire of co-founder Stewart Butterfield and potentially ushering in a new era of stock market sales. Continue reading...

Actions such as shares and likes down nearly 20%, though user numbers still growingFacebook usage has plummeted over the last year, according to data seen by the Guardian, though the company says usage by other measures continues to grow.Since April 2018, the first full month after news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in the Observer, actions on Facebook such as likes, shares and posts have dropped by almost 20%, according to the business analytics firm Mixpanel. Continue reading...

Everything you need to know about the next big augmented-reality game before its 21 June release dateHarry Potter: Wizards Unite will bring a little magic into the world tomorrow, as fans will be able to step into the world of the Boy Who Lived thanks to the augmented-reality smartphone game.Players use their phones to tackle something called the Calamity, which has tossed all sorts of dangerous magic – Confoundables – into the everyday world of muggles. Exploring the real world around them, they’ll run into familiar forms for fans of the Potterverse, such as pixies guarding screaming Howler letters or Hogwarts students trapped by vines. Casting spells on them by tracing lines on the phone’s screen will send them back where they belong, adding to the player’s collection of magical objects fished from the streets. Continue reading...

Cities say short-term holiday lettings market is contributing to soaring long-term rentsTen European cities have demanded more help from the EU in their battle against Airbnb and other holiday rental websites, which they argue are locking locals out of housing and changing the face of neighbourhoods.In a joint letter, Amsterdam, Barcelona, ​​Berlin, Bordeaux, Brussels, Krakow, Munich, Paris, Valencia and Vienna said the “explosive growth” of global short-stay lettings platforms must be on the agenda of the next set of European commissioners. Continue reading...

Reeling from a Dropbox price hike, Kate wants somewhere cheaper to store her 500GB of photos and filesI’ve just received notification that my Dropbox account is going up in price to more than £90 a year. I like Dropbox’s interface and ease of use from the mobile app, but £90 seems steep for what I require. What cheaper options do I have for securely storing about 500GB of photos and files? KateMost of us just evolve the way we do things by making convenient short-term decisions. A price jolt should prompt you to rethink how you are storing your data, where you are storing it, and why. Different people have different devices and different needs, so I can’t pick the best strategy for you or anybody else. However, I can give you a few things the think about. Continue reading...

After ordering and checking my credit rating several times, I can’t reverse the damage to my ratingI ordered two new smartphone contracts for myself and my wife. My wife decided to go for a different handset, so I cancelled her contract and reapplied.On the delivery day, I called to find out when it was coming, only to be told the order had been cancelled. No one could tell me why. Continue reading...

Board rejects all 13 shareholder proposals to address a range of issues even as workers protest outside eventAlphabet, the parent company of Google, failed to pass several proposals to address sexual harassment, antitrust issues and diversity policies at its annual shareholder meeting, despite hundreds of employees protesting outside the event.The annual meeting comes as Alphabet faces growing pressure from shareholders and employees, including over its handling of sexual harassment allegations, ethical concerns surrounding its artificial intelligence systems, its widespread reliance on and treatment of contract workers and its operations in China. Continue reading...

Epic bosses admit ignoring data protection rules and claim not to know how long users play forA Commons committee was left baffled as video game executives appeared to deny making money from their own games, admit to ignoring regulations governing data protection and age restrictions, and claim ignorance over how much time their own users were spending on games.Representatives from Epic Games, makers of Fortnite: Battle Royale, and EA Games, the publisher of the Fifa series of football games, appeared as witnesses in front of the Commons Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee as part of its inquiry into immersive and addictive technologies. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch; Brace Yourself Games/Nintendo

Apple CEO Tim Cook called on Silicon Valley to take responsibility for the damage it has caused in a recent commencement speech at Stanford