Hacked data – including CVV codes – worth about £20m on dark web, cybersecurity experts sayThe credit card details of 380,000 British Airways customers could already be on sale on the internet after the airline suffered a “malicious†data breach, experts have warned.Customers were scrambling to change their credit card details on Friday, after BA said it was investigating the theft of passengers’ financial data from its website and app over a two-week period between 21 August and 5 September. The airline said it would compensate passengers for any losses, signalling the potential for large payouts, given the number of customers affected. Continue reading...
by Rupert Neate and Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisc on (#3YA27)
Musk calls the Guardian the world’s ‘most insufferable newspaper’, as two senior executives quit Tesla as market value falls 6%Tesla shares crashed 6% on Friday as two of its senior executives quit, just hours after the electric carmaker’s chief executive Elon Musk sparked concern by smoking marijuana on a live web show.The company’s head of accounting, Dave Morton, and head of human resources, Gaby Toledano, said they were leaving the company, which has been placed at the centre of a string of controversies by its maverick CEO. Continue reading...
by Presented by Jordan Erica Webber and produced by D on (#3Y9X2)
Jordan Erica Webber looks at the battle to regulate 3D printing, a technology that can print untraceable guns and build homesIn July 2018, a US district judge issued a temporary restraining order against a company called Defense Distributed, run by crypto-anarchist Cody Wilson, to prevent them from releasing the blueprints for a 3D-printed gun.These blueprints would enable anyone with access to the right tools and materials to print a firearm that would be untraceable, with no background checks needed. To get around this injunction, which stopped him from making the plans public for free, Wilson started selling them online and distributing them via email and USB in August. Continue reading...
Airline urges customers to contact banks after 380,000 payment cards affectedBritish Airways is investigating the theft of customer data from its website and app over a two-week period and has urged customers affected to contact their banks or credit card providers.The airline said around 380,000 payment cards had been compromised and it had notified the police. Continue reading...
Park Jin Hyok, 34, charged by US officials over 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack that affected more than 150 countriesThe US justice department has charged an alleged North Korean spy for helping to perpetrate cyber-attacks against the National Health Service that saw operations cancelled, ambulances diverted and patient records made unavailable following a worldwide hack in 2017 which affected computers in more than 150 countries.Park Jin Hyok, 34, was also involved in an attack against the Sony Corporation in 2014 and an $81m theft from the Bank of Bangladesh in 2016, a criminal complaint released on Thursday claimed. Continue reading...
Trevor Jones ponders whether the drive of some male design geniuses might also be the thing that makes them such dysfunctional fathersWith reference to Lisa Brennan-Jobs talking about her father, Steve Jobs (Family, 1 September); typing on my beautiful Apple Macbook, by the side of my beautiful fan leg table (by Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto), I’ve got a moral dilemma. Both these much-loved products were designed by men of vision, talent and firmness of purpose who, according to their daughters, had been not-there-fathers. If they had been more-there-fathers, would these iconic products have seen the light of day? It is probably the wrong question to ask, as creativity is rarely governed by moral philosophy. I suspect that “dysfunctional†fathers Jobs and Aalto could not help themselves, being forever under the spell of some idea and the need to realise that idea in some form. However, both men were altruistic in their own way. Jobs wanted to “put a ding in the universe†and for Aalto: “Even the smallest daily chore can be humanised with the harmony of culture.â€
Company updates popular £80 tablet, improving camera and giving it new Alexa smart assistant capabilitiesAmazon is updating its popular £80 media tablet with an improved camera and new Alexa capabilities that turn it into an Echo device with a screen.The new Fire HD 8 looks almost identical on the outside to the previous version, with a robust plastic body available in a collection of colours. Inside is a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, a choice of 16 or 32GB of storage, an 8in 720p screen and stereo speakers, an improved front-facing camera, and 10 hours of battery life. Continue reading...
Firefox no longer works on Angela’s machine and she has been forced to use Microsoft Edge. How can she fix it?I cannot access various websites in Firefox. Some, like BBC News, will open but don’t display correctly. More worryingly, I cannot sign in to my bank account or my credit card account on Firefox. I am forced to use Edge! I have run various scans with Kaspersky and Malwarebytes and don’t know where to look next.I have a Dell Inspiron 15 5000 laptop running Windows 10 Home, Firefox 61.0.2 and Kaspersky Internet Security. AngelaAll software is corruptible and browsers, being complex, tend to suffer more than most applications. Problems may be due to corrupted user profiles, caches, or badly behaved extensions rather than the browser code, but for the user, the result is the same. Continue reading...
It’s fine to watch films on but this tablet transforms into a gutsy work laptop when paired with the Type Cover keyboardThe Surface Go is Microsoft’s new, lower-cost detachable Windows 10 tablet that looks to reinvent what a budget PC can be.The brief was pretty straightforward: make a smaller and lighter machine that has all the premium feel and experience of Microsoft’s category-defining Surface Pro, but at about half the cost. Continue reading...
Theranos was unable to find a buyer and aims to pay unsecured creditors its remaining cash of $5m, Wall Street Journal reportsThe once-heralded blood-testing startup Theranos is shutting down, according to a media report.Theranos was unable to sell itself and is now looking to pay unsecured creditors its remaining cash of about $5m in the coming months, according to an email the Wall Street Journal obtained that the CEO, David Taylor, sent to shareholders. Continue reading...
Facebook and Twitter executives are testifying in attempt to assure lawmakers they will protect midterm elections from foreign interferenceExecutives from Facebook and Twitter testified before Congress on Wednesday in their latest attempt to assure lawmakers that they are capable of protecting November’s midterm elections from foreign interference – but the loudest message may have come from Google, which was represented by an empty chair.“The era of the wild west in social media is coming to an end,†warned Senator Mark Warner, the vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, in his opening remarks on Wednesday morning. “Where we go from here now is an open question.†Continue reading...
Tesla CEO, who previously called Vernon Unsworth a ‘pedo’, has faced widespread backlash over his commentsElon Musk has escalated his baseless attacks against a British diver, claiming without evidence that the man who helped rescue children from a cave in Thailand was a “child rapist†in an email to a reporter.The embattled Tesla CEO faced widespread backlash in July when he first called the diver Vernon Unsworth a “pedo†in a tweet – an unfounded claim against a man who was part of the international team that freed 12 young footballers and their coach from the Tham Luang cave complex. Musk, who had unsuccessfully attempted to assist the rescue mission, eventually apologized to Unsworth. Continue reading...
Trump claimed that Google and Facebook suppress conservative content. The reason why is simple: we see what they think we want to, because it’s in their business interestIn a head-turning move that has pitted him squarely against Silicon Valley’s most revered companies, Donald Trump proclaimed last week that algorithms developed by the likes of Google and Facebook fail to offer consumers politically-balanced news about American politics and his presidency itself.The underlying insinuation was that firms like Google, in designing features like search engine results pages and the algorithms that power them, perpetuate a kind of bias against conservative media in the US. His message, in all its brashness, was very clear: that there is an insidious suppression of certain kinds of US news outlets, and that should the internet platform companies fail to address it, the president himself will do so throhesiugh the power vested in him – including, potentially, by levying heavy-handed regulation. Continue reading...
Huawei’s latest comes with a svelte metal body, a good screen and top-end performanceHuawei’s Honor sub-brand has been firing out great phones at a rate of knots, with the Honor Play the latest in its line of lower-cost top-spec phones.The Play doesn’t deviate from the winning formula used by the last few top-end Honor smartphones: a flagship processor, plenty of memory and storage, a big screen and battery life reaching well into the second day. Continue reading...
Squid fights, sex dolls and nods to modern masters … the V&A’s superb video games show kicks off in the noughties, which was just when they got interestingVideo games are a unique and sometimes messy mixture of everything from visual arts to music, coding and animation, typically experienced at home over the course of 10 hours or more. This makes them a fascinating subject for design critics and curators, but it also means that they do not adapt well to a museum setting. The soul of games – the thing that gives them their power – is interactivity, the chance to be a participant, rather than an observer. This is the very thing that’s taken away when they are placed in a museum, where they can be seen and read about – but not played.Places like Berlin’s Computerspielemuseum and exhibitions like the Barbican’s Game On have focused on video games’ history as a technology: arcade cabinets and old computers give way to sleek-looking modern consoles, as the displayed works progress from lines and dots to pixel sprites to polygonal 3D models to realistic characters in beautifully-rendered worlds. Continue reading...
Following fan criticism that the game was limiting how much they could play it each week, the newest expansion has reversed course – with more to do than ever beforeWith all the focus on the economics and communities of Destiny – and other all-consuming “hobby†games ranging from Fifa to Battlefield – it can be easy to overlook that they’re supposed to be fun. But based on a day sitting down with a near-final version of the game in Bungie’s studios just outside Seattle, Washington, it’s clearly been as much on the minds of the team as any of the financial and fan pressure facing the developer.
Placing restrictions on the sharing economy will not help locals and will be bad for consumersGaby Hinsliff’s article (31 August) blames Airbnb for rising rents that squeeze out young locals from cities such as Barcelona.The open-source Inside Airbnb website shows there are just over 17,000 listings in Barcelona – a city in which there are more than 800,000 homes. Continue reading...
Snapchat spectacles also among new acquisitions ahead of video games exhibitionAn Xbox controller, a mosquito emoji and a pair of Snapchat spectacles have been added to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection.The acquisitions were made as part of the museum’s “rapid response collecting†programme, which began in 2014 and has seen an eclectic range of objects, including an Ikea soft toy, a Jeremy Corbyn T-shirt and a pink knitted pussyhat enter the collection. Continue reading...
Once regarded as inferior to film and TV soundtracks, games scores are gaining recognition and awards as a valid form of contemporary classical musicIn early 2018, Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker was a guest on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, for which one of his chosen recordings was Jonathan Dunn’s theme for the 1988 Game Boy game RoboCop. In May, the Royal Albert Hall hosted PlayStation in Concert, at which the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra played music from games made for PlayStation consoles from the original in the 1990s through to the current generation. The event was hosted by Jessica Curry, composer for games such as Dear Esther, which recently had its own series of concerts in which a narrator and musicians performed to cues triggered by someone playing the game live on stage.Video game players love music. Even a track not made for a game can get a boost from association with one; Eminem’s 2002 song Till I Collapse re-entered the UK charts in 2009 after it was used in an advert for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. And music that is composed especially for games finds other outlets, too; a television show called Rich House, Poor House, in which families from opposing ends of the wealth spectrum swap homes for a week, has used music from The Sims, a series of life sim games about the capitalist fantasy of happiness through financial gain. Continue reading...
Trump’s timing of attacks on Google, Facebook and Twitter could not have been better, as the three come under scrutiny in hearingsTrump and Russia may have dominated the political discourse all summer, but last week the attention turned again to America’s internet technology giants. They had enjoyed a few months out of the spotlight following grueling congressional hearings in Washington late last year, after evidence emerged of Russia’s use of social media fake accounts to try to influence voters in the 2016 US presidential election.But that respite ended last week after a tweet from Donald Trump that electrified the news agenda from Silicon Valley to the capital when, seemingly out of the blue – he posted a bizarre tweet. “Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD,†he tweeted. Trump went on to allege that Google was censoring right-wing voices and privileging voices from the left. Continue reading...
by Presented by Jordan Erica Webber and produced by D on (#3XVYH)
Jordan Erica Webber delves into the murky world of pirate radio, from the first black radio station to broadcast in the UK to the rise in popularity of Haitian radio in BrooklynGovernments have been shutting down pirate radio stations for as long as pirate radio stations have existed, and yet they persevere. Despite the risk of station closure and hefty fines, new stations continue to pop up all over the world.
by Josh Halliday North of England correspondent on (#3XVX2)
Parents of Olivia Burt, who died outside a Durham nightclub, complain of inactionThe parents of a student who was crushed to death outside a nightclub have criticised Facebook for letting an internet troll abuse the memory of their daughter.The father of Olivia Burt, a 20-year-old Durham University student who died in February, said dealing with the social media company had “compounded our miseryâ€. Continue reading...
Linda’s history-studying son needs a portable computer. Which model would deliver value for money on a budget?My son is off to university and needs a laptop for his history course. His needs are coursework, watching movies, listening to music and gaming. Our needs are best value for money on a budget of £600 or less. What do you think of reconditioned laptops? We are not a poor household, but we are going to have to make a few sacrifices to get him through university. LindaIt’s always a good idea to see if the university and/or department have any recommendations, discount deals or special requirements. This can be important for courses that use professional software, though I don’t expect history needs anything that won’t run on most laptops. Continue reading...
Big new Google Assistant smart speaker finally launches in the UK with best-in-class voice control aiming to be the life and soul of the partyGoogle’s big, premium Apple HomePod rival the Home Max is finally being released in the UK today, bringing Google Assistant to the high-end smart speaker market.Announced in October 2017 and on sale in the US since November, the Home Max joins Google’s smaller Home and smallest Home Mini smart speakers as the big one. Google Assistant sorts voice commands, controls and questions exactly the same as Google’s smaller smart speaker offerings, but the way it sounds couldn’t be more different. Continue reading...
The death of a woman hit by a self-driving car highlights an unfolding technological crisis, as code piled on code creates ‘a universe no one fully understands’The 18th of March 2018, was the day tech insiders had been dreading. That night, a new moon added almost no light to a poorly lit four-lane road in Tempe, Arizona, as a specially adapted Uber Volvo XC90 detected an object ahead. Part of the modern gold rush to develop self-driving vehicles, the SUV had been driving autonomously, with no input from its human backup driver, for 19 minutes. An array of radar and light-emitting lidar sensors allowed onboard algorithms to calculate that, given their host vehicle’s steady speed of 43mph, the object was six seconds away – assuming it remained stationary. But objects in roads seldom remain stationary, so more algorithms crawled a database of recognizable mechanical and biological entities, searching for a fit from which this one’s likely behavior could be inferred.At first the computer drew a blank; seconds later, it decided it was dealing with another car, expecting it to drive away and require no special action. Only at the last second was a clear identification found – a woman with a bike, shopping bags hanging confusingly from handlebars, doubtless assuming the Volvo would route around her as any ordinary vehicle would. Barred from taking evasive action on its own, the computer abruptly handed control back to its human master, but the master wasn’t paying attention. Elaine Herzberg, aged 49, was struck and killed, leaving more reflective members of the tech community with two uncomfortable questions: was this algorithmic tragedy inevitable? And how used to such incidents would we, should we, be prepared to get? Continue reading...
George Garofano, 26, one of four charged over illegal hacking of American actor and other celebritiesA hacker was sentenced to eight months in prison on Wednesday for a scheme that exposed intimate photos of the actor Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities.George Garofano, 26, was accused of illegally hacking the private Apple iCloud accounts of 240 people, including Hollywood stars as well as average internet users, allowing their nude photos and private information to be spread around the internet. Continue reading...
Twitch, where majority of broadcasters play video games for an audience, was the first to unintentionally air a shooting liveWhen two people were killed and 11 injured at a Madden football video game tournament at a bar in Jacksonville, Florida, on Sunday, the incident joined the list of hundreds of tragic shootings that have already taken place in the US this year. But it was the first to occur during a video game tournament, and the first to have been unintentionally broadcast live online.Related: 'No one deserves to die over a video game': survivors recall chaos of Florida shooting Continue reading...
by Michael Safi in Delhi and Edward Helmore in New Yo on (#3XPTW)
Tesla boss criticised for making unfounded allegation against Vernon Unsworth, who helped free Thai cave boysElon Musk appears to have doubled down on his claim that a British explorer who was instrumental in freeing a group of Thai boys trapped in a cave is a “pedoâ€.The chair of Tesla was widely criticised last month for making the unfounded allegation against Vernon Unsworth, who was part of an international team that freed the young footballers and their coach from the Tham Luang cave complex in northern Thailand. Continue reading...
How the latest video game craze mixes up the fundamentals of game design and human psychology to make itself compellingAlmost every video game is designed to make you want to play it. Fortnite, though, is especially good at keeping people coming back, week after week, match after match. This “stickinessâ€, as game designers call it, is not down to some revolutionary new game design factor. Instead, Fornite has improved and repackaged ideas, creating an effective evolutionary step rather than a leap.
The UK’s advertising watchdog rules against company over its marketing of the appAn advert describing a smartphone app as a “highly accurate†method of birth control has been found to be misleading by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) in the latest blow to the much-hyped Swedish company, Natural Cycles.Related: ‘I felt colossally naive’: the backlash against the birth control app Continue reading...
As the new season hits its stride, we look at the best footie games available for 2018/19 on the PS4, Xbox, PC and phonesIt has been a rare old summer of football. England’s heroic – or at least, much better than expected – efforts in the World Cup were followed by three weeks or so of cold turkey, with nothing but the opaque machinations of the transfer window to keep us occupied. But already, the season has resumed, in all its relentless glory. If you want to join in but were born with two left feet, flex your thumbs instead with one of these games – the six best on the market right now. Video game football isn’t just about pretending to be Harry Kane or Pep Guardiola: some of these take a strikingly original approach to the beautiful game. Continue reading...
Minivan equipped with sensors makes four round-trips a day on a busy stretch of road, picking up paying passengersA self-driving taxi has successfully taken paying passengers through the busy streets of Tokyo, raising the prospect that the service will be ready in time to ferry athletes and tourists between sports venues and the city centre during the 2020 Summer Olympics.ZMP, a developer of autonomous driving technology, and the taxi company Hinomaru Kotsu, claim that the road tests, which began this week, are the first in the world to involve driverless taxis and fare-paying passengers. Continue reading...
Move may cost in short term but boost longer-term user engagement, CEO saysUber is to switch its focus from taxis to electric bikes and scooters to grow its global business, its chief executive has said.The ride-hailing app will promote different modes of transport that can work better in congested inner cities, to keep Uber users on its platform. Continue reading...
Social media giant struggles to stay relevant to a younger generationFacebook has officially lost its cool. Snapchat is set to overtake it as the digital hangout of choice for teens and twentysomethings this year, as Mark Zuckerberg’s social media site struggles to remain relevant to the youth generation.By the end of this year Snapchat, which with its disappearing messages and funky photograph filters has already won over young teens, will also become the most popular social media platform in the UK for 18- to 24-year-olds. Continue reading...
by Hannah Ellis-Petersen South-east Asia corresponden on (#3XJM6)
Move follows UN report accusing army of genocide against minority RohingyaFacebook has removed 18 accounts and 52 pages associated with the Myanmar military, including the page of its commander-in-chief, after a UN report accused the armed forces of genocide and war crimes.In an unusually prompt move, the pages and accounts of the Mynamar military, known as the Tatmadaw, were deleted just minutes after the UN fact-finding mission released its damning report. Continue reading...
From the cliched slasher Night Trap to the hideous Superman 64, these are some of the worst-ever video gamesIt is hard to argue when a video game is truly bad, whatever its relative merits. A broken game is rife with glitches, freezing or falling to pieces when you play it. And ungainly controls or horrible graphics might make it even more unpleasant. But now and then, as in the film world, even games that are terrible can become popular. Sometimes a train-wreck of a video game can deliver something that no well-produced blockbuster can: the element of surprise. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian