Technology | The Guardian

Alphabet first-quarter earnings offer a glimpse of how the digital ad market has fared amid stay-at-home ordersGoogle reported its weakest revenue growth in nearly five years in the first quarter as the pandemic-driven recession began to shrivel its advertising sales.“It was the tale of two quarters,” Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, told investors on a conference call on Tuesday. Typically – strong revenue growth in January and February was undercut by a “significant and sudden slowdown in advertising” in March, he said. “When I last spoke with you, no one could have imagined how much the world would change – and how quickly.” Continue reading...

Deployment of coronavirus tracking system to be trialled in ‘small area’ before roll out

Charities warn of ‘devastating effect’ as most vulnerable households left without access to web

Many of us are finding it hard to concentrate on books during lockdown – so here are some games that do fascinating things with words and storiesIt has been one of the many cruel ironies of lockdown: we all have time to read more, but the constant uncertainty and worry, together with the endlessly transmogrifying news narrative, have made it difficult to concentrate on novels.A few keen readers have turned to essay collections, short stories or diaries, which are less demanding on the memory and attention, but video games may also offer a way back into reading during these difficult times. Here are 12 interesting puzzle and adventure games that play with words, text and narratives in innovative ways, which may well guide you back into a reading frame of mind. Continue reading...

Epic makes its blockbuster game available in store, an embarrassing climbdownFortnite for Android is available through the Google Play store for the first time, almost 18 months after owners Epic Games tried to use the game’s popularity to break the app store duopoly.The release is an embarrassing climbdown for Epic, which has sunk significant resources into building its own independent games service, and is sure to reignite accusations of anti-competitive behaviour on the parts of both Apple and Google. Continue reading...

From those 6,000 cloud-stored selfies to your most guessable and reused passwords, here is an easy, expert guide to wielding a virtual vacuum

This Supershoppers special takes two Amazon-devoted families on an eye-opening tour of the retailers’ tactics – with mixed resultsI forget how much of an unbearable metropolitan elitist I am sometimes. When I see a programme called The Truth About Amazon, I automatically think it’s going to be an excoriating investigation into some of the alleged abuses of its workers. These are so many that, taken together, they would amount to something remarkably close to servitude, even before the new claims of failures to protect its people (or provide such things as hazard pay) started since the pandemic began. Or its viciously anti-union stance, or how a company making £11bn a year pays less tax than a pet hamster, or whether the invisible hand of the market is really enough to keep western capitalism from ultimately destroying us all ...You get, I’m sure, the idea. In fact, last night’s The Truth About Amazon on Channel 4, presented by Sabrina Grant and Helen Skelton, was a Supershoppers special, attacking it from that programme’s usual consumer rights perspective. This will probably do at least as much to problematise punters’ immediate relationship with the retail giant-of-giants as would another handwringing article about its tentacular reach into more and more aspects of our lives. Not to mention Jeff Bezos’s likely ultimate plan to strangle us all in our beds as we sleep and turn our bodies into fuel for his behemoth once it gains sentience. Continue reading...

The move raises thorny questions about civil rights amid the coronavirus pandemic

Unverified claims suggest UK government are running fake accounts to steer coronavirus conversation

Government becomes first to call for invasive measures in effort to combat coronavirus

Company says it made a loss last year due to investment and the competitive marketAmazon received €294m (£258m) in tax credits last year that it can deduct from future bills for its European business, as revenues at the online retailer rose significantly to €32bn.The company said it received the tax credits because it made a loss last year due to its investment programme and the highly competitive retail environment across Europe and the UK. Continue reading...

Employees say company has failed to provide adequate safety measures and has refused paid sick leave

Intelligence agency launches service to counter growing number of online scams

Professional Minecraft modeller Adam Clarke suggests eight great builds for Guardian readers – send us your best screenshotsWith lockdown entering its fifth week, Minecraft is proving a useful venue for friends and families to meet up, play together and work on collaborative projects. The game is widely used in schools throughout the world to teach everything from sustainable farming to the history of art, and Microsoft recently made the many lessons and exercises in its Minecraft Education programme available to everyone with an Office 365 account.If you have the game at home and are looking for new projects to attempt – maybe as part of your home schooling timetable – here are eight ideas that will test and expand your modelling skills. Continue reading...

Large 90Hz screen, slick software, speed and strong battery life at a price that undercuts top rivalsOnePlus is back for 2020 with a revamped, lower-cost flagship phone with a slightly smaller 90Hz screen and 5G as standard.The £599 OnePlus 8 slides in under the £799 8 Pro, offering most of what you get on the firm’s top phone but in a smaller, more manageable package. Continue reading...

Federal government pushes ahead with plans despite similar schemes having limited success overseasFacebook has said it is “disappointed” in the Australian government’s attempt to extract millions of dollars from tech giants to pay for media content shared through search and social media.But on Monday the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, vowed the Australian government “won’t bow to … threats” from big tech companies not to show local content, describing the coming stoush with Google and Facebook as a “battle worth fighting”. Continue reading...

Criminals seek rich pickings as viewers stuck at home flock to TV streaming sitesMore than 700 fake websites mimicking Netflix and Disney+ signup pages have been created seeking to harvest personal information from consumers during the coronavirus lockdown streaming boom.Netflix, which is expected to smash its forecast of 7 million new global subscribers when it reports first-quarter results on Tuesday, is the main target as millions of new potential customers seek entertainment while confined to their homes. Continue reading...

The retailer’s quarterly figures will have received a huge boost from lockdown salesAmazon will tell the world soon just how much money it has made from the “unprecedented demand shift” to its site from millions of people under lockdown conditions around the world.The retailer, which is run by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, will release its sales and profit figures for the first three months of the year (including the first few weeks of the lockdown in the UK and much of Europe and the US) on 30 April. Continue reading...

No matter how much we want to return to ‘normal’, we must be wary of additional for-profit use of our data

From online GPs and home working to smartphone tracking, the speed at which we are embracing technology is unprecedented – but can we trust it?Pandemics – as the historian Yuval Noah Harari has observed – press the fast-forward button on history. Suddenly, changes that would in pre-corona times have generated years of debate, dissent, hesitation, opposition and delay turn out to be possible overnight.Exhibit A in this context is the way in which hundreds of thousands of white-collar workers are suddenly able – indeed, required – to work from home. Continue reading...

Stuart Robert says people can be assured there will be no geolocation, surveillance or tracking

Rajesh Jayaseelan ‘starved’, friend says, because he feared landlord learning he was ill

Tech firms place limitations on how tracing apps may work in effort to protect users’ privacy

Users who have liked, shared or commented on posts with false claims will be directed to WHO’s ‘myth busters’ page

Court said firm not doing enough to protect staff and told it to stop selling non-essentials

Konami

Escape the lockdown by losing yourself in the stunning virtual landscapes of walking simulator gamesWith the pandemic keeping everyone inside just as spring brings good weather and longer days, many of us are missing simply wandering outdoors. Fortunately, there are video games offering beautiful landscapes where you can lose yourself in (virtual) nature. You’re in good company if you do – as film and media professor Alenda Chang points out in her book, Playing Nature: “For many people, the hours spent in game environments vastly outnumber those spent in wilderness areas”, even without a public health crisis.Replaying favourite games for comfort is a trend now, and some are revisiting recent open-world adventures, such as Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn, and even Far Cry 5 with the guns put away. But these blockbuster action games tend to feature enemies —not ideal if all you want is a peaceful ramble around a beautiful place. Continue reading...

The drug has been used to treat a number of diseases in the past half-century but after a French study claimed it was effective against coronavirus it has been hailed by the US president as a cure. But there is scant evidence it is effective – and it could actually be harmfulAt one of his recent daily press briefings, Donald Trump told his global television audience he was hearing great things about the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for treating coronavirus. “I think it could be, based on what I see, it could be a game changer,” he said.But despite big claims for the drug in a small study in France, the evidence for hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19 is scant – and certainly far from reliable enough to put into widespread use. So how did Trump come to recommend it to the extent that he declared: “What do you have to lose?” Continue reading...

Shares reach record high, pushing fortune of CEO and founder Jeff Bezos to $138bn

Bezos owns 11% stake in Amazon, which has seen surge in demand with households on virtual lockdown

Second-generation iPhone SE resembles older models, with prices starting at £419Apple has launched a cheaper version of its iPhone SE as it attempts to continue normal business despite the coronavirus pandemic.The second-generation SE resembles Apple’s previous design used for its smartphones between 2014 and 2017, complete with the traditional touch ID home button instead of face recognition. It costs from £419 in the UK and $399 in the US. Continue reading...

The role of the digital revolutionaries is to disrupt everything but the central institution of modern life: the market

The writer-director’s comedies – from Office Space to Silicon Valley – always sum up the spirit of their times. So why has he made an LSD-soaked cartoon about George Clinton and Bootsy Collins?Few writer-directors have been as consistent and ruthless at capturing the moment as Mike Judge, although he never actually intends to do so. “It’s always a shock when something comes out and it feels so relevant,” he says, in his laconic surfer-dude tone, talking to me by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “But I tend to look at stuff that feels as if it’s everywhere, but nobody’s talking about.”Judge, 57, is so beady at spotting what’s everywhere, his shows themselves end up becoming ubiquitous, the thing everybody’s talking about. It is impossible to imagine 90s TV without his seminal hits, Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill, the former satirising the worst of youth culture, the latter fondly depicting gentle American conservatism acclimatising itself to the Bill Clinton era. Continue reading...

Participants ‘folding proteins’ on home PCs, a task that could prove instrumental in tackling disease

Good sound, battery and noise cancelling, with attractive design and Apple’s H1 chip with Siri and cross-device connectivityApple-owned Beats is moving into the on-ear noise-cancelling world with the Solo Pro, using the same chips that make the PowerBeats Pro and AirPods so good.The £269.95 Beats Solo Pro blends the design of the firm’s existing Solo with the wired EP headphones for an attractive, modern and fairly sleek design. Continue reading...

Unrepairable phones and laptops are one of the scandals of our throwaway society. But the pushback is building – and the coronavirus crisis has added more pressure for change‘Imagine you showed someone a smartphone 20 years ago. You said: ‘Here’s this thing, it’s going to be awesome, and it’ll cost $1,000. But the manufacturers are going to glue the battery in, and you’re supposed to get rid of it when the battery wears out.’ You would have thought that notion was completely bananas.”Nathan Proctor is talking via Google Hangouts from Boston, Massachusetts, about an allegedly central feature of modern manufacturing known as planned obsolescence. This is the idea that some of the world’s biggest companies have been selling us products either knowing full well that they will only last a couple of years, or having deliberately built a short lifespan into the itemor its software. Continue reading...

User experience designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa say they lost their jobs after circulating a petition about Covid-19 risksAmazon has fired two employees after they publicly denounced the company’s treatment of warehouse workers during the coronavirus pandemic.The user experience designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa said on Tuesday they had been fired after internally circulating a petition about health risks for Amazon warehouse workers during the Covid-19 crisis. Costa had worked at the company for more than 15 years and Cunningham had been an employee for more than five. Continue reading...

The ITV presenter says that to suggest a connection between Covid-19 and 5G ‘would be wrong and could be dangerous’This Morning’s Eamonn Holmes has said he does not believe in conspiracy theories linking the roll-out of 5G mobile phone networks to coronavirus, while still insisting that “many people are rightly concerned and are looking for answers”.Media regulator Ofcom is investigating the ITV daytime show as a priority following hundreds of complaints that Holmes appeared to suggest people should not rush to dismiss a potential link between the pandemic and new technology. NHS officials have repeatedly made clear there is no connection, in line with global scientific consensus. Continue reading...

With families and couples filming themselves dancing or performing skits, the app has become even more popular in recent weeks. I asked its British stars to help me get startedAndy Warhol predicted a time everyone would have 15 minutes of fame. He was nearly right – it is actually 15 seconds. That is the maximum duration of a video clip with music (non-music clips can last up to a minute) on TikTok, the video-sharing platform that has taken the world by storm. Favoured by under-25s, who make up its core audience, TikTok this year surpassed Facebook and WhatsApp as the world’s most downloaded non-gaming app.TikTok’s content doesn’t take itself too seriously, and ranges from food to fashion, pranks to pets – as well as the ubiquitous dance challenges. It is a perfect fit, in other words, for the lockdown, when many of us are stuck inside and in desperate need of some silly fun. This may be why, even if you haven’t downloaded it, you suddenly find, clogging up your social media, clips of Justin Bieber dancing to I’m a Savage by Megan Thee Stallion, or Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez swapping outfits to Drake’s Flip the Switch. It seems everyone from doctors and nurses in PPE to bemused parents quarantined with teenagers are flocking to the app – and sometimes going viral in the process. Continue reading...

Retailer says it wants to ‘keep as many people as possible working during coronavirus crisis’

ITV host said ‘it’s very easy to say it is not true because it suits the state narrative’

Exclusive: draft plans for contact-tracing app said device IDs could be used to identify users

Health secretary Matt Hancock rebuts concerns about privacy

Jack Schofield and I struck up a correspondence back in the early days of computing in the UK as he used the email system run by the company I worked for, Apricot Computers.Jack’s email ID was simply JET045, this being long before the world wide web. Working in R&D I was responsible for part of this system and we often exchanged notes about technology and the way it was covered, often very perceptively, sometimes naively, by Jack and his fellow journalists. Continue reading...

“There were no design conventions for the earliest home computers, no rules for how they’d look,” says Alex Wiltshire, author of Home Computers, a new book that explores the rapidly changing face of the household machine between its birth in the 1970s and the 1990s.A world away from the devices used today, the computers in the book illustrate the rapid march of technology.Home Computers is published on 16 April by Thames & Hudson (£24.95)

Monitoring the pandemic with personal technology is a thorny issue. We can get results without having our privacy on parade

From being a goose on the loose to controlling whole galaxies, here’s a world of experiences for all the family

North Holland thinks unproven 600mph magnetic hovertrain could help replace air travelSwifter than trains, safer than cars and far less damaging to the environment than planes, the Dutch province of North Holland believes the hyperloop might be the future.Plans are being drawn up for Amsterdam to be connected to other European cities by the futuristic high-speed mode of transportation comprising a magnetic hovertrain in an air-free tube able to travel at speeds of over 600mph due to the lack of friction and drag. Continue reading...

The global sporting calendar may be empty, but games such as Fifa 20 and AO Tennis let you set up a cup competition in your living roomEuro 2020 postponed, Wimbledon cancelled, baseball’s opening day delayed: the coronavirus pandemic has decimated the sporting calendar. Fortunately, if you’re missing the competitive zeal of live sports, multiplayer games such as Fifa 20 enable fans to create their own tournaments – providing both distraction therapy, and the chance to beat your sister to the Premier League title. Here are five recommended multiplayer sports sims, and how to set them up for fierce, sofa-based competition. Continue reading...