Technology | The Guardian

Proposal for government to hold details amid complaints of council homes used for holiday letsAirbnb hosts could have their identities included on a register for the first time to prevent illegal short-term rents and the use of scarce council housing as holiday accommodation.The San Francisco-based property rental platform will this week begin a consultation on proposals for a register of hosts. It will ultimately present a white paper to politicians and community leaders across the UK, who have complained they are powerless to act when whole blocks are sometimes overrun by short-term rentals. Any register would be held by governmental bodies rather than the provider itself and would apply across homeshare sites. Continue reading...

Plan for register follows complaints in UK of council homes used for holiday letsAirbnb hosts could have their identities shared for the first time to prevent illegal short-term rents and the use of scarce council housing as holiday accommodation.The San Francisco-based property rental platform will this week begin drawing up plans for a register of hosts after pressure from politicians and community leaders across the UK who have complained they are powerless to act when whole blocks are sometimes overrun by short-term rentals. Continue reading...

The return of the Modern Warfare series ends its beta test on a high, with the chaotic Ground War mode and other fresh tweaks giving the reboot a different feelA couple of hours and several dozen respawns into the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare beta test and you gradually start to appreciate the changes. The latest title in the multimillion-selling shooter series is being sold as a return to the principles of its near-namesake, 2007’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Developer Infinity Ward is promising gritty, contemporary combat on claustrophobic maps with authentic weapons and skills – and absolutely none of the laser guns or wall-running super powers that have blighted later episodes. The beta tests, held over the last two weekends, have been the first chance to experience this premise on public servers. And it has not been disappointing.In many ways, the new title does feel very similar to the original Modern Warfare trilogy. We get familiar weapons with familiar effects, such as the super versatile M4A1 assault rifle and the strange-looking AUG with its blisteringly rapid fire rate. There is also a return for killstreaks, where players are specifically rewarded for shooting enemies rather than meeting mission objectives, recalling Modern Warfare’s ultra-aggressive roots. Map locations also have a nostalgically grungy and bomb-blasted look. Azhir Cave is a mass of snaking desert tunnels and crumbling villages, while Hackney Yard is all rusted shipping containers, abandoned offices and burned-out police cars. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber looks into the rise of identity politics in online dating. In this episode we hear from the journalist Rainesford Stauffer, dating expert Dr Jess Carbino and Tinder’s election bot creator, Yara Rodrigues Fowler Continue reading...

An attempt by contract workers to unionize has brought the city’s industrial past crashing into the 21st centuryThe first time Nabisco tried to close its Pittsburgh factory in 1982, a coalition of labor unions and politicians successfully fought back, preserving hundreds of jobs and the smell of baking cookies in the city’s East Liberty neighborhood. Sixteen years, three free-market presidents and numerous international trade deals later, Nabisco successfully shuttered the plant for good, laying off about 350 workers and leaving behind a hulking brick monument to the Pennsylvania city’s storied industrial past.Today, the old factory building has been transformed into a shiny testament to Pittsburgh’s future: the luxuriously renovated Bakery Square is home to hundreds of Google employees, assembly lines and industrial ovens replaced with cubicles, meeting rooms and an indoor bamboo garden, the only hint of the manufacturing past in a few tasteful design flourishes. Continue reading...

Ideas for emoji include vine of leaves on heart and people clasping handsTo err is human, it is said, to forgive divine. And soon that noblest of human qualities will be available in emoji form, following a global effort to find the most appropriate icon.A coalition of charitable and peace-building organisations in Finland are leading the quest to crowdsource an emoji to be added to the thousands available to smartphone users. Continue reading...

Tanya Gold published a piece about a plus-size mannequin one Sunday. By Monday morning the internet had gone mad and was out for her bloodIt was my fault. Sometimes I write glibly. I make an argument for myself and forget that people read it. It still surprises me, after 20 years of writing, to think that I have readers: that my internal monologue is out and about in the world. I do not think about them. If I did, I couldn’t write anything.In June, I wrote a piece about Nike’s obese mannequin, which was displayed at the London flagship shop to publicise Nike’s new willingness to sell clothes to overweight women. It makes me laugh now to think I insulted a mannequin – how, on that day in 2019, we came to discuss human rights for mannequins. I said it was a cynical doll from a cynical company that is no friend to women. I said that the normalisation of obesity frightens me, because I can see the outcome of addiction to sugar in myself. I said that the “fat acceptance” movement is an abyss of denial. I said the mannequin was “gargantuan” and “heaving with fat”. I said it might get diabetes – if it had flesh. I said that if it ran, it would ruin its inhuman knees. Continue reading...

Refunds to buyers rely on Royal Mail tracking using postcodes rather than signatures, and it’s helping thievesAnastasios Siampos was suspicious after selling an iPhone for £275 on eBay. The buyer claimed it was defective and, though Siampos contested this, eBay instructed the buyer to return it using Royal Mail’s 48-hour tracked delivery service. Two days later eBay refunded the buyer, insisting that Royal Mail’s tracker showed the parcel had been successfully returned. Siampos, however, had received nothing. When he contacted Royal Mail he found the parcel had indeed been delivered, but not to his address. Extraordinarily, the tracking update only confirms an item has been delivered to the postcode without specifying the property. There are 53 properties in Siampos’s postcode.Online selling platforms, such as eBay, rely on tracker information as proof an item has been returned and the sender can be refunded. Nowhere on Royal Mail’s website does it clarify that items are only tracked to the postcode – a loophole that has been exploited by fraudsters to steal goods. Continue reading...

Seat’s new flagship SUV is big in all respects: comfort, seats and everyday luxuries. Just be careful who you let share the driving…Seat Tarraco

Removals are part of inquiry into how developers use data, which the company started after the Cambridge Analytica scandalFacebook has suspended tens of thousands of apps from the platform for privacy reasons, it announced in a blogpost on Friday.The removals come as part of an ongoing investigation into how developers use data, which the company started after the Cambridge Analytica scandal in March 2018. The news also reveals that the platform is home to more problematic apps than previously thought. Continue reading...

Tech giant’s push for greener energy prompts biggest renewable energy deal in corporate historyGoogle’s chief executive has revealed plans for the biggest renewable energy deal in corporate history.Sundar Pichai said the clean energy deal will include 18 separate agreements to supply Google with electricity from wind and solar projects across the world. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Brad Smith says firms must help define and live by standards before they are forced on themTech companies should stop behaving as though everything that is not illegal is acceptable, says Microsoft’s second-in-command. Instead, they should focus on defining – and living by – the standards that they would like to see in regulation, before it gets forced on them anyway.For some of the most potentially dangerous new technologies, such as facial recognition, that could mean voluntarily refusing to sell them to certain countries, for certain uses, or even agreeing to a moratorium altogether, said Brad Smith, the president and chief legal officer of the world’s most valuable publicly-traded company. Continue reading...

Great fit and sound, long battery, attractive design and pocketable case make for an excellent set of budsLibratone has given us the better fitting AirPods that Apple wouldn’t, with great sound and noise cancelling.The Danish audio firm’s Track Air+ are a set of true wireless earbuds, priced at £179, that follow the familiar design of earbud with stalk but no cable. Continue reading...

If you spend hours a day staring at your phone screen for social media, games and reading, a new no-frills device could help nudge you back to the real worldFor years, I have had a screensaver on my iPhone that says READ A BOOK INSTEAD. It hasn’t worked.I used my phone for an average of 4 hours and 2 minutes a day last week, picking it up 103 times a day. That’s about once every 10 minutes while I am awake. And for what? Pokémon Go (yes, I am addicted), social networking and reading – in that order. And when I’m not on my phone, I am on my laptop. Continue reading...

Rental service, which has about 150 million users in more than 65,000 cities, was last valued at $31bn in September 2017Airbnb, the home-sharing rental business, is to go public “during 2020”, the company said in a brief statement on Thursday.The service, which claims 7m Airbnb listings in over 100,000 cities and 8.2 million guest arrivals in the year to July, was last valued at $31bn in September 2017. Continue reading...

New Android smartphone falls foul of trade war and Trump’s blacklisting of Chinese firm

A pair of aluminium legs that you strap to your bum could be the solution for people who find there are not enough chairs in the world. As long as they don’t mind looking ridiculousOn Wednesday night, the Tech Insider Twitter account made a simple statement: “This wearable chair could change how we work and travel.” The text was accompanied by a short video advertising the LEX bionic chair, a pair of £200 foldable aluminium legs that you strap to your bum and lean against whenever your legs get a bit tired. In the video, a man uses the LEX while sitting at a desk, waiting for a bus, and taking photos. It really does it all.This wearable chair could change how we work and travel pic.twitter.com/KO8QoUcrut Continue reading...

Perfectly modelled and smoothly animated, the 42 built-in games are lovingly reproduced, with modern gaming benefits. It’s a delightful surpriseIt’s been almost three years since Nintendo launched its diminutive NES Mini console and discovered a vast audience for stylish retro hardware. Since then, it has re-released the NES Classic Mini and launched an SNES sequel, while Sony has clambered artlessly on to the bandwagon with an uncharacteristically mediocre offering, the PlayStation Classic. Now Sega has joined the fray, its official Mega Drive Mini set to banish memories of the fairly awful Mega Drive retro consoles produced by third-party manufacturer At Games.The result is a wonderfully cute and detailed reproduction of the original Mega Drive model, sensibly priced at £70. Although it’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, it packs in accurate cosmetic features such as a volume switch, side grille and extension port, closely mimicking the ghetto blaster form of the 1988 machine. It is kind of a shame that the volume control is non-functional – a headphone port would have been a lovely extra, but doubtless prohibitively expensive to include. Continue reading...

The ‘gig economy’ is terrible for workers. We must tackle the problem head-on

Ed wonders if you need a computer to make YouTube videos, as he doesn’t own oneI’m a newbie. When people shoot YouTube videos, do they need a computer or laptop to do so? I don’t have either. EdPeople shoot videos with all kinds of equipment, from simple smartphones to professional movie cameras. Prices range from £50 to more than £40,000. As always, it depends on the job. Some people are taking selfies for Facebook while others are shooting blockbusters for cinemas. Continue reading...

According to a recent survey, 39% of us aren’t against machines capable of destroying humanity. Surely there are some things we can all agree onLaura Nolan is a modern hero. A former Google software engineer, Nolan resigned from her job last year after being asked to dramatically enhance the artificial intelligence used in US military drones. She is now calling for a ban on all forms of autonomous weapons on the basis that they might accidentally initiate a catastrophic global war. She said this as part of her role as a member of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.Now, listen, sometimes I’m able to kid myself about the goodness of people. I might not agree with them all the time, but at least I can understand our differences. I get why they might vote for a certain political party, or why they wanted Brexit to happen. After all, aren’t we all just people muddling through the muck together? And then I realise that there is a group called Stop Killer Robots, and it actually has to convince people to stop killer robots. Killer bloody robots, for crying out loud. Its only goal is to stop robots from destroying all of humanity as we know it, and it needs to exist because it turns out that some people aren’t automatically horrified by the idea. Continue reading...

Want to build worlds, become a crime kingpin, get lost in space, or enter the afterlife? Then our countdown of the 50 best games of the era has something for you

A web developer asked men to send her pictures of their genitals in order to build a filter that ‘recognises’ a penis and blurs it. Which raises the question: why haven’t tech companies taken this on yet?Earlier this month, after waking up to find an unwelcome dick pic in her Twitter account’s DMs, web developer Kelsey Bressler, 28, co-created an AI filter she claims is capable of preventing over 95% of sexually explicit images from reaching her inbox.To test the filter, Bressler solicited pictures of male genitalia en masse, receiving hundreds to the trial account @ShowYoDiq, “for science”. Continue reading...

Platform responds to concerns about impact of content on mental health of young peopleInstagram has announced that tighter restrictions are to be imposed on some posts related to diet products and cosmetic surgery.The social media platform said that from Wednesday on both Instagram and Facebook, age restrictions would be applied to some such posts while others would be removed. Continue reading...

WhatsApp joins Messenger on camera-equipped photo frame-like device tied in with AlexaJust 10 months after launching its first voice-controlled, video-calling smart displays in the US, Facebook is trying again with new Portal, Portal Mini and Portal TV – and now they are heading for the UK and Europe.The basic premise is very similar to the smart displays sold by Amazon, Google and others. Portal and Portal Mini look like digital photo frames complete with an actual black or white frame around the outside. They display your photos and calendar events, play videos and generally entertain, including streaming Spotify and Amazon Prime Video. They listen out for two hotwords depending on your settings. Continue reading...

Big tech claims AI and digitization will bring a better future. But putting computers everywhere is bad for people and the planetOur built environment is becoming one big computer. “Smartness” is coming to saturate our stores, workplaces, homes, cities. As we go about our daily lives, data is made, stored, analyzed and used to make algorithmic inferences about us that in turn structure our experience of the world. Computation encircles us as a layer, dense and interconnected. If our parents and our grandparents lived with computers, we live inside them.A growing chorus of activists, journalists and scholars are calling attention to the dangers of digital enclosure. Employers are using algorithmic tools to surveil and control workers. Cops are using algorithmic tools to surveil and control communities of color. And there is no shortage of dystopian possibilities on the horizon: landlords evicting tenants with “smart locks”, health insurers charging higher premiums because your Fitbit says you don’t exercise enough. Continue reading...

During a strange week for Asian Americans, the app – which is part of an art project – achieved its aim by underscoring exactly what’s wrong with artificial intelligenceHow are you supposed to react when a robot calls you a “gook”?At first glance, ImageNet Roulette seems like just another viral selfie app – those irresistible 21st-century magic mirrors that offer a simulacrum of insight in exchange for a photograph of your face. Want to know what you will look like in 30 years? There’s an app for that. If you were a dog what breed would you be? That one went viral in 2016. What great work of art features your doppelganger? Google’s Arts & Culture app dominated social media feeds in 2018 when it gave us a chance to bemoan being more Picasso than Botticelli, or vice versa. Continue reading...

Tech company to equip officers with body cameras to help identify terror attack videosFacebook is working with the Metropolitan police to improve the social network’s ability to detect live streaming of terrorism and potentially alert officers about an attack sooner.The tech company will provide officers at the Met’s firearms training centres with body cameras, in an effort to help its artificial intelligence more accurately and rapidly identify videos of real-life first person shooter incidents. Continue reading...

The withdrawal of the BBC’s iPlayer Radio app angers Rod MacraeI am saddened to discover that the closure of the BBC’s iPlayer Radio app service leaves me, and thousands of other loyal listeners, unable to access its services on anything but the latest handheld devices. From this week, if you have an iPad that runs on a platform older than Apple’s iOS11, you will not only see the iPlayer service stop, but will find you are denied access to its replacement, BBC Sounds, because it will only work on the newest iOS software.As a former reporter on Radio 4’s You & Yours, I am aware of the resentment many people have to any industry’s pressure on consumers to constantly upgrade and replace costly devices despite them functioning perfectly well. The BBC’s decision on the iPlayer Radio and Sounds apps will leave hundreds of thousands without access to its services. Sadly, the BBC has sided with the technology industry and ignored its own audience.

Fining YouTube for targeting adverts at children as if they were adults shows progress is being made on both sides of the Atlantic, writes Steve Wood of the Information Commissioner’s OfficeThe conclusion of the Federal Trade Commission investigation into YouTube’s gathering of young people’s personal information (‘Woeful’ YouTube fine for child data breach, 5 September) shows progress is being made on both sides of the Atlantic towards a more children-friendly internet. The company was accused of treating younger users’ data in the same way it treats adult users’ data.YouTube’s journey sounds similar to many other online services: it began targeting adults, found more and more children were using its service, and so continued to take commercial advantage of that. But the allegation is it didn’t treat those young people differently, gathering their data and using it to target content and adverts at them as though they were adult users. Continue reading...

Early reviews of Apple’s latest suggest colour, battery and lower price make the iPhone 11 a winnerThe early reviews of Apple’s iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max are in from publications with early access to the three models.While the iPhone 11 Pro is the most impressive technically, with a new triple camera system catching up to the competition, it is the iPhone 11, the cheapest of the bunch, that is winning the majority of people over. Questions remain as to whether it’s worth upgrading at all, however, if your iPhone is less than five years old. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Job has left some ‘addicted’ to extreme material and pushed others to far rightThe task of moderating Facebook continues to leave psychological scars on the company’s employees, months after efforts to improve conditions for the company’s thousands of contractors, the Guardian has learned.A group of current and former contractors who worked for years at the social network’s Berlin-based moderation centres has reported witnessing colleagues become “addicted” to graphic content and hoarding ever more extreme examples for a personal collection. They also said others were pushed towards the far right by the amount of hate speech and fake news they read every day. Continue reading...

Earl and Countess of Carnarvon open doors of Highclere Castle in Hampshire to select guestsFans of the hit TV series Downton Abbey are to be given the opportunity to “live like the lord or lady of a stately home” and stay in the castle where the show was filmed.To mark the release of the Downton Abbey film, the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon have posted their residence of Highclere Castle in Hampshire on the Airbnb booking website. Continue reading...

Workplace harassment was high on the agenda at the Women in Games European Conference, following a spate of allegationsSome say it is long overdue, some doubted victims would be ready to speak out, but now #MeToo has very much arrived in the video games industry. Last month, game developer Nathalie Lawhead posted to their website, accusing video game soundtrack composer Jeremy Soule of raping them while the two worked together at an unnamed Vancouver-based development studio. Soule has denied the accusation. Within days, another developer, Zoë Quinn, alleged on Twitter to have suffered abuse and harassment from Alec Holowka, co-creator of award-winning game, Night in the Woods. Holowka was found dead days after the allegations were made.Related: The video games industry isn’t yet ready for its #MeToo moment | Keza MacDonald Continue reading...

Office-sharing company’s value has been slashed since January but it says flotation will still take place this yearWeWork, the US office-sharing company, has postponed its stock market flotation after receiving a lukewarm response from investors.WeWork’s parent, We Company, had planned to launch an investor roadshow this week to drum up interest in its $20bn (£16bn) share sale, slashed from an initial valuation of $47bn. It hoped to price and list its shares next week, but has put the plans on ice amid operating losses and corporate governance issues. Continue reading...

Melbourne woman is accused of being part of syndicate which used stolen identity information to drain millions from multiple accountsMillions of dollars have allegedly been siphoned from personal superannuation and share trading accounts as part of a cyber fraud.There are understood to be multiple victims hit by the syndicate, which was revealed by the Australian federal police and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Money will go towards testing tools including voice analysis on child abuse image database

Tesla CEO’s lawyers said ‘pedo guy’ is a common insult used when Musk was a child in South Africa and not meant to ‘accuse a person’Elon Musk is continuing to try to wriggle his way out of a defamation lawsuit, claiming in a court filing on Monday that a tweet labeling a British diver “pedo guy” was not meant to actually accuse him of pedophilia.The Tesla CEO is being sued over comments made in 2018 about Vernon Unsworth, a diver who helped rescue a team of young soccer players stuck in an underwater cave. Continue reading...

My friend Sir Terry Harrison, who has died aged 86, was a man of the north-east and proud to be so. He joined the engineering firm Clarke Chapman in 1957 and became managing director in 1969. Clarke Chapman merged with Reyrolle Parsons to form Northern Engineering Industries (NEI) in 1977, employing 40,000 people.Terry became chief executive of NEI (1983-86) and was executive chair (1986-89) when it was acquired by Rolls-Royce. He was appointed to the board of Rolls-Royce and in 1992 was made chief executive. Three years later he was knighted. It was said that when Rolls-Royce divested itself of NEI in 1996, it had waited until Terry had safely retired from the board. Continue reading...

Social media was supposed to liberate us, but for many people it has proved addictive, punishing and toxic. What keeps us hooked? By Richard Seymour• Read the text version here Continue reading...

Same Bose magic now sleeker, with better controls, calling and adaptable noise cancellingBose’s new top-of-the range 700 noise-cancelling headphones attempt to be the new gold standard, with a new design, new technology and a shift in focus.Launched to sit atop the long-standing kings of noise-cancelling cans, the £300 QuietComfort 35 II, the new £350 Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 look to shift Bose’s rather staid image toward something more modern and fashionable. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber is joined by Richard Sprenger, who recently went to Los Angeles to learn more about a new summer camp that aims to teach six to 10-year-olds how to become the next YouTube sensation. Continue reading...

Engineer who quit over military drone project warns AI might also accidentally start a warA new generation of autonomous weapons or “killer robots” could accidentally start a war or cause mass atrocities, a former top Google software engineer has warned.Laura Nolan, who resigned from Google last year in protest at being sent to work on a project to dramatically enhance US military drone technology, has called for all AI killing machines not operated by humans to be banned. Continue reading...

BoE among 26 global banks due to meet with Libra amid fears over risk to state sovereigntyGlobal regulators will question Facebook on Monday about its Libra cryptocurrency amid concerns from EU governments over the threat the digital currency poses to financial stability, according to the Financial Times.Officials from 26 central banks, including the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, will meet with representatives of Libra in Basel on Monday, the FT said, citing officials. Continue reading...

Marc Randolph launched the streaming service that would revolutionize TV and film, upend Hollywood and draw more than 150 million subscribersIt was a fluke that the Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph changed the history of television. It almost didn’t happen.In 1997, the Santa Cruz businessman was spending his carpool rides to work brainstorming internet startup ideas with a colleague. They discussed personalised surfboards, customised dog food, shampoo by mail. One commute, the chat turned to “videotapes”. Continue reading...

Gentler acceleration and electric vehicles can reduce air pollution but walking or cycling are bestLocal authorities are encouraging people not to leave their cars idling as tests show we can reduce air pollution by changing the way we drive.Scientists in Utah measured exhaust emissions from a test car driven by volunteers over a set route. Contrary to the stereotypical view of the “boy racer”, the study showed the older male participants were the most polluting drivers. Continue reading...

Finance minister says governments’ monetary sovereignty could be at riskFrance has said it will block the development of Facebook’s Libra in Europe, dealing the cryptocurrency a fresh blow.The French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said plans for Libra could not move ahead until concerns over consumer risk and governments’ monetary sovereignty were addressed. Continue reading...

Israeli PM has denied writing inflammatory post about ‘Arabs who want to destroy us all’Facebook has suspended a chatbot on Benjamin Netanyahu’s official page after it breached hate speech policy by sending visitors a message warning of Arabs who “want to destroy us all”.Battling a tight election race in the run-up to the 17 September polls, the Israeli prime minister has sought to appeal to far-right religious and nationalist voters who fear the political influence of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Continue reading...

Supermarket to roll out grocery deliveries within one hour across more UK citiesMorrisons has expanded its partnership with Amazon for ultra-fast same-day grocery deliveries to more cities across the UK, as it reported a drop in quarterly sales.The Bradford-based supermarket group said it had signed a multiyear deal with Amazon, which replaces its previous rolling contract, to cover “many more cities across the UK”. Continue reading...