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Lanier was there for the creation of the internet and is convinced that social media is toxic, making us sadder, angrier and more isolated

If confirmed, it would be the third time a Tesla in autopilot has crashed into a stationary emergency vehicle this yearA Tesla car operating in “autopilot” mode crashed into a stationary police car in Laguna Beach, California, leaving the driver injured and the patrol vehicle “totalled”, according to an official.Sgt Jim Cota, the public information officer for the Laguna Beach police department, tweeted photos of the accident, which was reported at 11.07am on Tuesday. The driver of the Tesla, who suffered minor lacerations to the face from his glasses, told police officers the Tesla was in the semi-autonomous mode, although further investigation is needed to confirm this. Continue reading...

Directors could face financial penalty on top of fine directly imposed on companyBusiness directors could be personally fined up to £500,000 if they fail to prevent nuisance calls, under a government consultation on the issue.While there has been a big recent increase in the fines issued to companies – last year one was fined £400,000 for making almost 100m automated calls in 18 months – there is concern this has not been a sufficient deterrent. Continue reading...

Submission says bill would disproportionately affect ethnic minorities, and damage freedom of assembly and expression• Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morningFacial matching technology proposed by the government risks racial bias and would have a chilling effect on the right to freedom of assembly without further safeguards, the Human Rights Law Centre has said.The warning is contained in a submission to a parliamentary committee inquiry examining the Coalition’s proposal for the home affairs department to collect, use and disclose facial identification information. Continue reading...

Your reflexes are shot and your hand-eye coordination is dodgy – so how do you keep up with the kids in the world’s biggest video game? Here are the 13 rules of survivalYour kids are playing it, your friends are complaining about their kids playing it, and the tabloid press are telling you no one should be playing it because it’s evil. But the fact is, Fortnite is here, it’s lots of fun, and if you can’t beat its 40 million players you may as well join them.

This money-making addition can ‘exploit and manipulate’ players. But the impact on children is the biggest concern

It is lightning quick, clean, green – and expensive. But shouldn’t we think again about magnetic levitation?Clean, green, quick and quiet; no wheels, no engines to fail; able to stop quickly and safely and glide off noiselessly on a cushion of air.

Millions of teenagers have turned this unheralded video game into a cultural giant – and even parents are relaxed about itFortnite, a video game released without much fanfare last July, is now arguably the most popular diversion in the world; a cultural juggernaut on a par with Star Wars, or Minecraft – though one now also attracting players with a $100m prize fund. Playgrounds jostle as children showboat dance moves copied from the game, while parents tip from mournful anxiety about screentime quotas, to blessed relief that here is a game that encourages teamwork, compromise and communication between their otherwise monosyllabic adolescents.Fortnite borrows the premise of the Japanese novel Battle Royale and The Hunger Games, in which contestants are sent to an island where they must scavenge and fight until only one remains. In Fortnite you are dropped along with 99 other players from a flying bus, and parachute on to a candy-coloured island. Every few minutes a lethal electrical storm draws closer, herding survivors toward a final standoff. Continue reading...

The first ground-up car from DS gives a clear indication of where the brand is heading… into the VIP areaDS 7 Crossback

Agency urges router owners to reset them and download updates amid fears hackers could collect dataThe FBI warned on Friday that Russian computer hackers had compromised hundreds of thousands of home and office routers and could collect user information or shut down network traffic.The US law enforcement agency urged the owners of many brands of routers to turn them off and on again and download updates from the manufacturer to protect themselves. Continue reading...

‘One-man cybercrime wave’ Grant West masqueraded as Just Eat to get people’s dataA hacker who carried out attacks on a string of companies before selling customers’ data on the dark web has been jailed for more than 10 years.Grant West, 26, carried out cyber-attacks on high street brands including Sainsbury’s, Asda, Uber, Argos and bookmakers Ladbrokes and Coral. Continue reading...

Users have been forced into agreeing new terms of service, says EU consumer rights bodyFacebook and Google have become the targets of the first official complaints of GDPR noncompliance, filed on the day the privacy law takes effect across the EU.Across four complaints, related to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Google’s Android operating system, European consumer rights organisation Noyb argues that the companies have forced users into agreeing to new terms of service, in breach of the requirement in the law that such consent should be freely given. Continue reading...

LA Times, Chicago Tribune and others redirect to pages saying sites are currently unavailable in most European countriesThe general data protection regulation, which has come into effect, has prompted a number of prestigious US-based websites including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune to shut off access to internet users in the EU.Visitors to newspapers owned by Tronc Inc – formerly Tribune Publishing – which also includes the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel and the San Diego Union-Tribune, are being redirected to a page with the message: “Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. Continue reading...

How has becoming compliant played out in your workplace? What short and long term effects will the process have on the business?The last minute frenzy to retain customers while still complying with new regulation won’t have escaped your inbox.

The General Data Protection Regulation is coming into into force. Jordan Erica Webber finds out how the deluge of emails could be a health hazardSubscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at chipspodcast@theguardian.com.The General Data Protection Regulation is coming into force. Continue reading...

Police report says Model S accelerated for 3.5 seconds prior to collision with stopped firetruck that left two injuredA Tesla that crashed while in Autopilot mode in Utah this month accelerated in the seconds before it smashed into a stopped firetruck, according to a police report obtained by the Associated Press on Thursday. Two people were injured.Data from the Model S electric vehicle show it picked up speed for 3.5 seconds shortly before crashing into a stopped firetruck in suburban Salt Lake City, the report said. The driver manually hit the brakes a fraction of a second before impact. Continue reading...

The company, which has insisted its Echo devices aren’t always recording, has confirmed the audio was sentNo matter how suspicious it has seemed that Amazon is encouraging us to put listening devices in every room of our homes, the company has always said that its Echo assistants are not listening in on or recording conversations. Over and over again, company spokespeople have promised that they only start recording if someone says the wake word: “Alexa”.It’s a spiel Danielle, an Alexa user from Portland, Oregon, had believed. She’d installed Echo devices and smart bulbs in every room in her house, accepting Amazon’s claims that they were not invading her privacy. But today she asked the company to investigate after an Alexa device recorded a private conversation between her and her husband and sent it to a random number in their address book without their permission. Continue reading...

After controversy over Russian ads targeting US election, company creates searchable archive of political advertisingSix months after acknowledging it had run advertisements purchased by a Russian influence operation during the 2016 US presidential campaign, Facebook launched new political ad labels in the US disclosing who paid for them.Also starting Thursday on Facebook and Instagram, users will be able to search an archive of election and political issue ads in the US for all the political ads by a given candidate or organization. The archive will also allow users to see limited demographic information – age, gender and location – about the audience who saw the ad. Continue reading...

Federal investigation finds emergency braking system was not enabled in SUV that hit Arizona pedestrianA federal investigation into a self-driving Uber SUV that hit and killed a pedestrian in March has found that the vehicle’s emergency braking system was disabled.The preliminary report, issued by the National Transportation Safety Board, said on Thursday that while the vehicle’s guidance system had spotted the woman about six seconds before hitting her, emergency braking manoeuvres were not enabled in order to “reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior”. Continue reading...

Some companies push new onerous terms of service on users as GDPR rules come into force on FridayDozens of websites shut down their activities completely, others forced users to agree to new terms of service, and inboxes have been flooded with emails begging customers to remain on mailing lists as the GDPR rules come into force on Friday.The biggest update in data protection laws since the 1990s is posing major challenges for developers and businesses – while giving substantial new powers to consumers. Continue reading...

While many apps gather ‘digital dust’, others foster dependent helplessness, writes Martin WillisJohn Harris’s critique of the internet revolution (Ignore the hype over big tech. Its products are mostly useless, 21 May) does not go far enough. While many apps gather “digital dust”, others foster dependent helplessness.Last week in Berlin, a young Bavarian visitor asked me, a non-German speaking British pensioner, for help in navigating a short journey on the underground. He looked bemused when I produced a map and traced the route he needed to take, to the extent that I offered to guide him as I was travelling in a similar direction. Continue reading...

As regulations come into force on Friday, inboxes fill with messages hoping to persuade customers to stay subscribedAs the GDPR deadline approaches, businesses have been resorting to ever more desperate attempts to get users to open their emails.

Renewed call to drop Facebook’s under-13s chat app backed by 21,000-strong petitionMore than 21,000 child health advocates are petitioning Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to “pull the plug” on the company’s Messenger Kids app aimed at under 13s, warning of the “addictive power of social media”.In an open letter and petition led by two groups, the Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC) and MomsRising, the campaigners urged Zuckerberg to use his “enormous reach and influence to promote children’s wellbeing.” Continue reading...

Playstation 4; Quantic Dream/Sony

Company gathered data from texts and photos of users and their friends, court case claimsFacebook used its apps to gather information about users and their friends, including some who had not signed up to the social network, reading their text messages, tracking their locations and accessing photos on their phones, a court case in California alleges.The claims of what would amount to mass surveillance are part of a lawsuit brought against the company by the former startup Six4Three, listed in legal documents filed at the superior court in San Mateo as part of a court case that has been ongoing for more than two years. Continue reading...

Facebook CEO exploited ability to access data from any user’s friend network, US case claimsMark Zuckerberg faces allegations that he developed a “malicious and fraudulent scheme” to exploit vast amounts of private data to earn Facebook billions and force rivals out of business.A company suing Facebook in a California court claims the social network’s chief executive “weaponised” the ability to access data from any user’s network of friends – the feature at the heart of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Continue reading...

Firm’s first non-US Advanced Technologies Centre will host Elevate programme and research into electric transportUber is opening a new research centre in Paris to develop the firm’s flying taxis as part of its Elevate programme.The new Advanced Technologies Centre, which will open in the autumn, will be Uber’s first development site outside the US. The taxi firm said that it would be investing €20m (£17.5m) over the next five years and is partnering with École Polytechnique on various research schemes. Continue reading...

Matt’s dad wants to organise files and make them accessible via his phone and tablet. Which program should he choose?My dad runs a small business and has problems organising his files – Word documents, PDFs, photos – alongside his emails. He wants to be able to easily save the emails and files in folders in date order in a single place. He also wants the folders to be accessible from anywhere on his phone/iPad.I’ve tried simply saving the emails and documents into a single folder on his Mac, but this is a huge pain for the amount of emails he receives. MattOne of the advantages of the digitisation of information is that we can now store many different kinds of data together. Videos and sound recordings now sit happily alongside letters, photos, paper receipts and invoices instead of in separate ledgers or folders, or on different physical media such as cassette tapes, CDs, DVDs etc.

Battlefield V aims to showcase the “unseen locations and untold stories” of war, with both epic battles and individual missions to engage in from Norway to north AfricaWARNING: video content not suitable for childrenThe Battlefield series is going back to where it started with its fifth incarnation, but this time with a goal of showcasing the “unseen locations, untold stories, and unplayed gameplay moments” of the second world war.For the first time in the series, that also includes a heavy focus on female soldiers, with a substantial chunk of the single-player mode starring women, and the option for players to bring female characters into multiplayer games. Continue reading...

The company will focus research efforts on Pittsburgh and continue to test in San FranciscoUber is to shut down its self-driving car programme in Arizona after one of its cars killed a pedestrian there in March.Related: Self-driving Uber kills Arizona woman in first fatal crash involving pedestrian Continue reading...

French president demands commitments from Silicon Valley to give back to societyThe French president Emmanuel Macron has warned a gathering of global tech bosses – including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg – that they cannot ride the coattails of the digital economy without giving back to society.Macron told key tech figures at the Elysée palace on Wednesday that they could not just be “free riding” without taking into account the common good. He called on them to help improve “social situations, inequalities, climate change.” Continue reading...

ACLU releases documentation on Amazon Rekognition software, fueling fears of surveillance via police body camerasIn the aftermath of the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, over the killing of Michael Brown, police departments and policy makers around the country hit upon a supposed panacea to racist policing and police brutality: body-worn cameras.Many hailed the move as a victory for accountability. But among the few dissenters was Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice and a leader in the Black Lives Matter network, who warned early and often that the cameras could become tools of surveillance against people of color because “body-worn cameras don’t watch the police, they watch the community being policed, people like me”. Continue reading...

Attorney general says internet cannot be allowed to descend into a ‘lawless world’Britain will name and shame foreign states that hire hackers to carry out cyber-attacks or interfere via the internet in national elections, the attorney general has warned.In a speech referring to Russian and North Korean “campaigns of intrusion”, Jeremy Wright QC called for international sanctions to be applied against countries that exploit cyberspace for illegal purposes. Continue reading...

The format didn’t let MEPs question the Facebook boss too deeply – but there were worries over its monopoly1. The European Parliament’s chosen format was a terrible way to elicit answers from one of the most powerful people in the world.Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance in front of the European parliament’s conference of presidents was a long-awaited opportunity to press the founder of the world’s biggest social network – which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp – on his company’s global influence and use of personal data following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Continue reading...

Facebook founder spends 30 minutes giving answers to 60 minutes of MEPs’ questionsMark Zuckerberg’s meeting at the European parliament ended in acrimony amid a chorus of complaints that the Facebook founder had been allowed to evade questions and give vague answers. Over the 90-minute session, the Facebook founder told MEPs there would be no repeat of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal as he fielded accusations that his company had too much power.The format meant Zuckerberg spent around 30 minutes giving answers to a 60-minute block of consecutive questions. The 12 MEPs asked dozens of overlapping questions that allowed the Facebook boss to pick and choose his answers. Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the liberal group, slammed the “precooked format” as “inappropriate” and said it had permitted Zuckerberg to avoid questions. Continue reading...

Facebook’s co-founder will be speaking to the ‘conference of presidents’ made up of leaders of the eight major political groupings7.50pm BSTIf you’re looking for a handy guide to what, exactly, happened today (and even if you watched the whole thing, you may want that question answered), my colleague Jennifer Rankin has the wrap.7.30pm BSTDamian Collins, chair of the DCMS committee, repeats his frustration at the hearing:What a missed opportunity for proper scrutiny on many crucial questions raised by the MEPs. Questions were blatantly dodged on shadow profiles, sharing data between WhatsApp and Facebook, the ability to opt out of political advertising and the true scale of data abuse on the platform.Unfortunately, the format of questioning allowed Mr Zuckerberg to cherry-pick his responses and not respond to each individual point. Continue reading...

The tech giant’s algorithms could have been compromising rape victims’ anonymity – and it’s not the first time the company has been tripped up by AI-driven systemsSometimes, Google is just a bit too good at carrying out its stated goal to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Take search suggestions, the helpful feature that sees Google autocomplete phrases typed into its search engine. Type “How can I cook macaroni ...” and the site will add “cheese” on to the end, saving you six whole keystrokes. Wonderful!But it turns out there could be some less desirable implementations of the technology. The search-suggestion feature, and a similar feature that offers “related searches” at the bottom of the results page, could be helping to compromise the right to anonymity of complainants in UK rape and sexual assault cases. Type in the defendant’s name with a little extra information and the search engine may suggest related searches that include the victim’s name. It’s not the first time that Google, or one of its competitors in big tech, has been caught out after handing control to AI-driven, crowdsourced suggestions. Continue reading...

Tredegar, the birthplace of Aneurin Bevan, offers a microcosm of the health and social care problems facing the nationGrowing up in Tredegar in the 1960s, Jackie Rowlands vividly remembers the long benches in the surgery waiting room. Patients would move along the bench until it was their turn to see the doctor: “They were absolutely shining, so people just slid along because they were polished all the time. When you were a child, they were wonderful. You might be at the surgery at nine o’clock in the morning and not be seen until 11 o’clock, and if the doctor was called out to an emergency nobody complained.” She recalls a spirit of camaraderie: “Women used to knit in the surgery. And you had conversations – you got to know people along the bench.”Coal mining had brought jobs and relative prosperity to the town: Rowlands remembers Tredegar as a thriving community, with two cinemas, a “massive library”, the Workmen’s Hall, which held weekly dances, and a snooker hall. But the industry took its toll on health: pneumoconiosis, a lung ailment caused by coal dust, was widespread. Continue reading...

Gregory Stevens resigns after tweets about Palo Alto, slamming tech industry greed and empty social justice promisesA Silicon Valley pastor has resigned from his church after calling the city of Palo Alto an “elitist shit den of hate” and criticizing the hypocrisy of “social justice” activism in the region.

Facebook chief initially agreed to closed-door meeting, but will now speak publiclyMark Zuckerberg will appear publicly before the European parliament on Tuesday, ending a terse standoff with the institution, but further inflaming tensions with the House of Commons, which has repeatedly requested an appearance from the Facebook founder.The president of the European parliament, Antonio Tajani, announced on Monday morning that Zuckerberg’s appearance would be publicly livestreamed, following criticism that the Facebook chief executive had initially managed to persuade the body to meet him behind closed doors. Continue reading...

A projected Princess Leia in Star Wars suggested a 3D future, but we’ll have to wait a while before we are playing holochessThe fragile apparition endured only long enough to say: “Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope” before flickering out. But R2D2’s 3D projection gave millions of young eyes, including mine, their first taste of holograms, and planted unrealistic expectations of a future playing dejarik, the gruesome game of holographic chess played on board the Millennium Falcon.The concept of the hologram was already familiar, invented in the 1940s by physicist Dennis Gabor, but since the force reawakened the idea almost 40 years later, things haven’t really moved on. Why aren’t real, moving, Leia-style holograms now part of our day-to-day lives? Continue reading...

Deal will create single giant catalogue of more than four million songsSony has announced a US$1.9bn (£1.4bn) deal to acquire EMI Music Publishing, one of the world’s largest music publishing companies with rights to songs by the likes of Queen and Pharrell Williams.

Jon Baines says NHS trusts and others misunderstand the General Data Protection Regulation, Richard Stallman says personal data is only harmless when not collected, and John Chen of BlackBerry says individuals should own their own dataThe General Data Protection Regulation does not require organisations to contact consumers to obtain approval for further communications (however the contact details were originally collected). And it certainly doesn’t require NHS trusts to “get explicit permissions from patients” to send appointment reminders (New data law raises fears for NHS messages to patients, 19 May). That some NHS trusts are apparently under this misapprehension (which is as a result of confusion regarding GDPR and the 2003 regulations relating to the sending of electronic direct marketing) is concerning. A reminder message is both a very useful service for a patient, and a sensible way of avoiding the cost to the NHS of missed appointments. What it is definitely not, however, is a direct marketing message.Indeed, if NHS trusts are using patient data in this way, and if the result is some patients wrongly not getting reminders, those trusts are arguably breaching the existing data protection law that requires data to be “adequate” for the purposes for which it is held.

Many firms have the required consent already; others don’t have consent to send a requestThe vast majority of emails flooding inboxes across Europe from companies asking for consent to keep recipients on their mailing list are unnecessary and some may be illegal, privacy experts have said, as new rules over data privacy come into force at the end of this week.Many companies, acting based on poor legal advice, a fear of fines of up to €20m (£17.5m) and a lack of good examples to follow, have taken what they see as the safest option for hewing to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): asking customers to renew their consent for marketing communications and data processing. Continue reading...

Collective action seeking up to £3.2bn for claims Google bypassed privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browserGoogle is being sued in the high court for as much as £3.2bn for the alleged “clandestine tracking and collation” of personal information from 4.4 million iPhone users in the UK.The collective action is being led by former Which? director Richard Lloyd over claims Google bypassed the privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser on iPhones between August 2011 and February 2012 in order to divide people into categories for advertisers. Continue reading...

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation comes into force this week – here’s what it meansYou could be forgiven for thinking that Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a law created to fill your inbox with identikit warnings from every company you have ever interacted with online that “the privacy policy has changed” and pleas to “just click here so we can stay in touch”.But GDPR is far more than just an inbox-clogger. The regulation, seven years in the making, finally comes into effect on 25 May, and is set to force sweeping changes in everything from technology to advertising, and medicine to banking. Continue reading...

New faster dual-motor AWD variants added to lineup as firm continues battle to ramp up production of ‘mass market’ TeslaElon Musk has announced two new versions of the Model 3, including a high-performance model capable of hitting 60mph in 3.5 seconds, following months of production woes.

Xbox One, PC; Undead Labs/Microsoft

Attempts to reinvent money such as bitcoin often create excitement, but achieve littleThe cryptocurrency revolution, which started with bitcoin in 2009, claims to be inventing new kinds of money. There are now nearly 2,000 cryptocurrencies, and millions of people worldwide are excited by them. What accounts for this enthusiasm, which so far remains undampened by warnings that the revolution is a sham?One must bear in mind that attempts to reinvent money have a long history. As the sociologist Viviana Zelizer points out in her book The Social Meaning of Money: “Despite the commonsense idea that ‘a dollar is a dollar is a dollar,’ everywhere we look people are constantly creating different kinds of money.” Many of these innovations generate real excitement, at least for a while. Continue reading...

Great screen, improved camera and dual-sim support make this high-performing £469 phone feel like a bargainThe new OnePlus 6 holds true to a winning formula: a premium smartphone with top-end specs that costs less than half the price of an iPhone X.