Technology | The Guardian

The founders of Teacher Tapp, which surveys every aspect of teachers’ lives, hope their data can help improve retentionDoes it matter how often teachers go to the pub together, who they are in relationships with, or whether they do marking in the Easter holidays?Such quirky details about the hidden lives of the people who educate our children could be dismissed as irrelevant. However, that would be a mistake, say the founders of a new app designed to capture a real-time picture of the habits and motivation of the workforce of nearly half a million. Prof Becky Allen and Laura McInerney, a Guardian columnist, are former teachers who believe that understanding more about teachers’ lives could be the key to keeping them in the profession for longer. That is why they got together with a physics teacher, Alex Weatherall, to develop an app that gets daily insights into what teachers are doing and how they are feeling. Continue reading...

Tech company is alerting everyone affected as the country’s privacy chief demands to know if Cambridge Analytica used the informationTen New Zealanders who downloaded an app on Facebook could have exposed up to 63,714 of their compatriots to the data mining tactics of Cambridge Analytica.Facebook has told the country’s privacy commissioner that it is in the process of alerting New Zealanders who were affected by the breach, which occurred when ten users downloaded a personality quiz app. Continue reading...

National Cyber Security Centre finds increase in criminal online attacks against UK firms in 2017Criminal cyber-attacks on UK businesses increased last year, according to the annual report of the National Cyber Security Centre.Firms face a growing threat from ransomware, data breaches and weaknesses in the supply chain, according to the report, published on Tuesday. Emerging threats include theft from cloud storage, which the NCSC argues too many businesses put their faith in. Continue reading...

A new IMF report shows some stark gender trends in European and US workforce, including one that follows virtual reality in a new Spielberg film

Lauren Sager Weinstein, Transport for London’s chief data officer, explains what happens to its customers’ information. Plus Jon Baines on the General Data Protection RegulationWe take protecting the privacy of our customers extremely seriously (How to keep data truly safe? Don’t collect it in the first place, 4 April). Aside from cases where it is essential that we know the identity of a holder of an Oyster card – such as when checking customers are entitled for free or discounted travel – there is no requirement for anyone to share their personal details with us.For all cards, including those Oyster cards where proof of identity is required, we deliberately break the link in our systems between the card and the journeys made with it as soon as that link is no longer required for customer support, such as processing fare refunds. Continue reading...

As Facebook begins contacting millions of users whose personal information it says was harvested, we’d like to hear from people affected

Former hacktivists say action by Kemi Badenoch breaches Computer Misuse Act and question potential for prosecution or reformFormer hacktivists have reacted with bafflement after the Conservative MP Kemi Badenoch admitted that she hacked Harriet Harman’s website in 2008.Badenoch confessed to the hack, which carried a jail sentence of up to five years at the time she acted, in response to a question about the “naughtiest” thing she had done. Continue reading...

Countries spending billions on ‘third revolution in warfare’ as UN debates regulation of AI-powered weaponsThey will be “weapons of terror, used by terrorists and rogue states against civilian populations. Unlike human soldiers, they will follow any orders however evil,” says Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Studios are keener than ever to take a cut from this multibillion-dollar industry – but even the best games rarely inspire good filmsAs recent efforts – Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed, Warcraft – continue to show, video games rarely make great movies. If ever. Dwayne Johnson’s new epic Rampage might change all this, just as giant, genetically modified wolves might fly, but the source material was hardly that compelling to start with, partly because it was already a mish-mash of movie tropes. In the original Rampage arcade game, you could be King Kong, Godzilla or a werewolf and you basically had to re-enact a city-trashing scene out of a monster movie. Now, see the movie of the game of the movie!To turn it around, however, games already have taken over the movies. Look at Johnson’s last mega-hit, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. It wasn’t based on an existing game(nor was it a feature-length Guns N’ Roses song, which was a disappointment to some), but Jumanji did involve characters being sucked into a video game world, for all manner of entertaining body-swap action-adventure. One of the reasons Jumanji worked so well was because it was structured like a game. The set-up was crystal-clear: to get back home, the characters had to go through various levels, collect clues and Get the Thing (in this case, the “Jaguar’s eye”). Furthermore, the characters had their avatar’s skills and three lives each. As a movie targeted at younger viewers, it worked a treat. You knew who the characters were, where they were going and what they had to do to “win”. So many family movies forget this – A Wrinkle in Time, for instance. Continue reading...

Complaint filed with US watchdog urges sanctions for Google allegedly failing to comply with child protection laws around data collection and adsA coalition of 23 child advocacy, consumer and privacy groups have filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission alleging that Google is violating child protection laws by collecting personal data of and advertising to those aged under 13.

Message will reveal which users had personal information was harvested by Cambridge Analytica

A new generation of machines is being created, often with complex purposes in mindLast week, Nasa announced that it is developing robotic bees to gather information about areas of Mars that wouldn’t be accessible to a Mars rover. The bots could detect, for example, methane, a possible sign of life. Continue reading...

The only drawback to a car like this are the prying eyes that follow you whenever you drop the topMercedes-Benz E400 4MATIC AMG Line Cabriolet

Iranian IT minister says warning that displayed US flag was part of attack that also affected Europe, India and the USHackers have attacked networks in a number of countries including data centres in Iran, where they left the image of a US flag on screens along with a warning: “Don’t mess with our elections”, the Iranian IT ministry said on Saturday.“The attack apparently affected 200,000 router switches across the world in a widespread attack, including 3,500 switches in our country,” the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology said in a statement carried by Iran’s official news agency IRNA. Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg will be hauled before Congress this week. He’ll apologise – but his company doesn’t know how to change its brand of ‘surveillance capitalism’Ponder this … and weep. The United States, theoretically a mature democracy of 327 million souls, is ruled by a 71-year-old unstable narcissist with a serious social media habit. And the lawmakers of this republic have hauled up before them a 34-year-old white male, one Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, the sole and impregnable ruler of a virtual country of about 2.2 billion people who stands accused of unwittingly facilitating the election of said narcissist by allowing Russian agents and other bad actors to exploit the surveillance apparatus of his – Zuckerberg’s – virtual state.How did we get into this preposterous mess? Answering this question requires an understanding of (among other things) the peculiar nature of digital technology, the ideology of Silicon Valley, the astonishing political naivety of Zuckerberg, the ethical tunnel vision of software engineers and – most important – the business model that has come to be known as “surveillance capitalism”. Continue reading...

Direct action planned in protest against company’s involvement in Cambridge Analytica scandalFacebook users are being urged to stop using the social media platform for one day in protest against the company’s involvement in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The Faceblock campaign has been planned to coincide with Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance before US Congress on Wednesday, where the Facebook chief executive will be testifying about data privacy issues.The international group of campaigners is asking people to take part in a day of online protest by refusing to use Facebook’s platforms and apps, including Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, for 24 hours. Continue reading...

As Sheryl Sandberg mounts apology tour, company is under fire again over special privacy privileges not granted to regular users

AggregateIQ, which played a pivotal role in the Brexit campaign, suspended after reports it may have improperly obtained user data

Moved intended to stall spread of false information and ‘prevent future abuse in elections’Facebook is stepping up its efforts to fight fake news and political misinformation, with new controls intended to ensure authenticity and transparency among advertisers and publishers on the site.CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post shortly after the moves were announced: “These steps by themselves won’t stop all people trying to game the system. But they will make it a lot harder for anyone to do what the Russians did during the 2016 election and use fake accounts and pages to run ads.” He also threw his company’s support behind the Honest Ads Act, a US Senate bill: “Election interference is a problem that’s bigger than any one platform ... This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online.” Continue reading...

Taping over the lens is just the first step in keeping online snoopers out of your businessHere is what the former FBI director James Comey said when he was asked back in September 2016 if he covered his laptop’s webcam with tape.“Heck yeah, heck yeah. Also, I get mocked for a lot of things, and I am much mocked for that, but I hope people lock their cars … lock your doors at night. I have an alarm system, if you have an alarm system you should use it, I use mine.” Continue reading...

This week’s edition of Upside looks at experimental projects that offer a peek into the futureNew technologies are often touted as the solutions to our problems, as well as decried as the cause of all manner of social ills. We are told that increasing automation of jobs will mean more of us spending less time working, with ever greater responsibility handed over to software, sensors and the cloud.This week we visited some experimental projects that could offer a glimpse of our future, to see how people are grappling with the possibilities and problems of technological innovation. Continue reading...

The game-makers behind studio Vague Pixels used to squeeze in coding after their homework. Now they’re hoping that their frenetic action game Alter Army takes offJaipur has a population of around three million people, but only one video game development studio – or so Vague Pixels claims. Founders Mridul Bansal and Mridul Pancholi are set to release their debut game, the frenetically paced action platformer Alter Army, at the end of the month. An early build of the game shows enormous potential – it’s a little rough-hewn, as you’d expect from an unfinished version, but it’s energetic, characterful and boasts an entertainingly hard challenge. What makes it more remarkable is that it’s been created in less than two years by 16-year-olds with no game design experience.In fact, as Bansal explains to me over a patchy Skype connection, the pair were barely 14 when they started working together. He had recently moved schools when he met Pancholi; they were classmates, but rarely spoke. “One day we heard each other talking about computers and game development, and we thought we should discuss it,” Bansal recalls. “I went to his house and we decided to start a project so we could polish our skills.” Continue reading...

The Facebook chief has carefully crafted his image of boy genius turned mature leader. Now he’s losing control

An OECD report suggests robots could soon take 66m jobs from humans. That isn’t as bad as previously expected. But who will be first to lose their jobs to machines?Subscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at podcasts@theguardian.comA new report from the OECD – the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – looked at the extent to which jobs may soon be automated in 32 different countries, and found that 66 million people are at risk of losing their job to machines. That means 14% of jobs currently held by humans could soon be managed by robots. The level of risk varies from industry to industry and country to country, but in the UK about 10% of jobs are considered at high risk. Continue reading...

Company acknowledges revelations in CNBC report but says project was put on hold, with no data ‘shared or analyzed’Facebook was in discussions with major medical institutions about sharing user and patient data for a research project, the social media company admitted on Thursday, after revelations in a news report .The report, from CNBC, said the proposed plan included using a process to match data for individuals in both sets, which would be anonymized, to research how such information sharing could improve individual patient care. Continue reading...

Groups that have worked with Facebook to flag dangerous content reveal it took more than four days for it to respond when messages started circulatingA consortium of civil society, human rights and monitoring groups in Myanmar have criticised Mark Zuckerberg’s response to the spread of hate speech on the platform and accused the social media giant of failing to act quickly enough to curtail dangerous messages that incited violence inside the country.Earlier this week, Zuckerberg told Vox Facebook’s systems had detected a pair of chain letters spreading around Myanmar on Facebook Messenger last year. One warned of an imminent attack by Muslims on 11 September. Continue reading...

World’s eighth largest firm needs governance structure to provide better oversight than its founderThe most revealing answer given by Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday was his shortest. Asked if Facebook’s board had discussed whether he should step down as chairman, a move that would still leave him as chief executive, he replied: “Not that I’m aware of.”It’s probably safe to assume Zuckerberg would have known about any such discussions among his fellow directors, so take his answer to mean: no, Facebook’s board has heard the calls for the appointment of an independent chair, from New York City’s pension fund for example, and decided to ignore them. Continue reading...

CEO to appear before Senate judiciary and commerce committees in addition to House, amid investigation of Cambridge Analytica claimsMark Zuckerberg has agreed to testify before a joint hearing of two Senate committees, in addition to his appearance before a House committee next week.The Facebook CEO will appear before the Senate judiciary and commerce committees on Tuesday, and then the House energy and commerce committee on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Information commissioner is investigating use of personal information in political campaignsThe UK Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating 30 organisations, including Facebook, as part of its inquiry into the use of personal data and analytics for political purposes.The information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, said: “As part of my investigation into the use of personal data and analytics by political campaigns, parties, social media companies and other commercial actors, the ICO is investigating 30 organisations, including Facebook. Continue reading...

Number of accounts removed in second half of 2017 represents a drop for second period in a rowTwitter removed more than 270,000 accounts around the world for promoting terrorism in the second half of 2017, according to the company’s latest transparency report.

Mobile adventure game Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, which will allow players to become students at the wizarding school, will be launched on 25 AprilHarry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, the much-anticipated mobile adventure game that will allow players to become a student at the wizarding school, will be launched on 25 April, developer Jam City has announced.The game, which was revealed on the Pottermore site last autumn, will also feature six actors reprising their roles from the Harry Potter movies, including Michael Gambon as Professor Dumbledore, Dame Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall and Warwick Davis as Professor Flitwick. Continue reading...

Thomas wants to avoid Windows 10’s update problems on small laptops with only 32GB of storage. He’s asking about installing Windows 7 instead, but there are better optionsIs it possible to install Windows 7 on an Asus notebook with 32GB of storage? I don’t need the complexities of Windows 10 and its updating problems. I just need a light machine for travelling that gives me access to email and a word processor. ThomasAs a rule of thumb, you should never try to install an old operating system on new hardware, unless it has been tested to run it. Microsoft released Windows 7 in 2009, almost nine years ago. The hardware in Windows machines has changed since then, and you may not be able to find the drivers needed to make your Asus work with Windows 7. Continue reading...

The Facebook founder has said in a conference call to reporters that his company 'didn't do enough' to prevent companies like Cambridge Analytica from abusing tools on the platform. Zuckerberg said he accepted this was his 'mistake' and that the company should have done more

Academics around the world voice ‘huge concern’ over KAIST’s collaboration with defence company on autonomous weaponsArtificial intelligence researchers from nearly 30 countries are boycotting a South Korean university over concerns a new lab in partnership with a leading defence company could lead to “killer robots”.

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology demonstrates a robot designed for rescue missions or helping people with disabilities. The institute is facing a boycott from artificial intelligence researchers from nearly 30 countries over concerns that a new lab that has partnered with a leading defence company could lead to 'killer robots' Continue reading...

EA’s head of development addresses last year’s Battlefront II controversy and going from a three-person team to making multimillion-dollar gamesIn 2017, there were 7,672 games released on Steam, the world’s most popular video game service. That’s 21 games every single day. (For context, in 2013 that number was 565.) As of January 2018, if you filter out the dross, the average Steam game sells about 1,000 copies, according to independent data-crunching by publisher No More Robots. This is the dispiriting reality that independent game developers are working with: at this month’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, there were queues up and down the hallway for a talk entitled “Making indie games that sell”.Patrick Söderlund is the executive vice-president of one of the biggest game publishers in the world, EA – a company far removed from these problems, making multimillion-dollar games with studios that employ hundreds of people. Twenty years ago, though, he was part of a three-person team working out of an apartment in Sweden, making the original Battlefield games that have since become one of EA’s largest money-makers. It’s partly this experience that has led him to believe that big publishers such as EA should help independent games get made. Continue reading...

Facebook suspects 300,000 Australians had data shared with Cambridge AnalyticaAustralia’s privacy commissioner has launched an investigation to determine whether Facebook breached the Australian privacy act. The investigation was announced after the US social media giant revealed up to one in 50 local users may have had their personal information accessed by Cambridge Analytica.Facebook has admitted 311,127 Australian users are likely among the up to 87 million users worldwide whose data was unknowingly and “improperly” shared with the British political consultancy agency. Continue reading...

Shooting suspect appears to be a frustrated YouTuber who claimed the site censored her views through its ‘monetization’ policiesThe apparent motive in Tuesday’s shooting at YouTube’s headquarters is shining a light on the video-sharing platform’s complicated relationship with its most dedicated users – so-called “creators” who earn a share of the advertising revenue for their videos.Nasim Najafi Aghdam travelled to the company’s Silicon Valley campus and opened fire, shooting three people before killing herself, because she was “upset with the policies and practices of YouTube,” police said Wednesday. Continue reading...

The app helped revolutionise the community’s approach to HIV. Sharing that data undoes all its good workGay men have always needed safe spaces, somewhere they could congregate without fear of stigma and judgment or, even more essentially, persecution and violence. Over the past several decades, those spaces were more often than not gay bars and clubs, where gay men flocked to be themselves in a way that wasn’t always possible in “polite society”. The fact that there were also scores of men at those establishments looking for casual encounters wasn’t just a bonus, it was often the entire point.Related: Grindr shared information about users' HIV status with third parties Continue reading...

The role-playing adventure books sold 20m copies in the 80s, before being eclipsed by video games. Now they’re back with a new story by Charlie Higson, can they captivate the web generation?Ian Livingstone calls it the “five-fingered bookmark”: that grip known to children of the 80s and 90s. You’d insert a finger into various sections of your Fighting Fantasy adventure game book in order to be able to return if, say, your choice to drink the “sparkling red liquid” and turn to section 98 turned out to be a bad one, or if attacking the Mirror Demon “from another dimensional plane” proved fatal.“You used to see it on public transport everywhere,” says Livingstone, who with Steve Jackson dreamed up Fighting Fantasy back in the early 80s. “It’s like peeking around the corner. You can’t call it cheating – it’s taking a sneak peek.” Continue reading...

Nasim Najafi Aghdam injured three people at San Francisco office before killing herselfPolice in California have named a woman who opened fire at YouTube’s headquarters in a suburb of San Francisco, injuring three, before killing herself.Officials from the San Bruno police department identified her as Nasim Najafi Aghdam, who was in her late 30s. Continue reading...

Firm working on version of EU data protection law but Mark Zuckerberg stops short of confirming all changes will apply to US usersFacebook is rolling out stronger privacy protections to users ahead of the introduction of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), but Mark Zuckerberg will not promise all future changes will apply to the company’s American users.Although the initial tranche of changes, announced last week, will be available worldwide, Zuckerberg refused to commit to GDPR becoming the standard for the social network across the world. Continue reading...

We are conditioned to view data as a threat, but it can be the opposite, if all parties understand the deal into which they are entering“Raise your hands if you trust Facebook, if you trust Google, if you trust government.” It was spring 2017, and I was leading a debate with young people in Canberra. “Has anybody heard of Cambridge Analytica?” Heads shook.I explained behavioural communication. How Cambridge Analytica built “psychographics” from Facebook data to measure personality and motivation – what you choose and why you choose it – with the intention of influencing how people vote. The room fell silent, people looked alarmed. Continue reading...

Morrow, who has overseen rollout of national broadband network, says role has been ‘sometimes frustrating’The NBN chief executive, Bill Morrow, will quit his role by the end of the year, ending four years heading the rollout of the national broadband network during which he oversaw a massive change of direction in the nation’s largest infrastructure project.

Company says the Internet Research Agency, which is among those charged by a US grand jury with conspiracy to defraud, has abused the platformFacebook has removed 135 accounts which it believes are linked to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency (IRA), an organisation accused of spreading divisive messages across the internet, supporting the Russian government and attempting to weaken its rivals.The social media giant said the IRA - among those charged by a US grand jury with conspiracy to defraud the United States - has no place on Facebook after abusing the service. Continue reading...

A shooting at YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, California, left at least three injured and the female suspect, Nasim Najafi Aghdam, dead in an apparent suicide. The San Bruno chief of police, Ed Barberini, confirmed the shooter died at the scene and that several people were taken to hospital, three with gunshot wounds

Police say they have no details about motive in attack at company’s California headquarters as victims are treated at nearby hospital• YouTube shooting: police identify woman who opened fire at HQA shooting at YouTube’s California headquarters left at least three people wounded and a female suspect dead of an apparent suicide, police said Tuesday.

Music app copies Silicon Valley’s obsession with control through unequal voting rightsSpotify’s arrival on the New York Stock Exchange is revolutionary only in one way. The music streaming service refused the usual public offering of stock and chose a “direct listing”, in which the price of the shares is set by buyers and sellers in the market without the help of investment bankers’ expensive underwriting and “stabilisation” services. Smart move: Spotify will have saved itself a few tens of millions of dollars in fees.But, in another respect, Spotify has become a public company in a depressingly familiar fashion. Its founders are wedded to keeping vice-like control via a share structure with unequal voting rights. For unequal, read unfair: Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzen own 38.9% of the ordinary shares but they have created “beneficiary certificates” with super-charged voting rights that only they can own. Include those holdings and Ek and Lorentzen have 80.4% of the votes. Continue reading...