Company’s employees benefit as it shares spoils of £350m stock scheme payoutGoogle’s UK staff earned an average of £226,000 each last year as the company shared the spoils of a £350m payout from its stock scheme.Google, with UK staff numbers jumping by almost 400 to 3,658 last year, footed an £829m wage and salary bill for the year to 30 June. The total was a 26% increase on the £656m paid to staff in 2017, according to the company’s latest financial filings. Continue reading...

Sega’s retro reboot is no mere gimmick. It’s a joyous gift to make you a child again – but with all of 2019’s HD trimmingsThose disappointed by the recent PlayStation Classic, with its limited range of built-in and mundanely emulated games, may well be wondering what the higher end of the retro console market looks like. Well, this is it. Built by specialist company Analogue, previously responsible for the Super Nt and Nt Mini machines, the Mega Sg is billed as a “reimagining” of Sega’s original Mega Drive, the bad boy underdog of the 16-bit era.Unlike the PlayStation Classic, the Mini SNES, or even the recently announced Sega Mega Drive Mini (coming in September), the Mega Sg doesn’t come with a pre-loaded games library. Instead it has a cartridge slot that will accept any original Mega Drive cart, and two joypad ports that can take your old controllers (it will also work with modern wireless alternatives, although these aren’t supplied). In short, this isn’t a nostalgic toy designed for a few hours of fun reminiscence, but the gaming equivalent of a high-end turntable that plays all your old records as they were meant to be played. Continue reading...

Facebook, Google and Amazon have not just colonised the internet: their hubs, campuses and offices are taking over huge sections of cities around the world. But campaigners from New York to Toronto and Berlin are fighting back‘It’s a challenge out here. The way the tech companies are building and increasing their size is just pricing people out. Families who have been here for generations can’t afford to be here any more. They’re being pushed off into rural areas – anywhere from an hour to two and a half hours away.”JT Faraji is a 43-year-old artist who lives with his family in East Palo Alto, the northern California city on the edge of Silicon Valley. Just a stone’s throw away, Facebook’s global headquarters is his most visible neighbour, and he is also close to a big new Amazon office. He has lived in the area all his life and talks volubly about fascinating aspects of East Palo Alto’s history – like the period in the 1960s when black activists set up a high school and college, and there was even talk of renaming the city Nairobi: “There are a lot of minorities here: Hispanics, blacks, Pacific Islanders,” he says. “But those people are not really represented in the workforce in technology. So the way that northern California is going to look in not too long is going to be very … undiverse.” Continue reading...

Amazon made its CEO the wealthiest person in the world. So why can’t the company care for those injured while working there?Michelle Quinones, 27, started working at a Fort Worth, Texas, Amazon Fulfillment Center in July 2017 as an order picker, where she spent long hours on overnight shifts in the Amazon warehouse meeting mandatory rates for filling orders.A few months into the job, Quinones started having carpal tunnel symptoms. She was sent back to work at least 10 times from her warehouse’s Amcare clinic, put in place to provide Amazon employees with on-site first aid. Continue reading...

Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has accused technology giants of competing unfairlyDisplaying a degree of courage and clarity that is difficult to overstate, US senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has taken on big tech, including Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. Warren’s proposals amount to a total rethink of the United States’ exceptionally permissive merger and acquisition policy over the past four decades. Indeed, big tech is only the poster child for a significant increase in monopoly and oligopoly power across a broad swath of the American economy. Although the best approach is still far from clear, I could not agree more that something needs to done, especially when it comes to big tech’s ability to buy out potential competitors and use their platform dominance to move into other lines of business.Warren is courageous because big tech is big money for most leading Democratic candidates, particularly progressives, for whom California is a veritable campaign-financing ATM. And although one can certainly object, Warren is not alone in thinking that the tech giants have gained excessive market dominance; in fact, it is one of the few issues in Washington on which there is some semblance of agreement. Other candidates, most notably Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, have also taken principled stands. Continue reading...

Taxi company’s shares dropped about 12% on Monday, ending the day at $69.03 after selling shares at $72 on FridayShares in Lyft, the ridesharing company, stalled on Monday, falling below their initial public offering (IPO) on their second day of trading.Lyft became the first of a new wave of giant tech companies to go public last Friday, selling shares at $72 a piece. The hotly anticipated sale saw Lyft’s share price leap to $78.89 on the first day of trading. Continue reading...

Facebook aims to assure users it’s not spying on them via their phone’s mic for better adsFacebook is attempting to demystify how its news feed works with a new feature that explains to users how it picks the posts and adverts to show them.The company hopes the tool could put an end to the widespread conspiracy theory that it targets users by spying on them with their phone’s microphones, by explaining in plain English the most important factors that determine whether and when they see content on the social network. Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg also said he is weighing up paying publishers for use of their journalismFacebook could start employing editors to select “high-quality news” to show to users, in the social network’s latest attempt to lose its reputation as a source for disinformation.Mark Zuckerberg said he is considering the introduction of a dedicated news section on the social network, which could use either humans or algorithms to chose stories from outlets that are “broadly trusted” by society. Continue reading...

Staffers criticized the appointment of Heritage Foundation president Kay Coles James in a letter published on MondayA group of Google employees have called for the removal of a rightwing thinktank leader from the company’s new artificial intelligence council, citing her anti-LGBT and anti-immigrant record.Related: 'Bias deep inside the code': the problem with AI 'ethics' in Silicon Valley Continue reading...

In his latest bid to wrong-foot people, the Tesla CEO has released a novelty pop song about a dead gorilla called RIP HarambeName: Elon Musk, the rapper.Age: Two days, according to SoundCloud. Continue reading...

From Steam’s weakening monopoly to the tyranny of sales figures, the same game-changing issues were highlighted by leading figures in an industry teetering on transformationNever has the games industry felt more on the precipice. The entire medium is on the brink of enormous change, and there’s no clear understanding of exactly what sort. Speaking to various industry figures at this year’s Games Developers Conference, the feeling is that the current state of affairs is unsustainable.“Everything is coming to a head right now,” said Rami Ismail, organiser of international gaming conference GameDev.World. A combination of a “race to the bottom” with game prices, ever-increasing budgets and the difficulty of getting discovered for newcomers is causing many to push for change. Continue reading...

Following similar consoles from Nintendo and Sony, Sega is bringing its 1990s Mega Drive back with 40 games, including SonicSega has announced a release date for the long-expected Mega Drive Mini, a modern version of its classic 16bit console.Launching on 19 September, the retro replica will feature 40 built-in games, and comes with two controllers and a HDMI port, which plugs straight into modern televisions. It will cost £70/$80. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber chats to Max Benwell about how he managed to track down the person using his photos to deceive women, and what happened when he got them on the phoneIn March 2018, Max Benwell was minding his own business when he received a message from a woman he had never met. She told him someone had been messaging her and had been really abusive. The person messaging her was using Max’s photos.Jordan follows Max’s unusual tale. He went to incredible lengths to find the person who had stolen his identity online. She also chats to the woman whose day-to-day job involves figuring out whether people online are the people they say they are, or a catfisher.

Chief executive allegedly targeted because he owns Washington Post, where Jamal Khashoggi was columnistThe security chief for Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, says the Saudi government had access to Bezos’s phone and gained private information from it.Gavin de Becker, Bezos’s longtime security consultant, said he had concluded his investigation into the publication in January of leaked text messages between Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, a former television anchor whom the US National Enquirer tabloid newspaper said Bezos was dating. Continue reading...

It may be small, green and mean-looking, but spend some time in the Suzuki Jimny and you’ll soon be smittenSuzuki Jimny

This is what I’ve learned from living without email, electricity, or a phone…It was almost midnight when I checked my email for the last time and turned off my phone for what I hoped would be for ever. I had spent the summer of 2016 hand-building a straw bale home on a half-wild smallholding in County Galway, Ireland, and the following morning I intended to begin a new life without modern technology. There would be no running water, no clock, no fossil fuels, no electricity or any of the things it powers; no internet, phone, washing machine, lightbulbs or radio. I had no idea if unplugging myself from the industrial world would mean I’d lose all touch with reality, or finally discover it.I’m reluctant to write much about the big-picture reasons why I decided to reject tech. We know them too well already, and it’s not for want of information that we continue down the road we’re on. But, over time, I found my reasons slowly changed. Now they’ve less to do with saving the world, and much more to do with savouring the world. The world needs savouring. Continue reading...

Lyft, which went public on Friday, will soon be joined by Uber, Airbnb and other companies valued over $1bn – and they may be just the animal to burst a bubbleFive years ago Aileen Lee, founder of Silicon Valley investor Cowboy Ventures, coined the term “unicorn” for a private company valued at more than $1bn. Back then unicorns were almost as rare as their mythical namesakes – just 39 existed, according to Lee. Now there are 334 around the world, worth more than $1tn. And this week some of the very biggest beasts started stampeding towards the public markets.Related: Lyft share price soars 20% in minutes on taxi app's stock market debut Continue reading...

After two weeks of criticism, Sheryl Sandberg published a letter saying the company is exploring live stream video restrictionsTwo weeks after a terrorist used Facebook to broadcast live video while he massacred 50 Muslim worshippers in New Zealand, the company has broken its silence in the country by publishing a letter from Sheryl Sandberg in the New Zealand Herald.Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said the company is “exploring” placing restrictions on who can live stream video on Facebook, but did not announce any actual policy changes. Continue reading...

App, designed to help EU nationals to apply for settled status, until now worked only on Android

Tech firm has acted as US-Havana intermediary as memo says Cubans trust Google more than Trump administrationGoogle has worked as an intermediary between the Trump administration and the Cuban government as it has sought a deal to improve internet access on the island, according to private remarks by Google’s manager in Havana.Related: Apple Arcade v Google Stadia: which is the future for video games? Continue reading...

Whether it’s protesting projects with immigration authorities or walking out to demand better treatment of women, activism has entered tech with a force the industry has never experiencedThe election happens. The next day at the Slack office, people were quite literally sobbing in the cafeteria. I was mostly keeping my shit together until my parents called from Canada. I went into one of the little phone booths and just sobbed on the phone. It took a bit of time to grieve, but then you also have to act. The space that Maciej created in Tech Solidarity was incredibly important. To show up at that first meeting at the Stripe offices and see hundreds of other people who are figuring out what the hell to do next was incredibly gratifying. “Oh, Joe who works over at the security team at a text-editor company actually cares about the fate of Muslim people in America.” There were lots of pleasant surprises like that. Continue reading...

As algorithms play a growing role in criminal justice, education and more, tech advisory boards and academic programs mirror real-world inequality

Verifiable contact details will be required to run campaigns on site ahead of EU electionsAdvertisers will be required to provide verifiable public contact details before they can run political campaigns on Facebook, the company has announced, in the latest attempt by the social network to increase accountability for so-called dark adverts.The move is part of a raft of changes in the buildup to the European elections in May, when citizens from across the EU will vote in new MEPs. Continue reading...

US government says company is breaking the law by restricting who can view housing-related ads based on their ‘race, color, national origin, religion’The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud) has charged Facebook with violating the Fair Housing Act, alleging that the company’s targeted advertising discriminated on the basis of race and color.In a statement, Hud said Facebook was breaking the law by restricting who can view housing-related adverts on its site, which the department said “unlawfully discriminates based on race, color, national origin, religion, familial status, sex, and disability”. Continue reading...

Government report casts doubt over Chinese firm’s future involvement in telecomsThe government-led committee set up to vet products made by the controversial Chinese firm Huawei has warned it has found new significant issues that could pose a risk to the British telecommunications industry.The Huawei oversight board, which is chaired by the head of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said it had found further “significant technical issues in Huawei’s engineering processes leading to new risks in the UK telecommunications networks”. Continue reading...

The battle royale team game has won millions of players within weeks. How violent is it? What’s the age limit? And what does it cost? We answer your questionsSurprise-released in February, Apex Legends has taken the world of online gaming by storm, attracting more than 50 million players within a month. But what is it about this Fortnite-style battle royale blaster that has made it such a huge success, and should parents be concerned?Here’s everything you need to know. Continue reading...

From Neopets to Habbo Hotel and AIM, the early internet was a friendlier place. Readers recall the online spaces they’ve loved and lostThirty years ago this month, Tim Berners-Lee submitted his proposal for what would become the world wide web. Today’s internet is so dominated by a few tech companies and toxic debate, it can be hard to remember that it was once a friendlier place of previously unfathomable discovery and connection, especially when many of those online communities no longer exist. We asked readers and writers to share their favourite stories of the internet as it once was. Tell us yours in the comments. Continue reading...

Ed doesn’t want to pay an annual subscription for Office 365 and he’s looking for a compatible rivalI chose Microsoft Word for Mac when I switched to a MacBook Pro some years ago. As a writer, I have a very large number of Word files, but with Microsoft moving to an annual subscription model, the cost of remaining with Word is looking prohibitive.Is there is a cheaper way of carrying on with Word, or, failing that, an alternative word processor with which I’ll still be able to open and edit my existing Word documents? EdMicrosoft would prefer both Mac and Windows users of Office to move to the online version, Office 365, but it’s still entirely up to you. In fact, you can already use some Microsoft Office programs online, including Word, without paying Microsoft a penny. All you have to do is create a Microsoft Account using any working email address – it doesn’t have to be a Microsoft email address – and you can use online versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint with free online storage in OneDrive. This is exactly the same as Google’s online suite. The main difference is that Microsoft’s programs are better, except for multiuser simultaneous editing. Continue reading...

The spectre of superintelligent machines doing us harm is not just science fiction, technologists say – so how can we ensure AI remains ‘friendly’ to its makers? By Mara HvistendahlIt began three and a half billion years ago in a pool of muck, when a molecule made a copy of itself and so became the ultimate ancestor of all earthly life. It began four million years ago, when brain volumes began climbing rapidly in the hominid line.Fifty thousand years ago with the rise of Homo sapiens sapiens. Continue reading...

Company previously allowed such material even though it has long banned white supremacistsFacebook will no longer allow content supporting white nationalism and white separatism, it said on Tuesday. The announcement comes nearly a year after the revelation that its policy against white supremacy and hate speech still let users call for the creation of white ethno-states or claim the US “should be a white-only nation”.The policy change announced on Wednesday, which will go into effect next week, comes in the wake of a white supremacist terror attack on mosques in New Zealand that left 50 people dead, and as Facebook and other social media companies continue to grapple with the ways violent white supremacist groups are using their platforms for propaganda and recruitment. Continue reading...

US government panel has informed Beijing Kunlun Tech that its ownership of Grindr constitutes a national security riskChinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Limited is seeking to sell Grindr, the popular gay dating app it has owned since 2016, after a US government national security panel raised concerns about its ownership, according to people familiar with the matter.The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has informed Kunlun that its ownership of West Hollywood, California-based Grindr constitutes a national security risk, the two sources told Reuters. Continue reading...

Netflix-style subscriptions by two tech behemoths could open up gaming to millions who can’t afford pricey equipment. Watch out Microsoft and Sony

As flamenco dancers and baristas help show off multimillion-dollar homes, there is no longer room for the middle classIn Silicon Valley, an open house can be more than an open house. At a six-bedroom, seven-bath home in the town of Menlo Park, a flamenco dancer swirled and a guitarist fingerpicked in a kitchen alcove. Outside, pesto pizza was pulled from the pizza oven. A face painter splotched unicorns on pudgy cheeks. A barista whipped up lattes. There were squishy toys for kids and videos of the house for potential homebuyers, who could keep the video-players.“We mailed brochures to 5,000 homes, including one entirely in Mandarin,” said Michael Repka, CEO of DeLeon Realty, who padded around the house, along with everyone else, in booties, so as not to scratch the wood floors. Three days later, the Flamenco dancing paid off. The house sold for $6.82m, which was $332,000 above the asking price. Continue reading...

President says customers are asking company to build data centres elsewhere as a result of the government’s encryption billCompanies and governments are “no longer comfortable” about storing their data in Australia as a result of the encryption legislation, Microsoft has warned.On Wednesday the company’s president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith, said customers were asking it to build data centres elsewhere as a result of the changes, and the industry needed greater protection against the creation of “systemic weaknesses” in their products. Continue reading...

Will we still be able to upload online content and news – and what about memes?The European parliament approved the largest, and most contentious, overhaul of copyright legislation in two decades on Monday. When the directive comes into effect, it will be the biggest change to internet regulation since General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).Related: MEPs approve sweeping changes to copyright law Continue reading...

Atlassian’s Scott Farquhar says encryption-cracking bill must be amended before electionAustralian tech heavyweights, led by Atlassian’s Scott Farquhar, have intensified their call for the government to amend its controversial encryption-cracking bill before the coming election.Tech companies will gather in Sydney on Wednesday for a public forum where they will call for amendments including clarifying the requirements of employees under the law; creating a clearer definition of designated communications providers; increasing oversight; and narrowing the type of crimes the regime can be used for. Continue reading...

Hackers were able to access users’ movements, hometown, search history, email and phone numberThe detailed personal information of more than 60,000 Australians was exposed in a massive cyber-attack on Facebook last year, giving hackers the ability to access their movements, hometown, search history, email and phone number.Internal documents reveal the attack on Facebook in September last year affected an estimated 111,813 Australians, among roughly 29 million worldwide. Continue reading...

PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch; Telltale / Skybound Entertainment

Chinese firm first to launch smartphone with periscope zoom and Leica quad cameraThe Huawei P30 Pro is the first smartphone to have a 5x periscope-like optical zoom and four cameras on the back.Stepping up the smartphone camera wars another notch, the latest flagship smartphone from the Chinese firm at the centre of a political storm looks to raise the bar not only for camera quality but also flexibility. Continue reading...

Here’s what Tim Cook didn’t reveal, from Apple Card details to the Arcade game serviceIt’s US-only (for now?) but Apple is pushing its new credit card hard. The company is offering 2% cashback, paid daily, on any purchase made with the card using Apple Pay, and 3% on any purchase made with Apple itself, including the App Store and Apple Music. For purchases made in stores and online that don’t take Apple Pay, of which there are a lot, the rate is lower, at 1%. But those figures show how much Apple is willing to pay to make its card a success. For comparison, the best cashback card in the US, according to those who track this sort of thing, is the Citi Double Cash Card, which offers 2% cashback on everything but doesn’t drop the fees that Apple has, such as overseas transactions or late payments. Continue reading...

A cheerful, endearing approach to VR makes Nintendo’s Labo VR kit a fascinating family prospectVR was meant to be the future, and it still yet might be, but the current selection of virtual reality devices is in the main expensive, impractical and nausea-inducing. Initially tethered to high-end computers with wires, neither the Oculus Rift nor the HTC Vive VR headsets have yet captured the public imagination as much as that of investors, and lower-end contraptions such as Google Cardboard haven’t offered interesting enough experiences to become popular. Nintendo Labo, on the other hand, shows virtual reality for what it really is, at least right now: an interesting toy. With a 7+ PEGI rating, in contrast to the 12+ recommendation for every other VR device, it has the age suitability to match.Labo is not the VR device that will finally break through and make the technology ubiquitous, but that’s not what it’s trying to do. Like the other Nintendo Labo kits, released last year for Nintendo Switch, it is an interesting and educational toy aimed at curious children and their families. In the box are sets of cardboard sheets and a game cartridge containing the instructions to fold them into ingenious models. Pop the cart into the Switch, assemble your viewer according to the friendly directions, slot the console into the model, and you have a little working VR headset. Continue reading...

Tech giant blames slowing demand for its memory chips and smartphonesSamsung has issued a surprise profit warning, blaming a slump in memory chip prices and slowing demand for display panels. It is the latest sign that technology firms are facing tougher times amid a global economic slowdown.The warning from the South Korean technology company comes two months after Apple shocked investors with its first profit warning since 2002, citing the “magnitude” of the economic slowdown in China. Continue reading...

A flurry of stock market debuts, from Uber to Airbnb, has many speculating how more wealth will affect the city

Millions of us now have virtual assistants, in our homes and our pockets. Even children’s toys are getting smart. But when we talk to them, who is listening? By James VlahosOn 21 November 2015, James Bates had three friends over to watch the Arkansas Razorbacks play the Mississippi State Bulldogs. Bates, who lived in Bentonville, Arkansas, and his friends drank beer and did vodka shots as a tight football game unfolded. After the Razorbacks lost 51–50, one of the men went home; the others went out to Bates’s hot tub and continued to drink. Bates would later say that he went to bed around 1am and that the other two men – one of whom was named Victor Collins – planned to crash at his house for the night. When Bates got up the next morning, he didn’t see either of his friends. But when he opened his back door, he saw a body floating face-down in the hot tub. It was Collins.A grim local affair, the death of Victor Collins would never have attracted international attention if it were not for a facet of the investigation that pitted the Bentonville authorities against one of the world’s most powerful companies – Amazon. Collins’ death triggered a broad debate about privacy in the voice-computing era, a discussion that makes the big tech companies squirm. Continue reading...

Cyberdelic VR is being used to treat trauma and even simulate near-death experiences

Steven Spielberg and Big Bird on hand as company reveals new services including credit card and gaming platformApple unveiled a host of new subscription services at a star-studded event in Cupertino, California, on Monday morning.The event marked the debut of a new era for a company that built its brand on hardware and software; just last week, Apple announced new products with little fanfare, saving its firepower for Monday’s celebration of services, from its attempt to take on Netflix to a new Apple credit card. Continue reading...

The games world is awash with spiteful online appraisals – but what’s the point? A committed review-bomber tells allIn an age when everyone’s a blogger or social media influencer, it’s easy for traditional criticism to get drowned out. It’s at the epicentre of this din of competing opinions that Metacritic – a review aggregator owned by CBS that parses disparate media scores into round(ish) numbers – has flourished. Every game, album and movie that is released gets added to site’s gargantuan database, and review scores from tens or hundreds of publications are crunched into an easily digestible average.But on the right side of each product’s page is a separate score, a bane of developers, directors and record companies everywhere: the user reviews section. It’s a public forum where anyone who registers an account can jump into the discussion, leave their own score and heap praise on a release – or, perhaps more often, pour scorn on one. Continue reading...

Many of us rely on our devices for everything from rousing us in the morning to staving off boredom. But there are ways to break the habit Continue reading...

Alex Hern speaks to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, 30 years after the computer engineer sent the proposal for what would become the world wide web. Jordan Erica Webber chats to Elle Hunt and Alex about their earliest memories of using the webThis week, the inventor of the world wide web reflects on what he could have done differently all those years ago, and what we should all be doing to make the internet a safer and better place.Then, Elle Hunt and Alex Hern join Jordan Erica Webber to talk about some of the wackiest stories they heard when compiling the memories of people who used the web in the early days. Continue reading...