Technology | The Guardian

As firm’s stock falls over sales warnings, it has competition in bid to be the best smartphone

Paul lives in a signal black spot where his wife’s smartphone still works. Is there a way to find if phone has good reception?I have a Moto 3 smartphone and my wife has a similar earlier model. We are right on the edge of reception from EE. I can just get a very weak signal if I attach my phone to a selfie stick and lean out of a window, or walk up the bank behind the house. This is not ideal.Away from home, sometimes my wife’s phone can get a strong signal whereas mine can’t get a signal at all. This made me wonder if there was a measurement to assess how good a mobile phone is at receiving signals in areas of poor reception before you buy it … and if there is an easy way for an ordinary punter to understand it. PaulPhone manufacturers and others can and do test their phones, usually for certification purposes. The performance test results you want, if you can get them, are the Total Isotropic Sensitivity (TIS) value for reception and the Total Radiated Power (TRP) for transmission. Continue reading...

Tim Cook cites unforeseen magnitude of economic slowdown in China in a letter to shareholders explaining the changeApple cut its sales forecasts for its key end of year period on Wednesday, citing the unforeseen “magnitude” of the economic slowdown in China.Related: US markets start 2019 with a whimper as Trump blames 'glitch' for 2018 losses Continue reading...

Civil engineer who oversaw the completion of the Sydney Opera House and went on to become chair of Ove Arup in LondonNo roof is more dramatic – or symbolic of a country, as well as a major city – than that of the Sydney Opera House in Australia. Yet it nearly did not happen and it is thanks to Jack Zunz, who has died aged 94, that it did.The young Danish architect Jørn Utzon had won a competition in 1957 with a scheme resembling a Mayan temple topped by petal-like shell roofs, which could be enjoyed from any angle, since the opera house’s exposed promontory site has no back and is overlooked from the Sydney harbour bridge and the Rocks. He desperately needed an engineer to realise such a unique vision. Continue reading...

Buzz Lightyear joins Kingdom Hearts, Harry Potter looks for the Pokémon Go effect, it’s party time down on the farm, and an avenging hero returns from the mists of Dreamcast time(PlayStation 4, Xbox One) Disney and Pixar icons meet Japanese video-game heroes in this long-awaited role-player. Featuring worlds themed around Toy Story, Monsters Inc and Big Hero 6, among much else, this huge crossover adventure will hold some appeal for anyone who’s ever loved a Disney movie, which is surely just about everyone. Forgive the hopelessly convoluted plot and just enjoy fighting dark creatures with Donald Duck and Jack Sparrow.

Workers announced launch of union push in response to working conditions as company says it does not recognize allegationsAs Amazon’s workforce has more than doubled over the past three years, workers at Amazon fulfillment center warehouses in the United States have started organizing and pushing toward forming a union to fight back against the company’s treatment of its workers. Continue reading...

The CEO sets himself a personal challenge every new year. But after a bruising 12 months, what should he do next?When Mark Zuckerberg began his annual “personal challenges” in 2009, he set the bar pretty low: he dressed like an adult every day for a year. Subsequent challenges were squarely in the realm of achievable New Year’s resolutions, from reading a book every two weeks and running a mile a day to starting to learn Mandarin and sending thank you notes.But as Zuckerberg has transitioned his public image from the kid cosplaying as a business executive to the no-longer-quite-a-kid cosplaying as a statesman, his personal challenges have become something of a bellwether for how he is thinking about Facebook’s future. In 2016, when it seemed that Facebook’s challenges were still largely technological, he set out to build his own smart home system. In 2017, when political polarization was still being chalked up to filter bubbles, he embarked on a road trip around the US. And in 2018, when fake news and foreign interference were dominating headlines, he promised to buckle down and “focus on fixing” all of the various “issues” that had left the one-time prodigy looking more and more like a pariah. Continue reading...

The luxurious 4x4 from Bentley is one of the fastest, most powerful, most luxurious SUVs ever made – but it may leave some of your passengers feeling a little queasyBentley Bentayga

Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal and New York Times among titles affected by virus that hit shared systemsA cyber-attack has caused printing and delivery disruptions to major US newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun.The attack on Saturday appeared to originate outside the United States, the Los Angeles Times reported. It led to distribution delays in the Saturday edition of the Times, the Tribune, the Sun and other newspapers that share a production platform in Los Angeles. Continue reading...

Cyber firm was able to post tweets on celebrities’ accounts without entering passwordsLouis Theroux and Eamonn Holmes are among celebrities whose Twitter accounts were compromised after a security company was able to post tweets on their behalf without entering a password.The documentary maker and the news anchor were two of the individuals targeted by Mike Godfrey, who runs the British cybersecurity business Insinia. Continue reading...

Wearable machines are gaining approval from medical insurers and state health providersCompanies that make exoskeleton suits are hoping the devices might soon become as commonly provided as wheelchairs.Private medical insurers and at least three state health providers have agreed to cover the cost of the cyborg-type wearables for people unable to walk. Continue reading...

Personal details leaked through malware-infected computer, says South KoreaThe personal information of nearly 1,000 North Koreans who defected to South Korea has been leaked after unknown hackers gained access to a resettlement agency’s database, the South Korean unification ministry has said.The ministry said it discovered last week the names, birth dates and addresses of 997 defectors had been stolen through a computer infected with malicious software at an agency called the Hana centre, in the southern city of Gumi. Continue reading...

After the notch, phone makers are turning to hole-punch selfie cams and bigger screensFrom the launch of 5G to phones with large folding screens, more cameras and fingerprint scanners under the screens, 2019 looks set to transform the smartphone in more ways than one.2018 produced phones with notches hiding selfie cameras and sensors in the top of the screen. While not quite the innovation most were likely seeking, notches allowed manufacturers to remove everything from the front that wasn’t screen. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber and the Guardian’s UK tech editor explore the biggest stories of 2018 and consider what 2019 may have in storeThis year has been an interesting one. Tech CEOs were brought in front of Congress; GDPR came into effect in June and our inboxes were never the same; Cambridge Analytica was accused of harvesting personal data without permission and using it to influence voting in the US election; Julian Assange is still in the Ecuadorian embassy, so no real change there, but he is apparently in hot water for not looking after his cat properly.The past 12 months have also been filled with tech highs and lows, so it is fitting that we end the year by reminiscing, laughing and perhaps trying not to cry over some of the biggest stories that we have seen in 2018. Continue reading...

Picture-sharing platform retracts horizontal-scrolling feature within an hour of ‘mistaken’ rollout to users

Lawyers say Musk’s comments about man who helped rescue Thai team were free speech protected by the first amendmentElon Musk has asked a US judge to dismiss a lawsuit by a British diver who helped rescue a boys soccer team trapped in a Thailand cave and said Musk defamed him by calling him a paedophile and child rapist.Related: Elon Musk apologises for calling Thai cave rescuer a 'pedo' Continue reading...

Our 20 favourite pieces of the yearMillions are robbed of the power of speech by illness, injury or lifelong conditions. Can the creation of bespoke digital voices transform their ability to communicate? Continue reading...

Number of users plugging in products using virtual assistant causes outage in EuropeThousands of people plugging in new smart speakers on Christmas Day were greeted by a less than smart response after Amazon’s voice-controlled virtual assistant Alexa crashed.Servers controlling the digital butler were overloaded with questions and requests, prompting Alexa to tell some users: “Sorry, I’m having trouble understanding you right now.” Continue reading...

Exclusive: Emails show how tech firm has tried to gain influence and potentially shape lucrative government contractsA top Amazon executive privately advised the Trump administration on the launch of a new internet portal that is expected to generate billions of dollars for the technology company and give it a dominant role in how the US government buys everything from paper clips to office chairs.Related: Alexa's advice to 'kill your foster parents' fuels concern over Amazon Echo Continue reading...

Police issue warning after crews hampered while battling blaze on Bruny IslandDrone operators are being warned about rules for flying after a drone forced the grounding of firefighting aircraft battling a blaze on Tasmania’s Bruny Island.Tasmania police said the aircraft had to be grounded because firefighting efforts at Conleys Point, south Bruny, were being hampered by a drone flown in the area, putting community safety at risk. Continue reading...

Libel lawyer says Paul Gait and Elaine Kirk could win £75,000 from newspapers who identified themThe couple arrested and released without charge in relation to the Gatwick drone incident could win at least £75,000 from the newspapers who identified them, according to a leading libel lawyer.Mark Stephens, head of media law at Howard Kennedy, said they had a strong legal case if they wished to pursue legal action. “Absent of a compelling reason and the police saying you can, you may no longer identify people who have been arrested. Continue reading...

In the first half of 2018 Australian authorities made 2,375 requests, more than China, Singapore or the UKApple received 2,357 “device requests” from the Australian government and law enforcement in the first half of 2018, the third-highest rate of requests in the world.The tech company published its twice-yearly transparency report on Friday, which reveals how many times governments asked Apple for data and information about iPhone, iPads, computers and Apple accounts. Continue reading...

Arguments around the family Christmas table may make up for the lack of social media bashingIt’s the most wonderful time of the year to stop tweeting.People all around the world are coming together to vow they will not be on social media over the holidays. Continue reading...

The fight is on to be 2018 online champion as Bhushan Kumar’s T-Series vies for the top spotOne is a 29-year-old Swedish YouTube star who considers himself the most famous person on the internet. The other is an Indian entertainment company founded by a former fruit-juice seller who worked the streets of Delhi.Quite how and why PewDiePie and T-Series became locked in a “war” might seem a mystery to those used to the analogue age. Online, however, the race to become YouTube’s No 1 channel of 2018 has been an intensely fought battle – and one with bizarre offline consequences. Continue reading...

Taking inspiration from the top flight of motorsport, the Hummingbird e-bike is ready to take off (just don’t leave it unlocked anywhere)Hummingbird electric folding bike

After months of revelations about the firm, the executive is being talked of as a sacrifice, not founder Mark ZuckerbergFacebook’s already terrible year is ending on a new low, as Mark Zuckerberg and his beleaguered executive team battle another share price slide, this time triggered by new revelations about the company’s relaxed attitude to the privacy of its 2.2 billion customers’ data.Shares dropped more than 7% on Tuesday after it was revealed that the company had bent its own data rules for clients including Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, Microsoft and Sony. Continue reading...

The app wants to distance itself from its rivals’ troubles, but needs more of their revenuesDon’t suggest to executives at Snap, parent of the Snapchat app, that they work for a social network, or that they’re in the social media space. “It’s a communications platform, not a social network,” says Claire Valoti, international vice-president of Snap.You might think that an app where you create media – photos with captions and effects – and then send that to a selection of friends and acquaintances (where it self-deletes) sounds like social media. But Snapchat wants to distance itself from rivals such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, which this year were the focus of so much negative attention for their effects on democracies, cyberbullying, or invasion of privacy. Continue reading...

Revolut customers are protected by the Bank of Lithuania – but it’s not certain it will pay upIt is almost exactly 10 years since the 300,000 British customers lured into Icesave by high interest rates woke up to find that their £4bn in deposits had disappeared when parent company Landsbanki collapsed and the country’s entire financial system went into meltdown.Iceland’s deposit protection scheme instantly fell over. How could it not? A tiny country with a population about the same as Brighton found itself as the guarantor for savers across Europe, with Dutch as well as British savers heavily invested in the Landsbanki accounts. Today, we’re told, it’s all different. Banks have been forced to raise more capital, supervision and solvency testing is much more robust, and the EU has set a €100,000 (£90,000) minimum deposit protection level for member states. Continue reading...

Smart speaker’s remarks, apparently quoted from Reddit, come as Amazon tries to boost speaker’s conversational capacityAn Amazon customer got a grim message last year from Alexa, the virtual assistant in the company’s smart speaker device: “Kill your foster parents.”The user who heard the message from his Echo device wrote a harsh review on Amazon’s website, Reuters reported - calling Alexa’s utterance “a whole new level of creepy”. Continue reading...

From outlaws in turn-of-the-century America to a young woman falling tenderly in love and Norse gods going to war in spectacular style: our critics pick the best video games of the yearThis turn-of-the-century tale of the American Old West is extraordinarily ambitious and luxuriously slow-paced, taking in many hours of riding around a breathtaking recreation of untouched nature as well as gun-slinging shootouts. A game so bewilderingly detailed that it is sometimes difficult to believe. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch, PC; Nomada Studio/Devolver Digital

From Apple AirPods to Amazon tablets, here are suggestions for all budgetsStuck for a gift for Christmas with the clock steadily ticking on? Here are some tech suggestions for all range of budgets. Continue reading...

In this Christmas special, Jordan Erica Webber learns how to track Santa using satellites and jet fighters as he journeys around the world bringing presents to millions of childrenChips with Everything is interested in finding the best technological solutions to help catch a glimpse of Santa on his busiest night of the year. On Christmas Eve, the North American Aerospace Defence Command will be tracking Santa’s whereabouts so that no matter where you are in the world and what time it is for you, you can know exactly when to expect him … and his presents.We chat to Capt Cameron Hillier, of Norad, who tells us how his team uses radars, satellites and jet fighters to track Santa on his travels. Continue reading...

Dispute between subcontracting firm and workers demanding better conditions has prompted protest inside FacebookAfter 20 Facebook subcontractors demanded better working conditions, they were told to accept a counter-offer from their company by Friday afternoon – or lose their jobs.The labor dispute has prompted internal protest by some full-time Facebook employees (FTEs), who have been sharing updates on the situation on the company’s internal version of Facebook, known as Workplace, according to posts seen by the Guardian. Continue reading...

‘The tentacles of the campaign are vast,’ UK official says, as two Chinese nationals charged in USThe US and UK have taken the unprecedented step of accusing hackers linked to the Chinese government of waging a sustained cyber-campaign focused on large-scale theft of commercial intellectual property.Two Chinese nationals were charged in the US in relation to a campaign across Europe, Asia and the US that breached Chinese bilateral and international commitments, American prosecutors said. Continue reading...

US indictment accuses two Chinese nationals of global, state-backed campaign targeting dozens of agencies, including in AustraliaAustralia has called on China to respect international commitments on cybercrime after the US and UK revealed an alleged plot by a hacking group backed by state intelligence to steal intellectual property from the west on an industrial scale.On Friday Australia’s national cyber security adviser and the head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre, Alastair MacGibbon, described the hacking as “an audacious, global campaign” which had affected “several” Australian companies. Continue reading...

Authorities scramble to find ways to tackle drones as Gatwick shutdown highlights lack of progressFrom computer programming and guns that fire giant nets to well-trained birds of prey, previous attempts to stop the rogue use of consumer drones have been nothing if not original.But for all that creativity, the authorities have been left behind. And on Thursday, as an unknown operator succeeded in shutting down Gatwick airport for at least 18 hours by flying drones around the airport’s protected airspace, the slow pace of progress was highlighted again. Continue reading...

The creator of the year’s biggest game is facing a slew of lawsuits over its alleged use of famous dance moves. But will courts tap to the same tune?Imagine it is 2014 and you are the rapper 2 Milly. You have just created a new dance for your music video Milly Rock, and it has proved wildly popular. Four years later, an extremely similar dance crops up in a globally successful video game with more than 200 million players. What do you do? What can you do?The answer, of course, is sue. And that’s exactly what 2 Milly, real name Terrence Ferguson, has done, alleging copyright infringement, having swiftly registered the Milly Rock dance with the US Copyright Office. Continue reading...

Treasury presses for FCA to regulate cryptocurrencies to protect consumersThe UK government has said it stands ready to empower Britain’s financial regulator to oversee all cryptocurrency assets, after a warning from MPs that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were “wild west” assets that exposed consumers to a host of risks.While some crypto-assets are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), many others, such as bitcoin, are not, the Treasury noted in its response to a report from the Treasury select committee published in September, which called for regulation to protect investors and prevent money laundering. Continue reading...

Nintendo’s ingenious combination of video game and construction kit is one of the most interesting family games around. Should you buy it for your kids?Released in April, Nintendo Labo was one of the more unusual games of this year – or any year. The box contains cardboard sheets, rubber bands and string along with a game cartridge, inviting players to build ingenious little cardboard models that, when combined with the Nintendo Switch console and its controllers, become working interactive toys. It’s rather like cardboard Lego, presented in a way that gently introduces the basics of engineering.Labo is not as playground-popular as Minecraft or Fortnite, but it’s a rare video game that provides educational value as well as fun, and does so without forcing it down kids’ throats. Continue reading...

Cost of out-of-warranty battery replacements is due to jump to as much as £65Owners of iPhones with failing batteries have 12 days to take advantage of Apple’s out-of-warranty £25 battery swap offer before the price rises to as much as £65.The discounted battery replacement scheme, which applies to the iPhone 6 and newer models, was launched following revelations last year that Apple was intentionally slowing iPhones because of worn batteries. Continue reading...

Geoffrey writes from his Gmail address to ask how he can stop Google from intruding into almost everything

We knew that being connected had a price – our data. But we didn’t care. Then it turned out that Google’s main clients included the military and intelligence agencies. By Yasha LevineThe internet surrounds us. It mediates modern life, like a giant, unseen blob that engulfs the modern world. There is no escape, and, as Larry Page and Sergey Brin so astutely understood when they launched Google in 1998, everything that people do online leaves a trail of data. If saved and used correctly, these traces make up a goldmine of information full of insights into people on a personal level as well as a valuable read on larger cultural, economic and political trends.Google was the first internet company to fully leverage this insight and build a business on the data that people leave behind. But it wasn’t alone for long. It happened just about everywhere, from the smallest app to the most sprawling platform. Continue reading...

Drivers should be classed as workers with access to paid holidays and minimum wageJudges have dismissed Uber’s appeal against a landmark employment tribunal ruling that its drivers should be classed as workers with access to the minimum wage and paid holidays.Master of the rolls, Sir Terence Etherton, along with Lord Justice Bean, backed an October 2016 employment tribunal ruling that could affect tens of thousands of workers in the gig economy. A third judge, Lord Justice Underhill, dissented, leading to a 2-1 majority decision. Continue reading...

DC attorney general alleged in lawsuit the company’s ‘misleading privacy settings’ allowed firm to harvest information

If you’re a gamer after something more in-depth than coffee table books, here are some of the most thought-provoking reads about gamingPrima Games, £19.99 Continue reading...

Creator of the first word processor and designer of a 1960s online air passenger reservation systemEvelyn Berezin, who has died aged 93, invented the Data Secretary, the first electronic word processor for secretarial use, and in 1969 founded a company in Hauppauge, Long Island, to manufacture and sell it. She had bumped into the glass ceiling and it was the only way she could get a senior position running a company.The choice of product was tactical. As one of the few women developing computer hardware at the time, she was a two-finger typist and said she had to stay as far away as possible from looking like a secretary. However, she needed something that a small team could create at a price low enough to sell. In the 1960s, most computers were so expensive that companies rented them. While this benefited the supplier in the long run, it required a large initial investment, and Berezin did not have the capital. Continue reading...

No combination of settings can stop location data being used by advertisers, says reportFacebook targets users with location-based adverts even if they block the company from accessing GPS on their phones, turn off location history in the app, hide their work location on their profile and never use the company’s “check in” feature, according to an investigation published this week.There is no combination of settings that users can enable to prevent their location data from being used by advertisers to target them, according to the privacy researcher Aleksandra Korolova. “Taken together,” Korolova says, “Facebook creates an illusion of control rather than giving actual control over location-related ad targeting, which can lead to real harm.” Continue reading...

What a year it's been for the Facebook founder. There was that unforgettable Senate hearing, that huge data scandal and, oh yes, those 2 million Europeans who left the site. One to remember. Merry Christmas, Mark Continue reading...