Technology | The Guardian

I, too, wanted to see male-me, but it’s ironic that an app that encourages you to play with gender has such a binary view of itYou may remember Snapchat. The app used to be hugely popular and then suddenly became irrelevant. Thanks to its viral new gender-swapping filter, however, Snapchat is back. People are downloading the app in droves to see what they would look like as the opposite gender; even the (male) England Cricket team has got in on the action. (Honestly, if they all looked like that in real life, I would be the biggest cricket fan in the world.)Anyway, I’ve always thought I would have made a very handsome man, so when I heard about the Snapchat filter I was quick to try it out. Well, “quick’” may not be the most accurate descriptor. Apparently, I am now “can’t-use-technology-years-old”; it took me an embarrassing amount of Googling and expletives to figure out how to download the gender-swapping function. After all that trouble I can’t tell you how upset I was to find out that male-me looks like a sex offender. An extremely disappointing result. Continue reading...

Ruling will make it more difficult for workers to organize, secure minimum wages and other protections, labor advocates sayUber drivers are not subject to traditional labor protections because they are independent contractors, the National Labor Relations Board said in an opinion published on Thursday.The board’s opinion, which appears to be the first federal comment on the issue of Uber drivers’ employee status, will make it more difficult for workers to organize in unions and secure minimum wages and other protections, labor advocates say. Continue reading...

Cyberweapons are dangerous in themselves. Their proliferation makes them much more harmfulNSO Group, an Israeli firm that has risen to a billion-dollar valuation on the strength of the aggressive hacking tools it sells to authoritarian governments across the Arab world, is being sued by lawyers and activists who claim to be victims of its software. One of the lawyers involved in the suit was targeted some weeks ago by mysterious WhatsApp calls to his phone in the middle of the night. When he contacted technical experts, they discovered Pegasus 3, an aggressive virus that can apparently install itself on a phone without the victim taking any action at all. Once installed, it takes control of the device, recording conversations and video. It can destroy the evidence of its own arrival and existence, and control any files on the device. In effect, it turns a smartphone into the perfect spying device, which the victim will carry everywhere with them.Similar programs are widely available to abusers of all sorts, which is one reason why many domestic violence shelters ban the use of smartphones. But the ones that can easily be bought require some action from the victim, usually a misplaced click, or else a few moments’ access to their phone. The NSO malware targeting WhatsApp is different in that it could install itself without the victim doing anything at all. To discover and exploit the programming mistakes that opened this vulnerability would take years and cost millions of dollars. That is why it’s assumed that only states, or state-backed actors, have the resources to produce them. Continue reading...

She livestreams her dates, once became a real-life Alexa and built a light that dims in boring company. As AI: More Than Human opens at the Barbican, meet an artist for the tech ageIn a gallery in downtown Manhattan, people are huddling around four laptops, taking turns to control the apartments of 14 complete strangers. They watch via live video feeds, and respond whenever the residents ask “Someone” to help them. They switch the lights on and off, boil the kettle, put some music on – whatever they can do to oblige.The project, called Someone, is the latest in a series exploring our ever more complicated relationship with technology. It’s by the American artist Lauren McCarthy and is a sort of outsourcing of Lauren, an earlier work in which she acted as a real-life Alexa, remotely watching over a home 24 hours a day, responding to its occupants’ questions and needs like a flesh and blood version of Amazon’s voice-operated virtual assistant. Continue reading...

Chinese telecoms company’s chairman says concerns about surveillance are overblownHuawei’s chairman has said the Chinese company would be prepared to sign a “no-spy agreement” with the British government to reassure politicians it has no intention of allowing its technology to be used for surveillance.Speaking on a visit to London, Liang Hua said the company did not want to spy on western consumers and that concerns about Chinese laws requiring the company to cooperate with the regime’s intelligence agencies were overblown. Continue reading...

NSO Group technology reportedly used against lawyer involved in civil case against the Israeli surveillance firmThe UK lawyer whose phone was targeted by spyware that exploits a WhatsApp vulnerability said it appeared to be a desperate attempt by someone to covertly find out the details of his human rights work.The lawyer, who asked not to be named, is involved in a civil case brought against the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group whose sophisticated Pegasus malware has reportedly been used against Mexican journalists, and a prominent Saudi dissident living in Canada. Continue reading...

Time to make sure WhatsApp is updated on your iPhone, Android or Windows deviceUsers are being urged to update their WhatsApp smartphone apps immediately because of a security bug that allows hackers to take over your phone by simply calling it, whether or not you answer. Continue reading...

When the Guardian journalist died recently, it triggered a torrent of grief on social media. People felt they knew him, even if they hadn’t met. Ian Martin understands whyWe lost someone special when the journalist and writer Simon Ricketts died just over four months ago. He was a 24-carat mensch. A living antidote to cruelty and heartlessness. An astonishing comet of kindness blazing across social media’s dark night skies, indiscriminately brightening the lives of everyone. His wasn’t the first high-profile death at our end of Twitter, but it was the hardest.“Our end” – you know the end I mean. The older end. The flexitarian, smartarse, squabbling, umbrage-taking, performatively progressive end. The rainbow end. The herbivore lunch with an Armagnac at the end. Continue reading...

The spyware, developed by Israeli cyber intelligence company, used infected phone calls to take over the functions of operating systemsWhatsApp is encouraging users to update to the latest version of the app after discovering a vulnerability that allowed spyware to be injected into a user’s phone through the app’s phone call function.The spyware was developed by the Israeli cyber intelligence company NSO Group, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the vulnerability. Continue reading...

Madonna said giving her children mobile phones ‘ended their relationship’. We asked parents to share their own experiencesHas giving my child a phone changed my relationship with them? It’s meant fewer dinners together, and less inclination to share in conversation; greater irritability and less ability to self-regulate or find meaningful non-phone related activities to participate in. Many activities are done with the phone as meditating entity and spatial registry. The phone enhances the need for immediate mediation or gratification. Daniel, US Continue reading...

Great camera and software make a bargain, let down only by middling performance and batteryGoogle’s latest phone, the Pixel 3a, offers the firm’s fantastic camera and software for less than £400, cutting a few corners on the way.The pitch for the Pixel 3a is simple: everything that made the £739 top-end Pixel 3 good, but at a lower price. Continue reading...

CEO defiant in email but downward spiral continues after stock market debutThe chief executive of Uber has urged employees to ignore “pessimistic voices” after shares in the company slumped again on their second day of trading since Friday’s disappointing stock market debut.With Wall Street in a fragile state after the re-emergence of trade tension between the US and China, Uber’s stock market value fell below $63bn (£49bn), just over half the $120bn that its investment bankers advised it could be worth last year. Continue reading...

Trump-imposed tariff of 25% on $200bn of goods could add about $160 to the cost of a $999 Chinese-made iPhone XSThe escalating trade dispute between the US and China could prove damaging to Apple and its customers by pushing up the cost of iPhones and driving down the share price.According to a report by Morgan Stanley, the new Trump-imposed tariff of 25% on $200bn of Chinese-made goods could add about $160 (£124) to the cost of a Chinese-made iPhone XS, which starts at $999. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Obria Group’s ads suggest it provides abortion services, when in fact it tries to persuade women not to terminate pregnanciesGoogle has given tens of thousands of dollars in free advertising to an anti-abortion group that runs ads suggesting it provides abortion services at its medical clinics, but actually seeks to deter “abortion-minded women” from terminating their pregnancies.Related: Abortion: judge strikes down Kentucky restriction but governor to appeal Continue reading...

Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Google will make submissions as inquiry looks at online abuseFacebook, Apple, Microsoft and Google are to give secret evidence to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) as it examines the growing problem of online exploitation.Representatives of the four global tech companies will make part of their submissions in closed sessions of the inquiry, which is being held in Southwark, south London. Continue reading...

A gripping adventure from award-winning studio Inkle casts you as an archaeologist translating an ancient alien languageHeaven’s Vault, a science fiction adventure told with the appealing restraint of an Asimov classic, begins as something of a reluctant manhunt. Your character, Aliya, an orphan who as a young girl was rescued from a planet of slave traders by an esteemed academic, is summoned home to the university where she grew up. There, her adoptive mother beseeches Aliya to find an old friend who has disappeared while undertaking an archaeological treasure hunt. It’s an interruption that Aliya, a freelance archaeologist-cum-treasure hunter herself, could do without. Still, through familial loyalty, or more likely a rivalrous interest in whatever treasure the vanished man was hunting, she glumly agrees to the assignment.So begins a winding but exhilarating galactic sojourn – one that differs from linear fiction in that it remembers and adapts to every choice and every path you follow in order to build a story acutely individual to the player. The choose-your-own adventure is in vogue thanks, in part, to Charlie Brooker’s recent Netflix experiment Bandersnatch. Heaven’s Vault is, however, a different class of work, deeply complex and textured and building upon its Cambridge-based studio Inkle’s Bafta-winning previous game, 80 Days. The result is an elegiac triumph, filled with the kind of sturdy writing and character development that remains rare – all the more thrilling considering the story’s adaptive quality. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber talks to the co-host of Grindfest, a festival for which dozens of fans of a type of body modification called ‘grinding’ travelled to the Tehachapi mountains in CaliforniaHumans have been using technology to alter their bodies for decades. Many women have medical devices implanted in their arms as a form of contraception, and people with heart problems can be helped with pacemakers.Implants such as these are considered medically necessary or helpful, but some people like to take the idea of body modification a lot further. This week, Jordan delves into the often controversial world of biohacking, to explore how, when used in the right way, technology can enhance the human form, and find out why some of the latest forms of biohacking face medical, ethical and legal challenges.

Social media such as WhatsApp may enable voters, but encrypted messaging polarises them and blocks public scrutinyIn 10 days’ time, two political dramas will reach their denouement, thanks to the votes of a combined total of about 1.3 billion people. At the heart of both will be a mess of questions about democracy in the online age, and how – or even if – we can act to preserve it.Elections to the European parliament will begin on 23 May, and offer an illuminating test of the rightwing populism that has swept across the continent. In the UK, they will mark the decisive arrival of Nigel Farage’s Brexit party, whose packed rallies are serving notice of a politics brimming with bile and rage, masterminded by people with plenty of campaigning nous. The same day will see the result of the Indian election, a watershed moment for the ruling Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, and his Bharatiya Janata party, or BJP. Whatever the outcomes, both contests will highlight something inescapable: that the politics of polarisation, anger and what political cliche calls “fake news” is going to be around for a long time to come. Continue reading...

Huawei | IAAF ruling | Emma Thompson films | Gender inequality in salons | The royal babyThe US secretary of state says: “Ask yourself: would the Iron Lady be silent when China violates the sovereignty of nations through corruption or coercion?” (What would Thatcher do, asks Pompeo as he urges Huawei U-turn, 9 May). Perhaps. She was mostly silent when the US, on numerous documented occasions, did exactly that.

Could this be the moment the sentiment on Wall Street turned against the tech sector?Uber’s stock market debut came with all the usual razzmatazz of a big American technology IPO. The chief executive spent weeks making sweeping statements about how the business was “just getting started” and had new worlds to conquer – everything from pizza delivery to international freight. In the background, investment bankers whipped up buyers for the “transportation” stock of the 21st century.And, when the big day arrived on Friday, company executives rang the bell to open trading on the New York Stock Exchange while bagels were delivered to traders on the floor. All textbook stuff. Yet Uber’s arrival as a public company felt flat. It also had an end-of-an-era tone. Continue reading...

Enjoy some of the world’s rarest and special cars in a green oasis in the heart of the cityLondon Concours

From copywriters to computer programmers, people with online-based jobs are seizing the chance to take their work on their travelsI dismissed the idea at first. Over a picnic in south London’s Brockwell Park last May my friend Tom asked whether I had ever considered leaving the UK behind and continuing my football journalism career abroad.“Nice thought, mate,” I replied. “But I can’t see it happening. How would I make it work? Besides, I’d miss you too much.” Continue reading...

Presenting tech companies as America’s greatest menace may appeal to voters, but it does little to chart an alternative future

Our pick of the Bluetooth earbuds out there, from Apple Airpods to Samsung Galaxy Buds and moreEarbuds are great for some personal listening in the office, on the commute or at the gym, but wires are a pain, and headphone sockets are disappearing from our smartphones.Bluetooth earbuds have long been available with a wire between them that runs round the back of your neck, but that can be frustrating as it often gets caught on clothing. The next generation of truly wireless earbuds solves the problem by getting rid of the wires entirely. Continue reading...

Stock traded considerably lower than $100bn the ride-hailing app had hoped to achieveUber’s hopes of a surge in the price of its shares have fallen flat, as investors gave the taxi-hailing app’s eagerly anticipated stock market float a frosty reception by sending the shares below their launch price.Uber put a price of $45 on its shares valuing the company at $80bn (£61.4bn) – well below the $100bn it had once hoped to achieve – amid jitters among investors at the lacklustre performance of shares in rival Lyft since its recent float. Continue reading...

4AD

New Android version out in public beta with smarter AI, more privacy and dark modeGoogle took the wraps off the next version of Android 10 Q at its IO developer conference in California this week, introducing a whole range of new features, gestures, AI and privacy advances.Android Q doesn’t yet have a full name, but it marks a shift-change in Google’s attitudes to how things should work on a smartphone. Continue reading...

Ride-hailing app valued at $80bn, below its initial target – but it will still make billions for some early investorsUber on Thursday priced its shares at $45 each on its Wall Street debut, valuing the company at a disappointing $82bn.While its value could rise on the first day of trading, the figure is well below Uber’s initial $100bn target as investors got the jitters about the lacklustre performance of the float staged by its rival Lyft in March. Continue reading...

Chris Hughes wrote in the New York Times Facebook’s acquisition of rival platforms has given Zuckerberg ‘un-American’ controlA cofounder of Facebook has called for the government to break up the company, warning that Mark Zuckerberg’s power is “unprecedented and un-American”.Chris Hughes, who helped established Facebook after meeting Zuckerberg at Harvard, wrote in the New York Times that Facebook’s acquisition of rival platforms had given Zuckerberg unparalleled power over speech and that, from the early days of Facebook, Zuckerberg had touted “domination” as an ultimate goal. Continue reading...

Blame for the fall of GEC rests with its boss, Arnold Weinstock, says Tim Webb. Plus letters on the collapse of a once-great British electronics sector from Roger Cooper, Michael Prior, Alan Burkitt-Gray and David Murray Aditya Chakrabortty is basically correct in his analysis of the decline of Britain’s electronics industry and the central role played by Arnold Weinstock, head of GEC (Why does Britain need Huawei? The answer speaks volumes, 8 May). Weinstock was indeed parsimonious; he paid poor salaries, engineers worked in portable buildings and redundancy payments were the lowest the law would allow. In my job as a trade union official, I found him inflexible and uncompromising. Chakrabortty gives him a little too much credit for maintaining a level of research and development that was abandoned by his successors.While his foreign competitors were selling innovative consumer electronics and products people wanted to buy, Weinstock decided it was safer to build huge cash mountains rather than invest in the civil sector. He concentrated on military production, a source of easy money, provided by his friends in the Ministry of Defence and funded by the British taxpayer. Many of these products were overpriced, delivered late and performed poorly, particularly in the field of radar. Continue reading...

Innovative vehicle, which is being designed in England, is due to go on sale in 2021The first drafts of Dyson’s closely guarded electric car designs have emerged, showing a vehicle with unusual proportions that could be used off-road.The patent filings are the first clue to what the “radically different” car pledged by the British inventor Sir James Dyson might look like. Continue reading...

The sexist abuse women reported in 2014 has engulfed public life – and one of its perpetrators is a Ukip candidateFor luckier people than me, this week will have been the first time they’ve ever heard of Carl Benjamin (or Sargon of Akkad, as he is better known online). The fact that a Ukip candidate has been discovered to have said something hideous felt like such routine news, it would hardly have registered with me if I hadn’t immediately recognised the candidate in question.Benjamin (or Sargon of Akkad, as he is better known online) tweeted in 2016 that he “wouldn’t even rape” the Labour MP Jess Phillips. He revisited the topic in a recent video on his million-subscriber YouTube channel and is now being investigated by the police. It’s a sorry story from a candidate in the European elections, but Phillips is far from the only woman Benjamin has harassed online. He has built his entire platform on it. Continue reading...

iPad, iPhone, Mac, PC; Nyamnyam

There are plenty of reasons why Uber’s much-hyped share sale might fail – and many more why that could be a good thingSerf, noun: a laborer bound under the feudal system to work on his lord’s estate.Uber is a lot. Last year 5.2 billion people took a ride in an Uber. And the company lost an average of 58 cents on each ride. Continue reading...

Dave wants a point-and-shoot camera, but should he just buy a top-end smartphone instead?I’m looking for a compact travel camera. I presently have a Canon S100 and realise it is old and out of date. In its price range to maybe double its value ($1,000 Canadian or £570), what would you recommend for a simple but good point-and-shoot that also takes top-quality video?On the other hand, a US camera reviewer suggests buying the best quality smartphone possible, not a camera … Dave in CanadaThe Canon S100 was announced in November 2011, and it was one of the best digital compacts of its day. Enthusiasts liked its ability to shoot RAW images, its full manual controls and its 5x zoom lens. It also offered HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, in-camera GPS, auto-focus tracking with face detection, and could shoot 1080p videos. It wasn’t bad value at £429/$429.95 (US dollars). Amusingly enough, I recommended the Canon S95 in Ask Jack, before your S100 replaced it. Continue reading...

It made adults walk into lamp posts and kids throw sickies: now Pokémon fever is back. What’s the appeal?When it was released in 1996, Pokémon made zealots of children. Desperate to catch ’em all (as the slogan goes), they would queue for hours, play truant from school (‘Pokéflu’ apparently), fight, steal and bankrupt their parents. Exasperated schools banned the trading cards; jittery parents fanned the flames of moral panic.In November 1999, as the phenomenon reached its climax, Pokémon graced the cover of Time magazine; the accompanying feature described Pokémania, the fanaticism the game franchise inspired, as “a multimedia and interactive barrage like no other before it” and, less flatteringly, “a pestilential Ponzi scheme”. Eventually – outside Asia at least – Pokémon, like most children’s fads, faded from the mainstream. Continue reading...

Lawyers fighting executive’s deportation from Canada to US say president’s comments prove case is politically motivatedHuawei’s chief financial officer intends to seek a stay on extradition proceedings, in part based on statements by Donald Trump about the case that her lawyers say disqualifies the United States from pursuing the matter in Canada.Meng Wanzhou, 47, who faces charges related to Iran sanctions violations, was appearing at a Vancouver courthouse on Wednesday to set a timetable for her upcoming extradition hearing. Continue reading...

US secretary of state again calls on UK to resist Huawei’s efforts to gain access to 5G networkThe US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has invoked Margaret Thatcher as he appealed to the Conservative right to take a firmer line with China, again urging the UK to resist efforts by Huawei to gain access to Britain’s new 5G network.Insisting he felt duty-bound to raise sensitive issues with close partners, Pompeo said the telecoms company was, as a matter of Chinese law, required to bow to Beijing’s demands for access to its networks, adding he could see no circumstances in which the west should allow itself to become so vulnerable. Continue reading...

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has invoked Margaret Thatcher as he appealed to the Conservative right to take a firmer line with China, again urging the UK to resist efforts by Huawei to gain access to Britain's new 5G network.

Drivers are shutting off apps in protest across more than a dozen US cities as Uber prepares to go publicUber and Lyft are offering riders and drivers discounts and incentives to use the app on Wednesday as drivers seeking better wages strike across the US.Uber drivers are shutting off apps in protest across more than a dozen US cities as the company prepares to go public, demanding better pay and more protections. To support the drivers, advocates have called on users to stay off the app on Wednesday. But this week, many customers of Lyft and Uber have reported receiving coupons and discount codes timed around the protest, leading many to claim the companies are trying to lure them over the digital picket line. Continue reading...

A new breed of games pits vulnerable kids against huge challenges. What does this say about how adults are facing society’s problems?Environmental and financial crises loom and we feel we have no influence. If society has already reduced us to a childlike state of weakness, isolation and vulnerability, it is perhaps no surprise that modern pop culture and technology tend towards infantilisation, and that many video games function as childish wish fulfilment. By turning us into star footballers or super space marines, they reconstruct adolescent fantasies of proficiency and heroism.Yet some games have begun to depict a childhood experience more in tune with the current social context. These games make us play as children, and in doing so often accentuate feelings of powerlessness and fear. But they also reflect a generation of parents’ worries for the future and, perhaps, an evolving understanding of how we think about children and their inner lives. Continue reading...

Online repair communities are spreading repair knowledge online to place power back in the hands of consumersWhen Jessa Jones’s twin daughters flushed her iPhone 4S down the toilet, she decided that she was going to fix it herself. She took the toilet apart in her backyard, retrieved the device, and then searched online for how to make it turn on again. On DIY fix-it forums, she was informed that the first step was to replace the battery. She did this with relative ease, but the phone wouldn’t charge, which suggested that the water had also seeped into the phone’s motherboard.For most, this would mean giving up and going to the Apple store. But Jones was determined. She had no experience working with electronics but by trawling through online tutorials, she taught herself how to use a soldering iron and replace microscopic components inside the phone. She eventually succeeded and got the device working again. Continue reading...

A growing group who commute from places as far as eight hours away spend the night in their cars to pick up fares around San Francisco during the dayEvery Saturday morning before the sun rises, 35-year-old Uber driver Sultan Arifi rolls up the sleeping bag in the front seat of his car, places it in the trunk, and prepares for another day of work.He will spend the next 12 hours picking up as many passengers as he can on the streets of San Francisco before returning to a grocery store parking lot in the north of the city to sleep, often for six hours or less, rising as early as he can on Sunday to do it all again. Continue reading...

Drivers to take part in global protest on eve of ride-hailing app’s flotation on stock market

Google Assistant with video calling, security camera, face recognition and hand gesturesGoogle is launching a larger 10in version of its smart display as it attempts to supplant Amazon’s Alexa as the top smartspeaker maker.Announced at Google’s I/O developer conference in California on Tuesday, the new Google Nest Hub Max, which will launch on 15 July costing £219 in the UK. It spearheads the firm’s new push to combine its Nest and other smart home products into one brand. Continue reading...

Model has top-spec camera and software but costs more than £300 less than flagship Pixel 3Google is looking to buck the £1,000-plus smartphone trend by launching a cheaper Pixel 3a smartphone that still offers its top-spec camera and software.Announced at Google’s I/O developer conference in California on Tuesday, the new Pixel 3a and 3a XL Android phones are aimed at the increasingly important mid-range market. Starting at £399, they seek to offer most of what made Google’s £739-plus flagship phones good, but at a significantly reduced cost. Continue reading...

From battles between 9th-century kingdoms to the British Empire colonising the solar system, virtual Britains are remaking historySince Theresa May invoked Article 50, there has been a mystifying surge in video games set in Britain. They come in all shapes and sizes, from Nintendo’s Pokémon Sword and Shield, which riffs on the architecture of Oxbridge and London, to PanicBarn’s anti-Brexit polemic Not Tonight. Most began development long before the EU referendum, but they are useful explorations of national identity at a time when what Britain stands for is hotly contested.Gary Younge has described the Brexit debate as a clash between stories about Britain’s past and our ideas of Britishness. How, then, might these video games help us think about what Britain is today? Continue reading...

Wage cuts and inadequate bonuses mean drivers are left behind as ride-hailing firm prepares for stock market debutA lot of very rich people will get even richer when Uber goes public on 9 May in one of the most anticipated initial public offerings (IPO) to hit the stock market in 2019.Travis Kalanick, Uber’s founder, could see his 8.6% stake in the company valued at close to $8bn if the company is valued at $90bn plus. One early investor, the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, has a $3m stake in the company estimated to now be worth $400m. Uber’s current CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, could make at least $100m from stock options on top of his salary of $45m in 2018. Continue reading...