Technology | The Guardian

Chaotic roads, bad weather and reckless habits make the Russian capital one of the worst to drive, and its quest to build an autonomous car uniquely challengingIn certain sunny climes, self-driving cars are multiplying. Dressed in signature spinning sensors, the vehicles putter along roads in California, Arizona and Nevada, hoovering up data that will one day make them smart enough to run without humans.Besides perennial sunshine, those places share other common traits: wide, well-manicured roads, functional traffic enforcement, and agreeable local governments. That’s how Chandler, Arizona – a Phoenix suburb on nobody’s radar as of a few weeks ago – became the first US town to host autonomous cars on public streets without human safety drivers. Courtesy of Waymo, they’re expected to start carrying passengers within the next few months. Continue reading...

Brain-computer interfaces could change the way people think, soldiers fight and Alzheimer’s is treated. But are we in control of the ethical ramifications?At the World Government Summit in Dubai in February, Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk said that people would need to become cyborgs to be relevant in an artificial intelligence age. He said that a “merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence” would be necessary to ensure we stay economically valuable.

Ripple, also known as XRP, peaks at more than $100bn and surpasses Ethereum to become second most valuable cryptocurrency after bitcoinIf 2017 was the year of bitcoin, the pioneering cryptocurrency that neared $20,000 in December, will 2018 be the year of Ripple?Related: From the future of bitcoin to Facebook, 2018 in technology Continue reading...

Elon Musk sells all 50,000 plain black baseball caps showing the logo of his tunnelling firm, the Boring CompanyThe inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk has proved that he can do more than just build futuristic cars and launch space programmes, having sold out an entire line of 50,000 hats in just over a month.The latest milestone for the businessman behind Tesla, SpaceX and a host of other tech companies came when Musk announced that every one of his “Boring” baseball caps had been snapped up. Continue reading...

Britain could miss out on autonomous vehicle revolution owing to the shortage of charging bays and National Grid limitationsA shortage of charging points and strain on energy supplies are now the main stumbling blocks to the rise of driverless electric cars, according to the UK boss of insurer Axa.Amanda Blanc said a lack of rapid charging bays and pressure on the National Grid have overtaken questions about accident liability as the biggest barriers to autonomous vehicles entering the transport mainstream. Continue reading...

Tech is one of the richest and most powerful industries in America – and it gets an awful lot wrong. So here’s some seasonal advice for Silicon Valley’s biggest beastsNew Year’s resolutions are crap. The entire exercise is rife with failure and self-loathing, and you, dearest, have no need to make any. You are already reading the Guardian. You are perfect exactly the way you are.Infinitely more fun than reflecting on one’s own shortcomings is diagnosing the problems of other, richer, more powerful entities. It is in that spirit that we have created a list of New Year’s resolutions for the tech industry. Our resolution will be to continue doing our best to hold them to account, which, like the most successful resolutions, is what we were already planning to do anyway. Continue reading...

Social networks and politics, the still unfulfilled promise of augmented reality, pay-to-play games: what might change in the year aheadBoth of the major smart home platforms have a long-running problem with “discoverability”: it’s very hard to let users know what their devices can do, particularly if they’re always improving thanks to rapid software updates. Continue reading...

An examination of the internet age suggests that we should cultivate the heresies of secrets and silenceDuring a commercial break in the 1984 Super Bowl, Apple broadcast an ad directed by Ridley Scott. Glum, grey workers sat in a vast grey hall listening to Big Brother’s declamations on a huge screen. Then a maverick athlete-cum-Steve-Jobs-lackey hurled a sledgehammer at the screen, shattering it and bathing workers in healing light. “On January 24th,” the voiceover announced, “Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like [Orwell’s] Nineteen Eighty-Four.”The ad’s idea, writes Korean-born German philosopher Byung-Chul Han, was that the Apple Mac would liberate downtrodden masses from the totalitarian surveillance state. And indeed, the subsequent rise of Apple, the internet, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and Google Glass means that today we live in nothing like the nightmare Orwell imagined. After all, Big Brother needed electroshock, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, drugs and hectoring propaganda broadcasts to keep power, while his Ministry of Plenty ensured that consumer goods were lacking to make sure subjects were in an artificial state of need. Continue reading...

Most first encountered ransomware after an outbreak shut down hospital computers and diverted ambulances this year. Is it here to stay?For thousands of people, the first time they heard of “ransomware” was as they were turned away from hospitals in May 2017.The WannaCry outbreak had shut down computers in more than 80 NHS organisations in England alone, resulting in almost 20,000 cancelled appointments, 600 GP surgeries having to return to pen and paper, and five hospitals simply diverting ambulances, unable to handle any more emergency cases. Continue reading...

Male employee of UK-registered cryptocurrency exchange ‘safe, but stressed’ following capture by gunmenKidnappers in Ukraine have released an employee at a UK-registered cryptocurrency exchange after getting more than $1m (£750,000) in bitcoin as a ransom, an adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister told Reuters on Friday.Pavel Lerner, a leading analyst and blockchain expert, was seized by masked abductors on Boxing Day, according to a statement by his company, EXMO Finance, on its website. Continue reading...

The main use of quantum technology might not be to hack existing systems but to create unhackable communication networks of the futureThe Washington Post’s columnist David Ignatius moonlights as a pacey novelist. His latest book, The Quantum Spy, is a thriller that touches upon the space race of our times: the great power contest to develop a quantum computer, able to work so fast that it can crack today’s uncrackable codes. Such a machine would be revolutionary. Modern e-commerce depends on encryption to protect confidential information. It is used to authenticate our identities and ensure the integrity of the data. To be able to break such codes would expose us all. Ignatius’s fiction is grounded in fact: the US National Institute of Standards and Technology thinks that within 15 years the first quantum computer will emerge to defeat the most prevalent forms of encryption.However, cryptography remains a game of cat and mouse between codemakers and codebreakers. As fast as one group creates codes, another tries to break them. Unbreakable ciphers sometimes fall short. “Post-quantum cryptography” already exists, even before quantum computers do. Earlier this year academics suggested, controversially, that they had solved the maths to make “quantum-resistant” the main cryptography used on the internet. The main use of quantum technology might not be to hack existing systems but to create unbreakable protection for communication networks of the future. China claims to have launched such a network this year. Continue reading...

US firm admits it introduced feature, that affects the iPhone 6, 6S, 7 and SE, without users’ consent to cope with ageing batteries

Wild-living nomads, artists, actors, singers, cricketers and refugees – here is a stunning selection of images, from Gina Miller and Steve Coogan to Ed Sheeran, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Jeremy Corbyn, Cardi B and Fenella Fielding Continue reading...

In a year filled with depressing news alerts and Trump tweetstorms, moments of sheer joy online were hard to come by – but there were a fewUnless you’re a corporation hoarding billions of dollars in offshore tax shelters, 2017 has not been a good year.From Trump’s Twitter tantrums to the constant stream of alerts about natural disasters, the news has offered little in the way of happy distraction. Continue reading...

Buyers take stake of about 17.5% in ride-hailing company that has gone through a turbulent yearA consortium led by SoftBank Group Corp has successfully bought a large number of shares in Uber in a deal that values the ride-hailing/food delivery firm at $48bn (£36bn), Uber said on Thursday.

Claims of Russian meddling dominated 2017. The US midterm elections will be first big test of Facebook’s effort to stamp it outSocial networks spent much of 2017 slowly coming to terms with the extent to which their platforms had been exploited to spread political misinformation. But the narrow focus of investigations over the last year is likely to cause further pain in 2018, as the US midterm elections create a new urgency for the problem to be solved.At the beginning of this year, Facebook was hostile to the suggestion that it may have played an unwitting part in a foreign influence campaign. After the election of Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, described the suggestion that his site may have swayed voters as a “crazy idea”, despite evidence that hoaxes and lies had been spread on the social network during the campaign. (He later apologised for the comment, saying it was “dismissive and I regret it”.) Continue reading...

Move comes less than two weeks after high-profile digital currency exchange in Seoul was hacked and went bankruptBitcoin plunged by more than $1,000 (£740) on Thursday after South Korea said it was planning a crackdown on trading in the digital currency in the latest of a string of warnings for investors.It dropped to about $13,500 after trading at about $15,400 on Wednesday. The dip was seen as a further illustration of bitcoin’s volatility. Continue reading...

If this year’s $120m juicing flop gave you reason to doubt in human ingenuity, take heart in these incredible inventions to come: from an artificial kidney to a breast pump you might actually want to use

The system of ‘loot box’ gaming is perfectly pitched to profit from players and drive addiction, with all its associated costsIn a tale of gambling addiction posted to Reddit shortly before Christmas, the numbers were as shocking as they were unsurprising. First the anonymous addict frittered away $200 (£149), in November 2016. Then $700 more, later that month. Then $300, $400, $1,500 … eventually, by December 2017, a credit card debt of $16,000, too large to be kept a secret any longer. It’s a painful narrative, one that’s not softened through repeated telling.What might be more surprising is the particular type of gambling under discussion. This man hadn’t lost his money betting on football, or feeding notes into a fixed-odds betting terminal. He had been playing the mobile video game Final Fantasy: Brave Exodus (FFBE), a free-to-play game for android and iOS based on the Final Fantasy series. Continue reading...

This year, Facebook turned on its notification function for attacks in London and Las Vegas, Stockholm and St Petersburg. But do we feel more secure?You know the drill by now: a terrorist atrocity or catastrophe occurs in your home town, and no sooner have you seen the news than you receive a Facebook notification that one of your friends has marked themselves safe, or that another is asking you to do so.This was my experience during the attack in Westminster in March, with friends as far away as Canada asking me to declare myself “safe”. Clicking on Facebook’s nagging notification revealed 31 of my friends were apparently out of danger, but a further 249 were “not marked as safe”. Continue reading...

Sam’s old Dell has failed and she urgently needs a replacement. Happily there are lots of attractive options for less than her £800 budge …My seven-year-old Dell desktop has died and I need urgently to buy a new PC. It is a family computer but I also use it for work, for processing photos that I take professionally, and creating photobooks. Otherwise, my husband has 333GB of music, and we have also have email and web-surfing needs. I’m looking to spend £800-ish. Please help, it’s a minefield out there. SamBuying a new desktop PC is one of today’s simpler computer problems. The main decisions are about size, speed, source and price, though not necessarily in that order. There aren’t any tough technology decisions, because we already know the best options. The main barrier is the ability, or willingness, to pay for them.

Machines threaten jobs generating £290bn in wages and could widen inequality gap, according to IPPR

A series of attacks on government agencies, TV and banking networks convinced Seoul to develop an elite cadre of experts to defend the countryAt the fortified border between South and North Korea, students on a computer hacking course are instructed to peer northwards across a strip of empty land toward the enemy state.“Our country is divided and we are at war, but you can’t see that division in cyberspace,” said Kim Jin-seok. “So we take them to see it in person.” Continue reading...

Amid criminal investigations, the #DeleteUber campaign and accusations of sexual harassment, it’s been a rocky road for the service Continue reading...

Cryptocurrency heads back over $16,000 after losing more than 30% of its value in one day and sinking as low as $12,000Bitcoin bounced back over $16,000 on Boxing Day, recovering some of the ground lost in a pre-Christmas rout that pushed its price down below $12,000.Bitcoin is the first, and the biggest, "cryptocurrency" – a decentralised tradable digital asset. Whether it's a bad investment is the big question . Bitcoin can only be used as a medium of exchange and in practice has been far more important for the dark economy than it has for most legitimate uses. The lack of any central authority makes bitcoin remarkably resilient to censorship, corruption – or regulation. That means it has attracted a range of backers, from libertarian monetarists who enjoy the idea of a currency with no inflation and no central bank, to drug dealers who like the fact that it's hard (but not impossible) to trace a bitcoin transaction back to a physical person. Continue reading...

The Winter Olympics, Wimbledon, the World Cup and Premier League football will drive 4K into the mainstream – but HDR will remain nicheDuring Black Friday and the run up to Christmas , discounted TVs have been advertised with buzzwords such as 4K, UltraHD and HDR banded around as the latest and greatest thing – but is now the right time to buy one?Having been burned by 3DTV and then annoyed by often rubbish smart TVs, you could be forgiven for thinking that 4K and HDR are the next big forgettable fad. Continue reading...

As the number of Guardian supporters continues to grow, we look at independent publications with their own take on membership modelsAfter the Guardian wrote three weeks ago about the collapse of independent media all around the world, it quickly became apparent that was only half the story.Press freedom is at its lowest ebb this century. Authoritarian rulers and an economic rout have combined to drive hundreds of titles out of business.

Scandal at Uber, the backlash against Facebook, smartphone addiction: west coast editor Merope Mills shares the Guardian stories that captured the moodThe utopian dream of Silicon Valley is no more – 2017 made sure of that. Every month has brought fresh scandal to the titans of the industry, from Russian interference to sexual harassment; from Uber’s never-ending woes to YouTube’s advertising scandals.

With superstar backers and sponsorship from mainstream brands, competitive video gaming is hitting the big timeIf there are any doubts that computer games can become a mainstream spectator sport, then Jennifer Lopez and Stan Kroenke are not listening.The superstar singer and Arsenal’s majority shareholder have both put money into eSports teams, as the gaming competitions with millions of followers worldwide aim for even greater public appeal. Lopez has bought into a team franchise for the new Overwatch League, in which teams from cities such as Seoul, San Francisco and London play Overwatch, a mass-participation shooting game. The global competition for the game, which launches in January, also includes the LA Gladiators, run by Kroenke, a serial sports entrepreneur. Continue reading...

Cybersecurity professionals call for better education after data thefts and the Wannacry attack on NHS IT systemsCybersecurity professionals are calling for better education and improved apprentice schemes after saying a shortfall of staff in the sector is leaving companies exposed to hacker attacks.According to a recent survey of recruitment agencies, 81% expect a rise in demand for digital security staff, but only 16% saw that the demand would be met. Continue reading...

Anonymous benefactor known as Pine bucks global wealth trend with million-dollar donation fund for worthy causesWhat would you do if you had $86m? It’s a welcome dilemma for some of bitcoin’s early adopters thanks to the cryptocurrency’s meteoric rise, from less than $1,000 last year to a peak of almost $20,000 in December.One generous bitcoiner has decided to follow the lead of Bill Gates and establish a philanthropic purse, the Pineapple Fund, because “once you have enough money, money doesn’t matter,” they say. Continue reading...

The tale of an 80s urban legend keeps you guessing, while Radio 4’s Serial spoof is a treat worth staying up forThe Polybius Conspiracy (Radiotopia’s Showcase)

The loyal Micra has been a stalwart of driving schools and OAPs for years. But this model has learned some new tricksPrice: from £11,995

How did Boris react to a poster of Tintin, what’s been banned by Wetherspoons, and who said it was ‘disgusting’ to put a washing machine in the kitchen? How well do you remember 2017? Questions by Euan Ferguson (answers at the end)1 A mother and daughter died within a day of each other, and were honoured in Hollywood. Carrie Fisher died aged 60; her mother was 84, but who was she? Clue: her breakout role was as Kathy Selden in a 1952 film.2 Who was made a World Health Organisation goodwill ambassador, an appointment revoked within days? Continue reading...

Chief executive John Chen has yet to reverse the company’s slide – but a positive response from investors is pushing up its sharesRemember BlackBerry? The one-time giant of smartphones has gone through tumultuous times over the past six years, and become a much smaller software company. Its results last week showed just how small: third-quarter revenues were $226m (£169m), its lowest three-monthly total since 2004, with an operating loss of $258m.The Canadian company’s chief executive, John Chen, is a turnaround specialist who believes that the future is in self-driving cars, where automakers and software firms alike see huge promise. It is investing hope in QNX, which it bought in 2010: a maker of software that underpins car entertainment and data systems. Continue reading...

This year saw innovations that will set the pace for 2018, with devices acquiring bigger screens and becoming faster, more private and longer lastingAt the beginning of 2017 you could have been forgiven for thinking that smartphone innovation had died, with most phones looking the same and doing the same things, changing very little from the year before.

A new iPhone might be tempting at Christmas – but imagine escaping the endless distraction and becoming better organized in the process. I’ll do it if you doMy Christmas present to myself is a new phone. Should I upgrade to an iPhone X or make the radical lifestyle choice to downgrade to a flip phone?If you, me, and everyone we know had the sense we were born with, we would confront this decision armed with the following information: the Alcatel Go flip phone, which has GPS and photo and video capability, is $20 and has a battery life of 16 days. The Jitterbug 5 is $180 and can go one month without charging. The Samsung Gusto 3 is free, if you buy a $15-a-month call package from Affinity Cellular. (That’s for 350 minutes of talk time and no data, because it doesn’t support data. But you can text!) Continue reading...

From the #DeleteUber campaign to fake news, the industry found itself in the crosshairs this year – and it was a long time coming, experts sayWhen Jonathan Taplin’s book Move Fast and Break Things, which dealt with the worrying rise of big tech, was first published in the UK in April 2017, his publishers removed its subtitle because they didn’t think it was supported by evidence: “How Facebook, Google and Amazon cornered culture and undermined democracy.”When the paperback edition comes out early next year, that subtitle will be restored. Continue reading...

Tool allows users to see if they have engaged with Russian propaganda entity the Internet Research Agency, but won’t reach millions already exposed to fake newsFacebook has launched a new tool to allow users to see if they’ve liked or followed Russian propaganda accounts, though the feature probably won’t reach many of the millions of people exposed to fake news during US and UK elections.Facebook on Friday quietly rolled out a new page that says, “How can I see if I’ve liked or followed a Facebook Page or Instagram account created by the Internet Research Agency?”, referencing the infamous Russian entity and “troll army” accused of trying to influence American elections and British politics on social media. Continue reading...

Cryptocurrency’s year-end rally fails as its investors are ‘finally introduced to the law of financial gravity’Bitcoin lost more than a quarter of its value on Friday as an analyst warned that investors in the cryptocurrency had finally been introduced to the law of financial gravity.In the latest illustration of bitcoin’s volatility, it slumped to below $11,500 at one point on Friday – touching $11,159 – having started the week at a record high close to $20,000 and in its biggest weekly fall since 2013. However, by 5pm London time it was trading at $12,800 as the currency endured a see-saw day. Continue reading...

Sexual harassment and groping allegations against a suspended researcher are part of an industry culture that condones sexist behavior, women say

Plaintiffs from two separate class-action lawsuits claim Apple did not have user consent to slow iPhone performance and that it was forcing new purchasesApple is facing lawsuits over the revelations that it intentionally slows down older iPhones without user consent.

Giving a voice-activated device to someone for Christmas? Think again

Ian Bartlett says the ruling that Uber is a transport company not a digital service could also change the way we view other digital giants; and Derek Wyatt suggests a post-Brexit Britain could create a Global Digital Foundation to address these issuesUber is officially a transport company and not a digital service, the European court of justice (ECJ) has now ruled (Report, 21 December), making it assume greater responsibility for its business methods and duty to employees and customers. In addition to emphasising the important role played by the ECJ in looking beyond national parochiality, may I suggest that the principles should now be examined in the wider context of online communication. The likes of Twitter, Google, Facebook and YouTube argue from a similar standpoint as Uber has done – namely that they are a mere platform, with limited or no responsibility for what happens as a result of their (lucrative) commercial activity. So death threats, instructions for bomb-making, abusive messages, sexting, hate mail and the like can be published with relative impunity under the “freedom of the internet” banner. I suggest these organisations are publishers, not mere platforms, and must therefore take greater responsibility for the content that they, well, publish. Just like newspapers and broadcasters. Yes, they may be scrabbling to increase the number of moderators and checkers to close stable doors, but that merely underlines the scale of the problem. If they and others were to be made fully accountable for the content that they happily put out, that problem is likely to be dealt with far more effectively, to the benefit of society as a whole.

Long Island Iced Tea Corp’s shares jump 432% after new name includes word ‘blockchain’, the currency’s ledger technologyShares in a tiny US soft drinks firm, Long Island Iced Tea Corp, have quadrupled in value in just one day after it changed its name to Long Blockchain Corporation, the latest move by a string of obscure companies rebranding themselves in an attempt to ride the bitcoin bubble.The small business, which produces a range of soft drinks on Long Island, said it was still going to continue making the iced tea-based drinks but was “shifting its primary corporate focus towards the exploration of and investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology”. Continue reading...

Sara wants some new headphones but there are lots to choose from. How should she go about finding a new pair?I want to buy a new pair of headphones. I’ve had a pair of Sony headphones for years that sound great and cost me $45 (£33.64). How can some headphones cost hundreds of dollars? Also, are wireless/Bluetooth headphones any good? SaraHeadphones, like most technology products, are subject to the law of diminishing returns. Most cost from about £25 to £350, but you can pay more than $50,000 for a pair of Sennheiser Orpheus headphones, or €100,000 for the bejewelled bling of Focal Utopia headphones by Tournaire.

Company says it introduced the feature for the iPhone 6 and later devices to prevent sudden shutdown of phones and prolong lifespanAfter years of rumours, Apple has confirmed that it does indeed slow down older iPhones, a feature introduced last year to protect against problems caused by ageing batteries.

PM responds to security committee report into 2015 targeted killing of Reyaad Khan, who had joined Islamic State in SyriaTheresa May has defended the use of drone strikes against British citizens, saying the killing of Islamic State’s Reyaad Khan in 2015 was “necessary and proportionate” and that she would authorise such strikes in the future.The prime minister said there had been no alternative to the killing of Khan in a precision airstrike in Syria because “a direct and imminent threat was identified by the intelligence agencies”. There was “a clear legal basis for action in international law”, she added.

Company loses challenge by Barcelona taxi drivers’ group, which argued Uber was directly involved in carrying passengersUber is a transport services company, the European court of justice (ECJ) has ruled, requiring it to accept stricter regulation and licensing within the EU as a taxi operator.The decision in Luxembourg, after a challenge brought by taxi drivers in Barcelona, will apply across the whole of the EU, including the UK. It cannot be appealed against.

Government says internet providers will be legally obliged from 2020 to meet user requests for speeds of at least 10MbpsBritish homes and businesses will have a legal right to high-speed broadband by 2020, the government has announced, dismissing calls from the network provider BT that it should be a voluntary rather than legal obligation on providers.The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said only a universal service obligation (USO) would offer certainty that broadband speeds of at least 10Mbps would reach the whole of the UK by 2020. Continue reading...