Technology | The Guardian

The sequel to Wreck-It Ralph is an overstuffed but weirdly pointless exercise in tech worship that fails to include much that actually connects with the audience

A video-sharing app is has become the most popular free app on the App Store in the USIt has been called “the Chinese lip-syncing app your kids love, but you’ve never heard of”, and now it has become a hit in the States.The upstart video-sharing app TikTok is the most popular free download in the App Store in the US, above such behemoths as Facebook, YouTube and Amazon. It has been downloaded almost 80m times in the US to date, including nearly 4m downloads in October alone, making it No 1 in the App Store for that month. Continue reading...

Everything from reading to swimming to cooking can now be tracked or optimised. What is this quest for perfection doing to our free time?

Federal Agency of News says it’s legitimate and is seeking an injunction to prevent Facebook from blocking its accountA Russian company whose accountant was charged by federal prosecutors for attempting to meddle in US elections has sued Facebook, claiming it is a legitimate news outlet and its Facebook account should be restored.The Federal Agency of News LLC, known as FAN, and its sole shareholder, Evgeniy Zubarev, filed the lawsuit in federal court in the northern district of California, seeking damages and an injunction to prevent Facebook from blocking its account. Continue reading...

We would like to hear from Facebook workers following allegations published last week in the New York Times

Cryptocurrency’s value has slumped by more than a quarter in less than a weekThe price of bitcoin continued to plunge on Tuesday as it fell another 7% to $4,387, taking its losses to almost 30% in the past week.A 14% tumble in the price of the world’s biggest and best-known cryptocurrency on Monday had taken bitcoin below $5,000 for the first time in 13 months. It is now at its lowest level since October last year. Continue reading...

Jack Dorsey accused of hate speech after posing with sign criticising country’s caste systemTwitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, has upset Hindu nationalists and some members of the Brahmin caste in India by posing for a picture with a placard reading: “Smash Brahminical patriarchy”.Related: WhatsApp struggling to control fake news in India, researchers say Continue reading...

Big tech has ushered in a second Gilded Age. We must relearn the lessons of the first, writes the former US labor secretaryLast week, the New York Times revealed that Facebook executives withheld evidence of Russian activity on their platform far longer than previously disclosed. They also employed a political opposition research firm to discredit critics.There’s a larger story here. Continue reading...

Announcement comes before publication of damning Human Rights Watch reportAirbnb has said it will remove from its website all properties in Israeli settlements built on the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank, after years of accusations that the company was benefitting from rentals in the illegal outposts.The accommodation bookings website announced on Monday that around 200 listings would be taken down in what will be seen as a victory for the Palestinian-led anti-occupation movement. Continue reading...

Social media firm to finance trainee ‘community’ journalists schemeFacebook will donate £4.5m to fund 80 local newspaper jobs for the next two years, as the company faces further questions over its relationship with the media and long-term impact on the news business.The social networking company will make the money available to subsidise the cost of trainee journalists based in newsrooms across Britain with the objective of providing “reporting from towns which have lost their local newspaper and beat reporters”. Continue reading...

Matthew Hanley and Connor Allsopp from Tamworth sentenced over data theftTwo friends have been jailed for their roles in hacking the telecommunications company TalkTalk.Matthew Hanley, 23, and Connor Allsopp, 21, both from Tamworth in Staffordshire, admitted charges relating to the huge breach of customer details in 2015, which cost the company £77m. Continue reading...

Apple CEO predicts Congress will pass laws targeting big US technology firmsBig US technology companies should brace themselves for “inevitable” regulation, according to Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook.Cook predicted the US would pass new laws targeting technology firms “at some point” to prevent the misuse of personal data, after a leak of Facebook user information to Cambridge Analytica that resulted in Mark Zuckerberg being hauled in front of Congress. Continue reading...

Brazil, Latvia and Singapore join coalition of parliaments seeking answers from Facebook chiefThree more countries have joined an “international grand committee” of parliaments, adding to calls for Facebook’s boss, Mark Zuckerberg, to give evidence on misinformation to the coalition.Related: How Republican firm's plan to defend Facebook by attacking rivals backfired Continue reading...

PlayStation 4 (version played), Xbox One, PC; Bethesda

US lecturer receives more than 50,000 tweets a year meant for the British retailerEvery year the frenzy around John Lewis’s Christmas ad results in the chain’s namesake, an American lecturer, being mistakenly inundated with thousands of tweets. This year he stars in his own Christmas ad.Twitter UK has paid for the “real” John Lewis, who receives more than 50,000 tweets a year meant for the British retail chain, to appear in a tongue-in-cheek ad playing on the case of mistaken identity. Continue reading...

For harassed loved ones everywhere, we compare the Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox One and Nintendo SwitchA games console is the perfect Christmas present – it’s exciting, it’s cool and everyone can join in on the day (as long as you’ve had the foresight to sneak it out of its packaging on Christmas Eve to download the inevitable six hours of system updates). But selecting which machine to opt for is complicated and confusing, and if you get it wrong you may end up with yet another unloved gadget crammed in the cupboard where you keep the air fryer and mini candyfloss machine.Here are some tips for harassed parents or partners who have found the words “games console” on a loved one’s Christmas list and are experiencing technophobic panic. Continue reading...

Ministers not taking growing threat to national infrastructure seriously, says committeeMinisters are failing to act with “a meaningful sense of purpose or urgency” in the face of a growing cyber threat to the UK’s critical national infrastructure (CNI), a parliamentary committee has warned.The joint committee on national security strategy said at a time when states such as Russia were expanding their capability to mount disruptive cyber-attacks, the UK’s level of ministerial oversight was “wholly inadequate”. Continue reading...

Hillary J Shaw harks back to the events in Denmark in September 1943Whenever anyone suggests that, for example, microchips implanted under our skin are only a minor extension of already-existing monitoring, or that “the innocent have nothing to fear” from increased surveillance and tracking (Report, 12 November), I mentally rerun the events in Denmark in September 1943 but with this latest technology. September 1943 was when the Danes, having been tipped off that Germany was about to round up and exterminate the Jewish population there, suddenly admitted these people to hospital or hid them in their homes under “Danish” names such as Jensen. Thousands were saved. Now how would all this have played out if there had been chip implants or electronic ID cards then?

Search engine is lobbying hard to stop proposed tax, aimed at compensating news publishersGoogle’s top news executive has refused to rule out shutting down Google News in EU countries, as the search engine faces a battle with Brussels over plans to charge a “link tax” for using news stories.Richard Gingras, the search engine’s vice-president of news, said while “it’s not desirable to shut down services” the company was deeply concerned about the current proposals, which are designed to compensate struggling news publishers if snippets of their articles appear in search results. Continue reading...

Machines are supposed to be tools that serve human ends, but the relationship is slowly shifting - and not in our favourThe other day I had to log in to a service I hadn’t used before. Since I was a new user, the website decided that it needed to check that I wasn’t a robot and so set me a Captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). This is a challenge-response test to enable a computer to determine whether the user is a person rather than a machine.I was presented with an image of a roadside scene over which was overlaid a grid. My “challenge” was to click on each cell in the grid that contained a traffic sign, or part thereof. I did so, fuming a bit. Then I was presented with another image and another grid – also with a request to identify road signs. Like a lamb, I complied, after which the website deigned to accept my input. Continue reading...

Stories of human resilience, enlightenment, love and death provide a much-needed escape from the bluster of BrexitWhat Nobody Tells You About Rape | The Modern Mann

Automated ‘voices’ that were supposed to do mundane tasks online also now spread hate speech and polarise opinion. Are they a boon or a threat?Alan Turing’s famous test of whether machines could fool us into believing they were human – “the imitation game” – has become a mundane, daily question for all of us. We are surrounded by machine voices, and think nothing of conversing with them – though each time I hear my car tell me where to turn left I am reminded of my grandmother, who having installed a telephone late in life used to routinely say goodnight to the speaking clock.We find ourselves locked into interminable text chats with breezy automated bank tellers and offer our mother’s maiden name to a variety of robotic speakers that sound plausibly alive. I’ve resisted the domestic spies of Apple and Amazon, but one or two friends jokingly describe the rapport they and their kids have built up with Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Home Hub – and they are right about that: the more you tell your virtual valet, the more you disclose of wants and desires, the more speedily it can learn and commit to memory those last few fragments of your inner life you had kept to yourself. Continue reading...

Just when you thought the classic Defender was no more, along comes a firm determined to keep the 4x4 as relevant and desirable as everTwisted Land Rovers

Guardian readers respond to David Edmond’s article about the moral arguments surrounding driverless carsI was disappointed that David Edmonds (Driverless Cars still need a moral compass. But what kind?, Opinion, 15 November) failed to credit one of our most brilliant British moral philosophers who developed the “trolley problem” as a way to abstract the reasoning behind ethical decision-making. Philippa Foot is rarely given her due even though these thought experiments are regularly cited in modern philosophy. Her inventiveness has helped inspire the next generation of philosophers to engage with the practical challenges of artificial intelligence. And we wonder why philosophy is dominated by men.

Tech giant’s founder made surprise warning in staff meeting when addressing question about Sears, according to a recordingAmazon is going to fail, Jeff Bezos, the tech company’s founder, told staff recently.Related: What cities offered Amazon: helipads, zoo tickets, and a street named Alexa Continue reading...

Open Society Foundations hits out after reports firm tried to discredit critics as agents of philanthropistOpen Society Foundations has hit out at Facebook as “reprehensible” after a PR agency hired by the social networking site reportedly tried to discredit critics by claiming they were agents of George Soros.Patrick Gaspard, the president of OSF, said Facebook’s methods “threaten the very values underpinning our democracy” in a letter addressed to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer and the executive responsible for the company’s political operations over last few years. OSF was founded by Soros in 1993 to fund civil rights groups around the world. Continue reading...

Growth in bookings continues to slow as pressure builds to improve financial performanceUber has posted a loss of more than $1bn (£780m) in its latest quarter as growth in bookings continued to slow in the run-up to its stock market flotation next year.The San Francisco-based ride-sharing firm, valued at $76bn, is under pressure to improve its financial performance before the IPO. It lost $1.07bn in the three months to September, a 20% increase from $891m in the previous quarter. Continue reading...

Mary needs to replace her 2009 MacBook Pro but is overwhelmed by the options. Which is the best choice?I have soldiered on with a 2009 MacBook Pro, which I use for internet access, social media, photos, and my research. But in order to access the university library remotely, I have to use an up-to-date operating system, and my Mac is so old I can no longer update it.So, I need to buy a new MacBook, but I am overwhelmed by the options. Do I need a Touch Bar? How much memory and SSD do I need? MaryFollowing the product refresh on 30 October, Apple has four MacBooks that do much the same job. The good news is that, if you can survive on a 2009 MacBook Pro, any of them would be fine for your purposes. The bad news is that they all have features that would put me off buying them, though, with luck, they won’t necessarily put you off. Continue reading...

Blizzard’s wildly popular shooter has built up a fan base thanks to its progressive cast of characters. Here’s how they’re createdThere’s a buzz in the air at Blizzard Entertainment’s Irvine offices. It’s just a few days before BlizzCon, the annual celebration that sees thousands of fans of the company’s games pack into the Anaheim Convention Centre for announcements, panels and entertainment. Overwatch’s game director, Jeff Kaplan, bounces in his chair as he tells me it “feels like Christmas.” But there are no elves at work here, just hundreds of developers collaborating to make a new character to introduce to Overwatch’s players.At BlizzCon’s opening ceremony, fans will see a meticulous animated short that focuses on beloved cowboy character McCree, and introduces a new face, with red eyes framed dramatically by white hair and a wide brimmed hat. Her name is Ashe, and she’s a no-nonsense gunslinger who commands a gang of outlaws, including her own robot butler, Bob. Continue reading...

Now that the home for its next headquarters has been chosen, losing cities are revealing how they tried to sweeten the deal

DeepMasterPrints created by a machine learning technique have error rate of only one in fiveResearchers have used a neural network to generate artificial fingerprints that work as a “master key” for biometric identification systems and prove fake fingerprints can be created.According to a paper presented at a security conference in Los Angeles, the artificially generated fingerprints, dubbed “DeepMasterPrints” by the researchers from New York University, were able to imitate more than one in five fingerprints in a biometric system that should only have an error rate of one in a thousand. Continue reading...

Prosthetics have made amazing advances in recent years – and are slowly changing people’s attitudes to disability. By Patrick KaneI was born with the usual set of limbs. When I was nine months old, I contracted meningococcal septicaemia, a dangerous infection of the blood, which very nearly killed me. I survived, but because I had sustained major tissue damage, it became necessary to amputate my right leg below the knee, all of the fingers on my left hand and the second and third digits on my right hand. I learned to walk on a prosthetic leg at the age of 14 months, and have gone through my life wearing a succession of artificial limbs.As time has passed and technology has advanced, so too have my limbs. Like our mobile phones, prostheses have become lighter, faster and more efficient. When I was nine, I was fitted with a lifeless silicone hand, a useless thing that was purely cosmetic, and so clumsy that I refused to wear it after the first day. Now, at 21, and a student in my third year at Edinburgh University, I wear a bionic arm with nimble fingers that move independently, which I operate using controlled muscle movements in my forearm, as well as an app on my phone. As a child I wore a stiff artificial leg attached with straps that frequently fell off; earlier this summer, I took delivery of a new dynamic right leg with shock absorption and carbon fibre blades. Continue reading...

Facing a string of crises, Facebook hired a PR firm to push conspiracy theories about the billionaire, the New York Times reportsFacebook hired a PR firm that attempted to discredit the company’s critics by claiming they were agents of the billionaire George Soros, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.Soros is a Jewish philanthropist who is the frequent subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories. At the same time, the social media company urged the Anti-Defamation League to object to a cartoon used by anti-Facebook protesters over its resemblance to antisemitic tropes. Continue reading...

From the meaning of life to whether we are good in bed, we expect the search engine to be omnipotentWhat question do you wish Google were able to answer? If the survey commissioned by the TV channel Dave is to be believed, chances are your burning questions are what tomorrow’s winning lottery numbers will be, do aliens exist and what will happen to you when you die.The top 25 questions mostly fall into four categories: conspiracies (Who shot JFK? Did Donald Trump rig the election?); desires for worldly success (Will I ever be rich? What will tomorrow’s winning lottery numbers be?); anxieties (Do people like me? Am I good in bed?); and curiosity about the ultimate questions (What is the meaning of life? Is there a God?). Continue reading...

When children spend their parents’ cash on Fifa players, it’s easy to believe games are ruthlessly engineered to extract money. But that’s not the whole story

Moving healthcare subsidiary into main company breaks pledge that ‘data will not be connected to Google accounts’Google has been accused of breaking promises to patients, after the company announced it would be moving a healthcare-focused subsidiary, DeepMind Health, into the main arm of the organisation.The restructure, critics argue, breaks a pledge DeepMind made when it started working with the NHS that “data will never be connected to Google accounts or services”. The change has also resulted in the dismantling of an independent review board, created to oversee the company’s work with the healthcare sector, with Google arguing that the board was too focused on Britain to provide effective oversight for a newly global body. Continue reading...

Three of the greatest family games from the original PlayStation era have been updated and improved for modern kids – and nostalgic children of the 90sBefore he was a member of the Skylanders universe, Spyro the Dragon was one of Sony’s leading lights, the plucky protagonist of a trilogy of PlayStation-exclusive platformers developed by Insomniac Games (now perhaps better known for Ratchet & Clank and Marvel’s Spider-Man). Nostalgic fans have remained fond of those old adventures, and so two decades since the first game, Skylanders creator Toys for Bob has released this collection of remasters.I was eight years old when the first Spyro game came out, and my siblings and I played all three over and over again. When I loaded up the first of these remasters it felt so familiar – in the layout of the levels and the precise placement of items within, in the music and sounds and voice acting (despite the fact that Spyro here is voiced throughout by Tom Kenny, who originally only starred in the second and third games) – that my brain was tricked into believing that this was how Spyro had looked all along. Continue reading...

Tesla CEO tweeted in October that the spirit would be ‘coming soon’ but the regulatory council says tequila is a protected wordTesla Inc co-founder Elon Musk and Mexico’s tequila producers could be headed for a collision after the agave-based drink’s industry group opposed the flamboyant billionaire’s efforts to trademark an alcoholic drink dubbed “Teslaquila”.One of the world’s richest people and chief executive of Tesla, Musk is known for ambitious and cutting-edge projects ranging from auto electrification and rocket-building to high-speed transit tunnels. Continue reading...

Google’s plan to expand their campus into a new city has echoes of Amazon’s secretive year-long second headquarters processOfficials in San Jose, California, negotiating with Google over the tech company’s plan to build a massive new campus, are improperly withholding documents, a lawsuit alleged on Tuesday.The suit argues that non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) signed by San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo and as many as 18 city staffers at the request of Google were “illegal and invalid”. It seeks to force the city to turn over documents requested under California’s public records law. Continue reading...

Almost two-thirds of boards in technology have no female representation at allBritain’s technology sector has a “worrying” lack of diversity among its senior leadership, according to a report that shows the sector lags far behind the FTSE 100 and the wider economy on measures including gender, race and class representation.Just 8.5% of senior leaders in technology are from a minority background, according to the report from agency Inclusive Boards, while women make up only 12.6% of board members in the sector – compared to the 30% female representation now achieved by FTSE 100 businesses. Continue reading...

Residents wonder if company will be ‘good corporate citizen’ as governor hails decision to put headquarters in Long Island CityMore than 200 cities across North America spent a year competing for Amazon’s affections, lavishing tax breaks and other goodies for the chance to host the tech giant’s HQ2.Now, New York has won at least part of the prize – with Amazon splitting its second headquarters in two, and putting one of the new offices in Long Island City, Queens. Continue reading...

Firm to add hub in Nashville but critics attack lack of transparency in process and tax breaks for world’s richest manAmazon has announced it will open new offices in New York City and Arlington, Virginia, capping a year-long contest to host the tech giant’s new headquarters that drew bids from hundreds of US cities.Related: 'It's good and bad': New York torn on rolling out welcome mat for Amazon Continue reading...

PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC; IO Interactive/Warner Bros

The live-action film trailer has become an overnight sensation – thanks to a mix of unsettlement, nostalgia and Ryan ReynoldsThis week, Warner Bros released the first trailer for Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, a live-action Pokémon film due for release in May. At the time of writing, the trailer has been viewed 10m times on the official YouTube channel alone, and tens of millions more via Facebook and Twitter. Vice declared the trailer “extremely cursed”. It’s been a top trend on all night, with hundreds of tweets a minute. So what is it about this trailer that has provoked such an intense reaction?Pokémon is a pretty sacred source of childhood nostalgia for most millennials – a lot of us think about it the same way that 45-year-old men think about Star Wars. Anything that taps into (or messes with) childhood memories has a tendency to reduce grown adults to filling comment boxes with emotionally charged reactions to the size of a fictional creature’s paws. Continue reading...

The Kremlin’s target is not the outcome of specific votes, such as for Brexit or the US presidency, but to divide the westTo understand the current political frenzy on both sides of the Atlantic, it helps to know Tortuous Convolvulus. Unfamiliar with his work? Convolvulus was a spy, operating around 50BC, a specialist in psychological warfare. He was deployed by Julius Caesar against a stubborn Gallic rebellion, and his methods were not so different to those of Russian cyber-saboteurs against western democracies.On a recent trip to the US I was struck by how engaged officials were with the question of a Kremlin-sponsored Brexit Continue reading...

Hindu nationalism and cheap mobile data driving spread of disinformation, BBC study saysHindu nationalism and the plummeting cost of mobile phone data services are driving the explosive growth of fake news in India, according to a study that suggests WhatsApp is struggling to limit the spread of online disinformation on its service.The research by the BBC World Service sheds light on the conundrum surrounding online disinformation and fake news in the world’s biggest democracy, where the explosive popularity of the group-messaging app has been linked to a string of murders and growing anti-Muslim sentiment. The research was conducted as part of the BBC’s Beyond Fake News series. Continue reading...

Jon Tannahill was born 17 years after Space Invaders was released. He set his mind to be the bestTomohiro Nishikado’s video game Space Invaders remains the first and last concept for all other “shoot ’em up” video games; the core concept being a single person fighting off a multitude of artificially intelligent enemies. Created in no less than a year, its exquisite attention to imagery and sound, as well as easily understood game play, has offered timeless appeal. What was an amusement of lazy pleasure has since been deemed a work of art, joining the permanent collections of both MoMA and The Smithsonian.As it celebrates its 40th anniversary, Jon Tannahill of Brisbane – born 17 years after the game was released – holds the Space Invaders world record. Continue reading...

Trades Union Congress concerned over tech being used to control and micromanageBritain’s biggest employer organisation and main trade union body have sounded the alarm over the prospect of British companies implanting staff with microchips to improve security.UK firm BioTeq, which offers the implants to businesses and individuals, has already fitted 150 implants in the UK. Continue reading...

Big tech companies are transforming societies – but their pitiful contributions aren’t enough to help governments adaptAlongside the results of last week’s US midterms came the passing of San Francisco’s Proposition C, a measure that will tax firms with an annual turnover of more than $50m (£44m) to raise an estimated $300m extra a year to help address homelessness. Last Tuesday, 60% of voters backed it: though the proposal is now snarled up in a constitutional dispute, its approval marks a big moment for a city whose housing crisis has become a matter of urgency.Given the huge concentration of technology giants in San Francisco, the debate quickly became a drama about big tech and its social responsibilities. The most high-profile supporters of the plan included Marc Benioff, the founder and CEO of the software company Salesforce, the single largest employer in the city, who donated $8m to get it on the statute book. He and his fellow campaigners were opposed by a gaggle of high-ups from such companies as Twitter, the ride-hailing giant Lyft, and the online payments service Stripe: wealthy people apparently doing their bit to resist a modest boost in help for the most vulnerable, in a place whose homelessness problem is at least partly traceable to the vast increases in property values caused by big tech’s local dominance. Continue reading...