Technology | The Guardian

Site’s move comes amid continuing pressure over its role as a platform for misinformation and extremismYouTube will recommend fewer videos that “could misinform users in harmful ways”, the company announced on Friday, in a shift for a platform that has faced criticism for amplifying conspiracy theories and extremism.The change concerns YouTube’s recommendations feature, which automatically creates a playlist of videos for users to watch next. The recommendations are the result of complex and opaque algorithms designed to capture a user’s interest, but they have become a locus of criticism when YouTube directs people to potentially harmful and false content that they would not have otherwise sought out. Continue reading...

Merger of three platforms would allow users to text each other without switching apps

Forthcoming multiplayer sci-fi shooter Anthem represents a puzzling change of pace for its developer, BioWare. But when you play, it starts to make sense …Forty years after Space Invaders, video games are still coming up with new ways to shoot aliens. Anthem is a multiplayer game set on a planet whose gods abandoned it mid-creation, leaving a pantheon of mutated creatures to ravage the beautiful environment and threaten the humans who share it. Clad in a nimble mech-suit with flying jets and a portable arsenal of guns, you soar out over the gorgeous overgrown planet with three other players and hold off the aliens, discovering majestic ruins from the dawn of creation.Anthem is one of many online games competing for players’ long-term attention, designed to be played every day or every week by groups of friends together. But it is made by BioWare, a developer known for role-playing games that immerse a lone player in a rich fantasy that they alone control. Why has the studio decided to make something so different? It is undeniably a risk: the strengths of good single-player games – an absorbing narrative, player choice, the ability to take your time and explore at your own place – do not transfer well to the shared world of multiplayer games. Continue reading...

Staff discussed what to do with high-spending children before deciding to refuse refundsFacebook has settled a class action lawsuit that had accused it of allowing children to run up huge bills on their parents’ credit cards as part of a concerted effort to maximise revenues.Court documents obtained by the US-based Center for Investigative Reporting, initially sealed as part of a lawsuit filed in 2012, revealed Facebook staff discussed what to do with the “whales”, as they referred to the high-spending children, before deciding to refuse refunds. Continue reading...

Hbomberguy’s marathon 57-hour gaming session attracted the attention of the industry and celebrities alike. We meet the man trying to counter the tide of the manosophere and alt-rightPlaying a video game for 57 hours sounds like either heaven or hell, depending on who you are. But when it generates massive online buzz, garnering the attention of a sitting US congresswoman and Hollywood celebrities, and nets a charity for trans kids $340,000, it’s safe to assume you’ve done something good for the world. The person responsible for playing those hours, “Hbomberguy” – real name Harry Brewis, a YouTube essayist – did not set out to get the attention of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chelsea Manning, Mara Wilson and other popular figures. But he did.When I spoke to Brewis, he was still stunned by the attention but he seemed upbeat and elated by the experience. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber chats to roboticist Heather Knight about why she builds performing robots. What can cyborg cabaret and robot standups teach us about human-robot interaction?This week, Jordan Erica Webber chats to a computer scientist who programs robots to help them become more likeable, making it easier for humans to welcome them at work or at home.Heather Knight directs the Charisma* Robotics Lab, whose goal is to borrow methods from the performing arts to produce more charismatic robots. She also created Marilyn Monrobot, a robot theatre company with comedy performances, and the annual Robot film festival. Continue reading...

Six-wheeled robots launching in US can autonomously follow route and dodge pedestriansAmazon’s drone delivery service may be missing in action but the company has not given up on its dream of robots delivering parcels.It is launching Amazon Scout, a service employing six squat six-wheeled delivery robots, across Snohomish County, Washington, just north of its Seattle HQ. Continue reading...

Pa wants the screen image to be true to the print image, but his budget is only £300I read your answer about the best computer monitor for under £200. I’m looking for a monitor for serious photo editing. I want to get as true to what the print will be like (when printing via online printers). My budget is about £300. PaSad to say, prints can never look like screen images. Screens are bright and display colours using combinations of red, green and blue pixels (RGB). Prints don’t light up so they can’t have the same brightness or contrast range, and they’re printed using cyan, yellow, magenta and black inks (CMYK). Continue reading...

A new series asks prospective partners to exchange their mobiles. It’s the perfect fodder for our tech-craving times ... and also oddly charming“I don’t know if you want me to talk about that picture,” rugby lad Shaquille asks politics student Demi. “You’ve got something in your mouth …” His date looks mortified. And so begins Phone Swap, a new dating show in which two singletons exchange phones with potential partners.Now I know what you’re thinking: if you were going on a programme where someone had to look through your phone, wouldn’t you clean it up a little? Check your camera roll, add some things to make you look like a better person – meditation sounds, language apps? But alas, it really does appear that the show-makers stopped their charges having a quick blitz … or perhaps Demi just forgot to bin her nudes. Continue reading...

What happens to those caught up in the toxic lies of conspiracy theorists? The Guardian spoke to five victims whose lives were wrecked by falsehoodsConspiracy theories used to be seen as bizarre expressions of harmless eccentrics. Not any more. Gone are the days of outlandish theories about Roswell’s UFOs, the “hoax” moon landings or grassy knolls. Instead, today’s iterations have morphed into political weapons. Turbocharged by social media, they spread with astonishing speed, using death threats as currency.Together with their first cousins, fake news, they are challenging society’s trust in facts. At its most toxic, this contagion poses a profound threat to democracy by damaging its bedrock: a shared commitment to truth. Continue reading...

Canada’s ambassador to China said Meng Wanzhou had ‘good arguments on her side’, in part because of Trump’s remarksUS efforts to extradite a Chinese telecoms executive from Canada may have been stymied by remarks on the case made by Donald trump, according to Canada’s top diplomat in Beijing.Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, was detained at the request of the US on 1 December in Vancouver, over alleged violations of US sanctions on Iran. She is currently under house arrest and the US justice department has until 30 January to file a formal extradition request. Continue reading...

NICE recommends use of programs on smartphones for young people aged five to eight

Consumer finance journalist drops action as firm agrees to give £3m to anti-scam projectThe consumer finance journalist Martin Lewis is dropping his lawsuit against Facebook over its repeated failure to prevent scam adverts from using his name and image, after the company agreed to donate £3m to set up an anti-scam project with Citizens Advice and launch a UK-specific one-click reporting tool.Related: Facebook rolls out fact-checking operation in UK Continue reading...

Some of the Musk Foundation’s grants have benefited AI research, his brother’s charity, his children’s school and his fight against LA traffic

Authorities would need a fresh warrant before ordering companies to assist or build a new capability to access electronic communicationsIndustry groups including the representative of tech giants Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon, have backed several Labor amendments to the government’s encryption bill.Under Labor’s plan, law enforcement agencies would require a fresh warrant before ordering tech companies to assist or build a new capability to access electronic communications and the bill’s prohibition against creating a “systemic weakness” would be strengthened. Continue reading...

Firm falls to fifth place in customer satisfaction poll with First Direct ranked bestAmazon has slipped down a list of companies ranked by customer satisfaction after consumers were asked to consider ethics when rating brands.The online retailer, which became the world’s most valuable listed company earlier this month, had taken the top spot in the last six published biannual UK Customer Satisfaction Indexes (UKSCI). Continue reading...

Moving production of electric cars to Asia makes sense but moving the HQ too? More answers are neededSir James Dyson picks his moments. In October, with negotiations with the EU heating up, the company said it would build its whizzy new electric cars in Singapore. Now, with the Brexit temperature at maximum, Dyson has announced the head office will move to Singapore. Is one of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs – a man who says British business should embark on its post-Brexit future with optimism – guilty of saying one thing and doing another?Last year, one would have said no. The decision to build the cars in Singapore was understandable if Dyson judged that most of the customers would be in Asia, especially China. Moreover, Dyson’s love of Singapore, plus Malaysia and the Philippines, as a manufacturing base was not new. The company stopped building products in the UK a decade-and-a-half ago. Continue reading...

Microsoft is pledging $500m for housing in Seattle, but that plan isn’t as generous as it looksLike many major metropolitan areas, Seattle is currently mired in what writer and housing activist Laura Bernstein has described as “a dual crisis of climate and affordability”. A lack of affordable housing near industry has led to carbon-intensive sprawl – think of all those commuting cars – and economic distress among Seattleites. So, last Wednesday, when Microsoft announced a plan to dedicate $500m towards alleviating the affordable housing crisis in the area, one might have been forgiven for thinking it was an entirely good thing.Related: Think the giants of Silicon Valley have your best interests at heart? Think again | John Naughton Continue reading...

Capcom’s survival horror classic returns with improved visuals, new controls and a whole host of monstrous surprisesLet’s get this out of the way: Resident Evil 2 is the best game in Capcom’s long-running survival horror series and possibly the greatest example of the genre ever produced. Released in 1998, two years after the agenda-setting Resident Evil, it introduced the iconic characters Leon Kennedy, Claire Redfield and Ada Wong. It had wonderfully horrible monsters (the tongue-lashing Lickers, the hideously mutated William Birkin, the indomitable Mr X), and it boasted a brilliant set-piece location, the Racoon City police department, housed within a scary old art gallery.Now, 20 years later, Capcom has taken the game by the scruff of its neck, fully updated the visuals and controls, and reshuffled the narrative structure to deliver a contemporary horror experience that plays like our blood-tinted memories of the original. There’s been a zombifying outbreak in Raccoon City and two characters, rookie cop Leon and student Claire, find themselves trapped in the seemingly abandoned police station, trying to work out what has happened while fighting off the greedy and persistent undead. As we encounter reams of mutated scientists and endless documents about synthetic viruses, it becomes clear that local employer Umbrella Corp has been a very naughty pharmaceutical megacorp. Continue reading...

CEO says plan is more about ‘future-proofing’ business than anything to do with Brexit

The American wing of the movement sees big tech as a target of attack while populists in the rest of the world see it as their best chance of escaping intellectual hegemonyThe emerging global movement of rightwing populists is guilty of many things but ideological incoherence in choosing their enemies is generally not one of them. Whether it is Steve Bannon bashing Pope Francis, Matteo Salvini attacking the “do-gooders” in humanitarian NGOs or Marine Le Pen venting against the dull technocrats in Brussels, the populists go after a predictable, well-calculated set of targets. If anyone chooses their enemies well, it’s them.But there’s one issue on which there’s no agreement between American rightwing populists and their peers in the rest of the world: what to make of Silicon Valley. On the one hand, its services and platforms have been a boon to the populists everywhere, greatly boosting their audience numbers and allowing them to target potential voters with highly personalized messages; the Cambridge Analytica fiasco has made it quite clear. Today, upstart and new rightwing parties like Spain’s Vox instinctively understand the primacy of digital battles; Vox already leads all other Spanish parties in terms of Instagram followers. Continue reading...

I can’t access calls or texts and want to start protecting my email account from hackersYou have frequently advised readers to set up two-step verification to protect the security of their email system. We’d like to do this, but we live in a mobile blackspot, and can’t access calls or texts at home. What can we do? SD, Maidenhead, BerksYou are absolutely right to set this up, and we would strongly urge other readers to follow your lead. Continue reading...

Harry Brewis raised $340,000 for a UK trans group and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared in a Twitch stream that was an antidote to the worst of gaming cultureOne of the defining features of politics in the 21st century has been the way online cultural phenomena can cross over into the “real” world.Unfortunately, perhaps because the internet seems to bring out the worst in people, those phenomena have largely been, well, awful. Continue reading...

CNIL found that company failed to offer users transparent information on data useThe French data protection watchdog CNIL has fined Google a record €50m (£44m) for failing to provide users with transparent and understandable information on its data use policies.For the first time, the company was fined using new terms laid out in the pan-European general data protection regulation. The maximum fine for large companies under the new law is 4% of annual turnover, meaning the theoretical maximum fine for Google is almost €4bn. Continue reading...

Ruling will ensure doctors no longer judged by Google on fitness to practise, lawyer saysA Dutch surgeon formally disciplined for her medical negligence has won a legal action to remove Google search results about her case in a landmark “right to be forgotten” ruling.The doctor’s registration on the register of healthcare professionals was initially suspended by a disciplinary panel because of her postoperative care of a patient. After an appeal, this was changed to a conditional suspension under which she was allowed to continue to practise. Continue reading...

Twenty years on, Neopets will soon be available as a mobile puzzle game – reminding many millennials of their awkward adolescenceAs a woman who talks about video games on television, radio and elsewhere for a living, I’m often asked how I got into games, and I reply – truthfully – that I have been playing them my whole life. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family that owned every major game console. But when I reached adolescence, something (besides the obvious) changed. My varied video game diet narrowed dramatically. I skipped the entire console generation that included the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox in favour of my bedroom PC and two worlds it allowed me to access: The Sims and Neopets.The Neopets website was launched in 1999, and I’m pretty sure I was introduced to it by my uncle, though it’s known for its popularity among girls. It fits with the idea of femininity as nurturing: a virtual world that allows you to care for cute pets, play games to earn a currency called Neopoints, shop for clothes for your pets, build and furnish houses, and chat on the forums. Continue reading...

Users will be blocked from forwarding messages to more than five individuals or groupsWhatsApp users will be blocked from forwarding messages to more than five individuals or groups under new rules the messaging service is rolling out worldwide to fight the spread of misinformation.The company’s vice-president for policy and communications, Victoria Grand, announced the policy at an event in Jakarta on Monday, Reuters reported. Continue reading...

Social network gave ‘special status’ to English Defence League founder, say solicitorsThe Syrian schoolboy who was filmed being attacked in a playground in Huddersfield is to take legal action against Facebook over claims by Tommy Robinson that he attacked English girls.Solicitors for the 16-year-old, who can be identified only as Jamal, said Facebook had given “special status” to the English Defence League founder to peddle false and defamatory lies about the schoolboy. Continue reading...

Trial of automated technology a bid to improve safety and reduce trauma on dangerous rural roadsVictoria has sanctioned a trial of driverless cars on rural roads in a bid to improve the dramatically more dangerous conditions outside urban areas.People are five times more likely to be killed on a Victorian country road than in the city. Continue reading...

The slowdown at Apple should surprise no one given that most adults on the planet already have a smartphoneIt must be tough being Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. Well, perhaps we shouldn’t be too sympathetic: in 2018 he took home $15,682,219, and his earnings since 2011 are estimated to be not far south of three quarters of a billion dollars. For that he has to run the world’s most successful tech company. But that’s probably a doddle compared with trying to manage the expectations of Wall Street and the world’s media, both of which have an obsession with Apple that sometimes borders on psychosis.It’s not that long, for example, since the fevered speculation about whether Apple would be the first trillion-dollar company reached a climax on 2 August last year when it finally scaled that particular greasy pole. But since October its shares have dropped 20% and it’s been overtaken by Microsoft – yes, ye olde Microsoft! – as the world’s most valuable company. And then on 2 January, in a letter to investors, Tim Cook revealed that he expected revenues for the final quarter of 2018 to be lower than originally forecast. Continue reading...

Shoshana Zuboff’s new book is a chilling exposé of the business model that underpins the digital world. Observer tech columnist John Naughton explains the importance of Zuboff’s work and asks the author 10 key questionsWe’re living through the most profound transformation in our information environment since Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of printing in circa 1439. And the problem with living through a revolution is that it’s impossible to take the long view of what’s happening. Hindsight is the only exact science in this business, and in that long run we’re all dead. Printing shaped and transformed societies over the next four centuries, but nobody in Mainz (Gutenberg’s home town) in, say, 1495 could have known that his technology would (among other things): fuel the Reformation and undermine the authority of the mighty Catholic church; enable the rise of what we now recognise as modern science; create unheard-of professions and industries; change the shape of our brains; and even recalibrate our conceptions of childhood. And yet printing did all this and more.Why choose 1495? Because we’re about the same distance into our revolution, the one kicked off by digital technology and networking. And although it’s now gradually dawning on us that this really is a big deal and that epochal social and economic changes are under way, we’re as clueless about where it’s heading and what’s driving it as the citizens of Mainz were in 1495. Continue reading...

It’s still at prototype stage, but the Elevate shows that car designers are thinking on their feetThis ‘quadrupedal’ vehicle may look like a smart shopping trolley ready for a supermarket dash in some distant interstellar community. But, in fact, it’s a full-size, robotic walking car, which Hyundai believes may be helpful in rescue zones when normal vehicles, even the most robust 4x4s, just can’t hack it.It’s called the ‘Elevate’ and by blending technology found in modern electric cars with advanced robotics, it can climb up 5ft walls, straddle a 5ft hole and step across piles of debris, thanks to the addition of four fully articulated robotic legs – and all the while keeping its passengers completely level. Continue reading...

Class action alleges female workers were paid average of $13,000 less per year than men doing similar jobsThousands of women were systematically underpaid at Oracle, one of Silicon Valley’s largest corporations, according to a new motion in a class-action complaint that details claims of pervasive wage discrimination.A motion filed in California on Friday said attorneys seek to represent more than 4,200 women and alleged that female employees were paid on average $13,000 less per year than men doing similar work. An analysis of payroll data found disparities with an “extraordinarily high degree of statistical significance”, the complaint said. Women made 3.8% less in base salaries on average than men in the same job categories, 13.2% less in bonuses, and 33.1% less in stock value, it alleges. Continue reading...

Elon Musk says he has no choice but to reduce electric car manufacturer’s headcountTesla is cutting more than 3,000 jobs, or 7% of its workforce, after experiencing a year its founder, Elon Musk, said was both its most challenging and most successful.The chief executive of the electric car manufacturer told staff on Friday that “the road ahead is very difficult” because its products were not yet affordable for most people and it was up against a big incumbent industry. Continue reading...

In our latest collaboration, Jordan Erica Webber teams up with Ian Sample of the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast to look at why artwork produced using AI is forcing us to confront how we define creativityIn October 2018, the British auction house Christie’s became the first to sell a work of art created by an algorithm.The Portrait of Edmond Belamy was sold for $432,500 (£336,000), which was much higher than anyone had expected. This groundbreaking sale was controversial, not least in the AI art world itself. Continue reading...

Store of 770m email addresses and passwords discovered after being put on hacking siteThe largest collection of breached data in history has been discovered, comprising more than 770m email addresses and passwords posted to a popular hacking forum in mid-December.The 87GB data dump was discovered by the security researcher Troy Hunt, who runs the Have I Been Pwned breach-notification service. Hunt, who called the upload Collection #1, said it was probably “made up of many different individual data breaches from literally thousands of different sources”, rather than representing a single hack of a very large service. Continue reading...

Social network says it has taken down 289 pages connected to Kremlin-backed news websiteFacebook has removed hundreds of pages believed to be connected to the Kremlin-backed Sputnik news website for allegedly breaching its rules.The Facebook pages, which were targeted at individuals in former Soviet satellite states, either pretended to be independent news services or had names designed to appeal to fans of particular individuals, regions, or foods. Continue reading...

Playground Games drops ‘Carlton and Floss’ emotes from driving game as Epic faces fourth lawsuit for alleged Fortnite copyright infringementTwo dance moves that are the subject of lawsuits in the US have been removed from the driving game Forza Horizon 4.The moves were among a series of dance “emotes” included in the latest instalment of the Forza Horizon series, after the huge popularity of similar dances in Fortnite. Continue reading...

Tim Cook seeks competitive advantage over Google and Facebook with privacy pushApple’s chief executive has called for regulation to tackle the “shadow economy” of data brokers – intermediaries who trade in the personal information of largely unsuspecting consumers – as the company continues its push to be seen as supportive of privacy.Tim Cook, in an op-ed for Time Magazine published on Thursday, said: “One of the biggest challenges in protecting privacy is that many of the violations are invisible. For example, you might have bought a product from an online retailer – something most of us have done. Continue reading...

Pauline received a spam message that looked like a sextortion or webcam scamI got this email today. It says “I hacked your device, because I sent you this message from your account.” It goes on to claim that it has filmed me watching pornography, and demands $698 in bitcoin. Phishing? Pwned? What to do? PaulineThis is generally known either as “webcam blackmail” or “sextortion scam” and the email should have been diverted to your spam folder. Millions – perhaps billions – of similar emails have been sent over the years, but there seems to have been a flood of them over the past few months. Continue reading...

OpenSC venture, which will track Patagonian toothfish, developed by WWF and BCG DigitalA new project that uses technology to track the movements of food through the supply chain will aim to inform consumers whether items such as fish they buy at a restaurant were produced legally and sustainably.The new venture is called OpenSC and uses product QR codes that consumers can scan with a smartphone to automatically display information on where the product was caught, when and how it was produced, what its journey through the supply chain looked like, and even its carbon miles and what temperature it was stored at. Continue reading...

Platform acts after challenge leads to people walking through traffic and driving while blindfoldedYouTube has banned creators from depicting “dangerous challenges and pranks”, after a wave of incidents prompted by a viral challenge involving driving blindfolded pushed it to act.The so-called Bird Box challenge, inspired by the Netflix film of the same name, saw YouTubers imitating scenes from the movie in which characters must perform common tasks while blindfolded. A culture of one-upmanship meant that rapidly progressed to online celebrities such as Jake Paul walking through traffic and driving their cars while unable to see, leading to a Utah teenager crashing her car into oncoming traffic repeating the stunt. Continue reading...

PC; Pathea Games/Team 17

Film in which leader confronts Muslim outreach volunteers shown before Brexit contentYouTube has removed an advert for the far-right Britain First from its platform, after clips promoting the group began appearing on the video-hosting website.The five-and-a-half-minute unskippable video was displayed before content relating to Brexit and British politics. Continue reading...

Video games improve communication, adaptibility and critical thinking – just the attributes that employers are looking forIn recent years, Boris Johnson has excelled at making ignorant pronouncements and illiterate blunders. From offensive remarks on burqas to reciting Kipling in Myanmar and his ludicrous statements on Brexit, Johnson has perfected the art of getting it wrong. It feels like he’s managed to offend just about everyone. For video game educators like myself, that moment arrived way back in 2006, when Johnson attacked video games as a learning tool.“They [young people] become like blinking lizards, motionless, absorbed, only the twitching of their hands showing they are still conscious,” he wrote. “These machines teach them nothing. They stimulate no ratiocination, discovery or feat of memory – though some of them may cunningly pretend to be educational.” Continue reading...

The latest smart speaker with screen looks better, sounds great and has built-in smart hubThe new second generation Echo Show is bigger with a better display, but is size enough to keep Amazon ahead of stiff competition from Google?Since the original Echo Show launched last year the software has been refined, but the experience is broadly the same. The Show is a voice-first Alexa speaker, with touch interactivity as an additional input rather than the core experience. If you never wanted to touch the screen beyond the initial set-up ,you wouldn’t have to. Continue reading...

A stock image of an egg has amassed 26m likes to become the most popular post of all time, bumping Jenner’s shot of her newborn daughter and spurring some unlikely imitators

A student loan scheme is the latest example of how bubble economy marketing seems oblivious to the outside worldFor a good period in the middle ages, Europeans totally forgot how to make concrete. The Roman recipe for the tough stuff – opus caementicium – was lost for roughly 600 years after the fall of the empire, and the modern formula we know and love wasn’t invented for another 300 years after that.I’m telling you this because human progress isn’t linear. It’s fine to go backwards and forwards – to retread old ground and improve old ideas. Yet if someone approached Theo Paphitis with a cinder block tomorrow, he’d rightly tell them to get the hell out of the Dragons’ Den. So why do we keep falling over ourselves to praise Silicon Valley for reinventing concrete – or, if you prefer your analogies more straightforward, the wheel? Continue reading...

Rather than try to deal with every single email to achieve ‘inbox zero’, some workers have taken to letting them pile up, unanswered. But there are downsides …At the beginning of each year, many of us look at our overflowing inboxes with horror, then make a resolution: no longer will our email account be burdened with thousands of unread messages. Instead, it will become gloriously empty. You will leave work each day knowing that you have dealt with every single message.Devotees of “inbox zero” say that having a clean email account is like having a clean conscience. No guilt about unanswered messages, no anxiety, no vague sense of impending doom. Continue reading...

A new generation of devices featuring a host of clever features will make conventional alarm systems obsolete. We review four of the bestThe days of alarms and floodlights being the only choice for home security are behind us with the growing availability of more intelligent and flexible options, such as smart cameras.Placed outside or within the home, these internet-connected cameras offer a live view of what’s happening from practically anywhere, send alerts when they detect motion – and some can even recognise friend from foe. They promise full control and piece of mind through your smartphone, tablet or smart display. Continue reading...