Technology | The Guardian

Rolling updates as representatives from nine parliaments question the social media company, who refused to send CEO Mark Zuckerberg5.46pm GMTThis blog has wrapped up. We’ll have a story on the day’s developments very shortly. Thanks for reading.2.22pm GMTFacebook has said it has already investigated claims of Russian activity discussed during today’s hearing and found there was no concerns.Collins quoted an email seized from software company Six4Three alleging that a Facebook engineer had notified the company in October 2014 that Russian IP addresses were accessing “three billion data points a day” on the network. Continue reading...

Legislators from Argentina to Ireland feel the firm has failed to get a grip on the issue, and they are ready to step inLegislators from around the world have gathered in London for the “international grand committee session on fake news”. Led by the UK’s Damian Collins – as chair of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee – representatives from nine countries are grilling Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice-president of policy solutions, on Tuesday at the House of Commons.Here is why each country has questions for Facebook to answer. Continue reading...

Firm failed to tell 35 million users and 3.7 million drivers their data was hacked in 2016

Influencer Natalie Hintze paired a skateboarding selfie with a video of her falling over. But there’s no such thing as behind the scenes on social mediaInstagram influencers: flawless people doing flawless things in flawless places, right? Well, not anymore – or so they would like you to think. Now there is an increasing trend to offer behind-the-scenes glimpses of their “process”, a sort of social media blooper reel. Skateboarder Natalie Hintze this week coupled a typical selfie – bikini-clad, blond hair flowing behind her as she skates beneath a blue sky – with a video of her falling over (or stacking it, in skating parlance) at the bottom of the hill.There’s nothing wrong with self-deprecation online – it’s even endearing, compared to out-and-out arrogance. But this is the internet: do not think for a buffering second that appearances – ever – do not matter. Would Hintze have posted the video if she had collided with a garbage dumpster and been covered in four-day-old fast food? Probably not, unless she had factored in the down-to-earth points and felt it was truly worth it. Continue reading...

While the unusual technique reportedly employed by the MP Steve Baker does work, there are easier ways to ensure your privacy

Rockstar will invite players into the beta version of its evolving online western game from Tuesday 27 NovemberRed Dead Online, the multiplayer accompaniment to Rockstar Games’ old west masterpiece Red Dead Redemption 2, is set to launch this week. By Friday 30 November, anyone who has bought a copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 will be able to access it. Initially it will be a beta test, and will be developed and expanded gradually over the coming months as players test out the limits of the virtual frontier.Related: Red Dead Redemption 2 review – gripping western is a near miracle Continue reading...

New contract offer withdrawn after ‘Rashid’ complained that undercover project left him vulnerable to profilingGoogle was forced to settle a claim of race discrimination by one of its contractors after he claimed he was repeatedly treated as a terror suspect while working on a covert research project to navigate shopping centres for Google Maps.Ahmed Rashid (not his real name), a UK citizen of Moroccan descent, had an offer of a new contract abruptly withdrawn after he complained to Google about being frequently harassed, racially profiled, and accused of acting like a terrorist while conducting undercover research for Google in retail malls across the UK, he claimed. Continue reading...

All-glass design, face recognition and triple cameras are some of the innovations featured in the latest phones from Apple, Google, Huawei and Samsung£900 Continue reading...

This gleefully gory exploitation film sets out to shock, but smartly dissects our online-obsessed society along the wayBrash, violent and nihilistic, Assassination Nation feels like the product of a one-night stand between Spring Breakers and The Purge. A trigger warning flags up every conceivable hot-button topic – it’s a device that comes straight out of the Gaspar Noé playbook. This is pure genre exploitation – a gleefully gory revenge flick that leaves its small-town streets awash with blood. It may also be one of the smartest, most perceptive commentaries on a contemporary society distorted and magnified by online hysteria that you are likely to wince your way through.A malicious data breach causes a meltdown in the town of Salem, where at least half the residents have found their personal messages and emails hacked and shared. The people look for someone to blame, and virtual vigilantism soon spills out on to the streets; the result is like a Twitter pile-on armed with semi-automatic weapons. Four teenage girls (Odessa Young, Hari Nef, Suki Waterhouse, Abra) become the targets of the community, which masked, armed and pumped up into a frenzy, has collectively decided to mete out some justice. Continue reading...

Perfect for large families or parents of twins and triplets, the Multimac is a unique, sanity-saving, multiple child seat system, which fits into the back of almost any carI sometimes used to imagine parenting was a sort of extreme endurance sport. Throw in a few years of sleep deprivation and simple tasks like ‘feeding the baby’ (a teaspoon of slop inserted into a bobbing head) soon become hellish. Among the hardest challenges you face is ‘getting the baby into the car’. My wife and I used to have a strict ‘who touched the baby last clips her in’ policy. Our problem was self-inflicted. We had three children and a small car. As car seats became safer they became larger, which meant it became harder to get the seats into cars and the kids into seats.Now, 20 years too late for us, but hopefully in time for you, comes the revolutionary Multimac. It’s the world’s only one-piece car seat that now allows you to travel with up to four children (from birth to age 12) in a single row across the rear of almost any car. Unusually the Multimac doesn’t use Isofix points, but has its own super secure straps. You can fit these yourself or pay a Multimac agent, such as Halfords, a £99 one-off fitting fee. The bench is quite heavy so once you’ve installed it you’ll probably leave it where it is, but it can be moved if need be. It’s comfortable and hard-wearing, and anything that makes life easier for a new parent is a blessing… Continue reading...

This winning SUV has a secret... Beneath the bonnet, it’s a little bit FrenchVauxhall Grandland X

Documents alleged to contain revelations on data and privacy controls that led to Cambridge Analytica scandalParliament has used its legal powers to seize internal Facebook documents in an extraordinary attempt to hold the US social media giant to account after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer MPs’ questions.The cache of documents is alleged to contain significant revelations about Facebook decisions on data and privacy controls that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It is claimed they include confidential emails between senior executives, and correspondence with Zuckerberg. Continue reading...

As N26 makes its UK debut, we look at what you can expect from the new breed of servicesThe march of the smartphone-based “challenger banks” continues, with the German-based N26 the latest to launch in the UK.It joins other app-based banks, such as Monzo and Starling, that are shaking up the banking industry. Continue reading...

In this collaboration between the Guardian’s Science Weekly and Chips with Everything podcasts, we explore whether we will ever be able to build an intelligent machine to detect our lies. And if we did, could we trust it?How good are you at lying? Could you fool a friend? How about a machine? We’ve recently learned that the EU plans to trial lie detectors equipped with artificial intelligence, or “deception detection”, at border control to combat crime and terrorism.This got Jordan Erica Webber and Graihagh Jackson wondering about lying – how people learn to tell fibs, whether an AI machine can pick up subtle clues and cues, and if so, can we trust its judgment? Continue reading...

‘Digital detox ruling’ extends to all devices and is an an attempt to untether people from obsessively checking their phonesDoes a hotel pool even exist if you don’t put it on social media?It’s a question one Bali resort is encouraging its guests to put to the test by banning phones and mobile devices by the pool, in a bid to encourage people to absorb their surroundings rather than staring at a screen. Continue reading...

Tools launched to enforce transparency and avoid repeat of Russian misinformation campaign in Trump US electionsGoogle has launched a set of tools across Europe to help ensure political transparency in the run-up to the 2019 EU elections in an attempt to crack down on “dark adverts” online.The tools are a response, in part, to the Russian misinformation campaign during the 2016 US election, in which overseas operatives were able to buy political adverts to target Americans. Continue reading...

At Rockstar’s Edinburgh studio, designers reveal the lengths they went to in creating the western adventure’s animal soulOddly for a multimillion-selling blockbuster video game, in Red Dead Redemption 2 you spend many, many hours staring at a horse’s ass. Of the 70-ish hours I’ve spent with the game so far, I reckon 35 have been in a saddle, either exploring the wilderness or haring it from A to B on the way between story chapters. Horses are omnipresent, hitched to wagons, trotting under everyone from lawmen and farmers, running wild in the fields. They aren’t just a means of conveyance – they’re the soul of the game, beautiful and blameless, metaphors for the natural freedom that the game’s humans keep screwing up. If I ever accidentally shoot one in a fight, I feel appalled at myself.If the horses didn’t look and sound so lifelike, rearing and whinnying in the presence of wolves and grunting with exertion as you push them into a gallop, players wouldn’t feel such a connection to them. One of the first things I marvelled at in Red Dead was the way my steed’s muscles were moving under its flanks as it pushed through the deep snow. At Rockstar’s Edinburgh studio the week before Red Dead Redemption 2’s release, no matter whom I talked to, I ended up in a 20-minute conversation about horses. Continue reading...

Communication head takes blame for hiring Definers Public Affairs as Sheryl Sandberg says antisemitism claim ‘abhorrent’Facebook admitted on Wednesday that a top executive hired a public relations firm to attack George Soros and undermine critics by publicizing their association with the billionaire Jewish philanthropist.Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s outgoing head of communications and policy, took responsibility for hiring Definers Public Affairs in a memo first reported by TechCrunch and subsequently published as a blog post on the eve of the US Thanksgiving holiday. Continue reading...

The Facebook CEO agreed in a CNN interview that his power needs to be checked, but he has no plans to limit it himselfWith 2.2 billion members, Facebook is larger than any single nation, language or even religion. And as founder, chief executive, chairman of the board of directors and controller of 60% of the company’s voting shares, Mark Zuckerberg’s power is near absolute.Which is why it was almost reassuring that when CNN’s Laurie Segall asked Zuckerberg in an interview aired Tuesday, “Shouldn’t your power be checked?” Continue reading...

Move comes months after retailer closed global website after the government introduced GST changesAmazon has reopened its global website to Australian consumers, with the backflip coming just in time for Black Friday sales.The giant online retailer closed the global store to Australians in July after the federal government introduced changes to the GST – known colloquially as the “Amazon tax”. It placed the 10% tax on all low-value overseas purchases and businesses with a turnover of more than $75,000. Continue reading...

Customers’ names and email addresses posted on website, tech giant confirmsAmazon has suffered a major data breach that caused customer names and email addresses to be disclosed on its website, just two days ahead of Black Friday.The e-commerce giant said it has emailed affected customers but refused to give any more details on how many people were affected or where they are based. Continue reading...

Company says it disputes penalty for role in Cambridge Analytica scandal on principleFacebook is lodging an appeal against the record fine of £500,000 levied against it by the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK, arguing that the penalty “challenges some of the basic principles of how people should be allowed to share information online”.The company, which was fined the maximum amount allowable for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal earlier this year, had until Wednesday to launch an appeal or accept the fine. Continue reading...

Foxconn Technology Group plans to cut costs by £2.3bn next year, according to reportsFoxconn Technology Group, which supplies Apple with components for the iPhone, is reportedly planning to cut costs by billions of pounds amid concerns that iPhone sales growth is slowing.The Taiwanese manufacturer will slash 20bn yuan (£2.3bn) from expenses in 2019, Bloomberg News reported. Continue reading...

Company failed to remove post that informed users of auction of 17-year-old girl for several daysFacebook has been criticised for failing to remove a viral post promoting an auction of a child bride in South Sudan, which eventually led to the payment of the largest dowry ever recorded in the civil war-torn country.The highest bidder was a man three times the age of the 17-year-old girl who was auctioned. At least four other men in Eastern Lakes state competed, including the region’s deputy governor, said Philips Anyang Ngong, a human rights lawyer who tried to stop the bidding last month. Continue reading...

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.