Technology | The Guardian

After complaints about a project called Zen Blanket, we look at the pros and cons of crowdfundingIt is described as a hi-tech blanket that will give you “the best sleep ever” and reduce your stress levels, though at about £195 ($249) a pop it is certainly not cheap. The Zen Blanket was promoted on the crowdfunding websites Kickstarter and Indiegogo, prompting thousands of people to sink money into the venture – but some are now crying foul, demanding their money back and discussing class action lawsuits.One of those who is definitely not feeling zen is Don Dennis from Scotland. He pledged £118 to the project, in return for which he would be sent one of the blankets (£195 is the usual price, but early-bird backers received a discount). Continue reading...

Bug let developers access pictures people had uploaded but chosen not to postA Facebook bug let app developers see photos users had uploaded but never posted, the social network has disclosed.For two weeks in September, an error in the way Facebook shares photos with third parties meant that apps could see not only photos users had posted on their newsfeed, but also pictures in other parts of the site – on Facebook Stories or Facebook’s Marketplace, for instance. Continue reading...

Game Workers Unite UK will take aim at unpaid overtime, racism and sexism in sectorIt is known as “crunch” – long hours of unpaid overtime put in by computer games workers in the run-up to highly anticipated releases, often at the behest of managers.But the practice could soon be a thing of the past, as games workers unionise for the first time this weekend, taking aim at overtime, racism, sexism and bullying, which some say is rife in the sector. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber looks at why it’s difficult to be a game developer in Pakistan and Bosnia and HerzegovinaThis week we’re travelling to places that have almost no video game industry and talking to individuals who are doing their best to build one.Jordan Erica Webber talks to Amar Zubcevic, a game developer in Bosnia and Herzegovina who wants to inspire fellow developers to stay in the country and build a community, one games company at a time.

Ex-UK chancellor and austerity architect adds job as adviser to brother’s tech fund to portfolioGeorge Osborne has added a ninth job to his already bulging portfolio, joining his brother’s Silicon Valley venture capital fund.The former chancellor and current editor of London’s Evening Standard newspaper has been appointed as an adviser to 9Yards Capital. Continue reading...

What could be wrong with giving a shiny, new Facebook Portal or a fun DNA kit for the holidays? Plenty, writes Julia Carrie WongWhen it comes to gift giving, we often anticipate the moment of surprise and delight when a loved one will open their present – and forget to think about what comes next. But some presents are more trouble than they’re worth. Just ask anyone who has been on the receiving end of an unsolicited puppy, or a sourdough starter.So in the spirit of not burdening your beloveds with unintended consequences, we present to you our first-ever Reverse Gift Guide. Give your friends and family the gift of not having these products. They may not thank you now, but they will be better off. Continue reading...

Company had staff on hand to ‘help people manage their privacy’ and answer questions following controversy-plagued 2018Facebook held a one-off privacy “pop-up” in New York City on Thursday, part of the company’s ongoing public relations efforts to heal its image following a controversy-plagued 2018.Related: 'They don't care': Facebook fact-checking in disarray as journalists push to cut ties Continue reading...

Account has caused problems for pub chain including people turning up at the AGM asking ‘very heated questions’Twitter must reveal the user behind a pair of parody accounts claiming to be run by pub chain JD Wetherspoon, the high court has ruled.The social network, which did not oppose the application, has until mid-January to comply. The parody accounts, @Wetherspoon__UK and @SpoonsTom, have tens of thousands of followers each on the social network, and tweet a mixture of fake updates about Wetherspoon’s pubs and replies to users who mistakenly believe they are contacting the real company. Continue reading...

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission considers market position of Google and Facebook justifies greater oversightGoogle and Facebook are expected to push back hard against proposals to set up a new authority that would monitor how they use their market power and the operation of algorithms that drive the placement of news and advertising content on their sites.Publicly, the two digital multinationals say they are studying the nearly 400-page report released by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on Monday. Continue reading...

Journalists paid to help fix Facebook’s fake news problem say they have lost trust in the platformJournalists working as factcheckers for Facebook have pushed to end a controversial media partnership with the social network, saying the company has ignored their concerns and failed to use their expertise to combat misinformation.Current and former Facebook factcheckers told the Guardian that the tech platform’s collaboration with outside reporters has produced minimal results and that they’ve lost trust in Facebook, which has repeatedly refused to release meaningful data about the impacts of their work. Some said Facebook’s hiring of a PR firm that used an antisemitic narrative to discredit critics – fueling the same kind of propaganda factcheckers regularly debunk – should be a deal-breaker. Continue reading...

To win the game without spending money or watching ads, you tap your phone screen as fast as you can, nonstop, for 3,000 yearsThere’s a truism in the world of online media: if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. The aphorism also holds true in the world of gaming – and particularly in the case of freemium phone apps.You’re probably aware of these apps, if not the terminology: they arrive as free downloads, on the proviso that in order to access all their features you will either pay in time (through watching advertising) or money (via in-app purchases). Continue reading...

Protesters said move lacked public consultation as executives said massive investment would be good for the cityAmazon, the world’s wealthiest company, on Wednesday came head-to-head with public opposition to plans to build a new headquarters in New York as its executives said in the first in a series of hearings that its massive investment would be good for the city.At a public hearing at New York’s city hall, Amazon executives faced protesters calling for the plan, which the company claims will create as many as 40,000 new jobs over the next 15 years, to be abandoned. Continue reading...

Report details dangerous and unstable work conditions in dozens of warehouse distribution centers for Amazon and other retailersA coalition of labor advocacy groups is pushing New Jersey to enforce a “code of conduct” for warehouse workers at Amazon and other major online retailers, which includes a minimum wage, stabilized work hours and the right to unionise.A report released on Wednesday by Warehouse Workers Stand Up, details the dangerous and unstable work conditions that exist in dozens of New Jersey warehouse distribution centers for Amazon and other retailers including Costco, Office Depot and Macy’s. Continue reading...

Exclusive: internal document shows how Google employees are trained to treat temps, vendors and contractorsGoogle staff are instructed not to reward certain workers with perks like T-shirts, invite them to all-hands meetings, or allow them to engage in professional development training, an internal training document seen by the Guardian reveals.The guide instructs Google employees on the ins and outs of interacting with its tens of thousands of temps, vendors and contractors – a class of worker known at Google as TVCs. Continue reading...

As we publish the Guardian’s top 20 video games of 2018, we want to hear what you’ve been playing

Internet speeds in millions of households not fast enough to meet a typical family’s needsMore than a quarter of UK homes do not have fast enough broadband to cope with a typical family’s internet needs, such as downloading films and watching series on Netflix, according to a report.Just over 26% of the UK’s estimated 28 million households are getting by on speeds of less than 10Mbps, the level the media regulator, Ofcom, says is the bare minimum requirement for a modern household. Continue reading...

Dumping the home button for Face ID allows an impressive all-screen design but makes for an extremely expensive tabletAfter eight years of fairly boring design revisions, the new 2018 iPad Pro finally breaks the mould, restoring the wow factor the original commanded way back in 2010.That’s because the new iPad Pro is practically all screen. The home button is gone, replaced with uniform bezels around the edges and a thin, squared-off aluminium body reminiscent of the iPhone 4’s gorgeous design. Continue reading...

Technology company executive facing extradition to the US is given $7.5m bail by a judge in VancouverA Canadian court has granted bail to the Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou while she awaits a hearing on extradition to the United States.The release of the Chinese technology company’s chief financial officer caps three days of bail hearings and sets the stage for what could be a lengthy battle. Continue reading...

Law Council of Australia president-elect says the controversial legislation uses ‘a sledgehammer to crack a nut’The Morrison government’s new encryption bill uses “a sledgehammer to crack a nut” and would capture minor offences dealt with in local courts, as well as potentially allowing law enforcement agencies to target journalists and whistleblowers, experts have warned.The controversial encryption legislation was passed on the final sitting day of the year last week after Labor gave in to pressure from the government to pass the new laws before Christmas. Continue reading...

Facebook has always taken strange positions. But what is the point in banning posts that ‘facilitate, encourage or coordinate sexual encounters between adults’?Facebook has new rules, and they are not fun; like Dua Lipa’s, not fun at all. You could not dance to these rules. You must henceforth desist from any post that could “facilitate, encourage or coordinate sexual encounters between adults”. Since sex between consenting adults was, last time I checked, legal – indeed encouraged by responsible media platforms such as ours – this struck me as peculiar. Facebook has always taken strange positions: for ages, the weirdest was that it would remove pictures of breastfeeding, but not pages that made light of rape.This is the strangest yet, particularly given Mark Zuckerberg’s well-known creed of do-what-yer-like. If he can withstand the pressure of parliaments across the globe to appear before them, and if he can weather every accusation with a sturdy, “No, I didn’t … OK, yes I did, but I won’t do it again,” which special-interest group can possibly have leaned on him to make this radical move? Which evangelical church, which celibacy movement, could have got under his skin? Continue reading...

From immersive shooters to psychedelic Tetris and gothic fairytales, here are the virtual reality games you should be picking upThe familiar game of high-speed block organisation, but enveloped in psychedelic visuals and sound. VR isn’t strictly necessary, but it wraps the game’s astonishing visuals – glittering forests, neon cityscapes, constellations of lights that move like whales – all around you, helping you sink into the trance-like state of concentration that gives the game its title. The cumulative effect is quite emotionally overwhelming. As a fringe benefit, if you turn out to be one of the players who reports crying at Tetris Effect, the headset will help hide your tears from anyone else in the room. Continue reading...

It had everything: swordfights with lizards, magical tennis, shrieking mummies, a whole world to explore – plus a rousing score you could play along to. This joyful/scary chapter in Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda has inspired designers ever sinceThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s opening sequence is, for me, the most evocative of all video games. First you hear the galloping of a horse, joined by soft minor-key piano and melancholy, soaring ocarina notes as a young man in a green tunic rides under the setting moon. The camera pans over a blocky, low-resolution, yet spartanly beautiful landscape as the sun rises. It prepares you for a game that could be as melancholy as it was exciting, as emotionally affecting as it was technologically innovative. Released in Europe on this day in 1998, Ocarina of Time was one of the first true 3D adventures, a capsule world on a game cartridge, and it remains one of the very best. Continue reading...

In its latest seasonal update, the 200m-selling blockbuster allows players to create their own islands and share them with friends – the response is likely to be hugeEvery three months something gigantic happens in the lives of 200m video game players: Fortnite Battle Royale starts a new season. The seventh of these launched on Thursday, bringing a variety of additions to the online multiplayer shooting game, but the most important of these is surely the Creative mode, a whole new element that allows players to build their own Fortnite landscapes and share them with the world.For the uninitiated, Fortnite Battle Royale (as opposed to Fortnite Save the World, a linked but different version of the game) puts 100 players on an island together where they must search for guns and equipment and then fight until only one player remains. They begin on a large island filled with houses, shops, factories and sports arenas, but a huge storm rolls in progressively through the game, forcing combatants into an ever smaller area. The visuals are bright, brash and cartoony, and the locations are silly, from fast-food joints with enormous burger-headed statues, to toilet factories and spooky castles. It’s like playing Call of Duty in a world created by the Scooby Doo art team. Continue reading...

Service to be closed four months earlier than expected in light of lapse that exposed names, email addresses and other informationGoogle is still having trouble protecting the personal information on its Google+ service, prodding the company to accelerate its plans to shut down a little-used social network created to compete against Facebook.A privacy flaw that inadvertently exposed the names, email addresses, ages and other personal information of 52.5 million Google+ users last month convinced Google to close the service in April instead of August, as previously announced. Google revealed the new closure date and its latest privacy lapse in a Monday blogpost. Continue reading...

Forklift driver employed through labour hire company Adecco says he was dismissed from his job at Amazon due to union activityTwo unions have formed an alliance to organise workers at Amazon Australia after the first worker at its Sydney fulfilment centre to join a union was sacked.Raj, a forklift driver employed through labour hire company Adecco, has launched a general protections case in the Fair Work Commission claiming he was dismissed from his job due to union activity. Continue reading...

Country steps up pressure as Canada cancels a trade mission and Meng Wanzhou’s bail hearing adjourned until TuesdayChina has stepped up pressure on Canada ahead of the resumed bail hearing for a senior Huawei executive who was arrested in Vancouver on a US warrant.Related: China summons US ambassador over Huawei CFO's arrest Continue reading...

US trade representative says new tariffs will be imposed if trade negotiations are not achieved by the 90-day deadlineUS-China trade negotiations must achieve success by 1 March or new tariffs will be imposed, the US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, said on Sunday, clarifying the “hard deadline” after a week of seeming confusion among Donald Trump and his advisers.Related: China summons US ambassador over Huawei CFO's arrest Continue reading...

Terry Branstad urged to cancel arrest warrant for Meng Wanzhou and end her ‘egregious’ detentionChina has summoned the US ambassador in Beijing to protest about the detention of a senior Huawei executive in Canada after US law enforcement officials issued a warrant for her arrest last week.The official Xinhua news agency said the vice-foreign minister, Le Yucheng, had “lodged solemn representations and strong protests” with the ambassador, Terry Branstad, against the detention of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of the Chinese technology firm. Continue reading...

Jack Dorsey rhapsodised about 10-day meditation retreat and encouraged his 4 million followers to visitThe CEO of Twitter has faced fierce criticism for promoting Myanmar as a tourist destination in a series of tweets despite hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing human rights abuses that the UN says amounts to genocide.Jack Dorsey told his 4 million followers he had travelled to northern Myanmar last month for a 10-day silent meditation retreat, before encouraging them to visit. Continue reading...

As our online existences become less distinct from ‘real life’, experts raise concern about the growing power of big techMany of the boundary lines in our lives are highly literal, and, for the most part, this is how we’ve been trained to think of boundaries: as demarcations shored up by laws, physical, legal, or otherwise, that indicate exactly where one thing ends and another begins. Here is the border of your property; here is the border of your body; here is the border of a city, a state, a nation – and to cross any of these boundaries without permission is to transgress. But one of the most significant boundary lines in our lives is not this way, and one piece of ubiquitous technology is making this line increasingly permeable and uncertain, at a cost that we may only be starting to comprehend.Here’s a thought experiment: where do you end? Not your body, but you, the nebulous identity you think of as your “self”. Does it end at the limits of your physical form? Or does it include your voice, which can now be heard as far as outer space; your personal and behavioral data, which is spread out across the impossibly broad plane known as digital space; and your active online personas, which probably encompass dozens of different social media networks, text message conversations, and email exchanges? Continue reading...

From electric bikes and fold-up drones to combat robots and digital skipping ropes… the year’s most desirable technologyInstead of relying on heat, this innovative device employs the Coanda jet-flow effect (which helps keep planes airborne) to wrap and style hair. It requires relearning how to coax your locks, but you can say goodbye to heat damage and singed foreheads. Continue reading...

Neat, nimble and light… the reborn Alpine A110 has everything you need to tackle Devon’s toughest roadsAlpine A110

Chinese backlash intensifies as Meng Wanzhou faces extradition to US over fraud allegationsChina has warned Canada there would be severe consequences if it did not immediately release Huawei’s chief financial officer, calling the case “extremely nasty”.Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada on 1 December and faces extradition to the United States, which alleges that she covered up her company’s links to a firm that tried to sell equipment to Iran despite sanctions. Continue reading...

Labour’s deputy leader demands action after the Guardian’s investigation

The Chinese telecom giant is under renewed global scrutiny after the arrest of its founder’s daughter. Here’s whyIts chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who is also the daughter of the company’s founder, was arrested in Canada on 1 December and faces extradition to the US over allegations of helping evade sanctions against Iran. The Obama-era sanctions banned the sales of certain telephone-system equipment. Continue reading...

The arrest of its chief financial officer has shone a light on its global role in telecoms – and links to the Chinese stateMany executives consider themselves figures of great significance, but few are capable of sending a chill through global markets simply by getting arrested. Meng Wanzhou, also known as Sabrina Meng or Cathy Meng, is one.The chief financial officer of the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei – and the daughter of its billionaire founder, Ren Zhengfei – was detained in Vancouver last week. She could face extradition to the US on charges thought to be related to allegations that Huawei breached sanctions levied by Washington against Iran. Continue reading...

Meng Wanzhou lied about links between telecoms giant and shell company, Vancouver court hears as bail arguments continueA senior Chinese telecoms executive committed fraud when she lied about links between Huawei and a shell company used to sell telecommunications equipment to Iran in breach of US sanctions, Canadian prosecutors have told a Vancouver court.Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer, appeared in court on Friday as she sought bail in a case that has sparked a major international dispute between China and the US. After more than five hours of debate, the court has not yet decided if Meng will be granted bail as she fights an extradition order to the US. The closely-watched hearing will resume on Monday morning. Continue reading...

Australia has made itself a global guinea pig in testing a regime to crack encrypted communicationIn the hit US TV series The Wire police are initially baffled when the criminal suspects they are investigating begin to communicate through photographic messages of clock faces.After several seasons of plots driven by the legalities and logistics of setting up telephone intercepts on suspected drug dealers, the police can’t keep up when overheard conversations are replaced by an inscrutable form of pictorial code. Continue reading...

The Chinese telecoms firm’s promised investment follows the arrest of CFO in CanadaThe Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is to spend $2bn (£1.5bn) in an effort to alleviate British security services’ concerns about vulnerabilities in its products, capping a torrid week for the firm.In July, a British government centre established to verify the integrity of Huawei’s technology warned that it had security concerns about the company’s technology and could only provide “limited assurance” that risks to national security had been mitigated. Continue reading...

Turner prize | Bad sex | Cornish literature | Housing crisis | Dr Wendy Atkin | Corbyn’s cunning Brexit planI was interested to read that the chair of the Turner prize judges has declared winner Charlotte Prodger’s work the “most profound use of a device as prosaic as the iPhone camera that we’ve seen in art to date” (Video clips shot using an iPhone win Turner prize, 5 December). I am finding my iPhone very useful for holding down the wrapping paper on the Christmas presents, when I need both hands to wrangle the sticky tape into submission. Does this use count as profound or prosaic?

Entrepreneur says Silicon Valley has inequality problem as it puts too much trust in young, white menThere is a surefire way to make Vivienne Ming flinch. It is a reaction she has to the bullish claims that big tech firms like to make. As federal investigations hit Facebook and global protests plague Google, the mantra remains. Artificial intelligence will make all our lives better. Poverty, mental health, climate change, inequality? All can be solved with AI.As a Silicon Valley technologist, entrepreneur and theoretical neuroscientist, Ming might easily have fallen under the same spell as her tech firm counterparts. She is a firm believer that AI will become an ever more powerful tool, after all. And what could be more west coast than a Human Potential Maximiser? Continue reading...

Company criticised over data misuse and ordered to issue an apology on its website and appFacebook has been fined €10m (£8.9m) by Italian authorities for misleading users over its data practices.The two fines issued by Italy’s competition watchdog are some of the largest levied against the social media company for data misuse, dwarfing the £500,000 fine levied by the British Information Commissioner’s Office in September – the maximum that body was able to issue. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber explores the sometimes controversial world of holograms, from lessons taught by absent academics, to celebrities returning to the stage, even after their deathIn November 2018 Imperial College Business School announced that its students will be the first in the world to have live lectures delivered to them via hologram.Just a month before that, it was announced that Amy Winehouse would be going on tour in 2019. The singer, who died seven years ago, will appear on stage as a hologram. Continue reading...

Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s global chief financial officer, will appear at a bail hearing on Friday morning, following her arrest last Saturday

State-run papers label Washington a ‘despicable rogue’ as Japan moves to ban telecoms company from government contracts

National security adviser said US had long been concerned about role of Chinese tech companies in theft of technological knowhowThe US national security adviser, John Bolton, has said he knew in advance that a top Chinese telecoms executive would be arrested in Canada to face extradition to the US, in what is escalating into a major diplomatic incident.Beijing is calling for the release of Meng Wanzhou, the global chief financial officer of the vast Huawei corporation, and demanded Ottawa and Washington provide reasons for her arrest in Vancouver on Saturday. Continue reading...

US ride-hailing firm files plans with regulator as it races rival Uber for fundingUS company Lyft has filed plans with the regulator in Washington for a flotation as it races for funding against Uber, the rival ride-hailing company.In a statement on Thursday, Lyft announced it had submitted a draft registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in a move which sets it up to be one of the first large tech flotations of 2019. Continue reading...

Employees discussed how to minimise amount of consent they would need to ask forFacebook employees discussed how to minimise the amount of consent needed to collect user data, according to the latest tranche of emails released by the UK parliament relating to the company’s mass collection of call and text logs.Since 2015, the social network has collected communications metadata from users who install its app on Android phones. In March this year that logging became public when users discovered details of their communications as they downloaded their personal data using new tools created to comply with the EU’s general data protection regulation (GDPR). Continue reading...

Accident in New Jersey puts new focus on retailer’s warehouse working conditionsTwenty-four employees at an Amazon warehouse in New Jersey were taken to hospital after a robot accidentally punctured a can of bear repellant.The 255g can containing concentrated capsaicin, a compound in chilli peppers, was punctured by an automated machine after it fell off a shelf, according to local media. Continue reading...