Technology | The Guardian

Australia, Argentina and Ireland join UK and Canada in urging Facebook CEO to give evidence to parliamentsParliamentary committees from five countries have called for Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to appear in front of a joint hearing on online disinformation.Committee chairs from Australia, Argentina and Ireland joined the call on Wednesday, following last week’s joint request from the UK and Canadian governments. Between them, the five countries have an estimated 170 million Facebook users. Continue reading...

Users of the much-anticipated game have posted videos of avatars beating and killing a female characterThe makers of the most anticipated video game of the year, Red Dead Redemption 2, have been criticised after players recorded videos of themselves beating, abusing and killing a suffragette character.After its release in late October, the game – in which players can choose whether to speak to, rob, abuse or kill characters they interact with – was praised for its extraordinary attention to detail. Continue reading...

From the latest fun-filled escapades of Mario, Donkey Kong and Link to complex, literary titles such as Octopath Traveller, here are the games that get the best out of Nintendo’s consoleA novel and lively take on the shooter genre that has you splattering urban arenas with bright ink, switching between human and squid forms to swim around in the resultant sea of colour. The funky 90s street-style aesthetic perfectly complements the fun, frenetic play, and it’s had so many updates since its release that you are constantly getting more for your money.

Report finds platform was used to spread hate and cause harm, and that posts have been linked to offline violenceFacebook has admitted it did not do enough to prevent the incitement of violence and hate speech in Myanmar, after a report it commissioned concluded that it had become a platform for harmful and racially-inflammatory content.The report by San Francisco-based nonprofit Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) found that, in Myanmar, “Facebook has become a means for those seeking to spread hate and cause harm, and posts have been linked to offline violence.” Continue reading...

US startup stymied by ban on powered vehicles using public roads and footpathsThe electric scooter revolution is coming to London, as the US-based startup Bird launches the UK’s first legal scooter-hire service.The company, which has already launched in France, Israel, Belgium, Austria and the US, is starting out small, however: its scooters are only allowed to travel on one path running through the Olympic Park in east London. Continue reading...

A ‘Magna Carta for the web’ will protect people’s rights online from threats such as fake news, prejudice and hate, says founder of the world wide webTim Berners-Lee has launched a global campaign to save the web from the destructive effects of abuse and discrimination, political manipulation, and other threats that plague the online world.In a talk at the opening of the Web Summit in Lisbon on Monday, the inventor of the web called on governments, companies and individuals to back a new “Contract for the Web” that aims to protect people’s rights and freedoms on the internet. Continue reading...

The UK team beat the US to take fourth place as China and Canada won silver and bronze respectivelyOverwatch World Cup favourites South Korea emerged victorious on Sunday for the third time in a row, despite a round of upsets, including a particularly valiant run from the UK. At Blizzard Entertainment’s Blizzcon convention in Anaheim, California, last weekend, the victors of the group stages battled it out to take the trophy in front of thousands of fans.The team-based shooter game Overwatch matches make for exciting viewing, with two teams of six players battling to attack and defend objectives as a varied cast of characters, each with their own powerful abilities. No two matches are the same, as players choose different strategies in an attempt to get an advantage over their opponents. This variety was especially well showcased this year, leading to nail-biting matches and some surprising outcomes. Turret-building, molten-lava-pouring Swedish hero Torbjörn – previously seldom seen in competitive play – made surprise appearances in several teams’ lineups. Continue reading...

Scientists are investigating canines’ extraordinary sense of smell, hoping that it will prove a more reliable predictor of illnesses than conventional testingLast week, researchers presented evidence that dogs could tell from sniffing someone’s socks whether they had malaria. After several months of training, a labrador and a labrador-retriever could tell if a child had the disease even if they were not showing symptoms. Continue reading...

The latest hydrogen fuel cell electric car from Hyundai is so clean it actually vacuums the air as you travelHyundai Nexo

Company is considering area known as Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia, just south of WashingtonAmazon is in “advanced talks” to open its second headquarters in the Washington DC metropolitan area, the Washington Post, a paper owned by Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos, reported on Saturday.Amazon, which is headquartered in Seattle, is seriously considering an area known as Crystal City, a large residential and office complex in Arlington, Virginia, just south of Washington, the Post reported, citing unidentified sources. Continue reading...

The corporation’s new do-it-all audio app for younger listeners is smart but needs more contentBBC Sounds

Big tech faces a test as San Francisco weighs a ballot measure that would tax companies to help the homelessFor years, a Google search for “tech” and “homelessness” in San Francisco would invariably be populated by various rants and open letters from startup founders and other entrepreneurs decrying the “riff-raff” and “degenerates” they were forced to encounter on their streets on their way to work.These tone-deaf tech bros came to define the tenor of San Francisco’s second dotcom boom, fueling frosty relations between an influx of wealth and a city left ravaged by economic disparities. The common narrative was of Versailles on the eve of the revolution – anti-gentrification protests against tech buses, pointed flyers accusing tech workers of ignoring the suffering around them, sidewalk graffiti declaring that “Queers hate techies”. Continue reading...

‘Woozy Face’ is one of 158 emojis just released for the iPhone and iPad. But no one can agree on quite what it symbolisesName: Woozy Face.AKA: Face With Uneven Eyes and Wavy Mouth. Continue reading...

Investors take fright at slowing forecasts and withholding of number of handsets soldThe stock market value of Apple has dipped below $1tn (£770bn) after the decision to stop revealing how many handsets it sells stoked concerns among investors that iPhone sales have peaked.The tech company’s shares fell sharply on Friday as investors digested a slowing sales picture coupled with reduced financial transparency, after management said that from now on it would withhold the key sales measure from analysts. Continue reading...

Photo-sharing site to limit free storage to 1,000 images as part of revamp under new ownersFlickr is to delete millions of photos from the internet, as its new owners attempt to sustain the photo-sharing site after its purchase from Yahoo earlier this year.Free users of the site will be limited to storing 1,000 photos and videos, with any excess being deleted from February 2019. The limit is a steep reduction from the previous allowance of 1TB per user, about 200,000-500,000 photos each. Continue reading...

Author Adrienne Mayor discusses the myths that contained the first blueprints for artificial intelligencePhilosopher René Descartes’ quote “cogito, ergo sum” became well known after being translated into English as “I think, therefore I am.” It was the result of his attempt to figure out which of the things he thought he knew were impervious to doubt.

Kelly Ellis, who years earlier alleged sexual harassment at Google, is behind a class-action suit targeting the firm’s gender pay gapKelly Ellis would like an apology.The former Google software engineer felt a mix of emotions as she watched the massive walkouts protesting sexual harassment at the corporation’s offices across the globe on Thursday. She said it was moving to see thousands of employees demonstrate, but that it was hard not to feel frustrated and stuck on a nagging question: what took so long? Continue reading...

With in-display fingerprint scanner and speedy performance, this is the smartphone that brings all-screen design up a notchThe OnePlus 6T proves that cutting-edge technology doesn’t have to cost the Earth, bringing an in-display fingerprint scanner and a tiny notch for just £500.OnePlus has kept things simple for years, offering top specifications for budget prices. The price has slowly crept up to not-quite-so budget, but the level of refinement and technology has also improved. Continue reading...

Employees in Mountain View gathered to add their voices to the global protests, demanding a change to company policiesAfter a day of global protests, employees at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters added their voices to calls for major change to company policies on gender pay equity and sexual misconduct.Chants of “Stand up, fight back” and “Women’s rights are workers’ rights” reverberated through a crowd of several hundred workers who gathered on the eastern edge of the company’s vast Mountain View campus at about 11am on Thursday. Continue reading...

Fourth quarter sees revenues from services such as iCloud and Apple Music hit all-time high of $10bnApple, the world’s first company to be valued at $1 trillion, continues to grow at speed and has announced a double-digit increase in revenue.Slightly exceeding projected revenues, with $62.9bn, the tech giant is up roughly 20% over last year. Continue reading...

Attacker tried to sell certain materials on the internet but shipbuilder insists there is no evidence of theft of national security informationDefence shipbuilder Austal’s Australian business has been hit with a data breach and extortion attempt but insists there is no evidence of theft of national security information.Some staff email addresses and mobile phone numbers were accessed in the breach. The attacker tried to sell certain materials on the internet and engage in extortion. However, Austal said the company does not intend to respond to such threats. Continue reading...

Thousands of employees from Tokyo to California stage demonstrations targeting workplace cultureThousands of Google staff across the world have staged a series of walkouts in protest at claims of sexual harassment, gender inequality and systemic racism.Demonstrations at the company’s offices around the world began at 11.10am in Tokyo and took place at the same time in other time zones. Continue reading...

Hilary wants to upgrade to a 15.6in laptop with a 256GB SSD, but they are too expensive. Would a smaller drive be OK?I need to replace an old 15.6in Acer Aspire laptop with a Core i3 processor. I want to go down the SSD route, but do I need 128GB or 256GB? I use a laptop for documents, photos, emails, Facebook etc, and some Excel stuff, hence the need for Microsoft Office. No gaming.My local computer shop has an HP 250 G6 laptop with a Core i5-7200U, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, for £425, which they said they could upgrade to 256GB in the future if needed. I’ve also looked at a Lenovo IdeaPad 330S with a Core i5-8250U, 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD for £579, which seems way too expensive for what I need.The laptop industry is slowly changing from PCs with traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) to ones with chip-based solid-state drives (SSDs). The problem, as you have found, is the cost. SSDs are more responsive, but they are also much more expensive per gigabyte of storage space. Continue reading...

Web inventor says Silicon Valley firms have too much clout and ‘optimism has cracked’Tech giants such as Facebook and Google have grown so dominant they may need to be broken up, unless challengers or changes in taste reduce their clout, Tim Berners-Lee has said.Berners-Lee, the computer scientist who invented the world wide web in 1989, said he was disappointed with the current state of the internet, following scandals over the abuse of personal data and the use of social media to spread hate. Continue reading...

Joint hearing will try to force Facebook chief to appear over Cambridge Analytica scandalThe UK and Canadian parliaments are joining forces in an attempt to force Mark Zuckerberg to answer their questions over Facebook’s role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.The House of Commons digital, culture, media and sport select committee has announced its intention to hold a highly unusual joint hearing with its Canadian equivalent in an attempt to pressure the social network’s chief executive into appearing in front of parliament. Continue reading...

The greatest horror titles are haunted by marauding monsters, eviscerating aliens and little girls in red coats. Steel yourself to meet some of the most chilling ghosts in the machineVideo games are the perfect medium for horror. They offer a unique sense of immersion, of being trapped within an interactive nightmare, and this has proven irresistible to players and developers since the industry began. Some have faded with time – you’re unlikely to shiver with terror at the sight of 1987 Spectrum adventure Jack the Ripper, the first game to receive an 18 certificate thanks to its “gory” visuals. But many classic horror titles still leave us cowering helplessly behind our joypads.Here then are 13 unforgettably terrifying video game moments. Feel free to add your own chilling favourites in the comments section. Continue reading...

With Face ID and a decent screen, this phone attempts a happy medium between quality and price – but £750 still isn’t a bargainThe iPhone XR looks to offer most of what made the iPhone XS a knockout for £250 less – but with a colourful body and a slightly larger screen is this the iPhone to buy?With the iPhone XS and XS Max starting at £999 and £1,099 respectively, Apple has room to shoehorn a slightly lower cost, but still expensive, model in underneath. Continue reading...

It started out as an in-joke, then the trailer went viral. The team behind the game in which you play a naughty goose takes Guardian Australia behind the scenesUntitled Goose Game has a very simple pitch: you are a horrible goose and your aim is to ruin everybody’s day.“We thought this was a funny thing, with niche appeal,” says programmer Nico Disseldorp of House House, the four-person Melbourne-based development studio behind Untitled Goose Game. “We thought, ‘Oh, we’d love a game about a naughty animal.’ Continue reading...

Company announces 33% revenue growth over last year as CEO reports more than 2bn daily usersMark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook “may be close to saturated in developed countries” as the social media giant posted a 33% increase in revenue.Despite controversies including the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, the quarterly results showed Facebook continuing to grow, although Zuckerberg cautioned that revenue could slow in the future. Continue reading...

Christin Evans’ Twitter conversation with Salesforce’s Marc Benioff led to his role as a key advocate for San Francisco’s Prop CIt was a late-night Twitter argument that Christin Evans never planned to have. The San Francisco bookstore owner and homeless advocate used the platform to voice her frustration over a comment from the Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff – but she never thought he’d reply.“Is this for real?!” she wrote above a retweeted comment attributed to Benioff referring to San Francisco as the “Four Seasons of homelessness”. Tagging him in the tweet, she added: “How out of touch can a billionaire be?!?!” along with a plug to support Proposition C – a city initiative going to voters in November that would tax San Francisco’s highest-earning companies to fund new strategies to combat homelessness. Continue reading...

The Silicon Valley firm decamped to Brooklyn to launch new iPad Pro, ‘100% recycled aluminium’ Air and revamped Mac Mini

Apple announces thinner, more powerful 11in and 12.9in tablets with new gestures, processor, Apple Pencil and magnetic keyboard

Fan favourite updated with Touch ID and new keyboard and launched alongside new Mac Mini

Protest held outside court in London as firm appeals against employment tribunal rulingUber has launched a court challenge against a landmark legal ruling that set a precedent for millions of gig economy workers.The attempt to overturn the employment tribunal ruling that the company’s drivers were workers came as a former driver involved in the case claimed that if the taxi-hailing app were to win its appeal, Uber’s business model could expand into every sector of the economy. Continue reading...

Prime Wardrobe delivers three to eight clothing items with no upfront chargeAmazon is launching its “try before you buy” fashion service in the UK, marking the online retailer’s latest push into the clothing market.Prime Wardrobe delivers a bag of three to eight clothing items with no upfront charge and free delivery for people signed up to Amazon’s subscription service. Continue reading...

Bungie’s billion-dollar shooter game is winning back players by investing its alien prey with personality – and providing plenty to do when the gunfire stopsThe difficulty with games such as Destiny – continually evolving online worlds and communities with whims that change week on week – is that you never really know how well those changes have worked out until some time down the line. Destiny 2’s Forsaken expansion came out last month, bringing with it new modes and features intended to win back players who felt the game had become facile and too predictable. It’s now enjoying an excellent Halloween-themed seasonal event, the Festival of the Lost.The third expansion pack to the first sequel of a billion-dollar game is an odd place to rip up the rule book and start afresh. But time and again, that’s what Destiny 2: Forsaken does, and as a result Destiny has never been stronger. Continue reading...

Supplier under fire after vocational degrees were withheld unless students undertook factory workApple is investigating a factory in southwest China after a labour rights group said the tech giant’s supplier forced student workers to work “like robots” to assemble its popular Apple Watch.Many were compelled to work in order to get their vocational degrees and had to do night shifts, according to an investigation by Hong Kong-based NGO Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM). Continue reading...

Redesigned tablet with USB-C and potentially a new MacBook Air expected to be launched at New York event on TuesdayApple is expected to unveil a redesigned iPad Pro with Face ID and no home button, alongside new Mac computers, at an event in New York on Tuesday afternoon.The long-rumoured iPad Pro redesign will be the first significant change to Apple’s iOS-based tablet since the release of the 12.9in iPad Pro in 2015. Continue reading...

Miniature console to be released in December, packaged with popular games, including Resident Evil, Ridge Racer, Tekken – and the original Grand Theft AutoSony has released the full list of games for its forthcoming PlayStation Classic, a miniature version of the iconic 1997 games console announced last month.Related: 14 classic PlayStation games that are still fun today Continue reading...

PayPal, Stripe and Joyent abandon support of social media site that hosted posts by Robert BowersGab, the social media site popular with the far-right, has been forced offline by its service providers after it became clear that the alleged Pittsburgh shooter Robert Bowers had a history of anti-semitic postings on the site.Formed in August 2016 after Twitter began cracking down on hate speech on its social network, Gab has been labelled “Twitter for racists” by the website Salon but describes itself as “a free speech website and nothing more”. But the platform has proved popular among white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the “alt-right”, including the man accused of opening fire on a synagogue in Pennsylvania on Saturday, killing 11. Continue reading...

With in-display fingerprint and 3D face scanning, triple camera and long battery life, Huawei has pulled off something specialHuawei has made really good phones for years, but the Mate 20 Pro is the Chinese firm’s first truly cutting-edge device with a triple camera, 3D face unlock and an in-screen fingerprint sensor.The Mate series of phones has always delivered one thing above all else – battery life. This year Huawei has gone out of its way to deliver even more. Continue reading...

Investment means value of firm behind popular game has risen threefold in six monthsThe company behind the Fortnite video game has been valued at almost $15bn (£11.7bn) after receiving a $1.25bn cash injection led by the private equity firm KKR.The game, which has been described as a cross between The Hunger Games and Minecraft, has proved hugely popular since its release last year by Epic Games. Continue reading...

Musk and Tesla fined $20m each for misleading investors over privatisation plansElon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla, has said the tweet that cost him and the company $20m (£16m) each in fines by the US Securities and Exchange Commission was “worth it”.Worth it Continue reading...

The new technology, being tested in Salford, is the network of the future. But what practical uses will it offer?Last week, Vodafone launched a test of the UK’s first full 5G service, available for use by businesses in Salford. It is part of its plan to trial the technology in seven UK cities. But what can we expect from the next generation of mobile technology?One thing we will see in the run-up to launch is lots of stunts with the new tech. Earlier this year, operators paid almost £1.4bn for the 5G wavelengths being auctioned off by the government, and to recoup that cash, they will need to catch the eye of consumers. In September, Vodafone used its bit of the spectrum to demonstrate the UK’s first holographic call. The England and Manchester City captain Steph Houghton appeared as a hologram in Newbury to give football tips to an 11-year-old girl while remaining at Vodafone’s Manchester office. Continue reading...

It may once have been synonymous with writing, but it’s time to seek the uncorrupted writing experience elsewhereIn a grim political season, there are signs that journalists are successfully challenging at least one odious tyrant.In Slate, Rachel Withers has reported that in newsrooms throughout the United States, Microsoft Word is finally giving way to other programs, including Google Docs. Continue reading...

A lawsuit brought against Facebook for sexist job advertisements exposes the discriminatory nature of the online marketingIn September, a group of people searching for work in the US filed charges against Facebook and 10 other companies for discriminating against women by targeting certain job advertisements only at men. The employers, from sectors such as labouring and lorry driving, had used Facebook’s ad-targeting tools to direct the opportunities at those they thought most suitable – and this did not include women. Although the outcome of the case has not yet been decided, it could – along with similar cases – have a seismic impact on the future of digital advertising and, consequently, on the future of the net.Allegations of discrimination have been made against Facebook’s advertising before. An investigation by ProPublica and the New York Times at the end of last year found that dozens of employers had used the platform to target job ads at particular age groups, meaning that those outside those ages did not see them. Around the same time, the Washington State attorney general’s office launched a sting operation, to show how straightforward it was to use Facebook’s targeting tools to prevent certain ethnic groups from seeing ads in the US: it placed 20 phoney ads for jobs, apartments, insurance and other services and deliberately excluded one or more ethnic minority groups from receiving the notification. Continue reading...

The retailer has launched five clothing labels in a year and has ambitions to be a serious player in fashionBright red lacy dresses, cosy coats and ripped jeans fill a chic central London boutique decorated with neon signage and stripped wood floors. Shoppers bustle and admire the clothes – but they are not in a hip designer shop; they are in Amazon’s first pop-up fashion store in Europe.Last week, at the opening night of the Baker Street store, the models Lara Stone and Maddi Waterhouse, the actress Gemma Chan and socialites Pixie Geldof and Rafferty Law brought a sprinkling of stardust to a collection that the US online retailer hopes will make it a major player in British fashion. Continue reading...

GMB union says 40,000 drivers are worse off through missing holiday and sick pay, despite a court ruling in 2016Uber drivers are estimated to be more than £18,000 out of pocket because the ride hailing company refuses to recognise a two-year-old ruling entitling them to holiday pay, a minimum wage and rest breaks.The law firm Leigh Day – acting for the GMB union, which brought the action against the tech giant – calculates that its 40,000 drivers are all owed almost £11,000 in wages and more than £8,000 in holiday pay. But Uber is continuing to appeal the ruling, made two years ago at the central London employment tribunal. Continue reading...

It was once Jessica Powell’s job to defend Google. Now she’s taking her industry to task in a ‘totally fictional but essentially true’ bookIn September, Jessica Powell tapped on her phone’s contact list and texted her old boss, the Google CEO, Sundar Pichai. She also called a former co-worker at the company’s roughly 200-person communications team that, until last September, she led. Powell’s news: she was about to release a satirical novel about Silicon Valley, which readers would be likely to interpret as being about Google. The book, The Big Disruption, was billed as “a totally fictional but essentially true Silicon Valley story”. In public relations terms, it was a rogue turn – going from burnishing the company’s image to lampooning a company that looked suspiciously like it.Powell, 40, nursed some eleventh-hour nerves about the transition. Until last fall, Powell was on Google’s management team as vice-president of global communications, crafting strategy on how its policies and products should be presented and defended. After a career as the behind-the-scenes puppet master of corporate messaging and a bout of wanting to publish anonymously, she decided to put her name front and center. She didn’t want to irk Google friends, and even penned an introductory essay that argues you can love tech and still see its flaws. Powell insists the book is not a thinly veiled “tell-all” and that her distancing the book from Google is not one final act of PR. Continue reading...

Dozens of accounts posting politically charged content reached more than a million users, company saysFacebook has uncovered and deleted dozens of accounts and pages originating in Iran that were intended to provoke division in the US and the UK.The accounts, which posed as US and UK residents, posted frequently about politically divisive subjects, including race relations, opposition to Donald Trump, and immigration. More than a million Facebook users had engaged with the 82 pages, groups and accounts that were identified, most of them in the US, and Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said they were created to deliberately “sow discord”. Continue reading...