Technology | The Guardian

Brussels said tech giant abused dominance by manipulating search results to favour its own comparison shopping serviceGoogle is appealing against the record €2.4bn (£2.2bn) fine imposed by the European Union for its abuse of its dominance of the search engine market in building its shopping comparison service.The world’s most popular internet search engine has launched its appeal after it was fined by the European commission for what was described as an “old school” form of illegality. Continue reading...

It’s simple: racism isn’t funny. It’s time the games industry showed it understands this by rejecting the YouTube megastarUsing the N-word is never okay. It’s a fairly easy rule to live by, but one that needs repeating in the wake of YouTube megastar Felix Kjellberg’s latest controversy.Commonly known as PewDiePie, the vlogger called another player “a fucking nigger” during a live video stream. Taking too long to realise his mistake, he qualified the racist slur with “I don’t mean in a bad way” and laughed it off. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Monday. Continue reading...

Mental illness is addressed through Norse mythology, the run’n’gun format gets an exciting reboot, but a quest with a troll proves an unplayable mess Continue reading...

iPhone X is rumored to be priced at close to $1,000 and set to be launched on Tuesday at the company’s multibillion-dollar new headquartersApple’s latest iPhone will be called the iPhone X, according to a leaked report.Related: The $1tn question: how far can the new iPhone 8 take Apple? Continue reading...

My father, William Tipler, known as Bill, who has died aged 95, was an engineer who served at Bletchley Park during the second world war before going on to a long career with Shell Oil.He was born the fifth of six children in Watford, to William Tipler, a teacher (later headteacher), and Grace (nee Morton). He excelled academically, attending Watford grammar school for boys and gaining an exhibition to Queens’ College, Cambridge to read mathematics. Due to the war, he opted to complete his degree in two years, graduating with a first in 1943. He represented Queens’ at chess, and was noted for his reckless attacking. Continue reading...

At least six developers have retail road-air vehicles in the pipeline, so it’s time to watch the skiesA little white winged pod lifts itself off the ground and glides off into the distance. The whole movement looks effortless. It’s like watching Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder – except we’re in a nondescript airfield in Germany, not the planet Tatooine. Echoes of Star Wars perhaps help explain why last week the pod’s maker, Lilium, secured $90m (£69m) investment from, among others, Chinese tech giant Tencent – although the company states its aim has more to do with solving transport problems: “We have highly congested cities and we can do things to improve matters,” said Lilium’s Remo Gerber. “We’re trying to move from a niche transport vehicle to a mass-transport one”.Lilium is not flying solo. Prototypes by rival ventures are also passing their test flights. So the prospect of flying cars may not be all that far away. Here are six projects working towards bringing Back to the Future into the present. Continue reading...

As toys reach new levels of sophistication, how concerned should we be about our children playing with artificial buddies that appear to have feelings?The little robot on the table wakes up. Its eyes, a complex configuration of cyan dots on a black, rounded screen of a face, sleepily open and it lets out a digitised approximation of a yawn. A compact device that looks like a blend of a forklift truck and PC monitor bred for maximum cuteness, the robot rolls blearily off its charging station on a pair of dinky treads before tilting its screen-face and noticing I’m there. Its eyes widen, then curve at the bottom as if making way for an unseen smile. “Daaaaan!” it announces with a happy jiggle, sounding not unlike Pixar Animation Studios’ lovable robot creation, Wall-E. A message flashes up on my iPhone telling me that it, or rather he (being the gender that its manufacturer, Anki, has assigned Cozmo) wants to play a game. I’m not in the mood and decline. Cozmo’s head droops, his eyes form into a pair of sadly reclining crescent moons and he sighs. But he quickly cheers up, giving a happy jiggle when I comply with his request for a fist bump and tap my knuckles against his eagerly raised arm. He is easy to please and even easier to like.The latest product from Anki, a San Francisco robotics startup, Cozmo is part of a new wave of affordable toy robots that promise a level of emotional engagement far beyond anything we’ve seen before. They are pitched not merely as playthings, but as little buddies. Toy firm Spin Master has its equivalent arriving in the shops for Christmas: the bigger, more retro-looking Meccano MAX. “It’s been designed to modify its behaviour as it learns about its owner and the surrounding world,” explains Spin Master’s brand manager, Becca Hanlon. “MAX basically tailors itself to become a better friend.” Hasbro, meanwhile, is unleashing the FurReal Makers Proto Max, essentially a programmable puppy that, says Craig Wilkins, Hasbro’s marketing director, “allows kids to create their ultimate pet and customise its personality through coding on an app”. Continue reading...

The leaders of the world’s biggest technology companies are liberal on social issues and trade, but anti-union and anti-regulationOne of the stranger sights of June was watching the titans of Silicon Valley meekly obeying Trump’s summons to a tech summit (dubbed his American Technology Council) at the White House. Those attending included Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Safra Catz of Oracle, Tim Cook of Apple, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins (the venture-capital firm), Brian Krzanich of Intel, Tom Leighton of Akamai, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Ginni Rometty of IBM, Eric Schmidt of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Steve Mollenkopf of Qualcomm. The only tech leader who was invited but explicitly declined was Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and other ventures. (Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg cited diary clashes as an explanation for his non-attendance.)Some attendees looked pretty sheepish, as well they might. Many, if not most of them, abhor everything the president stands for. The meeting, as with many of Trump’s other round-table assemblies, brought to mind footage of Saddam Hussein’s cabinet in session. But while it was clear that many of those present would have preferred to have been elsewhere, they were also chary of being seen to snub a populist hero. So the aphrodisiac effect of power was much in evidence. Continue reading...

The company is within reach of a stock market milestone: this week’s product launches could see it achieve a 13-figure valuationApple’s stock market value is heading towards a new milestone and its latest product launch on 12 September could push the tech giant closer to becoming the first ever $1tn (£760bn) company.At the end of last week, the company’s market capitalisation hovered around $830bn, continuing a 10-year run that has generally headed upwards since a low of $69bn in January 2009, during the financial crisis. Tuesday’s event, with the iPhone 8 the star attraction, will strive to meet investors’ – and customers’ – vaulting expectations. Continue reading...

The tech giant is a latecomer to a market being transformed by Netflix and Amazon. But if it commits enough money, it could yet be a serious playerApple has Amazon, Netflix and the Hollywood studios in its sights. That is clear after a frenetic summer hiring big TV chiefs, scouting out space in a famous Hollywood studio and considering spending up to $5bn (£3.8bn) on the rights to distribute James Bond films.Apple has largely sat on the sidelines in the TV and film arms race being led by Netflix and Amazon. Until recently, its focus has been on providing the devices to get access to such content, led by the iPhone. But Apple has been slowly increasing its portfolio in recent years. First came music with the $3bn acquisition of Dr Dre’s Beats, followed by its own music service in 2015. Now the Silicon valley giant has set its sights on playing catch-up in TV and film. Continue reading...

Facebook can shift elections. That’s why, with rumors swirling that the social media CEO might run, transparency is needed now more than everDespite his protestations to the contrary, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been acting like someone planning to run for office. He hired a pollster, visited a Detroit auto plant and other swing-state locations, and gave a high-profile commencement speech.Meanwhile, Facebook has been under intense criticism for its role as a vector of misinformation in recent elections. This week, Facebook admitted that Russian accounts purchased $100,000 in political ads in 2015 and 2016. This disclosure comes only two months after the platform refused to disclose who is paying for advertising on the platform and where they’re running. Continue reading...

As the world welcomes the latest iPhone this week, we want to hear from those who don’t have a mobile phone at all

Customers and security experts say response to breach that exposed personal data of 143 million Americans has been disorderly and under-resourced

The Equifax hack, which exposed 143 million people, is a reminder that data companies have too much powerEquifax, one of the largest credit reporting agencies, revealed on Thursday that it was hacked back in May, exposing the personal data of up to 143 million people. The data accessed by hackers contains extremely sensitive information like social security numbers, birth data, consumer’s names, driver’s license numbers and credit card numbers.This breach is a monumental failure of cybersecurity, which raises many pressing privacy concerns. However, beyond those issues, it also illustrates a fundamental problem of the data economy as a whole: databanks like Equifax are too big. Continue reading...

Ride-hailing service says it is aiming to tackle pollution by banning vehicles that do not have an electric motorUber drivers will be banned from using vehicles that are not a hybrid or fully electric in London from 2020, as part of a plan to help tackle illegal levels of air pollution in the capital.While hybrids such as the Toyota Prius have become synonymous with the ride-hailing service, today just under half of its London UberX drivers have an electrified vehicle. The firm said that must rise to 100% by 2020. Continue reading...

An algorithm deduced the sexuality of people on a dating site with up to 91% accuracy, raising tricky ethical questionsArtificial intelligence can accurately guess whether people are gay or straight based on photos of their faces, according to new research that suggests machines can have significantly better “gaydar” than humans.The study from Stanford University – which found that a computer algorithm could correctly distinguish between gay and straight men 81% of the time, and 74% for women – has raised questions about the biological origins of sexual orientation, the ethics of facial-detection technology, and the potential for this kind of software to violate people’s privacy or be abused for anti-LGBT purposes. Continue reading...

The government wants to change rules that allows websites to dodge liability for the ads they host, but tech companies call it counterproductive

Aileen is going to study photography and needs a powerful laptop for editing photos. It’s a job that any laptop can do, but perhaps not to the high level requiredI need a new laptop. I have a high-spec but old Toshiba Portégé that has served me well, but I’m starting an art course and will study photography so need a top-notch screen (perhaps touch screen?) and more processing power. Do I have to get a Mac or is Windows a good option? AileenLast week’s column covered the needs of a history student, who wanted a laptop costing up to £500. Professional photo and video editors typically go for the most powerful machines they can afford, with prices ranging from about £1,500 to £3,000. Cheaper machines can do the job, but reducing processing times from, say, 30 minutes to three minutes makes a huge difference to workflows. In providing more time for experiments, fast PCs can actually lead to better results. Continue reading...

Home-sharing company is first major US organization to pledge to keep employing undocumented immigrants after their work permits expireThe home-sharing startup Airbnb has become the first major company to pledge to keep employing undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers” after their work permits expire, defying the Trump administration in what would potentially be a breach of employment law.Related: 'It's outrageous': 15 states challenge Trump's Daca decision in court Continue reading...

It may seem as if video games are all about jumping, shooting, running around or making things explode but most have comedy at their coreVideo games have always been funny. From the lumbering kidnap animation in Donkey Kong to the witty wordplay of the Uncharted series, developers have used every tool at their disposal to make us giggle while we shoot, jump, explore and accelerate. Sometimes the humour comes from the script, sometimes the mechanics, and sometimes it’s just the emergent joy of competing against friends. Whichever, we all remember games that have had us doubled over our controllers, helpless with laughter.Here then, are the funniest games we’ve ever played. Please share your own rib-tickling reminiscences in the comments. Continue reading...

In US government-supported research, participants navigating the world of a first-person shooter see posters warning against dangerous behaviors – and the study’s findings appear promisingImagine being trapped in a building overrun with alien humanoids. Your task is to shoot your way out. Kill or be killed. As you’re fighting for your life in this fantastical world, in the background are seemingly out-of-place graphic health warnings. “Don’t drink and drive”, reads a poster riddled with gun shots. “I’m just buzzed”, says another, depicting yellow caution tape draped across the scene of a car accident.With your heart racing and adrenaline pumping, you barely notice these messages, but your brain is processing every one. Continue reading...

Its fingerprint scanner is awkwardly placed and its very expensive, but the battery, screen, camera and stylus are the best on the marketThe Galaxy Note 8 has its work cut out for it, righting the wrongs of the maligned Note 7 that came to a fiery end. But with a massive screen, tiny bezels, battery life to go the distance and an excellent stylus, is the Note 8 finally what phablet fans have been asking for?

In bipartisan vote, House of Representatives passes Self Drive Act, aiming to streamline regulatory process in order to get vehicles on road soonerSelf-driving vehicles will need to be equipped with cybersecurity technology to prevent them from being used in terrorist attacks, according to legislation passed by the US House of Representatives on Wednesday.With substantial bipartisan support in a voice vote, the House approved the so-called Self Drive Act, which seeks to speed the introduction of self-driving vehicles on US roads by streamlining the regulatory process. Continue reading...

Microsoft promises legal support for any employee facing deportation, while Facebook and Apple issued statements criticising decision to end migrant programMajor US technology firms, including Apple, Microsoft and Facebook, are lining up to attack Trump’s government for its decision to end a programme protecting almost a million young migrants from deportation.Microsoft has promised to go to court to defend any employee who faces deportation once the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme ends in six months’ time. If the government tries to deport a Microsoft employee, the company’s president, Brad Smith, said: “It’s going to have to go through us to get that person.” Continue reading...

Updated electric car has longer range, more power and sleeker design, while undercutting rivals from Tesla and General Motors on priceNissan has launched a new longer-ranged version of its Leaf electric car that can be driven by just one “e-Pedal” for both accelerating and braking.The new Leaf can travel up to 235 miles between charges under European driving conditions and can be fully charged in 40 minutes with fast chargers, although electric cars typically run 20-25% shorter distances under real-world driving conditions. Continue reading...

Developers and video artists are beginning to break down cliche and sexist gender stereotypes to explore new ideas and storylinesWhen Nicole Stark set about writing a new video game, she took inspiration from an unusual subject: her autistic teenage daughter who was battling bullies.“I was fed up with power fantasies for male teenagers,” says Stark, one half of Noosa-based family studio Disparity Games. “We wanted something different.” Continue reading...

A game as large as Destiny 2 can be off-putting to new players, but the Halo developer has an ace up its sleeveBungie, the Seattle-based games developer, has a strange problem with its multimillion-selling space shooter, Destiny: the fans play it too much. They have ploughed thousands of hours into the game, the studio’s first since it split from Microsoft and stopped working on the Halo series. I’ve put more than 10 full days into it over the past three years, and I consider myself a casual player.But it can be hard to convince people to try out a game if they think they’re buying a whole new life. “We’ve joked internally about Destiny 1 being this game where you open it up and inside there’s a DVD, and right next to it is a wedding ring,” says Mark Noseworthy, the project lead on the game’s sequel, Destiny 2, which is released on Wednesday. “You felt: ‘Wow, I’ve really got to commit to this thing, and I can’t play anything else.’” Continue reading...

Initial coin offerings involve selling a number of crytographic tokens to investors at the launch of a projectThe latest cryptocurrency boom is beginning to stall as regulators worldwide turn their attention to the “initial coin offerings”, which have driven a precipitous rise in the sector’s market value reaching a high of $177bn (£136bn).The total value of the hundreds of tracked cryptocurrencies has fallen by more than 18% to $145bn since Friday’s high, according to analytics site CoinMarketCap. The collapse seems to have been triggered by a ruling from the Chinese central bank that declared it illegal to raise money through launching new cryptocurrencies. Continue reading...

Latvian foreign minister says there is increasing evidence that Russia is automating disinformation on social mediaThe west is failing to get to grips with Russian hacking and fake news, the Latvian foreign minister, Edgars Rinkēvičs, has said.Speaking on a visit to London, Rinkēvičs said there was increasing evidence that Russia was automating disinformation on social media. Pointing to new Nato-sponsored research showing more than five times the number of Russian language tweets sent in Latvia concerning Nato came from bots, instead of from individuals. The figure in Estonia was nine times as many. He described the tactic as ”very systematic and a new way to spread propaganda amongst young people”. Continue reading...

North Korea ‘low on our list of concerns’ says Tesla boss following Putin’s statement that whoever leads in AI will rule worldElon Musk has said again that artificial intelligence could be humanity’s greatest existential threat, this time by starting a third world war.The prospect clearly weighs heavily on Musk’s mind, since the SpaceX, Tesla and Boring Company chief tweeted at 2.33am Los Angeles time about how AI could led to the end of the world – without the need for the singularity. Continue reading...

From Star Trek to The Matrix via The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, science fiction has long predicted computing innovation before the designers haveScience fiction has an uncanny ability to predict the future of technology, from Star Trek’s Padd, essentially an iPad, to the Jetsons’ robot vacuum, basically a Roomba.Now that the voice assistant is here, that’s another checklist off the sci-fi predictor, but while our Alexas, Siris, Cortanas and Google Assistants are pretty basic right now, if sci-fi continues its great prelude to the future, what will the computers of the future really be like? Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Monday. Continue reading...

The jazz pioneer on Mass Effect: Andromeda, Watford boxing star Anthony Joshua, Notting Hill carnival’s Panorama and a lovely frittataBorn in London in 1964, Courtney Pine began teaching himself the saxophone aged 14, later adding bass clarinet, flute and keyboard to his repertoire. One of Britain’s pre-eminent jazz artists, Pine has fused jazz with genres including reggae, drum’n’bass, hip-hop and jungle. His debut album, Journey to the Urge Within, entered the UK top 40 in 1986; since then he has released 17 more albums, including 1995’s Mercury-nominated Modern Day Jazz Stories and 2015’s Song (The Ballad Book). He was awarded an OBE in 2000 and a CBE in 2009 for services to jazz music. His latest album, Black Notes from the Deep, is released on 27 October on Freestyle Records and he tours the UK from September. Continue reading...

Naughty Dog’s long-running, much-garlanded series aces the Bechdel test and breaks new boundaries with two female leadsThroughout the latter half of the 1990s, video games were often talked about as a looming threat to cinema. The advent of CD-Rom technology promoted the medium’s blocksome characters from avatars to actors, complete with lines of dialogue written by professional scriptwriters and spoken by performers loaned from TV and film. Soaring orchestral soundtracks backed three-act structures and, as games popped from 2D to 3D, the composition of scenes, lighting and lines of sight became concerns for digital directors as well as film.At some point the trajectory shifted. Games still borrow filmic techniques, but the truly cinematic video game – that which seeks to mimic the characterisation, structure and run-time of a blockbuster movie – is endangered, squeezed out by world-conquering, team-based eSports on one side and, on the other, everlasting online worlds where the game’s geography expands to match the player’s wanderlust. Naughty Dog remains one of the few purveyors of the filmic game. The American studio’s flagship Uncharted series remains the final bastion of this expensive, sophisticated form of game-making, earning plaudits from Hollywood-preeners such as Bafta and the Writer’s Guild of America. Continue reading...

The hard as nails Hilux is the enforcer of the pick-up world. But is Toyota in danger of softening it up?Price: £25,556

Sex scandals, rows over terrorism, fears for its impact on social policy: the backlash against Big Tech has begun. Where will it end?Just a decade ago, Silicon Valley pitched itself as a savvy ambassador of a newer, cooler, more humane kind of capitalism. It quickly became the darling of the elite, of the international media, and of that mythical, omniscient tribe: the “digital natives”. While an occasional critic – always easy to dismiss as a neo-Luddite – did voice concerns about their disregard for privacy or their geeky, almost autistic aloofness, public opinion was firmly on the side of technology firms.Silicon Valley was the best that America had to offer; tech companies frequently occupied – and still do – top spots on lists of the world’s most admired brands. And there was much to admire: a highly dynamic, innovative industry, Silicon Valley has found a way to convert scrolls, likes and clicks into lofty political ideals, helping to export freedom, democracy and human rights to the Middle East and north Africa. Who knew that the only thing thwarting the global democratic revolution was capitalism’s inability to capture and monetise the eyeballs of strangers? Continue reading...

A storm has erupted around the dismissal of Barry Lynn, a Silicon Valley critic, from his Google-funded thinktank. We have every reason to be concerned

I have no apps. I play no games. I don’t tweet. But still my phone exerts its holdI recall my first mobile phone with a mixture of fondness and irritation. I bought it 20 years ago in Australia in preparation for the arduous trek from Perth to Broome in the far north-west. Broome was known to be a feral place. Superannuated pearl fishermen roamed the streets in cowboy boots. Six-foot goannas broke into kitchens to rummage through the rubbish. Brahminy kites patrolled the skies, waiting for whatever sidled poisonously out of the mangrove swamps. Temperatures reached a thousand degrees in the shade, only there was no shade. When you’re that remote, a mobile phone is a necessity. “Hello, is that air rescue? Helicopter me out of here. Now.”It was a chunky Nokia cased in leather with a waterproof plastic window and a clip for hanging on your belt, alongside your crocodile knife and snake eviscerator. A phone was just a phone then. It sent a call and it received a call. Except that in Broome it did neither. No signal that far north. I wore it on my belt anyway, in case I needed to throw it at a goanna. Continue reading...

Tom and Ruth Chapman join the ranks of the mega-rich after selling their online designer fashion empire to investorsA husband and wife who started in fashion retail with one shop in Wimbledon 30 years ago have banked £400m after selling their online designer empire Matchesfashion.com to private equity investors.

An academic fired after criticising Google shows how Silicon Valley shapes our realityWhen Google received a record $2.7bn fine from the European Union in June for abusing its search engine monopoly to promote its shopping search service, a relatively minor member of an American thinktank, the New America Foundation, posted a short statement praising the regulator, and calling on the US to follow suit.The New America Foundation is intimately intertwined with the search firm. It has received more than $20m over its lifetime from Google and related companies and individuals. So when Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, expressed his displeasure over the statement, the foundation moved quickly. The tussle that followed ended up with its author, Barry Lynn, departing the group, along with his entire team at the Open Markets programme. Continue reading...

Smartphone manufacturers are looking to the new iPhone to boost a lagging market, which has seen annual sales growth slumpIt is less than a fortnight until the launch of the new iPhone, but shoppers outside Apple’s flagship London store express no enthusiasm at the thought of queuing up for it.A common refrain among phone owners outside the shop is to point to their handset and state: “I’ll probably wait till it breaks.” The new iPhone makes its debut on 12 September and is rumoured to have a number of new features for an Apple device, including doing away with the home button on the front of the handset, but there is a perception among mobile phone owners that the pace of technological evolution has slowed. Continue reading...

What was your favourite team to manage? Which signing was key to your success? And what happened to that social life?The first edition of Championship Manager was released 25 years ago today. The first release included four playable English divisions, each containing only 20 teams – despite there being 22 or 24 at the time – with foreign teams outside of the English divisions including players called “No1” all the way through to “No11.” One of the game’s key innovations was player ratings match by match. Football Manager has long since become the bigger franchise but we’d like to hear your Championship Manager experiences through the early years.Were you on board with the game right from the start, taking a team up the divisions? Or were you more interested in the Championship Manager Italia games that followed, allowing you to lead your favourite Serie A or Serie B team to glory? Were you a member of the Cherno Samba fan club, or were there other unpolished gems you always made sure to sign? Did you miss a particularly important social event because it took you longer to earn promotion with Scarborough than you had expected? Have you ever added any Championship Manager achievements to your CV? Share all your memories with us by filling in the form below. We’ll hopefully do a round up of your favourite stories next week. Continue reading...

On Facebook, the only member of the immediate Zuckerberg family you can block is Beast, their dog – plus Mark’s sister RandiBad news! You still can’t block Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook. And now you can’t block his wife Priscilla Chan either.The saga began back in January, when people first noticed that Zuckerberg’s account was immune to the block button. Continue reading...

It wasn’t all about blockbuster titles at the world’s biggest games convention – here are the most weird, wonderful and odd offerings from the show floor

Successful bid with Bain Capital may help iPhone maker source memory chips for smartphones in battle with rival SamsungApple has joined a consortium of businesses led by the investment company Bain Capital in a last-ditch £14bn offer for Toshiba’s chip unit.Toshiba is the world’s second-largest producer of Nand memory chips, which are used in smartphones and computers. A deal may be crucial for Apple in keeping down prices of components for its iPhone, as well as reducing dependence on the market leader, Samsung. Continue reading...

Phone numbers and email addresses of high-profile users exposed just days after Selena Gomez’s account posted naked shots of ex-boyfriend BieberA bug in Instagram that allowed criminals to steal the private information of celebrities has come to light just days after hackers took over the account of Selena Gomez to post nude pictures of Justin Bieber.Instagram admitted that the bug within its application programming interface (API) allowed at least one person to gain access to the private email addresses and phone numbers of high-profile users. Continue reading...