Technology | The Guardian

Barry Lynn has spent years studying the growing power of tech giants such as Google, and asking if they are monopolies. He believes the answer is yesEvery second of every day Google processes over 40,000 search queries – that’s about 3.5bn questions a day or 1.2tn a year. But there’s one question that Google apparently doesn’t want answered: is Google a monopoly?Barry Lynn, until this week a senior fellow at Washington thinktank the New America Foundation, has spent years studying the growing power of tech giants like Google and Facebook. He believes the answer is yes. And that opinion, he argues, has cost him his job. Continue reading...

Fraser starts his history course next month and still doesn’t know what laptop to buy. He’d rather not splurge £1,000 if he can get something for half the price Continue reading...

New America Foundation, which has received $21m from Google, dropped Open Markets initiative after senior fellow wrote blogpost praising EU fineAn influential Washington thinktank that has received more than $21m in funding from Google and its chairman Eric Schmidt dropped a team of scholars after its leader wrote an article praising the European Union’s decision to fine the tech giant.The New America Foundation is one of the leading left-leaning policy groups in the US and is led by Anne-Marie Slaughter, an author, foreign policy analyst and political scientist. In June, Barry Lynn, a senior fellow who led the thinktank’s Open Markets initiative, wrote a blogpost praising the EU’s decision to levy a record €2.42bn ($2.7bn) fine on Google for breaching antitrust rules and abusing its market dominance. “Google’s market power is one of the most critical challenges for competition policymakers in the world today,” Lynn wrote. Continue reading...

The two biggest players in smartphone software are pitching to win the war for AR. But will Ikea and Pokémon Go be enough to get consumers on board?This year the next big battleground between the titans of the smartphone industry will be augmented reality, as both Apple and Google duke it out with new phones, cameras and systems designed to provide Terminator vision – or Pokémon Go on steroids – to the masses.Augmented reality (AR) is nothing new. Many people’s first experience of the concept was seeing through the eyes of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 Terminator in James Cameron’s 1984 blockbuster. The movie showed the Terminator’s vision overlaid with information about subjects, objects and objectives. Continue reading...

Millions of passwords also contained in breach, a result of spammers collecting information in attempt to break in to users’ email accountsMore than 700m email addresses, as well as a number of passwords, have leaked publicly thanks to a misconfigured spambot, in one of the largest data breaches ever.The number of real humans’ contact details contained in the dump is likely to be lower, however, due to the number of fake, malformed and repeated email addresses contained in the dataset, according to data breach experts. Continue reading...

Autonomous vehicles have long been seen as a major security issue, but experts say they’re less vulnerable to hacks than human-controlled vehiclesSelf-driving cars feel like they should provide a nice juicy target for hackers.After all, a normal car has a driver with their hands on the wheel and feet on the pedals. Common sense suggeststhis provides a modicum of protection against a car takeover which a self-driving car, or even one with just the sort of assisted driving features already found on the road today, lacks. Continue reading...

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

The award is made up of 560,000 shares and has ballooned in value thanks to the company’s soaring stock priceTim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, has collected $89.6m as part of a 10-year deal that he signed as an incentive to keep the iPhone maker at the forefront of the technology industry after he took over the reins in 2011 from company co-founder Steve Jobs.The windfall was made up of the proceeds of the sale of 560,000 shares, according to a regulatory filing. Continue reading...

Iulian Enache, 31, shared intimate photos belonging to Ronan Hughes, from Northern Ireland, after teenager failed to pay ransomA man who blackmailed a Northern Irish schoolboy who went on to kill himself has been jailed for four years in prison.

Web.com pulls support for one of the oldest and largest neo-nazi hate sites following campaign by Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under LawOne of the oldest and largest neo-nazi sites on the internet, the white supremacist chatroom Stormfront, has been thrown off the open web by its domain registrar.

Holidays, children, natural phenomena: it’s easy to feel something didn’t happen unless you took a photo. But there are moments a picture can’t replicate

During his 12 years with Expedia it became a dominant name in the travel industry, but it will be a major challenge to steady Uber’s shipThe man designated as Uber’s new chief executive left Tehran for the US aged nine on the eve of the Iranian revolution, and became a driving force behind the success of the online travel company Expedia.Dara Khosrowshahi, who was chosen ahead of Meg Whitman, the chief executive of HP Enterprise, and the former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, is expected to join the ride-hailing company after 12 years at the helm of Expedia, during which time it made a series of acquisitions and took on a dominant role in the travel industry. Continue reading...

Announcement comes as ride-hailing service fights allegations of sexism and racism that led to ousting of founder Travis KalanickUber has chosen Dara Khosrowshahi, the chief executive of travel company Expedia, to be its new boss, ending a contentious search that has been marred by boardroom spats and leaks.The announcement, made on Sunday, comes as the ride-hailing service fights allegations of sexism and racism that led to the ousting of its founder, Travis Kalanick. Continue reading...

The furore caused by a Google engineer’s comments about gender bias overlooks the more endemic problem of male chauvinism within the tech industryA few months ago, a Google engineer named James Damore wrote an incendiary internal memo on a 12-hour flight to China. He had just attended a “diversity programme” run by his employer, which had clearly annoyed or disturbed him. “I heard things that I definitely disagreed with,” he later told an interviewer. He said there was a lot of shaming at the programme. “They said ‘No you can’t say that, that’s sexist… You can’t do this…’ There’s just so much hypocrisy in a lot of the things that they’re saying.”Related: Sexual harassment in Silicon Valley: have we reached a tipping point? Continue reading...

Sega’s blue hedgehog gets an out-of-house reboot, Uncharted 4’s spin-off proves good value, and Namco goes back in time Continue reading...

A crop of female developers is aiming to empower more women to break into a historically male-dominated industry to right the gender imbalance and, ultimately, creates game suited to, well, womenAt 23, Ally McLean already has what many would consider an enviable career.Currently the project lead at Sydney independent game development studio Robot House, McLean got her start as a professional cosplayer – designing and wearing elaborate gaming and pop-culture character costumes at comic book and gaming conventions. Continue reading...

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

The moreish multiplayer returns with a sprawling universe to explore, meaning you might spend as much time getting lost as you do shooting aliensThe greatest strength of Destiny – a game where even its biggest fans often struggle to explain why they continue playing for thousands of hours – is its core compulsion loop. Wandering around the Moon, shooting aliens in the head, picking up glowing engrams, harvesting helium filaments and completing patrols has proved immensely satisfying in a way that few other titles have managed.So it’s not surprising that the sequel doubles down on those elements, retooling the entire game to put that shooting-aliens-in-the-head experience front and centre. Continue reading...

Lee Jae-yong, the country’s third richest person, is to hear his fate in a scandal that has rocked the political and business worldsUntil a few months ago, Lee Jae-yong was well on the way to securing his status as South Korea’s most powerful business leader.

Britain to argue that there should be no substantial regulatory changes as a result of leaving the EUThe government is seeking to negotiate a deal over data sharing with Europe in which there are no substantial regulatory changes as a result of Brexit.The ambitious strategy emerged on Thursday in the last of a series of summer policy papers published by the Department for Exiting the European Union ahead of the next round of talks in Brussels on Monday. Continue reading...

Gareth’s son wants a laptop, but he might end up spending too much time playing games. If he got a Raspberry Pi would he learn more about computing?I just read your helpful article about laptops for children from November 2015. My eight-year-old is badgering us for a laptop. He has had a tablet for a few years, plays Minecraft and Lego games, and watches YouTube videos. I am worried that getting him a laptop will just feed an obsession with games and gamers. I would like him to learn more about computers and was thinking about getting a Raspberry Pi instead. Am I being a mean parent by not getting him a laptop or PC like many of his peers? If I go down this route, do you have any laptop recommendations for this year? GarethObsessive PC gamers usually know far more about computers than professional users. In their quest for performance, they learn about multi-threading, over-clocking, pixel-shading and software optimisation techniques, as well as things like memory, disk drive, keyboard and mouse speeds. As a result, they are much more likely to build their own machines. However, this rarely applies to children as young as your son.

SMS messages revealed in corruption trial show South Korean journalists requesting favours for positive coverage, as watchdogs decry company’s powerSouth Korea’s so-called “trial of the century” has seen Samsung’s crown prince Lee Jae-yong, the company’s vice-chairman, accused of bribing ousted president Park Geun-hye – but it has also shone new light on the depths of the electronics firm’s media manipulation.The company is awaiting this Friday’s verdict on several of Samsung’s current and former top executives, for their alleged involvement in a political scandal that has rocked South Korea. Lee could face a 12-year jail term if convicted of bribing Park to push through a controversial merger in 2015. Continue reading...

James Cameron’s smash-hit sequel gains a dimension and loses none of its splendour, but questions over whether it was truly necessary remain3D isn’t finished yet: James Cameron has supervised a new version of his smash-hit 1991 sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and watching in immersive 3D is a possible new way of getting excited about the technical effects that were state-of-the-art at the time.Related: Hasta la vista: why not even James Cameron can save 3D movies Continue reading...

The ‘funny little hack’ started a decade ago with #barcamp, and now 125m of them are shared daily on Twitter alone – but not without a few misfiresThe hashtag turns 10 today, and its inventor, Chris Messina – aka user no 1186 on Twitter – has explained how a small group of early Twitter users wanted to make conversations easier to follow.Related: Obama's anti-racism tweet after Charlottesville is most liked ever on Twitter Continue reading...

Softbank’s humanoid robot ‘Pepper’ dons robes to provide low-cost funerals complete with live-streaming optionIn Japan robots can serve as companions, helpers for the elderly, entertainment bots and even sexual partners, but now SoftBank’s humanoid robot Pepper has put itself up for hire as a Buddhist priest for funerals.Taking the German blessing bot’s idea and running with it, Pepper’s new code will let it chant sutras in a computerised voice while tapping a drum, providing a cheaper alternative to a human priest to see your loved ones off into the eternal sleep. Continue reading...

Company follows Waymo’s lead in pivoting from full ‘Apple car’ to manufacturing tech to automate already existing vehiclesApple is following the road taken by Waymo, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of Google-parent Alphabet, and downshifting on its still-unannounced self-driving car project, according to a report in the New York Times.The company has been working on its automotive technology under the internal code name “Project Titan” since at least 2014, and once intended to build its own vehicle from start to finish, creating a true “Apple Car”. Continue reading...

MPs have been urged to outlaw ‘catfishing’, when perpetrators steal the identity of someone else to strike up an online relationship

Personal data is to the tech world what oil is to the fossil fuel industry. That’s why companies like Amazon and Facebook plan to dig deeper than we ever imagined

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

Other measures being explored include levy on social media companies to help meet costs of online policingMinisters in the UK are considering creating an internet ombudsman to deal with complaints about hate crimes and are pressing ahead with proposals for a levy on social media companies to help pay for the policing of online offences.The ideas are being examined by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) before the release of an autumn green paper, which may be more radical than expected. Continue reading...

New software promises to extend battery life, improve notifications and speed up smartphones as Google pushes out updates to Pixel and Nexus devicesGoogle’s next version of Android is called Oreo and is coming to smartphones and tablets in the near future.

The notion has been parodied on TV, but a real company is offering transfusions of teenager’s plasma to reinvigorate older people. At $8,000, it’s a bit of a bloodsuckerWhat we now call “intergenerational fairness” has suffered a lot lately, and it’s not about to be improved by the news that the Baby Boomers are sucking the blood of the young. Although, in fairness, they are only after the plasma.In Monterey, California, a new startup has emerged, offering transfusions of human plasma: 1.5 litres a time, pumped in across two days, harvested uniquely from young adults. Continue reading...

Ride-sharing app under consideration for partnership offering service between homes and public transport hubs in areas with limited infrastructureUber is in talks with the New South Wales government to subsidise trips for Sydneysiders between their homes and public transport hubs.An Uber spokesman said the plans for a partnership to “fill the gaps” in areas with limited public transport were “probably the most positive signs we’ve seen across Australia”. Continue reading...

Early start would encourage women to become programmers and reduce gender stereotyping, argues Stephanie ShirleyChildren as young as two should be introduced to the basics of coding, according to one of Britain’s most eminent computing pioneers.Dame Stephanie Shirley, whose company was one of the first to sell software in the 1960s, said that engaging very young children – in particular girls – could ignite a passion for puzzles and problem-solving long before the “male geek” stereotype took hold. Continue reading...

Open letter signed by Tesla chief and Alphabet’s Mustafa Suleyman urges UN to block use of lethal autonomous weapons to prevent third age of warSome of the world’s leading robotics and artificial intelligence pioneers are calling on the United Nations to ban the development and use of killer robots.Tesla’s Elon Musk and Alphabet’s Mustafa Suleyman are leading a group of 116 specialists from across 26 countries who are calling for the ban on autonomous weapons. Continue reading...

London’s buoyant tech hub faces a struggle to keep attracting talent and money as the EU ‘turns off tap’ for fundingIt was earlier this summer when Justin Grierson noticed that the number of “hackathons” seemed to be trailing off around “Silicon Roundabout”, the east London area touted as Britain’s answer to the Californian valley that is home to technology giants Google and Facebook.“Last year there used to be at least two every weekend and now there might be about two a month,” said the freelance programmer who is a regular at the sprint-like design events for coders and others, which often bring him into contact with others in the sector. Continue reading...

As Google reels from the fallout over a controversial diversity memo, multiple women say they faced regular discrimination and ultimately leftQichen Zhang couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The technical specialist was in the middle of the office at Google when a white male colleague began joking with her about her hiring.“He said, ‘It must’ve been really easy for you to get your job because you’re an Asian woman and people assume you’re good at math,’” Zhang recalled in a recent interview. “It was absolutely stunning. I remember me just emotionally shutting down.” Continue reading...

It has taken a fan game to bring Sonic back to where he belongs – a two-dimensional platformer full of thrills, spills and 90s gaming nostalgiaPoor Sonic Team. After Sonic the Hedgehog and its Mega Drive sequels captured the imaginations of school kids around the world in 1991, the development studio behind the character hasn’t quite been able to find the magic formula that made the original game such a hit. After years of ill-thought out additions - werehogs, treasure hunts, royal love interests, even the third-dimension was arguably a stretch too far - it has taken an officially endorsed fan-game to recapture the essence of what made Sonic the only real challenge to Mario’s platforming crown all those years ago.If the 90s had never ended, Sonic Mania is the follow-up we would have had instead of making do playing Big the Cat fishing mini-games in Sonic Adventure. All those horrid secondary characters we’ve grown to hate over the years are nowhere to be seen, save for a couple of cameos that only hardcore Sonic fans will even recognise such as the cast of Sonic Championship. The player guides Sonic, Tails and Knuckles across two-dimensional rollercoaster levels (sorry, “zones”) made in the style of the Mega Drive originals and full of loops, springs and spike traps. It’s exhilarating. Continue reading...

After initial hack and ransom request, TV network suffers separate breach of social media accounts amid embarrassing leaks of unaired showsSeveral HBO Twitter accounts were hacked and taken over by the notorious OurMine hacking group, posting #HBOHacked messages and warnings about security.

Technology companies join together to condemn white supremacists and President Trump in aftermath Charlottesville rallyApple, LinkedIn, Spotify and Twitter have joined a growing chorus of technology companies to hit out at the far right and Donald Trump’s attempt to put white supremacists and leftwing counter-demonstrators at Saturday’s Charlottesville protest on the same moral plane.Following the lead of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google, Go Daddy and others, Apple CEO Tim Cook pledged $1m donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League and sent a strongly worded memo to staff, quoting Martin Luther King, about the violence in Charlottesville on Saturday. Continue reading...

Steve wants to know why public hotspots are not secure. Happily, there are ways to make your connection saferWhy are all the free wifi services offered by hotels and airports etc unsecured? I scan networks with AVG and then use TunnelBear’s VPN (virtual private network) whenever I want to use them for anything other than checking weather or news. SteveThere’s often a trade-off between security, convenience and cost. This doesn’t just apply to wireless hotspots but to houses, cars and other things.

As Nadine and Chloe take over the franchise, the Lost Legacy offers up all the thrills, spills and puzzles we’ve come to expect and is better for passing the Bechdel testYou can tell that Uncharted: The Lost Legacy started as more of an expansion than a standalone game. Rather than spanning the globe like previous Uncharted games, it all takes place in one part of India. And you get to play as a woman, who are so often relegated to DLC in these big franchises such as BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea or smaller spin-off games such as Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation. Even in Naughty Dog’s own The Last of Us: Left Behind, we only got to play as Ellie after we’d met her through the eyes of generic video game man Joel.But The Lost Legacy expanded during development, and although Uncharted 4 season pass holders won’t have to pay for it, it’s now a full-length by-the-numbers Uncharted game led by two women – the Indian-Australian Chloe Frazer and the black South African Nadine Ross. Continue reading...

CEO says Facebook is ‘watching closely’ and will ‘take down threats of physical harm’, joining raft of tech companies purging white nationalists and neo-NazisMark Zuckerberg broke his silence on the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville last weekend, writing in a Facebook post on Wednesday that the social network is “watching the situation closely and will take down threats of physical harm”.The CEO’s statement was made four days after a counter-protester was killed at a “Unite the Right” rally that used a Facebook event to recruit attendees, and a day after he published a post about a new data center Facebook is building in Ohio. The social network also appears to be deleting a number of white nationalist and neo-Nazi profiles and pages. Continue reading...

Action by technology companies and hacking group Anonymous removes neo-Nazi site from open web, while social media steps up anti-hate actionsAmerican neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer has moved on to the so-called dark web in an attempt to stay operational, following cyber-attacks by hacker group Anonymous and the cancellation of the site’s original domain name.

MSPs and Holyrood staff warned hackers trying to access numerous email accounts in ongoing ‘brute force cyber-attack’Hackers have mounted a “brute force” cyber-attack on the Scottish parliament’s computer systems, weeks after a similar attack on email accounts at Westminster.MSPs and Holyrood staff were warned on Tuesday that hackers were attempting to access numerous email accounts by systematically and repeatedly trying to crack their passwords. Continue reading...

Boston Dynamics demo clip shows we are not quite living in an i, Robot future – even if the machines can skate better than you canTechnology baron Elon Musk is scared of AI, warning of visions of the robot apocalypse when Terminator-esque machines decide they no longer need humans. But judging from the progress made by arguably the most advanced humanoid robots, if Terminator does show up, it won’t even be able to stack shelves without falling over.The hilarious outtake was part of a video demonstrating the advances made by former Google-owned Boston Dynamics, featuring a series of robots including the Atlas humanoid automaton, which while impressive in many respects is far from a highly capable robotic killing machine – or job taker. Continue reading...

London startup Automata Technologies is hoping to democratise robotics by installing the technology in workplaces. Is it really nothing to worry about?The technology industry likes to talk about how automation is set to change the world. Chatbots present a new way of interacting with software, self-driving cars promise to reshape our cities, and the increasing capability of AI to handle ever more complex and “human” tasks could reshape our economy. But amid all the futurism, one thing gets lost: actual robots.London startup Automata Technologies is one of those hoping to reverse the trend. The company makes a tabletop robotic arm, which it hopes will democratise access to automation for every industry by costing a fraction of the tens of thousands of dollars a typical industrial robot costs today – under £5,000 up front, or under £500 a month for a “robotics as a service” package. One thing that’s no different from the world of software bots is that this robot has a woman’s name: Eva. Continue reading...

Telecoms company dismisses Oozi Cats after investigators found an Uzi Katz was named as fugitive defendant in US in 1990sThe chief executive of a London telecoms company has been fired after it alleged that he had been lying about his true identity for at least 17 years and was on the run from US police.Oozi Cats, 56, was dismissed on Monday by Aim-listed Telit Communications after the company’s private investigators found that he was in fact Uzi Katz, named by Boston’s district court as a “fugitive defendant” wanted in connection with an alleged 1990s property scam.

Twitter account linked to the Anonymous network of hackers says apparent hack might be a stunt initiated by neo-Nazi siteA message purportedly posted by hackers has appeared on the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, saying the site has been taken over in response to an article criticising a woman who died during violence at far-right rally in Virginia over the weekend.The post on the website’s homepage said the international hacking network Anonymous had taken control of the site, which was founded and is edited by Andrew Anglin, who endorsed Donald Trump for president. Continue reading...