Company pledges further development to tackle rise of extremist and illicit content and hate speech, but says advanced machine learning is the answerGoogle has pledged to continue developing advanced programs using machine learning to combat the rise of extremist content, after it found that it was both faster and more accurate than humans in scrubbing illicit content from YouTube.
The makers of indie cult favourite Gone Home have created a linear sci-fi title set in 2088 that feels satisfyingly lived in and free from stereotypesIt seems unavoidable to compare Tacoma to Gone Home, the previous game by developer Fullbright Productons. Along with Dear Esther, it is often credited with popularising a certain type of linear narrative-focused game, often pejoratively labelled ‘walking simulators’. As soon as Tacoma was announced, people starting calling it Gone Home in Space. Again, you play as a woman exploring an abandoned environment, and again you’re piecing together what happened to the people who used to be there.But here the focus has shifted from the recent past to the not-so-distant future. Where Gone Home is set in a spooky house in 90s Oregon and intentionally plays on horror tropes, Tacoma takes the traditional science-fiction setting of a space station – the titular Tacoma. The futuristic placement allows for changes both narrative and mechanical. Whereas the charm of Gone Home, for many, was the familiarity of the 90s setting, the plot of Tacoma in 2088 revolves around an imaginable near future of space travel and advanced AI. Continue reading...
A journalist and a data scientist secured data from three million users easily by creating a fake marketing company, and were able to de-anonymise many usersA judge’s porn preferences and the medication used by a German MP were among the personal data uncovered by two German researchers who acquired the “anonymous†browsing habits of more than three million German citizens.“What would you think,†asked Svea Eckert, “if somebody showed up at your door saying: ‘Hey, I have your complete browsing history – every day, every hour, every minute, every click you did on the web for the last month’? How would you think we got it: some shady hacker? No. It was much easier: you can just buy it.†Continue reading...
by Anushka Asthana Political editor and Sam Levin in on (#2Y0B9)
Amber Rudd will tell forum including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that they share responsibility for tackling terrorismAmber Rudd will urge social media companies to do more to remove online terrorist content during a series of meetings with tech giants including Twitter and Facebook, after a sharp increase in the number of plots foiled in the UK. The home secretary will warn that extremists have exploited web platforms as way of spreading their “hateful messages†when she attends the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism in Silicon Valley.Theresa May had previously warned that the fight against Islamic State was shifting from the “battlefield to the internet†when she attended the G7 meeting in Sicily in the wake of the Manchester terror attack. World leaders called on internet service providers to “substantially increase†their efforts to crackdown on extremist content. Continue reading...
The US cable network has confirmed a ‘disturbing’ cyber-incident that reportedly led to the leak of future episodes and scripts onlineHBO is the focus of a “cyber-incident†reportedly involving hackers leaking forthcoming episodes and scripts of Game of Thrones.Related: At last! Game of Thrones gives us all the moments we've most been waiting for Continue reading...
Details discovered by developers in firmware for Apple’s HomePod speaker show in-development iPhone with IR face unlocking and bezel-less designThe next version of Apple’s iPhone will have infrared-based facial recognition unlocking – eliminating need for a passcode or fingerprint – and will have an almost all-screen design on the front, say developers digging into the pre-release of firmware distributed by Apple.
Nintendo’s cartoon avatars offer a gateway to role-play, Supergiant Games score a winner and PlayStation’s PlayLink refreshes the quiz experience3DS, Nintendo, cert: 7
With a real threat of antitrust and privacy regulation on the horizon, Google is on track to become this year’s top corporate lobbying spender in the USFigures released last week show that Google spent a record amount of almost $6m lobbying in Washington DC in the past three months, putting the Silicon Valley behemoth on track to be the top corporate lobbying spender in the US. Last year it ranked No 2, behind Comcast.Given the increased antitrust scrutiny that is coming from the Democrats’ new “Better Deal†policy platform, Donald Trump’s random tweets attacking Google’s fellow tech giant Amazon for its connection to the Washington Post, and his adviser Steve Bannon’s recent comments that Google and Facebook should be regulated as utilities, it is likely Google will only increase its lobbying expenditure in the next few months. Continue reading...
Scientists are racing to make replacement human organs with 3D printers. But while the technology’s possibilities are exciting, already there are fears we could be ‘playing God’Erik Gatenholm first saw a 3D bioprinter in early 2015. His father, Paul, a professor in chemistry and biopolymer technology at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, had bought one for his department. It cost somewhere in the region of $200,000. “My father was like, ‘This thing can print human organs,’†Gatenholm recalls, still awestruck. “I said, ‘Bullshit!’ Then it printed a little piece of cartilage. It wasn’t cartilage, but it was like, this could be cartilage. That was the moment when it was like, ‘This is frickin’ cool!’â€Gatenholm, who had long owned a regular 3D printer, decided then that he wanted to do something in 3D bioprinting. His language might be a bit Bill & Ted – he grew up between Sweden and the US, where his father is a visiting professor – but his intent and ambitions are very serious. Gatenholm had started his first biotech company aged 18 and he realised that if this machine had the potential to print organs, like his father said, then it had the potential to radically change the world of medicine. Continue reading...
The Amazon boss became the world’s richest man on Thursday, but he’s still looking for ways to do good with his money. He could start by improving the lives of his workersOn Thursday, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos finally became the world’s richest man. But he still hasn’t decided how to spend his money. Long known for being less charitable than other prominent members of the top .001%, Bezos recently hinted that he is finally looking for opportunities to put more of his money toward social good.Bezos has long had a reputation for being unusually stingy, even for a multibillionaire. He is the only one of the world’s top five billionaires not to have signed Warren Buffett’s giving pledge, and his philanthropic efforts so far have paled next to those of other prominent corporate titans like Bill Gates and even Mark Zuckerberg. Instead, he has used his money to purchase the largest luxury home in Washington DC (converting the 27,000 sq ft Textile Museum into a single-family residence). Unlike his brother, Mark Bezos, a volunteer firefighter who runs an anti-poverty organization called Robin Hood, Jeff has confined himself to a few highly idiosyncratic forms of charity, such as handing out free bananas on the streets of Seattle. Continue reading...
by Naomi Larsson, Matthew Jenkin and Charlotte Seager on (#2XP6H)
From sunlight lamps to white noise devices, we roadtest popular gadgets to see if they can improve our sleepResearch has shown that sleep deprivation can impact our productivity at work, and even curtail our earning power. With so many of us failing to have a good night’s sleep, can technology help? In recent years, all sorts of gadgets and apps promising to enhance our sleep have exploded on to the market. But do they really work? From sunlight lamps to white noise machines, our writers put some of the most popular sleep gadgets to the test. Continue reading...
Navine G Khan-Dossos’s work explores the shared geometric and algorithmic language of Islamic art and the internetNavine Khan-Dossos is an artist whose work is often informed by technology and infrastructure. In her latest work, A Year Without Movement, she explores the symbology of London’s huge Crossrail project, painting directly on to the walls of the 18th Century House of St Barnabus, which rests directly above Crossrail tunnels.
This corporate clickbait exercise pretends to be a film for kids, but is actually trying to cross-sell apps to a tween audienceChildren should not be allowed to watch The Emoji Movie. Their impressionable brains simply aren’t set up to sift through the thick haze of corporate subterfuge clouding every scene of this sponsored-content post masquerading as a feature film. Adults know enough to snort derisively when, say, an anthropomorphic high-five drops a reference to popular smartphone game Just Dance Now (available for purchase in the App Store, kids!), but young children especially are more innocent and more vulnerable.The Emoji Movie is a force of insidious evil, a film that feels as if it was dashed off by an uninspired advertising executive. The best commercials have a way of making you forget you’re being pitched at, but director Tony Leondis leaves all the notes received from his brand partners in full view. The core conceit apes Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, where a spirited misfit hops between self-contained worlds styled in a single recognisable way. Instead of holidays, however, our hero here jumps from app to app, and the ulterior motive of pumping up download numbers drains every last drop of joy from Leondis’s efforts to enchant. Continue reading...
Recent updates to iOS and Android contain fixes for Broadpwn, found in chips used in iPhones, Samsung Galaxies and Google Nexus devicesA recently patched bug found in the chips used to provide wifi in iPhones, Samsung Galaxies and Google Nexus devices could be used to build malware which jumps unstoppably from device to device, according to Nitay Artenstein, the researcher who discovered the flaw.Affected users should update their phones’ operating systems immediately, to iOS 10.3.3 (released 20 July) or the July security update for Android, which contain fixes for the flaw. Continue reading...
How often are we guilty of ignoring the people we love to check if randoms we haven’t seen in years have posted new pictures of their children online?
Free Basics, built for developing markets, focuses on ‘western corporate content’ and violates net neutrality principles, researchers sayFree Basics, Facebook’s free, limited internet service for developing markets, is neither serving local needs nor achieving its objective of bringing people online for the first time.That’s according to research by citizen media and activist group Global Voices, published this week, which examined the Free Basics service in six different markets – Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Pakistan and Philippines – to see whether it was serving the intended audience. Continue reading...
Recently, hit-maker Max Martin referred to Lorde’s track Green Light as ‘incorrect song-writing’. His theory applies to game design – especially SonicIn April, the pop musician Lorde gave an interview to the New York Times where she talked about a meeting with famed song writer Max Martin. The genius who helped create Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl†and Taylor Swift’s “Blank Spaceâ€, referred to Lorde’s song Green Light as “incorrect songwritingâ€. He saw its early key change, weird melodics and the lack of drums until the chorus kicks in, as improper. “It wasn’t an insult, just a statement of fact,†said Lorde. “It’s a strange piece of music.â€Weirdly, as soon as I read the fascinating little snippet of song craft theory, I thought of Sonic the Hedgehog. The legendary platformer, in which a spiky creature sprints furiously through a series of multi-levelled environments is incorrect game design. It shouldn’t work. It’s wrong.
Russian operator of long-standing bitcoin exchange BTC-e indicted for laundering money including high-profile hack of funds from Mt Gox exchangeThe Russian “internationally sought ‘mastermind’ of a crime organisation†accused of laundering more than $4bn in bitcoin, including funds obtained from the hack of failed bitcoin exchange Mt Gox, has been arrested in Greece.A US jury indicted Alexander Vinnik on Wednesday after his arrest in a small beachside village in northern Greece on Tuesday, following an investigation led by the US justice department along with several other federal agencies and task forces. Continue reading...
From presenter and critic Stephanie ‘Hex’ Bendixsen to 3D animator Delaney King, these are some of the faces behind the multibillion-dollar games industryMore than 70% of Australians play video games, and I’m one of them. With its spread from computers to TVs to mobile phones, the global games industry is now worth over $100bn, with an Australian market alone worth $3bn.But the value of games goes beyond just money. Interactive entertainment and the “serious games†that share lessons and skills have psychological and social benefits. We play to bond with other players, to build communities, to learn, to experience worlds beyond our imagination, and – as in the Dionysian theatres of old – to enjoy a temporary catharsis and channel feelings that otherwise preoccupy us into something vicarious. Continue reading...
Via concept art and sketches, we look at how developer Arkane envisaged one of the most visually spectacular games of the yearThink of the most impressive, memorable video games of the last 40 years and they tend to have one thing in common: unity of vision. From the sludgy corridors of Doom to the vast art deco chambers of Bioshock, great games take place in intricately realised worlds where every aspect – from armour to architecture – reflects a consistent visual theme.As in the movie industry, the creation of detailed virtual worlds often involves the production of concept art – reams of sketches and paintings, based on early script drafts and discussions, fashioned to provide a target look for designers, artists and coders. Continue reading...
Singer’s Divide album is bestselling entertainment product this year, shifting more than Rogue One: A Star Wars StoryThe popularity of Ed Sheeran, elevated by the launch of his latest album, Divide, and his headline Glastonbury spot, helped drive total UK music sales 11.2% higher to £564m in the first half of 2017.Sheeran continues to divide critical opinion, not least with his recent cameo in hit TV series Game of Thrones, but there is no denying the fillip the Suffolk-raised artist has given to the UK music industry, entertainment retailers and services. Continue reading...
The fact-checking website, which got a new lease of life in the era of ‘fake news’ is in danger of being snuffed out in a legal battle between warring exes
iRobot’s chief executive says company could share or sell maps of robot vacuum users’ homes to US tech firms as part of smart home and profit pushThe maker of the Roomba robotic vacuum, iRobot, has found itself embroiled in a privacy row after its chief executive suggested it may begin selling floor plans of customers’ homes, derived from the movement data of their autonomous servants.“There’s an entire ecosystem of things and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of the home that the user has allowed to be shared,†said Colin Angle, iRobot’s boss. Continue reading...
It might have some odd quirks, but this shooter in which you spray everything you see in DayGlo colours makes up for it in funSplatoon 2 gets so much right that it’s easy to ignore the occasional baffling ways in which Nintendo has failed to score into an open goal. Not least missing the chance to call the game “Spla2nâ€.A sequel to 2015’s third-person multiplayer-focused Wii U-exclusive shooter, Splatoon 2 will be a wholly new experience for many: the Switch is already attracting converts who never picked up Nintendo’s previous machine, while the two biggest reasons to own a Switch to date – Mario Kart 8 and Breath of the Wild – are both already out on the Wii U. Continue reading...
At-a-glance security information should be beside energy efficiency ratings to protect households according to Durham chief constable Mike BartonTelevisions, fridges and other internet-connected home appliances should carry cyber security ratings alongside energy efficiency ratings, a police chief has suggested.Durham chief constable Mike Barton said customers should be given the at-a-glance information for internet-ready equipment in the same way fridges, freezers, TVs and other appliances have to display their energy efficiency ratings before sale. Continue reading...
Pit your wits against a wily street hustler (played by Dan Skinner) in the heart of the City of London. But be on your guard: they say you always win your first game, always lose your second. You’ll need all your powers of observation and concentration to come out on top ...
Mike Barton says companies must do more to stop content appearing online, and questions difficulty of removing imagesInternet companies should reinvest some of their “eye-watering†profits into efforts to stamp out child abuse images online, a chief constable has said.Mike Barton challenged firms to do more to stop the content appearing in the first place, as police arrest hundreds of suspected paedophiles every month. Continue reading...
Long-standing basic graphics editing program, used throughout childhoods since the 1980s, has been marked for deathMicrosoft’s next Windows 10 update, called the Autumn (or Fall in the US) Creators Update, will bring a variety of new features. But one long-standing stalwart of the Windows experience has been put on the chopping block: Microsoft Paint.
In 2002 a game depicting Mickey Mouse and pals threatened by an evil force was a surprise hit. Can the latest Toy Story-themed instalment provide the magic fans crave?When Disney held its annual D23 fan convention in Anaheim, California, last week, news was dominated by the announcement of new Star Wars-themed areas for its giant theme parks, promising fully immersive adventure experiences. But when it came to video games, neither of Disney’s big geek-friendly franchises – Star Wars or Marvel – dominated the show. Instead, the spotlight was very much on franchise far less recognised by the wider masses: Kingdom Hearts, an action-RPG series that crosses Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy with elements of the Final Fantasy series.When new material for the much-delayed Kingdom Hearts III was revealed during the gaming-focused Level Up panel, the cheering was louder than anything that greeted major mainstream properties such as EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II or Insomniac’s upcoming Spider-Man title. While Kingdom Hearts is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, it’s been a 12-year wait for a brand-new, main instalment in the series. Continue reading...
As the Facebook CEO travels across the US to ‘learn about people’s hopes and challenges’, the cafeteria workers at his company struggle to make ends meet
Apple’s new 175-acre California campus was envisioned by Steve Jobs as a centre for creativity and collaboration. Apple claims it will be the ‘greenest building on the planet’. It consists of 5 million square feet of asphalt and concrete with grassy fields and over 9,000 native and drought-resistant trees, and is powered by 100% renewable energy Continue reading...
The much-mocked wearable computer, refashioned as an aid for factory workers, is the latest success born of a commercial flopRemember Google Glass? It was the name coined for spectacles developed by Google’s (now Alphabet’s) X division (the company’s intellectual sandpit in which engineers develop way-out ideas). Looking at first sight like a cheap pair of non-prescription reading glasses, Glass functioned as a kind of miniature head-up display (a transparent screen that allows users to read data without having to change their viewpoint). Over part of the right-hand lens was a small rectangular block of glass which functioned as a miniature computer monitor. Inside the right-hand support (the part that goes over your ear) Google had packed memory, a processor, a camera, speaker and microphone, Bluetooth and wifi antennas, an accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and a battery. So when you put on your spectacles you were, in fact, donning a tiny wearable computer.Glass was first announced in 2012 and made available (for $1,500) to select early adopters (dubbed “Glass explorersâ€) in 2013. It went on sale to the general public in May 2014. In technical terms, it was an amazing piece of miniaturisation. Driven by voice commands, it had quite impressive functionality. You could tell it to take a photograph, for example, or record a video of what you were looking at. Similarly, you could call up a Google search about something you were looking at and have the results displayed in surprisingly readable form on the tiny screen – which appeared to be suspended some distance ahead of you in space. In that sense, Glass looked like the realisation of a dream that early tech visionaries like Douglas Engelbart had – of technology that could usefully augment human capabilities with computing power. Continue reading...
The BFG director debuted the footage from his new film at a Comic Con event, showcasing elaborate VR and special effectsThe first footage from Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming thriller Ready Player One has been released onto the internet.Spielberg revealed the trailer for the film as part of an event at Comic Con in San Diego, marking his first film since his Roald Dahl adaptation The BFG. Continue reading...
by Sune Engel Rasmussen in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Ju on (#2WY44)
Laws that criminalize insulting Islam have led to a death sentence for posts, as activists worry Facebook’s commitment to Pakistanis’ ‘voice’ is mostly lip serviceTaimoor Raza, a 30-year-old Shia Muslim from a “poor but literate†family, was sentenced to death in June by an anti-terrorist court in Pakistan. His crime? Allegedly insulting the prophet Muhammad on Facebook.It occurred during an online debate with a man who turned out to be an undercover counter-terrorism agent. His death sentence, the first to result from a social media posting, is an extreme example of the Pakistani government’s escalating battle to enforce its blasphemy laws, which criminalize insulting Islam. Continue reading...
Fancy a Lichtenstein? How about a Warhol? San Francisco’s MoMA will now send you anything from its collection – all you have to do is ask the artbotIf you fancy receiving an artwork from a world-class gallery, all you now have to do is ask. Liberating itself from the confines of physical space, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has launched a service that has already gone viral. You simply take out your phone and text it a request, keying in “Send me†followed by a descriptive word or an emoji. Send me mountains. Send me sadness. Send me something orange. It will text back an image selected from one of the 34,678 artworks in its vaults.SFMOMA was aiming for 100,000 texts over the summer. On Monday last week, it clocked up 385,000. By the end of the week, it had passed 2m. Browse through some of the exchanges and you quickly see the potential. It’s beautifully simple – and consistently surprising. “Send me a Warhol†won’t get you a Warhol: the artbot doesn’t search by artist, nor by title. Asking for Kardashians won’t get you anything, either. But if a match can’t be found, texters don’t emerge empty-handed. Suggestions will be given instead. Maybe try “Send me the ocean†or “Send me San Franciscoâ€. Continue reading...
The vibrating back plate adds a physical dimension to music, games and VR in your home or office, but without the neighbour-ruining racketHearing music is one thing, but to really become enveloped by it, you need to feel the music too. Until recently that meant standing in front of an enormous speaker that pounded your body and ears with sound, the kind that makes your chest reverberate and your ears bleed. But what if you wanted that super-club experience at home? Meet the Subpac, a sub-like device you strap to your back to give you that body-rumbling feeling without deafening yourself or annoying your neighbours.
Under plan being considered by government, flat owners would be forced to pay extra strata fees, and limits placed on number of days a property can be let outResidents who let out their spare rooms to rowdy guests through sites such as Airbnb could be forced to pay compensation to their neighbours under a plan being considered by the New South Wales government.
by Julia Carrie Wong and Sam Levin in San Francisco on (#2X0PT)
Several city, state and federal spokespeople concur that Tesla CEO has not received permission to build high-speed tunnel from NYC to Washington DCElon Musk does not have government approval to build a Hyperloop tunnel from New York City to Washington DC.The Tesla executive took to Twitter this morning to tantalize his legion of fans and the tech press with the “news†that he had “just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins … City center to city center in each case, with up to a dozen or more entry/exit elevators in each city.†Continue reading...
Two of the biggest Tor-based destinations for guns, drugs and other illicit goods shut down as US decries dark web as ‘no place to hide’AlphaBay and Hansa – two of the largest “dark web†marketplaces for illegal and illicit items such as drugs and guns – have been shut down, the US Justice Department said on Thursday.Police in the US and Europe, including the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Dutch National Police, partnered to shutter the sites accused of allowing thousands of vendors to sell illegal drugs, of which Europol said there were 250,000 listings on AlphaBay alone, with 200,000 members and 40,000 vendors. Continue reading...
London transport app company given six-month licence to launch bus route between Aldgate East and Highbury and Islington stations on weekend nightsLondon-based transport app Citymapper has announced its next product: “a social hyper-local multi-passenger pooled vehicleâ€. Using “geo-matching technology†to route vehicles in a way which optimises boarding while minimising waiting times, the firm hopes to enable efficient ETAs for passengers with varied demographics.Helpfully, the firm has also provided a translation out of its Silicon Valley-speak: it’s launching a bus. Bus route CM2 will run between Aldgate East and Highbury and Islington stations, every 12 minutes, on Friday and Saturday nights from 9pm to 5.30am. Continue reading...
Search company to integrate its app-based feed of news, events, sports and interest-based topics into Google.com page in the near futureGoogle’s famously simple homepage with its logo and single search box on a white background is set to undergo a radical change for the first time since its launch in 1996, with the addition of Google’s interest and news-based feed.The feed of personalised information, which has been a mainstay of Google’s mobile apps for Android and iOS since 2012 along with a home-screen page on Google’s Nexus and Pixel smartphones and tablets, will become part of the main web experience in the near future, the Guardian understands. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian