Technology | The Guardian

Spokesman says number affected is less than many feared but that investigation is under way into potential data lossFewer than 90 email accounts belonging to peers and MPs are believed to have been hacked by an orchestrated cyber-attack, a parliamentary spokesman said on Sunday. The Houses of Parliament were targeted by hackers on Friday in an attack that sought to gain access to accounts protected by weak passwords. Continue reading...

A classic RPG returns in digital glory while Star Trek and Beethoven inspire exciting questsPS4, Square Enis, cert 12

When the sun is shining, this particular worker bee is definitely out of the officeObservant readers may have noticed that it has been quite warm. Yet strangely, as I was scurrying from one patch of shade to another, trying to stop my internal organs from liquefying, at no point did I start fretting about sunbathers being unable to read work emails because of the glare on their smartphones.However, now this “problem” has been solved by US and Taiwanese scientists, who have taken the light-baffling habits of moths to conjure technology that reduces screen glare from 4.4% to 0.23%. Which is fine, except, if people are frolicking in the sunshine, then why are they even bothered about work emails? Continue reading...

No door handle is in a regular place, no window is a regular shapeReally, though, why do you want a small family SUV? What’s wrong with a regular family saloon or, for anyone without a big hobby, a hot hatch? Is it like that thing where you do an MA because nobody’s impressed by a degree any more, and then you end up knowing a ton about French feminism for no reason? I’m not being anti-intellectual. I’m not even being anti-SUV. I’m just being very slightly sceptical about the Toyota CH-R.This is the most over-designed vehicle I’ve ever come across: the dash is fancy with diamond patterns, the body work is lousy with pointy bits, no door handle is in a regular place, no window is a regular shape if it can be segmented. Nobody knows why they want their windows to look like insects, or why the back end has to be modelled on an 80s film about a flying boat (which doesn’t exist; stop Googling). I guess you could always ask, but that would seem discourteous, like asking someone if their hair is meant to be that colour. All of this plays merry havoc with the rear visibility. This was not the car on which to test the proposition “nobody really needs a parking camera; ‘simple intelligent park assist’ (unmelodious, constant beeping) will do just fine”. Continue reading...

Justin Caldbeck took a leave of absence from his firm after six women accused him of making unwanted advances, often in context of potential business dealsA prominent venture capitalist admitted to sexually harassing women in the tech industry, saying he leveraged his “position of power in exchange for sexual gain” in the latest discrimination and misconduct scandal to rock Silicon Valley.Justin Caldbeck announced on Friday that he would be taking an indefinite leave of absence from Binary Capital, the firm he co-founded, following the claims of six women who accused the 40-year-old of making unwanted advances, often in the context of potential business deals. Continue reading...

Snap Maps lets users track each other’s movements in real time, but child safety groups are cautioning young people against sharing their locationSnapchat has introduced a map feature that lets users track other people’s location in real time, raising concerns among safety and privacy advocates.Snap Maps, launched this week, plots users and their snaps onto a map so friends and other Snapchatters can see where they are and what they are doing. Continue reading...

Scrubbing medical records from search should help limit the damage caused by leaks, hacks and errors by medical institutionsGoogle has started removing private medical records from its search results, after adjusting its policy regarding personal information.

Fitbits, pacemakers, Amazon Echoes – all are tools of the modern detective’s trade in a world where our devices are always watchingRichard Dabate told police a masked intruder assaulted him and killed his wife in their Connecticut home. His wife’s Fitbit told another story and Dabate was charged with the murder.James Bates said an acquaintance accidentally drowned in his hot tub in Arkansas. Detectives suspected foul play and obtained data from Bates’s Amazon Echo device. Bates was charged with murder. Continue reading...

Improved budget tablet has better screen, is slimmer and lighter and lasts a little longer between charges, also comes with Amazon’s smart voice assistant AlexaAt just £50, it was remarkable how not-rubbish the 2015 Amazon Fire 7 tablet was. Two years on, the Fire 7 (the 7 comes from the screen size - 7”) has slimmed down a little and has an improved screen, but is still just £50.

Dr Vyvyan Evans on the first emoji terror threat and what the future holds for non text-based communicationEmblems and signs have always played an important role in human communication. What’s different about emoji, how can they help us communicate better in the digital age, and where might non textual communication be heading next? Continue reading...

Credentials of officials – including MPs, diplomats and senior police officers – reportedly sold on Russian websites after 2012 attack on LinkedInPasswords belonging to British politicians, diplomats and senior police officers have been traded by Russian hackers, it has been reported.Security credentials said to have belonged to tens of thousands of government officials, including 1,000 British MPs and parliamentary staff, 7,000 police employees and more than 1,000 Foreign Office staff, were in the troves sold or swapped on Russian-speaking hacking sites. Continue reading...

The Uber CEO has finally stepped down in the wake of endless corporate sexism allegations and scandal – and the end all started with a blogpostSo then, zero stars for Travis Kalanick. The Uber co-founder and CEO has stepped down after a tumultuous period culminating in a spotlight being shone on the company’s corporate environment of sexism, as revealed in a powerful blogpost by former employee Susan Fowler. Make no mistake; this is largely Fowler’s victory and proof that speaking out can reap dividends, despite the risks involved and the bravery it takes.It has taken just four months since Fowler wrote her exposé – which has been retweeted more than 22,000 times – for Kalanick to fall on his priapic sword. In the blogpost, Fowler detailed how on her very first day in the job a colleague sent her chat messages propositioning sex. Even though the HR department conceded that this was sexual harassment, and that it later emerged other women had suffered the same treatment, the colleague was not punished. Fowler was essentially told to forget about it. She also noted that Uber’s female staff – 25% of employees – had dropped to 6% during her time there. An exodus of women due to both the chaotic nature of the organisation but more specifically, the insidious sexism. Continue reading...

This new Netflix docu-feature examines Hogan’s case against the gossip site, highlighting other wealthy figures aggressively seeking to silence the pressThe extraordinary case of Hulk Hogan’s 2015 legal action against the gossip website Gawker is far shadier, far creepier than many appreciate. Certainly, I didn’t realise that, until I saw this punchy documentary which sites it in a new context. The Hogan attack was a vanguard operation in the aggressive new reactionary philistinism and hatred of press freedom being nurtured by some of America’s super-rich which is encouraged as a political diversionary tactic by the US president.The wrestler sued Gawker for posting a sex tape of him with his best friend’s wife – the video was allegedly made and distributed without his knowledge. Much later, it was revealed that the suit was secretly bankrolled by the Silicon Valley billionaire, Ayn Rand-ist libertarian and Trump supporter Peter Thiel – apparently in revenge for Gawker outing him as gay. So far, so debatable. There are many who feel that both Hulk and Thiel were entitled to privacy and had no great sympathy for Gawker and its trashy, bitchy stories. But this film shows that there is ample evidence that Hogan knew that the tape was being made and was ready to let it accidentally-on-purpose emerge to promote his reality-TV career, panicking only when he thought that a longer version would become public, revealing his racist language. As for Thiel he was already furious at Gawker’s ValleyWag column and its continual, irreverent criticism of him and his financial performance, and had, in any case, a highly authoritarian contempt for the democratic impulses of the press. Thiel and Hogan won a staggering $140m in damages, enough to knock over first amendment issues and put Gawker out of business. Continue reading...

Irene wants to know why she should use a banking app instead of logging into her bank accounts with the Edge browser in Windows 10Why should I use a banking app instead of logging into my bank accounts with the relevant passwords via Windows 10 and Edge? Which one would be more secure? IreneOver the past five years or so, I feel the consensus has changed to using apps. However, it depends on the devices, banking software and browsers, what else is loaded on the device (either knowingly or not), and the communications network. Continue reading...

The retro sunglasses with a built-in video camera could be a must for serial posters on Snapchat, even if they’re not much good for anything elseSnap Inc’s Spectacles are one of the oddest pieces of hardware I’ve ever used.Typically, when a new technology is introduced it lives or dies based on how well it is executed. Think the fingerprint sensor on a smartphone: whether it was fast enough and accurate enough to be trusted was key. Continue reading...

His departure may give pause to other tech bro-dominated startups pursuing growth at all costs, but some say Silicon Valley’s issues are too deep rooted

Sega Forever collection, which includes the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog, will be free to download on iOS and Android from ThursdayVideo game players, like music lovers and film buffs, are incurable nostalgics. And so are the games companies. Last year we had the cruelly hard-to-come-by Nintendo Classic Mini console, which took us back to the heady days of the mid-1980s, and earlier this week, Atari announced its decision to get back into the hardware business with a new machine. Now, Sega has announced its Sega Forever collection, a range of classic titles, which will be downloadable for free on mobile phones from Thursday.According to Sega, the growing collection will be carefully curated to include hugely recognisable cult gems as well as obvious hits. In the first batch are the original Sonic the Hedgehog from 1991, the legendary 1989 role-playing adventure Phantasy Star II, Sega Mega Drive launch title Altered Beast and two offbeat console titles from the famed Sega Technical Institute, Comix Zone and Kid Chameleon. These are all 16bit titles, but Sega says future additions will be plucked from throughout the company’s long history, from the Master System to the Dreamcast. This raises the scintillating possibility of playing everything from Wonder Boy in Monster Land to Crazy Taxi on your iPhone or Android. When asked about arcade titles, a spokesperson told us they are, “an opportunity that Sega hopes to explore down the road”. Continue reading...

Some have tired of the CoD franchise, but Activision are hoping a return to the second world war and a new multi-objective mode can revive itYou’re in France, 1944, six weeks on from the Normandy beach landings, and things are about to go badly wrong for the US 1st Infantry division. Allied troops converging on the sleepy French town of Merigny expected minimal resistance from the Germany forces stationed there, but the numbers are greater than reported and they have an armoured machine gun car. Your platoon needs to take the church at the centre of the village, but there’s a hell-storm of bullets and explosions to get through first. As soldiers run past, shouts ring out and explosions make your ears ring, you realise something pretty fast: Call of Duty is back where it began, and where it now seems to belong – amid the chaos of the second world war.The Merigny encounter forms the basis of the Call of Duty: WWII campaign demo, shown off behind closed doors at E3. In this scene, lead protagonist private Ronald “Red” Daniels and other members of the 1st Infantry Division must edge closer to the town under heavy machine gun fire, creeping from wall to wall for cover and switching between familiar weapons of the era: the M1 Garand, the Karabiner 98K, the MP-40. Your first objective is to overrun the machine gun car then use it to direct suppression fire at soldiers in a nearby house, which eventually collapses under the onslaught causing a cascade of dust and rubble. It’s familiar action movie stuff, harking right back to the first three titles in the series, but there’s one key change: health no longer regenerates automatically – players now have to call for health packs from nearby medics – a feature designed to replicate both the camaraderie and the vulnerability of soldiers.

We live in turbulent times, so people are looking to the future – a thousand years hence, to be preciseWhat with Trump and climate change, the prospect of the human race lasting another thousand years seems uncertain. Nonetheless, the internet is looking forward to 3017.The 3017 meme, which has been circulating for a while, acclaims someone – or something – ahead of their time. The Daily Dot says it started out as praise for musicians so forward-thinking, they belong in the future – like the rapper Wintertime and Janelle Monae. Now, perhaps because we live in a turbulent era, it’s morphed into a meme about how the best is yet to come – in 1,000 years. Continue reading...

Former head of iOS, Scott Forstall, opens up about how Apple’s iconic device came from late CEO’s dislike for the husband of one of his wife’s friendsIf it wasn’t for one particular executive at Microsoft, whom Steve Jobs seemingly hated with a passion, Apple may never have created the iPhone or iPad.

Embattled founder of ride-hailing app stepped down in face of pressure from investors after tumultuous six months of scandals and stumbles

Between Trump and tech, never before have so many powerful people been so intent on transforming government into a businessIt’s a hot day in New York City. You’re thirsty, but your water bottle is empty. So you walk into a store and place your bottle in a machine. You activate the machine with an app on your phone, and it fills your bottle with tap water. Now you are no longer thirsty.This is the future envisioned by the founders of a startup called Reefill. If the premise sounds oddly familiar, that’s because it is: Reefill has reinvented the water fountain as a Bluetooth-enabled subscription service. Customers pay $1.99 a month for the privilege of using its machines, located at participating businesses around Manhattan. Continue reading...

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

Developer Insomniac previewed its forthcoming Marvel superhero spin-off at E3, but can it live up to brilliance of the first PlayStation classic?Spider-Man is Marvel’s most performative superhero. He uses the city like a stage, his movement is balletic and self-conscious, and there is a clear separation between the costumed hero and the child actor behind the mask. In a lot of ways, it’s the perfect dynamic for a video game – and in August 2000, Californian developer Neversoft realised this with absolute precision.Its Spider-Man title, released on the original PlayStation, was built around the same engine used in the groundbreaking skateboard sim Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. This gave the Marvel hero incredible freedom and manoeuvrability as he swooped over the streets of New York City, but it also accentuated the sheer fun and creativity of Spider-Man’s movement. Some 17-years later the Web Slinger is back with a similar concept, but in a very different era. This is the Marvel tie-in a heck of a lot of people have been waiting for. Continue reading...

At a meeting with top tech leaders Trump promised a transformation of outdated federal technology, which, astonishingly, still includes floppy disksDonald Trump called for “sweeping transformation of the federal government’s technology” during the first meeting of the American Technology Council, established by executive order last month.Eighteen of America’s leading technology executives – including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google parent Alphabet – convened at the White House Monday for the summit. Continue reading...

After years of refusing to let passengers tip through the app, Uber added tipping in three US cities after embattled CEO Travis Kalanick took a leave of absenceUber is adding tipping to its platform, addressing a longstanding complaint of drivers with a new feature rolled out one week after embattled CEO Travis Kalanick announced an indefinite leave of absence.The ride-hailing corporation launched tipping in Seattle, Minneapolis and Houston on Tuesday, with plans for an expansion to all US drivers by the end of July. The company had refused for years to allow passengers to tip through the app, one of many sources of frustration for drivers, who have repeatedly raised concerns about low wages and a lack of basic labor rights. Continue reading...

Warmongering football managers, a rampaging Cambridge professor, a ravenous space city, and a deep and meaningful round of golf … here are 10 great games to liven up your holidays

An anti-distraction campaigner has suggested draining the colour from your smartphone as a route to tranquility. But does it work?As someone who finds giving anything my continuous attention difficult, I’m always on the look-out for tips and tricks that can improve my concentration and render my digital life marginally less scatterbrained than normal. Continue reading...

Nine-country study finds widespread use of social media for promoting lies, misinformation and propaganda by governments and individualsPropaganda on social media is being used to manipulate public opinion around the world, a new set of studies from the University of Oxford has revealed.From Russia, where around 45% of highly active Twitter accounts are bots, to Taiwan, where a campaign against President Tsai Ing-wen involved thousands of heavily co-ordinated – but not fully automated – accounts sharing Chinese mainland propaganda, the studies show that social media is an international battleground for dirty politics. Continue reading...

Draft report from European parliament clashes with UK government calls to allow access to encrypted communications from WhatsApp and othersThe European Union is considering banning the implementation of so-called “backdoors” that allow the reading of encrypted messaging, a move that would place it in conflict with the UK government’s desire to have access to all secure communications.The draft report by the European parliament’s committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs says the data protection regulations have not kept pace with advances in technology and that amendments to the 2002 regulation on privacy and electronic communications (ePrivacy) are required. Continue reading...

Two primary coloured platform favourites return while elsewhere Destiny 2, Splatoon 2 and Call of Duty: WWII all make the cut in our best from the festActually playing video games at the E3 conference in Los Angeles proved a somewhat Herculean task this year. With over 65,000 attendees (15,000 more than 2016), grabbing hands-on time meant queuing for hours – and that’s if you could make it through the crowds to the relevant stands.Fortunately, it was frequently worth it: here are the most enjoyable demos we managed to experience amid the chaos. Continue reading...

Interconnected technology is now an inescapable reality – ordering our groceries, monitoring our cities and sucking up vast amounts of data along the way. The promise is that it will benefit us all – but how can it?• Read the text version hereSubscribe via Audioboom, iTunes, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Acast & Sticher and join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter Continue reading...

Google announces four measures to tackle problem, including better detection and greater counter-radicalisation effortsGoogle has introduced four new measures to tackle the spread of terrorist material online, saying the threat poses a serious challenge and that more immediate action needs to be taken.It has pledged better detection of extremist content and faster review, more experts, tougher standards and an expansion of counter-radicalisation work. Continue reading...

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

The veteran fighting series reaches its peak, Dark Souls finds a fitting successor and Japan’s Sengoku era is the setting for some enticing hack and slashPS4, Xbox One, PC, Bandai Namco, cert 16, out now

Ben C Lucas’s innovative rumination on the pitfalls of technology has Hollywood appeal and features a darkly charismatic performance from Jessica De GouwIt is not uncommon for films about drug users to contain closeup shots of pupils dilating. This is hardly surprising given closeups of eyes have long been fashionable in cinema; the famous opening of Luis Buñuel’s 1929 classic Un Chien Andalou comes to mind. And after a hit of the good stuff, eyeballs look fabulous on screen, as films like Requiem for a Dream remind us.Australian writer/director Ben C Lucas’s sophomore feature, OtherLife, joins the crazy-eyed canon in its opening moments, peppered with near full-screen vision of a narcotic-infused peeper. Continue reading...

The burgeoning Instagram genre celebrates mishaps by Lycra bros clanking iron. But its popularity shines a light on our conflicted relationship with the gymFor most people, the most common #gymfail is merely the failure to turn up in the first place. For a precious few, however, it might be the sexually suggestive way they are misusing the rowing machine. Or how they’re lifted clean off the ground by putting 980kg on to the lats machine. Or that inevitable comedy staple, the pull-up bar malfunction.These mishaps and petty vanities form grist to the mill of the #gymfails subgenre, in which strange, unseen humans with phones take videos of calamitous gym accidents. On Instagram, IG Gym Fails boasts 1 million followers. IG Gym Fails and its many competitors do a lively business in pushing the flip-side to Instagram’s body-beautiful culture. They are joined by a YouTube community where gym-fails compilations can easily hit millions of views. Continue reading...

In an extract from his new book, Brian Merchant reveals how he gained access to Longhua, the vast complex where iPhones are made and where, in 2010, unhappy workers started killing themselvesThe sprawling factory compound, all grey dormitories and weather-beaten warehouses, blends seamlessly into the outskirts of the Shenzhen megalopolis. Foxconn’s enormous Longhua plant is a major manufacturer of Apple products. It might be the best-known factory in the world; it might also might be among the most secretive and sealed-off. Security guards man each of the entry points. Employees can’t get in without swiping an ID card; drivers entering with delivery trucks are subject to fingerprint scans. A Reuters journalist was once dragged out of a car and beaten for taking photos from outside the factory walls. The warning signs outside – “This factory area is legally established with state approval. Unauthorised trespassing is prohibited. Offenders will be sent to police for prosecution!” – are more aggressive than those outside many Chinese military compounds.But it turns out that there’s a secret way into the heart of the infamous operation: use the bathroom. I couldn’t believe it. Thanks to a simple twist of fate and some clever perseverance by my fixer, I’d found myself deep inside so-called Foxconn City. Continue reading...

If you are a farmer, a pick-up makes a lot of sense. If you’re not, it’s little better than a bull in a china shopPrice: £31,506

Uber has vowed a shakeup of its scandal-prone executive culture. But it’s drivers, often left destitute by car rentals and low pay, who are being shortchanged

Forget football, the world’s fastest-growing sport is live video gaming. But increasingly its impact is proving harmful to those involved

Lack of story and some dodgy characters don’t spoil this physical Switch game’s immensely playable coreThe premise of Arms requires a substantial suspension of disbelief. The characters in Nintendo’s new fighting game mostly seem to have ended up immersing themselves in this sport because their arms (or, in one case, hair), instead of regular arms, are capital-A Arms – springy and extendable and ending in interchangeable weaponry. This raises some questions: How do they eat? How do they pick their noses? How do they wipe?Of course, a game like this doesn’t need to make sense, and the marketing makes it clear that Nintendo is perfectly content with the ridiculousness of it all. But given the popularity of the Switch and the focus on multiplayer, Arms could become a hit with a huge online fanbase, and it’s a shame that the lore and characters are lacking the kind of treatment received by games like Overwatch. There will still be fan fiction and fan art, obviously, it just won’t be as compelling. Continue reading...

Hospitals with relationship to university suspend email servers in precautionary measure against phishing scamUniversity College London has been hit by a “major” ransomware attack which brought down its shared drives and student management system.The attack has also led to a number of hospital trusts suspending their email servers as a precautionary measure, in an attempt to prevent the repetition of last month’s damaging WannaCry epidemic. Continue reading...

Quantic Dreams’ new narrative video game imagines the consequences of relying on robots in a thrilling study of control, subservience and humanityIn the 1950s, Isaac Asimov imagined a future in which sentient robots are built to serve and protect humans, but end up doing the opposite. Almost seven decades later, artificial intelligence and robotics technologies have brought that scenario closer to the realms of possibility. Detroit: Become Human, a narrative adventure from experimental studio Quantic Dreams is the latest work to imagine the consequences of relying on such super smart machines.Set several years in the future, the game takes place in a world where androids have taken over most menial tasks and humans are figuring out what to do with all their leisure time. The major manufacturer of replicants, CyberLife, says its machines are safe and under control, and everyone is happy to trust them. But when a small group start to show human-like awareness, fear and resentment grow. Detroit: Become Human gives players control over several of these awakened droids as they form a kind of underground movement and start demanding some rights. Continue reading...

Emphasis on simulator work in motor sport means more drivers will emerge from the gaming scene – if they can conquer problems over the lack of ‘fear of death’When Lewis Hamilton looked to his future in Formula One in 2012 and decided to leave McLaren, the team with whom he had grown up and won his first world championship, the decision was roundly questioned. After securing two further titles for Mercedes, the move was regarded as inspired but predicting what is round the corner in motor racing has never been easy and, with F1 having just begun the process of reinvention under its new owners, the future is very much on the agenda.Many sports have faced new challenges and opportunities because of the extraordinary changes technological advances have wrought in the past two decades. But that is true of F1 perhaps more than most, the sport having stuck with a long outdated model that has increasingly failed to engage with a younger audience. If F1 and motor racing in general are to survive, doing so is crucial and it seems it is at the crossroads between the virtual world and the real that it is most likely to happen. Continue reading...

The ruling comes after seven-year legal battle and could lead to ISPs and governments blocking access to other torrent sites across EuropeThe European court of justice (ECJ) has ruled that BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay is directly infringing copyright, in a move that could lead to ISPs and governments blocking access to other torrent sites across Europe.

Mike and Joan are planning to buy their student granddaughter a laptop for university and would like some tips before they discuss it with herOur granddaughter is off to university this year and we will be buying her a laptop. We will discuss this with her, but some advice from you would be welcome. Mike and Joan Continue reading...

From Life is Strange: Before the Storm to Mario + Rabbids, here are the titles that most beguiled and surprised us at this year’s E3Before the giant E3 video game exhibition takes place every year, it is proceeded by a series of vast press events, where publishers hope to snag just a little of the world’s attention with their latest mega releases. Filling huge venues and live-streamed to a global audience of millions, these one-hour hype-fests can make all the difference between blockbusting success and ignoble failure.Here, then, are our 17 favourite announcements, culled from all the pre-E3 shows. We’ve stuck to games that were either revealed for the first time on stage, or were finally confirmed after months of gossip, leaks and rumours. These are the titles we want to discover more about at the show, and over the months to come. Continue reading...

The company typically releases security updates for operating systems it still supports – but in wake of serious cyber-attack it has reassessed the policyMicrosoft has released new security updates for older versions of Windows as it warns of potential cyber-attacks by government organisations.The patches include updates to Windows XP, the operating system that was targeted by the WannaCry ransomware attack in May that attacked parts of the NHS and other companies worldwide. Continue reading...