Technology | The Guardian

Sharing apps – from Airbnb to Uber – were supposed to make services open to everyone. But real-life discrimination can be exacerbated in an economy where we are vulnerable to others’ biasesThe problem started when Reed Kennedy tried to book an Airbnb house in upstate New York for New Year’s Eve. “I made a few attempts,” the 42-year-old real estate investor says. “Each time the host would reject my request, but when I went back it was still available for those dates. I realised something was going on.” Kennedy, who is African American, decided to get a white member of the group to attempt the booking. “She was able to get it immediately,” he continues. “I’d had a profile on Airbnb for three years, validated by email, Facebook and Google, as well as my driver’s licence and passport. She set up a profile with no references, no validations and was able to book immediately. At that point I realised my race was an issue.”At a time when racial tensions have exploded and racist hate crime is on the rise in the UK and US, discrimination has reared its head in another, more unexpected place: the sharing economy, bastion of feelgood values, sustainability, social responsibility and trust. “Belong anywhere” promises Airbnb. “Your day belongs to you,” Uber enthuses. “We do chores,” assures TaskRabbit, “you live life.” The messages are bold, slick and utopian. These platforms are a force for good. It’s all about sharing, after all. Except they now find themselves blamed for doing the opposite. Uber and Lyft have been accused of fostering discrimination. A 2016 study in Boston and Seattle found “significant evidence of discrimination”. Rides for men with black-sounding names were cancelled more than twice as often as for other men. Black people faced notably longer waiting times to get paired with drivers. Women were taken on longer routes. Away from the on-demand economy, Amazon was criticised for excluding black neighbourhoods when it launched its same-day delivery offer (it has since expanded its services to correct the problem in several cities). Continue reading...

Move comes after former Uber engineer Susan Fowler wrote blog outlining allegations of discrimination and sexism at cab-hailing app companyA former Uber engineer has come forward with allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination, claiming that management repeatedly dismissed her complaints, protected a repeat offender and threatened to fire her for raising concerns.The accusations from Susan Fowler, a former site reliability engineer who now works for technology company Stripe, prompted CEO Travis Kalanick to announce an “urgent investigation” on Sunday. Continue reading...

Gaming company Rocketwerkz claims staff focus better when not stressed by issues that need attention outside the workplaceA gaming company in New Zealand is luring employees from around the world by offering unlimited paid annual leave, a share in the company’s profits and no set work hours.Dean Hall became famous in international gaming circles for being the lead designer on the popular zombie apocalypse video game DayZ.

A pen-like device linked to a smartphone app, this gadget claims to be more accurate than a ruler – but will it go the distance?Billed as “the world’s first dimensioning tool”, the InstruMMent 01 looks like a pen, writes like a pen and doubles up as a handheld measuring device. Late last year, its creators raised $464,000 (£374,000) on crowdfunding site IndieGoGo, and last week InstruMMent 01 went on sale at Selfridges in London, advertised on the shop’s website as “the future of design”. It has been described by tech magazine Wired as a gadget “on a mission to finally kill the tape measure”, much to the annoyance of the man behind it.“We hear this over and over,” says Mladen Barbaric, CEO of Instrumments, at the product launch. “But we’ve never said that we’re trying to replace the measuring tape.” The firm’s repeated reference to “dimensioning” emphasises the distinction from mere measuring – but is it even a real word? “It is. You can look it up,” says Barbaric. “The real scientific definition is ‘quantifying in space’.” Continue reading...

The leader of the free world’s ‘invincible ignorance’ about cybersecurity is worrying in the extremeMy favourite image of the week was a picture of the Queen opening the National Cyber Security Centre in London. Her Majesty is looking bemusedly at a large display while a member of staff explains how hackers could target the nation’s electricity supply. The job of the centre’s director, Ciaran Martin, is to protect the nation from such dangers. It’s a heavy responsibility, but at least he doesn’t have to worry that his head of state is a cybersecurity liability.His counterpart in the United States does not have that luxury. To the astonishment of everyone in the tech community, King Donald is still tweeting and nattering away on his Samsung Galaxy phone, an Android device that in security terms is the equivalent of emmental cheese. When Trump was elected, most people assumed that he would give up his favourite phone, just as Obama had to give up using his beloved BlackBerry, in favour of something that had been “hardened” by the NSA. It hasn’t happened. Continue reading...

Demonic swordplay satisfies in feudal Japan, a second world war sniper raises his game, and a new title for armchair generals keeps it simplePS4, Sony, cert: 18

As 3D printing continues to transform manufacturing, doctors are hoping it could also help the 30 million people worldwide in need of artificial limbs and bracesJohn Nhial was barely a teenager when he was grabbed by a Sudanese guerrilla army and forced to become a child soldier. He spent four years fighting, blasting away on guns almost too heavy to hold, until one day the inevitable happened: he was seriously injured, treading on a landmine while he was on morning patrol.“I stepped on it and it exploded,” he recalled. “It threw me up and down again – and then I tried to look for my leg and found that there was no foot.” Continue reading...

Calm, purposeful and with plenty of pizzazz, Mazda’s redesigned family saloon knows how to carry a tunePrice: £19, 302

Winter Hall in the running as Wellcome Trust announces six finalists for its Developing Beyond prizeAs an entertainment, Winter Hall should be an unusual diversion for video game fans more used to glamorised violence and action drama. Players will live as characters connected by one unpleasant feature – the black death. They will explore the suffering caused by the bubonic plague and watch as medieval society struggles to cope with the devastation triggered by one of the world’s worst disease epidemics.Mass graves, religious fanaticism, and the dead carted off at night: it is the stuff of a zombie apocalypse. Yet this is no cheap piece of horror exploitation. Winter Hall is one of six games under development that have been shortlisted for a $500,000 competition backed by the Wellcome Trust. Continue reading...

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft who has spent billions on philanthropic efforts over the past several decades, speaks at the Munich security conference on Sunday and says that the world must be on guard for bio-terrorism attacks. Telling the audience that “a synthetic version of the smallpox virus ... or a super contagious and deadly strain of the flu” could kill more than 30 million people in a year, Gates says there is a “reasonable probability” that such an event could occur in the next 10 to 15 years

The ride is outrageously smooth: you could go over an elk and only notice in the rearviewEverywhere I went in my Jaguar F-Pace R-Sport, I met a man who said his wife wanted one of those. It was uncanny. On forecourts, outside school, in the street, there was a Jag fancier with a demanding wife. As any fool knows, the Jaguar is the ultimate anniversary vehicle, the car you buy as a couple at a certain point that says you’ve Done OK. It’s like renewing your vows, only the vow was to maintain a steady, decent income. When I was at university, my friend’s parents bought a Jag with a personalised number plate, and she said, “Dad, but that means sexually transmitted disease”, and he said, “It may mean that to you, young lady, but it means Sean and Tracey Dixon to your mother and me.” So there’s a chance that when men say, “The missus wants it,” they mean, “I want it and she still loves me enough to pretend to.” But I don’t think that’s what’s going on: there’s something about the F-Pace R-Sport that is particularly metrosexual, built for the distaff sensibility which the real man, of course, is only too happy to access.It is outstandingly handsome: clean, beefy lines and an attractive but not undue heft (it has aluminium casing; it will never be dainty but it doesn’t feel wasteful). It’s an automatic that purrs through all eight gears as if gliding to a meeting with another fabulous, exotic cat. It’s a turbocharged diesel, but Jaguar rules at those, accepting none of the sluggishness or reluctance you often accept as the pay-off for economy. The all-wheel drive gives it an ersatz-country feel, as if you could be whizzing up a dirt track to the stables, and it’s just happenstance that puts you on the way to Waitrose. Life is too short to explain torque vectoring in full, but it puts the brake emphasis on the inside rear wheel and makes you feel sporty and nimble at awkward angles. The ride is outrageously smooth, you could go over an elk and only notice in the rear-view. The cabin is classy, harking back to an era when to perforate a leather good was the endpoint of chic. The controls look sharp, the screen quality is almost sumptuous, but it has none of the needless complication that can hamper a cluster with a lot of features, docks, compatibilities and alerts, and it has none of the fussiness that comes with nooks and crannies. Continue reading...

The social media tycoon’s 5,700-word post about the ‘global community’ stokes rumours that another billionaire businessman is planning to run for presidentName: The Facebook manifesto.Age: One day old. Continue reading...

Lee Jae-yong, also known as Jay Y Lee, alleged to have paid £30m in bribes to presidential crony Choi Soon-silThe acting head of Samsung, South Korea’s biggest conglomerate, has been arrested in connection with the corruption and influence-peddling scandal that threatens to topple the country’s impeached president, Park Geun-hye.

Leigh Alexander finds out how close we are to the end of potholes and road works. Could Leeds become the first city to repair itself, using new robot technology?

Team Ninja’s unforgiving role-playing action adventure set in feudal Japan owes a debt to the Dark Souls series, but with a tone and narrative of its ownWhen a demo for Nioh first appeared back in April 2016, the gaming population was somewhat confused. After all, this was a project that was supposed to have perished in development hell over a decade before.Through its tumultuous development period, Nioh underwent countless iterations, beginning as a tie-in with an unmade Akira Kurosawa movie, and eventually landing on a model that resembled the famed Dark Souls series – mechanically and aesthetically. Both Nioh and Dark Souls are set amid ruin and gothic despair, and both feature a stranger in a strange land, struggling onwards through a quest for salvation, facing monstrous creatures and demons alike. Continue reading...

Emojis are a versatile tool for digital communication, but intimidating for the uninitiated – which makes them ripe for technophobia and moral outrageI sent my boss a mailbox emoji. Do I need to resign? Continue reading...

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

The YouTuber, who lost support from Walt Disney Company and Google for posts featuring neo-Nazi ‘jokes’, claimed Wall Street Journal was ‘scared’ of himYouTube star PewDiePie has released an impassioned, 10-minute diatribe in which he blames the mainstream media for cherry-picking parts of his videos to make him look like an antisemite.On Tuesday, the Walt Disney Company and Google severed ties with the 27-year-old YouTuber, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, after the Wall Street Journal highlighted the fact that he’d posted several videos featuring antisemitic or neo-Nazi “jokes”, including one where he paid two men to hold a “Death to All Jews” sign. Another video features a man dressed as Jesus saying “Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong”. Continue reading...

Who needs massive memory, email access and kitten memes when you have a phone that can survive any dystopian apocalypse?It was like a trip to Q’s lab for this particular journalistic James Bond. Back in 2000, it was day one at Channel 4 News and I was sent to the dark and windowless garage across the road to sign a chit and be issued with the latest hi-tech kit: silver, slim but reassuringly solid, with a weight to enable it be used, if necessary, to bludgeon a Spectre assassin; Bluetooth option. What the hell was Bluetooth anyway, Q? And a charger. Ah, that battery life. More on that later. Like Bond I never bothered reading a manual. The Nokia 3310 could be worked out on the go by instinct alone. The so-called “candy bar” shape fitted so reassuringly into a pocket. Unlike James Bond’s Beretta it’s never jammed on me or frozen mid-sentence like an iPhone.Related: Nokia 3310, beloved and 'indestructible' mobile phone, 'to be reborn' Continue reading...

Move follows Apple and Sonos rises, with cost of Surface and Surface Book computers increasing by 15%Microsoft has increased the price of its Surface and Surface Book computers in the UK by more than 15%, or £400 for some models, due to sterling’s drop in the value post-EU referendum.The price increase comes in the wake of similar moves by Sonos and twice by Apple, which saw the cost of computers, speakers and apps rise by as much as 25% adjusting for the falling value of sterling against the dollar, in which Microsoft and other US technology firms do their accounting. Continue reading...

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

Hackers potentially accessed accounts between 2015 and 2016, and the warning comes two months after saying data from 1bn users was compromised in 2013Yahoo is warning users of potentially malicious activity on their accounts between 2015 and 2016, the latest in a string of cybersecurity problems faced by the technology company.The measure comes two months after the company revealed that data from more than 1bn user accounts had been compromised in August 2013, the largest such breach in history. The number of affected accounts was double the number implicated in a 2014 breach the internet company disclosed in September and blamed on state-sponsored hackers. Continue reading...

Stone, who’s named as one of four individuals under FBI observation over alleged contacts with Russian intelligence, urges Department of Justice inquiryRelated: Damning reports emerge of Trump campaign's frequent talks with Russian intelligenceRoger Stone, a longtime adviser and confidant to Donald Trump who has been named in news reports as one of at least four individuals under FBI observation over alleged contacts with Russian intelligence, has called for an official inquiry into the swirling crisis.

Because the pavement LEDs, as part of a trial in the municipality of Bodegraven-Reeuwijk, told them it was safe to do soIn the future, you won’t even have to look up from your phone to cross the road.The Dutch municipality of Bodegraven-Reeuwijk is testing a new system for traffic lights which embeds a thin strip of LEDs on the pavement before busy road crossings, to signal to inattentive smartphone users whether or not it’s safe to step out. Continue reading...

Newly published patent describes a system that scans the surface of a finger through a screen, removing the need for a separate Touch ID sensorApple is working on fitting fingerprint scanners beneath the screen of its iPhone, removing the need for a separate home button, a newly published patent has revealed.The patent, purchased by Apple as part of its acquisition of a display company called LuxVue in 2014, details a system of using LEDs mounted underneath a display to both detect finger’s position and scan its surface to be able to read a fingerprint. Continue reading...

First Thailand, now the world – Trash Dove is everywhere. We asked the creator, Syd Weiler, about the sticker that is all over Facebook comment threadsIf you spend any time in the comments section of big Facebook pages, you may have seen a purple bird headbanging in the comments. Continue reading...

Reports that a Finnish manufacturer will reissue ‘the world’s best-selling mobile phone’ have been met with joy and trepidationSeventeen years after it was originally launched, the Nokia 3310 is reportedly set to make a comeback.HMD Oy Global, a Finnish manufacturer with the exclusive rights to market the Nokia brand, is apparently planning to release a revamped version of the classic phone at the end of February. Continue reading...

Ciaran Martin, head of UK National Cyber Security Centre, says he expects formal requests for help with digital securityBritish political parties have approached the surveillance agency GCHQ for advice on beefing up their internet security after a cyber-attack during the 2015 UK general election and the hacking in the US last year of the Democratic party.

Former head of strategic marketing, hired to broaden company’s reach across genders, alleges augmented reality startup is tolerant of sexismAugmented reality startup Magic Leap is being sued for sexual discrimination by an executive who was hired to help it appeal to women.The company, a startup best known for securing a valuation in the billions despite never publicly demonstrating its technology, is being sued by Tannen Campbell, its former head of, and later vice-president of, strategic marketing and brand identity. Continue reading...

An update has added more geeky in-jokes and references to the e-commerce giant’s AI assistant, from ‘Cowabunga’ to ‘Great Scott!’

My father, Alf Perry, who has died aged 64, following a cardiac arrest, was a respected structural engineer. His career encompassed the growth of Hong Kong’s skyline, the preservation of the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the revitalisation of Bristol Harbourside.The son of Douglas Perry, a railwayman, and his wife, Joan (nee Marwood), Alf was raised in Totnes, Devon. An aptitude for maths, along with a British Rail scholarship, took him to Imperial College London, where he studied civil engineering for four years. He subsequently took a position at British Rail, reconstructing bridges. After two years he left to join Ove Arup, the eminent firm of civil engineers, where he remained until his retirement in 2009. Continue reading...

Video site cancels reality series Scare PewDiePie and vlogger’s membership of premium advertising programme, but won’t shut down his channelYouTube is cutting its ties with star video-maker PewDiePieafter criticism of his use of Nazi imagery and antisemitism as props for shock humour.The video site has cancelled the second season of PewDiePie’s reality show, Scare PewDiePie, and removed his channel from a premium advertising programme following the revelations. Continue reading...

YouTuber with 53 million subscribers posted videos featuring antisemitic jokes and Nazi imagery, including two men holding a ‘Death to All Jews’ signThe Walt Disney Company has severed ties with YouTube’s biggest star PewDiePie after he posted a series of videos featuring antisemitic comments.PewDiePie, real name Felix Kjellberg, is a 27-year-old Swede who built a huge fanbase making opinionated videos, mostly about video games. With more than 53 million subscribers on YouTube, Kjellberg has turned his videos into a lucrative business, earning more than $14m per year from advertising, sponsorship and appearance fees. Continue reading...

Ladykiller in a Bind is the latest work from Christine Love, but it has invoked controversy about sex, representation and consentMuch like sex itself, it’s hard to get a sex game right at the first attempt. While the genre known as interactive fiction often explores themes of sex and sexuality, players of mainstream video games are used to little more than the occasional, awkward and intensely unerotic cut scene. Creators, consumers and critics of this relatively young artform are still figuring out what the culture deems acceptable. That can lead to difficult conversations – as it did this month with one highly divisive scene in a game released late last year.Christine Love is a writer and programmer known for making visual novels: interactive narrative games with static 2D art, in which the player’s choices often involve selecting which response to give in conversation scenes. Her latest project, Ladykiller in a Bind, is a piece of erotica, which turns out to be complicated in a medium built on interactivity. Continue reading...

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

Swedish YouTube star Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, saw his ties with Disney severed after he posted a series of videos featuring antisemitic comments. This included paying two men to hold up a sign saying ‘Death to All Jews’ and posting the video to his YouTube channel on 11 January 2017

MPs are not the only ones concerned about information being published that can identify where they live (MPs say watchdog risks identifying addresses, 11 February). Many people across the UK have been using the useful community messaging site, Streetlife. Now, with very little warning, users are being told they need to transfer to the US community messaging site Nextdoor.com, to which Streetlife has recently been sold. There is widespread concern that Nextdoor, unlike Streetlife, publishes not only people’s names and their street but also their house number. It is possible to delete the house number if you go to their website but this company should not be compromising users’ security in such a way in the first place. Some locals have already unsubscribed; others are thinking of so doing. It remains to be seen whether NextDoor will respond positively to people’s concerns.

As Nintendo launches its most striking console yet, R&D leads Shinya Takahashi and Yoshiaki Koizumi explain who this machine is aimed atThe Nintendo Switch is the weirdest games console to hit the market since … well, the last games console Nintendo released.When docked to the TV, the slim black device could be mistaken for one of the company’s previous consoles. The “Joy-Con” controllers give away that something’s up, though: even in their most traditional configuration, clicked in to a mounting device to be used as a classic dual-analogue-stick handset, they’re still fairly oddly shaped. Continue reading...

The pop-science writer behind Everything Bad is Good for You and Wonderland came in to answer your questions, on everything from innovation in science and technology, to his thoughts on the Trump administration2.35pm GMTThanks everyone for the great questions - I hope you'll get a chance to check out Wonderland, my new book. We didn't get to talk about it all that much, but I would like to just mention that the Observer yesterday called it "seductively erudite", a phrase that I am now going to put on my tombstone. Signing off!2.30pm GMTschtengraby2 says:You talked about making a board game with your kid on Start the Week this morning. Sounded fun! How did you go about doing that?That was really an incredibly rewarding experience as a parent. (And I think it was rewarding for my son too.) It was a summer-long project. We spent some time sketching out some ideas about what the theme of the game should be, which turned out to be a game about growing vegetables. And then spent much more time sketching out the actual board, just using paper and magic markers, and devising the rules. And then we would, in the language of product design, iterate: we'd play a couple of games, discuss what was working and wasn't working, and then tweak the game in a way we thought would make it more fun. And then we'd start the whole process again. I wrote a longer description of the whole process, with some reflections on game design as an educational tool and a great family experience, in this article at our site How We Get to Next. Continue reading...

For decades, computers have got smaller and more powerful, enabling huge scientific progress. But this can’t go on for ever. What happens when they stop shrinking?Subscribe via Audioboom, iTunes, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Acast & Sticher and join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter Continue reading...

Electronics firm joins Apple and Microsoft on growing list of companies to raise prices in the UK following the EU referendumHome sound system manufacturer Sonos has become the latest technology company to announce significant price rises for British customers following the Brexit vote.Some of the company’s products are increasing in price by up to 25%, as a result of the collapse in sterling since the EU referendum last June. The price rises were announced on Monday, but will not be put in place until Thursday 23 February. Continue reading...

Businessman is seeking damages of up to €45m from Uber over wife’s discovery of his extra-marital tripsAn adulterous businessman in southern France is seeking damages of up to €45m (£38m) from Uber over his wife’s discovery of his extra-marital affair, according to reports.The man, from the glitzy Riviera area on the southern coastline, says he once connected to his account on the ride-hailing application via his wife’s phone to request a driver. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Monday. I didn’t do Friday did I? Continue reading...

A terrifying return to form for the survival horror series, a well-crafted crossover title for young and old and a tightly knit textile platformerPS4, Xbox One, PC, Capcom, cert: 18

The city has levied fines on users of the apartment-rental site, often a source of vital extra income, but a politician insists: ‘We’re not going after the little guy’A war of words between Airbnb and New York, its largest market, has escalated with the first fine issued by the city in what is expected to be a crackdown on “hosts”.

Isaac Asimov’s prophetic play and Adam Rutherford’s The Rise of the Robots revealed that our fear of machines is nothing newThe Rise of the Robots (R4) | iPlayer

Scratch the surface and the new Ateca is very much a VW, but Seat would rather accentuate its Spanish flairPrice: £17,497

The emerging sport of drone racing is already attracting big sponsorship deals, but which nascent league will attract the fastest pilots and dominate the field?They have been responsible for innumerable deaths in the Middle East during the last decade and, if Amazon has its way, will deliver millions of toasters, gift sets and novels in the future. But recently drones have begun to fulfil a less utilitarian kind of role: competition in the nascent world of futuristic motorsports. A confluence of technological advances has made drone racing possible. A minuscule camera, mounted on the drone’s nose, allows the pilot, as competitors are luxuriously titled, to control the vehicle through virtual reality-style goggles, as if perched in its tiny cockpit.With powerful lithium batteries, the size of which dictates the speed class of the drone, these machines, which are typically the size of a box of tissues, can reach speeds in excess of 120mph. Studded with coloured LEDs, they fly like hyper-evolved, fluorescent mosquitoes and, thanks to their size and manoeuvrability, can make use of those areas of a sports stadium that are usually out of bounds: streaking over the pitch, for example, before grazing through a window, along a corridor and out again into the night sky. Impromptu courses can be set up anywhere. In September, during an event timed to coincide with the Paris Drone festival, pilots raced along the Champs-Élysées, watched by 150,000 spectators. Continue reading...

Spotlight thrown on long hours and injuries as employee speaks up and United Automobile Workers union saying it has been approached to organise plantThe United Automobile Workers union has said it was approached by workers at the Tesla assembly plant in Fremont, California – rejecting a charge by the Elon Musk that a worker who publicly criticised the company was on the UAW payroll.The move to organise at the electric car factory shines an unwelcome spotlight on allegations of long hours, mandatory overtime and preventable injuries at a time when Tesla is accelerating production to meet ambitious targets. Continue reading...

Apple chief calls on governments and technology companies to crack down on misinformation in public discourseFake news is “killing people’s minds”, Tim Cook, the head of Apple, has said. The technology boss said firms such as his own needed to create tools that would help stem the spread of falsehoods, without impinging on freedom of speech.Cook also called for governments to lead information campaigns to crack down on fake news in an interview with a British national newspaper. The scourge of falsehoods in mainstream political discourse came to the fore during recent campaigns, during which supporters of each side were accused of promoting misinformation for political gain. Continue reading...