Technology | The Guardian

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

Scale and sophistication of hack points to foreign state, says Czech foreign minister, comparing it to attack on US Democratic partyThe Czech Republic has suffered a damaging security breach after hackers infiltrated the emails of dozens of its most senior diplomats in a massive cyber-attack thought to have been carried out by Russia.

My mother used to only check on me when I visited unstable countries for work. Now she does it when I am in Trump’s USWhen I was a kid dreaming of being a game developer, I hoped that in the future I’d be joining a large studio and working on a blockbuster title. Things didn’t quite pan out that way. After leaving university with a fellow student, I am now the co-founder of my own company, Vlambeer, renowned for successful game releases such as Nuclear Throne and Ridiculous Fishing.I was born in the Netherlands, the son of an Egyptian immigrant and a Dutch mother, and was raised as a proud Muslim. For the past years, much of my travel to the United States has led to secondary selection, investigation, or interrogation. For all 100 flights I took in 2014, I jokingly created a website that kept track of whether my boarding passes were marked for “random checks” before even reaching airport security. For many of the 1.6 billion Muslims across the world, whether they’re born in the western world or not, this is a recognisable issue with air travel. Many of my Muslim friends calculate an extra 30 minute delay for boarding and transfers. Continue reading...

The creators of the online game announced today that they will be shutting down the website to make way for a new mobile version. How did a game for children become embedded in internet culture?It’s the end of an internet era: Club Penguin is closing its website.While this is far from the end for Club Penguin – the creators say they will be launching a new mobile-only game, Club Penguin Island – it marks the end of a beloved chapter in internet history. Continue reading...

Guerrilla Games’ have created a brave, independent, multi-dimensional heroine to lead this highly satisfying missionOf all the ways Horizon: Zero Dawn could have begun, we certainly weren’t expecting a Lion King tribute. This is, after all, a far-future, post-apocalyptic adventure set in a brutal world populated by monstrous robots – hardly Disney material. But sure enough, the game opens with Aloy, the flame-haired warrior who has become a fixture of Sony’s PlayStation 4 marketing, as a baby, carried on the back of her mentor, Rost. When he reaches the edge of a cliff, he holds the child aloft to the Goddess, screaming her name into the abyss.

CEO Jeff Bezos says company’s legal and lobbying teams will help fight the ban, echoing moves by Expedia and MicrosoftAmazon chief executive, Jeff Bezos, has pledged the full legal resources of his company to fight the travel ban instituted by Donald Trump against seven Muslim-majority nations.In an email to employees sent on Monday afternoon, Bezos said that Amazon would be putting its legal and lobbying efforts behind the fight against the ban. A key avenue of opposition involves supporting the attorney general for Washington state, where Amazon is headquartered, in his lawsuit against Trump – the first confirmed legal action from a state against one of the new administration’s policies. Continue reading...

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

Finally released as a complete package, last year’s episodic stealth shooter is the best in the series and possibly one of the finest stealth games ever madeWhen this new instalment in the Hitman series was first announced back in June 2015, the overwhelming reaction was one of confusion.Following 2012’s poorly received Hitman: Absolution, the franchise was to re-emerge as something unprecedented in the action adventure genre: a six-part digital episodic release, spread across a whole year, each part constituting one level of the final game. Nobody was quite sure what this experiment would look like, or what the point was. Continue reading...

Libratus, an artificial intelligence robot, has won chips worth $1.5m from four of the world’s top poker players in a three-week challenge at a Pittsburgh casinoEvery day for the last 20 days, between the hours of 11am and about 10pm, four of the world’s top poker players have been sitting in a Pittsburgh casino playing against a software robot called Libratus.With only a few hours of the Brains vs Artifical Intelligence competition left, Libratus has won more than $1.5m worth of chips from the humans. It would take a miracle for the human players, Dong Kim, Jason Les, Jimmy Chou and Daniel McCauley – all specialists in no-limit Texas Hold’em, a two-player unlimited bid form of poker – to make a comeback. Continue reading...

After Uber lifted surge pricing during a protest at New York’s John F Kennedy airport against Trump’s travel ban, condemnation online was swiftThere was plenty to be angry about this weekend – and many people were extremely irate about the ride-hailing company Uber.As news of Donald Trump’s travel ban on Muslim-majority countries spread, protests sprang up at airports around the US. In support, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance called on its members to avoid John F Kennedy International Airport for one hour: Continue reading...

James McAvoy’s bravura turn helped M Night Shyamalan’s film hold the top spot, while A Dog’s Purpose dodged controversy and Resident Evil crept inM Night Shyamalan’s revival as a commercial force was underlined by the figures for his multiple-personality thriller Split’s second week at the US box office: it held on to the No 1 spot with an estimated $26.3m (£20.9m) for a total of $77.9m (£62.1m), well ahead of second-placed family movie A Dog’s Purpose, which managed $18.4m (£14.6m). Continue reading...

A big 5.5in screen, solid build and feel, a great fingerprint scanner and dual-Sim support means latest Huawei Honor is a solid, good value smartphoneHuawei’s Honor line has been making a name for itself by selling good yet reasonably priced smartphones. The Honor 6X is no exception, even if it isn’t perfect.

Three engrossing games put the fun into planning – a Viking conquest, a presidential campaign and an after-work competition for car-plant robotsOne of the fascinating aspects of the resurgence of interest in board gaming is how they have demonstrated a knack for making pedestrian or even administrative processes engrossing. Vikings on Board, superficially a game themed around preparing for a journey, is a superb example. It’s not quite a packing-your-suitcase simulator, yet the gameplay remains focused on managing a workforce and moving supplies around a harbour, all with a view to dominating the northern territories with a clan of Norsemen.The mechanics might seem at odds with the game’s claim to be a family-friendly strategy title. However, thanks to its captivating Viking theme and a riveting betting mechanic, which sees players trying to balance predicting the fortunes of their rivals with racing to claim victory, Vikings on Board shines, whether played with the family or over drinks with adult friends. Elaborate, enthralling and lavishly produced, it can feel a little convoluted when played at the family table, but if your own Viking clan doesn’t mind flexing its grey matter, it is well worth paying attention. Continue reading...

There are ways to get your point across more effectively. Avoid shouting into the abyss and follow these steps to become a master persuaderWhenever a major story breaks in the social media age, from the supreme court judgement on article 50 to the news that roast potatoes can apparently cause cancer – it sparks a heated debate. And in this post-truth world of alternative facts even the US president conducts his battles on Twitter. But what if you’re less interested in just shouting your view and actually want to try to change people’s minds? Continue reading...

Purchases on its software platform made $8.6bn for the company last year, even as demand for the iPhone showed signs of easingWhen Apple launched its App Store eight years ago with a selection of just 500 applications for iPhone users, not many of the company’s famously bullish executives could have expected that it would grow into an earnings juggernaut. The iPhone and iPod were overwhelming successes and the iPad was just around the corner: apps seemed like an offshoot.But last year, Apple’s app business made almost $30bn (£24bn) as the Pokémon Go phenomenon drove purchases, taking total store sales to $85bn since 2008. This week’s latest quarterly results will confirm its importance to the tech group, with iPhone sales losing steam and the group’s services unit – home to the app store and iTunes – becoming increasingly important to Apple. Continue reading...

I can get you to 128mph no problem, it seems to say, but wouldn’t you rather enjoy the scenery?The Peugeot 3008 has sleek, long lines in the body, then an abruptly curtailed snout, as if it’s been punched in the face. Inevitably, then, I started to wonder why someone might want to punch it in the face. This ridiculous Peugeot fascination with vista, a huge great windscreen delivering less-than-brilliant visibility, thanks to its very shallow angle and hefty A-frame? I could live without that. The highly effective fragrance diffuser that gave the eerie impression of having swapped one’s regular family for aliens or furniture? That was a bit prissy. But overall, no: it would be fanciful to bear ill will towards this car. It is trying its best, goddammit. Its face looks like that only to reduce its dimensions and kerb weight while keeping its boot capacity.Over the years, I’ve noticed I rarely ask passengers how comfortable they are, preferring instead to stare at them now and then, and observe how comfortable they look. This is a spacious back row, with a lot of headroom and a high seat, so they look rather regal. The driver and front passenger, likewise, have a lot of space, most noticeably in the area of the elbows. Highly gesticulate-prone people, who both like an array of drinks and always arrive in a car bursting with oddments, will find almost nothing to argue about, which – vexingly for this superior cabin – they won’t even notice until they’re in a smaller car and start knocking over each other’s coffees again. Continue reading...

The Facebook CEO used his own page to criticize Donald Trump’s executive order that will severely limit immigrants from certain Muslim-majority countriesMark Zuckerberg criticized Donald Trump’s executive order to severely limit immigrants and refugees from certain Muslim-majority countries, becoming the most high-profile tech industry leader to speak out against the president since the election.“Like many of you, I’m concerned about the impact of the recent executive orders signed by President Trump,” the Facebook CEO wrote on his Facebook page. “We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat ... We should also keep our doors open to refugees and those who need help. That’s who we are.” Continue reading...

Algorithms can make bad decisions that have serious impacts on people’s lives, leading to calls for a third party body to ensure transparency and fairnessAn artificial intelligence watchdog should be set up to make sure people are not discriminated against by the automated computer systems making important decisions about their lives, say experts.The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to an explosion in the number of algorithms that are used by employers, banks, police forces and others, but the systems can, and do, make bad decisions that seriously impact people’s lives. But because technology companies are so secretive about how their algorithms work – to prevent other firms from copying them – they rarely disclose any detailed information about how AIs have made particular decisions. Continue reading...

Seven days into Trump’s presidency, and the response from many of us has been anger and alarm. Fortunately, there were also those who could see the funny side – here is a pick of the bestThis week has been a lot.As 2017 slowly turns into your favourite dystopian fiction, we thought you might appreciate a reminder of those able to draw on humour to get us all through. Like this alternative rendition of Trump’s inauguration: Continue reading...

It started as a cult game that scared a generation before spawning a film franchise that is about to call it a day. For one writer, it’s still body horror at its bestIt’s March 1996. The Fugees have taken over the world. Happy Gilmore’s in cinemas and people are saying things like “Hey, that Adam Sandler dude’s great!” and “I do not hate Adam Sandler at all!” And if you play video games, you walk past any darkened window worried that a skinless hound will clatter through it and try to rip all your organs out through your armpits. This is because you’ve just played Resident Evil. And it’s scared you. Scared you like no other game has before.Related: Resident Evil 7: Biohazard review – a masterclass in terror Continue reading...

Police get a break as digitally savvy criminals who can’t resist the lure of an audience broadcast acts as serious as rape and torture. But why do they do it?This week three men have been arrested in Sweden on suspicion of raping a woman in an apartment in Uppsala, about an hour north of Stockholm. It wasn’t difficult for the police to find the suspects because they broadcast the alleged assault on Facebook Live. Several viewers reported the footage and police swarmed the apartment to take the men into custody.Facebook Live allows anyone to broadcast a video directly from their smartphone to the social network. Despite a wide-reaching advertising campaign urging people to use the feature to share heartwarming life moments, it’s gained a reputation for much grittier subject matter: the torture of a young man with disabilities in Chicago; the musings of a spree killer being chased by police; child abuse and now gang rape. Continue reading...

Following the news that Square Enix is making a new range of Avengers games, here are our favourite comic book conversions from gaming historyOn Thursday, games publisher Square Enix announced it had signed a multi-game partnership with Marvel to produce a series of Avengers titles. Two studios, Crystal Dynamics (Tomb Raider) and Eidos Montreal (Deus Ex) will be working on the project, so we can perhaps expect big, open world action adventures with a smattering of role-playing depth.So what legacy will this tie-in have to contend with? Is there a glorious history of super hero games? Kind of. Continue reading...

The moustachioed plumber’s latest adventure takes place in a lifelike New York. But gaming should give us valuable respite from reality, not more of itMario is coming to a street near you. His latest outing, Super Mario Odyssey, was unveiled in a Nintendo trailer earlier this month, and shows the moustachioed plumber gleefully sprinting around a facsimile of New York, hopping over taxis and scaling skyscrapers. Elsewhere, he swings through dewy forests and slides through realistically animated streams. The angry, sentient plant pots may be slightly less believable, but that’s besides the point – Mario has been plucked from the multicoloured fantasy of the Mushroom Kingdom and dumped into our much less palatable reality.Related: And breathe: the computer games helping kids relax Continue reading...

Yevgeniy Nikulin faces extradition requests from both countries amid lingering disquiet over Moscow’s alleged interference in the US presidential electionAn alleged computer hacker being held in the Czech Republic is at the centre of an international legal tussle between the United States and Russia amid lingering disquiet over Moscow’s alleged interference in the recent US presidential election.Yevgeniy Nikulin, 29, faces extradition requests from both countries after being detained by Czech police on an Interpol arrest warrant issued by US authorities. Continue reading...

In audio obtained by the Guardian, McCain says ‘it is the one aspect of our confrontation where adversaries are ahead’John McCain warned that the Trump administration is unprepared to deal with Russian attempts “to influence elections in France and European countries in the coming months”.In audio obtained by the Guardian of the 2008 presidential nominee speaking at the congressional retreat in Philadelphia, the Arizona senator said “we don’t have a policy and we don’t have a strategy” for Russian cyber warfare. He said “it is the one aspect of our confrontation where I believe our adversaries are ahead of us”, adding “it is a hell of a lot of easier to offense in cyber than defense”.

President probably owns a 2012 Samsung Galaxy S3, which no longer receives software updates, leaving Trump vulnerable to hackers and nation-state actorsDonald Trump is a big fan of the phones in the White House. “These are the most beautiful phones I’ve ever used in my life,” he told the New York Times in an interview this week. It’s not their aesthetics he’s drawn to, but the security built into the system that ensures no one is tapping his calls.Unfortunately the president’s love for security doesn’t seem to extend to his smartphone, revealed in the same interview to be an “old, unsecured Android phone”, which he carries around the White House “to the protests of some of his aides”. This contradicts previous reports suggesting Trump traded his handset for a “secure, encrypted device approved by the Secret Service”. Continue reading...

Facebook CEO makes statement after backlash over ‘quiet title actions’ to secure parcels belonging to native owners within his $100m seafront propertyMark Zuckerberg has said he is reconsidering whether to seek the forced sale of tracts of land belonging to native Hawaiians in a large estate he bought on the island of Kauai, after facing a wave of criticism.The Facebook CEO filed a series of lawsuits, known as quiet title actions, against hundreds of Hawaiians who may own small parcels of land within the boundaries of his seafront property on Kauai. The quiet title system is used to establish ownership of land where inheritance has occurred over generations and lacks formal documentation. It can result in owners being forced to sell their land at auction and, in some cases, pay the legal fees of the plaintiff. Continue reading...

Ubisoft has taken its tactical shooter into an open world setting, promising a customisable experience. Is it any good?Our squad’s ninth unsuccessful attempt to extract the whistleblower was the most ridiculous. By that point the four of us playing co-op were fairly au fait with the mission’s set-up: a dozen or so heavily armed Santa Blanca cartel members holed up in a well-defended rocky outcrop near the shore of Bolivia’s Laguna Colorada, unaware that a man in their midst named Emilio was experiencing serious doubts about his long-term career prospects in the narco-terrorism business.

Simon Wheatcroft went blind at age 17. Yet today, he runs marathons. Leigh Alexander explores the incredible story of how he is able to do this with the help of some particularly innovative technology. This is a re-run of a podcast we launched in June 2016

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

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO announced his plans to start digging ‘in a month or so’, but city planning bodies say he doesn’t have the permits requiredElon Musk announced plans to start digging a traffic-easing tunnel under Los Angeles “in a month or so”, but city planning bodies say he doesn’t yet have permission.The SpaceX and Tesla CEO has been mulling the idea since December, when he revealed his frustrations with congestion in the city. “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging,” he said on Twitter. 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?In 1971, Intel, then an obscure firm in what would only later come to be known as Silicon Valley, released a chip called the 4004. It was the world’s first commercially available microprocessor, which meant it sported all the electronic circuits necessary for advanced number-crunching in a single, tiny package. It was a marvel of its time, built from 2,300 tiny transistors, each around 10,000 nanometres (or billionths of a metre) across – about the size of a red blood cell. A transistor is an electronic switch that, by flipping between “on” and “off”, provides a physical representation of the 1s and 0s that are the fundamental particles of information.In 2015 Intel, by then the world’s leading chipmaker, with revenues of more than $55bn that year, released its Skylake chips. The firm no longer publishes exact numbers, but the best guess is that they have about 1.5bn–2 bn transistors apiece. Spaced 14 nanometres apart, each is so tiny as to be literally invisible, for they are more than an order of magnitude smaller than the wavelengths of light that humans use to see. Continue reading...

Deep learning-based system could be further developed for smartphones, increasing access to screening and aiding early detection of cancersComputers can classify skin cancers as successfully as human experts, according to the latest research attempting to apply artificial intelligence to health.The US-based researchers say the new system, which is based on image recognition, could be developed for smartphones, increasing access to screening and providing a low-cost way to check whether skin lesions are cause for concern. Continue reading...

Badlands National Park sent out a series of (now-deleted) tweets on climate change, seemingly in defiance of Trump administrationIf you had “National Parks subtweet the new president” on your 2017 bingo card, today’s your lucky day.After the US National Parks Service was temporarily banned for retweeting images comparing Trump and Obama’s inaugurations, the official Twitter account of the appropriately named Badlands National Park, based in South Dakota, appeared to go rogue by posting a series of now-deleted tweets on climate change. Continue reading...

Apple has cut the cable from its EarPods, improving sound, fit and connectivity – but the AirPods lack noise-cancelling and easy controlsWhen Apple removed the traditional headphone socket from its latest iPhone, part of the rationale was that wireless headphones were now coming into the mainstream. And Apple had its own player in this field, its AirPods.But then there was an unexpected delay in their launch, raising fears over technical issues. Now they’re finally here, are they worth the £159 price tag? Continue reading...

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

Sources speaking exclusively to the Guardian reveal details of Samsung’s next flagship smartphone, including an iris scanner, ahead of March launchSamsung’s Galaxy S8 will come in two sizes, have an almost bezel-less, edge-to-edge “infinity” display and an iris scanner, the Guardian has learned.

Capcom returns to the ‘haunted house’ origins of its survival horror series. But rather than regressive, its move to the deep south couldn’t be more timely

Researchers in Beijing find that 45% of users suffer some level of setup failure, with a 10-second wait not uncommonNext time you feel frustrated while trying to connect to a wifi network, take solace in the fact that you aren’t alone: millions of others have the same problem.Researchers from Tsinghua University and Tencent, the developer of WeChat, found for 15% of users it takes longer than five seconds to connect to a network and for 5%, more than 10 seconds. Continue reading...

Man launched class-action lawsuit hoping to force Apple to implement lockout feature to prevent texting while driving or have phone sales halted in CaliforniaA California man has launched a class-action lawsuit against Apple for failing to introduce an iPhone safety feature that would prevent people from texting while driving.Julio Ceja, from Orange County in California, was rear-ended by a driver who was allegedly distracted while using her phone. According to the complaint, Ceja was at a traffic light when he saw a driver behind him “engaged in using her phone instead of paying attention to the road in front of her”.

Some tech CEOs may be cozying up to Trump, but workers on the ground are determined to stop him – and they might transform the industry in the processLast week, something unusual happened in Silicon Valley. Dozens of tech workers stood in the rain in downtown Palo Alto and staged a protest. They held signs and chanted slogans outside the headquarters of Palantir, the $20bn data-analytics company co-founded by Peter Thiel, one of Donald Trump’s closest advisers.Related: 'Call me': Donald Trump woos tech leaders at New York meeting Continue reading...

After a washing up disaster, our writer has been without her handheld helper for six weeks. How has she coped?About 2 billion people use smartphones across the globe, with more than half the population in developed countries relying on them daily. In fact, according to research by psychologists, we spend on average about five hours each a day doing so, flicking it on as many as 85 times.I was one of those people, until a few weeks ago. Continue reading...

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

Plan would involve 90% of passengers being processed through Australian immigration without human involvementA plan to rely on biometric recognition to further automate airport border processing raises privacy and ethical concerns about data security, according to an expert.But another information security analyst says the plan – which would involve 90% of passengers being processed through Australian airport immigration without human involvement – would not present any more privacy concerns than current border control regimes. Continue reading...

Prime minister says Labor, Nick Xenophon and Greens were all invited to a briefing, but they have no record of this and only found out through the mediaLabor has accused Malcolm Turnbull of putting his own political purposes ahead of national security by publicising plans for a secret briefing for political parties to head off “Russian-style” cyber attacks.The prime minister had told the Australian newspaper about his plans to invite opposition parties to secret classified briefings – but did not inform them except through the media. Continue reading...

A 14-month government ‘cleanup’ of internet access services will make it harder for users to access websites that are usually censored or restrictedChina has begun a crackdown on the use of virtual private networks, or VPNs, making it harder for internet users to circumvent the Great Firewall.The nation’s ministry of industry and information technology announced a 14-month “cleanup” of internet access services, including making it illegal to operate a local VPN service without government approval. Continue reading...

The Taiwanese manufacturer had claimed to be in process of building a $7bn American plant after Trump met with Japanese tech billionaire last yearTaiwanese manufacturer Foxconn has appeared to back away from claims it is preparing to build a $7bn factory in the US.News of the plant, which could create some 30,000 to 50,000 American manufacturing jobs, first surfaced last year after a meeting between now President Donald Trump and the Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, head of Japanese telecom and tech investment giant SoftBank. Continue reading...

Travellers can now use photographs taken on their mobiles when applying for a passport online. But the future for the photobooth is a developing pictureLong before Instagram and iPhones, Snapchat and Kim Kardashian, there was a Siberian immigrant in New York City who was about to get very rich. Fascinated by his Brownie box camera, the Kodak device that brought photography to the masses, Anatol Josephowitz arrived in Manhattan with plans to go further, foreshadowing the selfie age a good 80 years before its time.In 1925, Josepho (he dropped the -witz) unveiled his Photomaton, a small automatic studio with a stool that would return a strip of eight postage-stamp portraits in exchange for 25 cents. “Broadway’s greatest quarter-snatcher” was a sensation, making Josepho famous. In 1927, he sold the US rights to his machines for $1m. Continue reading...

Banking group says none of its 20m accounts were hacked or compromised after fending off two-day denial of service attackLloyds Banking Group suffered 48-hour online attack this month as cybercriminals attempted to block access to 20m UK accounts.The denial of service attack ran for two days from Wednesday 11 January to Friday 13 January, as Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland were bombarded with millions of fake requests, designed to grind the group’s systems to a halt. Usually in a denial of service (DOS) attack the criminals demand a large ransom, to be paid in bitcoins, to end the onslaught. Continue reading...