Technology | The Guardian

Jason Calacanis, an early investor in Uber, spearheads a contest to find a service ‘that is actually good for society’Can Facebook be replaced? The prominent Silicon Valley investor Jason Calacanis, who was an early investor in several high-profile tech companies including Uber certainly hopes so. He has launched a competition to find a “social network that is actually good for society”.The Openbook Challenge will offer seven “purpose-driven teams” $100,000 in investment to build a billion-user social network that could replace the technology titan while protecting consumer privacy. Continue reading...

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With its profound knowledge of its customers, Amazon can move into almost any sector – striking fear into the hearts of rivals. And the $740bn company is ‘just getting started’The computer on which this article was written is sitting on a laptop stand that tells you everything you need to know about how Amazon does business. At $19.99 (£14.99) a pop, the laptop stand combines everything customers love about Amazon: utility, price and convenience. It’s also a total and complete knockoff – of a laptop stand that the San Francisco-based company Rain Design began selling nearly a decade before Amazon decided to make its own.Amazon’s innovation with its own version was to replace Rain Design’s raindrop logo with its own smiley arrow logo – and cut the price in half. Continue reading...

Jeff Bezos’s firm is good at selling things to shoppers, but that is the tip of its commercial icebergIn the early days of Amazon, Jeff Bezos instituted a rule: every internal team should be small enough that it can be fed with two pizzas. The goal wasn’t to cut down on the catering bill. It was, like almost everything Amazon does, focused on two aims: efficiency and scalability. The former is obvious. A smaller team spends less time managing timetables and keeping people up to date, and more time doing what needs to be done. But it’s the latter that really matters for Amazon.The thing about having lots of small teams is that they all need to be able to work together, and to be able to access the common resources of the company, in order to achieve their larger goals. Continue reading...

With the retailer poised to report blockbuster results, we look at the story behind its success“I see them as kind of a great white shark. You don’t really want to mess with them.” The words are those of a former manager at Amazon – and she is describing her former employer.It is an apt analogy. Amazon is huge – worth $740bn (£530bn) at Monday night’s share price – but it moves fast and is a lethal predator. Continue reading...

Exclusive: panel told researcher Aleksandr Kogan that Facebook’s approach fell ‘far below ethical expectations’A Cambridge University ethics panel rejected research by the academic at the centre of the Facebook data harvesting scandal over the social network’s “deceptive” approach to its users privacy, newly released documents reveal.A 2015 proposal by Aleksandr Kogan, a member of the university’s psychology department, involved the personal data from 250,000 Facebook users and their 54 million friends that he had already gleaned via a personality quiz app in a commercial project funded by SCL, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica. Continue reading...

Latest in Amazon Key programme sees newer Volvos and General Motors vehicles become lockboxes for Prime membersAmazon has begun offering deliveries direct to car boots for members of its Prime subscription service.

Popularity of services such as Spotify outstrips traditional formats for first time

EC concerned £300m deal with music-recognition app could give Apple data on users and rival streaming services to aid poachingThe EU has launched a formal investigation into Apple’s proposed acquisition of UK music-recognition app Shazam.The European commission announced its in-depth investigation into the deal over concerns that it would harm consumer choice and give Apple an unfair advantage through access to user data, which could aid in poaching customers from rivals. Continue reading...

General Data Protection Regulation holds that anyone in Europe can ask any company for the data it has on themHave you ever wondered what your boss or co-workers say about you behind your back? If you’re located in Europe, it will soon be extremely easy to find out.Under the General Data Protection Regulation that comes into play on 25th of May, any individual located in Europe can ask any company for the data it collects about them – and that includes their employer. Continue reading...

One of video games’ most beloved creators on surviving a tumultuous career, running an indie publishing arm and earning a Bafta fellowshipWe went through a period in the games industry where I felt I was being shamed for doing story. It was like, all games should be Deus Ex, all games should be design-driven and systemic. Interactivity is what’s unique about games, a powerful tool that can’t be ignored, but I don’t like limited ideas about what games “should” be. It annoys me because there are so many different people playing games who like them for completely different reasons. Gamers aren’t just one thing.

Media committee chair says Martin Lewis’s case shows yet another failure to protect usersFacebook is facing calls to deploy facial recognition technology to block scam adverts featuring celebrities, after consumer campaigner Martin Lewis launched legal proceedings against the social network over fake promotions claiming his endorsement.Damian Collins, the chair of the parliamentary committee investigating online disinformation, told the Guardian he would ask the social network to consider new ways to block fake promotions when the company’s chief technology office appears to answer questions in parliament on Thursday. Continue reading...

Company tells Australian regulator that news makes up just 5% of content shared, and downplays its collection and use of people’s data

Video-sharing site responds to criticism over objectionable content by publishing report into scale of its moderation processYouTube says it removed 8.3m videos for breaching its community guidelines between October and December last year as it tries to address criticism of violent and offensive content on its site.

Platform removed a video exposing Jones’ harmful lies about the Sandy Hook massacre, but has yet to censor Jones himself – raising questions about its approach to fake newsYouTube’s algorithm has long promoted videos attacking gun violence victims, allowing the rightwing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to build a massive audience. But when a not-for-profit recently exposed Jones’ most offensive viral content in a compilation on YouTube, the site was much less supportive – instead deleting the footage from the platform, accusing it of “harassment and bullying”.Media Matters, a leftwing watchdog, last week posted a series of clips of Jones spreading falsehoods about the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, a newsworthy video of evidence after the victims’ families filed a defamation lawsuit against the Infowars host. But YouTube, for reasons it has yet to explain, removed the video three days after it was published, a move that once again benefitted Jones, who is now arguing that the defamation suit has defamed him. Continue reading...

A recent report suggests that many trackers and apps can be miles off the mark – particularly over long distances such as the marathonA report from Which? has claimed that some fitness trackers and apps are so inaccurate that they could measure as many as eight miles too short, or too far, over the London Marathon course. So how can you measure how far you have really run? Continue reading...

Mike Wendling’s history of the political group provides plenty of information, but doesn’t get to the root of its hatredThe best thing about Mike Wendling’s new book is the cover. It is extremely clever – a digitised, mashed-up, almost-but-not-quite swastika, which is both artistically striking and a reflection of the book’s central argument: that the “alt-right” represents a novel form of extreme rightwing thinking that is at once familiar and confusing.Most people first heard of the “alt-right” around mid-2016, as the internet-savvy rabble that got behind Trump hammered out frog memes, worshipped Milo Yiannopoulos and loitered around the Breitbart website. No one was entirely sure whether this was a new combination of internet libertarians and youthful nationalists or simply old-fashioned racism repackaged. According to Alt-Right: From 4chan to the White House, it’s a bit of both and very hard to pin down: “an incredibly loose set of ideologies held together by what they oppose: feminism, Islam, the Black Lives Matter movement, political correctness, a fuzzy idea they call ‘globalism’ and establishment politics of both left and right”. Unsurprisingly, then, writes Wendling, “it’s a movement with several factions which shrink or swell according to the political breeze and the task at hand”. Continue reading...

MoneySavingExpert founder says firm failed to stop false adverts luring victims into scamsMartin Lewis, the consumer advice and money-saving expert, is suing Facebook for defamation after it published dozens of fake adverts featuring his face and name.He is seeking exemplary damages in the high court, arguing that Facebook failed to prevent or swiftly remove false advertising that has both tarnished his reputation and lured unwitting victims into costly scams. Continue reading...

Tech company claims news readership has been increasing as Seven argues Google exploiting its lack of competitionGoogle sent more than 2bn visits to Australian news websites last year and is optimistic about the ability of quality journalism to survive the digital disruption, the company has told the competition regulator.

Leaving your scepticism at the door, this digital wellness startup can feel like a personal therapistFor all the things that the millennial generation struggle with (buying a house, cultivating a career, monogamy), self-care seems to be one area where they flourish. So much so that it is said to be a multibillion-dollar industry, and whatever your particular strand of self-care needs, Shine may be the app you have been waiting for. Along with recently landing $5m (£3.5m) of investment, the startup has picked up more than two million users in two years, with people tuning in for affirmations, meditations and salutations.Its primary focus is a chatbot that dishes out life advice in text messages and then offers guided audio therapies and blog content, depending on your needs. The app has been used in 189 countries, despite the fact that it is only formatted in English. As a millennial snowflake, I tried it for a week to see how I would fare: would it help me “thrive”, as it claimed? Continue reading...

Cheap, cheerful and Chinese: the new MG ZS is a very different carMG ZS

Carole Cadwalladr just wanted to insure her car. Six months later, she found a mass of personal details held by a firm she had never contacted that is run by Leave.EU’s biggest donor, Arron Banks. How did it get there?If a 29-year-old Peugeot 309 is the answer, it’s fair to wonder: what on earth is the question? In fact, I had no idea about either the question or the answer when I submitted a “subject access request” to Eldon Insurance Services in December last year. Or that my car – a vehicle that dates from the last millennium – could hold any sort of clue to anything. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, however, in pursuing the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it’s that however weird things look, they can always get weirder.Because I was simply seeking information, as I have for the last 16-plus months, about what the Leave campaigns did during the referendum – specifically, what they did with data. And the subject access request – a legal mechanism I’d learned about from Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a Swiss mathematician and data expert – was a shot in the dark. Continue reading...

Kane Gamble, 18, targeted CIA and FBI chiefs from Leicestershire housing estateA teenager who rocked the US intelligence community when he tricked his way into top officials’ accounts in a campaign of “cyberterrorism” has been locked up for two years.

Developers at the gaming giant reveal the thinking behind their new range of hi-tech interactive cardboard construction kits, and the laughs they had while inventing themThe launch of a new Nintendo product always generates excitement, because you never quite know what you are going to get. In 2004, Nintendo abandoned the wildly successful Game Boy portable consoles in favour of an ugly silver clamshell with two screens, the DS. Two years later, when other games companies were focused on improving their consoles’ graphical power, Nintendo popularised motion control with the comparatively underpowered Wii. Both announcements attracted scepticism and even mockery from players and market analysts alike, and both sold more than 100m each.The company’s experimental approach is not always successful, however. Though Nintendo’s most recent console, the Switch, has been a huge success so far, its predecessor, the Wii U, was one of the worst-selling games machines of all time. Nintendo Labo, out today in the US and on 27 April in the UK, is one of Nintendo’s weirdest ever ideas: a set of cardboard construction kits that, combined with the game software packaged with it, can be used to create interactive toys. Continue reading...

In April 2018, Google lost a landmark case against a businessman who used his ‘right to be forgotten’ to have links to a previous conviction taken down from the search engine. Jordan Erica Webber discusses the importance of this case and looks ahead at the coming era of General Data Protection RegulationSubscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at podcasts@theguardian.comWe’ve all done things we regret. Perhaps you’re one of those people who lies awake at night fretting about something hurtful you said 10 years ago. Or maybe you committed a crime in your youth, served your time, reformed and are dedicated to a new life as a law-abiding citizen. Continue reading...

After Cambridge Analytica revelations, 83% of Americans call for companies like Facebook to face harsher penalties for breachesAmericans want major technology companies to be regulated, with legal responsibility for the content they carry on their platforms and harsher punishment for breaches of data privacy, according to a nationally representative survey of 2,500 adults.In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the way that technology companies handle our personal data and moderate the content – including fake news, hate speech and terrorist propaganda – on their platforms has been thrown under the microscope. Continue reading...

Liberal Democrat leader claims recent scandals have shown web companies have gone from ‘heroes to villains very quickly’Vince Cable has compared Google, Amazon and Facebook to the US oil monopolies that exploited their market power more than a century ago – and called for them to be broken up.In a speech in London, the Liberal Democrat leader said a series of recent scandals, including revelations about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, meant the “tech titans” had “progressed from heroes to villains very quickly”. Continue reading...

Under the trending Twitter hashtag #GameStruck4, video game fans have spent the day listing the four titles that defined their love of gaming. Some are predictable, others not so muchIt’s a question video game fans often discuss: which games have defined your life? Now that question has become a trending Twitter hashtag, and some familiar classics are emerging as the most widely inspiring experiences.It all started yesterday when streaming service Filmstruck took to Twitter asking people to list their four life-changing movies under a hashtag, #FilmStruck4. In response, Twitch streamer Marcus “EpicNameBro” Sanders tweeted: “I don’t watch movies, so I can’t do the whole ‘What 4 films define you’ thing. But I can do games.” He listed four titles – Final Fantasy Tactics, Demon’s Souls, Cave Story and World of Warcraft – and added the hashtag #GameStruck4. Continue reading...

Five-year deal, thought worth $40m, gives Prime subscribers in UK access to grand slam eventAmazon has struck a deal said to be worth $40m (£30m) for the exclusive UK TV rights to the US Open tennis tournament, as the US firm looks to add to its 100 million Prime subscribers.Amazon, which is in talks with the Premier League to potentially stream matches from 2019 to 2022, has struck a five-year deal starting with this summer’s tournament at Flushing Meadows in New York.

Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple have accrued so much power, it has damaged American democracyFor those Democrats who dream of being president, it’s no longer safe to play it safe. We live in a dangerous, unstable time in a democracy that is far from healthy. Many of the forces corroding it precede Donald Trump, despite progressives who would tell you otherwise – this entire century, so far, has been a misery for many Americans.

Company moves responsibility for users from Ireland to the US where privacy laws are less strictFacebook has moved more than 1.5 billion users out of reach of European privacy law, despite a promise from Mark Zuckerberg to apply the “spirit” of the legislation globally.In a tweak to its terms and conditions, Facebook is shifting the responsibility for all users outside the US, Canada and the EU from its international HQ in Ireland to its main offices in California. It means that those users will now be on a site governed by US law rather than Irish law. Continue reading...

California base faces claims of unreported injuries as it struggles to roll out Model 3Tesla is facing an investigation by Californian safety regulators into reports of serious injuries at its factory in Fremont, California, where it is struggling to scale up production of its Model 3 mass-market electric car.The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration said on Wednesday it had begun an inspection on Tuesday, a day after the news website Reveal alleged that Tesla failed to disclose legally mandated reports on serious worker injuries, making its safety record appear better than it was. Continue reading...

An edible board game and a trickster goose were among offerings at London’s Now Play This experimental games showcaseNow Play This is an exhibition of experimental game design and a regular feature of the annual London games festival. For this year’s Now Play This, at Somerset House earlier this month, exhibition director Holly Gramazio and digital curator George Buckenham spread a wide range of games – digital, physical, edible, musical – across the site’s indoor and outdoor spaces. Here are some of our favourites.Lost Wage Rampage (Jane Friedhoff, Marlowe Dobbe, and Andy Wallace) Continue reading...

Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation is forcing big changes at tech’s biggest firms – even if the US isn’t likely to follow suitDespite the political theatre of Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional interrogations last week, Facebook’s business model isn’t at any real risk from regulators in the US. In Europe, however, the looming General Data Protection Regulation will give people better privacy protections and force companies including Facebook to make sweeping changes to the way they collect data and consent from users – with huge fines for those who don’t comply.“It’s changing the balance of power from the giant digital marketing companies to focus on the needs of individuals and democratic society,” said Jeffrey Chester, founder of the Center for Digital Democracy. “That’s an incredible breakthrough.” Continue reading...

Signatories including Microsoft, Arm and Trend Micro agree not to take part in cyber-attacksMore than 30 global technology firms have signed up to a “digital Geneva convention”, committing never to partake in cyber-attacks against individuals or businesses.The signatories to the “cybersecurity tech accord”, which include Facebook, Microsoft, Arm and Trend Micro, are largely from the US and western Europe, and do not include companies from the countries seen as most responsible for the recent escalation of digital hostilities, such as Russia, North Korea and Iran. Continue reading...

Sindri Thor Stefansson escaped through window before reportedly boarding same flight to Sweden as prime minister Katrín JakobsdóttirThe suspected mastermind behind the theft of 600 computers used to mine bitcoin in Iceland has escaped from prison and fled to Sweden on an aeroplane reportedly carrying the Icelandic prime minister.

Most popular browser finally stops unwanted sound and moving image automatically on both desktop and mobileGoogle’s Chrome browser now blocks auto-playing video with sound, taking a big step forward in removing one of the most irritating things about the modern web.

City officials send cease-and-desist letters to electric scooter startups, as local residents complain the unregulated schemes are a nuisanceSome people are tossing the scooters into trash cans and lakes. Others are tripping over them on the sidewalk, complaining of broken toes and dangerous collisions.The San Francisco war over electric scooters – which several startups have dumped on to sidewalks in a competitive rush to launch unregulated rental programs – dramatically escalated on Monday when the city attorney sent cease-and-desist letters, warning that authorities would “impound” the motorized devices to stop the “dangerous” and “unlawful operation”. Continue reading...

Attorney general says inquiry into practices of platforms for trading Bitcoin and other currencies is an effort to protect consumers

The perfect @ identity is a must-have accessory for big companies and brand-conscious celebrities – at any costEverything has a price, even the top Twitter handles, and if somebody does not want to sell then they may be forced to relinquish their account.“We have a marketplace which allows the sale of Twitter handles,” says Philly, a subversive marketer who founded ForumKorner, an online gaming forum. “Unlike some websites, however, we do not allow the sales of stolen accounts that some people phish, or hack, to obtain before reselling them.” Continue reading...

Firm struggles to hit targets for mass-market electric car after reeling from excessive automation and mounting pressureTesla has temporarily suspended its Model 3 assembly line as Elon Musk’s electric car firm struggles to deliver on targets.The company said the move was a planned production pause of up to five days. It is the second time since February that Tesla has halted its production line for the Model 3 at its Fremont, California plant. Continue reading...

Telecommunication companies told not to deal with Chinese manufacturer, while US imposes fresh sanctions for illegal sale of sensitive technologyBritain’s cyber-security watchdog has warned telecommunications companies against dealing with the Chinese manufacturer ZTE, citing “potential risks” to national security.The US commerce department has imposed a seven-year-ban on companies selling products and services to ZTE – which makes mobile phones and network equipment – alleging it failed to crack down on personnel who sold sensitive US technology to Iran and North Korea. ZTE halted trading of its shares in Hong Kong and Shenzhen on Tuesday following the announcement of the US ban, while Beijing warned it would “safeguard” its companies if necessary. Continue reading...

No indication that Australian information was compromised in ‘malicious’ August offensiveAustralia has joined the US and UK in publicly blaming Russia for a “malicious” global cyber-attack last year. The attack appeared to be an attempt at espionage, stealing intellectual property and laying the foundation for a future attack on infrastructure.Australia joined a coordinated announcement sheeting the blame home to Russian state-sponsored actors. The US and the UK held rare coordinated conference calls on Monday to reveal their findings on the malicious activity identified in August 2017. Continue reading...

Security officials issue alert directly blaming Kremlin for attack as US warns Moscow it is ‘pushing back hard’The cyberwar between the west and Russia has escalated after the UK and the US issued a joint alert accusing Moscow of mounting a “malicious” internet offensive that appeared to be aimed at espionage, stealing intellectual property and laying the foundation for an attack on infrastructure.Senior security officials in the US and UK held a rare joint conference call to directly blame the Kremlin for targeting government institutions, private sector organisations and infrastructure, and internet providers supporting these sectors. Continue reading...

Social network criticised over feature that targets users who are likely to switch to an advertiser’s rival’s productFacebook has been criticised for hiding an advertising product that claims to be able to predict users’ future behaviours and target messages at them in an attempt to alter those behaviours.The product, named “loyalty prediction” by Facebook, is part of a suite of capabilities enabled by a machine learning-powered tool called FBLearner Flow. That tool was publicly introduced in 2016, but the advertising techniques it enables were only revealed in a pitch document leaked to the Intercept. Continue reading...

A study conducted on child-directed Android apps from Google Play Store found over half may break US privacy law for under 13sThousands of child-directed Android apps and games are potentially violating US law on the collection and sharing of data on those under 13, research has revealed.A study conducted on 5,885 child-directed Android apps from the US Play Store, which are included in Google’s Designed for Families programme, found that well over half of the apps potentially violated the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (Coppa). Continue reading...

‘Humans are underrated,’ says CEO after company failed to hit weekly production target in first quarter of 2018Elon Musk has admitted that automation has been holding back Tesla’s Model 3 production and that humans, rather than machines, were the answer.

The latest treatise on technology taking over our lives suggests democratic systems are incompatible with the digital age, but the theory lacks coherenceThere is a clear, algorithmic formula for writing books about technology and society in 2018. Authors are generally required to be male, their documented personal journey must have been from that of techno-optimist to techno-sceptic to techno-panicker. There must be an urgent existential threat to either democracy or humanity lurking in the code base of Silicon Valley companies. The intractable crisis is not so profound, however, that it cannot be solved by a hail of partially thought-through remedies tacked on in the appendix.This recipe is producing a growing body of what might be termed “techlash” literature: the backlash against Silicon Valley and its seemingly unstoppable accretion of wealth, data and cultural and political capital. Where once we might have read expansive works of science fiction creating vivid and ambiguous alternative realities to help us navigate the future, now we have worrisome documentaries of threats so present they have often played out by the time the galley hits the review pile. In the last year several notable techlash titles have appeared, including Franklin Foer’s World Without Mind, Tim Wu’s The Attention Merchants and Jonathan Taplin’s Move Fast and Break Things. Continue reading...