Technology | The Guardian

David Kaye warns digital economy bill’s age controls and censorship of websites could break international human rights lawThe UN’s free speech advocate has warned that British government plans to enforce age verification and some censorship of pornographic websites risk breaking international human rights law and would contribute to a “significant tightening of control over the internet”.David Kaye, the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, called on ministers to conduct a comprehensive review of the digital economy bill, which he said facilitated state surveillance and lacked judicial oversight.

Windows Vista reaches the end of its life on 11 April. John wants to buy a new PC to replace his slow 10-year-old Acer Aspire.I have a 10-year-old Acer Aspire T660 desktop with 640MB of memory and Windows Vista Premium installed. The whole system is getting slower and slower, including the instruction to print documents and/or photos to my HP printer/copier/scanner.I use the PC for email, online banking, word processing and spreadsheets (Microsoft Office), Skype and some games. Broadband here to the house is poor.You must have an enormous amount of patience to run Windows Vista in 640MB or even 2GB of memory, and your best investment would have been to add as much memory as your PC could handle – in this case, 4GB. Sadly, it’s too late for that: it’s not worth spending money on a machine that is at the end of its useful life. On the plus side, almost anything will be a huge improvement. Continue reading...

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

Two employees say company didn’t offer adequate psychological support for a job requiring them to view ‘indescribable’ sexual assaults and murdersMicrosoft workers on the “online safety team” were forced to view photos and videos of “indescribable sexual assaults”, “horrible brutality”, murder and child abuse, resulting in severe post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a lawsuit.The complaint, filed on behalf of two employees and their families, outlined the “inhumane and disgusting content” the moderators viewed on a regular basis and alleged that the psychological impact has been so extreme that the men are “triggered” by simply seeing children and can no longer use computers without breaking down. Continue reading...

Internet Australia wants review brought forward owing to ‘continuing disquiet’ as government seeks to expand accessThe peak body for internet users in Australia has formally requested that a review of the attorney general’s data retention scheme be brought forward, calling the legislation a “monumental stuff-up” as the government seeks to expand access to include civil lawsuits.

The dossier includes lurid details from Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow and claims an ‘extensive conspiracy’ between his team and the Kremlin – is it true?

The Facebook Journalism Project comes after company accused of failing to tackle misinformation and at a time when newsrooms are cutting costsFacebook has unveiled measures to establish stronger ties between the social network and the news industry, allowing for collaboration on product development, new ways for publishers to make money, and training for newsrooms and readers.The announcement of the Facebook Journalism Project comes in the wake of heightened scrutiny of the social network’s role as a distributor of news, which saw the company accused of failing to tackle the spread of misinformation in the run-up to the US presidential election. At the same time, Facebook and Google are taking the lion’s share of online advertising revenue while newsrooms cut costs and make lay-offs. Continue reading...

Long-lost titles finally saw the light of day, and Mario ran into troubleRelated: The Last Guardian review – a joyous meditation on companionshipIn an industry fuelled by carefully managed waves of hype, developers can easily get carried away in the promotion of software that isn’t quite ready yet. Sometimes that means being loose-lipped about features that don’t make it into the final product, a crime for which the internet will punish you in the same way as if you’d been caught drowning puppies. Other times, games are talked about for so long that they start to seem less like forms of entertainment and more like musty urban myths. But, for some reason, the last few weeks have seen the emergence of a clutch of games that had themselves in video game lore as forever “coming soon”. Continue reading...

Beijing KFC is pioneering technology to try to predict and remember people’s fast food choices but there’s a trade off between convenience and privacyWalking into the KFC restaurant in Beijing’s financial district, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a fried chicken outlet like any other. It’s only if you head right to the back corner of the shop that you realise you’re actually in China’s first smart restaurant.KFC has teamed up with Baidu – the search engine company often referred to as “China’s Google” – to develop facial-recognition technology that can be used to predict customer’s orders. Continue reading...

Foreign secretary tells incoming US administration that Russia and Putin have been ‘up to all sorts of very dirty tricks’The Russian embassy in London has accused the Foreign Office of preparing to mount a witch-hunt against Moscow in the wake of allegations by the UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, that Russia has been “up to all sorts of tricks”.Johnson had claimed that the Kremlin was behind the hack of the Democratic campaign headquarters computer during the US presidential race, the first time that the UK has confirmed US intelligence reports linking the hacks to Russia. Continue reading...

European ePrivacy directive revision looks to protect communication confidentiality, block nonconsensual tracking and lessen cookie warningsMessaging services such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Gmail will face tough new rules on the tracking of users under a revision to the ePrivacy Directive proposed by the European Commission on Tuesday.

Targets allegedly included former prime ministers Matteo Renzi and Mario Monti and ECB chief Mario DraghiItalian police have arrested two people who allegedly tried to hack the communications of former prime minister Matteo Renzi and other senior Italian politicians and business executives as part of a cyber-espionage ring that sought sensitive financial and political information.The alleged hackers, named as Giulio Occhionero and Francesca Maria Occhionero, a brother and sister who were residents of London, also targeted the former prime minister Mario Monti; the head of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi; Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, a member of the conclave that elected Pope Francis, and top officials in Italy’s tax police. Continue reading...

Experiential games are finding new ways to tell interactive stories, but studio Humble Grove has given the genre a new autobiographical twistTurning a space into a home is a process akin to alchemy. It’s a combination of objects (old, new, inherited, broken, and sometimes of mysterious origin) and an investment of emotional energy. Space does not become a home overnight. It’s worked and kneaded, left to rise. It is gradual, and then it is a sudden realisation that becomes magically real: this house is now mine.Hana Lee and Tom Davison, the duo behind independent studio Humble Grove, explore this cathexis of placemaking in their forthcoming game, 29, set in an isometric facsimile of the flat they lived in as students. Via soft, desaturated pastels, they’ve captured the whole feel of the place, from a clock ticking on the wall, to a cat purring, radiators popping and pipes groaning in the walls. But there are also magical elements mixed in with the kitchen sink realism. A small fern creeps up from the floor where you walk, and it dies just as quickly. Stars wink in and out of existence just behind you. It’s a familiar place – but uncertain. There are suitcases packed in the bedroom, but nowhere to go. Continue reading...

Chrome, Safari, Opera and extensions such as LastPass can be tricked into leaking private information using hidden text boxes, developer findsYour browser or password manager’s autofill might be inadvertently giving away your information to unscrupulous phishers using hidden text boxes on sites.

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

Two women recently reported their abuse on Twitter. The difference in how the company responded raises questions about the way it protects its usersOver the weekend “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli was suspended from Twitter following his interactions with Teen Vogue journalist Lauren Duca. Today, the company briefly suspended Alexandra Brodsky, a fellow at the National Women’s Law Center, after she retweeted screengrabs of antisemitic abuse she received. Her abusers’ accounts were not suspended.Related: Martin Shkreli suspended from Twitter for alleged harassment of Lauren Duca Continue reading...

Clinton email hack | Girl with the Dragon Tattoo | Pope and breastfeeding | Self-publishing | Singular pluralsUS security services accuse Russia of interfering in the US election (Trump meets with intelligence leaders after calling Russia case ‘witch-hunt’, 6 January), but in view of FBI director James Comey’s bombshell only 11 days before the election – announcing that the FBI had discovered additional emails and was reviewing them to see whether they were related to its investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information – are we to assume he is also a Russian agent?

Government focus on false reporting comes amid claims that Russia is trying to influence German election later this yearGerman government officials have said they are investigating an unprecedented proliferation of fake news items amid reports of Russian efforts to influence the country’s election later this year.The BfV domestic intelligence agency confirmed that a cyber-attack last December against the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) used the same “attack infrastructure” as a 2015 hack of the German parliament attributed to Russian hacking group APT28. Continue reading...

PM says protection down to individual parties, while senior Whitehall source claims UK does not take threat seriouslyTheresa May has been urged to take stronger action against the threat of foreign powers influencing UK elections through hacking, following accusations of Russian interference in the US presidential contest. Angus Robertson, the SNP Westminster leader, questioned whether the government was doing enough to protect the UK’s democratic system against online threats, following claims that Russia orchestrated an attack against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party during the US election.May has said that it was a matter for individual political parties to protect themselves against cyber-attacks. It is understood that the major parties have their own safeguards in place, but government agencies have not approached them with offers of extra help in light of the US hacking scandal.

A leading police officer wants young offenders to be issued with tags that block the internet. All we need to do is change the law (and hide all the cables)

Vladimir Putin’s office says intelligence agencies’ accusations are unfounded and amount to a political witch-huntThe Kremlin has hit back at a US intelligence report blaming Russia for interference in the presidential election, describing the claims as part of a political witch-hunt.“These are baseless allegations substantiated with nothing, done on a rather amateurish, emotional level,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists on Monday. “We still don’t know what data is really being used by those who present such unfounded accusations.” Continue reading...

Streep delivers an emotional speech while La La Land breaks records; Standing Rock inspires other protests; 16 arrested in Kim Kardashian West robberyLa La Land continued its seemingly unstoppable Oscars charge by winning a record-breaking seven awards at the ceremony in Los Angeles Sunday. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone both took home awards for acting and Damien Chazelle won best director for the film. Moonlight took home best picture drama. One of the night’s biggest moments, though, saw Meryl Streep deliver a searing and emotional speech, in which she criticized Donald Trump for imitating a reporter with disabilities and called on the press to hold power to account. “Disrespect invites disrespect, violence invites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose,” she said. Trump responded on Twitter, calling Streep a “Hillary flunky” and “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood”, before denying he mocked the reporter. Continue reading...

Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicked it all off in 2007, but since then the iPhone has seen size, shape, capability and feature changes, from apps, Siri, retina screens, waterproofing and headphone socket removal. Here’s how the iPhone has evolved over the last 10 years. Continue reading...

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

President-elect’s incoming White House chief of staff says Trump ‘accepts the findings’ of a report on Russian interference in the electionDonald Trump no longer denies that Russia orchestrated a cyber-attack against Hillary Clinton’s campaign and her party, according to his top advisers, who also blamed Democrats for the breach and falsely characterized the testimony of an intelligence chief to Congress.Related: Barack Obama says Donald Trump may have 'enough craziness' to be president Continue reading...

If you’re taking your photography more seriously, and would like to upgrade from camera or phone, here are six top models with connectivitywith a M.Zuiko Digital 14‑42mm 1:3.5‑5.6 II R lens; 16MP; 503g; £549 Continue reading...

The influential tech thinker has charted the history of the attention industry: enterprises that harvest our attention to sell to advertisers. The internet, he argues, is the latest communications tool to have fallen under its spellTim Wu is a law professor at Columbia University. His specialities include competition, copyright and telecommunications law. So far, so conventional. But Wu is an unconventional academic. For one thing, he ran for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governorship of New York (and won 40% of the popular vote, though not the primary election). For another, he served for a time in the office of New York’s attorney general, specialising in issues involving technology, consumer protection and ensuring fair competition among online companies. “If I have a life mission,” he said once, “it is to fight bullies. I like standing up for the little guy and I think that’s what the state attorney general’s office does.”As I said, no ordinary academic. But it gets better. Wu is also the guy who coined the phrase “net neutrality”, which has turned out to be a key concept in debates about regulation of the internet. He was for a time a senior adviser to the Federal Trade Commission, America’s main consumer protection agency. And somehow, in the middle of all this activity, he writes books that make a big impact. Continue reading...

Donald Trump tweets defiance as New York Times sources say Britain ‘among first’ to raise alarm over hacking of Democratic National Committee

With Barack Obama’s presidency coming to a close, Ewen MacAskill, the Guardian’s defence and intelligence correspondent, helps us explore what mass surveillance in America might look like under Donald TrumpIn this week’s episode of Chips with Everything, we discuss the Patriot Act, the USA Freedom Act and Edward Snowden’s NSA files leak. Plus: we look at how president-elect Donald Trump’s outlook on mass surveillance might compare and contrast to that of President Barack Obama’s. Continue reading...

Resident Evil haunts the deep south, Halo Wars makes a twisted return – and Nintendo launches a its keenly awaited new console … the best of games to come

Nintendo’s new portable platform seeks to bridge home life and travel – but the maverick company will need industry rivals to jump on board to win success

A voyage through the offbeat products on show at CES 2017, the annual electronics show, foreshadows a weird and wild futureA pet collar that communicates whether a dog is happy or sad. A robot suitcase. A pair of jeans that gives directions.These are all real things that real people can supposedly really purchase one day,on show at this year’s CES, the annual electronics show in Las Vegas. Continue reading...

Digital interactivity has top billing at the Las Vegas event. But how many people really want a toothbrush that films the inside of their mouth as they clean?If this year’s CES continues to predict future tech trends, then we can soon expect to have emotional relationships with our cars, virtual reality devices so realistic you need a sick bag, and products so pricey most people won’t be able to afford them.One of the main themes this year at the premier electronics convention, which is held annually in Vegas, is that in the future everything will have a relationship with everything. Continue reading...

Unveiled at CES 2017, Tappy ‘smart rings’ connect to wearer’s bank account and can be used to make purchases through contactless pay terminals in storesIn the future, rings could become much more than statements of commitment or fashion. According to a Hong Kong-based tech company, wedding rings will continue to be symbols of everlasting love – but also a method of payment.The Tappy “smart ring”, unveiled this week at CES, the annual electronics show in Las Vegas, will enable its wearer to pay for items in any stores using contactless payment terminals, simply by placing their ring finger close to a payment machine. Continue reading...

Campbell Brown will lead efforts to improve partnerships with news organizations that depend on social media company’s content distributionFacebook has hired former CNN anchor Campbell Brown to help build better relations with news organizations in the wake of the fake news scandal.The social media giant already has a team of staff to liaise with media within the markets it operates but Brown – an Emmy-winning TV veteran who also worked at NBC – at will lead this team, reporting into Nick Grudin, vice-president of media partnerships. Continue reading...

UN aid target | Jazz and football | Passport applications | Consumer debt | Russian hacking | An audientYou fail to mention (UK among six countries to hit 0.7% UN aid spending target, 5 January) that the United Arab Emirates has met the UN commitment of spending 0.7% of gross national income since 2013. The most recent OECD report, quoted in your article, shows that the UAE contributed 1.09% of GNI towards overseas aid in 2015, making it second only to Sweden in terms of aid spending as a proportion of GNI. The UAE shares the UK’s commitment to overseas aid.

President-elect still does not publicly support conclusion of Russia interference in US election but calls the meeting ‘constructive’Donald Trump struck a conciliatory tone with US intelligence officials after meeting with their leadership, but did not publicly support their conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential contest.In a statement issued ahead of the release of a declassified version of the intelligence assessment, Trump said he had “tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community”, describing his meeting with James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, and other senior intelligence officials, as “constructive”. Continue reading...

Wireless power is still in its infancy, but CES 2017 has marked a significant milestone for the technologyOver the past few years, wires have been cut for everything from internet connections to earphones – but still, almost every device needs to be plugged in at least once a day to charge. That may be about to change.

In this slim volume by Klaus Schwab, founder of the organisation behind Davos, corporate-speak disguises a harsh realityMuch mirth ensued recently when Jeremy Corbyn’s crack publicity team issued a photograph of the dear leader with a compressed quote from his speech: “We now face the task of creating a New Britain from the fourth industrial revolution – powered by the internet of things and big data to develop cyber physical systems and smart factories.” Wait, what?One may be forgiven for suspecting that Corbyn had not a clue what he was uttering, but the “fourth industrial revolution” is an actual thing, at least according to some analysts. The first was steam-powered; the second electrical; the third the birth of the computer age; and the fourth – which some argue is just a continuation of the third – is the era of wearable gadgets, 3D printing, gene editing, machine intelligence and networked devices such as street lights full of electronic sensors, or smart fridges that order eggs when you’ve run out. The dream of networking ordinary objects with cheap processors and wireless communication comes under the rubric of “the internet of things”, which is (or ought to be) short for “the internet of things that should not be connected to the internet”. Inevitably, some bored teen will hack your smart fridge to flood your kitchen while you’re away; the more urban infrastructure is computerised, the more vulnerable it will be to cyber-attack. The “smart city” is the hackable city. Continue reading...

Company won’t say why video showing a man bound, gagged and cut with a knife amid shouts of ‘fuck Donald Trump’ wasn’t taken down for 30 minutes

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

A small silicone gadget attached to the chest gives its wearer the ability to sense which direction they face. Could it prompt a ‘cyborg’ evolution in human ability?Liviu Babitz opens his collar to reveal a small silicone gadget, the size of a matchbox, attached to his chest with two titanium bars that sit just under the skin. Most resembling a compact bike light, the North Sense that Babitz has attached is an artificial sense organ that delivers a short vibration every time the user faces North. Babitz and Scott Cohen, co-founder at Cyborg Nest, the company that created North Sense, are currently the only two using the product, which will soon be shipped out to clients who have pre-ordered it over the last few months.“Around us is an entire universe we don’t perceive,” Cohen explains. “As we walk down the street there’s radiation, X-rays, infrared and ultraviolet, as well as the electromagnetic field of the planet. So we want to create new senses to become aware of our environment.” Although many people are experimenting with modifying their bodies using technology for medical or experimental purposes, Cyborg Nest are more interested in creating and extending human senses. Two of their other co-founders, Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas, have both already installed superhuman senses – Harbisson, who is colourblind, has an ‘eyeborg’ that allows him to “hear” the light spectrum (including infrared and ultraviolet), while Ribas has a sensor in her elbow that vibrates when an earthquake occurs anywhere in the world. Continue reading...

App launched in Punjab alerts emergency response police team to their location as authorities seek to improve women’s safetyA smartphone application enabling women to report incidents of harassment to police in Pakistan’s Punjab province went live this week as authorities step up efforts to promote women’s safety in one of the worst provinces for crimes against them.

Cyber attacks, warns Gibney, are not just ‘hacking’ but a complete offensive capability – and a new form of geopolitical dysfunctionThe title of Alex Gibney’s new documentary about cyberwar has something apocalyptic about it: a digital version of the Book of Revelations, perhaps. It’s actually a technical term relating to malware developed in the last decade by the US and Israeli security services. Analysts nicknamed it “Stuxnet”, though the intelligence officers themselves gave their baby the creepy codename “Olympic Games”. Continue reading...

As a London taxi driver on the front line of the impact of driverless cars, I found Jackie Ashley’s article (Driverless cars should be a major political issue, 2 January) long overdue. Many of the questions she raises are worrying.The idea that faceless corporations such as Uber are developing this technology to give it away for the greater good of mankind and the environment is questionable. Once these non-national monopolies take control, they will have the power to set the price for the job, and my bet is it will not be as cheap as Jackie predicts. Just check out the companies and individuals who have bought shares in these tech platforms, there’s hardly an idealist among them. Continue reading...

US intelligence chief, James Clapper, tells Congress that ‘Russia has clearly assumed an even more aggressive cyber posture’. Clapper made the comments on Thursday during a public defense of his analyst’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the US presidential election. Committee chairman John McCain preceded by stating, ‘every American should be concerned by Russia’s attack on our nation’ during his opening statement

Nobody reads the small print when they sign up to social media – so no one knows what they’re giving away. Martin Belam has found out for youThe Children’s commissioner has warned that children as young as eight are signing up to social media terms and conditions without reading or understanding the agreements they are entering.Let’s be honest, that probably goes for a lot of adults too – and most of these lengthy legal documents that we never bother to read include some rather unexpected clauses. Here are some of the more wide-reaching and most bizarre. Continue reading...

Insurance firm Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance is making 34 employees redundant and replacing them with IBM’s Watson Explorer AIA future in which human workers are replaced by machines is about to become a reality at an insurance firm in Japan, where more than 30 employees are being laid off and replaced with an artificial intelligence system that can calculate payouts to policyholders.Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance believes it will increase productivity by 30% and see a return on its investment in less than two years. The firm said it would save about 140m yen (£1m) a year after the 200m yen (£1.4m) AI system is installed this month. Maintaining it will cost about 15m yen (£100k) a year. Continue reading...