Crafty and creative hacks, apps and bits of kit to use with your Amazon Echo and its avatarSmart speakers are taking over British homes. A recent YouGov survey found the number had doubled in three months, with around 10% of Brits owning one – and that 75% of these were Amazon Echo devices. The overwhelming majority are used for basic tasks like playing music and answering general knowledge questions – but with the right tips, tricks, skills and accessories you can get the Echo’s digital assistant Alexa to do just about anything… Continue reading...

The service has millions of satisfied customers – but when it goes wrong holidays are ruinedI got £1,500 compensation when I threatened legal action after a villa disasterWhen Damian White and family finally arrived at the three-bed villa in Portimão, Portugal, they booked through Airbnb – after spending hours searching for it with incomplete address details – they didn’t realise this was just the start of their holiday from hell. Continue reading...

Sarah Jeong is the latest public figure to pay the price for postings on Twitter that are resurfaced years laterLess than 24 hours after it was announced that Sarah Jeong was to join the editorial board of the New York Times, the reporter was embroiled a row over the nature of racism. Old tweets in which Jeong, a reporter for the tech website the Verge who is of Korean heritage, criticized and made jokes about white people were resurfaced on a rightwing blog run by Jim Hoft.

Revelation comes after US company posts record $2.5bn profit in most recent quarterAmazon has revealed that its UK corporation tax bill almost halved to £4.5m last year, days after the US company posted a record profit of $2.5bn (£1.9bn) in its most recent quarter.

The power of global corporations and the rise of the right are scrutinised in a novel that explores current anxieties with a cold and horrified eyeAs the UK trembles endlessly on the long drawn-out brink of Brexit, Sam Byers imagines what might come after. His furiously smart near-future satire is set partly in the fictional everytown of Edmundsbury, and partly in the digital world, from the shallows of Twitter to the murky depths of multinational tech companies. It’s both a rollicking farce of political exhaustion and social collapse, and a subtle investigation into the slippery, ever-evolving relationship between words and deeds.Sleepy Edmundsbury is under pressure from outside forces: global tech giant Green is quietly insinuating itself into the town’s infrastructure, while building company Downton is strong-arming the last remaining residents out of the crumbling Larchwood housing estate with an eye on redevelopment. And then a van draws up in the market square, and masked men calling themselves “the Griefers” stage a happening that appears to hold residents to digital ransom, displaying tantalising screenshots with the slogan “What don’t you want to share?” As a demonstration that “the cosy little box we’ve all fashioned to pour our ids into isn’t as secure as we thought”, they ask that one person from the town step forward to offer up their web history, or victims will be exposed at random. Continue reading...

Phones are increasingly being used for anything but their original purpose – having a chat with a friendStatistics illustrating our addiction to our smartphones come out quite frequently and receive a lot of attention for information so unsurprising; it will come as no shock to anyone that the average Briton checks her phone every 12 minutes. Indeed, I’d like to pick a fight with the blandness of the questions asked in Ofcom’s latest telecommunications report. I wish they’d included: “Have you ever picked up your phone to Google where your phone is?” Or: “Have you ever smashed or otherwise been suddenly deprived of your phone, and wanted to stand in the street howling like a wolf?”The report belongs in the news category “things we already knew, but are worried about, so will continue to pick at like a scab”. Yet there is one new element to our behaviour: we’ve stopped using telephones for talking to one another. The number of calls made dropped for the first time in 2017. It’s not a huge drop – 1.7% – and the figure may be misleading since calls made on WhatsApp and Facebook weren’t counted. Three-quarters of people still believe that voice calls are important. But that’s not as many – 92% – as the number who value their phones mainly for internet access. Continue reading...

Computing and mobile phone giant beats Amazon to landmark after its shares hit $207.05Apple became the world’s first trillion-dollar public company on Thursday, as a rise in its share price pushed it past the landmark valuation.The iMac to iPhone company, co-founded to sell personal computers by the late Steve Jobs in 1976, reached the historic milestone as its shares hit $207.05, the day after it posted strong financial results. Apple’s share price has grown fourfold since Tim Cook replaced Jobs as chief executive in 2011. Continue reading...

As Apple becomes the first company to break $1tn market cap barrier its progress from garage-based startup to the all-conquering global company it is today can be charted in six products. Here are the computers, music players, smartphones and tablets that made Apple Continue reading...

Over 42 years, the company has created an ‘app economy’ and placed itself at the centre of itFew companies change the world, and fewer still do it more than once. Apple is one of them, with a string of products over its 42-year history that have revolutionised computing, upended industries and ultimately reshaped society.Related: Apple becomes world's first trillion dollar company Continue reading...

Hackers access usernames, passwords and email addresses in breach of one of world’s biggest websitesReddit has suffered a data breach compromising usernames, passwords and email addresses of groups of users, the site has confirmed.While the size of the breach has yet to be clarified, Reddit said two data sets had been accessed by hackers, including one from 2007 containing account details and all public and private posts between 2005 and May 2007. Continue reading...

AB wants a new laptop for his studies and has narrowed the choice to two Lenovo ThinkPads. Which would suit him best?I enter grad school this fall, and plan to upgrade my 2015 MacBook Air. After a lot of research, I’ve narrowed it down to the ThinkPad T480 and the sixth-generation ThinkPad X1 Carbon. With modifications and warranties, both fall within my €1,800 (£1,599) budget, with the T480 being marginally cheaper. However, being a student, portability is a major priority. The X1 is certainly lighter at about 1.2kg, but how much of a difference will this make in practical terms?Keyboard quality is another prerequisite, with reviews proving inconclusive. Which device would be a better bet?These two 14in laptops should not be comparable, because they are based on completely different design philosophies. It’s a testament to the progress made in reducing the size and weight of traditional laptops that they are now surprisingly close.

Xbox One, PC, PS4; Hello Games

Study reveals dramatic rise in addiction to technology, as average Briton checks a mobile phone every 12 minutesThe average Briton now checks a mobile phone every 12 minutes and is online for 24 hours a week, finds an Ofcom study revealing the extent to which people now rely on the internet.Ofcom also found that, for the first time, the time spent making phone calls from mobile phones fell, as users instead used messaging services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Continue reading...

iPhone manufacturer drops to third after Chinese company splits Samsung and Apple for first time in seven yearsHuawei overtook Apple to become the world’s second-largest smartphone seller behind Samsung in the second quarter, the first time in seven years that any contender has managed to split the top two.Multiple market analysts said that Huawei’s rise came as the slowdown in China, the world’s largest market for smartphones, eased, with growing market share in Europe. Huawei failed in its recent bid to launch in the US after government action against companies deemed a security threat. Continue reading...

Firms says aim is to give users more control over the time they spend on their platformsFacebook and Instagram are to introduce tools to help users manage their time on the social networks, Facebook has announced.The tools will let people set themselves time limits for using the apps, mute notifications temporarily and view a dashboard showing their use. Continue reading...

We are too smart to be manipulated by algorithms, argues a mathematican. But the maths misses the crisis we are facing“Space is big,” wrote Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. “You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”Adams’s assertion comes repeatedly to mind when reading David Sumpter’s Outnumbered, which attempts to reckon with the sheer scale of the systems that manage much of our digital lives. It’s easy, when faced with the numbers at hand, to succumb to a kind of vertigo: Facebook has two billion users, who make tens of millions of posts every hour. From this data, along with millions more photos, likes and relationships, Facebook builds models of all of us that extend in hundreds of dimensions – the puny human mind, at best, is capable of visualising four. Continue reading...

Firm sued Martin Tripp after Elon Musk claimed the ex-technician had attacked Tesla computer systemsThe Tesla “whistleblower” who was accused of sabotage has filed a counterclaim against Tesla and Elon Musk, arguing that his former employer defamed him when it told media outlets that he had threatened a mass shooting.Martin Tripp, a former technician at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada, was sued by the electric car company on 20 June, just days after Musk had sent a company email stating that an employee had engaged in “quite extensive and damaging sabotage” against the company’s computer systems. Continue reading...

Tech giant reported a $11.5bn profit, up 32% from the same period last year, and sales increased 17% to $53.3bn, a new recordApple Inc reported better than expected sales figures for the third quarter, pushing shares of the iPhone giant higher and easing the value of the company up from $935bn toward the symbolic $1tn threshold.“Growth was strong all around the world,” Apple finance chief Luca Maestri said. Continue reading...

Company reports ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’ as it deletes 32 political pages and accountsFacebook has detected “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” before the United States midterm elections that could be linked to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian-based group with ties to the Kremlin.On Tuesday, the social network removed 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram that were pushing American political stances and organising events, including a protest against a Unite the Right rally due to take place in Washington next week. Continue reading...

Online crime is borderless, and so must be our response. We cannot fight back if we are isolated and fragmentedThe safety of our online lives has become increasingly important. Whether it be interference in elections, attacks by hostile forces, or online fraud, the security of the web feels fragile. Cybersecurity has reached a crossroads and we need to decide where it goes next. The outcome will touch each of us – will we pay more and yet still be less safe? Will we face higher insurance premiums and bank charges to cover the rising number of cyber-incidents? We stand in the middle of a storm – not just a geopolitical one, but a cyberpolitical one. It feels as if no one trusts anyone any more, and suspicion and confusion reign across our delicate cyberworld. Which way do we turn?As in many classic tales, there are two roads ahead. In one direction lies “Balkanisation”: the fragmentation and isolation of an industry. Balkanisation is a natural response to fear and mistrust; when we’re scared we go home and lock the doors. But for cybersecurity, Balkanisation means growing political intervention and a breakdown of international projects and cooperation. This could leave every country effectively facing global cyberthreats on its own. For consumers it could mean higher costs as businesses seek to recoup money lost to cybercrime, as well as reduced protection because competition and choice are restricted. Continue reading...

Finance sector is second, with criminal attacks and human error playing significant roles in both sectors

As the multimillion-dollar industry’s worth and growth have accelerated, regulators have struggled to clamp down on illegal gamblingIn 2017, the global eSports economy was estimated to stand at around $696m, attracting an audience of over 385 million people, according to Newzoo. But the industry’s formidable growth has attracted more than just hordes of professional gamers, avid viewers and brands offering lucrative sponsorship deals.Organised criminals and low-level chancers have seen an opportunity to influence match outcomes and profit from them in betting markets. As the industry has grown, a string of match-fixing scandals have unfolded, embroiling some of the most prestigious competitive gaming tournaments. Continue reading...

The sprawling internet theory, beloved by Trump supporters, has ensnared everyone from Tom Hanks to Hillary Clinton

Damian Hinds to address parents’ concerns about screen time in first major speech on social mobilityMore than a quarter of children starting primary school are unable to communicate in full sentences as concerns grow about the amount of time they are spending in front of screens, the education secretary will say in his first major speech on social mobility.Damian Hinds is expected to say on Tuesday that he wants to harness technology so parents can do more to help their children’s early language development. Continue reading...

Advertising watchdog launches formal investigation over description of productThe Advertising Standards Authority has launched a formal investigation into marketing for a Swedish app that claims to be an effective method of contraception, after reports that women have become pregnant while using it.

After hi-tech won Trump the presidency, Jessica Alter wanted to put the Democrats on a stronger footing. She shares what she has learnedJessica Alter is the co-founder of Tech for Campaigns, a 7,000-strong volunteer organisation that enables Silicon Valley employees to use their digital skills to help Democratic election candidates. “The aim is to become a permanent digital arm for progressive and centrist campaigns, and give access to campaigns at any level to the people, technology and resources they need,” she says.What led you to start Tech for Campaigns. Was it the aftermath of the 2016 election?

Research exposes the male-dominated, pro-western worldview of the online encyclopediaOver the last year, scientist Jess Wade has taken to the keyboard to rectify gender bias on Wikipedia. She has written more than 270 entries about forgotten but influential women in science – such as Susan Goldberg, the first female editor of National Geographic. Research shows just 16% of Wikipedia editors are female and only 17% of entries dedicated to notable people are for women. Continue reading...

They already perform remotely controlled operations – now robots look set to be the physicians of the futureLike all everyday miracles of technology, the longer you watch a robot perform surgery on a human being, the more it begins to look like an inevitable natural wonder.Earlier this month I was in an operating theatre at University College Hospital in central London watching a 59-year-old man from Potters Bar having his cancerous prostate gland removed by the four dexterous metal arms of an American-made machine, in what is likely a glimpse of the future of most surgical procedures. Continue reading...

This mighty new coupé is a real head-turner, has a lavish interior and a real firecracker of an engine… just don’t lose the keyLexus LC 500

Select committee criticises Facebook response and urges tighter internet regulationThe DCMS select committee’s far-reaching interim report on its 18-month investigation into fake news and the use of data and “dark ads” in elections offers a wide-ranging, informed and sustained critique that carries with it the full weight of parliament. The verdict is withering: Facebook failed. It “obfuscated”, refused to investigate how its platform was abused by the Russian government until forced by pressure from Senate committees and, in the most damning section, it aided and abetted the incitement of racial hatred in Burma, noting that even the company’s chief technical officer, Mike Schroepfer, called this “awful”. Continue reading...

An iPhone X is £999, a Samsung S9 £739, but you can find good mobiles that cost a lot lessHow do you find the best-value smartphone deal? If you are anything like me, you can be easily overwhelmed by the range of deals on offer – Carphone Warehouse alone lists 77 different pay-monthly plans. But if your old mobile phone has died, or you just dropped it one too many times, don’t be seduced into signing a £30-a-month, two-year contract for a £500-plus smartphone because, as my recent experience shows, there is just no need to do so.All you need to do is spend a little more than £100 on the latest Chinese-made Huawei (recently rebranded Honor) handset, and grab a £7.50-a-month sim-only deal from Tesco Mobile, and all but the most demanding of mobile users will not be able to spot the difference – and save hundreds of pounds. Continue reading...

Electric car firm has hit trouble, and Musk – who has a knack of making enemies – must explain to investors what is going onThe last time Elon Musk addressed the analysts who follow Tesla, his electric car company, he was – to say the least – rude. “Boring, boneheaded questions are not cool,” he told the analysts. “These questions are so dry. They’re killing me,” Musk complained.Predictably, the outburst led to a selloff for Tesla’s shares – one the company can ill afford. On Wednesday he gets another chance, when Musk must once more explain to investors what is going on at Tesla. Continue reading...

Parliamentary inquiry to demand urgent action to combat ‘relentless targeting of hyper-partisan views’The Cambridge Analytica Files: read the Observer’s full investigationDemocracy is at risk unless the government and regulators take urgent action to combat a growing crisis of data manipulation, disinformation and so-called fake news, a parliamentary committee is expected to say.In damning conclusions to a report leaked by former Vote Leave campaign strategist Dominic Cummings before its official publication on Sunday, the digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) committee adds to the growing calls for tougher government regulation of social media companies. It accuses them of profiting from misleading material and raises concerns about Russian involvement in British politics. Continue reading...

Report into fake news could put legal burden on firms such as Twitter and Facebook to remove harmful and illegal contentFacebook, Twitter and Google could face their worst regulation nightmares if the recommendations of parliament’s report into fake news, based on a leaked version published on Friday by the former campaign strategist for Vote Leave, come to pass.The report is expected to call for the creation of a new legal framework for regulating technology firms, tightening their liabilities and imposing a requirement for them to take down “harmful and illegal content”. It will argue for the end of “safe harbour” provisions, whereby platforms are not liable for content hosted by them until it is flagged to them as problematic. Continue reading...

Social media company says fall is linked to action to delete fake accounts and admits it may well continueTwitter’s stock plunged 20.5% by the time the markets closed Friday – the second-biggest loss for Twitter’s stock since the company went public in 2013.Almost $5bn (£3.8bn) has been wiped off the market value of Twitter after the social media service reported a drop of 1 million users following its action to delete fake and offensive accounts. Continue reading...

InfoWars owner found to have violated social network’s community standardsAlex Jones, the American conspiracy theorist who runs the InfoWars website, has been suspended from Facebook for bullying and hate speech.The suspension will last for 30 days, and affects only Jones’s personal account on the social network, not the main InfoWars account. His profile will continue to be published, but he will not be not be able to post content until the suspension elapses. Continue reading...

The movie industry has seen tech advances since its inception. But do audiences really want to have a say in a film’s plot?Subscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, AudioBoom,Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at chipspodcast@theguardian.com.Charlie Chaplin, known for the slapstick humour of his films, was part of a generation of actors who managed to continue working through the transition from the era of silent film to one filled with dialogue and sound. Continue reading...

Despite some critics’ glee at the latest earnings report, the planet’s most powerful business remains unstoppableImagine running a business that generated $13.2bn in revenue in one quarter – a 42% increase over the same quarter a year before. And imagine that it reported a 31% jump in profits over the same quarter last year.Now watch as many allegedly smart people dump your stock because they think the future of your company looks bleak. We live in stupid times. Only dupes pay attention to one-day moves in any stock, or even whole sectors. I can guarantee you no one inside Facebook is panicking. No one on its board of directors is worried or is demanding a shift in course or Mark Zuckerberg’s resignation. If anything, institutional investors are getting ready to buy Facebook at a bargain.

Officials say vulnerability in system used to pay for email, music and games was exploited to swipe nearly a quarter million dollars

Conservatives believe they’ve found proof of anti-rightwing bias in social media. Twitter says they haven’t. An explainer

Shares climb after quarterly profits that were twice what analysts expected, as revenue grows 39% to $53bnAmazon posted a record profit of $2.5bn in the second quarter of 2018, thanks to strong performance by the retail giant’s non-retail divisions – advertising and cloud-computing, the company announced Thursday,The favorable profit results, which were double analyst expectations, buoyed tech investors a day after weak growth saw Facebook’s market value plunged by $119bn, the single greatest one-day loss in US history. Continue reading...

Test of Rekognition software links members of Congress to arrest photos and finds people of color misidentified disproportionatelyAmazon’s facial recognition technology falsely identified 28 members of Congress as people who have been arrested for crimes, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).The ACLU of Northern California’s test of Amazon’s controversial Rekognition software also found that people of color were disproportionately misidentified in a mugshot database, raising new concerns about racial bias and the potential for abuse by law enforcement. Continue reading...

The company lost $118bn in market value after news of slowed growth and rising costs. But is it more than a blip?

Shares crash as social network admits user growth fell after Cambridge Analytica breachMore than $119bn (£90.8bn) has been wiped off Facebook’s market value, which includes a $17bn hit to the fortune of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, after the company told investors that user growth had slowed in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.Facebook’s shares plunged 19% on Thursday in New York, a day after the Silicon Valley company revealed that 3 million users in Europe had abandoned the social network since the Observer revealed the Cambridge Analytica breach of 87m Facebook profiles and the introduction of strict European Union data protection legislation. Continue reading...

Maggie would like some affordable loudspeakers to work with her retro amp, CD player and TVI have a Rotel RA-810A amplifier – recently serviced and in good working order – and a Yamaha CDX-730 CD player but no speakers. They were originally linked to some Tannoys but I didn’t bring them with me from South Africa.I want to be able to play my CDs and DVDs with the speakers linked up to the TV. I’m not a purist and don’t want to pay top price. If you could point me towards a few alternatives, I can then make the decision what to pay. MaggieThe Rotel RA-810A is a classic stereo amplifier from the late 1980s. I remember it as being well made and having a decent sound. However, it does have a couple of drawbacks. Continue reading...

Company warns of slowing revenue growth as it invests in security – but it still makes $13.2bnFacebook stock price tumbled more than 20% in after-hours trading, after the company’s chief financial officer said revenue growth would “continue to decelerate in the second half of 2018” as the company increased its investment in security and privacy.In its earnings report for the second quarter of 2018, Facebook just missed Wall Street’s estimates on revenues and user growth, though it still made $13.2bn – a 42% year-on-year increase. Continue reading...

Tech firms are known for their lavish meals, but city says it damages local businessesFree food has long been a perk of Silicon Valley. On the campuses of Facebook, LinkedIn and Google, employees have access to high-end restaurants with pizza ovens, sushi counters, freshly baked pastries and ice cream.However, as technology companies come under increasing pressure to deliver more value to the communities they inhabit, cities are clamping down on campus cafeterias in an attempt to support local restaurants. Continue reading...