Technology | The Guardian

British commissioner wants more transparency and limits on harvesting data for political endsA senior EU official has called for action against internet companies that harvest personal data, as Brussels prepares to move against those spreading “fake news” following the Cambridge Analytica revelations.Sir Julian King, the European commissioner for security, wants “a clear game plan” on how social media companies are allowed to operate during political campaigns to be ready for the 2019 European elections.

Tech companies are finding innovative and lucrative ways to clean the air in our homes, while sales of purifying plants are bloomingFirst it was clean eating; now it’s clean breathing. Sales of air purifiers are soaring, with the global market expected to be worth £6.2bn by 2024.The trend is in response to the rise in asthma and allergies linked to poor air quality inside buildings. Research says it can be up to five times more polluted than air outside, with chemicals from cleaning products, aerosols and perfume rivalling diesel fumes as causes of contamination. Continue reading...

Part April Fool, part radical design solution… The Pop.Up.Next drone and car transporter sounds too good to be truePop.Up.Next drone and car transporter

The data-mining scandal offers a unique chance to reclaim our private information and use it in a way that will benefit us allThe continuing collapse of public trust in Facebook is welcome news to those of us who have been warning about the perils of “data extractivism” for years.It’s reassuring to have final, definitive proof that beneath Facebook’s highfalutin rhetoric of “building a global community that works for all of us” lies a cynical, aggressive project – of building a global data vacuum cleaner that sucks from all of us. Like others in this industry, Facebook makes money by drilling deep into our data selves – pokes and likes is simply how our data comes to the surface – much like energy firms drill deep into the oil wells: profits first, social and individual consequences later. Continue reading...

After the Cambridge Analytica data-breach row many users are looking to switch their social media accounts. What sites and apps could prove an option?For too many people considering leaping aboard the #DeleteFacebook bandwagon, the answer is simple: switch your photo and video sharing to Instagram and your messaging to WhatsApp. But what many do not realise is that both of those apps are owned by Facebook – since September 2012 and October 2014 respectively.It is a mark of the company’s dominance of the social media landscape – Facebook has 2.13 billion monthly active users, WhatsApp 1.5 billion and Instagram 800 million – that finding a single alternative is difficult. Continue reading...

Emil Michael was hired by SoftBank as it invested in Uber following crisis over sexual harassment allegationsA controversial former Uber boss, who was one of the ride-hailing service’s most senior executives when it was engulfed in crisis last year, was paid $4m (£2.8m) in consultancy fees by the venture capital firm brought in to revive the company’s fortunes.Emil Michael received the payment for advice given to the technology investor SoftBank as it acquired a 17.5% stake in Uber at the turn of the year. Continue reading...

After revelation of controversial memo by senior executive, leaked posts show staff decrying disloyalty at companyFacebook employees are calling for a crackdown on suspected leakers and questioning whether “spies” have infiltrated the corporation, according to leaked internal posts that suggest the social media giant’s workforce is becoming defensive in the face of critical public scrutiny.The posts were a response to the leak of a memo by a senior Facebook executive who defended the social network’s negative effects on society. Continue reading...

A US government effort to fight online sex trafficking has cleansed many sites of personal ads and consensual eroticism, in a shift advocates say amounts to dangerous censorship

Parent firm Under Armour says email addresses and scrambled passwords among stolen dataPersonal details of about 150 million users of the MyFitnessPal app were compromised in one of the biggest hacks in history, its owner has confirmed.US sportswear brand Under Armour said user names, email addresses and scrambled passwords were among the stolen data. However, payment card data was not affected. It urged customers to change their passwords immediately. Continue reading...

The harvesting of our personal details goes far beyond what many of us could imagine. So I braced myself and had a look

Zuckerberg says he disagrees with 2016 memo, which acknowledged site could cost lives or play role in terror attacksA top Facebook executive warned in a leaked memo that the platform could lead to deaths and could help terrorists plan attacks, but argued that the negative outcomes were a reasonable byproduct of the company’s broader “growth tactics” and mission to “connect” people.The public disclosure of the 2016 memo, in which a vice-president, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, wrote “anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good”, prompted the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to defend his company’s mission in a hastily released statement on Thursday. Continue reading...

With 2018 elections on horizon Facebook is trying to get ahead of misinformation, but won’t say whether it supports ad regulationFacebook has announced new steps it claims will increase election security and combat fake news, but has declined to say whether the company supports federal legislation to regulate political ads.Company executives told reporters on Thursday that the company was expanding its fact-checking efforts, improving ad transparency, doubling its security team and working to prevent “misleading or divisive” memes from going viral in advance of the US midterm elections in November. Continue reading...

Trump’s obsession with Amazon probably has more to do with personal grudge than principle, but its power should nonetheless be checkedDonald Trump has his sights set on Amazon. He is reportedly “obsessed” with the internet commerce giant, and as is his wont, spent Thursday morning tweeting about it. And it’s not because he loves online shopping.“I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!” he said. Trump is allegedly mulling using antitrust measures to knock Amazon down a notch. Continue reading...

Sensing opportunity – and GDPR – the Silicon Valley company launches major data protection push across devicesApple is launching a major privacy push, with software updates across all its devices to introduce new data privacy information immediately, with an updated website offering new privacy management tools to follow in May.Thursday’s updates (macOS 10.13.4, iOS11.3 and tvOS 11.3) are prompted by the enormous new European data protection regulation GDPR, and have been in the works since at least January. But they come at a good time for the company, whose head Tim Cook has been merrily capitalising on the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, publicly rebuking Mark Zuckerberg over the social network’s business model. Continue reading...

Games creators and writers give their theories on how an upcoming crop of adaptations could avoid the same pitfalls as Assassin’s Creed, World of Warcraft and Super Mario BrosNo other film genre boasts such an unimpeachable reputation for dreadfulness as the video game adaptation. Some, such as this year’s Tomb Raider film and the zombie-themed Resident Evil efforts, almost achieve mediocrity. Others are so fascinatingly terrible that they have become Hollywood legend – for instance, the baffling interpretation of Super Mario Bros proffered by edgy British directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton in 1993, in which Nintendo’s bright, joyful Mushroom Kingdom was reimagined as a futuristic dystopia called Dinohattan, where everyone was dressed in fishnets and black leather trenchcoats. A quarter of a century later, it is still impossible to understand why anyone thought that was a good idea.The ever-expanding Marvel cinematic universe is ample proof that films can do an excellent job of exploring geek culture and fleshing out the paper-thin characters that dominate it; Black Panther has just become the fifth highest-grossing movie ever at the US box office. Millions have now grown up with video games, so why is it that studios have failed to make a single video game movie that doesn’t stink? Continue reading...

Robert is often required to email sensitive data. Is there a secure way of doing so in view of the new data protection laws?As a freelance media professional, I am often asked by my various employers to send copies of my passport, completed visa forms and other sensitive data in the form of email attachments. I have recently questioned this and have not really got a satisfactory response. I have tried uploading these documents to my Google Drive account and giving them a link, though I don’t really know whether this method is any safer. However, I am at a loss to see how companies should acquire such sensitive data in light of the new GDPR rules coming into force in May. RobertThe European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into force on May 25, will govern the storage and processing of data rather than its collection. It also includes some very important consumer rights. The most important are the right to be informed, the right of access, the right to correct errors, the right to erase data, the right to restrict processing, and the right take it elsewhere (data portability). How useful these will be in practice remains to be seen.

As Facebook faces scrutiny over data harvesting, the Lean In author and architect of the company’s controversial business model has kept a low profileIn the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal, there has been a glaring lack of leadership from Facebook. Almost five days of silence passed before its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, faced the public with a post to his Facebook profile and a series of well-rehearsed interviews with handpicked media outlets.As the public bayed “Where’s Mark?”, his right-hand woman, Sheryl Sandberg, has avoided much of the scrutiny, despite the fact that she is the architect of Facebook’s data-centric advertising business and a highly skilled communicator. Continue reading...

Elaine Herzberg, 49, died after being hit by the automated Uber in Tempe, ArizonaThe family of the woman killed by an Uber self-driving vehicle in Arizona has reached a settlement with the ride services company, ending a potential legal battle over the first fatality caused by an autonomous vehicle.Cristina Perez Hesano, attorney with the firm of Bellah Perez in Glendale, Arizona, said “the matter has been resolved” between Uber and daughter and husband of Elaine Herzberg, 49, who died after being hit by an Uber self-driving SUV in Tempe earlier this month. Continue reading...

The company listed 12 policy-related job openings based in Washington DC as it faces scrutiny over its privacy policiesFacebook is increasing its lobbying presence in Washington DC before Mark Zuckerberg’s expected testimony on Capitol Hill.The company has listed 12 policy-related job openings based in Washington DC as it faces increased scrutiny over its privacy policies after it was reported that Cambridge Analytica had obtained data from up to 50 million Facebook users. Continue reading...

Two lawsuits by female employees, alleging company underpays women and that ‘bro-culture’ enabled daily harassment, move aheadCalifornia courts have allowed female Google employees to move forward with two major lawsuits alleging patterns of sexual harassment and pay disparities, which civil rights attorneys say could uncover “widespread” discrimination at the tech company.A San Francisco judge has approved a class-action complaint alleging that the Silicon Valley corporation systematically underpays women in engineering, management, sales and education, meaning Google will have to publicly respond to claims that thousands of women have been denied proper compensation. Continue reading...

A cozy relationship with governor Doug Ducey enabled an autonomous program with limited expert oversight – but governor denies it was ‘secret’Arizona’s Republican governor repeatedly encouraged Uber’s controversial experiment with autonomous cars in the state, enabling a secret testing program for self-driving vehicles with limited oversight from experts, according to hundreds of emails obtained by the Guardian.The previously unseen emails between Uber and the office of governor Doug Ducey reveal how Uber began quietly testing self-driving cars in Phoenix in August 2016 without informing the public. Continue reading...

Former English Defence League leader banned for violating rules governing ‘hateful conduct’The former leader of the English Defence League Tommy Robinson has been permanently banned from Twitter.It is understood that the rightwing extremist fell foul of Twitter’s rules governing “hateful conduct”. Continue reading...

For £65 you can travel back to the 80s by once again owning a Commodore 64. Not only does it plug straight into your telly, it lets you rediscover old gaming thrills like Boulder Dash and SpeedballWithout wanting to reheat old playground arguments, I had a ZX Spectrum, my school had BBC Micros, but everyone was secretly a bit jealous of the kids who had a Commodore 64. Not, of course, that we’d tell them that at the time. But the use of sprites, the multichannel sound processor, and that precious 64k of memory were enough to turn heads.And now the Commodore 64 is back. Well, at least a miniature version of it is. Retailing at around £65, the C64 Mini comes preloaded with 64 games, and, just like the old days, it plugs straight into your television. Although this time it is via an HDMI cable. Continue reading...

Corporation suggests changes are response to Cambridge Analytica scandal, with EU set to toughen data protection rules in MayFacebook is launching a range of new tools in an effort to “put people in more control over their privacy” in the buildup to new EU regulations that tighten up data protection.The changes come after a troubling two weeks for the company, which is battling with the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica files. At least one of the new features, a unified privacy dashboard, was previously discussed by Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, back in January. Continue reading...

He dreamed up his novel about a teenage games fanatic while working for internet companies in the 90s. Cline on his real-life geek-to-riches story – and what it was really like working with Steven SpielbergIt took Ernest Cline 10 years to write Ready Player One. There were times he thought he would never finish the manuscript, let alone publish it. But the novel, mostly set in a global online pleasure world called Oasis, went on to become a bestseller and was translated into more than 20 languages. Now a film adaptation by Steven Spielberg is in cinemas – a real-life geek-to-riches drama so reflective of the book’s plot it seems almost unfeasible.The sci-fi story’s setup is simple. Teen protagonist Wade Watts is a games fanatic living in a slum town outside Oklahoma City, but spending most of his time in the virtual world. The death of James Halliday, the eccentric creator of Oasis, triggers a treasure hunt that revolves around Halliday’s main obsession: 1980s pop culture. Whoever solves a series of puzzles within the game becomes its new billionaire CEO. Wade enters the hunt, kicking into gear a breathless nerd empowerment fantasy. Continue reading...

Forget flash campaigns. Political battles are now won with knocked-up placards, beermats, hats and memes. And museums are scrambling to scoop them up‘Slogans in nice typefaces won’t save the human races.” So says a huge banner in London’s Design Museum, the slogan leaping from the wall in quite a nice typeface of bold 3D yellow sans serif letters on a bright scarlet background. Graphic design might not provide salvation from the world’s woes, but it can certainly try, as a new exhibition of the last decade in politicised posters, placards and memes shows in kaleidoscopic colour.Titled Hope to Nope, the show surveys the visual products of the tumultuous 10 years since Shepard Fairey made his Hope poster for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. It’s a decade that has seen more than its share of political turmoil, with the global financial crisis, the Arab spring, the Occupy movement, oil spills, terrorist attacks, Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump – whose detractors responded by riffing off Fairey’s image with the Trump Nope meme. Continue reading...

We’ve come a long way since the web was just a fun place to share cat gifs – now it’s a place mostly dedicated to finding and selling your personal info. Here’s what you need to know in this new eraOn the internet, the adage goes, nobody knows you’re a dog. That joke is only 15 years old, but seems as if it is from an entirely different era. Once upon a time the internet was associated with anonymity; today it is synonymous with surveillance. Not only do modern technology companies know full well you’re not a dog (not even an extremely precocious poodle), they know whether you own a dog and what sort of dog it is. And, based on your preferred category of canine, they can go a long way to inferring – and influencing – your political views.Just over a week ago, the Observer broke a story about how Facebook had failed to protect the personal information of tens of millions of its users. The revelations sparked a #DeleteFacebook movement and some people downloaded their Facebook data before removing themselves from the social network. During this process, many of these users were shocked to see just how much intel about them the internet behemoth had accumulated. If you use Facebook apps on Android, for example – and, even inadvertently, gave it permission – it seems the company has been collecting your call and text data for years. Continue reading...

John Edwards accuses social media giant of flouting the country’s lawsNew Zealand’s privacy commissioner has accused Facebook of breaking the country’s privacy laws and has deleted his account on the site.John Edwards released a scathing criticism of the social media giant, accusing it of breaching privacy laws after it refused to release personal information held about the accounts of other Facebook users. Continue reading...

Calls for CEO to appear reach fever pitch after Cambridge Analytica reports, paving way for showdown over Facebook accountability

Deal, worth up to £1.3bn, shows Waymo’s ambition in developing driverless ride-hailing serviceJaguar Land Rover is to supply up to 20,000 of its new electric I-Pace cars to Waymo, a subsidiary of Google owner Alphabet,to be converted into self-driving vehicles for its ride-hailing service.The tie-up, worth up to £1.3bn and announced at the New York motor show, is a further mark of Waymo’s ambition in the race with Uber and others to develop a driverless ride-hailing service – as well as a huge boost for Britain’s biggest car manufacturer as it takes it first steps into electric vehicles. Continue reading...

Chair of committee investigating fake news urges Facebook head to ‘think again if he has any care for users’Mark Zuckerberg has come under intense criticism from the UK parliamentary committee investigating fake news after the head of Facebook refused an invitation to testify in front of MPs for a third time.Related: Vote Leave 'cheating' may well have swayed EU referendum result, Wylie tells MPs - Politics live Continue reading...

New top-end phone is first to have three separate cameras on back, as well as a new full-body screen with notch at topHuawei’s latest flagship smartphone is the P20 Pro, which has not one, not two, but three cameras on the back.The new P20, and the larger, more feature-packed P20 Pro, launched at an event in Paris that indicated the Chinese company is looking to match rivals Apple and Samsung and elevate the third-largest smartphone manufacture’s premium efforts. Continue reading...

Fears draft rules could threaten users’ privacy by letting one firm collect vast amounts of dataDraft rules for age verification on pornographic websites could put users’ privacy at risk and give the world’s biggest porn publisher a power similar to that of Facebook and Twitter, critics have said.The guidance, which comes after the government passed a law last year forcing pornography sites to use age checks or face being blocked, states there is no legal requirement for sites to offer visitors a choice of age verification services. Continue reading...

Evidence from Cambridge Analytica boss provoked debate during Commons select committee, but you noted Facebook CEO’s absence

What happens when you remove the fighting from a video game and turn it into an ancient world to explore? The creators of Assassin’s Creed Origins found outEven if you’re not particularly interested in video games, you’ll probably have heard of Assassin’s Creed. They’re a series of historically themed action games that take place in digital recreations of places such as Revolution-era Paris, medieval Jerusalem and 1860s London. Playing Assassin’s Creed involves climbing up ancient buildings and mingling with the residents of cities of the past, meeting (and occasionally assassinating) historical figures as a member of an ancient, clandestine brotherhood working against the Templars.The games have been around since 2007 and have made an awful lot of money for their publisher, Ubisoft. The company employs a team of hundreds of artists, historians, writers, coders, sound designers and more to create these virtual places. An hour in the company of any of these games is enough to discern how much effort goes into their historical settings – though it’s hard to appreciate them fully when you’re busy fighting, talking or running away from guards. Continue reading...

Governor Doug Ducey tells Uber crash raises concerns about its ability to safely test technologyArizona governor Doug Ducey suspended Uber’s self-driving vehicle testing on Monday following a pedestrian fatality in a Phoenix suburb last week.Ducey told Uber’s chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi that video footage of the crash raised concerns about the company’s ability to safely test its technology in Arizona. Continue reading...

US ride-hailing firm will take 27.5% stake in Asia-based Grab and its CEO will join Grab’s boardUber is selling its south-east Asian ride-hailing and food delivery business to bigger regional rival Grab, as its seeks to cut losses ahead of a potential stock market flotation next year.The move marks the US company’s third major retreat overseas, following its exit from China in 2016 and Russia last year. Continue reading...

Google and Facebook have collected private data without oversight on a scale that no democratic government would be allowed to do. They shouldn’t be allowed eitherOne of the strangest features of the current debates about privacy on the internet is the way in which private advertising companies are able to get away with practices that no democratic government could. The security services and police are restricted in their surveillance of private citizens on the web by the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. Around 130,000 people signed a petition against it, largely because of the provision requiring internet providers to keep for up to a year records of all the websites that their users visited. One campaigner described it as “one of the most extreme surveillance laws ever passed in a democracy”.Yet the material collected in this way can only be accessed under a system of legal and political oversight: the Home Office might like more powers, but the European court of justice ruled in December 2016 that independent judicial authorisation was needed for the “general and indiscriminate retention” of personal data. All that fuss over a year’s worth of websites, when it turns out that Facebook has been storing all the contact details, the instant messages, and the phone calls of millions of its users for as long as 10 years without anyone outside the firm realising what their apparently innocuous consent implied. Continue reading...

How an extreme libertarian tract predicting the collapse of liberal democracies – written by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s father – inspired the likes of Peter Thiel to buy up property across the Pacific• Read the text version hereSubscribe via Acast, Apple Podcasts Audioboom, Soundcloud, Mixcloud & Sticher. Join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter and email us at podcasts@theguardian.com Continue reading...

PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC; Ubisoft

From refugees to Aids, live action role-play games are exploring critical issues. But is the idea of social change via larp a fantasy?The detention centre sits on the border. Once a low-security prison, it is in a depressing state of disrepair. The private company running the government facility plans improvements, but the flood of desperate “residents” has pushed these firmly on to the back burner.Residents are not prisoners, but a perceived scarcity of social resources means public opinion towards them is volatile; in response, the government has set an extremely small immigration quota. Residents undergo rigorous assessment in order to have their immigration applications even considered. Continue reading...

At a time of great emotional pain, Charlotte Soares was confronted by pop-up adverts on Facebook for funeral organisersThe news reminds me why I stopped using Facebook (Report, 22 March). Back in 2015-16 my mother was dying and I only used my BT email when writing to family and friends about her, never mentioning her on Facebook, the only social media I used. Suddenly I started getting pop-up adverts on Facebook for funeral organisers, will writers and monumental masons. At a time of great emotional pain, I was confronted by this every time I went on to Facebook like a slap in the face. I complained to BT that it seemed my emails were being compromised, when I thought what I wrote in them was private. They said it should be and they would investigate but I heard no more.I tried to contact Facebook to complain about inappropriate advertising which, to me, was of an emotionally abusive nature, but could find no working contact details. It left me no alternative but to come off Facebook because I could no longer trust the site. My main worry was the link between what I wrote in emails and what appeared on Facebook. I tested it by sending an email saying I was thinking of going to Italy. Hey presto, up came an advert on Facebook for Alitalia. It felt like an invasion of my privacy even if it’s only computers talking to each other with no humans aware. To use my mother’s final illness as a means to persuade me to buy things is inappropriate and caused me immense distress. Continue reading...

Some might be baffled by the cheapo Lego art style and janky controls – but, for kids, playing a game that doesn’t always work properly is all part of the funIf your kids aren’t playing Fortnite – the colourful, cartoonish shooter that has recently become a massive after-school (and work lunch-break) craze – they are probably playing Roblox. Like Minecraft, which colonised the minds of basically all school-aged children around 2012-15, Roblox lets players get creative and build things. But it goes further than Minecraft in that you can create entire games in Roblox, from racers to haunted-house adventures to competitive battle arenas. According to the developer, it has 56 million players. Continue reading...

As the use of autonomous machines increases in society, so too has the chance of robot-related fatalitiesWas killed last Sunday by an Uber autonomous car that hit the 49-year-old at approximately 40mph as she was crossing the road in Tempe, Arizona. Police confirmed there was an operator in the Volvo SUV at the time of the collision, and stated that it didn’t appear the car had slowed down. Continue reading...

The bestselling SUV from Volvo is the safest car on the road… but don’t ask it to park itselfVolvo XC60

Mark Zuckerberg kept his silence – then did little to assuage the anger in a week that laid bare the worst of Silicon ValleyEvery story has a beginning. For me, the story of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook that has unfolded so spectacularly this past week began in a cafe in Holloway, north London, at the beginning of 2017.I was having a coffee with my colleague Carole Cadwalladr. She had recently written a series of articles that set out how certain Google search terms had been “hijacked by the alt-right”. In the course of that investigation she explained how she had come across another pattern of activity apparently linking the Trump and Leave.EU campaigns, one that appeared to involve the billionaire Robert Mercer, Steve Bannon – then of Breitbart – and a secretive British company called Cambridge Analytica. She laid out the elements of what she knew, and what she didn’t, testing her conviction that “there’s definitely something there”. Continue reading...