Technology | The Guardian

Ciaran Martin, head of UK National Cyber Security Centre, says he expects formal requests for help with digital securityBritish political parties have approached the surveillance agency GCHQ for advice on beefing up their internet security after a cyber-attack during the 2015 UK general election and the hacking in the US last year of the Democratic party.

Former head of strategic marketing, hired to broaden company’s reach across genders, alleges augmented reality startup is tolerant of sexismAugmented reality startup Magic Leap is being sued for sexual discrimination by an executive who was hired to help it appeal to women.The company, a startup best known for securing a valuation in the billions despite never publicly demonstrating its technology, is being sued by Tannen Campbell, its former head of, and later vice-president of, strategic marketing and brand identity. Continue reading...

An update has added more geeky in-jokes and references to the e-commerce giant’s AI assistant, from ‘Cowabunga’ to ‘Great Scott!’

My father, Alf Perry, who has died aged 64, following a cardiac arrest, was a respected structural engineer. His career encompassed the growth of Hong Kong’s skyline, the preservation of the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the revitalisation of Bristol Harbourside.The son of Douglas Perry, a railwayman, and his wife, Joan (nee Marwood), Alf was raised in Totnes, Devon. An aptitude for maths, along with a British Rail scholarship, took him to Imperial College London, where he studied civil engineering for four years. He subsequently took a position at British Rail, reconstructing bridges. After two years he left to join Ove Arup, the eminent firm of civil engineers, where he remained until his retirement in 2009. Continue reading...

Video site cancels reality series Scare PewDiePie and vlogger’s membership of premium advertising programme, but won’t shut down his channelYouTube is cutting its ties with star video-maker PewDiePieafter criticism of his use of Nazi imagery and antisemitism as props for shock humour.The video site has cancelled the second season of PewDiePie’s reality show, Scare PewDiePie, and removed his channel from a premium advertising programme following the revelations. Continue reading...

YouTuber with 53 million subscribers posted videos featuring antisemitic jokes and Nazi imagery, including two men holding a ‘Death to All Jews’ signThe Walt Disney Company has severed ties with YouTube’s biggest star PewDiePie after he posted a series of videos featuring antisemitic comments.PewDiePie, real name Felix Kjellberg, is a 27-year-old Swede who built a huge fanbase making opinionated videos, mostly about video games. With more than 53 million subscribers on YouTube, Kjellberg has turned his videos into a lucrative business, earning more than $14m per year from advertising, sponsorship and appearance fees. Continue reading...

Ladykiller in a Bind is the latest work from Christine Love, but it has invoked controversy about sex, representation and consentMuch like sex itself, it’s hard to get a sex game right at the first attempt. While the genre known as interactive fiction often explores themes of sex and sexuality, players of mainstream video games are used to little more than the occasional, awkward and intensely unerotic cut scene. Creators, consumers and critics of this relatively young artform are still figuring out what the culture deems acceptable. That can lead to difficult conversations – as it did this month with one highly divisive scene in a game released late last year.Christine Love is a writer and programmer known for making visual novels: interactive narrative games with static 2D art, in which the player’s choices often involve selecting which response to give in conversation scenes. Her latest project, Ladykiller in a Bind, is a piece of erotica, which turns out to be complicated in a medium built on interactivity. Continue reading...

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

Swedish YouTube star Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, saw his ties with Disney severed after he posted a series of videos featuring antisemitic comments. This included paying two men to hold up a sign saying ‘Death to All Jews’ and posting the video to his YouTube channel on 11 January 2017

MPs are not the only ones concerned about information being published that can identify where they live (MPs say watchdog risks identifying addresses, 11 February). Many people across the UK have been using the useful community messaging site, Streetlife. Now, with very little warning, users are being told they need to transfer to the US community messaging site Nextdoor.com, to which Streetlife has recently been sold. There is widespread concern that Nextdoor, unlike Streetlife, publishes not only people’s names and their street but also their house number. It is possible to delete the house number if you go to their website but this company should not be compromising users’ security in such a way in the first place. Some locals have already unsubscribed; others are thinking of so doing. It remains to be seen whether NextDoor will respond positively to people’s concerns.

As Nintendo launches its most striking console yet, R&D leads Shinya Takahashi and Yoshiaki Koizumi explain who this machine is aimed atThe Nintendo Switch is the weirdest games console to hit the market since … well, the last games console Nintendo released.When docked to the TV, the slim black device could be mistaken for one of the company’s previous consoles. The “Joy-Con” controllers give away that something’s up, though: even in their most traditional configuration, clicked in to a mounting device to be used as a classic dual-analogue-stick handset, they’re still fairly oddly shaped. Continue reading...

The pop-science writer behind Everything Bad is Good for You and Wonderland came in to answer your questions, on everything from innovation in science and technology, to his thoughts on the Trump administration2.35pm GMTThanks everyone for the great questions - I hope you'll get a chance to check out Wonderland, my new book. We didn't get to talk about it all that much, but I would like to just mention that the Observer yesterday called it "seductively erudite", a phrase that I am now going to put on my tombstone. Signing off!2.30pm GMTschtengraby2 says:You talked about making a board game with your kid on Start the Week this morning. Sounded fun! How did you go about doing that?That was really an incredibly rewarding experience as a parent. (And I think it was rewarding for my son too.) It was a summer-long project. We spent some time sketching out some ideas about what the theme of the game should be, which turned out to be a game about growing vegetables. And then spent much more time sketching out the actual board, just using paper and magic markers, and devising the rules. And then we would, in the language of product design, iterate: we'd play a couple of games, discuss what was working and wasn't working, and then tweak the game in a way we thought would make it more fun. And then we'd start the whole process again. I wrote a longer description of the whole process, with some reflections on game design as an educational tool and a great family experience, in this article at our site How We Get to Next. Continue reading...

For decades, computers have got smaller and more powerful, enabling huge scientific progress. But this can’t go on for ever. What happens when they stop shrinking?Subscribe via Audioboom, iTunes, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Acast & Sticher and join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter Continue reading...

Electronics firm joins Apple and Microsoft on growing list of companies to raise prices in the UK following the EU referendumHome sound system manufacturer Sonos has become the latest technology company to announce significant price rises for British customers following the Brexit vote.Some of the company’s products are increasing in price by up to 25%, as a result of the collapse in sterling since the EU referendum last June. The price rises were announced on Monday, but will not be put in place until Thursday 23 February. Continue reading...

Businessman is seeking damages of up to €45m from Uber over wife’s discovery of his extra-marital tripsAn adulterous businessman in southern France is seeking damages of up to €45m (£38m) from Uber over his wife’s discovery of his extra-marital affair, according to reports.The man, from the glitzy Riviera area on the southern coastline, says he once connected to his account on the ride-hailing application via his wife’s phone to request a driver. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Monday. I didn’t do Friday did I? Continue reading...

A terrifying return to form for the survival horror series, a well-crafted crossover title for young and old and a tightly knit textile platformerPS4, Xbox One, PC, Capcom, cert: 18

The city has levied fines on users of the apartment-rental site, often a source of vital extra income, but a politician insists: ‘We’re not going after the little guy’A war of words between Airbnb and New York, its largest market, has escalated with the first fine issued by the city in what is expected to be a crackdown on “hosts”.

Isaac Asimov’s prophetic play and Adam Rutherford’s The Rise of the Robots revealed that our fear of machines is nothing newThe Rise of the Robots (R4) | iPlayer

Scratch the surface and the new Ateca is very much a VW, but Seat would rather accentuate its Spanish flairPrice: £17,497

The emerging sport of drone racing is already attracting big sponsorship deals, but which nascent league will attract the fastest pilots and dominate the field?They have been responsible for innumerable deaths in the Middle East during the last decade and, if Amazon has its way, will deliver millions of toasters, gift sets and novels in the future. But recently drones have begun to fulfil a less utilitarian kind of role: competition in the nascent world of futuristic motorsports. A confluence of technological advances has made drone racing possible. A minuscule camera, mounted on the drone’s nose, allows the pilot, as competitors are luxuriously titled, to control the vehicle through virtual reality-style goggles, as if perched in its tiny cockpit.With powerful lithium batteries, the size of which dictates the speed class of the drone, these machines, which are typically the size of a box of tissues, can reach speeds in excess of 120mph. Studded with coloured LEDs, they fly like hyper-evolved, fluorescent mosquitoes and, thanks to their size and manoeuvrability, can make use of those areas of a sports stadium that are usually out of bounds: streaking over the pitch, for example, before grazing through a window, along a corridor and out again into the night sky. Impromptu courses can be set up anywhere. In September, during an event timed to coincide with the Paris Drone festival, pilots raced along the Champs-Élysées, watched by 150,000 spectators. Continue reading...

Spotlight thrown on long hours and injuries as employee speaks up and United Automobile Workers union saying it has been approached to organise plantThe United Automobile Workers union has said it was approached by workers at the Tesla assembly plant in Fremont, California – rejecting a charge by the Elon Musk that a worker who publicly criticised the company was on the UAW payroll.The move to organise at the electric car factory shines an unwelcome spotlight on allegations of long hours, mandatory overtime and preventable injuries at a time when Tesla is accelerating production to meet ambitious targets. Continue reading...

Apple chief calls on governments and technology companies to crack down on misinformation in public discourseFake news is “killing people’s minds”, Tim Cook, the head of Apple, has said. The technology boss said firms such as his own needed to create tools that would help stem the spread of falsehoods, without impinging on freedom of speech.Cook also called for governments to lead information campaigns to crack down on fake news in an interview with a British national newspaper. The scourge of falsehoods in mainstream political discourse came to the fore during recent campaigns, during which supporters of each side were accused of promoting misinformation for political gain. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Italian government official says no classified emails were compromised in attack believed to have lasted more than four months last yearRussia is suspected by Italian officials of being behind a sustained hacking attack against the Italian foreign ministry last year that compromised email communications and lasted for many months before it was detected, according to people familiar with the matter.

Optional function will require users to input a six-digit security codeWhatsApp is implementing a new two-step verification process to boost security for users.The optional security feature significantly increases the hurdles that a third-party would have to get over to break into a user’s account. Continue reading...

Despite promoting an image of innovative iconoclasm, outside the spotlight a cadre of powerful tech figures are planting themselves in Trump’s cornerWhen a group of 97 technology companies filed a legal submission against Donald Trump’s travel ban for citizens of seven Muslim-majority companies, the immediate question for many was not who had signed, but who had not. Absence from the brief became a source of embarrassment, and many new tech firms – including Adobe, Tesla, Zenefits, Postmates and Fitbit – quickly jumped on board.As much as Silicon Valley likes to promote an image of innovative iconoclasm, companies have a herd mentality when it comes to political or social issues. Once one company goes out on a limb, the rest rush to follow. With near-unanimous opposition to Trump’s executive order, tech burnished its image as a bastion of progressive values – a reputation that had taken a major hit when top executives travelled to Trump Tower in December to make nice with the then president-elect. Continue reading...

Activision has announced its best-selling first-person shooter will return to its roots with its 2017 instalmentThis should not come as an enormous surprise to fans of first-person shooters, but Activision is taking the Call of Duty series back to “its roots”. In a conference call to investors on Thursday, the publisher’s chief executive, Eric Hirshberg, and chief operating officer, Thomas Tippl, both acknowledged that last year’s space-based Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare had commercially underperformed. They promised that the 2017 instalment would return to “traditional combat” – a homely phrase which is likely to mean either a contemporary or historical setting.The announcement reverses a trend toward ever more futuristic combat, which really began with the 2012 title Call of Duty: Black Ops II,partly based in a second cold war in the mid-2020s. Later, the poorly received Call of Duty: Ghosts, and the decent pair Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, wandered further into a speculative universe of drone warfare, mass electronic disruption and outer space dog fights. This trend was always questioned by hardcore fans of the series – which began in 2003 as a second world war drama – and was only going to become more obscure as studios faced coming up with ever more outlandish technological weaponry. Continuing along this narrative route for a few years we faced the prospect of holographic soldiers shooting each other with mind lasers – or even worse, a diplomatic solution. Continue reading...

Alex Hearn takes a look back at the ‘no professors allowed’ informal dining club The Ratio Club which laid the foundations for the British cybernetics movement and, ultimately, artificial intelligenceSubscribe and review on iTunes, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast, or on your favourite podcasting app and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterWriting in his journal on 20 September 1949, English psychiatrist Ross Ashby noted that six days earlier he had attended a meeting of young minds in the basement of the National Hospital for Nervous Disease in London. But what was discussed? Who else was in attendance? And how would the regular meetings of the Ratio Club change the face of British cybernetics and, latterly, the artificial intelligence we see all around us today? Continue reading...

From Motorola’s oh so 80s DynaTAC brick to the Nokia 3310 with its changeable covers and Samsung’s explosive Galaxy Note 7 – these are the phones that matter the most Continue reading...

Intel’s CEO said the Arizona plant was a response to Trump’s business-friendly policies, but the company announced it in 2011 – and Obama gave a speech thereThis week Intel’s CEO used a meeting with Donald Trump to announce it would invest $7bn in building a factory in Arizona, creating about 3,000 jobs.It seemed like a coup for Trump, who has pledged to bring manufacturing back to the US. Continue reading...

Social media giant is failing to capitalise on US president’s use and is reluctant to make deep cuts needed to turn a profitNot even the best efforts of Donald Trump can pull Twitter out of its dive, it would seem. The company’s fourth-quarter results showed a loss of $167m (compared with $90m a year before) on flat revenues of $638m, with no clear path to profit, even though the US President’s frequent outbursts helped increase the number of users by a modest 2 million to 319 million.Twitter should be capitalising on the fact that the most powerful man in the world is using it as his channel to present the alternative facts of his presidency. Imagine if Trump’s key announcements were made on YouTube: each clip would be festooned with ads.

Investors take fright as company reveals $457m loss for 2016 and concedes its financial growth is lagging its popularityShares in Twitter have slumped after the tech company suffered a decline in advertising income, despite a rise in user numbers as Donald Trump’s high-profile tweeting helped to advertise the platform’s influence. Continue reading...

As the queen of the headdress is commemorated on the 108th anniversary of her birth, we look back at some of her best moments Continue reading...

A semi-satirical subreddit is home to some of the most ardent supporters of The Schulz – but can memes influence the Bundestag elections?Donald Trump has r/the_Donald. Bernie Sanders has his dank meme stash. Ed Miliband has Milifandom.Now, German politician Martin Schulz has his own meme-making enthusiasts, who are supporting his bid to be German chancellor. Welcome to the world of r/The_Schulz. Continue reading...

Social network will still allow targeting based on ‘ethnic affinity’ of users in domains other than housing, employment and creditFacebook has updated its advertising policies to ban discrimination based on a number of personal characteristics, including race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or age.Accompanying the new policies is a section aimed at educating advertisers about the extent to which ad targeting is allowed on the social network, both in terms of Facebook’s own policies and applicable national laws. Continue reading...

Libby would like to know which browser she should use – it may sound simple, but there are plenty of optionsWhich is the best web browser for Windows 10: Firefox or Google Chrome? LibbyOver the years, I’ve used and recommended a lot of different browsers for Windows, including Mosaic, Netscape, Internet Explorer, Maxthon, Firefox, Chrome and Vivaldi. Times change, and so do web browsers. You can always switch to whichever feels better at the time. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Thursday. Why not check out my article on visiting Mojang?! Continue reading...

Online encyclopaedia editors rule out publisher as a reference citing ‘reputation for poor fact checking and sensationalism’Wikipedia editors have voted to ban the Daily Mail as a source for the website in all but exceptional circumstances after deeming the news group “generally unreliable”.The move is highly unusual for the online encyclopaedia, which rarely puts in place a blanket ban on publications and which still allows links to sources such as Kremlin backed news organisation Russia Today, and Fox News, both of which have raised concern among editors. Continue reading...

‘Minor’ fire at Galaxy Note 7 battery supplier’s Tianjin plant saw 110 firefighters and 19 trucks sent to put out blaze, according to emergency servicesA fire that drew out 110 firefighters and 19 trucks to a factory operated by Samsung Galaxy Note 7 battery supplier, Samsung SDI, was caused by discarded faulty batteries, the company has said.

Until 15 February, there will be a huge increase in duration of lures, up to six hours from the usual 30 minutesRemember Pokémon Go? It’s still around, and now the smartphone game is celebrating Valentine’s Day with its latest in-game event.Getting into the theme of love, perhaps the most exciting thing for Pokémon Goers is a huge increase in the duration of lures: the Pokémon-attracting devices will now last a whole six hours, 12 times longer than their standard 30-minute duration. Continue reading...

Company reveals technology capable of increasing picture resolution 16-fold, effectively restoring lost data – but results still an educated guessGoogle’s neural networks have achieved the dream of CSI viewers everywhere: the company has revealed a new AI system capable of “enhancing” an eight-pixel square image, increasing the resolution 16-fold and effectively restoring lost data.The neural network could be used to increase the resolution of blurred or pixelated faces, in a way previously thought impossible; a similar system was demonstrated for enhancing images of bedrooms, again creating a 32x32 pixel image from an 8x8 one. Continue reading...

The long-running franchise gets a virtual reality makeover and accompanying odour, while Nintendo launches Switch with the help of the princessAt the cinema, too many sequels feel like little more than tawdry cash-ins designed to capitalise on the success of an earlier film. The motivations for making video game sequels can be similarly ignoble, but there is one big difference: often video game sequels are better than the originals. Newer developers get better at making games every year, a process bolstered by improving technology. Worlds can be larger and more convoluted, sound and visuals get all-new Ultra HD sparkle.Related: Resident Evil 7: Biohazard review – a masterclass in terror Continue reading...

Chrome browser is fast and capable but it can murder your battery life. Here’s how to help your laptop or tablet last longerGoogle’s Chrome browser is used by over 62% of the world’s PC users, but it’s a notorious battery hog that if left to run rampant can reduce your laptop or tablet to just a couple of hours of life. But it doesn’t have to be like that, as Google is making efforts to improve it. In the meantime, here are some tips to get Chrome’s battery usage under control without sacrificing functionality. Continue reading...

Vladimir Putin wants to extend his influence beyond the ballot box and into the very fabric of our public life. We must take action before it’s too lateThe Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign is being treated too much like a novelty and not enough as a serious and persistent security threat. The problem becomes more urgent as we see it spread to other countries.WikiLeaks, which disseminated stolen DNC documents, announced last week that it would turn its attention to France, and has released material relating to presidential candidates François Fillon and Emmanuel Macron, opponents of Marine Le Pen. Continue reading...

Companies were not original signatories, but now join 97 other tech firms in supporting Washington state lawsuitElon Musk’s companies SpaceX and Tesla are to join the ranks of technology firms officially opposing the migrant ban imposed by the US president, Donald Trump, standing alongside the 97 firms who signed up to an amicus brief on Sunday night.The companies are supporting a lawsuit brought by Washington state against the ban, which affects millions of people from seven majority-Muslim nations. The suit, which is currently being heard in the ninth circuit federal court in San Francisco, California, has already succeeded in imposing a temporary halt to the enforcement of Trump’s executive order. Continue reading...

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

Robots exhibition at the Science Museum, London, is a striking display of 500 years of automata – and raises pressing questions about the futureEric the robot wowed the crowds. He stood and bowed and answered questions as blue sparks shot from his metallic teeth. The British creation was such a hit he went on tour around the world. When he arrived in New York, in 1929, a theatre nightwatchman was so alarmed he pulled out a gun and shot at him.Related: Robots 'could replace 250,000 UK public sector workers' Continue reading...

A new exhibition opening on 8 February, Robots is a collection of over 100 objects ranging from 16th century automata to cutting-edge ‘emotional’ robots Continue reading...

From Bioshock to butt battles: the hidden games we both love – and hate – to findIf you remember Pimp My Ride, the long-running TV show in which rapper Xzibit modified people’s cars with gigantic speakers, horrible decals and velvet seats, you may also recall that the programme spawned a particularly daft meme.“Yo dawg,” the original joke went, “I heard you like cars, so I put a car in your car so you can drive while you drive”. It was, of course, a reference to the show’s habit of building each owner’s interests into their remodelled car – however laboured the connection happened to be. The meme was absurd and recursive, but it’s probably how mini-games – those little nuggets of alternative gameplay hidden within a larger experience – came about. “We heard you like games,” the developers of the first ever example may have said, “so we put games in your games so you can play while you play.” Continue reading...

Design critic Oliver Wainwright goes behind the scenes at the Robots exhibition at the Science Museum in London. Curator Ling Lee introduces him to some of the most advanced humanoid robots in the world, from a lifelike baby to robots without conscience. She explains the stage that the technology is at, who may use it and how far it has to go