Technology | The Guardian

Facebook CEO makes statement after backlash over ‘quiet title actions’ to secure parcels belonging to native owners within his $100m seafront propertyMark Zuckerberg has said he is reconsidering whether to seek the forced sale of tracts of land belonging to native Hawaiians in a large estate he bought on the island of Kauai, after facing a wave of criticism.The Facebook CEO filed a series of lawsuits, known as quiet title actions, against hundreds of Hawaiians who may own small parcels of land within the boundaries of his seafront property on Kauai. The quiet title system is used to establish ownership of land where inheritance has occurred over generations and lacks formal documentation. It can result in owners being forced to sell their land at auction and, in some cases, pay the legal fees of the plaintiff. Continue reading...

Ubisoft has taken its tactical shooter into an open world setting, promising a customisable experience. Is it any good?Our squad’s ninth unsuccessful attempt to extract the whistleblower was the most ridiculous. By that point the four of us playing co-op were fairly au fait with the mission’s set-up: a dozen or so heavily armed Santa Blanca cartel members holed up in a well-defended rocky outcrop near the shore of Bolivia’s Laguna Colorada, unaware that a man in their midst named Emilio was experiencing serious doubts about his long-term career prospects in the narco-terrorism business.

Simon Wheatcroft went blind at age 17. Yet today, he runs marathons. Leigh Alexander explores the incredible story of how he is able to do this with the help of some particularly innovative technology. This is a re-run of a podcast we launched in June 2016

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

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO announced his plans to start digging ‘in a month or so’, but city planning bodies say he doesn’t have the permits requiredElon Musk announced plans to start digging a traffic-easing tunnel under Los Angeles “in a month or so”, but city planning bodies say he doesn’t yet have permission.The SpaceX and Tesla CEO has been mulling the idea since December, when he revealed his frustrations with congestion in the city. “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging,” he said on Twitter. 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?In 1971, Intel, then an obscure firm in what would only later come to be known as Silicon Valley, released a chip called the 4004. It was the world’s first commercially available microprocessor, which meant it sported all the electronic circuits necessary for advanced number-crunching in a single, tiny package. It was a marvel of its time, built from 2,300 tiny transistors, each around 10,000 nanometres (or billionths of a metre) across – about the size of a red blood cell. A transistor is an electronic switch that, by flipping between “on” and “off”, provides a physical representation of the 1s and 0s that are the fundamental particles of information.In 2015 Intel, by then the world’s leading chipmaker, with revenues of more than $55bn that year, released its Skylake chips. The firm no longer publishes exact numbers, but the best guess is that they have about 1.5bn–2 bn transistors apiece. Spaced 14 nanometres apart, each is so tiny as to be literally invisible, for they are more than an order of magnitude smaller than the wavelengths of light that humans use to see. Continue reading...

Deep learning-based system could be further developed for smartphones, increasing access to screening and aiding early detection of cancersComputers can classify skin cancers as successfully as human experts, according to the latest research attempting to apply artificial intelligence to health.The US-based researchers say the new system, which is based on image recognition, could be developed for smartphones, increasing access to screening and providing a low-cost way to check whether skin lesions are cause for concern. Continue reading...

Badlands National Park sent out a series of (now-deleted) tweets on climate change, seemingly in defiance of Trump administrationIf you had “National Parks subtweet the new president” on your 2017 bingo card, today’s your lucky day.After the US National Parks Service was temporarily banned for retweeting images comparing Trump and Obama’s inaugurations, the official Twitter account of the appropriately named Badlands National Park, based in South Dakota, appeared to go rogue by posting a series of now-deleted tweets on climate change. Continue reading...

Apple has cut the cable from its EarPods, improving sound, fit and connectivity – but the AirPods lack noise-cancelling and easy controlsWhen Apple removed the traditional headphone socket from its latest iPhone, part of the rationale was that wireless headphones were now coming into the mainstream. And Apple had its own player in this field, its AirPods.But then there was an unexpected delay in their launch, raising fears over technical issues. Now they’re finally here, are they worth the £159 price tag? Continue reading...

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

Sources speaking exclusively to the Guardian reveal details of Samsung’s next flagship smartphone, including an iris scanner, ahead of March launchSamsung’s Galaxy S8 will come in two sizes, have an almost bezel-less, edge-to-edge “infinity” display and an iris scanner, the Guardian has learned.

Capcom returns to the ‘haunted house’ origins of its survival horror series. But rather than regressive, its move to the deep south couldn’t be more timely

Researchers in Beijing find that 45% of users suffer some level of setup failure, with a 10-second wait not uncommonNext time you feel frustrated while trying to connect to a wifi network, take solace in the fact that you aren’t alone: millions of others have the same problem.Researchers from Tsinghua University and Tencent, the developer of WeChat, found for 15% of users it takes longer than five seconds to connect to a network and for 5%, more than 10 seconds. Continue reading...

Man launched class-action lawsuit hoping to force Apple to implement lockout feature to prevent texting while driving or have phone sales halted in CaliforniaA California man has launched a class-action lawsuit against Apple for failing to introduce an iPhone safety feature that would prevent people from texting while driving.Julio Ceja, from Orange County in California, was rear-ended by a driver who was allegedly distracted while using her phone. According to the complaint, Ceja was at a traffic light when he saw a driver behind him “engaged in using her phone instead of paying attention to the road in front of her”.

Some tech CEOs may be cozying up to Trump, but workers on the ground are determined to stop him – and they might transform the industry in the processLast week, something unusual happened in Silicon Valley. Dozens of tech workers stood in the rain in downtown Palo Alto and staged a protest. They held signs and chanted slogans outside the headquarters of Palantir, the $20bn data-analytics company co-founded by Peter Thiel, one of Donald Trump’s closest advisers.Related: 'Call me': Donald Trump woos tech leaders at New York meeting Continue reading...

After a washing up disaster, our writer has been without her handheld helper for six weeks. How has she coped?About 2 billion people use smartphones across the globe, with more than half the population in developed countries relying on them daily. In fact, according to research by psychologists, we spend on average about five hours each a day doing so, flicking it on as many as 85 times.I was one of those people, until a few weeks ago. Continue reading...

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

Plan would involve 90% of passengers being processed through Australian immigration without human involvementA plan to rely on biometric recognition to further automate airport border processing raises privacy and ethical concerns about data security, according to an expert.But another information security analyst says the plan – which would involve 90% of passengers being processed through Australian airport immigration without human involvement – would not present any more privacy concerns than current border control regimes. Continue reading...

Prime minister says Labor, Nick Xenophon and Greens were all invited to a briefing, but they have no record of this and only found out through the mediaLabor has accused Malcolm Turnbull of putting his own political purposes ahead of national security by publicising plans for a secret briefing for political parties to head off “Russian-style” cyber attacks.The prime minister had told the Australian newspaper about his plans to invite opposition parties to secret classified briefings – but did not inform them except through the media. Continue reading...

A 14-month government ‘cleanup’ of internet access services will make it harder for users to access websites that are usually censored or restrictedChina has begun a crackdown on the use of virtual private networks, or VPNs, making it harder for internet users to circumvent the Great Firewall.The nation’s ministry of industry and information technology announced a 14-month “cleanup” of internet access services, including making it illegal to operate a local VPN service without government approval. Continue reading...

The Taiwanese manufacturer had claimed to be in process of building a $7bn American plant after Trump met with Japanese tech billionaire last yearTaiwanese manufacturer Foxconn has appeared to back away from claims it is preparing to build a $7bn factory in the US.News of the plant, which could create some 30,000 to 50,000 American manufacturing jobs, first surfaced last year after a meeting between now President Donald Trump and the Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, head of Japanese telecom and tech investment giant SoftBank. Continue reading...

Travellers can now use photographs taken on their mobiles when applying for a passport online. But the future for the photobooth is a developing pictureLong before Instagram and iPhones, Snapchat and Kim Kardashian, there was a Siberian immigrant in New York City who was about to get very rich. Fascinated by his Brownie box camera, the Kodak device that brought photography to the masses, Anatol Josephowitz arrived in Manhattan with plans to go further, foreshadowing the selfie age a good 80 years before its time.In 1925, Josepho (he dropped the -witz) unveiled his Photomaton, a small automatic studio with a stool that would return a strip of eight postage-stamp portraits in exchange for 25 cents. “Broadway’s greatest quarter-snatcher” was a sensation, making Josepho famous. In 1927, he sold the US rights to his machines for $1m. Continue reading...

Banking group says none of its 20m accounts were hacked or compromised after fending off two-day denial of service attackLloyds Banking Group suffered 48-hour online attack this month as cybercriminals attempted to block access to 20m UK accounts.The denial of service attack ran for two days from Wednesday 11 January to Friday 13 January, as Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland were bombarded with millions of fake requests, designed to grind the group’s systems to a halt. Usually in a denial of service (DOS) attack the criminals demand a large ransom, to be paid in bitcoins, to end the onslaught. Continue reading...

Analysts are worrying about how Nintendo’s new machine will replace the Wii U, but we should be thinking of it as the new 3DSThe 3DS, Nintendo’s current handheld console, is six years old this year. Since its debut in 2011, over 60 million have been sold worldwide – sneaking it into the top ten highest-selling games devices of all time. In stark contrast, the Wii U has lifetime sales of just over 13m. The machine has, by most metrics, been an abject failure. Nintendo is an extremely rich company, but it won’t want to repeat that experience. It has shareholders to think about.The company’s next product, the Switch, is being described as a hybrid of console and handheld. It’s a concept the Wii U attempted to tap into, via its GamePad controller with built-in screen; most games could be played on this device alone, meaning that as long as you had power, you could theoretically play on the go. Of course, that wasn’t ever part of Nintendo’s marketing for the Wii U, and besides, it wasn’t exactly ideal for portability – you had to lug the console, the GamePad and the power cable around with you. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Monday. Or, if you’re Trump’s press office, it’s actually Thursday and the dishonest press is lying. Continue reading...

An old favourite gets a 3DS release, a battling bellydancer breaks into the big-time consoles, and a talking gun fires up a 2D platformer

Tests on tens of thousands of devices found that both original and replacement batteries were responsible for the phones bursting into flamesSamsung has blamed lithium-ion batteries for causing its Galaxy Note 7 mobile phones to overheat and catch fire, a fault that led to the global recall of millions of devices and damaged consumer confidence in the world’s biggest maker of smartphones.

Barack Obama selfies to feature alongside self-portraits by Tracey Emin and Vincent van Gogh in exhibition on self-expressionAn exhibition at Saatchi gallery plans to explore the importance of selfies as an art form.Opening in March, it will showcase a selection of well-known pieces as well as selfies that have “quickly become icons of the digital era”. Continue reading...

On 31 December 1999, the unknowns of Y2K - or, the millennium bug - made for an uncertain New Years Eve. This week, we explore the plausibility of a mass technology failure with Martyn Thomas CBE., IT professor at Gresham CollegeDuring the final hours of the year 1999, as crowds of tens of thousands gathered in city centres to ring in the new year, Martyn Thomas filled his bathtub with cold water and stocked up on food and supplies. He was one of many who feared that the “millennium bug” would cause disaster – that there would be widespread computer failure because so many programmers had represented each year with just two digits. Continue reading...

Less than a year after Mark Zuckerberg paid millions to media companies to promote online live video coverage, the Facebook founder is changing tackRemember the time (actually only last April) when Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook Live and paid 140 or so media companies around the world some $50m to provide video coverage that made Live live. Ah! welcome to the surging, dominant video age. Except that now the major news analytics player, parse.ly, has just concluded that audiences spent 30% less time engaging with online video, on average, then they did with short, medium and lengthy text posts. And engagement, of course, is supposedly the crucial thing, the gold standard measure of involvement and commitment.Facebook (the Poynter Institute reports) isn’t renewing those media contracts. Facebook is thinking more about “longer premium video content”. And so the wheel turns again: continuing proof that, digitally, last year’s amazing breakthrough can be this year’s febrile bust. Continue reading...

The retail giant has a threatening lead over its rival with the Echo and Alexa, as questions remain over how the search engine can turn voice technology into revenueAmazon and Google always thrive in the fourth quarter as people get out their wallets for Christmas. Both companies – or in Google’s case, its parent group, Alphabet – are therefore expected to announce booming revenues in their fourth-quarter results over the next fortnight, with Alphabet going first on Thursday and Amazon the following week. But analysts are already looking beyond the simple question of how many cardboard boxes Amazon filled and how many searches Google answered. They’re wondering which company will win the battle to control your home.That battle is being fought by two carafe-sized cylinders from the respective companies. One is Amazon’s Echo, with its voice-operated “personal assistant”, Alexa; the other is Google Home, which responds to the phrase “OK Google”. Both are internet-connected, home-based devices which can be command to do things: give the weather forecast; play music; read out news headlines; update shopping lists; and control “smart” devices in the home such as light bulbs or power points. In theory, if a device can be linked to it, the Echo can control or monitor it, and keep you informed. And simply by saying “Alexa, add sugar to the shopping list”, users can keep up to date on house supplies and even purchase them directly. Continue reading...

I was impressed by a number of things: the acceleration is more aggressive than you expect; the drive is swift and grippyI had the Vauxhall Mokka during an ad campaign for the car, and driving past the billboards (all shiny, mustard-coloured bulk) in the actual car (a cheery, school-run blue, a rounded, friendly nose) was like seeing Myleene Klass in an M&S ad for your bra. “Mmmm…” I thought. “It’s not exactly like that in real life.” It is sturdy and handsome, without being glamorous, as befits its bid for the crossover crown, vying with the Nissan Juke and the Skoda Yeti. There’s a diesel option; I had the 1.4 petrol, all-wheel drive, which acquits itself pretty neatly. If you imagine these three cars as interns, the Mokka would uncomplainingly get you a coffee, just as you’d ordered it; the Juke wouldn’t be served in a coffee shop because of its piercings and intimidating makeup; and the Yeti would get a coffee and a sandwich you didn’t really want, leaving you feeling obscurely guilty and annoyed. So far, the Mokka has the job, right? (I don’t, incidentally, believe in unpaid internships. All of these cars deserve the minimum wage.)Despite its versatility, I was happiest in town: the fuel economy isn’t the best, but the eco alerts on the dash, even though I never really understand them, make me feel as if I’m driving responsibly. It’s an automatic and shifted gears smoothly, without complaint. The steering was biddable. If it were still an intern, you’d be wondering whether it was a little too obedient, short on initiative, a rule-taker. To resolve this, you need to get to a motorway. I was impressed by a number of things: the acceleration is sharper and more aggressive than you expect; the drive is swift and grippy. The cabin looks functional at first, designed for the kind of people who spill (wait, that’s me – this car was designed for me!), but after driving for an hour or so, I’d happily do the same again. I’ve sat in far pricier seats bellyaching about the posture and fabricating reasons to stop. Functional, user-friendly satnav and USB connections are so much the norm now that it seems faint praise, like saying “she has A-levels” or “good personal hygiene”. But there’s lots of entry-level celebrity detail, electrically controlled wing mirrors, tinted windows. Continue reading...

For many, the winter means using phone fingerprint recognition technology becomes almost impossible. Here’s what you can do about it

From Fallout to Metal Gear Solid – here are six leaders of the free world that no one would vote forThe history of video games has seen many fine upstanding leaders, prime ministers and presidents. Stoic Marion Bosworth from Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 who instigates the fight back against cyber terrorist Raul Menendez; The President in Saint’s Row IV who must defend their country against an alien invasion; and who can forget President Ronnie in Bad Dudes who remains steadfast in his love of burgers, even after being kidnapped by DragonNinja?But sometimes these digitised demagogues fare less well, and understandably, it’s these more troublesome characters that have come to mind this week. Continue reading...

Fifa belongs to a select group of titles familiar to people who have no interest in gaming – or even real football. What’s the secret of its success?Subscribe via Audioboom, iTunes, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Acast & Sticher Continue reading...

US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found no cause to order a recall of the vehicles, placing responsibility for the accident primarily on the driverThe US auto safety regulator has cleared Tesla’s Model S of defects that could have led to the death of a man who collided with a truck while using the car’s Autopilot system.

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

There were hundreds of opportunities to stop the Republican demagogue. That should focus our minds as he takes the oath of office•Donald Trump inauguration: the world holds its breath – live coverage•Inauguration day schedule: our guide to the dayThe road to President Trump was long and bumpy. There were many turns not taken, countless alternative routes that would have spared us this outcome. Instead, we kept going, corruption, infighting and sheer obliviousness stopping us changing course.What could have been different? There are a thousand possibilities. You could start with the long decay of the US news media into a branch of the entertainment industry, primed to seize on Trump’s celebrity. A wiser society would have demanded better, resisted more vocally, criticised more intelligently. Continue reading...

Police say child is in custody after the woman live-streamed the two-year-old taped to a wall and said ‘now sit still’An Ohio woman was charged with abduction on Thursday after she taped her two-year-old son to a wall and broadcast the episode on Facebook Live earlier this month.Police from Reynoldsburg, Ohio, charged the mother, 18-year-old Shayla Rudolph, with the third-degree felony on Thursday, and said that Franklin County children services had taken her son into protective custody. In a statement, the department said that they were alerted to the video on Wednesday by a local news station. Continue reading...

Government-backed network was temporarily banned from posting images, videos or live streams for about 20 hours, possibly over a copyright issueHardly a day goes by without Facebook landing itself in a censorship row, but the social media giant’s latest kerfuffle – a temporary ban of the Russian government-backed network RT – has drawn threats of retaliation from the Russian state censor.RT was barred from posting images, videos or live streams on its Facebook page for about 20 hours, possibly over a copyright issue related to its stream of Barack Obama’s final press conference on Wednesday, according to the network. The network said it streamed a subscription Associated Press feed, which should not have violated any rights. Continue reading...

Your smartphone is an ad-delivery device. The line between content and advertising is blurred. But is the answer to go offline?On the internet, advertising is the industry that dare not speak its name. A Facebook post is “suggested”; a tweet is “promoted” – they are ads. An article or video is “presented by” or “sponsored” – it’s an ad. Even something as impressive as Felix Baumgartner’s skydive from the edge of space in 2012 – that was an ad, paid for by Red Bull. The term “content” serves to blur lines – helpfully, from an advertiser’s point of view – between what is advertising and what isn’t.Google’s founders once wrote that any search engine that sold ads would be compromised; now it’s the biggest advertising company on the planet. Your smartphone, media studies professor Mara Einstein says, is fundamentally an ad-delivery device. Advertising is everywhere. And yet, increasingly, we don’t want to see it. We install ad-blockers because webpages are increasingly slowed down by waiting for intrusive adverts to be loaded from some distant server, and because we don’t want to be tracked around the internet by shadowy companies that trade our personal data. But who does ad-blocking really hurt? Clue: not the advertisers. Continue reading...

The processor is the most important part of a computer, but CPU names and numbers don’t mean much to most people. Regular commenter 75drayton wants help figuring them outI had no idea the Core i3-6100 you mentioned last week is faster than some of the slower i5 chips. Is there any chance of you writing an article that focuses on processors? I appreciate that PCs are more than just processors, but I would find it useful. 75draytonIt’s worse than that. There have been cheap Intel Pentium chips that were faster than Core i7’s! Intel uses BMW-style branding, where the Core i3, i5 and i7 are marketed as good/better/best. This is usually a fair reflection of current performance per watt of power used, but it doesn’t tell you the raw performance.

A Swedish Facebook group called Mediekollen promises to debunk false information on the web. The twist? Mediekollen is faking its factsAnyone who thought the furore over fake news would lead to fast and effective action to tackle disinformation on the web has been quickly disabused of the notion.From Donald Trump labelling news sources he doesn’t like as “fake news” to doubts about Facebook’s plans to use third-party fact checkers to verify disputed stories, each twist and turn seems to open up a new can of worms. Continue reading...

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

Girls aged 13 to 15 invited to test tech skills in competition as part of effort to inspire more women to join fight against online crimeTeenage girls are being invited to put their technology skills to the test in a competition that could unearth the cyber spies of the future.The contest has been set up by GCHQ’s new National Cyber Security Centre as part of efforts to inspire more women to join the fight against online crime. Only 10% of the global cyber workforce are female, the intelligence agency said. Continue reading...

Jokers are exploiting a bug in iOS and are sending messages stuffed with emojis which cause recipients’ iPhones or iPads to freezeA bug in iOS is being exploited in a prank aimed at crashing iPhones and iPads using the power of simple text, flag and rainbow emojis.

Russian president dismisses alleged links between US president-elect and Moscow and says sex claims are ‘obvious fake’Vladimir Putin has dismissed the dossier published last week about alleged links between Moscow and Donald Trump, describing the people who ordered it as “worse than prostitutes”. Continue reading...

Survey spanning 40 countries reveals how officials are failing to keep up with changes in way voters gather information and form opinionsWeakened and distrusted central governments around the world have been incapable of responding to the way the internet and social media have empowered populist but previously fringe groups, a unique worldwide survey of government communication chiefs has found.The survey spanning 40 countries is the first international review to reveal how deeply governments feel they are losing control and authority over communications. Continue reading...

Price rises for iOS and Mac users announced in an email to developers, following a 19% fall in the value of the poundApple is raising prices on its UK App Store by almost 25% to reflect the sharp depreciation of the pound following June’s vote to leave the European Union.The new prices enshrine parity between the dollar and the pound, at least for apps on the iOS and Mac app stores. An app that costs $0.99 in the US, and used to cost £0.79, will now cost £0.99. Continue reading...

The EU’s legal affairs committee is walking blindfold into a swamp if it thinks that “electronic personhood” will protect society from developments in AI (Give robots ‘personhood’, say EU committee, 13 January). The analogy with corporate personhood is unfortunate, as this has not protected society in general, but allowed owners of companies to further their own interests – witness the example of the Citizens United movement in the US, where corporate personhood has been used as a tool for companies to interfere in the electoral process, on the basis that a corporation has the same right to free speech as a biological human being.Electronic personhood will protect the interests of a few, at the expense of the many. As soon as rules of robotic personhood are published, the creators of AI devices will “adjust” their machines to take the fullest advantage of this opportunity – not because these people are evil but because that is part of the logic of any commercial activity. Continue reading...