Technology | The Guardian

It is crucial for a resilient democracy that we better understand how Google and Facebook are changing the way we think, interact and behaveThe lack of transparency around the processes of Google’s search engine has been a preoccupation among scholars since the company began. Long before Google expanded into self-driving cars, smartphones and ubiquitous email, the company was being asked to explain the principles and ideologies that determine how it presents information to us. And now, 10 years later, the impact of reckless, subjective and inflammatory misinformation served up on the web is being felt like never before in the digital era.Google responded to negative coverage this week by reluctantly acknowledging and then removing offensive autosuggest results for certain search results. Type “jews are” into Google, for example, and until now the site would autofill “jews are evil” before recommending links to several rightwing antisemitic hate sites. Continue reading...

White House spokesman Eric Shultz says on Friday that Barack Obama has ordered US intelligence to review evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election before he leaves office. Schultz denies the review is ‘an effort to challenge the outcome of the election’

President’s decision to have US intelligence agencies look over evidence comes after unrelenting pressure from Democratic lawmakers to declassify informationBarack Obama has ordered US intelligence to review evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election after coming under sustained pressure from congressional Democrats.The review will be one of Obama’s final instructions to the intelligence agencies, which will soon report to Donald Trump, whom congressional Democrats consider the beneficiary of a hack targeting the Democratic National Committee. Continue reading...

Abdurzak Hadi, whose 10-year-old son has leukaemia, is struggling to make ends meet but feels he has nowhere else to goAbdurzak Hadi has worked as a minicab driver for 10 years, and as an Uber driver in London for nearly three. He came to the UK as a child refugee from Somalia in 1992 and now has a young family but is struggling to support them.

Lawsuit over extent of CEO’s control of company shows board voted to give him two-year leave if he serves ‘in a government position or office’Mark Zuckerberg may intend to pursue government service while retaining control of Facebook, according to recently unsealed court filings in a case pitting the CEO against minority investors.The class-action lawsuit was first filed in late April, after Zuckerberg proposed a corporate shake-up that would dilute the voting power of shareholders – giving him “eternal control” of the company, in the words of the shareholders’ lawyers. Text messages excerpted in the court documents reveal that Zuckerberg and two board members discussed the CEO’s possible government service, and argued about how to present it to shareholders. Continue reading...

Wearables maker Fitbit buys smartwatch startup for fraction of reported value in 2015Smartwatch maker Pebble has sold to Fitbit in a deal that leaves it shutting down all manufacturing, refunding Kickstarter backers, and warning current owners that their watches may stop working at some point in the future.The deal, according to a report from Bloomberg, values the smartwatch startup at less than $40m. If true, that is a massive drop from earlier reported acquisition attempts. Techcruch says Pebble was first offered $740m by watchmaker Citizen in 2015, and then $70m by Intel in early 2016. Pebble’s chief executive, Eric Migicovsky, reportedly refused both offers. Continue reading...

Claire wants to buy her son a laptop to run Minecraft with Pixelmon mods. Her budget is £300, but she’s willing to spend a more Continue reading...

Experts at Countering Drones event assess the risks to airports and prisons posed by growth of high-powered, affordable modelsSecurity officials, police and legal experts from around the world are gathered in London for a global conference on tackling the threats posed to prisons, airports, nuclear facilities and other infrastructure by consumer drones.The Countering Drones conference, which organisers describe as the first of its kind, reflects concerns that increasingly high-powered and affordable models of drones are posing new and wide-ranging security challenges for police and other protection forces. Continue reading...

The winner of the 2016 Capcom Cup receives $230,000, but the pressures on competitors are more than monetary – particularly if they’re transgenderThe atmosphere in the competitor pen at the 2016 Capcom Cup in Anaheim, California, is weirdly tranquil – despite the stakes. There’s a $230,000 cheque waiting for the winner, $60,000 for the runner-up. The room, snugly closed off from a shanty town of flight cases, stage lights and wires behind the sweeping stage is lined with sofas, on which the eight finalists sit. In 10 minutes they will emerge to a full house of hollers and applause, ready to make their bids in the annual competition to crown the best Street Fighter player in the world.In the middle of the room, two trestle tables sag under the weight of monitors, on which the finalists are free to warm up their fingers with practice games. There are, however, no preparatory or prayerful rituals going on back here; only the idle swiping of phones. I sink into the couch beside 32-year-old Ricki Ortiz, one of two Americans to reach the finals (the other six competitors all come from Street Fighter’s home of Japan). What does she do to prepare for a major fixture like this, I ask. “Me?” she says. “I had a quick nap.” Continue reading...

Fifa 17 is the latest target. But increasingly games reflect the world as it is – not as reactionaries would like it to be

With the market for retro cell phones booming, here’s a selection of desirable designs, from a 10kg monster to a clamshell classicWhen it debuted in 1989, the MicroTAC was hailed as a “game-changer”, one that Motorola argued would bring mobile phones out of the hands of top execs and into the hands of senior mid-level execs. Competively price at $2,995, the size of a Dutch brick rather than the preceding concrete breezeblock, it had an amazing half-hour’s talk time with only 10 hours of charging.The price has dropped a bit, but at £100 on eBay, the likes of the MicroTAC still hold value for collectors. New research by Talkmobile highlights how the market for vintage phones has become increasingly lively as collectors aim to snap up a brick of tech history. Continue reading...

The Microsoft billionaire’s annual reading list includes a 2014 study by British political scholar Archie Brown – a choice, he says, that was inspired by the US electionIf there’s one thing more valuable to an author than a Richard and Judy endorsement circa 2006, it’s a Bill Gates plug circa this week. The man has reach, and the luxury of reading time that comes with being a semi-retired billionaire. And he has weight. So, while four of the books on his annual list cover predictable if fascinating ground (genetics, tennis, electricity infrastructure and a business memoir), the fifth is quite interesting, not to say timely.In The Myth of the Strong Leader, the renowned British political scholar Archie Brown throws a dozen world leaders of the past century into a bag, shakes them up, and watches the nice guys rise to the top. Brown debunks the idea that the most successful leaders are those who dominate and mould their nations around themselves, as far as their political systems allow. “A more collegial style of leadership is too often characterised as a weakness,” he writes. Continue reading...

I recently met a rather mysterious Android developer called Nick and helped him to publish his first library on Bintray.

Developer EA Sports backed a campaign in the UK to combat homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in footballRussian MPs have asked the state communications oversight agency to take action against the Fifa 17 video game for violating the country’s law against gay propaganda.

The truck carries a shipping container holding a mobile data centre which can store up to 100 petabytes“The internet is not something that you just dump something on,” the American senator Ted Stevens famously said in 2006. “It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.”Ted Stevens was wrong. The internet is a big truck, and Amazon wants to drive it right up to your gaff to give you better upload speeds. Continue reading...

The new, improved Android device might not be quite the bargain the OnePlus 3 was, but it’s still right up there with the bestThe OnePlus 3T is a minor update to a very good smartphone which improves on some key areas, but it isn’t quite the bargain the original was.

Firm reveals secret project in statement to US highways regulator, two years after rumours of its interest began to circulateApple has said for the first time that it is working on technology to develop self-driving cars.The company, which has been rumoured to be interested in the automated car market for the past two years, confirmed its previously secret initiative in a statement to the US highways regulator. Continue reading...

Youngsters put five hi-tech gizmos, from robots to racing trucks, through their pacesToys are getting smarter. Whether they are racing cars that “read” the track, robots that teach coding or ground-drones controlled with the swipe of an iPad, these “connected” playthings have been proclaimed as the future of the toy industry.For parents concerned about the amount of time their kids spend in front of a screen, connected toys offer a welcome and reassuring physicality: the toy is the focus, the app merely the control panel. For their children, it means (effectively) getting a pet robot. Which is why brands such as Sphero and Anki are set to dominate 2016 Christmas lists. But the question remains: how much fun are these digitally driven playthings? We asked Louis (10), Phoebe (10), Eliza (eight) and Max (seven) to help us find out. Continue reading...

From the lush medieval world of The Witcher 3 to the touching narrative of The Last Guardian, let’s give thanks for rich escapes from a tough yearDeath, disorder, confusion and upheaval: 2016 has surpassed even the most outlandish video game in its disquieting depictions. Fiction may be unable to compete with reality when it comes to whiplash-inflicting narrative twists, but it can provide a sanctuary into which the embattled and anxious may retreat. Video games in particular provide a comforting framework for the human mind. Even on the virtual battlefield, or post-apocalyptic city, few games ever betray their fundamental rules, something that can no longer, it seems, be said for politics and all the rest.These days most video games take years to build. Such is the cost and scale of the technological and artistic undertaking of interactive blockbusters that it’s unlikely we’ll see 2016’s major themes surfacing in games for another year or so. Some developers, however, successfully anticipated the events of the moment. The recently released Watch Dogs 2 casts you as a member of a San Francisco-based hacktivist group vying to take down a privacy-violating corporation. The hackers co-opt the power of millions of web-connected household devices – CCTV cameras, printers, kettles and so on – to overwhelm their target’s servers. It’s a storyline that pre-empted the recent botnet attack, when great swaths of the internet, including Netflix, Twitter, Reddit, Spotify and even the UK government’s website, were successfully brought down for a few hours by as yet unidentified hackers, using the combined power of millions of online devices. Continue reading...

They say the Santa Fe is just a poor version of Land Rover’s Discovery. It’s not… It’s pretty good and cheaper, tooPrice: £31,026

Every move I made, it was already there. Every thought I thinked, it had already thunk itIf you were given to conspiracy theories, the Mercedes E-class would be your nemesis. Every move I made, every corner, every rev, it was already there. Every thought I thinked, it had already thunk it. Opening the boot in a shower, watching water drip round the perfectly designed rubber piping, so that nothing touched me or my luggage, I felt gripped by a sudden mourning. Such a lot of thought has gone into this – more than thought, empathy. If only that kind of intelligence could have gone somewhere useful, like the refugee crisis. But look, we are where we are. This boot is awesome and my plentiful luggage is as dry as toast.I’ve never sat in a car thinking, “If only this was a nine-speed automatic”, but the truth is, this was subtle and elegant at every speed, shifting deftly, making driving feel like flying. You could feel its grip on the road, and it spread confidence, via your butt, throughout the car. Continue reading...

PM Frank Bainimarama wants to make Fiji a telecoms hub but experts say phone app breaks the laws of thermodynamicsAn app that claims to recharge phone batteries in 30 seconds has been publicly endorsed by the Fijian government, despite experts saying it defies the rules of thermodynamics.InstaCharge was launched at a lavish party in Fiji last week, and was lauded by the Fijian prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, who is said to be the only person so far to use the new app. Continue reading...

The tech company, long criticized displacing low-income residents in Silicon Valley, will partner with advocacy groups to amid massive campus expansionFacebook has agreed to invest $20m in affordable housing initiatives after facing intense criticism for failing to help low-income residents in Silicon Valley where the technology boom has exacerbated displacement and gentrification.The corporation, which is pushing forward with a massive campus expansion in northern California, announced on Friday a partnership with community organizations aimed at funding affordable housing construction and assisting tenants facing eviction. Continue reading...