Technology | The Guardian

As thousands gather for the first public viewing of Musk’s ‘loop track’, skeptics wonder whether it will live up to its promisesElon Musk enthused that this was no ordinary tunnel opening, but something epic and “incredibly profound”. Skeptics wondered whether it was just a hyped-up coming-out party for a hole in the ground.In the end, the first public viewing of Musk’s latest visionary project – an underground “loop” track that promises to revolutionize transport in the 21st-century city – turned out to be a grand mixture of imaginative futurism and showbiz razzmatazz, not to mention a showcase for a novel tunnel-boring technology that may be the most significant development of all. Continue reading...

The app was ‘perhaps the most effective platform’ for the Russian online propaganda campaign by the Internet Research AgencyThis January, as Mark Zuckerberg was embarking on his quest to “fix” Facebook, one writer proposed a bold idea: make Facebook more like Instagram, “the Facebook-owned app that isn’t destabilizing society”. Instagram was no panacea, according to the New York Times tech columnist, but the downsides of the largely visual network – making “some of its users feel ugly and unpopular” – were insignificant compared with those of a highly politicized Facebook that could “undermine democracies and promote misinformation around the world”.The idea that Instagram was a safe harbor for social media users in a sea of propaganda and political divisiveness caught on, both among users who didn’t realize the app was owned by scandal-ridden Facebook and with the tech press. An April Bloomberg Businessweek cover story framed Instagram as “Facebook’s best hope” and “Mark Zuckerberg’s way out of the latest data scandal”. Continue reading...

Company says it is ‘committed’ to strengthening and advancing civil rights on service after groups demand restructuring of boardDozens of civil rights groups are calling for Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to step down from Facebook’s board of directors following what they described as years of the company’s role in “generating bigotry and hatred towards vulnerable communities”.In a letter sent to Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO, on Monday night, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Muslim Advocates, Equality Labs and MoveOn.org were among more than 30 groups demanding a restructuring of the board to improve accountability of senior leadership in the wake of recent scandals. Continue reading...

Just unwrapped a gift of an internet-connected device? Don’t just turn it on and plug it in – you might be giving the manufacturer all sorts of information you don’t need toJeff Bezos knows when you’ve been sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows when you’ve been bad or good, because you didn’t change the default privacy settings on the Amazon smart speaker you set up in your bedroom, for goodness’ sake.This Christmas, families will be unwrapping various internet-connected devices, and, knowingly or not, wiring up their homes for levels of surveillance rarely seen outside the Soviet bloc. But you still have a bit of control. Here are the best tips to protect your digital privacy, without resorting to Christmas gifts whittled from wood. Continue reading...

A new Guardian documentary shows young Geovany filming his last day in a temporary home. Plus, read about other interesting documentary releasesIn the shadow of Silicon Valley a hidden community thrives despite difficult circumstances. For one resident, eight-year-old Geovany Cesario, impending change is bittersweet. When the time comes to leave Crisanto Avenue, which he affectionately calls Crisanto Street, he uses his camera to document the day.Crisanto Street is a film by Paloma Martinez, an award-winning director interested in the intimate moments that humanise complex social and political structures. She began her storytelling career as a labour organiser in her native Texas. Her films have been screened at festivals around the world. With her work she hopes to empower communities and spark a dialogue about difficult subjects. Continue reading...

In the shadow of Silicon Valley, a hidden community thrives despite difficult circumstances. For one resident, eight-year-old Geovany Cesario, impending change is bittersweet. When the time comes to leave Crisanto Avenue, which Geovany affectionately calls Crisanto Street, he uses his camera to document the day Continue reading...

Alfonso Ribeiro wants to stop the makers of Fortnite and NBA 2K from using the dance he first performed on the 1990s sitcomThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star Alfonso Ribeiro is suing the creators of Fortnite and NBA 2K for using his famous dance on the popular video games.In separate lawsuits filed on Monday in federal court, Ribeiro alleges that Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, and 2K Sports-creator Take-Two Interactive used his dance, dubbed The Carlton Dance, without permission or credit. Continue reading...

For children facing life-limiting illnesses, adaptive technology allows them to feel independent and express themselvesWith his spiky hair and Adidas sweatshirt, Shay Murray looks like a typical 11-year-old. He’s cute, he’s boisterous, he’s into everything. But he also has Pearson syndrome, an incredibly rare mitochondrial disease that affects multiple body organs. His eyesight, hearing and memory are deteriorating, his kidneys are operating at barely 60%. There is no cure. Most children with the condition die by the age of five.I’m watching Shay play video games in a big, bright social area at the Keech children’s hospice in Luton, where he is a regular and very enthusiastic visitor. “Whenever he comes here, I know the staff need a rest when he leaves,” says his father, Alan. “He’s a character. In a way, the disability has made him who he is – with the family sarcasm added on.” Continue reading...

Company will spend more than $1bn to build a new complex in New York City, in the tech industry’s latest major expansion eastSilicon Valley is becoming Silicon Nation.Google has announced will spend more than $1bn to build a new office complex in New York City that will allow it to double the number of people it employs there. Continue reading...

Company discovered suspicious traffic to a customer-support forum while investigating a security bug that exposed dataTwitter shares fell almost 7% after the company said it was investigating unusual traffic that might be from state-sponsored hackers and, in what appeared to be an unrelated issue, a security firm said hackers used the platform to try to steal user data.Related: After a year from hell, Facebook parties like it's 2017 Continue reading...

The network held its Christmas party at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco – but was there much to celebrate after a year of scandal?

Tax will come into effect from 1 January, but plans for an EU-wide levy have falteredFrance is to press ahead alone with a new tax on big technology companies after struggling to secure agreement for a EU-wide levy.The French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said he believed the tax, which will take effect from 1 January, would raise €500m (£450m) in its first year. Continue reading...

A growing number of customers are fed up with the company, from its working conditions at warehouses to anti-tax lobbyingThe holiday season is all about spending the time with your loved ones and, judging by most office mailrooms, shopping on Amazon. Last year, 76% of Americans who shopped online for Christmas presents said that they planned to do most of that shopping on Amazon.Amazon now accounts for just shy of half of all online sales in the US and Santa’s not so little helper is expected to have another bumper Christmas this year. But there are a growing number of people whose front steps won’t be graced by Amazon packages this festive season – consumers boycotting the online retailer. Continue reading...

Why libraries, parks and other endangered public spaces are essential to good city livingFor the sociologist Eric Klinenberg, a vision of the good city begins in the local library. It’s a place where a huge amount of knowledge is available permanently, free of charge. It’s a computer centre; it’s a place where everyone goes, including the marginalised young and elderly. Security is light-touch – “you rarely see a police officer in the library”. It is adaptable in a crisis. During Hurricane Sandy, a branch library in Staten Island became the place where local people sheltered and where relief was coordinated. In north-west Bangladesh, libraries float on moored boats in flood-prone areas. All this passes almost unnoticed. Libraries are closing across the UK and the US at a scarily rapid rate (nearly 130 have closed in the past year, it was recently revealed). The public library is not, and inherently never can be, a market, and so, Klinenberg writes, “If it didn’t already exist, it’s hard to imagine our society’s leaders inventing it.”Klinenberg, who comes from a similar Chicago community milieu as his friend Barack Obama, has written a paean to libraries, parks, playgrounds and other public spaces, but he is unable to keep the bleaker realities of urban (and, unusually, suburban) life out of his would-be-inspiring “Aren’t Cities great?” narrative. What are clearly meant to be instructive just-so stories and heartwarming anecdotes are often much more grim and upsetting than he seems to think they are. Continue reading...

Ambassador meets Michael Spavor who was arrested last week; he and Michael Kovrig were held following Huawei boss’s arrest in CanadaCanada’s ambassador to Beijing has met the second Canadian detained in China on suspicion of threatening national security.The Canadian foreign ministry said ambassador John McCallum met Michael Spavor, a business consultant, two days after visiting another detained Canadian, Michael Kovrig, a thinktank employee. Continue reading...

Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, pushes initiative in the state amid questions over his own political aspirationsRo Khanna is not running for president.Unlike many of his colleagues in Congress, the Silicon Valley congressman was not in Iowa to test the waters for a White House run. His visit was decidedly more ambitious: to bridge the deepening economic divide between urban and rural America. Continue reading...

Solutions for the ‘last mile’ of your commute vary from the weird to the boring, but this nifty and lightweight scooter will certainly put a smile on your faceMicro Falcon X3

For years, the hard-working Ford has been a favourite of Middle England – and it still has all the virtues we need in these turbulent daysFord Mondeo

After complaints about a project called Zen Blanket, we look at the pros and cons of crowdfundingIt is described as a hi-tech blanket that will give you “the best sleep ever” and reduce your stress levels, though at about £195 ($249) a pop it is certainly not cheap. The Zen Blanket was promoted on the crowdfunding websites Kickstarter and Indiegogo, prompting thousands of people to sink money into the venture – but some are now crying foul, demanding their money back and discussing class action lawsuits.One of those who is definitely not feeling zen is Don Dennis from Scotland. He pledged £118 to the project, in return for which he would be sent one of the blankets (£195 is the usual price, but early-bird backers received a discount). Continue reading...

Bug let developers access pictures people had uploaded but chosen not to postA Facebook bug let app developers see photos users had uploaded but never posted, the social network has disclosed.For two weeks in September, an error in the way Facebook shares photos with third parties meant that apps could see not only photos users had posted on their newsfeed, but also pictures in other parts of the site – on Facebook Stories or Facebook’s Marketplace, for instance. Continue reading...

Game Workers Unite UK will take aim at unpaid overtime, racism and sexism in sectorIt is known as “crunch” – long hours of unpaid overtime put in by computer games workers in the run-up to highly anticipated releases, often at the behest of managers.But the practice could soon be a thing of the past, as games workers unionise for the first time this weekend, taking aim at overtime, racism, sexism and bullying, which some say is rife in the sector. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber looks at why it’s difficult to be a game developer in Pakistan and Bosnia and HerzegovinaThis week we’re travelling to places that have almost no video game industry and talking to individuals who are doing their best to build one.Jordan Erica Webber talks to Amar Zubcevic, a game developer in Bosnia and Herzegovina who wants to inspire fellow developers to stay in the country and build a community, one games company at a time.

Ex-UK chancellor and austerity architect adds job as adviser to brother’s tech fund to portfolioGeorge Osborne has added a ninth job to his already bulging portfolio, joining his brother’s Silicon Valley venture capital fund.The former chancellor and current editor of London’s Evening Standard newspaper has been appointed as an adviser to 9Yards Capital. Continue reading...

What could be wrong with giving a shiny, new Facebook Portal or a fun DNA kit for the holidays? Plenty, writes Julia Carrie WongWhen it comes to gift giving, we often anticipate the moment of surprise and delight when a loved one will open their present – and forget to think about what comes next. But some presents are more trouble than they’re worth. Just ask anyone who has been on the receiving end of an unsolicited puppy, or a sourdough starter.So in the spirit of not burdening your beloveds with unintended consequences, we present to you our first-ever Reverse Gift Guide. Give your friends and family the gift of not having these products. They may not thank you now, but they will be better off. Continue reading...

Company had staff on hand to ‘help people manage their privacy’ and answer questions following controversy-plagued 2018Facebook held a one-off privacy “pop-up” in New York City on Thursday, part of the company’s ongoing public relations efforts to heal its image following a controversy-plagued 2018.Related: 'They don't care': Facebook fact-checking in disarray as journalists push to cut ties Continue reading...

Account has caused problems for pub chain including people turning up at the AGM asking ‘very heated questions’Twitter must reveal the user behind a pair of parody accounts claiming to be run by pub chain JD Wetherspoon, the high court has ruled.The social network, which did not oppose the application, has until mid-January to comply. The parody accounts, @Wetherspoon__UK and @SpoonsTom, have tens of thousands of followers each on the social network, and tweet a mixture of fake updates about Wetherspoon’s pubs and replies to users who mistakenly believe they are contacting the real company. Continue reading...

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission considers market position of Google and Facebook justifies greater oversightGoogle and Facebook are expected to push back hard against proposals to set up a new authority that would monitor how they use their market power and the operation of algorithms that drive the placement of news and advertising content on their sites.Publicly, the two digital multinationals say they are studying the nearly 400-page report released by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on Monday. Continue reading...

Journalists paid to help fix Facebook’s fake news problem say they have lost trust in the platformJournalists working as factcheckers for Facebook have pushed to end a controversial media partnership with the social network, saying the company has ignored their concerns and failed to use their expertise to combat misinformation.Current and former Facebook factcheckers told the Guardian that the tech platform’s collaboration with outside reporters has produced minimal results and that they’ve lost trust in Facebook, which has repeatedly refused to release meaningful data about the impacts of their work. Some said Facebook’s hiring of a PR firm that used an antisemitic narrative to discredit critics – fueling the same kind of propaganda factcheckers regularly debunk – should be a deal-breaker. Continue reading...

To win the game without spending money or watching ads, you tap your phone screen as fast as you can, nonstop, for 3,000 yearsThere’s a truism in the world of online media: if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. The aphorism also holds true in the world of gaming – and particularly in the case of freemium phone apps.You’re probably aware of these apps, if not the terminology: they arrive as free downloads, on the proviso that in order to access all their features you will either pay in time (through watching advertising) or money (via in-app purchases). Continue reading...

Protesters said move lacked public consultation as executives said massive investment would be good for the cityAmazon, the world’s wealthiest company, on Wednesday came head-to-head with public opposition to plans to build a new headquarters in New York as its executives said in the first in a series of hearings that its massive investment would be good for the city.At a public hearing at New York’s city hall, Amazon executives faced protesters calling for the plan, which the company claims will create as many as 40,000 new jobs over the next 15 years, to be abandoned. Continue reading...

Report details dangerous and unstable work conditions in dozens of warehouse distribution centers for Amazon and other retailersA coalition of labor advocacy groups is pushing New Jersey to enforce a “code of conduct” for warehouse workers at Amazon and other major online retailers, which includes a minimum wage, stabilized work hours and the right to unionise.A report released on Wednesday by Warehouse Workers Stand Up, details the dangerous and unstable work conditions that exist in dozens of New Jersey warehouse distribution centers for Amazon and other retailers including Costco, Office Depot and Macy’s. Continue reading...

Exclusive: internal document shows how Google employees are trained to treat temps, vendors and contractorsGoogle staff are instructed not to reward certain workers with perks like T-shirts, invite them to all-hands meetings, or allow them to engage in professional development training, an internal training document seen by the Guardian reveals.The guide instructs Google employees on the ins and outs of interacting with its tens of thousands of temps, vendors and contractors – a class of worker known at Google as TVCs. Continue reading...

As we publish the Guardian’s top 20 video games of 2018, we want to hear what you’ve been playing

Internet speeds in millions of households not fast enough to meet a typical family’s needsMore than a quarter of UK homes do not have fast enough broadband to cope with a typical family’s internet needs, such as downloading films and watching series on Netflix, according to a report.Just over 26% of the UK’s estimated 28 million households are getting by on speeds of less than 10Mbps, the level the media regulator, Ofcom, says is the bare minimum requirement for a modern household. Continue reading...

Dumping the home button for Face ID allows an impressive all-screen design but makes for an extremely expensive tabletAfter eight years of fairly boring design revisions, the new 2018 iPad Pro finally breaks the mould, restoring the wow factor the original commanded way back in 2010.That’s because the new iPad Pro is practically all screen. The home button is gone, replaced with uniform bezels around the edges and a thin, squared-off aluminium body reminiscent of the iPhone 4’s gorgeous design. Continue reading...

Technology company executive facing extradition to the US is given $7.5m bail by a judge in VancouverA Canadian court has granted bail to the Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou while she awaits a hearing on extradition to the United States.The release of the Chinese technology company’s chief financial officer caps three days of bail hearings and sets the stage for what could be a lengthy battle. Continue reading...

Law Council of Australia president-elect says the controversial legislation uses ‘a sledgehammer to crack a nut’The Morrison government’s new encryption bill uses “a sledgehammer to crack a nut” and would capture minor offences dealt with in local courts, as well as potentially allowing law enforcement agencies to target journalists and whistleblowers, experts have warned.The controversial encryption legislation was passed on the final sitting day of the year last week after Labor gave in to pressure from the government to pass the new laws before Christmas. Continue reading...

Facebook has always taken strange positions. But what is the point in banning posts that ‘facilitate, encourage or coordinate sexual encounters between adults’?Facebook has new rules, and they are not fun; like Dua Lipa’s, not fun at all. You could not dance to these rules. You must henceforth desist from any post that could “facilitate, encourage or coordinate sexual encounters between adults”. Since sex between consenting adults was, last time I checked, legal – indeed encouraged by responsible media platforms such as ours – this struck me as peculiar. Facebook has always taken strange positions: for ages, the weirdest was that it would remove pictures of breastfeeding, but not pages that made light of rape.This is the strangest yet, particularly given Mark Zuckerberg’s well-known creed of do-what-yer-like. If he can withstand the pressure of parliaments across the globe to appear before them, and if he can weather every accusation with a sturdy, “No, I didn’t … OK, yes I did, but I won’t do it again,” which special-interest group can possibly have leaned on him to make this radical move? Which evangelical church, which celibacy movement, could have got under his skin? Continue reading...

From immersive shooters to psychedelic Tetris and gothic fairytales, here are the virtual reality games you should be picking upThe familiar game of high-speed block organisation, but enveloped in psychedelic visuals and sound. VR isn’t strictly necessary, but it wraps the game’s astonishing visuals – glittering forests, neon cityscapes, constellations of lights that move like whales – all around you, helping you sink into the trance-like state of concentration that gives the game its title. The cumulative effect is quite emotionally overwhelming. As a fringe benefit, if you turn out to be one of the players who reports crying at Tetris Effect, the headset will help hide your tears from anyone else in the room. Continue reading...

It had everything: swordfights with lizards, magical tennis, shrieking mummies, a whole world to explore – plus a rousing score you could play along to. This joyful/scary chapter in Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda has inspired designers ever sinceThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s opening sequence is, for me, the most evocative of all video games. First you hear the galloping of a horse, joined by soft minor-key piano and melancholy, soaring ocarina notes as a young man in a green tunic rides under the setting moon. The camera pans over a blocky, low-resolution, yet spartanly beautiful landscape as the sun rises. It prepares you for a game that could be as melancholy as it was exciting, as emotionally affecting as it was technologically innovative. Released in Europe on this day in 1998, Ocarina of Time was one of the first true 3D adventures, a capsule world on a game cartridge, and it remains one of the very best. Continue reading...

In its latest seasonal update, the 200m-selling blockbuster allows players to create their own islands and share them with friends – the response is likely to be hugeEvery three months something gigantic happens in the lives of 200m video game players: Fortnite Battle Royale starts a new season. The seventh of these launched on Thursday, bringing a variety of additions to the online multiplayer shooting game, but the most important of these is surely the Creative mode, a whole new element that allows players to build their own Fortnite landscapes and share them with the world.For the uninitiated, Fortnite Battle Royale (as opposed to Fortnite Save the World, a linked but different version of the game) puts 100 players on an island together where they must search for guns and equipment and then fight until only one player remains. They begin on a large island filled with houses, shops, factories and sports arenas, but a huge storm rolls in progressively through the game, forcing combatants into an ever smaller area. The visuals are bright, brash and cartoony, and the locations are silly, from fast-food joints with enormous burger-headed statues, to toilet factories and spooky castles. It’s like playing Call of Duty in a world created by the Scooby Doo art team. Continue reading...

Service to be closed four months earlier than expected in light of lapse that exposed names, email addresses and other informationGoogle is still having trouble protecting the personal information on its Google+ service, prodding the company to accelerate its plans to shut down a little-used social network created to compete against Facebook.A privacy flaw that inadvertently exposed the names, email addresses, ages and other personal information of 52.5 million Google+ users last month convinced Google to close the service in April instead of August, as previously announced. Google revealed the new closure date and its latest privacy lapse in a Monday blogpost. Continue reading...

Forklift driver employed through labour hire company Adecco says he was dismissed from his job at Amazon due to union activityTwo unions have formed an alliance to organise workers at Amazon Australia after the first worker at its Sydney fulfilment centre to join a union was sacked.Raj, a forklift driver employed through labour hire company Adecco, has launched a general protections case in the Fair Work Commission claiming he was dismissed from his job due to union activity. Continue reading...

Country steps up pressure as Canada cancels a trade mission and Meng Wanzhou’s bail hearing adjourned until TuesdayChina has stepped up pressure on Canada ahead of the resumed bail hearing for a senior Huawei executive who was arrested in Vancouver on a US warrant.Related: China summons US ambassador over Huawei CFO's arrest Continue reading...

US trade representative says new tariffs will be imposed if trade negotiations are not achieved by the 90-day deadlineUS-China trade negotiations must achieve success by 1 March or new tariffs will be imposed, the US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, said on Sunday, clarifying the “hard deadline” after a week of seeming confusion among Donald Trump and his advisers.Related: China summons US ambassador over Huawei CFO's arrest Continue reading...

Terry Branstad urged to cancel arrest warrant for Meng Wanzhou and end her ‘egregious’ detentionChina has summoned the US ambassador in Beijing to protest about the detention of a senior Huawei executive in Canada after US law enforcement officials issued a warrant for her arrest last week.The official Xinhua news agency said the vice-foreign minister, Le Yucheng, had “lodged solemn representations and strong protests” with the ambassador, Terry Branstad, against the detention of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of the Chinese technology firm. Continue reading...

Jack Dorsey rhapsodised about 10-day meditation retreat and encouraged his 4 million followers to visitThe CEO of Twitter has faced fierce criticism for promoting Myanmar as a tourist destination in a series of tweets despite hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing human rights abuses that the UN says amounts to genocide.Jack Dorsey told his 4 million followers he had travelled to northern Myanmar last month for a 10-day silent meditation retreat, before encouraging them to visit. Continue reading...

As our online existences become less distinct from ‘real life’, experts raise concern about the growing power of big techMany of the boundary lines in our lives are highly literal, and, for the most part, this is how we’ve been trained to think of boundaries: as demarcations shored up by laws, physical, legal, or otherwise, that indicate exactly where one thing ends and another begins. Here is the border of your property; here is the border of your body; here is the border of a city, a state, a nation – and to cross any of these boundaries without permission is to transgress. But one of the most significant boundary lines in our lives is not this way, and one piece of ubiquitous technology is making this line increasingly permeable and uncertain, at a cost that we may only be starting to comprehend.Here’s a thought experiment: where do you end? Not your body, but you, the nebulous identity you think of as your “self”. Does it end at the limits of your physical form? Or does it include your voice, which can now be heard as far as outer space; your personal and behavioral data, which is spread out across the impossibly broad plane known as digital space; and your active online personas, which probably encompass dozens of different social media networks, text message conversations, and email exchanges? Continue reading...

From electric bikes and fold-up drones to combat robots and digital skipping ropes… the year’s most desirable technologyInstead of relying on heat, this innovative device employs the Coanda jet-flow effect (which helps keep planes airborne) to wrap and style hair. It requires relearning how to coax your locks, but you can say goodbye to heat damage and singed foreheads. Continue reading...