Technology | The Guardian

“I’d rather pump septic tanks,” John Perry Barlow told me in a Chinese restaurant in 1995 to explain how much he hated writing. “You can never tell whether you did any good or not.”We were all attending a nearby Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference. Barlow was then hashing out the beginnings of A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, which he conceived as a modern-day equivalent to Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Many at the time thought the piece overwrought; faced with the criticism, Barlow would laugh and say his friend Mitch Kapor thought he needed a “hyperbolectomy”. Continue reading...

Music streaming service is gearing up to make its first physical products as it faces blockade from rivalsSpotify is working on a line of “category defining” hardware products and is ready to start setting up the manufacturing process.The streaming music company intends to create a hardware category “akin to Pebble Watch, Amazon Echo, and Snap Spectacles”, according to job adverts posted over the past year. Continue reading...

MPs cast doubt on whether energy efficiency gains can keep offsetting rising power demandA cross-party group of MPs has raised doubts over whether the growing energy demand from digital technology and the proliferation of internet-connected gadgets can continue to be offset by energy efficiency improvements.More efficient smartphones, networking gear and data centres have so far largely staved off increased power demand from the internet and computing – which now accounts for about 6% of global electricity use. Continue reading...

Aim is for players to build a fake news empire, which researchers hope will expose propaganda tacticsFake news is already an entire industry, an anti-democratic weapon, a movie, a play, an insult and a cliche.Now it is being turned into a game – to help people understand its wiles and deceptions.

Police say 30-year-old man was shot, and later died, following possible ‘exchange of words’ with delivery driver for on-demand app

‘His excellency’ Calvin Ayre says project will be entirely funded from digital currency profitsCalvin Ayre, a gambling and bitcoin multi-millionaire who was once on the run from the US authorities, is building a $100m five-star resort on Antigua funded by profits from digital currencies.Canadian-born Ayre, who has been appointed Antigua and Barbuda’s special economic envoy, said he had begun work on the upmarket tourist resort on Antigua’s Valley Church beach. Continue reading...

From superfast trains to colonising Mars – a selection of Elon Musk’s extraordinary ideasMusk’s SpaceX enterprise was founded with the intention of making space travel affordable. By extension, Musk has stated that he hopes human beings will one day become a “multi-planetary species”. At the 68th International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide last September, Musk said he hopes to send cargo ships to the Red Planet within the next five years, with humans settling by 2024. Continue reading...

Whatever two-wheel adventures you are planning, this classy take on the all-round gravel bike will make the ideal companionTemple Cycles Adventure Disc

Is a 1-litre engine enough? The new compact crossover from Seat proves you can pack a punch no matter your sizeSeat Arona

The outspoken libertarian’s departure is a sign of the times, say LA conservatives, as Silicon Valley faces criticism for silencing alternative viewpoints

Bath holiday lets | 1970s contraception | Mattinata | Dame’s Delight | Birthday listings | Jazz thanksIn Bath it is not just Airbnb that’s a problem (Letters, 15 February). A housing association is renting out former council homes as holiday lets. One is let to hen parties, leaving neighbours to explain to their children the inflatable penises in the back garden.

Social network instructed to delete illegally collected data or face €100m in fines after it loses case over consent and trackingFacebook has been ordered by a Belgian court to stop collecting data on users or face daily fines of €250,000 a day, or up to €100m.The court ruled on Friday that Facebook had broken privacy laws by tracking people on third-party sites in the latest salvo in a long-running battle between the Belgian commission for the protection of privacy (CPP) and the social network. Continue reading...

Now available free on PC, Dead Space came closer than any other game to replicating the look, feel and atmosphere of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi thrillerThis week, Electronic Arts has made one of the most interesting and atmospheric narrative games of the 2000s available for free to users of its Origin gaming service. Released in 2008 and created by Californian studio Visceral Games, Dead Space remains a heady, often terrifying thrill ride and if you’ve never played it before, it’s worth taking this chance – especially if you’re a fan of the Alien movies.Although there have been numerous attempts to bring Alien directly to video games – most successfully, Creative Assembly’s incredibly tense Alien: Isolation – it’s Dead Space that has got closest to replicating the look, feel and atmosphere of Ridley Scott’s original film. Continue reading...

Company is working to fix glitch in software update that can put devices into bootloopApple is working urgently to fix a bug in its latest software update that crashes applications that display a particular letter from the south Indian language Telugu.Typing or receiving a message that contains the letter causes apps such as Gmail, Instagram or WhatsApp to crash. Continue reading...

Can technology provide solutions to the various difficulties that disabled people face every day in areas where full accessibility is lacking?Subscribe and review on Apple, Spotify or on your favourite podcasting app and join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter.

White House labels Kremlin ‘reckless’, while UK says it ‘undermined democracy’The US and UK governments have publicly blamed Russia for a crippling cyber-attack last year that targeted Ukraine and spread around the world.On Thursday, Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, said that the NotPetya ransomware attack in June 2017 “was part of the Kremlin’s ongoing effort to destabilise Ukraine and demonstrates ever more clearly Russia’s involvement in the ongoing conflict.” Continue reading...

Next wave of development will see drivers only expected to intervene when the car requests it, say researchersDriving down the motorway in a swanky semi-autonomous car, the vehicle is at its own wheel, humming along smoothly. But coming off a slip road it is over to you. The only trouble is, you’ve fallen asleep.The goal of a completely driverless car is considered top of a six-level scale of autonomy, and researchers believe it will one day be possible to achieve that aim. But for now, cars are stuck at level two on the scale – in which the driver must still perform several key aspects of driving – while engineers work out how to crack the problem of keeping drivers alert.

With cries of undue influence over the industry body deciding which ads to ban, is new Chrome adblocking too self-serving?From today, users of Google Chrome, the most popular web browser in the world, will no longer see 12 types of online adverts which have been deemed to be “intrusive” by a group of advertising industry membersLeading that body, which examined 104 potential formats to determine which should be blocked and which should be allowed, is the world’s largest digital advertiser: Google. Continue reading...

PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One; Warhorse Studios/Koch Media

White rings formed due to oils and polish in the wood reacting negatively with the silicone foot on the bottom of £319 speakerEarly adopters of Apple’s new £319 HomePod smart speaker have started complaining that the “new sound of home” is leaving white ring marks on wooden surfaces that are difficult to remove.

Users of latest Chrome browser on Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Android will have some of most intrusive types of ads blocked automatically

The company’s first foray into smart tech adds Amazon’s Alexa to a great wireless speaker to create a formidable comboHaving practically invented the multi-room wireless speaker category in 2005, Sonos has lagged behind in the race to become smart. Now the Sonos One is here, packing Alexa in the top and premium audio in the bottom.

How an extreme libertarian tract predicting the collapse of liberal democracies – written by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s father – inspired the likes of Peter Thiel to buy up property across the Pacific

Readers respond to John Harris’s article exposing the impact of online holiday lets on local communitiesCongratulations to John Harris for his excellent article on the reality of Airbnb (Profiteers make a killing on Airbnb – and erode communities, 12, February). The scale and nature of this problem needs to be exposed. Harris is absolutely right to distinguish between local residents letting out a spare room and commercial operations buying into the property market for large returns. In our local residents’ association, the disruption caused by Airbnb visitors is in the top five of problems where action is desperately sought from the council.There are two points worth adding. Firstly, Edinburgh council acts more like the Edinburgh development corporation than a local authority, promoting tourism with singular disregard for the people who actually live in central Edinburgh 365 days a year. This helps to generate the market in which Airbnb flourishes. It also gives the council a stake in Airbnb accommodation. Secondly, the city loses out on tax revenue from this “non-commercial” sector’s demands on the infrastructure. No one is against tourism, but it should be balanced against the needs of those who live and work in Edinburgh. But then we all know the pressures on council from many directions.

Though 5,000-site attack suggests forcing visitors to mine cryptocurrency offers scant reward, it hasn’t stopped news platform SalonA malware attack that turned thousands of websites into cryptocurrency mining engines made just $24, according to the company that develops the software used.On Sunday, hackers compromised an accessibility plugin, BrowseAloud, which is used to offer screen-reading services on a number of websites including the Information Commissioner’s Office, the Student Loans Company and several English councils. Continue reading...

Advertising watchdog rejects Echo Dot owner’s complaint that TV spot was irresponsibleAn Amazon Echo owner has tried to get a television advertising campaign for the smart speaker banned after the Alexa virtual assistant attempted to order cat food when it heard its name on an ad.

Analysts say local competitors are as profitable as before the global giant’s ‘underwhelming’ launch – but for how much longer?Three months after the launch of Amazon in Australia, local competitors say they are still waiting for the dreaded “Amazon effect” to hit their sales.

Robotics company releases video of the SpotMini, its four-legged and well-mannered machineEight years after it was first revealed to the public, the uncanny gait of Boston Dynamics’ quadrupedal robots is still unsettling. But a new video, released by the firm on Monday, shows the company’s flagship robot, the SpotMini, crossing a new threshold – literally – as it demonstrates that it can open doors.The video depicts a SpotMini, a four-legged yellow machine that stands about a metre high, flummoxed by a closed door before a second robot of the same type, equipped with a fifth limb extending from its back, arrives to save the day. The second bot turns the handle, pulls the door open and holds it for the first to walk through, then follows. Continue reading...

Fourattic/Devolver Digital; PlayStation 4, PC, PlayStation Vita

There’s no question that ‘distracted driving’ can be deadly – so why are so many of us reluctant to take a stand against it?A friend drove me to work the other day and, while she was driving, picked up a call on her cellphone. It was a short conversation and after she hung up, she apologized, but the episode left me feeling uncomfortable. Should I have called her out or am I overreacting?I suspect you don’t need me to tell you that your nervousness is well-founded: the statistics on car accidents and phone use are incontrovertible. In 2015, approximately 3,477 people were killed, and 391,000 were injured, in car crashes caused by “distracted driving”. Continue reading...

The Xbox and PC online multiplayer pirate adventure will boast sea monsters and skeleton forts – and this is only the beginningWhen the veteran British games studio Rare first revealed Sea of Thieves in 2015, it’s fair to say the response was positive. After years spent concentrating on the controversial Kinect device, the creator of luscious SNES and N64 classics Donkey Kong Country and Banjo-Kazooie unveiled an online pirate adventure where groups of friends would set sail on an open ocean, seeking out treasure and doing battle with other player crews. It felt like the beloved developer had truly returned.Two years later, anticipation remains high. Within five hours of the recent closed beta test going live, it was the most watched game on streaming service Twitch, beating even the mighty League of Legends. In the end, more than 300,000 people signed up to play, spending 2m hours and completing 400,000 quests in the week-long test. Continue reading...

It’s the wifi speaker to beat in terms of audio but being locked in to Apple services is frustrating and its voice assistant is lackingAfter much anticipation, and speculation that Apple has missed the boat and handed victory to Amazon’s champion Echo, the HomePod smart speaker is finally here. But is it actually any good? And why exactly does it cost four times as much as an Echo?

Firm to appeal decision by Berlin regional court which upholds complaints that users not given informed consentFacebook’s default privacy settings and use of personal data are against German consumer law, according to a judgement handed down by a Berlin regional court.The court found that Facebook collects and uses personal data without providing enough information to its members for them to render meaningful consent. The federation of German consumer organisations (VZBV), which brought the suit, argued that Facebook opted users in to features which it should not have. Continue reading...

Some players find the carnage of Monster Hunter: World distasteful. To me, it is an outlet for the carnivore withinI have an admission to make: I’m a vegetarian who enjoys big-game hunting. For the past several weeks I have been playing Monster Hunter: World, a PlayStation 4 video game in which you head out into the wilds and hunt down enormous dinosaur-like creatures, wearing armour fashioned from the bones, fur and scales of previous conquests. Monster Hunter: World is nothing like real-world hunting. For one thing, the monsters in question are hugely powerful and often eat me for dinner several times before I finally manage a victory, and for another I do most of my hunting with a lightning-infused axe that transforms into a sword.More saliently, it’s not real. My entertainment does not come at the cost of any real-world suffering. There is no possibility of extinction or ecological catastrophe. Continue reading...

Market for data analysis called a ‘race to the bottom’, with trials failing because of evidence issuesMore than a dozen police forces have outsourced digital forensic investigative work to unaccredited private laboratories in the past year, at a time when a series of rape cases have been abandoned because of problems with digital evidence.The collapse of four trials within two months because digital forensic evidence had not been shared with defence teams has shaken confidence in the criminal justice system and triggered a review of thousands of rape cases by the Crown Prosecution Service. Continue reading...

A forecast 700,000 UK teenagers and young adults will leave the social media site in 2018It’s official: Facebook is for old(er) people. Teens and young adults are ditching Mark Zuckerberg’s social network as popularity among the over-55s surges, according to a report.In 2018, 2.2 million 12- to 17-year-olds and 4.5 million 18- to 24-year-olds will regularly use Facebook in the UK, 700,000 fewer than in 2017, as younger users defect to services such as Snapchat, according to eMarketer. Continue reading...

Hackers used plug-in to force computers to secretly mine cryptocurrencyA series of Australian government websites, including the Victorian parliament’s, have been compromised by malware that forces visitors’ computers to secretly mine cryptocurrency, as part of a worldwide security breach.The process, known as cryptojacking, forces a user’s computer to mine cryptocurrency without their permission, generating profits for the hacker. Continue reading...

Thousands of sites, including NHS services and the ICO, hijacked by rogue codeThousands of websites, including those belonging to NHS services, the Student Loans Company and several English councils, have been infected by malware that forces visitors’ computers to mine cryptocurrency while using the site.Late on Sunday, the website of the UK’s data protection watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office, was taken down to deal with the issue after it was reportedly infected by the malware. Continue reading...

Cattle rancher, lyricist for the Grateful Dead and internet pioneer who became a digital rights activistJohn Perry Barlow, who has died aged 70 after a long period of ill health, started as a cattle rancher, wrote lyrics for the Grateful Dead, and then became a digital rights activist and a champion of free speech on the internet. His ideas captured the mood of a generation that believed people could reinvent themselves in a new virtual world with no government controls and no national boundaries.And, by the way, where they could share digital music and movies without paying for them. As Barlow pointed out, digital goods, unlike physical goods, could be infinitely replicated at zero cost. Continue reading...

Driving France’s car renaissance is this chunky little chap. But don’t think this compact SUV is all about style and quirky details, there’s plenty of substance to back it upCitroën C3 Aircross compact SUV

She’s a safe pair of hands who asks the questions and fills the airtimeHardly a day goes by without real life throwing another offering into the pot of potential Black Mirror storylines.The latest is the general knowledge app HQ, played live on smartphones, like a quiz show, at set times of the day, with prize money to be divided up between the players who make it to the end of 12 increasingly difficult questions. I’ve never managed to get past question six, but I know someone who won $150. The game has already been on the receiving end of a number of controversies, about its investors and creators, but that doesn’t seem to have dented its appeal. While the quiz plays out, there’s a rolling comments section underneath it, like a demonic Twitter feed that it’s impossible to take your eyes away from. Not only is it Black Mirror-ish, it’s a bit Clockwork Orange, too. Continue reading...

Ongoing studies show that some mammals and birds can mimic the sound of the human voiceResearch published last month proved that orca, or killer, whales have the ability to mimic the complexities of human speech. Josep Call, professor in evolutionary origins of mind at the University of St Andrews, was a co-author of the study. He said: “I think here we have the first evidence that killer whales may be learning sounds by vocal imitation.” Continue reading...

We hear a lot about the dangers of video games but what if coaches used them to improve and inspire young players?By Craig Shields for Nutmeg, part of the Sport NetworkFootball is a simple game and nowhere more so than at youth level, where children instinctively connect the dots and know to put the round thing into the net – or between the jumpers. In coaching, we tend to worry too much about how successful teams of yesteryear were formed rather than looking forward and taking advantage of modern methods and tools.Youngsters don’t live in the same world Kenny Dalglish or Denis Law grew up in. City streets are no longer littered with footballs – at least in Scotland –but while children are now restricted in ways their fathers and grandfathers weren’t offline, they have greater freedom of expression and exploration online. Continue reading...

Google pulls all adverts from vlogger’s content for displaying a ‘pattern of behaviour’ that ‘damages the broader creator community’YouTube has once again penalised vlogger Logan Paul for posting inappropriate content, just weeks after he was suspended from the company’s paid-content program over a video trivialising suicide.The YouTube star has had all adverts on his videos suspended over what Google describes as a “pattern of behaviour”, repeatedly posting content which push the boundaries of what is acceptable on the site. Continue reading...

What went wrong in Hawaii when a false emergency alert was sent to mobile phones warning that a ballistic missile was about to hit the islands?Subscribe and review on iTunes, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast or on your favourite podcasting app and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterThe state of Hawaii was sent into a frenzy on 13 January when an alert popped up on mobile phone screens telling people that a ballistic missile was heading towards the islands. Continue reading...

It might only come in blue but you’d have to spend a lot more than £449 to find a better smartphone than thisThe Honor 10 View’s all-screen design, great performance and stellar battery life puts rival phones retailing at twice the price to shame, making you question why you’re paying any more for a top-end smartphone in 2018. Continue reading...

When real-life failure was difficult, video games were a place where all I lost was imaginary points and minutes of my timeThe very first one I remember is Ski Free. It’s pretty simplistic; you race down a hill, pursued by a yeti, avoiding obstacles and trying desperately not to crash. In my distant memory, others follow: a blur of pixellated colours and basic sound effects by today’s symphonic standards. Tyrian. Jazz Jackrabbit. Duke Nukem 3D. Doom. I was entranced.Video games. Continue reading...

The ease with which giant databases can be queried and cross-referenced makes privacy vanish on the internetPrivacy is necessary for human society to function. The problem is not that the information exists but that it reaches the wrong people. Information on the internet could bring great benefits to society, and to individuals, when huge datasets can be refined to yield information otherwise unavailable. But once the information is gathered, a precautionary principle has to apply. It is too much of a stretch to agree with John Perry Barlow, the internet rights pioneer who died this week, when he quipped that “relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds”; but it does not help when it appears that everything the public sector does with the huge datasets it has will be overseen by the minister for fun.Governments need to keep our trust; but technology erodes privacy in two ways. The first is simply smartphones. Most Britons – 70% – now carry around with them devices which record and report their location, their friends and their interests all the time. The second is the ease with which two (or more) datasets can be combined to bring out secrets that are apparent in neither set on its own, and to identify individuals from data that appears to be entirely anonymised. By the beginning of this century researchers had established that nearly 90% of the US population could be uniquely identified simply by combining their gender, their date of birth and their postal code. All kinds of things can be reliably inferred from freely available data: four likes on Facebook are usually enough to reveal a person’s sexual orientation. Continue reading...