Playability, creativity and decision-making are to the fore in the best of this week’s games releasesPS4, Xbox One, PC, Capcom, cert 12

The trial, dubbed Airbnb Select, will see rental firm provide home improvement loans as it seeks to standardise offeringsAirbnb is looking to take an increasingly active role in ensuring the homes it offers for rent on its site are pleasant to stay in, from offering loans to hosts for home improvements to actively partnering in the construction of an apartment block in Florida, according to reports.The changes, which see the company move further than ever from its origins as a listing site connecting holidaymakers with hosts who have a spare room, could help Airbnb cement its position as an alternative to traditional hotels. Continue reading...

Ride-hailing service hopes to reverse TfL ruling that it is not ‘fit and proper’ company to run taxi services in capital

Facebook’s chief operating officer gave first live interview by a senior executive since the company disclosed it found some 3,000 politically divisive adsFacebook owes the American people an apology for the way it handled Russia’s interference in last year’s presidential election, its chief operating officer said on Thursday.“It’s not just that we apologize. We’re angry, we’re upset. But what we really owe the American people is determination” to do a better job of preventing foreign meddling, Sheryl Sandberg told the Axios news website during an interview in Washington.

Actor who has spoken out in Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal is banned in move that will reignite controversy around Twitter abuse rules

The British entrepreneur says he wants to make ‘airline speeds on the ground’ a reality, while engineering experts cast doubt on the safety of the technologySir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group has invested an undisclosed amount in Hyperloop One, the frontrunner of a number of companies competing to bring Elon Musk’s futuristic vision of a magnetically-propelled high-speed transport system to life.The investment, which makes up part of an $85m fundraising announced in September, will see Hyperloop One changing adding the Virgin name to its branding. Continue reading...

A developer has warned it is possible to create a phishing attack based on a fake sign-in request for Apple ID credentialsThe iPhone’s habit of repeatedly requesting your Apple ID password with little explanation or warning isn’t just annoying – it’s also a security flaw which could allow attackers to craft extremely convincing phishing attacks, an iOS developer has warned.Regular users of iPhones or iPads will be used to sporadic requests from the operating system to enter their Apple ID password, popping up in the middle of other activities and preventing them from continuing until they accede to the request. Continue reading...

Cliff wants a an alternative to premium-priced Intel laptops. Will AMD’s new Ryzen chip bring down the cost – and if so, when?The “light but mighty” (in speed and capacity) laptops from Dell, HP and Microsoft seem to me to be very expensive because Intel sells processors at premium prices. Now that AMD has produced Ryzen chips, can you foresee if and when these makers will produce desirable laptops with cheaper AMD chips? I can afford to pay Intel’s price premium, but I’d be more likely to buy if the £1,600 price came down to, say, £1,200. CliffThe good news is that Ryzen-based laptops will be here soon. The bad news is that the first ones won’t be ultralight models like the Dell XPS 13. Also, they probably won’t bring prices down as much as you hope.

It isn’t going to replace the iPad Pro any time soon, but with hands-free Alexa, good screen and solid battery, this device hits the spot for leisure usersAmazon’s new 10in tablet aims to offer users media viewing that rivals top-end competitors, but for under half the price of even the cheapest 10in iPad.While the company has found great success with its smaller and cheaper Fire 7, and now the excellent Fire HD 8, the previous Fire HD 10 was a bit hit and miss. This time round the right corners have been cut in the pursuit of a cheaper price. Continue reading...

Oculus Go will not require linking to a smartphone or personal computer like its predecessor, the Oculus Rift, and will cost less at $199Facebook has unveiled a stand-alone virtual reality headset designed to extend the appeal of the company’s Oculus technology to the masses.The headset, called Oculus Go, won’t require plugging in a smartphone or a cord tethering it to a personal computer like Oculus Rift or its competitor HTC’s Vive do. Continue reading...

Information about F-35 joint strike fighter was taken in cyberattack on Australian defence contractor, official revealsSecret information about new fighter jets, navy vessels and surveillance aircraft has been stolen from an Australian defence contractor.The hackers had “full and unfettered access” to the information for four months last year, before the Australian Signals Directorate was tipped about the breach in November. Continue reading...

Computers, smartphones and apps all hit by problem – with Europe and North America worst affected by faults now thought resolvedFacebook and Instagram were offline to many users on Wednesday afternoon in what appeared to be a global connection problem.The website Down Detector suggested users of both social media sites began reporting problems at about 4pm, with Europe and North America seemingly worst hit, though this could be due to time zones and the number of Facebook users in different regions.

Culture secretary says internet firms may have legal status changed amid concerns about copyright and extremist materialKaren Bradley, the culture secretary, has said the government is considering changing the legal status of Google, Facebook and other internet companies amid growing concerns about copyright infringement and the spread of extremist material online.The internet groups are considered conduits of information rather than publishers under UK law, meaning they have limited responsibility for what appears on their sites. Continue reading...

Premium device switches between ebooks and audiobooks and comes with Bluetooth, longer battery life and aluminium design to tempt readersAmazon’s Kindle is finally water resistant, with the launch of the new larger 7in Kindle Oasis that merges ebooks and audiobooks into one device.Ahead of the 10th anniversary of the original Kindle in November, the new top-end device aims to lead Amazon’s e-readers into the next decade with a new aluminium design, longer built-in battery life and a larger, brighter screen. Continue reading...

Information led to US decision to end use of company’s software across federal government in DecemberAn Israeli security agency hacked into Russian antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab in 2015, providing the crucial evidence required to ban the company from providing services to the US government, according to a report.While the Israeli spies were inside Kaspersky’s systems, they observed Russian spies in turn using the company’s tools to spy on American spies, the New York Times reports. That information, handed to the US, led to the decision in September to end the use of the company’s software across the federal government by December. Continue reading...

A study shows in most countries, women walk significantly fewer steps each day than men. Talia Shadwell hears from people all over the world saying the same thing: it’s down to personal safety, not laziness

US credit monitoring firm Equifax says far higher number of British customers were affected than previously thoughtEquifax has admitted that almost 700,000 UK consumers have had their personal details accessed following a cyber-attack, a figure far higher than previously thought.As well as affecting more Britons, the hack also resulted in significantly more damaging data being leaked on those who were affected. The information lost by the US credit monitoring firm included partial credit card details, phone numbers and driving licence numbers. Continue reading...

Government’s internet safety green paper includes voluntary levy on social media firms and web giants and social media code of practiceInternet companies such as Google and Facebook are to be asked to pay for measures to combat and raise awareness about online bullying and other web dangers, under a government internet safety strategy outlined on Wednesday.The proposed voluntary levy on social media firms and other leading web players is among a series of measures in an internet safety green paper, the product of a consultation process announced in February. Continue reading...

Regional disaster coordinators fear the Coalition’s cost-cutting decision to run fibre optics to-the-node will result in people being cut off in power outageLives may be lost in mass-emergencies including flood, bushfire and cyclone events because the NBN network will be left vulnerable during significant power outages, disaster management experts have warned NBN Co.Emergency coordinators in disaster-prone regions fear the government’s decision to run fibre optics largely to-the-node instead of to-the-premises in a bid to save money and roll out the NBN faster will leave communities completely cut off in a power outage. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Cyber-attack was far more widespread than firm admits, say sources, with data from as many as 350 clients in compromised system

America’s 2 million truckers have long been mythologised in popular culture. But self-driving trucks are set to lay waste to one of the country’s most beloved jobs – and the fallout could be hugeJeff Baxter’s sunflower-yellow Kenworth truck shines as bright and almost as big as the sun. Four men clean the glistening cab in the hangar-like truck wash at Iowa 80, the world’s largest truck stop.Baxter has made a pitstop at Iowa 80 before picking up a 116ft-long wind turbine blade that he’s driving down to Texas, 900 miles away. Continue reading...

Emergency coordinators fear decision to run fibre optics to-the-node will leave communities cut off in power outageLives may be lost in mass-emergencies including flood, bushfire and cyclone events because the NBN network will be left vulnerable during significant power outages, disaster management experts have warned NBN Co.Emergency coordinators in disaster-prone Queensland regions such as the Sunshine Coast and Redland fear the government’s decision to run fibre optics largely to-the-node instead of to-the-premises in a bid to save money and roll out the NBN faster will leave communities completely cut off in a power outage. Continue reading...

The Facebook CEO’s cartoon avatar visited the hurricane-damaged island in a tone-deaf livestream that was part disaster tourism, part product promotionA cartoon version of Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, visited hurricane-damaged Puerto Rico on Monday, in a tone-deaf livestream that was part disaster tourism, part product promotion.Zuckerberg, along with Facebook’s head of social virtual reality, Rachel Franklin, appeared as avatars within the broadcast from his profile as they “teleported” to different locations using Facebook’s “social VR” tool Spaces. In reality, the two were speaking from the comfort of their offices in the company’s campus in Menlo Park, California, wearing virtual reality headsets. Continue reading...

The cryptocurrency is up 1,600% in two years – but state efforts to remove its near-anonymity will undermine its popularityIs the cryptocurrency bitcoin the biggest bubble in the world today, or a great investment bet on the cutting edge of new-age financial technology? My best guess is that in the long run, the technology will thrive, but that the price of bitcoin will collapse.If you haven’t been following the bitcoin story, its price is up 600% over the past 12 months, and 1,600% in the past 24 months. At over $4,200 (as of 5 October), a single unit of the virtual currency is now worth more than three times an ounce of gold. Some bitcoin evangelists see it going far higher in the next few years. Continue reading...

Data shows consistent performance for iPhone 5S, iPhone 6, iPhone 6S and iPhone 7 with successive iOS updates, but that doesn’t mean the phones don’t feel slowerIt’s a perennial question asked in offices, pubs, shops and across the internet every year in the run up to the launch of a new iPhone: does Apple slow down older iPhones to make you buy new ones.

Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah becomes latest public figure to gamble on initial coin offerings to generate serious moneyForget a Gucci handbag, massive sunglasses or a teacup Chihuahua – the must-have celebrity accessory for 2017 is a cryptocurrency endorsement deal.So much money is floating around the sector that companies will pay almost anything to attract attention to their fundraising rounds – called “initial coin offerings”, in a legally questionable analogy to initial public offerings for tech startups. Continue reading...

This meticulously crafted title is more than just an ode to the golden age of animation – it’s a punishing yet moreish game that’s not for the faint-heartedYou may have heard that this game is hard. We can report, its difficulty has not been overstated – but punishment isn’t everything it has to offer. While Cuphead is decidedly painful, committed to beating you over the head with death after death in its 1930s-style animated world, it’s also meticulously crafted. It’s rich in tone, near pitch perfect in its balancing and it’s dedicated to teaching you the best way to succeed – all while you desperately sway between bashing your head against a wall and screaming in victorious elation.Bosses are the central spectacle here – ultra-paced, wonderfully designed, concentrated encounters that punctuate its run-time – but the immediate appeal is its inimitable art style. As a homage to the early days of animated cartoons, Cuphead is about as authentic as you get. The film grain crackles and its watercolour backgrounds pop with an obsessive attention to detail that never lets up. Its characters, too, are a work of art, offering up some of the most visually distinct creatures you will see in video games. That unflinching authenticity seeps into every part of Cuphead, from its menus to its music; from its character names – shout out to Porkrind the shop keeper – to their voice work. It’s fantastic across the board. Continue reading...

The latest iteration of the football gaming behemoth doesn’t disappoint, but the big hits of the season surely come in a pair of blasts from the pastEA, Xbox One/PS4/PC, cert 3

Brad Parscale tells CBS ‘Twitter is how [Trump] talked to the people’ but says staff members from other social media giant helped with targeted advertisingThe Trump presidential campaign spent most of its digital advertising budget on Facebook, testing more than 50,000 ad variations each day in an attempt to micro-target voters, Trump’s digital director, Brad Parscale, told CBS’s 60 Minutes in an interview scheduled to air on Sunday night.Related: Why Facebook is in a hole over data mining | John Naughton Continue reading...

As the venerable messaging system goes permanently AFK, one writer recalls how the platform allowed him to blossom into teenage eloquenceI was saddened this week to learn of the passing of a technological titan: the great AOL Instant Messenger. I knew it simply as Aim and I owe it a debt of gratitude, for it helped to make me the strapping, confident young man I am today, with decently fast typing skills.Related: AOL shuts down Instant Messenger after 20 years of online chat Continue reading...

Farmers’ pictures of their livestock and working day are pulling in followers from all over the worldInstagram often gets criticised for triggering Fomo or self-esteem issues, but staring at images of belted galloway calves in the Yorkshire dales could inspire an unfamiliar calm instead. Around the country, farmers are using the app to connect not only with fellow farmers but also with fans of their animals, the rural lifestyle or simply just the picturesque landscapes they capture.Neil and Leigh of Hill Top Farm in the Yorkshire dales have more than 16,000 followers as @hilltopfarmgirl, the majority of whom they believe are non-farmers. “I think they follow for a real variety of reasons,” Leigh says. It could be concern for high-welfare meat or a love of animals and the landscape. “Some people love the escape into a different world - a US follower once said he loved looking at the photos when he was at work in his office in a skyscraper in Chicago.” Continue reading...

Sync your calendars, censor your history and save great posts: top ways to streamline your social experienceWant to liven up your messages and updates? Facebook automatically converts certain character combinations into graphical emoticons: for example, if you enter “:D” it will appear as a laughing face, while “<3” gives you a heart. See emojicodes.com for a full list. Laptop users can also use keyboard shortcuts to navigate around the site quickly; on Chrome for Windows, for example, pressing alt+2 takes you directly to your timeline, while alt+3 opens your friends list. The key combinations vary depending on your browser: see this page for details. Continue reading...

Stress led the creator of Moshi Monsters to meditation and to create new app Calm, which he aims to make the biggest brand in mental fitnessHow much are you involved in Mind Candy these days? The company went through some difficult times as kids’ gaming moved from web to mobile – what did you learn from that?

For anyone with a yearning for the good old days, this new Caterham will blast you down memory lane in no timePrice: £27,995

Hi-tech features concealed throughout this 50s seaside house in East Sussex make it highly energy efficient – and make life easier for its ownersPicture a tech-savvy home and you will probably envisage a slick, white cube where the blinds whirr up at a preset hour and sensors turn on the shower. But a smart home doesn’t have to be robotic and flashy. “We wanted to use technology to make life easier,” says Gigi Sutherland of the home she and her partner, Matt Sellers, redesigned in East Sussex. With walls clad in basic building materials, the mood here is far from futuristic. The rough and ready aesthetic has hidden depths, though, from concealed speakers and motion sensors to app-controlled energy and security systems.The house dates from the 1950s and, while the building itself is not so special, it backs on to Camber Sands. “It was just a set of boxy rooms and two garages,” says Sutherland, a stylist. “We wanted to join up the spaces and integrate the garages into the house.” The pair rebuilt the interior from scratch. Walls are made from OSB, a type of chipboard, and plaster-like dark grey Artex. “It creates a tadelakt-style finish with a nice chalky texture,” says Sutherland. The flooring is grey poured concrete. Continue reading...

Faced with a choice of babysitters, which do you rely on: your instinct – or the algorithm that tells you to book the one in the green top?My first lesson in the dangers of trusting strangers came in 1983, not long after I turned five, when an unfamiliar woman entered our house. Doris, from Glasgow, was in her late 20s and starting as our nanny. My mum had found her through a posh magazine called The Lady.Doris arrived wearing a Salvation Army uniform, complete with bonnet. “I remember her thick Scottish accent,” Mum recalls. “She told me she’d worked with kids of a similar age and was a member of the Salvation Army because she enjoyed helping people. But, honestly, she had me at hello.” Continue reading...

Shakespeare had it easy. Writing an 800-word column while resisting the siren call of online gossip? That’s a literary triumphAddicts talk about hitting “rock bottom” with their vice, and given that I am definitely addicted to the internet, I know exactly when I reached mine. It wasn’t the multiple times I Googled the 1990 Bacardi advert five minutes before a deadline, purely to relive that glorious moment from my youth when alcohol advertised itself by promising it would make you so drunk you would fancy your Aunt Beryl. Nor was it the times my children tried to get my attention but I was otherwise engaged in the deeply important task of seeing how many likes a photo of them got on Instagram. (I should call social services on myself but I’m looking something up on my phone, so I can’t actually use it to make a call. Sorry, kids!) No, it came three years ago in a hotel room in Los Angeles.Now, I love Los Angeles, but instead of enjoying the palm trees and the hipsters on this trip, I spent it inside my hotel staring at my laptop. Someone back in Britain had taken deep offence at a throwaway line I’d written about – and I swear I’m not making this up – the salaries of footballers and, as is the way with such things, marshalled their online troops so that hundreds of people were screaming at me on Twitter. For two days, I tried to engage with these furious warriors, because having all these angry voices coming out of my computer made me feel like the most loathed person in the world and I was determined to fix this. On the third day, my boyfriend called and ordered me to go out, leave my phone behind and take a break. So I did. And as I sat on Santa Monica beach, I realised my relationship with the internet had to change. Continue reading...

Ashamed of your toes? Passionate about hamsters? There are others who feel just the same. All you have to do is find them…Read enough stories about the internet and you’d be forgiven for thinking its main function is teenage bullying, criminal grooming and trolling public figures. But the internet also helps us find people like us, people you can’t spot on the bus, like never before. Before finding my own tribe in 2013, I was sad and broke, having traded my life savings for an apparently useless journalism MA.Unemployment is lonely. There were a million of us at the time, but career advice distances you from people going through the same thing: you’re meant to stand out, beat the competition, get a billboard CV. Since there was no community, I decided to start one: an anonymous blog called How To Be Jobless. Continue reading...

From artificial intelligence to cheap smartphones, Google is on the frontline of technological development. But is it growing too big and moving too fast? A rare interview with Google’s boss

What is it like to be autistic? The Guardian’s latest VR film offers a glimpse of how a person on the autism spectrum copes with a stressful environment

Uber should license its software to other taxi firms and charge users £1.99 for its app, says Ken Patterson; social trading can change the world, says John BirdYour correspondents from charities supporting people with disabilities quite rightly say that “disabled people deserve to benefit from the greater choice of affordable and accessible travel that competition and innovation delivers” (Letters, 2 October). They go on to say that “Uber provides this opportunity” – er, no. Uber does no such thing, because it does not provide any vehicles. Uber makes the so-called “self-employed contractors”, who drive the vehicles, provide vehicles adapted for disabled use – at their expense, not Uber’s. As always, Uber simply provides the link and takes a hefty fee.If Uber is prevented from operating, the vehicles will still be there to provide a service to disabled people, probably working for London’s many other taxi firms. And if Uber wanted to provide a public service of any sort to anyone (disabled or otherwise) rather than indulge in monopolistic world domination, it would license the software to any taxi firm that wanted to use it and make the app available to users for £1.99. That way it might even make a profit.

Aristotle was designed to ‘soothe babies, reinforce good manners, help learn a language’ until campaigners argued it would replace caring with fake nurturingChildren’s toymaker Mattel has been forced to cancel plans to produce an AI-powered babysitter, after a raft of complaints that the product would inflict psychological damage on young children.First announced in January, the device was to be called Aristotle and was a tall cylinder, reminiscent of Amazon’s Echo smart speaker. It would have provided many similar features to smart speakers, allowing owners to purchase nappies online or verbally search for child raising help on the internet. Continue reading...

Kane Gamble, 18, pleads guilty to trying to hack into the computers of senior US government officialsA British teenager has admitted trying to hack into the computers of senior US government officials, including the director of the CIA and the deputy director of the FBI.Kane Gamble, 18, pleaded guilty on Friday to 10 charges at Leicester crown court. Besides John Brennan, the then director of the CIA, and Mark Giuliano, a former deputy director of the FBI, his targets included Avril Haines, Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, and John Holdren, his senior science and technology adviser. Continue reading...

For 13 years I’ve hung around like a tricky end-of-level boss. On my last day as the Guardian’s games editor, here’s how the industry has grown since I startedIn July 2004, Neil McIntosh, then head of blogging at the Guardian, posted a story on the newspaper’s growing website. “Welcome to Gamesblog, the videogames weblog from the Guardian,” he wrote. “Our aim here is to talk about games in an entertaining, adult way, and help you enjoy playing games on whatever gadget you own – PC, games console, handheld device or mobile phone. We hope you find things are a little different around here.”Alongside Aleks Krotoski and Greg Howson, I was one of the writers brought on to contribute daily stories, news and personal opinions to this formative gaming blog – and while my compatriots eventually moved on, I hung around like a particularly tricky end-of-level boss, obsessively documenting the changing face of the industry. Back then, we thought the medium was about to enter a period of extraordinary change. We were right. Continue reading...

Want to know where the nearest playground is or when to take a toilet break in movies? There’s an app for thatSmartphone apps can broadly be divided into the useful and the pointless curios doomed to be forgotten, such as that gender-swap image-manipulation thing that exists solely to make me look like an uncomfortably sexualised foetus. Look closely, however, and you will find a middle ground: apps that sound stupid, but are useful enough to improve your life meaningfully. Here are my eight favourites. Continue reading...

Released in 1993, Sega’s coin-op driving masterpiece should be lagging in the slipstream of other driving titles by now. Just what is the game’s secret?If you were to set foot inside the Heart of Gaming, a densely packed treasure trove of classic and modern arcade games in Croydon, there is one cabinet you’d almost certainly have to queue to play on. Featuring chunkily texture-mapped stock cars, snaking between each other on swooping circuits below an azure blue sky, Daytona USA, is one of the greatest driving games ever made.