Technology | The Guardian

UK cybercrime tsar will ask government to set up scheme to deter teenagers who often do not realise they are breaking lawBritain’s cybercrime tsar will formally ask the government to set up a programme based on the controversial Prevent strategy to stop children as young as 12 becoming involved in sophisticated computer offences, the Guardian has learned.Dr Jamie Saunders said training was needed to help spot teenagers at risk as many young internet users experiment with hacking or other cyber offences without realising that what they are doing is a crime. Continue reading...

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

The depiction of the first world war in Battlefield 1, and a disastrous social media campaign to promote it, raise questions of rules, respect and responsibilityThe first world war has never been a major subject for video games, perhaps because the endless weeks of trench-digging and letter-writing followed by a vault over the top and a brief, futile sprint into a “game over” screen doesn’t play to the medium’s conventional strengths. For years the second world war was the preferred theatre for the game director. That conflict’s variety has allowed players to partake in skirmishes in pretty French villages in Brothers in Arms, to storm Normandy beaches in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and to draw a bead on Hitler’s testicles in Sniper V2 Elite.With its centenary, however, attention has turned to the first world war. 2014’s Valiant Hearts: The Great War was a cartoonish yet sombre game that, much like Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong, examines the pressures exerted by wartime circumstance and misfortune on the human heart. This month’s Battlefield 1 takes a more visceral approach, placing you in the boots of a number of soldiers across a range of French, Italian and Mesopotamian historical arenas. While there’s a brief story, Battlefield’s long-term offering is in its vast, disorienting multiplayer battles, where up to 64 players assume the roles of infantrymen, horse riders, tank drivers and biplane pilots, and trade shots while using war pigeons to call down artillery strikes on one another. Some may baulk at the appropriation of one of the world’s deadliest conflicts as set dressing for a sort of Scout-like wide game, but its no more morally questionable than a film director using war to mawkish ends. Continue reading...

With an ageing population and care costs rising, robots and smart homes may be a solution. But would you want a plastic dog to look after your loved ones?Sitting in a studio in Kensington, London, the designer Sebastian Conran walks me through a worst-case scenario. “Basically, what it’s looking for is a break in routine,” he explains, pointing to a drawing of an elderly woman, collapsed on the floor of her home. “There’s an event. The e-sensor in the room notices that you’ve fallen over. MiRo goes to investigate.”MiRo is a robotic dog. There is an early model close to where we are sitting. Its head sits above a torso without arms or legs, and its cartoonish eyes stare out below alert ears embedded with speakers. Conran’s company describes it as a biomimetic companion robot, and says it will eventually work with facial recognition technology to make life easier for its owner – to prompt them to take medicine, or to remind them of visitors’ names, or to question them if it thinks they’re in trouble. Conran tells me to think of it as a cross between a pet and Radio 4’s John Humphrys. Continue reading...

Thousands take part in annual protest, which largely avoided ugly scenes of previous yearsThousands of masked protesters descended on central London on Saturday night for the Million Mask March, an annual global anti-capitalism and pro-civil liberties demonstration.Wearing characteristic Guy Fawkes masks, supporters of hacking collective Anonymous crowded into Trafalgar Square with scores of police on hand to keep order. The protest passed off without major incident, though by 10.45pm police had made 47 arrests, the majority for drug offences and obstruction of officers. Continue reading...

Announcements by the chancellor about funding are all well and good, but simple legislative action might have more effectOn Tuesday, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, announced that the government was “investing” £1.9bn in boosting the nation’s cybersecurity. “If we want Britain to be the best place in the world to be a tech business,” he said, “then it is also crucial that Britain is a safe place to do digital business… Just as technology presents huge opportunities for our economy – so to it poses a risk. Trust in the internet and the infrastructure on which it relies is fundamental to our economic future. Because without that trust, faith in the whole digital edifice will fall away.”Quite so; cybersecurity is clearly important. After all, in its 2015 strategic defence and security review, the government classified “cyber” as a “tier 1” threat. That’s the same level as international military conflict and terrorism. So let’s look at the numbers. The UK’s defence budget currently runs at £35.1bn, while the country’s expenditure on counterterrorism is now running at about £3bn a year. That puts Hammond’s £1.9bn (a commitment he inherited from George Osborne, by the way) into perspective. And the money is to be spent over five years, so an uncharitable reading of the chancellor’s announcement is that the government is actually investing just under £400m annually in combating this tier 1 threat. Continue reading...

Audi’s SQ5 is certainly Super Quick. But before you can blast down the road you have to know how to start itPrice: £52,300

Experts warn of ‘enormous and growing problem’ for youngstersMedical and addiction experts, charities and parents are becoming increasingly concerned about the amount of time children are spending playing online games as figures show that UK spending on titles such as League of Legends, World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto will top £3bn this year.Dr Aric Sigman, a freelance lecturer in child health, said he had heard from a number of doctor’s surgeries that parents were asking for sleeping pills for their children. “Whether you call it an addiction or not, this is an enormous and growing problem,” he said. Continue reading...

The information revolution is threatening our political systemOnce upon a time, a long, long, long time ago, small children might get told off for being loud or unruly or, as we called it then, “disruptive”. Now? Not so much. In 2016, it’s cool to be disruptive. It’s what every startup in Silicon Valley is straining to do.It’s what Airbnb has done – disrupting the hotel industry as Uber has disrupted taxis and Amazon has disrupted bookshops and almost everything else. Two years ago I went to a conference in San Francisco, TechCrunch Disrupt, and met many people claiming to disrupt many things, including, in one case, socks. Continue reading...

Conditions imposed by Met under Public Order Act include 9pm curfew and restrictions on assembly in Trafalgar SquareThousands of masked protesters have gathered in central London for the annual Million Mask March.Wearing trademark Guy Fawkes masks, supporters of the hacking collective Anonymous met in Trafalgar Square in Westminster accompanied by scores of police officers. Continue reading...

Entrepreneurs from around the world gather for a three-day conference looking at how the continent can get creative with the internetWhat is the future of the internet in Africa? How can tech save lives, educate and light homes, in communities where schools and energy suppliers are failing?For the past three days young innovators, entrepreneurs and blockchain experts convened at the inaugural Africa 4 Tech summit to discuss these questions. Here’s what we learned. Continue reading...

My enjoyment varied with the terrainYou don’t need me to tell you about the Micro scooter: it is part of the holy trinity of child-rearing, along with the Bugaboo (a large, outrageously comfort-driven baby buggy) and the Trunki (a wheeled suitcase with a charmful animal personality). They didn’t have them in our day, and people without children express through their disapproval all their hatred of modern parenting. For those with children, they’re the only game in town. My friend bought his nephew an own-brand supermarket version of the Micro and his brother picked it up and put it in the bin.The adult version was an inevitability, and I have always scorned it as wilful infantilism, like taking up dummies or nappies because they look fun when your kid has them. But the EMicro One is a scooter with a motor, and a different beast; when you reach 5km an hour, the electric motor kicks in, then you are in a truly new transport space, somewhere between a three-year-old and a person with a mobility buggy. I don’t call it a beast lightly. Continue reading...

Matt Furie has launched a campaign to transform the cartoon frog from a symbol of hate used by racist Donald Trump supporters to a symbol of peaceHow could you reclaim a meme that’s been appropriated by white supremacists? That’s the challenge faced by Pepe the Frog’s creator Matt Furie.Furie has launched the #SavePepe campaign in an attempt to transform the cartoon frog from a symbol of hate used by racist Donald Trump supporters to a symbol of peace. He’s urging people to flood the internet with their own “peaceful or nice” versions of Pepe to claw the character back from the alt-right. Continue reading...

The AI research firm is teaming up with gaming company Blizzard to take on the real-time strategy gameAfter its success at mastering the ancient Asian boardgame of Go, DeepMind is planning to learn its next game – and it’s about as different as it can possibly be.The London-based AI research firm, a subsidiary of Google, is teaming up with Californian gaming company Blizzard to take on the real-time strategy game StarCraft II. Continue reading...

First it was phones, now washing machines – US consumer safety regulator ordered the recall after more than 700 complaints and several injuriesSamsung and US safety officials announced a recall on Friday of nearly 3m washing machines after reports that the appliances – just like the company’s Note 7 smartphones – are exploding and injuring people.The Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Friday that Samsung has received 733 reports of washing machines “experiencing excessive vibration or the top detaching from the washing machine chassis”. Continue reading...

In the latest surprise of the 2016 US presidential election, the email of the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign was hacked, pushing thousands of personal messages into the public sphere. We speak to the Guardian’s Washington correspondent David Smith about the implications of email hacking on the 2016 race and elections to comeThere are only days before Americans head to the polls to decide who will become their next commander-in-chief: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. While Trump’s campaign has been barraged by allegations of sexual assault and tax-related controversies, Clinton has faced criticism connected to her etiquette in handling emails. In her camp’s latest email-related incident, John Podesta, her campaign chairman’s gmail was hacked, revealing thousands of personal emails into the public domain.

Social network’s shares plunge after chief financial officer warns of slowing advertising growthThe value of Mark Zuckerberg’s stake in Facebook has plunged by $3bn, after a warning of slowing advertising growth sent the social media company’s share price tumbling.The Facebook co-founder’s personal wealth has been reduced by 6%, the biggest loss ever suffered by an individual shareholder, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which ranks him as the world’s fifth richest person with a $52bn fortune. Continue reading...

WhatsApp diplomacy is taking off as messaging app becomes vital tool for tactics, huddles, policy talk - and banterWhen the world’s nations sit down to talk nowadays, there is a distinct difference to the way diplomacy is done. Influence is no longer defined only by special relationships and old alliances, but which WhatsApp group you are invited into.

Bad news for trash birds but good news if you’re still playing Pokémon Go: the worst characters in the game are slightly less commonYou hate catching Pidgeys. I hate catching Pidgeys. Now, finally, Niantic Lab, the makers of Pokémon Go, have realised that no-one likes catching Pidgeys, and tweaked the game so that you won’t be catching as many bloody Pidgeys.The change is one of a few introduced by the developers in the latest update to Pokémon Go, and the biggest sign yet that Niantic is actually listening to Pokémon Go’s large, yet shrinking, playerbase when deciding how to guide the game going forward. Continue reading...

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

Billionaire inventor sets up £15m institute of technology on Wiltshire campus to help UK compete with Asian nationsBillionaire inventor Sir James Dyson is to put his money where his mouth is by helping to bridge Britain’s chronic skills gap with the launch of a new university.Dyson is ploughing £15m over the next five years into the Dyson Institute of Technology as he looks to double his engineering workforce to 6,000 by 2020. Continue reading...

Eyewear printed with a wild pattern can be enough to fool commercial systems into misidentification, research showsA team of researchers from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University have created sets of eyeglasses that can prevent wearers from being identified by facial recognition systems, or even fool the technology into identifying them as completely unrelated individuals.In their paper, Accessorize to a Crime: Real and Stealthy Attacks on State-of-the-Art Face Recognition, presented at the 2016 Computer and Communications Security conference, the researchers present their system for what they describe as “physically realisable” and “inconspicuous” attacks on facial biometric systems, which are designed to exclusively identify a particular individual. Continue reading...

Lawyers for two former drivers last week won tribunal ruling that they were entitled to minimum wage and sick payUber is facing the likelihood of several hundred more legal claims from taxi drivers who believe they have been wrongly classed as self-employed and are owed backdated holiday pay and missing wages.

We write with great concern following the Daily Mail’s front page of 2 November. Texting while driving has been one of the biggest causes of car-related deaths in the UK and it is important that in the case described in the Mail’s report, justice was served for the victims of this appalling tragedy caused by the dangerous driving of the driver.Related: Daily Mail draws criticism over front page story targeting foreign drivers Continue reading...

It’s no catastrophe if Britain can’t agree a deal to stay in the single market, says inventor as he pledges to plug UK shortfall of engineers via his new collegeSir James Dyson, the billionaire inventor, has said it would not be a “catastrophe” if Britain cannot agree a deal to remain part of the European single market and has to pay tariffs on exported goods.Dyson, one of the most prominent business supporters of Brexit before the referendum, said that the British economy and its companies are doing “rather better than everybody thought” since the vote. Continue reading...

Todd Katz objected to the impersonation suit, saying his email was ‘preposterous and grammatically deficient’ and that his impression wasn’t credible

The attack was a distributed denial of service, in which a network of infected computers is directed to bombard its target with traffic and overload its serversThe entire internet infrastructure of the African nation of Liberia has been brought to a grinding halt after it was targeted by hackers using the same weapon that caused the largest cyber-attack in history just two weeks ago.The attack was a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, in which a network of infected computers – a botnet – is directed to bombard its target with traffic, overloading its servers.

Latest response in long-running antitrust case over price comparison tools says renewed charges are not in users’ interestsGoogle has responded to the European commission’s (EC) renewed statement of objections, declaring its case against Google Shopping to be “wrong on the facts, the law, and the economics” and dismissing it as just “the interests of a small number of websites”.

Large-screened smartphone hopes to fill the gap left by Samsung’s exploding Note 7 and solidify Huawei as a premium handset manufacturerHuawei’s new smartphone has a massive 5.9in screen. But just how big do you really want your smartphone to be?

Marie is buying a computer for her son and seeks something that can be upgraded and won’t need replacing in a couple of yearsI am getting my son a new laptop for Christmas. My budget is around £500. He is adamant that he wants a 15in HP laptop – he won’t be lugging it anywhere – but I’ve also been looking at Dell and Asus ZenBooks. My question is: Can I future-proof my purchase to take him through his GCSEs to A-levels, or should I just go for an entry-level laptop with the view of replacing it in a couple of years?His usage will be mostly be Microsoft Office, web browsing and watching YouTube videos. From my headache-inducing searches of various forums and guides, I think my basic requirements would be a Core i5, 8GB and SSD (solid-state drive) storage. Marie Continue reading...

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

Near tripling of the social media giant’s profits comes at a time when traditional news publishers are hemorrhaging ad dollars and announcing cutbacksFacebook almost tripled its profits in the third quarter of 2016 as the social media giant took an even larger slice of the online advertising market. The company reported a 59% year-over-year increase in advertising revenue on Wednesday. Net income for the three months ending 30 September rose to $2.38bn from $896m a year earlier.The jump in profits and revenues comes as traditional publishers are hemorrhaging advertising dollars and announcing cutbacks. News groups including the Daily Mail, the Guardian, New York Times and Wall Street Journal have all announced layoffs in recent weeks. Continue reading...

Mesmerizing online puzzles and optical illusion have been widely debated and shared across the internet. The latest craze: figure out which box contains the carFrom widely shared optical illusions and brain teasers to the strange, blue-and-black phenomenon that was The Dress, it’s clear that the internet is infatuated with puzzles.The latest which seems to have captured collective attention is about choosing which box contains a car. Posted on Monday by the Daily Mail, the puzzle was found on Brilliant.org, a problem-solving site. Continue reading...

I reject Uber completely: not primarily because it pays drivers too little – which may now change temporarily in the UK (Report, 29 October), until Uber fires them all – but because of its injustice to passengers themselves. One basic injustice is that Uber requires riders to run a proprietary app. A proprietary program is controlled by a company and gives the company power over whoever runs it. This is wrong in itself, and often tempts the company to design the program to snoop on users or otherwise mistreat them (see http://gnu.org/proprietary/).The other basic injustice of Uber is that it makes customers identify themselves – and records where they go. If Uber or similar services replace today’s taxis, we will all suffer a loss of freedom. The data Uber collects is easily available to the state (see http://gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html). Continue reading...

Commission calls on government to create ‘comprehensive right’ that would give Australians greater control of personal dataThe Productivity Commission wants to revolutionise how personal data is collected and handled in Australia.It is calling on the federal government to create a “comprehensive right” for consumers to give them far greater control over their personal data. Continue reading...

Don’t be fooled by the social network’s hostile response to Admiral’s plan to price car insurance based on postsFacebook’s terms of service are pretty clear, by the standards of such things. (I should know: I once read 150,000 words of small print in a week to see what I would find out.) There are very few random blocks of all-caps, it’s fairly short, and it has hyperlinks in it. You don’t even have to scroll down to find one of the key sections, which lays out what it means when you share information with Facebook.“You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook,” the company assures you, “and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings.” Continue reading...

Prejudice, harassment and hate speech have crept from the real world into the digital realm. For virtual reality to succeed, it will have to tackle this from the startIt won’t be long, the technologists tell us, before we’ll all be vacationing in virtual reality. We’ll can the commute and hold meetings in virtual reality offices. We’ll hang out with our friends around virtual reality campfires, or attend virtual reality concerts. And at those gigs or football games, we’ll also run the risk of getting sexually assaulted.On 20 October, Jordan Belamire (a pseudonym) wrote a Medium post describing how, while she was recently playing a VR game, another player groped her crotch. He’d heard her voice, you see, deduced that she was female, and decided to put her in her place. Continue reading...

As part of the government’s new national cyber-security programme, 50 people with non-tech backgrounds will be recruited to become hack-breakers. Do you have what it takes?Want to become a government codebreaker, but worried that your profound lack of technological nous will hold you back? Fear no more! Next year, as part of a £1.9bn national cyber-security programme, the government will push hopefuls with no background in technology through an intensive 10-week cyber-security bootcamp. By the end of the GCHQ-certified scheme, it hopes to find 50 high-aptitude individuals to protect our nation from cyber attacks.Are you one of those individuals? Here’s a quiz to test your flair for cyber security. Continue reading...

The team behind Football Manager 2017 have produced a stunningly detailed collection of football data. In this short film, Copa90 find out how they did itBy Copa90, part of the Guardian Sport Network“The last time we tried to calculate our strike rate it was around 99.5%,” says Football Manager head honcho Miles Jacobson. For him and his team at Sports Interactive, the aim is always to create the most real-life representation of football year after year. Creating Football Manager 2017 has not just been about building a commercial product. It’s also about constructing a game they want to play over the next year until they release the next edition.Jacobson strives to build the most realistic game yet so he can live out his dream of leading Watford to the Premier League title, albeit with the heavy heart that comes after he has relieved Walter Mazzarri of his duties in the process. Continue reading...

Insurer withdraws initiative with hours to go as privacy campaigners criticise ‘intrusive’ attempt to analyse users’ dataAdmiral has been forced to pull a new initiative that used Facebook to analyse the personalities of car owners and set the price of their insurance after the social media site blocked it.Admiral was due to launch firstcarquote officially on Wednesday but delayed it with just two hours to go. Continue reading...

Instead of pressuring women in the tech industry to solve sexism, this feminist activist is teaching men how to stop biased behaviorIt’s a Friday afternoon at a tech startup in downtown San Francisco, and Valerie Aurora is arming men with phrases they can use to try to make their Silicon Valley environment less sexist: “Not cool.” “We don’t do that here.” “Awkward!”She wants them to use them against other men when they encounter biased comments or actions aimed at women, and tells them not to worry if they freeze the first time. “Just keep practicing and wait for the next time. I guarantee it will happen again.” Continue reading...

Smartphones and tablets become king as the share of desktop web browsing traffic shrinks to 48.7%, according to dataMobile devices are used more than traditional computers for web browsing, as smartphone and tablet use overtook desktop for the first time, October figures show.

The company is to use Facebook data to calculate customer premiums. But even more invasive ways to monetise lives are coming with the Internet of ThingsAnybody who has been overcharged by an insurance company, denied a claim or given the runaround by an insurer’s customer disservice should shudder at the idea of insurers learning how to deploy the internet as a way of monitoring customers and using their online data to determine how much they should pay.The latest, inevitable news is that Admiral, one of the UK’s biggest insurers, is to use customers’ Facebook data to help calculate how much car insurance they should pay. Continue reading...

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

The last few instalments in the simulation series have provided major improvements. But has the Football Manager team run out of energy this year?The question every annual franchise has to answer is whether the new entry in the series expands enough on the previous title to warrant a purchase. This year, and for the first time in a few seasons, Football Manager 2017 doesn’t make enough of a step to confidently recommend it outright. Though it does build on the strengths of its excellent predecessor Football Manager 2016, it doesn’t offer enough of a change for anyone outside the hardcore fanbase to warrant an immediate purchase.This feels like a strange thing to write, because in many ways – through a series of small but positive changes to the way players interact with the game – FM 2017 offers the best experience of pretending to be a football manager there’s ever been. Although the series shares the lineage of Championship Manager, FM 2017 is getting closer than ever to abolishing that game’s reputation as glorified football spreadsheet. Continue reading...

Insurer’s algorithm analyses social media usage to identify safe drivers in unprecedented use of customer dataOne of the biggest insurance companies in Britain is to use social media to analyse the personalities of car owners and set the price of their insurance.The unprecedented move highlights the start of a new era for how companies use online personal data and will start a debate about privacy. Continue reading...

At the heart of the app is the belief that mass surveillance makes the world a better, fairer place through the question: can injustice survive transparency?

Investigators hired by Alfa Bank say server logs show no sign of secretive contact after online report sparks debate between internet security expertsA US cybersecurity firm hired by a Russian bank to investigate allegations of a secret line of communication with the Trump Organization said on Tuesday there was no evidence so far of substantive contact, email or financial links.

Tennessee family blames an exploding battery – a common occurrence that has led to a mass recall – for setting their million-dollar home on fireIt has been nearly a year since the self-balancing scooters known as hoverboards were setting sales charts on fire, but the resulting litigation (from the resulting real-world fires) is just getting started.A family in Nashville, Tennessee, has filed a $30m lawsuit against Amazon, arguing that the online retailer should be held liable for the ill-fated Christmas present that burned their house down. Continue reading...

Inventor of world wide web says hackers could cause major disruption with open economic or traffic dataHackers could use open data such as the information that powers transport apps to create chaos, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, has said.“If you disrupted traffic data for example, to tell everybody that all the roads south of the river are closed, so everybody would go north of the river, that would gridlock you [and] disable the city,” he said. Continue reading...