Technology | The Guardian

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...

The most memorable comments on the cryptocurrency from senior figures in world finance•ECB official backs bitcoin clampdown

Social media company makes $91m profit in fourth quarter of 2017 on revenue of $732mTwitter has posted its first quarterly profit in the company’s 12-year history, although a clampdown on fake accounts meant it lost users in the US and overall user growth stalled.The San Francisco-based social network, which went public five years ago, made a profit of $91m (£65m) in the fourth quarter of 2017, compared with a $167m loss a year earlier, after cutting costs. Continue reading...

Yves Mersch joins growing list of experts calling for restrictions on cryptocurrencies• What the experts have said about bitcoin

Plaintiffs claim firm knowingly sold phones with microphone issues, which prevented calls and voice assistant functionalityGoogle is facing a class-action lawsuit over defects to its Pixel smartphones.The plaintiffs allege that Google knowingly sold defective Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, which suffered from problems with the microphones that prevented them from being used for calling or voice assistant functionality. Continue reading...

Social news site blocks subreddit where fake AI-created clips were first created, which had almost 100,000 usersSocial news site Reddit has banned its nearly 100,000-strong “deepfakes” community, the original source of face-swapped celebrity pornography.Reddit is where the deepfakes wave began, with one user manually creating the first AI-created video clips. When a second Redditor built a desktop app to do the same thing, the community began to grow rapidly, approaching 90,000 members at the time of its deactivation. Continue reading...

The Nintendo Switch’s popularity and portability have made it an attractive home for indie games, and there are more than 400 now available. Guardian video games editor Keza MacDonald and Nintendo expert Chris Scullion recommend the best Continue reading...

From bedtime games to trips to the aquarium, Zun Lee captures the lives of African-American men bringing up the next generation in the Bronx, Harlem and beyondFather Figure: Exploring Alternate Notions of Black Fatherhood by Zun Lee is at the Bronx Documentary Center until 31 March

Is your life weighed down by thousands of emails? Moya Sarner’s was too. So she decided to try all the top recommended techniques to stop the deluge

MPs told to avoid ‘polluting’ term in first select hearing outside UK on technology industry and misinformationA Commons committee has been warned not to use the term “fake news” as it prepares to hear evidence on the topic in Washington.The digital, culture, media and sport committee chaired by the Conservative MP Damian Collins will hear five hours of testimony in George Washington University, including an hour each from senior representatives of Twitter, Google and Facebook. Continue reading...

Three white men backed by strong campaigns have recently succeeded in halting extradition. Syed Talha Ahsan was less fortunateA court’s decision to block the extradition of an alleged computer hacker with Asperger syndrome highlights once again the compassionate quality of British justice. Judges sitting in the high court have spared Lauri Love the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence and a penal ordeal regarded as one of the harshest in the world. He must now take his chance in a British court.Love is the last of a trio of high-profile UK citizens who have avoided being sent for trial in America in the past five years. The other two are Gary McKinnon, accused of hacking US military computers, and Richard O’Dwyer, who faced criminal copyright charges. Continue reading...

Ever yearned to chisel a sculpture, compose a symphony or design a gigantic neon metropolis? A riveting game from the makers of LittleBigPlanet unleashes your suppressed artistMost homes hide abandoned easels, guitars and origami kits, all bought with good intentions to express the latent creativity that grownup life can easily stifle. You might want to unlock it, but the effort is too intimidating.Media Molecule, a game developer based in Guildford, believes that video games can help. A studio populated by artists, musicians and creatives of all stripes, it is best known for the successful LittleBigPlanet games – cheerful adventures with a hand-crafted look and a novel “play, create, share” philosophy, letting players remix the levels and make their own. Taking this idea further, Media Molecule has spent the past five years working on Dreams, a PlayStation 4 game that lets players create and share little worlds. Due for release later this year, the game offers a potential for creativity beyond what any other video game has attempted. Continue reading...

BIS head says cryptocurrency is a ‘Ponzi scheme’ that poses a threat to financial stability

University of Oxford project finds Trump supporters consume largest volume of ‘junk news’ on Facebook and TwitterLow-quality, extremist, sensationalist and conspiratorial news published in the US was overwhelmingly consumed and shared by rightwing social network users, according to a new study from the University of Oxford.The study, from the university’s “computational propaganda project”, looked at the most significant sources of “junk news” shared in the three months leading up to Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address this January, and tried to find out who was sharing them and why. Continue reading...

Sony Japan Studio/Bluepoint; PlayStation 4

South Australia’s big gamble on grid-scale battery storage may pay for itself in just a year if it continues to prevent massive price spikes• Giles Parkinson is editor of RenewEconomy On Sunday 14 January something very unusual happened.The Australian Energy Market Operator called – as it often does – for generators in South Australia to provide a modest amount of network services known as FCAS, or frequency control and ancillary services. Continue reading...

Campaign to highlights potential harm of digital platforms and social media on young people, alongside a call to regulate tech companies

Assessments after WannaCry attack reveal vulnerabilities across whole of health systemEvery NHS trust assessed for cyber security vulnerabilities has failed to meet the standard required, civil servants have said for the first time.In a parliamentary hearing on the WannaCry attack which disrupted parts of the NHS last year, Department of Health (DoH) officials said all 200 trusts had failed, despite increases in security provision. Continue reading...

Rights groups and lawyers for 33-year-old welcome landmark judgment against extradition to USA high court ruling blocking extradition to the US of Lauri Love, a student accused of breaking into US government websites, has been welcomed by lawyers and human rights groups as a precedent for trying hacking suspects in the UK in future.The decision delivered by the lord chief justice, Lord Burnett of Maldon, is highly critical of the conditions Love would have endured in US jails, warning of the risk of suicide. Continue reading...

Lauri Love will not face extradition to the US, the high court has ruled. The British student is accused of hacking into US government websites. Speaking outside court Love said he was thankful for the support he received ‘without which I’m not sure I would have made it this far’

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia warns of ‘optimising for outrageous, salacious, and often fraudulent content’ amid 2016 election concernsThe top-ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee has warned that YouTube’s powerful recommendation algorithm may be “optimising for outrageous, salacious and often fraudulent content” or susceptible to “manipulation by bad actors, including foreign intelligence entities”.