The man behind the mask: game director Yoko Taro on writing, suffering and diet cokeBereft of his signature mask – which he will not be photographed without – and perched awkwardly on a folding chair, video game director Yoko Taro has the air of a dishevelled monk. The famously camera shy developer behind cult hit games like Drakengard 3 and last year’s Nier: Automata listens attentively as questions and answers are rapidly translated.“To be honest, I think I am making normal games targeted towards normal people,” he says. “But ultimately when I release those normal games, weird people find them to be weird games and enjoy them. Which probably means there’s something wrong with me.” Continue reading...

The Silicon Valley drive for corporate efficiency – all 24/7 schedules, bulletproof coffees and five-minute meetings – has long been lauded. Now the wheels are flying offLast week, an emotional Elon Musk described how he was working so hard to keep production of the Tesla Model 3 on track that he missed his own birthday. “All night – no friends, nothing,” he told the New York Times, apparently “struggling to get the words out”. Musk had, he said, been working 120-hour weeks, often not leaving the factory for three or four days. When he did get home, he said, the choice was between no sleep or taking an Ambien, an insomnia drug intended for short-term use (and blamed by some of Tesla’s board members for his erratic night-time tweeting).Musk has long been celebrated by the business press for his work ethic. His extraordinary schedule – a long working day broken into five-minute increments, so that every second is accounted for (lunch is usually wolfed down in a meeting) – has been reported, approvingly, for some years now. And certainly, Musk has more on his plate than many chief executives. As well as running Tesla, the first mass-market car company to be founded in the US in decades, he is the head of SpaceX, which aims to fly people to Mars, and Neuralink, a company attempting to build a brain-computer interface. Continue reading...

The seven-second video app may be dead, but its best clips are having a resurgence on YouTube. What does it mean for creators?

A study has found teens are ‘hyperconnected’ to their phones but many of their parents have a problem with their own screen timeParents lament their teenagers’ noses being constantly buried in their phones, but they might want to take stock of their own screen habits, according to a new report.Related: How much screen time is too much for kids? It's complicated Continue reading...

Changing recorded votes would be difficult for bad actors. But at Def Con in Las Vegas, children had no trouble finding another point of entryAt the world’s largest hacking conference, there was good news and bad news for fans of free and fair elections.The good news is that hacking the US midterms – actually changing the recorded votes to steal the election for a particular candidate – may be harder than it seems, and most of the political actors who could pose a threat to the validity of an election are hesitant to escalate their attacks that far. Continue reading...

Health and beauty retailer advises online customers to change their passwordsSuperdrug has advised its online customers to change their passwords after the high street chain was targeted by hackers claiming to have stolen the personal details of thousands of people.The health and beauty retailer told customers it had been contacted by a group on Monday evening claiming to have obtained the details of 20,000 customers, including names, addresses, dates of birth and phone numbers. Continue reading...

Firm announces removal of pages, groups and accounts linked to Russia and Iran, citing ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior’Facebook has removed 652 fake accounts and pages with ties to Russia and Iran attempting to exert political influence in the US, UK, Middle East and Latin America.The accounts and pages were divided between four separate campaigns, three of which originated in Iran, of “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”, disclosed by the social network today. Continue reading...

The success of a booming video game industry, expected to generate $137.9bn in revenue this year, is music to the ears for bands, musicians, record labels and composers“Video games have not only helped the music industry survive, but thrive on entirely new levels,” Steve Schnur tells me. As the worldwide executive and president of music at game publisher EA, his team – many of whom have been professional musicians and singer/songwriters – work with some of the biggest music acts in the world, licensing music for video game series like Fifa, Madden NFL, Need for Speed and NHL.Since the 90s, when licensed music became prevalent in games, series such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Grand Theft Auto and Wipeout have become just as well-known for their soundtracks as they are for their gameplay. For millions of people, video games have been a way to discover new favourite bands or dive into other musical genres. And because people discover this music while playing a game they love, they develop a strong emotional attachment to it. Continue reading...

The phablet’s massive, beautiful screen, excellent performance and new Bluetooth stylus will have Note fans salivatingThe king of the big, powerful phones is back for another generation, but is the new Samsung Galaxy Note 9 still the phablet to beat?The Note series pioneered the big-screen smartphone in 2011 and over the last seven years it has been made larger and more feature-packed with each new version. Where the Galaxy S9 series is Samsung’s top-end phone for normal people, the Note 9 is the powerhouse for those that need the answer to the question “can I do that on my phone” always to be yes. Continue reading...

Jonathan Lane recommends a flat-rate tax on revenues, and Philip Barton seeks a fairer tax rate to rein in the tech giantsI was interested to read that the EU and the chancellor, Philip Hammond, are considering taxing some global companies based on their revenues rather than their profits (Hammond calls for ‘Amazon tax’ to save the high street, 11 August). Would it not make sense to shake up corporation tax by scrapping the current system and imposing a revenue-based tax on all UK companies?For example, if every firm paid a flat 2% on revenues, all the loopholes would disappear overnight – ensuring all companies paid taxes proportionate to the business they do in the UK. With the sweeping away of complex tax law, costly tax advisers would become redundant, and tax accounting would be simplified. Continue reading...

Natasha Aponte got her Tinder matches to meet in New York City, all thinking they’d be going on a one-on-one dateNatasha Aponte is a New York-based model who isn’t afraid of some drama on a first date. Over the past month, she’s been using Tinder to arrange for hundreds of guys to meet her at the same place, at the same time, unbeknown to each other.Related: Why women should gamble on dating apps and pick the hottest men | Nichi Hodgson Continue reading...

Firm claims Kremlin-linked group created fake websites for Senate and thinktanks

In the world of tech startups, messing up is practically a religion. This company is here to pick up the pieces

This year’s official Formula One game is the closest yet to the real racing driver experience. You’ll even need to brush up on your TV interview techniqueXbox One, PlayStation 4, PC; CodemastersTurning the pinnacle of the motorsports world into an annual video game used to be a thankless task: an ever-changing track roster and the need to ensure that every virtual advertising hoarding corresponded to its real-life counterpart used to mean that a given year’s Formula One game would come out only when the season was ending. But this year’s F1 game from British developer Codemasters conveniently arrives during the sport’s mid-season break. Continue reading...

Musk tweeted on 7 August that he had ‘secured’ funding to take the company private, but so far no offer has been madeInvestors betting on a fall in Tesla’s share price have made $1.09bn since 7 August, when Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted he had “secured” funding to take the troubled company private.The electric car company’s shares soared 11% to $379 after Musk’s so-called “Tesla tweet” that he had “funding secured” to buy out investors at $420 share. But that tweet – now the subject of legal action and a regulatory inquiry – so far has not led to an offer and Tesla’s stock has fallen 19% to $308 share. Continue reading...

Plunge into ingenious shifting labyrinths to battle lethal beasts, in the knowledge that every gory failure makes you strongerPlaystation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC/Mac, Xbox One; Motion Twin

John Hanke, the boss of developer Niantic, is as passionate as ever about getting players outside. And his strategy is working, as seen in the success of this year’s Pokémon Go Fest in Chicago

Just the Tonic at the Mash House, Edinburgh

On the eve of a new exhibition, we talk to six radical designers in an industry that’s evolving at exhilarating speedJust as the kaleidoscopic dramas of Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, the pseudo-non-fiction murk of Alan Moore’s comic From Hell and the domestic pragmatism of Jamie Oliver’s 15 Minute Meals meet under the fat banner of prose, so the body of video games becomes an ever broader church. It is impossible to enforce orthodoxy in a medium where shifting technology defines the canvas.The artform now embraces work from a dizzying spectrum. A challenging time, then, for the Victoria and Albert Museum to stage its first major video game exhibition. Rather than reach into the primordial digital soup of the 1950s, or the gambling-adjacent squalor of the Pac-Man and Space Invaders arcade era, the V&A’s exhibition, titled Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt, begins in the mid-2000s. This was the moment at which technological advances began to alter dramatically the way in which games were designed, made and played. Continue reading...

As part of the Cyber Security Challenge UK, law enforcement agencies are putting ‘cyberdefenders’ through their pacesAt the heart of a police operation to defend Britain from attack by cybercriminals, a 14-year-old boy was honing his skills to thwart hackers linked to a rogue state.Ben Abrahmason was among a group who gathered at a military base in Wiltshire on Friday to counter fictional but sophisticated cyber-attacks. Continue reading...

Once seen merely as workhorses, the new generation of vans are highly adaptable all-roundersMercedes-Benz Vito 119 Sport Crew

An Observer Magazine cover story from September 1982 sees the novelist, 33, turn his attention to a ‘global addiction’Martin Amis discovered Space Invaders at a bar near the railway station in Toulon. It was 1979. The console had been installed in the corner and resembled a fridge, and as soon as Amis slotted in his first coin he fell head over heels. ‘I knew instantly that this was something different, something special,’ he explains. ‘The bar closed at 11 o’clock that night. I was the last to leave.’Amis is recounting this three years later, in the Observer Magazine’s 19 September 1982 cover story. He’s 33 now, a three-book novelist, though a few years off publishing Money. He might have written it sooner had he not found the arcades so enticing. ‘I was very good yesterday, and hardly played at all,’ he writes, describing, like a 10-year-old Fortnite fanatic, the early anguish of addiction. ‘So I had a long session this morning.’ Continue reading...

The Tesla founder confessed that the past year was ‘excruciating’ in an emotional interview that led to stocks falling sharply. Here’s a look back on his 201827 JanuaryElon Musk’s Boring Company launches a $500 flamethrower. Critics say it is more like a gun-shaped blowtorch than a flamethrower.

Having the power to pick and choose when you interact with people is empowering, but negative comments were becoming hard to ignoreI feel happy today,” my daughter announces as we walk to her nursery. “That’s lovely to hear,” I tell her. “What’s made you happy?” She thinks about it. “I don’t know,” she says, after a few minutes of reflection. “This morning, when I opened-ed my eyes, I smiled and I was just happy.” “That’s so nice,” I say. “Hearing that makes me happy. You’ve made me happy.” “I know,” she says. I look at the baby, who is listening intently to our conversation, not that she possesses enough vocabulary to reply. It doesn’t matter. She is always listening. She understands a lot. “Are you happy?” I ask the baby. She smiles and she nods slowly three times.I haven’t been happy recently. It’s been largely a feeling of being overworked and moving from project to project without ever getting the opportunity to reflect on a piece of work and enjoy the satisfaction of completing it. Then there’s the correspondence about the project. If you write and put stuff into the public sphere, people have a space within which to give you feedback. In the form of social media posts, comments and emails. Which is their right. But every now and then, a piece of “feedback” will undo you. Continue reading...

The Tesla founder acknowledged that the past year has been ‘most difficult and painful’ time in his career – but what brought him there?It’s been a horrible year for Elon Musk. One even he acknowledges couldn’t have been much worse. “This past year has been the most difficult and painful year of my career,” the billionaire entrepreneur said in an New York Times interview published on Friday. “It was excruciating.”Related: Tesla founder Elon Musk says past year excruciating and 'worst is yet to come' Continue reading...

Emma Arbuthnot, who gave a licence back to Uber, acts over potential conflict of interestThe judge at the heart of tech giant Uber’s legal battle to operate in London has stepped aside to avoid any perceived conflict of interest.Emma Arbuthnot, the chief magistrate whose judgment reinstated Uber’s London licence after it was judged not a “fit and proper” private car hire operator, has withdrawn from hearing further appeals by the company after an Observer investigation raised questions into links between her husband’s work and the company. Continue reading...

From asking innocent questions before mounting an attack to inciting online abuse by others, trolling is entering a new, subtler era. Here’s how to deal with itThe internet, almost everyone agrees, is a terrible place. You can’t move for trolls – malicious actors out to ruin your day with an argumentative tweet or Facebook post. Four in 10 Americans have experienced online harassment, according to the Pew Research Center.The simple answer is to keep shtum. “Don’t feed the trolls” is a maxim many live by online. “There’s no benefit to it. You’re not going to be able to change anybody’s mind,” says Dr John Synnott, senior lecturer in investigative and forensic psychology at the University of Huddersfield. “There is no talking back to someone when they have made their decision.” But as Sarah Jeong, a tech journalist who will join the New York Times in September recently discovered, saying you’ll take a vow of silence is easier than actually keeping it. Her decision to fight fire with ironic fire backfired as trolls piled in, taking her joking responses to insults out of context in an attempt to get her into trouble with her new employers. She’s not unique. Continue reading...

Musk says he has endured ‘the most difficult and painful’ time in emotional interview as confession wipes billions off Tesla valueElon Musk has said the past year of his professional life has been “excruciating” and that stress over his business had caused his health to deteriorate. To make matters worse, the confession wiped billions off the value of Tesla, the electric car company he founded.In an emotional interview with the New York Times, the founder of electric carmaker Tesla also revealed that the pressures of work had caused him to spend his birthday stuck in the Tesla factory and almost miss his brother’s wedding. Continue reading...

Elon Musk, Roseanne Barr, Tiger Woods and others have all claimed the sedative was at fault for their strange behaviorElon Musk’s erratic public declarations are reportedly worrying Tesla board members, and a main concern for executives is a sedative Musk says he has been using: Ambien.“It is often a choice of no sleep or Ambien,” Musk told the New York Times in an interview published on Thursday, which came after the Tesla founder claimed on Twitter that he was considering taking the company private. Continue reading...

London-based bank set to become fintech ‘unicorn’ after lining up $150m of fundingMonzo, a digital bank popular with millennials, is set to become one of the UK’s technology “unicorns” after lining up new finance that would value the three-year-old company at more than $1bn (£787m).The London-based bank has organised $150m of funding from investors, including Silicon Valley’s Accel Partners, which was an early investor in Wonga. Monzo’s fundraising will value it at up to $1.5bn – about four times the £280m value placed on the bank when it last raised money in November 2017, the Financial Times reported. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber delves into the world of the virtual celebrity, from live concert performances to social-media influencersSubscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom and Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterIn April 2018, Instagram influencer, Miquela Sousa, had her Instagram account hacked. A fellow influencer, Bermuda, deleted all of the 19-year-old’s posts, replacing some with pictures of herself. The reason for the hacking was simple: Bermuda was blackmailing Miquela into telling her more than one million followers the truth. Continue reading...

Company says no data compromised by 16-year-old although court hears he stored information’ in a folder called ‘hacky hack hack’A 16-year-old boy hacked into Apple’s mainframe, downloaded internal files and accessed customer accounts because he was a fan of the company and hoped to work there one day, a Melbourne court has heard.

The social network ploughs its way through the world and deals with the consequences later. In Myanmar, that strategy has had deadly consequencesWhen Facebook invited journalists for a phone briefing on Tuesday evening to talk about its progress in tackling hate speech in Myanmar, it seemed like a proactive, well-intentioned move from a company that is typically fighting PR fires on several fronts.But the publication of a bombshell Reuters investigation on Wednesday morning suggested otherwise: the press briefing was an ass-covering exercise. Continue reading...

Thousands of audio programmes are free to listen to and most are available via smartphone appsListening to audio programmes, or podcasts, is simple if you have access to the internet. You just need to find a podcast platform or app that suits you and then sample some of the many thousands of podcasts made around the world. All podcasts are free, and most are available via many different apps. Continue reading...

Ian doesn’t like the way the US is going, and wonders if he could avoid using the country’s PC products. Good luck with thatIf I wanted to show my distaste for the direction the US is going by boycotting American PC hardware, software and services, could it be done? IanYou could certainly eliminate a lot of American products, but you might be giving up features without getting any ethical benefits. For example, more than a billion people already manage without a lot of American technology because they live in China or Russia. While I share your distaste for the Trump regime, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are not exactly choirboys.

Avatars of real-life DJs curate – and create – cool music and players have ownership of their nightclubs in the latest After Hours update, which puts GTA at the heart of pop cultureIn 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the first record you hear on a car radio is Billie Jean, no matter what you drive. Unseen code binds this piece of music to an important point in time and the experience of being behind the wheel. When I first got my driving licence, I recreated the moment in my crappy Vauxhall Astra, so strong was the association. In video games such as GTA, as in real life, music and memories are closely interlinked.Sixteen years since Vice City, Rockstar Games has taken in-game musical experiences further in GTA Online, the immensely popular web version of its famous (and infamous) series. The latest After Hours immortalises four real-life DJs in the most successful entertainment product ever made; nearly 100 million people have bought Grand Theft Auto V, according to Rockstar’s latest figures, and millions of them play online. Now playing in GTA Online’s virtual clubs are Solomun’s pulsing crowd pleasers, Dixon powdery synthesisers, Tale of Us’s sweeping basslines and the Black Madonna’s infectious groove. Each act is debuting new music in nightclubs spread across Grand Theft Auto V’s satirical Los Angeles, Los Santos. Continue reading...

Misinformation has lead to violent attacks against Rohingya but report says company has been slow to respondFacebook’s efforts to crack down on hate speech in Myanmar, which has contributed to violent attacks against the minority Muslim population, have been inadequate, according to a Reuters investigation.The social media company has faced warnings from human rights groups and researchers that its platform was being used to spread misinformation and promote hatred of Muslims, particularly the Rohingya, since 2013. As Facebook has grown its user base in the country to 18 million, hate speech has exploded, but the company has been slow to respond to the growing crisis. Continue reading...

In our next We Need to Talk About podcast, we’ll consider the key questions surrounding AI. What are your views?If 2017 was the year artificial intelligence rose to prominence, 2018 is when we’re seeing it go mainstream. Whichever area you work in, it’s likely AI will become increasingly prevalent in your everyday activity. Wherever you are in the world – whether you are an expert in AI, someone whose job increasingly uses AI or simply an interested reader we would like to hear from you.Earlier this year, the Guardian published a long read that asked: Has technology evolved beyond our control? Its author, James Bridle, argued that “our technologies are extensions of ourselves, codified in machines and infrastructures, in frameworks of knowledge and action. Computers are not here to give us all the answers, but to allow us to put new questions, in new ways, to the universe.” Continue reading...

SEC is reportedly investigating whether the Tesla CEO’s tweets about going private may have violated US securities lawThe US’s top financial watchdog has reportedly sent subpoenas to Tesla regarding chief executive Elon Musk’s plans to take the company private.Fox Business Network reported on Wednesday, citing sources, that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is formally investigating Musk’s recent tweets that he had “secured” funding to take the troubled electric vehicle company private. Continue reading...

London mayor says cap on new licences would mean less congestionThe London mayor is seeking powers to limit the number of Uber drivers operating in the capital, blaming a surge in private hire drivers for the city’s increasing congestion and pollution.Sadiq Khan said a cap on new licences was an urgent and necessary step. But unlike New York, which announced a cap last week, he is unable to impose restrictions. Continue reading...

Lifeguards warn parents to put phones away, after more than 300 people drowned this yearGerman lifeguards have issued a warning that a growing number of child drownings this summer are linked to their parents’ obsession with mobile phones.

Far-right conspiracy theorist will not be able to tweet, retweet or favourite tweets for seven daysControversial Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been suspended from Twitter for up to seven days.The suspension has put Jones into what Twitter describes as “read-only mode” preventing him from tweeting, liking or retweeting, but not removing his tweets or personal account from the social network. The Infowars Twitter account remains unaffected. Continue reading...

The author of global bestseller Sapiens is back, with a self-help guide for a bewildering age – and its sweeping statements are peppered with truly mind-expanding observationsYuval Noah Harari’s career is a publishing fairytale. An obscure Israeli academic writes a Hebrew-language history of humanity. Translated into English in 2014, the book sells more than a million copies. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg includes it in his book club in 2015. Ridley Scott wants to turn it into a TV series. Barack Obama says it gave him perspective on “the core things that have allowed us to build this extraordinary civilization that we take for granted”. Its sales spike when it is mentioned on Love Island.That book was Sapiens, which is bold, breezy and engaging; romping its way from the discovery of fire to the creation of cyborgs in less than 500 pages. The future-gazing follow-up, Homo Deus, was also a global bestseller, and now Harari has turned his attention to the present with 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. It covers everything from war – Harari’s academic specialism – to meditation, his favourite leisure activity. (He does two hours a day, and a month-long retreat every year.) The collection of pieces aims to take stock of where humanity has reached, and where it might be going. Ultra-topical concerns such as “fake news” and the rise of authoritarians such as Donald Trump are set in the context of centuries of our biological and social evolution. As Obama said, this approach certainly gives the reader perspective. Ivan the Terrible was probably more, well, terrible than Trump. Cheer up! Until you remember climate change, at least – because, to his credit, Harari is one of the few futurists to factor ecological collapse into his predictions. Continue reading...

Company signs exclusive three-year agreement to screen all 380 Spanish top-flight football matches across south AsiaFacebook has bought the rights to show Spanish top-flight football in the Indian subcontinent in the latest move by a US technology company into sports rights.The company has signed an exclusive agreement to show La Liga games featuring Barcelona’s Lionel Messi and other stars for the next three years. The deal will allow Facebook to show all 380 matches for the new season, which starts on Friday, to users in India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Continue reading...

Turning off location history won’t hide where you are when you use search, Maps or weather. Here’s how to stop being trackedWhen you turn off “location history” Google still tracks your location when you use several of its key services including Maps, search and the weather. Here’s how to really turn all of it off.A report from the Associated Press has highlighted that the feature called location history is just one of the systems that Google uses to track your location for personalised services, local search and other purposes such as advertising. Continue reading...

The whistleblower will speak in October at the Institute of Contemporary Arts dinnerChelsea Manning will discuss the Cambridge Analytica scandal and other issues around technology and democracy during her first appearance in the UK later this year.Manning was released from prison after being sentenced in 2013 in violation of the US Espionage Act for disclosing classified government documents to WikiLeaks. In October, she will be the main guest at the Institute of Contemporary Arts dinner, which is being held in her honour. Continue reading...

Campbell Brown, head of news partnerships, tells publishers that without Facebook’s help their businesses will dieA senior Facebook executive told Australian media companies that if they didn’t cooperate with the social network, their businesses would die.According to a report by The Australian, Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of news partnerships, told a group of more than 20 broadcasters and publishers that she wanted to help media companies develop sustainable business models through the platform. Continue reading...

Some services on Android and iPhone automatically stores your movements even after you pause the ‘location history’ settingGoogle wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you've used a privacy setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so. Continue reading...

Musk said that the Saudi investment fund had approached him several times over the last two years with offers to help the struggling company go private

Machine-learning system can identify more than 50 different eye diseases and could speed up diagnosis and treatmentA new machine-learning system is as good as the best human experts at detecting eye problems and referring patients for treatment, say scientists.The groundbreaking artificial intelligence system, developed by the AI-outfit DeepMind with Moorfields eye hospital NHS foundation trust and University College London, was capable of correctly referring patients with more than 50 different eye diseases for further treatment with 94% accuracy, matching or beating world-leading eye specialists. Continue reading...