Technology | The Guardian

San Francisco-based company reached an agreement with California’s housing agency amid complaints of guests being rejected for their raceAirbnb will allow the government to test for racial discrimination by hosts as part of an agreement with California that is the first of its kind and could pave the way for stricter regulations and greater public scrutiny.The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) announced Thursday that it had resolved a complaint it filed against Airbnb with an agreement that forces the company to permit the state to conduct “fair housing testing” of certain hosts. That means that for the first time the San Francisco-based company is giving a regulatory body permission to conduct the kind of racial discrimination audits that officials have long used to enforce fair housing laws against traditional landlords. Continue reading...

In an exclusive interview, head of Xbox Phil Spencer explains the vision behind Project Scorpio and what it adds to the Xbox One generationEarlier this month, Microsoft did something console manufacturers haven’t done for many years. It announced key details of its forthcoming Project Scorpio console – an update to the Xbox One – via a set of exclusive features on the video game news site, Eurogamer. In the modern games industry the strict control of information, especially regarding hardware, has become something of a corporate obsession. To cede control of a major revelation – in this case the technical specifications of a forthcoming machine – was a fascinating, but intelligent move. It added a sense of impartiality and validity to all the specs and stats that came out of the reveal, lending the information some real authority that would have been missing from an official press release. It let gamers start processing the meaning of the machine for themselves.But there are still big questions for Microsoft: Is there really a large enough audience for a high-powered version of a console that’s barely three years into its lifecycle? Is this really just about the 4K television industry? Continue reading...

Government lawsuit against the huge Silicon Valley data-analytics firm comes at a time of heightened debate about discrimination in the tech industryPalantir, a Silicon Valley company with ties to Donald Trump, has agreed to pay $1.7m to settle a government lawsuit alleging racial discrimination against Asian applicants.The $20bn data analytics company, co-founded by Peter Thiel, one of the president’s advisers, has not admitted wrongdoing in the settlement, which comes at a time of increasing debate about discrimination in the tech industry. Continue reading...

The dealings of two of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies shows that there remains an urgent political task to bring a rogue culture to heelThe taxi-hailing company Uber brings into very sharp focus the question of whether corporations can be said to have a moral character. If any human being were to behave with the single-minded and ruthless greed of the company, we would consider them sociopathic. Uber wanted to know as much as possible about the people who use its service, and those who don’t. It has an arrangement with unroll.me, a company which offered a free service for unsubscribing from junk mail, to buy the contacts unroll.me customers had had with rival taxi companies. Even if their email was notionally anonymised, this use of it was not something the users had bargained for. Beyond that, it keeps track of the phones that have been used to summon its services even after the original owner has sold them, attempting this with Apple’s phones even thought it is forbidden by the company.Uber has also tweaked its software so that regulatory agencies that the company regarded as hostile would, when they tried to hire a driver, be given false reports about the location of its cars. Uber management booked and then cancelled rides with a rival taxi-hailing company which took their vehicles out of circulation. Uber deny this was the intention. The punishment for this behaviour was negligible. Uber promised not to use this “greyball” software against law enforcement – one wonders what would happen to someone carrying a knife who promised never to stab a policeman with it. Travis Kalanick of Uber got a personal dressing down from Tim Cook, who runs Apple, but the company did not prohibit the use of the app. Too much money was at stake for that. Continue reading...

Company reports 8% fall in revenue in first quarter to $548m, but shares rebound as number of users rises

Hands-free, voice-powered smart selfie camera takes photos and videos on command while its virtual assistant Alexa gives fashion adviceAmazon has unveiled the Echo Look, a new voice-controlled selfie camera pitched as the ultimate bedroom companion that allows AI assistant Alexa to give you fashion tips and tell you what to wear.The camera, which is available by invitation only in the US costing $200 (£156), stands on a shelf armed with four LEDs for lighting, a depth-sensing system and a microphone array to receive commands just like Amazon’s other Alexa-powered Echo and Echo Dot. Continue reading...

FCC chairman Ajit Pai vows to cut rules to enforce an open internet where all traffic is treated equally – but senators and activists warn there will be a fightThe Trump administration’s plans to overturn open internet protections face “a tsunami of resistance from a grassroots movement of Americans from every walk of life,” senators and activists warned on Wednesday.Related: Tim Berners-Lee: selling private citizens' browsing data is 'disgusting' Continue reading...

With their eerily pristine models of Apple and Facebook’s offices, Turner-nominated artist duo Langlands & Bell expose the ‘fantasy of total control’ that is Silicon Valley architectureEerie white forms appear to float off the walls of a gallery on Pall Mall, hovering in front of lurid blocks of colour like the preserved cadavers of some alien race displayed in a future museum of natural history. There are amoebic creatures with bulbous appendages, others with angular faceted shells; some seem to stare out with cyclopean eyes or gaping circular mouths.Westminster’s gilded avenue of gentlemen’s clubs, where kings and earls once strode, is an appropriate place for what turns out to be a display of our modern-day vessels of power. These bleached bodies are the headquarters buildings of the world’s biggest technology companies, as seen through the detached, deadpan eyes of artist duo Langlands & Bell. Continue reading...

Pontiff makes surprise appearance at Vancouver conference via video-link from the VaticanHe sits behind a desk rather than pacing around a stage, but the power of his message is not diluted. Pope Francis has made a surprise TED talk, beamed from the Vatican to Vancouver, calling for leaders to act with humility and tenderness.The first pontifical TED talk, which lasted 18 minutes, featured Francis dispensing advice to politicians and leaders of big business, as well as talking about his own background as the son of migrants. Continue reading...

Select committee chairman Damian Collins says site does not act quickly enough and fake news could pose threat to ‘the integrity of democracy’Facebook must improve its response to fake news before the UK general election and start blocking or issuing warnings about material that contains falsehoods, the chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee has said.

Facebook Live was meant to be part of the social network’s optimistic vision. But in the wake of two violent crimes, its response has left much wanting

Officials say the timeline given by Richard Dabate, accused of killing his wife in their Connecticut home, is at odds with data collected by her wearable deviceWearable technology is revolutionizing the way people keep active, and if prosecutors in Connecticut have their way, it may help put a suspected murderer behind bars.Officials say that the timeline given by Richard Dabate, accused of killing his wife in the couple’s Ellington, Connecticut, home in 2015, is at odds with data collected from her Fitbit, a wearable device that tracks physical activity. Continue reading...

Jimmy Wales has launched a new site and Google is changing its algorithm – but they’re not the only ones offering innovative solutions to combat fake news onlineIt was Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s assertion that there were “alternative facts” that did it for Jimmy Wales. The Wikipedia founder has set up a site that will attempt to tackle the growing proliferation of fake news. Like the established online encyclopedia, Wikitribune will rely on a volunteer fact-checking community – peer-reviewed news if you like – but they will be collaborating with professional journalists, paid for by crowdfunding. The site, which launches today, is described as “news by the people for the people”. At the same time, Google has announced it is to combat fake news by identifying misleading or offensive content (thanks to reports from users) and changing its algorithm to stop fake news being so prominent in search results. It will promote more authoritative and authentic content – much like these existing fake-news fighters:Related: Google acts against fake news on search engine Continue reading...

Adam Mudd jailed for two years for creating attack-for-hire business responsible for more than 1.7m breaches worldwideA man has been jailed for two years for setting up a computer hacking business that caused chaos worldwide.

Firm introduces user tools for reporting misleading content, and pledges to improve results generated by algorithmGoogle announced its first attempt to combat the circulation of “fake news” on its search engine with new tools allowing users to report misleading or offensive content, and a pledge to improve results generated by its algorithm.The technology company said it would allow people to complain about misleading, inaccurate or hateful content in its autocomplete function, which pops up to suggest searches based on the first few characters typed. Continue reading...

Users of viral face-tuning app have criticised its ‘hot’ filter for whitening skinThe creator of an app which changes your selfies using artificial intelligence has apologised because its “hot” filter automatically lightened people’s skin.FaceApp is touted as an app which uses “neural networks” to change facial characteristics, adding smiles or making users look older or younger. But users noticed one of the options, initially labelled as “hot” made people look whiter. Continue reading...

Snooker player Neil Robertson blamed a recent drop in form on video game addiction. But was he right to? We speak to the researchers trying to find outSnooker player Neil Robertson claims a ruinous addiction has harmed his professional career. It’s not alcohol, it’s not drugs – it is video games. In a recent interview with Eurosport, the Australian said his compulsive need to play the online fantasy game World of Warcraft interfered with his training and preparation for a tournament in China. “I’m two months sober from playing them,” he told the site. “My friend said to me: ‘you don’t get to choose the crack you are addicted to’. And the multiplayer online ones I can’t touch because I just get too hooked on them.”It is only the latest article to put forward the possibility that video games have addictive qualities similar to drugs or gambling. Over the last 20 years, as the medium exploded in popularity, there have been regular scare stories about zombie-like teenagers slumped in front of their PCs, eschewing school work and social interaction. In South Korea, where online gaming is effectively a national sport and its pro players are treated like rock stars, the government has funded treatment centres for games addiction and passed laws to limit access to games for children. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterChatterbox is the Guardian’s daily venue for video game-themed discussion. It has been running as a comments-based forum for over a decade. Continue reading...

How Activision’s shooter presents the conflict should be watched closely by those interested in public history to bring about a dialogue between academia and games

Uber allegedly used program to track and identify Lyft drivers, building up profiles of individuals and figuring out who was driving for Uber and LyftUber faced yet another challenge on Monday when a former Lyft driver filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that a secret program created by the ride-hailing giant to spy on its rival’s drivers violated federal and state privacy laws.Related: Uber allegedly used secret program to undermine rival Lyft Continue reading...

Polling days as public holidays | Wales coverage | Redundant machines | Toasting the mole | Cemetery dangersInstead of new bank holidays for each of the nations of the UK to coincide with saints’ days (as proposed by Labour), why not make national elections a public holiday as in many other countries? This would help to make it as easy for many people in employment to vote, as it is for people who are retired or not in work. Alternatively, voting should take place at weekends, thereby avoiding disruption to schools. Improving turnout and making the voting process just as convenient for everyone would be a step towards a healthier democracy.

The phone app uses ‘neural networks’ to turn your frown upside down – but the results are nothing to smile aboutSometimes it’s hard to work up a smile for the camera. I don’t want people to think I enjoy having my picture taken. Even when I slavishly follow an instruction to smile, I try to make sure my eyes betray a little resentment. I may be saying cheese, but my face is saying: I hate cheese.Luckily, I’ll never have to smile for a picture again, because now there’s an app for that. FaceApp uses “deep generative convolutional neural networks” to turn your frown upside down. It is meant to be more realistic than previous selfie filters, making subtle adjustments to the eyes and the rest of the face to produce a look of genuine merriment, instead of a cheese-hating grimace. Continue reading...

Micah Weinberg of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute says homelessness is not helped by outdated laws and regulations that block new housingYour story (‘It’s a perfect storm’: homeless spike in rural California linked to Silicon Valley, April 13) on a spike in homelessness in California’s Central Valley highlights an important problem, but some additional context is needed. The skyrocketing housing costs that are pushing workers east and bidding up prices in the Central Valley are not just a Silicon Valley phenomenon. The entire Bay Area region is suffering the same, the result of constrained housing supply from decades of underproduction. Local and state leaders have refused to address the problem at its core: reforming rigid and outdated laws and regulations that make building affordable housing all but impossible and help arm anti-growth zealots with the tools they need to block new housing.The Bay Area Council does not, as your story wrongly suggests, view the Central Valley as a “bedroom community” for the purpose of enabling these policy failures. Although, without meaningful statewide housing reforms, we must build strong transportation links to respond to the continuing migration of lower- and middle-income workers from Silicon Valley to the Central Valley. A report by our Bay Area Council Economic Institute (The Northern California Megaregion, June 2016) examines this issue, and also makes recommendations for enhancing educational, workforce and economic development capacity in the Central Valley to support the expansion of the tech industry and jobs there.

Uber added fingerprinting code in effort to catch Chinese fraudsters, leading to CEO Travis Kalanick’s reported dressing down in Apple’s Cupertino headquartersUber broke Apple’s privacy rules in its iOS app in an effort to catch Chinese fraudsters, resulting in chief executive Travis Kalanick being hauled in to Cupertino for a personal dressing down from Tim Cook, it has been revealed.Apple prevents developers from identifying specific iPhones for privacy reasons, arguing that a phone that is completely wiped and resold should have no links to its previous owner; to that end, in 2012, the company stopped allowing apps on its App Store to access information like the “Unique Device Identifier” (UDID) and similar identifying information. Continue reading...

After the widely mocked $400 wifi-enabled Juicero machine, here are five over-engineered fixes to issues that arise when you have too much money

Email service developed a side business after it was acquired by Slice in 2014 – selling aggregated data about users to apps they were unsubscribing fromThe chief executive of email unsubscription service Unroll.me has said he is “heartbroken” that users felt betrayed by the fact that his company monetises the contents of their inbox by selling their data to companies such as Uber.Founded in 2011, the free web service allows users to unsubscribe en masse from mailing lists, newsletters and other email annoyances. To do so, it requires access to the users’ inboxes, and permission from them to scan the data for unsubscribe links. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterChatterbox is the Guardian’s daily venue for video game-themed discussion. It has been running as a comments-based forum for over a decade. Continue reading...

The rich used to show how much they could spend on things they didn’t need. Today, a public display of productivity is the new symbol of class power

An indie fantasy is endearing but confusing, while Nintendo’s Pokémon-style battling spirits return in force and Capcom serves up a feast of nostalgiaPS4, Xbox One, PC, Focus Home Interactive, cert: 12

If you have a young family, you’d do well to take the Scenic route. Renault’s all-rounder is your nursery on the roadPrice: £21,605

Virtual reality technology is making great advances, but it has also helped popularise a theory long debated by philosophers and now gaining supporters in Silicon Valley – that the outside world is itself a simulationHave you ever wondered if life is not exactly what it’s cracked up to be? OK, let’s take that thought a little further. Have you ever suffered from an identity crisis? Yes? One in which you suspected that you’re not a real person, but instead an extremely sophisticated computer simulation of a real person produced by an immensely more developed civilisation than that which we take to be our own?It’s just possible that I lost you on that last point, but stay with me, because the reality we take for granted is coming under increasing technological and theoretical threat. Continue reading...

Reading Laurie Penny’s article about AI will not pose many surprises for readers of classic science fiction (Opinion, 20 April). She suggests that we may have to “build robots with a capacity for moral judgment”, which presumably would entail their having basic commands capable of overruling experience (experience of language being what so rapidly turns ’bots racist and sexist). Isaac Asimov long ago turned this idea into a series of books about his three laws of robotics. She also points to the role of language in forming preconceptions, citing our rigid system of pronouns. Poul Anderson, also long ago, proposed a whole new system, with “e” as the third-person pronoun, “uz” as its possessive, and the lovely word “marry” as a noun denoting a partner of whatever gender (“uz marry”). I wonder why we haven’t yet succeeded in imitating him.

This examination of today’s tech-zombie epidemic is worth putting your phone down for – at least for a whileAre you addicted to technology? I’m certainly not. In my first sitting reading Adam Alter’s Irresistible, an investigation into why we can’t stop scrolling and clicking and surfing online, I only paused to check my phone four times. Because someone might have emailed me. Or texted me. One time I stopped to download an app Alter mentioned (research) and the final time I had to check the shares on my play brokerage app, Best Brokers (let’s call this one “business”).Half the developed world is addicted to something, and Alter, a professor at New York University, informs us that, increasingly, that something isn’t drugs or alcohol, but behaviour. Recent studies suggest the most compulsive behaviour we engage in has to do with cyber connectivity; 40% of us have some sort of internet-based addiction – whether it’s checking your email (on average workers check it 36 times an hour), mindlessly scrolling through other people’s breakfasts on Instagram or gambling online. Continue reading...

Training neural networks to create recipes, jokes, and Doctor Who episodes

Nintendo’s karting franchise is designed to get everyone racing together no matter what their individual ability. This Switch remaster achieves that and moreBringing Mario Kart to the Switch feels like an easy win for Nintendo’s fledgling machine. It isn’t exactly a new game – it’s Mario Kart 8, with a few extras – but that doesn’t really matter, for three main reasons: the ability to play in portable mode opens up whole new contexts, not that many people owned a Wii U anyway, and Mario Kart 8 is still an absolutely fantastic racing game.For those who skipped the Wii U, Mario Kart 8 introduced bigger tracks to accommodate 12 racers and vehicles that defy gravity to drive up walls and along ceilings, and sprout gliders to soar through the air. Those tracks all still look great on this new console, especially in portable mode. And Mario Kart 8 Deluxe also includes what was DLC for the Wii U version, like the wonderful Animal Crossing track that comes in four seasonal flavours, so there are 48 tracks in total. Continue reading...

It might be a little off the pace but with great performance, excellent camera and good fingerprint sensor, the P10 is the Chinese firm’s best phone to dateHuawei hopes that its latest flagship smartphone, the P10, will help secure it as the world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer. But has this Leica dual camera-equipped device got what it takes to compete?

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

Retail giant is looking for site in Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne to become its first fulfilment centre in the countryThe retail giant Amazon is expanding its operations in Australia, announcing plans to build the first of several large warehouses on the east coast to allow for faster local delivery.The company announced the long-anticipated move on Thursday, and according to Business Insider reported is looking for warehouse space in Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne to become its first 93,000 sq m Australian “fulfilment centre”. Continue reading...

Tribunal ruled last year that Uber drivers should be treated as employed workers with rights to minimum wage and sick payUber has been granted the right to appeal against last year’s landmark ruling that its UK minicab drivers should be treated as employed workers with rights to the minimum wage and sick pay.The employment appeals tribunal in London has set a date for a two-day hearing starting on 27 September. The San Francisco-based company will argue its 40,000 currently self-employed drivers in Britain are free to work when and where they want and enjoy more flexibility than traditional private-hire drivers who are self-employed. Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg’s social network is betting big on augmented reality, hasn’t given up on VR – but doesn’t have much to say about the ‘Facebook killer’As Apple has WWDC and Google has I/O, so Facebook has F8: the social network’s big annual conference has steadily grown, from a way to speak to developers about the upcoming changes to its platform to an event where the whole world hears about the exciting new products coming from the House of Zuckerberg.Facebook’s chief executive may not quite have Steve Jobs’ infamous “reality distortion field” – the social network’s ideal world is more like an artificial reality where none of the outside world penetrates – but he can still wow when he wants to. Here’s the eight biggest things to take away from the San Jose event. Continue reading...

Divorce is always hard, but it can be particularly messy in a land of huge wealth, alpha personalities and hard-nosed lawyers who don’t come cheapThe billionaire founder of Zynga, the San Francisco-based company that makes FarmVille, has found himself in (very messy) DivorceVille.Mark Pincus, an early investor in Facebook and Twitter who is worth $1.28bn, separated from his wife, Alison Gelb Pincus, the co-founder of home decor business One Kings Lane. The couple married in 2008, a year after Mark founded Zynga, which grew into a $1bn company within four years. There was a prenup, but in filing for divorce Alison has asked the court to nullify the agreement since Mark’s net worth soared during their marriage. Continue reading...

Gladys Berejiklian’s government gives qualified support to short-term letting of spare rooms and empty propertiesThe New South Wales government looks set to allow home owners to rent out spare rooms and entire homes using Airbnb and similar sites but has committed to giving strata corporations greater powers to deal with problems in apartment blocks.The state government on Wednesday released its long-awaited response to last year’s parliamentary inquiry into short-term holiday letting, offering “qualified support” to changes that would see the industry regulated in NSW for the first time. Continue reading...

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

Horizon Zero Dawn is a beautiful and exciting adventure, but its most interesting element is that it focuses on the intellectual curiosity of its heroSomething has only just occurred to me about Horizon Zero Dawn. The PlayStation 4 action adventure game, set in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by robotic dinosaurs, is thrilling and beautiful – that much is obvious right from the start. Also obvious is the fact that it borrows a lot of mechanics from the Far Cry series, and that it lacks the sheer depth and scope of role-playing adventures like Witcher 3 and Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But what dawned on me much more slowly was the fact that its wonderful lead protagonist, Aloy, is not so much motivated by some grand mission to save humanity (though that sort of comes into it), she is motivated by intellectual curiosity. She is fascinated by the mechanised monsters roaming the landscape and the ruins of an ancient technological culture that she first discovers as a child, and she wants to learn more. Her interactions with the world, the characters and the wider narrative within it, are all personal rather than heroic. In short, she acts like a human being.For a very long time, a huge percentage of action-adventure games were about saving the planet – sometimes even the entire universe – from some monstrous invading evil. The stakes were almost always that high. There were many intermingled reasons for this. Partly, there’s the huge influence that fantasy and science-fiction masterworks have had on game developers – the overbearing presence of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars in the collective imaginative canon. But also, a lot of early video games drew their story-telling approach directly from mythic sources – the great legends, folk and fairy tales – because with limited visual and narrative story-telling tools available, these primal tales were the easiest to communicate. Hence, a lot of games about lone heroes triumphing against the odds – rendering Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces into interactive life. Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg at the F8 conference hinted that AR encourages people to interact with others – although that experience is still mediated by a screenWe live in a time when society is divided and work is needed to bring people together, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks it has the solution: augmented reality.Speaking on stage at the company’s annual developer conference F8, Zuckerberg outlined the company’s plan to turn the camera app into a platform that makes it easy for people to build augmented reality experiences, whereby digital objects and information are overlaid onto or used to enhance the physical space. Continue reading...

Privacy, security, artificial intelligence, net neutrality, big data and impact of internet on daily life among topics included in surveysThe EU is launching an unprecedented public consultation to find out what Europeans fear most about the future of the internet.A succession of surveys over the coming weeks will ask people for their views on everything from privacy and security to artificial intelligence, net neutrality, big data and the impact of the digital world on jobs, health, government and democracy. Continue reading...

The £6.2m settlement sets new precedent for pre-installation of third-party apps and search engines, including Russia’s YandexGoogle has been forced to open up Android to rival search engines and applications in Russia, after settling a two-year battle with competition authorities for 439m roubles (£6.2m).