A well-worn hoax status post is doing the rounds on social media again – but do you know what Facebook really can do with your pictures?A hoax Facebook status threatening that the company is about to reveal all of your private photos and messages has resurfaced again. The status message, and subsequent variations of it, date back to at least June 2012, and periodically gain traction.There’s absolutely no substance to them. Continue reading...
The Finnish startup turned to an online community of tech enthusiasts to shape the design of its new device. The result? Something ‘really different’When Finnish startup Eve-Tech launched its first device, the T1 tablet computer, it received positive reviews for its premium feel and budget price.However, there was also a lot of feedback from reviewers and users about how it could have been better, including criticism about the quality of the outer casing, ports and rear camera.
The new Conversation Topics feature on the Facebook Messenger app tells you what your friends have been doing, what they like and what you could talk to them aboutName: Conversation Topics.Age: Brand new. Continue reading...
Twitter has struggled to prevent abusive users from overwhelming discussion, but have trolls also reduced the value of the company?Twitter might have finally found some motivation to deal with its troll problem. Three and a half billion motivations, really.The company has spent the past few months courting potential buyouts from companies including Google, Disney, and enterprise software firm Salesforce. Continue reading...
Tolerance of the Facebook board member supporting Trump’s divisive campaign reveals an industry where actions don’t match the missionIt’s not often that Mark Zuckerberg invokes the values of Facebook to rebuke the people he works with, but this year, he reached a tipping point with the “deeply upsetting†views of one of the members of his board of directors, which he disavowed as “not represent[ing] the way Facebook or I think at allâ€.
With a hack of half a billion users and a government spying program uncovered at Yahoo in the last four weeks, Verizon may be looking for an outAnalysts are predicting more bad news for Yahoo on Tuesday as the company releases its latest results amid a now floundering takeover bid.The research firm eMarketer is expecting a double-digit decline in ad revenue. The drop comes as Verizon is attempting to renegotiate its $4.8bn bid for the company. Continue reading...
Company sets up stalls for passengers to exchange phablet or obtain refund, as airlines around world ban exploding device from planesSamsung’s Galaxy Note 7 is now banned on so many airlines worldwide that the company is opening up stalls inside airports to let owners swap or get a refund for the phablet before boarding their flight.The booths are opening in airports around the world, including Australia and South Korea, following the ban of the device on those countries’ largest airlines, Korean Air, Virgin Australia and Qantas. The Australian bans are at the airlines’ discretion, however: in other nations, including Korea, the US and Japan, the Note 7 is banned from flights under the order of the country’s airline regulators. Continue reading...
In the age of photorealism, developer Playground Games used intricate HD sky footage and ‘sub-pixel’-detail car models to raise the bar on authenticityLast October, video game developer Playground Games sent six staff members from its studio in Leamington Spa to a tiny town 120 miles south-west of Sydney called Braidwood, New South Wales. Armed with a custom built 12K-resolution camera worth tens of thousands of pounds, they weren’t there to capture the scenery or film movie sequences with a cast of actors. They were there to record the sky.Released in September, Forza Horizon 3 is widely credited as one of the most visually impressive console games ever made. A driving simulation based in and around a fictitious car festival, the game gives players hundreds of miles of accurately modelled Australian scenery to explore, from dense rain forests to sun-bleached outback wastelands. Continue reading...
Ellen Pao says Project Include, her group pushing for inclusion in tech, is cutting ties with Thiel, a part-time partner, since their ‘values are not aligned’
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla sues two California agencies as part of protracted legal battle over public access to beach on his propertySilicon Valley venture capitalist and billionaire Vinod Khosla, who has been engaged in a legal battle over public access to a beloved surfing beach that sits on his land, is suing two state agencies accusing them of using “coercion and harassment†to take away his private property rights – an allegation one campaign group describes as “absurdâ€.Khosla, who has a net worth of $1.55bn, co-founded the technology company Sun Microsystems and now runs the venture capital firm Khosla Ventures. In 2008, he bought a 53-acre section of Martins Beach near Half Moon Bay, about 30 miles south of San Francisco. Continue reading...
Grand Theft Auto publisher Rockstar doesn’t work like other game companies, which is why two tweets have caused an explosion of excitementNobody announces anything on a Sunday afternoon. Nobody except Rockstar, of course.The publisher behind the multimillion selling Grand Theft Auto series put out one tweet on the afternoon of 16 October – a refreshed version of its own logo, on a red background. That was it. So far the message has been retweeted 110,000 times. Continue reading...
Turn any idle asset into a productive piece of capital. All you have to do is set a price, and the robots will take care of the rest. What could possibly go wrong?
Term deemed ‘misleading’ by German transport minister as Federal Motor Transport Authority reminds Tesla owners to pay attention when drivingTesla Motors has been asked by the German transport minister to not use the word “autopilot†in its advertising, as doing so may suggest to drivers that they do not need to pay attention to the road.The minster, Alexander Dobrindt, told Reuters that his office made the request “to no longer use the misleading term for the driver assistance system of the carâ€. Continue reading...
Following US ban, airlines based in Hong Kong, China, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Germany and Italy prohibit flying with troubled phabletAirlines around the world have now banned Samsung’s troubled Galaxy Note 7 smartphone over the fire risks posed by the device’s lithium-ion battery.Following a ban by the US Federal Aviation Authority, Japan’s transport ministry ordered airlines to completely ban the Note 7 from flights, including the country’s largest operators All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines. Travellers ignoring the ban will have their smartphones confiscated with the possibility of further punitive measures. Continue reading...
by Steve Rose, Peter Robinson, Nick Gillett, Issy Sam on (#1YB7T)
AI, VR and smartphones are changing the way we consume culture, but what comes next? From film to visual arts, we explore entertainment’s new frontiersYou can star alongside Leo when cinema enters its ‘karaoke’ phase Continue reading...
Russian president says US warnings show Washington is using cyber-attacks as a political tool after Joe Biden says ‘we are sending a message’ to PutinVladimir Putin on Sunday shrugged off new US threats to retaliate against alleged Russian hackers, saying such statements only confirmed that Washington used cyber-attacks for political ends.
Laura Bates’s takedown of Justin Webb was the highlight of a day celebrating women in science, technology and contemporary lifeDigital Human (Radio 4) | iPlayer
The airlines cite the smartphone’s potential fire risk as the reason for the ban, which comes into effect todayPassengers flying Qantas or Virgin Australia will be banned from bringing the recalled Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on all flights.The airlines cite the smartphone’s potential fire risk as the reason for the ban, which comes into effect on Sunday. Continue reading...
Fed up with chores? We road-tested six domestic robots (so you don’t have to)The future is a funny place to live. A few years ago, I bought a lamp controlled by Wi-Fi. “No more getting up and switching things on for me!†I thought, smugly. It was only once I’d bought the lamp that I realised how tedious it is to get your phone out, unlock it, swipe through to the right app, open it, select the correct lamp and switch it on every evening.So I struck upon a brilliant plan. I saw a Kickstarter for a physical button that links to your phone via Bluetooth and connects to Wi-Fi-enabled objects. I bought that, too, hooked it up to the lamp and stuck it on my wall. Continue reading...
The super-slim tablet is said by some to crack too easily. And when the tech giant charges £566 for a repair, is it being unfair?Apple’s swishest iPad yet – the ultra-slim Pro – is thinner, lighter and has an “amazing screenâ€, according to reviews. But some buyers are finding that the screens crack too easily and are flabbergasted when Apple demands £556 to repair it.One customer, Londoner Jonathan Hassid, paid £1,086 for his 12.9 inch iPad Pro, plus £150 for Apple’s own screen protector. But just three months later the iPad developed a crack on its screen, even though, Hassid says, it had never been bashed or dropped. What stunned him was the reaction from Apple. Continue reading...
His games channel has 12.7m subscribers, but Daniel Middleton’s horizons are expanding into publishing and theatre“I think pugs are actually the perfect dog for YouTubers, just because they’re lapdogs. YouTubers spend a lot of time at home, and they’re perfect companion dogs. When you need to work, they don’t mind. They love sleeping!â€Daniel Middleton, aka DanTDM from child-friendly YouTube gaming channel The Diamond Minecart, has been working a lot. He’s the most popular British creator on YouTube, with 12.7 million subscribers and 8.3bn video views since 2012. Continue reading...
New Zealand tourist Warriena Wright met up with Gable Tostee in fun-loving Surfers Paradise. A few hours later she plunged 14 storeys to her deathWarriena Wright was visiting the Gold Coast in Australia when she matched on Tinder with Gable Tostee. They met up in the popular tourist nightspot of Surfers Paradise on a Thursday night and bought a six-pack of beer after spending a few minutes in a pub.By the end of the date Wright was dead, having plunged 14 storeys from the balcony of Tostee’s apartment, and two years later he is on trial in Queensland’s supreme court charged with her murder. Continue reading...
Actor offered to lend his voice to the Facebook founder’s artificial intelligence-based personal assistant, which Zuckerberg calls ‘kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man’It may be Tesla’s Elon Musk who most often invites comparison to Marvel’s superhero Iron Man – the alter ego of billionaire inventor Tony Stark – but it is Mark Zuckerberg who might be the first to bring Stark’s technology to life.Memorably, the Facebook CEO sets himself annual goals such as learning Mandarin in 2010, eating only meat from animals he killed himself in 2011, or reading two books a month in 2015. Continue reading...
Robots | Escaped gorilla | York Minster bellringers | Trident | Trichologist obituaryEarl Yardley, of Industrial Vision Systems (Letters, 14 October), says that in the future robots will not replace humans and instead the two will work “in partnershipâ€. A touch complacent, maybe? Last May the iPhone parts maker Foxconn reduced its employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000, thanks to the introduction of robots. I have yet to hear where the 60,000 replaced workers were redeployed. I suspect they weren’t. So, while hoping that everything will work out for the best, perhaps we do need to work on a plan B as well.
Google splitting its mobile and desktop indexes within ‘months’ to offer better smartphone experiences, according to a Google webmaster trends analystDesktop Google searches could end up slightly out of date compared to those done via smartphones, as the company begins to push mobile search.Google is fully splitting its search index into two distinct versions: a rapidly updated mobile one, and a separate, secondary search index for the desktop web. Continue reading...
Reports say Sony has given a timeframe for its plan to bring its console brand to iOS and Android smartphonesSony is developing at least five smartphone games based on PlayStation titles, which will be released in the next 18 months.According to Japanese news site Nikkei, the games will be initially launched in the Asian market in the business year ending March 2018. Continue reading...
Virgin America, Delta Air Lines and Alaska Airlines install bags capable of withstanding 1,760C heat to stop smartphone and laptop battery fires spreadingFollowing explosions of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, airlines are taking steps to protect their planes from mobile devices with fire-suppressing systems.Three US airlines have started rolling out new fire-containment bags capable of sealing up an overheating smartphone or laptop battery to prevent a disaster mid-air. Continue reading...
Baxter and Sawyer are designed to collaborate with people, performing a range of repetitive jobs – but for some tasks there are no tools better than human hands
Meanwhile, some US commentators on cybersecurity issues have suggested that these attacks are not a surprise but appear to be a new spin on an old strategyIt could have been a cold war drama. The world watched this week as accusations and counter-accusations were thrown by the American and Russian governments about documents stolen during a hack of the Democratic National Committee and the email account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta.The notion that public figures have any right to privacy appears to have been lost in the furore surrounding the story, stolen correspondence being bandied around in attempts to influence the outcome of one of the nastiest, most vitriolic US presidential campaigns in history. Continue reading...
Exploding phones take heavy toll on South Korean electronics firm, with safety crisis expected to dent customer loyaltySamsung has issued its second profit warning this week after the withdrawal of its Galaxy Note 7 phone, increasing the estimated cost of the recall to its bottom line from £1.9bn to at least £4bn.The South Korean electronics company said the crisis caused by the exploding Note 7 smartphones would reduce profits by at least 3tn won (£2.2bn) in the six months to the end of March. It hopes it can boost sales of its other flagship handsets to cushion the impact. Continue reading...
Space battles, hallucinogenic puzzlers, office simulators and more – here are our favourite games from Sony’s initial virtual reality lineupSony’s PlayStation VR headset launches this week, offering a more affordable and intuitive introduction to the concept than the likes of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. All you need is a PlayStation 4, a PlayStation Camera – and the £350 headset itself of course.If you’ve taken the plunge into virtual gaming, here are the nine games we’d recommend trying first. Continue reading...
We are a generation struggling to look after elderly relatives. Maybe technology can ease the loadBy our habits, shall ye know us. Every home has its rituals, its small daily ceremonies, and none more so perhaps than the homes of the elderly; the kettle always boiled for visitors regardless of whether they want tea, the radio religiously activated for The Archers, the dog put out last thing at night.Related: English man spends 11 hours trying to make cup of tea with Wi-Fi kettle Continue reading...
The flotation of the five-year-old app, now used by more than 40% of young Americans, will be the largest social media IPO since Twitter in 2013Snapchat is preparing for a “mega unicorn†flotation on the stock market that could value the five-year-old mobile app known for its disappearing photos at as much as $25bn.Related: Meet Snapchat's 'dudeocracy' of talent Continue reading...
by Jemima Kiss in San Francisco and agencies on (#1Y0N0)
Registered complaints leading up to US recall and replacement program found only 96 smartphones sparking or inflicting injury due to faulty batteryThe recall and replacement program for Samsung’s faulty Note 7 smartphone has officially begun in the US after an agreement was reached with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, increasing the number of devices that could be returned to 1.9m.Yet the company has claimed that despite the vast scale of the recall – which Samsung estimates will eat into $2.33bn of its profits – only 96 handsets have been found to have caused damage or injury owing to the faulty battery problem. Continue reading...
Launched today, fact check will now appear as a label among news search results alongside other labels such as opinion, local source and highly citedIn the midst of a highly charged presidential election, where fact and fiction have frequently become confused, Google News has introduced a new fact check feature in search results for news stories.Launched today, fact check will now appear as a label among news search results, alongside other established labels such as opinion, local source and highly cited. Continue reading...
They’re ‘plant-based and protein rich’ and contain “12.5% of your daily nutritional requirements’ – but people say they pack some pretty nasty side effects tooThe “future of food†company Soylent has recalled its new line of food bars after reports that the “meal replacement†has made people ill.Soylent began selling 250-calorie bars in August, advertising them as a “12.5% of your daily nutritional requirements†that are “plant-based and protein richâ€. In the weeks since, dyspeptic customers have filled Soylent’s message boards with complaints about the bar.
Automated inspection machines and artificial intelligence aren’t designed to cost human workers their jobs; in fact, quite the opposite (Schools not preparing children to succeed in an AI future, MPs warn, theguardian.com, 12 October).Working side by side with humans, AI technology increases productivity in factories, eliminating the need for costly precision fixtures, and allowing different parts to be processed and inspected without changing tools. This assists human workers with inspection processes, relieving them of more commonplace work, and allowing them to be redeployed to tasks that robots cannot do. Continue reading...
Troubled smartphone maker offers incentives in US and South Korea in bid to limit reputational damageSamsung will pay Galaxy Note 7 owners to buy another brand’s smartphone, including arch rival Apple’s iPhones.The troubled smartphone maker began offering financial incentives to US and South Korean customers for exchanging their Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phablets for a refund or another product, in an attempt to limit reputational damage in the wake of its exploding smartphones. Continue reading...
It’s been 20 years since original Tomb Raider. But who is the woman behind the legend? Ellie Gibson visited the famed archeologist in her Surrey mansion to find outShe’s famous around the globe for her archaeological exploits, elegant acrobatics, and ability to take down a T rex at 20 paces. But who is the real Lara Croft? I have come to her sprawling manor home in rural Surrey to find out.This is, after all, the British icon who has spent the last 20 years battling wolves, giant snakes and unsupportive vest tops. Now, as I watch Lara standing at the kitchen counter, wrestling with a small foil pod, one thing becomes clear: she is not a woman who can work a Nespresso machine. “Oh bollocks,†she says, in that familiar cut-glass accent, as coffee granules spray across the polished granite. She hurls the empty pod in the sink, whips out the pistols she keeps strapped to each thigh, and blasts the machine with both barrels. She then pops the guns neatly back in their holsters and turns, raising an eyebrow in her trademark style. “Tea?†Continue reading...
Exclusive: a joint letter marks the escalation of a growing campaign for Airbnb to eliminate illegal hotels that take affordable housing off the marketAirbnb is facing renewed calls for a federal investigation from more than a dozen US cities, boosting senator Elizabeth Warren’s efforts to force the popular home-sharing startup to release data on its affordable housing impact.A coalition of American lawmakers, including leaders from New York, San Francisco, Seattle, St Louis and Portland, urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday to “help cities to protect consumers†and “study the extent to which the [short-term rental] industry is facilitating commercial operationsâ€. Continue reading...
Tim Cook met with Sonder CEO amid reports of a prototype Apple keyboard using startup’s technologyApple is reportedly closing in on a Australian startup that has pioneered dynamic, customisable “magic keyboardsâ€.The Sydney tech company Sonder has designed a smart keyboard that can be customised to accommodate any language, shortcut or custom icon, using the same E Ink display technology used by Kindle. Continue reading...
Mamie would like to replace her old keyboard and mouse with something better. There are plenty of options ...My Dell desktop’s wired optical mouse and keyboard are getting a little long in the tooth, and I’d like to replace them. What do you recommend? Are wireless devices worth it, or do you continually need to recharge them and replace endless batteries? I can touch-type, but my skills are a little rusty. MamieKeyboards are partly a matter of taste, and habitual use overcomes many objections. In other words, if you use a flawed keyboard for long enough, you’ll get used to it. You may even come to like it. Continue reading...
Tools for informal chat are believed to lend themselves to collaborative communication. But are they more suited to office gossip and cute gifs?The all-too-familiar reflex of minimising an open Facebook tab as your manager approaches could soon be relinquished to the past, as Facebook looks to legitimise its infiltration into our working lives. Itrecently launched “Facebook at workâ€, now officially titled “Workplaceâ€, provides users an entirely separate professional Facebook account through which they can communicate with colleagues and workmates. Workplace is already in more than a thousand organisations worldwide , sold to businesses with a per-user price plan. There’s even a separate work-chat app, so you can install a shop-talk exclusive messenger to your iPhone or Android.
