Two big Silicon Valley names are missing from the alliance, which aims to set societal and ethical best practice for artificial intelligence researchGoogle, Facebook, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft are joining forces to create a new AI partnership dedicated to advancing public understanding of the sector, as well as coming up with standards for future researchers to abide by.Going by the unwieldy name of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, the alliance isn’t a lobbying organisation (at least, it says it “does not intend” to lobby government bodies). Instead, it says it will “conduct research, recommend best practices, and publish research under an open license in areas such as ethics, fairness and inclusivity; transparency, privacy, and interoperability; collaboration between people and AI systems; and the trustworthiness, reliability and robustness of the technology”. Continue reading...

Canadian company shifts focus to software having struggled to compete as mobile users opt for touchscreensBlackBerry is shutting down its phone business after 14 years of making handsets.The company’s devices were once the phone of choice for professionals, providing access to emails on the move, but BlackBerry has struggled to keep up with competition from rivals Apple and Samsung as mobile users increasingly opt for touchscreens. Continue reading...

Technology giant’s commitment to £8bn regeneration project is major boost, says chancellor Philip HammondApple is to move its UK headquarters to Battersea power station in a major boost for the £8bn regeneration of the Grade II-listed building – and a fillip for London following June’s Brexit vote.The technology company has agreed to take 500,000 sq ft of office space across six floors in the power station’s central boiler house. It will move 1,400 Apple employees into the building in 2021 from its eight other London offices. Continue reading...

Microsoft’s head of Xbox planning says 4K is a key part of gaming’s future, and insists customers will understand appeal of Project Scorpio when they see itMicrosoft was surprised and fascinated by Sony’s decision not to support 4K UHD Blu-ray discs with its PlayStation 4 Pro console, an executive has revealed.Albert Penello, who leads planning for the Xbox division, said that he expected Sony to feature a 4K disc player in its updated PS4 machine, which is launching on 10 November. Microsoft is supporting the format – which allows gamers to player UHD movies on their machine – in both its Xbox One S and Project Scorpio platforms. Continue reading...

A week after its release in the UK, readers tell us what they think about the virtual reality system Oculus Rift

The Anti-Defamation League has included the cartoon to its Hate on Display list after it was adopted by white supremacists this yearPepe the Frog, a green frog with red lips created by cartoonist Matt Furie in 2005, has been labelled an “online hate symbol” by the Anti-Defamation League after his adoption as an icon of the white supremacist movement.“Images of the frog, variously portrayed with a Hitler-like moustache, wearing a yarmulke or a Klan hood, have proliferated in recent weeks in hateful messages aimed at Jewish and other users on Twitter,” the ADL said, explaining its decision to add the meme to its online Hate on Display database. Continue reading...

Short on single-player campaign but long on loot collection and exploration, new expansion of first-person shooter ticks most boxes – but might not win new playersBy now, you know what Destiny is: a hybrid first-person shooter and massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, it throws players into a vast space opera as they fight four alien races to defend an embattled future Earth on the verge of collapse.Or more reductively, you play as a space wizard and shoot aliens in the head to get cool new guns and make numbers go up. Continue reading...

As writers learn that tech giant has processed their work without permission, the Authors Guild condemns ‘blatantly commercial use of expressive authorship’When the writer Rebecca Forster first heard how Google was using her work, it felt like she was trapped in a science fiction novel.“Is this any different than someone using one of my books to start a fire? I have no idea,” she says. “I have no idea what their objective is. Certainly it is not to bring me readers.” Continue reading...

With EA Sports gearing up to release the latest edition of the big-money football computer game franchise, Fifa 17, we figured we’d try out our own motion-capture animations, celebrations and cut-scenes. Unfortunately none of our submissions were used in the final version

Sony are hoping to buck the trend of flagging VR sales with its new console , while Deus Ex proves there’s life yet in the dystopian gaming genreIf you did your growing up in the 20th century, the chances are your youthful predictions for 2016 would have involved colonies on the Moon, flying cars and friendly, subservient robots. Although these visions of ultra-modernity are sadly yet to be, we can always console ourselves with the fact that at least we’ll all soon be using virtual reality, gaming’s holy grail, which has been tantalisingly out of reach since its initial appearance in the early 90s. But this month even that small piece of future-certainty looked questionable with news that, in the US, sales of Oculus Rift (£549), the Facebook-owned technology that re-sparked interest in VR, and HTC Vive (£799), its technically superior rival, had both ground to a halt. PC gaming platform Steam showed a 0% growth for Vive and a 0.01% increase in Oculus Rift ownership last month, a possible indication that early adopters have got theirs, and everybody else is waiting for some decent games and a price reduction.Related: PlayStation boss: virtual reality throws out the game-design rule book Continue reading...

Who are the people writing the thousands of ‘fair and unbiased’ reviews? Do they get paid? Not quiteFake reviews on Amazon can’t be trusted as they’re biased, or at least that’s what recent reports claim. But who are the people behind these thousands of reviews, how did they get into it all and are the so-called incentivised reviews really fake?

We need better language to describe the technology companies that control the digital worlds in which we speak, play and liveGoogle and Facebook have conveyed nearly all of us to this page, and just about every other idea or expression we’ll encounter today. Yet we don’t know how to talk about these companies, nor digest their sheer power.

SpaceX founder tells meeting of astronautical experts that his only purpose is to ‘make life interplanetary’, revealing plans for reusable ship to MarsSpaceX founder Elon Musk has outlined his highly ambitious vision for manned missions to Mars, which he said could begin as soon as 2022 – three years sooner than his previous estimates.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk describes his highly ambitious vision for manned missions to Mars at a conference in Mexico. ‘The key is making this affordable to almost anyone who wants to go,’ he says. The first flights would be ‘fairly expensive’ but ticket prices could later drop to as little as $100,000. One day he hopes the transport system will give ‘full access to he entire greater solar system’ once refuelling stops are established Continue reading...

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

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s project to colonise Mars, has released a video demonstrating his hopes for space travel. Musk has said that he wants to make it possible for ‘anyone who wanted to go’ to Mars to be able to get there but predicts it could take between 40 and 100 years to establish a large colony of people. The new rocket involved in this would be the largest in history. Continue reading...

After details of the infidelity website’s 33m members were leaked online, Rob Segal and James Millership had a job on their hands to salvage the damaged brandCan Ashley Madison shake off her bad reputation? “We talk about her as Lindsay Lohan,” says Rob Segal, chief executive of Ruby, the company behind the infidelity website hacked last year. “People are interested in her good and bad.”People are definitely interested in her. Despite last year’s calamitous security breach which saw the confidential account details of 33 million members of the site – which used the slogan “Life is short. Have an affair” – leaked online, it attracted close to 5 million new subscribers in the months that followed. Continue reading...

Six lawmakers question why it took Yahoo two years to discover breach as experts warn of the implications of the record-breaking haul of password data

Court hearing follows arrest of man in Northamptonshire over alleged hacking and theft of 3,000 imagesThe Duchess of Cambridge’s sister has taken high court action against a “person or persons unknown”.Pippa Middleton is listed as the claimant in a case to be heard in London on Wednesday. The case is listed as “Middleton & anr v The Person or Persons Unknown”. Court officials identified the claimant as Pippa Middleton but gave no indication of what the case was about. Continue reading...

Scientists create polymer sheets that can be programmed to change shape over time, which could be used to make the next generation of medical implantsThe delicate flower bud bursts into life, opening layer after layer of brightly coloured petals, first large and red, then small and purple, and finally the innermost ones - tiny and orange.But as convincing as the bloom may seem, it is not a work of nature. Scientists created the flowering bud after learning how to make polymer sheets that can be programmed to change shape over time.

From the must-have big names to the quirky indie games, here are some of the treasures we found at the UK’s biggest games eventThousands of people filled the halls of the NEC in Birmingham for this year’s EGX to play hundreds of new and unreleased games. While a few big names had an appropriately big presence, the indie-themed Rezzed zone was bigger than ever, and the quirky Leftfield Collection – as always – boasted some of the most interesting games on show. Here are our favourites of all shapes and sizes. Continue reading...

National data protection authority blocks recent privacy changes made by social network and commands existing shared data and phone numbers be deleted for 35 million usersThe German data protection agency has ordered Facebook to stop collecting user data from its WhatsApp messenger app and delete any data it has already received.The social network announced in August that it would begin sharing data from its 1 billion-plus user base, including phone numbers, from WhatsApp users with Facebook for the purpose of targeted ads. It gave users the option of opting out of the data being used for advertising purposes, but did not allow them to opt out of the data sharing between WhatsApp and Facebook. Continue reading...

The SpaceX founder has become the face of entrepreneurial space exploration – and ambition. What does the established space science community think of him?Entrepreneur Elon Musk has set himself an ambitious timeline for the colonization of Mars. The South Africa-born magnate estimates that his private space company, SpaceX, will launch its first manned mission in 2024 – one decade sooner than Nasa’s ambitions.Musk will grace the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Tuesday, unveiling his plans to send humans to Mars in a keynote talk titled Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species. He will outline what SpaceX deems to be a “good approach” for establishing a city on the red planet. Continue reading...

Financial backing of pro-Trump trolls causes rift with VR games developers as Palmer Luckey attempts to backtrackDevelopers of virtual reality games are pulling their support for Oculus after the involvement of its co-founder Palmer Luckey in a pro-Trump and anti-Clinton group was revealed.

Deep learning needs to become more efficient if it is going to move from using data to categorise images of cats to diagnosing rare illnesses“Is data the new oil?” asked proponents of big data back in 2012 in Forbes magazine. By 2016, and the rise of big data’s turbo-powered cousin deep learning, we had become more certain: “Data is the new oil,” stated Fortune.Amazon’s Neil Lawrence has a slightly different analogy: Data, he says, is coal. Not coal today, though, but coal in the early days of the 18th century, when Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine. A Devonian ironmonger, Newcomen built his device to pump water out of the south west’s prolific tin mines. Continue reading...

TV and MLS have played a part in popularizing the beautiful game Stateside, but video games’ influence on the American soccer fan cannot be underestimatedFor Kelvin Garcia, growing up in a Dominican family from New York City meant two sports took priority. “As a Latino kid in the Bronx, all I ever played was basketball and baseball,” says Garcia, who now lives in Texas. As a boy, soccer was barely on Garcia’s radar. He remembers working at a sports camp with European counselors during the 2010 World Cup and wondering what the excitement was about. As a basketball fan, he was more interested in whether LeBron was going to the Knicks.Nowadays, Garcia cannot go a day without talking about his love for Antonio Conte’s Chelsea and their title chances. Continue reading...

Google is old enough to drink, buy cigarettes and vote in the UK. But does it know its date of birth?What’s that Google? It’s your 18th birthday today? Happy birthday Google! You’re now old enough to drink in Britain. Though the existence of Google Plus suggests you’ve been quietly breaking that law for a while now.Sorry to nitpick though, but are you sure it’s your birthday? Only, there’s been some confusion over that in the past. Right now, on 27 September, you have one of your merry “Google doodles” up on your homepage wishing yourself a happy birthday (also, Google, that’s a little sad? Are you OK? Normally we rely on our friends to wish us a happy birthday rather than buying our own cards). Continue reading...

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

27 September 1954: The age of a clerical army engaged in a welter of repetitive calculation is over and done withWhen Lyons Electronic Office (“Leo” for short) came into regular operation at the beginning of this year, it marked a new era in clerical functions. The age of a clerical army engaged in a welter of repetitive calculation was over and done with. The new age sees that same clerical army engaged not in mathematical drudgery but in the more interesting and stimulating work of interpreting figures rather than merely producing them. The effect in a large business is immediate and widespread. No longer does management need to conduct its high level operations as the result of history and hunches. “Leo” provides, almost for the asking, up-to-the-minute figures of sales, stocks, and production and all those various “breakdowns” and analyses which were previously impossible owing to the time and labour involved in their preparation.

Each rumored sale would have advantages except ABC News-owner Disney, which poses the risk of causing competitors to refrain from using the platformTwitter is being sold to Disney. No, Microsoft. No, Salesforce. No, Alphabet. The troubled, often controversial microblogging service is suddenly the prettiest tech company at the dance, with suitors clandestinely announced through media outlets including Bloomberg and CNBC throughout the weekend and into Monday morning. None have yet confessed they are serious.Twitter closed at $18.63 per share on Thursday, the day before the rumors started; by the time the bell rang on Monday afternoon, the stock had reached heights of $23.37, up further than the stock has been since January. Continue reading...

The company has rolled out a self-driving fleet in Pittsburgh. But passengers might not be aware of how experimental the pilot still isAnyone requesting an Uber ride in a 12-sq mile area in the center of Pittsburgh might now be randomly allocated a self-driving Ford Fusion rather than a human-operated vehicle.But passengers riding in Uber’s computer-controlled cars today might be surprised at just how experimental the technology is. According to documents obtained by the Guardian under public records laws, until as recently as June anyone not employed by Uber riding in one of its autonomous vehicles (AVs) had to sign a legal document waiving the company of any liability for their injury or death. Continue reading...

California’s Customer Records bill has been welcomed by actors’ union SAG-AFTRA as a welcome challenge to age discrimination in the film industry

A prank video destroying an iPhone 7 has gone viral, getting nearly 10m views and complaints from users apparently tricked into drilling a 3.5mm hole into their device. The video claims that users can add a headphone jack to their iPhone, an element left out of the model. The uploader (YouTube/ TechRax) has seven separate videos showing him destroying iPhone 7s and his Twitter bio reads ‘Ukrainian who specialises in smashing technology for your pleasure’.

Sir Bradley Wiggins’s reputation is at stake after the Fancy Bears group of hackers alleged he had taken prohibited substances. Wiggins claims the substances were taken with a therapeutic use exemption, which allows athletes with pre-existing conditions to compete

Prank video destroying new Apple smartphone receives 10m views, with some seemingly tricked into making 3.5mm hole in the bottom of their devices

The $22bn messaging app has changed its name to reflect the fact that it is ‘a camera company’ now. But will it succeed where Google Glass failed?Name: Snap Inc.Age: Two days old. Continue reading...

Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google have priorities ranging from taxes to trade and national security in this year’s electionsWhen US presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump take the stage at Hofstra University in Long Island, New York, for their first formal, head-to-head debate on Monday night, they will undoubtedly be watched carefully by senior executives of – and lobbyists for – the country’s largest technology companies.Both candidates have been vocal on some key issues near and dear to the hearts of technology companies – such as global trade. As Dean Garfield, president and CEO of the Washington DC-based technology industry advocacy group the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC), points out, it is unusual for trade agreements such as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) to take center stage in a presidential election. Continue reading...

Autonomous Lexus SUV could not prevent accident that caved in front and rear passenger-side doors, setting off airbags and forcing it to be towed awayOne of Google’s self-driving cars was involved in one of the worst autonomous vehicle accident yet, when a driver ran a red light and collided with the passenger side door of the modified Lexus SUV.The driver of the vehicle passed through a red light as one of Google’s fleet of autonomous Lexus SUVs passed through a green light on Friday afternoon. The collision, which occurred at the intersection between El Camino Rea and Phyllis Ave in Mountain View, California, caused the Google car’s airbags to be deployed, and caved in its front and rear right-side doors. Continue reading...

Behind many Instagram accounts featuring filtered selfies and sunkissed beaches is a second account reserved for close friends and full of wilfully unattractive shotsSocial media has given us many things: selfies, shelfies, belfies; this week Miranda July liveblogged her dentist visit. It has also given us online status anxiety, a pervasive fear of missingout and may be affecting our mental health. Recently, it has produced the curious conceit of the dual Instagram account; in which users have two Instagram accounts, one reserved for their close friends, and another for anyone who wishes to follow them.“Rinstagram” and “Finstagram”, then. Account users have their real-Instagram (their rinsta) which has high follower numbers and offers a more polished and performative visual narrative. Think classic Instagram. Filtered selfies. Pleasing photos of food. Drink poised in air, quixotic rural or seaside landscape in the background. Their fake-Instagram (their finsta) is a second Instagram account reserved for their close friends. With low follower numbers (followers are usually kept in the low double figures), they use this account to share more candid pictures of their lives – often wilfully unattractive ones, pulling faces and the like.

The place to talk about games and other things that matter

Ryan Avent is right to warn that we may be heading towards a world without work (Journal, 19 September). Unfortunately, mainstream economists are not listening. Indeed, in the past, automation has not caused lasting unemployment. Instead, it has made products and services cheaper, which raises demand for them and other products, and eventually creates new jobs. But past rounds of automation replaced human and animal muscle power. That was fine for the humans, who could go on to jobs that were often more interesting and less dangerous, using their cognitive faculties instead of just muscle power. It didn’t work out so well for the horse.Related: A world without work is coming – it could be utopia or it could be hell | Ryan Avent Continue reading...

Dish with reflector as large as 30 football pitches will listen for signs of intelligent life and is one of several ‘world-class’ projectsThe world’s largest radio telescope has begun operating in south-western China, a project Beijing says will help humanity search for alien life.The five-hundred-metre aperture spherical radio telescope (acronym: Fast), nestled between hills in the mountainous region of Guizhou, began working about noon on Sunday, the official news agency, Xinhua, reported. Continue reading...

CEO says firm, which makes Dulux paint, is committed to UK but desires quick, no-nonsense approach to Brexit negotiationsAkzoNobel, one of Europe’s biggest industrial companies, has called for “quick clarity” over the UK’s future relationship with the EU.Ton Büchner, the chief executive of the company, which makes Dulux paint and employs 45,000 people, said staff had sought reassurances about the company’s future in the UK but that he was committed to its existing investments. Continue reading...

It began life as an app for sharing self-deleting photos with friends. These days, however, it’s a hugely popular social network. Here’s our crash courseSnapchat is used by more than 150 million people every day, according to latest estimates. Yet 2016’s big story with this social app is that those users are no longer just teenagers.Snapchat has expanded to older smartphone owners, and evolved well beyond its roots as an app for private sharing of self-deleting photos.In 2016, it is as much a public social network, not to mention a new form of television, with its own daily menu of news and entertainment. Continue reading...

The screenwriter on a great festival, shock horror Train to Busan, hacking TV drama Mr Robot and immersive theatre to die forBorn in London in 1970, screenwriter, producer and author Goldman began her writing career aged 16 when she left school and became a journalist, initially working as a showbiz reporter for the Daily Star. That same year she met Jonathan Ross in a nightclub, married him in Las Vegas aged 18 and went on to have three children with him. While the children were young, Goldman published several nonfiction guides for teenagers and, in 2000, her first novel, Dreamworld, before making the switch to films as co-writer on 2007’s Stardust. The movie was the first of several successful screenwriting collaborations with Matthew Vaughn, namely Kick-Ass (2010), X-Men: First Class (2011) and Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015). Her latest project is an adaptation for director Tim Burton of Ransom Riggs’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, in cinemas this week. Continue reading...

Gentler designs with an emphasis on teamwork are fuelling a boom in board game sales. Why, in the golden age of video games, are we choosing to play with counters round a table? Below, the best of the new waveIt’s a bright Thursday morning in Oxford, and the Thirsty Meeples cafe on Gloucester Green market is thrumming with activity. As we sit at a sun-warmed window table, the maitre d’, Gareth, introduces himself and presents a list of recommendations.First, he suggests Forbidden Desert. It is not a cocktail. “You have all crash-landed in a desert where you are searching for a lost civilisation,” explains Gareth, who sports a purple Thirsty Meeples “Game Guru” T-shirt. “A sandstorm hits, and you have to find all the pieces of a mythical flying ship to escape.” Next he offers up Escape: The Curse of the Temple, in which we’ll become “Indiana Jones-type people” who have to flee a crumbling ancient tomb. “Or,” Gareth says, “how about fighting fires?”. Last, he recommends Flash Point, in which I, my wife and two sons would rescue people from a burning building. Pull enough of them from the flames and we all win. But if a certain number are lost to the inferno, we lose. We choose Flash Point. Continue reading...

Apple’s AirPods may have grabbed the headlines but they’re only part of a whole ‘hearable’ revolutionEarlier this month, the internet got in a froth about Apple’s decision to drop the 3.5mm analogue audio jack from the new iPhone. Users took to Twitter to vent their outrage, while tech analysts, such as Paul Erickson at IHS Technology, suggested that the removal was money-driven: “It should be noted that wireless models are the highest revenue-generating products within the headphone market,” he told the Financial Times.Further disapproval was directed at Apple’s replacement for wired earphones, the AirPod, essentially a wireless earphone and microphone – “like a tampon without a string” according to the Guardian – while the writers of US late-night talkshow Conan created a satirical Apple ad featuring the devices plopping from users’ ears to floor and being eaten by their pet dogs. Continue reading...

Microsoft’s road-racing sim steps up a gear, DC’s Dark Knight returns to rule the streets of Gotham, but an intriguing new shoot-’em-up is too much like hard workPC/Xbox One, Microsoft; cert: 3

This lightweight MTB is agile and strong, perfect for muddy trails or longer ridesAfter the hottest and driest September in a century, it’s hard to believe we’ll ever have fun in the mud again… So when the rain arrives you want to be ready, and the Reaction range of mountain bikes is a great place to begin. Made by Cube, the much-lauded German manufacturer, the all-carbon range starts at £1,249 and tops out at almost £2,000. But unless you are a pro trail racer, the entry-level GTC is all you’ll ever need in a lightweight hardtail MTB. It’s balanced, responsive and very agile. At its core is its super-stiff frame, which uses the firm’s ‘Grand Tour’ composite. The tapering top tube combines with the race-light wheels to give you a wonderful sense that you could skip across gloopy bogs all day. It has decent front shox and reliable disc brakes, too. An easy rider for the hard stuff (cube.eu).Price: £1,249

Subaru’s sturdy Forester is so robust and uncompromising that it pays to have calloused palms before you drivePrice: £25,495