Technology | The Guardian

Driving France’s car renaissance is this chunky little chap. But don’t think this compact SUV is all about style and quirky details, there’s plenty of substance to back it upCitroën C3 Aircross compact SUV

She’s a safe pair of hands who asks the questions and fills the airtimeHardly a day goes by without real life throwing another offering into the pot of potential Black Mirror storylines.The latest is the general knowledge app HQ, played live on smartphones, like a quiz show, at set times of the day, with prize money to be divided up between the players who make it to the end of 12 increasingly difficult questions. I’ve never managed to get past question six, but I know someone who won $150. The game has already been on the receiving end of a number of controversies, about its investors and creators, but that doesn’t seem to have dented its appeal. While the quiz plays out, there’s a rolling comments section underneath it, like a demonic Twitter feed that it’s impossible to take your eyes away from. Not only is it Black Mirror-ish, it’s a bit Clockwork Orange, too. Continue reading...

Ongoing studies show that some mammals and birds can mimic the sound of the human voiceResearch published last month proved that orca, or killer, whales have the ability to mimic the complexities of human speech. Josep Call, professor in evolutionary origins of mind at the University of St Andrews, was a co-author of the study. He said: “I think here we have the first evidence that killer whales may be learning sounds by vocal imitation.” Continue reading...

We hear a lot about the dangers of video games but what if coaches used them to improve and inspire young players?By Craig Shields for Nutmeg, part of the Sport NetworkFootball is a simple game and nowhere more so than at youth level, where children instinctively connect the dots and know to put the round thing into the net – or between the jumpers. In coaching, we tend to worry too much about how successful teams of yesteryear were formed rather than looking forward and taking advantage of modern methods and tools.Youngsters don’t live in the same world Kenny Dalglish or Denis Law grew up in. City streets are no longer littered with footballs – at least in Scotland –but while children are now restricted in ways their fathers and grandfathers weren’t offline, they have greater freedom of expression and exploration online. Continue reading...

Google pulls all adverts from vlogger’s content for displaying a ‘pattern of behaviour’ that ‘damages the broader creator community’YouTube has once again penalised vlogger Logan Paul for posting inappropriate content, just weeks after he was suspended from the company’s paid-content program over a video trivialising suicide.The YouTube star has had all adverts on his videos suspended over what Google describes as a “pattern of behaviour”, repeatedly posting content which push the boundaries of what is acceptable on the site. Continue reading...

What went wrong in Hawaii when a false emergency alert was sent to mobile phones warning that a ballistic missile was about to hit the islands?Subscribe and review on iTunes, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast or on your favourite podcasting app and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterThe state of Hawaii was sent into a frenzy on 13 January when an alert popped up on mobile phone screens telling people that a ballistic missile was heading towards the islands. Continue reading...

It might only come in blue but you’d have to spend a lot more than £449 to find a better smartphone than thisThe Honor 10 View’s all-screen design, great performance and stellar battery life puts rival phones retailing at twice the price to shame, making you question why you’re paying any more for a top-end smartphone in 2018. Continue reading...

When real-life failure was difficult, video games were a place where all I lost was imaginary points and minutes of my timeThe very first one I remember is Ski Free. It’s pretty simplistic; you race down a hill, pursued by a yeti, avoiding obstacles and trying desperately not to crash. In my distant memory, others follow: a blur of pixellated colours and basic sound effects by today’s symphonic standards. Tyrian. Jazz Jackrabbit. Duke Nukem 3D. Doom. I was entranced.Video games. Continue reading...

The ease with which giant databases can be queried and cross-referenced makes privacy vanish on the internetPrivacy is necessary for human society to function. The problem is not that the information exists but that it reaches the wrong people. Information on the internet could bring great benefits to society, and to individuals, when huge datasets can be refined to yield information otherwise unavailable. But once the information is gathered, a precautionary principle has to apply. It is too much of a stretch to agree with John Perry Barlow, the internet rights pioneer who died this week, when he quipped that “relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds”; but it does not help when it appears that everything the public sector does with the huge datasets it has will be overseen by the minister for fun.Governments need to keep our trust; but technology erodes privacy in two ways. The first is simply smartphones. Most Britons – 70% – now carry around with them devices which record and report their location, their friends and their interests all the time. The second is the ease with which two (or more) datasets can be combined to bring out secrets that are apparent in neither set on its own, and to identify individuals from data that appears to be entirely anonymised. By the beginning of this century researchers had established that nearly 90% of the US population could be uniquely identified simply by combining their gender, their date of birth and their postal code. All kinds of things can be reliably inferred from freely available data: four likes on Facebook are usually enough to reveal a person’s sexual orientation. Continue reading...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sony Japan Studio/Bluepoint; PlayStation 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

The firm’s latest Alexa-powered addition to its Echo range adds a clock and touchscreen interface to the mixAmazon’s new Echo Spot is one of the most novel takes on a smart speaker yet, and while it is certainly more than just a smart clock, that’s what it’s best at – an attractive voice-assisted smart desk or bedside-table accessory.

An initial flurry of real calls and more time to read turned into losing contacts, missing out on groups and upsetting my wifeAt the end of 2016, I sent a message to all my contacts: “After 31 December, I will not use WhatsApp any more. Instead, I will use Threema and Signal.”On New Year’s Eve, I closed my WhatsApp account and deleted the app from my phone. A few clicks later, I’d left all my family, friend and work groups, the school groups of my children and all my individual contacts. Continue reading...

The latest in a visceral series, this breakout hit shoves humans back down the food chain to a land where dinos roamIn 1864, when Jules Verne published Journey to the Centre of the Earth and, almost five decades later Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published The Lost World, there still existed in readers a lingering notion that, just maybe, in some unmapped nook of the planet, the dinosaurs had prevailed. Not just the soaring raptors and skittering lizards, but the lumbering mastodon and megalosaurus too – vanished monsters whose form, animation and complexion we’d no longer have to extrapolate from bony jigsaws, but could observe right there, plodding through foreign grass. No more. Google’s prying satellites have mapped every furlong of the planet, while sonar long extinguished any hope of some subterranean Mesozoic outpost.The compulsion to rediscover a lost world remains, however. In this, the Crichton period, we have turned to the uncharted plains of test-tube science in the hope of resurrecting real-life dinosaurs. Monster Hunter: World rejects this approach and returns to the romance of the Victorian stories: it sends you off to a forgotten continent, one filled with wild and unclassified megafauna to investigate, spot, capture or kill. It is also, indisputably, the most vivid and profound opportunity we have yet seen to come face-to-claw with our planet’s old monsters. Continue reading...

A perceptive account of the challenges India faces in dealing with the aspirations of its growing young populationIn 2014, in the 16th general election since winning independence from Britain in 1947, India voted for a new leader. The choice was a relatively simple one. The election pitted the centre-left Congress party, whose de facto candidate for prime minister was Rahul Gandhi, the lacklustre scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, against the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), led by Narendra Modi, a polarising but charismatic rightwing activist turned politician from a poor provincial family.Covering the election for the Observer, I travelled from Delhi, the Indian capital and my base as South Asia correspondent, to Meerut, a small city an hour or so north, to attend a Modi rally. The meeting was vast, with tens of thousands hanging on the BJP leader’s every word. He promised a national regeneration, an India that stood up to its neighbours, was proud of its Hindu heritage, and which offered a hand-up to those who worked hard but had little sympathy with anyone who expected a hand-out. Continue reading...

Advances in AI and robotics are leading to high street models becoming increasingly useful in our day-to-day livesNamed after the Greek god of the wind, this bot’s abilities are more prosaic yet nevertheless useful. Its big boast is that it can fetch you a beer from the fridge, but this household helper can also vacuum, pick up toys and find your lost glasses. The price tag will probably be five figures and the manufactures are hoping it will breeze into shops later this year. Continue reading...

From getaway cars to wonderfully restored racing machines, the third annual London Classic Car Show is the perfect antidote to autonomous drivingLondon Classic Car Show

In the fourth and final episode of this mini-series, Jordan Erica Webber explores what ordinary citizens can do to take back control and how newly released technology might help us along the waySubscribe and review on iTunes, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast or on your favourite podcasting app and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterThe common thread of this mini-series has been rich and powerful people, companies, and governments harvesting our information, and using opaque algorithms to make decisions about us, predict our behaviour, and micro-target us with adverts. Only one question remains: how can we fight back? Continue reading...

Whether it was at home with family or in a public space with friends we’d like to hear your experiences from Cuba or anywhere else

Nouriel Roubini calls cryptocurrency the ‘mother of all bubbles’ as it falls below $8,000The economist credited with predicting the 2008 global financial crisis said a 12% fall in the value of bitcoin on Friday was the latest proof that the cryptocurrency was the biggest bubble in history and destined for a crash.Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University, said bitcoin was “the mother of all bubbles” favoured by “charlatans and swindlers” as it fell below $8,000 (£5,600) early on Friday, marking a 30% drop since the beginning of the week as investors became increasingly twitchy about a clampdown on cryptocurrencies by regulators. Later it rallied, climbing back over $8,600 by 3pm (GMT). Continue reading...

An ex-YouTube insider reveals how its recommendation algorithm promotes divisive clips and conspiracy videos. Did they harm Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency?

The methodology Guillaume Chaslot used to detect videos YouTube was recommending during the election – and how the Guardian analysed the data

The 2016 presidential race was fought online in a swamp of disinformation, conspiracy theories and fake news. Now a Guardian investigation has uncovered evidence suggesting YouTube’s recommendation algorithm was disproportionately prompting users to watch pro-Trump and anti-Clinton videos

Demand for new phones appears to be waning with collapse in China market and Apple shipping 5m fewer devicesThe global smartphone market fell 9% in a year this quarter, the biggest fall in smartphone history, with even Apple’s iPhone sales down 1% as users hang on to their phones longer.For Apple, which is shipping 5m fewer smartphones than a year ago, the decline is offset by an increase in the average sale price of its iPhone, thanks to the popularity of its £1,000 iPhone X. Continue reading...

US investigation into boom stokes fears of impending bust as cryptocurrency records steepest monthly slide in its historyBitcoin plummeted in value by more than $44bn (£30.9bn) in January, marking the steepest monthly fall in its short history.The slide extended further on Thursday after the Indian government said it would ban all cryptocurrency trading and Facebook announced a ban on digital currency adverts. Bitcoin fell by more than 10%, dropping below $9,000, marking a sharp reverse from its peak of almost $20,000 just before Christmas. Continue reading...

The revered game of clashing cultures gets a slick, strategic board-game adaptation – and we look at two family-friendly new releases.

Amazon’s share price soared over 4%, while Apple shares wobbled despite quarterly revenues, and Alphabet announced a lossJeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, added another couple of billion to his fortune on Thursday as Amazon, the company he founded, announced it had made close to $2bn in profits in the three months running up to Christmas.Related: Amazon fulfillment centers don't boost employment, analysis finds Continue reading...

Teacher says his account was shut down because he posted a Gustave Courbet painting of a woman’s genitalsA long-running dispute over allegations of censorship by Facebook has come to a head in a French court, where the social network denied it had deleted a user’s account because he posted a picture of a 19th-century painting of a woman’s genitals.L’Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World), an 1866 oil painting by the realist painter Gustave Courbet, hangs on the walls of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Continue reading...

After analyzing data for counties in 25 states containing the centers, analysis found no increase in overall employment in the countiesStates and cities have fallen over themselves to offer huge tax breaks to Amazon in the hope of securing one of the tech giant’s order fulfillment centers. But an analysis of the impact of the centers released on Thursday found the facilities do not boost overall employment in the counties where they open.The cities shortlisted for Amazon's proposed second headquarters Continue reading...

Major video game industry event reverses its decision to honour Bushnell following claims of improper conductA major video game industry event has cancelled its decision to honour Atari founder Nolan Bushnell after attention was drawn to well-documented examples of a sexist culture at the company he oversaw in the 1970s.Bushnell was due to receive the Pioneer award at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in March, recognising his 40 years of involvement in the industry. Together with Ted Dabney, he set up Atari in 1972, developing the seminal arcade machine Pong, before manufacturing the Atari 2600, one of the first home video game consoles. Continue reading...