Technology | The Guardian

Taxi-hailing service admits drivers in Scotland and several cities outside London will have to wait to get earningsHundreds of Uber drivers have not been paid this week and have been told they will have to wait until next week to get their earnings.The taxi-hailing service, which is already facing legal claims from drivers who believe they have been wrongly classed as self-employed, said drivers in Scotland and a number of cities outside London had been affected by what it said was a banking glitch. Continue reading...

Companies are using old-school techniques to help everyday consumers get to grips with the complexity of a new technologyAbove me is the Hillary Step, a sheer vertical face of rock about 12 metres high on the south-east ridge of Mount Everest. In a brisk breeze, snow eddies around my boots. I reach out my thickly gloved hand to connect a carabiner to a rope to pull myself up the rock wall.In reality, of course, I’m not scaling the world’s tallest mountain but strapped to a machine in a stuffy, darkened room in a Los Angeles convention centre. This is Everest VR, a virtual reality experience on HTC’s Vive which, along with Facebook’s Oculus Rift headset, is one of the top-end VR devices available. The Everest app was stitched together from more than 300,000 photographs and while linear in structure, it’s not really a game – more a showcase for the hardware – it is captivating. Continue reading...

The face-mounted camera in kooky glasses prove too tempting for eBay sellers as scarceness of Snapchat’s new gadget drives buyers wildWant a pair of Spectacles, the new camera equipped sunglasses from the company formerly known as Snapchat? That’ll be $130. Assuming you live in Los Angeles.Oh, you don’t live in LA? Then you should probably start saving. It looks like $500 will do it, if you’re quick. You could even pick up a job lot of five for the low, low price of $2,000! Continue reading...

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

Kate Bottley has found fame on the TV show, but says her 35-year hobby helps her preach a ‘gospel of normality’The Reverend Kate Bottley, possibly the most famous vicar in Britain thanks to her regular appearances on Gogglebox, seems to have a god-given gift for the 1983 arcade game Track & Field. She has just thrashed the Guardian’s games editor Keith Stuart at the classic button-bashing sports sim.She takes the 100m sprint with ease, before breaking a record in the javelin. “That’s it, I’m retiring undefeated,” she declares to the small crowd that’s gathered around her at the GameCity festival taking place at Nottingham’s National Video Arcade (NVA). Continue reading...

From city planning to burger building, here’s our pick of the independent gaming scene in Australia and beyondThe Penny Arcade Expo (Pax) is one of the biggest gaming conventions in the world, bringing together classic consoles, the latest shooters, mobile games, PCs, Macs, tabletops – and the people who love them.For the latest event in Melbourne, Pax Australia, the biggest companies in the world – including Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony – came to show off their wares, but the most interesting stuff was relegated to one corner of the exhibition hall: Pax Rising, where independent developers let you play their latest games.

ESA’s big push will bring number of Galileo satellites in orbit to 18Next week the European Space Agency begins its final push to establish an independent global satellite navigation system. Four new satellites are scheduled for launch atop a specially converted European Ariane 5 rocket at 13:06 GMT on 17 November.The launch will take place from Europe’s spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana. Until now, the satellites have been launched two at a time using Russian Soyuz rockets, again launched from Kourou.

Android-maker dismisses accusations that Google abuses its market dominance to hinder competitionGoogle has dismissed the European commission’s charges that it abuses the market dominance of its Android operating system to prevent rivals from competing with alternative software and services.

Headset for Android smartphones is Pixel-exclusive but kicks off firm’s play for premium, extended VR experiences with wand-style controllerGoogle’s big bet on the future of virtual reality, Daydream, is finally available to buy, but is the Daydream View headset actually worth getting?

The social network’s latest attempts to take on Snap Inc at its own game include a new app in Brazil and a new feature in WhatsAppStop me if you think you’ve heard this one before: Facebook has released a Snapchat clone. The new standalone app offers ephemeral picture and video messaging, as well as the all-important AR lenses – sorry, “masks” – and is particularly targeted at users in emerging markets.This is the 13th time Facebook has tried to take on Snapchat by cloning features, releasing direct competitors, or simply attempting to buy its rival wholesale. Continue reading...

Whatever happens at least we know that these video game depictions of widescale catastrophe are completely farfetchedWhen times are tough it’s worth remembering that at least we don’t actually live in a video game. Since the very beginning, designers have been imagining the digital demise of the human race, with classics such as Missile Command and Space Invaders pitting players against incalculable odds in seemingly futile battles for survival. But the great thing is, they’re just games, right?Here then, are some of our favourite apocalyptic scenarios from gaming history, all of them reassuringly fanciful and completely unlikely. Continue reading...

Bank announces total sum as it reassures customers that they have been refunded and that normal services have been restored

The acquisition of German engineering business Grohmann is part of a plan to cut costs, speed up production and increase qualityTesla is making a “significant investment” in expanding its European operations, its CEO, Elon Musk, told investors on Tuesday, announcing a new “gigafactory” battery production plant and an automated manufacturing research centre.The expansion follows the purchase of German firm Grohmann Engineering, which will be renamed Tesla Grohmann Automation. The company specialises in automated assembly systems serving the automotive, telecommunications, consumer electronics and biotechnology industries. Continue reading...

Electronics company says sorry in US print media for problems with its smartphones and washing machinesSamsung has taken out a full-page advert in multiple US newspapers to apologise for the faulty Note 7 phone, which has now been subject to a worldwide recall.The advert in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post, is signed by Samsung’s North America chief executive, Gregory Lee. It offers an apology for falling short on the company’s ambition to “offer best-in-class safety and quality. Continue reading...

Information Commissioner’s Office raised concerns over social network’s collection of messaging app’s data

The latest instalment in the shooter series tries out some new ideas, including zero-gravity combat, but it is held back by well-worn conventionsIn the moments that Infinite Warfare has the courage of its convictions, when its various systems sync-up sufficiently, we get a tantalising taste of its true potential.These moments usually come when the protagonist, Nick Reyes, leaves terra firma and zips about in zero-gravity, course-correcting with boosters and engaging enemy soldiers against the backdrop of gargantuan spaceships smashing into one another. In between precision shots from his Ghostbusters-like energy weapon, he grapples on to a grunt and pulls the pin on his grenade before kicking him towards two buddies, who look on helplessly as he greets them with an explosion. That taken care of, Reyes grapples to his waiting Jackal space fighter and boosts off to begin dogfighting with enemy craft. Continue reading...

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

From Tomb Raider to The Sims, games are taking over the studio made famous by the Beatles. Our writer sees a 120-strong orchestra and choir tap into its fabled atmosphere to record Final Fantasy XVSpill a glass of wine on the wooden floor at Abbey Road and the studio triggers an emergency procedure. In this, England’s most storied recording venue, change is resisted at a molecular level – and not only because, in 2010, the government listed the building as a heritage site to ward off vampiric property developers. A few years ago, decorators varnished the floor of Studio Two, whose decor is somewhere between a 1950s prep school gym and a ballroom on the Titanic. Complaints quickly followed. The room’s acoustic resonance, made famous on most of the Beatles’ albums, had changed. The varnish was promptly chipped off, at vast expense. Since the 1960s, the studio door has been repainted and the seaweed once used to stuff the drapes that hang from the ceiling swapped for a less pungent material. Everything else remains preserved, with monastic reverence.Related: Final Fantasy XV footage reveals magic, quests and chocobos Continue reading...

A charity has found the amount of time spent playing online games is one of parents’ main concerns. We’d like to hear your experiences

It has come out of nowhere to become one of 2016’s most critically acclaimed games. But this overnight success has been a long time comingMany video games with famously protracted development times have one thing in common: they turned out to be huge disappointments.

As the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre starts work, recruiters are busy identifying raw talent to counter future hazardsWith the launch of the National Cyber Security Centre, backed by £1.9bn of funding to battle online crime, the government has made a statement.Defence experts have long warned of the growing menace of cybercrime and now they have good reason to believe the threat is being given priority treatment. Continue reading...

Prices for most of Apple’s USB-C adapters have been dropped, in some cases by as much as halfApple has dropped the price on a number of USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 peripherals after the launch of the new MacBook Pro, which faced a barrage of criticism for launching with no ports other than the new USB standard.Prices for most USB-C adapters Apple makes have been dropped, in some cases by as much as half. The company has also dropped the price of third-party peripherals by 25%, including the 4K and 5K LG screens the company demonstrated late last month, and a SanDisk SD card reader has received a special price cut of 40%. Continue reading...

ProtonMail says it was in effect removed from Google for almost a year, demonstrating the existence of ‘search risk’Google has been accused of hiding a competitor’s webmail service from its search results in a “suspicious” manner for almost a year, costing the service hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost traffic.The company, ProtonMail, provides encrypted email accounts for users, and has been one of the most popular services of that type since its launch in 2014, as reflected by its Google search ranking: the company says it was placed “on the first or second page of most [relevant] queries including ‘encrypted email’ and ‘secure email’”. Continue reading...

Doing your shopping by pressing buttons in your home sounds like a great labour-saving life-hack … and then you get 45 toilet rolls arrive in one goThe internet of shopping is finally here: magic-like buttons that when pressed have goods delivered to your door, without any need to log on to a website or get out your credit card. The branded Dash buttons are Amazon’s latest offering to make it easier to shop, so I bought a load of them to find out whether it’s the retail revolution we didn’t even know we were looking for.There is no Dash button for ordering Dash buttons, so I looked though the 40 or so available and found eight for things I would normally buy. They’re £5 each, so I spent £40 for this convenience, but with the promise £5 would be taken off the first purchase made with each button making them free in the long run. Continue reading...

UK cybercrime tsar will ask government to set up scheme to deter teenagers who often do not realise they are breaking lawBritain’s cybercrime tsar will formally ask the government to set up a programme based on the controversial Prevent strategy to stop children as young as 12 becoming involved in sophisticated computer offences, the Guardian has learned.Dr Jamie Saunders said training was needed to help spot teenagers at risk as many young internet users experiment with hacking or other cyber offences without realising that what they are doing is a crime. Continue reading...

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

The depiction of the first world war in Battlefield 1, and a disastrous social media campaign to promote it, raise questions of rules, respect and responsibilityThe first world war has never been a major subject for video games, perhaps because the endless weeks of trench-digging and letter-writing followed by a vault over the top and a brief, futile sprint into a “game over” screen doesn’t play to the medium’s conventional strengths. For years the second world war was the preferred theatre for the game director. That conflict’s variety has allowed players to partake in skirmishes in pretty French villages in Brothers in Arms, to storm Normandy beaches in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and to draw a bead on Hitler’s testicles in Sniper V2 Elite.With its centenary, however, attention has turned to the first world war. 2014’s Valiant Hearts: The Great War was a cartoonish yet sombre game that, much like Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong, examines the pressures exerted by wartime circumstance and misfortune on the human heart. This month’s Battlefield 1 takes a more visceral approach, placing you in the boots of a number of soldiers across a range of French, Italian and Mesopotamian historical arenas. While there’s a brief story, Battlefield’s long-term offering is in its vast, disorienting multiplayer battles, where up to 64 players assume the roles of infantrymen, horse riders, tank drivers and biplane pilots, and trade shots while using war pigeons to call down artillery strikes on one another. Some may baulk at the appropriation of one of the world’s deadliest conflicts as set dressing for a sort of Scout-like wide game, but its no more morally questionable than a film director using war to mawkish ends. Continue reading...

With an ageing population and care costs rising, robots and smart homes may be a solution. But would you want a plastic dog to look after your loved ones?Sitting in a studio in Kensington, London, the designer Sebastian Conran walks me through a worst-case scenario. “Basically, what it’s looking for is a break in routine,” he explains, pointing to a drawing of an elderly woman, collapsed on the floor of her home. “There’s an event. The e-sensor in the room notices that you’ve fallen over. MiRo goes to investigate.”MiRo is a robotic dog. There is an early model close to where we are sitting. Its head sits above a torso without arms or legs, and its cartoonish eyes stare out below alert ears embedded with speakers. Conran’s company describes it as a biomimetic companion robot, and says it will eventually work with facial recognition technology to make life easier for its owner – to prompt them to take medicine, or to remind them of visitors’ names, or to question them if it thinks they’re in trouble. Conran tells me to think of it as a cross between a pet and Radio 4’s John Humphrys. Continue reading...

Thousands take part in annual protest, which largely avoided ugly scenes of previous yearsThousands of masked protesters descended on central London on Saturday night for the Million Mask March, an annual global anti-capitalism and pro-civil liberties demonstration.Wearing characteristic Guy Fawkes masks, supporters of hacking collective Anonymous crowded into Trafalgar Square with scores of police on hand to keep order. The protest passed off without major incident, though by 10.45pm police had made 47 arrests, the majority for drug offences and obstruction of officers. Continue reading...

Announcements by the chancellor about funding are all well and good, but simple legislative action might have more effectOn Tuesday, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, announced that the government was “investing” £1.9bn in boosting the nation’s cybersecurity. “If we want Britain to be the best place in the world to be a tech business,” he said, “then it is also crucial that Britain is a safe place to do digital business… Just as technology presents huge opportunities for our economy – so to it poses a risk. Trust in the internet and the infrastructure on which it relies is fundamental to our economic future. Because without that trust, faith in the whole digital edifice will fall away.”Quite so; cybersecurity is clearly important. After all, in its 2015 strategic defence and security review, the government classified “cyber” as a “tier 1” threat. That’s the same level as international military conflict and terrorism. So let’s look at the numbers. The UK’s defence budget currently runs at £35.1bn, while the country’s expenditure on counterterrorism is now running at about £3bn a year. That puts Hammond’s £1.9bn (a commitment he inherited from George Osborne, by the way) into perspective. And the money is to be spent over five years, so an uncharitable reading of the chancellor’s announcement is that the government is actually investing just under £400m annually in combating this tier 1 threat. Continue reading...

Audi’s SQ5 is certainly Super Quick. But before you can blast down the road you have to know how to start itPrice: £52,300

Experts warn of ‘enormous and growing problem’ for youngstersMedical and addiction experts, charities and parents are becoming increasingly concerned about the amount of time children are spending playing online games as figures show that UK spending on titles such as League of Legends, World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto will top £3bn this year.Dr Aric Sigman, a freelance lecturer in child health, said he had heard from a number of doctor’s surgeries that parents were asking for sleeping pills for their children. “Whether you call it an addiction or not, this is an enormous and growing problem,” he said. Continue reading...

The information revolution is threatening our political systemOnce upon a time, a long, long, long time ago, small children might get told off for being loud or unruly or, as we called it then, “disruptive”. Now? Not so much. In 2016, it’s cool to be disruptive. It’s what every startup in Silicon Valley is straining to do.It’s what Airbnb has done – disrupting the hotel industry as Uber has disrupted taxis and Amazon has disrupted bookshops and almost everything else. Two years ago I went to a conference in San Francisco, TechCrunch Disrupt, and met many people claiming to disrupt many things, including, in one case, socks. Continue reading...

Conditions imposed by Met under Public Order Act include 9pm curfew and restrictions on assembly in Trafalgar SquareThousands of masked protesters have gathered in central London for the annual Million Mask March.Wearing trademark Guy Fawkes masks, supporters of the hacking collective Anonymous met in Trafalgar Square in Westminster accompanied by scores of police officers. Continue reading...

Entrepreneurs from around the world gather for a three-day conference looking at how the continent can get creative with the internetWhat is the future of the internet in Africa? How can tech save lives, educate and light homes, in communities where schools and energy suppliers are failing?For the past three days young innovators, entrepreneurs and blockchain experts convened at the inaugural Africa 4 Tech summit to discuss these questions. Here’s what we learned. Continue reading...

My enjoyment varied with the terrainYou don’t need me to tell you about the Micro scooter: it is part of the holy trinity of child-rearing, along with the Bugaboo (a large, outrageously comfort-driven baby buggy) and the Trunki (a wheeled suitcase with a charmful animal personality). They didn’t have them in our day, and people without children express through their disapproval all their hatred of modern parenting. For those with children, they’re the only game in town. My friend bought his nephew an own-brand supermarket version of the Micro and his brother picked it up and put it in the bin.The adult version was an inevitability, and I have always scorned it as wilful infantilism, like taking up dummies or nappies because they look fun when your kid has them. But the EMicro One is a scooter with a motor, and a different beast; when you reach 5km an hour, the electric motor kicks in, then you are in a truly new transport space, somewhere between a three-year-old and a person with a mobility buggy. I don’t call it a beast lightly. Continue reading...

Matt Furie has launched a campaign to transform the cartoon frog from a symbol of hate used by racist Donald Trump supporters to a symbol of peaceHow could you reclaim a meme that’s been appropriated by white supremacists? That’s the challenge faced by Pepe the Frog’s creator Matt Furie.Furie has launched the #SavePepe campaign in an attempt to transform the cartoon frog from a symbol of hate used by racist Donald Trump supporters to a symbol of peace. He’s urging people to flood the internet with their own “peaceful or nice” versions of Pepe to claw the character back from the alt-right. Continue reading...

The AI research firm is teaming up with gaming company Blizzard to take on the real-time strategy gameAfter its success at mastering the ancient Asian boardgame of Go, DeepMind is planning to learn its next game – and it’s about as different as it can possibly be.The London-based AI research firm, a subsidiary of Google, is teaming up with Californian gaming company Blizzard to take on the real-time strategy game StarCraft II. Continue reading...

First it was phones, now washing machines – US consumer safety regulator ordered the recall after more than 700 complaints and several injuriesSamsung and US safety officials announced a recall on Friday of nearly 3m washing machines after reports that the appliances – just like the company’s Note 7 smartphones – are exploding and injuring people.The Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Friday that Samsung has received 733 reports of washing machines “experiencing excessive vibration or the top detaching from the washing machine chassis”. Continue reading...

In the latest surprise of the 2016 US presidential election, the email of the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign was hacked, pushing thousands of personal messages into the public sphere. We speak to the Guardian’s Washington correspondent David Smith about the implications of email hacking on the 2016 race and elections to comeThere are only days before Americans head to the polls to decide who will become their next commander-in-chief: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. While Trump’s campaign has been barraged by allegations of sexual assault and tax-related controversies, Clinton has faced criticism connected to her etiquette in handling emails. In her camp’s latest email-related incident, John Podesta, her campaign chairman’s gmail was hacked, revealing thousands of personal emails into the public domain.

Social network’s shares plunge after chief financial officer warns of slowing advertising growthThe value of Mark Zuckerberg’s stake in Facebook has plunged by $3bn, after a warning of slowing advertising growth sent the social media company’s share price tumbling.The Facebook co-founder’s personal wealth has been reduced by 6%, the biggest loss ever suffered by an individual shareholder, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which ranks him as the world’s fifth richest person with a $52bn fortune. Continue reading...

WhatsApp diplomacy is taking off as messaging app becomes vital tool for tactics, huddles, policy talk - and banterWhen the world’s nations sit down to talk nowadays, there is a distinct difference to the way diplomacy is done. Influence is no longer defined only by special relationships and old alliances, but which WhatsApp group you are invited into.

Bad news for trash birds but good news if you’re still playing Pokémon Go: the worst characters in the game are slightly less commonYou hate catching Pidgeys. I hate catching Pidgeys. Now, finally, Niantic Lab, the makers of Pokémon Go, have realised that no-one likes catching Pidgeys, and tweaked the game so that you won’t be catching as many bloody Pidgeys.The change is one of a few introduced by the developers in the latest update to Pokémon Go, and the biggest sign yet that Niantic is actually listening to Pokémon Go’s large, yet shrinking, playerbase when deciding how to guide the game going forward. Continue reading...

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

Billionaire inventor sets up £15m institute of technology on Wiltshire campus to help UK compete with Asian nationsBillionaire inventor Sir James Dyson is to put his money where his mouth is by helping to bridge Britain’s chronic skills gap with the launch of a new university.Dyson is ploughing £15m over the next five years into the Dyson Institute of Technology as he looks to double his engineering workforce to 6,000 by 2020. Continue reading...

Eyewear printed with a wild pattern can be enough to fool commercial systems into misidentification, research showsA team of researchers from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University have created sets of eyeglasses that can prevent wearers from being identified by facial recognition systems, or even fool the technology into identifying them as completely unrelated individuals.In their paper, Accessorize to a Crime: Real and Stealthy Attacks on State-of-the-Art Face Recognition, presented at the 2016 Computer and Communications Security conference, the researchers present their system for what they describe as “physically realisable” and “inconspicuous” attacks on facial biometric systems, which are designed to exclusively identify a particular individual. Continue reading...

Lawyers for two former drivers last week won tribunal ruling that they were entitled to minimum wage and sick payUber is facing the likelihood of several hundred more legal claims from taxi drivers who believe they have been wrongly classed as self-employed and are owed backdated holiday pay and missing wages.

We write with great concern following the Daily Mail’s front page of 2 November. Texting while driving has been one of the biggest causes of car-related deaths in the UK and it is important that in the case described in the Mail’s report, justice was served for the victims of this appalling tragedy caused by the dangerous driving of the driver.Related: Daily Mail draws criticism over front page story targeting foreign drivers Continue reading...

It’s no catastrophe if Britain can’t agree a deal to stay in the single market, says inventor as he pledges to plug UK shortfall of engineers via his new collegeSir James Dyson, the billionaire inventor, has said it would not be a “catastrophe” if Britain cannot agree a deal to remain part of the European single market and has to pay tariffs on exported goods.Dyson, one of the most prominent business supporters of Brexit before the referendum, said that the British economy and its companies are doing “rather better than everybody thought” since the vote. Continue reading...