Technology | The Guardian

Major brands including Verizon and Walmart pulled their ads after they were found to be appearing next to videos promoting extremist views or hate speechIt’s been a bad week for Google, with major brands pulling millions of dollars in advertising amid rows over extremist content on YouTube.

Major companies pulling advertisements a sign that many doubt Google’s ability to prevent marketing campaigns from appearing alongside repugnant videosPepsiCo, Walmart and Starbucks on Friday confirmed that they have suspended their advertising on YouTube, joining a growing boycott in a sign that big companies doubt Google’s ability to prevent marketing campaigns from appearing alongside repugnant videos.

You are a sea of caterpillars in an alien river. You are a cluster of stars. What do you do in a game about everything? Anything at all, it turns outA daisy creeps across a rocky landscape. It becomes a blade of grass, which, in turn, becomes a caterpillar, which then turns itself into a very miniature zebra. Nearby, a patch of clover says to the zebra, “Repetition is the only form of permanence I am capable of.”This is a kind of everything.

Security feature enabled for all users to help protect accounts from being compromised by password reuse and phishingInstagram has become the latest social network to enable two-factor authentication, a valuable security feature that protects accounts from being compromised due to password reuse or phishing.Users can, and should, opt in by clicking on the settings icon in the top right of their profile, hitting two-factor authentication in the following menu, and enabling the setting to “require security code”. Continue reading...

Ride-hailing startup faces yet another discrimination scandal after a manager who was recruiting Kamilah Taylor made the comment in a LinkedIn messageUber is facing yet another discrimination scandal after a manager who was recruiting a female engineer defended the company by saying “sexism is systemic in tech”.On 14 March, an engineering manager at Uber tried to recruit Kamilah Taylor, a senior software engineer at another Silicon Valley company, for a developer position at the San Francisco ride-hailing startup, which is struggling to recover from a major sexual harassment controversy. Continue reading...

Are we facing a new cyber cold war, or is there more behind allegations of Russian hacking in the US?The troubling allegation that Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election raises important questions. Are we facing some kind of new cyber cold war? Or is there more to the story? Continue reading...

After Donald Trump was elected, I removed people on Facebook and Twitter to avoid upsetting myself. Am I part of the problem?Q: On Facebook and Twitter I unfriend or unfollow people I don’t agree with to avoid upsetting myself. Is this wrong and am I part of the problem that ended with Trump?A: After the disaster of the US election, the answer to this question is supposed to be yes – yes, you must follow people you don’t agree with; yes, you are part of the problem unless you toughen up and engage with the Other Side. If opposing views upset you, you are either weak-minded and vulnerable to manipulation by bigots or locked in your liberal echo chamber, where the only possible explanation for why Trump won the election is that people in general are idiots. Continue reading...

Facebook turned on Safety Check during the Westminster attack. In telling friends you are ‘not marked as safe’, is it providing another avenue for fear?This morning, after reading the latest news updates about the terror attack on Westminster, I fired up Facebook. There I was met with an atypical request: a friend who lives an eight-hour flight away in Canada had asked me to mark myself “safe”.

Major phone networks express concern over video sharing site and parent company’s inability to guarantee money won’t flow to extremismThe growing advertiser boycott of YouTube has reached the US, with AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Verizon and Enterprise all halting adverts on the site, as well as Google’s wider ad networks, over the video-sharing site’s inability to guarantee promotional messages won’t appear alongside extremist content.Some of the new members of the boycott have also expanded the scope of the complaints, from a specific focus on YouTube to a broader criticism of Google’s ad platform. “We are deeply concerned that our ads may have appeared alongside YouTube content promoting terrorism and hate,” AT&T said. “Until Google can ensure this won’t happen again, we are removing our ads from Google’s non-search platforms.” Continue reading...

The app for automating common actions on iOS and iPad will remain on the app store, but its $2.99 pricetag has been slashed to nothingApple has acquired Workflow, a popular iOS app for automating common actions on iPads and iPhones.The app, which fills a similar niche on iOS to services such as IFTTT on the web and Apple’s own Automator on desktop, was highly praised by its users, and by Apple itself, which commended its developers with a design award in 2015. Continue reading...

Evaldas Rimasauskas charged after allegedly sending phishing emails to representatives of major tech firms and pretending to work for Asian companyTwo major American tech companies were tricked by a Lithuanian man’s phishing scheme into wiring him over $100m, according to the justice department.Evaldas Rimasauskas, 48, was arrested last week by Lithuanian authorities and charged on Monday by prosecutors in the southern district of New York. Announced on Wednesday, the charges of wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft could carry a sentence of 20 years in prison. Continue reading...

The whistleblower lists damning claims of spying on innocent individuals by a secretive Scotland Yard unit. It’s now vital that we hold the police to accountAs the only Green party peer I receive a lot of post to my office in the House of Lords. Rarely, though, do I open letters like the one that has been revealed. The anonymous writer alleged that there was a secretive unit within Scotland Yard that has used hackers to illegally access the emails of campaigners and journalists. It included a list of 10 people and the passwords to their email accounts.Related: Met police accused of using hackers to access protesters' emails Continue reading...

Developer preview version of new operating system released showcasing a suite of improvements

Police investigating alleged attack, which came to light when teenager’s mother approached police with screengrab photosA 15-year-old girl in Chicago was apparently sexually assaulted by five or six men or boys on Facebook Live, and none of the roughly 40 people who watched the live video reported the attack to police, authorities have said.It is the second time in recent months that the Chicago police department has investigated an apparent attack streamed live on Facebook. In January, four people were arrested after mobile phone footage showed them allegedly taunting and beating a mentally disabled man. Continue reading...

The company’s philosophy once followed Warhol’s line about Coke. But with a premium iPhone Pro rumoured, this sense of egalitarianism no longer appliesFor the past decade, Apple’s philosophy has been summed up by an Andy Warhol line about Coca-Cola.“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest,” Warhol wrote in his 1975 autobiography. “You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the president drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.” Continue reading...

Offer from Zapier comes as high-paid tech workers in Bay Area have complained about the cost of living in a region that suffers from a major housing shortageA Silicon Valley startup is paying employees $10,000 to leave Silicon Valley.Zapier, an automation company founded in 2011, has announced that it is offering new recruits a hefty “de-location package” if they’re willing to move away from the Bay Area, an unusual perk that offers yet another sign of the worsening housing crisis in northern California. Continue reading...

Feature – which flags content as ‘disputed’ – trialled on story that falsely claimed thousands of Irish people were brought to the US as slavesFacebook has started rolling out its third-party fact-checking tool in the fight against fake news, alerting users to “disputed content”.The site announced in December it would be partnering with independent fact-checkers to crack down on the spread of misinformation on its platform. Continue reading...

Board member Arianna Huffington and other executives repeatedly said they support Travis Kalanick despite weeks of turmoil and public relations crisesTop executives at Uber defended its CEO, Travis Kalanick, on Tuesday, claiming that the company roiled by scandals can “fundamentally change” its culture with the embattled founder at the helm.Board member Arianna Huffington and two executives repeatedly said they supported Kalanick during a conference call with reporters. The call was the latest damage-control effort at the ride-sharing company, which has faced weeks of turmoil and public relations crises including a massive sexual harassment scandal, a series of high-profile departures, an explosive intellectual property lawsuit and revelations that the company used secret software to deceive law enforcement. Continue reading...

Government ‘read the riot act’ to the firm, which must do more to tackle far-right videos on YouTubeGoogle’s public apology over placing advertising next to extremist material came only after it was “read the riot act” at a Whitehall summit last Friday, it has emerged.

This year’s must-have accessory isn’t a handbag, it’s a Louis Vuitton phone case – sealing a trend that speaks volumes about our selfie-obsessed times

Exclusive: Watchdog investigates claim that secretive unit worked with Indian police to obtain campaigners’ passwordsThe police watchdog is investigating allegations that a secretive Scotland Yard unit used hackers to illegally access the private emails of hundreds of political campaigners and journalists.The allegations were made by an anonymous individual who says the unit worked with Indian police, who in turn used hackers to illegally obtain the passwords of the email accounts of the campaigners, and some reporters and press photographers. Continue reading...

Google’s video platform is being attacked by advertisers for not censoring enough and by creators for censoring too much. But don’t feel sorry for it just yetYouTube has found itself fighting battles on two fronts this week.Advertisers have launched a concerted attack against the video-streaming platform for its devil-may-care attitude to extremist content. They argue it is too hard to guarantee that advertising spend won’t end up going to the likes of far-right group Britain First, and have decided to boycott the platform en masse until YouTube can confirm changes. Continue reading...

Company drops ‘Air’ branding from iPads while launching a new colour in collaboration with Product Red and a new video app, ClipsApple has updated its iPad line, dropping the “Air” branding as it boosts the specs on its mid-tier product. The new hardware launches alongside another colour for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, and an unusually timed announcement of a new video app, Clips.Starting at £339 for a 32GB model with wifi only, and rising to £559 for a 128GB model with 4G, the new iPad, an update to the iPad Air 2, solidifies Apple’s intentions to split the line into three: an expensive iPad Pro, available in two sizes, for those needing a laptop replacement; a cheap iPad mini for those needing a small portable tablet; and the iPad sitting in between the two. Continue reading...

The gay dating app has introduced its own, quite graphic, graphics to help their users communicate. But one symbol went a little too close to the boneName: Gaymoji.Appearance: Bright, cute, lewd. Continue reading...

‘We deeply apologise,’ says company’s CBO Philipp Schindler as he announces tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory contentGoogle has promised a wide-ranging overhaul of its advertising policies in response to a growing boycott of the company’s platforms from leading brands and advertisers including the UK government, Marks & Spencer and McDonald’s.In a blogpost published on Monday night, Philipp Schindler, the company’s chief business officer, wrote: “We have strict policies that define where Google ads should appear, and in the vast majority of cases, our policies and tools work as intended. But at times we don’t get it right. Continue reading...

Why days before the presidential election did the FBI announce it was reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton – when it was silent about its probe into Mr Trump’s Russia ties?When the president’s own staff turn up in Washington to publicly rebut his accusations that he had been wiretapped by his predecessor, it’s not good news for the White House. Yet the longer the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, and Mike Rogers of the National Security Agency appeared in front of a committee of Congress, the worse it got. Since last July, Mr Comey said, the president’s campaign has been investigated for colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Donald Trump’s election machine is coating his White House with sewage.Yet Donald Trump, with the insouciance of a Bourbon monarch, shows no sign of taking any notice of the facts. Nor, it seems, will he retract false claims, nor will he be held accountable for his dissembling. Mr Trump is prepared to carry on in disgrace. He spent the minutes after his own intelligence officers called him out for peddling falsehoods by trying to create a bizarre counter narrative with the @POTUS twitter account that stretched his credibility so far it snapped. Continue reading...

My father-in-law, Raymond Hardman, who has died aged 96, was a modest man from a working-class family who overcame his relative poverty to rise to academic excellence in his chosen field of electrical engineering.Raymond was born in Oldham to Joseph Hardman, a carder in a cotton mill, and his wife, Jessie (nee Oliver), a cotton mill worker. As a result of injuries sustained during the first world war Joseph died when Raymond was only two, and he and his younger sister, Mabel, were brought up by their mother and her sister, their Auntie Bina. Continue reading...

Matt Brittin says company ‘needs to do more’ but declines to say whether it will actively seek out inappropriate materialGoogle’s European chief has publicly apologised after online adverts for major brands appeared next to extremist material, but declined to say whether the company would begin actively seeking out such content and taking action against it.Matt Brittin, Google’s head of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told the Advertising Week Europe conference in London on Monday: “I want to start by saying sorry to the brands affected by this. I take the issue very seriously and I apologise in the instances where that may have happened.” Continue reading...

The US president has not tweeted from Android for 11 days, while some missives coming from an iPhone have been more Trump-esque than usualDonald Trump appears to have ditched his infamous Android phone – at least when it comes to tweeting.The President of the US has not tweeted from an Android device for almost two weeks, since he noted a survey that showed positive employment news. Instead, every tweet sent since 8 March from his Twitter account has been sent using Twitter for iPhone. Continue reading...

A court in Minnesota has told Google to hand over the names of everyone who inputted a particular search

Jeff Jones’s exit is latest blow for firm after revelations of secret tool to evade law enforcement and claims of discrimination and sexual harassmentUber president Jeff Jones left the taxi-hailing firm after just six months in the job because working at Uber was incompatible with his values, he said.Jones’s departure is the latest blow to the San Francisco-based company, after revelations of a secret programme to evade law enforcement, allegations of workplace discrimination and sexual harassment, and a string of departures of high-level executives. Continue reading...

Jones, hired to boost taxi hailing app’s reputation, is latest in string of high-level executives to leave as firm faces multiple controversiesTaxi hailing app Uber has been thrust deeper into turmoil with the departure of company president Jeff Jones, a marketing expert hired to help bolster its reputation.

Vodafone and trio of high street banks take action as industry and UK government ask how their ads became attached to extremist materialGoogle executives are bracing for a two-pronged inquisition from the advertising industry and the government over the company’s plans to stop ads being placed next to extremist material.A slew of big-name companies, advertising firms and government departments have either pulled their adverts from Google and its YouTube video site or are considering whether to do so, with media giant Sky, telecoms group Vodafone and a trio of banks adding their names to a growing list over the weekend. Continue reading...

Can all those drinks, capsules and powders really improve your sporting performance? We asked the expertsThere are hundreds of powders, gels and bars that promise to improve an athlete’s performance. But judging which ones are based on good scientific evidence and which might be useful for a particular activity or individual is a bewildering business.Even the fact that professional sports teams use particular products might not be an indicator of their effectiveness – they may merely be fulfilling their sponsorship obligations. Continue reading...

Social media companies could face regulation as Google advertisers pull out in protest over extremist contentPoliticians and advertisers have warned Google that it must overhaul advertising practices or risk being hit by regulation and advertiser boycotts.A major global marketing company became the first to pull all its advertising spending with Google after the news that adverts for a range of organisations had been inadvertently placed next to extremist material. MPs meanwhile threatened that legislation could be put on the table if social media companies did not effectively self-regulate. Continue reading...

Anyone looking at the adverts companies think I may be interested in will conclude I lead a pretty dull lifeShow me a person’s targeted adverts, goes no proverb (yet), and I’ll show you what they put in their online shopping basket but decided against buying at the last minute. Most internet users will be very familiar with the feeling that your computer is spying on you, with adverts trying to get your attention and reminding you what you’re missing out on.Related: How Google's search algorithm spreads false information with a rightwing bias Continue reading...

Wagdi Ghoneim among those said to have earned significant ad revenue from household names and government departmentsExtremists and hate preachers are estimated by marketing experts to have made at least $318,000 (£250,000) from adverts for household brands and government departments placed alongside their YouTube videos.Google, which owns YouTube, is estimated by internet analysts to have taken a cut of $149,000 from advertisers for its role placing the ads against the content, even though brands did not want their names associated with the hate speech. Continue reading...

What is programmatic advertising, how does it work and why did big brands appear next to inappropriate material? We explainWhy is advertising by big brands appearing alongside inappropriate content such as extremist videos?As odd as it may sound, in the digital age many brands do not know exactly where their online advertising is running. The computerisation of digital advertising, where machines are largely responsible for choosing where ads run, has taken over much of the job of deciding where they should appear on the internet. This process is called programmatic advertising.

A patent has been filed for a system that transfers energy from one device to another by converting it to radio waves and then back into energy

Designs that made the act of listening a personal experience, from early in-ear prototypes to Bluetooth, wireless and noise-cancelling varieties Continue reading...

Proposal to let fully autonomous vehicles on the roads is a game-changer with global implications, but comes with a complex set of questionsAutonomous vehicles are already a common sight on the streets of Silicon Valley, an international hub for self-driving technology. But this month, California set the stage for the next phase of innovation that could dramatically alter transportation and mobility across the globe. The state has proposed regulations to allow fully autonomous vehicles to drive on public roads – meaning empty cars with no steering wheels and no backup driver inside.Related: Empty cars with no steering wheel could soon be driving in California Continue reading...

British advertisers urge company overhaul after adverts from several big organisations appear next to inappropriate materialGoogle has been summoned to the Cabinet Office after it emerged that government advertising was being inadvertently placed next to extremist material.The government joined a number of organisations, including the Guardian, in pulling advertising from Google and YouTube after discovering that ads had appeared alongside inappropriate content. Continue reading...

Interrupting the march of technology through art

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

Travel association says cyber-attack may have affected 43,000 people, including 1,000 files with personal data of holidaymakersA cyber-attack on the website of the UK’s largest travel association could have affected about 43,000 people, including 1,000 holidaymakers.

Readers have reacted to messages about ‘the end of Windows Vista’ with a flurry of questions about their options. Here are the main ones Continue reading...

Max Aguilera-Hellweg is both a doctor and a photographer and has brought his unique sensibility to explore the point at which robots become more like humans. His new book of portraits of humanoids and androids displays the range created, from the geminoids designed to look and act like humans, to a scary robot created to understand how they learn. Humanoid is published by Blast Books Continue reading...

We asked readers how they’ve been getting on with Nintendo’s hybrid console – and the answer, mainly, is playing ZeldaIt’s been a week or so since the Nintendo Switch came out, so we thought we’d ask our readers how they were getting on with the venerable Japanese game company’s hybrid console.

The justice department announced charges on Wednesday against four defendants, including two Russian security services officers, in a huge data breach at Yahoo that affected 1b user accounts, according to a federal law enforcement official. Two of the defendants are Russian FSB officers and the other two are hackers. One of the defendants has been taken into custody in Canada, and another is on the list of the FBI’s most wanted cyber criminals

10,000 contractors told to flag ‘upsetting-offensive’ content after months of criticism over hate speech, misinformation and fake news in search resultsGoogle is using a 10,000-strong army of independent contractors to flag “offensive or upsetting” content, in order to ensure that queries like “did the Holocaust happen” don’t push users to misinformation, propaganda and hate speech.The review of search terms is being done by the company’s “quality raters”, a little-known corps of worldwide contractors that Google uses to assess the quality of its systems. The raters are given searches based on real queries to conduct, and are asked to score the results on whether they meet the needs of users. Continue reading...