Technology | The Guardian

Video service is augmenting new tech with real people to help guide the successors to Zoella and PewDiePieYouTube wants to provide more of a “human touch” for its community of video creators, while also doing more to help them tackle trolls and avoid exploitative deals with multi-channel networks. And while its plans to do so inevitably include changes to its technology, they involve real-life humans as well. As YouTube’s VP of operations Sebastien Missoffe puts it, it’s a necessary part of being “a digital media company of the 21st century”.“We need to balance the great technology we have and bring this human access for every single creator,” Missoffe says. “They can reach a human being at YouTube.” So as it consolidates its creator tools in a revamped online “hub” and improves its comment-moderation and copyright tools, it is providing more direct access to its support staff too, with four tiers of support based on how many subscribers a creator has. Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg uses tape over his webcam. Even if you’re not worried about industrial espionage, there’s no such thing as too much securityOutlook and other email clients let you install a personal security certificate, which you can use to encrypt email so that only trusted recipients can read it, or digitally sign your messages to prove that they came from you. You can get your own certificate from comodo.com and it doesn’t cost a penny. The catch is that your recipients will need to be using a compatible email system – if they’re using Gmail on their smartphone, they’ll just be annoyed when you keep sending them unreadable strings of garbled data. “It also means you’ve got to protect your laptop,” points out Tony Anscombe, security “evangelist” at the antivirus firm AVG. “If your laptop’s stolen and your password is written on a Post-it note on the screen, then what’s the use of the encryption?” Continue reading...

Current real-world politics remind us why so many prefer the ordered fairness of gamingDuring the run-up to the general election, my children and I took our new puppy for a walk around the block. A campaigner for Ukip, presumably spying a happy scene ripe for spoiling, approached. If there was, as the prime minister once suggested, racism in the Ukip pamphleteer’s closet, its whiff did not dampen the generosity of our dog’s greeting. As the man handed me a sticky leaflet, the puppy peed in excitement on his shoes, before trying to hump his leg, wetly.The scene was a cause of great hilarity for my children, none of whom will be able to vote for another two general elections. “Barney peed on the Ukip man,” they’d tell bewildered visitors during the following days and weeks. It was a minor victory for a generation to whom so much worse has been done by this political class. Continue reading...

Five Hundred Metre Aperture Spherical Telescope, or Fast, is the size of 30 football fields and has been cut out of a mountain in GuizhouChina has hoisted the final piece into position on what will be the world’s largest radio telescope, which it will use to explore space and help in the hunt for extraterrestrial life.The Five Hundred Metre Aperture Spherical Telescope, or Fast, is the size of 30 football fields and has been cut out of a mountain in the south-western province of Guizhou. Continue reading...

Powerful, uncomplaining, relentless… VW’s much-loved Transporter takes long-distance adventures in its stridePrice £30,460

Simple, slick and speedy… Quella’s latest Nero is every urban cyclists’ best friendThe Emperor Nero was famous for his debauchery and unfettered extravagance. I don’t think he’d have been impressed with this latest bike from Quella. The Nero is sleek, simple and unadorned.Quella began life in an old chicken shed in Cambridgeshire in 2012. Since then its focus has been on building frames that are a winning mix of modern design and old-fashioned craftsmanship. Continue reading...

There’s a whole class of information that Facebook thinks it knows about me and is willing to sell – the problem is their data isn’t entirely accurateFacebook knows everything about you. At least that’s what we, and the advertisers it sells us to, are constantly told. But a peek behind its algorithmic curtains suggests what it does know might be wrong.As any of its 1.65 billion users can tell you, Facebook is constantly “updating” its privacy settings, which is why I tool through all my settings every few weeks. I try to keep a lock on what strangers can learn about me on Facebook or have access to; not because I’m disinclined to participate in the platform, but because my family is uncomfortable with strangers having access to their personal lives, and that seems fair. Continue reading...

Tesla’s ambitious futurism has earned it loyal fans – but after the death of a driver using autopilot, some say the company should be more explicit about limitationsElon Musk’s rockets usually do not stray beyond Earth’s orbit, but that hasn’t stopped him from making promises about Mars. The Tesla CEO’s wild, ambitious futurism has earned him billions of dollars, fawning coverage from the tech press, and a subreddit devoted entirely to discussion of his divinity.

At a Guardian Live event his week, member Ruth Oliver heard a panel of writers and thinkers including Paul Mason and Lydia Nicholas discuss what the world will look like in 2025.The event was particularly topical given what’s happened with the referendum over the past week. I’ve felt quite overwhelmed and have read so much in the press and on social media it can be quite unsettling. This was a nice chance to step back from the headlines and look at the wider picture.

I worried I’d not screwed everything in tightly enough‘Ikea to start selling bikes” is a nightmare headline for the friendly independent bike shop. Not only could the Swedish behemoth take any custom the internet hasn’t already siphoned off, but the bike shop will end up having to fix those inevitable DIY bike-building disasters when people who call saddles “seats” are let loose with some Allen keys.The Sladda comes flat-packed, of course. I set aside an hour to build mine, figuring I know more or less what I’m doing. But an hour wasn’t nearly long enough: I started at noon and finished at five, with time off for lunch. I got stuck three times: first when I put on the front forks the wrong way, next by fixing the kick-stand backwards, so the pedals wouldn’t turn, and finally when I put on the handlebars upsidedown. As ever with Ikea, there are no written instructions, just ambiguous pictures. Continue reading...

The funds were blocked after the popular messaging service reportedly defied repeated orders to turn over messages sought in a drug caseA court in Brazil on Thursday blocked 19.5m reals ($6.07m) of Facebook’s money after its WhatsApp messaging service failed to turn over messages sought in a drugs case – despite the fact that the company has no access to its users’ messages.Brazil’s federal police said WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook , has defied repeated orders to turn over messages sent and received by suspected members of an international cocaine smuggling ring that has been under investigation since January. Continue reading...

Driver in first known fatal self-driving car crash was also driving so fast that ‘he went so fast through my trailer I didn’t see him’, the truck driver involved saidThe Tesla driver killed in the first known fatal crash involving a self-driving car may have been watching a Harry Potter movie at the time of the collision in Florida, according to a truck driver involved in the crash.The truck driver, Frank Baressi, 62, told the Associated Press that the Tesla driver Joshua Brown, 40, was “playing Harry Potter on the TV screen” during the collision and was driving so fast that “he went so fast through my trailer I didn’t see him”. Continue reading...

Latest in a series of botched public sector IT programmes including Scottish farm payments and NHS advice systemsScotland’s police authority has abandoned a new unified IT system after it was plagued with problems, in the latest in a series of botched public sector IT programmes.The authority said it had scrapped the £60m i6 project because of its insurmountable flaws. It had been introduced to merge more than 130 different computer and paper systems left in place after eight regional forces were merged to form Police Scotland. Continue reading...

A payroll levy on the city’s largest tech companies – such as Google, Twitter, Uber and Airbnb – aims to tackle inequality, but some have savaged the proposalSan Francisco’s long, complex and often fraught relationship with the tech industry has come to a head with a proposal to levy a “tech tax” on the companies that have fueled the city’s transformation into a place that is increasingly uninhabitable for people on low or medium incomes.Under the plan, large tech employers in the city, potentially including Google, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb and Salesforce, would be required to pay a 1.5% payroll tax. The estimated $120m in annual revenue would be used to fund affordable housing and services for the city’s large homeless population. Continue reading...

Car manufacturer joins forces with US computer chip giant and Israeli technology firm to bring fully automated driving into production by 2021BMW has announced it is joining forces with US computer chip firm Intel and the Israeli technology company Mobileye to develop self-driving cars.

Crowdsourced name for Android version 7 upsets some, but Nougat is here to stay after Google unveils name and statueGoogle has announced that the next version of Android, codenamed “N”, will be called Nougat, bitterly dividing opinion among its fans.Nougat, which has been in developer and early-adopter preview for the last few months since being announced at Google’s I/O developer conference in May, will be the 14th distinct iteration of Android, labeled Android 7.0. Continue reading...

Tesla’s Autopilot is in the spotlight after a fatal crash. Samuel Gibbs used it when he drove to France in a Model S – here’s how he found the experience of driver assistanceTesla’s Autopilot has been thrown into the spotlight after a fatal crash involving a Model S which was under the control of the car’s driving-assist system.Autopilot, a feature for both the Model S and the newer SUV Model X, is a combination of two technologies. The first is adaptive cruise control, which is a common feature to high-end cars. The second is Autosteer, in other cars called lane departure assistance. Continue reading...

From Assassin’s Creed to Witcher, a guide to where Westminster stole all of its best ideas this weekVideo games are often criticised for their outlandish story lines, but considering what’s been happening in British politics this week, they now seem like a perfectly sensible place to learn about the world.So if you’ve not yet had your fill of plot twists, back-stabs and last minute turn arounds, here are gaming’s greatest power struggles.

From the 7th annual VidCon in Anaheim, California, we explore how YouTube has impacted the lives of creators and fans alikeIn a special episode from VidCon, producer Matt Shore talks to fans, volunteers and popular YouTuber Ricky Dillon about what online video means to them in 2016. Continue reading...

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

New iOS apps of June 2016 include Motion Stills, Splash – 360 Video Camera, Live.ly, Rodeo Stampede, Pixel Cup Soccer 16 and Human Resource MachineFrom turning your photos into gifs to riding buffalo for a sky zoo, and from shooting virtual-reality videos to learning to code, this month has a varied selection of new apps and games for iOS devices.As ever, prices are correct at the time of writing, and IAP indicates that an app uses in-app purchases in some way. Continue reading...

Technology giant is mulling a bid to acquiring Tidal because of its strong ties to popular artists such as Madonna, reports Wall Steet JournalApple is reportedly considering a potential takeover bid for Jay Z’s music-streaming service, Tidal.

First driver known to have died using Tesla autopilot may not have been at fault – but death highlights trend of drivers posting self-driving videosFederal investigators are examining the first known fatality involving a Tesla using self-driving technology. Joshua Brown, a 40-year-old from Ohio, was killed when his Tesla Model S collided with a large truck while in autopilot mode.It may take months before the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reaches firm conclusions about the crash in Florida.

The autopilot sensors on the Model S failed to distinguish a white tractor-trailer crossing the highway against a bright skyThe first known death caused by a self-driving car was disclosed by Tesla Motors on Thursday evening, a development that is sure to cause consumers to second-guess the trust they put in the booming autonomous vehicle industry.The 7 May accident occurred in Williston, Florida, after the driver, Joshua Brown, 40, of Ohio put his Model S into Tesla’s autopilot mode, which is able to control the car during highway driving. Continue reading...

Unionized workers negotiated contract that ensured they would be paid at least $15 per hour and included protections against sexual harassmentComputer company Dell is dumping a team of cleaning staff just two months after they signed a new contract giving them better pay and new protections against sexual harassment in the workplace.On 1 May, services contractor Able drew up a new agreement which ensured its 8,000 Bay Area cleaners would be paid a minimum of $15 per hour – an increase of $0.76 – and get better family healthcare benefits. Language was also added to the contract to give protections from sexual violence – an all-too-common problem for female staff. Continue reading...

Monica Moreno, a cafeteria worker at Intel, joins a movement to unionize food service workers and protest conditions at Silicon Valley technology companies. Meanwhile, Dell is trying to ditch a cleaning company that negotiated a strong union deal after a sexual harassment case Continue reading...

Frank Herbert on his Boeing, Stephen King on his Wang, and Philip Roth worrying that writing would become too easy … Matthew Kirschenbaum’s account of literature in the digital ageIn a photograph taken in his high-tech home office at 29 Merrick Square, London, in 1968, thriller writer Len Deighton is hard at work on his next novel, Bomber. An electric typewriter is perched atop a desk, a huge telex machine extrudes paper coils on to the florid carpet, and a video camera on a tripod is pointed at the author’s face. In the foreground is another, bulkier, typewriter connected by a fat cable to a cabinet or console. The author of Billion Dollar Brain had lately taken delivery of a magnetic tape selectric typewriter (MT/ST) (marketed in Britain as the IBM 72 IV). It was first posited at IBM’s main offices in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1957; the finished product weighed 200lb and cost $10,000. And with it Deighton was about to compose the first novel ever written on a word processor.In fact, as Matthew Kirschenbaum points out in his unexpectedly engaging history of word processing, it was Deighton’s sedulous assistant Ellenor Handley who did most of the typing (until 1968 she’d had to redraft each novel dozens of times). As she typed, her keystrokes were saved to tape, and corrections could be made before a final printout. It was a vexing process in which writing happened both on paper and in the typist’s harried imagination; IBM’s literature commanded the user to “visualise the characters on the tape!” so as to grasp the machine’s capricious behaviour. There was no screen and no mouse; the MT/ST had no conception of what a page was; you had to manually slow and stop printing to introduce new text. But the MT/ST was a step towards the dream, as Kirschenbaum clunkily puts it, of “hardware and software for facilitating the composition and formatting of free-form prose as part of an individual author’s workflow”. Continue reading...

Social network’s base of operations in Ireland puts it out of Belgium’s jurisdiction, appeals court rulesFacebook has successfully overturned a decision that blocked the social network from using its so-called datr cookies to track the internet activity of logged-out users in Belgium.

Internet company says it complies with Spanish laws and will cooperate with authoritiesTax investigators in Spain have raided Google’s Madrid offices, in the latest investigation into the group’s tax affairs. Continue reading...

Among the best new apps for Android smartphones and tablets of June 2016 are Detour, RunGo, Lost Frontier, Rodeo Stampede and BitTorrent NowFrom travel tips and running guides to puzzles and elephant stampedes, it’s a good month for high-quality new Android apps and games.Here are 20 worth trying. Prices are correct at the time of writing, with IAP indicating that in-app purchases are used in an app or game. Continue reading...

Thomas Ross sketched technical drawings before filing 1992 patent for Electronic Reading Device, which he said is ‘the very essence’ of iPhone, iPod and iPadA businessman has filed a $10bn lawsuit against Apple, claiming that the iPhone, iPad and iPod all infringe his 1992 invention of an Electronic Reading Device, or ERD.In an exclusive interview, Thomas Ross, from Miramar in Florida, told the Guardian that he knows he is fighting a goliath. “I am just one person going up against the resources and power of Apple, the biggest corporation in the world. But what’s right is right.” Continue reading...

A patent granted to Apple may allow iPhone cameras to be disabled by infrared sensors. This seems logical enough for concerts, but what about protests?House Democrats were able to garner wall-to-wall media coverage of their sit-in by broadcasting live from a congressman’s smartphone on 23 June. Yet that may not be possible in the future if a new patent recently granted to Apple is an indication of technology restrictions to come.Related: Democrats stream gun control sit-in on Periscope after Republicans turn TV cameras off Continue reading...

Boss of Facebook’s virtual reality headset business Brendan Iribe gets Twitter account hacked, putting him in good company as tech heads keep fallingThe head of Facebook’s virtual reality headset maker, Oculus, has had his Twitter account hacked, making him the latest in a long line of celebrity and tech bosses to have had their social media accounts compromised in recent weeks.The account of Oculus chief Brendan Iribe was taken over at around 7am UK time, when a tweet was sent out to his 16,000 followers announcing that “we here @Oculus are very excited to announce our CEO. @Lid ! :)“. Continue reading...

CEO says restrictions on free tier of note-taking service and price rises for paying users are to fund improving Evernote in the long termEvernote, the note-taking service, is facing a user backlash after restricting the number of features available to free accounts.The company’s Evernote Basic tier, which offers free access to the software, will now only be able to sync across two devices. For most people, this will be a computer and one mobile device, leaving users with more than one computer, or a computer and two mobile devices (a phone and a tablet, for instance), needing to pay for the first time. Free users can still access the web version of Evernote, though. Continue reading...

Windows 10 makes Julia log in whenever she leaves her laptop alone for a few minutes. Happily, it’s very easy to change that, but it does raise security issues Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Thursday. Better late than never? Continue reading...

Award-winning studio Fullbright Company returns with another intriguing narrative adventure, this time set on a doomed space station where everything is recordedThree years ago, The Fullbright Company helped to redefine the nature of narrative video game design. The tiny independent studio, based in Portland, Oregon, released Gone Home, a first-person exploration drama about a young woman who travels back to visit her family and finds nothing but an empty house.Wandering the hallways and rooms alone, players used environmental clues such as audio recordings and notes to piece together what had happened. The game cleverly employed the tropes of survival horror (an abandoned house, rumours of a murder) to suggest there was a mystery or supernatural element to the story, thereby hooking players familiar with gaming conventions into the experience. But eventually we discover something much more human, grounded and emotionally complex. Gone Home wasn’t about horror, it was about friendship, music and first love. Continue reading...

Infrared device would be able to block fans using their iPhones to record shows, films and other live eventsThe spread of smartphones has created a divide among gig-goers. There are those who like to hold their phone up for large chunks of the show, to capture footage of the band. And there are those who like to stand and watch the group and listen to the music, without any screens in their way.Now, it seems, the latter group could be on their way to victory in the eternal struggle between the filmers and the watchers. Pitchfork reports that Apple has won approval from the US Patent and Trademark Office for technology that could be used to prevent fans filming or taking photos of gigs on their iPhones. Continue reading...

Changes ahead for streaming service as, with 15m paying subscribers, it continues the battle with rivals Spotify and YouTubeHappy Birthday will presumably be being played on repeat in Apple Music’s offices today. It’s one year after Apple’s music-streaming service launched and it has 15 million subscribers.It also has an upcoming redesign, unveiled at the company’s recent WWDC event in San Francisco, to close a year in which it got first dibs on Drake’s new album, bagged Taylor Swift for a series of ads and even ventured into enemy territory by launching on Android. Continue reading...

Toffler was one of the world’s most famous futurists who foresaw how digital technology would transform the worldAlvin Toffler, a guru of the post-industrial age whose books, including Future Shock, anticipated the transformation brought about by the rise of digital technology, has died. He was 87.Toffler died in his sleep at his home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, on Monday, said Yvonne Merkel, a spokeswoman for his Virginia-based consulting firm Toffler Associates. Continue reading...

Changes to the algorithm mean your friends’ posts will be prioritized, and publishers that rely on Facebook traffic will be gnashing their teethTo paraphrase Archimedes, give me an algorithm, and I can move the world.Facebook announced yet more changes to its news feed algorithm on Wednesday, the secret sauce that determines whose posts show up on your Facebook page, and whose remain unseen. Continue reading...

Viewers can feel like they were sitting on the hillside during the Sermon on the Mount or right beside the crypt during the resurrection in VR re-enactmentFirst came the scriptures; then the altarpieces. After that, stained glass windows and engravings of the Stations of the Cross. Last century brought biblical epics like Spartacus. Now believers will be able to experience the life of Jesus as if they were there themselves, thanks to advances in virtual reality technology.Autumn Productions and VRWERX are set to release Jesus VR – The Story of Christ, a 90-minute virtual reality re-enactment of the New Testament, which includes Jesus’s birth and death by crucifixion, along with key moments like the Sermon on the Mount. Continue reading...

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act makes technology terms of service legally enforceable, which the ACLU says can be used to hide illegal activity

Changes to posts from Facebook groups or the pages of brands likely to affect traffic to publishersFacebook is to give greater weight to posts from individuals rather than corporations in a change to its newsfeed likely to affect traffic to publishers.In a posting on its Newsfeed blog, Facebook said that it was planning to make an “upcoming change to News Feed ranking to help make sure you don’t miss stories from your friends”. Continue reading...

Of the 2.8m vehicles being recalled globally over fears of cracks in the fuel emissions control unit, some 713,000 are in EuropeTens of thousands of Toyota cars are being recalled in the UK for safety reasons, including fears that their airbags could inflate without warning.The world’s largest carmaker has been forced to recall 2.9m vehicle worldwide, including 72,885 UK-registered Prius, Auris and Lexus CT200h models, over possible cracks in the fuel emissions control unit. Continue reading...

Cancelling a Windows 10 upgrade by closing the pop-up dialogue will no longer schedule the install, but will lead to further nagsMicrosoft is backtracking on its aggressive upgrade policy that has seen Windows 10 apparently installing or attempting to install without users’ permission leading to lawsuits and interrupted weather forecasts.

Publishers including the BBC, Telegraph and Guardian saw double-digit surges in web traffic around EU voteThe public’s thirst for EU referendum news smashed web records for publishers including the BBC, Telegraph and Guardian, while Facebook proved crucial in driving the leave campaign’s impact online.News publishers saw huge double-digit surges in web traffic on Thursday, the day of the referendum, as the public sought news, views and information before casting their vote.

My secret account is now not so private after Facebook updated its search engine without warning, and there’s nothing I can do about itQuietly, over the last year, Facebook has killed the concept of a private account.The site has always had a love-hate relationship with privacy: it’s long offered some of the most granular controls of any social network for choosing who sees what content, letting users make posts visible on a sliding scale from “everyone” to “only me”. Continue reading...

The story of Airbnb’s current battle with San Francisco over regulation actually begins with a senator who prayed to control ‘the pollution’ of internet pornAirbnb, like pornography, is a business based on selling a fantasy. Porn offers the simulacrum of a sexual encounter; Airbnb, that of being “a local” in a city not one’s own. There’s less fuss, less muss, and a much reduced chance of STDs and irritated neighbors.

Search company launches new opt-in ad service for non-Google sites and tools that show how it tracks your internet activityGoogle has rolled out new tools to let users see what its ad-tracking service has learned about them, and to let users opt in or out of a new personalised ads service.