Technology | The Guardian

In just two months, Webs & Tiaras has become the third most popular channel on YouTube, even if it’s one of the strangest success stories yet on the serviceThe latest YouTube craze is a channel where adults don Spider-Man and Elsa from Frozen outfits and ride giant ducks, grow Pinocchio noses and lick enormous lollies.Webs & Tiaras’ first video was only published in March 2016 but the channel, which promises “compilations of your favourite superheroes and princesses in real life”, has already notched up 1.7bn video views. Continue reading...

Electrical company acquires greater share of mobile phone market as annual pre-tax profits rise by 17% to £447mDixons Carphone has unveiled a 17% rise in annual pre-tax profits to £447m and dismissed concerns over Britain’s decision to leave the EU.Seb James, the chief executive of the electrical and mobile phone company, said it would continue to find opportunities to grow despite the outcome of the referendum last week. Continue reading...

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

Social media giant agreed on Tuesday that location data was ‘one of the factors’ it used but on Wednesday said no, not any moreFacebook has denied using location data to suggest potential friends amid questions about the unsettling accuracy with which it puts forward “people you may know”.The feature has been known to suggest users who have no or few mutual friends on the network – and, reportedly, nothing in common beyond having shared the same physical space – prompting concerns about how it works. Continue reading...

The platform will avoid in or out arguments by letting remain voters hook up with each other for a proper European unionFear not, Europhiles, for love is not lost. If you’re downbeat about Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, know that 48% of the country are with you, and one of them might just be your soulmate.No, honestly ... there is a new dating app in development that aims to let you meet other Remain voters so that you don’t have to go through the pain alone. Continue reading...

The student loan forgiveness proposal drew immediate backlash on Twitter, where users asked why entrepreneurs should receive special treatmentHillary Clinton put forward a set of proposals, in a newly released agenda on technology and innovation, that would treat entrepreneurs and startup workers more favorably than other student debtors.In a move aimed at “breaking down barriers and leveling the playing field for entrepreneurs and innovators who are launching their own startups”, Clinton proposed allowing startup founders to defer student debt payment for up to three years. The deferrals would also be available to a new company’s first 10 to 20 employees. Continue reading...

Aydin C is linked to the case of 15-year-old Amanda Todd, who took her life in October 2012 after being tormented by an anonymous cyberbullyAn Amsterdam court has ruled in favour of extraditing a Dutchman to Canada where he is wanted on charges linked to the cyberbullying of a teenager who killed herself in 2012.Identified only by his first name because of Dutch privacy rules, Aydin C, “who is linked to the suicide of 15-year-old Amanda Todd, may be extradited to Canada”, the court said in a statement. Continue reading...

US Customs and Border Protection proposal would see Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts requested on landing and visa formsThe US government is proposing making social media accounts part of the visa screening process for entry into the country.

The creator of Life Is Strange is back with a very different tale of warring vampire factions thriving in a disease-ridden LondonLondon, 1918. The streets are dour, cold and deserted, the Spanish flu is claiming dozens of victims a day, and a new scourge is lurking in the capital’s sprawling slums. Vampires.Thus begins the latest project from Parisian studio Dontnod Entertainment, creator of acclaimed adventures Remember Me and Life Is Strange. In Vampyr, the player takes control of Jonathan Reid, a doctor and newly initiated blood sucker, who sees vampirism as a disease that can be cured. But while he’s searching for the origins of the contagion, he must also stay alive – and there’s only one way to do that. “Feeding on citizens is the basis of your character progression,” says creative director Philippe Moreau. “The more you kill, the stronger you get. The question is, how far are you willing to go?” Continue reading...

‘Keep calm and code on’, urges one VC firm as tech companies try to inject confidence into the industry after country votes to leave the EULeading lights of the UK’s technology sector are trying to calm fears of a “Texit” following the result of last week’s EU referendum.After some of Britain’s biggest tech start-ups, including business data company DueDil and foreign exchange service TransferWise, revealed they are openly mulling an overseas relocation after the historic leave vote, other investors and entrepreneurs have intervened to try to inject some confidence into the shaky industry. Continue reading...

New advances in technology are sparking efforts to use virtual reality to help people gain a deeper appreciation of environmental challenges, reports Yale environment 360Could virtual reality (VR) — immersive digital experiences that mimic reality — save the environment?Well, that may be a bit of a stretch. But researchers say that it could perhaps promote better understanding of nature and give people empathetic insight into environmental challenges. Continue reading...

Bitly blamed for some of the hacks on victims including actor Channing Tatum and journalist Matthew Yglesias, but company denies vulnerabilityGoogle CEO Sundar Pichai has become the latest celebrity to fall prey to hacking group OurMine Security, apparently due to a vulnerability in URL shortening service Bitly.On Monday morning, Pichai tweeted the message: “Hey, it’s OurMine,we are just testing your security, to upgrade your security please visit our website”, and posted a similar statement to his Quora. It was deleted a few minutes later, but it put the CEO in the company of a number of other celebrities who’ve been hacked by the same group in the past few weeks. Continue reading...

In a rare interview Fumito Ueda, the creator of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus talks, about his hotly anticipated game and his nerves over its releaseThere are very few games that become legendary for a single moment, a single unforgettable image, but Ico is certainly one of them. For many players, when the eponymous protagonist takes the hand of the captive girl Yorda and leads her from her cage, it is a profoundly emotional experience. Most had never played anything that required one character to connect with another in such a tactile and protective way, and the idea that hand-holding could be a central mechanic was as revolutionary as it was quietly beautiful.

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

Government on course to biometrically register country’s 1.25 billion population as part of plan to modernise administrationThe digital revolution arrives in remote Indian villages such as Akbarpur by communication methods old and new: a WhatsApp message buzzes through to the village chief; he notifies his fellows via megaphone.The world’s biggest biometric ID programme is coming to town. Continue reading...

The band’s audience accessories illuminated the crowds at Glastonbury – but how do they work, and what’s next for crowd interaction?When they played Yellow, they went yellow. It doesn’t take a genius to programme Coldplay’s Xyloband wristbands, but the effect – at a Glastonbury that even the normally Pollyanna-ish Michael Eavis dubbed the “muddiest ever” – was to add a touch of closing-night glamour to a sodden Worthy Farm.The Xylobands have become a proprietary part of Chris Martin’s sets, filled with red, yellow and blue LEDs. These are synched to a radio transmitter, allowing them to be manipulated in time with the music, creating vast rivers of coloured light, like the slush-ballad mid-set lighter experience for the age of the e-cig. Their inventor, Jason Regler, claims to have had the idea while watching Coldplay perform their mid-set slush-ballad Fix You. Continue reading...

Dean Farrar, 49, from Rochdale contacted thousands of underage girls on social media in attempt to persuade them to perform sexual acts on cameraA serial child abuser who contacted 11,000 minors across the world on social media in attempt to get them to perform sexual acts has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Research by affordable housing advocacy groups finds more than 55% of listings in city on Airbnb are illegal, and 30% are listed by commercial hostsShort-term rental companies like Airbnb are flooding New York City’s housing market, reducing available housing stock citywide by 10%, a new study has revealed.

Company withdraws appeal leaving it liable for $10,000 compensation judgment after botched automatic upgrade of travel agent’s computerA Californian woman has won $10,000 in compensation from Microsoft after Windows 10 automatically tried and failed to install on her Windows 7 computer.

Rhode Island school employees fired after private chat referring to particular pupils as “dumb”, “idiots” and “toxic” was leakedThe old adage, don’t write anything down in an email you wouldn’t say publicly, appears to apply to chat now too, after three teachers were fired for calling their pupils “idiots” in a private chat.The Rhode Island school teachers were using Slack – the darling of Silicon Valley that pitches to be better than email – when their messages were leaked. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Documents reveal Sidewalk Labs is offering cloud software Flow to Columbus, Ohio, to upgrade bus and parking services – and bring them under Google’s management

Ultra-cheap Ringing Bells Freedom 251 Android phone previously thought to be scam will ship in batch of 200,000 – but company will make loss on each handsetThe $4 Indian phone that some thought might never materialise reportedly does exist, but only because the startup producing it is making a loss on each one.The Ringing Bells Freedom 251, initially announced at a price of £5, is apparently set to ship this week to customers who preordered the phone in February for – ($3.70 or £2.77). At that price – the one the company originally pledged – it is losing the Indian startup Rs 150 ($2.2 or £1.65) on each smartphone. Continue reading...

Even at Google’s DeepMind, there’s still stuff that humans code best, it seems – and it’s all down to timingAlphaGo, the board-game-playing AI from Google’s DeepMind subsidiary, is one of the most famous examples of deep learning – machine learning using neural networks – to date. So it may be surprising to learn that some of the code that led to the machine’s victory was created by good old-fashioned humans.The software, which beat Korean Go Champion Lee Sedol 4–1 in March, taught itself to play the ancient Asian game by running millions of simulations against itself. Continue reading...

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

Telltale is back with a story-focused spin on DC’s most famous hero. But this time the mask is offTelltale Games has always been an ambitious studio. It started making episodic adventure games back in 2007 with the Sam & Max titles, but later graduated to big movie tie-ins Jurassic Park and Back to the Future. It’s breakthrough though was Walking Dead, a dialogue-based thriller with just as much dramatic punch as the frantic and emotional zombie comic series. Since then it has managed to convert both RPG shooter Borderlands and building sim Minecraft into unlikely adventure hits, appeasing two highly invested fanbases.But Batman: A Telltale Series may be its most audacious project yet. For a start, it follows countless adaptations of DC’s defining hero, from Ocean’s 1986 action adventure, to the likes of Lego Batman, Injustice and, of course, the hugely acclaimed Arkham trilogy. It’s quite a legacy to live up to. Continue reading...

The dystopian free-running epic gets a fluid reboot, everyone’s favourite detective gets a new case and the weirdest beat-’em-up around gets physicalPS4, Xbox One, PC, Electronic Arts, cert: 16, out now

Analysis of abuse of politicians in the US, UK and Australia sheds light on a problem often dismissed as par for the courseby Elle Hunt, Nick Evershed and Ri Liu Continue reading...

A wave of new internet startups aim to do for eating out what Airbnb did for travel accommodation and Uber for taxis, with diners eating in chefs’ own homesLast weekend, with a certain amount of trepidation, I made a booking with a website called EatAbout, whose tagline invites you to “enjoy private meals in the home of a chef”. Conceived last October by two young Swedes living in London, the website launched in January with the intention of “democratising eating out” and making “good food accessible to everyone” by cutting out many of the costs associated with running a restaurant. Despite a deep and abiding love of the traditional restaurant-going experience, I was curious enough about the concept to give it a try.First, I scan a map of London for hosts – EatAbout currently has 30 chefs in its network, all within the M25 – and settle upon Carine O, whose food incorporates influences from France and her native Cameroon. Then, out of five options, I pick a three-course menu called “Fish BBQ My Way”, priced at £77 for two. Once I’ve chosen a time and submitted my card details, Carine gets in touch to ask whether we’d prefer mackerel or sea bass and then offers some friendly advice on wine (EatAbout invites guests to bring their own). The next day, bottle in hand and with the meal already paid for, we arrive at Carine’s home in south London ready for some barbecued fish. Continue reading...

A great all-round road bike that will flatter your skills and save your pocketsChris Boardman, MBE, sometimes known as the Bike Prof for his masterly attention to detail, relaunched his eponymous range at the start of this year. As you would expect from a relaunch, the considerable hike in tech, quality and design was matched by a price rise. If you were tempted by the Prof’s smooth and dextrous frames but didn’t think you could quite afford one, then your reticence has been rewarded. Halfords is currently holding a 15% sale on all 2016 Boardman bikes. Does that mean they aren’t selling as well as hoped? Maybe, but who cares – they are sodding good. I’ve ridden the Road Pro Carbon and it was a revelation. Fast, comfortable and, thanks to very grippy disc brakes, safe in all this summer rain. It’s built around Boardman’s award-winning SLR Endurance frame platform and uses its C7 carbon throughout. You’ll find it treads a fine line between balance, stiffness and weight. Add in the ever-reliable Shimano 105 5800 groupset and Shimano RS505 hydraulic disc brakes and you have a surefire winner. Go on, treat yourself – you’re worth it… (halfords.com)Price: £1,274 (was £1,499)

The great Italian marque has turned out a slick and economical luxury limo. It’s so good you could almost get suspicious…Price: £69,560

Long March-7 two-stage rocket is expected to become the main carrier for China’s future space missionsChina blasted off its Long March-7 new generation carrier rocket on a successful inaugural voyage on Saturday from a new launch centre, state media reported, as the country races ahead with an ambitious space program.

The accommodation website has become so successful that hotels are losing business and tourist sites face being ruinedTo use the industry jargon, it is the ultimate “disruptor”. Airbnb, the website that allows homeowners around the world to rent out their spare rooms, has had a seismic impact on the travel market.Hotel chains are reportedly feeling the squeeze as the US upstart – which has attracted $2bn in funding in less than a decade – eats into their business model by offering travellers the opportunity to “live like a local” and “belong anywhere” in one of the two million rooms and properties that are listed on its site. Continue reading...

Video-sharing websites are taking down Isis videos and other violent propaganda with technology used to remove copyright-protected materialSome of the web’s biggest destinations for watching videos have quietly started using automation to remove extremist content from their sites, according to two people familiar with the process.The move is a major step forward for internet companies that are eager to eradicate violent propaganda from their sites and are under pressure to do so from governments around the world as attacks by extremists proliferate, from Syria to Belgium and the United States. Continue reading...

I expect to find myself overstepping the 30mph mark in a cheeky Mazda, but not in thisIt is commonplace to remark that the Toyota Prius surprises pedestrians by sneaking up on them when they, in their bovine 20th-centuriness, are still expecting cars to make a noise. What I didn’t expect was how much it would surprise me while I was actually driving it.It is so noiseless, and I am so conditioned to associate cars moving with engines revving, that even while my foot was on the accelerator, I was still astonished to find myself hurtling towards a tree. And that was nothing on the poke it has as you pootle around town. I expect to find myself overstepping the 30mph mark in a cheeky Mazda, but to catch myself hurtling like a country driver in a car whose raison d’etre is to be the goody-two-shoes of the road was… well, it was like the arrival of some horrific and unwanted self-awareness. Maybe it’s not the car and has never been the car. Maybe I just have a heavy right foot. Continue reading...

We increasingly rely on GPS to get from A to B. But what happens if we’re led catastrophically astray – and are we losing our sense of direction?One early morning in March 2011, Albert Chretien and his wife, Rita, loaded their Chevrolet Astro van and drove away from their home in Penticton, British Columbia. Their destination was Las Vegas, where Albert planned to attend a trade show. Rather than stick to the most direct route, they decided to take a scenic road less travelled, Idaho State Highway 51. The Chretiens figured there had to be a turnoff from Idaho 51 that would lead them east to US Route 93 all the way to Vegas.Albert and Rita had known each other since high school. During their 38 years of marriage, they had rarely been apart. They worked together, managing their own small excavation business. A few days before the trip, Albert had purchased a Magellan GPS unit for the van. They had not yet used it, but their plan wasn’t panning out. As the day went on and the shadows grew longer, they hadn’t found an eastward passage. They decided to consult the GPS. Checking their roadmap, they determined the nearest town was Mountain City, Nevada, so they entered it as the destination into their GPS unit. The directions led them on to a small dirt road near an Idaho ghost town and eventually to a confusing three-way crossroads. And here their troubles began. Continue reading...

Engineers testing driver-free vehicles say aggressive driving and road rage could become a thing of the past. But are their cars any fun?Giving up the controls was as breathtakingly simple as touching two turquoise coloured buttons below the steering wheel with both thumbs. A melodious bell chimed, a line of LEDs stretching across the dashboard switched from red to yellow to aqua blue, and the steering wheel withdrew slowly and serenely from my sweaty grasp.But any nervousness I felt stemmed far more from being required to steer a multimillion-euro research vehicle the few kilometres from German car manufacturer Audi’s headquarters in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, on to the autobahn, than the fact that “Jack” had now taken over the driving. Continue reading...

The president called startups ‘the upside of an interconnected world’ when he joined founders at Stanford University for an entrepreneurship conference FridayTo hear Barack Obama tell it, if the UK’s vote to leave the European Union represents the fears and disruption that come with globalization, startups represent the promise and growth.The president on Friday joined a T-shirt-clad Mark Zuckerberg and several young startup founders on stage at Stanford University for a White House entrepreneurship conference. The administration has been holding such events to persuade young people overseas to join startups instead of extremist groups. Continue reading...

‘Headquartering elsewhere is now a possibility’, says TransferWise boss, as loss of talent and regulatory uncertainty rear their headsBrexit has left the UK’s technology industry reassessing its position, with major firms putting expansion plans on hold as they consider a move to a continental location.Britain’s financial technology sector is particularly hard-hit, with the prospect of losing access to European markets an unappealing one. “Fintech” has long been one of the UK’s most promising growth areas, in part due to London’s position as the financial capital of Europe. Continue reading...

Robotic-canine housebot designed to take care the domestic chores takes one step on four legs closer to reality with new SpotMiniGoogle’s holding company, Alphabet, has a new robotic dog from its Atlas-making Boston Dynamics subsidiary capable of clearing up after its human masters.

Delivery of medical supplies to inaccessible locations during relief efforts could see ships deploy armies of drones ferrying supplies to and from shoreA drone successfully delivered medical supplies to the New Jersey coastline straight from the deck of a ship, marking the first ship-to-shore delivery in the US.

Fancy a thriller about a dystopian UK being destroyed by a vast group hallucination? The timing of this intriguing black comedy that won E3 perhaps couldn’t be betterThere’s always one game at E3 that proves, counter to the general theme of the show, bigger isn’t always better. This year, a tiny studio named Compulsion found itself thrust into the limelight after its project We Happy Few caused a considerable splash at Microsoft’s press conference. But as a black comedy set in a dystopian Britain being destroyed by a vast group hallucination, it may now take on more profound and pressing connotations following last night’s result. For some, this strange combination of 1984, A Clockwork Orange and Bioshock feels very much the game of the moment.The opening of the E3 demo, which momentarily silenced the usual energetic whooping, evoked the spirit of another wonderful introductory sequence, from Terry Gilliam’s seminal 1985 film Brazil. Wage-slave Arthur Hastings is sat at his desk in an extravagantly British office in 1964, surrounded by Heath Robinson vacuum-tube machinery and period furniture, balefully performing his job of erasing uncomfortable stories from back-issues of a newspaper. Suddenly he spots a story with personal relevance, but as he’s processing it a colleague sporting a Mary Quant dress and a white mask with a rictus grin, enters. Unlike his colleagues, it emerges, Arthur hasn’t been taking his mandatory Joy pills. This is a Britain in which drugged out bliss isn’t a counter-culture activity, it’s a legal requirement. Continue reading...

From EA Sports’ NCAA Football to the classic Tecmo Bowl, we run down half a dozen classic sports video game console franchisesFor football nerds, it was a new Star Wars sequel every July. You cleared your datebook for the day it dropped, and by “cleared,” we mean excavated. A night. A week. A month. Whatever. The second-biggest compliment you can give NCAA Football is that, for a generation, it isolated you from the concepts of sunrise, sunset, responsibility, loved ones, hygiene or real life, a black hole of bliss, one of the singular greatest and most pleasurable time-sucks of the new millennia. If the zombie apocalypse upstairs coincided with a rivalry game or the prizing of a 5-star high-school quarterback with the kind of wheels that’d make Michael Vick look like Cory Sauter, the undead would have to wait. You have an Outback Bowl to win. Continue reading...

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

Survey reveals the moral dilemma of programming autonomous vehicles: should they hit pedestrians or avoid and risk the lives of occupants?There’s a chance it could bring the mood down. Having chosen your shiny new driverless car, only one question remains on the order form: whether your spangly, futuristic vehicle be willing to kill you?To buyers more accustomed to talking models and colours, the query might sound untoward. But for manufacturers of autonomous vehicles (AVs), the dilemma it poses is real. If a driverless car is about to hit a pedestrian, should it swerve and risk killing its occupants? Continue reading...

Faced with two deadly options the public want driverless vehicles to crash rather than hurt pedestrians – unless the vehicle in question is theirsIn catch-22 traffic emergencies where there are only two deadly options, people generally want a self-driving vehicle to, for example, avoid a group of pedestrians and instead slam itself and its passengers into a wall, a new study says. But they would rather not be travelling in a car designed to do that.The findings of the study, released on Thursday in the journal Science, highlight just how difficult it may be for auto companies to market those cars to a public that tends to contradict itself. Continue reading...

Film criticism remains ‘a heavily male pursuit’, according to a study of Rotten Tomatoes by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film

The first $10bn technology company from Europe is Finland’s Supercell, following a buyout from TencentFinland’s Supercell has become Europe’s first ever “decacorn” – that’s a technology company worth $10bn – after a buyout from Chinese internet leviathan Tencent.The deal will see Tencent and its partners secure an 84.3% stake in Supercell, best known for its Clash of Clans mobile game, paying $8.6bn (£5.78bn) for the pleasure. That values the overall company at $10.2bn, the first European technology startup to break that barrier. Continue reading...

Simon Wheatcroft was blind at 17. Yet today, he runs marathons. Here’s howLeigh Alexander delves into the incredible story of how Simon Wheatcroft, who has been legally blind since he was 17, runs marathons with the help of some particularly innovative technology. Continue reading...

Advances in artificial intelligence could give us digital immortality, distilling a lifetime’s worth of online presence into a deathless version of ourselvesWould you like a version of yourself to live on after death? A radical new concept called “augmented eternity” could make that fantasy a reality, creating a posthumous impression of our knowledge, opinions and even parts of our personality in digital form.Researchers at the MIT Media Lab and Ryerson University in Toronto believe that by applying artificial intelligence to all the data we produce each day, we may be able to transfer our thoughts to a virtual entity that not only survives our physical demise but continues to learn as new information is plugged into it. Continue reading...

Jan is planning to buy a new laptop with an SSD that won’t have room for all her photos. How can she store them separately so that she and her husband can both view them?I store my photos on a six-year-old MacBook Pro, which still has a traditional hard drive. My next laptop will probably have a 512GB or smaller SSD, so I will need another way to store them. I would like to share a database with my husband, so we can store family and travel photos from phones and cameras. I’m still uncomfortable with the thought of all my family photos being online somewhere, which I accept may be a little illogical as I do use cloud back up for other items.