Technology | The Guardian

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

One of the most widely translated works in history has been given a 21st-century update with millennials in mindIn the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and then some time later created emoji .One of the most widely translated works in history has been given a 21st-century update with the publication of the Emoji Bible. Continue reading...

While some applaud new tech to monitor a baby’s breathing, heart rate and temperature, others think it goes too far

Pontiff tells social media stars they create virtual circles to which followers belong, laying ‘paths of optimism and hope’Pope Francis demonstrated his digital credentials on Sunday by holding an intimate meeting with YouTube stars, throwing his support behind popular beauty videos and encouraging his celebrity guests to help young people create virtual identities.Immediately after the meeting Pope Francis addressed participants of an educational conference at the Vatican, attended by actors including Salma Hayek, Richard Gere and George Clooney, who was accompanied by his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney. Continue reading...

When he’s not playing guitar for Queen, Brian May PhD is an astronomer and inventor. He talks about his latest gadget – an update on the Victorian stereoscopeBrian May is examining his hands. His fingernails are painted with a futuristic, silvery polish, but it’s his fingertips he’s focused on. They are, he informs me, covered with soft calluses. It’s hardly surprising – he’s just flown in from Barcelona, where he’s been on tour, thrashing out hits with Queen (with American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert on Freddie duties). But here in London, his guitar is nowhere in sight. Because it’s not a gig he’s eager to talk about: it’s the launch of his latest invention.Dubbed the “Owl VR Smartphone Kit”, his low-tech, adjustable plastic gadget looks like a cross between a kiddie’s shoe gauge and Google Cardboard. By attaching a smartphone to the back of its frame, using some tape, a metal plate and a magnet, the device can be used to view 360-degree videos – handy, since Queen are currently filming one of their own. But as May reveals, it can do far more than that. Slot in a card bearing two, almost identical, photographs and when you look through the lenses the image suddenly bounces forth in glorious 3D – a technique known as stereoscopy. With an app, he demonstrates, you can even make 3D versions of your smartphone shots. “This is a proper scientific instrument,” he says, with the confidence of a man who has a patent pending. Continue reading...

Fans will have to wait a few more weeks to finally explore the hugely anticipated PlayStation 4 space gameThe much anticipated Playstation 4 game No Man’s Sky has been delayed. One of Sony’s key releases for the year, the ambitious space exploration adventure will now be released on 10 August in the UK, several weeks later than planned.Rumours of a possible delay were first reported by gaming new site Kotaku on Wednesday, but Sony made no confirmation at the time. On Saturday morning the game’s creative director Sean Murray, posted on the official PlayStation blog, providing a new release date. Continue reading...

Unisex invariably means a saddle designed to accommodate testiclesThere are a great many reasons why I struggled to keep up with one of the world’s top women’s cycling teams when I chased them around Mallorca. Most were my own fault: my lack of athleticism and undisciplined diet, plus a swollen elbow after I fell off outside the hotel after not fixing on my pedals properly.But I also blame the Fizik Aliante saddle, an instrument of torture that comes with Eastway’s Emitter R4. It isn’t normal to struggle to pee after a 55-mile ride because your bits have been compacted tighter than a rush hour tube train. That’s my excuse for getting dropped by Dani King, anyway, when I joined the Olympic gold medallist and her Wiggle High5 team on a winter training camp. Continue reading...

New technology is helping alcoholics and casual drinkers alike monitor and manage their consumptionHow many units of alcohol do you drink each week? It’s a question most people stumble over.It’s not easy to monitor alcohol intake. So often a doctor asks and the patient tries to quickly calculate the recommended weekly units, before settling on a slightly lower figure. It’s an issue too for those who want to figure out whether they have reached drink-driving limits. But tech companies claim to have a solution to this problem. Continue reading...

Some in Silicon Valley have been threatening the ‘uppity’ press with rhetoric about journalists needing ‘to be taught lessons’. That’s not how it worksNo major American cultural force is more opposed to examination and more active in suppressing it today than Silicon Valley. So when it was revealed this week that Facebook board member Peter Thiel had been secretly bankrolling a lawsuit to inflict financial ruin on the news and gossip site Gawker, Silicon Valley cheered.The investor Vinod Khosla wrote on Twitter that the “press gets very uppity when challenged”. And that these bad journalists need “to be taught lessons”. Continue reading...

Apple wants to diversify beyond its signature product, and has considered buying the owner of HBO and Warner Bros movie studio – but that’s not all, folksWhen you’re the biggest company in the world, with a lead product that is arguably the most successful consumer electronic product of all time, what do you do for an encore?

Unique code signatures shared between malware used in multiple bank attacks suggest involvement of hacking group named ‘Lazarus’, Symantec saysSecurity researchers Symantec have found clues in the malware used to hack into international financial messaging network Swift, which suggest a link to the Sony Pictures hack in 2014.At least three banks have reported financial attacks based on the Swift hack. In February, Bangladesh’s central bank lost $81m (£55m) after fraudulent messages were sent through the network instructing a transfer to an account in the Philippines. In May, a Vietnamese bank came forward to say that it had been targeted by the hackers as well, and had managed to stop a $1m transfer. And later that month, Reuters revealed that a third bank, Ecuador’s Banco del Austro, had also fallen prey. Continue reading...

Amid concerns 18- to 24-year-olds will miss out on having a say in EU referendum, app will encourage users to registerUber will encourage its millions of users to register to vote in the EU referendum as they wait for a taxi this weekend, amid continuing concerns that many young people will miss their chance to take part in the poll. Continue reading...

Near-miss report says drone flew ‘extremely close’ to Boeing 757 and experts say there was a definite risk of collisionA drone was flown just 30 metres from a Boeing 757 jet near Manchester airport, according to an official near-miss report.The pilot of the airliner “expressed his surprise” after spotting the object shortly after take-off, the UK Airprox Board (UKAB) said. Continue reading...

Blizzard’s take on the team-based shooter is as polished as you’d expect, marrying tactical breadth with an emphasis on variety and inclusivityLet’s address the elephant in the room.Hello, elephant. You’re looking nice. Very tall. Overwatch is a lot like Team Fortress 2, Valve’s seminal team-based shooter first released in 2007. Continue reading...

The new electric typewriter has been called ‘pretentious hipster nonsense’, but it’s just plain boring – and that’s precisely the pointIt was with trepidation that I advanced on my local cafe in New York, clutching the handle of my Freewrite “smart typewriter” like a spy en route to a briefcase switch.An electric typewriter that promises digital connectivity without the distractions, Freewrite has largely been dismissed by the tech press. Even the pop culture mavens of Mashable denounced it as “pretentious hipster nonsense”, excoriating its weight (four pounds), diminutive screen (5.5in) and hefty price tag ($499). Continue reading...

Next week Aggie the robot begins tours of Perth’s Art Gallery of Western Australia. But relax human guides – she isn’t ready to take your job just yetThe writing is on the LED screen: our jobs are ours for as long as the robots don’t want them. But no one could have predicted they’d come for the gallery guides first.

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Are electric cars really good enough to take four adults and a week’s worth of luggage from London to the Loire? Samuel Gibbs finds outThe alarm went off at 6am to kickstart our journey, and I was full of trepidation. Driving 706 km (439 miles) in a car with three other adults and enough luggage for a week’s holiday might already feel like a modern labour of Hercules for some, but this trip had an extra challenge: the car would be all electric.The chariot to take us from the south of London to the middle of France would be a Tesla Model S 90D. Fortunately, unlike most other electric cars, the Model S is not a small car, so fitting everyone and everything in wouldn’t be an issue. But a quoted range of just under 350 miles per charge, though one of the longest available, left me a little worried. Would we really get anything like that much milage, with a fully laden car, and at motorway speeds? Would there be enough chargers along the way? And after the fourth recharging stop, would my passengers mutiny? Continue reading...

Thiel acknowledged that he secretly bankrolled lawsuits against the gossip-tinged company and its journalists in order to put the publisher out of businessIt may be a post-ink age, but a Silicon Valley billionaire’s legal campaign against Gawker Media is about to offer a modern test of the old adage: never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.In a blog post Thursday, Gawker CEO Nick Denton warned PayPal cofounder and Facebook board member Peter Thiel that he will face consequences for trying to take down the gossip-tinged media company and challenged him to a public debate in person or online. Continue reading...

Two senators say it could expand nonjudicial subpoena to acquire email records, chat accounts, account login records, browser histories and social media usageTwo US senators have warned that a new bill would vastly expand the FBI’s warrantless access to Americans’ online records.

Dominance of Facebook and Google has seen print ads plummet and newspapers’ once-bright digital future recedeThe boss of the media firm Vice has predicted a “bloodbath” in the industry this year – and, judging by the investor panic that attended the Daily Mail’s latest results, Shane Smith may be right.Investors took fright at a 16% drop in print advertising revenues at the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday in the six months to the end of March, sending parent company DMGT’s share price tumbling by 13%. Continue reading...

Developers expected to welcome ruling that finds Google’s employment of Java code in its Android operating system was fair useGoogle has won a six-year court case brought by software firm Oracle, which claimed Google had infringed its copyright by using 11,500 lines of Java code in its Android operating system.The jury ruled that Google’s use of 37 Java APIs (application programming interfaces) was fair use. The news will be welcomed by developers, who typically rely on free access to APIs to develop third-party services. Continue reading...

Hugely popular on the PC version of Minecraft, multiplayer competitive games are coming to console, starting with a battle modeFor years, PC owners have been able to load up Minecraft, find a server and play a variety of mostly fan-made mini-games, set within the blocky confines of Mojang’s creative masterpiece. From competitive survival tests to giant hide n seek challenges, participants can compete with and against friends in online sessions. So far, the console versions of Minecraft have not supported this feature. Until now.In June, 4J Studios, the Dundee-based developer behind the Xbox, PlayStation and Wii U versions of the game, will launch a free update to the console editions of Minecraft featuring the first in what they plan to be a series of mini-games. They’re starting off with the simply named Battle, an eight-player deathmatch in the last survivor is the winner. Continue reading...

Government Accountability Office report details ‘museum-ready’ machines controlling nuclear force messaging system that are ‘obsolete’The US military’s nuclear arsenal is controlled by computers built in the 1970s that still use 8in floppy disks.A report into the state of the US government, released by congressional investigators, has revealed that the country is spending around $60bn (£40.8bn) to maintain museum-ready computers, which many do not even know how to operate any more, as their creators retire. Continue reading...

Inspiration drawn from titles as diverse as Doom and Hearthstone drive the developer, according to senior game designer Michael ChuOverwatch, the new team-based first-person shooter from World of Warcraft developer Blizzard, has been out for less than 48 hours, but it’s already fairly clear that the game is a hit.Its short, open beta, which concluded two weeks ago, was popular enough to spark a meme in the intervening period detailing all the things players were doing now they couldn’t play the game (sample post: the person who drew all the Overwatch heroes as if they were bowls of lukewarm water). Then, on release day, the Overwatch subreddit briefly drew more traffic than the front page of Reddit itself, seemingly a result of users hammering refresh to find out when the servers were turned on.

Storing voice recordings of people younger than 13 via Alexa, Google Home and Siri appears to flout the Children’s Online Privacy Protection ActIn a promotional video for Amazon’s Echo virtual assistant device, a young girl no older than 12 asks excitedly: “Is it for me?”. The voice-controlled speaker can search the web for information, answer questions and even tell kids’ jokes. “It’s for everyone,” enthuses her on-screen dad.Except that it isn’t. An investigation by the Guardian has found that despite Amazon marketing the Echo to families with young children, the device is likely to contravene the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), set up to regulate the collection and use of personal information from anyone younger than 13. Continue reading...

The majority of the questions sent to Ask Jack are about Windows 10. Here are 10 recent ones, plus a bonus: how to stop or block the upgradeHow much data do I need to download to install Windows 10? Brian Continue reading...

Billionaire venture capitalist, outed as gay by online news site in 2007, provided $10m to support wrestler’s case over sex tapePeter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, has admitted that he is the secret funder of Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against online news site Gawker.Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, sued for invasion of privacy after Gawker published an excerpt of a leaked sex tape in 2012. In March this year, a Florida jury awarded Bollea $140m (£95.1m) in damages against the media organisation. Continue reading...

From Thursday 12pm BST we will be hosting a panel discussion at the Continue conference about the untapped value of games to the cultural establishment

Alyssa Azar, the youngest Australian to summit world’s tallest mountain, took three goes to tell her father the newsIf there is one phone call you do not want to miss, it is the one your daughter makes standing on top of the tallest mountain in the world.But that is what happened to Glenn Azar when his “baby”, Alyssa, made it to the summit of Mount Everest on Saturday. Continue reading...

Labour’s Yvette Cooper is at forefront of cross-party campaign aiming to tackle the growing menace of online abuseLabour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians will come together to call for a national campaign to defeat online misogyny as research reveals the scale of abuse aimed at women on social media.Yvette Cooper is joining forces with the former Tory minister Maria Miller, former Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson and Labour’s Jess Phillips to launch an online public consultation in an attempt to create a national conversation about tackling the growing scale of online abuse. Continue reading...

Volvo is testing driverless lorries to work underground and Google has autonomous cars on the road – but what does it mean for the future of motoring?From self-driving cars to robot lorries, autonomous vehicles are the future of road transportation. But who’s in pole position, who’s stuck in the pit lane and how far away is the starting grid? Continue reading...

Dark Souls meets tilt shift photography in the latest project from respected Toronto developer Capybara Games – and it’s a big deal for Microsoft’s consoleIn the early 1980s, two computer science students Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman released a program on to the University of California’s Unix mainframe that would eventually inspire the most important genre in independent video game development. Named Rogue: Exploring the Dungeons of Doom, Toy and Wichman’s project was a fantasy adventure, in which players crept through a series of visually sparse underground locations, battling monsters and collecting loot. The unique aspect was that these dungeons were procedurally generated, meaning that every time the player loaded up the program, the layout was different. It was like playing a new game every time.Over three decades later and the roguelike genre has become a staple of the indie scene. The basic elements – exploration, looting, procedurally generated environments and the concept of permadeath (ie no lives: once you’re dead, the game is over) – can be found informing hundreds of titles, from Spelunky to Nuclear Throne to Don’t Starve. Continue reading...

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The cuts, which will mainly fall in Finland, mark the end of the US company’s attempt to take on Apple and SamsungMicrosoft is cutting up to 1,850 jobs in its smartphone business just two years after it bought handset maker Nokia in an ill-fated attempt to take on market leaders Apple and Samsung.

The man reportedly bankrolling Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker knows the importance of secrets – and what happens when they’re exposedBillionaire Silicon Valley investor, Donald Trump delegate and Facebook board member Peter Thiel has made secrecy his brand. So when it emerged that Thiel appeared to be bankrolling former wrestler Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker, many people were surprised.Yet by publicly outing him as gay in 2007, Gawker founder Nick Denton shattered the privacy of Thiel’s fiercely guarded personal life and techno-libertarian vision. And Thiel, it turns out, can hold a grudge. Continue reading...

I read Michele Hanson’s article (G2, 24 May) with a wry smile, having spent time earlier modifying a friend’s computer to prevent it updating to Windows 10, as the same thing had nearly happened to me last month.What happens is that Microsoft installs a Trojan horse update along with all the normal ones. Sometime later this malware initiates an upgrade to Windows 10 without asking permission, and no method of cancellation without turning the computer off. Continue reading...

Latest racing title’s eSports mode could lead to successful drivers receiving a real-life licence. How easy will it be for gamer drivers to transfer to the track?Two seemingly contradictory pieces of information came out of Sony’s recent unveiling of Gran Turismo Sport at a lavish event in London. First, this definitely isn’t Gran Turismo 7. In a similar vein to the ‘offshoot’ Prologue series it’s an update, adding new vehicles and tracks to a framework that is, essentially, 2013’s Gran Turismo 6. However, one key addition – the new Sport Mode – could well make this the most important Gran Turismo title so far.At its most basic, Sports Mode is an eSports competition that offers drivers two competitive possibilities: a Nations Cup, in which top players advance through regional finals and on to the world championship; and a Manufacturer Fan Cup, with teams formed by the top driver from each of the three participating continents entering a final 24-hour race. Continue reading...

It used to be Instagram posts of glamorous parties and beach selfies. Now it’s Netflix and bragging about your chilled weekendSocial media is often called out as an outlet for bragging. Or its spin-off, the #humblebrag. We hear all the time about how the pressure to keep up with the shiny, happy people we see on Facebook is making our mental health suffer.It can seem that everyone else’s existence is all #marbs, postcoital selfies, and smug invitation acceptances. Except for my Instagram feed, which is literally just pictures of Hampstead Heath. Continue reading...

Is Android just not good enough for the 15-year Google veteran, or is the one-time search company CEO just keeping tabs on the competition?Despite having been the chief executive of Google for 10 years where he oversaw the launch of Android, and now the executive chairman of Google’s holding company Alphabet, Eric Schmidt uses an iPhone.

In this podcast originally published in April 2012, Aleks Krotoski explores the tension between online identity and anonymity in an interview with Chris Poole

Company unveils new factory in Germany that will use machines to make shoes instead of humans in AsiaAdidas, the German maker of sportswear and equipment, has announced it will start marketing its first series of shoes manufactured by robots in Germany from 2017.

The billionaire investor, who has a difficult history with the site’s tech branch, is paying the legal bills for the ex-wrestler in his sex-tape lawsuit, Forbes reportsBillionaire Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel is secretly funding lawsuits to financially ruin journalist Nick Denton and his media empire Gawker, according to a new report from Forbes.Thiel – who co-founded PayPal, was an early investor in Facebook and has an estimated wealth of $2.7bn – is allegedly paying the legal bills for former wrestler Hulk Hogan’s fight against Gawker. Hogan, who sued Gawker for posting a clip from a sex tape, was recently awarded $115m, a decision Denton is appealing.

Magistrates investigating tax payments reveal tech giant is being investigated for aggravated financial fraud and organised money launderingFrench investigators have raided Google’s Paris headquarters, saying the company is now under investigation for aggravated financial fraud and organised money laundering.In a major escalation of France’s long-running enquiry into Google’s tax affairs, magistrates revealed on Tuesday that the software giant is suspected of evading taxes by failing to declare the full extent of its activities in the country.

A free school for low-income students set to open this fall in Silicon Valley with Priscilla Chan as CEO can’t get permits to start buildingA new school funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, is facing delays in construction due to a water crisis in East Palo Alto, a Silicon Valley city that has struggled with poverty amid the region’s tech boom.The Primary School, a private school for low-income students scheduled to open this fall with Chan as CEO, cannot currently get permits to build its facilities due to a major local water shortage that is creating obstacles for numerous development projects in East Palo Alto, according to city officials. Continue reading...

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

Internal report finds ‘virtually identical’ rates of conservative and liberal topics, but guidelines updated to ‘exclude possibility of improper actions’Facebook has denied allegations that the team responsible for its trending topics section deliberately suppressed conservative views – but says it will improve the feature.Allegations have been made anonymously that the team responsible for choosing trending topics did so with little oversight and deliberately suppressed conservative views. Continue reading...

Facebook has apologized for wrongly banning a photo of plus-sized model Tess Holliday for violating its ‘health and fitness’ advertising policyFacebook has apologized for banning a photo of a plus-sized model and telling the feminist group that posted the image that it depicts “body parts in an undesirable manner”.Related: The ‘perfect body’ is a lie. I believed it for a long time and let it shrink my life Continue reading...

Smaller, independent app fights back by asking users to tweet pictures of their socks with #TinderSuckMySocksTwo’s company but three’s a crowd according to dating app Tinder, which has launched a legal bid to kill off a rival app aimed at people looking for threesomes.Related: Tinder launches group dating feature – and exposes you to Facebook friends Continue reading...