Technology | The Guardian

Nation states have been attacking each other electronically for a decade or more. Historians will eventually give it a name and a start and end dateThe job of the historian is often to pull together broad themes and trends, then give them a snappy title that people will easily recognise and understand. That’s how we end up with labels like “The decline and fall of the Roman Empire” or “The Rise of Hitler and the Third Reich”.As someone who studied history, I’ve had this lingering curiosity about how historians of the future will view our times. It is easy to imagine textbooks in a hundred years with chapters that start with Reagan and Thatcher and end with the global financial crisis and called something like The Western Neoliberal Consensus 1979-2008. Continue reading...

With technology developing at an increasingly rapid pace, as we head into 2017, we ask: will AI machines surpass the human race?

There were many products that promised so much and delivered so littleWhile there were some good things in technology released this year, there were also quite a few let downs. From detonating devices to damp squibs, these are the biggest let downs of 2016.

Experts say report is too little too late and comes after several others from private sector detailing alleged exploits of groups Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear

US firm filed patent document in 2014 for ‘airborne fulfilment centres’ that could use fleet of drones to make deliveriesAmazon has filed a patent for flying warehouses that could use a fleet of drones to make deliveries to customers.A patent document filed in 2014 in the US describes giant airships as “airborne fulfilment centres” (AFCs) that could be stationed above metropolitan areas and used to store and quickly deliver items at times of high demand, using drones dispatched directly from the airship. Continue reading...

Hackers can cause fraud, explosions and house fires, and utility companies should do more to protect consumers, conference toldSmart electricity meters, of which there are more than 100m installed around the world, are frequently “dangerously insecure”, a security expert has said.The lack of security in the smart utilities raises the prospect of a single line of malicious code cutting power to a home or even causing a catastrophic overload leading to exploding meters or house fires, according to Netanel Rubin, co-founder of the security firm Vaultra. Continue reading...

Some record labels have had their biggest revenue rise in more than a decade thanks to services such as Spotify and Apple MusicFive years ago, the demise of the music industry seemed almost inevitable. Recession, rampant piracy, falling CD sales and a fear that “kids just don’t buy music any more” had giant record labels, once oozing wealth, counting the pennies.

Apps offer an enticing temporary escape, but my resolution for 2017 is to swap Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram for facing real life head onI sit with a friend having some seasonal drinks. The second she gets up to go to the toilet, I catch myself reaching for my smartphone. But instead of taking it out and idly filling the two minutes she’s gone, I flip the switch on the side to silent and look around the room instead. I’m practising for 2017.On the face of it, smartphones might seem like hard things to hate. On average, smartphone owners use them for over three hours per day. By the standards of even five years ago, the handheld devices of today are extraordinary pieces of technology that enable a vast range of capabilities. Whether it is communicating entirely in emojis, piloting a drone, or Googling while on the toilet, the things we can do with smartphones would have amazed, and possibly terrified, our ancestors. Continue reading...

Charlie’s mum wants a new laptop for around £200, and there are models with 32GB of storage for £160. However, mum needs a DVD/RW drive …My mum is looking to buy a new laptop after Christmas. Her budget is tight: around £200. She uses it for Microsoft Office, browsing the internet (reading the Guardian) and watching TV. I suggested a 32GB SSD drive – which would be really quick – as she will use USB sticks, SD cards and the cloud for storage. I saw one for £160, but if she bought that, she would need to buy an external DVD drive for burning music to CD etc. Would it just be easier to stay safe and get a standard laptop with a hard drive? Charlie

From Nathan Drake to the Freudian imagery of No Man’s Sky, writers Holly Nielsen and Kate Gray ponder the raunchiest gaming pleasures of the yearWarning: this article contains sexual references, sexual innuendo and unlikely sexual interpretations of ostensibly inoffensive material.It turns out that 2016 was a pretty good year for video games. Everything else might have gone to hell, but games pretty much delivered. From the showy popcorn thrills of Uncharted 4 to the sombre gothic chills of Dishonored 2; from blockbusters to rule-breakers; from lumbering epics to short, sharp shocks, 2016 had it all. Continue reading...

The new controllers from Oculus represent a glimpse of a virtual reality people can really lose themselves inIn 2016, 21st-century virtual reality really arrived. From cheap mobile experiences to exuberant desktop machines, if you wanted to dive into a virtual world, there was a way. But while the headsets opened up possibilities, the new breed of touch controllers are the virtual hands drawing you in.

The signatories to the letter on children’s lifestyles (Screen-based lifestyle harms children’s health, 26 December) make the usual error – compounded by your selective headline – of lumping an enormous variety of cultural experience into one category: “screen-based”, which is then labelled as merely “technology”. This makes about as much sense as lumping all printed matter together under the heading of “paper-based technology”. We know that’s a silly idea because we know that printed matter includes a vast range of cultural products, from novels to cereal packets. Screen-based content is just as diverse. Instead of wringing our hands over the long-established fact that children start to access this content during their first year of life, could we start to give some informed attention to how children begin to “learn about the culture they are born into” (to quote one of the signatories to the letter) and consider the possibility that some screen-based material may be enjoyed and valued by both parents and children, and may make a serious contribution to children’s social and emotional development?

‘No evidence of attack’ in full or partial state recounts, but worries persist that voting machine companies could be ‘central’ targets of future breachesThe US presidential election was correct, according to a crowdfunded effort to recount the vote in key states, but the review also highlighted the unprecedented extent to which the American political system is vulnerable to cyberattack, according to two computer scientists who helped the effort to audit the vote.J Alex Halderman and Matt Bernhard, both of the University of Michigan, campaigned in favor of a recount of the US presidential election, which was eventually spearheaded by Jill Stein, the Green party candidate. Continue reading...

Worldwide system used to coordinate travel bookings between airlines is insecure and easy to exploit, experts revealThe worldwide system used to coordinate travel bookings between airlines, travel agents, and price comparison websites is hopelessly insecure, according to researchers.The lack of modern security features, both in the design of the system itself and of the many sites and services that control access to it, makes it easy for an attacker to harvest personal information from bookings, steal flights by altering ticketing details, or earn millions of air miles by attaching new frequent-flyer numbers to pre-booked flights, according to German security firm SR Labs.

Tech economy is drawing new inhabitants and businesses but is contributing to dislocation, leaving families, teachers and even principals with housing woes

Company has declined to provide audio recorded by smart speaker system at house where man died, according to a reportAmazon has refused to hand over data from an Echo smart speaker to US police want to access as part of an investigation into a murder in Arkansas, according to court records seen by tech industry news site The Information.Arkansas police issued a warrant to Amazon to turn over recordings and other information associated with the device owned by James Andrew Bates. Bates has been charged with the murder of a man found dead in his hot tub in November 2015.

Google and Amazon brought AI into the home and DeepMind built a computer that could outsmart humans at Go. Will 2017 hold similar advancements?Over the course of 2016, artificial intelligence made the leap from “science fiction concept” to “almost meaningless buzzword” with alarmingspeed.Everything has AI now. Period-tracking app Flo “uses a neural network approach” to deliver “high period forecast accuracy”; food delivery app Just Eat launched a chatbot that “sees AI integrated into the ordering experience to ensure that customers receive the best, round the clock support and service”; restaurant guide Borsch “uses artificial intelligence to help people discover the yummiest dishes around”.

Company claimed one-man protest involving ‘giant firecrackers’ led to activation, but it also promoted a link to a false report of a major ‘explosion’

Sony Music Entertainment’s Twitter account was hacked on Monday, publishing fake statements including ‘RIP @britneyspears’Sony Music Entertainment’s Twitter account was hacked on Monday, publishing fake statements that pop music icon Britney Spears had died.Sony Music, a unit of Sony Corp, said in a short statement that its social media account was “compromised” but that the situation “has been rectified”. Continue reading...

Jihadi scholars’ accounts focused mostly on war in Syria and frequently attacked Islamic StateTwitter has suspended the account of Jordanian preacher and al-Qaida spiritual leader Abu Qatada, along with two other influential scholars aligned with the extremist group.The three accounts, which between them had tens of thousands of followers and were used several times a day, were at the heart of an online network of al-Qaida supporters, said Cole Bunzel, scholar of jihadism at Princeton University. Bunzel tweeted: Continue reading...

Last week’s government announcement of investment into superfast broadband under the Broadband Delivery UK programme (theguardian.com, 22 December) is welcome news for the UK economy, as there is plenty of evidence to suggest that lack of broadband coverage is preventing many businesses from operating to their full potential, particularly in rural areas. But beyond the investment headlines, we also need to see evidence of a joined-up approach to finding a long-term solution to providing universal superfast broadband, which, as well as improving 4G and 5G, will mean converging fibre broadband and local wireless infrastructure, rather than still relying in many areas on the old copper systems we have today. Ultimately, the government should invest in a gold-standard solution using fibre and wireless technology to create a future-proof broadband infrastructure that will enable the UK to become a global leader in communications networks.

The internet provided humorous respite for those who became cynical and weary amid the onslaught of bad, worse and fake news. Here are some highlightsLevity may not be the first thing people think of when they consider the year 2016. But there was diversion from this year’s most popular internet memes. Not all were positive. Or amusing. But here we go! Continue reading...

Tim Wu on a decades-long campaign to monetise attention which has reached new intensity in the Facebook ageTim Wu is an expert on concentrations of power. An author, activist and lawyer, he is most famous for coining the phrase “net neutrality” – the idea that the oligopoly that owns our internet infrastructure shouldn’t charge differently for different kinds of data. In his new book, he targets another kind of corporate domination: the industry that monopolises our attention.According to Wu, this industry emerged from the first world war. In 1914 Germany could mobilise 4.5 million men; the best Britain could do was 700,000. To build a bigger army, the British government embarked on the first systematic propaganda campaign in history. It printed 50 million big, colourful recruitment posters and plastered them on shops, houses, buses and trams throughout the country. It staged rallies and parades. It filled vans with film projectors and screened patriotic films in towns across Britain. And it worked: stirred by this unprecedented experiment in state-sponsored persuasion, millions of young men marched off to gruesome, pointless deaths in a gruesome, pointless war. Continue reading...

In a bad year for many things, technology actually had a good time - but what are the products and services really worth buying?2016 may have been a bad year for most things, but it was actually a pretty good year for technology, with plenty of new products and services released that were worth the digital ink used to describe them.

From a rise in AI and improvements to self-driving cars, to televised eSports and all-out cyberwar, the coming year has it allIn some ways, tech in 2017 will be a steady progression from what came before it. Time marches on, and so too does the advance of technology. In other ways, though, it will be just as upended as the rest of the world by the unprecedented disruption that 2016 has left in its wake.Here are the trends to watch out for in the coming year: Continue reading...

Police and aviation authorities say anyone receiving the gadget as a Christmas present should visit dronesafe.uk website for safety adviceNew drone owners have been warned about the risks of flying the devices as soon as they unwrap them this Christmas.Police and aviation authorities urged users to read up on strict rules about the remote-controlled gadgets before taking them for their first spin. Continue reading...

What you call your wireless network might seem a trifling decision, but it’s a window into the way a person wants to present themselves in a connected worldWhat you choose to call your wireless network can say a lot about you. If you’re the attendee of an “alt-right” event at Texas A&M University who decided to promote genocide in the form of a network ID, it can say you are violently racist. While it is perhaps not surprising to see the USA’s new far-right white supremacist movement engaging with the language of Nazism, there seems something particularly insidious in using such hateful language in something as benign as a Wi-Fi connection.What turns a simple technical feature into a personalised billboard? Amber Burton, a senior lecturer in digital media and communications currently researching digital identities, likens the naming of our networks to a “digital T-shirt”. Continue reading...

Brian Krebs has been sent heroin and a wreath in an attempt to discredit and intimidate him but sees irresponsible hardware manufacturers as the real threatBrian Krebs does not use heroin, but sometimes people send it to him anyway. The 43-year-old Alabama native writes Krebs on Security, a one-man operation focused on digital crime. His encyclopedic knowledge of the subject and his network of contacts has made his blog essential reading for anyone interested in cybercrime and a coveted lecturer at some of the biggest companies in the world. It has also made him some dangerous enemies – hence the heroin, meant as a sinister, silencing message.Looking back on a year in which Russian cyber-spies have been accused of meddling in the US election, Yahoo announced that 1bn email accounts were compromised and hackers used internet-connected devices including baby monitors, webcams and thermostats, to take down some of the world’s biggest websites, what surprises Krebs the most is that people are surprised at all. Continue reading...

The star of the video game adaptation – alongside co-star Marion Cotillard and director Justin Kurzel – discusses the plausibility of past lives and inheriting the experiences of our ancestors. Fassbender also cautions against colonisation, while Kurzel speaks about mainstream snobbishness towards the gaming community.• Assassin’s Creed opens in the UK on 1 January 2017 Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Friday! And this is the last Chatterbox before Christmas, so we’d like to wish all out chatterboxers a very merry Christmas and a wonderful new year. Thank you for reading our stuff and chatting here with us. Continue reading...

Bridgewater Associates has a team of engineers working on a project to automate decision-making to save time and eliminate human emotional volatilityThe world’s largest hedge fund is building a piece of software to automate the day-to-day management of the firm, including hiring, firing and other strategic decision-making.

Breman Museum in Atlanta says it is paying $2 a click to stop neo-Nazi site being top result for ‘did the Holocaust happen’A Jewish heritage museum has accused Google of profiting from Holocaust denial because it is paying to prevent a neo-Nazi website from appearing as the top result for “did the Holocaust happen”.The marketing director of the Breman Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, said it was “nauseating” that Google directed users to the white supremacist site, and added that it was paying Google up to $2 a click to direct searchers to its own site via AdWords, Google’s pay-per-click advertising service. Continue reading...

CrowdStrike says malware implant was used to track movements of artillery units, adding to suspicions Russia is involvedA new report suggests the same hacking group believed to have hacked the Democrats during the recent presidential election also targeted Ukrainian artillery units over a two-year period, that if confirmed would add to suspicions they are Russian state operatives.The report, issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, said a malware implant on Android devices was used to track the movements of Ukrainian artillery units and then target them. The hackers were able to access communications and geolocations of the devices, which meant the artillery could then be fired on and destroyed. Continue reading...

The 2016 US presidential election wasn’t the first case of a successful email hacking faux scandalA batch of stolen emails was released to the public, with evidence pointing towards Russian hackers. The media ran through the formerly private correspondence with a fine-toothed comb, looking for dirt. Although little if any damning information was found, public trust in the hacking victims was severely eroded. The volume of media coverage created the perception that where there’s smoke, there must be fire, and a general presumption of guilt resulted.The year was 2009, and the victims were climate scientists working for and communicating with the University of East Anglia. The story was repeated in 2016 with the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee. Continue reading...

Research finds leaving social network for a week increases life satisfaction, especially among heavy users and ‘lurkers’Taking a break from Facebook can boost emotional wellbeing and life satisfaction, with the effects particularly pronounced among people who “lurk” on the social network without actively engaging with others, a study suggests.The research by the University of Copenhagen showed the effects of quitting for a week were also strong among heavy users and those who envied their Facebook friends, suggesting that people who pore irritably over the posts of others may benefit the most. Continue reading...

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

Imaginative readers shared their home tech projects – here are some of our favourites, from their visionary solutions to the delightfully pointless

Sheets bear the message ‘welcome to Japan’ and contain information on Wi-Fi spots and other travel informationJapan has taken its reputation for hygiene up another notch with the introduction of “toilet paper” for smartphones inside toilets at Narita international airport.In a new take on the meaning of public convenience, users are invited to pull off a piece of paper from a dispenser next to the regular toilet roll and give their phone screens a germ-busting polish. Continue reading...

California DMV announced it had revoked the registration of 16 autonomous Uber cars, which were caught on numerous occasions running red lightsCalifornia has forced Uber to remove its self-driving vehicles from the road, canceling the company’s controversial pilot program in San Francisco after a week of embarrassing reports of traffic violations and repeated legal threats from state officials.The department of motor vehicles (DMV) announced late Wednesday that it had revoked the registration of 16 autonomous Uber cars, which the corporation deployed without proper permits last week and which were caught on numerous occasions running red lights. Continue reading...

Company insists traffic violations in San Francisco are the result of ‘human error’ by drivers who can take control if needed, but witness account contradicts thisAn autonomous Uber malfunctioned while in “self-driving mode” and caused a near collision in San Francisco, according to a business owner whose account raises new safety concerns about the unregulated technology launch.The self-driving car – which Uber introduced without permits, as part of a testing program that California has deemed illegal – accelerated into an intersection while the light was still red and while the automation technology was clearly controlling the car, said Christopher Koff, owner of local cafe AK Subs. Continue reading...

If board games just won’t do it this year, here are some alternatives guaranteed to get everyone dancing, racing, cooking or indeed fightingAt Christmas – as with any occasion where your whole extended family is crammed into one house amid an abundance of unresolved tensions and alcohol – Monopoly is not always the answer. Similarly, there are times in life when Trivial Pursuit is just going to make everything worse, and when people simply don’t want to hear you explain the rules to Settlers of Catan for the 300th time. Sometimes, only video games will do.So, if at any point during the festive season you find yourself desperate for shared entertainment options (that don’t involve getting out in the fresh air, of course), here is a selection box of local multiplayer titles that will fit the bill. All of them are available for current machines, and most can be downloaded in a couple of hours. This Christmas, don’t become a victim of charades. Continue reading...

From Russia and the US election to revelations about Yahoo, the hallmark of the major cyber-attacks this year has been just how public they have becomeWhile new revelations about Russian hacking during the US election continue to make headlines, they were by no means the only big cyber-attacks of the last year. In fact, there were so many that you could dub 2016 as “the year of the hack”.A hallmark of 2016 cyber-attacks has been just how public they have become. On 21 October, an attack on internet infrastructure provider Dyn with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack took down access to Netflix, Facebook, Twitter plus the Guardian, CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and others. Continue reading...

Fifa belongs to a select group of titles familiar to people who have no interest in gaming – or even real football. What’s the secret of its success?Jan Tian stood in nervous silence in the departure hall of Beijing Capital International Airport. Beside him, his sister held an envelope containing a thousand yuan, close to her entire year’s wages. It was May 1993 and China’s capital was humid, its parks ablaze with tulips, crab apples and red azaleas. But Tian, who had graduated from Beijing University a decade earlier and now worked in Vancouver for the video game company Electronic Arts, had not come to sightsee. The previous week, he had received a phone call to say that his father had suffered a stroke and Tian’s bosses had booked him an emergency flight to China.After a week, the doctors had given their prognosis: Tian’s father would be paralysed down his left side, but would recover. As concern yielded to relief, Tian’s thoughts returned to the work he had left behind in Canada. The release date for EA Soccer, his current project, had recently been brought forward, after an executive walked past an office and heard staff, who were playing an early version of the game, whooping with excitement. For the game to be on shelves by Christmas, it would need to be finished by October. They had less than five months. Continue reading...

Zuckerberg’s dead-eyed delivery during a two-minute humblebrag about his artificial intelligence tool Jarvis makes you question who the real robot isIt’s been a horrible year for Facebook and the world, but that hasn’t stopped Mark Zuckerberg from sending a saccharine digital Christmas (sorry, non-denominational holiday season) card, in the form of a two-minute video, showcasing his perfect life.Soundtracked by plinky-plonky music, Zuck presents a simple AI called “Jarvis” (named after Iron Man’s butler) that he’s spent about 100 hours this year programming. Jarvis, who is voiced in the video by Morgan Freeman, is the virtual assistant the Facebook CEO set out to build as a personal challenge that would help him understand the state of artificial intelligence. Continue reading...

Social network could face fine of up to 1% of global turnover in 2014 prompted by privacy policy change for WhatsApp that shared user data with FacebookThe European commission (EC) has filed charges against Facebook for providing “misleading” information in the run-up to the social network’s acquisition of messaging service WhatsApp after its data-sharing change in August.

Game designer Jack de Quidt asks Oculus whether its VR headset – and Touch controllers – will really deliver new narrative experiencesThe very first thing I saw in virtual reality was Wevr’s theBlu demo, back in the early days of the HTC Vive headset. It’s the thing a lot of people mention when they’re asked about the most compelling VR experiences, and with good reason: the demo transports you to the helm of a sunken ship, the whole ocean above your head; it allows you to take in the beauty of the scene for a few minutes before, out of the depths, a vast blue whale slowly emerges, dwarfing you.I took the headset off and walked away across the busy floor of the game conference, but I could still feel the water around me. I told my friends. They joined the long queues. They told their friends. And that was the entire story that was told: there is a whale and it is beautiful. Since then, I’ve flown spaceships and climbed buildings and repaired robots in VR. I’ve shot a variety of floating objects. I’ve sat cross-legged in the middle of Venice’s Piazza San Marco and looked down on the people in the flooded square. Continue reading...

At company Q&A, Apple CEO argued it is important to engage with president-elect and suggested a bright future for desktopTim Cook has spoken to Apple employees in a closed Q&A about his decision to meet with US president-elect Donald Trump, arguing that it’s more important to engage than stand on the sidelines “yelling”.Cook also answered employee questions about the perception that Apple has abandoned its Mac line of desktop computers, and about what he thinks most differentiates the company from its competitors. Continue reading...

Taxi-hailing app loses $2.2bn in first nine months of the year amid setback to roll-out of self-driving carsUber lost $2.2bn (£1.77bn) in the first nine months of the year despite a surge in revenues, according to reports, adding to the taxi-hailing app’s woes as it faces a setback in plans to launch self-driving cars.The San Francisco-based firm was valued at more than $65bn in a $12.5bn fundraising effort earlier this year but has remained secretive about its financial performance. Continue reading...

Milorad Trkulja sued Google, arguing when terms such as Melbourne underworld criminals were entered, images of him showed upAn appeals court has found in favour of Google after a man claimed the search engine had defamed him by publishing photos of him linked to hardened criminals of Melbourne’s underworld.Milorad Trkulja sued Google, arguing when search terms such as Melbourne criminal underworld photos and Melbourne underworld criminals were entered, images of him showed up. Continue reading...