Technology | The Guardian

The room-rental website, now worth $30bn, faces a critical year as city authorities clamp downIn the back room of a pub in Kentish Town, a group of middle-class Londoners are perched on velvet-covered stools, eating hummus and talking about property. On the wall, above a pile of empty beer kegs, a slide presentation is in progress. A video of Airbnb’s recent advert shows smiling hosts opening their front doors and declaring their support for Sadiq Khan’s post-Brexit “London is open” campaign.The audience of Airbnb hosts are there after receiving individual invitations from the company to a “home sharers” meet-up – a concept largely unfamiliar to the slightly bemused crowd. Jonathan, an enthusiastic Californian Airbnb employee, who was recently seconded to London to set up the clubs, is happy to explain: “Homesharing clubs are simply a way of organising this into something … that has a unified voice … then actually takes actions as a collective,” he says, in a less than clear answer. Continue reading...

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk addresses an audience in Los Angeles as he unveils his company’s newest energy product - solar roof tiles. Musk outlined the benefits of an “integrated future” which would allow consumers to charge electric vehicles with renewable solar power, showcasing the tiles on homes once used as the set for US drama Desperate Housewives

I used the horn so much that I can now do a passable impression of it, like David Attenborough and the woodpeckerThe Toyota hybrid range is like a variety of bird – there’s the one you see everywhere, the Prius, and for some reason that makes the rarer ones more exciting. The Rav4, as handsome a hybrid as I’ve seen in a while, has a sporty cousin, the C-HR. I can’t, if I’m honest, tell you what’s better about it (the styling is a bit boxier and more aggressive) but I can tell you that not one but two delivery guys clocked the Rav, said, “Nice car, but…” and got their phones out to show me the C-HR. In a lesson for progressives everywhere, the hybrids have shed their do-gooding image just by being so very new.Related: Honda Jazz car review: ‘Like driving your regular car after packing it for a holiday’ Continue reading...

Some overseas users visiting UK have better coverage roaming than people using British networks, says cross-party report

Employment tribunal judge’s ruling will send shockwaves through companies using the same business modelYaseen Aslam. James Farrar. Remember those two names, because they are giant-killers. This summer the men took on not just one £50bn multinational, but an entire business model. On Friday, they won.As minicab drivers for Uber, Aslam and Farrar were deemed to be self-employed. The status meant they were denied the most basic rights that other workers take: no minimum wage, no sick pay, no paid holiday. But as an employment tribunal judge heard over several days in July, that classification was both wrong and unfair. And he agreed.

Topline profits down 80% for the dating site as more internet daters opt for mobile-based Tinder and other free appsThe dating website Match.com suffered a collapse in profits last year as fickle Britons turned to free smartphone apps to find a date.Topline operating profits at the UK’s biggest dating website plunged by 80% to £1.6m in the year to 31 December. Turnover was also down more than 10% at £38.2m as apps such as Tinder changed the nature of online dating. Continue reading...

Landmark employment tribunal ruling states firm must also pay drivers national living wage and holiday pay with huge implications for gig economyUber drivers are not self-employed and should be paid the “national living wage”, a UK employment court has ruled in a landmark case which could affect tens of thousands of workers in the gig economy.The ride-hailing app could now be open to claims from all of its 40,000 drivers in the UK, who are currently not entitled to holiday pay, pensions or other workers’ rights. Uber immediately said it would appeal against the ruling. Continue reading...

Uber drivers James Farrar and Asif Hanif gives their reactions on Friday after a court ruled in favour of drivers being classified as workers, not self-employed. The change in title means that Uber’s workers will have to be paid the national living wage. Uber workers were not entitled to holiday pay and other rights because they were classified as self-employed. Now as workers they will receive both

This story of idealism, legal wrangling and vast profits reveals a fascinating moment in cultural historyTetris is a phenomenon. Created in 1984 by Russian programmer Alexey Pajitnov, it was initially passed hand to hand by floppy disk. Soon it was crossing national borders and generations like no game before or since. Sales and downloads are now in the hundreds of millions, and the first film of a sci-fi trilogy based on its ever-descending blocks is due in 2018.The story behind its creation – a tale of idealism, legal wrangling, murder and vast profits starring amateur game designers, Soviet bureaucrats, Japanese and American electronics companies and Robert Maxwell – is compelling. Brown chronicles Tetris’s spread and the software giants’ desperate dance around the rights for various markets, and ponders humanity’s need for games. The result is a decent introduction to a fascinating moment in cultural history, touching on Nintendo’s backstory and the 1980s revolutions that made gaming one of the world’s biggest creative industries. But the artwork is forgettable and the characters are flat, leaving the book feeling – in contrast to the game – all too putdownable. Continue reading...

Richard Fox, a senior solicitor and head of Kingsley Napley Solicitors, hails the legal ruling in favour of two Uber drivers that they should be classified as workers, not as self-employed. Speaking on Friday, Fox says employment law is now catching up with the way people work and emphasises that this is a comprehensive decision with further ramifications likely to happen. With drivers classified as workers, not as self-employed, Uber must now pay the national living wage

I am concerned about the planned move towards paperless receipts (Tesco to trial paperless receipts on smartphone, 26 October). There are still shoppers who do not have, and perhaps do not want, a “smart” phone. The most important function of a paper receipt provided at the till is that it proves the customer has paid. This is doubly important given that large supermarket chains can ban from their stores anyone they believe has left without paying. If, as/after I leave a shop without a paper receipt, the shop makes a mistake and accuses me of shoplifting, how do I prove that I did pay? I have never been in this position, but always ask for a receipt as proof. This also means that if I then go into another shop selling the same item I can prove I bought it elsewhere, a situation I have encountered.

Judges who ruled that Uber drivers are not self-employed make scathing assessment of the companyThe employment tribunal judges who ruled that the Uber drivers are not self-employed and should be paid the “national living wage” were scathing in their assessment of the company. Among the most unequivocal sections of the judgment were the following:Any organisation ... resorting in its documentation to fictions, twisted language and even brand new terminology, merits, we think, a degree of scepticism. Continue reading...

The Guardian is hosting a daily chat show at GameCity festival in Nottingham National Videogame Arcade. Here are the first two episodesEvery year, the GameCity festival in Nottingham provides a showcase for new and innovative game developers and thinkers. Now based at the National Videogame Arcade (NVA) and in shops and cafes around the city centre, the event is a celebration of independent development and a focal point for thinking about what games are and can be.Each morning of the festival, the Guardian has been running a chat show in the NVA toast bar, meeting some of the developers showing their new projects, as well as academics analysing the place of games in modern culture. Luckily we’ve been recording the audio, so more people can get to hear them. Continue reading...

To mark the video-sharing app’s demise, we’d like to see your most disappointing Vines from down the years

Article 29 Working Party pan-EU privacy regulator has serious concerns over WhatsApp data and warns Yahoo over data breach and US authority email scanningWhatsApp has been warned by the pan-European privacy watchdogs over its sharing of information with Facebook and asked to pause the transfer of personal data.The gathered European Union data protection authorities, collectively known as the Article 29 Working Party, said they had serious concerns over WhatsApp’s recent privacy policy change and the sharing of user phone numbers with its parent company Facebook. Continue reading...

The constraint of the format fostered a new type of creativity for comedians, actors and artists, who have to move on to new platforms now that Vine is deadThe closure of the video-sharing app Vine was met with sadness but some amount of inevitability by an elite group of social media stars who found their six seconds of fame on the app.Vine, at one time, had 100 million people watching videos every month and 1.5 billion daily video loops. The constraint of the six-second video format fostered a new type of creativity for comedians, actors and artists, which gave rise to Vine stars – internet celebrities who could make a decent living from the platform. Continue reading...

New thinner, lighter Apple laptops have Touch ID fingerprint scanners, but drop standard USB-A ports and SD card slot for four Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports

New laptops significantly more expensive and already-existing machines have prices raised by hundreds of pounds as Apple adjusts for new US dollar-pound sterling rateIf you’re a Mac user, everything just got a lot more expensive. Apple used the cover of introducing three new MacBook Pros at its latest event to quietly raise the prices of every single computer in its line.It’s the latest example of the Brexit effect, with prices updated to account for the new low exchange rate between the US dollar and pound sterling. While the new laptops introduced on 27 October are significantly more expensive than the ones they are replacing, even machines that have seen no change at all have had their prices raised, in some cases by many hundreds of pounds. Continue reading...

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

A security expert sounded the alarm after he was sent the personal details of more than half a million Australian blood donorsA Microsoft regional director and security developer, Troy Hunt, was contacted early on Tuesday morning by an anonymous person on Twitter who told him he had obtained personal information about him and his wife.“This guy reached out to me and said, ‘Here’s your personal data,’” Hunt said. Continue reading...

Apple announced first new MacBook Pros in more than a year, with a ‘Touch Bar’ above the keyboard that can be used for typing emoji

Ryan Collins ran a two-year phishing scam to gain the passwords of more than 100 people, including Jennifer Lawrence, Rihanna and Avril LavigneThe hacker who stole nude photos of female celebrities in 2014 has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison, officials announced on Thursday.In a court in May, Ryan Collins, a 36-year-old from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, plead guilty to federal hacking charges and admitted to a two-year phishing scam to gain passwords of more than 100 people, including actors Jennifer Lawrence and Aubrey Plaza and singers Rihanna and Avril Lavigne.

Alphabet, alongside Facebook, is dominating the fast-growing mobile ad market and has benefited from robust sales on mobile devices and YouTubeGoogle’s parent Alphabet defied expectations to report a 20.2% rise in quarterly revenue on Thursday, while retail giant Amazon slightly missed predicted predicted forecasts due to spending on preparations for the holiday season.Indicating an end to its record-breaking profits streak, Amazon reported profit of $252m or 52 cents per share, though analysts had predicted 85 cents per share. Revenues reached $32.71bn but are predicted to reach between $42bn and $45.5bn for the busy fourth quarter. Continue reading...

Company report describes network of aircraft that can take off and land vertically and lays out plan in support of companies attempting to build themUber’s eyes are on a new prize: flying cars.Outlined in a white paper published this week, the company’s chief product officer, Jeff Holden, describes a network of small, electric aircraft that can take-off and land vertically (VTOL, or vertical take-off and landing, aircraft) to enable speedy and reliable commuting that it claims will ease congestion in cities. Continue reading...

Werner Herzog’s documentary about how the internet has changed civilisation is thorough and thoughtful, if not conclusiveThis week, the prolific film-maker Werner Herzog has also released a Netflix documentary called Into the Inferno, about the terrible might of active volcanoes. Here is his second new film this year (there’s a third to come, called Salt and Fire). It’s another catastrophist study of a colossal force that is indifferent to humans’ puny and irrelevant moral judgement. His subject is the internet and our new world of digital interconnectivity, and he takes a sombre, quite censorious line.Related: Savage kingdoms: Werner Herzog takes us from the Earth’s core into cyberspace Continue reading...

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook reveals the latest MacBook Pro on Thursday from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. The new MacBook Pro will add a fingerprint security reader - similar to the one found on iPhones now - along with other system updates. Most noteworthy is the addition of a touchscreen bar of keys named ‘Touch Bar’, which can contain emojis as. Cook described the new product as incredible

AT&T, Verizon and other companies claim new measure, which includes browsing history, apps and location data, will hamper advertising revenueUS regulators have approved new broadband privacy rules that make internet providers such as Comcast and Verizon ask their customers’ permission before using or sharing much of their data.The move is designed to give citizens more control of their own data, but internet companies claim it will make it more difficult for them to grow their advertising businesses. Continue reading...

Twitter is discontinuing the most creative video platform on the internet. Here we pay tribute to the weirdest, wackiest and most wonderful VinesTwitter announced on Thursday that it will soon kill off one of the weirdest and funniest parts of the internet.Vine, the six-second looping video app launched in 2012, will be “discontinued”, its owner Twitter announced in a post on Medium. Continue reading...

MoMA in New York has just added the first emoji to their collection – Shigetaka Kurita explains how he designed them, and how it all started with the heartI was part of a team that spent about two years designing the first emoji for the launch of i-mode [NTT DoCoMo’s mobile internet system] in 1999. It limited users to up to 250 characters in an email, so we thought emoji would be a quick and easy way for them to communicate. Plus using only words in such a short message could lead to misunderstandings … It’s difficult to express yourself properly in so few characters.In the mid-1990s, before mobile phones, we used to have pagers in Japan called Pocket Bells. They were cheap and really popular among young people, partly because they had a heart symbol. Then a new version of the Pocket Bell came out that was intended more for business use, and the heart symbol was dropped. It caused an outcry, to the extent that young users left DoCoMo and signed up with another Pocket Bell company that had retained the symbol. That’s when I knew that symbols absolutely had to be part of any texting service. That was my main inspiration. Continue reading...

Social network to discontinue Vine mobile app ‘in the coming months’ as it reduces head count and costsTwitter is killing off its social media video-sharing app and platform Vine as it trims its headcount and costs. The social network said the Vine mobile app would be discontinued “in the coming months”.Twitter said in a blog post: “Nothing is happening to the apps, website or your Vines today. We value you, your Vines and are going to do this the right way. You’ll be able to access and download your Vines. We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made.” Continue reading...

Group’s spin-off of its archive of what was once the web’s third most-visited site features 4.5m animated imagesIf you’re nostalgic for a certain time on the internet – a time before your Facebooks and your Twitters, when the only live video was grainy webcam links that updated one frame a minute and your favourite social network was that one forum you’d been on since 1995 – you could do worse than spend a few minutes today on the Internet Archive’s latest project, GifCities. Continue reading...

Borderlands: The Handsome Collection, featuring Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, is free for Xbox One nowMicrosoft is giving away two of the best games of the last console generation for free, possibly by mistake.Borderlands: The Handsome Collection, which contains Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, is free for the Xbox One right now, and users can add the games to their library on Microsoft’s website. Continue reading...

The company’s quarterly results report dropped at 4am local time in California with news of 9% cuts in workforce but better-than-expected revenue of $616m

Host Leigh Alexander chats with popular YouTube star Hannah Hart about the challenges and implications of internet celebrity and putting your life online for all to seeIn 2011, Hannah Hart took the internet by storm when she recorded a video of herself drinking wine and cooking a cheese-less grilled cheese sandwich and uploaded it to the web. Today, her YouTube channel has over 2.5 million subscribers, she’s starred in films and TV programmes, and has recently released her second book. Continue reading...

Stephen has finally got fast broadband installed, but the Wi-Fi signal doesn’t reach his home office. What’s the solution?I’ve just switched from slow ADSL broadband, where the router was outside my office, to fast Virgin broadband, where the router is on the other side of the house. Unfortunately, my computer is struggling to pick-up the Wi-Fi signal. In the past, I’ve tried Wi-Fi extenders from Netgear and Belkin but not had much luck with them. I found that if I placed them where they got a strong enough signal, they didn’t actually extend the signal much further. Will Google’s Wi-Fi mesh routers be the solution, and if so, do you know of any routers like that that can be bought in the UK? StephenWi-Fi is never as fast, and never as reliable, as a wired internet connection. In the old days, before DECT and mobile phones, many people had wires running to landline phones, and it’s still not that hard to do with bulkier Cat5E (E for “enhanced”) or Cat6 cable. Cat6A can deliver 10 gigabits per second over 100 metres of Ethernet cable, which would solve the speed problem for the foreseeable future. Continue reading...

Apple is expected to overhaul its MacBook line of personal computers. Expect a new MacBook pro if the leaks are correct – but no more MacBook AirAt a press event on the morning of 27 October, San Francisco time, Apple is expected to overhaul its MacBook line of personal computers.Leading the event is expected to be an update to its MacBook Pro range of laptops, which has not seen any changes whatsoever for more than 500 days. The biggest alteration to the computers has been leaked by Apple itself, when a software update for macOS Sierra included a number of images showing the new computers in action. Continue reading...

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

Supersized smartphone doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, but it ticks most boxes, with great screen, camera and latest Android 7.1 NougatThe 5.5in Google Pixel XL is the company’s first own-brand phablet, the bigger brother of the 5in Pixel. It’s Google inside and out, but is it better than Samsung or Apple’s efforts?

Lee Jae-Yong joins the board of the electronics giant after Galaxy Note 7 smartphone fiasco brings a huge drop in third-quarter profitsSamsung’s Lee Jae-Yong took a major step towards control of the family-run conglomerate on Thursday, joining the board as the company reported a 30% profit dive following the recall of its flagship Galaxy Note 7 handset.The nomination was approved by an extraordinary meeting of Samsung shareholders, which also focused on the recall fiasco surrounding the handset that has hammered the reputation of the world’s largest smartphone maker. Continue reading...

Skylanders, the first release from Activision Blizzard Studios, is a CGI animation based on a £2.5bn game and toy franchiseInside a converted flower warehouse off a scruffy street in Paris’s 18th arrondissement, the world’s largest computer games company is preparing its latest assault on the world’s screens.On Friday, Skylanders Academy, a CGI animation based on a $3bn (£2.5bn) combined video game/toy franchise aimed at pre-teens, will hit Netflix. Continue reading...

Transport hubs in Los Angeles, Denver and Washington are soon to trial Total Recall-style high-speed body scannersA startup bankrolled by Bill Gates is about to conduct the first public trials of high-speed body scanners powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the Guardian can reveal.According to documents filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Boston-based Evolv Technology is planning to test its system at Union Station in Washington DC, in Los Angeles’s Union Station metro and at Denver international airport. Continue reading...

The 176 tiny designs – a gift from a Japanese phone company – will go on show at New York’s Museum of Modern ArtBack in the day, before cars could drive themselves and phones could airbrush selfies, a Japanese phone company released the first emojis.The year was 1999 and the tiny 12-by-12 pixel designs included smiley faces, hearts of the intact and broken variety, a peace sign and zodiac symbols. Continue reading...

Apple showed off what it calls ‘AirPods’ last month during a launch event for the iPhone 7, but now the company isn’t saying when they’ll be released

Dyn, the victim of last week’s denial of service attack, said it was orchestrated using a weapon called the Mirai botnet as the ‘primary source of malicious attack’

The $3,000 computer is marketed to professionals as Microsoft shifts focus to ‘technology that enables profound creation’Microsoft is getting artsy. The tech giant unveiled tools for artists and designers on Tuesday in Manhattan, including a smartphone app that allows users to scan 3D images of everyday objects and move them around in virtual or “mixed” reality.Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, said he anticipated a greater market for creative tools as the market for video display devices matures. “Much of technology has been slanted toward consumption,” Nadella said. “I believe that the next 25 years will be defined by technology that enables profound creation.” Continue reading...

As the gaming world advances, women are facing the same physical threats online as offline. Players and developers want to do something about itStriding through the snow-covered fortress, shooting zombies with her bow and arrow, Jordan Belamire felt like a god – right up until the moment someone named BigBro442 decided to “virtually rub [her] chest” and make her feel like just another “powerless woman”.“Even when I turned away from him, he chased me around, making grabbing and pinching motions near my chest,” she wrote in a Medium post of her experience playing QuiVR, a virtual reality game. “Emboldened, he even shoved his hand toward my virtual crotch and began rubbing.” Continue reading...

Ambitious – and expensive – high-speed internet program will stop plans to expand to new cities as business reportedly under pressure to cut costsGoogle’s parent company is halting operations and laying off staff in a number of cities where it once hoped to bring high-speed internet access by installing new fiber-optic networks.The company also announced that Craig Barratt, a veteran tech executive who led the ambitious – and expensive – Google Fiber program, is stepping down as CEO of Access, the division of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, that operates the five-year-old program. Continue reading...

Russia’s Vladislav Surkov fell out of favour with Putin but new role in Ukraine talks has made him target for unknown hackersVladislav Surkov was the mysterious Kremlin puppet master who wrote rock lyrics and loved Tupac Shakur yet was simultaneously the chief architect of Vladimir Putin’s system of “managed democracy”.Now, after some time on the sidelines, Surkov is well and truly back in the thick of Kremlin intrigue after a cache of emails purporting to show his office coordinating affairs in separatist east Ukraine was leaked online.

From facial-recognition to dog power, smart technology has come knocking on your door. No, don’t get up …The doorbell, like the landline, is increasingly on its way out. Being in a specific place at a certain time is just not how digital nomads roll. In the past few years, US companies such as SkyBell and DoorBird have offered solutions to the problem of having to be home occasionally by developing doorbells that connect to your smartphone, so you can converse with the deliveryman, passing pal or burglar, whether in or out. The UK’s newly launched Ding, though, is one of the first to do it with a design finish that doesn’t scream “home security paranoiac with own laser trip wires”. Continue reading...

In Playtest, a developer creates an augmented reality horror adventure that uses the player’s own memories to scare them. This is closer to reality than you may thinkThe latest Black Mirror series from Charlie Brooker presents, despite its transition to Netflix, another unsettling collection of future shock nightmares drawn from consumer technology and social media trends. The second episode, Playtest, has an American tourist lured to a British game development studio to test a new augmented-reality horror game that engages directly with each player’s brain via a biorobotic implant. The AI program mines the character’s darkest fears and manifests them into the real-world as photorealistic graphics. Inevitably, terror and mental breakdown follow.The idea of a video game that can analyse a player’s personality and change accordingly may seem like the stuff of outlandish sci-fi to some Black Mirror viewers. Continue reading...