Technology | The Guardian

Reviewers given discounts or free products award higher ratings, detrimentally affecting Amazon’s star systemSo-called incentivised reviews, where people are given products in return for write-ups on Amazon, are skewing results, artificially increasing the star ratings, according a report.

Delayed effect of March 2016 software update sees third-party printer cartridges stop working in Hewlett-Packard machinesHewlett-Packard printers have suddenly started rejecting ink cartridges produced or refilled by third parties, apparently due to a “ticking timebomb” left by the manufacturer in an update released in March 2016.The printers, in the company’s OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro and OfficeJet Pro X ranges, accepted refills made by third-parties and sold at a significantly lower price than the official ink made and sold by HP itself. But on 13 September, the printers began to reject those refills, with error messages including “cartridge problem”, “one or more cartridges are missing or damaged” and “older generation cartridge”. Continue reading...

California judge decides a jury should hear the accusations made against the headphones mogul by a former partnerDr Dre faces the prospect of a gruelling lawsuit after a California appeals court allowed a former hedge fund manager to go ahead with his case against Beats Electronics over royalties for Beats headphones.Steven Lamar first brought his case two years ago, arguing that he was “the founder of Beats headphones, its design and corporate identity”, and that he had done the preparatory work on setting up Beats and demanding a cut of royalties on future sales of headphones derived from the original design, instead of just the 4% he gets on past models. Continue reading...

Highest court in Italy recently upheld a ruling that, after a period of two years, an article in an online news archive had expired, ‘just like milk or yoghurtEver since the European court ordered Google to delist a 16-year-old article about a bankruptcy, web watchers have wondered how the ‘right to be forgotten’ would evolve.Mario Costeja González’s ‘Data and Goliath’ victory in 2014 in Spain has meant that human concepts of fairness are now applied to Google Search, which is subject to European data protection laws. Continue reading...

Like free stuff? Of course you do, you’re reading the online version of our student guide. Whether it’s opera or gaming, here are more cash-saving culture hacks

As the iPhone 6S turns one, Alex Hern looks back on what’s niggled, what’s grown on him, and what is and isn’t getting fixed with the iPhone 7When the iPhone 6S hit the shops, we called it “a very good phone, ruined by rubbish battery life”. A year on, with the iPhone 7 on the shelves and iOS 10 on devices, the 6S is now the budget option in Apple’s line-up. But how has the phone aged? Is it still very good? Does the battery life still suck? Will the 6S be remembered as a high point in the iPhone’s history, or an era to be slightly buried?I’ve been using an iPhone 6S – in rose gold, naturally, and I’m not even sure if I’m doing this out of irony anymore – for the past year. Some of what I hated, I’ve come to love, and some of what I loved, I’ve come to hate. And some bad stuff is just still bad. Continue reading...

Head of Aftenposten, which forced backdown over ‘napalm girl’ photo, accuses Facebook founder of hiding from debate

Diddy Kong, Waddle Dee, Bub and Bob … which is the fluffiest, most doe-eyed creature ever to grace the video game menagerie?It’s a question that has bothered gamers – and pet lovers – for many years. Exactly what is the cutest animal ever to appear in video game form? Certainly pixellated critters have been a staple protagonist for game designers since Donkey Kong first stamped his way up the building in Nintendo’s 1981 arcade classic.Since then, as in the world of animated movies, there have been many hundreds of anthropomorphised heroes – with designers relying heavily on our instinctual protective love of small animals with gigantic eyes. Continue reading...

Aftenposten editor who locked horns with Facebook over censorship of ‘napalm girl’ photo challenges company to respondIn every TV studio where Facebook’s powerful position is being debated, one chair remains empty. In every newspaper article, every blogpost and every Facebook thread that challenges the company, one participant is missing.Where is Mark Zuckerberg? A man now more powerful than most state leaders. Continue reading...

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

A court summons has been issued, as lawsuit says the public needs to know how an unidentified vendor broke into one of the world’s most popular productsA federal court in Washington DC has issued a summons to the FBI after a group of media organizations filed a suit compelling them to release details about how they hacked an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino killers.

White House will publish footsteps for auto-makers interested in making self-driving vehicles and model legislation for states that want to legalize themThe White House will release guidelines for self-driving automobiles on Tuesday, as well as model legislation recommended to states that want to follow in the footsteps of California, Florida and Nevada, which have legalized automated vehicles.

Financial services providers are launching a national campaign to combat rise in fraud and remind customers to stop and think

Officials allege that Google Indonesia paid less than 0.1% of total income and taxes owed last year, as investigation into last five years escalated to criminal caseIndonesia plans to pursue Google’s parent company Alphabet for five years of back taxes, meaning the search firm could face a bill of more than $400m for 2015 alone if it is found to have avoided payments, a senior government tax official has said.Muhammad Hanif, head of the tax office’s special cases branch, told Reuters its investigators went to Google’s local office in Indonesia on Monday. Continue reading...

The Wireless Emergency Alert asked residents Monday morning to help look for Ahmad Khan Rahami, the first time the system has been used in a manhuntNew Yorkers were rattled Monday morning by an alert from the Wireless Emergency Alert system (WEA) on their mobile devices, calling for their aid in a manhunt for someone suspected of terrorism, the first time the system has been used for such a callout.The alert, sent to some but not all cellphones in the New York area, read: “WANTED: Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28-yr-old male. See media for pic. Call 9-1-1 if seen.” The alert was sent between 7.30 and 8.30am on Monday. By 11.25am, officials had announced that Rahami had been taken into custody after a shootout in Linden, New Jersey. Continue reading...

Laetitia Birbes accused YouTube staffer of threatening her career on video platform if she asked tough questionsThe European commission has said Jean-Claude Juncker needed no protection from awkward questions after a video blogger accused a staffer at YouTube of trying to censor her questions to the EU chief executive.Juncker, 61, gave a series of live interviews on YouTube last Thursday to young social media celebrities, including French vlogger Laetitia Birbes, aiming to counter an image of Brussels bureaucrats as stuffy and out of touch. Continue reading...

The traditional PES v Fifa rivalry is back – and Konami has produced its best football simulation since the glory days of PlayStation 2Since the mid-2000s, Pro Evolution Soccer (now formally abbreviated to PES) has resembled one of those once-great footballing names now reduced to scraping an existence in the lower divisions – a Leeds United or Sheffield Wednesday, say. In the early 2000s, though, PES’s annual tussle with EA Sports’ Fifa was one of the games industry’s great rivalries. PES was the option for the purists, its stimulating fast-paced and highly tactical gameplay providing a thrilling simulation of the beautiful game. But Fifa had the flashy presentation and its expensive official licence, and from 2008 onwards a much-improved on-pitch experience, allowing it build a seemingly unassailable lead. As a result, Fifa became one of the UK’s best-selling games, PES stagnated.However, last year’s PES 2016 represented an impressive comeback, thanks mainly to vastly improved graphics and physics brought by a switch to the Fox game engine, which also powered Metal Gear Solid V. Happily, PES 2017 builds considerably on that sudden improvement, addressing many (though not all) of the criticisms that still dogged its predecessor. Compared to the commercial might of Fifa 2017, it’s still an underdog of Leicester City proportions, but in some fundamental areas it outshines its brash, flashy rival. Continue reading...

Microsoft’s headset, originally for gamers, looks like ski goggles meets bifocals meets Tom Cruise in Minority Report, but its purpose is a serious onePassengers in a ThyssenKrupp elevator in the tallest building in the western hemisphere might have felt their ears pop on the way to the 63rd floor last Thursday. There, using Minority Report-style mixed-reality glasses, the German engineering behemoth had joined Microsoft to demonstrate the bleeding edge of elevator repair technology.Related: Minecraft on Hololens: the future of gaming is right in front of your eyes Continue reading...

Testing of see-through cases that cover the screen and touchscreen gloves shows most do not activate the home buttonThe iPhone 7’s new solid-state home “button” does not work without skin contact, rendering the phone unaccessible when placed inside a sports armband, a waterproof case or when the user is wearing touchscreen gloves.

Author of a book about the controversial court ruling set to speak about its implications alongside a Google executiveIn May 2014, the European Court of Justice ruled that people had a “right to be forgotten”. So individuals could have links to articles about them expunged from search engines.It meant that the most popular search engine, Google, was required to delete “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” data from its results whenever a member of the public requested it. Continue reading...

A new world proves less than brave, while a blast from the past offers retro thrills and an RPG classic is probably one for the fansXbox One, PC, Microsoft Home Studios, cert: N/A

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

Diesel cars by Fiat, Suzuki and Renault among makers emitting up to fifteen times European standard for nitrogen oxideA year on from the “Dieselgate” scandal that engulfed Volkswagen, damning new research reveals that all major diesel car brands, including Fiat, Vauxhall and Suzuki, are selling models that emit far higher levels of pollution than the shamed German carmaker.The car industry has faced fierce scrutiny since the US government ordered Volkswagen to recall almost 500,000 cars in 2015 after discovering it had installed illegal software on its diesel vehicles to cheat emissions tests. But a new in-depth study by campaign group Transport & Environment (T&E) found not one brand complies with the latest “Euro 6” air pollution limits when driven on the road and that Volkswagen is far from being the worst offender. Continue reading...

Recruitment firms are searching for skilled staff and senior executives to lead R&D teams in Bulgaria, Hungary and RomaniaCarmakers are shifting their research centres to eastern Europe following the Brexit vote to lower costs and maintain unfettered access to European markets.Recruitment firms are on the lookout for skilled staff and senior executives who can lead research and development teams in Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria. Continue reading...

Questions surround Tour de France winner and British Olympic champion’s use of medical certificates for banned substancesJust last month Bradley Wiggins, the first British man to win the Tour de France, was basking in the glory of becoming the country’s most decorated Olympian at another glittering Games for Team GB’s cyclists.

Another Apple launch, another innovation – this time the loss of the headphone jack. But is built-in obsolescence and minimalism depriving us of the sheer joy of ‘things’, asks Aleks KrotoskiAnyone who’s ever watched toddlers playing in a sandpit knows that the concept of the death of the physical is vastly over-rated. These tiny tots – the very manifestations of Freud’s self-obsessed, filterless id – will fixate on any worthless piece of plastic within their grasp, and will cut anyone who tries to come near it. “Mine!” is the war cry of this generation (at least in their current, unsocialised guises). Physical objects are the simulacra of their mini selves, and ownership is their way of asserting control over their burgeoning sense of who they are. Like heck anyone’s going to take that away from them.And yet there are predictions and bestsellers and trend look books that suggest that the future is not physical, but a clutter-free space in which we are surrounded by nothing but a handful of beautiful things. Continue reading...

Software programmed to interact with humans is hot property in Silicon Valley, with potential benefits for businesses, consumers – even the bereaved‘Chatbots are the new apps,” said Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella earlier this year. He was not the first senior tech exec to make this claim.“Threads are the new apps,” suggested Facebook’s head of messaging products David Marcus in January, referring to the threads of conversation in apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Continue reading...

Robot deception, addiction and possibility of AIs exceeding their remits noted as hazards that manufacturers should considerIsaac Asimov gave us the basic rules of good robot behaviour: don’t harm humans, obey orders and protect yourself. Now the British Standards Institute has issued a more official version aimed at helping designers create ethically sound robots.

Short-term sublets can turn into a nightmare, but a tribunal ruling offers some hope to long-suffering residents

Google admitted their software had been udderly ‘overzealous’, but didn’t begrudge cow for milking its newfound fameWe are used to faces and number plates being obscured by Google to protect privacy for images on Street View, but animals don’t often suffer the same fate – except for this Cambridge cow.The picture, which was taken last summer at Coe Fen, was spotted by the Guardian’s US opinion editor David Shariatmadari. Continue reading...

MDLinking aims to be a WhatsApp, LinkedIn and virtual reality video library rolled into one to allow doctors from Afghanistan to Angola to share skillsImagine you’re a doctor in Swindon and a patient with a chewing tobacco habit turns up with unusual tongue lesions. What if you could, at the press of a few buttons, locate and get instant advice from the Mumbai-based world expert on cancers related to chewing tobacco?This is the vision for a new app which aims to transform the way in which 8.5 million doctors around the world share their knowledge and skills. Continue reading...

The video-game theorist has turned his attention to play in the real world, and how it can improve our livesProfessor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and an Atlantic contributing editor, Ian Bogost is one of the foremost writers on gaming culture – though he’s probably best known for the Facebook game Cow Clicker, which, despite being a satire, became a viral hit. In his new book, Play Anything, Bogost takes his expertise away from the screen and into the real world, arguing that in the 21st century we’ve lost track of what it really means to “play”.You’ve become known – as you put it – as the “Cow Clicker guy”. But now you’ve written a book warning against the dangers of indulging in such aimless fun…

What happened when the rock star, the professor and the philanthropist met? They built the first ever ‘flat-pack’ truckPrice: to be decided, but much cheaper than any other ATV, possibly between £10,000 and £15,000

Laura Trott has just launched a range of four bikes through Halfords. Good spec and a great price make them worth a look, even if you aren’t an OlympianLaura Trott has had quite a summer. She became the first woman in British history to win four Olympic gold medals. As if that were not enough, she’s now also overseen the launch of a range of bicycles for Halfords – aimed purely at women. There are four in the collection, ranging from an entry-level £499 hybrid up to this RD3 road bike. Trott has been closely involved in the design of each, casting her eye over everything from crank arms to the length of the top tube and even the selection of the saddle (Selle Italia) and wheels (RS11 race rims). Most importantly, she says, is that the geometry of each bike has been specifically geared to fit the female form. I don’t have a female form, but can tell you the RD3 is fast, strong and lightweight. Just like the Olympian herself… (halfords.com)Price: £899

Loss of public trust killed the USSR and it can bring down Western elites tooAsked by Bloomberg this month about Russian involvement in the hacking of the US Democratic national committee, Vladimir Putin issued a non-denial denial. Basically, his answer boiled down to this: whoever did it did a good thing. This response only added to the stir created by the initial accusation that Russia was behind the activities of the “Fancy Bears”. The fear of Russia manipulating presidential elections in the world’s mightiest democracy has been spreading across the United States.Getting to the real perpetrators of hacking attacks is notoriously difficult. Yet seen from the Kremlin hackers perform a valuable public service by revealing secrets – not to foreign intelligence services, but to the western public. The political power of these revelations was first demonstrated by WikiLeaks, which broke the confidentiality of US diplomatic cables. The effect was much enhanced by the Snowden files, which exposed, inter alia, US spying on other western leaders. Continue reading...

From Trump’s mastery of Twitter to the insecurity of technology, cynicism and fear threaten our liberal democracyEver since the internet went mainstream in the 1990s people wondered about how it would affect democratic politics. In seeking an answer to the question, we made the mistake that people have traditionally made when thinking about new communications technology: we overestimated the short-term impacts while grievously underestimating the longer-term ones.The first-order effects appeared in 2004 when Howard Dean, then governor of Vermont, entered the Democratic primaries to seek the party’s nomination for president. What made his campaign distinctive was that he used the internet for fundraising. Instead of the traditional method of tapping wealthy donors, Dean and his online guru, Larry Biddle, turned to the internet and raised about $50m, mostly in the form of small individual donations from 350,000 supporters. By the standards of the time, it was an eye-opening achievement. Continue reading...

• Cyclist emphasises Geert Leinders had no involvement with allergy treatment

It is impossible to critique unless you put the price to one side, but that is unfair on all the other carsIt is a car that people crossed the road to call nice. One guy undertook me in a chimp display and ran into the car in front of him; I tore past the wreckage (marred bumper), leaving him speechless with rage. The Audi RS6 was the best of cars, it was the worst of cars.It was only not £100,000 because, in some silted recess of car-industry restraint, that is still understood to be an obscene amount to spend on a car. Instead, with all its trimmings, it was £99,420. What it was trying to achieve – a pleasurable, solid but chic family car that at the flick of a switch turns into a sports car that could quite plausibly take off or fire rockets – is an insanely expensive proposition. Incomprehensible extras (the carbon styling package, the “5-V-spoke” star design black gloss alloy wheels) added another Mazda to the price. You could buy this car, or you could buy a house in Lancashire, or you could buy a boat. It is impossible to critique unless you put the price to one side, but that is unfair on all the other cars. Because it is amazing; and maybe all the other cars would be, too, if they took leave of their senses. Continue reading...

Darren Martin, whose brother Lee was killed by a van driver using a mobile phone, says proposed £200 fine no deterrentThe brother of a man killed by a van driver using a mobile phone has said proposals to double the fine for using a device behind the wheel are not high enough.Darrell Martin said police told him there was 90 seconds of clear road when Christopher Gard, who had at least six previous convictions for using a phone at the wheel, could have seen his brother Lee, but failed to do so. He collided with the cyclist at 65mph on 12 August last year. Continue reading...

Reported closure of the tech firm’s London base is likely to lead to the loss of 400 jobsThe UK office of one of the world’s leading technology firms, Skype, is to close, it has been reported.Related: Britain leads Europe in tech, with 18 of 47 $1bn companies – report Continue reading...

• Team GB gold medallists among four more Britons whose TUEs are listed

Love, 31, who has Asperger syndrome, could face a 99-year prison sentence for hacking into missile defence centresLauri Love, the student accused of hacking into the computer systems of the US missile defence agency, Nasa and the Federal Reserve, has lost his appeal against extradition to America.Judge Nina Tempia said the 31-year-old, who has Asperger syndrome, could be cared for by “medical facilities in the United States prison estate” and implied that he should answer the “extremely serious charges” in the country where the damage was inflicted.

From old railway tracks repurposed as routes for fibre-optic cables to cold war bunkers retrofitted to store data, Hu shows that the intangible cloud has a solid infrastructureThe cloud is “a system of networks that pools computing power”. You may think of it as a mute and ethereal concept but for Tung-Hui Hu it is “both an idea and a physical and material object”. His slim yet wide-ranging study attempts to reify and historicise a concept that has “become a potent metaphor for the way contemporary society organizes and understands itself”. The idea dates back to a 1922 design for predicting weather using a network of human “computers”, or mathematicians, connected via telegraph. From the 19th-century train tracks repurposed as routes for fibre-optic cables and the cold war bunkers retrofitted to store data, Hu shows that the intangible cloud has a solid and polluting infrastructure. He also reveals the human costs, such as the poorly paid foreign workers screening content for Silicon Valley companies, and explores the monetisation of the user: “the cloud is a subtle weapon that translates the body into usable information.” Witty, sharp and theoretically aware, Hu deconstructs this much-discussed but poorly understood “cultural fantasy”.• A Prehistory of the Cloud is published by MIT Continue reading...

Repair specialists discover Apple has drilled some holes leading nowhere into the bottom of its phoneEagle eyed Apple fans irritated by the absence of a 3.5mm headphone socket on the iPhone 7 Plus may have been somewhat appeased by signs of another speaker in its place. The row of holes, giving the base of the phone a pleasing symmetry, hinted at something going on inside.But a teardown by repair company iFixit has revealed the grille to be nothing more than an aesthetic adornment. Continue reading...

Be still, my beating algorithm. We speak to FutureFest 2016’s Ghislaine Boddington, Rob Morgan and Marie Horner about what the future of love might look likeSubscribe and review on iTunes, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast, or on your favourite podcasting app.In this episode, we explore the what the future holds for love and relationships, and how technology will play into the mix. To investigate, we speak to FutureFest’s Ghislaine Boddington, Marie Horner and Rob Morgan. According to them, we’ll all soon be bringing our cyborg partners home to meet our parents. Continue reading...

Our online worlds are full of colors, words and sounds but lack something major – scents. Could that ever change?When David Edwards founded the oPhone, he hoped scent messages would become the next big thing in the digitisation of our online lives.The device looked like a high-tech cruet set, and allowed a friend with an iPhone app to send you bespoke olfactory messages alongside photos. Send a picture of your dinner, tag it with four different tones, and whoever’s on the receiving end can sniff it from the vase-like tubes of the oPhone.

Like Lauri, my son Gary McKinnon has Asperger’s. I saw the suffering he went through awaiting justice. The new safeguards against extradition must be implementedI received the most precious gift I could have ever hoped for when Theresa May announced that my son Gary McKinnon would not be extradited to the US for alleged computer hacking. Our absolute joy and sense of relief felt by this decision cannot be overestimated.When our then home secretary had the courage to use the Human Rights Act to protect Gary and to simultaneously announce the introduction of new rules, so that anyone physically in the UK when their alleged crime occurred could now ostensibly be tried here. However, much of the decision-making in this regard has unfortunately been left in the hands of the CPS and judges, who tend to approve extradition to the US regardless of a proposed inhumane sentence or lack of evidence. Continue reading...

Nottingham’s innovative gaming institution was facing closure barely a year after it opened – until its founders called to the development community for helpIn August it looked like game over. The National Videogame Arcade, a fascinating institution that opened in March 2015 to promote the cultural and economic significance of games, was facing closure. Although the large building in Nottingham’s creative quarter attracted plenty of visitors with its mix of classic arcade machines, specialist interactive installations and events, it was not turning a profit. Meanwhile there were 40 staff to pay and a large rented building in central Nottingham to maintain. Over the summer, directors Iain Simons and Jonathan Smith made the decision to call in an insolvency firm.“It became horribly clear, horribly suddenly, that we weren’t going to be able to pay salaries,” says Simons, who has been creative director of the GameCity festival, which spawned the NVA, since it began a decade ago. “We sat down with everyone individually and told them. We asked everyone if they would work for deferred payment in order for us to get a plan together. This was in the middle of the summer season, our busiest time – and every single member of staff came back to work. We stayed open seamlessly while this all took place; the only reason we’ve been able to survive is because the staff cared about it so much.” Continue reading...

Decision on fate of British activist accused of hacking US agencies will be first substantive test of extradition law reformsThe computer activist Lauri Love will discover on Friday whether he is to be sent to the United States to face charges of hacking into the US military agencies, in the first test case since the extradition law was tightened by Theresa May.