Technology | The Guardian

Customers receive nothing from settlement with US Federal Trade Commission, which decided owner Ruby Corp was unable to pay full $17.5m penaltyThe owner of hacked infidelity website Ashley Madison will pay a sharply discounted $1.66m penalty to settle US investigations into lax data security and deceptive practices.

Trial only open to two customers in UK who have huge gardens, live close to an Amazon depot and want items that weigh less than 2.6kgAmazon says it has successfully trialled its Prime Air drone delivery service in Cambridge, UK, by delivering a TV streaming stick and bag of popcorn directly to the garden of a nearby customer.The breakthrough suggests that autonomous aerial delivery could become a viable business sooner than thought, albeit only for customers with huge gardens, who live close to the delivery depot, and want items weighing less than 2.6kg. Continue reading...

The titles our readers were most horrified to see excluded from our 10 best games of the yearWhat did you most enjoy doing this year: shooting demons? Stealthily flitting your way around a city? Or perhaps you spent many aeons creating a civilisation worthy of song?Related: The 10 best video games of 2016 Continue reading...

Final Fantasy XV is not like other games. But as you marvel at its lavishness and beauty, you may start to notice the wheels coming offA tagline greets you every time you start Final Fantasy XV: “A Final Fantasy for Fans and First-Timers”. It isn’t that the goal itself is notable, so much as the fact that Square Enix feels the need to repeat it every time you turn on the console. After all, what game hasn’t tried to appeal to fans and first-timers? Metal Gear Solid 4, maybe. But other games generally assume their audience includes fans, first-timers, and everyone in between.Of course, Final Fantasy XV isn’t like other games. Other games don’t take a decade from revelation to release, meaning there’s rather more “first-timers” than there ever have been before. Other games don’t launch with a tie-in movie voiced by Aaron Paul and Lena Headey, or a five-episode anime detailing the lives of the main characters, widening the gap between the fans and the first-timers still further. Other games don’t get delayed by three months to ensure that all the content is on disk, before receiving a day-one content patch, and a follow-up content patch a month later. Other games don’t feel the need to open, not with a stunning set-piece, or a slow intro to the world, but with a weird combat tutorial/lore guide where a strange fox thing talks to you about how to fight in the game before the game proper gets going. Continue reading...

Tell MAMA accuses social networking site of ignoring calls to tackle online abuse against Muslims, Jews and LGBT peopleThe founder of a hate-crime monitoring group has told MPs that Twitter is failing to tackle far-right extremists in the wake of Jo Cox’s murder.Fiyaz Mughal, founder of Tell MAMA, which records anti-Muslim abuse, said the group’s attempts to report far-right extremism, including voices that call for the eradication of Muslims, had been ignored by the social networking site. Continue reading...

Six months after its release, the game is getting its first major tranche of new pokémonPokémon Go is getting bigger. Six months after its release, the game is getting its first major tranche of new pokémon, with fan favourites from the second generation of games including Pichu and Togepi joining the roster.The pokémon, originally introduced in Pokemon Gold and Silver for the Game Boy Color, won’t be immediately accessible on the game map like typical creatures in the game. Instead, they will begin to hatch out of eggs from Tuesday, according to Pokémon Go developer Niantic Labs. Continue reading...

Fearmongering Donald Trump and optimistic Silicon Valley seem to epitomize opposing ideologies. But the two have far more in common than you thinkTomorrow, Silicon Valley leaders will sit down for a summit with Donald Trump. Larry Page, Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and Sheryl Sandberg are all expected to attend. The agenda is unknown, but the mood is likely to be tense. After all, tech executives overwhelmingly backed Hillary Clinton and loudly railed against the dangers posed by a Trump presidency. And Trump regularly lashed out at Silicon Valley on the campaign trail, bashing the industry for building hardware overseas and importing foreign engineers.But tech has little to fear from Trump. If his cabinet appointments are any indication, he seems keen to govern as a free-market fundamentalist, cutting taxes and regulations to the bone. Trump’s elevation of ultra-hawkish ex-generals to key cabinet posts also suggests that he will aggressively expand the sprawling surveillance state inherited from Obama. This is excellent news for companies like Palantir, which sell data analytics tools to the CIA, the NSA and other agencies. Palantir was co-founded by Peter Thiel, the billionaire who broke with his Silicon Valley colleagues to embrace Trump. Thiel now sits on the transition team, and has begun drawing a select circle of tech industry allies into Trump’s orbit. He and his friends are likely to make lots of money. Continue reading...

US president Barack Obama says Russia’s involvement in the email hacks that blighted the US elections was no secret. In an interview with The Daily Show host Trevor Noah on Monday, Obama warns president-elect Donald Trump against ignoring intelligence briefings

Carter Page, John Bolton and more bolstered president-elect’s claims, saying US intelligence agencies’ findings were ‘a lot of speculation’ and could be a ‘false flag’Some Donald Trump loyalists have bolstered the president-elect’s unsupported claims that US intelligence agencies could be perpetuating a “conspiracy theory” after they reportedly concluded that Russia interfered with the presidential election and strengthened Trump’s run for the White House.Related: CIA concludes Russia interfered to help Trump win election, say reports Continue reading...

Superfast broadband competitors will be charged $7.09 per line a month to help subsidise the cost of regional internetThe Turnbull government is planning to charge competitors to the National Broadband Network a levy to help pay for rural broadband services.The levy would ensure NBN rivals are unable to cherrypick the most profitable parts of the market, usually in the inner city, and leave NBN Co to wholly subsidise the cost of providing services to rural and remote areas, which is expected to cost about $10bn over the next 30 years. Continue reading...

Job ad suggests company is looking for someone to address fears about fake news and social network’s wider impactFacebook is looking for an experienced media executive to help smooth its relationship with the press amid mounting concerns about fake news and the social network’s influence over the public.On Monday the company began advertising for a head of news partnerships with “20+ years of experience in news, with strong track-record and understanding across the business”. The requirement means those applying must have started their news career before Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had celebrated his 13th birthday. Continue reading...

This year has revealed how difficult it is for the social network to ‘make the world more open and connected’ when the decisions it makes can be so divisiveMark Zuckerberg started 2016 with a cookie cutter message of hope. “As the world faces new challenges and opportunities, may we all find the courage to keep making progress and making all our days count,” he wrote on his Facebook wall on 1 January. He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, had just had their daughter, Max, and had been sharing warm and fuzzy photos of gingerbread houses and their dreadlocked dog Beast over the holiday season.Then 2016 happened. As the year unfurled, Facebook had to deal with a string of controversies and blunders, not limited to: being accused of imperialism in India, censorship of historical photos, and livestreaming footage of human rights violations. Not to mention misreported advertising metrics and the increasingly desperate cloning of rival Snapchat’s core features. Things came to a head in November, when the social network was accused of influencing the US presidential election through politically polarized filter bubbles and a failure to tackle the spread of misinformation. The icing on the already unpalatable cake was Pope Francis last week declaring that fake news is a sin. Continue reading...

Richard B Spencer’s account reinstated weeks after being suspended as part of wider crackdown on hateful conduct from ‘alt-right’ membersTwitter has reinstated the account of Richard B Spencer, a self-styled white nationalist leader who was suspended from the service in the wake of a much publicised crackdown on hateful conduct.Spencer’s account was initially suspended on 15 November, as part of a sweeping move against leaders of the “alt-right”, a far-right movement which has been resurgent in America since the election of Donald Trump. Continue reading...

It’s the best, lightest, most beautiful laptop around. Until it runs out of battery. Or you forget a dongle. Or you realise you’re bankruptApple’s latest laptop, the new 13in MacBook Pro, is a much anticipated re-design of the company’s notebook range and represents a brave new USB-C-only future. But is it worth sacrificing ports and spending the best part of £2,000 to use?

The hacker crime-caper sequel comes good, while Dishonored’s follow-up falls short of the original and Nintendo’s build-your-own phenomenon gets an impressive port to its handheld consolePC/PlayStation 4/Xbox One, Ubisoft, cert: 18

From the retro gaming delights of Super Mario Bros to virtual reality, home-bots and hybrid cars, here is this year’s must-have technologyThis first person-view drone can bank, twist and zoom through the heavens at nearly 50mph. Probably as close as you can get to flying without leaving the ground. Continue reading...

It is crucial for a resilient democracy that we better understand how Google and Facebook are changing the way we think, interact and behaveThe lack of transparency around the processes of Google’s search engine has been a preoccupation among scholars since the company began. Long before Google expanded into self-driving cars, smartphones and ubiquitous email, the company was being asked to explain the principles and ideologies that determine how it presents information to us. And now, 10 years later, the impact of reckless, subjective and inflammatory misinformation served up on the web is being felt like never before in the digital era.Google responded to negative coverage this week by reluctantly acknowledging and then removing offensive autosuggest results for certain search results. Type “jews are” into Google, for example, and until now the site would autofill “jews are evil” before recommending links to several rightwing antisemitic hate sites. Continue reading...

White House spokesman Eric Shultz says on Friday that Barack Obama has ordered US intelligence to review evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election before he leaves office. Schultz denies the review is ‘an effort to challenge the outcome of the election’

President’s decision to have US intelligence agencies look over evidence comes after unrelenting pressure from Democratic lawmakers to declassify informationBarack Obama has ordered US intelligence to review evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election after coming under sustained pressure from congressional Democrats.The review will be one of Obama’s final instructions to the intelligence agencies, which will soon report to Donald Trump, whom congressional Democrats consider the beneficiary of a hack targeting the Democratic National Committee. Continue reading...

Abdurzak Hadi, whose 10-year-old son has leukaemia, is struggling to make ends meet but feels he has nowhere else to goAbdurzak Hadi has worked as a minicab driver for 10 years, and as an Uber driver in London for nearly three. He came to the UK as a child refugee from Somalia in 1992 and now has a young family but is struggling to support them.

Lawsuit over extent of CEO’s control of company shows board voted to give him two-year leave if he serves ‘in a government position or office’Mark Zuckerberg may intend to pursue government service while retaining control of Facebook, according to recently unsealed court filings in a case pitting the CEO against minority investors.The class-action lawsuit was first filed in late April, after Zuckerberg proposed a corporate shake-up that would dilute the voting power of shareholders – giving him “eternal control” of the company, in the words of the shareholders’ lawyers. Text messages excerpted in the court documents reveal that Zuckerberg and two board members discussed the CEO’s possible government service, and argued about how to present it to shareholders. Continue reading...

Wearables maker Fitbit buys smartwatch startup for fraction of reported value in 2015Smartwatch maker Pebble has sold to Fitbit in a deal that leaves it shutting down all manufacturing, refunding Kickstarter backers, and warning current owners that their watches may stop working at some point in the future.The deal, according to a report from Bloomberg, values the smartwatch startup at less than $40m. If true, that is a massive drop from earlier reported acquisition attempts. Techcruch says Pebble was first offered $740m by watchmaker Citizen in 2015, and then $70m by Intel in early 2016. Pebble’s chief executive, Eric Migicovsky, reportedly refused both offers. Continue reading...

Claire wants to buy her son a laptop to run Minecraft with Pixelmon mods. Her budget is £300, but she’s willing to spend a more Continue reading...

Experts at Countering Drones event assess the risks to airports and prisons posed by growth of high-powered, affordable modelsSecurity officials, police and legal experts from around the world are gathered in London for a global conference on tackling the threats posed to prisons, airports, nuclear facilities and other infrastructure by consumer drones.The Countering Drones conference, which organisers describe as the first of its kind, reflects concerns that increasingly high-powered and affordable models of drones are posing new and wide-ranging security challenges for police and other protection forces. Continue reading...

The winner of the 2016 Capcom Cup receives $230,000, but the pressures on competitors are more than monetary – particularly if they’re transgenderThe atmosphere in the competitor pen at the 2016 Capcom Cup in Anaheim, California, is weirdly tranquil – despite the stakes. There’s a $230,000 cheque waiting for the winner, $60,000 for the runner-up. The room, snugly closed off from a shanty town of flight cases, stage lights and wires behind the sweeping stage is lined with sofas, on which the eight finalists sit. In 10 minutes they will emerge to a full house of hollers and applause, ready to make their bids in the annual competition to crown the best Street Fighter player in the world.In the middle of the room, two trestle tables sag under the weight of monitors, on which the finalists are free to warm up their fingers with practice games. There are, however, no preparatory or prayerful rituals going on back here; only the idle swiping of phones. I sink into the couch beside 32-year-old Ricki Ortiz, one of two Americans to reach the finals (the other six competitors all come from Street Fighter’s home of Japan). What does she do to prepare for a major fixture like this, I ask. “Me?” she says. “I had a quick nap.” Continue reading...

Fifa 17 is the latest target. But increasingly games reflect the world as it is – not as reactionaries would like it to be

With the market for retro cell phones booming, here’s a selection of desirable designs, from a 10kg monster to a clamshell classicWhen it debuted in 1989, the MicroTAC was hailed as a “game-changer”, one that Motorola argued would bring mobile phones out of the hands of top execs and into the hands of senior mid-level execs. Competively price at $2,995, the size of a Dutch brick rather than the preceding concrete breezeblock, it had an amazing half-hour’s talk time with only 10 hours of charging.The price has dropped a bit, but at £100 on eBay, the likes of the MicroTAC still hold value for collectors. New research by Talkmobile highlights how the market for vintage phones has become increasingly lively as collectors aim to snap up a brick of tech history. Continue reading...

The Microsoft billionaire’s annual reading list includes a 2014 study by British political scholar Archie Brown – a choice, he says, that was inspired by the US electionIf there’s one thing more valuable to an author than a Richard and Judy endorsement circa 2006, it’s a Bill Gates plug circa this week. The man has reach, and the luxury of reading time that comes with being a semi-retired billionaire. And he has weight. So, while four of the books on his annual list cover predictable if fascinating ground (genetics, tennis, electricity infrastructure and a business memoir), the fifth is quite interesting, not to say timely.In The Myth of the Strong Leader, the renowned British political scholar Archie Brown throws a dozen world leaders of the past century into a bag, shakes them up, and watches the nice guys rise to the top. Brown debunks the idea that the most successful leaders are those who dominate and mould their nations around themselves, as far as their political systems allow. “A more collegial style of leadership is too often characterised as a weakness,” he writes. Continue reading...