Technology | The Guardian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For those of us whose range of experience runs beyond brides, haircuts and dancing Playboy bunnies, a list of alternative female emoticonsWhen it comes to women and emojis, it can feel a bit like the 1950s got trapped in your keyboard. The “femoji” are all girly girls; they get their nails done , get haircuts , get married , and dress up as dancing Playboy bunnies .. Meanwhile “menmoji” are policemen , construction workers and cyclists ..There have been many suggestions as to how best to change the emoji-optics. Michelle Obama tweeted that she’d like to see an emoji of a girl studying. Always and Bodyform, the feminine hygiene companies, have both launched campaigns to introduce less stereotypical emoji. In Bodyform’s case these revolve around periods and include an angry-PMS-face emoji, which isn’t stereotypical at all. Continue reading...

Google has quietly become an important force in PC sales, according to latest figuresMore Google Chromebooks are sold in the US than Apple Macs, according to the latest figures from analyst firm IDC.While few think of the company, famous more for its mobile and internet software, as a major creator of PC operating systems, the slimmed-down Chrome OS has powered almost 2m laptops sold to Americans in the first quarter of 2016, IDC told the Verge. Continue reading...

Once, people like Sam Lee would have aspired to work in music journalism or radio. Now they’re curating playlists for services like Deezer“One of our most popular playlists is Sad Songs For Crying. That is a bit worrying, actually, now I think about it.”Sam Lee is one of an emerging breed of music tastemakers. He doesn’t work for a magazine or music blog, nor does he work for a radio station. Instead, he’s the UK and Ireland editor at music-streaming service Deezer. Continue reading...

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

Monsters battle teens who have gods on their side, a North Korean US dystopia is uninspired, and Enter the Gungeon goes great gunsPS Vita, Acttil, cert: 12 Continue reading...

Fewer than half of consumer payments were cash in 2015, while direct debits were worth £1.22tnBritain has passed another milestone on the path to a cashless society, with 2015 the first year that cash was used for fewer than half of all payments by consumers.Cash usage will be eclipsed by debit cards and contactless payments by 2021, according to Payments UK, which represents the major banks, building societies and payment providers. Continue reading...

There are plenty of great social apps jostling to be the next smartphone hit. Here are some of the contendersThe most popular social apps – Facebook and WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, as well as Twitter and Snapchat – have hundreds of millions of people using them. They’re not in any immediate danger of being dislodged from your home screen. That hasn’t stopped startups from trying, though. There are hundreds releasing new social apps all hoping to be the next big smartphone hit. Most fail, some get bought by bigger fish as they start to grow, but many have some inventive ideas along the way about what the next social networking trends will be. Here are some of the social apps making waves in 2016. Continue reading...

From Lacroix’s hi-tech racer to Pininfarina’s take on an old-school steely, the LikeBike show in Monaco is all about gallery-grade cyclesLast summer masked men smashed through the plate glass of a boutique on Regent Street and made off with a £25,000 haul. Nothing unusual in that, except for one thing: their targets were the latest, finger-light bikes from cult brand Pinarello.Bicycles today are more desirable and more collectable than ever before. They have become highly fetishised objects which manage to be both machines and works of art at the same time. Those interested in these “hyper” bikes would do well to head to Monaco for what is being billed as the “most glamorous bike show on earth”. Held in the Grimaldi Forum overlooking the Mediterranean, LikeBike will be a showcase for cyclophilia and excess, with everything from diamanté-encrusted carbon frames to bikes made of 50 layers of compressed ash. Be sure to wear your smartest Lycra… Continue reading...

Despite renewed efforts to clean up the market for tickets in major events, it remains easy to purchase tools that defeat vendors’ security measuresSoftware that helps touts bypass the security systems of major ticketing companies and scoop up tickets at the expense of fans is easily available online – and even comes with YouTube videos to explain how to use it.Scrutiny of ticketing firms and touts has reached fever pitch ahead of a government-backed report into the industry due to be published this week. Continue reading...

The problems of storing and carrying energy for our gadgets and homes are proving difficult to solve. But a breakthrough is sorely neededFrom the phones in our pockets to the cars on our roads, almost everything with an electrical circuit needs a battery. But while the rest of the technology industry has made great leaps over the past couple of decades, batteries have not.The shortcomings of batteries are now one of the biggest bottlenecks in transport, energy, infrastructure and more. Our power demands are ever-increasing, but our ability to carry or store power is limited. Smartphones barely last a day, electric vehicles have much shorter ranges than petrol or diesel cars, and storing energy from sources such as solar panels is difficult. Continue reading...

Scotland Yard figures reveal scale of violence on capital’s roads and prompt fresh spat between rivalsA surge has been recorded in violent crimes against London taxi drivers, prompting a fresh spat between Uber and black cabs over who is to blame.New figures from Scotland Yard reveal that violent offences against taxi drivers have risen by more than two-thirds, from 856 in 2014 to 1,403 last year. Black-cab drivers have blamed Uber for the increase, alleging that “poor English” and the inadequate street knowledge of drivers working for the taxi-hailing app company have generated so much frustration among passengers that it has led to violence. Continue reading...

The driver’s seat is wide enough for two, and three stone cold enemies could sit in the middle row without compromising their implacable distanceThe Citroën Grand C4 is certainly large – the dash was so wide and deep that I couldn’t reach the front of it; and the windscreen is gigantic, which, along with the glass roof, made the roads feel American. Don’t ask me how that works, I just felt several times as if I were in Wyoming.The driver’s seat is wide enough for two, though it’s arguable how useful that is, and three stone-cold enemies could sit in the middle row without compromising their implacable distance. The third row is a bit more intimate, and luggage would have to get on extremely well. But you wouldn’t want this car to be any larger, particularly if you park like an idiot at the best of times, which by the ancient laws of the universe of cars, people who need seven seats always do. Continue reading...

Standard words won’t protect you from determined hackers. But you can make your online accounts safe in just a few easy stepsOnly idiots, we know, use “password” as their password. Or “123456”. Or “football” (the seventh most common password in the world). Maybe you carefully add an upper case letter, an unusual character or two, plus a few numbers to your Pa$swOrd.But with hackers using “brute force” software to make as many as 8m password guesses a second, don’t kid yourself you are safe. This week LinkedIn told users to reset their accounts after more than 100m passwords appeared for sale online. Continue reading...

As fallout continues over raids on Labor party, Mitch Fifield appears to contradict AFP commissioner on whether government was aware of inquiryThe communications minister, Mitch Fifield, has confirmed he knew the Australian Federal Police were investigating leaks from within NBN Co but said he did not tell the prime minister.Fifield said on Saturday he had no interaction with the AFP regarding the investigation, including over Thursday’s night’s raids on properties linked to Senator Stephen Conroy and the Labor staffer Andrew Byrne. Continue reading...

Device helps doctors accurately measure patient’s drinking history, and not just depend on most recent testsA San Francisco-based company has won a US government-sponsored competition with an alcohol monitoring devices that can be worn on the wrist, the latest milestone in the development of wearable technologies that monitor and diagnose medical conditions.BACtrack, a privately held medical device maker, took the $200,000 top prize in the National Institutes of Health Wearable Biosensor Challenge with its wristband monitor – dubbed BACtrack Skyn – which measures blood alcohol levels via sweat on the skin. Continue reading...

While technology has undoubtedly improved our lives, history shows we need rules and regulations to ensure workers can share in the gig economy’s wealthAcross the country, new companies are using the internet to transform the way Americans work, shop, socialize, vacation, look for love, talk to the doctor, get around, and track down a 10ft feather boa – which was my latest Amazon search.These innovations have improved our lives in countless ways, reducing inefficiencies and leveraging network effects to help grow our economy. This is real growth. Continue reading...

Google’s path to developing machine-learning tools illustrates the stark challenge that tech companies face in trying to make machines act like humansMachines may yet take over the world, but first they must learn to recognize your dog.To hear Google executives tell it at their annual developer conference this week, the technology industry is on the cusp of an artificial intelligence, or AI, revolution. Computers, without guidance, will be able to spot disease, engage humans in conversation and creatively outsmart world champions in competition. Such breakthroughs in machine learning have been the stuff of science fiction since Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Banks may like wristbands warning us we’ve spent too much. But I’d rather have one to stop me arguing on Twitter and saying yes to thingsTechnology is no longer one of life’s benign helpers. I blame the Microsoft paperclip. He started it, with his incessant questions. Now we have an activity app on the Apple Watch that tells users to stand up if it thinks they have been sitting down for too long. Worse still is the proposed wearable tech invented by a British firm that could send bank customers an electric shock if they overspend.While the latter sounds like a story from the Onion, (and wouldn’t you just take the watch off when you felt a bit spendy?), let’s consider for a moment some uses such irritating warnings may have: Continue reading...

Organised troll-reviewing of the remake’s trailer is inevitable, but it won’t stop the thrilling transformation in pop culture that is finally taking placeWe live in a post-mainstream culture. As the way we consume books, movies and television changes, artists and directors no longer need to cater to a “universal” audience viewpoint. This means there is slightly less obligation to pander to what straight white men are supposed to want from culture. Not everyone is happy about that fact, and across the literary and cultural spectrum, tantrums are being thrown.Related: Who ya gonna call? Why Ghostbusters is leading the charge for female buddy movies Continue reading...

It’s the 30th anniversary of Top Gun, and here are the finest air combat games inspired by the classic movieIt was the quintessential 1980s action movie, boasting turbo-charged machismo, ridiculous military hardware and the most homoerotically charged beach volleyball scene in memory.Unsurprisingly, with its tense and beautifully short aerial combat scenes, Top Gun – which is 30 years old today – also inspired a whole era of flight-shooter video games. Unfortunately, most of the licensed Top Gun games were awful. So here are our favourite flight blasters that were clearly influenced by that unforgettable motion picture event. Continue reading...

Whether you’re fighting mythical creatures or baking egg- and dairy-free cakes, there is pleasure to be found in imposing constraintsI’m a level one gal in a level 12 world, but I’m scraping by. I time my dodges carefully, angling just right to catch the boss as he lunges where I’m no longer standing. Then I jump back, down an estus flask and restore my health, staying a whisker out of reach. But this time I’ve miscalculated. I’m not quite far enough away. The game forces me to watch as my outmatched, under-levelled character meets the business end of an axe in a frustratingly long cinematic sequence.“YOU DIED,” the screen glares. Continue reading...

ALP complains to Australian federal police that photos taken and disseminated from raid on Stephen Conroy’s office could have included its broadband policyLabor has complained to the Australian federal police that an NBN staff member disseminated photos taken during Thursday night’s police raid on the former communication minister Stephen Conroy’s office which could have included the party’s broadband policy.The federal Labor party was engaged in a legal wrangle with the AFP for most of Friday and has secured agreement that the material seized in the dramatic late-night raids, part of an investigation into damaging leaks regarding the National Broadband Network, is covered by parliamentary privilege and will be sealed and stored by the clerk of the Senate, probably until parliament resumes after the election campaign. Continue reading...

Harvard researchers say leaked documents show bureaucrats fabricate positive posts to distract from criticism of government

The place to talk about games and other things that matterYay, Friday! And comments are open now! Continue reading...

One of the UK’s most creative studios was shut by Microsoft in April, we talk to co-founder Peter Molyneux and his staff about the end of an eraFor almost 20 years, Lionhead Studios was a beacon of the UK games industry. In a medium where big budgets tend to shrink ambitions, here was a group of experimenters, inventors, and craftspeople who always produced something curious, whether that was creative oddity The Movies or the hugely successful Fable series. Formed in Guildford in 1996, the studio was independent for a decade before Microsoft acquired it. Another decade later, on 31 April 2016, the lights were turned off for the final time. Lionhead made games with big choices, and it was ended by a cruel one.For much of its history, the studio was synonymous with Peter Molyneux, the idiosyncratic game designer who co-founded seminal Guildford studio Bullfrog in the 1990s. There, he oversaw a string of classic sim titles – Populous, Powermonger, Syndicate, Theme Park – before selling up to Electronic Arts in 1995. That publisher’s subsequent mishandling of the studio, which would flounder and then close six years later, is a foundation myth of the games industry; a stark cautionary tale on what can happen when big money meets creative genius. Usually, one of the two doesn’t make it out alive. Continue reading...

Telco confirms NBN and ADSL users having difficulty and says it is working to ‘restore services as quickly as possible’Telstra has apologised to customers affected by an internet outage, the fourth service failure from the telco in as many months.A Telstra spokesman confirmed its NBN and ADSL users might be having difficulty connecting to the internet on Friday. Continue reading...

Sales of vinyl records grow for eighth year in row, but labels attack ‘meagre’ payouts from advert-funded streaming websitesResurgent sales of music on vinyl generated more income for UK artists than YouTube last year, with British acts including Adele and Ed Sheeran accounting for a record one in six of all the albums sold worldwide.Vinyl sales grew for the eighth consecutive year in 2015 with more than 2m LPs sold in the UK, the most since at least 1994 when Wet Wet Wet and Bon Jovi were among the year’s biggest artists. Continue reading...

Election 2016: Federal police operation condemned by Bill Shorten as ‘unprecedented’ during a federal election campaignSound, sound the clarion, fill the fife, throughout the sensual world proclaim: It’s Friday!Welcome to the end of week two of the election campaign, only six more to go. Six weeks to go and it has already got quite ugly, the dog whistling already served up, the members interests – specifically failures to declare them – already nipping the parties’ backsides. Continue reading...

This lowish-budget British film about gamers playing a VR shoot ’em up gone wrong is a modest update on all those killer-website movies in the noughtiesWith the Imax-scaled Warcraft inbound, this lowish-budget Brit attempt to replicate gaming’s immersive properties – stalking nerds around an, of course, mysterious corporation’s wipe-clean HQ while they beta test a VR shoot ’em up – risks looking a bit Amstrad. Yet it’s been capably produced: writer-director Charles Barker may cleave to a dusty old slasher-pic template but he hustles everybody briskly between levels, sending his industrious design team ahead of him to redress a presumably limited number of sets. If it’s far from bleeding edge – within days, it’ll look as dated as Tron and The Lawnmower Man do today – it’s a modest upgrade on all those killer-website movies that popped up a decade ago, keeping us at least semi-interested as to who stands and falls. It’ll fill a slot, if your Xbox connection is down and you feel inspired to quit the sofa. Continue reading...

Google will offer the popular videos for VR and will sell a plastic headset in which consumers will insert a phone along with a controller that serves as a handIf Google gets its way, you will explore the world with your phone strapped over your eyes.At its annual developer conference in Silicon Valley, the internet company showed how it plans to get more people using virtual reality in the coming year by baking the technology into newer smartphones. The vision is for the world’s billions of people to ditch the physical world and explore far off places, take in the news, meet a friend or, as Google repeatedly demonstrated Thursday, water a virtual garden. Continue reading...