Technology | The Guardian

Through charities, lobbying groups, and head-to-head fights with the FBI, tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook wield influence comparable to that of Andrew Carnegie and John RockefellerThe late 19th century was a period known as “the Gilded Age” in America. As the railroads, mining industries and factories boomed, millions of workers were inspired to migrate from Europe, yet the wealth became concentrated among a small set of industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie, a steel magnate, and the oil baron John D Rockefeller. These men wielded massive power through business, political efforts and philanthropy.

Marin is a leading name in the world of mountain biking, but this commuter bike tames the city streets, tooBack in 1986, across the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco and, no doubt, on a countercultural high, Marin released its first mountain bike. Its chunky wheels and solid frame were built to cope with all that Mount Tamalpais and the Repack Trail could throw at it. It seems ironic to recommend a city bike made by a company whose roots are so firmly in the countryside. But commuting is a tough game these days – and you want a good bike on your side. The brand’s top city cycle is the Fairfax SC6, and it deals brilliantly with everything your ride is going to throw at you. It has a low-maintenance internal gear hub and squeak-free carbon belt as well as decent mudguards, dazzling dynamo lights, a sturdy rack, and puncture-proof tyres… All you need, in fact, to go wild in the city (marinbikes.com).Price: £1,900

NSA whistleblower responds to admission by Australian federal police that it investigated leaks to a Guardian journalist by requesting his metadataEdward Snowden has condemned Australian law enforcement for collecting the communications records of a Guardian journalist without a warrant.

Democrats marched against Democrats in San Francisco and revealed a widening rift between commuting tech workers and their venture capital bossesAfter working in Silicon Valley for years, Morgan Quirk felt good protesting outside the home of a venture capitalist who funded tech startups and fundraisers for Hillary Clinton. He was part of a new splinter group of the liberal party: Democrats marching against Democrats in San Francisco, commuting tech workers against their bosses. Continue reading...

Chris Sims’ account emptied and loan for £8,000 taken out as fraudsters continue to exploit way banks use customers’ mobilesChris Sims was sitting in his Nottingham home a fortnight ago when his iPhone, on the EE network, suddenly stopped working. Within 75 minutes the fraudsters who had hijacked his phone had, through his online banking app, emptied his bank account of £1,200 and applied for an £8,000 loan in his name. But Sims is just the latest victim of a financial scam that is sweeping Britain: sim-swap fraud.When Sims rang EE, it soon emerged that someone posing as his wife had managed to persuade the mobile network to activate a new sim card – in effect giving the fraudsters control of his mobile number. The crooks were then able to reset all his mobile banking passwords, using his phone as identity, and the passwords being sent to the phone. Continue reading...

Blogging site possibly inaccessible since early this week after post about Panama Papers leak, which China internet regulators have moved to censor reports aboutA US-based online publishing platform, Medium, has been blocked in China, according to users and tests by Reuters, the latest service to apparently be affected as Beijing exerts greater control over the internet.Medium, which allows users, including companies and media outlets, to post blogs that readers can annotate, has been inaccessible since at least early this week, according to internet users in China and tests by Reuters using tools developed by anti-censorship watchdog GreatFire.org. Continue reading...

Every Friday we apply critical attention to things that don’t normally get it. This is an important function that might hold civilisation together. Or, more likely, not. Drop your suggestions for reviews in the comments or tweet them to @guideguardian Continue reading...

Complex anonymity tools mean it can cost $100,000 to identify just one hoax caller. But how long will it be before swatting costs someone their life?The first 911 call came at 4.30pm. The caller told dispatchers that a man, woman, and boy had been shot and another child was being held hostage. Police responded in force, sending more than half a dozen cruisers and emergency vehicles to a sprawling house in the affluent Atlanta suburb of Johns Creek.

The entrance hall to Brunel’s 19th-century tunnel under the Thames has been turned into a unique auditorium, complete with the rumble of Tube trainsThe engineers Marc and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel would have approved, the director of the Brunel Museum Robert Hulse reflected, as he removed the legs from a Bechstein grand piano and helped wrestle it down a twisting staircase into the massive iron shaft they sank into the banks of the Thames 190 years ago. Continue reading...

Brian Message of Courtyard Management says he is ‘praying every night’ that the band decide to put their next record on SpotifyRadiohead have still not decided whether to allow their new album to be streamed on Spotify. Speaking at the Wanstead Tap cafe in London on Thursday night, Brian Message – of the band’s management company, Courtyard Management – said he’s “praying every night” that lead singer Thom Yorke lets Spotify have the album, but a final decision is yet to be made.As previously reported, Message told the audience of just 30 people that the new album would be released in June. He refused to reveal its name, but billled the album as “something that will probably make many of us go, ‘Wow!’”. Continue reading...

Apple Watch expected to last only three years too, while Mac computers should last four, plus Apple slip-up points to OS X rebranding as MacOSApple has said that it expects so-called first owners of £500 iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches to replace them after only three years of use, and Mac computers only four.As part of the company’s new environmental push, which includes its new Apps for Earth campaign with the WWF, Apple has listed how long it expects its products to last for their “first owners” and therefore how much they contribute to the greenhouse gas lifecycle. Continue reading...

From TwoHeadlines to Shiv Integer, artists are subverting Silicon Valley’s tools to artistic endsAt Facebook’s F8 conference in Silicon Valley, David Marcus, the company’s head of messaging, proudly demonstrated its new suite of chatbots. Users can now get in a conversation with the likes of CNN, H&M, and HP, and ask for help shopping, or the latest headlines.The chatbots aren’t very good, but that doesn’t mean Facebook isn’t proud of them anyway: “I guarantee you’re going to spend way more money than you want on this,” Marcus chuckled on stage. Continue reading...

Smartphones, genome sequencing and wearable technology will bring benefits but also challenges to health and social careAlthough not new, the smartphone’s potential is yet to be realised in health and care. Efforts to curate quality apps, for example through an NHS app library, have had little success. Sophisticated apps can fit into health services. Ginger.io offers people with depression or anxiety problems the ability to track their mood and share data with clinicians to offer interventions.

Nicholas Coleridge: ‘There is something extraordinarily alluring about a glossy magazine, the physical quality, particularly a very thick one’Magazines are not suffering anything like the circulation declines experienced by newspapers, according to one of Britain’s leading magazine chiefs.Nicholas Coleridge, president of Condé Nast International, told a Media Society event earlier this week that although magazine sales were “off their top” it was “only by a small amount”. Continue reading...

In the early days, the internet was seen as egalitarian and open. So how did the web become a world of bullies and trolls? Five tales from the frontline of online shamingWhen I bought a computer, in the 1980s, it was a different world. I joined Compuserve, the first major commercial online service in the US, in 1982. It was like Facebook, but all text. Now we would complain it was slow and expensive, but at the time it was radical to be able to sit in your house and talk to people all over the world. Continue reading...

A secretive team has been assigned to explore improvements to the app store, according to reports, including better search and paid options

Top Apple lawyer and FBI executive will testify before lawmakers as heated debate over law enforcement access to encrypted devices continuesApple and the FBI will return to Congress on April 19 to testify before lawmakers about their heated disagreement over law enforcement access to encrypted devices, a congressional committee announced on Thursday.

Traditional searches or wiretaps often require government to eventually notify the people they’ve searched; Microsoft wants the same to apply to emailsMicrosoft sued the US government on Thursday for the right to tell customers when authorities search their email inboxes.In a federal complaint that names the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, the company argues the government has taken advantage of the consumer trend for storing their private data on tech companies’ servers, rather than storing it on their own devices. This shouldn’t let the government search the digital equivalent of a person’s desk without telling them, Microsoft argues. Continue reading...

Activist working for group dedicated to fighting China’s ‘Great Firewall’ says firms such as Apple should back up its words with actionsWestern companies need to end their hypocrisy over free speech in China, and start helping to end censorship in the country, a leading anti-censorship activist has told the Guardian.One of the three co-founders of GreatFire, an organisation dedicated to fighting the so-called Great Firewall of China, the technological heart of state censorship in the country, said it hurts to see companies such as Apple citing Chinese censorship in their battles with western governments, while co-operating with authoritarian state in order to earn money from its burgeoning middle classes and take advantage of its enormous manufacturing base. Continue reading...

I‘m the Guardian contributor most targeted online. We have to stop the harassment so many women faceWhen you find out that you’re the best at something, normally it makes sense to feel happy. I’m not sure that reaction applies, though, when what you’re top at is being hated. Continue reading...

Yegor Tsvetkov’s project using photos of strangers on St Petersburg metro shows how easy it is to track peopleA Russian photographer has proved how easy it is to track down people on social media using facial recognition software.Yegor Tsvetkov took photos of strangers on St Petersburg’s metro and used a facial recognition app which trawls through profiles on VKontakte, Russia’s biggest social network, to track down their online profiles. Continue reading...

‘When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off the phone, they hear please cut off your left arm above the elbow,’ said AMC boss, who has since taken to Twitter to allay fearsThe head of a major US cinema chain has suggested that ‘texting-friendly’ screens could soon become a reality.Related: If Sean Parker has his way, opening night for movies will be in your living room Continue reading...

Introducing RoBoHon, a smartphone which doubles up as a tiny robot, created by Japanese electronics firm Sharp. The robo-phone can walk around, read out your messages, and has a projector embedded in its head so it can beam images onto flat surfaces. But would you pay the hefty price tag of ¥198,000 (£1,282) for it? Continue reading...

RoBoHoN is adorable, can recognise your face, read your messages aloud, wake you up and announce phone calls, but is probably out of your price rangeThe cutest robo-smartphone ever made is hitting shelves in Japan next month - but is it cute enough to drop almost £1,300?RoBoHoN (which translates roughly as “heart moving phone”) is an adorable tiny robot, which doubles up as a smartphone. Or is it a smartphone that doubles up as a robot? Continue reading...

We live in an age of undies innovation: from self-medicating bras to briefs that smell of breakfast or hide a weapon (and that’s not even a euphemism)

After the difficulties experienced by Twitter bot Tay, the new service is providing amusement while learning how to automatically caption imagesAfter the somewhat awkward experience last month of having an AI Twitter bot go full-on racist in a few hours once it interacted with humans, Microsoft have released a new AI experiment on to the internet - CaptionBot.The idea is that you upload a photo to the service, and it tries to automatically generate a caption that describes what the algorithm sees. You are then able to rate how accurately it has detected what was on display. It learns from the rating, and in theory, the captions get better. Continue reading...

‘Groundbreaking’ changes strengthen EU privacy protections, enshrine right to be forgotten and give regulators wide-reaching powersThe European parliament has voted through tougher rules on data protection, aimed at boosting privacy and giving authorities greater powers to take action against companies that breach the rules.

A 360-degree livestream video shows the pioneering perspective of a cancer keyhole procedure carried out by Dr Shafi Ahmed in theatre at Barts Health NHS Trust

Cameron wants to try multi-monitor computing, like the Microsoft co-founder is known to do, but ideally without creating a spaghetti junction of wiresMulti-monitor computing is an idea that has been challenging me for some time – that and a spaghetti junction of wires.I have super-powerful Alienware laptop but there is only one HDMI port, and it doesn’t like running HDMI and anything else simultaneously.I am wondering if I should build a PC that will have video cards and ports to support three screens and have a separate, dedicated travel laptop. What do you think? Continue reading...

Company’s new Messenger chatbot prompts nonsensical answers and unrelenting spam, which risks tipping users over the edgeIf bots are the new apps, we’re in for a bombardment of spam that could force you into blocking brands, bots and services, if Facebook’s new chatbots are anything to go by.

An English teacher from the United Arab Emirates, a researcher from Carmarthenshire and an insurance analyst from Essex. Kate Lyons meets the people who make the Guardian’s comment threads tickThe Guardian’s web we want series has taken a look at the darker side of online conversations, but most commenters bring insight, knowledge and enthusiasm to the debate. Nine of the best explain what keeps them coming back to the threads below the line. Continue reading...

Stephen Kavanagh, in charge of national strategy on digital crime, says confidence of victims is being underminedThe police chief in charge of combating digital crime has admitted that an “inconsistent” approach from police forces to online abuse is undermining the confidence of victims.The Essex chief constable, Stephen Kavanagh, the national police chiefs’ lead on digital crime, said those subjected to online harm deserved a better service from the police.

Internet giant has blocked dozens of search links containing references to star and alleged ‘threesome’ after legal requests

Pan-European working party questions protection of EU citizens’ data from ‘massive and indiscriminate’ surveillance by US government

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

In a society where five-star ratings have become a form of social currency, your real-life reputation is being shaped by digital scoresIt’s a brave new world in which we live in, dictated by scores, reviews, judgements and critiques; and we’re asking the question: what does your rating say about you?Joining Olly Mann to talk about Uber and the “rating society” are Guardian Australia’s Elle Hunt, applied psychologist Reece Akhtar and co-founder of iPhone app Peeple Julia Cordray.

Dr Shafi Ahmed will carry out surgery live-streamed in virtual reality, a move experts hope will make healthcare ‘more equitable’ and help medical trainingThis Thursday afternoon, Shafi Ahmed will lean over a patient and begin a delicate operation to remove cancerous tissue from a male patient’s bowel. He has performed such procedures many times before. But this time it won’t be just his surgical team who are in the room with him – the world will be there too.Showing from 1pm the approximately two-hour long procedure at the Royal London Hospital is the world’s first operation to be streamed live in 360-degree video, allowing medical students, trainee surgeons and curious members of the public to immerse themselves in the medical event in real time.

Matthew Keys was convicted of giving login credentials to the hacking group, in a decision civil liberties group calls ‘prosecutorial discretion run amok’Matthew Keys, a journalist found guilty of conspiring with hacking group Anonymous to break into the Los Angeles Times website, was sentenced to two years in prison on Wednesday in a case that has sparked national debate about how the US prosecutes hacking offenses.Keys, who was found guilty of three criminal counts in October, was convicted of giving Anonymous login credentials to the computer system of the Tribune Company, which owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and other media companies. Continue reading...

Artificial intelligence, virtual reality and chatbots – Facebook 2016 developer event revealed ambitious plans for expanding its social empireFacebook’s (mostly) annual developer event in San Francisco has been running since 2007. Over that time it has morphed from an insider code-builder’s event to a high-profile launch event, and though the developers are still there Facebook’s message is now rather more well honed when it comes to translating their mission to the masses.This year, chatbots and virtual reality grabbed the most attention, but there were many smaller but significant announcements too. Here’s everything you need to know from this year’s event.

Blood-testing startup accused of not resolving issues found during inspection earlier this year that created ‘immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety’Troubled blood-testing startup Theranos could be banned from practicing for two years for failing to resolve major problems at its main laboratory in California, federal health regulators have warned.The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which monitors clinical lab standards among other things, wrote to Theranos management on 18 March notifying the company that it had 10 days to respond or would have its license revoked and its owners banned from running any lab. Continue reading...

Google answers plea from users with update to open source tool that adds ability to operate on multiple devices – it’s like using many brain cells instead of oneThe battle for the future of computing is a battle to bring artificial intelligence to the mainstream – and Google is quietly overhauling a machine learning tool used to improve some of its most popular services including Google Translate and Google Photos.TensorFlow can be used to help teach computers how to process data in ways similar to how the human brain handles information. It is also open source, meaning Google has published and shared the code online so that external developers can use and improve it. Continue reading...

It turns out cult card game Cards Against Humanity is the ideal accompaniment to the government’s EU leaflets. Who knew?Even if you are yet to receive the government’s pro-EU leaflet, you’ve probably heard about it. But have you noticed how well it fits with the popular board game Cards Against Humanity?The EU and a game known for its political incorrectness don’t seem like the most likely bedfellows – yet the minute a leaflet arrived at software engineer Jenny Owen’s home, the partnership seemed perfect. Continue reading...

Russian and transgender players of Rust are unhappy, but the decision to randomise race and gender is all about better gameplay, not imposing ideologyI am the lead developer on a multiplayer survival game named Rust. Last week, we made a change to the game that upset a lot of people: we made half of our players, picked at random, play as women. We also made some of them black. The response has been extreme.Rust is not a game about identity. The objective in Rust is to survive. This is made difficult by things such as starvation, dehydration, radiation, exposure and bear attacks. The biggest threat in the game comes from other players who are trying to survive in the same conditions. You will survive better if you’re a part of a group, but this takes a lot of mutual trust. If you kill someone you’ll be able to loot their corpse and take all their food, medicine and weapons. This makes the game very interesting socially, since players struggle with trust and slowly build up relationships with one another. Continue reading...

With the world only half paying attention to online threats, women are rising up to help each other, from strategy to supportFor two years, Michelle Ferrier was the target of a campaign of intimidation and harassment. The only black, female reporter on Florida’s Daytona Beach News-Journal, from 2007 Ferrier was targeted with a stream of abusive letters threatening lynchings and a “race war”, all in the same handwriting and from the same potentially dangerous person.But without a specific threat, police said, there was no chance of a criminal investigation. Afraid for her family, Ferrier left the paper and moved away. Continue reading...

Company’s thinnest, lightest and most expensive e-reader yet has a new design with 9-week reading battery, ergonomic grip and page-turn buttonsAmazon has just released the next step in the evolution of e-readers, a wafer thin screen bolted to a small grip containing the battery and electronics, the Kindle Oasis.The new high-end Kindle Oasis is Amazon’s biggest step yet towards its goal of making e-readers just like paper, having committed to shrinking each iteration of Kindle by 20% at a time. Continue reading...

The startup disrupting the taxi industry via one simple ride-hailing app has been batting away lawsuits since 2009 – here’s a comprehensive roundupUber – which at its latest valuation of $62.5bn is the world’s most valuable private startup – has paid huge sums of money in legal settlements across the world since the taxi-hailing company was founded in 2009.

Hackers reportedly supply zero-day exploit to allow US law enforcement entry to device, which may put older iPhones at risk of cyber criminalsThe FBI reportedly bought a previously unknown security bug from a group of professional hackers to gain entry to the San Bernardino iPhone 5C, according to the Washington Post.The report suggests hackers supplied at least one so-called zero-day flaw in the iPhone 5C’s security that allowed the FBI to circumvent the lockscreen and automatic wipe feature that kicks in after 10 wrong passcode entries. Continue reading...

Parliament’s equalities chair warns against internet providers being allowed to hide behind free speech argumentBritain needs better internet laws to stop online abuse that may be creating a nightmare for society in future, Maria Miller, the Conservative former culture secretary and equalities minister, has said.The senior Tory MP, who now chairs the Commons women and equalities committee, said the government needed to wake up to some of the problems the internet was creating, from vile abuse on social media to easy sharing of violent explicit images among young people. Continue reading...

UK-based Rebellion is reviving the arcade hit as its first virtual reality game. But the company is playing by new rulesIn some ways, 1980s arcade hit Battlezone can lay claim to being the first “virtual reality” game to hit the market.Its rudimentary vector-based graphics presented a 3D view of head-to-head tank combat, viewed by the player through a periscope-style screen. A far cry from what’s offered by the Oculus Rifts of today’s world. Continue reading...