Police say child is in custody after the woman live-streamed the two-year-old taped to a wall and said ‘now sit still’An Ohio woman was charged with abduction on Thursday after she taped her two-year-old son to a wall and broadcast the episode on Facebook Live earlier this month.Police from Reynoldsburg, Ohio, charged the mother, 18-year-old Shayla Rudolph, with the third-degree felony on Thursday, and said that Franklin County children services had taken her son into protective custody. In a statement, the department said that they were alerted to the video on Wednesday by a local news station. Continue reading...

Government-backed network was temporarily banned from posting images, videos or live streams for about 20 hours, possibly over a copyright issueHardly a day goes by without Facebook landing itself in a censorship row, but the social media giant’s latest kerfuffle – a temporary ban of the Russian government-backed network RT – has drawn threats of retaliation from the Russian state censor.RT was barred from posting images, videos or live streams on its Facebook page for about 20 hours, possibly over a copyright issue related to its stream of Barack Obama’s final press conference on Wednesday, according to the network. The network said it streamed a subscription Associated Press feed, which should not have violated any rights. Continue reading...

Your smartphone is an ad-delivery device. The line between content and advertising is blurred. But is the answer to go offline?On the internet, advertising is the industry that dare not speak its name. A Facebook post is “suggested”; a tweet is “promoted” – they are ads. An article or video is “presented by” or “sponsored” – it’s an ad. Even something as impressive as Felix Baumgartner’s skydive from the edge of space in 2012 – that was an ad, paid for by Red Bull. The term “content” serves to blur lines – helpfully, from an advertiser’s point of view – between what is advertising and what isn’t.Google’s founders once wrote that any search engine that sold ads would be compromised; now it’s the biggest advertising company on the planet. Your smartphone, media studies professor Mara Einstein says, is fundamentally an ad-delivery device. Advertising is everywhere. And yet, increasingly, we don’t want to see it. We install ad-blockers because webpages are increasingly slowed down by waiting for intrusive adverts to be loaded from some distant server, and because we don’t want to be tracked around the internet by shadowy companies that trade our personal data. But who does ad-blocking really hurt? Clue: not the advertisers. Continue reading...

The processor is the most important part of a computer, but CPU names and numbers don’t mean much to most people. Regular commenter 75drayton wants help figuring them outI had no idea the Core i3-6100 you mentioned last week is faster than some of the slower i5 chips. Is there any chance of you writing an article that focuses on processors? I appreciate that PCs are more than just processors, but I would find it useful. 75draytonIt’s worse than that. There have been cheap Intel Pentium chips that were faster than Core i7’s! Intel uses BMW-style branding, where the Core i3, i5 and i7 are marketed as good/better/best. This is usually a fair reflection of current performance per watt of power used, but it doesn’t tell you the raw performance.

A Swedish Facebook group called Mediekollen promises to debunk false information on the web. The twist? Mediekollen is faking its factsAnyone who thought the furore over fake news would lead to fast and effective action to tackle disinformation on the web has been quickly disabused of the notion.From Donald Trump labelling news sources he doesn’t like as “fake news” to doubts about Facebook’s plans to use third-party fact checkers to verify disputed stories, each twist and turn seems to open up a new can of worms. Continue reading...

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

Girls aged 13 to 15 invited to test tech skills in competition as part of effort to inspire more women to join fight against online crimeTeenage girls are being invited to put their technology skills to the test in a competition that could unearth the cyber spies of the future.The contest has been set up by GCHQ’s new National Cyber Security Centre as part of efforts to inspire more women to join the fight against online crime. Only 10% of the global cyber workforce are female, the intelligence agency said. Continue reading...

Jokers are exploiting a bug in iOS and are sending messages stuffed with emojis which cause recipients’ iPhones or iPads to freezeA bug in iOS is being exploited in a prank aimed at crashing iPhones and iPads using the power of simple text, flag and rainbow emojis.

Russian president dismisses alleged links between US president-elect and Moscow and says sex claims are ‘obvious fake’Vladimir Putin has dismissed the dossier published last week about alleged links between Moscow and Donald Trump, describing the people who ordered it as “worse than prostitutes”. Continue reading...

Survey spanning 40 countries reveals how officials are failing to keep up with changes in way voters gather information and form opinionsWeakened and distrusted central governments around the world have been incapable of responding to the way the internet and social media have empowered populist but previously fringe groups, a unique worldwide survey of government communication chiefs has found.The survey spanning 40 countries is the first international review to reveal how deeply governments feel they are losing control and authority over communications. Continue reading...

Price rises for iOS and Mac users announced in an email to developers, following a 19% fall in the value of the poundApple is raising prices on its UK App Store by almost 25% to reflect the sharp depreciation of the pound following June’s vote to leave the European Union.The new prices enshrine parity between the dollar and the pound, at least for apps on the iOS and Mac app stores. An app that costs $0.99 in the US, and used to cost £0.79, will now cost £0.99. Continue reading...

The EU’s legal affairs committee is walking blindfold into a swamp if it thinks that “electronic personhood” will protect society from developments in AI (Give robots ‘personhood’, say EU committee, 13 January). The analogy with corporate personhood is unfortunate, as this has not protected society in general, but allowed owners of companies to further their own interests – witness the example of the Citizens United movement in the US, where corporate personhood has been used as a tool for companies to interfere in the electoral process, on the basis that a corporation has the same right to free speech as a biological human being.Electronic personhood will protect the interests of a few, at the expense of the many. As soon as rules of robotic personhood are published, the creators of AI devices will “adjust” their machines to take the fullest advantage of this opportunity – not because these people are evil but because that is part of the logic of any commercial activity. Continue reading...

Facebook denies it is deliberate loophole but Tobias Boelter sets out what the vulnerability is and why it mattersThere was an outcry when the Guardian published my information regarding a vulnerability within WhatsApp’s implementation of end-to-end encryption, but much of the response misses the point.Most of the arguments seem to revolve around what is and isn’t a backdoor. You can argue that we are looking at a vulnerability which would be something that is there by error, or a backdoor, which would be something that is there deliberately. Continue reading...

Drivers of the electronic cars will again be able to set the self-driving features to break the speed limit, even on undivided roadsTesla owners will be able to ask the robot that drives their car to break the speed limit, again, following a software update pushed out to users over the weekend.The new software changes the way the autopilot function works on Tesla cars equipped with it. The brand covers a suite of advanced safety features, from lane assist, which keeps the car in the correct lane when driving on motorways, to adaptive cruise control, which allows the car to match speeds with the vehicle in front. Continue reading...

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

Brexit Britain goes into space, Mario hits the smartphone sector in style, and the cricket simulation series hits us for sixPS4, Xbox One, PC, Billy Goat Entertainment, cert: 3

The voice-controlled home assistant works well, but on the other hand it is a networked listening device, with wider implicationsA few weeks ago, I bought Amazon’s latest gizmo – the Echo. It’s a voice-activated, networked device equipped with a seven-piece microphone array, which means that it can pick up one’s voice from anywhere in its vicinity with impressive accuracy. It comes in two versions, one a 9.25in-tall cylinder that contains a number of speakers, the other a much smaller cylinder that just has tinny speakers. Since the latter was a third of the price of the former, your cheapskate columnist bought that and hooked it up to his hi-fi system, which means that when he speaks to it the Echo replies in sultry female tones modulated by a high-end analogue amplifier and a pair of very fine speakers. Her name, by the way, is “Alexa”.I bought it because it seemed to me that it might be a significant product and I have a policy of never writing about kit that I haven’t paid for myself. Having lived with the Echo for a few weeks I can definitely confirm its significance. It is a big deal, which explains why the company invested so much in it. (It’s said that 1,500 people worked on the project for four years, which sounds implausible until you remember that Apple has 800 people working on the iPhone’s camera alone). Amazon’s boss, Jeff Bezos, may not have bet the ranch on it (he has a pretty big ranch, after all) but the product nevertheless represents a significant investment. And the sales so far suggest that it may well pay off. Continue reading...

The Mustang is a V8 legend that epitomises the frontier spirit of the west. Just don’t unleash it in rush hourPrice as tested: £35,745

While some are more secure than others, there always seems to be another flaw waiting to be discovered – so should security be prioritized over convenience?

‘It’s madly extravagant but be wary; once you’ve tried it, nothing else is like it’The Ferrari did something to me, cognitively. I don’t know whether it was the alarm going off in my head, screaming “£200,000”, or the bright yellow brakes visible through the wheels, ramming home how much sheer metal work it takes to stop a machine such as this, once it gets moving. Perhaps it was because it arrived not with a driver so much as a minder and I felt the obscure urge to reassure him, as if I’d taken possession of an evacuee.Immediately, basic skills like observation and decision-making were shot: from the inside, I couldn’t figure out how to open the door, only the window. In a perverse bid to protect the roof from my own fingernails, I opened the fold-down roof to take my jumper off (this takes 14 seconds and is like watching an acrobat climb into a tiny box). I was never not surprised by the roar of the ignition, nor anything but astonished by the acceleration. As the fresh acts of folly piled up, I couldn’t even reassure myself that nobody was watching; in a Ferrari, someone is always watching. The cliche is that it makes you feel like a film star, which is true. That film star was Mr Bean. Continue reading...

The Bundestag was hacked in 2015. Angela Merkel should expect this year’s election to be targeted tooOne year ago in Berlin, Lisa F, a 13-year-old German-Russian girl, disappeared for 30 hours. When she returned to her parents, she claimed she had been kidnapped and raped by “Arab” men. This was a lie – as she later admitted. She had fallen out with her parents and invented the whole story. But that did little to stop the episode from becoming the centrepiece of a whirlwind Russian disinformation campaign aimed at destabilising Angela Merkel and German institutions.Related: The leaked Russia-Trump dossier rings frighteningly true | Andrei Soldatov Continue reading...

Hillary Clinton’s former deputy social media director, Emmy Bengtson, opens up about her experience working for the Clinton camp, including the how the infamous ‘Delete your account’ tweet came to beIn June 2016 we ran an episode of Chips with Everything discussing the digital strategy of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign with the his digital director Kenneth Pennington. This week, we flip the coin and speak to Emmy Bengtson, former deputy social media director for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Continue reading...

Scientists claim smartphone cameras are now advanced enough to allow crooks to copy your fingerprint from photos and unlock your phone. So put your hand back in your pocketName: The peace sign.Appearance: Fist clenched, index and middle fingers outstretched skywards. Continue reading...

Pre-ordering is a dangerous game, an untried console could be a total flop. But I’ve got a good feeling about the Switch, I think I’m going to be very happy with itWhen I went to bed on Thursday night, I knew I would be pre-ordering a Nintendo Switch as soon as I woke on Friday.I had some rules for myself, of course. The price had to be right; there had to be at least one game I wanted coming on launch day, plus at least one other shortly after; and the implicit promises made in the first announcement – that it would be a truly hybrid system, as capable on-the-go as docked – had to be kept. Continue reading...

Donald Trump promised to assemble ‘some of the greatest computer minds’ to address cybersecurity. Instead, he picked the former mayor of New YorkAt Donald Trump’s now-notorious press conference on Tuesday, lost amidst his threats to news organizations and denunciations of his enemies, the president-elect claimed he would soon assemble “some of the greatest computer minds anywhere in the world” to tackle the US government’s cybersecurity problem. On Thursday, he went the opposite route instead and hired Rudy Giuliani.Giuliani, Trump election surrogate and the disgraced former mayor of New York, is apparently going to head up Trump’s efforts to coordinate “cybersecurity” issues between the federal government and the private sector, the transition team announced Tuesday. But what does Giuliani, last seen on the campaign trail claiming the president can break whatever law he likes in a time of war, know about cybersecurity? From the look and sound of it, not much. Continue reading...

Why is there a hole in its encryption, what is the Signal protocol, what does that mean for my privacy and are there any alternatives?

From old-school fantasy to family-friendly team shoot ‘em ups, classic Street Fighter titles and an all-new Super Mario adventure, here’s what to look forward toNintendo announced all the details of its Switch console on Friday morning, revealing a 3 March launch date and £280 price tag. But what about the games? Everyone was expecting a new Super Mario title and perhaps a remaster of ElderScrolls V: Skyrim – and those were certainly delivered. But what else has been confirmed?Here are the titles we’re most looking forward to.

Exclusive: Privacy campaigners criticise WhatsApp vulnerability as a ‘huge threat to freedom of speech’ and warn it could be exploited by government agenciesA security backdoor that can be used to allow Facebook and others to intercept and read encrypted messages has been found within its WhatsApp messaging service.

Japanese gaming company reveals new console, which launches with flagship title Zelda: Breath of the Wild, will cost $299.99 in US and £279.99 in UKJapanese gaming company Nintendo has unveiled its new Nintendo Switch console at a presentation in Tokyo.The device, a hybrid that can be used both handheld and with a TV when in a dock, will go on sale on 3 March priced $299.99 in the US and £279.99 in the UK. Other European prices will vary, Nintendo said. Continue reading...

Online retailer prepares to expand full-time US workforce by more than 50% over next 18 months, with hires from Florida to CaliforniaAmazon plans to create more than 100,000 jobs in the United States, from software development to warehouse work, becoming the latest company to boast a hiring spree since Donald Trump won the US presidential election in November.The world’s largest online retailer announced on Thursday that it would grow its full-time US workforce by more than 50% to more than 280,000 in the next 18 months. Continue reading...

What are the origins of the 35-page intelligence dossier containing allegations about links between Donald Trump and the Kremlin – and how bad could it get?With days to go before Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States, Washington has been convulsed by news of a 35-page intelligence dossier containing incendiary allegations from Russian spies about close links between the Trump camp and the Kremlin as well as salacious sexual details that could allegedly expose the next US head of state to blackmail. The allegations are wholly unsubstantiated, but were deemed serious enough for US intelligence agencies to pass a two-page summary of them last week both to Trump and the current president, Barack Obama.Related: Trump dossier: intelligence sources vouch for credibility of report's author Continue reading...

Proposed rules for robots and AI in Europe include a push for a general basic income for humans, and ‘human rights’ for robotsThe European parliament has urged the drafting of a set of regulations to govern the use and creation of robots and artificial intelligence, including a form of “electronic personhood” to ensure rights and responsibilities for the most capable AI.In a 17-2 vote, with two abstentions, the parliament’s legal affairs committee passed the report, which outlines one possible framework for regulation. Continue reading...

Company behind advanced flying camera capable of shooting video and stills while following users offers refunds as financing failsEagerly anticipated “selfie drone” the Lily Camera, which promised to be able to follow owners around and automatically photograph them, has been cancelled by its designers.The drone secured at least $34m of pre-orders since going on sale on the manufacturer’s website in June, but the costs of development continually outpaced the speed with which Lily could raise funds. Continue reading...

The new machine seeks to merge the handheld and home console experiences. Now it needs to find an audienceIn 2013, Nintendo opened a new research and development facility in its home town of Kyoto, Japan. Usually, a consumer technology manufacturer opening a new office wouldn’t be news, but this was different: the $350m building would house both the company’s handheld and console gaming R&D teams.In the past, these groups had been kept apart, producing very different hardware and games for the different markets – now they would be merged. At the time, analysts thought this was to improve functionality between the Wii U and 3DS, but now we understand this was not the end goal – the end goal was Switch. This hybrid gaming system, which works as both a portable machine and a home console, now looks to represent Nintendo’s future in the games industry. But what does that mean? Continue reading...

Project to build solar-powered drone to provide internet access in remote areas closed in favour of competing high-altitude balloon schemeGoogle owner Alphabet’s subsidiary research company, X, has shut down its project aimed at building a solar-powered drone intended to bring internet access to remote areas.The project, which stemmed from an acquisition Google made in April 2014 of New Mexico-based Titan Aerospace, was deemed by X to be less promising than a competing attempt to use lightweight weather balloons for the same purpose. Continue reading...

David Kaye warns digital economy bill’s age controls and censorship of websites could break international human rights lawThe UN’s free speech advocate has warned that British government plans to enforce age verification and some censorship of pornographic websites risk breaking international human rights law and would contribute to a “significant tightening of control over the internet”.David Kaye, the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, called on ministers to conduct a comprehensive review of the digital economy bill, which he said facilitated state surveillance and lacked judicial oversight.

Windows Vista reaches the end of its life on 11 April. John wants to buy a new PC to replace his slow 10-year-old Acer Aspire.I have a 10-year-old Acer Aspire T660 desktop with 640MB of memory and Windows Vista Premium installed. The whole system is getting slower and slower, including the instruction to print documents and/or photos to my HP printer/copier/scanner.I use the PC for email, online banking, word processing and spreadsheets (Microsoft Office), Skype and some games. Broadband here to the house is poor.You must have an enormous amount of patience to run Windows Vista in 640MB or even 2GB of memory, and your best investment would have been to add as much memory as your PC could handle – in this case, 4GB. Sadly, it’s too late for that: it’s not worth spending money on a machine that is at the end of its useful life. On the plus side, almost anything will be a huge improvement. Continue reading...

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

Two employees say company didn’t offer adequate psychological support for a job requiring them to view ‘indescribable’ sexual assaults and murdersMicrosoft workers on the “online safety team” were forced to view photos and videos of “indescribable sexual assaults”, “horrible brutality”, murder and child abuse, resulting in severe post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a lawsuit.The complaint, filed on behalf of two employees and their families, outlined the “inhumane and disgusting content” the moderators viewed on a regular basis and alleged that the psychological impact has been so extreme that the men are “triggered” by simply seeing children and can no longer use computers without breaking down. Continue reading...

Internet Australia wants review brought forward owing to ‘continuing disquiet’ as government seeks to expand accessThe peak body for internet users in Australia has formally requested that a review of the attorney general’s data retention scheme be brought forward, calling the legislation a “monumental stuff-up” as the government seeks to expand access to include civil lawsuits.

The dossier includes lurid details from Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow and claims an ‘extensive conspiracy’ between his team and the Kremlin – is it true?

The Facebook Journalism Project comes after company accused of failing to tackle misinformation and at a time when newsrooms are cutting costsFacebook has unveiled measures to establish stronger ties between the social network and the news industry, allowing for collaboration on product development, new ways for publishers to make money, and training for newsrooms and readers.The announcement of the Facebook Journalism Project comes in the wake of heightened scrutiny of the social network’s role as a distributor of news, which saw the company accused of failing to tackle the spread of misinformation in the run-up to the US presidential election. At the same time, Facebook and Google are taking the lion’s share of online advertising revenue while newsrooms cut costs and make lay-offs. Continue reading...

Long-lost titles finally saw the light of day, and Mario ran into troubleRelated: The Last Guardian review – a joyous meditation on companionshipIn an industry fuelled by carefully managed waves of hype, developers can easily get carried away in the promotion of software that isn’t quite ready yet. Sometimes that means being loose-lipped about features that don’t make it into the final product, a crime for which the internet will punish you in the same way as if you’d been caught drowning puppies. Other times, games are talked about for so long that they start to seem less like forms of entertainment and more like musty urban myths. But, for some reason, the last few weeks have seen the emergence of a clutch of games that had themselves in video game lore as forever “coming soon”. Continue reading...

Beijing KFC is pioneering technology to try to predict and remember people’s fast food choices but there’s a trade off between convenience and privacyWalking into the KFC restaurant in Beijing’s financial district, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a fried chicken outlet like any other. It’s only if you head right to the back corner of the shop that you realise you’re actually in China’s first smart restaurant.KFC has teamed up with Baidu – the search engine company often referred to as “China’s Google” – to develop facial-recognition technology that can be used to predict customer’s orders. Continue reading...

Foreign secretary tells incoming US administration that Russia and Putin have been ‘up to all sorts of very dirty tricks’The Russian embassy in London has accused the Foreign Office of preparing to mount a witch-hunt against Moscow in the wake of allegations by the UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, that Russia has been “up to all sorts of tricks”.Johnson had claimed that the Kremlin was behind the hack of the Democratic campaign headquarters computer during the US presidential race, the first time that the UK has confirmed US intelligence reports linking the hacks to Russia. Continue reading...

European ePrivacy directive revision looks to protect communication confidentiality, block nonconsensual tracking and lessen cookie warningsMessaging services such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Gmail will face tough new rules on the tracking of users under a revision to the ePrivacy Directive proposed by the European Commission on Tuesday.

Targets allegedly included former prime ministers Matteo Renzi and Mario Monti and ECB chief Mario DraghiItalian police have arrested two people who allegedly tried to hack the communications of former prime minister Matteo Renzi and other senior Italian politicians and business executives as part of a cyber-espionage ring that sought sensitive financial and political information.The alleged hackers, named as Giulio Occhionero and Francesca Maria Occhionero, a brother and sister who were residents of London, also targeted the former prime minister Mario Monti; the head of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi; Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, a member of the conclave that elected Pope Francis, and top officials in Italy’s tax police. Continue reading...

Experiential games are finding new ways to tell interactive stories, but studio Humble Grove has given the genre a new autobiographical twistTurning a space into a home is a process akin to alchemy. It’s a combination of objects (old, new, inherited, broken, and sometimes of mysterious origin) and an investment of emotional energy. Space does not become a home overnight. It’s worked and kneaded, left to rise. It is gradual, and then it is a sudden realisation that becomes magically real: this house is now mine.Hana Lee and Tom Davison, the duo behind independent studio Humble Grove, explore this cathexis of placemaking in their forthcoming game, 29, set in an isometric facsimile of the flat they lived in as students. Via soft, desaturated pastels, they’ve captured the whole feel of the place, from a clock ticking on the wall, to a cat purring, radiators popping and pipes groaning in the walls. But there are also magical elements mixed in with the kitchen sink realism. A small fern creeps up from the floor where you walk, and it dies just as quickly. Stars wink in and out of existence just behind you. It’s a familiar place – but uncertain. There are suitcases packed in the bedroom, but nowhere to go. Continue reading...

Chrome, Safari, Opera and extensions such as LastPass can be tricked into leaking private information using hidden text boxes, developer findsYour browser or password manager’s autofill might be inadvertently giving away your information to unscrupulous phishers using hidden text boxes on sites.