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The title that arguably kickstarted one of the most controversial gaming genres of the last decade is getting a re-release on the latest consolesThe intention was to explore the limits of the first-person shooter genre. This was the idea that drove a small group of researchers at the University of Portsmouth to develop the original version of Dear Esther in 2007. Set on a remote Hebridean island, the game offered no puzzles, no peril, no allies or enemies to interact with. The player progressed through the haunted, barren landscape while a tragic story of love and loss played out around them. They walked, they listened, they watched.It was minimal, it was experimental, but there was something about the game – its beautiful environments, its haunting soundtrack, its sullen, almost despairing atmosphere, that caught people’s attention. This was a genre associated with fast-paced blasters like Doom and Unreal, but here was a game about a man descending into grief, the nature of which remained elusive, but centred on the titular Esther. It generated enough interest that co-creators Dan Pinchbeck and Jessica Curry were able to set up their studio, The Chinese Room (named after the philosophical thought experiment), as a commercial venture to develop a standalone version. Continue reading...

Co-creator of the iPlayer criticises the corporation’s bureaucracy as he leaves after 14 yearsTony Ageh, one of the architects of the BBC iPlayer, is to leave the corporation after 14 years to join the New York Public Library as chief digital officer.

Fang Binxing mocked for needing to circumvent his own censorship system live during a talk to access a website in South KoreaThe “Father” of China’s internet censorship infrastructure, known as the Great Firewall of China, has been caught having to circumvent his own creation after attempting to display a website during a talk at the Harbin Institute of Technology in the Heilongjiang province of China.

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While most companies are simplifying their browsers for the mass market, Vivaldi is going in the opposite direction. After spending five months on the beta test, Jack Schofield reports on the launch of version 1.0Vivaldi has launched a new web browser that is different enough to have a chance of success. Rather than targeting the mass market with a simplified browser, Vivaldi is trying to deliver more power to the people who live and work on the web, whether they use Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.These people, the developers believe, are those who want to take notes and screen grabs while browsing, or view three or four different web pages in the same tab. People who want to be able to save and reload all their favourite sites as sessions. People who want to do everything via configurable keyboard commands, or use mouse-gestures instead. Continue reading...

Latest wireless noise cancelling headphones from Sony last ages between charges, sound decent and feel great, only let down by a few small nigglesSony has a history of making great, long-lasting headphones and its h.ear on Wireless NC headphones are no exception.The company’s big push in the past couple of years has been for high resolution music delivered by its range of Walkman devices and Xperia smartphones. These new headphones are some of the first to deliver that high resolution music wirelessly, but HiRes music isn’t required to enjoy them. Continue reading...

Outspoken energy minister Ségolène Royal has told Musk of her vision to transform France’s oldest nuclear site into a Tesla factory: ‘Who dares, wins’French energy minister Ségolène Royal has suggested to Tesla founder Elon Musk that he build an electric car factory on the site of France’s oldest nuclear reactor after it closes at the end of the year, AFP reported on Tuesday.French President Francois Hollande has pledged to close down the Fessenheim nuclear plant in the Alsace region near the German border but has met strong resistance from local politicians and unions worried about job losses. Continue reading...

Biometric devices measuring players’ joint stress, heart and breathing rates have been approved for use during Major League Baseball games this seasonWearable technology is coming to Major League Baseball.

George Hotz has scored $3.1m investment in his startup Comma, and thinks he can build a better self-driving car than Elon MuskGeorge Hotz, the latest Silicon Valley startup founder to get a multimillion-dollar check from venture capitalists, went for a ride in a Rolls-Royce around San Francisco on Monday.At 26, Hotz thinks he could teach the legendary vehicle a few tricks. Braking should be smoother, he says. Accelerations could be gentler. The vehicle should run each time as if the best limo driver in the world was behind the wheel. “You don’t want the champagne to spill,” Hotz says. Continue reading...

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are a tale of two Snapchats – each with different posting styles and strategies on how to nab the millennial voteBernie Sanders is winning the Snapchat election – at least on the follower count.“We do have the largest – and I’ve heard by far – the largest one,” said Hector Sigala, a digital media director on the Sanders campaign. Continue reading...

When MP Jess Phillips signed an email to a constituent with kisses she was rebuked by a judge. It’s time we had some xxing etiquette‘Another example of where being an MP and a human is unacceptable,” complained Jess Phillips as she tweeted a letter that she had sent to the justice secretary, Michael Gove.The Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley told the Conservative minister that she found the response of a judge in a Department for Work and Pensions tribunal case about a constituent’s access to disability benefit a “total insult”. Continue reading...

Company will not open center that would have employed over 400 people, citing a recently passed law they say discriminates against LGBT citizensPayPal cancelled plans for a new operation center that would have employed over 400 people in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Tuesday citing the state’s recently passed religious freedom law that critics say discriminates against the LGBT community.“Two weeks ago, PayPal announced plans to open a new global operations center in Charlotte and employ over 400 people in skilled jobs. In the short time since then, legislation has been abruptly enacted by the State of North Carolina that invalidates protections of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens and denies these members of our community equal rights under the law,” Dan Schulman, president and chief executive officer of PayPal, said in a letter released on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Customers furious as Nest is set to turn off Revolv units in just over a monthGoogle owner Alphabet’s subsidiary Nest is closing a smart-home company it bought less than two years ago, leaving customers’ devices useless as of May.In 2014, Google acquired Revolv, the maker of a £210 hub which could be used to control devices such as lights, alarms and doors. Continue reading...

Researchers discover that touching the areas where a robot’s genitals or buttocks would be provokes a physiological response in humansCalifornian researchers have established that an intimate caress of a humanoid robot can produce a physiological response in a human.They challenged volunteers with a robotic creature less than two feet high that possessed eyes, ears, torso, legs, arms and a voice – and a chat-up line rich in come-hither invitations. “Sometimes I’ll ask you to touch my body and sometimes I’ll ask you to point to my body,” it told volunteers. Continue reading...

Wikimedia claims Swedish court decision means tourists who take selfies at famous landmarks and spread them online could be in violation of lawSweden’s highest court on Monday found Wikimedia Sweden guilty of violating copyright laws by providing free access to its database of artwork photographs without the artists’ consent.

A government-sponsored committee is recommending standards that could open a path for commercial drone flights over populated areasA committee sponsored by the US government is recommending standards that could clear the way for commercial drone flights over populated areas and help speed the introduction of package delivery drones and other uses not yet possible, the Associated Press has reported.The Federal Aviation Administration currently prohibits most commercial drone flights over populated areas, especially crowds. That ban frustrates a host of industries that want to take advantage of the technology. Continue reading...

‘Techies’ is one photographer’s mission to tell the stories of Silicon Valley’s minorities, and to disrupt your idea of what a tech worker looks likeProminent Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently wrote that “software coding is quite possibly the most inviting, inclusive profession ever” and linked to a study reporting that many coders are self taught. What he didn’t notice: the study also says the profession is 92.8% men.Helena Price, a photographer and former startup worker, is on Monday launching the largest oral history of discrimination in Silicon Valley – a series of 100 portraits of “techies” who fall into those forgotten categories. Continue reading...

Somerset House hosted a diverse and fascinating selection of experimental games as part of the 2016 London Games Festival. Here are the highlightsThe Now Play This festival took place this weekend at Somerset House in London, bringing together a vast array of interesting experimental game projects. Organisers Holly Gramazio and George Buckenham arranged the exhibits into themed rooms, with quieter areas for more intimate projects, and open spaces for a range of raucous physical games.Here are some of our favourite titles from the weekend. Continue reading...

Leaked FBI advisory tells state and local law enforcement that they are ‘in this together’ and federal agency will aid unlocking of iPhones where possibleThe FBI has told other US law enforcement agencies that it will help them to unlock the iPhones of suspected criminals.

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Monday. We have heard reports that, due to the lateness of this box, some people have been forced to ‘do some work’. Obviously this is a scenario that we would prefer our users not to encounter and we apologise for any inconvenience or terror caused. Continue reading...

Elon Musk’s company took $276m in deposits for the ‘affordable’ $35,000 car, which is primed for a 2017 launchTesla Motors took almost $10bn (£7bn) worth of pre-orders for its newest car, the Model 3, in just two days, according to the company’s chief executive Elon Musk.By the end of 2 April, 276,000 pre-orders had been placed for the car worldwide. Although the Model 3 is Tesla’s first attempt at an “affordable” electric car, it will still cost at least $35,000 when it ships in mid–2017, meaning the company has secured $9.7bn worth of sales for a car still over a year away from rolling off the production line. Continue reading...

Blizzard gained many fans with its seminal MMORPG – but it’s the virtual card game Hearthstone that’s making it a household nameOne of the striking things about Blizzard, the superstar developer behind some of gaming’s biggest hits, including World of Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft, is how little it actually does.That’s not to say the company’s employees aren’t constantly at work, although the Kendo lessons taking place on the lawn outside its headquarters in Irvine, California, on the sunny spring day I visit could give that impression. Continue reading...

Hackers could steal users’ location data, finding out ‘where you are, how you got there and where you are going’, say campaigners

From home entertainment and wireless speakers to lights, thermostats, sensors, alarms and more, this is the one remote to rule them all – for a pretty priceThe Logitech Harmony Elite is the one remote to rule them all, from TV, set-top box and console to lights, thermostat, wireless speakers and internet-connected sensors, it’ll control the lot.

From home entertainment and wireless speakers to lights, thermostats, sensors, alarms and more, this is the one remote to rule them all – for a pretty priceThe Logitech Harmony Elite is the one remote to rule them all, from TV, set-top box and console to lights, thermostat, wireless speakers and internet-connected sensors, it’ll control the lot.

From football reports to clickbait, programs are changing the way the news is createdLook closely at what many journalists write about artificial intelligence – from AlphaGo’s triumph at the ancient Chinese board game Go to Microsoft’s accidentally racist Twitter bot – and you might detect some smugness. Research by Oxford University has predicted that journalism is among the jobs least likely to be replaced by a machine in the near future. And yet, as Columbia University prepares to celebrate 100 years of the Pulitzer prize, intelligent robots will publish financial reports, sports commentaries, clickbait and myriad other articles formerly the preserve of trained journalists.“A machine will win a Pulitzer one day,” predicts Kris Hammond from Narrative Science, a company that specialises in “natural language generation”. “We can tell the stories hidden in data.” Continue reading...

Android app offered access to videos and statements in Pashto but has been removed from Google Play StoreThe Afghan Taliban have created an app for Android smartphones in an attempt to connect with a wider digital audience.The app, called Alemarah, gave access to Taliban videos and statements in Pashto, but was removed from Google’s Play Store shortly after the US-based SITE Intel Group reported its launch on Friday. Continue reading...

Mainstream news is not to blame for Donald Trump’s ascendancy. After all, it’s largely ignored by his supportersAs the Trump bandwagon gathers speed, one of the most touching sights is that of mainstream journalists in full-on mea culpa mode. “Those of us in the news media have sometimes blamed Donald Trump’s rise on the Republican party’s toxic manipulation of racial resentments over the years,” wrote the New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, last Saturday. “But we should also acknowledge another force that empowered Trump: us. I polled a number of journalists and scholars, and there was a broad (though not universal) view that we in the media screwed up.”“Trump is not just an instant ratings/circulation/clicks gold mine; he’s the motherlode,” Ann Curry, a TV news anchor, told Kristof. “He stepped on to the presidential campaign stage precisely at a moment when the media is struggling against deep insecurities about its financial future. The truth is, the media has needed Trump like a crack addict needs a hit.” Continue reading...

With Britain facing a skills shortage, a new exhibition is highlighting the work of British industry’s backroom boys and girlsPictured seated in a workshop, visor raised, 20-year-old Sophy Bage gazes resolutely across the room. Hair drawn back tightly into a ponytail, bright yellow earplugs just visible, a small smile steals across her illuminated face. She looks completely at home – and well she might. Because Bage is a welder.On show at the Mall Galleries in central London, this photograph of Bage forms part of a week-long tribute to the little-known, yet vital, champions of science and engineering. Titled Technicians Make It Happen, and composed of photographs, paintings and items relating to a host of varied careers, the exhibition is a paean to those who make the wheels of industry turn, usher forth feats of civil engineering and build intricate equipment that will yield a slew of scientific results. “Technicians have a really diverse range of roles,” says Nigel Thomas, executive director of Education and Skills at the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. “You’ll see them in the NHS right through to stuff like satellite design.” Continue reading...

In rare public statement about spaceflight company, billionaire owner announces ‘flawless restart and perfect landing’The private spaceflight company Blue Origin has successfully landed a rocket for the third time, owner Jeff Bezos announced on Saturday.Related: SpaceX mission could herald new era of reusable rockets Continue reading...

The most significant examples of what used to be called the ‘sharing economy’ are giant corporations pursuing monopoly power – what exactly is being shared?Sharing” is one of the most rhetorically abused virtues of the age. First we had the euphemism “file-sharing”, for duplicating and uploading copies of albums or films to the internet. Well, you can’t share what isn’t yours in the first place. (If I pilfer money from a bank and give it to my friends, I might plead that I was just “money-sharing”, but I am more likely to be convicted of robbery.) And now we supposedly have a “sharing economy”, the most-often cited two examples of which – Uber and Airbnb – are giant corporations pursuing monopoly power and fighting governments the world over. What exactly is being shared here, and in whose interest?The first “sharing economy” organisations allowed members to timeshare things such as cars or power tools, rather than owning one each and leaving it idle most of the time. In their purest form such groups were “peer-to-peer”: self-organising, with no central authority. Once a for-profit company is set up to handle the logistics – such as Zipcar – however, the notion of “sharing” is arguably already out of the window. Still, there remained the kernel of a communitarian idea in the origin of Airbnb, founded by two tech workers who rented out airbeds in their spare rooms for a conference, and thought there might be a market. Continue reading...

‘Everyone does it’, but leaseholders and tenants must tread carefully if they want to avoid repercussionsGrowing numbers of landlords are launching possession proceedings against tenants who have sublet their property via sites such as Airbnb without permission, it was claimed this week. Tenants who do this without consent risk eviction for a breach of their assured shorthold tenancy agreement. Meanwhile, owners of leasehold flats have also been warned they should tread very carefully.Only Airbnb hosts who own their property outright can be sure that they are not breaching any contractual obligations – but even these homeowners, like any other landlord, are breaking the law if they fail to get a gas safety certificate for the property each year. Continue reading...

Gmail Mic Drop caused more tears than laughter, thanks to users accidentally enabling the prank on serious emails – with some dire consequencesApril Fools’ Day 2016: best jokes from around the worldGoogle’s April Fools’ Day prank has backfired, leaving the company looking the fool and a number of concerned users fearing for their jobs – or worse.

Science Kombat is a new browser-based game that lets some of history’s most famous scientists duke it out in an epic grudge matchHere’s something fun for a Friday: If you miss the heady days of over-the-top fighting games from the early 90s, then Superinteressante magazine has a neat little surprise for you this week.Science Kombat is a free-to-play browser game that pits eight science heavyweights against each other in a one-on-one brawl. You can choose from Einstein, Tesla, Pythagoras, Hawking, Turing, Darwin, Newton and Curie (it would have been nice to see more female scientists on the roster), and each comes with their own set of science-based power-ups. Stephen Hawking can create black holes to inflict damage on your opponent, while Curie harnesses the power of radium-coated hands to unleash a fireball reminiscent of Ryu’s Hadouken. Continue reading...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveils a prototype of the Model 3 car to a group of Tesla owners in Los Angeles on Thursday. The electric car will go into production in late 2017 at a starting price of $35,000 (£24,000). He says tens of thousands of pre-orders have already been taken Continue reading...

From the first Apple computer, Steve Jobs leaving and returning, the iMac and the MacBook Air to the iPod, iPhone, iPad and Watch, Apple’s is a rich history Continue reading...

Doctor Who: Comic Creator, Dragon Anywhere, Great Italian Chefs, Super Arc Light, Total War Battles: Kingdom and more to try on your iOS deviceFrom Doctor Who to Italian chefs, and South Korean survival-horror to lost socks – the App Store is certainly a broad church in 2016.Our pick of the best new apps and games this month includes all of the above, plus music-making tools, retro dungeon adventures, and an app where children are rated on their ability to copy cartoon characters’ gurning. Continue reading...

Pakistanis have been riveted by Shahbaz Taseer and his wife Maheen’s accounts of his captivity and releaseA Pakistani man who was held by the Taliban for nearly five years before being abruptly freed this month has described on social media the moment he was reunited with his wife.Pakistanis have been riveted by Shahbaz Taseer and his wife Maheen’s accounts of his captivity and release. Continue reading...

Mogul claims media group Schibsted and VC firm Verdane exaggerated the streaming service’s number of users when he bought it last year

Tech giant adds to publishers’ woes as it is revealed it expects to include adblocking features in next version of its Internet Explorer replacement

Company releases open-source chatbot framework allowing developers to build their own versions of its disastrous Twitter bot experimentMicrosoft has released open source tools for people to build their own chatbots, as it set out its view of the immediate future of artificial intelligence as conversational aids similar to its back-firing Tay experiment.

Collective says it attacked official websites in retaliation to sentences given to 17 members of a book club in LuandaA Portuguese branch of the Anonymous hacking collective says it has shut down around 20 Angolan government websites in retaliation to the jailing of 17 youth activists for plotting a “rebellion”.

Making Dalek-driven comics, playing Nintendo’s first mobile game, getting food Deliveroo’d to your door, battling in Clash Royale and more new appsNearly eight years since the launch of the Google Play store, have all the good app ideas been taken? Nope. Every month throws up a new crop of interesting, inventive and useful (or just fun) apps and games.Here’s our pick of the month for Android. Clicking or tapping on an app’s title will take you straight to the store, and prices are correct at the time of writing. If you see “IAP” that means the app uses in-app purchases. Continue reading...

Andreas Stephens waited outside the Sydney dealership for 48 hours to pre-order the as-yet-unseen model, expected to retail for about A$45,000 in 2018An Australian who waited outside Sydney’s Tesla dealership for 48 hours has become the first person in the world to order its hugely anticipated electric car.Andreas Stephens pre-ordered the Model 3, an as-yet-unseen model expected to retail for about A$45,000 (US$35,000) when it is eventually released in Australia in 2018. Continue reading...

The phone belongs to teenage suspect Hunter Drexler, and the announcement comes just days FBI says it gained access to the San Bernardino gunman’s iPhoneThe FBI agreed to help an Arkansas prosecutor unlock an iPhone and iPod belonging to two teenagers accused of killing a couple, just days after the federal agency announced it had gained access to an iPhone linked to the San Bernardino gunman.The FBI announced Monday that it had gained access to an iPhone belonging to Syed Farook, who died with his wife in a gun battle with police after they killed 14 people in San Bernardino in December. The FBI hasn’t revealed how it cracked Farook’s iPhone. Authorities also haven’t said whether the iPhone and iPod in the Arkansas case are the same models or whether the FBI will use the same method to try to get into the devices. Continue reading...

For a long time self-driving cars were considered the province of science fiction, or expensive science projects financed by big companies. But the falling price of a key piece of technology needed for some self-driving vehicles has enabled a few college dropouts to found their own automated vehicle startup. Guardian reporter Danny Yadron takes a ride with Brandon Moak, co-founder of Varden Labs, which is now testing their cars on California campuses Continue reading...

Filter fan claims to clean up pollen, pollutants and smells with a new Internet of Things app for remote monitoring, connecting to its existing robotic vacuumDyson’s new Pure Cool Link air purifying fan promises to clean up the air in your home, but also marks the first step of the British engineering firm into the Internet of Things.

Privacy watchdog finds US government has repeatedly relied on All Writs Act to try to force Google or Apple to unlock a phone, as in the San Bernardino caseThe US government has used the same legal tactic it deployed in its encryption fight with Apple in more than 60 other phone-unlocking cases, according to a tally by a privacy watchdog, including other iPhones and devices running Google’s Android operating system.The American Civil Liberties Union scoured court records across the US for cases where the government relied on the All Writs Act to try to force Google or Apple to help them unlock a phone. The statute, which has its origins in a more than 200-year-old legal principle, gives judges broad authority to ensure their orders – such as search warrants – are fulfilled. Continue reading...

Home Office is told its plans in the snooper’s charter to retain web browsing history of all British citizens for 12 months would cost in excess of £1bnGovernment plans to track every website visited by every British citizen could cost more than £1bn, privacy campaigners have estimated.The £1bn estimate for the cost of requiring phone and internet companies to retain everyone’s internet connection records and store them for 12 months is based on a similar scheme in Denmark, which was recently dropped on grounds of cost. Continue reading...

The worlds of science and technology collide as we ask how new tech is being used on localised levels to create global changeIt’s the question on everyone’s lips: what are we doing about climate change? Lucky for us, there are innovations in tech and science taking place that may be applied to global issues like climate change.Joining Nathalie Nahai to discuss how new technology – and new ways of approaching the data behind tech – are shaping our future are the project director for Project Ukko, Drew Hemment; senior researcher at Nesta Lydia Nicholas; and particle phycisist Ben Still. Continue reading...