Technology | The Guardian

Andrew House says PlayStation VR headset will offer completely new gaming experiences, levelling the traditional games industry power structuresVirtual reality could be a great leveller for the games industry, allowing small studios to make a sizeable impact by creating new experiences that would be impossible on a traditional console. That’s the view of Andrew House, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, which has just revealed a £349 price point for its PlayStation VR headset, due out in October.While VR’s future is far from assured, and while the rules of designing successful experiences are still being established (many conventional video game genres simply don’t translate to the VR world) there are, House believes, exciting new opportunities. “The most fascinating thing is how VR has rewritten the rulebook of what game design should be,” he said. “It’s levelled the playing field in terms of production values. Continue reading...

Adverts hijacked by malicious campaign that demands payment in bitcoin to unlock user computersA number of major news websites have seen adverts hijacked by a malicious campaign that attempts to install “ransomware” on users computers, according to a warning from security researchers Malwarebytes.The attack, which was targeted at US users, hit websites including the New York Times, the BBC, AOL and the NFL over the weekend. Combined, the targeted sites have traffic in the billions of visitors. Continue reading...

Amazon-owned live-streaming service kicks off its new category with marathon broadcast of American chef Julia ChildLive-streaming video service Twitch is making its latest attempt to compete with traditional television – by launching its own food channel.The Amazon-owned site is starting with a famous name, though one perhaps not known to its Gen Y and Gen Z audience. Continue reading...

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

As sophisticated algorithms can complete tasks we once thought impossible, computers are seeming to become a real threat to humanity. Whether they decide to pulp us into human meat paste, or simply make our work completely unnecessary, argues technology reporter Alex Hern, we should be afraid of computers

Photo-sharing app follows Twitter and Facebook in introducing formula that prioritizes photos based on a user’s interests, friends and other dataInstagram is overhauling its feed with a new personalized algorithm that means, in theory, that users will be subjected to fewer boring sunsets from random acquaintances, and more critical updates from celebrities (and close friends and family.)The move announced on Tuesday follows in the footsteps of Facebook and Twitter and moves away from the traditional organization of posts in chronological order. Instead of having the most recent photos appear at the top of a feed, the app will prioritize photos based on a user’s interests, friends and other data. Continue reading...

Ryan Collins was charged for hacking web accounts of several female celebrities as part of investigation into who posted images of Jennifer Lawrence and othersA Pennsylvania man has agreed to plead guilty to hacking into the email and online accounts of several female celebrities and stealing private information, including nude photos and videos, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday.Ryan Collins, 36, was accused of gaining access to more than 100 Google and Apple accounts, many belonging to famous women, between November 2012 and September 2014. Continue reading...

Auto executives and US senators clash over calls for universal standards in robotic vehicles at Senate commerce committee hearingThe robot car revolution hit a speed bump on Tuesday as senators and tech experts sounded stern warnings about the potentially fatal risks of self-driving cars. “There is no question that someone is going to die in this technology,” said Duke University roboticist Missy Cummings in testimony before the US Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation. “The question is when and what can we do to minimize that.”Automotive executives and lawmakers sniped at each other over whether universal standards were necessary for self-driving cars, with private sector saying that standards would slow progress and legislators replying that they’d heard the same objections over updated seatbelt standards in 1998. Continue reading...

The South Australian capital will become a laboratory for internet of things, with elevators that talk to each other, video recognition of masked criminals and moreStepping into the elevator at the school for computer sciences hub at Adelaide University, Prof Ali Babar shakes his head in exasperation.As the doors close the head of the Australian centre for smart cities mentions the woman recently found dead in China 30 days after technicians attempting to fix a glitch cut power to the lift she was in and left her stranded inside. Continue reading...

Senior Tories and opposition MPs demand tighter controls in legislation that will overhaul state’s surveillance powersTheresa May is facing calls from senior Tories and the opposition to improve the investigatory powers bill to allay concerns about privacy.In a debate for the second reading of the bill, Ken Clarke, the Conservative former home secretary, and Dominic Grieve, the Tory former attorney general, suggested there could be improvements to the new laws that overhaul the state’s surveillance powers. Continue reading...

Hackers target ‘deeply disturbing’ presidential candidate and ask for support to dismantle his campaign and expose private detailsThe hacking collective Anonymous has vowed once again to “dismantle” Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and to “expose what he doesn’t want the public to know”.

The home secretary handled the snooper’s charter debate well, but even supporters seek more details about surveillanceIf Theresa May can hang on in her job for just a few more weeks, she will overtake the long-service record of the Victorian home secretary whose lads at the Met failed to catch Jack the Ripper. There was a lot of Ripper talk on Tuesday when MPs debated May’s latest version of the snooper’s charter. The case casts a shadow over her career too.Whoops! No. Correction. The menacing “Ripper” they kept mentioning was Labour’s half-baked Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (“often incomprehensible”, recalled Tory Euro-martyr Dominic Grieve), known in Whitehall as “Ripa.” And “snooper’s charter”? Labour’s Andy Burnham doesn’t care for that label either. Lazy thinking, he said, and mean to hardworking spooks.

Stewart Baker claims the tech company has cooperated with the Chinese government – and compares Tim Cook to Doris Day in the Apple v FBI debateIn one of the more unusual analyses of the Apple v FBI debate, former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker has compared Tim Cook to 1940s Hollywood star Doris Day.Addressing an audience at SXSW young enough to have no idea who Doris Day was, Baker quoted Hollywood musician and actor Oscar Levant, who said: “I remember her before she was a virgin.” Continue reading...

The union contends that the proposed class-action settlement, which has yet to be approved by a judge, still treats drivers as independent contractorsThe Teamsters union and several drivers for the ride-hailing company Lyft are charging that the $12.25m settlement reached in a class-action lawsuit over the employment classification of drivers is not good enough.On Tuesday morning, the union is set to file an objection in US district court to the proposed settlement between the San Francisco-based startup and the plaintiffs’ attorney, Shannon Liss-Riordan. Continue reading...

Google DeepMind’s success is significant, but artificial intelligence practitioners must teach the public there’s more to AI than trying to replace them“Really, the only game left after chess is Go,” was how Demis Hassabis set the scene ahead of AlphaGo’s match with world champion Lee Sedol earlier this month.Either Hassabis’s copy of the latest Street Fighter didn’t get delivered on time, or he was trying to be a little poetic to mark the occasion. Either way, you’d be forgiven for thinking there really were no games left to conquer after the media reaction to AlphaGo winning the first three games in a best-of-five against its human opponent. It’s been a curious month to be an AI researcher. Continue reading...

Microsoft denies claims on Reddit, forums, gaming sites and Twitter that Windows 10 is being forced on Windows 7 PCs without asking usersWindows 7 users are reporting that Windows 10 is automatically installing on their PCs without permission.

Inventor Demis Hassabis says AlphaGo improved its game after playing itself millions of times – but how can this technological marvel be harnessed?The computer programme that defeated the world Go champion taught itself how to improve its game by playing millions of matches against itself, according to the head of the Google subsidiary that developed the software.Demis Hassabis, who co-founded DeepMind – the London-based unit that built the AlphaGo programme, said that he hoped to use the same technique to help Google improve its own products, such as its phone assistants and search engines.

DeepMind’s artificial intelligence astonishes fans to defeat human opponent and offers evidence computer software has mastered a major challengeGoogle DeepMind’s AlphaGo program triumphed in its final game against South Korean Go grandmaster Lee Sedol to win the series 4-1, providing further evidence of the landmark achievement for an artificial intelligence program.Lee started Tuesday’s game strongly, taking advantage of an early mistake by AlphaGo. But in the end, Lee was unable to hold off a comeback by his opponent, which won a narrow victory. Continue reading...

Backhanded congratulations from the company’s head of AI research to Google DeepMindPoor Facebook. Just a few months ago, the social network thought that its AI experts were on the cusp of a breakthrough, making a computer that could play Go faster than any previous machine.Then Google came along and blew them out of the water, revealing first that it had built a Go computer capable of defeating a professional human player, and then going on to beat Lee Sedol, the greatest player of the last decade, 4-1 over the course of a week. Continue reading...

As AlphaGo and driverless cars make headlines, what will technological breakthroughs and the rise of the robots really mean for human beings?

Zane Alchin allegedly made explicit rape threats on Facebook but his defence will rest on legal argument over whether internet is ‘a carriage service’A Sydney man who allegedly made explicit rape threats on Facebook has had a hearing date set in a case described as a test of both legal and police responses to the online harassment of women.Zane Alchin, 25, of Caringbah, was charged in late October with using a carriage service to menace after allegedly threatening rape in comments posted on Facebook in August. Continue reading...

Michael Goguen of Sequoia Capital describes relationship as ‘kind and loving’, denying allegations he abused woman who was a victim of human traffickingProminent Silicon Valley investor Michael Goguen fired back on Monday against allegations that he kept a “sexual slave” for 13 years, filing a cross-complaint alleging that the initial lawsuit was an extortion attempt.The filing against Amber Laurel Baptiste begins: “Consumed by anger, obsession and jealousy that her decade-long, mutually consensual love affair with Mr Goguen had ended, Ms Baptiste hatched a plan to get her vengeance.” Continue reading...

Letter to Guardian signed by QCs and leading legal figures says ‘snooper’s charter’ compromises ‘fundamental right to privacy and may be illegal’The investigatory powers bill, which goes before MPs on Tuesday, is not fit for purpose and breaches international standards on surveillance, according to a letter signed by more than 200 senior lawyers.The legislation acknowledges for the first time the extent of bulk interception and hacking carried out by the government’s monitoring agency, GCHQ, and sets out a legal framework with safeguards.

Flock of racing pigeons equipped with pollution sensor and Twitter account take to the skies in bid to raise awareness of capital’s illegally dirty airThey’ve been driven from Trafalgar square for being a nuisance, derided as rats with wings and maligned as a risk to public health.But now pigeons could play a small part in helping Londoners overcome one of the capital’s biggest health problems – its illegal levels of air pollution blamed for thousands of deaths a year. Continue reading...

Joanna Cherry says her party will vote against investigatory powers bill as Lib Dems attack Labour’s decision to abstainThe Scottish National party has questioned the legality of the so-called snooper’s charter bill – warning that it will not support the legislation in its current form, the Guardian can reveal.Joanna Cherry, the party’s justice spokesperson, said she accepts the law needs a thorough overhaul, but claimed the plans could “set a dangerous precedent and a bad example internationally”. Continue reading...

Ubisoft’s online shooter will be familiar to Destiny veterans, but its gritty take on New York amps up the misery and leaves us powerless to careThere is a strange dichotomy at the heart of The Division, which says a lot about where games are right now.In one sense, it is an utterly artificial experience. The Manhattan we see in this post-pandemic nightmare is an ethereal filmset of a city. A majority of buildings are inaccessible, the vehicles are useless, and the enemies take dozens of shots to bring them down. Continue reading...

Leading military lawyer says refinements of technology already used on stealth bombers could breach international laws“Invisibility cloaks” and other future advances in military camouflage techniques could violate the Geneva conventions, a top military lawyer has warned.Refinements of technologies that are already used on stealth bombers could breach compliance with international laws regulating armed conflict if equipment is disguised or soldiers’ weapons are hidden, according to Bill Boothby, a former air commodore and deputy director of RAF legal services. Continue reading...

At a luxury hideaway in Morocco, two years of talks on Icann’s running of the internet finished with a deal to put multiple global stakeholders in chargeIt’s early March in Marrakech, and a gleaming conurbation of hotels run in the kind of rare equilibrium of slick organisation and genuine friendliness that Tyler Brûlé might dream about.Inside, the people who run the internet’s naming and numbering systems have been meeting with some of the governments who would rather be doing the job themselves. Eventually they cut a deal, and then negotiators from countries mostly in the northern hemisphere staggered blinking into the sunlight and splayed like lizards around the azure swimming pools, almost too tired to drink. Almost. Continue reading...

US transport secretary Anthony Foxx expects autonomous driving technology to prevent 80% of accidents – but it won’t be perfect, and what the future holds is unclearThe fact that a Google self-driving car had a crash is “not a surprise” according to the US transport secretary Anthony Foxx.

Vermont senator gets top marks on issues including censorship, mass surveillance and net neutrality ... with the Republican frontrunner ranked lastThe top candidate from the great state of the internet is Bernie Sanders, according to an analysis of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates’ campaign platforms by tech policy activists at the Free Press Action Fund. The worst candidate on policy positions that affect citizens’ digital lives? Donald J Trump.While nearly all the candidates have been a little light on policy so far, they have all opined on the internet. In October, for example, a video surfaced of Ted Cruz stammering through an answer about the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa), a bill deplored by privacy advocates which passed the Senate less than a week later (like the rest of the Republican hopefuls in the Senate, Cruz did not vote on it). Continue reading...

While the Apple v FBI row makes world headlines, people in the UK are disregarding a bill that permits hacking and gaggingNews of the legal dispute between Apple and the FBI has made headlines across the world. The dispute stems from the FBI’s investigation of the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. As part of its investigation, the FBI obtained an iPhone used by one of the deceased shooters, Syed Farook. The data on the iPhone is encrypted and the FBI wants Apple to create new software that would cripple core security features of the iPhone.Apple has refused, challenging a court order obtained by the US government. Apple’s refusal has engendered a heated public debate in the US about the balance between security in the technology products and services we increasingly rely upon, and government authority to undermine that security. The case has divided White House officials, catalysed a congressional hearing and inspired national polling on this issue. Continue reading...

Spurred on by Apple’s battles against the FBI, some of tech’s biggest names are to expand encryption of user data in their services, the Guardian can revealRelated: FBI 'could force Apple to hand over private key'Silicon Valley’s leading companies – including Facebook, Google and Snapchat – are working on their own increased privacy technology as Apple fights the US government over encryption, the Guardian has learned. Continue reading...

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

A caveman faces predators, a princess gets an HD makeover and a fallen angel fails to find redemption(PS4, Xbox One, PC, Ubisoft, cert M, out now)

Michael Goguen says he will focus on clearing his name over allegations he abused Amber Baptiste for 13 yearsA partner at Sequoia Capital has left the renowned Silicon Valley venture capital firm days after a lawsuit was filed accusing him of sexually abusing a woman and not honouring an agreement to compensate her.

Self-driving cars could cut road deaths by 80%, but without better security they put us at risk of car hacking and even ransom demands, experts at SXSW sayYou’re about to drive to work. You turn on the ignition – and a message on the dash lights up. “We’ve hacked your car! Pay 10 bitcoin to get it back.”Hacking into software and then demanding a ransom to release it – what’s known as ransomware – is not new. Finnish security expert Mikko Hypponen fully expects it to become a reality as self-driving or “autonomous” cars start to become more commonplace. Continue reading...

The country’s most forward-thinking mayors want to attract tech money and jobs to their cities – and much of that happens through networking at the eventVery quietly, and a little secretly, an unprecedented gathering of American mayors has arrived in Austin, Texas.Twenty mayors, from Kansas City, Sacramento, Portland, Albuquerque, Baltimore and elsewhere, have been drawn here to the SXSW festival, though most have a packed schedule that is closed to journalists and the public. Amazon; Google; Austin’s HomeAway vacation rentals firm; and Maven, General Motors’ ride-sharing service, have been privately pitching to them. They’ve held a little startup shark tank. They’re touring new designs for space-efficient housing and hearing about surveillance technology. Continue reading...

Go grandmaster wins fourth showdown of five-match series against Google’s artificial intelligence, AlphaGoThe rise of the machines came to a halt, temporarily at least, when the champion Go player Lee Sedol beat a computer program on Sunday to prevent a whitewash after losing the first three games.AlphaGo, developed by the Google subsidiary DeepMind, has an insurmountable lead in the series, but Sedol’s win restored some human dignity. Fans of the ancient Chinese board game cheered when AlphaGo quit after five hours and Lee was greeted by applause from journalists at the post-match news conference at a Seoul hotel. Continue reading...

Artificial intelligence comes of age in showdown between human brainpower and a machineA computer program developed by Google took an unassailable 3-0 lead in a best-of-five match with a Go grandmaster on Saturday.The Chinese board game is considered to be much more complex than chess – there are a far greater number of outcomes – and the victory by the program, AlphaGo, is being a hailed as a stark demonstration of the rapidly growing power of modern artificial intelligence. AlphaGo took only four hours to achieve its third consecutive win over Lee Se-dol, one of the ancient game’s greatest modern players. Continue reading...

Ibtihaj Muhammad was told that her headscarf had to be removed for a security photo, and was then given a pass with another – incorrect – Muslim nameA member of the USA Fencing World Team was told to remove her hijab by staff at the SXSW festival for a photo on her ID badge, she said on Saturday via Twitter.Ibtihaj Muhammad, who will be the first US Olympian to wear a hijab, said she explained that she wears the head scarf for religious reasons but the registration authorities insisted she take it off. Continue reading...

A campaign spread false explicit images of the Texan in an effort to undermine her. But the media has also played a role in public perceptions of womenWhen former Texas state senator Wendy Davis started seeing photoshopped photos of herself in sexual positions flooding her Twitter and Facebook streams, she finally decided she had to delete the social networks from her phone.“I have lots of bots who follow me. I could literally say it’s a beautiful day in Texas and the responses I get on Twitter are ‘baby murderer’. But it rose to a sexualization during my campaign,” she said. “For my own peace of mind, I finally just took them off my phone. I knew I wasn’t going to be disciplined enough to not go down the comment stream.” Continue reading...

Neuroscientists are divided about whether electrical brain stimulation improves learning or helps depression, but that hasn’t stopped DIY hackers giving it a tryStruggling with your mathematics homework? Sudoku proving too hard? Depression? ADHD? Post-traumatic stress disorder?There’s a solution: it involves strapping electrodes to your head and feeding a current through your brain. Sound good? Continue reading...

Artificial intelligence expert Jerry Kaplan says those whose jobs involve ‘a narrow set of duties’ are most likely to see their work replaced by automationEver since the first vision of a robot appeared on the horizon of mankind, humans have feared that automation will replace the workforce in our dystopian future.There typically follows a period of reassurance, in which we are compelled to believe that this will be a good thing, and that robots could actually liberate us from the drudgery of daily toil and free us for more enjoyable, cerebral pursuits. Futurist Jerry Kaplan, 63, is among those optimists. He estimates that 90% of Americans will lose their jobs to robots and we should all be happy about it. Continue reading...

President Barack Obama addresses the rift between government and the technology world at the SXSW festival, addressing the balance between individual privacy and the government’s obligation to keep the public safe. While saying he cannot address the current battle between Apple and the FBI directly, the president adds that he is ‘on the civil liberties side’ but cautions against an absolutist approach

Google’s DeepMind computer program wins $1m in victory marking significant development in artificial intelligence

A fabled trait of the Volvo is safety, and this has all you’d expectCars, in their brand building, love to ethnicise their qualities, so that long before you can drive, you know that a BMW is built with German rigour, a Saab would win in a traditional collision with an elk, and a Volvo has heated seats. In the 90s, that was bizarre and exotic, like having a Jacuzzi in Guildford. Now that it has competition from other marques (Audi), the Volvo has made its seats hotter and more leathery. There’s a temperature beyond which your cells coagulate and cannot go back, like scrambled egg, and my butt has never felt closer to it. The windscreen is also heated and – this is a life first – so are the washer nozzles.The other fabled trait of the Volvo is safety, and the V60 Cross Country has all you’d expect, airbags lurking like tumours in every pocket of its skeleton, collision warning with auto-brake that I was never quite bold enough to put to the test, along with more baroque security features – skid plates, for those moments when you throw yourself over mountains and scrape your bodywork against the rocks (of your imagination). The high-spec cabin is crammed with bling, screens that give strange information, such as how many people are in the back (I guess this is handy if you habitually forget one of your children). Continue reading...

12 March 1988: Employers are looking for practical project experience and the ability to communicate and to understand business problemsBritain needs immediately nearly 20,000 more people with professional skills in information technology, a 12 per cent increase on the current strength. And that is in general industry, commerce, and government alone - excluding the needs of the academic world and the IT industry itself.The continuing rise in demand means that at least 82,000 more staff, and perhaps 101,000, will be needed over the next five years. Continue reading...

Trials starting as early as next year to be announced in budget as part of chancellor’s plans to kickstart British economyDriverless cars will be tested on Britain’s motorways as soon as next year, George Osborne will announce in next week’s budget, as he claims that Britain can “lead the world in new technologies and infrastructure”.The chancellor will deliver his budget on Wednesday and is expected to warn that the deteriorating global outlook will make it harder to reach his target of delivering a surplus on the public finances by the end of the parliament in 2020. Continue reading...

The president did not directly comment on the battle between Apple and the FBI but said that ‘fetishishing our phones above every other value is incorrect’Barack Obama today attempted to heal a rift between the technology community and the government, saying the two sides must engage constructively to build technologies that balance individual privacy with the government’s obligation to keep people safe.Addressing a small and enthusiastic audience at the SXSW festival, Obama told the 2,400 festival-goers, technologists, local politicians and media that the American constitution and bill of rights are a system designed to protect the public from government overreach. Continue reading...

Blizzard reveals new Hearthstone cards including C’Thun, a ‘legendary’ that interacts with 16 other new cards, in major expansion that changes format of gameThe next expansion pack for Hearthstone, Blizzard’s hugely popular collectible card video game, will be called Whispers of the Old Gods and will launch towards the end of April or the beginning of May, the company has announced.Based around Warcraft’s Lovecraftian-style elder gods, C’Thun, Yogg-Saron, N’Zoth and Y’Shaarj, the expansion will bring a further 144 cards to the game, including a number of “corrupted” versions of previous minions. A selection of the new cards were revealed to journalists and community members at Blizzard’s headquarters in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Continue reading...