Technology | The Guardian

The video-game theorist has turned his attention to play in the real world, and how it can improve our livesProfessor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and an Atlantic contributing editor, Ian Bogost is one of the foremost writers on gaming culture – though he’s probably best known for the Facebook game Cow Clicker, which, despite being a satire, became a viral hit. In his new book, Play Anything, Bogost takes his expertise away from the screen and into the real world, arguing that in the 21st century we’ve lost track of what it really means to “play”.You’ve become known – as you put it – as the “Cow Clicker guy”. But now you’ve written a book warning against the dangers of indulging in such aimless fun…

What happened when the rock star, the professor and the philanthropist met? They built the first ever ‘flat-pack’ truckPrice: to be decided, but much cheaper than any other ATV, possibly between £10,000 and £15,000

Laura Trott has just launched a range of four bikes through Halfords. Good spec and a great price make them worth a look, even if you aren’t an OlympianLaura Trott has had quite a summer. She became the first woman in British history to win four Olympic gold medals. As if that were not enough, she’s now also overseen the launch of a range of bicycles for Halfords – aimed purely at women. There are four in the collection, ranging from an entry-level £499 hybrid up to this RD3 road bike. Trott has been closely involved in the design of each, casting her eye over everything from crank arms to the length of the top tube and even the selection of the saddle (Selle Italia) and wheels (RS11 race rims). Most importantly, she says, is that the geometry of each bike has been specifically geared to fit the female form. I don’t have a female form, but can tell you the RD3 is fast, strong and lightweight. Just like the Olympian herself… (halfords.com)Price: £899

Loss of public trust killed the USSR and it can bring down Western elites tooAsked by Bloomberg this month about Russian involvement in the hacking of the US Democratic national committee, Vladimir Putin issued a non-denial denial. Basically, his answer boiled down to this: whoever did it did a good thing. This response only added to the stir created by the initial accusation that Russia was behind the activities of the “Fancy Bears”. The fear of Russia manipulating presidential elections in the world’s mightiest democracy has been spreading across the United States.Getting to the real perpetrators of hacking attacks is notoriously difficult. Yet seen from the Kremlin hackers perform a valuable public service by revealing secrets – not to foreign intelligence services, but to the western public. The political power of these revelations was first demonstrated by WikiLeaks, which broke the confidentiality of US diplomatic cables. The effect was much enhanced by the Snowden files, which exposed, inter alia, US spying on other western leaders. Continue reading...

From Trump’s mastery of Twitter to the insecurity of technology, cynicism and fear threaten our liberal democracyEver since the internet went mainstream in the 1990s people wondered about how it would affect democratic politics. In seeking an answer to the question, we made the mistake that people have traditionally made when thinking about new communications technology: we overestimated the short-term impacts while grievously underestimating the longer-term ones.The first-order effects appeared in 2004 when Howard Dean, then governor of Vermont, entered the Democratic primaries to seek the party’s nomination for president. What made his campaign distinctive was that he used the internet for fundraising. Instead of the traditional method of tapping wealthy donors, Dean and his online guru, Larry Biddle, turned to the internet and raised about $50m, mostly in the form of small individual donations from 350,000 supporters. By the standards of the time, it was an eye-opening achievement. Continue reading...

• Cyclist emphasises Geert Leinders had no involvement with allergy treatment

It is impossible to critique unless you put the price to one side, but that is unfair on all the other carsIt is a car that people crossed the road to call nice. One guy undertook me in a chimp display and ran into the car in front of him; I tore past the wreckage (marred bumper), leaving him speechless with rage. The Audi RS6 was the best of cars, it was the worst of cars.It was only not £100,000 because, in some silted recess of car-industry restraint, that is still understood to be an obscene amount to spend on a car. Instead, with all its trimmings, it was £99,420. What it was trying to achieve – a pleasurable, solid but chic family car that at the flick of a switch turns into a sports car that could quite plausibly take off or fire rockets – is an insanely expensive proposition. Incomprehensible extras (the carbon styling package, the “5-V-spoke” star design black gloss alloy wheels) added another Mazda to the price. You could buy this car, or you could buy a house in Lancashire, or you could buy a boat. It is impossible to critique unless you put the price to one side, but that is unfair on all the other cars. Because it is amazing; and maybe all the other cars would be, too, if they took leave of their senses. Continue reading...

Darren Martin, whose brother Lee was killed by a van driver using a mobile phone, says proposed £200 fine no deterrentThe brother of a man killed by a van driver using a mobile phone has said proposals to double the fine for using a device behind the wheel are not high enough.Darrell Martin said police told him there was 90 seconds of clear road when Christopher Gard, who had at least six previous convictions for using a phone at the wheel, could have seen his brother Lee, but failed to do so. He collided with the cyclist at 65mph on 12 August last year. Continue reading...

Reported closure of the tech firm’s London base is likely to lead to the loss of 400 jobsThe UK office of one of the world’s leading technology firms, Skype, is to close, it has been reported.Related: Britain leads Europe in tech, with 18 of 47 $1bn companies – report Continue reading...

• Team GB gold medallists among four more Britons whose TUEs are listed

Love, 31, who has Asperger syndrome, could face a 99-year prison sentence for hacking into missile defence centresLauri Love, the student accused of hacking into the computer systems of the US missile defence agency, Nasa and the Federal Reserve, has lost his appeal against extradition to America.Judge Nina Tempia said the 31-year-old, who has Asperger syndrome, could be cared for by “medical facilities in the United States prison estate” and implied that he should answer the “extremely serious charges” in the country where the damage was inflicted.

From old railway tracks repurposed as routes for fibre-optic cables to cold war bunkers retrofitted to store data, Hu shows that the intangible cloud has a solid infrastructureThe cloud is “a system of networks that pools computing power”. You may think of it as a mute and ethereal concept but for Tung-Hui Hu it is “both an idea and a physical and material object”. His slim yet wide-ranging study attempts to reify and historicise a concept that has “become a potent metaphor for the way contemporary society organizes and understands itself”. The idea dates back to a 1922 design for predicting weather using a network of human “computers”, or mathematicians, connected via telegraph. From the 19th-century train tracks repurposed as routes for fibre-optic cables and the cold war bunkers retrofitted to store data, Hu shows that the intangible cloud has a solid and polluting infrastructure. He also reveals the human costs, such as the poorly paid foreign workers screening content for Silicon Valley companies, and explores the monetisation of the user: “the cloud is a subtle weapon that translates the body into usable information.” Witty, sharp and theoretically aware, Hu deconstructs this much-discussed but poorly understood “cultural fantasy”.• A Prehistory of the Cloud is published by MIT Continue reading...

Repair specialists discover Apple has drilled some holes leading nowhere into the bottom of its phoneEagle eyed Apple fans irritated by the absence of a 3.5mm headphone socket on the iPhone 7 Plus may have been somewhat appeased by signs of another speaker in its place. The row of holes, giving the base of the phone a pleasing symmetry, hinted at something going on inside.But a teardown by repair company iFixit has revealed the grille to be nothing more than an aesthetic adornment. Continue reading...

Be still, my beating algorithm. We speak to FutureFest 2016’s Ghislaine Boddington, Rob Morgan and Marie Horner about what the future of love might look likeSubscribe and review on iTunes, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast, or on your favourite podcasting app.In this episode, we explore the what the future holds for love and relationships, and how technology will play into the mix. To investigate, we speak to FutureFest’s Ghislaine Boddington, Marie Horner and Rob Morgan. According to them, we’ll all soon be bringing our cyborg partners home to meet our parents. Continue reading...

Our online worlds are full of colors, words and sounds but lack something major – scents. Could that ever change?When David Edwards founded the oPhone, he hoped scent messages would become the next big thing in the digitisation of our online lives.The device looked like a high-tech cruet set, and allowed a friend with an iPhone app to send you bespoke olfactory messages alongside photos. Send a picture of your dinner, tag it with four different tones, and whoever’s on the receiving end can sniff it from the vase-like tubes of the oPhone.

Like Lauri, my son Gary McKinnon has Asperger’s. I saw the suffering he went through awaiting justice. The new safeguards against extradition must be implementedI received the most precious gift I could have ever hoped for when Theresa May announced that my son Gary McKinnon would not be extradited to the US for alleged computer hacking. Our absolute joy and sense of relief felt by this decision cannot be overestimated.When our then home secretary had the courage to use the Human Rights Act to protect Gary and to simultaneously announce the introduction of new rules, so that anyone physically in the UK when their alleged crime occurred could now ostensibly be tried here. However, much of the decision-making in this regard has unfortunately been left in the hands of the CPS and judges, who tend to approve extradition to the US regardless of a proposed inhumane sentence or lack of evidence. Continue reading...

Nottingham’s innovative gaming institution was facing closure barely a year after it opened – until its founders called to the development community for helpIn August it looked like game over. The National Videogame Arcade, a fascinating institution that opened in March 2015 to promote the cultural and economic significance of games, was facing closure. Although the large building in Nottingham’s creative quarter attracted plenty of visitors with its mix of classic arcade machines, specialist interactive installations and events, it was not turning a profit. Meanwhile there were 40 staff to pay and a large rented building in central Nottingham to maintain. Over the summer, directors Iain Simons and Jonathan Smith made the decision to call in an insolvency firm.“It became horribly clear, horribly suddenly, that we weren’t going to be able to pay salaries,” says Simons, who has been creative director of the GameCity festival, which spawned the NVA, since it began a decade ago. “We sat down with everyone individually and told them. We asked everyone if they would work for deferred payment in order for us to get a plan together. This was in the middle of the summer season, our busiest time – and every single member of staff came back to work. We stayed open seamlessly while this all took place; the only reason we’ve been able to survive is because the staff cared about it so much.” Continue reading...

Decision on fate of British activist accused of hacking US agencies will be first substantive test of extradition law reformsThe computer activist Lauri Love will discover on Friday whether he is to be sent to the United States to face charges of hacking into the US military agencies, in the first test case since the extradition law was tightened by Theresa May.

Safety regulators have recalled the device after a spate of fires led to injuries and property damageUS safety regulators have announced a formal recall of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 smartphone after a spate of fires led to injuries and property damage.Samsung had already initiated a voluntary recall but the US consumer product safety commission chairman, Elliot Kaye, strongly criticised Samsung for not co-ordinating with his agency. “As a general matter it’s not a recipe for a successful recall for a company to go out on its own,” he said, adding that anyone who believes a unilateral effort would be sufficient “needs to have more than their phone checked”. Continue reading...

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

Free Wi-Fi will still be available around the city but web browsing on tablets is temporarily removed after growing concerns over inappropriate behaviorFew people lingered near the LinkNYC Wi-Fi kiosks along 8th Avenue on Thursday morning. One made a phone call near Times Square, others charged their phones. Two men stood in front of another one at a machine near Penn Station, charging their phones and utilizing the free Wi-Fi.The tall metal towers began replacing city phone booths with free Wi-Fi, phone calls and info services – like 311, New York City’s non-emergency services directory, or Google maps – earlier this year. Until yesterday, they also had internet-enabled tablets. However, after reports of misuse and growing public concern, it was announced that web browsing on the tablets would be temporarily removed. Continue reading...

Telecoms company cites connectivity issues and says Apple is working on a fix in latest setback for the rollout of the ‘biggest iOS release ever’Telecom company T-Mobile has warned iPhone customers not to download Apple’s latest software update, adding to an already long list of complaints about the iOS10 system.“Do not download iOS10,” the carrier tweeted on Thursday to customers who use the iPhone 6, 6+ and 5SE models. “We are getting reports of connectivity issues [and] Apple is working on a fix.” Continue reading...

Universal and Sony plan app streaming playlists of hits for £4.99 a month to plug gap between free, ad-based services and premium subscriptionsTwo major record labels are rolling out a low-priced UK music streaming service under the Now That’s What I Call Music brand, previously best known for its long-running compilation album series.

Seeing tech elites the way they see themselves – as utopian revolutionaries – helps clarify why they so often stumble into controversy

Le Monde and Paris Match among those signing up for social media app’s first non-English media partnershipsSnapchat has unveiled its first non-English media partnerships with the launch of a French version of Discover.US brands Vice and Cosmopolitan have been joined by some of France’s biggest media outlets including newspaper Le Monde, magazine Paris Match and sports publisher L’Équipe. Continue reading...

Users searching for ‘butt’ have found Apple’s new iOS 10 Messaging app suggests a sexualised animation of the Fluttershy character pulling down her underwearApple’s built-in gif feature for its iOS 10 Messages app, used by adults and children alike, is suggesting a sexualised animation of a My Little Pony character bending over and pulling down her underwear for searches for the word “butt”.The new feature is part of Apple’s big revamp of the Messaging app, to bring it in line with competitors such as Facebook Messenger. It allows users to search for gifs, share music and add features from third-party apps. Continue reading...

Robert wants to save some cash by buying a second-hand smartphone. What are the things to watch out for?I’m thinking of replacing my Huawei Y300 smartphone, which is about three years old now. I was wondering about buying a second-hand phone. I believe you save a considerable amount of money buying hardware behind the curve. Until now, I’ve bought most hardware new. Are there any dos and don’ts when buying second hand? RobertYou can save money by buying new smartphones that are “behind the curve” – Amazon often has deals on new phones at close to used prices. Otherwise, the savings on second-hand phones may be offset by the extra work you have to do, and the extra risks. The savings may be wiped out if your phone fails, or turns out to be stolen. Continue reading...

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

With dual cameras, dual Sim, microSD card slot, premium build and two-day battery life, the only thing holding back the Honor 8 is Huawei’s softwareThe Honor 8 is the latest smartphone from Huawei’s cheaper sub-brand. It’s no longer as cut price as the range used to be, but Huawei has squeezed most of what was good about its flagship P9 smartphone into something that costs almost 20% less. So do you really need to spend more than £400 for a great phone any more? Continue reading...

Objects will soon be able to ‘talk’ to each other, locate staff and monitor workplace temperature, but what will this mean for privacy?At a digital innovation consultancy in central Helsinki, the men’s toilets were causing something of an inconvenience. The Finnish company, Futurice, employs many male employees and the bathrooms were often occupied.However, now they can find out if one is free without leaving their desk. An app with a live map of the office tells them. “The bathrooms on the map turn red when they’re occupied and green when they’re unoccupied. Then you know where to go,” says Paul Houghton, who has the grand title of director of wizardry and development at Futurice.

Company drops pre-tax profits forecast as it plans to expand its self-driving and electric car lines, and relocates more factories south of the borderFord has warned shareholders that it is pouring cash into “emerging opportunities” and expects a steep decline in its financial performance in 2017.The second-largest US automaker dropped its expected pre-tax profits forecast from $10.8bn to $10.2bn as it announced plans to expand its self-driving and electric lines in the face of intense competition from Silicon Valley as well as traditional car firms. Continue reading...

Mobileye says capability of system to do the driver’s job was overstated but Elon Musk’s company denies ever suggesting its cars could drive themselvesMobileye broke ties with Tesla Motors because the Silicon Valley firm was “pushing the envelope in terms of safety” with the design of its Autopilot driver-assistance system, its chairman has said.

The damage amassed during the collision that killed Gao Yaning made the car ‘physically incapable’ of determining if autopilot was engaged, the company saidTesla Motors is investigating the cause of a fatal crash in China involving one of its vehicles but said that it has “no way of knowing” if its semi-automated autopilot system was engaged at the time of the accident.“Because of the damage caused by the collision, the car was physically incapable of transmitting log data to our servers,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday. Continue reading...

The data center project enjoyed broad political support in New Mexico, which beat out Utah after leaders pushed back against a tax-incentive planFacebook has chosen a village on the edge of New Mexico’s largest metropolitan area as the location for its new data center, after a roller-coaster contest between New Mexico and Utah to attract the facility.The courting of Facebook began more than a year ago with a meeting between Republican Governor Susana Martinez and Facebook executives. Continue reading...

More drivers are tweeting, making video calls and taking photos, survey finds, with handset use contributing to nearly 500 road accidents in 2014Illegal mobile phone use by drivers is rising, according to new research that found 31% of motorists admitted to using a handheld phone behind the wheel compared with 8% in 2014.The survey by the RAC found that the proportion of drivers who confessed to sending a message or posting on social media rose from 7% to 19% over the same period, while 14% of motorists have taken photographs or videos with their phone while driving. Continue reading...

Widespread use of video-links for victims and witnesses, and online guilty pleas for fare-dodging are part of plans to modernise delivery of justiceVulnerable victims and witnesses will no longer have to appear in court to give evidence and fare dodgers will be able to plead guilty and pay fines online under new reforms.The radical changes to court procedures in England and Wales are part of a £1bn programme to modernise the courts announced jointly by the lord chief justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the senior president of tribunals, Sir Ernest Ryder, and the new justice secretary, Elizabeth Truss, on Thursday. Continue reading...

Rayouf Alhumedhi drafts proposal for new options and says not only Muslim women wear a headscarf as it serves as ‘an integral aspect of women’s lives’Emojis, the smartphone icons which have been called “the world’s fastest growing language”, have been diversifying in recent years. But Rayouf Alhumedhi, a 15-year-old student living in Germany, noticed an important figure was still missing from those available – a woman in a headscarf.

Of course it was foolish of Facebook to censor the image of Kim Phuc, injured and fleeing from a napalm attack during the Vietnam war (Report, 10 September). However, I was surprised and encouraged to discover that it has a policy of child protection which includes censoring nude photos of children. If all the various internet providers adopted this policy there might be less child abuse worldwide.When Lowell Goddard, former head of the inquiry into child sexual abuse, resigns and says that sexual crimes against children are too big, too tolerated and altogether too much we should be grateful to Mark Zuckerberg, a father himself, for trying to do something about it.

Publishers, musicians and TV makers could find it easier to make money from use of their work on YouTube, Google News and Facebook

It is barely a professional pursuit, yet quadcopter flying has attracted wealthy benefactors, million-dollar TV deals and famous investors. Those on the inside are convinced fame and fortune lie aheadDrones aren’t just for snooping on Bin Laden showering in the Tora Bora mountains. The idea of racing them has been embedded in pop culture for ages, but it’s only recently that the sport has started to form itself into something recognisably professional. Landmarks have come thick and fast in the past year, most notably with the $1m (£760,000) Dubai World Drone Prix in March.Now, the fledgling sport is about to reach Britain. Sky has decided to invest $1m into a US drone-racing formula, run by a former Tough Mudder executive; 10 episodes of the Drone Racing League will be shown on Sky Sports Mix. The deal also paves the way for a British drone race, at a venue yet to be decided. Continue reading...

Campaigners say giving agency greater surveillance powers to combat hackers is like ‘the fox protecting the chicken’Privacy groups have expressed serious concern at the prospect of a “Great British Firewall” proposed by the surveillance agency GCHQ to protect major British companies against malicious hackers.They said they were worried that it could be used to deny freedom of speech, with the government potentially able to designate sites they disapprove of as “malware”. Continue reading...

The Hot In Herre rapper is feeling the heat, to the tune of $2.4m. Now concerned fans have started the hashtag #savenelly to pay off his debt through royalties raised via the streaming serviceName: Nelly.Age: 41. Continue reading...

Amazon’s challenger to Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Now makes the leap from the US in the form of a smart home-controlling speakerAmazon is releasing its wireless, voice-controlled speaker, the Echo, in the UK and Germany, along with its Alexa personal assistant.The Echo is a Wi-Fi speaker that users speak questions, commands and playback requests to, with Alexa – Amazon’s challenger to Apple’s Siri, Google’s Now and Microsoft’s Cortana – replying in kind, only now in a British accent. Continue reading...

If your iPhone or iPad has been ‘bricked’ or stuck with the Apple logo showing, you’ll need a computer, iTunes and a cable to fix it. Here’s howSome users attempting to update to Apple’s latest iOS 10 on their iPhones and iPads have been left with inoperable devices. There is a fix, but it requires a real computer to do it. Here’s how.

Drone Racing League sees competitors pilot custom craft through courses using headsets giving a first-person viewFrom military raids to delivering Amazon’s books, drones are almost everywhere. And now they are set to become TV stars, as professional drone racing comes to the UK for the first time.Sky is investing $1m (£760,000) in the US-based Drone Racing League, and will begin broadcasting its events from next month. The first live races outside the US, including one in London, are due to take place next year. Continue reading...

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

Apple said the issue with the software update process that affected ‘a small number’ had since been fixed but users are still reporting problemsThe latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, which powers the iPhone and iPad, iOS 10, has suffered issues during its launch with reports of it “bricking” devices.

Wait for Xbox: Project Scorpio or opt for a Playstation 4 Pro? Plump for an Xbox One S or hold out for a Nintendo NX? This guide should help anyone trying to choose a new consoleThe console market has suddenly become rather confusing. A month ago we had three machines: the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and a rather poorly Wii U. Now, both Sony and Microsoft have announced multiple iterations of their platforms, while Nintendo is waiting in the wings with a whole new creation.If all this activity has burned out your logic circuits, here is a rundown of all the new machines, what they do and how they compare. Continue reading...

Employees in fields such as customer service and transportation face a ‘disruptive tidal wave’ of automation in the not-too-distant futureBy 2021, robots will have eliminated 6% of all jobs in the US, starting with customer service representatives and eventually truck and taxi drivers. That’s just one cheery takeaway from a report released by market research company Forrester this week.These robots, or intelligent agents, represent a set of AI-powered systems that can understand human behavior and make decisions on our behalf. Current technologies in this field include virtual assistants like Alexa, Cortana, Siri and Google Now as well as chatbots and automated robotic systems. For now, they are quite simple, but over the next five years they will become much better at making decisions on our behalf in more complex scenarios, which will enable mass adoption of breakthroughs like self-driving cars. Continue reading...