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

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel took the Republican national convention stage in Cleveland on Thursday night with a message not often heard at Republican gatherings. ‘I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican, but most of all, I am proud to be an American,’ he said. CNN reported that Thiel is the first person in history to tell the RNC that he’s gay Continue reading...

What looks like a silly mobile phone game is in fact a parenting holy grail: a reason to get out in the fresh air and moveIf parenting is one long process of discovering that it doesn’t really happen like they say in the books, then school holidays are proof positive that Swallows and Amazons was fiction. Every July starts, at least in this house, with starry-eyed delusions about a summer spent messing about on rivers, climbing trees and having wholesome adventures. Or failing that, perhaps a summer of cheery educational play as per the more optimistic newspaper supplements, where the kids thrill to your kitchen science experiments and treasure hunts round National Trust properties.Related: Pokémon Go review: not a good game... but a great experience Continue reading...

Augmented reality game finally released in country of birth along with flurry of safety tips to keep users safe on the streetsPikachu has finally come home. After one abruptly cancelled launch, concerns about server capacity and government warnings about security, Pokémon Go was launched in Japan on Friday.

Film director says ‘invasion’ of privacy in gaming app is part of the wider practice of ‘surveillance capitalism’Film director Oliver Stone has branded the popular gaming app Pokémon Go a “new level of invasion” of privacy that could lead to “totalitarianism”.

Snowden and co-designer Andrew ‘Bunnie’ Huang’s ‘introspection engine’ knows when a cellular, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection is being used to share dataEdward Snowden has helped design a mobile phone case called the “introspection engine” that, he claims, will show when a smartphone is transmitting information that could be monitored.Presenting via video link to event at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Snowden and co-designer Andrew “Bunnie” Huang showed how the device connects to a phone’s different radio transmitters, showing its owner knows when a cellular, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection is being used to share or receive data.

High street bank branches see 32% decline in visits since 2011 as consumers turn to online methods – with digital-only banks adding to the competitionSmartphone-addicted Britons are embracing mobile banking, with payments via apps rocketing 54% in 2015 and reaching a value of £347m.The average customer of certain UK banks views their finances on their phone more than once a day – and much of this balance checking and payment making is done while people watch TV, according to a report by the British Bankers’ Association.

California appeals court upheld ruling that the video showing a student – who later killed himself – seemingly masturbating in stall was an invasion of privacyWhen a 16-year-old student at a San Diego high school uploaded a 10-second video to Snapchat of another student seemingly masturbating in a restroom stall, he thought he’d get a laugh from his peers. The video, shot on a smartphone, was posted to Snapchat stories and disappeared 24 hours later, but not before it went viral around the school.Two weeks later the subject of the video – known in court documents only as Matthew B – killed himself, leaving a suicide note that read: “I can’t handle school any more and I have no friends.” Continue reading...

Reporters and attendees train Pokémon between votes and speeches, stalking Pokéstops instead of delegates and dueling on the convention center stageTexas senator Ted Cruz’s incendiary rebuke of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on the stage in Quicken Loans Arena on Wednesday evening seemingly transformed the home of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team into a gladiatorial colosseum, complete with screaming fans and enraged detractors.

One in 10 people in England and Wales have been victims of cybercrime in past year, first official figures showPolice chiefs have called for a national campaign against online fraud and other cybercrime on the scale of last century’s seatbelt and drink-driving campaigns in the wake of figures showing that one in 10 adults have been victims of such offences in the past year.Chris Greany, the City of London police’s economic command head, said that with around 1m cases reported to Action Fraud in the last year alone, it was not possible for all cases to be investigated. Continue reading...

Aquila drone, which at cruising speed uses same wattage as three hairdyrers, uses lasers to beam internet to remote regionsFacebook has announced the first successful test flight of a high-altitude solar plane to bring internet access to remote parts of the world.The Aquila drone has the wingspan of an airliner but weighs less than a car. When cruising it consumes just 5,000 watts – the same as three hairdryers or a powerful microwave. Continue reading...

Daniel Kelly, who used a drone to fly contraband into prisons, is the first person in the UK to be jailed for the offenceA man who used a drone to fly contraband into prisons has become the first person in the UK to be jailed for the crime, police said.Daniel Kelly, 27, was jailed for 14 months at Maidstone crown court in Kent after admitting conspiracy to project an article into prison. Continue reading...

Lawyer accuses taxi-app company of hiding behind language to claim drivers are not employeesLawyers representing Uber workers have accused the company of “doublespeak” and speaking with “forked tongues” over claims of job creation and its relationship with drivers.

Labour peer says decision to take leave of absence from the Lords has been made easier by Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the partyLabour peer Oona King is to become YouTube’s global director of diversity, saying the decision to move away from politics was made easier by Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party.Google would not confirm the move, but it is understood she has agreed to take up the post and is on a leave of absence from the Lords. Continue reading...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing the US government over ‘unconstitutional’ use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

What began as a simple Facebook event page for friends grew into crawl with more than 9,000 people at starting points around the city and no fixed routeThe largest gathering yet of Pokémon Go players in San Francisco was almost a total disaster.Up until a half hour before more than 9,000 people were supposed to begin gathering at select locations in the hometown of the viral game sensation’s developer, Niantic Labs, the servers were down. Continue reading...

The problem with traditional conservatives is that they’re too anti-government to fulfill Thiel’s vision. Fortunately for him, Trump is no traditional conservativeTonight, tech billionaire Peter Thiel will speak at the Republican national convention and make his case for why Donald Trump should be the next president of the United States. Most of the media is baffled by Thiel’s endorsement. And it’s true that at first glance the two men aren’t an obvious match. Trump is an authoritarian populist who promises to abolish free trade. Thiel is a self-described libertarian who worships capitalism. Thiel is also one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley – and Silicon Valley hates Trump.So why would Thiel embrace Trump? So far, observers have offered two explanations. One is Thiel’s contrarianism; another is his lifelong crusade against “political correctness”. Thiel certainly enjoys courting controversy, whether it involves funding a lawsuit to destroy Gawker or funding a fellowship to induce kids to drop out of college. And Thiel shares Trump’s antipathy to the “politically correct” rhetoric of diversity and multiculturalism, as well as to affirmative action. Continue reading...

Britain’s largest internet service provider continues to struggle with power issues, causing outages across the countryBT Broadband and Plusnet customers are facing a second day without internet access, as the UK’s largest internet service provider, and its competitors, struggle with further power issues.

Korean Fair Trade Commission visited company’s Seoul base over allegations that it abused its market dominanceGoogle is facing an investigation by the South Korean antitrust regulator into Android and the company’s alleged abuse of market dominance, according to local reports.

Legendary Entertainment confirmed as studio set to bring Nintendo mystery-solving game to the big screenDetective Pikachu, the Pokémon game in which a kindly and intelligent character teams up with a boy called Tim Goodman to solve mysteries, is to be the first instalment in a forthcoming Pokémon movie franchise, with production starting in 2017.Only released earlier this year, the game has proved one of the most popular in Nintendo’s Pokémon slate. Soon after its release, 40,000 signatures were gathered on a petition lobbying for Danny DeVito to voice the English language version, but the actor reportedly declined to audition. Continue reading...

John has upgraded one of his two laptops to Windows 10 but doesn’t want to lose Windows 7 on the other. Does he have to upgrade it before 29 July, to avoid paying?I have two laptops: one started with Windows 7 and the other with Windows 8. I’ve upgraded the second machine to Windows 10 and left the first on Windows 7. Microsoft keeps telling me to upgrade before 29 July as it “qualifies” but I don’t want to lose my Windows 7.

Will souped up Xbox and PlayStations excite the punters? Meanwhile, a surprise return to form for Resident EvilIt’s officially summer time, which means – even for gamers – it’s time to venture outside, blinking into the unfamiliar daylight. This is the season the games industry chooses to quietly slow to a standstill until September. But first came the small matter of E3 – the Electronic Entertainment Expo – in LA, otherwise known as the annual multi-million-dollar bunfight where games publishers tout their sparkly upcoming wares.Related: Scorpio rising: Microsoft's plans for Xbox One and the future of video games Continue reading...

Virtual reality is the hot topic of conversation, but here’s how other trends, from augmented reality to the rejection of ‘crunch’, could change the future of gamingThe focus of this year’s Develop, the annual game developer conference held in Brighton, was unmistakable: virtual reality. The aim of conference is to highlight and discuss current trends, and last year these included social media, spectatorship, and games as services. This year, however, VR dominated the schedule to the extent that sometimes it was difficult to find a non-VR talk to attend, but with so many developers and other industry members in one place there were plenty of other discussions on the fringes. At least until Pokémon Go came out.In a Q&A session, Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail said: “The industry moves so fast that I think a lot of advice from two years ago, unless it’s very generic advice, does not really apply in the same way anymore.” Continue reading...

Ukrainian man Artem Vaulin, the alleged ringleader of Kickass Torrents, was arrested in Poland and faces charges in USA Ukrainian alleged to be the ringleader of the world’s biggest online piracy site, Kickass Torrents, has been accused of distributing more than $1bn worth of illegally copied films, music and other content.

The mobile game’s 21m players are bulk buying ‘PokeCoins’ from Apple’s app store, one brokerage firm saysApple stands to rake in $3bn in revenue from the Pokémon Go craze in the next one to two years as gamers buy “PokéCoins” from its app store, according to analysts.Pokémon Go, the augmented reality game from Japanese games firm Nintendo, can be downloaded for free but iPhone users can use PokeCoins to buy additional features.

Company calls discrimination ‘the greatest challenge we face’ and has come under fire in recent months for users experiencing racial bias on the platformAirbnb has hired former US attorney general Eric Holder to help address racism and other forms of discrimination on its short-term rental platform, the company announced Wednesday.In a blogpost, CEO Brian Chesky called discrimination “the greatest challenge we face as a company” and conceded that he and his cofounders were not “fully conscious of this issue when we designed the platform” and that “there have at times been a lack of urgency to work on this”. Continue reading...

Elsewhere, a Pokémon trainer gets stuck in a tree as officers across the country struggle to handle continuing app-fuelled mishapsA woman trying to catch Pokémon got stuck in a cemetery tree in New Jersey, a Baltimore man drove into a police car and a man in New Hampshire was robbed at knifepoint, as officers around the US struggle to respond to Pokémon hunters distracted into danger.Related: Pokémon Go: armed robbers use mobile game to lure players into trap Continue reading...

From a taped conversation to a naked snap at the gym, technology no longer places reasonable limits on our ability to share private acts – but the law doesWhen Playboy model Dani Mathers shared a photograph of a naked woman in a gym locker room with her thousands of followers on Snapchat last week, the caption she affixed to the illicit image embodied the promise and threat of the cameraphone era: “If I can’t unsee this, then you can’t either.”Seeing something once, for a passing moment of time, only to move on and forget, is no longer the standard form of experience. In countries such as the US and the UK where smartphones are already ubiquitous, we are empowered by technology to capture, record, store and disseminate previously unimaginable amounts of audio and visual information about ourselves and the people around us. Continue reading...

Banning the ‘alt-right’ agitator from Twitter is not constructive; it stands to further wind up people who respond to humiliation by becoming dangerousDing dong, the witch is dead. In the wake of news earlier today that Twitter had finally banned “alt-right” agitator Milo Yiannopoulos from its platform, a chorus of virtual cheers has gone up, a powerful sense of satisfaction.The Breitbart writer, who previously appointed himself a star of the digital trash fire known as “Gamergate”, has been a peddler of inarguable hate speech. Beyond just speech, though, he’s cannily built smear campaigns that incited his followers to dogpile other users, usually women and people of color, until the targets could no longer use social media constructively. Continue reading...

Twitter bars Milo Yiannopoulos for good after Jones quit the network following tweets that left her in ‘personal hell’Twitter has vowed to act more quickly and effectively against online abuse having banned one of its most notorious users following a campaign of vitriolic racist and sexist abuse against the Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones.Milo Yiannopoulos, a British columnist with the rightwing website Breitbart, was permanently barred from Twitter after Jones quit the network on Tuesday in response to a wave of abusive tweets, which she said left her in a “personal hell”. Continue reading...

James Farrar claims that one month in 2015 he earned little more than £5 an hour and feared repercussions if he cancelled a jobAn Uber driver who says he earned less than the minimum wage has told a tribunal about the “tremendous pressure” he was put under to work long hours and accept jobs, and the “repercussions” he faced from the company if he cancelled a pick-up.

As the company prepares to bring thousands of new workers to its Menlo Park campus, advocates say it must do more to help lower-income local residentsThe first time Tameeka Bennett had to drive two hours in traffic to get to her job in East Palo Alto, she broke down in tears in her car. It was October 2014, and Bennett, 29, had never imagined she would have to move away from the Silicon Valley city where she grew up, which is one of the least affluent communities in the region.Related: 'Largest-ever' Silicon Valley eviction to displace hundreds of tenants Continue reading...

Owner of 4AD, Matador and XL says hackers may have accessed personal data of US customers who bought music online in past yearBeggars Group – home of independent music labels 4AD, Matador, Rough Trade Records, XL Recordings and Young Turks – has warned US customers of a data breach following news that the conglomerate has been hacked.A letter sent by Beggars’ US distributor, Matador Direct, to customers last week explained that people who purchased any products from the websites for the aforementioned labels between 28 April 2015 and 4 May 2016 may be victims of the data breach, possibly exposing their personal information to the perpetrators. Continue reading...

Technology firm hailed success of machine-learning trial and said efficiencies will be applied to all its centres by end of yearGoogle says it has cut its vast data centres’ energy use by 15% by applying artificial intelligence to manage them more efficiently than humans.The servers that power billions of web searches, streamed films and social media accounts are estimated to account for around 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Google is believed to have one of the biggest fleets of them in the world.

Company says services have been since restored, after UK’s largest ISP suffers outage affecting England, Wales, Scotland and Northern IrelandPower issues have caused outage to BT’s broadband and Plusnet services, leaving thousands of users struggling to access the internet.The UK’s biggest internet service provider (ISP) with 10 million customers, reported outages in several areas at about 9am. BT said it was aware and working on a fix at 9.10am, but is facing outcry on social media as users vent their frustration. Continue reading...

First commercial partnership for hit location-based game will see 3,000 fast-food restaurants become virtual Pokémon gyms, paving the way for global rolloutThe release of mobile-gaming sensation Pokémon Go in its home country of Japan has been delayed due to leaked details of McDonald’s sponsorship of the game.

The place to talk about games andIt’s Wednesday. Continue reading...

At a Guardian Live event, games editor Keith Stuart asks a panel of designers and programmers what the advances in artificial intelligence mean for games and the people who play them?The success of Pokémon Go suggests that augmented reality (AR) games will be big business. Already games like Minecraft can create new landscapes every time you play, while advances in artificial intelligence may lead to computer-controlled characters that can build new stories and activities based on player preferences.What are the ethical and legal ramifications of AI as it deepens its involvement with people? Could virtual reality gaming ever become like The Matrix? Continue reading...

Critic, author and father Rich Stanton has beaten Bloodborne a dozen times, but having faced the game’s toughest boss, is it time to retire?Recently, my partner and I had our second child and, over the subsequent weeks, as is often the case, we barely slept. What I didn’t expect was that, in the zombie hours at the edge of night, the harrowing cries of our newborn baby would keep pulling me back to something dark, distant and seemingly unrelated. Bloodborne.From Software’s 2015 masterpiece, a dark action adventure set in a plague-ridden gothic metropolis, is a towering achievement of interactive media, but it is also a grim and intimidating challenge requiring at least 50 hours to appreciate. During that time, players discover that a core theme of the game is progeny, covering the whole gamut, from birth to infanticide. Not for the first time, I realised the director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, thinks of everything. Continue reading...

Breitbart writer, who tweeted as @Nero, handed permanent suspension after claims he fanned flames of social media attack on Ghostbusters’ Leslie JonesTwitter has permanently banned a rightwing writer and notorious troll for his role in the online abuse of Leslie Jones over her role in the Ghostbusters reboot.Milo Yiannopoulos, the technology editor for Breitbart.com, tweeted as @Nero. Before he was banned, he had more than 338,000 followers and called himself “the most fabulous supervillain on the internet” for his provocations online. Continue reading...

The British former journalist lost a bid for protection from damages over the Hulk Hogan privacy case, but vowed to fight onThe founder of Gawker Media, Nick Denton, faces personal bankruptcy after a US judge refused to extend protections shielding him from liabilities in the Hulk Hogan privacy case.The decision represents a victory for Hogan as well billionaire investor Peter Thiel, an early backer and board member of Facebook who helped fund Hogan’s lawsuit following the publication of an article by Gawker about Thiel’s homosexuality. Continue reading...

The Balkan country is littered with tens of thousands of mines planted during the 1992-1995 conflictPeople playing the popular smartphone game Pokémon Go in Bosnia have been urged to avoid areas littered with unexploded mines left over from the 1990s conflict.“Today we received information that some users of the Pokémon Go app in Bosnia were going to places which are a risk for (unexploded) mines, in search of a pokemon,” the NGO Posavina bez mina said on its Facebook page. Continue reading...

Blue-tick badges normally reserved for the accounts of high-profile figures are to be rolled out to all users who provide correct informationThe Twitter “blue tick” badge normally reserved for the accounts of high-profile figures is to be made available to all users, the social media site has said.Related: ​Belarusian president accidentally ​sparks international striptease Continue reading...

Supreme court overturns judge’s order to mobile phone companies to block access after owner Facebook stood by refusal to intercept texts for police inquiryBrazil’s federal supreme court has suspended a judge’s ruling ordering mobile phone companies to indefinitely block access to Facebook’s WhatsApp – the third such decision against the popular phone messaging app in eight months.

Institutions including MoMA in New York are seizing the opportunity to get gamers through the doors, though some museumgoers are unimpressedSummer is a tough time to get paying museumgoers through the doors – but this year, there’s an extra incentive. Art museums like the Whitney and the Museum of Modern Art in New York are jumping on the Pokémon Go bandwagon and helping players of the augmented reality game “catch ’em all”.Just as local businesses have jumped on the bandwagon to get new customers, museums are jumping on board to attract young players and boost ticket sales from Los Angeles to New York, Texas and Boston. Continue reading...

The wildly popular mobile game is a Pokétopian fantasy that has flooded our world with good feelings – and timing could be everything behind its success

The £24.3bn deal has been called into question by SoftBank’s shareholders, who are concerned about their company’s debt levelThe £24.3bn takeover of ARM Holdings, Britain’s biggest technology company, could be in doubt after investors in the Japanese group behind the deal – SoftBank – gave it the thumbs down.Related: The chancellor's reaction to SoftBank's takeover of ARM was ludicrous Continue reading...

Employment law’s ‘case of the year’ will assess claim by 19 drivers that they are not technically self-employedUber is facing a legal challenge from drivers who say that they should be recognised officially as workers at the company, as calls grow for new rights for the UK’s burgeoning army of self-employed individuals.In a tribunal hearing described as “the case of the year in UK employment law”, lawyers working for a group of Uber drivers will argue that the terms and conditions of their work with the company mean that they are not technically self-employed and should be entitled to a range of benefits that they currently do not receive.