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

Isabella Lane started Smarter Applications with husband Christian two and a half years ago. Their first product was a wifi kettle, which they built for £100Subscribe and review on iTunes, Soundcloud & Mixcloud and join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter.From its humble beginnings with just a £100 wifi kettle prototype, Smarter Applications has come a long way. The kettles are now stocked in the likes of Harrods and John Lewis and the company has also launched a wifi coffee machine and fridge cam in Europe, with plans to export to the US in 2017. Continue reading...

Executives commit to removing extremist material but do not address Amber Rudd’s concerns after Westminster attack

Exhibition explores the history of the selfie and our changing relationship with this most everyday of art formsIt is a show that includes painstakingly executed self-portraits by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Frida Kahlo; and rather more spontaneous selfie-portraits by Kim Kardashian, Tom Cruise and a macaque monkey from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.The images are being displayed together in London’s Saatchi gallery and while curators are not assigning them any aesthetic equivalence, they do argue that there is a direct line from one to the other. Continue reading...

Brian likes to have everything on his own Windows PC and doesn’t want to share anything with others. Can he avoid using the cloud?How long will I be able to continue avoiding the cloud? I mean things like Microsoft accounts (my computers all use Windows 10), Facebook, Google and so on. I like everything to be stored on my computer and I don’t need to “share” stuff with others, but I have a feeling that Microsoft and others want everyone to sign up. BJGIt’s almost impossible to avoid the cloud now, because of the movement of commercial and government services to the web, the multiplication of computing devices and the rapid growth in smartphones. These different trends reinforce one another. Continue reading...

Samsung’s European Mobile Division vice president Jean-daniel Ayme discusses the new features of the Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone on Wednesday. This the company’s first major smartphone release since the recall of its fire-prone Note 7. This model boasts a larger display with no home button and also a voice assistant to rival Siri and Google. The Note 7 recall cost Samsung at least $5.3 bn (£4.27bn)

Latest in long-running high-school franchise boasts characters as deeply written and well observed as a multi-season TV seriesLike Scooby-Doo, the Famous Five and Harry Potter, the Persona series of Japanese role-playing games fits into a long tradition of teen fiction in which young people band together to expose the schemes and exploitations of corrupt adults. The abuses that Persona 5’s teenagers must confront are, however, unusually and uncompromisingly grave.The game opens with a typical example: one evening your character, a 17-year-old high-school student, confronts an inebriated, groping politician who is trying to force a woman into a taxi. The consequences of intervening with such a powerful local figure prove life changing. You are summarily expelled from school and banished to Tokyo, to live with a crotchety café owner. There you are enrolled in an academy whose halls are filled with whispering students who, having read the headlines, judge you as a toxic delinquent. Continue reading...

President to approve law killing rules meant to prevent internet service providers from selling consumers’ web browsing and app storage histories to advertisersPresident Donald Trump was expected to sign legislation on Wednesday allowing internet service providers to sell the browsing habits of their customers.The move, which critics charge will “fundamentally undermine” consumer privacy, overturns an Obama-era rule issued last October that was designed to give consumers greater control over how internet service providers (ISPs) could share their information. Continue reading...

Brand hopes to win back consumer trust after Note 7 debacle with new phone that’s almost completely bezel-free and includes its new virtual assistantSamsung has unveiled the Galaxy S8 and S8+, the company’s first flagship phones since the Note 7 debacle in 2016 threatened to sink its brand in the eyes of the public.The new phones’ most eye-catching feature is an almost completely bezel-free display, running the full width of the device, even curving around the edge (akin to the screen on Samsung’s Galaxy S7 Edge), and shrinking the chin and forehead of the front screen to tiny slivers. Samsung’s calls this the “infinity display”, and even the home button has been removed, replaced with a pressure-sensitive section at the bottom of the screen. Continue reading...

Move continues trend of exclusivity for premium members, after Switch sells out from major retailers as it records successful startIf you want a Nintendo Switch, you might have to start thinking about the prospect of Amazon Prime membership: the online retailer has started selling its admittedly limited stock of the new Nintendo console exclusively to members of its Prime subscription service.It’s the continuation of a growing trend from Amazon, which was first spotted making certain games and films members-only in early 2016. Then, Amazon’s explanation for the exclusivity, which affected games like Grand Theft Auto V and films including Birdman, was that “one of the many benefits of Amazon Prime is access to exclusive selection on a number of great products”. Those products were available from third-party sellers on Amazon. Continue reading...

Official opening of Amazon Go store delayed after camera and sensor technology found wanting in beta testingAmazon’s cashier-less grocery shop, dubbed Amazon Go by the company, is going through some teething problems, according to the Wall Street Journal.Specifically, the new shop can’t handle tracking more than about 20 people at the same time, and freaks out “if an item has been moved from its specific spot on the shelf” the paper writes, citing un-named sources. Continue reading...

The ride-hailing rival has seized on Uber’s scandals to position itself as the ethical choice, but can it back up the claims?“We’re woke. Our community is woke, and the US population is woke.”

Historian Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, which offers lessons on resisting repressive rule, has sales blurb rewritten to repeat slogan seen on pro-Putin postersPublishers believe that Russian hackers are behind an attack on the Amazon page for a self-styled manual for resisting US president Donald Trump and other populist leaders, with the author, historian Timothy Snyder, claiming the hack as just the latest in a series of efforts by Russians to undermine his work.Images of Snyder’s On Tyranny were replaced on Amazon.co.uk with those for a non-existent colouring book by “Timothy Strauss”. The blurb for Strauss’s book said it contained “lessons to Make World Great Again” [sic] – a slogan used on pro-Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin posters that have appeared across the Russian Federation. Continue reading...

Investigatory Powers Act lets UK compel removal of electronic protection but it would face enforcement challenges and risk driving targets to other servicesThe government already has the power to force technology firms to act as it wants over end-to-end encryption, but is avoiding using existing legislation as it would force it into a battle it would eventually lose, security experts have said.The Investigatory Powers Act, made law in late 2016, allows the government to compel communications providers to remove “electronic protection applied … to any communications or data”. Continue reading...

Lower, properly enforced speed limits are the key to tackling all the costs and nuisances of traffic (Letters, 25 March). A report from the Policy Studies Institute in 1996 concluded that speed limits on main roads should be reduced, with the speed limit on motorways certainly no higher than 60mph. The immediate consequence of strict enforcement of lower limits would be reductions in road crashes and casualties, fuel consumption, CO emissions and noise. Capacity would be increased. Traffic levels would be reduced by checking and then reversing the tendency for car journeys and lorry hauls to increase in length.The default speed limit in towns should be 20mph. Combined with bus priorities, measures to make walking and cycling safer and more agreeable, and planning policies to encourage smaller, local shops and other facilities, lower speeds in towns would have a profound influence on modal choice and journey length. The best way of enforcing speed limits is by variable speed limiters on the vehicle. They can either be operated by the driver or activated externally. Both types of speed limiter have been shown to be technically feasible and inexpensive. Continue reading...

Service aims to make it much easier for independent traders to accept card payments by using readers that connect to smartphones or tabletsSquare, the payments company founded by Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, is entering the UK market offering merchants next-day settlement and slashed prices compared to rivals.The company is taking on current market leader, Stockholm-headquartered iZettle. Both companies seek to provide a better service to small businesses than legacy card payment firms such as WorldPay and Barclaycard, whose bulky terminals and complex fee structures can lead to merchants choosing to only take cash payments. Continue reading...

US firm says it ‘must take the consequences’ of rules requiring cabs to be fitted with seat occupancy sensors and fare metersUber will shut down its operation in Denmark next month following the introduction of new taxi laws, the company has said, marking the latest European setback for the US ride-booking service.A company spokesman, Kristian Agerbo, said on Tuesday Uber “must take the consequences” of the rules, which among other things will require cabs to be fitted with seat occupancy sensors and fare meters. Continue reading...

Tesla and SpaceX founder launching Neuralink to explore technology of implanting tiny electrodes into the brainTesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is launching a new company called Neuralink with the intention of connecting computers directly to human brains, according to a report.The Wall Street Journal reported that the billionaire entrepreneur, whose other interests include sending humans to Mars, is exploring “neural lace” technology – the implanting of tiny electrodes into the brain that could be used to give direct computing capabilities.

Adapt the look of your character and your vehicle, keep on top of your skills and above all flirt – here are some pointers you might not knowAndromeda: it’s a whole new galaxy. And whether you’re a veteran player of the original Mass Effect trilogy or this is your first foray into BioWare’s galactic RPG, there are things you might not know when starting out. For sure, Mass Effect: Andromeda is all about the journey, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t make that journey a little easier and more enjoyable by following these seven tips. Continue reading...

A vote could kill privacy rules that would prevent service providers from selling browsing histories and app usage histories to advertisers – here’s why it mattersA US House committee is set to vote today on whether to kill privacy rules that would prevent internet service providers (ISPs) from selling users’ web browsing histories and app usage histories to advertisers. Planned protections, proposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that would have forced ISPs to get people’s consent before hawking their data – are now at risk. Here’s why it matters. Continue reading...

John Moore, who posted the sign to his Facebook page, said he wanted to pay tribute to the emergency services using a well-known internet meme – which ended up being read out in the House of CommonsAt 8.41pm on the day that terror hit Westminster, a doctor in Windsor called John Moore posted a picture he made on a well-known tube sign generator site to his Facebook page.It said: “All terrorists are politely reminded that THIS IS LONDON and whatever you do to us, we will drink tea and jolly well carry on. Thank you.” Continue reading...

Launch of rival to Amazon Echo takes fight to Jeff Bezos’s Seattle-based company, but experts say it’s still Google’s to loseGoogle is launching its rival to Amazon’s Echo, the Google Home, in the UK as the battle for the living room hots up.The smart speaker, which can play music, control Internet of Things devices, and answer questions, will cost British customers £129, £20 less than Amazon’s Echo, when it launches in Britain on 6 April. Continue reading...

Company trying to manage stockpile of four million handsets that were recalled after battery explosionsSamsung has announced it could refurbish and sell some of the millions of Note 7 smartphones that were recalled for safety reasons, in an effort to manage its stockpile in an “environmentally friendly” manner.

A prototype security device promises to film pilferers in the act and email you the evidence. But is it worth entering a moral minefield for the sake of 15ml of semi-skimmed?When you head to your workplace fridge, only to find that some thoughtless colleague has nabbed your milk, what is the appropriate response?a) Shrug it off and say: “Oh well, that only cost me around 8p when you think about it”; Continue reading...

UK home secretary wants police to be able to access WhatsApp, but any backdoor also makes services vulnerable to criminalsTech companies are facing demands from the home secretary, Amber Rudd, to build backdoors into their “completely unacceptable” end-to-end encryption messaging apps. Speaking on Sunday, just five days after a terror attack in Westminster killed five and injured more than 50, she said “there should be no place for terrorists to hide”.This may sound familiar. Two years ago, after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, the then British prime minister David Cameron said Britain’s intelligence agencies should have the legal power to break into the encrypted communications of suspected terrorists. He promised to legislate for it in 2016. Continue reading...

Database contains photos of half of US adults without consent, and algorithm is wrong nearly 15% of time and is more likely to misidentify black peopleApproximately half of adult Americans’ photographs are stored in facial recognition databases that can be accessed by the FBI, without their knowledge or consent, in the hunt for suspected criminals. About 80% of photos in the FBI’s network are non-criminal entries, including pictures from driver’s licenses and passports. The algorithms used to identify matches are inaccurate about 15% of the time, and are more likely to misidentify black people than white people.These are just some of the damning facts presented at last week’s House oversight committee hearing, where politicians and privacy campaigners criticized the FBI and called for stricter regulation of facial recognition technology at a time when it is creeping into law enforcement and business. Continue reading...

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

Office for National Statistics to harvest data from traffic sensors, mobile phones and satellite images at new campus in WalesThe UK’s official statistics office is looking into using traffic sensors, mobile photo data and satellite images as new ways of measuring the shape of the economy.The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is opening a new data science campus at its headquarters in Newport, south Wales, on Monday as part of a £17m investment in the way the UK collects and presents data. Continue reading...

My colleague Gordon Reece, who has died aged 76, was an unconventional academic. He was a pioneer of computational fluid dynamics and of novel mathematics teaching methods for engineers, but he was also an election forecaster and spoke German and French fluently. He was a socialist, humanist, trade unionist and CND supporter.Gordon was born in Stafford, the son of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, Horst Riesenburg (later anglicised to Reece), and his wife, Hilde (nee Gans), who were both teachers. He attended Kempsey primary school, near Worcester, and then the Royal Grammar School Worcester. Continue reading...

Amber Rudd has repeated calls that intelligence services be able to access technology companies, from the American giants to those run from a bedroomThe social media giant became a favourite with extremists in the early years of online radicalisation; it is free, international and allows anyone to sign up and post what they please. Profiles sympathetic to Islamic State and al-Shabaab were once common on the site, but have become less visible since Twitter actively started removing extremist material. Continue reading...

A previous plan to ban end-to-end encryption was dropped after widespread opposition, including from David DavisAmber Rudd’s call for “no hiding place for terrorists” on the web echoes and revives David Cameron’s 2015 proposal to ban end-to-end encryption on services such as WhatsApp.That proposal was dropped from the “snooper’s charter” legislation because of widespread opposition in the tech industry and from Conservative libertarians, including David Davis, now Brexit secretary and one of the home secretary’s cabinet colleagues. Continue reading...

A museum in Quebec is offering to find your lookalike among its ancient sculptures using facial recognition softwarePast searches for my doppelganger proved disappointing. A website I uploaded a picture to some months ago promised to locate an identical stranger, but then responded with two pictures of German guys who looked nothing like me. When I refused to acknowledge either as a dead ringer, the website stopped sending me prospective matches. My plans to seek employment as somebody else’s evil twin were put on hold.But what if my true doppelganger belonged to another era? The Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec has launched a project called My 2,000-Year-Old Double, allowing anyone to track down their twin among the statues of antiquity. Upload a photo (no smiling; think like a block of marble) and your features will be measured to locate your closest match from the museum’s admittedly narrow database of 60 Greek and Roman sculptures. The best looky-likies will be photographed to appear in an exhibition alongside their ancient counterparts. I am resolved to find mine. Continue reading...

The home secretary, Amber Rudd, says WhatsApp and other messaging applications must not provide a secret platform for terrorists to communicate. Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Rudd said that the government’s intelligence services should have access to encrypted messages, following reports that Khalid Masood had used the service prior to the Westminster attack

Protect your privacy, your data and your peace of mind with this guide to beating thieves, whether they’re online or on the streetAs we’ve recently seen from leaked CIA documents, no one is immune to hacking attacks. Here’s how to protect yourself against them, whether they come from opportunist thieves or state-sponsored spies. Continue reading...

A sci-fi franchise’s new mission is beset by old bugs, the Switch gets musical and a shoot’ em up provides a powerfully pure arcade experiencePS4, Xbox One, PC, EA, cert: 16

SsangYong has always served up bumper helpings for budget motorists. Now it’s added some flavour, too

Major brands including Verizon and Walmart pulled their ads after they were found to be appearing next to videos promoting extremist views or hate speechIt’s been a bad week for Google, with major brands pulling millions of dollars in advertising amid rows over extremist content on YouTube.

Major companies pulling advertisements a sign that many doubt Google’s ability to prevent marketing campaigns from appearing alongside repugnant videosPepsiCo, Walmart and Starbucks on Friday confirmed that they have suspended their advertising on YouTube, joining a growing boycott in a sign that big companies doubt Google’s ability to prevent marketing campaigns from appearing alongside repugnant videos.

You are a sea of caterpillars in an alien river. You are a cluster of stars. What do you do in a game about everything? Anything at all, it turns outA daisy creeps across a rocky landscape. It becomes a blade of grass, which, in turn, becomes a caterpillar, which then turns itself into a very miniature zebra. Nearby, a patch of clover says to the zebra, “Repetition is the only form of permanence I am capable of.”This is a kind of everything.

Security feature enabled for all users to help protect accounts from being compromised by password reuse and phishingInstagram has become the latest social network to enable two-factor authentication, a valuable security feature that protects accounts from being compromised due to password reuse or phishing.Users can, and should, opt in by clicking on the settings icon in the top right of their profile, hitting two-factor authentication in the following menu, and enabling the setting to “require security code”. Continue reading...

Ride-hailing startup faces yet another discrimination scandal after a manager who was recruiting Kamilah Taylor made the comment in a LinkedIn messageUber is facing yet another discrimination scandal after a manager who was recruiting a female engineer defended the company by saying “sexism is systemic in tech”.On 14 March, an engineering manager at Uber tried to recruit Kamilah Taylor, a senior software engineer at another Silicon Valley company, for a developer position at the San Francisco ride-hailing startup, which is struggling to recover from a major sexual harassment controversy. Continue reading...

Are we facing a new cyber cold war, or is there more behind allegations of Russian hacking in the US?The troubling allegation that Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election raises important questions. Are we facing some kind of new cyber cold war? Or is there more to the story? Continue reading...

After Donald Trump was elected, I removed people on Facebook and Twitter to avoid upsetting myself. Am I part of the problem?Q: On Facebook and Twitter I unfriend or unfollow people I don’t agree with to avoid upsetting myself. Is this wrong and am I part of the problem that ended with Trump?A: After the disaster of the US election, the answer to this question is supposed to be yes – yes, you must follow people you don’t agree with; yes, you are part of the problem unless you toughen up and engage with the Other Side. If opposing views upset you, you are either weak-minded and vulnerable to manipulation by bigots or locked in your liberal echo chamber, where the only possible explanation for why Trump won the election is that people in general are idiots. Continue reading...

Facebook turned on Safety Check during the Westminster attack. In telling friends you are ‘not marked as safe’, is it providing another avenue for fear?This morning, after reading the latest news updates about the terror attack on Westminster, I fired up Facebook. There I was met with an atypical request: a friend who lives an eight-hour flight away in Canada had asked me to mark myself “safe”.

Major phone networks express concern over video sharing site and parent company’s inability to guarantee money won’t flow to extremismThe growing advertiser boycott of YouTube has reached the US, with AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Verizon and Enterprise all halting adverts on the site, as well as Google’s wider ad networks, over the video-sharing site’s inability to guarantee promotional messages won’t appear alongside extremist content.Some of the new members of the boycott have also expanded the scope of the complaints, from a specific focus on YouTube to a broader criticism of Google’s ad platform. “We are deeply concerned that our ads may have appeared alongside YouTube content promoting terrorism and hate,” AT&T said. “Until Google can ensure this won’t happen again, we are removing our ads from Google’s non-search platforms.” Continue reading...

The app for automating common actions on iOS and iPad will remain on the app store, but its $2.99 pricetag has been slashed to nothingApple has acquired Workflow, a popular iOS app for automating common actions on iPads and iPhones.The app, which fills a similar niche on iOS to services such as IFTTT on the web and Apple’s own Automator on desktop, was highly praised by its users, and by Apple itself, which commended its developers with a design award in 2015. Continue reading...

Evaldas Rimasauskas charged after allegedly sending phishing emails to representatives of major tech firms and pretending to work for Asian companyTwo major American tech companies were tricked by a Lithuanian man’s phishing scheme into wiring him over $100m, according to the justice department.Evaldas Rimasauskas, 48, was arrested last week by Lithuanian authorities and charged on Monday by prosecutors in the southern district of New York. Announced on Wednesday, the charges of wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft could carry a sentence of 20 years in prison. Continue reading...

The whistleblower lists damning claims of spying on innocent individuals by a secretive Scotland Yard unit. It’s now vital that we hold the police to accountAs the only Green party peer I receive a lot of post to my office in the House of Lords. Rarely, though, do I open letters like the one that has been revealed. The anonymous writer alleged that there was a secretive unit within Scotland Yard that has used hackers to illegally access the emails of campaigners and journalists. It included a list of 10 people and the passwords to their email accounts.Related: Met police accused of using hackers to access protesters' emails Continue reading...

Developer preview version of new operating system released showcasing a suite of improvements

Police investigating alleged attack, which came to light when teenager’s mother approached police with screengrab photosA 15-year-old girl in Chicago was apparently sexually assaulted by five or six men or boys on Facebook Live, and none of the roughly 40 people who watched the live video reported the attack to police, authorities have said.It is the second time in recent months that the Chicago police department has investigated an apparent attack streamed live on Facebook. In January, four people were arrested after mobile phone footage showed them allegedly taunting and beating a mentally disabled man. Continue reading...