Technology | The Guardian

Extramarital dating site under investigation by US regulator a year after entire user database leaked onlineAvid Life Media (ALM), the corporate parent of hacked extramarital dating site Ashley Madison, is being investigated by the US Federal Trade Commission according to the company’s new executive team.Appointed in April, the new chief executive, Rob Segal, and the president, James Millership, have been given the job of righting ALM in the aftermath of the hack, which saw the entire membership register of Ashley Madison posted to the internet. Over the following year, ALM lost more than a quarter of its revenue, as worried members fled the company’s portfolio of dating sites. Continue reading...

Blockchain, the increasingly celebrated peer-to-peer data technology, is the basis of bitcoin and has huge potential – will it be as big as the web?Proposed in 2008 and launched the following year, bitcoin – a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system” – was initially viewed by many as the preserve of geeks and criminals. Yet it has subsequently taken giant strides towards the mainstream. There have been various high-profile attempts to unmask the “real” Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by bitcoin’s inventor(s). And in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, some hailed bitcoin, surging as the pound plummeted, as “digital gold”.It is now recognised that the still-mysterious Nakamoto did more than invent a currency. He also solved a longstanding problem in computing, to do with date and networks. His solution was complex, but it involved the use of an infrastructure comprising “blocks” of confirmed transactions that form a chronologically linked “chain”. As other digital currencies, and other blockchains, have emerged, banks and some governments have begun to pay attention, and investment is rocketing. The World Economic Forum predicts that, within a decade, 10% of global GDP could be stored on blockchains. Continue reading...

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

Clips from an episode of ABC’s flagship science program, Catalyst, which has been found to have breached the broadcaster’s impartiality guidelines. The episode, Wi-Fried?, was broadcast in February and looks at the potential dangers of using electronic devices such as Wi-Fi hubs and mobile phones Continue reading...

Presenter Maryanne Demasi also under review for program Wi-Fried, which an internal investigation found breached the broadcaster’s impartiality guidelinesThe future of the ABC’s science program Catalyst and presenter Maryanne Demasi are under review after an episode which linked Wi-Fi and mobile phones with health risks including brain cancer was found to have breached the ABC’s impartiality guidelines.When the ABC aired “Wi-Fried?” in February several scientists, including professor of public health at the University of Sydney, Simon Chapman, said it was misleading and should never have gone to air. Continue reading...

Driverless technology remains a work in progress as the fatal crash of Tesla Model S tragically showed. Here are some flaws that persist in autopilot technology

Company to stop making device it hoped would entice users who prefer a physical keyboard, a symbolic shift away from handsets and toward softwareThe smartphone pioneer BlackBerry will stop making its Classic model, the company said on Tuesday, some 18 months after launching the device it had hoped would entice users who prefer a physical, rather than touchscreen, keyboard.

Robotics competition prize for best warehouse-working ‘picker’ machine awarded to robot designed by Dutch teamAmazon’s progress toward an army of helpful robots is one step closer: a prize for the best warehouse-working “picker” machine has gone to a robot designed by a team from TU Delft Robotics Institute and Delft Robotics, both based in the Netherlands.The competition was held in conjunction with Germany’s Robocup in Leipzig. Announced on Monday, the winners took home $25,000, while the university of Bonn’s NimbRo won $10,000 for second place and Japanese firm PFN was awarded $5,000 for third. Continue reading...

Electric car firm misses its vehicle delivery target for the second consecutive quarter as it struggles to transform into a mainstream, high-volume manufacturerTesla Motors missed its vehicle delivery target for the second consecutive quarter and is on track to fall short of its annual target, suggesting the US electric car maker is still wrestling with production issues as it looks to transform itself into a mainstream, high-volume manufacturer.Related: Elon Musk's self-driving evangelism masks risk of Tesla autopilot, experts say Continue reading...

A ‘male fertility testing’ system encourages men to share responsibilty for conception by monitoring their reproductive healthIn the febrile world of health startups, entrepreneurs are racing to quantify every possible bodily and environmental function. And so if we can monitor air quality, sleep and heart rate, why wouldn’t we monitor sperm quality as well?In May, America’s Food and Drug Administration approved Trak, a new “male fertility testing” system. It looks like a cross between a frisbee, a clock and a Cuisinart blender. The Trak website announces that it is “like a Fitbit for sperm”. Continue reading...

Company’s first physical store in UK allow visitors to roadtest the full range of electrical products – from vacuum cleaners to hair dryersDyson will on Wednesday open its first bricks-and-mortar store in the UK, an Apple-style hub on London’s Oxford Street where shoppers can test and buy the company’s full range of consumer electrical products.Visitors to the Dyson Demo can have their hair styled and dried with the company’s Supersonic hairdryer in a first floor salon, or choose from more than 60 different types of dust and debris with which to test its bagless and cordless vacuum cleaners. Continue reading...

Damian Carrington tests a concept vehicle touted as a ‘solution for future urban transport’ in a rapidly urbanising worldI’m sitting in a cross between an electric-assisted bicycle and an electric car that looks like a cool golf buggy.

You’ve changed your passwords and avoided banking using public Wi-Fi. But what else could be putting you at risk?Bad news if you were hoping to stay safe online: the number of victims of identity theft rose by 57% in the last year, according to fraud prevention service Cifas.But unlike previous rises, the victims of identity theft are no longer targeted by fraudsters digging through rubbish bins for bank statements, or by hackers installing keyloggers on compromised PCs. Instead, according to Cifas, the victims are giving out the base ingredients of identity theft willingly online, through social media. Continue reading...

Organ donation? There’ll soon be an app for that, after Tim Cook cites Steve Jobs’ ‘excruciating’ wait for a liver transplant in 2009 as inspiration for Health updateApple will give US users the ability to sign up as organ donors on their iPhones as part of its upcoming iOS 10 update.The chief executive, Tim Cook, says he hopes the easy sign-up button in the Health app will help ease a longstanding donor shortage in the US. Continue reading...

Six years after the deliciously dark Limbo, developer Playdead returns to Xbox and PC with another meticulously muted platformer about a boy on the runIf you hadn’t realised that Inside was created by the same people behind Limbo, Playdead won’t let you forget it for long. The intro is immediately familiar: a quietly foreboding woodland and a young boy on the run. It’s a clear promise that those who appreciated the unique experience that Limbo offered can expect more of the same here.Still, as you’d expect from a developer who’s had more time (and presumably much more money) to refine their art, there are obvious differences. For one thing, there’s more colour – that is, there is some where before there was none. The environments are still pretty bleak, from the rain-soaked countryside to the crumbling corporate interiors, but not quite monochromatic. Among the grey there are splashes of red, on the boy’s jumper and on handholds that might otherwise be missed, yellow on chirping chicks in a farm populated by pig corpses and on cables that lead to secrets, and the colour of flesh.

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

‘Deep learning’ research company will use 1m anonymised eye scans to train a neural network to identify early signs of degenerative eye conditionsGoogle DeepMind has announced its second collaboration with the NHS, working with Moorfields Eye Hospital in east London to build a machine learning system which will eventually be able to recognise sight-threatening conditions from just a digital scan of the eye.The collaboration is the second between the NHS and DeepMind, which is the artificial intelligence research arm of Google, but Deepmind’s co-founder, Mustafa Suleyman, says this is the first time the company is embarking purely on medical research. An earlier, ongoing, collaboration, with the Royal Free hospital in north London, is focused on direct patient care, using a smartphone app called Streams to monitor kidney function of patients. Continue reading...

Cybercrime is becoming big business and tech firms are ‘in an arms race’ to outdo sophisticated criminal operations, report by BT and KPMG saysBritish firms must “take the fight to the criminals” to prevent a rising tide of cyber-attacks by sophisticated organised crime gangs, according to a report.In a joint report, telecoms group BT and consulting firm KPMG called on companies to address the “industrialisation of cybercrime”, warning against the danger of overplaying the more high-profile threat of lone hackers. Continue reading...

Your editorial (Humans must not become back-seat drivers for computers, 2 July) reaches the right conclusions that cars will be safer when humans no longer drive, but there is much more to it than recognising large white articulated trucks, paper bags or aggressive drivers. Doesn’t the software need a driving test?The pressure for autonomous driving comes from the Googles, Baidus and Apples of this world, who want the drivers’ time to surf the web or download their music. They want totally autonomous vehicles, without steering wheels, that will revolutionise transport for the old, the young and the disabled. The car companies are being pushed, reluctantly, into this revolution, clinging on to their marketing pitch of selling the “driving experience” and keeping the steering wheel available for the driver to use. No revolution here for the old, young and disabled. Continue reading...

As free upgrade period draws to a close, software maker resorts to adware tactics with its most irritating pop-up yetMicrosoft’s aggressive push to get users to upgrade to Windows 10 has been turned up a notch as the company begins pushing full-screen upgrade pop-up notifications to Windows 7 and 8.1.

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We talk to Respawn Entertainment about its forthcoming sci-fi sequel, which adds a campaign mode, new weapons and fresh ideas, to the acclaimed originalWhen Jason West and Vince Zampella set up Respawn Entertainment in 2010, they had one ambition: to produce a new first-person shooter that would have as massive an impact on the genre as their previous creation: the Call of Duty series. It was a big ask, but when Titanfall arrived three years later, the game was certainly a brilliant attempt. The sci-fi shooter boasted an innovative mechanic allowing players to summon a giant robot into the arena, and an incredibly fluid, free-running movement style – all combined into a set of blisteringly loud and detailed map designs.But one thing many players said about Titanfall was that, beyond the raw speed and inarguable thrill of the highly vertical, highly acrobatic gameplay, there was little in the way of tactical depth. It’s something the team says it wants to address. Continue reading...

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have launched an inquiry into Tesla Model S cars after a driver was killed in an accident in one of its self-driving vehicles while using the company’s autopilot mode. Joshua Brown, 40, was driving on a highway in Williston, Florida when his car hit a truck which was crossing the road Continue reading...

The messaging app already has more than a billion users, including plotters against Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson. It is changing the way we communicate – and its level of encryption would make the FBI weepThere is something reassuringly traditional about the neatly typed resignation letters, with a House of Commons letterhead and an attack on the Labour leader within. They are solid and permanent, when everything else seems to be falling apart. And old-fashioned, even if one does tweet a picture of it afterwards, as many MPs have done. But according to reports, those conspiring against Corbyn were far more modern. They used the messaging service WhatsApp. And it wasn’t just Labour. There was thought to be at least one WhatsApp group of Conservative MPs exploring ways to stop Boris Johnson becoming leader. Gone are the days of machinations in back rooms and hushed conversations in corridors; the leaders of the two main political parties could be decided on a mobile app more often used by teenagers wondering where to go on a Saturday night.If you don’t already use WhatsApp, you probably soon will. A few months ago, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, went past its billionth user, and it will get bigger (“We still have another 6 billion people to get on WhatsApp,” the company wrote in a blogpost). Last year, it delivered more messages than traditional SMS text messages. Since 2010, it has been possible to make voice calls from WhatsApp, which could, predict some tech watchers, spell the end of mobile networks such as Vodafone or O2. It probably won’t be long until we can use video calling on it, too; but for now it remains primarily a texting service, only better. Messages are sent over the internet and it is efficient and easy to use. You can message one-on-one, or set up a group in your phone contacts list – family, say, or friends. Or Labour politicians. Among my groups are different bands of friends, two British family groups and a Turkish one, and a group of old housemates. Continue reading...

Video service is augmenting new tech with real people to help guide the successors to Zoella and PewDiePieYouTube wants to provide more of a “human touch” for its community of video creators, while also doing more to help them tackle trolls and avoid exploitative deals with multi-channel networks. And while its plans to do so inevitably include changes to its technology, they involve real-life humans as well. As YouTube’s VP of operations Sebastien Missoffe puts it, it’s a necessary part of being “a digital media company of the 21st century”.“We need to balance the great technology we have and bring this human access for every single creator,” Missoffe says. “They can reach a human being at YouTube.” So as it consolidates its creator tools in a revamped online “hub” and improves its comment-moderation and copyright tools, it is providing more direct access to its support staff too, with four tiers of support based on how many subscribers a creator has. Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg uses tape over his webcam. Even if you’re not worried about industrial espionage, there’s no such thing as too much securityOutlook and other email clients let you install a personal security certificate, which you can use to encrypt email so that only trusted recipients can read it, or digitally sign your messages to prove that they came from you. You can get your own certificate from comodo.com and it doesn’t cost a penny. The catch is that your recipients will need to be using a compatible email system – if they’re using Gmail on their smartphone, they’ll just be annoyed when you keep sending them unreadable strings of garbled data. “It also means you’ve got to protect your laptop,” points out Tony Anscombe, security “evangelist” at the antivirus firm AVG. “If your laptop’s stolen and your password is written on a Post-it note on the screen, then what’s the use of the encryption?” Continue reading...

Current real-world politics remind us why so many prefer the ordered fairness of gamingDuring the run-up to the general election, my children and I took our new puppy for a walk around the block. A campaigner for Ukip, presumably spying a happy scene ripe for spoiling, approached. If there was, as the prime minister once suggested, racism in the Ukip pamphleteer’s closet, its whiff did not dampen the generosity of our dog’s greeting. As the man handed me a sticky leaflet, the puppy peed in excitement on his shoes, before trying to hump his leg, wetly.The scene was a cause of great hilarity for my children, none of whom will be able to vote for another two general elections. “Barney peed on the Ukip man,” they’d tell bewildered visitors during the following days and weeks. It was a minor victory for a generation to whom so much worse has been done by this political class. Continue reading...

Five Hundred Metre Aperture Spherical Telescope, or Fast, is the size of 30 football fields and has been cut out of a mountain in GuizhouChina has hoisted the final piece into position on what will be the world’s largest radio telescope, which it will use to explore space and help in the hunt for extraterrestrial life.The Five Hundred Metre Aperture Spherical Telescope, or Fast, is the size of 30 football fields and has been cut out of a mountain in the south-western province of Guizhou. Continue reading...

Powerful, uncomplaining, relentless… VW’s much-loved Transporter takes long-distance adventures in its stridePrice £30,460

Simple, slick and speedy… Quella’s latest Nero is every urban cyclists’ best friendThe Emperor Nero was famous for his debauchery and unfettered extravagance. I don’t think he’d have been impressed with this latest bike from Quella. The Nero is sleek, simple and unadorned.Quella began life in an old chicken shed in Cambridgeshire in 2012. Since then its focus has been on building frames that are a winning mix of modern design and old-fashioned craftsmanship. Continue reading...

There’s a whole class of information that Facebook thinks it knows about me and is willing to sell – the problem is their data isn’t entirely accurateFacebook knows everything about you. At least that’s what we, and the advertisers it sells us to, are constantly told. But a peek behind its algorithmic curtains suggests what it does know might be wrong.As any of its 1.65 billion users can tell you, Facebook is constantly “updating” its privacy settings, which is why I tool through all my settings every few weeks. I try to keep a lock on what strangers can learn about me on Facebook or have access to; not because I’m disinclined to participate in the platform, but because my family is uncomfortable with strangers having access to their personal lives, and that seems fair. Continue reading...

Tesla’s ambitious futurism has earned it loyal fans – but after the death of a driver using autopilot, some say the company should be more explicit about limitationsElon Musk’s rockets usually do not stray beyond Earth’s orbit, but that hasn’t stopped him from making promises about Mars. The Tesla CEO’s wild, ambitious futurism has earned him billions of dollars, fawning coverage from the tech press, and a subreddit devoted entirely to discussion of his divinity.

At a Guardian Live event his week, member Ruth Oliver heard a panel of writers and thinkers including Paul Mason and Lydia Nicholas discuss what the world will look like in 2025.The event was particularly topical given what’s happened with the referendum over the past week. I’ve felt quite overwhelmed and have read so much in the press and on social media it can be quite unsettling. This was a nice chance to step back from the headlines and look at the wider picture.

I worried I’d not screwed everything in tightly enough‘Ikea to start selling bikes” is a nightmare headline for the friendly independent bike shop. Not only could the Swedish behemoth take any custom the internet hasn’t already siphoned off, but the bike shop will end up having to fix those inevitable DIY bike-building disasters when people who call saddles “seats” are let loose with some Allen keys.The Sladda comes flat-packed, of course. I set aside an hour to build mine, figuring I know more or less what I’m doing. But an hour wasn’t nearly long enough: I started at noon and finished at five, with time off for lunch. I got stuck three times: first when I put on the front forks the wrong way, next by fixing the kick-stand backwards, so the pedals wouldn’t turn, and finally when I put on the handlebars upsidedown. As ever with Ikea, there are no written instructions, just ambiguous pictures. Continue reading...

The funds were blocked after the popular messaging service reportedly defied repeated orders to turn over messages sought in a drug caseA court in Brazil on Thursday blocked 19.5m reals ($6.07m) of Facebook’s money after its WhatsApp messaging service failed to turn over messages sought in a drugs case – despite the fact that the company has no access to its users’ messages.Brazil’s federal police said WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook , has defied repeated orders to turn over messages sent and received by suspected members of an international cocaine smuggling ring that has been under investigation since January. Continue reading...

Driver in first known fatal self-driving car crash was also driving so fast that ‘he went so fast through my trailer I didn’t see him’, the truck driver involved saidThe Tesla driver killed in the first known fatal crash involving a self-driving car may have been watching a Harry Potter movie at the time of the collision in Florida, according to a truck driver involved in the crash.The truck driver, Frank Baressi, 62, told the Associated Press that the Tesla driver Joshua Brown, 40, was “playing Harry Potter on the TV screen” during the collision and was driving so fast that “he went so fast through my trailer I didn’t see him”. Continue reading...

Latest in a series of botched public sector IT programmes including Scottish farm payments and NHS advice systemsScotland’s police authority has abandoned a new unified IT system after it was plagued with problems, in the latest in a series of botched public sector IT programmes.The authority said it had scrapped the £60m i6 project because of its insurmountable flaws. It had been introduced to merge more than 130 different computer and paper systems left in place after eight regional forces were merged to form Police Scotland. Continue reading...

A payroll levy on the city’s largest tech companies – such as Google, Twitter, Uber and Airbnb – aims to tackle inequality, but some have savaged the proposalSan Francisco’s long, complex and often fraught relationship with the tech industry has come to a head with a proposal to levy a “tech tax” on the companies that have fueled the city’s transformation into a place that is increasingly uninhabitable for people on low or medium incomes.Under the plan, large tech employers in the city, potentially including Google, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb and Salesforce, would be required to pay a 1.5% payroll tax. The estimated $120m in annual revenue would be used to fund affordable housing and services for the city’s large homeless population. Continue reading...

Car manufacturer joins forces with US computer chip giant and Israeli technology firm to bring fully automated driving into production by 2021BMW has announced it is joining forces with US computer chip firm Intel and the Israeli technology company Mobileye to develop self-driving cars.

Crowdsourced name for Android version 7 upsets some, but Nougat is here to stay after Google unveils name and statueGoogle has announced that the next version of Android, codenamed “N”, will be called Nougat, bitterly dividing opinion among its fans.Nougat, which has been in developer and early-adopter preview for the last few months since being announced at Google’s I/O developer conference in May, will be the 14th distinct iteration of Android, labeled Android 7.0. Continue reading...

Tesla’s Autopilot is in the spotlight after a fatal crash. Samuel Gibbs used it when he drove to France in a Model S – here’s how he found the experience of driver assistanceTesla’s Autopilot has been thrown into the spotlight after a fatal crash involving a Model S which was under the control of the car’s driving-assist system.Autopilot, a feature for both the Model S and the newer SUV Model X, is a combination of two technologies. The first is adaptive cruise control, which is a common feature to high-end cars. The second is Autosteer, in other cars called lane departure assistance. Continue reading...

From Assassin’s Creed to Witcher, a guide to where Westminster stole all of its best ideas this weekVideo games are often criticised for their outlandish story lines, but considering what’s been happening in British politics this week, they now seem like a perfectly sensible place to learn about the world.So if you’ve not yet had your fill of plot twists, back-stabs and last minute turn arounds, here are gaming’s greatest power struggles.

From the 7th annual VidCon in Anaheim, California, we explore how YouTube has impacted the lives of creators and fans alikeIn a special episode from VidCon, producer Matt Shore talks to fans, volunteers and popular YouTuber Ricky Dillon about what online video means to them in 2016. Continue reading...

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

New iOS apps of June 2016 include Motion Stills, Splash – 360 Video Camera, Live.ly, Rodeo Stampede, Pixel Cup Soccer 16 and Human Resource MachineFrom turning your photos into gifs to riding buffalo for a sky zoo, and from shooting virtual-reality videos to learning to code, this month has a varied selection of new apps and games for iOS devices.As ever, prices are correct at the time of writing, and IAP indicates that an app uses in-app purchases in some way. Continue reading...

Technology giant is mulling a bid to acquiring Tidal because of its strong ties to popular artists such as Madonna, reports Wall Steet JournalApple is reportedly considering a potential takeover bid for Jay Z’s music-streaming service, Tidal.

First driver known to have died using Tesla autopilot may not have been at fault – but death highlights trend of drivers posting self-driving videosFederal investigators are examining the first known fatality involving a Tesla using self-driving technology. Joshua Brown, a 40-year-old from Ohio, was killed when his Tesla Model S collided with a large truck while in autopilot mode.It may take months before the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reaches firm conclusions about the crash in Florida.

The autopilot sensors on the Model S failed to distinguish a white tractor-trailer crossing the highway against a bright skyThe first known death caused by a self-driving car was disclosed by Tesla Motors on Thursday evening, a development that is sure to cause consumers to second-guess the trust they put in the booming autonomous vehicle industry.The 7 May accident occurred in Williston, Florida, after the driver, Joshua Brown, 40, of Ohio put his Model S into Tesla’s autopilot mode, which is able to control the car during highway driving. Continue reading...

Unionized workers negotiated contract that ensured they would be paid at least $15 per hour and included protections against sexual harassmentComputer company Dell is dumping a team of cleaning staff just two months after they signed a new contract giving them better pay and new protections against sexual harassment in the workplace.On 1 May, services contractor Able drew up a new agreement which ensured its 8,000 Bay Area cleaners would be paid a minimum of $15 per hour – an increase of $0.76 – and get better family healthcare benefits. Language was also added to the contract to give protections from sexual violence – an all-too-common problem for female staff. Continue reading...

Monica Moreno, a cafeteria worker at Intel, joins a movement to unionize food service workers and protest conditions at Silicon Valley technology companies. Meanwhile, Dell is trying to ditch a cleaning company that negotiated a strong union deal after a sexual harassment case Continue reading...