Technology | The Guardian

Electronic wristbands among measures to keep expected 2 million pilgrims safe from crowd crushes and extremist threatA year after the worst hajj disaster in a generation, Saudi Arabia is issuing pilgrims with electronic bracelets and using more surveillance cameras to avoid a repeat of the crush that killed hundreds of people and damaged already strained ties with Iran.The Muslim pilgrimage, which starts on Friday and will bring 2 million people to Islam’s most sacred sites in Mecca, will also be a focus of concerns about militant violence after a suicide bomber killed four soldiers in early July in the nearby city of Medina, Islam’s second holiest. Continue reading...

Fashion journalist Derek Blasberg is a professional friend to the stars. Gareth McLean discovers the man behind the glittering feedBlasberg beams as he greets this woman who apologises for missing his birthday. (It’s 22 April which is also World Earth Day, a coincidence, Blasberg jokes, because “I’m so grounded.”) The woman tried to send flowers but she’s so unsure of where he is these days that she wasn’t certain of the best address to send them to. Blasberg demurs: that doesn’t matter. It’s a lovely surprise to see her here, given there are no wedding dresses on show anywhere, he teases, impishly. But he’s forgetting himself; he introduces me to the woman. And this, he says, is Vera.And that’s how I met Vera Wang. As we head off – after Blasberg’s invited Wang to a party later at his friend Lauren Santo Domingo’s house, naturally – I tell him I’m impressed: not everyone gets called Honeybear by Vera Wang. Self-deprecating as ever, Blasberg shrugs. Maybe Vera calls everyone that. Maybe she’s forgotten his name. Continue reading...

Jean-Claude Juncker says EU decision to hit Apple with €13bn tax bill was not unfair attempt to single out US firmsClaims that an EU decision to present Apple with a €13bn (£11bn) tax bill was designed as an attack on the US have been rejected by the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker.Last week’s ruling that the American tech giant must settle the massive tax bill with Ireland has gone down badly in Washington, with the US Treasury warning that the move risked damaging “the important spirit of economic partnership between the US and the EU”. Continue reading...

This week’s launch of Apple’s latest smartphone comes in an unfamilar period for the company – one of falling sales and declining revenuesWireless-only headphones? Dual rear cameras? Pressure-sensitive sensors? This year, as every year, the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco will be crammed to the rafters with press and Apple well-wishers waiting for the pomp, circumstance and technical revelations of another iPhone launch. But this one, on Wednesday, is more important for Apple than it has been for a while.After the huge success of 2014’s iPhone 6 – which introduced a completely new design with larger screen sizes, attracting more people switching from rival Android phones than ever before – 2015’s iPhone 6S has been a bit of a damp squib in terms of consumer buzz. And encroaching competition from China means Apple faces arguably the most competitive market conditions it has ever seen. Continue reading...

US journalist Dan Lyons found fame with his spoof blog of Apple boss Steve Jobs – but disaster struck when he joined the Silicon Valley circus himselfDan Lyons is the former Forbes magazine senior editor who found online fame as the writer behind the parodic Fake Steve Jobs blog. When he lost his job at Newsweek in 2013, he decided to join New York tech startup HubSpot as a “marketing fellow”.It didn’t end well, and Lyons has now written a book about the experience called Disrupted: Ludicrous Misadventures in the Tech Start-Up Bubble. He has also been a writer on satirical sitcom Silicon Valley. Continue reading...

Lip-synching app Musical.ly has gone from web gimmick to internet smash, hosting souped-up video clips for 95 million (mostly) teens. What’s its secret?Essex-based 17-year-old Amelia Gething was on holiday with her family in Barbados this summer when a stranger approached with a question: “Are you on Musical.ly? My daughters recognised you but they’re too shy to say hello.” Continue reading...

With yet another iPhone in the pipeline, could it be time to make the change to Google’s operating system? These questions and answers may help you decideApple is about to unveil its latest smartphone, likely to be called the iPhone 7. Plenty of owners of older iPhones will be eager to upgrade, but what if you’re losing faith in Apple’s flagship device?According to research firm Gartner, Android accounts for 86.2% of new smartphone sales, with impressive handsets from Samsung, Motorola and Google tempting people away from iOS. Continue reading...

Memphis resident Frances Berry describes herself as a picture-maker: she creates images with “whatever happens to be within reach”. In her series Lines We Live By, she manipulates old family photos and vintage postcards. Although she remains coy about her methods, the series was created primarily using her phone, which she says “seems appropriate for this day and age, considering we are all glued to them. I love being able to use this contemporary tool to manipulate historical imagery.” Berry stretches out the background around the central figure, which stands alone in the middle of the image. She adds: “Our minds distort our memories and the visual distortion here is a representation of that.” Continue reading...

In eco mode, if you put your foot on the gas, the engine wheezes as if it runs on cheese and GauloisesOn a baking hot day, I drove the Renault Mégane out of town, whined up the motorway (this was before I discovered sports mode was possible, as well as eco) and before too long I was in Clarkson country. The Mégane is not a very Cotswolds car; in my head I could hear the denizens, all called Jeremy or Miles, making insistent xenophobic slurs against its Frenchness and the fact that it isn’t an SUV.In eco mode, none of the gears has very much of anything except for reverse (so that it can run away when it meets an Audi), and you can grind the gas pedal into the floor (like a clove of garlic) and create nothing more than a wheezy noise (it sounds as if it runs on cheese and Gauloises). However, it is extremely economical, and the eco graphics are pleasing; little leaves adding to a plant as you improve your fuel efficiency with dainty acceleration and responsible handling. I hit peak leaf and could feel myself driving into the future, almost. Continue reading...

One of the UK’s biggest tech companies may be staying in the UK for now – but it still thinks Brexit is a disasterTransferWise, the foreign exchange startup founded in 2011 by Estonian duo Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus, is expanding.In a cafe just outside the company’s new offices, near the top of the Tea Building in Shoreditch, London, I meet Hinrikus, fresh from climbing the Matterhorn in Switzerland. TransferWise had outgrown its digs, up the road near Old Street’s Silicon Roundabout, and needs room to expand.

What’s the right handset for someone going to high school, what controls should be put in place – and will teachers even allow it? Here’s the lowdownBuying a mobile phone for someone starting secondary school is a minefield – and not just financially. Some parents will argue that no child of 11 needs a phone; others that it is essential. And with the vast choice of handsets and deals on offer – from pay as you go to contracts and sim-only – the choice is bewildering, with the cost of getting it wrong surprisingly high.Below we list what we think are the best deals – with a word of warning before you get your wallet out. If you are planning to send your son or daughter to school with one of the latest smartphones, think again. Of the thousands of mobiles stolen every month, as many as two-thirds are taken from children aged 13-16. Buy your child the latest iPhone and the chances are they will no longer have it at the end of the first week. Continue reading...

Up to 1m devices across 10 markets, including the US and Australia, will be affected, analysts estimateSamsung has recalled its new Galaxy Note 7 smartphones in 10 countries after reports that some batteries exploded or caught fire.Koh Dong-jin, head of the South Korean company’s smartphone business, expressed regret over the recall of an estimated 1m devices, which will affect markets including South Korea, the United States and Australia. Continue reading...

Centre-left politician also criticises Google and Facebook and complains that EU states with low-tax regimes have lured multinationals

Leading YouTubers accuse platform of censorship for disabling adverts on content not considered to be ‘advertiser-friendly’YouTube video makers are up in arms after finding out that many of their videos are being stripped of advertising by Google because of “inappropriate” content.A number have publicly complained they are being censored after they began receiving messages informing them that some videos were not “advertiser-friendly”. Continue reading...

They steal, they blog, they repeat. Welcome to Liftblr, the quasi-anarchist portion of Tumblr. Chips with Everything talks to journalist Tasbeeh Herwees, who has reported on Liftblr, and Dr Elizabeth Yardley, a criminologist who focuses on social media connectionsIn this week’s edition of Chips with Everything, we dive head-first into Liftblr, a community of anonymous Tumblr users that supposedly shoplift from major retailers and post their hauls of stolen goods to the social network.To investigate, we speak to reporter Tasbeeh Herwees who wrote an extensive piece about Liftblr for GOOD Magazine, and Dr Elizabeth Yardley, a criminologist who studies how crime and social media are connected. Continue reading...

Motion to be presented before parliament on Wednesday seeking an endorsement of cabinet decisionThe Irish government has decided to appeal against the European commission’s ruling that Apple was given a sweetheart tax deal and should hand Dublin €13bn (£11bn) in fiscal payments.Related: Apple tax: European commissioner defends €13bn ruling Continue reading...

Vestager says special tax treatment for a specific company is as much a benefit as handing the firm a bundle of cash and amounts to illegal state aidEurope’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has defended her €13bn (£11bn) ruling against Apple’s Irish tax affairs, hitting back at claims made by a predecessor that EU state aid laws should not be used to fight sweetheart tax deals.Vestager made clear the rationale for the Apple ruling following comments by Neelie Kroes, who said on Thursday that EU member states have a sovereign right to determine their own tax laws. Kroes served as competition commissioner between 2004 and 2010. Continue reading...

The urgent software update affects the most recent two versions of macOS, El Capitan and YosemiteA week after patching three serious vulnerabilities in iOS, Apple has released a matching software update to fix the same flaws in its computer operating system macOS.The urgent security update affects the most recent two versions of macOS, El Capitan and Yosemite, and blocks weaknesses in Safari and the base operating system. It can be downloaded through software update on affected machines. Continue reading...

Ruth Smeeth, who has had 25,000 ‘vile’ messages, says leader must do more than condemn those who claim to act in his name

Patrick Burt want to use local zoning laws to restrict major technology companies from occupying space in the city, which is home to Palantir and AmazonThe mayor of Palo Alto is pushing for a ban on large technology companies downtown, making him the latest local politician to go after the powerful firms driving the booming economy in Silicon Valley.Patrick Burt said he and other city council members in Palo Alto – which is home to corporations Palantir and Amazon, and is at the center of California’s regional hub for technology – want to use local zoning laws to restrict major tech companies from occupying space in the city’s downtown area. Continue reading...

Company begins streamlining hardware businesses ahead of smartphone launch expected under its own Pixel brandGoogle’s ambitious Project Ara modular smartphone concept with interchangable components has been shelved.Reuters reports that Google canceled the project as part of a broader push to streamline the company’s hardware efforts, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Continue reading...

The online giant has launched Dash buttons in the UK allowing customers to order product refills but campaigners criticise the tech as wastefulAmazon launched its Dash buttons in the UK and parts of Europe this week. For the price of £4.99 – redeemable from a first order – Amazon Prime subscribers will be able to summon refills of products from Play-Doh to Wilkinson Sword razor blades with a button press.Related: Amazon launches Dash instant-order Internet of Things buttons in the UK Continue reading...

Technology giant Samsung Electronics says it is suspending the sales of its brand new Galaxy Note 7 smartphones over faulty batteries. Speaking on Friday, Koh Dong-jin, president of Samsung’s mobile business, adds that replacement devices for phones already sold will be made available to customers. The new Galaxy Note 7 was launched two week ago

Mark Zuckerberg’s use of language invites questions about the relationship between tech luminaries, their products and the world they are trying to createOver drinks at a conference in Gothenburg in 2010, our small group of privacy academics were discussing the idea that we had so little access into Zuckerberg’s life and ideas compared to the access he had into everyone else’s.“Wouldn’t it be great,” we thought as we sipped cheap Scandinavian beers, “if we could reverse-Facebook Facebook? If we had a record of everything Zuckerberg has ever said?” Continue reading...

The basic principle – a boy must collect different colours in order to change the background of his 2D world – might sound dry, but there’s beauty in Hue’s executionImagine a preeminent expert on the science of colour vision has lived her entire life in a black-and-white room. She has never seen colour for herself, but she has complete knowledge of the physical, chemical, and biological processes that make it possible. When she is released from her prison and first sees a blue sky, doesn’t she nevertheless learn something new?The philosopher Frank Jackson once used this thought experiment to counter the notion that the world is entirely physical. Hue is an abstraction of this knowledge argument, electing to answer the question, “What does a person learn when they see colour for the first time?” with, “How to solve a lot of puzzles.”

Game developer Rebekah Saltsman could never get near a console when her brothers were around – then the Snes arrivedI don’t remember a time we didn’t have video games in the house.I grew up in Gregory, Michigan, a small town in the middle of nowhere; a town that literally borders Hell. That’s Hell, Michigan. I wish I was kidding. My dad was a second shift supervisor at a General Motors plant in Detroit. He always wanted to have the latest expensive things; we owned an early home PC and he’d bring home these floppy discs filled with games – they would trade them around at his office. My mom worked as a secretary and later a substitute teacher and a city postal carrier – she learned how to program at college. She made sure we all had access to the computer, even though my sister and I were super little and there were six of us fighting to use it. Continue reading...

Bad acting, clunky camerawork and overheating headsets … VR’s first feature-length 360-degree movie is no miracle – but the medium might be a blessingThe acting? Dire. The direction? Awful. The adaptation? Conservative and pedestrian. In conventional terms, everything about this new retelling of the Jesus story – showing here in Venice in an abbreviated 40-minute cut – is ropey. It is all too clearly influenced by Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: the film has the same executive producer, Enzo Sisti and the same religious adviser, Fr William Fulco. But technologically it’s a different story. It’s the first feature film to be presented in complete wraparound 360-degree virtual reality. And it’s a startling, bizarre, often weirdly hilarious experience. With your bulky headset on – it began to overheat during the crucifixion scene, alarmingly – you have the urge to giggle. Not necessarily mocking. You just feel skittish.The camera position is fixed and so are you. You can’t walk up to people or back away. There is little or no intercutting within scenes. But you can revolve around completely on the spot and look up at the roof/sky or down and even back through your legs to look at people upside down, should you so wish. I was filled with the weird, paranoid urge to turn my back on the main action and check that reality really was carrying on as normal and that the actors weren’t having a cheeky cigarette. Continue reading...

Korean manufacturer confirms 35 cases of newly launched devices exploding while being charged, and offers exchanges but stops short of full recallSamsung has suspended sales of its brand-new top-end Galaxy Note 7 smartphone and is offering replacements for anyone who has already purchased one, but has stopped short of a full recall.Koh Dong-jin, president of Samsung’s mobile business, said on Friday, two weeks after the Note 7’s launch: “We have received several reports of battery explosions on the Note 7... and it has been confirmed that it was a battery cell problem. There was a tiny problem in the manufacturing process so it was very difficult to find out.” Continue reading...

The Facebook CEO said he was ‘deeply disappointed’ in explosion of Falcon 9 rocket carrying satellite intended to provide internet coverage to parts of Africa

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

When Nasa tried to launch a satellite into orbit, the rocket crumpled into smoke and fire. Almost 60 years later, SpaceX is feeling similarly explosive growing pain

Commissioner responsible for the issue said Europe must develop networks and next-generation high-speed 5G wireless applications quicklyEurope needs to invest close to $800bn in its digital infrastructure to catch up with the United States and China, the European Union commissioner responsible for the issue said on Thursday.Commissioner Guenther Oettinger also urged fellow Austrians to reject populist views that could deter technology experts from migrating to Europe to help drive development. Continue reading...

Firm wins judicial review of regulations that require drivers to meet specified standard of EnglishUber has won the right to take Transport for London to court over new rules that would force its drivers to pass stringent English tests.The company said it has successfully applied for judicial review of certain regulations put forward in TfL’s licensing proposals for private hire drivers that are currently set to take effect on 1 October. Continue reading...

An explosion occurred at a SpaceX launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Thursday morning. Nasa reports SpaceX was conducting a test-firing of an unmanned rocket at the time of the explosion. The routine test was in advance of a Saturday launch Continue reading...

Somerset House, London

Several prominent hacks have led some to accuse Russia of meddling in the US elections. If true, Putin’s objectives are likely part of a bigger play

Rather than pursuing companies such as Apple for what they did in the past, we should focus on shaping a fair tax system for the futureNobody will accuse me of being lax on state aid enforcement. In 2008, when European Union member states were about to embark on a subsidy race to bail out banks hit by the financial crisis, I stated that state aid rules are part of the solution, not the problem. And while many disagreed with the application of state aid rules to bailouts, I advocated the enforcement of tough restructuring obligations for state-aided banks.However, state aid is not a cure for all ills. Today, there is a broad sentiment that multinational companies do not pay enough taxes, that they are using mismatches between national tax laws to lower their tax burden.

User frustration over battery life has steadily increased as people keep devices for longer, but the company has a solutionThere was a time a few years back when a lot of people bought a new smartphone every 18 months, as soon as the latest model dropped and their contract was up. But that has changed.As the rate of technical improvements slows and new models offer little beyond a shiny new exterior, the urge to spend £600 each year has become easier to ignore. Polling by Fluent and eMarketer in the US suggests that nearly half of smartphone users now wait at least three years between upgrades, while data from Gallup suggests more than half wait until their phone stops working or becomes “totally obsolete”. Continue reading...

Revelation that tech firm will pay deferred taxes to US Treasury follows Tim Cook’s previous refusal to support such a moveApple boss Tim Cook expects the iPhone maker to repatriate huge offshore profits to America next year, paying billions of dollars in deferred taxes to the US Treasury.In an interview with RTE radio, he gave a summary of the company’s 2014 tax affairs, saying: “We paid $400m [in tax] to Ireland, we paid $400m to the US. And we provisioned several billion for the US for payment as soon as we repatriated. Continue reading...

Paula wants a laptop for her son to make YouTube videos. Video editing tends to need expensive processing power, memory and storageI too am looking for a laptop for my son. He turns 14 in October and will be starting his GCSE courses. He will mostly use it for school work in Microsoft Office. (He tends to use his PlayStation for games.) He’ll also want to store videos – so plenty of storage is paramount – and he wants to create videos for YouTube. My budget is £300-400.I have taken note of your recommendations in an earlier article, Which laptop should we buy for our child? PaulaLast year I noted that many schools were adopting Windows detachables or two-in-ones, and these now have a wide market. Their main advantages are that they do double duty as tablets and laptops, while being both portable and very cheap. They also tend to be reasonably robust. Teenagers tend to break laptop hinges, and that’s generally less of a problem with detachables. In fact, some models have no hinges to break. Continue reading...

Sharing of nude selfies may be behind the figures, says NSPCC, and many parents are unaware that such activity is illegalMore than 2,000 children were reported to police in the UK for crimes linked to indecent images in the space of three years.The figures, released following a freedom of information request, come amid concerns about sexting among young people, where they share nude pictures on their phones and social media. Continue reading...

Chief executive criticises EU’s imposition of €13bn back tax bill and accuses authorities of ‘picking on’ IrelandThe chief executive of Apple has dismissed the EU’s tax ruling as “political crap” and said Ireland was being “picked on”, as he vowed to push ahead with expansion plans in Cork.In an interview with the Irish Independent, Tim Cook suggested the European commission might be trying to use state aid rules to harmonise tax rates across the EU. Continue reading...

Quadrilateral Cowboy was built to facilitate the ‘electric feeling’ of taking something apart, and putting it all back together againIn 2013, Brendon Chung’s short, sharp game about a heist gone wrong, Thirty Flights of Loving, was listed as one of the finalists for the Narrative Award at the Independent Games Festival. Before that, the game had been discussed by critics as one of the “very best narratives” in video games. Its use of the jump cut, borrowed from film-making, was a novelty, and Chung used it to great effect, tying together vignettes to tell a story that hurtled by with the kind of confident pacing that video games rarelyachieve.You might question, then, why Chung decided to move away from all this fanfare with his next game, Quadrilateral Cowboy. While working on it back in 2013, he told IGN that he “wanted to go in a very different direction from Thirty Flights [of Loving] and let the player experiment in a sandbox and figure out their own solutions to problems”. Continue reading...

There’s nothing like other people’s infidelities to get the pulse racing, but this ‘inside story’ promises more than it delivers. Plus: DCI Banks is grumpy and Bear Grylls does choreographed excitement

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

The annual footie simulation Fifa gets an overhaul, the PlayStation VR headset debuts and Pokémon Sun and Moon arrives in time for Christmas. Plus, the top UK gaming events• Autumn culture: Art & Design | Classical | Pop | Dance | Film | Theatre | TVThe visually astonishing motor sports series returns to Xbox One, and this time the setting is a realistically modelled reproduction of Australia. With a map twice the size of the previous game and featuring more than 350 cars, it’s a vast driving challenge. There is also a four-player coop mode, so you can take a road trip with your friends, from the rain forests of Queensland to the hippy paradise of Byron Bay.

With Microsoft and Google among US companies tied to Ireland, industry advocate raises concern over implications of European commission’s decisionAmerica’s biggest technology companies have been taking stock of the European commission’s decision on Tuesday to order what it called “recovery of illegal state aid” for alleged unpaid taxes in Ireland from Apple of up to €13bn($14.6bn, £11bn), plus interest.Apple’s surprise, retroactive tax bill – which is believed to be the largest in history – has raised both condemnation and alarm in the technology industry, particularly for companies with a long history of operations in Ireland. Continue reading...

Regulatory body Berec issues guidelines that could benefit publishers struggling with commercial effects of ad-blockingPlans by mobile phone operators to block adverts for customers across their networks are in doubt after the EU said they breached net neutrality legislation.Updated guidelines issued by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (Berec) this week state that advertising should not be blocked by networks, something that mobile operator Three has already trialled in the UK. Continue reading...

I am outraged that Apple is outraged by its tax bill (Apple rages at EU’s €13bn tax demand, 31 August). Apple has hundreds of stores in Europe to sell its products. The message to Apple is very simple: if any of your stores catch fire, don’t bother to call the fire service. If you are burgled, don’t call the police. If you want to deliver your products using public roads, you can’t. If someone falls off a ladder in one of your stores, don’t call the medical services.If you do not want to pay your taxes, fine. But do not expect to use the infrastructure paid for by our taxes.