Technology | The Guardian

Despite signs of crisis among science startups, many still think that biotech will create companies so powerful that they will ‘win’ the 21st centuryIt was noon on a Thursday at a gathering of science startups in San Francisco. The public market for biotechnology stock had dropped 25% in two months. The private sector’s star startup, Theranos, valued at $9bn, has begun to implode. The most popular food tech startup, Hampton Creek, which is trying to reinvent mayonnaise, has reportedly stretched the truth of their science.And yet there was no sign of trouble on that sunny afternoon. Continue reading...

Crowd-funded smartphone is thin, capable, has a decent camera and excellent fingerprint scanner, for a mid-range priceThe Nextbit Robin is crowd-funded Android smartphone that aims to put the cloud at the centre of the experience, while breaking the mould on the traditional black slab.

Arcane unit in Luxemburg that allows US multinational to pay much lower taxes is at the centre of demands for firm to pay moreIf you had to sum up Amazon’s core business in a single sentence, how would you put it? Is it a website where you can order almost anything? Or is it a quick and convenient delivery network allowing you to receive the goods you need promptly?Clearly, it is both. But precisely how the group’s economic value is split between the two is now a vexed question at the heart of tax disputes on both sides of the Atlantic. Continue reading...

Documents released during the internet giant’s court battle with the US Internal Revenue Service over a possible $1.5bn in unpaid taxes detail a complex restructuring and a deal with Luxembourg that delivered Amazon multimillion-dollar savingsAmazon is facing a landmark court ruling in the US that could prise open its obscure tax structure in Luxembourg, after a high-stakes legal battle that has shed unprecedented light on the technology giant’s labyrinthine tax affairs.The case, which is quietly coming to a head as Amazon’s Luxembourg arrangements face intense scrutiny from European authorities, has revealed new details of an elaborate avoidance scheme it devised and codenamed Project Goldcrest. Continue reading...

Bethesda’s downloadable content plans will add new life to the post apocalypse, with monster training, robot building and a vast new area to exploreThe first downloadable content (DLC) for Fallout 4 has been announced and, reading between the lines, it’s clear that the game has been a hit beyond even Bethesda’s expectations. Fallout has always been a popular series but the fourth entry has now sold more than 12 million copies, making it the most successful game in the company’s history. The post-launch plans show a development studio ready to run with that success – and fix some of the stuff it didn’t get right first time.

With the demise of print revenues, it’s clear that the future of news is digital. But what role will mobile play?After the announcement that the Independent is to go digital only and the arrival of the new Quartz app we take a look at the latest innovations in mobile news and ask where the sector is going next.Nathalie is joined by Zach Seward from Quartz to talk about why they want to make news “into a conversation” and we gather a panel of Guardian journalists to talk about how the implications of this shift to mobile on The Guardian itself. Continue reading...

Human development is too important, too complex, and too culturally diverse to be left to profit-driven companies acting in their own interestsGoogle’s new holding company, Alphabet, has announced the latest piece in its corporate restructuring plans: Jigsaw. It’s the jovial rebrand of Google Ideas, the web giant’s controversial diplomatic arm, founded in 2010 and headed by ex-US State Department policy wonk Jared Cohen. Jigsaw’s stated mission is to use technology to tackle geopolitics.Just another move in the exuberant tech industry, you might say; in a sector that’s reported as if it is the fashion business, not the oil trade. But what Google is doing (and it is Google, despite the niceties of Alphabet’s organigram) has far-reaching social, economic and political implications. Continue reading...

Latest Philips Bluetooth wireless noise-cancelling headphones get a lot of things right, but are hampered by a few nigglesPhilips’s latest noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones attempt to pack in premium features into a lightweight set of cans without breaking the bank.

For months, the FBI searched for a compelling case that would force Apple to weaken iPhone security – and then the San Bernardino shooting happenedTwo weeks ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation called Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, with a jarring message: the agency wanted Apple to help them hack an iPhone. Apple refused.The request stepped up a level on 16 February when a federal magistrate ordered Apple to help the FBI unlock a single iPhone – the phone belonging to one of the killers in the December mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. Apple again refused. Continue reading...

After Taryn Wright exposed an elaborate fake tragedy on Facebook, she found herself leading a squad of online detectives – but on the internet, it doesn’t take long for a crowd to become a mobOn 13 May 2012, friends of Dana Dirr, a 35-year-old surgeon in Saskatchewan, were greeted with a distressing message when they logged into Facebook: “URGENT PRAYERS NEEDED.” A post written by Dirr’s father informed her friends that Dana was fighting for her life after a head-on car accident. Dana had been airlifted to the very same trauma centre where she worked as a surgeon; in fact, she was meant to be on duty that night. “Dana is almost 35 weeks pregnant now,” her father wrote. “So please pray for her and the baby!”Within hours, hundreds of people had shared the post of Dana’s accident, and hundreds more had left supportive comments. As she fought for her life, her family continued to post updates to Facebook. Minutely detailing their lives online was nothing new for the Dirrs. Dana’s husband, a tattooed ex-punk named JS, had been active in online communities for at least a decade – and had acquired hundreds of online-only friends (and at least one online lover). In 2010, Dana and JS had even become minor internet celebrities when they began sharing the story of their seven-year-old son Eli, who was in the midst of his fourth battle with cancer, with a growing number of followers – first a few hundred, then a few thousand. They called him Warrior Eli. Continue reading...

In the old world, our address books and calendars would have been accessible with a warrant – so why not our smartphones?In Silicon Valley, saying you think Apple should help the FBI get into terrorists’ phones is grounds to get kicked out of your Uber.

Inspired by bats and birds, the wings of a new type of unmanned Micro Air Vehicle can respond to air currents and change shape during flightIt flies like a bird, it was inspired by a bat and it could in every sense take off: a new British unmanned Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) can skim over the waves, splash down and take off and change wingshape in responses to the forces it encounters.Drones have been used by the military for years. But scientists based at Imperial College and Southampton University have pioneered a new approach. They are testing a new MAV with better aerodynamic properties, which can fly long distances and will be more economical to run. Continue reading...

In an open letter to the city’s mayor Ed Lee, entrepreneur Justin Keller said he is ‘outraged’ that wealthy workers have to see people in pain and despairRelated: Super Bowl protests flare up over plight of San Francisco’s homeless residentsIn only the latest cultural altercation between San Francisco’s tech workers and the city’s impoverished population, one tech worker has declared the homeless are “riff raff” whose “pain, struggle and despair” shouldn’t have to be endured by “wealthy” people commuting to work. Continue reading...

White House spokesman Josh Earnest responds to a question on the news that Apple will resist a court order to help the FBI gain access to one of the San Bernardino shooters’ iPhones. Asserting that the organisation has only been asked to create software to enable access to this individual device, Earnest says that the FBI and the Department of Justice can count on the ‘full support’ of the Obama administrationApple encryption case risks influencing Russia and China, privacy experts say

Analysts and lawmakers warn FBI that ramifications over its demand that Apple unlock San Bernardino killer’s iPhone ‘could snowball around the world’Authoritarian governments including Russia and China will demand greater access to mobile data should Apple lose a watershed encryption case brought by the FBI, leading technology analysts, privacy experts and legislators have warned.Related: Apple challenges 'chilling' demand to decrypt San Bernardino shooter's iPhone Continue reading...

Apple chief executive Tim Cook has opposed a demand from a US judge to help the FBI break into an iPhone recovered from one of the San Bernardino shooters. Cook said the court’s demand amounts to ‘hacking’ its customers Continue reading...

The director of the FBI, James Comey, says federal investigators still cannot gain access to the contents of an Apple iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino killers. Comey tells the Senate intelligence committee that encryption hampers law enforcement, national security and local policing

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Satirical comic insists ‘we’re not going to tone anything down’ after social network removes its page ‘in error’

Innovative genius or unusable white elephant, the Steam Controller has attracted plenty of commentary. Valve explains what it really meansIn early February, there was a minor controversy surrounding the critically acclaimed strategy sim, XCOM 2. It turned out that the game, which most people play with a mouse and keyboard, would only be supporting one type of joypad: Valve’s idiosyncratic Steam Controller.Launched in November alongside the new range of Steam Machine PCs, this ambitious and innovative control device has provoked a range of reactions – though confusion seems to be the most common. Featuring two large HD haptic track pads, a single analogue thumbstick and an array of buttons (including two on the inside edges of the pad’s handles), the Steam Controller is designed to bring the precision controls of the mouse/keyboard combo to a handheld form factor. Each of the touch pads, for example, features haptic feedback, allowing you to sense where your thumb is on the surface, rather like moving a mouse around on a desktop. Continue reading...

At just over Rs500, handset sold by Ringing Bells is evidence of domestic companies competing strongly with Chinese importsA little-known Indian company is launching a smartphone on Wednesday believed to be the cheapest in the world, targeting a market already dominated by low-cost handsets.Set to be priced at under 500 rupees (about £5.10), domestic handset maker Ringing Bells’ Freedom 251 smartphone is about 1% of the price of the latest Apple iPhone. Continue reading...

From tuning into worldwide radio to experimenting with augmented reality, here are the best ways to use tablets in class for education and entertainment

Public health professor Simon Chapman joins experts in criticising episode for being misleading and ignoring range of evidence about Wi-Fi and mobile phonesRelated: Mobile phones and brain cancer: ‘no evidence of health risk’ is not the same as 'safe'| Maryanne DemasiA science program on the ABC which suggested Wi-Fi networks and mobile phone use may be associated with brain cancer should never have gone to air, according to an eminent professor of public health. Continue reading...

Company claims as many as 40% of US teens are on the chat app – but after a series of scares, online safety groups urge caution

Court says manufacturer must supply software to break encryption on Syed Farook’s phone so it can be accessed without wiping his dataA US federal magistrate has ordered Apple to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters.Related: FBI appeals for help to fill in 18 missing minutes of San Bernardino timeline Continue reading...

Tweets do not translate to votes due to ‘highly skewed’ user base and penchant for spectacle and scandal – but Google searches might be a better indicatorTwitter mentions are not a reliable way too predict elections and only indicate whether candidates are creating interest, not how many votes they will receive, a study has concluded.Related: Rolling TV election news eclipsed by Twitter, Buzzfeed and Periscope Continue reading...

35-year-old Brandon Kiehm was indicted in New York for conning the women with heart-wrenching tales of needing money for his family’s cancer treatmentsBeware of swiping right for single men on Tinder who claim to work for Goldman Sachs, especially if they woo you with a heart-wrenching tale of needing money for their sister’s cancer treatments. You might just wake up a few weeks later and find they’ve swiped your money.That’s the message from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R Vance Jr, who on Tuesday announced the indictment of a 35-year-old man for scamming $26,000 out of two women he met on Tinder. Continue reading...

After the hip-hop mogul’s latest Twitter rant requesting funding from Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page, we tried to find out who he knows in Silicon ValleyThere appears to be some truth to Kanye West’s claim that he has met “all the tech guys”. The Chicago hip-hop mogul this weekend declared he is $53m in debt and requested funding from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google cofounder Larry Page.He then threw down this 70-character gauntlet: Continue reading...

It’s good to see that Cambridge is catching up with County Durham (Recycling waste into BBQ biofuel, 15 February).Martin Bacon of Teesdale Conservation Volunteers, based in Barnard Castle, produced his first coffee-powered car in 2010 in conjunction with a BBC TV science programme, Bang Goes the Theory. It was driven from London to Manchester to launch a new series. Continue reading...

Apple enters a market dominated by China’s two biggest internet companies, Alibaba and Tencent, in country where 358 million people pay by mobile phoneApple’s Apple Pay mobile payment system will be available in China from 18 February for Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) customers, bank representatives said in social media posts on Tuesday.

British mapping agency Ordnance Survey creates easy-to-read map using Nasa open data, which could be used while walking on the surface of MarsThe British mapping agency Ordnance Survey has created an easy-to-read map of Mars’ surface using Nasa open data.The map – posted to Flickr on Friday – covers 3.8m sq miles or approximately 7% of the red planet’s surface. It was produced to a scale of one to 4m. Continue reading...

Plans seek to force adult entertainment providers to verify viewer age with ‘robust’ tools and protectionsThe UK government is forging ahead with its plans to limit access to adult content online, launching a public consultation on age verification for pornography sites.

With his company DeepMind, Londoner Demis Hassabis is leading Google’s project to build software more powerful than the human brain. But what will this mean for the future of humankind?Demis Hassabis has a modest demeanour and an unassuming countenance, but he is deadly serious when he tells me he is on a mission to “solve intelligence, and then use that to solve everything else”. Coming from almost anyone else, the statement would be laughable; from him, not so much. Hassabis is the 39-year-old former chess master and video-games designer whose artificial intelligence research start-up, DeepMind, was bought by Google in 2014 for a reported $625 million. He is the son of immigrants, attended a state comprehensive in Finchley and holds degrees from Cambridge and UCL in computer science and cognitive neuroscience. A “visionary” manager, according to those who work with him, Hassabis also reckons he has found a way to “make science research efficient” and says he is leading an “Apollo programme for the 21st century”. He’s the sort of normal-looking bloke you wouldn’t look twice at on the street, but Tim Berners-Lee once described him to me as one of the smartest human beings on the planet.Artificial intelligence is already all around us, of course, every time we interrogate Siri or get a recommendation on Android. And in the short term, Google products will surely benefit from Hassabis’s research, even if improvements in personalisation, search, YouTube, and speech and facial recognition are not presented as “AI” as such. (“Then it’s just software, right?” he grins. “It’s just stuff that works.”) In the longer term, though, the technology he is developing is about more than emotional robots and smarter phones. It’s about more than Google. More than Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and the other giant corporations currently hoovering up AI PhDs and sinking billions into this latest technological arms race. It’s about everything we could possibly imagine; and much that we can’t. Continue reading...

The beta test for Tom Clancy’s The Division was a fun but flawed experiment. Associate creative director Julian Gerighty says there is plenty more to revealWhen the four-day public beta test for online game The Division closed down in late January, plenty of questions remained unanswered. Ubisoft first announced its latest Tom Clancy spin off at E3 in 2013, promising an ambitious combination of role-playing adventure and third-person shooter, set in a New York devastated by a manmade small pox epidemic. Players would get into groups of four and enter the city, clearing the streets of violence. It sounded like a gritty real-world take on Activision’s epic space opera, Destiny. And in many ways, that’s how it played.But the beta experience drew a mixed reaction. Players enjoyed the near-seamless matchmaking, as well as the combination of a mission-based campaign mode with a competitive multiplayer area – known as the Dark Zone – where co-op groups could fight each other for loot. But the non-player characters roaming the streets of Manhattan all looked very similar, the weapons felt underpowered and the loot seemed slightly mundane. Ubisoft seemed to have stumbled on an unspoken fact of the role-playing genre – that the dynamics only work in a fantasy or science fiction environment. There, players can more easily suspend their disbelief and the roster of enemies and weapons can be boosted by the inclusion of fantastical monsters, weird planets and improbable laser canons.

A contemporary music festival in Plymouth plans to shed light on this mysterious substance as well as exploring the frontiers of musical imaginationFrom motion-tracked musicians to interactive sound installations, the Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival is all about blending the sonic with tech.Kicking off on 26 February and hosted at Plymouth University, the festival will feature innovations in the way we make music, all under the banner of “Frontiers: expanding musical imagination”. “This festival was originally created to showcase the research we developed in the university,” says Eduardo Reck Miranda, professor of computer music, who with co-director Simon Ible launched the inaugural festival more than a decade ago. Continue reading...

Sri Lankan government hopes the venture will provide high-speed internet with extensive coverage and cheaper rates for dataGoogle’s balloon-powered high-speed internet service known as “Project Loon” has started testing in Sri Lanka ahead of a planned joint venture with the government.

The greatest fighting game series of them all is back, but its return is half-cooked, with much of its advertised features yet to materialiseSeven years ago, Street Fighter IV felt like a spiritual revival. Capcom’s hyperactive martial arts series had been absent for close to a decade and, under the enthusiastic watch of producer Yoshinori Ono, its return was a triumph. By simplifying the game’s move lists it lowered the entry bar to newcomers, but it then also offered a long, deep learning curve for those willing to set out on the warrior’s journey. In this way the game attracted a devoted community of competitors, who trained with the dedication of real-world martial artists, and who now compete in professional tournaments for enviable prizes.Street Fighter V’s launch, by contrast, feels lacklustre. For the first time in the history of the series, there will be no release in the arcade, that frontline of competitive play where Street Fighter has, traditionally, always debuted. Capcom has been unable or unwilling to fund the game’s development alone, forging a financial partnership with Sony (thereby preventing the game from coming to Microsoft’s console). And now, on arrival, the Street Fighter V of February 2016 is plainly unfinished, with many of its modes and functions unavailable. The game is a statement of intent rather than anything resembling a final delivery. Continue reading...

The Observer’s apps reviewer recommends 10 apps and 10 mobile games he’s discovered this month, from Lonely Planet guides you can store offline to a game that allows you to run a newspaper Continue reading...

A solid but uncharismatic new racer from Milestone, the return of Pikachu and pals and stunning Ninja action

China may be showing the way forward with its innovative messaging serviceWould you want to be able to book a taxi from your email program? How about being able to send emails from your music organiser? Or maybe you’d like to be able to order a pizza while using your dating app?Unlikely scenarios, all three; and yet many of the apps that we use would like to be able to encompass functionalities as diverse as that. It was part of the integrated approach that Microsoft’s Windows Phone introduced in 2010 with its “People Hub” idea. That didn’t have much success, arguably because it was too early and the implementation wasn’t great. But the idea that when you communicate, you want to be able do all sorts of communication – whether via Facebook or Twitter or text or email – is one that is catching on in a big way. Continue reading...

It’s not just boy racers and rally drivers who love Subarus – the cars enjoy a fanatical following. The question is: why?Price: £27,495

The online Indie must not forget its roots as a vigorous daily conversation between people who only quite liked one anotherWhat happened to the Independent this week is a footnote in a huge story – the wave of creative destruction overturning all traditional media – and a very important local political and cultural story.The big story is well understood. Digital is much cheaper than analogue, or Gutenberg technology. The cumbersome is collapsing, outpaced by the nimble. That allows new voices into an old debate-cartel. But it’s not all genteel and attractive. Continue reading...

Want a football that can help you to become the next Lionel Messi? Or a tiny folding scooter to put the fun into your commute? These and more in this month’s roundupThis new addition to the noisy world of laser tag claims to occupy “the third space between the screen-dominated indoors and the vanishing outdoors”, which means that it has all the hysterical trigger-happiness of a multiplayer first-person shooter without the risk of obesity and bedsores. Continue reading...

Investigatory powers tribunal says computer network exploitation, such as activating cameras on devices without permission, is legalHacking of computers, networks and smartphones in the UK or abroad by GCHQ staff does not breach human rights, a security tribunal has ruled.A panel of five members of the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) decided on Friday that computer network exploitation (CNE), which may involve remotely activating microphones and cameras on electronic devices without the owners’ knowledge, is legal.

This week saw another mass protest by London black-cab drivers against Uber – so we brought two drivers from opposite sides of the road together to discuss the pros and cons of this ongoing disruption to the traditional cab industryRelated: Black-cab drivers' Uber protest brings London traffic to a standstillThis week, 8,000 London taxi drivers brought central London to a standstill in protest at the rise of Uber, the industry-disrupting ride-hailing app, and the light-touch regulation they say allows it to threaten their livelihoods. There are around 100,000 private hire or minicab drivers in London (with around 10,000 new drivers licensed every year), and at least 25,000 of them drive for Uber. It has become an increasingly bitter dispute. Seamus Balfe, who has been a black-cab driver for 16 years, and James Farrar, an Uber driver who is also co-founder of United Private Hire Drivers, which represents minicab drivers, navigate the issues. Continue reading...

Date bug will prevent 64-bit iOS devices from booting up, rendering them inoperable even through fail-safe restore methods using iTunesManually setting the date of your iPhone or iPad to 1 January 1970, or tricking your friends into doing it, will cause it to get permanently stuck while trying to boot back up if it’s switched off.

UK internet mapping company to appeal after High Court rejects lawsuit claiming Google’s conduct led to ‘dramatic loss of traffic’UK-based digital map provider Streetmap has lost its High Court action accusing Google of abusing its search dominance to promote Google Maps over rivals.

As a medium, games are only really now getting to grips with romance and relationships, but they’re still too goal-orientatedLet’s say I want to know what love is ... and I want something to show me. I could listen to pop music. I would discover that love is the greatest thing. It’s a drug. It’s something you can’t hurry. Apparently it’s thicker than water, which doesn’t really tell me much, other than love will be difficult to drink and may have a lower freezing point. By this point, I’ve already had enough of silly love songs.Cinema, too, has explored it for many years – all those two-hour stories of forgiveness and redemption, and Julia Roberts just being a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her. Books have been there for centuries, covering both ends of the sexy spectrum from the gently smouldering affection between Elizabeth and Darcy, to Morrissey’s car crash of a sex scene. Continue reading...

Digital fitness apps go the way of big-brands, as the last popular running app joins the purchase list alongside Adidas’s Runtastic and Under Armour’s MyFitnessPalJapanese trainer and sportswear manufacturer Asics has bought the popular running app Runkeeper, making it the latest in a string of fitness app purchases by sporting-goods manufacturers.

Researchers find software repository GitHub approved code written by women at a higher rate than code written by men, but only if the gender was not disclosedWhen a group of computer science students decided to study the way that gender bias plays out in software development communities, they assumed that coders would be prejudiced against code written by women.After all, women make up a very small percentage of software developers – 11.2% according to one 2013 survey – and the presence of sexism in all corners of the overwhelmingly male tech industry has been well documented. Continue reading...