Governor Mark Carney highlights importance of financial technology and its potential role in managing economyThe Bank of England plans to encourage innovation in financial technology by collaborating with companies which are designing innovative payment systems and cybersecurity, to further build on Bitcoin’s blockchain concept.Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, had intended to announce the so-called fintech accelerator in his annual Mansion House speech on Thursday. However, he did not deliver the scheduled speech and instead paid tribute to the late MP Jo Cox as a “remarkable person†who “dedicated her life to helping othersâ€. Continue reading...
Reports that the capital’s intellectual property regulator has accused Apple of infringing design patents for a Chinese phoneBeijing has ordered Apple to stop selling the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in China’s capital, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.The city’s intellectual property regulator has ruled that the design of the two phones is overly similar to another phone, the 100C, made by the Chinese company Shenzhen Baili. In a statement, the Beijing Intellectual Property Bureau wrote that the phones infringe on a Chinese patent for exterior design held by Shenzhen Baili. Continue reading...
by Anna Lauren Hoffman in Oakland, California on (#1HG8R)
How does Facebook translate broad ethical values into its decision-making process for research?When Facebook was revealed to have been experimenting on the emotional state of 700,000 of its users back in June 2014, many were outraged that the company had violated ethical guidelines and “harmed†its users.The fallout of that “emotional contagion study†haunts Facebook’s reputation among ethicists and researchers. But it has also compelled the company to clean up its ethical act, and inspired the introduction of a newly developed internal ethics review process this week. Continue reading...
The race is on to get driverless trucks on the roads, and experts say the impact on professional drivers ‘is going to be huge’Driverless trucks will be safer and cheaper than their human-controlled counterparts, but that doesn’t mean America’s 3.5 million professional truck drivers are giving up to the machines without a fight.Across the US, truckers collectively haul more than 10bn tons of freight each year, but it’s a tough job – the hours are long and lonely, the pay is low and the lifestyle is sedentary. In many ways it’s a job ripe for disruption; robots v truckers. Continue reading...
Apps such as Pacemaker, Serato Pyro and djay Pro could help you practise your mixing skills and ensure parties go with a (beat-matched) swingHey boys. Hey girls. Superstar DJs? Here we go – on a touchscreen, rather than a set of physical decks.DJ apps can be a touchy subject in dance circles, but they shouldn’t be. Rather than posing a threat to the traditional, physical craft of professional DJing, they’re more aimed at interested amateurs. Continue reading...
Founding member of Sony’s flagship console Andrew House comes clean about Death Stranding, virtual reality and yelling at NintendoIt was certainly not a conventional E3 game trailer. The forthcoming release from Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima and his self-named studio saw actor Norman Reedus naked on a beach, clutching a baby and surrounded by dead sea creatures – and that was essentially that. But occupying the centre point of Sony’s pre-event press conference, Death Stranding made a huge impact, both in the auditorium and among the hundreds of thousands watching online. If it was a gamble to give prominent placing to such a surreal and oblique video, it certainly paid off.Tweeting later, Kojima made it clear that the game is some time away – an unnecessary clarification from a man whose previous titles have often undergone several years of development. It was perhaps exasperation with his unhurried approach that recently led Konami to end its 30-year relationship with the developer. Now, he joins Fumito Ueda and David Cage in a collection of the industry’s most unpredictable auteurs, all working for Sony. Continue reading...
Social media accounts associated with the group got an LGBT-friendly makeover courtesy of WachulaGhostAnonymous has launched another wave of hacking attacks against Islamic State (Isis), taking over social media accounts associated with the group and giving them an LGBT-flavoured makeover.The loose hacking collective, which grew out of the infamous 4Chan forum in the late 2000s, announced its war on Isis in 2015, taking control of almost 100 twitter accounts following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris that year. Continue reading...
Latest Motorola, now Lenovo, Moto G has grown in size, power and price, with a good screen, camera and microSD slot, but no NFCThe first Moto smartphone since Motorola was bought by Lenovo is an update of the budget superstar, the Moto G. Can the new fourth generation Moto G4 capture what was so good about the last three Moto G phones?
by Denis Campbell Health policy editor on (#1HETC)
Health service seeks to use of technology to help patients manage conditions such as diabetes and heart diseaseMillions of people will receive devices and apps free on the NHS to help them manage conditions such as diabetes and heart disease in an major drive to use technology to reduce patient deaths.
Company announces partnership with Kind Financial, a Los Angeles firm that sells computer systems to governments that track legalized marijuana salesMicrosoft, the famously conservative company best-known for producing office software like Windows, has taken the unexpected step of entering the burgeoning industry of marijuana.The company, founded by Bill Gates, announced a partnership on Thursday with Kind Financial, a Los Angeles firm that sells computer systems to governments that track legalized marijuana sales.
Nohemi Gonzalez’s family filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in San Francisco, claiming the social media companies provide ‘material support’ to IsisThe family of a California design student killed in November’s terror attacks in Paris have sued Twitter Inc, Google and Facebook Inc, claiming the social media companies provide “material support†to the militant group Islamic State.Nohemi Gonzalez’s family filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco, asking the court to rule that the companies are violating the US Anti-Terrorism Act. It seeks compensatory damages to be determined by the court. Continue reading...
Despite luxury carmaker’s grandiose description of Vision Next 100, concept vehicle receives mixed responseRolls-Royce has unveiled its first driverless vehicle, a concept car that promises to help its owner announce their importance to the world.The Vision Next 100 is an autonomous vehicle aimed at “the most discerning and powerful patrons in the worldâ€. It has no steering wheel and a silk “throne†from which its occupants can watch the world go by. Continue reading...
by David Smith in Orlando and Spencer Ackerman in New on (#1HDQ9)
Omar Mateen warned of the rampage on Facebook accounts thought to be associated with him, and searched for ‘Pulse’ and ‘shooting’ while still at the clubThe Orlando gunman used Facebook during his deadly rampage, apparently seeking to gauge reaction in real time while also vowing more attacks, it emerged on Thursday, as Barack Obama flew in to the city to console families of the victims.
Zoltan Istvan leads the Transhumanist party and believes that, through science, humans will reverse ageing and eventually death. Can he convert the skeptics?
The biggest draw at this year’s E3 event is the game that Nintendo fans have craved for years - and it looks set for huge acclaimIn 2013, Nintendo teased the game which, everyone believed, would be the making of its Wii U console. It insisted that teaser was merely a tech-demo, but enraptured Nintendo fans paid little heed because it featured the character Link, which meant a new game in the Legend of Zelda series – Nintendo’s most revered franchise - was on the way. Three years on, at E3 2016, that tech-demo finally became reality: Nintendo devoted its entire booth to a single game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.Never mind the fact that 2017, when Breath of the Wild arrives, is when Nintendo will cut its losses on the Wii U and release a new console, the ever-mysterious NX. The latest chapter of the Zelda franchise will run on both consoles, and at last is a reality. We have played it – luckily without having to endure the 5 ½-hour queue that E3 Show attendees wishing to do likewise had to negotiate. While we didn’t quite see enough to be able to assert categorically that it will be acclaimed as a classic like its predecessors, it certainly represents a considerable change-up, while oozing an irresistible level of charm. Continue reading...
Later this month sees the third running of CycleHack, a collaborative brainstorming event which has grown to cover 38 cities on five continents. Will this year’s hacks outdo past successes like the viral hit Penny in Yo’ Pants?
Bree was a funny, friendly 16-year-old video blogger with a strange family. But all was not what it seemed. Ten years on, we revisit YouTube’s first viral sensationIn June 2006, a 16-year-old girl began a video blog on YouTube. Her name was Bree, she’d been lurking in the burgeoning community for a while. She was a self-described dork, she thought her hometown was really boring – “Maybe that’s why I spend so much time on my computer …â€She was funny, friendly, had great eyebrows. Her first few videos were relatable and cute, introducing her friend Daniel and complaining about being home-schooled and having to do homework in June. It soon became clear she was pretty lonely, which was probably why her username was Lonelygirl15. Continue reading...
Employers are increasingly looking to the digital community to build apps and games that help them recruit a more diverse workforceWe’re a nation glued to our smartphones, according to a 2015 Ofcom report. Sixteen- to 24-year-olds are the biggest user group – 90% of them own one and look at it 387 times each day on average. It’s clear that if recruiters are searching for a young, captive audience from which to source talent, they should be thinking mobile.And they are. Software companies are seeing growing demand from employers looking for gamified recruitment apps. Whether companies are seeking greater diversity or bubbly shop assistants, there’s much in this new breed of digital tools to attract businesses. But what are the benefits for job hunters? Continue reading...
by Danny Yadron in San Francisco and Ben Jacobs in Wa on (#1HB72)
While cybersecurity specialists say hack of DNC files on Donald Trump was connected to Russian intelligence, Trump points to his political adversariesA dossier containing critical information about Donald Trump that was hacked from files belonging to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was posted on the internet on Wednesday, prompting the presumptive Republican nominee to claim his political adversaries, not Russian hackers, were responsible.The hack of the DNC server, which a specialist cybersecurity company attributed to hackers connected to Russian intelligence, gave outsiders access to internal emails, chat messages and a 200-page book of opposition research that the committee had compiled on Trump. Continue reading...
FBI did not properly disclose privacy impact of storing 411m photos and has no information on how often software returns false positives, a new study findsThe FBI maintains a huge database of more than 411m photos culled from sources including driver’s licenses, passport applications and visa applications, which it cross-references with photos of criminal suspects using largely untested and questionably accurate facial recognition software.A study from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released on Wednesday for the first time revealed the extent of the program, which had been queried several years before through a Freedom of Information Act request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The GAO, a watchdog office internal to the US federal government, found that the FBI did not appropriately disclose the database’s impact on public privacy until it audited the bureau in May. Continue reading...
Nine Inch Nails musician and Apple Music executive joins music industry’s debate over Google’s video service, but YouTube hits backNine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor is the latest artist to join the music industry’s war of words with YouTube, attacking Google’s video service over the role it plays for musicians.“I find YouTube’s business to be very disingenuous. It is built on the backs of free, stolen content and that’s how they got that big,†said Reznor in an interview with Billboard. Continue reading...
Andrew House says PlayStation 4 Neo console isn’t ready to show off yet and Sony will wait until there is enough content to illustrate its benefitsSony will not show the updated PlayStation 4 Neo console until there is enough content available to illustrate the benefits of the machine, PlayStation boss Andrew House has stated.Speaking at the E3 video games conference in Los Angeles, the president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment also expressed surprise that Microsoft had announced its Project Scorpio hardware over a year before launch. Continue reading...
Social network drops the dot-@, usernames and attachments from the 140-character limit while also allowing users to retweet their own tweetsTwitter has finally given into its true nature and allowed users to retweet themselves, cementing itself as the mother of all self-reinforcing echo chambers.
The games industry cliche is that every conference panel is full of stubble-faced white men in suit jackets and T-shirts. Is it true this year?Ask five people who follow the video games industry what to expect from an E3 press conference and they’ll all paint you a similar picture. Bright lights on a big stage, lengthy cinematic trailers for shooters starring gravelly-voiced stubble-faced white men, interspersed with awkward patter from white men in suits (or, depending on the publisher, suit jackets and T-shirts and trainers), cheered and whooped at by a largely white male audience. This industry is often unwelcoming to women and underrepresented minorities, and these widely watched events do little to counter that.Of course, some conferences do better than others. This year, we’ve judged EA, Bethesda, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Sony for the diversity of their speakers and of the games and characters on show. How do they compare?
If you were ‘in favour of leaving the EU’, Facebook wanted you to tell people. Remaining, not so muchFacebook has denied bias in the forthcoming EU referendum, after users noticed that the social network offered the ability to mark yourself as “in favour of leaving the EUâ€, but not in favour of remaining.The feature was highlighted by Jon Worth, a writer and strategist based in Berlin. When writing a status update on Facebook, if he tapped to add a “feeling/activity†tag to the update, then tapped on “moreâ€, only a pro-Leave option was included in the list of available activities. Continue reading...
Robin Hanson’s strange, very serious, book predicts what will happen in a Matrix-like world when computers have software emulations of human brains and our bodies are destroyedIn the future, or so some people think, it will become possible to upload your consciousness into a computer. Software emulations of human brains – ems, for short – will then take over the economy and world. This sort of thing happens quite a lot in science fiction, but The Age of Em is a fanatically serious attempt, by an economist and scholar at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, to use economic and social science to forecast in fine detail how this world (if it is even possible) will actually work. The future it portrays is very strange and, in the end, quite horrific for everyone involved.It is an eschatological vision worthy of Hieronymus Bosch. Trillions of ems live in tall, liquid-cooled skyscrapers in extremely hot cities. Most of them are “very able focused workaholicsâ€, who “respect and trust each other more†than we do. Continue reading...
by Katharine Murphy, deputy political editor, and Gar on (#1H877)
Pacific Gas and Electric, a company Bill Morrow joined in 2006 as chief operating officer, reportedly facing 13 criminal countsThe executive appointed by Malcolm Turnbull to run NBN Co appears likely to be called as a witness in legal actions now under way in the US, flowing from one of the worst utility disasters in the country’s history.Legal actions have begun in San Francisco involving Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), a company Bill Morrow joined in 2006 as chief operating officer, before becoming chief executive a year later. Morrow left PG&E in September 2008. Continue reading...
The Facebook CEO floated the far out idea in a Facebook Live video, while also chatting with comedian Jerry Seinfeld about his broken armFirst Facebook had pictures. Then it had videos. And soon it will have virtual reality. But some day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg imagines a way for users to be able to transmit thoughts directly from one brain to another.“You’re going to just be able to capture a thought, what you’re thinking or feeling in kind of its ideal and perfect form in your head, and be able to share that with the world in a format where they can get that,†Zuckerberg said in a live video Q&A broadcast from his Facebook page. “There’s some pretty crazy brain research going on that suggests we might be able to do this at some point.†Continue reading...
Hackers lurked in systems since at least last summer but only recently exfiltrated files on his business dealings and past political statements, investigators saidHackers linked to the Russian government stole research files on Donald Trump from the Democratic National Committee, according to a US firm investigating the breach.Some of the hackers had been lurking in the systems since at least last summer, well before Trump sealed the Republican nomination, but only recently exfiltrated the Democratic party’s cache of files on Trump’s business dealings and past political statements, investigators said. Continue reading...
Premium aluminium body, good screen and camera, great fingerprint scanner, bloat-free software, and a day’s battery – at half the cost of a SamsungThe OnePlus 3 is the latest top-end smartphone sold at mid-range prices from Chinese manufacturer OnePlus, which offers a refined experience for considerably less than Samsung, HTC, LG or Apple.The 3 is the fourth smartphone from OnePlus – a small Chinese startup aiming to provide the best experience possible product for significantly less money than rivals – and is a big step in all directions over last year’s OnePlus 2. Continue reading...
DC circuit court votes 2-1 in favor of FCC’s rules that treat broadband service like public utility and prevent providers from offering preferential ‘fast lanes’An appeals court upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules on Tuesday, requiring internet providers to treat all web traffic equally.The three-judge panel’s 2-1 decision is another victory for consumer advocates, the regulator and the Obama administration who have campaigned for years to protect an open internet. Continue reading...
It’s always worth catching the French publisher’s E3 show – and this year virtual reality, snow sports and motorcycle stunt shooting added to the mixAmid the slick hyperbole and dead-eyed “we’re excited to announce†monotony of the E3 press conference weekend, Ubisoft events always stick out. Whatever the games are like, there will surely be something to amaze, bedazzle or bemuse – whether that’s a disastrous laser quest enactment or E3’s first passing of the Bechdel Test. This year it was a bizarre opening performance of Just Dance 17 featuring pandas and giraffes dancing to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me know. This would absolutely not happen at an Electronic Arts event.But there were certainly moments that stood out for the right reasons. Star Trek: The Bridge from Ubisoft’s Red Storm studio is essentially a virtual reality take on the brilliant multiplayer mobile game Space Team, set aboard a federation starship named USS Aegis. Up to four players take different positions on a VR representation of the bridge and have to work together to beat a series of missions. While the captain has overall control, a tactical expert navigates the combat options while the navigator steers. Apparently, there’s a single-player mode, but the fun is going to be playing online with similarly nerdy friends shouting “make it so†repeatedly until you’re kicked off the server. It’s out this autumn for Vive, Rift, and PlayStation VR. Continue reading...
Second major expansion for Destiny hits in September, and the game’s developers revealed more about what’s in storeIn September, Destiny returns, and so do the Lords of Iron.Bungie’s massively multiplayer online first-person shooter has been quiet for the past six months, since the launch of September’s Taken King expansion (save a small content update in April). But now it’s back, with a new area, new raid, and new strikes – as well as the return of the fan-favourite rocket launcher Gjallahorn. Continue reading...
Shares in Premier Farnell, maker of £20 educational computer for children, rise by 50% as sale is announcedPremier Farnell, the maker of the low-cost Raspberry Pi mini computer, has agreed to sell itself for £615m to the Swiss industrial components maker Dätwyler.The Leeds-based electronic components distributor said Dätwyler would pay 165p in cash for each Premier Farnell share – 51% more than the UK company’s closing share price on 13 June. Premier Farnell shares rose 50% to 163.5p. Continue reading...
With the first half of 2016 already under our belt, we look back at the best releases of the year, in no particular orderThe concluding instalment in From Software’s acclaimed action role-playing series provides all the impassable enemies, labyrinthine locations and gothic cruelty we expect from director Hidetaka Miyazaki.
The presumptive Democratic nominee would pressure tech companies to be more cooperative to government requests and countering online propagandaPresumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said on Monday that if elected, she would pressure US technology companies to help intelligence agencies disrupt violent plots after a gunman killed 49 people in an Orlando nightclub.
Pepper the humanoid robot has started work as an assistant on the reception desk in hospitals in Liege and OstendTwo Belgian hospitals have added an innovative staff member to their reception desks: humanoid robots called Pepper.The robots took up assistant reception duties at hospitals in Ostend and Liege on Monday.. Continue reading...
At its annual developer event, CEO Tim Cook led a silence for victims in Orlando, before revealing updates to iOS and Siri, its voice-controlled AIApple, known for its steady stream of slick consumer electronic devices, used its annual developer conference in San Francisco to roll out a collection of millennial-friendly texting tools to enhance emojis, improve image sharing and add animations to messages.Related: Apple WWDC keynote: key points at a glance Continue reading...
Court orders subpoena to gather account details of Queensland university student accused of making online racist commentFacebook has been dragged into a racial discrimination case involving three Queensland university students.On Monday federal circuit court judge Michael Jarrett ordered the social media giant be subpoenaed for information on the account details of a Queensland University of Technology student accused of making a racist comment online. Continue reading...
From smartphone-camera ‘clicks’ to websites that emulate the sound of a turning page, you shouldn’t believe everything you hearThere’s a “fantastic cackle†from the Jaguar F-Type’s V8 engine, while the new Ford Mustang makes a beautiful “wub-wubâ€, according to motoring broadcaster Quentin Willson. Increasingly, however, the throb of a high-performance engine is faked or artificially boosted and then piped into a car’s cockpit. A new invention developed by Ford for “generating engine noise†has been lodged with the US Patent and Trademark Office, demonstrating that artificial sounds are now a big global business.We live in a world of ersatz noise, where computers mimic sounds once made by machinery, from the old-fashioned shutter-style click of the camera on phones to websites that shuffle like paper when we turn a page. Continue reading...
It’s loud, chaotic, expensive and some say increasingly irrelevant – but attending E3 is still a games industry rite of passageYou see them at LAX airport in the second week of June every year, long snaking lines of them, sloping off long haul flights and waiting to pass through customs. They’re mostly men, mostly in their 20s and 30s, dressed in jeans, T-shirts and trainers; they’re in big groups, laughing and joking, enjoying the air of jubilant anticipation, but pretending not to. They’re all here for the same thing; the same thing 50,000 other people are coming to Los Angeles for; the same thing I’ve now been doing for 10 years. They’re here for E3.E3 – the electronic entertainment expo – is effectively the Mecca of the mainstream video game industry. Held every year at the vast Los Angeles convention centre (except for a couple of ill-remembered jaunts to Atlanta, and two years when it was semi-cancelled), it is a trade-only event that everyone in the business has to attend at least once. This is where the big players – Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Sony, etc – show off their forthcoming multimillion dollar releases to a highly excitable crowd of retailers, investors and journalists. They do it at considerable cost (a stand on the show floor can cost around $20m) and with a ton of planning that takes all year. They do it because this is now a $100bn-a-year industry and there is a lot riding on building a buzz around your latest annual franchises. Even in this age of mass digital dissemination, you still need a focal point.
Social network attempts to convince users to install its new photo-sharing app by threatening to remove all photos synced from the Facebook appFacebook will delete all the photos users have synced from the main Facebook app if they do not install its dedicated photo-sharing app Moments before 7 July.