Claire Williams says pioneering technology created in motor sport boosts British manufacturingThe head of the Williams Formula One team has said the value of F1 to the UK economy is undervalued and that the sport is at the forefront of vital research and development that can boost the manufacturing industry.Claire Williams said the sport was showcasing the pinnacle of technology and was a vital test bed for new innovations. Continue reading...

California startup’s robot isn’t quite ready to take on Kuratas but founders confident ‘Team USA’ can win as Japanese firm accepts challengeThey’ve been popularized in movies, television and video games, but giant fighting robots still haven’t left the realm of science fiction. That will soon change.

Huawei’s quick-charging lithium-ion batteries power up 10 times faster than regular batteries by using new techniqueA smartphone battery that lasts longer than a day might be out of reach of most people for the moment, but a large one that charges to 48% in five minutes is on the way.

Silicon Valley executives deny Julieta Yang’s allegations that she endured sexual harassment and low wages, but advocates say case raises awareness about vulnerability immigrant domestic workers faceRelated: The vanished: the Filipino domestic workers who disappear behind closed doorsJulieta Yang’s voice trembled as she recalled living in a house with a boss she alleges made repeated unwanted sexual advances. Continue reading...

There’s apocalypse wow from the Fallout series and Lara’s back to her best, but Ubisoft lets itself down with a creaky Assassin’s Creed outing

Loyal, dependable, agile and fast, Mazda’s new CX-3 compact crossover has much in common with your petPrice: £17,595

Using GPS tracking and messaging, your suitcases will soon be able to send you a text about where they areDo you get anxious waiting at the baggage carousel in the airport? I do. And the longer it takes for my luggage to appear, the edgier I get. It is= a fear of that moment when only a handful of battered suitcases are trundling around, none of which are yours.But imagine, as you rush to the inquiry desk to vent your spleen you get a text on your phone saying: “I’m on carousel 5, come and pick me up.” Continue reading...

Defrauded British users claim the holiday rental website has washed its hands of themAirbnb faces accusations that it is leaving its users vulnerable to fraud after previously unseen figures revealed that a growing number of people have fallen victim to scammers while trying to book a break via the British arm of the holiday rental website.In the first nine months of this year the number of people in the UK who reported that they had been defrauded on the website was 687, or at least two a day, double that of the whole of 2014, according to Action Fraud. This was more than five times higher than two years ago. Last week the company, which now lists properties in more than 190 countries, opened its doors to more than 5,000 of its property hosts at its annual conference in Paris, where the chief executive, Brian Chesky, described Airbnb in his keynote speech as “misunderstood”. Continue reading...

As part of our series on the future of transportation, we’re looking vehicles that might change the way you travel. Martin Aircraft is developing a fan-propelled jetpack, which the company says will be able to fly for up to half an hour and soar almost 1,000 meters. The jetpacks are expected to become commercially available in the second half of 2016. Martin provided the Guardian with this demonstration video.

As part of our series on the future of transportation, we’re looking at vehicles that might change the way you travel. Elio Motors is developing a three-wheeled, motorcycle-like vehicle that it says will get 84 miles to the gallon and retail for $6,800. The company plans to launch it next year. Elio provided the Guardian with this promotional video.

The $1bn-plus valuation of a number of Silicon Valley firms far outstrips their ability to deliver such returns – and many investors now believe it’s a question of when, not if, the bubble will burstThere are a lot of people in Silicon Valley and New York betting on “unicorns” – the new breed of tech startups like Uber, Square, Airbnb and Snapchat that have been valued at least $1bn.Not since the last dotcom boom has so much money been poured into so many hyped companies. As startup founders and their investors hope to turn their paper unicorn fortunes into cold hard cash, some of Silicon Valley’s most successful investors are warning a reckoning is coming. And on Monday that magical thinking faces one of its biggest tests. Continue reading...

Whether it’s the person sitting in the vehicle or the one who designed it, where responsibility lies when a robot car commits a traffic offence is not always clearWhen a California cop pulled over a Google self-driving car for holding up traffic this week, he knew he couldn’t send its robot driver to jail. But exactly where the responsibility lies for traffic problems caused by autonomous vehicles is not always so clear.Related: Self-driving cars are the future, but there’s a tech traffic jam in their path Continue reading...

Companies spend big money to identify flaws, but does this make for a safer internet?Imagine getting $1m for finding a security weakness in a mobile operating system. That’s what happened to an anonymous team of hackers who found a way to hack through Apple’s iOS to score the sizeable prize, security startup Zerodium announced this month.Zerodium launched the challenge in September, saying it would pay seven figures to a team able to find a way to take over iPhones and iPads running the latest versions of iOS just by tricking it into visiting the wrong web page or opening a text message. Continue reading...

Overall reduction in cases attributed to new law, which sought to discourage trivial claimsThe number of libel actions linked to posts on Facebook and Twitter rose last year, as overall defamation cases dropped to a six-year low.Total defamation cases in the UK fell by 27% year on year, from 86 to 63, the lowest level since 2008/09, according to a new report. Continue reading...

‘I could hear its Eeyore voice as I pummelled it into second gear, “Really? Driving again?”’The Suzuki Vitara is the reverse of the tardis, looking larger and fancier, only from the outside. Inside, the displays are maddening: slow touchscreen, slower satnav, a radio that stops and starts for no reason, a parking camera in permanent panic mode and a “you’re about to crash into the person in front of you” alarm. I figured out that’s what it was only because of the illustration: one car, another car and a giant comic-book star between them. I would say this feature makes you more, rather than less, likely to crash.And how would that crash come about? Certainly not through a sudden burst of speed. It’s 0-62mph is 12 seconds, far faster than anyone but a getaway driver would have call for, yet nevertheless the most sluggish I’ve driven for months, and you can feel a certain reluctance from the minute you turn on the engine. I could hear its Eeyore voice as I pummelled it into second gear, “Really? Driving again? Wouldn’t you rather just stay at home?” Continue reading...

Apple CEO ordered ‘inclusion and customer engagement’ training after black teens were asked to leave Australia store because they ‘might steal something’Apple boss Tim Cook has ordered that shop staff be retrained on “inclusion and customer engagement” after a group of black teenagers was told to leave a store in Melbourne, Australia because staff were worried they “might steal something”.A video of the interaction between a Highpoint Apple store staff member and a group of students was uploaded to Facebook on Tuesday night and has now been shared more than 222,400 times.

Father of the IBM mainframe computers that still run the worldWhenever you draw cash from your bank, take out insurance, book a flight, or shop in a large department store, the transaction was probably handled by an IBM mainframe originally designed by a former South Dakota farm boy, Gene Amdahl, who has died aged 92. Amdahl’s System/360 mainframes, announced in 1964, transformed IBM, and transformed computing. They became such an essential part of large-scale data processing that most Fortune 500 companies are still using them 50 years later.The S/360’s legacy includes the now-ubiquitous 8-bit byte, though Amdahl had argued for the option to use old-style 6-bit bytes as well. That idea was vetoed by Fred Brooks, Amdahl’s boss, who also led the development of the S/360’s operating systems. Continue reading...

Talk to trees in an augmented reality treasure hunt or help the king and queen of Scentopia defeat the evil Weedo in a hands-on digital art park in Southend. Don’t forget your smartphoneStep into NetPark, the invisible art gallery, where there is absolutely nothing to see – unless you want to. Tucked away in Southend-on-Sea, the “world’s first digital art park” is quietly opening its nonexistent doors. On hearing this claim of a global first, people may be incredulous. But the gallery’s creators are sure: this is the one and only time a Wi-Fi network has been built specifically to house a curated art collection – and further, a collection created specifically for that space.

UK record labels earned more last year from vinyl than they did from the 14bn music streams on YouTubeThe boss of British music industry body the BPI has claimed UK labels make less money from YouTube than from vinyl sales.Speaking at the Music Futures conference in Gateshead, Geoff Taylor said vinyl revenues were worth more than the “14bn music streams on YouTube” in 2014. Continue reading...

Automated vehicle caused traffic jam while travelling at just 24mph in a 35mph zone, causing police to pull the car overThey’ve driven 1.2m miles, and haven’t managed to get a speeding ticket yet – but a self-driving Google car got in trouble with the law on Thursday.

Facebook makes third attempt to take on rival Snapchat with an in-house alternative to ‘ephemeral’ messagesFacebook is testing Snapchat-style disappearing messages within its Messenger app in France, offering users the ability to set a message to self-destruct an hour after it is sent.Simply tapping an hourglass icon on the Messenger app turns on the ability, which remains active until it’s turned off. It mirrors features in other messaging apps: Snapchat, for instance, removes messages once read, while Google’s chat platform offers the ability to prevent conversations from being saved in history. Continue reading...

A recent hackathon highlighted a quiet revolution taking place across the capital, where collaborative digital making may be a spur for social change

The Maribyrnong College students uploaded video of the incident to Facebook and some people accused the Melbourne store of racially profiling its customersApple has apologised after a staff member at one of its Victorian stores kicked out a group of black students over fears they “might steal something”.The company experienced a backlash after the year 10 Maribyrnong College students uploaded video of the incident on Facebook, in which the staff member can be heard saying: “These guys [security guards] are just a bit worried about your presence in our store. They’re just worried you might steal something.” Continue reading...

Terrence McNeil, 25, accused of using Twitter and Tumblr accounts to pledge allegiance to Isis and post names and addresses of 100 US service membersAn Ohio man was arrested on Thursday and accused of calling for violence against American military members in the name of the Islamic State, federal prosecutors announced.Terrence McNeil, 25, was charged in district court in Akron with one count of solicitation of crime of violence, related to his social media posts in support of the jihadi militant group, also known as Isis or Isil. Continue reading...

Results of the Bank’s study, Andy Haldane said, suggested that administrative, clerical and production tasks were most at threatThe Bank of England has warned that up to 15m jobs in Britain are at risk of being lost to an age of robots where increasingly sophisticated machines do work that was previously the preserve of humans.Andy Haldane, the bank’s chief economist, said automation posed a risk to almost half those employed in the UK and that a “third machine age” would hollow out the labour market, widening the gap between rich and poor. Continue reading...

About 300 turn out in capital after taxi service raises commission for many rides from 20% to 25% for new driversUber, the online taxi hailing service whose success led to demonstrations by rival operators in cities across the world, has faced a protest by its own drivers over pay in London.In the latest challenge to the rapidly growing California company, protesters backed by the GMB union gathered on Thursday outside its London offices holding placards with slogans such as “Uber 1* rating for greed” and “Uber Xploitation”. GMB sources claimed 300 people attended the protest. Continue reading...

Steve Jobs treks across comic landscapes in his black turtleneck to warn people of Apple’s in-app purchase policy and more in series by Robert SikoryakTerms and conditions just got a lot more readable, thanks to comics artist Robert Sikoryak.The Masterpiece Comics author has turned iTunes’ 20,000-word legalese into a 94-page graphic novel and posted most of it on Tumblr. Continue reading...

Donna needs help getting started, Diane is wary of downloading a Windows Store game, Jerry wants to put off the upgrade for later. Your questions answered

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

This 7in Android tablet is ludicrously cheap (and comes with a buy-five-get-one-free offer), but it gets the basics right while costing less than one-sixth of an iPad mini 4Amazon’s latest low cost Fire asks the question: can a tablet that sets you back just £50 each, or buy five and get one free, be any good at all?

The Silicon Spa cluster has 40 video gaming companies, including some of the biggest names. But the game is far from wonApproximately 75% of the digital media companies in Leamington are gaming companies. It is known as the Silicon Spa.This games cluster grew out of the success of games developer and publisher Codemasters – which really was a trailblazer – and then Blitz Games Studios. Other companies moved or set up here to be near those companies. As the businesses thrived, some staff left to set up on their own but stayed local. Continue reading...

US authorities made the most requests for users’ information, while India and Turkey had the most takedowns for content that violated local lawsFacebook has said government requests for data and demands for content to be taken down surged in the first half of 2015, which the social network has seen continually increase since it began publicly releasing such data two years ago.Related: World's biggest tech companies get failing grade on data-privacy rights Continue reading...

The premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, says education department computers were breached revealing private data including allegations of sexual assaultAllegations of sexual assault are among the personal information about students that has been hacked in Queensland’s education department, the premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, told parliament on Thursday.Earlier this week the attorney general, Yvette D’Ath, told parliament a cyber attack on TAFE Queensland and Department of Education and Training computers uncovered only low-level information that “would be otherwise found on other public websites such as the White Pages”. Continue reading...

Optimism surrounds roll-out of ShareTheMeal smartphone app after summer trial provides 1.7m meals for school children in LesothoThe World Food Programme (WFP) is banking on technology, generosity and busy thumbs to help it feed some of the 600,000 Syrian refugee children who have been forced from their homeland by the country’s four-year civil war.Related: Conflict drives 'unacceptable' figure of 795 million people facing hunger Continue reading...

Facebook’s chief operating officer is an unconventional choice for a ship sponsor, who are usually wives of senior officers or politicians with navy tiesThe US navy has made an unconventional choice to sponsor its newest submarine: Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, who is known for advocating women’s empowerment through her Lean In book and campaign.Sponsors, who christen the ship, are always women but historically they were often the wives of senior officers or politicians with close ties to the navy. According to navy lore, sponsors are said to imbue a ship with their personalities. Continue reading...

CEO Tim Cook stresses tech company’s commitment to Ireland regardless of European Union decisionApple’s chief executive has said a looming European Union tax ruling on its dealings with Ireland would not affect its presence in the country, where it declares much of its overseas profit, and where it is hiring 1,000 extra staff.

Chinese e-commerce giant says more than 1.7 million people, 400,000 vehicles and 200 aircraft will be involved in deliveriesAlibaba Group’s sales for its Singles’ Day shopping festival have topped $14bn (£9bn), a 60% rise on the Chinese e-commerce giant’s performance a year ago.The numbers were boosted this year by adding the sales from various new channels, including its affiliates and investees. Overall sales on Wednesday reached 91.2bn yuan ($14.3bn/£9.4bn).

TalkTalk offers an upgrade to all of its customers after data breach, after putting cost of attack at £35mTelecoms group TalkTalk is offering customers a free upgrade following the cyber-attack which left many of them panicking that money was being stolen from their accounts.The company has also made it clear, however, that customers who have decided to terminate their contracts because of the uncertainty cannot do that for free unless they can show they have been “financially impacted” by the attack on the group and its customer base. Continue reading...

Tanner White asked Steve Grand to be his date for the Marine Corps Ball via YouTube and his ‘heart skipped a beat’ when the singing star acceptedCountry singer Steve Grand has fulfilled his promise to attend the 2015 Marine Corps Ball with a marine who asked him to be his date via YouTube in September.

#Milifandom was a thing, but Ed didn’t win. Our panel met at Web Summit to talk internet echo chambers, state-sanctioned trolling and ‘clicktivism’How did Labour get such a walloping the last UK general election when everyone you knew on Twitter was a #Milifan? Or, alternatively, how could Ukip be such an electoral damp squib – in terms of seats, if not votes – when everyone you chatted to on Facebook was on Team Farage?The answer – and it’s not a new concept – is filter bubbles. As we spend more of our online lives on social networks where we’ve chosen the people we follow or friend, there’s a risk that our belief of what “everyone” thinks will be disproved when the real-world everyone goes to the polling stations. Continue reading...

Tech Weekly goes live in this panel discussion from the 2015 Web SummitCould machines ever understand us emotionally? How much is technology already affecting our cognitive abilities, mental wellbeing and emotional lives? And as our personal and emotional experiences migrate to alternate platforms, VR, mobile, and others, will empathy be lost in an AI world?In the second of our podcasts from the annual Web Summit in Dublin, Nathalie Nahai is joined on stage to discuss by Oren Frank from Talkspace; Rana el Kaliouby from Affectiva and Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab. Continue reading...

Dating app announces changes, allowing the option for users to add job and education information, and enhancing matching algorithmsTinder has announced updates to its app in response to user requests, including the addition of job and education information to personal profiles, a cleaner messaging interface and an improved matching algorithm.In a blog post, the company announced the introduction of so-called “smart profiles”. Job and education information will be pulled from a user’s Facebook profile, but is optional for the app and can be slightly edited. Continue reading...

Mobile phone company objects to rival’s advert claiming it is ‘the undisputed ... most reliable network’

Of 18 submitted proposals, Sean Parker’s Adult Use of Marijuana Act is considered the frontrunner because of his rumored financial backing

Social media and selfie queen who sensationally quit Instagram was approached by male supermodel to become a couple – to boost followersThe teenage Instagram star with more than half a million followers who sensationally quit the social media platform last week has now turned her attention to fake online couples.The 18-year-old Australian Essena O’Neill hit headlines for replacing captions on her popular Instagram photos with more realistic descriptions of the shots, before deleting almost 2,000 pictures and describing them as “contrived perfection made to get attention”. Continue reading...

ISPs tell Commons select committee that £175m budgeted by government for implementation will not cover ‘massive costs’ of collecting everyone’s dataConsumers’ broadband bills will have to go up if the investigatory powers bill is passed due to the “massive cost” of implementation, MPs have been warned.Internet service providers (ISP) told a Commons select committee that the legislation, commonly known as the snooper’s charter, does not properly acknowledge the “sheer quantity” of data generated by a typical internet user, nor the basic difficulty of distinguishing between content and metadata. Continue reading...

This year’s Singles’ Day – the country’s answer to Black Friday, which began as an ‘anti-Valentine’s Day’ binge for singletons – tramples 2014 recordShoppers have spent more than $9bn (£6bn) in the first 12 hours of China’s Singles’ Day sales, topping last year’s total for the world’s biggest online shopping day.Total gross merchandise volume, a measure of sales, matched the 2014 Single’s Day figure of $9.3bn just after midday, the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba said. Continue reading...

‘Who Viewed Your Profile - InstaAgent’ secretly sent user passwords to its developer’s server, and posted images without permissionAn Instagram client which was the most downloaded free app in Britain and Canada has been silently stealing usernames and passwords and uploading them to its developer’s server.The app, marketed as “Who Viewed Your Profile - InstaAgent”, claimed to allow users of the social network to track the people that have visited their account. But users who logged into the account instead had their credentials uploaded, unencrypted, to a third-party server. Continue reading...

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

New Silent Circle smartphone promises to be the most secure and private Android device available, and delivers with surprising ease of useIn a world of unscrupulous apps and tech company tracking, the Blackphone 2 promises to help keep your personal information private without getting in your way.