The respected and sometimes reviled CEO of Activision Blizzard is typically bullish about the takeover deal everyone in the industry is talking aboutThree years ago, a group of senior Activision executives led by CEO Bobby Kotick met with Stephane Kurgan and Riccardo Zacconi, the heads of mobile gaming company King. It was, says Kotick, a social engagement, two powerhouses of the global games industry shooting the breeze in a fancy restaurant. During an investor call this week, however, Zacconi talked about the “mutual fear and respect” at the table. Executives don’t meet like this for fun. They were sizing each other up.On Monday, Activision announced that it would be acquiring King, creator of the massively successful Candy Crush Saga game – as well as other more modest smartphone hits – for $5.9bn. Predictably, the revelation sent shockwaves through the industry: it’s a hefty sum – more than Disney paid for legacy entertainment companies Marvel and LucasFilm. What was Activision thinking? Continue reading...

Information Commissioner’s Office fines CPS £200,000 after finding that videos had not been kept securely by private film studioThe Crown Prosecution Service has been fined £200,000 after laptops containing videos of police interviews with victims of sex attacks were stolen from a private film studio.The highly unusual security breach and heavy penalty follow an inquiry by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which is responsible for enforcing data protection laws. Continue reading...

Company plans to help drivers ‘recognise and prevent’ offensive and inappropriate behaviour. Mada Masr reportsUber is teaming up with an Egyptian anti-sexual harassment initiative to train its drivers in how to “recognise, prevent and take positive action” against inappropriate behaviour, the company has announced.All drivers available on the app will undergo the training to ensure “Uber is offering the safest ride in Cairo,” the company said in a recent statement. Continue reading...

The Colombian pop star teams up with Angry Birds maker Rovio for gem-swapping puzzler, with ambitions to make it a wider brandMobile game Kim Kardashian: Hollywood has made more than $113m (£73.2m) according to its developer Glu Mobile’s financial results. No wonder so many celebrities are following in her footsteps.Glu alone has signed deals to make games for Katy Perry, Britney Spears and Nicki Minaj, but they have all been beaten to the app stores by Shakira, via her partnership with Angry Birds developer Rovio Entertainment. Continue reading...

16-year-old who was detained after search of an address in Norwich has been released on police bail until MarchA 16-year-old boy arrested in connection with alleged data theft from TalkTalk has been released on bail.He was detained after detectives from the Metropolitan police cybercrime unit and officers from the National Crime Agency searched an address in Norwich. Continue reading...

New wireless headphones are comfortable, have great controls and automatically pause the music when taken off your headThe latest Bluetooth headphones from Plantronics sound great, last ages and won’t break the bank.You may not have heard of Plantronics, but the US firm first made headsets for pilots and Nasa, including the headsets through which Neil Armstrong spoke the immortal words “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. Continue reading...

Voters rejected a proposal to restrict short-term rentals following $8m campaign by the online letting company, with 55% of citizens voting againstSan Francisco’s citizens have narrowly voted against controversial proposals to restrict short-term home and apartment rentals, handing a victory to companies such as Airbnb.The failure of “Proposition F” is a victory for the company which has been targeted by affordable housing advocates and tenants’ rights attorneys, though it won by a tighter margin than expected with 55% of votes. Continue reading...

Share price falls 27% as co-founder Eric Lefkofsky returns to chairman’s seat and company forecasts revenue below estimates through 2016Groupon, the daily deals website, has said co-founder Eric Lefkofsky is stepping down as chief executive and returning to the role of chairman, effective immediately.

Tesla announces it delivered slightly more vehicles in the quarter than it estimated, prompting a jump in share price in after-hours tradingElectric car maker Tesla Motors Inc delivered more vehicles in the third quarter than it had previously estimated, helped by the rollout of the Model X SUV.

Computer exploit merchant Zerodium says it paid research team that worked out how to ‘jailbreak’ latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 9.1.

Cyberpsychologist Mary Aiken thinks we need to understand cybercriminal motivations, while mentoring young people with tech and hacking skills“A humanistic, cognitive psychology approach to hacking would be to consider an emotion such as revenge… But my favourite explanation for the academic literature is a Freudian psychoanalytic approach to hacking, which actually conceptualises hacking in Freudian terms as a cyber-sexual urge to penetrate. And there are castration complex overtones in terms of being cut off from the network as well…”Mary Aiken knows what she’s talking about: she’s the cyberpsychology expert whose work was the inspiration for TV show CSI: Cyber. In a speech at the Web Summit conference in Dublin, she suggested that we have a lot to learn still about the motivation of the people behind hacks of companies like Sony and TalkTalk. Continue reading...

Palmer Luckey thinks virtual reality can bring ‘real-world experience’ to more children – and become ‘more ubiquitous than the smartphone’Games were the earliest showcases for virtual reality company Oculus VR’s technology, but its founder Palmer Luckey thinks it will have important applications for education in the future.“I think there’s a lot of potential for virtual reality in the education industry … Classrooms are broken. Kids don’t learn the best by reading books,” he said at the Web Summit conference in Dublin. Continue reading...

Hacktivist collective distances itself from data dump purporting to out several politicians as Ku Klux Klan members, which was quickly discreditedThe hacktivist collective known as Anonymous has denied involvement in a data-dump on Monday that incorrectly outed several politicians as being members of the Ku Klux Klan.

World’s biggest online retailer opens shop in Seattle’s University Village stocked with 6,000 books at same price as on its websiteAmazon is opening its first physical bookstore, 20 years after the world’s biggest online retailer started selling publications on the internet.The company will unveil a shop called Amazon Books at University Village in Seattle, its home city, on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Australian teenager with more than 612,000 Instagram followers radically rewrites her ‘self-promoting’ history on social media (and launches new website)An Australian teenager with more than half a million followers on Instagram has quit the platform, describing it as “contrived perfection made to get attention”, and called for others to quit social media – perhaps with help from her new website.Essena O’Neill, 18, said she was able to make an income from marketing products to her 612,000 followers on Instagram – “$2000AUD a post EASY”. But her dramatic rejection of social media celebrity has won her praise. Continue reading...

Classic design, slim bezels, a round, sapphire screen, two-day battery life and a heart rate monitor make the top-end smartwatch worth the extra costWho would have thought that a little-known Chinese smartphone manufacturer famous for budget smartphones would make the best Android Wear smartwatch going?

Firms such as Google and Facebook didn’t offer users basic disclosures about privacy and censorship. ‘The best-scoring company got a D,’ says thinktankThe world’s top tech companies are failing when it comes to privacy and freedom of expression, according to the most comprehensive assessment to date of their user agreement policies.Related: How a digital rights project ranks tech firms and attempts to fix global failure Continue reading...

The wearable activity tracker’s third-quarter earnings report showed growth, but stocks dropped Monday after news of more than 20m new shares in marketFitbit has announced that months after the company went public in June, its revenue is up 168% year on year, according to its third-quarter earnings report.Despite the better than expected revenue – rising to $409.3m from $152.9m a year ago – the stock for the company dropped by as much as 9% in early after hours trading on Monday. This was due to the company’s announcement that it will be selling additional 7m shares and some of its shareholders will be selling 14m shares. That means more than 20m more shares will flood the market.

Simply play the game and tweet your score to be in with the chance of winning a PlayStation 4‘Where the tech world meets’ Web Summit is the biggest tech conference in Europe, hosted in Dublin between 3 – 5 November. To celebrate the Guardian’s media partnership we’re giving you the chance to win a PlayStation 4. To enter: Continue reading...

After complaints from civil liberties groups, company promises more awareness of context of real-name complaintsFacebook has announced plans to water down its controversial “real names” policy, after lobbying from civil liberties groups worldwide.The new rules still officially require the use of “authentic names” on the site, something which has previously resulted in criticism from varied groups including the drag community, Native Americans, and trans people. While Facebook does not require the use of “legal names” on the site, it does demand that users identify with the name that other people know them by. Continue reading...

Who’s Down app for Android and iPhone acts as virtual notice board for friends to signal when they’re free for an impromptu meet up, activity or gaming sessionIs talking to people to tell them that you’re available to socialise too much effort for you? There’s an app for that.

The annual GameCity festival brought a cavalcade of weird, offbeat and beautiful games to Nottingham last week. Here are some of our favouritesIn an ornate office, on the first floor of Nottingham’s city hall, a woman is cautiously crawling across a vast rug, insensible to the room’s other occupants.It looks weird, but as far as she’s concerned, she’s a spy infiltrating the secret base of a dangerous enemy. She’s wearing a HTC Vive virtual-reality headset and playing a game named Unseen Diplomacy. This is the sort of thing you stumble across at the annual GameCity festival. Continue reading...

Former reviewer of terrorism legislation says it would be glib to require judicial oversight of applications by security services to intercept communicationsIt would be glib for the government to require judges to approve warrants to intercept communications, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has said, as he called for an end to the “demonisation” of the security services.Alex Carlile QC, a Liberal Democrat peer and former MP, was speaking ahead of the publication of a draft of the investigatory powers bill, due on Wednesday, amid a political debate about whether politicians should be stripped of the power to sign off intercept warrants. Continue reading...

There’s no question that Apple has had a legendary run and often exceeds Wall Street expectations. A company, however, is more than its numbers. Here’s whyLike clockwork Apple announced their quarterly results on Tuesday and Tim Cook spun out his narrative of Apple’s ever-increasing, ever-impressive numbers. And as usual the market responded by largely agreeing that the skies are bright in Apple’s land. Analysts have declared that the high-flying stock is still undervalued, making it feel like there’s an indefinite upside ahead.

Smart, beautiful and as relatively pricey as a certain lager, Apple products make the company huge profits. It was just a case of cracking the desirability codeApple lives on cream – the very top of the market. Researcher IDC says its larger-screened iPhone has pushed Samsung aside to hold a majority of the more expensive end of the market – devices costing more than $650. But it’s not just the phone cream that it has grabbed. After 30 years in the personal computer market, Apple has just recorded a historic sales high of 5.7 million Macs in a quarter. Like Stella Artois, Apple positions itself as reassuringly expensive; it is a top-end brand in markets that have mainly been commoditised, with profits drained from all but a few. Apple intends to remain one of the few.Apple does not break out profits from phones, tablets or laptops, but industry estimates suggest operating margins of at least 28% for the iPhone, on its average price of $670. South Korea’s Samsung, the only other phone maker generating substantial profit, has just announced operating margins in its mobile division of 9%. Apple makes more than three times as much profit from iPhones as Samsung does from its mobiles. And the two companies account for all the profit there is in smartphones – LG, Sony, HTC, Microsoft and BlackBerry are all losing money on handsets. (China’s fast-growing Huawei, the third-biggest maker, has not announced any results.) Continue reading...

Halo 5 is a superb connected experience, Rock Band 4 plays it safe, and Minecraft’s spinoff Story Mode turns up the emotionXbox One, Microsoft, cert: 16

Light, strong and durable, the Luath is a set of wheels your kids will loveLearning to ride should be the start of a love affair with bicycles. Yet our first set of wheels is usually heavy and unwieldy with binary brakes that knock our heads backwards and gears with teeth that shred the skin from our shins. But then along came Isla Rowntree. The former competitive cyclist set up her company in 2005 in Shropshire with the aim of making decent bikes for kids. Starting with balance bikes for two-year-olds and going through the range to this Luath, which is for age 13+, Islabikes are light, strong and so durable they’re usually handed down through families, before going on to cousins, neighbours and more. Thoughtful details, like the Luath’s short-reach brakes for little hands, make them brilliantly usable. They are expensive, but your children will appreciate the outlay.Price: £549.99

Miles Brignall talks to the people who lost thousands of pounds in an earlier data breach. They are furious that the telecoms company says it’s not to blameVictims of the first TalkTalk security breach last November are still fighting for compensation after losing thousands of pounds – and they say they are appalled that hackers have again been able to steal customer details from the telecoms giant.Graeme Smith lost £2,815 after being rung by fraudsters pretending to be TalkTalk staff. Dave Westwood suffered the same fate, losing £3,900. Last week a retired teacher, who declined to be named, said she was targeted by hackers and lost £2,800 made as a Swift payment converted to Hong Kong dollars. In each case TalkTalk has refused to accept responsibility or offer compensation. Continue reading...

‘It’s like the car version of a ginormous ant’Picture a summer’s day, when some ants have stayed their regular size, but a few ants are ginormous, and it makes your senses shimmer as you struggle to figure out which is the normative ant. The Fiat 500X is the car version of that: in SUV terms, very tidy and compact but, compared with a regular Fiat 500, freakishly large, its features bulbous and cartoonish, which makes it bouncy and near-comical when you have it in bright red.The cabin is lacquered to such a high, primary-coloured sheen that you can practically see your own face in the glove compartment. This is useful if you’ve ever wondered what you’d look like reflected in a pool of blood; less so when you’re trying to concentrate on the road. Otherwise, it’s surprisingly roomy, though this is only a surprise if you were expecting a regular Fiat. My worry is that the ubiquity of the 500 makes it hard to adjust to the larger version. Even though it looked classy – a more integrated, intuitive design than SUVs at a similar price point (I’m looking malignantly at the Nissan Duke, again) and a not insignificant engine – it doesn’t score any status points. Continue reading...

Guardian finds batch of 100 stolen cards on sale for £98 on ‘dark web’ amid heightened fears about identity theft in wake of TalkTalk hackUK credit card details are on sale for as little £1 each online, the Guardian has learned, as fears rise over the security of personal data in the wake of the TalkTalk cyber-attack.More than 600,000 individuals had their personal details stolen from UK companies in 2014, according to the Financial Times, underlining the scale of online crime in this country. It is likely that some of that data will have ended up on a website used by criminals wanting to buy high-end UK credit card data. Continue reading...

Company to make Windows 10 a ‘recommended update’ next year, meaning those running updates will have it downloaded and will be prompted to installMicrosoft’s efforts to entice users to upgrade to Windows 10 will soon see it automatically downloaded on to users computers without their knowledge.

Apps impress – from games to shopping – but inconsistent Siri functionality shows revamped set-top box has more development aheadApple TV was a “hobby” for the company for a long time, but after selling more than 25m units, Apple is getting serious about its set-top box in 2015.The new version of the device runs new software – tvOS – and can download apps and games, all accessed using a new Siri-enabled controller. But is the hype – “the future of TV is apps” – correct, or will Apple TV struggle against cheaper rivals like Amazon’s Fire TV and Google’s Chromecast? Continue reading...

Our penultimate Twitch broadcast from GameCity in Nottingham, featuring Jack de Quidt writer of the latest game from Stanley Parable co-creator William PughOnce again Guardian games editor Keith Stuart and games writer Jordan Erica Webber are broadcasting ‘Wake up with the Guardian’ live from GameCity in Nottingham.From 9am, we’ll be talking to game writer and designer Jack de Quidt about his mysterious project with Stanley Parable co-creator William Pugh. We’ll also cover how to get into the games industry. Continue reading...

From vampires and witches to ghosts, zombies and monsters, here is our collection of Halloween-themed apps for mobile devicesIt’s that time of year when things go bump in the night. Spooky things, obviously, rather than just your partner/neighbour/cat thumping the wall in anger when they fail at a Candy Crush Saga level, which is a year-round thing.Yes, Halloween is here with its army of ghosts, witches, werewolves, zombies, vampires and monsters – all knocking on your door demanding chocolate with their parents hovering apologetically in the background. Continue reading...

The search engine company fell out with Beijing over censorship in 2010 but founder Sergei Brin says the new corporate structure opens doors againGoogle parent Alphabet may do business in China following the reorganisation of the technology giant, co-founder Sergey Brin has said.

Senior officers seek to revive measures seen in ‘snooper’s charter’ ahead of forthcoming legislation regulating surveillance powersPolice have lobbied the government for the power to view the internet browsing history of every computer user in Britain ahead of the publication of legislation on regulating surveillance powers.

Following TalkTalk's latest hack attack, Tech Weekly asks how safe is your data and who are the hackers?Not a day goes by without another cyber attack being reported: in December Sony Pictures was hacked; in August hackers released the personal information of 37 million users of infidelity site Ashley Madison; and Chinese hacking was top of the agenda during President Xi Jinping's visit to the US last month.Now TalkTalk has landed themselves in hot water, having been targeted by hackers for the third time in the past eight months. Continue reading...

Naughty Dog sticks with the basics of the multiplayer experience, but includes some interesting additions from Last of Us and Nathan Drake’s own historyWhile Sony was understandably keen to talk up Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End during Paris Games Week, we’re going to have to wait a while longer for information on the main story campaign. For now, the focus of attention is firmly on the game’s five-on-five multiplayer mode.

BMW taps into golfing superstitions, Domino’s effects a funny angle, Breast Cancer Now’s astonishing effort and Acura makes customer care claimsThis Acura advert from the US will have extra resonance for anyone who enjoyed Channel 4’s series Humans as it taps into the same uncanny sense of otherness we get when we see near perfect replicas of our species. It isn’t clear at first why the engineer is strapping these “people” into the car but when the penny drops, it delivers a clever claim about Acura’s customer care.

Our latest instalment of new advertising work from around the world starts and ends with extraordinarily touching pieces of work … with very different aims. A US advert for Acura demonstrates how much the car’s engineers care about the people who buy their vehicles, while a UK film for charity Breast Cancer Now uses astonishing frankness to draw attention to the disease’s victims. In between, Domino’s Pizza has us questioning our own memories in a quirky nostalgia-based advert; Halo 5 begins its big Christmas push with a bombastic piece of communication; and BMW claims superstition goes out of the window when you have a chance to drive one of their cars Continue reading...

First title in collaboration with mobile firm DeNA will launch later than expected, to be followed by non-freemium games later in the yearNintendo has revealed that its first mobile game will be called Miitomo, and that it will be a “freemium” title using in-app purchases. However, its launch has been delayed until March 2016.Miitomo is the first game from Nintendo’s deal with mobile firm DeNA, which was announced in March 2015. The first fruits of the partnership had been expected to debut before the end of the year. Continue reading...

Gabriele is sceptical about Windows 10 and still misses XP. With a new version due in a few days, is it worth taking the free upgrade, and when?I know you can’t answer, but what do you really think about Windows 10?I was sceptical from the start. When I started reading about how a lot of people in business are going to stick with Windows 7 until it’s ended, I thought: Get another machine now while they’re still affordable, and did so. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterSorry! I am too busy pretending to be a radio presenter! Continue reading...

Email addresses and passwords leaked to Pastebin did not come from within the company, firm saysBritish Gas has emailed more than 2,000 of its customers to warn them that their email addresses and passwords to their British Gas accounts were posted online.In the email, the company told customers that its systems were secure, and that the data had not come from British Gas. It did not explain where the information did come from. Continue reading...

Android-maker’s new smartphone runs the latest Android, has a great camera, fingerprint sensor and screen – and costs significantly less than the competitionThe Nexus 6P is Google’s flagship phablet and the best phone it has ever made.

After the success of the iPhone, Apple may struggle to come up with new innovations that will dominate markets in quite the same wayJust over 14 years ago, Steve Jobs unveiled a cigarette pack-sized product that didn’t impress many onlookers. The iPod looked like just another music player – not a product that could transform Apple’s fortunes, then a computer maker struggling with generating profit.On Tuesday Apple announced the largest-ever annual profit in corporate history – $53.3bn (£34.7bn) over the previous 12 months. In the July-September period, sales of iPhones grew almost a quarter compared to the same period in 2014, even as rivals such as Samsung and LG saw slower sales. The transformation looks complete.

Bosch and Siemens manufacturer threatens legal action after James Dyson claims companies have misled consumers in move ‘akin to VW scandal’A German vacuum cleaner maker is threatening to sue Dyson over allegations that it manipulated energy-efficiency tests.BSH Hausgeräte, which makes household appliances under the Bosch and Siemens brands, said it was taking steps to sue Dyson in the UK over what it said were false allegations made by billionaire founder Sir James Dyson. It did not specify what form the legal action would take. Continue reading...

Anonymous person calling themselves ‘The Clarifier’ ordered to pay several thousand euros to Dijon eaterieAn amateur French restaurant reviewer has been fined several thousand euros after writing a scathing take on a local eatery which had not even opened yet.The review said the Loiseau Des Ducs restaurant in Dijon was “overrated, it was all show with very little actually on the plate, and the only thing well-stocked was the plate which carried the bill”. Continue reading...

In a quiet, introvert corner of the tech world, Portland’s XOXO festival and Makerbase are encouraging creatives to reclaim their part in creating tech historyBack in early September, in a hot, dusty dog park on the east side of Portland, a few hundred people gathered around a modest stage to listen to two men called Andy.Both of them, the co-founders Andy Baio and Andy McMillan, had spent months arranging a small gathering of handpicked, independent designers, developers and – in the true, non-advertising sense of the word – creatives. Some were sitting cross-legged on coloured mats nursing strong locally roasted coffees, others lurking at the back looking shy and keeping out of the sun.

Detroit sci-fi thriller and GT Sport were highlights at Paris Games Week, but there was more to excite PS4 owners – including a date for No Man’s SkySony used its presentation at Paris Games Week on Tuesday night to announce a number of new PlayStation 4 titles, release dates and updates on existing games.