Video-game events are usually about noise, crowds, darkness and heavily marketed blockbuster titles. But it doesn’t have to be that wayThis summer, the picturesque Birchcliffe Centre, a converted baptist church in the West Yorkshire village of Hebden Bridge, hosted an unusual festival. Guests danced across the sunlit floor to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach; they drank mugs of tea and watched talks. Outside, there was an “art walk” where attendees trudged up and down the muddy slopes, breathing in the scent of early summer flowers. There were nice places to eat, the village was welcoming. Everyone felt safe and included. Passers-by would perhaps not have guessed what people had come here to see and share. Video games.The event, named Feral Vector, was a conscious attempt by organiser David Hayward to fight both the “gravitational pull of London” as he puts it, and the popular image of what a gaming event is. From the cavernous E3 show in Los Angeles to the annual EGX, this year held at Birmingham’s NEC, the usual set-up involves a vast convention centre, near total darkness and a constant cacophony of competing sound systems. But not everyone feels comfortable in these aggressively noisy environments. As independent game designer Rob Fearon recently noted on his website: “We all deserve better.” Continue reading...

Hundreds of internet service providers have not yet submitted plans as they struggle to understand what is required of them in storing Australians’ metadataThe federal government has processed less than a third of data retention plans submitted by internet service providers, while hundreds more have not even put forward proposals, placing them in technical breach of the country’s metadata laws.The Attorney General’s Department has confirmed that of the 229 plans submitted by ISPs to show that they comply with the laws – which require them to collect and store the metadata – just 79 have been processed.

The NBN Co says it needs more copper to meet demand but prime minister says existing copper network is in much better condition than was expectedThe prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull has defended the national broadband network’s purchase of 1,800km of copper to deliver his vision of fibre to the node.The company told a Senate estimates hearing it has so far purchased $14m worth of copper and will need more to meet future demand. Continue reading...

As fans worldwide celebrate the date depicted in cult 1989 film, Universal Studios, Nintendo and Pepsi also get on (hover)boardIt is the day that Back to the Future fans have waited 26 years for, the moment the real world finally catches up to the future world imagined in the second film of the time-travelling franchise.Related: Back to the Future day: live! Enjoy 21 October 2015 around the world Continue reading...

Many of the world’s top technology companies are against cybersecurity plans before US Senate on privacy grounds, according to a new pollTwenty-two of the world’s top technology companies are firmly against the controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa) now on the floor of the Senate, according to a new poll by internet activists Fight for the Future.The poll lists Apple, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia as opposing the legislation while Comcast, HP, Cisco and Verizon are among the 12 companies who back or have remained silent on the bill. Cisa is aimed at tightening online security but has been criticised as infringing on civil liberties and privacy. Continue reading...

Artificial intelligence experts point to looming danger amid unpredictable technology and fears that technology could ‘seduce us into warfare’Experts in artificial intelligence, lawyers and activists organized by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots gathered at the United Nations on Tuesday to warn against a growing reliance on cheap drones and “stupid AI” that can be unpredictable in the real world.“Terminator always comes up,” Toby Walsh, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, told reporters on Tuesday, referring to the sci-fi cyborg on a mission to wipe out mankind. “But it’s not really Terminator that we’re worried about at the moment. I think that Terminator is perhaps 50 or so years away.”

Company reports 6.4% revenue increase and also announces deal with Google to provide web search results and ads for some Yahoo user queriesYahoo reported another set of disappointing results on Tuesday as the tech company inked a deal with Google over search ads.In another blow to boss Marissa Mayer’s efforts to turn around the tech company, Yahoo reported an 6.4% increase in revenues for the three months ending in September, below analysts’ forecasts.

New all-metal Android 6.0 Marshmallow device comes bearing resemblance to iPhone 6S as Taiwanese company decides to tackle Apple head-onHTC has decided that the best way to win in a market dominated by Apple and Samsung is to try and beat Apple at its own game, with the One A9.

Audit by Irish data protection watchdog over alleged transfer of European data to US by Facebook follows three-year campaign and ECJ rulingFacebook’s European privacy practices are to be investigated by the Irish data protection watchdog, after a three-year legal fight by Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems.The high court in Dublin quashed the Irish data protection commissioner’s original refusal to examine Schrems’ complaint over the alleged movement of his data outside of Europe by Facebook after referring the case to the European court of justice. Continue reading...

The Senate is currently debating a bill that would give the government huge amounts of your private information. But this would make hacks more likely

Shiv Kumar Yadav attacked 25-year-old woman in case that led to accusations of inadequate background checks on driversAn Uber taxi driver has been convicted of raping a female passenger in Delhi last year, a case that sparked fresh fears in a city plagued by sexual violence.Uber was banned from operating in India’s capital in the aftermath of the attack, which led to accusations that the company failed to conduct adequate background checks, although the ban has never been fully enforced. Continue reading...

Taxi-hailing app is latest company to risk public anger but says tax figure due reflects accounting losses in previous yearsUber is the latest company to risk public anger after paying £22,134 in UK corporation tax last year despite making an £866,000 profit.The online taxi-hailing service was reportedly able to pay such a low sum as it legally transferred profits to its sister company in the Netherlands, where it would be liable for a lower rate of tax. Continue reading...

Publisher to distribute more than a million cardboard virtual reality headsets to NYT subscribers

The apps, mostly used by Chinese users, pulled private information from iPhones due to having used a malicious advertising toolkitApple has removed 250 apps from its store after discovering a widely-used advertising network was siphoning off private information such as email addresses in breach of the company’s policies.The apps, which are largely from Chinese-based developers, all used a software development kit (SDK) called Youmi to build in advertising. But, apparently unknown to the developers, Youmi also built in code that would steal user data and upload it to Youmi’s own servers. Continue reading...

#PowerShift looks at power of social media in series commissioned out of AOL/HuffPo’s UK operation and starring actor who plays Sansa Stark in HBO hitThe Huffington Post has commissioned a new web docu-series starring Game of Thrones actor Sophie Turner.Turner, who plays Sansa Stark in the hit HBO series which airs on Sky in the UK, will host a 10-part series called #PowerShift which will look at the power of social media. Continue reading...

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

New audio device does for speakers what Google’s Chromecast TV dongle did for smart television with great audio quality and simple setupThe Chromecast Audio is Google’s wireless streaming dongle that turns almost any speaker into an internet-connected one.

FAA chief cites ‘troubling trend’ of close calls with pilots and wildfire-fighting operations in creating taskforce to determine regulation of private dronesHobbyist drone owners have flown too close to the fire for the last time: the US government announced this morning that it would require some publicly available drone aircraft to be registered to their owners, a move prompted by the growing number of reported close calls and incidents that pose safety risks, officials announced Monday.The goal, said transportation secretary Anthony Foxx, was to identify exactly who was using what drone, and where. “Finding the drone has not been as much of a problem as finding the person who was using the drone,” said Foxx. Continue reading...

Plans for new Essex plant alarm conservationists and come on top of worries about security implications of China’s involvement in UK nuclear industryConservation charities have expressed alarm at plans for a Chinese-built nuclear power station in Essex, with one saying the plant could have “major impacts” on the estuary location, a haven for birds and marine life.The new reactor in Bradwell, on the heavily protected Blackwater estuary, east of Chelmsford, could be confirmed this week during a state visit to Britain by China’s president, Xi Jinping. Continue reading...

Online retailer senior vice president claims newspaper failed to check backgrounds of sources and misled company about focus of articleAmazon has launched a scathing attack on the New York Times’ exposé of a “bruising” work culture at the online retailer, claiming the paper’s journalists failed to check facts and verify their sources.

The social network will now explicitly warn users it fears are being targeted by state-sponsored hackersFacebook will explicitly notify users it believes have been targeted by an attacker suspected of working on behalf of a nation state, the company has announced.Users whose accounts are targeted or compromised by state-sponsored hackers will now receive a notification upon login, warning them that “we believe your Facebook account and your other online accounts may be the target of attacks from state-sponsored actors”. Continue reading...

Writer and broadcaster Julia Hardy was depressed and angered by the comments she received on Twitter and YouTube, so she set out to do something about itI never really thought about being a woman as an “issue” until I worked in video games. Admittedly, I arrived in 2006, when the idea of social media was just taking off thanks to the explosive growth of MySpace and the arrival of YouTube. Out of nowhere, there were these vast communication platforms offering exciting new dialogues, fascinating exchanges of thought and … masses of depressing and upsetting vitriol.It was only when I hosted GameFace, a video game TV show on Bravo, that I became aware that, as a visible woman in this culture, you can be subjected to torrents of spiteful abuse – as well as endless commentary on your physical appearance. Admittedly, I first discovered this through a serious rookie error: I googled myself, just to see how the new show was being received. It was a truly mortifying experience. Continue reading...

Unsettling undersea machinations inspired by Philip K Dick, enjoyably unadorned robot combat and… interior designFrom Amnesia to Total Recall, indie horror darling Frictional takes you to the bottom of the sea in this trans-human mind-bender. Simon undergoes an experimental medical procedure after suffering life-threatening brain damage, only to wake on Pathos-II, a research facility under the ocean. Stalked by murderous machines and confronted with questions of morality and the nature of life, Simon has to rely on stealth and his wits to survive. But is any of it real? Continue reading...

Cocoon uses a microphone to detect sounds outside of the hearing range of humans to alert you to intrudersAs history has it, the young Isaac Newton found inspiration for the theory of gravity by watching apples fall to the ground. Dan Conlon’s big idea was born after smashing the bell box of a faulty alarm system off the side of his house in the early hours of the morning as the ringing kept the neighbourhood awake.

She had agreed to settle his monthly charges by direct debit. But no one told her he’d been sent multiple handsetsA Cheshire parent has had to pay out more than £2,000 after Vodafone gave eight expensive mobile handsets to her 21-year-old son in a case that will alarm parents who pay their grown-up children’s mobile bills.Claire Hardwick is paying her unemployed son Nick’s monthly bill by direct debit because his severe learning difficulties mean he is unable to manage a bank account. But she has been left unable to afford this month’s mortgage payment after it turned out Nick had persuaded Vodafone to send him a string of mobile phones worth thousands of pounds over just a few weeks. Continue reading...

Government can’t be trusted to store data safely, our readers say, but the public’s sense of what is private is shiftingThere have been few public disclosures to put privacy and surveillance on the agenda as much as Edward Snowden in June 2013. Yet outside the technology industry and surveillance community itself, how much impact did the story make, and what have been the wider implications for citizens and their attitudes to online privacy?We asked Guardian readers whether they felt happy to trade off online privacy for online security. And what about private companies; is it a fair exchange if they use our personal data to allow them to make better products and services? Continue reading...

Sophie Sabbage’s bestseller, The Cancer Whisperer, tells how she tries to learn from the disease and not fear itIt was the “stoical silence” that made Sophie Sabbage write her book while she was supposed to be dead.“I was sitting in this NHS waiting room and that’s what it was, stoical silence, eyes front, as terrified people sat there waiting for chemotherapy or radiation treatment. No one was connecting. I was crying, something I thought was appropriate for someone who has been told they’re about to die. The nurse came over very anxious, but there was this ‘please don’t be vulnerable’ appeal from her and I realised that people don’t talk – or cry – about this here.” Continue reading...

The founder of Lastminute.com, Martha Lane Fox, last week told the annual Wired technology conference how an industry that promised so much hope had failed. Here is her call for Britain to set a global standard for equality in the sectorYou’ll forgive me if I have to paint a bit of a picture for you. You can imagine me and my best friend aged 20, unbelievably dirty – head to toe filth – sitting on the edge of a dirt track in the middle of the Steppes, looking out across the Altai mountains as we tried to hitchhike from Ulan Bator in the middle of Mongolia to goodness knows where in the middle of Kyrgyzstan.We were sitting on the edge of this track waiting to see if we could find another truck of people moving their yurts from one end of Mongolia to the other, to hitch a ride to cross the border. And we were fighting because we had a tiny piece of Mars bar left, and we needed it because all we had eaten for the last four months had been goats boiled in salty water and goats’ milk curdled into a sour cream. Continue reading...

Whether you dream of singing, tinkling the (virtual) ivories or subjecting the world to your acid squiggles, there are apps to spark your creativity“You can’t sing, you can’t play, you look awful … you’ll go a long way,” was how KitKat portrayed the music industry’s A&R process in its 1984 TV ad, albeit with the then-traditional fruit and flowers replaced by a four-fingered chocolate bar.In 2015, not being able to sing or play is no barrier to making music for pleasure – yours, at least, if not the people within earshot – thanks to a generation of smartphone and tablet apps aimed at unlocking the creativity of musical novices. Continue reading...

The late night host is an unashamed nerd with a fluent understanding of what is one of the pillars of popular culture – unlike rival and guest Jimmy KimmelJimmy Kimmel, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live, will be a guest on tonight’s episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. While the two hosts have very similar jobs, they could not be farther apart in terms of their awareness of the diversifying American media landscape.This summer, Kimmel decided to pick an unnecessary, multi-episode fight with the video game community. The feud culminated in Kimmel having popular online gaming personalities Markiplier and MissesMae on his show in an attempt to mend fences – and stop the mean YouTube comments – but even that got condescending when Kimmel and his guests engaged in an awkward three-way hug that ended with Kimmel suggesting they should “try being around other humans every once in a while.” Continue reading...

University of Leeds is leading a pioneering £4.2m project to develop robots that can fix street lights and potholes with minimal disruptionA university is leading a pioneering £4.2m project to create “self-repairing cities” by developing robots that can fix street lights and potholes.Researchers at the University of Leeds will develop small robots to identify problems with utility pipes, street lights and roads and fix them with minimal disruption to the public. Continue reading...

League of Legends is coming to Wembley. The BBC is broadcasting it. Sky is taking bets on it. But do esports even care what the mainstream thinks?'Esports' is big. With 100 million viewers a month spread across a number of games, it's more popular than The Great British Bake Off. But neither Alex Hern or Elena Cresci really get why. So they invited Philippa Warr to break it down on Updog, the Guardian's podcast for internet people about internet things.• You'd be surprised just how big 'esports' is getting Continue reading...

Decade-long case involved Google creating digital copies of millions of books from major libraries to be made available for search

Richard Massett, representing the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, says he is surprised that the high court ruled on Friday that Uber’s app is legal in London. The capital’s black-cab and minicab drivers claimed the Uber app was being used as a taximeter, a privilege afforded only to black-cab drivers who have done ‘the knowledge’

There’s a cliche that narrative games are about power fantasies. But maybe the satisfaction comes from having a sense of control that real life doesn’t afford usMost of us accept the idea that video games are about power. From highly cerebral simulations like Civilization to run ‘n’ gun blasters such as Call of Duty and Battlefield, the successful player will usually rise in status from a lowly grunt to a celebrated and powerful hero, often leaving thousands of vanquished foes in their wake. This basic structure is certainly not unique to games – it is the essential metanarrative that has informed storytelling for generations, as catalogued by Joseph Campbell in his famed work, the Hero With a Thousand Faces. We like to tell and hear stories about people overcoming obstacles to become glorious heroes. It seems like human nature.But in video games, I wonder sometimes if something much more subtle and instinctive is going on. Perhaps games aren’t really about power, they’re actually more about agency – the idea that we can have any sort of influence and control over what happens to us, and the world around us. Continue reading...

TfL had sought legal clarity on whether tech firm’s app was a taximeter, which in London is exclusive right of black-cab driversThe taxi-booking service Uber has received a boost after the high court ruled that its app was legal in London. Had it lost the case, the company would have been forced to change its service to comply with rules that protect black-cab drivers.Related: Q&A: Uber court case in London Continue reading...

From underwater seances to scrabbling for 10ps for the payphone, readers share their memories on how things have changed since the birth of the smartphone

Iain Macintosh reads an exclusive extract from his latest book, The Football Manager Guide to Football ManagementWe know most of you who listen to Football Weekly have spent many an hour playing Football Manager. We know too that most of you have a soft spot for Iain Macintosh. So as a special treat, here's a special podcast dedicated to both.Iain reads an exclusive extract from his latest book, The Football Manager Guide to Football Management, and he also speaks to Miles Jacobson, one of the wonks behind the FM series, about the history of the games and what features we can expect in the latest instalment. Continue reading...

Three ambitious engineers from Finland are bidding to change personal computing with a new portable computer and operating systemPersonal computers, says entrepreneur Kristoffer Lawson, haven’t changed much in 20 years. It’s still a box, a screen and, if you’re using a desktop, a keyboard.But Lawson thinks that the era of cloud computing deserves its own kind of computing device. Portable, but more powerful than a mobile, designed to be plugged into any desktop screen and with a new kind of operating system that connects more fluidly to your contacts. And at a launch in San Francisco on 15 October, that’s what Lawson and the rest of the Solu team unveiled. Continue reading...

Can the publishing industry survive now that increasing numbers of people are choosing to block online ads?This week on the podcast we discuss a problem that cuts to the very core of what we do. How long can the online advertising model continue to support web publishers?In the wake of Apple's latest IOS update which offered content blocking extensions to Safari for the first time, we look at the potentially devastating effects it could have on publishers, the Guardian among them. Continue reading...

Mjölnir is real – or at least, as real as you can call a hammer which only works on metal surfacesArthur C Clarke’s third law of prediction states that: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So it looks like kitchen table hardware hacking is now sufficiently advanced, because the magic hammer wielded by Marvel’s Thor is now real. Continue reading...

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

From red capes to leisure suits, here’s the second instalment in our collection of gaming’s most nightmarish moments• The 30 worst video games of all time - part oneVideo games are not always wonderful. Sometimes they fall slightly short, sometimes they fall so far from wonderful that wonderful is just a very distant speck on the horizon. Here is our second collection of those games.Once again, our criteria were not to choose titles that are just plain awful – there are too many of those, and most of them will not have troubled you. No, these are games that are singularly, spectacularly bad – or even worse, perhaps, they’re games that promised the Earth, but then delivered Watford. Continue reading...

Facebook, Google and Yahoo argue Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act under Senate review could cause ‘collateral damage’ to ‘innocent third parties’Some of the biggest names in tech including Google, Yahoo, Facebook and T-Mobile have come out against a controversial cybersecurity bill, arguing that it fails to protect users’ privacy and could cause “collateral harm” to “innocent third parties”.In an open letter published on Thursday the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a trade group representing those and several other major tech firms including eBay and RedHat, came out staunchly against the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa). Continue reading...

The podders look ahead to Tottenham trying to take the smile off Jürgen Klopp's face. Plus, previews of the rest of the weekend's key games, Holland crashing out of Euro 2016, and the inside track on Football ManagerOn today's Football Weekly, AC Jimbo is joined by Barry Glendenning, James Horncastle, Iain Macintosh and Miles Jacobson, one of the wonks behind the Football Manager series (yes, blame him for your wasted youth).We begin by looking forward to Jürgen Klopp's Premier League debut as he takes his injury-hit Liverpool side to White Hart Lane, where Spurs will most likely poop on his party. Continue reading...

Most encryption software does the high-tech equivalent of reusing passwords, and that could be how the US national security agency decrypted communicationsThe NSA could have gained a significant amount of its access to the world’s encrypted communications thanks to the high-tech version of reusing passwords, according to a report from two US academics.Computer scientists J Alex Halderman and Nadia Heninger argue that a common mistake made with a regularly used encryption protocol leaves much encrypted traffic open to eavesdropping from a well-resourced and determined attacker such as the US national security agency. Continue reading...

The BBC is broadcasting them, Sky’s taking bets on them, but finals of Dota 2 and League of Legends are already attracting audiences of more than 20m viewers

Do you remember what it was like before you could check emails or listen to music on your phone?

Culling engineering jobs is a bizarre act in a field where, such is the intense competition for staff, poaching is commonplaceTwitter’s new chief executive, Jack Dorsey, must hope that none of the 336 people about to be let go by the struggling company are as valuable as John Bauer.In 2002, Bauer was a programmer at Google who tweaked some code and turned the company it into a cash-generating machine. The tweak allowed key words typed into the search engine to appear in bold when they flashed up in adverts, alongside the search results. It more than quadrupled the number of times people clicked on the ads, and ensured Google’s financial future. Continue reading...