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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...

From ET the Extra Terrestrial to Leisure Suit Larry, here are the games that shot for the stars but crashlanded in the gutterEvery gamer has a tale of the worst game they ever played.It may have been the utterly catastrophic sequel to a much-loved classic, a rushed tie-in with a favourite movie, or an experimental new release from a favourite studio. But we’ve all had that moment of excitedly unwrapping the box, shoving the disc (or cartridge) into the machine and then ... then comes the horrific realisation that you have wasted £45 on the interactive equivalent of a late-career M. Night Shyamalan movie. Continue reading...

Elon Musk introduces the autopilot feature for newer Tesla Model S sedans. From Thursday in the US they will be able to steer and park themselves under certain conditions. While fully autonomous cars will be available in an estimated three years, regulatory approval could take longer. Musk says regulators will need data showing self-driving cars are safer than people-driven carsPhotograph: Beck Diefenbach/Reuters Continue reading...

Apparent surge is likely to reignite debate over whether there has been a long-term decline in offending in England and WalesThe headline crime rate for England and Wales is expected to rise by up to 40% when the latest official figures are published on Thursday.

Company excited about semi-autonomous system but warns that drivers will still have to keep their hands firmly on the wheelThe electric carmaker Tesla Motors hopes to overtake competitors with a new autopilot system that lets cars change lanes by themselves.Like other semi-autonomous systems available from companies including Mercedes, Audi and Volvo, Tesla’s system automatically keeps the car within its lane and maintains a certain distance from the car in front, both at highway speeds and on city streets. Continue reading...

Business secretary says bringing in red tape to stifle a creative company would dent London’s image as centre for new business and technologySajid Javid has warned against a “heavy handed” regulatory clampdown on Uber, the ride-hailing app firm, in London.The business secretary, speaking in front of MPs at a select committee hearing on Wednesday, said he thought that if Transport for London brought in all the proposals it was considering in a public consultation on the taxi market in the capital, “many people would think it would have a massive detrimental impact on consumers in London”. Continue reading...

Electric Jukebox isn’t an app and charges no monthly fees – but will customers want to pay £179 for a new device to play music?It has become a music industry mantra that streaming is the future of music, yet the public have been notably unexcited about the prospect of paying monthly subscriptions to use an app. Launches this year from Tidal, run by Jay Z, and Apple have been met with more shrugs of indifference than shrieks of excitement, but a new British company hopes to buck the trend.Electric Jukebox comes with the usual stream of musical endorsements – even if Robbie Williams, Alesha Dixon, Sheryl Crow and Stephen Fry constitute a less starry line-up than Tidal’s Beyoncé, Madonna, Rihanna, Kanye West et al – but the company claims this first UK entry into a field dominated by the Swedish firm Spotify is offering something new: the chance to turn your TV into a jukebox. Continue reading...

Ofcom to regulate services such as Channel 4’s All4 and Sky’s Now TV, which were previously overseen by ATVODVideo-on-demand services including Channel 4’s All4 and Sky’s Now TV will be regulated by broadcast and communications regulator Ofcom.Currently TV-like services delivered over the internet are regulated by a separate body authorised by Ofcom, the Authority for Television On Demand (ATVOD), which follows similar rules. These rules will still apply, but be overseen by Ofcom. Continue reading...

Sectors ranging from finance to transport and media are changing at a rapid pace – but governments have yet to catch upOne of the most difficult challenges facing western governments today is to enable and channel the transformative – and, for individuals and companies, self-empowering – forces of technological innovation. They will not succeed unless they become more open to creative destruction, allowing not only tools and procedures, but also mindsets, to be revamped and upgraded. The longer it takes them to meet this challenge, the bigger the lost opportunities for current and future generations.Self-empowering technological innovation is all around us, affecting a growing number of people, sectors and activities worldwide. Through a constantly increasing number of platforms, it is easier than ever for households and corporations to access and engage in an expanding range of activities – from urban transportation to accommodation, entertainment and media. Even the regulation-reinforced, fortress-like walls that have traditionally surrounded finance and medicine are being eroded. Continue reading...

A prototype of the app is already in existence and will be modified for use in Indigenous communitiesMalcolm Turnbull is a self-confessed gadgets man, and within minutes of meeting a group of Indigenous leaders, the new prime minister had come up with the idea of using technology to reduce truancy rates.“Within five minutes he said, why don’t we get an app,” the chairman of the prime minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, Warren Mundine said. “The teachers have an app. They sit there and they tick off Little Johnny and Joe and Mary as they come into the classroom. And if the kid is not there, then it sends an SMS to their parents.” Continue reading...

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

Software’s developer claims it’s a player for music from legal sources, but industry body RIAA says it’s sourcing songs from piracy sitesMajor music labels are suing filesharing application Aurous for “willful and egregious copyright infringement” just days after its earliest alpha version launched.US industry body the RIAA has filed a lawsuit on behalf of labels including Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music subsidiaries Warner Bros, Atlantic and Capitol seeking an injunction against the software as well as damages. Continue reading...

Technology that improved processor efficiency was used in Apple devices but belonged to University of Wisconsin-Madison, jury decidesApple Inc could face up to $862m in damages after a US jury on Tuesday found the company used without permission technology owned by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s licensing arm in chips found in devices including the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and several versions of the iPad.The jury in Madison, Wisconsin, also said the patent, which improves processor efficiency, was valid. The trial will now move on to determine how much Apple owes in damages. Continue reading...

Clinton’s server, which handled her personal and State Department correspondence, was warned to be easy for even low-skilled intruders to attackThe private email server running in Hillary Clinton’s home basement when she was secretary of state was connected to the internet in ways that made it more vulnerable to hackers, according to data and documents reviewed by the Associated Press.Clinton’s server, which handled her personal and State Department correspondence, appeared to allow users to connect openly over the internet to control it remotely, according to detailed records compiled in 2012. Experts said the Microsoft remote desktop service wasn’t intended for such use without additional protective measures, and was the subject of US government and industry warnings at the time over attacks from even low-skilled intruders. Continue reading...

Citing rules introduced three years ago, the crowdfunding platform has removed the $4m projectBad news if you want to burn hairs off your face using a laser: Kickstarter has pulled the fundraising page for the “Skarp” laser razor, despite the project having already raised $4m on the crowdfunding platform.Kickstarter’s reasoning is fairly straightforward, however: the Skarp doesn’t actually exist. Continue reading...

Cooperation is going to be the central focus of the new campaign, with a focus on personal choice and ability rather than run ‘n’ gun actionIt’s just a month until Activision unleashes the latest title in its blockbusting Call of Duty series. And while we’ve seen plenty of information on how Black Ops 3 is tweaking the multiplayer experience, there’s been much less focus on the single-player campaign mode.Set 40 years after the events of Black Ops 2, the world is now divided into a patchwork of international alliances, all investigating advanced cybernetic and bio-augmentation technologies. The narrative follows a group of robotically enhanced super soldiers, investigating the disappearance of a CIA operative in Singapore, as well as a huge data leak of military secrets. Continue reading...

The Golden State has passed a bill allowing hoverboards and electric skateboards, on the same day their ban was restated by the London policeCalifornia has passed legislation to allow use of electric skateboards and other motorised, wheeled devices such as “hoverboards” anywhere bicycles are allowed, reversing earlier legislation which banned the vehicles.The bill was signed into law on Sunday, the same day that London’s Metropolitan police service restated earlier guidance that hoverboards are banned from the British capital’s roads and pavements. Continue reading...

Shoppers are undetterred by the announcement that riding a self-balancing scooter in London is illegal – but it might be too soon to call it a must-have gadget“Hoverboards” are the latest tech craze sweeping the globe. Central London shop Spy Master is one of the few retailers in the UK that stocks the device in-store. Among drones, Go-Pro action cameras and encryption equipment, the two-wheeled, brightly coloured gadgets apparently fly off the shelves. “Thousands” have been sold at the shop this year says the company’s director, Julia Wing. They offer a row of different models – including a blue IO Hawk, a large graffiti-adorned board, and a bright-green transporter with Bluetooth speakers – ranging between £500 to around £1,500. Continue reading...

Japan’s largest messaging app will begin to encrypt location data and messages on a device level, preventing it from complying with law enforcement requests for disclosureJapanese messaging app Line has become the latest large platform to enable end-to-end encryption for its users, frustrating governments and other would-be eavesdroppers.The feature allows users of the Line apps on smartphones and desktops to send messages that are fully encrypted on a device level. Similar to the encryption employed by Facebook’s WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage, Line’s implementation of the protocol leaves the company itself unable to decrypt and read user messages, even under legal duress. Continue reading...

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

Robert George Speedy and Jake Watson stole $40,000 but unwittingly also stole an employee’s phone with locator app installedA phone-tracking app helped police find and corner two armed robbers, one of whom then shot an officer in the face to avoid arrest in 2012, a court has heard.Robert George Speedy and Jake Watson entered a tavern brandishing a machete and a rifle and ordered staff to open the safe so they could remove the day’s takings, prosecutors said. Continue reading...

Video games could be the greatest storytelling medium of our age – if only the worlds of art and technology would stop arguing and take noticeIt’s an unfortunate feature of working as both a novelist and a games designer that I end up sitting through a lot of panels, round-tables, conferences, discussions and other exercises in head-nodding where digital people try to get to grips with storytelling, or where story people try to understand the digital world.Both these types of event have their aggravations. When digital people run workshops or colloquia or jams (there are infinite names for the basic principle of bringing people together in combination with coffee) about storytelling, they often seem not to notice that quite a lot of very clever people have been thinking very hard about stories for, oh, the past 3,000-4,000 years. I’ve heard people suggest that maybe stories have a “pattern” or “structural ordering” that holds together their parts, without apparently realising that a lot of people have written about this, from Aristotle on. Continue reading...

It is estimated that nearly three million British motorists have fitted dashboard cameras – but are they more useful for capturing dramatic crashes than making safer roads?

Largest-ever tech deal helps world’s third-largest computer maker to tap into faster-growing market for managing and storing dataAmerican computer company Dell is buying digital storage giant EMC for $67bn in the largest tech acquisition in history and a move that marks another transformation for the once pre-eminent maker of consumer PCs.Shares of EMC surged on news of the deal. Dell, by contrast, is not publicly traded. Founder and CEO Michael Dell took the company private at a price of $25bn in 2013 largely to escape the clutches of investors who wanted to oust him (notable among them activist investor Carl Icahn). Continue reading...

The World Conker Championships take place in Southwick, a village in Northamptonshire, where spectators watch competitors from 10 countries do battle with a nut and a 12in piece of string Continue reading...

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Winnie Blagden received cards and gifts from around world after radio launched appeal to help her celebrate landmark day

The Metropolitan police has warned prospective hoverboard owners not to ride their scooters on public streetsBad news if you like gliding down the street like a low-rent Marty McFly: “hoverboards” (also known as self-balancing scooters) are illegal to ride in public in Britain, according to guidance released by the Crown Prosecution Service.The wheeled vehicles, which are an evolution of the infamous Segway “personal transportation device”, are too unsafe to ride on the road, but too dangerous to ride on the pavement, according to legislation. As a result, they are only legal to use on land that is private property, and only with the landowner’s permission, the CPS says. Continue reading...

Government aims to aid business growth with Video Games Prototype Fund helping startups turn ideas into reality

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

Users of the social networking service are watching 370 years of video a day, while talkshow hosts seem to be getting the bug for live-tweeting“I had a moment when I was talking about quantum television,” said Dan Biddle, Twitter UK’s director of broadcast media partnerships, as he perched in a meeting room shortly after his company’s keynote at the Mipcom conference in Cannes.“It was this sense of where TV used to be seen as a wave where you just sit and it crashes over you for an hour and you’re consumed, now there’s a sense that it’s actually made up of particles, like light. Continue reading...

Phone companies have thrown themselves into finding another elusive must-have quality for the front-facing camera – but a teenager could beat them to it‘The front-facing camera currently seems to stand rather low on the list of system-critical features consumers demand,” observed PocketNow in a chin-stroking article in March 2012. “With the primary focus of this secondary camera aimed at video calling …one would think there would be a corresponding eruption in the usage of mobile video services. This explosion hasn’t happened.”Such are the perils of jumping too far forward in trying to read social signals. It turned out that a front-facing camera was terrific for taking stills – and then meant stills featuring you, the phone owner. We all know what happened next. Taking a picture of yourself is hardly new; cameras have had timers for ages so you could set them on tripods and run around in front. What’s new is being able to see what you’re photographing, and do it at arm’s length. Continue reading...

So you’ve decided to buy a new games console – but choose wisely, or face the shame of an inert box next to your TV for the next several yearsBuying a new games consoles is one of those most vitally important decisions you can make in life – we’re only partially joking. Choose correctly, and you’re guaranteed years of fun and entertainment; make a bad call, and you’ll have a useless black box under your TV, endlessly incurring the disappointment and embarrassment of your children and the mockery of your friends.So let’s say you’ve committed to buying at least one shiny new machine. Which should it be? Here is a quick guide to where the big consoles are right now. Continue reading...

Women in tech forced to disguise their identity – and even quit the industry – after facing threats online, study findsA few months ago, I stared out of the window, wondering whether to change my name. I’d been advised I “might consider” doing so if I wanted to report on video gaming. It was hard to imagine a cacophony of hate in a silent house under the quiet shade of hundred-year-old chestnut trees.But women in tech, such as games developer Zoe Quinn, had told me about being terrorised, made homeless, or “screamed at by a Nazi” down the phone at night. Quinn was targeted by groups – mostly of young men – who saw her as a symbol of socially aware critiques of misogyny in gaming to which they objected. Continue reading...

Elizabeth Day visits the virtual human interaction laboratory at Stanford University in Silicon Valley – and it blows her mindMy interest in virtual reality was virtually nil – until last month. When I thought of it, I pictured low-budget sci-fi movies with bad special effects. I thought of those pixellated posters, popular in the mid-1990s, the ones where you would stare at the wall and a three-dimensional vision of an underwater city would slowly emerge from a cluster of purple dots.I thought of it as something that turned on adolescent gamers who sat at home in their underpants with the curtains closed and who dreamed of a day when they could fully inhabit the body of the bank robber guy with the stubble and the biceps in Grand Theft Auto. I thought of 3D glasses in 1950s movie theatres and the 360-degree cinema screens your parents took you to when you went on holiday to France and it was raining. The whole idea of virtual reality made me want to stifle an actual reality yawn. In short: I was clueless. Continue reading...

Volkswagen’s new electric hybrid Golf is as green as they come, but can VW ever clean up its ruined reputation?Price: £28,755 (with government grant)

Thinktank wants firms to establish guidelines for recommended daily use of their technologyTechnology firms risk repeating the mistakes of tobacco companies if they fail to take responsibility for the threats that their products and services pose to young people’s mental health.This provocative claim comes from a thinktank which wants the firms to establish guidelines for the recommended daily use of their technology. It is made in Screened Out, a report to be published on Thursday by the Strategic Society Centre (SSC), which says smartphone manufacturers and online social networking sites need to consider how young people are affected by their businesses – and potentially redesign their products and services accordingly. Continue reading...

The new Skoove app promises to ‘make your musical dreams come true’. It’s good, but doesn’t hit all the right notes for a learnerI’ve long fancied the idea of astonishing my friends by whipping a cloth off a keyboard and playing a glorious rendition of festive tunes à la Downton Abbey Christmas special. But apart from prodding the odd key, I’ve never been near a piano.Enter Skoove, the app that promises to “make your musical dreams come true”. Excellent. I’m already Googling fancy evening dresses and recipes for mulled wine. Better still, the current beta version of the app is free (it’ll cost between £3.50 and £7.50 a month when commercially released), which is a boon considering an electric keyboard costs around 60 quid (there’s currently no way to use the interactive features with Granny’s upright). Continue reading...

Austrian student who took on Facebook over data privacy in the European court of justice and won says the fightback is just beginningThe EU’s safe harbour ruling is a “puzzle piece in the fight against mass surveillance, and a huge blow to tech companies who think they can act in total ignorance of the law,” says Max Schrems, the man who brought the case.“US companies are realising that European laws are getting more and more enforced. But still, people don’t believe that a court would order Google or Facebook to do something – they wouldn’t dare. Well, yes, they fucking would,” he said, speaking in Vienna. Continue reading...

In the wake of the big cultural event that was Bake Off we celebrate the human meme that is Nadiya HusseinThe Bake Off final is the biggest TV event of the year. And these days, it's also the biggest thing on the internet in the UK. So on this week's episode of Updog, the Guardian's podcast celebrating all things internet-y, Elena Cresci wanted to celebrate the memes of Bake Off, and pay tribute to its winner, one-woman-emoji-keyboard Nadiya Hussein. But first, she had to convince Alex Hern that this baking show is worth all the fuss…• I can and I will: the best acceptance speeches ever Continue reading...

The 13-year-old YouTuber’s sudden death has led to much speculation – yet more evidence that internet detectivism rarely ends wellCaleb Logan Bratayley – real name Caleb LeBlanc – was the eldest child of the Bratayley family, based in Maryland: a dad, mum, and three kids vlogging (video blogging) since 2011.The family is a sort of online middle-class version of the Kardashians, and has modelled its success on another YouTube family, the Shaytards. Continue reading...

After unveiling the luxury Model X, Elon Musk’s company has a big challenge ahead as it aims for a bigger audience with its Model 3, promised for 2017On 21 September, Tesla’s chief executive and founder, Elon Musk, used all the tricks in his showman’s book to launch the company’s latest all-electric vehicle, the Model X, at the company’s San Francisco Bay headquarters.Tesla’s mission, he said, is to “accelerate the advent of sustainable transport”, hoping that the new SUV will help the company appeal to a wider audience of American motorists. But with a $130,000 price tag for the fully loaded version (and a base price of about $80,000), the Model X could end up having an awkward relationship with sustainability. Continue reading...