Technology | The Guardian

The game has been flooding the news and neighbourhoods but for many it seems as silly as it is impenetrable. Pokémon Go devotee Clem Bastow breaks it downIf you’ve been out and about over the past few days, chances are you’ve seen people frantically swiping their smartphones in front of places of interest, or listened with slight alarm as friends chattered excitedly about how they “caught a Sandshrew behind the supermarket”. You may have wondered: what the heck is happening?The answer is Pokémon Go, the new smartphone game from Nintendo and Niantic Labs. According to data tabled by Digital Vision, two days after the app’s launch, Pokémon Go was installed on 5.16% of Android devices in the US and had roared to the top of the iTunes app store’s free app charts. Nintendo’s stocks are reported to have risen to their highest value since 1983 and demand for the game was so high, with servers crashing regularly, that Amazon’s chief technology officer, Werner Vogels, even offered to share the traffic load. Continue reading...

Biggest jump in share price for Japanese firm since 1983 with 36% rise in two days since launch of Pokémon GO appThe Pokémon GO effect has sent Nintendo’s shares surging for the second day running, driving the Japanese company’s value up by more than a third since the game’s launch last week.Nintendo’s shares jumped 24.5% to ¥20,260 (£153.50) in Tokyo – their biggest gain since 1983. The increase follows a 10% rise on Friday. The shares have risen by 36% in two days, adding almost £6bn to Nintendo’s market value. Continue reading...

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Xbox execs Phil Spencer, Mike Ybarra and Shannon Loftis talk about Xbox One S, Scorpio, virtual reality – and why diversity is central to modern gamingAt the end of this year’s E3 conference in Los Angeles, one thing seemed clear: although a lot of journalists left feeling that Sony had “won” the hype war with its games-focused press conference, everyone was actually talking about Microsoft. The company choose the event to announce, not one, but two new consoles: an updated version of the Xbox One with a simple “S” suffix, and a more powerful upgrade – codenamed Project Scorpio – due out next year.The question on a lot of lips was, why? Why did Microsoft start its press briefing with Xbox One S, promising 4K compatibility, a new 40% smaller body and support for HDR gaming, only to apparently undermine the package by revealing Scorpio at the end? Due in late 2017, this intriguing iteration packs in eight CPU cores and promises six teraflops of processing power. And while Xbox One S will run 4K movies and promises to upscale games to that resolution, it’ll be Scorpio that delivers true, native 4K gaming. So why not keep it secret for a few more months? Why instantly cannibalise the Xbox One S market before it has even launched? Continue reading...

Missouri suspects used app’s geolocation feature to target ‘unwitting victims’, says police after another incident saw game lead player to dead body

An uneven attempt to make the world war two strategy game more popular, an ambitious but flawed shooter and a niche slice of Japanese culturePC, Paradox Interactive, cert: 7

Tech billionaire says he hopes to publish details this week as cryptic message echoes 2006 blogpost in which he unveiled what is now Tesla Model STesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, under pressure after a fatal crash involving one of his electric cars, went on Twitter Sunday to say he’s working on another “Top Secret Tesla Masterplan”. He said he hoped to publish details this week.The tantalizing message echoes an August 2006 blog post, titled “The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)”, in which Musk unveiled the cars that became the Tesla Model S four-door family car and the Tesla 3 sports sedan. Continue reading...

Networked devices for your smart home are the modern way to manage your life, but the rush to sell shoddy smart products risks compromising securityYou know the problem. You’re going abroad for a couple of weeks, during which time your house will be empty. You haven’t yet got round to installing a burglar alarm. But not to worry – just pop round to a supermarket and buy a couple of timer sockets. Plug them into the mains, set the timers to switch on and off at appropriate times twice a day, plug your lamps into them and off you go. Easy, peasy!Well, yes. But it’s so 1950s. So analogue. Why not be really cool and have a proper networked timer socket, something that you can control from your smartphone from anywhere in the world? Something like the AuYou Wi-Fi Switch for example. Looks like it’s just the ticket. Plug it in, hold down the power button and it hooks up with the app on your (Android) smartphone, and – bingo! – job done. Now, where did you put that boarding pass? Continue reading...

Motorola and LG are getting on board this emerging smartphone movement, but will it all fit together?Wander into your local phone shop for an upgrade and you could soon be sold a module rather than a whole new phone. It’s a radical new idea. But is the driving force behind modular phones being produced by Motorola, LG and others a response to consumer needs and environmental concerns, or is it simply an over-designed fad?Such devices came to attention in 2013 when Phonebloks, an open-source modular smartphone startup, was set up to reduce electronic waste. In essence, it was the conceptual introduction of a forever-upgradable phone, one customisable to suit different needs. Continue reading...

Statement in response to petition signed by more than 4.1m people says referendum was ‘once in a generation’ voteThe hopes of more than 4.1 million people who signed a petition calling for a second referendum on the EU have faded, after a response from the government saying it was a “once in a generation vote”.Parliament must consider all petitions that reach a threshold of 100,000 votes for a debate and, although the decision has yet to consider the motion for a debate, the Foreign Office responded to the signatories by email on Friday evening, pointing out that over 33 million have had their say.

With a top speed just shy of 90mph, the Leaf doesn’t have many pretensions in the boy racer departmentOften, when I think an idea won’t catch on (the mobile phone, the breakfast bar), it’s just because I haven’t thought about it as hard as its inventor has; I fear this may be true of the Nissan Leaf. It struck me as inherently preposterous to design a car that has to be delivered on the back of another car, because no one can be sure it’ll make the journey on electricity alone.While we’re here, why eschew the option of a petrol hybrid? Why not throw in some petrol so that the superbly organised can bask in their virtue, having remembered to charge it for eight (or 16) hours the night before (depending on the voltage), while the feckless can be allowed to sometimes forget? Continue reading...

Clem Bastow finds the augmented reality created by Nintendo and Niantic Labs absorbing, occasionally embarrassing, and above all, addictiveI’m halfway across the street – nose buried in my iPhone, tracking a rare Pokémon – before I look up and see the sign affixed to the cyclone wire fence: “PATROLLED BY ARMED GUARDS”. I find myself weighing up the situation: is it worth trespassing on Victoria Barracks in the possibly vain hope that I might catch, say, a Golbat?This is my life in a post-Pokémon Go world. Yesterday I said “Aha!” out loud, when a Pidgey appeared between a man’s legs as we were waiting at a pedestrian crossing. Continue reading...

Facebook’s live streaming video allows people to broadcast life – and death – for the world to see, raising a new and complex set of ethical questionsThree days in America. Three mobile phone videos depicting violent deaths.The killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and then a bloody shootout in Dallas, join a growing canon of brutal imagery either instantly broadcast or rapidly distributed on Facebook. Continue reading...

After much delay from surveillance concerns, the EU agreed to Privacy Shield, a new data transfer deal that will affect Facebook, Google and other US tech firmsGovernments across the European Union have finally given the green light to a new deal on how consumer data must be transferred with the United States, ending months of delay caused by concern over US surveillance.Privacy Shield, the new commercial data transfer pact, was provisionally agreed by the EU and the US in February and will come into effect on Tuesday. Continue reading...

The over-35s have discovered Snapchat – much to their kids’ utter horror: ‘We young people need another social media migration anyway’Like many people of a certain age, I recently began using Snapchat, after years of shunning it in favor of social media apps designed for people who still type with all their fingers and not just their thumbs.And I’m not alone. Of the 150 million people who use Snapchat each day, the number of US users over 35 has increased from 2% in 2013 to 14% today, we learned this week from ComScore. Continue reading...

Police’s lethal use of bomb-disposal robot in Thursday’s ambush worries legal experts who say it creates gray area in use of deadly force by law enforcementFor what experts are calling the first time in history, US police have used a robot in a show of lethal force. Early Friday morning, Dallas police used a bomb-disposal robot with an explosive device on its manipulator arm to kill a suspect after five police officers were murdered and seven others wounded.“We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was,” Dallas police chief David Brown told reporters. Continue reading...

His latest documentary lays bare the story of the Stuxnet worm, a groundbreaking virus jointly created by the US and Israel. Here the acclaimed film-maker discusses the pervasive threat posed by this new age of warfare“How paranoid were you before you made this movie and how paranoid are you now?” That question was perhaps the only moment of levity during a conversation with documentarian Alex Gibney after the credits rolled on Zero Days, a terrifying account of the cyberwar that is already raging on thumb drives and mainframes from Washington to Tel Aviv to Isfahan Province in Iran and anywhere else that can connect to the internet.Related: Zero Days review – a disturbing portrait of malware as the future of war Continue reading...

From Game of Thrones-inspired castle estates to spiralling pink robo-slides, this year’s graduate architecture shows offer a window to escapist fantasy landsArchitects might be known for wearing black, as if in permanent mourning for the lives they once had, and for spending months searching for the perfect shade of grey. But judging by this year’s student shows, that monochromatic hegemony is under threat: the next generation appears to be plotting a psychedelic revolution. Continue reading...

Officials also revoke regulatory approval for Theranos’s California lab, months after company acknowledged regulatory investigationUS regulators have banned Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes from owning and running a medical laboratory for two years, the company announced on Thursday. The Center for Medicare and Medical Services also revoked regulatory approval for Theranos’ California Lab.The announcement comes months after the company admitted to being investigated by several regulators following a series of reports from the Wall Street Journal. Theranos claimed that its technology enabled it to perform blood tests with just a pinprick, instead of a traditional blood draw. In October 2015, Theranos employees interviewed by the Wall Street Journal cast doubt over those claims and the accuracy of the company’s tests. Continue reading...

Forget New York, let alone Tokyo: as reader Greg Whistance-Smith points out, the wildly popular Japanese anime show Mobile Suit Gundam has rather bizarrely chosen quiet Edmonton, Alberta as the backdrop for its two-part season finaleOne of the peculiar honours shared by the world’s major cities is a knack for getting destroyed on screen. Residents of London, New York and Los Angeles have seen their cities fantastically ruined by natural and manmade disasters alike. None have experienced this quite as frequently as Tokyo: radioactive monsters, giant robots, supernatural forces and earthquakes have taken turns smashing the city in films and television shows for the past 60 years. Meticulously depicting a city’s demise is, if nothing else, a declaration of its importance: these places are worth destroying.In Edmonton, a quiet city at the northwestern tip of the Canadian prairies, those images of mass destruction seem exhilaratingly foreign. Edmonton is often forgotten not just in discussions of cities but in discussions of Canadian cities; or else it is humorously acknowledged as a place with endless winters and harsh, Soviet-like architecture. Those half-truths noted, the city nevertheless has its gems, among them an incredible river valley, one of the world’s biggest universities (the University of Alberta), and a thriving arts scene, including the world’s second largest fringe festival after Edinburgh. It’s one of the youngest cities on the continent, with a median age of 36.5, and the northernmost city of more than 1 million people.

Company appears to be relaxing its hold on franchises, potentially allowing new revenue to replace that lost by underwhelming console salesPokémon GO is only out in a few countries so far, but the game’s astonishing success is already having an impact far and wide.A mobile game for iOS and Android, Pokémon GO lets players catch the titular monsters in the “real” world. Players’ physical locations are tracked, and when they are nearby a Pokémon, they’re free to catch it by playing a simple mini game. Points of interest become item-granting “Pokéstops” or player-battling gyms, while a pedometer feature lets players incubate and then hatch eggs, for yet more Pokémon. Continue reading...

We talk to internet culture experts about how memes are used to generate change in society and politicsWith social editor, Elena Cresci, Montclair State University professor Joel Penney and digital culture lecturer Paolo Gerbaudo, Leigh Alexander discusses the impact that memes have on the world around us. Continue reading...

With fewer than 6,000 units sold, Silent Circle’s privacy-focused Blackphone was a huge flop. It highlights a bigger problem with how people value securityPrivacy and security of personal data is a hot-topic. From the snooper’s charter to the NSA, your Facebook settings to your medical data, concerns over the security of our information impacts many aspects of our lives. Many of us are exercised about intrusions and campaign strongly for personal rights - but when it comes to protecting ourselves, do we ever put our money where our mouths are?In 2014, after the Snowden revelations, a partnership between Swiss privacy outfit Silent Circle and Spanish smartphone maker Geeksphone produced the Blackphone. Continue reading...

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KiLife has created two wearable devices that use apps and Bluetooth to track a child’s distance from a parent and emit a 95-decibel siren if they stray too farParents afraid of losing their child in a crowd can rest easy thanks to a new wristband that can be locked to a youngster’s wrist and emit a 95-decibel siren should they wander too far.

Tiny robotic stingray gives hope to scientists they can create artificial creatures and ultimately build a human heartWith a flash of light and a ripple of fin, the small aquatic robot set off across the water and into the annals of science as the latest advance in artificial creatures.A melding of tissue and technology, the robot in question resembles a miniature stingray. It has a thin rubbery body, a skeleton of gold, and an unusual power source: a sheet of heart cells that contract when illuminated with pulses of blue light.

The Guardian takes the first-ever public tour of Amazon’s nerve centre in Seattle and finds a sparkling PR effort – and free bananasA group of twentysomethings are laughing around a rooftop fire-pit overlooking sailboats on Seattle’s Lake Union. A team of software engineers huddles round a laptop while sipping lattes in wingback chairs. And a tiny Boston terrier is running around squeaking a squeezy toy.Amazon’s first-ever public tour of its Seattle headquarters offers a very different view from the toxic workplace depicted in last year’s New York Times exposé. There’s not one person crying at their desk, and not a single burned-out “rank and yank” reject being tossed from the building by burly security guards. Continue reading...

My uncle, Ray Lakeland, who has died aged 95, was a pioneer in the world of outside broadcasting.The youngest of five children, Ray was the only son of Isabel and William Lakeland, who ran the Cattle Market pub in Preston, Lancashire. Educated by Jesuits at Preston Catholic college, where he became head boy, he studied history at Manchester University with the intention of becoming a teacher. Following the outbreak of the second world war, he enlisted in the Royal Armoured Corps in 1941, serving in tanks and rising to the rank of captain. Continue reading...

Tesla’s behaviour in the aftermath of news that a driver died while using the car’s autopilot feature criticised by crisis management experts as ‘error-filled’Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been bullish in his defense of his company following the death in May of a driver using the car’s “autopilot” feature, even claiming that in the last year “500,000 people would have been saved” if the feature was widely available.

Demolition of 216-unit complex is the latest example of rising income inequality in a region home to many of the world’s wealthiest technology companiesIris Milano could hardly sleep after she got the news that her family would be kicked out of their two-bedroom apartment in San Jose.“You’re always thinking and worrying. It’s something that is always with me,” said Milano, 47, a skin-care technician who lives with her husband and 14-year-old son in an apartment protected by rent control in the northern California city. “We are being forced to move. This is our home.” Continue reading...

Most insiders agree that trade plans aimed at limiting free movement and protecting economy, would damage UK sectorOne of the favoured plans to restrict freedom of movement but protect the UK economy following the vote to leave the EU would exacerbate the damage of Brexit to the technology sector companies fear.According to commenters such as the Financial Times’ Wolfgang Münchau, the UK might negotiate a bilateral free-trade agreement which would see it giving up “passporting” rights (the ability to offer financial services throughout the EU without needing to be subject to overseas regulators) in order to secure an opt-out of one of the EU’s four fundamental freedoms: the freedom of movement of people. Continue reading...

Snapchat’s latest feature is a shot across the bow at Facebook and Instagram, and has the social media firm aiming higher than ever beforeSnapchat is taking on Apple, Google and Facebook, and moving ever further away from its roots as an “ephemeral” messaging platform, with its latest feature: Memories.Snapchat users can now decide to save their snaps, both still and video, to a new section of the app, accessed by swiping up from the camera screen. From there they can also search for other saved photos, both chronologically and with text keywords – Snapchat suggests “Hawaii” and “dog”, for example. It’s smarter than simple keyword searches, and is able to recognise objects in the pictures, but don’t expect Google-level smart searches just yet. Continue reading...

Steve wants to know how to protect his personal information if his Windows 7 laptop falls prey to thieves Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterChatterbox: Thursday Continue reading...

Former culture secretary Maria Miller says companies should face levy if they fail to do more to tackle online abuseA senior Tory MP is calling for a levy on social media companies to pay for the policing of online abuse if they fail to do more to tackle the crimes taking place on their platforms.

Bitcoin hasn’t lived up to the salvation rhetoric, but the digital engine behind the currency may be about to change the worldHave you heard the good news? The blockchain is here – and it’s going to save everything.If you aren’t tied to the tech community, you might not have picked up on this salvation rhetoric. But you probably have heard of bitcoin, which burst into the public consciousness before imploding dramatically in 2014. Continue reading...

Android malware created by a Chinese advertising company has put as many as 85m devices at risk – here’s everything you need to know about itWhen researchers revealed that a Chinese advertising company had created one of the most pernicious pieces of Android malware yet, they estimated it has infected 10m Android handsets worldwide.Dubbed “HummingBad” by researchers at the security firm Check Point, it’s a one of the biggest attacks to date on Android – the world’s most popular mobile operating system, which runs on more than 80% of all smartphones as well as tablets. Continue reading...

In the fast-moving culture of Silicon Valley, where failure is welcomed on the road to success, experts ask if the car maker launched its autopilot too soonJust days after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into the fatal crash of a Tesla Model S driving in autopilot mode, a second Tesla using autopilot mode has been involved in a collision.Art gallery director Albert Scaglione told police he was driving in autopilot mode when his Tesla Model X crashed and rolled over on the Pennsylvania Turnpike around 100 miles east of Pittsburgh on 1 July. Scaglione and his artist son-in-law Tim Yane both survived without major injuries. Continue reading...

Online retailer says Brexit changes nothing for now and more staff needed to fulfil Prime Now one-hour delivery serviceAmazon is planning to hire 1,000 more people than previously expected in the UK this year as the online retailer rolls out its one-hour delivery operation and extends its web services.The company will now create 3,500 permanent full-time jobs in the UK in 2016, taking Amazon’s total workforce to 15,500 as its Prime Now fast-delivery service, launched a year ago, reaches more than a third of the UK population. Continue reading...

CEO Elon Musk has said the laser-sensing device used in Google’s driverless cars is not necessary. But after the fatal collision, will he reconsider his position?The autopilot mode of the Tesla Model S, involved in a fatal collision made public last week, draws on a number of sensors including cameras, ultrasound and radar. But one piece of technology Tesla chose not to build into its cars is Lidar, a laser-sensing system used by Google’s driverless cars.Tesla CEO Elon Musk has, in the past, dismissed the need for Lidar, suggesting the technology “doesn’t make sense” in the context of a car. “For full autonomy you’d really want to have a more comprehensive sensor suite and computer systems that are fail-proof. That said, I don’t think you need Lidar. I think you can do this all with passive optical and then maybe one forward radar,” he said during a press conference last October. Continue reading...

Mass recall comes after reports of hoverboard battery packs that exploded or caught fire and caused injuries such as burns to the neck, legs and armsMore than 500,000 hoverboards are being recalled after some of the motorized scooters overheated, burned riders and damaged property.There have been 99 reports to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) of hoverboard battery packs that exploded or caught fire, the US regulator said on Wednesday. Continue reading...

My father, Bill Swan, who has died aged 89, worked on skyscrapers as an engineer in 1960s Toronto and later pioneered jet washers for commercial use.His career reflected the upheavals of the 20th century. Born in Howdon, Tyneside, he left school at 14, in 1941, and became an apprentice boilermaker at the Wallsend Slipway, one of the great shipyards of the Tyne. His father, Joe, also a boilermaker, died of tuberculosis the same year, leaving Bill with his mother, Nancy (nee Corbett), and two sisters. Continue reading...

Care.data scheme to close after Fiona Caldicott review calls for tougher measures to keep information confidentialThe government’s scheme to store patients’ medical information in a single database, which ran into massive problems over confidentiality, is to be scrapped, NHS England has said.The decision to axe the scheme, care.data, follows the publication of two reports that support far greater transparency over what happens to the information, and opt-outs for patients who want their data seen only by those directly caring for them. Continue reading...

Raul Diaz was arrested in late June after a spate of attacks on Google Street View cars and buildingsA man has been charged with arson after setting a Google Street View car on fire because he “felt Google was watching him”.Raul Diaz, 30, of Oakland, California, was arrested outside Google offices in Bayshore Parkway on 30 June. Guns and a device which bomb squad officers identified as a half-finished pipe bomb were found in his car, according to a criminal complaint filed by the state. Continue reading...

Kieran ‘Kez’ Brown to play Fifa 16 for the team, live streaming on Twitch and making YouTube videosManchester City have hired an 18-year-old gamer to represent the football club at eSports tournaments and fan events.Kieran ‘Kez’ Brown will play for the team on the world’s dominant football game Fifa 16, live streaming on Amazon’s gaming site Twitch and making videos for the club’s YouTube channel. Continue reading...

Despite Tesla’s safety warnings about autopilot, experts say Joshua Brown’s family could argue he was led to believe the system was more capable than it isThe family of a man killed when his Tesla hit a truck while under the control of its autopilot function may have legal grounds to sue the company, legal experts say.

Malware takes over phones and tablets, steals and sells information, installs apps and clicks on ads – and 300,000 devices in US, and 100,000 in UK, are affectedOver 10m Android devices have been infected with a new piece of malware called HummingBad, according to security firm Check Point.

Extramarital dating site under investigation by US regulator a year after entire user database leaked onlineAvid Life Media (ALM), the corporate parent of hacked extramarital dating site Ashley Madison, is being investigated by the US Federal Trade Commission according to the company’s new executive team.Appointed in April, the new chief executive, Rob Segal, and the president, James Millership, have been given the job of righting ALM in the aftermath of the hack, which saw the entire membership register of Ashley Madison posted to the internet. Over the following year, ALM lost more than a quarter of its revenue, as worried members fled the company’s portfolio of dating sites. Continue reading...

Blockchain, the increasingly celebrated peer-to-peer data technology, is the basis of bitcoin and has huge potential – will it be as big as the web?Proposed in 2008 and launched the following year, bitcoin – a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system” – was initially viewed by many as the preserve of geeks and criminals. Yet it has subsequently taken giant strides towards the mainstream. There have been various high-profile attempts to unmask the “real” Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by bitcoin’s inventor(s). And in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, some hailed bitcoin, surging as the pound plummeted, as “digital gold”.It is now recognised that the still-mysterious Nakamoto did more than invent a currency. He also solved a longstanding problem in computing, to do with date and networks. His solution was complex, but it involved the use of an infrastructure comprising “blocks” of confirmed transactions that form a chronologically linked “chain”. As other digital currencies, and other blockchains, have emerged, banks and some governments have begun to pay attention, and investment is rocketing. The World Economic Forum predicts that, within a decade, 10% of global GDP could be stored on blockchains. Continue reading...

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