Technology | The Guardian

Leaked FBI advisory tells state and local law enforcement that they are ‘in this together’ and federal agency will aid unlocking of iPhones where possibleThe FBI has told other US law enforcement agencies that it will help them to unlock the iPhones of suspected criminals.

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Monday. We have heard reports that, due to the lateness of this box, some people have been forced to ‘do some work’. Obviously this is a scenario that we would prefer our users not to encounter and we apologise for any inconvenience or terror caused. Continue reading...

Elon Musk’s company took $276m in deposits for the ‘affordable’ $35,000 car, which is primed for a 2017 launchTesla Motors took almost $10bn (£7bn) worth of pre-orders for its newest car, the Model 3, in just two days, according to the company’s chief executive Elon Musk.By the end of 2 April, 276,000 pre-orders had been placed for the car worldwide. Although the Model 3 is Tesla’s first attempt at an “affordable” electric car, it will still cost at least $35,000 when it ships in mid–2017, meaning the company has secured $9.7bn worth of sales for a car still over a year away from rolling off the production line. Continue reading...

Blizzard gained many fans with its seminal MMORPG – but it’s the virtual card game Hearthstone that’s making it a household nameOne of the striking things about Blizzard, the superstar developer behind some of gaming’s biggest hits, including World of Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft, is how little it actually does.That’s not to say the company’s employees aren’t constantly at work, although the Kendo lessons taking place on the lawn outside its headquarters in Irvine, California, on the sunny spring day I visit could give that impression. Continue reading...

Hackers could steal users’ location data, finding out ‘where you are, how you got there and where you are going’, say campaigners

From home entertainment and wireless speakers to lights, thermostats, sensors, alarms and more, this is the one remote to rule them all – for a pretty priceThe Logitech Harmony Elite is the one remote to rule them all, from TV, set-top box and console to lights, thermostat, wireless speakers and internet-connected sensors, it’ll control the lot.

From home entertainment and wireless speakers to lights, thermostats, sensors, alarms and more, this is the one remote to rule them all – for a pretty priceThe Logitech Harmony Elite is the one remote to rule them all, from TV, set-top box and console to lights, thermostat, wireless speakers and internet-connected sensors, it’ll control the lot.

From football reports to clickbait, programs are changing the way the news is createdLook closely at what many journalists write about artificial intelligence – from AlphaGo’s triumph at the ancient Chinese board game Go to Microsoft’s accidentally racist Twitter bot – and you might detect some smugness. Research by Oxford University has predicted that journalism is among the jobs least likely to be replaced by a machine in the near future. And yet, as Columbia University prepares to celebrate 100 years of the Pulitzer prize, intelligent robots will publish financial reports, sports commentaries, clickbait and myriad other articles formerly the preserve of trained journalists.“A machine will win a Pulitzer one day,” predicts Kris Hammond from Narrative Science, a company that specialises in “natural language generation”. “We can tell the stories hidden in data.” Continue reading...

Android app offered access to videos and statements in Pashto but has been removed from Google Play StoreThe Afghan Taliban have created an app for Android smartphones in an attempt to connect with a wider digital audience.The app, called Alemarah, gave access to Taliban videos and statements in Pashto, but was removed from Google’s Play Store shortly after the US-based SITE Intel Group reported its launch on Friday. Continue reading...

Mainstream news is not to blame for Donald Trump’s ascendancy. After all, it’s largely ignored by his supportersAs the Trump bandwagon gathers speed, one of the most touching sights is that of mainstream journalists in full-on mea culpa mode. “Those of us in the news media have sometimes blamed Donald Trump’s rise on the Republican party’s toxic manipulation of racial resentments over the years,” wrote the New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, last Saturday. “But we should also acknowledge another force that empowered Trump: us. I polled a number of journalists and scholars, and there was a broad (though not universal) view that we in the media screwed up.”“Trump is not just an instant ratings/circulation/clicks gold mine; he’s the motherlode,” Ann Curry, a TV news anchor, told Kristof. “He stepped on to the presidential campaign stage precisely at a moment when the media is struggling against deep insecurities about its financial future. The truth is, the media has needed Trump like a crack addict needs a hit.” Continue reading...

With Britain facing a skills shortage, a new exhibition is highlighting the work of British industry’s backroom boys and girlsPictured seated in a workshop, visor raised, 20-year-old Sophy Bage gazes resolutely across the room. Hair drawn back tightly into a ponytail, bright yellow earplugs just visible, a small smile steals across her illuminated face. She looks completely at home – and well she might. Because Bage is a welder.On show at the Mall Galleries in central London, this photograph of Bage forms part of a week-long tribute to the little-known, yet vital, champions of science and engineering. Titled Technicians Make It Happen, and composed of photographs, paintings and items relating to a host of varied careers, the exhibition is a paean to those who make the wheels of industry turn, usher forth feats of civil engineering and build intricate equipment that will yield a slew of scientific results. “Technicians have a really diverse range of roles,” says Nigel Thomas, executive director of Education and Skills at the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. “You’ll see them in the NHS right through to stuff like satellite design.” Continue reading...

In rare public statement about spaceflight company, billionaire owner announces ‘flawless restart and perfect landing’The private spaceflight company Blue Origin has successfully landed a rocket for the third time, owner Jeff Bezos announced on Saturday.Related: SpaceX mission could herald new era of reusable rockets Continue reading...

The most significant examples of what used to be called the ‘sharing economy’ are giant corporations pursuing monopoly power – what exactly is being shared?Sharing” is one of the most rhetorically abused virtues of the age. First we had the euphemism “file-sharing”, for duplicating and uploading copies of albums or films to the internet. Well, you can’t share what isn’t yours in the first place. (If I pilfer money from a bank and give it to my friends, I might plead that I was just “money-sharing”, but I am more likely to be convicted of robbery.) And now we supposedly have a “sharing economy”, the most-often cited two examples of which – Uber and Airbnb – are giant corporations pursuing monopoly power and fighting governments the world over. What exactly is being shared here, and in whose interest?The first “sharing economy” organisations allowed members to timeshare things such as cars or power tools, rather than owning one each and leaving it idle most of the time. In their purest form such groups were “peer-to-peer”: self-organising, with no central authority. Once a for-profit company is set up to handle the logistics – such as Zipcar – however, the notion of “sharing” is arguably already out of the window. Still, there remained the kernel of a communitarian idea in the origin of Airbnb, founded by two tech workers who rented out airbeds in their spare rooms for a conference, and thought there might be a market. Continue reading...

‘Everyone does it’, but leaseholders and tenants must tread carefully if they want to avoid repercussionsGrowing numbers of landlords are launching possession proceedings against tenants who have sublet their property via sites such as Airbnb without permission, it was claimed this week. Tenants who do this without consent risk eviction for a breach of their assured shorthold tenancy agreement. Meanwhile, owners of leasehold flats have also been warned they should tread very carefully.Only Airbnb hosts who own their property outright can be sure that they are not breaching any contractual obligations – but even these homeowners, like any other landlord, are breaking the law if they fail to get a gas safety certificate for the property each year. Continue reading...

Gmail Mic Drop caused more tears than laughter, thanks to users accidentally enabling the prank on serious emails – with some dire consequencesApril Fools’ Day 2016: best jokes from around the worldGoogle’s April Fools’ Day prank has backfired, leaving the company looking the fool and a number of concerned users fearing for their jobs – or worse.

Science Kombat is a new browser-based game that lets some of history’s most famous scientists duke it out in an epic grudge matchHere’s something fun for a Friday: If you miss the heady days of over-the-top fighting games from the early 90s, then Superinteressante magazine has a neat little surprise for you this week.Science Kombat is a free-to-play browser game that pits eight science heavyweights against each other in a one-on-one brawl. You can choose from Einstein, Tesla, Pythagoras, Hawking, Turing, Darwin, Newton and Curie (it would have been nice to see more female scientists on the roster), and each comes with their own set of science-based power-ups. Stephen Hawking can create black holes to inflict damage on your opponent, while Curie harnesses the power of radium-coated hands to unleash a fireball reminiscent of Ryu’s Hadouken. Continue reading...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveils a prototype of the Model 3 car to a group of Tesla owners in Los Angeles on Thursday. The electric car will go into production in late 2017 at a starting price of $35,000 (£24,000). He says tens of thousands of pre-orders have already been taken Continue reading...

From the first Apple computer, Steve Jobs leaving and returning, the iMac and the MacBook Air to the iPod, iPhone, iPad and Watch, Apple’s is a rich history Continue reading...

Doctor Who: Comic Creator, Dragon Anywhere, Great Italian Chefs, Super Arc Light, Total War Battles: Kingdom and more to try on your iOS deviceFrom Doctor Who to Italian chefs, and South Korean survival-horror to lost socks – the App Store is certainly a broad church in 2016.Our pick of the best new apps and games this month includes all of the above, plus music-making tools, retro dungeon adventures, and an app where children are rated on their ability to copy cartoon characters’ gurning. Continue reading...

Pakistanis have been riveted by Shahbaz Taseer and his wife Maheen’s accounts of his captivity and releaseA Pakistani man who was held by the Taliban for nearly five years before being abruptly freed this month has described on social media the moment he was reunited with his wife.Pakistanis have been riveted by Shahbaz Taseer and his wife Maheen’s accounts of his captivity and release. Continue reading...

Mogul claims media group Schibsted and VC firm Verdane exaggerated the streaming service’s number of users when he bought it last year

Tech giant adds to publishers’ woes as it is revealed it expects to include adblocking features in next version of its Internet Explorer replacement

Company releases open-source chatbot framework allowing developers to build their own versions of its disastrous Twitter bot experimentMicrosoft has released open source tools for people to build their own chatbots, as it set out its view of the immediate future of artificial intelligence as conversational aids similar to its back-firing Tay experiment.

Collective says it attacked official websites in retaliation to sentences given to 17 members of a book club in LuandaA Portuguese branch of the Anonymous hacking collective says it has shut down around 20 Angolan government websites in retaliation to the jailing of 17 youth activists for plotting a “rebellion”.

Making Dalek-driven comics, playing Nintendo’s first mobile game, getting food Deliveroo’d to your door, battling in Clash Royale and more new appsNearly eight years since the launch of the Google Play store, have all the good app ideas been taken? Nope. Every month throws up a new crop of interesting, inventive and useful (or just fun) apps and games.Here’s our pick of the month for Android. Clicking or tapping on an app’s title will take you straight to the store, and prices are correct at the time of writing. If you see “IAP” that means the app uses in-app purchases. Continue reading...

Andreas Stephens waited outside the Sydney dealership for 48 hours to pre-order the as-yet-unseen model, expected to retail for about A$45,000 in 2018An Australian who waited outside Sydney’s Tesla dealership for 48 hours has become the first person in the world to order its hugely anticipated electric car.Andreas Stephens pre-ordered the Model 3, an as-yet-unseen model expected to retail for about A$45,000 (US$35,000) when it is eventually released in Australia in 2018. Continue reading...

The phone belongs to teenage suspect Hunter Drexler, and the announcement comes just days FBI says it gained access to the San Bernardino gunman’s iPhoneThe FBI agreed to help an Arkansas prosecutor unlock an iPhone and iPod belonging to two teenagers accused of killing a couple, just days after the federal agency announced it had gained access to an iPhone linked to the San Bernardino gunman.The FBI announced Monday that it had gained access to an iPhone belonging to Syed Farook, who died with his wife in a gun battle with police after they killed 14 people in San Bernardino in December. The FBI hasn’t revealed how it cracked Farook’s iPhone. Authorities also haven’t said whether the iPhone and iPod in the Arkansas case are the same models or whether the FBI will use the same method to try to get into the devices. Continue reading...

For a long time self-driving cars were considered the province of science fiction, or expensive science projects financed by big companies. But the falling price of a key piece of technology needed for some self-driving vehicles has enabled a few college dropouts to found their own automated vehicle startup. Guardian reporter Danny Yadron takes a ride with Brandon Moak, co-founder of Varden Labs, which is now testing their cars on California campuses Continue reading...

Filter fan claims to clean up pollen, pollutants and smells with a new Internet of Things app for remote monitoring, connecting to its existing robotic vacuumDyson’s new Pure Cool Link air purifying fan promises to clean up the air in your home, but also marks the first step of the British engineering firm into the Internet of Things.

Privacy watchdog finds US government has repeatedly relied on All Writs Act to try to force Google or Apple to unlock a phone, as in the San Bernardino caseThe US government has used the same legal tactic it deployed in its encryption fight with Apple in more than 60 other phone-unlocking cases, according to a tally by a privacy watchdog, including other iPhones and devices running Google’s Android operating system.The American Civil Liberties Union scoured court records across the US for cases where the government relied on the All Writs Act to try to force Google or Apple to help them unlock a phone. The statute, which has its origins in a more than 200-year-old legal principle, gives judges broad authority to ensure their orders – such as search warrants – are fulfilled. Continue reading...

Home Office is told its plans in the snooper’s charter to retain web browsing history of all British citizens for 12 months would cost in excess of £1bnGovernment plans to track every website visited by every British citizen could cost more than £1bn, privacy campaigners have estimated.The £1bn estimate for the cost of requiring phone and internet companies to retain everyone’s internet connection records and store them for 12 months is based on a similar scheme in Denmark, which was recently dropped on grounds of cost. Continue reading...

The worlds of science and technology collide as we ask how new tech is being used on localised levels to create global changeIt’s the question on everyone’s lips: what are we doing about climate change? Lucky for us, there are innovations in tech and science taking place that may be applied to global issues like climate change.Joining Nathalie Nahai to discuss how new technology – and new ways of approaching the data behind tech – are shaping our future are the project director for Project Ukko, Drew Hemment; senior researcher at Nesta Lydia Nicholas; and particle phycisist Ben Still. Continue reading...

Süddeutsche Zeitung’s lawsuit is thrown out by court in latest blow to online newspapers hoping to halt spread of adblocking

Automated vehicles have long been considered the province for big companies, but now even a few college dropouts can get one on the roadConsider this scene at a California state college campus:A futuristic-looking golf cart rolls towards a student walking with her books. When it gets near, it stops on its own, then Brandon Moak leans out and says, “Would you like a ride in a self-driving vehicle?” Continue reading...

USB-C cables that do not comply with the required specifications, which have been known to fry computers, smartphones and tablets, are now bannedAmazon has banned USB-C charging cables that do not comply with specifications, awhich are considered dangerous as they can damage devices they are used with and potentially cause safety risks.The USB-C specification, which includes a reversible connector that can plug in either way up, was designed as the do-it-all cable capable of charging computers as well as smartphones, tablets and other low-power gadgets.

Short-lived return saw Tay tweet about smoking drugs in front of the police before suffering a meltdown and being taken offlineMicrosoft’s attempt to converse with millennials using an artificial intelligence bot plugged into Twitter made a short-lived return on Wednesday, before bowing out again in some sort of meltdown.

Users blame Apple and iOS 9.3 after Booking.com app broke fundamental link system within the iPhone and iPad, leaving them angrily tapping dead URLsA bug that causes links and web addresses not to work and iPhones to crash continues to affect thousands of Apple smartphone and tablet users.

Main programmer on AlphaGo published a paper on teaching a computer to play the casino favouriteWhat next for Google’s DeepMind, now that the company has mastered the ancient board game of Go, beating the Korean champion Lee Se-Dol 4–1 this month?A paper from two UCL researchers suggests one future project: playing poker. And unlike Go, victory in that field could probably fund itself – at least until humans stopped playing against the robot. Continue reading...

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

A temporary truce has emerged in the raging battle between Apple and the FBI, but technology fragility and corporate power remain unaddressedIt has been a spectacular six-week showdown – the world’s most valuable brand, Apple, pitted against the powerful American agents of the FBI. Two titans of spin, locked in a fast-moving battle over a dead terrorist’s smartphone. Now, as dramatically as it exploded, the FBI’s legal demand that Apple help it crack the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino killers has evaporated – the agents hacked their way in anyway, assisted by a mysterious third party.There was always more to the Apple v FBI case than met the eye – and it is true for this latest twist too. The biggest issue is that both sides stand to gain a lot more from this battle than any of us. With little relation to reality, and backed by a worryingly partisan chorus, the notoriously closed Apple is emerging as a champion of users’ rights. Equally worryingly, a government agency is claiming the power to keep to itself a tool that can potentially break security features on millions of phones, while earmarking a demand for further judicial or legislative intervention in the future. Whichever way you look, this feud is far from a road to freedom in the digital environment. Continue reading...

Developer Blizzard agrees scene in which female provocatively directs rear towards camera is inconsistent with her characterThe game developer Blizzard has altered a sequence in the forthcoming shooter Overwatch after fans complained that it needlessly sexualised a female character.In the contentious moment, a character named Tracer adopts a victory pose in which her rear is directed provocatively toward the camera. One player argued on the game’s official forum that the pose is inconsistent with her character, as established in the game’s publicity and narrative. Continue reading...

$9.99-a-month premium tier launching first in the US, taking on Spotify and Apple Music with 125m-track catalogueThe music and audio streaming firm SoundCloud is launching its long-planned subscription service, but for now the $9.99-a-month service will only be available in the US.The new feature, SoundCloud Go, is being launched on Tuesday, and the company hopes a mammoth catalogue of more than 125m tracks – quadruple those of its rivals Spotify and Apple Music – will persuade a chunk of its 175 million subscribers who listen for free to start paying. Continue reading...

After hundreds complain of bugs and crashes, one gets fixed by Apple and the other is isolated to Booking.com’s appHundreds of iPhone and iPad users have been hit by multiple bugs locking their devices or causing them to crash since the release of Apple’s latest operating software, iOS 9.3.

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

Changes to Instagram’s algorithm will present photos out of chronological order. But users should not rush to change their preferences just yetForthcoming changes to Instagram’s algorithm, which will present photos out of chronological order, have thrown the photo-sharing app into chaos, with users asking their followers to “turn on notifications” so their updates aren’t lost to the new regime.Don’t do it. For your sake. Not yet, anyway. Continue reading...

AI such as Microsoft’s Tay show why we need more women in tech – and how the male-dominated industry is failing to consider their real-life counterpartsBy now you’ve likely heard the story of Tay, Microsoft’s social AI experiment that went from “friendly millennial girl” to genocidal misogynist in less than a day. While Tay promised to learn from her interactions with people online, Microsoft apparently hasn’t learned anything from the countless headlines about how Twitter users like to talk to visible women – everything from gleefully anarchic trolling to threats and abuse – otherwise it would have seen this coming.At first, Tay’s story seems like a fun one for anyone who’s interested in cautionary sci-fi. What does it mean for the future of artificial intelligence if a bot can embody the worst aspects of digital culture after just 16 hours online? If any AI is given the vastness of human creation to study at lightning speed, will it inevitably turn evil? Will the future be a content creation battle for their souls? Continue reading...

The release of the headsets is a major milestone for virtual reality and a big day for the tech world, but it could be a while before they really take offOculus today has shipped its first consumer virtual reality headsets, setting a major milestone for the industry.The groundbreaking headsets, retailing for $599 and now backordered until at least July, allow high-quality, super immersive virtual reality viewing in a small package – a remarkable innovation those in the space have been holding out hope for for years. Continue reading...

Following the attack in Pakistan, Facebook users as far away as Hawaii, New York and the UK received notification from the site’s disaster response featureFacebook has apologised for pushing its safety check feature to users worldwide in the wake of the suicide bombing in Pakistan.After the deadly attack in Lahore on Sunday, in which at least 69 people were killed and hundreds injured, Facebook users nowhere near the Pakistani city were mistakenly asked if they were safe. Continue reading...

The FBI’s attempt to force Apple to unlock a phone is only the latest example of the state challenging fundamental freedomsSo the FBI has backed off – at least for the time being – in its bid to force Apple to write a crippled version of the iPhone operating system in order to enable the bureau to unlock the phone used by a terrorist. Last Tuesday government lawyers asked a judge to postpone the scheduled hearing because FBI investigators believe they may have found a way to hack the iPhone’s security without forcing Apple to help. The judge readily agreed, thereby putting on the back burner an epic confrontation between an irresistible force and an immovable object. If you wanted a case study that illustrates the challenges posed by digital technology for the modern state, then this battle between the FBI and Apple is it.The story began on 2 December with an attack by two terrorists that left 14 people dead and 22 seriously injured at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. Four hours after the shooting, the two killers (a married couple) were shot dead by the police. The man – Syed Rizwan Farook – had an iPhone provided by his employers, which survived the raid. Continue reading...