Technology | The Guardian

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...

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...