Technology | The Guardian

Will souped up Xbox and PlayStations excite the punters? Meanwhile, a surprise return to form for Resident EvilIt’s officially summer time, which means – even for gamers – it’s time to venture outside, blinking into the unfamiliar daylight. This is the season the games industry chooses to quietly slow to a standstill until September. But first came the small matter of E3 – the Electronic Entertainment Expo – in LA, otherwise known as the annual multi-million-dollar bunfight where games publishers tout their sparkly upcoming wares.Related: Scorpio rising: Microsoft's plans for Xbox One and the future of video games Continue reading...

Virtual reality is the hot topic of conversation, but here’s how other trends, from augmented reality to the rejection of ‘crunch’, could change the future of gamingThe focus of this year’s Develop, the annual game developer conference held in Brighton, was unmistakable: virtual reality. The aim of conference is to highlight and discuss current trends, and last year these included social media, spectatorship, and games as services. This year, however, VR dominated the schedule to the extent that sometimes it was difficult to find a non-VR talk to attend, but with so many developers and other industry members in one place there were plenty of other discussions on the fringes. At least until Pokémon Go came out.In a Q&A session, Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail said: “The industry moves so fast that I think a lot of advice from two years ago, unless it’s very generic advice, does not really apply in the same way anymore.” Continue reading...

Ukrainian man Artem Vaulin, the alleged ringleader of Kickass Torrents, was arrested in Poland and faces charges in USA Ukrainian alleged to be the ringleader of the world’s biggest online piracy site, Kickass Torrents, has been accused of distributing more than $1bn worth of illegally copied films, music and other content.

The mobile game’s 21m players are bulk buying ‘PokeCoins’ from Apple’s app store, one brokerage firm saysApple stands to rake in $3bn in revenue from the Pokémon Go craze in the next one to two years as gamers buy “PokéCoins” from its app store, according to analysts.Pokémon Go, the augmented reality game from Japanese games firm Nintendo, can be downloaded for free but iPhone users can use PokeCoins to buy additional features.

Company calls discrimination ‘the greatest challenge we face’ and has come under fire in recent months for users experiencing racial bias on the platformAirbnb has hired former US attorney general Eric Holder to help address racism and other forms of discrimination on its short-term rental platform, the company announced Wednesday.In a blogpost, CEO Brian Chesky called discrimination “the greatest challenge we face as a company” and conceded that he and his cofounders were not “fully conscious of this issue when we designed the platform” and that “there have at times been a lack of urgency to work on this”. Continue reading...

Elsewhere, a Pokémon trainer gets stuck in a tree as officers across the country struggle to handle continuing app-fuelled mishapsA woman trying to catch Pokémon got stuck in a cemetery tree in New Jersey, a Baltimore man drove into a police car and a man in New Hampshire was robbed at knifepoint, as officers around the US struggle to respond to Pokémon hunters distracted into danger.Related: Pokémon Go: armed robbers use mobile game to lure players into trap Continue reading...

From a taped conversation to a naked snap at the gym, technology no longer places reasonable limits on our ability to share private acts – but the law doesWhen Playboy model Dani Mathers shared a photograph of a naked woman in a gym locker room with her thousands of followers on Snapchat last week, the caption she affixed to the illicit image embodied the promise and threat of the cameraphone era: “If I can’t unsee this, then you can’t either.”Seeing something once, for a passing moment of time, only to move on and forget, is no longer the standard form of experience. In countries such as the US and the UK where smartphones are already ubiquitous, we are empowered by technology to capture, record, store and disseminate previously unimaginable amounts of audio and visual information about ourselves and the people around us. Continue reading...

Banning the ‘alt-right’ agitator from Twitter is not constructive; it stands to further wind up people who respond to humiliation by becoming dangerousDing dong, the witch is dead. In the wake of news earlier today that Twitter had finally banned “alt-right” agitator Milo Yiannopoulos from its platform, a chorus of virtual cheers has gone up, a powerful sense of satisfaction.The Breitbart writer, who previously appointed himself a star of the digital trash fire known as “Gamergate”, has been a peddler of inarguable hate speech. Beyond just speech, though, he’s cannily built smear campaigns that incited his followers to dogpile other users, usually women and people of color, until the targets could no longer use social media constructively. Continue reading...

Twitter bars Milo Yiannopoulos for good after Jones quit the network following tweets that left her in ‘personal hell’Twitter has vowed to act more quickly and effectively against online abuse having banned one of its most notorious users following a campaign of vitriolic racist and sexist abuse against the Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones.Milo Yiannopoulos, a British columnist with the rightwing website Breitbart, was permanently barred from Twitter after Jones quit the network on Tuesday in response to a wave of abusive tweets, which she said left her in a “personal hell”. Continue reading...

James Farrar claims that one month in 2015 he earned little more than £5 an hour and feared repercussions if he cancelled a jobAn Uber driver who says he earned less than the minimum wage has told a tribunal about the “tremendous pressure” he was put under to work long hours and accept jobs, and the “repercussions” he faced from the company if he cancelled a pick-up.

As the company prepares to bring thousands of new workers to its Menlo Park campus, advocates say it must do more to help lower-income local residentsThe first time Tameeka Bennett had to drive two hours in traffic to get to her job in East Palo Alto, she broke down in tears in her car. It was October 2014, and Bennett, 29, had never imagined she would have to move away from the Silicon Valley city where she grew up, which is one of the least affluent communities in the region.Related: 'Largest-ever' Silicon Valley eviction to displace hundreds of tenants Continue reading...

Owner of 4AD, Matador and XL says hackers may have accessed personal data of US customers who bought music online in past yearBeggars Group – home of independent music labels 4AD, Matador, Rough Trade Records, XL Recordings and Young Turks – has warned US customers of a data breach following news that the conglomerate has been hacked.A letter sent by Beggars’ US distributor, Matador Direct, to customers last week explained that people who purchased any products from the websites for the aforementioned labels between 28 April 2015 and 4 May 2016 may be victims of the data breach, possibly exposing their personal information to the perpetrators. Continue reading...

Technology firm hailed success of machine-learning trial and said efficiencies will be applied to all its centres by end of yearGoogle says it has cut its vast data centres’ energy use by 15% by applying artificial intelligence to manage them more efficiently than humans.The servers that power billions of web searches, streamed films and social media accounts are estimated to account for around 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Google is believed to have one of the biggest fleets of them in the world.

Company says services have been since restored, after UK’s largest ISP suffers outage affecting England, Wales, Scotland and Northern IrelandPower issues have caused outage to BT’s broadband and Plusnet services, leaving thousands of users struggling to access the internet.The UK’s biggest internet service provider (ISP) with 10 million customers, reported outages in several areas at about 9am. BT said it was aware and working on a fix at 9.10am, but is facing outcry on social media as users vent their frustration. Continue reading...

First commercial partnership for hit location-based game will see 3,000 fast-food restaurants become virtual Pokémon gyms, paving the way for global rolloutThe release of mobile-gaming sensation Pokémon Go in its home country of Japan has been delayed due to leaked details of McDonald’s sponsorship of the game.

The place to talk about games andIt’s Wednesday. Continue reading...

At a Guardian Live event, games editor Keith Stuart asks a panel of designers and programmers what the advances in artificial intelligence mean for games and the people who play them?The success of Pokémon Go suggests that augmented reality (AR) games will be big business. Already games like Minecraft can create new landscapes every time you play, while advances in artificial intelligence may lead to computer-controlled characters that can build new stories and activities based on player preferences.What are the ethical and legal ramifications of AI as it deepens its involvement with people? Could virtual reality gaming ever become like The Matrix? Continue reading...

Critic, author and father Rich Stanton has beaten Bloodborne a dozen times, but having faced the game’s toughest boss, is it time to retire?Recently, my partner and I had our second child and, over the subsequent weeks, as is often the case, we barely slept. What I didn’t expect was that, in the zombie hours at the edge of night, the harrowing cries of our newborn baby would keep pulling me back to something dark, distant and seemingly unrelated. Bloodborne.From Software’s 2015 masterpiece, a dark action adventure set in a plague-ridden gothic metropolis, is a towering achievement of interactive media, but it is also a grim and intimidating challenge requiring at least 50 hours to appreciate. During that time, players discover that a core theme of the game is progeny, covering the whole gamut, from birth to infanticide. Not for the first time, I realised the director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, thinks of everything. Continue reading...

Breitbart writer, who tweeted as @Nero, handed permanent suspension after claims he fanned flames of social media attack on Ghostbusters’ Leslie JonesTwitter has permanently banned a rightwing writer and notorious troll for his role in the online abuse of Leslie Jones over her role in the Ghostbusters reboot.Milo Yiannopoulos, the technology editor for Breitbart.com, tweeted as @Nero. Before he was banned, he had more than 338,000 followers and called himself “the most fabulous supervillain on the internet” for his provocations online. Continue reading...

The British former journalist lost a bid for protection from damages over the Hulk Hogan privacy case, but vowed to fight onThe founder of Gawker Media, Nick Denton, faces personal bankruptcy after a US judge refused to extend protections shielding him from liabilities in the Hulk Hogan privacy case.The decision represents a victory for Hogan as well billionaire investor Peter Thiel, an early backer and board member of Facebook who helped fund Hogan’s lawsuit following the publication of an article by Gawker about Thiel’s homosexuality. Continue reading...

The Balkan country is littered with tens of thousands of mines planted during the 1992-1995 conflictPeople playing the popular smartphone game Pokémon Go in Bosnia have been urged to avoid areas littered with unexploded mines left over from the 1990s conflict.“Today we received information that some users of the Pokémon Go app in Bosnia were going to places which are a risk for (unexploded) mines, in search of a pokemon,” the NGO Posavina bez mina said on its Facebook page. Continue reading...

Blue-tick badges normally reserved for the accounts of high-profile figures are to be rolled out to all users who provide correct informationThe Twitter “blue tick” badge normally reserved for the accounts of high-profile figures is to be made available to all users, the social media site has said.Related: ​Belarusian president accidentally ​sparks international striptease Continue reading...

Supreme court overturns judge’s order to mobile phone companies to block access after owner Facebook stood by refusal to intercept texts for police inquiryBrazil’s federal supreme court has suspended a judge’s ruling ordering mobile phone companies to indefinitely block access to Facebook’s WhatsApp – the third such decision against the popular phone messaging app in eight months.

Institutions including MoMA in New York are seizing the opportunity to get gamers through the doors, though some museumgoers are unimpressedSummer is a tough time to get paying museumgoers through the doors – but this year, there’s an extra incentive. Art museums like the Whitney and the Museum of Modern Art in New York are jumping on the Pokémon Go bandwagon and helping players of the augmented reality game “catch ’em all”.Just as local businesses have jumped on the bandwagon to get new customers, museums are jumping on board to attract young players and boost ticket sales from Los Angeles to New York, Texas and Boston. Continue reading...

The wildly popular mobile game is a Pokétopian fantasy that has flooded our world with good feelings – and timing could be everything behind its success

The £24.3bn deal has been called into question by SoftBank’s shareholders, who are concerned about their company’s debt levelThe £24.3bn takeover of ARM Holdings, Britain’s biggest technology company, could be in doubt after investors in the Japanese group behind the deal – SoftBank – gave it the thumbs down.Related: The chancellor's reaction to SoftBank's takeover of ARM was ludicrous Continue reading...

Employment law’s ‘case of the year’ will assess claim by 19 drivers that they are not technically self-employedUber is facing a legal challenge from drivers who say that they should be recognised officially as workers at the company, as calls grow for new rights for the UK’s burgeoning army of self-employed individuals.In a tribunal hearing described as “the case of the year in UK employment law”, lawyers working for a group of Uber drivers will argue that the terms and conditions of their work with the company mean that they are not technically self-employed and should be entitled to a range of benefits that they currently do not receive.

Art Cockerill, who has died aged 87, was a soldier, engineer, author, librettist, publisher and occasional contributor to Guardian Weekly.Born in Blidworth, Northamptonshire, he was the fourth of 10 children, all of whom would later feature in his semi-fictional family saga Lay Gently on the Coals (2011). His father, John, was variously a soldier, manual worker and entertainer; his mother, Margaret, let rooms to theatricals – Art remembered John Mills as a lodger. He entered the Duke of York’s Royal Military School, in Dover, Kent, in 1939. A proud “Dukie”, he went on to write the school’s bicentenary history, The Charity of Mars (2002). Continue reading...

ICM poll shows support for victims to have their identity protected after Home Office rejects calls for anonymityThree-quarters of people believe victims of “revenge pornography” should be given automatic anonymity to bring the offence in line with other sexual crimes.In an ICM poll 75% of men and women questioned supported campaigners who want victims’ identities to be protected after an allegation is made to police. The revenge pornography law – introduced in April last year – does not treat the offence as a sexual crime and girls, men and women who are victims face being re-victimised if a suspect is arrested and charged, say campaigners. There is also concern that victims are not supporting prosecutions because of fears of an online backlash if they come forward. Continue reading...

Players wishing to skip effort required to gain experience and capture rare or advanced Pokémon appear to be willing to pay for someone to do it for themThe Pokémon Go craze continues unabated, with accounts being sold on auction sites such as eBay for thousands of pounds, despite contravening developer Niantic’s terms of service.The accounts, which list high-level trainers and specific rare or powerful Pokémon with combat powers over 1,000 points, promise to help users defeat others in battle and take over gyms without needing to pound the streets catching Pokémon for weeks. Continue reading...

Worst Tinder Date Ever, from the writers of Friends With Benefits, will be the first film to explore the dating app on the big screenWarner Bros is developing a romantic comedy based on dating app Tinder.Worst Tinder Date Ever is a pitch from Keith Merryman and David A Newman, writers of Friends With Benefits and Think Like a Man. The plot follows a couple in Los Angeles who meet via the app and share an accident-filled date. Continue reading...

Riding the Pokémon Go wave but stuck on training your Pokémon to fight in gyms? Haven’t quite mastered when to tap and when to swipe? Look no furtherTwo weeks in, Pokémon Go fever continues, but as new players join it’s getting difficult to compete in gyms. Here’s some advanced tips to help you get the best out of what you’ve got.

Culture, media and sport committee says BT’s broadband infrastructure division offers poor serviceBT is failing to invest properly in broadband infrastructure and should be broken up unless it spends more money to improve the service, according to a committee of MPs.In a report published on Tuesday, the culture, media and sport select committee said BT’s underinvestment in its Openreach broadband infrastructure division could amount to hundreds of millions of pounds a year. Continue reading...

Shares in the Japanese firm have more than doubled since the launch of the popular gameShares in Japan’s Nintendo soared another 14% on Tuesday, more than doubling the firm’s market capitalisation to 4.5tn yen (£32bn) in just seven sessions since the mobile game Pokémon Go was launched in the United States.The phenomenal success of Pokémon Go – now available in 35 countries, the majority in Europe, and most recently in Canada – has triggered massive buying in Nintendo shares, surprising even some seasoned market players. Continue reading...

Romain Pierre, 27, was arrested in Cirebon but was freed when police realised he had unintentionally entered baseIndonesian police say they have detained a French man who trespassed on a military base while playing the augmented reality game Pokémon Go.Related: Pokémon Go: how the overnight sensation was 20 years in the making Continue reading...

BBC+ selects content users are likely to be interested in based on indicators such as their location and what they have previously watched, read or listened toThe BBC has launched a new personalised app tying together access to all its digital services that it says will help the public get the most out of their licence fee.BBC+, which soft launches on Tuesday, collates BBC content and tailors recommendations, bringing together different services such as iPlayer and the BBC News website. As it develops, more content will be accessible from inside the app. Continue reading...

Thread is helping thousands sharpen up their wardrobe without leaving the house. As well as revolutionising shopping habits, it is an interesting test case for AI in the workplaceLast week, I bought a selection of clothes recommended by an online personal stylist: a pair of skinny Topman jeans, a perfectly fitting white T-shirt from Jack & Jones, and most daringly – for me, anyway – some khaki chino shorts by Pull&Bear.We’d carried out the consultation online, with me sharing not only obvious information like my size, desired price range and “daringness” (with “daring” defined as wearing floral shirts or shorts with blazers), but also helping her work out my actual style preferences by telling her brands I like and flicking through endless pictures of well-dressed men to highlight the looks I want. Continue reading...

NSW police commissioner Andrew Scipione expresses concern about potential effects on children, saying in real life ‘game over is game over’New South Wales’ top police officer has warned against the society-wide impact of violence in video games, saying that in real life “game over is game over”.Andrew Scipione, the state police commissioner, expressed concern at the potential effects, particularly on children, in his opening address to a conference on violence in the media in Sydney on Monday. Continue reading...

Worldwide study finds that while 39% of Brazilians think they could build a website, only 16% of British workers feel the sameOnly 16% of workers in the UK would be comfortable building a website, compared with 39% in Brazil and 37% in India, according to a report, which warns that Britain’s digital skills lag behind other countries’.

Revenue, minus commissions paid to partners for web traffic, fell 19% in the company’s second quarter, the sixth decline in the past seven periodsThe bad news keeps on coming for Yahoo. On the same day the company reached a shortlist for the sale of its troubled assets, the fallen tech giant once again missed its quarterly earnings predictions.Revenue for the company’s second quarter was $1.31bn. Revenue, minus commissions paid to partners for web traffic, fell 19% in the second quarter, the sixth decline in the past seven periods. Continue reading...

Company missed second-quarter expectations, announcing that it added only 1.7 million members worldwide and blamed price increase for drop in membershipViewers gave Netflix the chill last quarter, as the company blamed a price increase for a dramatic drop off in its growth rate.Netflix shares plunged 15% in the after-hours trading on Monday when the company announced that it added just 1.7 million members worldwide in the second quarter. As of last month, the streaming service has more than 83 million members.

Microsoft shrinks games machine by 40% and adds redesigned controller, IR blaster and front-facing USB port in console war with SonyMicrosoft’s slimmed-down and 4K-movie capable Xbox One S will cost £350 ($400) and be available from 2 August in the US.

The parcel giant’s couriers complain of low pay, no employment rights and the threat of losing their work at short noticeWhen a courier rings your doorbell with the latest delivery from the virtual high street, there’s a good chance they work for Hermes, the German-owned delivery giant that is on course to deliver more than a quarter of a billion parcels to British households this year. Such is the UK consumer’s appetite for online shopping, Hermes’ parcel load is increasing by as much as 15% a year.Hermes couriers, alongside workers at the Royal Mail’s ParcelForce and other companies such as Yodel, are the footsoldiers of the internet shopping boom. But while most of ParcelForce’s deliverers earn an hourly wage with sick pay and paid holiday, every one of Hermes’ 10,500 couriers is self-employed. They are paid per parcel – 48p is common, but it can be more. Yodel, with 8,000 couriers, operates a similar system. Continue reading...

Tech giant’s head of safety tells conference that enforcement staff weren’t meeting policy requirements about online threatsEnforcement teams working for Facebook have failed to meet the company’s strict rules of zero tolerance towards rape threats online, its head of safety said on Monday.Antigone Davis, global head of safety for the California-based tech giant, said in the last nine months her team had been examining whether the tools, resources and policies in place to tackle online abuse were effective. Continue reading...

Chief executive of Japanese technology giant had asked himself if he still had the energy for job; this takeover proves he doesLess than a month after the abrupt resignation of Masayoshi Son’s anointed successor raised questions about SoftBank’s appetite for overseas investments, the group has made its ambitions clear with a £24bn move on ARM Holdings, Britain’s most successful technology company.Monday’s cash deal marks the start of the mobile technology company’s quest to add semiconductors to its eclectic business portfolio and be a key part of the shift towards artificial intelligence, something that Son, SoftBank’s chief executive, has described as “the biggest paradigm shift in human history”. Continue reading...

Britain’s best unknown technology company ARM Holdings has been bought by Japan’s SoftBank. But what exactly is the Internet of Things?Britain’s best unknown tech business ARM Holdings is being bought by Japan’s SoftBank on the back of the promise of the Internet of Things (IoT). But what is IoT, and what has a chip designer like ARM got to do with it? Continue reading...

It’s the hottest game in the world right now, but what do games developers think of Pokémon Go, and where do they think its success will take augmented reality?Pokémon Go hit the UK app store right smack in the middle of Brighton’s game developer conference Develop, and it seemed suddenly the entire indie community was flicking Pokéballs into hotel corners to try and snag some of the city’s omnipresent Voltorbs and Magnemites.“I hope some of my friends get well-paying work making doomed clones of Pokémon Go,” tweeted indie developer George Buckenham (Beasts of Balance) in the wake of Go’s release. We thought we’d ask those from the indie studios here at Develop how they were planing to capitalise on its success and what kind of pitches they had at the ready for when augmented reality (AR) investors come knocking for their own revamps of Pokémon Go. Continue reading...