Technology | The Guardian

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

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

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

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

Print front page using cartoon symbols to show whether stories were happy or sad news criticised on Twitter and elsewhere

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some are underdeveloped, but others are fun even in their unfinished state

Forza 6 takes simulation of the racing track to a new level as players grapple with aquaplaning“It is like driving down the M1 three metres behind a truck with your wipers switched off. But at 200mph,” explains Allan McNish on the experience of piloting a top-end prototype sportscar in the rain. And he speaks from experience. The former Formula One driver, three-times winner of the Le Mans 24 Hours and the 2013 FIA World Endurance champion with Audi, drove, during his extensive career, in every permutation of wet weather conditions imaginable.Two of the cars in which he competed , the 2012 R18, in which he won the 12 Hours of Sebring and the R8 that was part of his American Le Mans Series title in 2006, both feature in the recently released Forza 6, as does, for the first time, racing in the wet and at night, now that developer Turn10 believes it can do the conditions real justice. But it has also gone further and simulated an even greater level of realism – that of standing water and the aquaplaning it can induce in cars. Continue reading...

Computer gamers looking to relive their memories of space invaders and Pac-Man can now play the original arcade versions at homePlaying arcade games on original hardware is the ultimate way to enjoy the arcade experience at home. But the cost – and size – of an arcade cabinet can be prohibitive. Yet there is a relatively unknown console that lets you play arcade hardware on a TV: the supergun.Inside the arcade cabinet

Whether your iPhone processor chip was manufactured by Samsung or TSMC, Apple says battery life will only vary by 2-3%Claims that the battery life of the new iPhones can vary by up to two hours depending on which third-party supplier manufactured the central chip don’t reflect real-world usage, according to Apple.The chip at the heart of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, named the “A9” chip by Apple, comes in two forms, one manufactured by Samsung and the other by Taiwanese company TSMC. Since the phones started hitting shelves last week, users have reported that the phones containing Samsung chips significantly underperform those with TSMC chips in intensive battery-life tests. Continue reading...

Two taxi drivers appear in Brisbane magistrates court over allegations they and others were involved in assaults on three Uber driversA Brisbane Uber driver was assaulted by angry taxi drivers who used the ride-share app to set up their unsuspecting victim, a court has heard.Related: Brisbane taxi drivers charged over attacks on Uber drivers Continue reading...

High-profile law firm brings action on behalf of one woman from Boston and another from South Carolina, and says Uber ‘fails to protect female passengers’The law firm that represented the hotel maid who said she was sexually assaulted by Dominique Strauss-Kahn and a woman from Delhi who said she was raped and beaten after hailing an Uber driver last December has filed a lawsuit against the controversial taxi app on behalf of two female passengers.Related: Delhi woman sues Uber for 'negligence and fraud' after alleged rape Continue reading...

Letter calls for investigation and asks ‘what’s the difference in security measures’ that allowed supposedly limited access to database of 200 million peopleDozens of consumer privacy groups are calling for a US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation into the data breach at credit agency and data broker Experian, saying that intrusions into other parts of the company’s data “would be a terrifying and unmitigated disaster”.

Demise of Mark Group and Climate Energy prompts furious attack from green campaigners but government blames firms’ commercial decisionsThe Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has denied that subsidy cuts were responsible for the collapse of two solar panel installers in as many days, blaming the company failures on “commercial decisions”.Amid warnings of a crisis in the green energy sector following the failure of Mark Group and Climate Energy and a forecast that 20,000 solar jobs could eventually be threatened, the DECC defended aid cuts for solar and energy efficiency. Continue reading...

Murdoch sent a tweet on Wednesday night praising the Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson and jabbing at the current presidentRupert Murdoch has issued an apology, after suggesting on Twitter that Barack Obama was not a “real black president”.Murdoch sent a tweet on Wednesday night praising the Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson and his wife and jabbing at the current president – although not by name. Continue reading...

Kenya’s Samburu national park has been mapped by Google Street View, raising awareness of the reserve’s efforts to protect the elephant populationGoogle Street View has launched a map of Kenya’s Samburu national park, giving internet users the chance to get up close to the majestic elephants that live there. The project, created in partnership with Save the Elephants and with the support of the Samburu County government, aims to raise awareness about the struggle to protect the elephants, that remain at risk from poachers. Continue reading...

After much speculation over a ‘dislike’ button, social network trials emotional reactions for users, such as ‘love’ and ‘laughter’Facebook is to trial “reactions” options for users responding to content, proving that merely being able to “like” something was somewhat limiting the human emotional spectrum.From Friday, Ireland and Spain (assumingly particularly emotive nations?) will be the first to test the new feature. Despite wide reporting that Facebook was working on a “dislike” button in September, it seems company boss Mark Zuckerberg has decided that a binary choice of like and dislike is too specific. Continue reading...

Company’s Snowball hardware lets developers use postal service to get higher bandwidth than their broadband serviceAmazon has come up with a new system for getting huge amounts of data from your computers to theirs: send it by post. As computer science pioneer Andy Tanenbaum wrote: “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.”The company’s new Snowball hardware is aimed at developers who use Amazon Web Services, the increasingly-ubiquitous internet backend to websites as varied as Netflix and Ocado. Continue reading...

Display market rises by more than a quarter as total digital advertising hits record £3.98m in first half

Korean company insists its payment system is secure and that no user or transaction data has been impacted by hack into underlaying technologySamsung has insisted that its newly launched mobile payments system is unaffected after the technology on which it is based, called LoopPay, was hacked.

Laurene Jobs allegedly called stars to dissuade them from taking part in Danny Boyle-directed drama, according to the Hollywood ReporterSteve Jobs’s widow Laurene Jobs called Hollywood stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale to beg them not to play her husband in a forthcoming biopic, according to the Hollywood Reporter.In an extensive piece on the new film, titled simply Steve Jobs, the US trade bible quotes an anonymous “key player” in the film-making process, who reveals: “Since the very beginning, Laurene Jobs has been trying to kill this movie, OK? Laurene Jobs called Leo DiCaprio and said: ‘Don’t do it.’ Laurene Jobs called Christian Bale and said: ‘Don’t [do it].’” Continue reading...

Mario doesn’t like the sound of his Windows PC, particularly when watching TV programmes online. What can he do to improve it?What are the best, reasonably inexpensive hardware and/or software solutions to improve a PC’s crappy sound? We find the audio of TV programmes hard on our ears, bass too loud, and the high notes are several db lower than normal due to our age. We use our PCs to listen to classical music as well.Our operating system is Microsoft Windows 7, default device: Realtek speakers. Our speakers are cheap Creative MF 0055 2.0 Series. Are the standard sound boards that come with most PCs suitable or is a better one required? (We live in Canada and subscribe to the Guardian.) MarioA PC is a poor source for hi-fi, but that probably doesn’t matter if you mainly want to change the sound to suit your ears. In the long term, I expect you will have to buy better speakers. However, you can start by experimenting with Windows’ settings and, perhaps, some audio utilities. Continue reading...

TSMC and Samsung make chips for iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, but power consumption varies markedly, according to user reportsTwo seemingly identical, brand new, iPhones 6S may have a battery life that differs by up to two hours depending on which of two companies manufactured their processor, according to reports from owners.The investigations were sparked by a report from technology news site Anandtech that Apple is dual-sourcing one of the key components of the new phones. The A9 “system on a chip”, the lump of silicon that lies at the heart of the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus, is designed by Apple but manufactured by two independent contractors: Korea’s Samsung Electronics and Taiwan’s TSMC. The two chips interact with the rest of the hardware identically, based as they are on the same designs, but differences in their production is apparently having an effect on how efficient they are at doing their jobs. Continue reading...

These new aluminium wire-freeheadphones sound better than most. Linked by a subtle cable, they clip to each other magnetically – but battery life could be betterBluetooth earbuds offer the holy grail of wire-free listening without the bulk of headphones. Optoma’s new NuForce BE6 promise better sound and a premium aluminium design, but are they worth the extra cost over cheaper rivals?The NuForce BE6 are about as simple and understated as Bluetooth earbuds can get. Continue reading...

Matthew Keys was fired by a TV station owned by the same company two months before the website was hackedThe well-known social media journalist Matthew Keys has been found guilty of conspiring with the hacking group Anonymous to break into the Los Angeles Times’ website and alter a story.

Sensitive information about patients’ conditions could become public if phones are lost or stolen, warn researchersDetails of patients’ illnesses and treatment could be leaked because so many doctors use smartphones to send details of their cases to each other, including x-ray results and photographs of wounds, warns research.Patients are at risk of having their confidentiality breached because up to two-thirds of doctors are using SMS texts and picture messages to share information, including photographs of wounds, in the search for a second opinion. Continue reading...

Companies are pushing for the ability to fly their drones without the strict supervision that is currently required, but regulators say it could be a long waitIf you’re hoping Amazon will send the next George R R Martin novel to you by drone, you may have even longer to wait than you thought: the FAA estimates it will be three years before it has a framework for drone operators to fly the machines without direct human oversight.At a conference for commercial drone operators in Las Vegas on Wednesday morning, the US Federal Aviation Adminstration (FAA) told the drone industry its new rules for drones will be given to the White House by the end of the year, including some more relaxed policies for corporate drone users.

People could use it to disable hobbyists’ drones but Liteye’s Anti-UAV Defense System has practical applications for law enforcement and government tooA team of British technology firms has developed a “death ray” for drones that can knock an unmanned aerial vehicle out of the sky by turning it off in midair up to a mile away.

Microsoft is betting big on a premium laptop that rivals Apple’s MacBook Pro and turns into a tablet – but it’s the kind of innovation it needsMicrosoft did something shocking last night. It launched something people might actually lust over, something sleek, something powerful, something innovative. The Surface Book.

Urban smellscape researcher Kate McLean travels the world mapping scents: Edinburgh smells of the brewery and penguin poo, New York’s summer is ripe with garlic and spilled beer, while Amsterdam smells of ... damp?“It smells like Amsterdam” is a well-turned phrase. Each year, about 1.5 million tourists visit the city to legally consume cannabis in specially licensed coffee shops, and every time their doors open to welcome a new customer, a potent waft escapes with the force of a jet missile into the street.Whatever your views on the subject, the scent of marijuana and hashish is strong. The distinctive and easily identifiable smell curls along the narrow streets of De Wallen, lingers among the pubs, clubs, bars and coffee shops of the red light district and wafts across the open expanse of Stationsplein as newcomers in transit cram in a full, enhanced, poly-sensory experience of the city. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and everything else that mattersIt’s Wednesday! Continue reading...

Attorney general tells billion-dollar companies to explain how they stop player data being misused by employees to line their own pocketsNew York’s attorney general has started investigating the fantasy sports companies DraftKings and FanDuel after reports that an employee may have used inside information to win $350,000 in a football contest.

European court of justice struck down provisions allowing transfer of EU citizens’ data to the US after Austrian student argued NSA might get access to itIreland has said it plans to investigate the transfer of data on Facebook users in Europe to the United States after an EU court invalidated the “safe harbour” provisions under which it took place.

New devices include the new Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, challenging Apple’s dominance at the top end of the laptop marketMicrosoft is bringing “the thunder”. That was the message sent to its competitors today, when Microsoft unveiled its Windows 10 devices, including the new Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, challenging Apple’s dominance at the top end of the laptop market.“We have competitors, you might have noticed. They are chasing us,” Panos Panay, head of engineering of all Microsoft devices, said during the hour-and-a-half-long presentation. “What do you do? Do you double down and bring the thunder or do you reinvent the category again?” Continue reading...