Technology | The Guardian

We can conjure objects into our real world as if by magic with AR, and with Pikachu and friends earning up to $10m per day, R&D departments are searching for the next phaseWhile Dorothy, blue-skirted and pigtailed, clutching a wicker basket and a bewildered dog under her arm, surveys the weird flowers and pygmy huts around her, she’s sure of just one thing: she’s not in Kansas any more. L Frank Baum’s character was, it turns out, born slightly too early. In 1901, a year after the publication of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum wrote The Master Key, a novel credited with the invention of augmented reality via a pair of imagined spectacles that could map information on to whatever or whomever its wearer looked at. Had Dorothy owned a pair, she might have learned that she’d been whisked to Oz, or that her new friend the Tin Man was in need of a heart, even, perhaps, that a wicked witch is burned not by fire, but by water.It was almost a century until Baum’s invention gained a label. In a 1992 research paper, the Boeing engineers Thomas Caudell and David Mizell described a pair of “see-thru virtual reality goggles”, a device that would enhance the vision of factory workers with the complicated task of piecing together a jumbo jet’s nests of internal wiring with dynamically changing labels and information. Caudell termed this principle of annotating the seen world “augmented reality”, thereby formalising for Silicon Valley’s mavens and investors a fresh and unplundered field of technological opportunity, one that would eventually lead to the invention of Google Glass, a pair of information-spewing spectacles built, unbelievably, to Baum’s century-old definition. Continue reading...

The internet of things has created a global network of devices vulnerable to cyber criminals – and no one wants to fix itM y eye was caught by a Kickstarter campaign for a gizmo called a SWON, described as “a connected conservation device for your shower”. You unscrew the shower head, screw on the SWON and then screw the head back on to it. From then on, water goes through the SWON before it reaches you. The Kickstarter campaign needs $50,000 to be pledged before the product can be made. Last time I checked, it had 75 backers and had raised pledges of $4,798.Before consigning it to the “leading-edge uselessness” bin, I clicked on the link. This triggered a video spiel in which four twentysomething hipsters straight out of central casting (male, baseball caps, black T-shirts – you know the rigmarole) explain why the gizmo is such a good idea. Apparently, every minute a hipster spends in the shower uses 2.5 gallons of water. “This is why,” says the lead geek, “I created SWON, an IoT device that installs in under one minute.” It will save its users “hundreds of dollars” in utility costs, and between 4,000 and 10,000 gallons of water a year, which in drought-stricken Silicon Valley is obviously quite a big deal. Continue reading...

The war in Iraq is being broadcast 24/7. But don’t think for a moment that the authorities have surrendered their control over the mediaSome 34 years ago, almost by accident, Britain’s ministry of defence solved the pesky problem that had laid the Pentagon low in Vietnam. What do you do about journalists running wild in your warzone? You put them on a long, slow boat to the other side of the world. You – ahem! – take control.And so, from Grenada to Panama to Iraq War One, journalists were locked in little boxes as far from the action as possible before (Iraq Two) being cautiously “embedded” with units they depended on to keep them safe. No freelance trips here. No unwanted questions asked. Control was still the theme of each and every fighting day. Continue reading...

The Lexus GS F is a 168mph saloon with near vertical powers of acceleration. Perfect for a trip to the shops…Price: £72,495

Experts say blue chip companies have decided it’s cheaper to deal with extortionists than risk damaging attacksSeveral of London’s largest banks are looking to stockpile bitcoins in order to pay off cyber criminals who threaten to bring down their critical IT systems.The virtual currency, which is highly prized by criminal networks because it cannot be traced, is being acquired by blue chip companies in order to pay ransoms, according to a leading IT expert. Continue reading...

Internet-connected gadgets vulnerable because they don’t have enough memory for safety software, use generic code and access web by default“Smart” internet-connected devices such as webcams, kettles and baby monitors are “too dumb” to resist the kind of cyber-attack that brought down some of the world’s most popular websites on Friday, experts have warned.Richard Sims, a product development consultant at the Technology Partnership, said such devices – commonly referred to as the “internet of things” – often connect to the internet by default and use stock code from open-source software, which makes them easier to hack. Continue reading...

On Friday the US and EU were subjected to a far-reaching cyber attack, which widely blocked internet access; some of the world’s most popular websites were shutdown, including Paypal, Twitter and Spotify. The hack was a botnet attack. Usually, botnet attacks use computers, but Friday’s attack was different because it used household items with internet connections to launch a huge denial of service (DDoS) assault. It is believed the attack came from China

Bright red seatbelts look like ceremonial sashes: my kid has become an ambassadorHaving a Citroën Cactus is a bit like painting your house pink; it sounds extraordinary and daring; it looks it for a while, but since you’re mostly inside it rather than outside, it’s your neighbours who have to live with it. I’m talking mainly about the side panels: bubbly sheets whose purpose was never plain to begin with. The Rip Curl keeps the panels and adds a number of driving modes (snow, sand, slipperiness), to ensure you’re ready for more than just bumping into things: you can now bump into things that are also driving on sand. It’s not obvious what the point is, for those of us not planning to reinvade Africa. It does have a mud setting, though, so is not totally inappropriate for the British weather.That is its metier: rugged jaunts across tricky terrain. Round town, it doesn’t get much chance to show off, though it does have a pleasing interior. The driver’s seat is armchair-roomy, like going to a posh cinema. Bright red seatbelts give everyone the look of wearing a ceremonial sash, which can be discombobulating, especially when you catch your kids in the rear-view and try to remember when you made them the Icelandic ambassador. Heavily stylised stitching and natty door pulls make you feel as though you’re sitting inside 1930s luggage. The younger passengers were unimpressed with the pop-out back windows and moaned constantly about not being able to stick their heads out. (It was like being able to hear the internal monologue of a dog.) The satnav was so sluggish that on roundabouts you just had to get used to being told to take the exit you’d just passed. Continue reading...

After the success of Pandemic Legacy, designer Rob Daviau is back with a seafaring adventure. But is everyone ready for board games you throw away at the end?Rob Daviau thought Cluedo was flawed. It was around the end of 2008, while Daviau was working as a designer at Hasbro, and he was brainstorming ideas which could breathe new life into the murder mystery classic. “At one point I made the comment: ‘I don’t know why they keep inviting these people over for dinner, they’re all mass murderers. Why would you keep inviting them back game after game?’”Daviau was joking, but his boss thought there was something in his critique. What if there was a way for games to change every time they were played? They discussed ways in which decisions made in one gaming session might carry over into the next. An attempt at Cluedo: The Usual Suspects was swiftly abandoned but Daviau soon found another classic with potential: Risk – the somewhat interminable game of word conquest.

Hundreds of thousands of devices such as webcams and DVRs were infected with malicious code to create a so-called ‘botnet’ to target leading sitesThe huge attack on global internet access, which blocked some of the world’s most popular websites, is believed to have been unleashed by hackers using common devices like webcams and digital recorders.Among the sites targeted on Friday were Twitter, Paypal and Spotify. All were customers of Dyn, an infrastructure company in New Hampshire in the US that acts as a switchboard for internet traffic. Continue reading...

LinkedIn has suggested the 29-year-old’s arrest is tied to a 2012 breach that resulted in more than 100m of its users’ passwords being compromisedA Russian man has been charged with hacking and stealing information from computers at LinkedIn and other San Francisco Bay Area companies.The US attorney’s office in San Francisco announced Friday that a grand jury indicted 29-year-old Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Nikulin, of Moscow, Russia, a day earlier on charges including computer intrusion and aggravated identity theft. Continue reading...

Deciding to make judgments about the newsworthiness of content is a major shift for the social media platform whose CEO insists it is ‘not a media company’

Google in June deleted a clause in its privacy settings that said it would not combine cookie information with personal information without consentSince Google changed the way it tracks its users across the internet in June 2016, users’ personally identifiable information from Gmail, YouTube and other accounts has been merged with their browsing records from across the web.An analysis of the changes conducted by Propublica details how the company had previously pledged to keep these two data sets separate to protect individuals’ privacy, but updated its privacy settings in June to delete a clause that said “we will not combine DoubleClick cookie information with personally identifiable information unless we have your opt-in consent”. Continue reading...

Australian man says the iPhone ‘melted’ and destroyed his car while he was on the beach, as lithium-ion batteries under scrutiny amid major Samsung recallApple is investigating a report from an Australian man who claimed his iPhone 7 caught fire and destroyed his car, the company said on Friday.Surfer Mat Jones told Channel 7 News that he had gone into water off a New South Wales beach and left his new iPhone 7, bought last week, wrapped in a pair of trousers in his car on the beach. Continue reading...

Denial of service attack from unknown culprits on domain name system company Dyn caused access to be severely restricted for users on FridayUS officials are investigating multiple attacks that caused widespread online disruption on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday.

We uncover the rituals and superstitious habits that we perform on our technology and gadgetsHave you ever raised your phone in the air to get better reception? Or perhaps blown into your video game cartridge to make it work properly?We explore the psychology behind the rituals that we perform on our technology with guests psychologist and writer Stuart Vyse and ethnographer Nicolas Nova. Continue reading...

Nintendo’s new hardware is attempting to reinvent gaming – again. But can the company’s focus on portability help it connect with a new generation of gamers?Nintendo’s next console looks like it may just be the Nintendo console we’ve all been waiting for – at least since the Wii U was consigned to being the dustiest thing on our shelves. Eccentric, interesting, boasting widespread industry support and with a focus on portability that plays to Nintendo’s considerable strengths (Game Boy, DS, 3DS ...), the Switch is the veteran company’s attempt to reinvent gaming. Again.Some of the biggest reveals from the Nintendo Direct broadcast included: the re-introduction of cartridge games, similar to those used in the 3DS; the fact that Bethesda’s Skyrim remaster will be coming to the system, which is huge; and the removable side controls that can be slotted into a larger controller or used on their own as tiny little handheld gadgets that look like they may well cramp up podgier fingers in a few short minutes. They’re called Joy-Cons, a controversial naming decision which reminds some of the old Namco Jogcon pads and others of a euphemism for injuring yourself during sex. Continue reading...

The ‘Dirty Cow’ bug was originally introduced nine years ago, and has been sitting unnoticed for much of that timeThe operating system that lies at the core of most servers on the internet and most smartphones has a critical vulnerability which has existed, unnoticed, for nine years.Called “Dirty Cow” (because it exploits a mechanism called copy-on-write), the bug allows an attacker to gain privilege escalation on the Linux kernel. Continue reading...

Testing shows 32GB iPhone 7 is slower and Intel-based iPhone 7 Plus has worse signal than 128 or 256GB versionsNot all iPhone 7s are born equally, according to new tests, which appear to show the cheapest, 32GB versions are significantly slower than the more expensive 128 or 256GB versions and that some have much poorer 4G reception.

Facebook board member who donated to Donald Trump after sexual misconduct allegations wrote a 1995 book that attempted to discredit date rape

The place to talk about gamesIt’s Friday! Continue reading...

The head of Apple, Tim Cook, says all payments could soon be via smartphone apps. But there’s a sinister side to this vision, that would lead to us losing our freedomThe tooth fairy is dying. Soon, there will be no more scrabbling under pillows in the middle of the night; no more wondering what to do with a tiny molar, swapped for the traditional pound. (Chucking it in the bin seems heartless, keeping it faintly grisly.) But although my nine-year-old is reaching the limits of belief in fairies, it’s not just the magic that’s fading. It’s the habit of carrying cash.By 2025, three quarters of payments in Britain are expected to be made without notes or coins. We’re not quite Sweden – where even street beggars are starting to take plastic, via card-readers handed out by charities – but we’re moving in the same direction, towards a world of tapping contactless card to reader and paying by app, and who knows what else besides. Continue reading...

Interior minister says pro-Moscow disinformation network has sprung up on Czech soil and ‘we want to get into every smartphone’ to defeat itThe Czech government has accused Russia of conducting a propaganda war on its soil and is setting up a unit to counter what it says are networks of pro-Moscow puppet groups.“We want to get into every smartphone” to counter Russian disinformation, said Milan Chovanec, the Czech interior minister. Continue reading...

University of Leeds researchers analyzed the body language, facial expressions and voice of sitcom character to create a digital avatar and, eventually, a chatbotSince the final episode of hit sitcom Friends first aired in 2004, many fans have clung to the hope of a reunion. Earlier this year, the show’s co-creator Marta Kauffman quashed that idea emphatically:“There will never be a Friends reunion movie,” she told E! News. Could she be any clearer? Continue reading...

For all its lip service about embracing difference, Silicon Valley is still mostly white and male. Calling support for Donald Trump diversity won’t change thatEarlier this week, while we were still reeling from cavalier boasts about sexual assault and from watching woman after woman come forward to recount alleged sexual mistreatment at the hands of Donald Trump, Silicon Valley bigwig Peter Thiel donated $1.25m to the candidate.Far from being blacklisted for supporting Trump, Thiel remains a “part-time partner” at influential tech startup incubator Y Combinator, and he still sits on the boards of Facebook, Palantir, Asana and Zenefits.

Swedish Cancer Society’s original video, with animated images and information on how to conduct breast exams, was taken down by Facebook this week

The Amazon founder spoke out against the Republican nominee, but said he supports Facebook’s decision to keep Trump backer Peter Thiel on its boardSilicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel should not be ousted from Facebook’s board for his political views, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said, even though he believes Donald Trump’s actions “erode democracy”.Speaking at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco, the entrepreneur described how the Republican presidential candidate had attacked him on Twitter, making allegations that he bought the Washington Post to exert political power and avoid paying taxes. Continue reading...

Cancer charity to appeal against deletion of animated images showing women how to check for lumpsFacebook has removed a video on breast cancer awareness posted in Sweden after deeming the images offensive, the Swedish Cancer Society said on Thursday.The video, displaying animated figures of women with circle-shaped breasts, was aimed at explaining to women how to check for suspicious lumps. Continue reading...

The device formerly known as the NX unifies the company’s home and portable console lines in one flexible packageNintendo has unveiled its new console, the Nintendo Switch, which will be released in March 2017.The company announced the new name and new release date in a “teaser trailer” posted to its website and Twitter feed. Continue reading...

Video follows announcement that all Tesla cars built from now on will contain components required for self-drivingTesla announced on Wednesday that from now on all of its electric cars will be built with the components required to turn them into fully autonomous vehicles at a later date. Now chief executive, Elon Musk, has released a video showing what that really means.The video shows a Tesla Model X driving out of a garage, picking up a human driver – who is required to be in the driving seat for the car to legally self-drive in the US – and then driving itself around some public roads, navigating junctions and highways before returning to a parking lot, letting out the human driver and then going off to park itself. Continue reading...

Kate needs to replace an ancient laptop and for ergonomic reasons she’d like an all-in-one PC insteadI have an ancient laptop that needs replacing as soon as possible. I have a desk at home and do not need the portability of a laptop, but I would like an all-in-one to stop me hunching over the screen. I will use it for web browsing, sending emails, collating photos, and tasks like my ancestry research. What would you recommend? Kate Continue reading...

As a person of colour, I found it cathartic to play a video game that acknowledges the reality of racism and says: things don’t have to be this wayPeople of colour in South Africa have faced a long history of ostracism on multiple levels. Though I missed the worst of it, apartheid laws mandated racist exclusion: careers, political roles, even door entrances and homes, all were determined by race. These attitudes remain, even without laws to back them up.I was a child, the first time I was subjected to a racial slur. Decades later it continues in South Africa, but also online, particularly in an internet environment dominated by status quo warriors who love Trump, hate women and believe progress is poison. Continue reading...

The event is expected to feature the launch of the newest versions of Apple’s MacBook Pros, the company’s top tier of laptop computersApple is expected to launch the next generation of Mac computers at a press event on 27 October. The company sent out the invitations, with the words “hello again” under a colourful Apple logo, on Wednesday night.The event is expected to feature the launch of the newest versions of Apple’s MacBook Pros, the company’s top tier of laptop computers. Continue reading...

With the trailer imminent, here is what we’re expecting – or at least hoping for – from Rockstar’s western sequelSaddle up, Red Dead Redemption 2 is moseying into town. After two teasing tweets this week, Rockstar finally confirmed on Tuesday that a sequel to its acclaimed western adventure would be arriving in autumn 2017. A trailer will drop on Thursday.It’s a big deal. The original Red Dead Redemption remains a wonderful and atmospheric example of open-world game design, providing a cogent plot of remorse and retribution, within a functioning world that seems to truly reflect the Frontier at the time. But since then, Rockstar’s own Grand Theft Auto V, released in 2013, has shifted the bar for the genre in terms of ambition, scope and size. Continue reading...

First smartphone designed by Google from scratch ticks many boxes, but isn’t quite the stellar world beater some might expectGoogle has finally launched an own-brand smartphone, the Pixel, to challenge Apple head on and provide a premium Android experience with the hardware tailored to the software by the people who actually make it..

Nvidia Titan processor, eight cameras and faster radar to be switched on once software catches up, allowing a trip across US ‘without touching the wheel’All new Tesla models are being built with hardware to enable them to be fully self-driving, Elon Musk has announced.

Complaint alleges that Samsung knew for years its technology was hazardous, saying a Galaxy S6 Active shot out 5in flames and left a user with ‘melted flesh’Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 is not the company’s only smartphone prone to dangerous explosions, according to a new lawsuit that says a Galaxy S6 Active shot out five-inch flames and left a user with “melted flesh”.The complaint, which alleges Samsung knew for years its technology was hazardous, comes amid an embarrassing and expansive recall of 1.9m Galaxy Note 7 devices after it was revealed that the lithium ion battery was catching fire. Continue reading...

Professor praises creation of Cambridge University institute to study future of artificial intelligenceProfessor Stephen Hawking has warned that the creation of powerful artificial intelligence will be “either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity”, and praised the creation of an academic institute dedicated to researching the future of intelligence as “crucial to the future of our civilisation and our species”.Hawking was speaking at the opening of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) at Cambridge University, a multi-disciplinary institute that will attempt to tackle some of the open-ended questions raised by the rapid pace of development in AI research. Continue reading...

Facebook CEO says of Peter Thiel’s continued support of Republican nominee: ‘There are many reasons a person might support Trump’Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended Facebook board member Peter Thiel’s support of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in a post that invoked the importance of “diversity” for the social media company.“We care deeply about diversity. That’s easy to say when it means standing up for ideas you agree with. It’s a lot harder when it means standing up for the rights of people with different viewpoints to say what they care about,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post visible only to Facebook employees, a photograph of which was shared on Hacker News on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Players of the latest Football Manager will have to tackle all the problems Brexit brings. It’s not the first time real-world conditions have affected popular titlesThere is a popular misconception that video games bear little relation to reality. Unfortunately, this is hard to counter when the best-known characters are probably a speedy blue hedgehog and a plumber who lives in a magical mushroom kingdom. Indeed, even comparatively serious games such as SimCity, Civilization and Papers Please take a highly abstract approach to culture, society and government, which sets them apart from real-life events.This week, however, the maker of the fastidiously authentic video game Football Manager said the game was being updated to simulate the economic effects of Brexit. The accurate portrayal of transfer costs and work permits will be tweaked, making it potentially more expensive to buy foreign players, and more problematic to get work permits for those from EU countries. Continue reading...

The US should attempt to de-escalate tensions by negotiating some form of international cyber treaty before this gets out of controlWhat’s the CIA’s brilliant plan for stopping Russian cyber-attacks on the US and their alleged interference with the US election? Apparently, some in the agency want to escalate tensions between the two superpowers even more and possibly do the same thing right back to them.NBC News reported late last week that the CIA is working up blueprints for an “unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia”, and it sounds a lot like they’re planning on leaking documents on Vladimir Putin, just as the Russians are accused of doing to the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

The doomed phablet might have been discontinued by its manufacturer, but it makes a great (if risky) fancy dress optionEveryone knows that the best Halloween costumes are the topical ones. And usually the worst, too.On top of the obvious ones – there are going to be a lot of Trumps and Clintons hitting the streets at the end of this month – there’s the all-important meme selection to pay attention to. Continue reading...

Officials confirm government cut off internet access for Julian Assange following a raft of leaked emails targeting DemocratsEcuador has confirmed that it has temporarily cut off internet access in its embassy in London to Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblowing site WikiLeaks, over fears that he was using it to interfere in the US presidential election.The move followed the publication of leaked emails by WikiLeaks, including some from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) released just before the party’s convention in July, and more recently a cache of emails from the account of Hillary Clinton campaign adviser John Podesta. Continue reading...

If you’re the high-profile head coach of one of the biggest NFL teams, you apparently can’t get real work done on a tabletCan you get work done using a tablet? Microsoft and its Surface tablet seem to think so, but at least for one high-profile Surface user, you can’t. The New England Patriots head coach, Bill Belichick, is going back to using a pen and paper.

The Apple components supplier expects full-year profit to be well under expectationsApple supplier Laird has warned annual profits will fall sharply following a sudden downturn in its smartphone components business and unprecedented pricing pressures.Shares in the group almost halved to 165p as it said it may be facing “a new reality” in the mobiles market after an expected pick-up in smartphone production failed to materialise. Continue reading...

Owners of the twice-recalled Galaxy Note 7 say the exploding phones caused extensive damage to their homes, but the company isn’t playing ballSamsung is being sharply criticized by owners of faulty Galaxy Note 7 smartphones who claim the company isn’t doing enough to compensate for the most serious damaged caused when their handsets caught fire.Related: Samsung must act fast to keep an exploding phone from blowing up its brand Continue reading...

Monzo wants to take on the traditional banking sector on its own turf, aiming to offer a full current account service in early 2017Banks are boring, for a good reason. The last thing you want to hear from the organisation you’ve entrusted with your money is their exciting plans for how to shake up the world of finance. Generally, you want a beige person in beige clothes gesturing to whatever is the digital equivalent of a big vault filled with gold. It’s boring, it’s reassuring, it’s safe.Banks are, in short, the opposite of a tech startup. So a tech startup wanting to take on the banks on their own turf has its work cut out for it. Continue reading...

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

Twitter and Uber may be based in San Francisco, but Santiago’s ‘Chilecon Valley’ and the South Korean capital Seoul could both make claimsBefore long, Santiago could be a city full of electric vehicles charged by “smart” power grids, many of them driving on highways equipped with traffic-reducing automated variable toll pricing. Perhaps a new arrival to the Chilean capital would go for the chance to found a technology company, incentivised by programmes like the state-backed, foreigner-friendly Start-Up Chile, in “Chilecon Valley”. And perhaps they’ll stay for the capital’s reputation boasting the most advanced public transit system in Latin America.Or they might opt for Africa instead of South America, to take advantage of the assistance offered by organisations like SmartXchange in Durban. Not only does South Africa’s third largest city now have an increasingly tech-savvy middle class population, it has schools like the Durban University of Technology, whose Urban Futures Centre is even developing technological solutions to the common challenges of drug use, security and policing strategy. If these succeed, Durban, like Santiago, may count itself among the highest-tech cities sooner than the rest of the world could imagine.

CBS network announces competition series based on the popular mobile phone game, once skewered by Stephen Colbert on his Late ShowCandy Crush, the addictive mobile phone game, is being adapted into a TV game show, the CBS network announced on Tuesday.Matt Kunitz, who produced NBC’s long-running game show Fear Factor, is listed as creator of the Candy Crush competition series. The network did not announce the number of episodes ordered or a premiere date, though it did say the show would be broadcast on its TV network in the US and distributed internationally by Lionsgate. Continue reading...