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This week 33 million records of people who had used a website for secret affairs had their names and identifying details leaked online by hackers. We spoke to five people for whom the hack has had profound personal ramificationsI joined Ashley Madison this year, during a very, very stressful period, both personally and professionally. But my intentions were never actually to meet another woman, and I quickly realised that this was not going to be a good way of meeting new people.In total, I used the site for a single month, getting almost zero responses. Once I realised that it was going nowhere, and that I would have never left my family behind, I decided to just quit. So I paid my €19 (£15) to get rid of everything, deleted the mobile app and removed everything: email accounts, messages, etc. Continue reading...

A press report detailing an allegedly soulless, dystopian workplace at the online retailer generated headlines but has had minimal impact on the bottom lineA dark and lengthy exposé of the work culture of Amazon, the world’s most powerful online retailer echoed round the world last week. The article, in the New York Times, made Amazon sound like the Hunger Games crossed with 1984. The sick and the pregnant fell by the wayside, trampled on by colleagues who are encouraged to snitch on co-workers. Only the meanest survived.A tidal wave of think pieces followed along with calls for a boycott. Dr Evil himself – Amazon founder Jeff Bezos – was forced to speak out and claim such behavior was anathema to himself and the company. But a week on, the reaction from shoppers and – perhaps more importantly – Wall Street and the tech community is a big “meh”. Continue reading...

‘It has a huge amount riding on the affections of people who would prefer to be on a motorbike, or MDMA’I feel bad mentioning it, because it’s not the brand’s fault when a person crashes a car: but the car crashes in the news recently, the ones that left several injured or involved a mountain, often seem to have featured a Seat Leon (not always the Cupra, though, which is the hottest of the Leons, my ST280 the hottest of the hot, at 276bhp).In the UK we’d call the size the “small family car” and be led to wonder what kind of family would like to drive it; in Europe, it’s a C-segment, small but not the smallest, and it recalls the time in a person’s life when they like to fill their car with friends. Your 20s, in other words; not your 30s – by then, your friends have their own cars, or you have dropped them, and anyway, you are all too drunk to drive. Continue reading...

More than 800 user profiles in hacked details from the Ashley Madison infidelity website used Australian government email addressesThe chief of the defence force, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, has warned the alleged hack of personal information from the Ashley Madison infidelity website, including that of defence personnel, is unlikely to be an isolated event.Related: Ashley Madison hack: five people on getting caught up in the data breach Continue reading...

Controversial taxi app’s revenues double every six months according to unverified investor report but profit figures still remain shrouded in secrecyUber’s global bookings are projected to more than treble to $10.8bn (£6.9bn) this year and reach $26.1bn the next, according to an investors’ presentation that indicates a flotation for the ride-hailing business by 2017.The taxi app, which operates in more than 50 countries, keeps 20% of booking revenue, according to the confidential slideshow, obtained by Reuters. Based on those figures, 2015 revenue would be around $2bn. Continue reading...

Online dating has gone mainstream, but what about expanding your social circle? Here’s how to make virtual friendships work IRLI don’t know how much wine I’d had when I offered to marry Nathan, an American living in Berlin whom I had never met. The time stamp on our Facebook chat history says my proposal occurred at 7.23pm one Friday in January, so hopefully not too much. The (non-serious) offer of marriage was friendly rather than romantic: Nathan and I have a similar sense of humour and marrying me would allow him to remain in the EU without having to navigate the complicated bureaucracy of German visa applications. He politely declined.True, we’d never met in real life, but that has never been much of a problem for me. Most of the new friends I have made in the past two years, since moving to London, I have initially encountered online. Continue reading...

Music streaming service asks to access contacts, photos and GPS locations from user mobiles as it tries to personalise its serviceThe chief executive of music service Spotify has apologised to users after anger over sweeping changes to its privacy policy that give the company much greater access to personal data on users’ phones.As well as collecting personal information, such as email addresses and birthdays, Spotify will be able to sift though users’ contacts, collect their photos and in some cases, even check their location and determine how quickly they are moving. Depending on the device being used, Spotify said it may be able to collect sensor data, such as “data about the speed of your movements, such as whether you are running, walking, or in transit”. Continue reading...

Summer camps such as one at Georgetown university in the US aim to encourage more teenage girls into computer coding careersThe group of high school girls sat before a potted plant with wires running down the sides. India Bhalla-Ladd, 15, fiddled with a button on the broadboard, a pegboard for electronic devices. With each press, a different plant type appeared on a black-and-white screen – veggie, flower, and the one she eventually landed on: succulent.That morning, in a Georgetown University classroom, the toggling device for their project was acting up. They had to troubleshoot a plant. Continue reading...

With the new season well underway, here’s a handpicked selection of apps and games for fans of the beautiful gameFootball: bloody hell! After a summer of Fifa shenanigans, it’s good to be back in the swing of the club season.Jose Mourinho is scowling and firing his blamecannon; Arsenal have a dodgy keeper; Sunderland are making my school team (1997-98 season: played one, lost one, scored two, let in 14) look like Barcelona; mascots are giving children nightmares… It’s like the beautiful game never went away. Continue reading...

As a woman working in the male-dominated gaming industry, I realised that sexism is still rife. And it’s not just the trolls who are to blameThe terrible one-year anniversary of Gamergate is nearly here, and the women that make your games are war-weary, exhausted by a cultural battle that we never asked for. We are professionals trying to do our job, screamed at by children who don’t want girls in their clubhouse.Elizabeth Sampat is one of these professionals. She’s a game designer at PopCap, one of the most successful studios in the world. In the aftermath of Gamergate, she’s struggling with an ethical dilemma. She’s uncomfortable asking girls to enter the game industry, knowing the abuse they will inevitably face. “I will no longer participate in encouraging young women and girls to become game industry professionals,” wrote Sampat in a popular Facebook post. “I will continue to fight tooth and nail for every woman who is currently here. But until the industry and gaming culture improves, it’s unethical.” Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Friday! Today’s screenshot is from Lucky’s Tale, the visually impressive virtual reality platformer from Playful Corp. Continue reading...

Investors growing increasingly concerned over Twitter’s ability to compete with Facebook after shares fall 6% to below $26 initial public offer price set in 2013Twitter shares have crashed below the price they originally sold for as investors grow increasingly concerned that the service won’t be be able to become a mainstream platform like Facebook.

Cyber-attack, pilot error and privacy issues must be considered by makers, users and insurers of unmanned aerial vehicles, according to reportA sharp escalation in the use of drones will bring increasingly complex risks from cyberattack, reckless pilots and privacy issues, a new report from the Lloyd’s of London insurance market has warned. Spending on unmanned aerial vehicles is likely to double to more than $90bn by 2024, Lloyd’s predicted, but makers and users of the machines, as well as insurers, are relatively unprepared for the emerging consequences.“Drone technology has significant potential, but is a particularly novel – and controversial – emerging technology. Insurance is expected to be a key component in the risk-management framework that will need to be developed for the systems to operate safely and with due regard to third-party interests,” it argues in the report “Drones take flight”. Continue reading...

UK data protection watchdog orders search engine to remove search result links to news stories about right to be forgotten link removalsGoogle has been ordered by the Information Commissioner’s office to remove nine links to current news stories about older reports which themselves were removed from search results under the ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling.The search engine had previously removed links relating to a 10 year-old criminal offence by an individual after requests made under the right to be forgotten ruling. Removal of those links from Google’s search results for the claimant’s name spurred new news posts detailing the removals, which were then indexed by Google’s search engine. Continue reading...

What happened, why hackers were able to steal the data and what can you do if your details appear onlineA dating site with the tagline “Life is short. Have an affair” which offers married people the opportunity to cheat on their spouses. With a claimed 37m users, it is one of the biggest of its sort, and no stranger to controversy: the site had previously allowed a sports scientist to eavesdrop on conversations between its users to write a paper on how women seek affairs, and regularly contacted journalists to offer “adultery insights” based on data from their users. Continue reading...

Hacked dating site has been filing copyright takedown requests to try to keep its leaked database and its customers’ personal details out of the public eyeHacked extramarital dating service Ashley Madison is trying to prevent dissemination of its stolen database by sending copyright takedown notices to social networks and file-sharing sites.The action, after 33m user records were posted online, mirrors the largely-successful attempt to get an earlier, smaller, leak of user data scrubbed from the internet. But this time, the main dump remains very much online, as the arms race between hackers and hacked has escalated to include the use of technology such as peer-to-peer file sharing protocol bittorrent and the anonymous browsing service Tor. Continue reading...

Technology that pinpoints exact locations saves money and lives but critics say devices garner inflated sense of security, and prompt people to take more risksAs the line between civilization and wilderness becomes increasingly thin, do true adventurers still exist?Technology allows climbers to tweet from the top of Mount Everest. Antarctic skiers can instantly upload selfies from the South Pole. Anyone can obtain an inexpensive device with a panic button that allows them to request a rescue from any place on earth, for any reason – adventure’s version of a “get out of jail free” card.

Comedian turned political activist says he has ‘gone as far as we can’ with his YouTube show and wants to spend some time ‘learning’Russell Brand says he is stopping his YouTube show The Trews and taking a break from Facebook and Twitter to spend some time “learning”.“I think we’ve gone as far as we can with the Trews for now,” he said in in a video titled “Final Episode Of The Trews – Goodbye, Good Luck”. Continue reading...

The business of protecting data is getting tougher by the day – but there are ways not to breach the law and still safeguard customer dataSince the Snowden revelations, the market for privacy-oriented services has only grown – indeed, it’s likely that it will keep growing. We’re not at peak surveillance, but we’re way past peak indifference to surveillance.

Smartphone addicts may be using their devices while sitting on the toilet, but does that mean they want to chat to one another?Three quarters of smartphone owners admit to using their devices while sitting on the toilet, so perhaps the only surprise is that it’s taken this long for an app to link them up to other random people also perching on the loo.Released by developer Ricardo Gruber, the free iPhone app Pooductive offers anonymous messaging, with the hook that everyone you encounter will be similarly occupied. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Thursday. I think we may have featured this game before, but what the heck, it’s pretty beautiful. This is the twin-stick shooter, A Quiver of Crows from Californian studio Sheado.net. It’s coming to Steam this autumn. Continue reading...

Brian Krebs says public shaming culture could put lives at risk after the release of personal information from the infidelity websiteTop data security analyst Brian Krebs has warned that people could take their lives after their personal details were exposed in a hack of infidelity website Ashley Madison.“We have to be very cautious and I think sensitive to this,” Krebs, who broke the initial story, said. “There’s a very real chance that people are going to overreact. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw people taking their lives because of this, and obviously piling on with ridicule and trying to out people is not gonna help the situation.” Continue reading...

Messaging app, with more than 800m active users, rolls out its web client to work with Apple’s iPhonesWhatsApp has rolled out its web service to Apple iPhone users, allowing them to send and receive messages on their computers as well as their phones.Support for iOS has been a long time coming, but now means WhatsApp offers its web option - which works on both Mac and PC - to users with most phones running Windows, Google, Blackberry and Nokia operating systems. Continue reading...

The married SNP representative for Edinburgh West denies using the adultery website and claims her identity was ‘harvested’A married SNP MP whose email address was among the millions released in a data hack on adultery website Ashley Madison has said she is the victim of a smear campaign.Michelle Thomson, the MP for Edinburgh West, said her identity was “harvested” by hackers who published what they claim to be the personal information, including names, email addresses, phone numbers and partial credit card numbers of the social network’s 37 million users. Continue reading...

Employees, asked what they would hate to see go wrong, listed privacy and security flaws prominentlySenior staff at Ashley Madison, the hacked extramarital dating site, were raising concerns over its security procedures as recently as June, just a month before the site was attacked.Internal documents leaked as part of the attack show concerns over “a lack of security awareness across the organisation” being raised by one vice president. A database containing the documents and more than 30 million user records exfiltrated in the attack, was posted to the internet on Tuesday. Continue reading...

The story is baffling, the characters disappointing and the twists anticlimactic, but this video game adaptation has violent energyThere’s probably a more effective way of killing people, but extending both arms perpendicular to your chest as you spin and shoot handguns is certainly a photogenic method. With any luck, your long coat will billow, adding the right touch of panache. The emotionless assassin played by Rupert Friend at the heart of Aleksander Bach’s Hitman: Agent 47 uses this move a number of times, like a dancer proudly pirouetting or a jazz drummer returning to a specific fill he’s perfected.This vaguely science-fiction action picture based on a video game (and not a sequel to 2007’s Hitman) is an idiotic mess with a bafflingly dense prologue, an endless final battle, lifeless performances and anticlimactic twists, but it does have a degree of visual flair. When the characters finally shut up and get to shooting, one must give credit to the creativity of the kills. Heads pop like ripe grapes, bodies flail as they are sucked into jet engines and arteries spray all over white staircases. While there’s zero to recommend about this film regarding its story or dialogue, it’s worth appreciating that it all seems very well rehearsed. Continue reading...

Shark, selfie and carrot emojis being mooted for release in 2016 – but there’s still no sign of the elusive redheadThirty eight new emoji are under consideration by the Unicode Consortium, the organisation which designs and approves emoji, for inclusion in its next release.New emoji candidates include a pregnant woman, bacon and a partner for the dancing emoji woman in the red dress. Continue reading...

Data published from infidelity website includes dating profiles with names, addresses, phone numbers, encrypted passwords and partial credit card numbersHackers have released what they claim to be the personal information, including names, email addresses, phone numbers and partial credit card numbers of 37 million users of the infidelity site Ashley Madison.

World No 2 invests in three small firms that he says share his ‘dedication, hunger and standards’ via crowdfunding firm in which he is shareholderTennis star Andy Murray has made investments in a number of startups, including a company that builds virtual reality shops online, through equity crowdfunding firm Seedrs.The world No 2, who joined London-based Seedr’s advisory board in June, has made three investments and will take a stake in the British businesses. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Wednesday. Today’s game is the open-world narrative adventure Affliction from Mastermind Games. It’s set in a small town in fifties America where a meteor strike brings disaster. Continue reading...

Justine Roberts falls victim to ‘swatting’ prank, which comes as parenting website is temporarily shut during cyber-attack by hacker called @DadSecurityArmed police officers were sent to the home of the founder of Mumsnet after a hacker made a hoax call as part of a wider attack on the parenting forum and its 7.7 million users.Justine Roberts said the website, which has more than 14m visits a month, was forced offline during a cyber-attack claimed by an internet troll called @DadSecurity on Twitter who posted taunts such as “RIP Mumsnet” on the social network.

Advertising watchdog says video bloggers have complained of pressure to keep commercial tie-ups secret from their fansThe UK advertising watchdog has introduced new rules governing how popular video bloggers such as Zoella promote products, after a number complained of pressure to keep commercial tie-ups secret from their legions of fans.The move comes less than a week after the way vloggers, bloggers and celebrities endorse products was put in the spotlight when regulators forced Kim Kardashian to delete a selfie promoting a drug for breaking US ad laws. Continue reading...

Clinton stands by server use as legally permitted as officials examining system may uncover whether anyone tried to break in and who else had accountsA forensic examination of Hillary Clinton’s private computer server could unearth more details than what she put in her emails. It could answer lingering questions about the security of her system, who had access to it and whether outsiders tried to crack its contents.Clinton last week handed over to the FBI her private server, which she used to send, receive and store emails during her four years as secretary of state. The bureau is holding the machine in protective custody after the intelligence community’s inspector general raised concerns recently that classified information had traversed the system. Continue reading...

Survey finds two-thirds of customers likely to pay for service after free trial ends but 61% turn off auto-renewal optionJust over half the people who sampled Apple Music have stuck around to use the service regularly, a study by music industry analytics firm MusicWatch has found. Apple recently took a victory lap for hitting the 11 million user mark among people who had sampled its new service, which is meant to compete with similar offerings from Spotify and Pandora. But 48% of those users aren’t there any more.Related: Apple Music has 11m listeners five weeks after launching Continue reading...

Amazon staff in the UK and abroad are being pushed beyond their limits and some are developing physical and mental illnesses, according to a UK trade union. Elly Baker, GMB’s lead officer for Amazon, says some British staff are suffering from musculoskeletal problems, work-related stress and anxiety, and often feel scared to speak up for fear of losing their job. The claims made by the union come after a damning expose by the New York Times into Amazon’s corporate culture. Amazon’s founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos has since refuted the claims Continue reading...

Employees are using time management apps to make better use of the working day. But do they really work – and are they too Big Brother?Andrew Chen, an investor in the San Francisco Bay Area, used to think that reaching zero in one’s inbox was folklore. The tech entrepreneur now uses an app, Streak, to regularly clear his emails. He also gets all his scheduling done with the help of another digital time manager, Esper.Time management apps have proliferated over the past few years as consumers increasingly try to squeeze more productivity out of their waking – and even sleeping – hours. Users hoping to curtail their time on Facebook and squeeze in more hours at the gym have flocked to apps like RescueTime and Toggl. You define the tasks and set the app to measure how long you spend on them. Continue reading...

Released without prior notification, the bug allows attackers to run programs as though they are the administrator of the computerApple has been hit by a second unpatched “privilege escalation” bug in as many months, allowing an attacker to take complete control of a computer by abusing a flaw in the operating system’s memory handling.The bug, which is similar to the DYLD vulnerability revealed in late July, affects versions of Mac OS X from 10.9.5 through to the recently released 10.10.5. It does not affect the beta versions of the next version of Mac OS X, called El Capitan, which is due out this autumn. As a privilege escalation bug, it opens up the possibility of malware bypassing security measures that are put in place to limit the abilities of malicious code, which somehow ends up running on a users’ computer. Continue reading...

Augmented reality company records net loss after it acquired rival Layar and tripled its headcount in preparation for growthBritish startup Blippar recorded a loss of £4.96m in its last financial year, as it more than tripled its headcount in the expectation of future growth in the augmented reality (AR) technology market.The company’s AR mobile apps, which overlay digital information and interactivity over real-world scenes and printed media, have been installed by more than 50 million people since they launched in 2011. Continue reading...

Rob from the rich, give to the poor, wipe an AI’s memory and practice your stealth skills – Volume has it allThere are two types of Metal Gear Solid fans. Some love the game for its increasingly dense plot, rich with oblique references to philosophy, information science, and conspiracy theories, as well as developer Hideo Kojima’s off-kilter sense of humour and love of easter eggs. For those people, September’s Metal Gear Solid V is likely to scratch that itch.The other type of Metal Gear Solid fan loves the series for its self-proclaimed “tactical espionage action”. That’s the aspect of the series I’ve always loved: stealth gameplay which verges on pure puzzles at times, throwing the protagonist Snake into a room full of cameras, guards and mines and tasking the player to get to the other side without being seen. Continue reading...

Rio de Janeiro Olympics among events companies may work together to cover following deal that values news and media site at $1.5bnNBC Universal has confirmed a $200m (£127m) investment in BuzzFeed in a deal that values the news and media company at about $1.5bn.Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed founder and chief executive, said the strategic partnership would “combine our respective strengths to build the future of news and entertainment”. Continue reading...

GMB says staff at distribution centres across UK under pressure to be ‘above-average Amazon robots’, in wake of US revelations

London event this September unveils the first four of its headline actsThe first raft of headliners for the Apple Music festival in London in September have been announced. Four acts have been named for the event, which was previously called the iTunes festival, and which takes place at the Roundhouse in north London.The headliners announced so far are: One Direction (supported by Little Mix) on 22 September; Disclosure on 25 September; Pharrell Williams on 26 September and Florence + the Machine (supported by James Bay on 28 September). Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Tuesday. Today’s screenshot comes from an isometric RPG named Seven. The game is being developed using the Unreal Engine 4 by indie studio Fool’s Theory, which is made up of ex-staff from CD Projekt RED. Continue reading...

Google’s new OS emphasizes security after last OS, Lollipop, contained a bug that allowed users to take control of a device by sending a textGoogle’s new operating system is called Marshmallow. The new name was revealed on Monday not in a press release but in a statue outside Google’s office in Mountain View, California. This will be the 13th official, renamed iteration for the Linux-based operating system, on which the company’s mobile phones and tablets are run.Eleven of the other names for the mobile system software kept with the dessert theme (the first two were just Alpha and Beta): Continue reading...

Your article about paternoster lifts (Why Germans fought so hard to save their paternoster lifts, 14 August) brought back happy memories of sixth-form voluntary service at school in central London in the late 1960s. To get out of any sport-related activity, my friend Sheila and I wheeled a tea trolley round all the outpatient departments of St Thomas’ hospital on Wednesday afternoons, doing our bit to help those waiting to be seen. Our self-selected reward at the end of the day was a ride on the staff-only paternoster lift, something we’d never come across before or, as far as I’m concerned, since. Like Dejan Tuco, we thought it particularly daring to do the full circuit, going round the hidden top and bottom of the lift, where you could hear the mechanism grinding away. Such innocent pleasures!

Former White House press secretary Jay Carney defends the competitive work environment of his new employer Amazon after a damning New York Times exposé into the retail giant. Speaking to CBS This Morning on Monday, Carney says he does not recognise the company portrayed in the article, which described working conditions devoid of empathy and a brutal push for greater productivity and efficiency. He says employees are drawn to the company because they agree with its ‘spirit of innovation’• Watch Jay Carney’s full interview on CBS This Morning Continue reading...

App offers practical assistance to refugees arriving in the eastern German city and comes in response to recent anti-immigrant hostilityA smartphone app has been launched to help asylum seekers find their feet in Dresden, which became the epicentre of anti-immigrant hostility in Germany earlier this year.The Welcome to Dresden app, developed by two IT companies based in the eastern German city, gives refugees information on how to register with the authorities, get health insurance and find their way around.

Read receipts – those signifiers that a message has been opened and read – fill me with terror, but plenty of people keep them on. Why?There was a time when the main thing you had to worry about in casual social situations was the decision between a peck-on-the-cheek, a handshake, or a hug upon greeting.Meanwhile, relationships have always been fraught with double meanings and crossed wires. Flowers – a spontaneous, fresh-scented display of thoughtfulness? Or a floral attempt to make amends, reeking of guilt? Continue reading...

Chief executive said in an internal email that the New York Times article did not describe the Amazon he knewAmazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos has defended his company after allegations of employee cruelty made by the New York Times.In a rare communication from the 51-year-old, Bezos told staff to carefully read the “very long” article and compared it with a “very different take by a current Amazonian” in an internal all-staff email.