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Disconnect and Adblock joins Electronic Frontier Foundation in coalition hoping to pressure advertisers to obey user preferences on tracking

Quilliam Foundation’s #notanotherbrother campaign highlights the human cost on Muslim communities of exposure to Islamist extremismA UK counter extremism organisation has launched a YouTube video focusing on the Muslim community in an attempt to fight back against the social media recruitment tactics employed by terror group Isis.London-based Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism thinktank co-founded by Maajid Nawaz, has launched the video targeting those who may be seeking out online call-to-arms messages from Isis and could be vulnerable to radicalisation. Continue reading...

• A gamer simulated Football Manager for 1,000 years and published results

Vlogbrothers’ Hank Green wants social network to rethink the way it counts views, and crack down on ‘freebooted’ videos ripped from YouTubeFacebook has ambitions to compete with YouTube in the online video world, but one of the latter’s prominent creators has criticised the social network’s strategy.Hank Green is one half of the Vlogbrothers duo, whose YouTube channel has more than 552m views and 2.6 million subscribers. He also co-founded the influential VidCon conference. Continue reading...

A group of researchers have demonstrated how to track users with nothing more than their remaining battery power, which could compromise privacyA little-known feature of the HTML5 specification means that websites can find out how much battery power a visitor has left on their laptop or smartphone – and now, security researchers have warned that that information can be used to track browsers online.The battery status API is currently supported in the Firefox, Opera and Chrome browsers, and was introduced by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, the organisation that oversees the development of the web’s standards) in 2012, with the aim of helping websites conserve users’ energy. Ideally, a website or web-app can notice when the visitor has little battery power left, and switch to a low-power mode by disabling extraneous features to eke out the most usage. Continue reading...

‘We have no interest in pressing charges or finding the people’ says the robot’s co-creator after Hitchbot met its demise (ironically) in the City of Brotherly LoveThe person or people who decapitated a hitchhiking robot in Philadelphia narrowly escaped having their pictures captured by the android, its co-creator told the Guardian on Monday.

Sudden blanket ban on websites considered a ‘social nuisance’ is met with anger online and triggers debate on censorship and freedomIndian authorities have moved to block more than 800 pornography websites in the first large-scale crackdown on the internet in the world’s largest democracy.The move immediately prompted a debate about censorship and freedom. Continue reading...

Wizard game that helps to strengthen cognitive function will be available on an iOS app after being developed by the University of CambridgeA “brain training” game improves the cognitive function of people with schizophrenia and facilitates everyday tasks, according to researchers at the University of Cambridge.Wizard, which will now be available on iOS (Apple’s operating system) as part of the Peak app, was tested for four weeks by 22 participants with a schizophrenia diagnosis. Continue reading...

Richard Dawkins is the latest victim of users who disappear seemingly at random and without warning. What is this mystery?Apparently Richard Dawkins does not exist – which is awkward, given everything he says about God.Confusing cosmic glitch pic.twitter.com/kQeu6L3OVe Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Monday. Today’s screenshot is from Retro Invasion, a co-op brawler by German studio, Threaks. The game is now on Steam early access (or will be tomorrow – the press release is ambiguous). Continue reading...

The former Talking Heads man has aired his frustrations with the current music business model, and said Apple Music refused to disclose their royalty calculations on his own musicDavid Byrne has called for more transparency from major labels and streaming services, criticising the lack of information regarding how they pay royalties and what percentage of these reach the artists.

Journey makes the step up to current-gen consoles in style, while a gun-toting cat on a unicorn steals the show elsewhereOne of 2012’s best games glides softly on to current-gen consoles. Journey is an interesting beast, a serene and ethereal antidote to a medium fixated on the fast and loud. The player takes up the role of a nameless wanderer amid the desert ruins of a once-great civilisation, able only to float around and produce mournful musical chimes. As you surf the sand dunes and drift in the breeze, sometimes you are alone and other times another singing wanderer guides your way… Continue reading...

Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal the tech giant created Google Auto LLC to help develop its self-driving cars even as it courted big car makersGoogle has set up its own car company. The tech giant has flirted with major car firms as it explores driverless cars but has also quietly set up its own auto company, according to documents obtained by the Guardian.Google Auto LLC is headed by Chris Urmson, project lead for Google’s self-driving cars. Urmson has been on a charm offensive with the world’s biggest automobile manufacturers. At the North American International Auto Show in January, Urmson announced talks with General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Daimler and Volkswagen. In March, he told USA Today: “Making cars is really hard, and the car companies are quite good at it. So, in my mind, the solution is to find a partnership.”

French-born Mark Karpeles held in connection with the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the virtual currencyMark Karpeles, the former head of defunct bitcoin exchange MtGox, has been arrested in Japan, and is reportedly to be questioned over the 2014 disappearance of nearly $390m (£250m) worth of the virtual currency. Continue reading...

From personalised ads in Solitaire to an address book-reading personal assistant, some users are unhappy with Windows 10’s approach to privacyWindows 10 is under attack over default settings which users say compromise their privacy, just days after the operating system’s successful launch saw more than 14 million installs in the first 24 hours.Hundreds of commenters on sites such as Hacker News and Reddit have criticised default settings that send personal information to Microsoft, use bandwidth to upload data to other computers running the operating system, share Wi-Fi passwords with online friends and remove the ability to opt out of security updates. Continue reading...

Online taxi-hailing app raises close to $1bn from investors including Microsoft and Indian media conglomerate Bennett Coleman & Co’s Times InternetUber Technologies Inc has closed a new round of funding that values the online taxi-hailing company at nearly $51bn, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Ilion made payments of $500 and $300 last year after ‘ransomware’ infected municipal computers, while other US towns dealt with similar attacksA village in central New York made ransom payments of $300 and $500 last year to keep its computers running after two official-looking emails released malware throughout its system, state auditors said.The comptroller’s office, which has audited 100 municipal computer systems in the past three years, said Ilion’s experience should warn others of the growing threat, which can infiltrate computers and make them inaccessible. The big problem for the village of 8,000 was its financial software. Continue reading...

Head-mounted wearable computer is returning to the market, but this time aimed squarely at business users rather than consumersGoogle has quietly resurrected its wearable computer, Glass, as an enterprise-focused device aimed at industries such as healthcare, manufacturing and energy.The unannounced relaunch, reported by the Wall Street Journal, could be followed a year later by a new consumer version. But for now, the device is aimed exclusively at business customers who gain immediate value from having a head-mounted display, and bypass many of the issues experienced by consumer users, particularly the privacy concerns sparked by wearing a head-mounted camera in public places. Continue reading...

Andy Cox, engineering lead for Facebook's aviation team, appears in a promotional video discussing the technology behind the company's first full-scale drone, which it plans to use to provide internet access in remote parts of the world. Code-named 'Aquila', the solar-powered drone will be able to fly without landing for three months at a time, using a laser to beam data to a base station on the ground Continue reading...

PS4/PS3/PSVita/PC (version tested); cert n/a; Size Five GamesGaming has its trends, and in recent times one has been the procedurally generated or “roguelike” indie game. You could go back over decades picking out examples of this design technique, but the big inspiration for this modern flowering is the success of Spelunky. A 2D platformer that married Nintendo-quality controls with brilliant enemies and ever-changing environments, it’s not only a classic but shows why the technique is so attractive to small teams. A procedurally generated game can, if you get it right, keep surprising players for years and even decades to come.

Sandi MacPherson’s 50/50 Pledge is indicative of a movement that’s aiming for a fair proportion of men and women at tech events – and eventually in the industryWomen are woefully under-represented in the tech industry. A study last year found that of 6,517 companies that had raised venture funding in the US only 183 had a female chief executive. Now one of those is setting out a simple, practical idea that might actually move the dial.Launched this week by Sandi MacPherson, founder of the San Francisco-based social networking startup Quibb, the 50/50 Pledge aims to get an equal proportion of men and women on stage at tech events by connecting organisers with a directory of relevant female experts. Since the directory was tweeted out by MacPherson “with no expectations” in May it has already accrued over 1,100 names, with candidates ranging from software engineers to chief marketing officers at companies such as Google, Facebook and BuzzFeed. Continue reading...

Sewing blogger Jenny Rushmore was told she should ‘eat less cake’ – so her followers posted pictures of them eating cake in solidaritySometimes, when it comes to internet trolls, the best thing to do is grab a slice of cake.At least that’s what one sewing blogger’s followers decided after an internet troll came out of nowhere to tell her she should “eat less cake”. Continue reading...

Police unaware of 644 reports from principals because of coding error made during upgrade to Education Department systemAn IT failure in the Queensland Education Department meant 644 suspected cases of child sexual abuse were not relayed to police.School principals attempted to report the cases, which took place from 22 January and involved students whose parents or guardians were deemed to be acting in their interests over the abuse, via the department’s One School online portal.

The place to talk about games and other things that matterHello, it’s Friday. Today’s game is Arslan: the Warriors of Legend, a tactical action game from Tecmo Koei, coming to PS4 and Xbox One in early 2016. Continue reading...

Social media company plans to start testing the craft, which is intended to provide internet access to remote areas, within monthsFacebook has revealed its first full-scale drone, which it plans to use to provide internet access in remote parts of the world.Code-named “Aquila”, the solar-powered drone will be able to fly without landing for three months at a time, using a laser to beam data to a base station on the ground. Continue reading...

Brief filed as part of lawsuit demands court vacate Federal Communications Commision’s decision to regulate internet carriers as public utilitiesTelecoms lobbyists have filed a brief in a lawsuit that includes nearly every major industry player demanding that the Washington DC court of appeals vacate net neutrality rules ordered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in February.Chief among the objections of the United Telecom Association (UTA) is that their members won’t invest as heavily in broadband infrastructure if they’re forced to abide by the new regulations, contravening the FCC’s mandate to encourage investment. Continue reading...

Congressional Black Caucus to meet executives of Google, Apple and other tech companies with poor track records of hiring African American employeesThe most powerful African American politicians in the US will next week demand that Silicon Valley companies hire more black people after official figures revealed that many of the world’s most prominent tech companies’ workforces are just 2% black.

Search firm rejects regulator’s demand to remove links from google.com as well as its European subsidiariesGoogle has rejected the French data protection authority’s demand that it censor search results worldwide in order to comply with the European Court of Justice’s so-called right to be forgotten ruling.The company’s rejection of the ruling could see its French subsidiary facing daily fines, although no explicit sanction has yet been declared. Continue reading...

Grassroots supporters across the country tuned in Wednesday night to hear the Democratic presidential candidate deliver his message via livestreamFrom Montpellier to Honolulu, Bernie Sanders supporters gathered at bars and bookstores, coffee shops and even a yoga studio, on Wednesday evening to hear the upstart Democratic presidential candidate call for a political revolution.Sanders delivered his message from a house party in Washington DC, and his remarks were simultaneously broadcast in about 3,500 meeting locations across the country. Continue reading...

The former Top Gear stars have signed a deal with the online giant for a rival motoring series Continue reading...

Former BBC stars opt for online giant rather than ITV and Netflix for new motoring show to launch next yearPoll: Would you join Amazon Prime to watch Clarkson, Hammond and May?

Suman Nayyar needs to replace his seven-year-old Windows XP PC and isn’t sure what to get, but there are certainly plenty of alternativesCan a thumb PC or mini-desktop replace my seven-year-old Windows XP PC? Or, as desktops are on the way out, could I get away with using an iPad and iPhone? Basically, I do email, social media, web-surfing and photos. Suman NayyarAt this early stage, I wouldn’t recommend a “USB PC” such as the Intel Compute Stick as a desktop replacement: a mini-desktop such as the Acer Revo One is more capable and much better value. The larger question is whether you can replace a PC with a tablet.

We know that digital technology has radically reshaped our lives. But is it also changing our ideas of who we are?A new book by author Laurence Scott looks at some of the strange side-effects of the digitisation of our lives. It's called The Four-Dimensional Human, and in it Scott picks apart some of the jarring new realities posed by the hyper-connectivity of our everyday lives. He argues that as moments of our lives audition for their moment of digital glory we are increasingly projecting ourselves into a shimmering fourth dimension online, allowing us to exist in several places at once.But as our treasured experiences are fed into our social platforms, can we ever experience the present in the same way? What does it mean to become the PR representative for yourself, continually attending to your brand across multiple platforms? Scott joins Olly Mann to explore the shadowlands where our photogenic breakfasts meet our awkward silences and leave us with a sense of unease at the digital takeover of our lives. Continue reading...

PM says he will introduce legislation that could see websites shut down if they fail to bring in effective age-restricted controlsDavid Cameron is to give pornography websites one last chance to produce an effective voluntary scheme for age-restricted controls on their sites or he will introduce legislation that could see them shut down.At the election the then culture secretary, Sajid Javid, said the party would act to ensure under-18s were locked out of adult content and the Conservative election Facebook page in April promised legislation to achieve this. Continue reading...

Company’s second-quarter earnings were better than expected – its ad business was up 43% – and its stock rallied after initial slump in after-hours tradingYou’ll be seeing a lot more video on Facebook in the near future, and your musings will be easier to access. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors on Wednesday’s second-quarter earnings call that “connecting people with more great video content is an important part” of the company’s future, and the company will improve its searchability – Facebook has already indexed some 2tn posts.Users had sent out some 40% more videos to their lists of friends and followers, Zuckerberg said, and the company was encouraging them to share still more. (Facebook’s own video advertising is more valuable per advertisement than its text and image ads.) “This quarter we updated our newsfeed ranking to help people see more videos they care about,” Zuckerberg said. Continue reading...

Deflategate got you curious on how to permanently erase your scandalous text conversations? Here’s some pro tips for when simply hitting delete is not enoughRelated: Tom Brady denies Deflategate 'smoking gun' exists after suspension upheldTom Brady’s four-game suspension has angered many Patriots fans, who’ve since questioned the decision. The 20-page ruling by the NFL revealed that the quarterback had his cellphone destroyed, the very cellphone NFL investigators wanted to look at to see if Brady had ordered the footballs deflated. Continue reading...

Despite the lack of flourish and giant ads, a lot rides on the success of the new Windows version for Microsoft and its chief executiveTwenty years ago the launch of a new version of Windows merited midnight store openings and a seven-figure payment to use a Rolling Stones song in ads celebrating the new Start menu. Early on Wednesday the release of Windows 10 happened silently, with millions of computers around the world updated over the internet.Related: Windows 10 review – final version of Windows might be Microsoft's best ever Continue reading...

Former Twitter executive says company’s ‘fatal posture’ is futile obsession with matching competitor, as growth stalls and stock remains at bottom of a cliffTwitter is in trouble. With user growth stalled, staff fleeing the company by the hundreds, and the company’s stock still at the bottom of the cliff it fell from in April, sources say the company’s futile obsession with matching its biggest competitor for scale is costing it dearly. And it still doesn’t have a permanent CEO.“Honestly, I think part of the fundamental issue is their relentless fixation on how they compare to Facebook, and I think that’s in some ways a fatal posture,” one former Twitter executive told the Guardian. “I mean, no one will say on the record ‘We compare ourselves relentlessly to Facebook,’ because that’s a losing position, but of course they do.” Continue reading...

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Hamburg data protection authority says that site cannot demand photo ID from users – and says company has to ‘play by our rules’ to operate in the countryFacebook has been told to allow people to use pseudonyms on its site by a German regulator, which has ruled that the site’s “real name” policy violates the right to privacy.The Hamburg data protection authority said on Tuesday that the site could not force users to give official ID such as a passport or identity card, nor could it unilaterally change their chosen names to their “real” names on the site. Continue reading...

Facebook’s SMS notification allows users to post a birthday wish by replying with ‘1’ – meaning it would be more heartfelt to send ‘Wibble!’ to your friendsGood news! Birthday wishes are finally meaningless. All the birthday cards you’ve ever posted, all the tender heartfelt messages sent to loved ones, all the dates seared into your memory through years of joy, are now utterly invalidated, so we should all stop bothering and move on with our lives.If you’re wondering who to thank from freeing us of the burden of caring about arbitrary dates, it’s Facebook. Thanks to them, the phrase “Happy Birthday!” is now a hollow shell. Why? This: Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Wednesday already! Today’s screenshot is from World of Tanks which is now available on Xbox One. Continue reading...

Microsoft has launched its latest operating system, promising to shake up the whole gaming ecosystem. But will it?After several months of hype and expectation, Windows 10 has finally launched, bringing a(nother) new operating system era to computers everywhere. Under the tagline “it’s the Windows you know, only better” Microsoft is promising a range of exciting features, from the return of the Start menu to the arrival of Cortana, a cross-platform digital assistant that promises to be sort of like Paperclip guy but actually useful.Forget all that, though, because the real question is: what will Windows 10 mean for games and gamers? Here are the key features and how they’ll affect PC and Xbox One owners. Continue reading...

With more than a quarter of Tajikistan’s citizens working abroad, some couples are relying on video chats to make their vows. RFE/RL reportIn Shahnoza Idrisova’s wedding photo, the 27-year-old economist is dressed in white and accepting a water-filled bowl from her new mother-in-law, a ritual normally performed by both bride and groom just after marriage.

Microsoft’s Windows swansong brings together the best bits of Windows 7 and 8 – and won’t force you to change the way you workMicrosoft’s last version of Windows is finally here: Windows 10 is arguably the best version of the ubiquitous operating system. But the question is, should you upgrade for free immediately? Or will it be another Windows 8 moment?Windows 10 is a big step towards the Microsoft classic becoming an always-connected operating system for every device, not just PCs, which is continuously updated for free. It’ll run traditional desktop Windows apps, like Windows 7. But it will also run new “universal” apps downloaded from the Windows Store, which Microsoft hopes will become a trusted source of traditional Windows desktop programs as well. Continue reading...

Company posts revenues of $502.4m, compared with $312m from a year earlier, but growth remains an issue after Twitter’s CEO was forced out in JuneTwitter beat expectations – including its own – by a healthy margin on Tuesday, announcing better-than-anticipated earnings even as two more high-profile executives left amid a continuing shakeup. The company’s share price rallied 5.36% in after-hours trading.“Product initiatives we’ve mentioned in previous calls haven’t yet had meaningful impact on growing audience and participation,” interim CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey said on a conference call with investors. “This is unacceptable, and we’re not happy about it.” Continue reading...

The retail giant’s proposal carves out airspace from 200ft-400ft exclusively for autonomous drones, with a further 100ft above it declared a no-fly zoneAmazon is proposing that a pristine slice of airspace above the world’s cities and suburbs should be set aside for the deployment of high-speed aerial drones capable of flying robotically with virtually no human interference.The retail giant has taken the next step in its ambition to deliver packages via drone within 30 minutes by setting out in greater detail than ever before its vision for the future of robotic flight. It envisages that within the next 10 years hundreds of thousands of small drones – not all of them Amazon’s or devoted to delivery – will be tearing across the skies every day largely under their own automated control. Continue reading...

Users of YouTube and other services will no longer need a Google+ account to join, in attempt to downsize reach of failed rival to Facebook and TwitterOh, Google+, we hardly knew you. Because we never used you. Even though your parent company systematically forced us all into signing up for accounts. You were the new odd kid in class nobody wanted to talk to, but we were all forced to.Now, in a blog post entitled “Everything in its right place”, which may or may not be a Radiohead reference, the company has announced it is scaling back the reach of Google+, its underperforming social network. Continue reading...

New Moto G adds waterproofing, while Moto X attempts to beat Samsung and Apple with cheaper prices and better camerasMotorola is launching a new version of its popular low-priced Moto G and two new versions of its Moto X, as it attempts to compete at both the low and high end of the smartphone market.