Technology | The Guardian

With his company DeepMind, Londoner Demis Hassabis is leading Google’s project to build software more powerful than the human brain. But what will this mean for the future of humankind?Demis Hassabis has a modest demeanour and an unassuming countenance, but he is deadly serious when he tells me he is on a mission to “solve intelligence, and then use that to solve everything else”. Coming from almost anyone else, the statement would be laughable; from him, not so much. Hassabis is the 39-year-old former chess master and video-games designer whose artificial intelligence research start-up, DeepMind, was bought by Google in 2014 for a reported $625 million. He is the son of immigrants, attended a state comprehensive in Finchley and holds degrees from Cambridge and UCL in computer science and cognitive neuroscience. A “visionary” manager, according to those who work with him, Hassabis also reckons he has found a way to “make science research efficient” and says he is leading an “Apollo programme for the 21st century”. He’s the sort of normal-looking bloke you wouldn’t look twice at on the street, but Tim Berners-Lee once described him to me as one of the smartest human beings on the planet.Artificial intelligence is already all around us, of course, every time we interrogate Siri or get a recommendation on Android. And in the short term, Google products will surely benefit from Hassabis’s research, even if improvements in personalisation, search, YouTube, and speech and facial recognition are not presented as “AI” as such. (“Then it’s just software, right?” he grins. “It’s just stuff that works.”) In the longer term, though, the technology he is developing is about more than emotional robots and smarter phones. It’s about more than Google. More than Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and the other giant corporations currently hoovering up AI PhDs and sinking billions into this latest technological arms race. It’s about everything we could possibly imagine; and much that we can’t. Continue reading...

The beta test for Tom Clancy’s The Division was a fun but flawed experiment. Associate creative director Julian Gerighty says there is plenty more to revealWhen the four-day public beta test for online game The Division closed down in late January, plenty of questions remained unanswered. Ubisoft first announced its latest Tom Clancy spin off at E3 in 2013, promising an ambitious combination of role-playing adventure and third-person shooter, set in a New York devastated by a manmade small pox epidemic. Players would get into groups of four and enter the city, clearing the streets of violence. It sounded like a gritty real-world take on Activision’s epic space opera, Destiny. And in many ways, that’s how it played.But the beta experience drew a mixed reaction. Players enjoyed the near-seamless matchmaking, as well as the combination of a mission-based campaign mode with a competitive multiplayer area – known as the Dark Zone – where co-op groups could fight each other for loot. But the non-player characters roaming the streets of Manhattan all looked very similar, the weapons felt underpowered and the loot seemed slightly mundane. Ubisoft seemed to have stumbled on an unspoken fact of the role-playing genre – that the dynamics only work in a fantasy or science fiction environment. There, players can more easily suspend their disbelief and the roster of enemies and weapons can be boosted by the inclusion of fantastical monsters, weird planets and improbable laser canons.

A contemporary music festival in Plymouth plans to shed light on this mysterious substance as well as exploring the frontiers of musical imaginationFrom motion-tracked musicians to interactive sound installations, the Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival is all about blending the sonic with tech.Kicking off on 26 February and hosted at Plymouth University, the festival will feature innovations in the way we make music, all under the banner of “Frontiers: expanding musical imagination”. “This festival was originally created to showcase the research we developed in the university,” says Eduardo Reck Miranda, professor of computer music, who with co-director Simon Ible launched the inaugural festival more than a decade ago. Continue reading...

Sri Lankan government hopes the venture will provide high-speed internet with extensive coverage and cheaper rates for dataGoogle’s balloon-powered high-speed internet service known as “Project Loon” has started testing in Sri Lanka ahead of a planned joint venture with the government.

The greatest fighting game series of them all is back, but its return is half-cooked, with much of its advertised features yet to materialiseSeven years ago, Street Fighter IV felt like a spiritual revival. Capcom’s hyperactive martial arts series had been absent for close to a decade and, under the enthusiastic watch of producer Yoshinori Ono, its return was a triumph. By simplifying the game’s move lists it lowered the entry bar to newcomers, but it then also offered a long, deep learning curve for those willing to set out on the warrior’s journey. In this way the game attracted a devoted community of competitors, who trained with the dedication of real-world martial artists, and who now compete in professional tournaments for enviable prizes.Street Fighter V’s launch, by contrast, feels lacklustre. For the first time in the history of the series, there will be no release in the arcade, that frontline of competitive play where Street Fighter has, traditionally, always debuted. Capcom has been unable or unwilling to fund the game’s development alone, forging a financial partnership with Sony (thereby preventing the game from coming to Microsoft’s console). And now, on arrival, the Street Fighter V of February 2016 is plainly unfinished, with many of its modes and functions unavailable. The game is a statement of intent rather than anything resembling a final delivery. Continue reading...

The Observer’s apps reviewer recommends 10 apps and 10 mobile games he’s discovered this month, from Lonely Planet guides you can store offline to a game that allows you to run a newspaper Continue reading...

A solid but uncharismatic new racer from Milestone, the return of Pikachu and pals and stunning Ninja action

China may be showing the way forward with its innovative messaging serviceWould you want to be able to book a taxi from your email program? How about being able to send emails from your music organiser? Or maybe you’d like to be able to order a pizza while using your dating app?Unlikely scenarios, all three; and yet many of the apps that we use would like to be able to encompass functionalities as diverse as that. It was part of the integrated approach that Microsoft’s Windows Phone introduced in 2010 with its “People Hub” idea. That didn’t have much success, arguably because it was too early and the implementation wasn’t great. But the idea that when you communicate, you want to be able do all sorts of communication – whether via Facebook or Twitter or text or email – is one that is catching on in a big way. Continue reading...

It’s not just boy racers and rally drivers who love Subarus – the cars enjoy a fanatical following. The question is: why?Price: £27,495

The online Indie must not forget its roots as a vigorous daily conversation between people who only quite liked one anotherWhat happened to the Independent this week is a footnote in a huge story – the wave of creative destruction overturning all traditional media – and a very important local political and cultural story.The big story is well understood. Digital is much cheaper than analogue, or Gutenberg technology. The cumbersome is collapsing, outpaced by the nimble. That allows new voices into an old debate-cartel. But it’s not all genteel and attractive. Continue reading...

Want a football that can help you to become the next Lionel Messi? Or a tiny folding scooter to put the fun into your commute? These and more in this month’s roundupThis new addition to the noisy world of laser tag claims to occupy “the third space between the screen-dominated indoors and the vanishing outdoors”, which means that it has all the hysterical trigger-happiness of a multiplayer first-person shooter without the risk of obesity and bedsores. Continue reading...

Investigatory powers tribunal says computer network exploitation, such as activating cameras on devices without permission, is legalHacking of computers, networks and smartphones in the UK or abroad by GCHQ staff does not breach human rights, a security tribunal has ruled.A panel of five members of the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) decided on Friday that computer network exploitation (CNE), which may involve remotely activating microphones and cameras on electronic devices without the owners’ knowledge, is legal.

This week saw another mass protest by London black-cab drivers against Uber – so we brought two drivers from opposite sides of the road together to discuss the pros and cons of this ongoing disruption to the traditional cab industryRelated: Black-cab drivers' Uber protest brings London traffic to a standstillThis week, 8,000 London taxi drivers brought central London to a standstill in protest at the rise of Uber, the industry-disrupting ride-hailing app, and the light-touch regulation they say allows it to threaten their livelihoods. There are around 100,000 private hire or minicab drivers in London (with around 10,000 new drivers licensed every year), and at least 25,000 of them drive for Uber. It has become an increasingly bitter dispute. Seamus Balfe, who has been a black-cab driver for 16 years, and James Farrar, an Uber driver who is also co-founder of United Private Hire Drivers, which represents minicab drivers, navigate the issues. Continue reading...

Date bug will prevent 64-bit iOS devices from booting up, rendering them inoperable even through fail-safe restore methods using iTunesManually setting the date of your iPhone or iPad to 1 January 1970, or tricking your friends into doing it, will cause it to get permanently stuck while trying to boot back up if it’s switched off.

UK internet mapping company to appeal after High Court rejects lawsuit claiming Google’s conduct led to ‘dramatic loss of traffic’UK-based digital map provider Streetmap has lost its High Court action accusing Google of abusing its search dominance to promote Google Maps over rivals.

As a medium, games are only really now getting to grips with romance and relationships, but they’re still too goal-orientatedLet’s say I want to know what love is ... and I want something to show me. I could listen to pop music. I would discover that love is the greatest thing. It’s a drug. It’s something you can’t hurry. Apparently it’s thicker than water, which doesn’t really tell me much, other than love will be difficult to drink and may have a lower freezing point. By this point, I’ve already had enough of silly love songs.Cinema, too, has explored it for many years – all those two-hour stories of forgiveness and redemption, and Julia Roberts just being a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her. Books have been there for centuries, covering both ends of the sexy spectrum from the gently smouldering affection between Elizabeth and Darcy, to Morrissey’s car crash of a sex scene. Continue reading...

Digital fitness apps go the way of big-brands, as the last popular running app joins the purchase list alongside Adidas’s Runtastic and Under Armour’s MyFitnessPalJapanese trainer and sportswear manufacturer Asics has bought the popular running app Runkeeper, making it the latest in a string of fitness app purchases by sporting-goods manufacturers.

Researchers find software repository GitHub approved code written by women at a higher rate than code written by men, but only if the gender was not disclosedWhen a group of computer science students decided to study the way that gender bias plays out in software development communities, they assumed that coders would be prejudiced against code written by women.After all, women make up a very small percentage of software developers – 11.2% according to one 2013 survey – and the presence of sexism in all corners of the overwhelmingly male tech industry has been well documented. Continue reading...

Our resident mobile-auteur guides us through ten film-making apps, including iMovie, Hyperlapse and Kinemaster, revealing some of their cleverest features.1. Ramp up the resolution... or not Continue reading...

The editor-in-chief of MuslimGirl.net, the leading online magazine for Muslim women in the US, talks about prejudice and being inspired by BatmanAmani al-Khatahtbeh started her website MuslimGirl.net – which has one million unique readers, and a roster of about 50 editors and writers – “with a $9 domain registration”, in 2009, when she was a teenager in high school. She started publishing blogs on the site with friends from her mosque, inspired, Khatahtbeh says, “to push back against society’s imposition of ‘voicelessness’ and ‘docility’ on young Muslim women”.MuslimGirl has published stories on gay imams, “how to cope with your period as a Muslim woman”, and anti-black racism in the Muslim community – “taboo topics”, Khatahtbeh says, that before MuslimGirl she was unable to find a source for online. Continue reading...

Users of the video streaming site are falling for phishing emails and fake sites that lure them into giving up their passwords – only to have them sold onlineHackers have long targeted credit card numbers, bank accounts and social media passwords.Now, like the rest of us, they want cheap Netflix. Continue reading...

Social network’s Richard Allan and Brian McBride, former Amazon UK chief, to join government committee despite tax rowThe government has appointed a Facebook director and the former head of Amazon UK to a new advisory committee on the digital economy, despite the ongoing row over the amounts such companies have paid in tax to the UK exchequer.The appointments come days after it emerged that the Department for Work and Pensions plans to give a non-executive directorship to Amazon’s boss in China, Doug Gurr. Continue reading...

Once the bastion of social networking, MySpace backed away from a ‘Space/Face’ merger in 2004. In the decade since, it has changed ownership three timesMySpace, Facebook’s one-time rival, has a new home. The fallen tech star is now owned by Time Inc, which acquired the company almost by accident after buying ad tech firm Viant.Viant, formerly Interactive Media Holdings, oversees a portfolio of businesses including ad-targeting firm Specific Media, video ad network Vindico, and smart TV ad software-maker Xumo. Oh yes, and MySpace, purchased for more than half a billion dollars in 2005 by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and bought by Viant’s Specific Media for $35m in 2011. Continue reading...

Matt Brittin said that he couldn’t tell MPs how he is paid. He’s under no obligation to reveal the figure - but we can make an educated guessGoogle’s European boss prompted incredulity when he told MPs on the public accounts committee on Thursday that he could not disclose a figure for his pay.Matt Brittin did not make clear whether he really did not know the figure or simply did not want to reveal it. Continue reading...

I don’t like being bothered or bossed around. I hated that anyone, for any reason, could interrupt my life, and I could interrupt my life just the sameThe phone rings: it’s my friend checking to see if I can pick her up on the way to a dinner party. I ask her where she is and as she explains, I reach as far as I can across the countertop for a pen. I scribble the address in my trusty notebook I keep in my back pocket. I tell her I’ll be at her place in about 20 minutes, give or take a few. Then I hang up. Literally.I physically take the handset receiver away from my ear and hang it on the weight-triggered click switch that cuts off my landline’s dial tone. Continue reading...

Letter to European Union signed by 47 companies calls for governments to ensure local and national laws do not limit their developmentAirBnB, Uber, TaskRabbit and 47 other “collaborative economy” companies have penned an open letter calling on the European Union to prevent member states from clamping down on their businesses.Writing on behalf of the “European Collaborative Economy Industry”, more widely known as the “gig economy” or “sharing economy”, the signatories call for EU member states to “continue to seek to ensure that local and national laws do not unnecessarily limit the development of the collaborative economy to the detriment of Europeans”. Continue reading...

Magazine publisher acquires social network’s owner Viant and will mine its membership dataTime Inc has acquired what is left of social media pioneer MySpace in a move designed to hoover up user data to help it target digital ads more effectively.The publisher of magazines including Time, People and in the UK, NME and Ideal Home announced in a statement it had acquired Viant, a group of companies that includes advertising network Specific Media, which purchased MySpace for $35m in 2011. Continue reading...

Part narrative adventure, part science fiction TV series, the latest game from Max Payne creator Remedy Entertainment shows us a new era of entertainmentQuantum Break is about what happens when three young dudes get together and, for old time’s sake, bring about the collapse of the space-time continuum.Jack Joyce arrives at a university laboratory to find his wild-eyed genius best friend Paul Serene, standing next to a machine shaped like a giant ring doughnut. Serene raves about the technical possibilities of time travel while playing down all that annoying stuff about the massive consequences to the very fabric of the cosmos.

Customer service skills and a way with words are replacing muscles and a tough reputation, says European drugs agencyDrug dealers are turning from goons to geeks in a trade that is increasingly being conducted online, says a report by the European drugs agency.Research into internet drug markets by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) suggested the self-regulation of online markets such as Silk Road provide a safer environment for users and dealers of illicit substances. Continue reading...

Search results removals will now be applied to domains beyond Europe, including google.com, if the browser is located within the European Union

Company’s board of directors recommends that offer be accepted, shortly after revealing it has 281m mobile users and 59m desktop usersNorwegian web-browser maker Opera Software is on the verge of being bought for $1.2bn by a consortium of Chinese investors and software companies.Opera’s board of directors has recommended that the acquisition offer be accepted by its shareholders, having been searching for a buyer since August 2015. Continue reading...

Former deputy prime minister warns draft investigatory powers bill enables Russian-style ‘collection of everything on everyone’Britain’s intelligence agencies will be allowed to continue with a Russian-style “dragnet approach” to the bulk collection of data under the government’s proposed snooper’s charter, Nick Clegg has warned.The former deputy prime minister highlighted a “great congregation of concern” across the political spectrum after Theresa May published the draft investigatory powers bill. It would allow the security agencies to access the internet browsing histories of UK citizens for up to 12 months and establish a new legal framework for tracking web and phone use. Continue reading...

Critical report from parliamentary committee increases pressure on home secretary Theresa May to rewrite so-called snooper’s charter billThe home secretary has yet to make a conclusive case for giving spying agencies new snooping powers to track the web browsing histories of all British citizens, a key committee of peers and MPs has concluded.

The mass-market electric car, which will be the third in Tesla’s fleet, won’t arrive in driveways until at least 2017Tesla’s fourth car, the Model 3, will be revealed on 31 March, chief executive Elon Musk told shareholders on the company’s quarterly earnings call.Long awaited, the Model 3 is intended to be Tesla’s first “moderately priced” car. Tesla has said that it will have a starting price of about $35,000, which will likely be reduced further by the electric vehicle subsidies on offer in many countries around the world. Continue reading...

Tech is moving from the boardroom to the bedroom and is about to shake up the way we have sex and our fundamental ideas about relationshipsWith the likes of sex robots, personalised VR porn and teledildonics entering the market, our sex lives could be about to become more hi-tech.But beyond the souped-up vibrators, what are the repercussions of these apps on our ideas of fidelity and our sense of intimacy? What effect could the advent of sex robotics have on our human relationships? Continue reading...

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

Everyone can do an evening with a movie, a sofa and a bottle of wine but can the competitive world of video games also bring a couple together?Yoshi’s Woolly WorldWii U Continue reading...

Five alternatives to a pricey smartphone, from the Alcatel OneTouch to the Nokia 225 and the Samsung E1270“I felt far more alive,” said Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne of his brief but exhilarating love affair with a dumbphone. The dalliance lasted a few days, before he went crawling back, tail between legs, to the distracting and intrusive bosom of his iPhone. But the instinct that led him to stray is one shared by millions: smartphones are expensive, technologically perishable, physically delicate, thin on battery life, and cumbersome. Worse than that, they’re a bottomless time-sink, aggressively attention-consuming at all hours of the day or night, and they make the world your workplace.It isn’t just reactionary sentiment that could lead someone to turn back to a simpler piece of hardware. The smartphone market is plateauing and, according to Ofcom, 30% of the UK’s mobile phone users don’t own one; a figure that doesn’t include the many people who own a smartphone but keep a dumbphone in reserve for holidays, festivals and the many inevitable intervals during which their smartphones are out of action. There’s a national thirst for a phone that answers the call of duty, but goes no further, and the following is a cross-section of candidates from five brands. Could you do what Eddie couldn’t, and abandon your smartphone for good? Continue reading...

Team Legacy has moved in together to train for the Oceanic Pro League – but convincing parents that gaming is a viable career is often the greatest challengeBehind the façade of a pleasantly nondescript house in Sydney’s west, there’s a sporting revolution taking place.Six young men aged from their late teens to early 20s have been brought together to live in a two-storey suburban home for a year, in the hopes of becoming a world-beating team. Continue reading...

After several ‘excruciating’ financial months that included $67m in unplanned costs, the electric car maker says it will start making money this yearElon Musk, chief executive of electric luxury car maker Tesla Motors, promised investors on Wednesday that the company will start making money this year, sending its shares up sharply despite a wider fourth-quarter loss.Tesla shares rose more than 10% in after-hours trading after the company forecast a 60-80% increase in vehicle sales this year, and promised it would turn a profit on an adjusted basis. It will start generating positive cash flow in March. Continue reading...

Report finds average advertised pay for digital roles is about £50,000, as industry’s combined annual turnover hits £161bnEmployees in the UK’s growing digital technology sector can expect to earn better salaries than in the rest of the economy, according to the latest government-backed analysis of the industry.According to the Tech Nation 2016 report, the average advertised salary in digital roles is just under £50,000, 36% higher than the national average. The advertised pay for such jobs grew by 13% between 2012 and 2015. Continue reading...

Marc Andreessen, an influential investor, posted a tweet that appeared to back colonialism following India’s decision to ban Facebook’s free mobile internetA member of Facebook’s board and influential Silicon Valley investor was forced into a groveling apology on Wednesday after acknowledging that remarks appearing to support British colonialism in India were “ill-informed and ill-advised”.In a series of apologetic tweets, Marc Andreessen, who is accustomed to ranting on Twitter to nearly half a million devoted followers, apologized “without reservation” for an earlier, now deleted tweet. Continue reading...

Following much criticised £130m settlement, company’s representatives and HMRC chief can expect tough time before public accounts committeeGoogle’s tax affairs will be scrutinised by MPs on Thursday as the internet search engine company answers questions about its £130m settlement with HM Revenue & Customs. The California-based company will be represented by the head of its European operations, Matt Brittin, and its head of international tax, Tom Hutchinson.

Organisers say about 8,000 drivers took part to highlight threat to their trade from TfL’s licensing of taxi-hailing appTaxi drivers brought central London to a standstill to highlight the threats to their trade from Uber and changing regulation.

Toymaker has been hacked once, but if it gets hacked again, it wants you to know that it warned you in advanceHacked internet-connected toy maker VTech has finally relaunched its online app store more than two months after attackers broke into its site and stole the personal details of almost 5 million customers.The new store comes with much-needed upgrades to the site’s security, with which the company is attempting to quell the concerns of customers. But it also comes with another surprise for parents, buried the site’s terms of service. Continue reading...

Help! You’ll need somebody to send this series of animations to, as the former Beatle records ‘unique musical compositions’ for communications appThe ultimate Valentine’s Day gift for that special Beatles fan in your life? No, not a box-set, a T-shirt or a Yellow Submarine salt and pepper set. How about pinging them on Skype with a branded animation voiced by Sir Paul McCartney?Well, it’s the thought that counts. And the thought that McCartney and Skype have had is that in 2016, the world is finally ready for “love-inspired Mojis” featuring the musician. Continue reading...

Voice recognition tools such as Apple’s Siri still struggle to understand regional quirks and accents, and users are adapting the way they speak to compensateIt was a simple enough question, at least in this part of the world.“How can we mosey on down to the rodeo?” my friend Ben Crook drawled, sat in a rocking chair on his front porch, a can of Lone Star beer in his left hand on a humid night in Houston. Continue reading...

As part of its attempts to counter online radicalisation, the agency has come up with Slippery Slope – a sort of anti-extremist Flappy BirdI’m a susceptible goat speeding down the path to Islamic extremism, but first I must negotiate the green-and-grey blocks of infidel propaganda. No, wait; I’m a radicalised goat, hell-bent on jihad, but my extremist beliefs are threatened by green-and-grey blocks of debate. Or could it be that I’m trying to master the FBI’s virtually unplayable – it’s almost as infuriating as Flappy Bird – new online anti-extremism game, which involves manoeuvring a wayward goat through a sub-Minecraft-style obstacle course whose metaphorical intent is all but unfathomable?The game, entitled Slippery Slope, is supposed to educate impressionable kids on “the distorted logic of blame that can lead a person into violent extremism”, but it’s also indicative of how clueless governments can be when it comes to reaching out to the kids. Slippery Slope is part of an online initiative launched by the FBI called Don’t Be a Puppet: Pull Back the Curtain on Violent Extremism, which uses games and quizzes to inform young people about radicalisation. Continue reading...

You can’t do it yet, but here’s how to disable Twitter’s latest feature once it hits your accountTwitter has finally lifted the curtain on its long-teased rejig of the timeline.A new feature, dubbed “show me the best Tweets first”, will mix-up the Twitter timeline for the first time ever, putting the “most important” tweets from people you follow at the top of the timeline. Continue reading...

Twitter hopes a small change to its timeline will make a big difference to its future – so get ready for algorithmic tweets at the top of your timeline