Technology | The Guardian

Security bug allows remote attack of Uconnect system, letting hackers apply the brakes, kill the engine and take control of steering over the internetSecurity experts are urging owners of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles vehicles to update their onboard software after hackers took control of a Jeep over the internet and disabled the engine and brakes and crashed it into a ditch.

The company has kept quiet about sales figures for the Apple Watch, which went on sale in April, but analysts’ estimates are low after tepid reviewsAll eyes will be on Apple’s Watch sales when the tech behemoth reports its latest quarterly earnings later today. There may not be much to see.Analysts have called for caution ahead of Apple’s earnings call today, during which the company is expected to give its first official indication of Apple Watch sales figures since they went on sale in April. However, Apple will probably leave the exact revenue for the product in the “other” category and few are expecting detailed figures for an Apple product that has got off to a mixed start.

Research finds more than 38 million people in China are using VPNs or proxy servers to watch BBC shows – and could be a useful source of revenue

A coder has already produced a Google Chrome plugin to reverse Twitter’s change, allowing background images to be restored for usersTwitter users are no longer able to set their own background pictures as they browse the site, after the company quietly turned off the much-loved feature and replaced backgrounds with a uniform light grey.User-set backgrounds will still be visible when a specific user’s feed, or individual tweet, is visited. But when browsing the home timeline, users are now faced with a plain background, rather than one of their own choice. Continue reading...

Silicon Valley companies rally around Samsung with supporting statement arguing that Apple’s patent litigation is damaging to the industryGoogle, Facebook, Dell, HP, eBay and a collection of other large Silicon Valley companies have sided with Samsung in its battle over patents with Apple.

US presidential hopeful believed he had received supportive tweet with picture of ‘Vietnam vet’ during controversy over McCain criticism

Move to waive account-removal fee may not be useful to users whose information is already in hands of hackers The Impact TeamExtramarital dating site Ashley Madison has apologised to its users a second time for allowing its database to be comprehensively stolen, and is temporarily offering users the ability to fully delete their account from the site free of charge.The “paid delete” ability, which typically costs £15 in the UK and $19 in the US per account, was cited by Ashley Madison’s pseudonymous attacker, The Impact Team, as a main reason for the hack in the first place. The group alleged that the site did not in fact fully delete all information about a user, even after they had paid the fee. Continue reading...

Case of mistaken identity bumps Spanish Instagram user off social network, replacing him with his footballing namesakeInstagram has apologised after it handed control of a Spanish user’s account over to a Barcelona football player with the same name.Andrés Iniesta, from Madrid, is the holder of the @ainiesta Instagram account. Andrés Iniesta, from Fuentealbilla, is the captain of Barcelona football club. The former Iniesta woke up on Wednesday to find that access to his Instagram account was blocked. Continue reading...

Discover Weekly will offer two hours of music based on users’ listening habits and those of similar fansThe music-streaming battle between Apple Music and Spotify isn’t just about which one has the Taylor Swift album: it’s about which one has the best playlists, and the ability to recommend them to the listeners who’ll love them.Apple Music made a strong start on the first of those: the service has won plaudits for its deep collection of programmed playlists. Now Spotify is fighting back on a related front: personalisation. Continue reading...

Yu Suzuki’s long-awaited adventure sequel has received over $6m in crowdfunding, but questions still hang over it. Here are some possible answersAfter years of enthusiastic fan campaigns, raised hopes and dashed dreams, Shenmue III has finally been funded. The third title in the influential action adventure series, originally developed for the Sega Dreamcast console, finished its Kickstarter campaign at the weekend, attracting just over $6.3m from almost 70,000 backers.Envisioned and overseen by legendary designer Yu Suzuki, the long-awaited sequel is now the most highly funded video game on the Kickstarter platform, beating previous record-holder Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night by almost a million dollars. Shenmue III was also the fastest title to shoot through the one million dollar funding mark, reaching the figure less than two hours after the Kickstarter launch. The game went on to earn its $2m target within nine hours. Continue reading...

Everyday delivery moves one step closer as Federal Aviation Authority-approved drone successfully deposits medicine to rural health clinicThe first US government-approved drone delivery has successfully transported 4.5kg of medical supplies to a rural health clinic.

Italian police investigate six Hacking Team employees after previous accusations over the leaking of company secretsItalian police are investigating whether the attack on cyber-espionage firm Hacking Team, which exposed its dealings with repressive regimes and flaws in user software, could have been an inside job.

Site’s hackers claim 37m personal records have been stolen from notorious dating site, with Cougar Life and Established Men also compromisedHackers have stolen and leaked personal information from online cheating site Ashley Madison, an international dating site with the tagline: “Life is short. Have an affair.”The site, which encourages married users to cheat on their spouses and advertises 37 million members, had its data hacked by a group calling itself the Impact Team. At least two other dating sites, Cougar Life and Established Men, also owned by the same parent group, Avid Life Media, have had their data compromised.

Microsoft Hyperlapse, WifiMapper, Booking Now, Musical.ly, This War of Mine, Mission Impossible, Warhammer 40,000 and moreWelcome to this week’s roundup of the latest, greatest Android apps and games, covering smartphones and tablets.All these apps have been released for the first time – ie not updates – since the last roundup. All prices are correct at the time of writing, with “IAP” indicating use of in-app purchases. Continue reading...

State government proposes changes to licence conditions which would help free up the on-demand transport industryTaxi and Uber drivers will operate on a level playing field under legislative changes proposed by the West Australian government.

From a zombie apocalypse to the horrors of trench warfareMany tabletop games enjoy taking inspiration from obscure sources. Not so Pints of Blood, which leaves little room for confusion. Focusing on a group of survivors fending off zombies in a pub, it’s Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead in your hands. With attractive production quality and semi-co-operative gameplay, it’s easy to tempt friends into Pints of Blood, but it can quickly feel repetitive. The result offers plenty of undemanding fun, if a slight lack of intricacy.With a less obvious influence, but more nuanced – and surprisingly so – is BraveRats, which across just 17 cards presents a brilliantly elegant playing system. Themed loosely around two warring rodent clans, it’s a quickfire game of reading your rival’s intentions in snappy sessions of about five minutes. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Monday again! Today’s game is Dream, a narrative adventure set in the unconscious mind of the lead protagonist. It’s coming to Steam on 31 July. Continue reading...

The internet is already a threat to quiet contemplation – but could the internet of things herald a return to solitude?Solitude has long been the condition for inspiration. John the Baptist fled to the desert; Descartes retreated to his fireside; Mahler took refuge in his lakeside cabin. Through solitude, religious, intellectual or creative enlightenment can be reached. As Nietzsche said: “How can anyone become a thinker if he does not spend at least a third of the day without passions, people and books?”

The London developer drew from the best Batman comic books for its successful action-adventure trilogy, exploring the character’s vulnerabilities in new waysNearby, there’s a cape with rainbow stripes and a cowl covered in diamantes; beside them a Batman bust featuring the phrase: “Although of course you end up becoming yourself”. It’s a book title, but also a neat comment on this weird character.We’re at the Kachette art gallery in Shoreditch and tonight sees a promotional installation featuring dozens of Batman outfits reinterpreted by artists and celebrities. It’s the sort of event Bruce Wayne would begrudgingly attend, and somewhere among these curious art works is Sefton Hill, the director of the monumentally successful Batman Arkham video games. Continue reading...

David Cameron and the director of the FBI have both asked for ‘backdoors’ to be included in encryption softwareEver since the internet emerged into public view in the 1980s, a key question has been whether digital technology would pose an existential challenge to corporate and governmental power. In this context, I am what you might call a recovering utopian – “utopian” in that I once did believe that the technology would put it beyond the reach of state and corporate agencies; and “recovering” in the sense that my confidence in that early assessment has taken a hammering over the years. In that period, technology has sometimes trumped politics and/or commercial power, but at other times it’s been the other way round.The early battles were over intellectual property. Since computers are essentially copying machines, making perfect copies of digital goods became child’s play. As a celebrated trope put it: “Copying is to digital technology as breathing is to animal life.” So began the copyright wars, triggered by widespread piracy and illicit sharing of copyrighted files, which emasculated the music industry and led to the emergence of new corporate masters of the media universe – Apple, Spotify, YouTube and the rest – and the taming of the file-sharing monster. Result: Technology 1, Establishment 1. Continue reading...

Beneath its unremarkable exterior, VW’s Passat is bursting with gadgets. So why does everyone think it’s dull?Price £22,320

Richard Prince has turned borrowing online images into high art – and hard cash. But is the artist’s work anything other than genius trolling?It’s a question as old as art itself: “Yeah, but is it art?”Type it into Google and get 1.26 billion results. It lends itself to book titles, television series and conversations between white walls, whetted by prosecco. Continue reading...

‘The steering is so responsive, it made me want to zigzag down the road for a laugh’All the problems you might encounter with a BMW i3 will be because you have not planned your life around having one. You can’t charge it with an extension cable, so even if you have a plug installed in your forecourt (who has a forecourt?), parking must reach it. I was charging up with a cord 30m down my road, hopping in and out of the house to apologise to passersby.The mileometer is maddening: a promised 16 miles morphs mysteriously into 10 after you’ve gone down two streets. The company claims a range of 100 miles, thanks to its incredible battery: on the controls, it goes up to 80. But that comes with more riders than a presidential entourage: it depends on climate, driving style, weight of driver, weight of passenger, weight of handbag. Continue reading...

Musk announces Tesla Motors will debut a new roadster in four years and says upgrade to current Model S means car can go zero to 60mph in just 2.8 secondsElon Musk has made it official: his electric car company, Tesla Motors, is planning to debut an unnamed new Roadster in four years, and it won’t be based on the Lotus like the last one.But Musk isn’t done with the old cars yet. The electric tech mogul held a press conference on Friday to tell reporters how fast his old car goes with its new upgrade: zero to 60 miles per hour in 2.8 seconds, which would put the four-door sedan in a league with high-end sports cars like the most recent Lamborghini Murciélago. Continue reading...

VFS Global, which provides visa services on behalf of the UK, released online application forms that allowed users to access other people’s data

Move follows judge’s recent ruling that government was legally mistaken in deciding not to introduce compensation scheme for musicians who faced lossesThe high court has quashed regulations introduced by the government to allow members of the public to lawfully copy CDs and other copyright material bought for their own private use. The move follows a judge’s recent ruling that the government was legally incorrect in deciding not to introduce a compensation scheme for songwriters, musicians and other rights holders who faced losses as a result of their copyright being infringed.The decision was won by the Musicians’ Union, UK Music and the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, with a legal team led by two QCs, Ian Mill and Tom de la Mare. UK Music estimated that the new regulations, without a compensation scheme, would result in loss of revenues for rights owners in the creative sector of £58m a year. Continue reading...

Conservatives announce cross-party commission, which will be asked to decide whether act is too expensive and overly intrusiveMinisters have launched a cross-party review of the Freedom of Information Act that is likely to be viewed as an attempt to curb public access to government documents. The move comes just hours after papers released on Friday under FOI disclosed that British pilots have been involved in bombing in Syria.Matthew Hancock, the Cabinet Office minister, laid a statement before parliament outlining details about the five-person commission that will be asked to decide whether the act is too expensive and overly intrusive. Members will include Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, who is already on the record calling for the act to be rewritten. Straw is still the subject of FOI requests over the rendition of a terror suspect during his time in office. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterHello, it’s Friday. Today’s game is Solar Shifter EX, a top-down bullet hell shooter from Elder Games, the one-man studio formed by Hungarian developer, Ede Tarsoly.Solar Shifter features a jump shift mechanic that lets you warp out of danger zones faster than Kenny Loggins. Coming to PC later this year it’ll hit Xbox One and PS4 in 2016. Continue reading...

With the help of smartphone apps and FitBit-like devices, women can now track and understand their monthly menstrual cycles and pregnancies digitally

Decision to stop short of a full-on purge of site’s most controversial threads demonstrates awakening within Reddit to a long-acknowledged problem: the site might not be able to survive without themReddit finally began contending with the hate-filled parts of its popular internet free-for-all on Thursday, as new leadership vowed to crack down on the site’s baroque selection of pornography and to isolate other “content that violates a common sense of decency”.Dozens of so-called “subreddits” devoted to images and fantasies of rape and violence have now vanished, less than one week after Reddit’s female chief executive departed amid a chorus of death threats and slurs from the site’s notoriously toxic users. Continue reading...

Company posts better-than-expected profit as it announces 11% rise in advertising revenue in call to investors with new CFO Ruth PoratGoogle finally ended its losing streak on Thursday when it beat expectations and posted better-than-expected profit for the first time in six quarters.The company’s advertising revenue jumped 11% from last year to $16.02bn. Its consolidated revenue rose 11% to $17.73bn. The number of ads, or paid clicks, increased by 18%. Continue reading...

Wells-Barnett was a prominent suffragist and anti-lynching activist who used her platform as a newspaper editor to decry racial inequality in the late 19th centuryAs civil rights past and present remain in focus after the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, and the release of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, Google is celebrating journalist and activist Ida B Wells-Barnett’s 153rd birthday with a “Google doodle”.

ESports deserves a better documentary than this dull and sentimental celebration of competitive gamingESports – competitive team video gaming played out in front of a stadiums full of fans – deserves its Hoop Dreams. Professional players, showing off their prowess in games such as League of Legends and Dota 2, vie for giant prize money in tournaments watched online by millions. Corruption and match-fixing allegations have dogged the sport, like any other. The subject has spice and drama aplenty. Yet All Work All Play ignores all that for dry praise of the sport’s progress, peppered with the odd bit of soupy sentimentality. Gaming has inspired very good documentaries in recent years (Indie Game: The Movie, Free to Play), made by film-makers that understand character and plot. But All Work All Play makes for a dull, corporate documentary. Continue reading...

Lauri Love held in Suffolk and facing possible extradition to US over claims he hacked agencies including Nasa and the Federal Reserve

Sometime in 1993, my beloved Morris Traveller was badly damaged and I took it to Charlie Ware’s Morris Minor Centre in Bath: I wandered into the workshop and thence into a rather untidy (and oily) office where I was welcomed and asked all about my car, how long I had owned it, my maintenance schedule etc, by a middle-aged man who was clearly enormously enthused by all things Minor-related.Rather belatedly, I realised I had actually met Charlie himself, an almost legendary figure to those of us who tasked ourselves with keeping these venerable vehicles on the road. Picking it up some weeks later, he talked again about how I had managed to keep the paint inside the chassis-boxes immaculate while the outside was in a bit of a state. It was a delight to find such boyish enthusiasm in one who spent his life surrounded by elderly vehicles and encouraged me to keep my own vehicle on the road – which I did for another 15 years. Continue reading...

Leading women in the tech industry say the Reddit CEO’s resignation shows Silicon Valley still has a woman problem but some feel attitudes are changing fastIt is 2015 and for many working in tech, it is still not a good time to be a woman.Just ask Ellen Pao, who resigned as interim CEO of Reddit last week, after being subjected to abuse from the site’s members. Or ask other women in the industry who have had similar experiences. These women are not surprised by what has happened to Pao – the abuse, the resignation, the lack of support from her company – in fact, many of them have anticipated it. Yet despite that, they are undeterred and hope that one day down the road, maybe as soon as 2020, women and men could be treated as equal in Silicon Valley. Continue reading...

Toys are starting to talk back to children, but they may not be better for your children than a silent teddyThink back to when you were a child: the thought of your favourite doll or teddy bear learning your name and intelligently talking to you would be simply magical.That’s the promise of connected toys. Hello Barbie is a $75 doll that can listen to your child and respond intelligently; CognitToys offers an artificial intelligence dinosaur for $120 that learns with children, getting smarter as they do; and the Avakai is a €67 wooden toy that communicates over the internet. Continue reading...

Katie hasn’t bought a laptop for 10 years and needs an introduction to the current market. She wants something small that can handle Microsoft Word and Excel

The handicraft look has been explored in many recent games, but Nintendo’s latest platformer exploits it in cute, interesting and compellin waysFrom The Great British Bake Off to the vast number of crafting magazines bulging off the newsagent shelves, the handmade look is definitely in vogue. This trend has even been reflected in games, beginning perhaps with loveable platformer LittleBigPlanet, and most recently seen in the Xbox One title Unravelled. Here’s another example: Yoshi’s Woollen World, a follow-up of sorts to developer Good Feel’s Wii title, Kirby’s Epic Yarn.In Woolly World, it’s not just about cute aesthetics: the handmade theme of the visuals adds to the tactility of the Yoshi universe. These games have always been very physical because of the character’s signature jump, not quite as famous as Mario’s, but more distinctive as he kicks his legs and audibly strains to reach higher platforms. Here, your cuddly dinosaur squishes the cushioned ground underfoot, jumps onto stitched platforms suspended between knitting needles and encounters enemy crabs with scissors for claws. Spools of thread hang on the walls, knotted seagulls fly past, and doors unzip and curl back to let you through. Even familiar world themes look more interesting in cloth: lava has a sequined sheen, its heat rays made of string, and winter hats stand in for mountains in the backdrop as Yoshi rolls a snowball made of cotton wool. Continue reading...

If customers are to embrace the new era of connectivity, devices must be imbued with a touch of magic, says MIT researcherOne of the leading thinkers in the new computing sector known as the internet of things (IoT) can’t help but look at all the flashy, expensive, feature-packed gadgets on the market today – things like Google Glass or the Apple Watch – and keep coming away with the same thought: too many device makers keep getting it wrong.Given the nature of his chosen field, serial entrepreneur David Rose – who’s also a researcher with the MIT Media Lab, where he’s taught for six years – might be expected to want the next generation of connected devices to pick up where smartphones leave off. Indeed, that seems to be the nature of the race to figure out what the next dominant computing platform looks like, whether it’s Facebook snatching up Oculus or Microsoft working to bring its HoloLens to fruition. Continue reading...

Fear of missing out, nomophobia and Facebook addiction disorder are just some of the digital-related anxieties starting to affect our increasingly online lives. Some 35% of millennials list fear of missing out as one of the top three reason for using social media. But how much of a problem are these disorders? And if you are suffering, what can you do about it? Ollie Peart investigates Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Thursday! Sorry about yesterday, I was at the Develop conference watching Randy Pitchford doing magic tricks (“look, I made Aliens Colonial Marines disappear!”) Continue reading...

Surge in sales of big-ticket items in Greece is partly responsible for boosting pretax profits to £381m, up from £316m the previous yearDixons Carphone has reported a 21% rise in profits, in part helped by Greeks panic buying big-ticket items such as large-screen TVs as a safe haven for their cash amid the ongoing economic crisis in the country.

Media regulator says is considering whether fibre broadband should be split from rest of the business after complaints it is not fairly shared with rivals

Eric Migicovsky says Pebble is the Swatch of iPhone wearables and predicts, as with smartphones in 2007, the key experiences are yet to come“When I look five years ahead, I see computers getting smaller and smaller, and I see them really worn on our bodies. We’re going to be wearing more computers on us: I think that’s inevitable.”You would probably say the same if you were Eric Migicovsky, who runs smartwatch maker Pebble, whose business model involves selling people computers to wear on their bodies. Continue reading...

Reed Hastings announces stronger-than-expected earnings and 65m subscribers but firm is considering how to push consumers toward more expensive plansNetflix CEO Reed Hastings told investors on Wednesday that the company was preparing to carefully push consumers toward higher-priced plans in the US in the coming years.Share prices slipped early in the day and then soared more than 10% on after-hours trading as the stronger-than-expected second-quarterresults were announced. The company’s stock also split seven-for-one on Wednesday.

US firm TCYK, apparently named after film The Company You Keep, made Sky hand over details of customers accused of downloading movieDozens of UK broadband customers have received letters from a US firm accusing them of pirating a little-known Robert Redford film and inviting them to pay a financial settlement on pain of further legal action.TCYK LLC, a legal firm apparently named after the initials of the film in question, The Company You Keep, obtained a court order against Sky Broadband this year requiring it to hand over the details of customers that TCYK alleges used torrent sites to download and distribute the film. Continue reading...

Now-deleted picture of comedian taken by surveillance helicopter is to be investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office after privacy debateA picture tweeted by a police helicopter team showing comedian Michael McIntyre standing in a London street is being investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office for a possible breach of data protection laws.

Authorities including councils, government departments and the police breach data security – with many repeat offenders, says freedom of information groupPublic bodies are unintentionally releasing confidential personal information on a regular basis, research reveals.Freedom of information website WhatDoTheyKnow.com, which automates FOI requests and publishes responses, says it has recorded 154 accidental data leaks made by councils, government departments, police, the NHS and other public bodies since 2009. This amounts to confidential data being wrongly released on average once every fortnight. Continue reading...

Does the expanding network of connected devices herald a brave new compact for our digital lives – or the end of politics?The word “thing”, in Old English, means a meeting or assembly. In the epic poem Beowulf, the eponymous hero declares he’ll “alone hold a thing” with the monster Grendel, who is terrorising the Danes in the great hall of Heorot. Beowulf uses “thing” euphemistically – it is a meeting that immediately descends into a fight.The Icelandic parliament is still called Althing (Alþingi). But over the ages, “things” have gradually evolved from meetings to matter. Today, we primarily use the term “thing” to refer to objects. Even in this sense, however, things are still core to our political and social lives. Continue reading...