Technology | The Guardian

Personal information of almost every government employee was stolen from the Office of Personnel Management, which neglected basic cybersecurity practicesThe agency that allowed hackers linked to China to steal private information about nearly every US government employee and detailed personal histories of military and intelligence workers with security clearances failed for years to take basic steps to secure its computer networks, officials acknowledged to Congress on Tuesday.Related: OPM hack: China blamed for massive breach at US federal agency Continue reading...

The e-tailing giant reportedly developing a mobile app On My Way that would pay participating members of the public to deliver goodsAmazon.com is considering recruiting the man on the street to deliver packages to the rest of his neighborhood.The e-tailing giant is developing a mobile app that would pay participating members of the public to deliver goods, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The low-tech meets hi-tech move is the latest in a long list of schemes to cut the costs of one of the most expensive parts of the Amazon business model, namely doorstep delivery. Continue reading...

Researchers at New York’s Columbia University harness the element’s natural process to power miniature vehicle and an LED lampMachines that harness the power of evaporating water have been created by scientists in the US.Researchers at Columbia University in New York have built a miniature car that draws on the process to propel itself along, as well as an evaporation-driven generator that powers a flashing LED lamp. Continue reading...

Android Security Rewards offers bug bounties to developers who find critical flaws in the operating systemGoogle will start to pay security researchers who find bugs in its Android devices a reward of up to $40,000 (£25,600), in the first extension of its bug bounty programme to the mobile operating system.The company has also announced a new programme to ensure the security of third-party software on the Android OS by nudging developers to stop using programming libraries which are known to be out-of-date in their applications. Continue reading...

From Last Guardian, Uncharted 4 and Dreams to Destiny, Project Morpheus and Call of Duty Black Ops III, here’s everything you need to knowSony showed off a large collection of new games, gave new details on exclusive elements in some big games, and announced that its Project Morpheus virtual reality headset would be available next year.

For these ‘citizens of the world’, the office can be anything from a beach hut in Brisbane to a Starbucks in Seattle, thanks to the growing prevalence of remote-based work. But roaming the globe from cafe to cafe is not without its challenges

Adobe Photoshop Mix, Kamcord, Monster Mingle, Dash Radio, Tiki Taka Soccer, You Must Build a Boat, Hitman: Sniper 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...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterHello! Continue reading...

Can you build a half-size, hypersonic passenger pod? If so, Elon Musk wants to hear from youElon Musk, the man behind the futuristic spaceflight company SpaceX, the futuristic electric car company Tesla and, er, the payment company PayPal, is ramping up the focus on his third futuristic transportation obsession: the Hyperloop.Musk is setting up a competition to design a passenger pod to run in the Hyperloop, a low-pressure tube between LA and San Francisco which will use a railgun to rocket passengers between the two cities at supersonic speeds. Continue reading...

US online video startup says more than half of its viewing comes from outside its home country, as it sets sights on signing more creatorsMore than half of online video service Vessel’s usage is coming from outside the US, 11 weeks after the San Francisco-based company launched its iOS app and website.The company has been pitching itself to YouTube creators and musicians as a “first window” for web video, promising to pay them more money than they get from their cut on free video services if they grant it at least three days’ exclusivity on their new videos. Continue reading...

Plans to hire ‘ambitious, detail-oriented journalists’ to work on recently-unveiled app, but what happens when Apple becomes the news?That news story you just read on your iPhone: did Apple pay the editor responsible? Actually, from this autumn, it’s possible that the company did.Related: News outlets face losing control to Apple, Facebook and Google Continue reading...

NetPark in Southend-on-Sea is using Wi-Fi and apps to add an artistic layer and help bring nature to lifeA leafy expanse in Southend-on-Sea might seem like the epitome of analogue attraction, but the modest appearance of Chalkwell Park belies a radical twist. For this summer its verdant fields will be turned into a garden of digital delights.The brainchild of “artistic laboratory” Metal, and dubbed “NetPark”, the project is bringing together an international team of artists, writers and musicians to unleash a host of virtual artwork within the park, from interactive stories to poetry and music. “The way that I think about it is [as] a 21st-century sculpture park where all of the pieces of work are in the digital layer rather than in the landscape,” explains Metal’s artistic director, Colette Bailey. Continue reading...

Web service that promises secure central storage for passwords says people’s main accounts may have been compromisedA web service that promises to help people keep their various passwords secure has reported hackers may have obtained some user information — although not actual passwords — from its network.The company was advising users to change their LastPass master passwords, which are used to retrieve encrypted individual passwords for the users’ other online services or accounts. But it said they did not need to change individual passwords for all their accounts. Continue reading...

French publisher seeking to redefine the sandbox action adventure with its co-op shooter set in a vast intricate landscape with no cinematic narrativeUbisoft may well have just announced the end of the open-world action adventure as we know it. Ghost Recon: Wildlands, the latest title in the French publisher’s strategy shooter series, is the first to take place in a freely explorable landscape. But instead of adopting the usual approach of providing a main through-line of story missions, backed up with side quests (as in games like Far Cry and Grand Theft Auto), Wildlands, has no fixed narrative at all.Instead, players – taking part alone or with three friends – will be able to travel the world’s nine different environments, taking on missions in any order they want. There are no cinematic sequences to drive the plot. A range of land, sea and air vehicles including helicopters, trucks, motorbikes and speedboats are available for navigation and the landscape – based around Bolivia – is scattered with towns and villages to discover. Continue reading...

Microsoft promised the greatest line-up in Xbox history for its E3 press briefing – then delivered with fan favourites, and Xbox 360 compatibilityMinecraft is coming to the real world - and in 3D. Just don’t hold your breath.Microsoft delivered a convincing press briefing at E3 2015, revealing a muscular line-up of exclusive titles and features. Continue reading...

Clone site buckling under influx of new users seeking a ‘censorship-free’ experience after Reddit banned five subredditsDisgruntled Redditors have decamped en masse to a Swiss-based clone of Reddit called Voat after the site’s administrators banned five subreddits for harassing behaviour.In response to the deluge, Voat, which mimics Reddit’s design and layout (albeit using “subverses” rather than “subreddits”) was forced to ask for bitcoin donations to keep the site live. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterSorry everyone, I literally just woke up, at 3am in Los Angeles, and thought “oh no, I forgot Chatterbox!” Continue reading...

Woven into the fabric of every element of our lives, the internet isn’t the most important fight we have, but it is the most foundationalIn the endless prairie in which the strawmen crowd, thousands of acres are populated by the one of the laziest, and yet most excitingly topical sorts of strawman: the Internet Utopian.The Internet Utopian has just read John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, a beautiful piece of rhetoric that articulates a vision for a society of the mind, out of reach of the most venal impulses of the “governments of the industrial world … weary giants of flesh and steel,” where freedom is more universal, and co-operation simpler, than at any time in the past. Continue reading...

Social network has realised that just because you didn’t like, share or comment doesn’t mean you weren’t interestedFacebook has announced the latest change to the algorithm governing what stories its users see in their news feeds on the social network.The company says it hopes to help more “meaningful” stories bubble up in people’s feeds by looking beyond metrics like comments, likes and shares when judging what’s interesting. Continue reading...

Are landlines dead, is DNA private, and what will you do if a robot takes your job? Answer these questions and more to find out how future-proof you are

Create your own monsters with Sago Mini Monsters and use Frozen fever to educate your kids Continue reading...

(PS4, Capcom, cert 12)Served up as an appetiser for next year’s PS4-exclusive Street Fighter V, Sony has commissioned a quick and dirty next-gen port of the landmark title responsible for reviving the fighting game genre. Sadly, the emphasis here is on the dirty. Sure, the content presented is comprehensive, featuring the most up-to-date revision of the game, complete with 44 characters, the hyperactive Omega mode and every DLC costume to date (including the hilarious animal wild pack).Sadly, the quality of the port falls some way short of Capcom’s in-house standards. Menus are jerky, music skips, moves are buggy and broken and, to top it all off, it suffers from input lag, an issue the PS4 version was promoted as having fixed over the PS3 iteration. Considering this is a modest six-year-old engine that runs flawlessly on the existing PC port, there’s really no excuse for such poor performance. Inevitably, there will be a patch that beats the game into shape, but until that day it’s impossible to recommend this spoiled update of Capcom’s evergreen title. Continue reading...

(PS Vita, NIS America, cert 6)A dungeon crawler in the vein of the 3DS’s complex and challenging Etrian Odyssey series on the more powerful Vita should be a win. Yet while Operation Abyss packs sharper visuals and a richer, brooding musical score into its nightmare tale of strange powers and extra-dimensional monsters (that only Japanese teenagers can vanquish, naturally), in almost every other respect it’s a disappointment.From reused environments to typos in the text and the rote emulation of Etrian Odyssey’s nuanced role-playing, this feels like a job half done. More effort has been put into character creation, for the squads you explore dungeons with, than in explaining any of the game’s overcomplicated systems to the player. Continue reading...

The Hövding airbag is the latest piece of hi-tech hardware offering vital head protection to cyclistsI’m lying on the ground in the middle of the park, feeling a bit like a crash test dummy. My ears are ringing and my head is held in the vice-like grip of safety gear more suited to a spaceship.But what I’m actually wearing is a cycling helmet. It’s a Hövding, an “airbag for cyclists”, invented in Sweden and billed as the helmet for people who don’t like wearing helmets. The Hövding promises superior protection in a crash without the need to actually put anything on your head. Continue reading...

Industry report says phone calls to banks have also declined sharply with smartphones and tablets predicted to overtake use of branches this yearThe use of bank branches fell by 6% last year as customers channelled more transactions over phone networks and the internet, according to a report published on Sunday that predicts the use of smartphones and tablets will usurp branches this year.It insists, however, that banks are not giving up on bricks and mortar altogether despite a wave of closures and job cuts in recent years. Continue reading...

New spin-off will launch in the summer as a site and app, gathering YouTube games videos in one place, and taking on Amazon’s TwitchYouTube is launching YouTube Gaming, a new spin-off app and website for gamers that will make its debut in the summer, initially in the US and UK.It will seek to capitalise on the popularity of gaming videos on YouTube, with profile pages for more than 25,000 games “from Asteroids to Zelda” collecting videos related to each title. Games publishers and YouTube gamers will also be prominently featured. Continue reading...

Sunday Times says Downing Street believes Russia and China have hacked into American whistleblower’s files, endangering US and British agentsDowning Street and the Home Office are being challenged to answer in public claims that Russia and China have broken into the secret cache of Edward Snowden files and that British agents have had to be withdrawn from live operations as a consequence.

Gill Pratt is set to leave the wing of the US defense department that develops cutting-edge technologies but lets us in on what’s next for the venerated agencyGill Pratt invented legs. Well, sort of: the MIT-educated scientist invented electric series-elastic actuators, the technology that carried the bipedal “dinosaur” robots that wowed the scientific community in the early aughts.Since 2010, he has worked for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the wing of the US defense department devoted to funding and developing new technologies, from a self-steering bullet called Exacto to the packet-switching system, Arpanet, that became the internet. He is now set to leave the robotics challenge program. Continue reading...

The choirmaster says technology has transformed his work and he even auditions singers via Skype and FaceTimeAre you a gadget fiend or a technophobe?Definitely a gadget fiend. I was a proper nerd as a kid. A spod. I programmed my Amstrad CPC 464 in Basic and built my own number games. My first paid music job was singing in the touring production of Evita, aged 10 – a seminal moment in my life – and from the proceeds I bought a sampler. But because of the Amstrad’s memory limitations, you only had one second to play with, so you could only make stuff like the “Ta-ta-ta-take” bit in Respectable by Mel & Kim. Continue reading...

Digital technology has changed the way we listen to music – but what about the way it is made? Metronomy, a band who straddle the analogue/digital divide, discuss the uneasy terrain of modern music, and test out some of the most advanced gear available.

A host of innovations were on display at the Imagine Festival in Milton KeynesWant to experience driverless pods before they hit the road? Fancy dodging transport problems before they happen? What about a system for rewarding those who walk rather than take the car?At the Imagine Festival in Milton Keynes last week, the potential of technology to revolutionise the way we move about was on display, as a host of young entrepreneurs vied to offer creative solutions to 21st-century travel dilemmas. Continue reading...

‘The wasted capacity made me feel guilty I wasn’t transporting a Portaloo or towing a horse’What a beast, what a gigantic monument to shininess. When they parked the Toyota Hilux Invincible X outside my house, my first worry was I might need planning permission. It has a massive, open flatbed with a flap-down back door, along the lines of a classic pickup, with extra bling. I texted my mother a picture of it to ask if she needed anything. “Can I have seven labourers from the 1930s?” she said. “I have work they could do and crusts of bread.” Seven cases of wine didn’t even leave a trace on its capacity. I stuck the kids in the back. They begged me to drive down the road. I realised how illegal that was, and how much the world had changed.It has legitimate seats as well, of course: a double cab and four seats. Imagine yourself in a regular car, with a huge other car stitched on to the back. There is nothing obnoxious, jerky or hard to control, but it’s unlike anything else, even any other SUV, I can think of. It has a 2.8-tonne towing ability; the sheer bulk of the engineering makes it more like a removal expedition, or driving a ski lift. Continue reading...

As chief Dick Costolo departs, investors must stop pushing Twitter to be the next big social media network and focus on its simple strengthsWhen the chief executive of Twitter announced he was stepping down on Thursday, staff knew there was only one way to mark his surprise departure. A hashtag on the social network was created – #thankyoudickc – for colleagues to lavish praise on Dick Costolo, a former standup comedian turned Silicon Valley entrepreneur. “140 characters certainly not enough #thankyoudickc,” said one employee.In his nearly five years in the job, Twitter has grown from a few million users to 302 million. Why then would the 51-year-old leave one of the most high-profile jobs at one of the tech industry’s brightest shining stars? Despite his popularity and success in helping the company mature, Costolo has always been caught between conflicting visions of what Twitter is capable of being: a social utility that promises to be a democratic civic space for all, or a commercial service.

‘BuzzFeeds, SchmuzzFeeds’ said the Daily Express owner in his Financial Times interview. Here are 10 more insights into the mind of the media mogulRichard Desmond dismissed BuzzFeed in his Financial Times interview as “BuzzFeeds, SchmuzzFeeds – at the end of the day, you trust the Daily Express”. So here’s a list of 10 things we learnt about Desmond during media correspondent Henry Mance’s expensive lunchtime encounter with the porn baron.1) He is not an internet fan, saying about meeting Google to put OK! magazine online: “They’re all very smooth, they’re all like out of Thunderbirds, and they’ve all got these fantastic sweaters – don’t know where they get them. By the time you have the fourth meeting, the whole deal’s completely fucking changed. They are the biggest gangsters in the world and they get away with it. One thing I’ve got to say about the European Union is that they are giving them a good kicking. I was always slow to adopt the internet, because I knew what would happen. It’s interesting how vinyl’s coming back, isn’t it?” Continue reading...

The taxi-app firm calls them the engine of the business, but drivers complain of falling pay, insecure employment and vulnerability to difficult passengersMost days at midday, Uber’s nondescript office in London’s King’s Cross opens its doors and dozens of men clutching sheaves of driving licences and insurance documents pour in. Many are first- or second-generation immigrants from places such as Afghanistan, Poland, Somalia and Nigeria eager to sign up to drive for the US tech company, whose phone-based minicab-hailing app has transformed the taxi industry in 58 countries.Related: Uber whistleblower exposes breach in driver-approval process Continue reading...

Oculus Rift has linked up with Microsoft as it prepares to bring VR to the home, and developers’ enthusiasm appears undiminished by past disappointments

PS4, Xbox 360, PC; Capcom; £17.99-£19.99It may not be obvious when you look at screen shots, but the Street Fighter games have more in common with chess than they do with less accomplished beat ’em ups. Stratagems are executed in split seconds, while individual frames of animation mark the difference between a successful attack and risible failure. Ultra Street Fighter IV adds the ability to trigger two ultra combos at once and time your character’s wake-up after being knocked down, along with a wealth of minuscule alterations to every fighter in the roster. For less obsessive fighting game fans most of these tweaks will be undetectable, but for those who have never put away their tournament joysticks, this is the definitive edition of the game. New players may find the complexity and subtlety overwhelming, but for seasoned Street Fighters this is as good as it gets.

iOS & Android; Square Enix; £3.99For some shameful reason, being a sniper in video games is brilliant fun. Hitman: Sniper knows this, delivering an entire game in which your only interaction with people is shooting them from a very long distance. Overlooking a sprawling Alpine chalet, you’re given 10 minutes to kill a series of targets, all of whom are people traffickers, which assuages the messy moral ambiguity. Your prey and their security guards wander about waiting to be picked off, preferably by putting a bullet into a piece of machinery or plate glass balcony to make it look like an unfortunate accident. Bonus points are awarded if corpses fall somewhere discreet; popping your target near a swimming pool or precipice does the trick. Over successive missions you get to know the location and the pieces of scenery that become lethal when shot at the right moment. All in all, a wonderful guilty pleasure. Continue reading...

Xbox 360/One, PS3/4, PC; Activision; £11.59Supremacy, the third downloadable add-on for Activision’s monstrously successful Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare, follows the series’ template of four multiplayer maps and an extra chapter of the celebrity cameo-infested Exo Zombies game, which adds Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell to John Malkovich, Bill Paxton and Rose McGowan, who were introduced in past instalments. Of the four multiplayer levels, Skyrise is a remake of old favourite Highrise, retaining its multi-tiered design that encourages sneak attacks; Kremlin is set in a bullet-pocked Red Square with two opposing towers overlooking a bridge and a minefield that arms itself midway through each round; Parliament sees you fighting on a futuristic boat embedded in a partially destroyed Westminster Bridge; and Compound supplies a nice mix of open spaces and claustrophobic interiors. Although there are no real standouts, it’s all competently designed, even if Exo Zombies is starting to feel a bit tired. The Call Of Duty juggernaut rolls on. Continue reading...

With its release slated for October, we take an early look at Halo 5, and find it more immersive than ever

It was the game that launched a million Xboxes. We delve into the world of Halo and its enigmatic hero the Master Chief

With buildings like the Hypercube and the Matrix, the Russian startup hub looks the part – but corruption allegations, the parlous international situation and getting on the wrong side of Vladimir Putin have all made life difficult

Rapper tweets ‘I’m ready to lead Twitter. First order of business, get that moolah!’ as Costolo announces shock departureSnoop Dogg has professed an interest in becoming chief executive of Twitter after the announcement that current chief Dick Costolo is to step down.The rapper, briefly known as Snoop Lion during a short-lived reggae phase, tweeted: “I’m ready to lead @twitter!”, following up with: “First order of business, get that moolah!” Continue reading...

New smartphone would mark U-turn in company strategy as it struggles to stymie falling sales and moves to place software on iPhones and other AndroidsThe next BlackBerry smartphone could run Android and have a sliding physical keyboard, according to reports.BlackBerry briefly showed off a slider device on stage at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March, but has provided little detail on it since. Continue reading...

From July, direct messages can be 10,000 characters long, but there will be no changes to the length of tweets

Slowing growth in user numbers and failure to capture a bigger slice of digital advertising revenue behind departure of the chief executiveIt says something about the extraordinary scale of social platforms when a technology behemoth with 302m active users every month can be seen as failing to achieve its potential. Yet that is exactly why it appears that Twitter’s chief executive, Dick Costolo, now has to go from the company’s top post.Related: Twitter's outspoken CEO Dick Costolo to step down Continue reading...

Wild camping expert Phoebe Smith checks out some hi-tech gear that could coax the uninitiated into the great outdoors“I got really badly sunburned, chased by sheep, bitten to death by midges, got a tick which went bad; but when I got back, something had really shifted inside me.” This is how Phoebe Smith recalls her first time wild camping, an area in which she has since become an undisputed authority. At the age of 33 she is already the author of seven books on the subject, most recently Wild Nights, published last month.Like most outdoor-types, she takes her technology with a pinch of salt. “People love kit, they love toys. They love buying stuff,” she says, “I’m not against progress, it’s great that people are making things easier, lighter and greener, but you need to know you can go out there and not rely on it at all.” Continue reading...

Tech giant is bringing virtual reality to the masses with a simple device that you make out of cardboardGoogle’s previous attempt to get us to wear something mildly ridiculous on our faces didn’t end well. But while Google Glass was released (and failed) to much fanfare, the growth of Google Cardboard has been unhurried, and – by Google’s standards – low key.Now on its second version, “Cardboard” is a cheap holder that turns your smartphone into a virtual-reality headset. Anyone can download the template and make one, while the impatient can buy a pre-made model for £10 from Amazon. (Currently only the template for v.1.2 is available, but v.2 will be downloadable soon – and it will be easier to build.) Once you have your Cardboard you can download VR apps from Google Play or the App Store and experience the sensations of exploring far-flung cities, the stomach-in-the-mouth feel of a rollercoaster ride or simply be spooked by zombie children – all without leaving your chair. Continue reading...