Technology | The Guardian

Deal makes Guardian Media Group exclusive partner for Founders Factory investments in businesses in the media sectorThe publisher of the Guardian has invested in Founders Factory, a company that funds technology startups across a range of industries launched by lastminute.com co-founder Brent HobermanUnder the exclusive deal, Guardian Media Group, the parent company of the Guardian and Observer, becomes the exclusive partner for Founders Factory investments in businesses in the media sector.

Who would want to buy a game that can only be played through a maximum of 24 times? Everyone

From mad scientists to stealthy assassins, we celebrate the video game women who get things doneOver the years, there has been no shortage of articles about “the best female characters in video games”. The problem is, what they’ve usually meant is “the sexiest female characters in video games”, which has made for some very repetitive and occasionally rather creepy reading.For this alternative selection, three women games writers have chosen 30 interesting and complex examples, who have more to offer than either looking good in an armoured bikini or fulfilling the “strong female character” archetype. And as Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft has dominated every discussion about women in games for the last 20 years, she’s been respectfully jettisoned too. Continue reading...

Politician who once said ‘I’m not into this detail stuff – I’m more concepty’ says of his solitaire game: ‘I’ve spent countless hours on beta releases’Donald Rumsfeld, the two-time US secretary of defence who presided over the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, has released a video game.The game, initially released as an iOS app, is based on a version of solitaire favoured by Winston Churchill. The variant uses two decks of cards rather than one, 10 rows of cards instead of seven, and an extra pile of six cards called “the Devil’s Six” for the player to work into their strategy. Continue reading...

If we’re channeling our energy into tweets and status updates, where are we creating anything that is built to last?Can you remember how you were feeling on this day last year? How about three years ago? Facebook can, and if you’re a regular user of the service, you may have noticed that for the better part of the last year, it’s been ready to remind you.“We care about you and the memories you share here,” the platform warmly intones, offering a confetti draped image of a photo or status update from some time ago. Theoretically this is a sensible idea – we upload massive reams of stuff to our online networks, and our fleeting day-to-day engagements with these services are easy to forget, and occasionally fun to remember. Sure, you’d like to be reminded that your friend’s wedding was six years ago now, and look how much fun you had then! Or look how three years ago you posted about your favorite coffee shop, and now just today you did almost the exact same thing. Ha ha! Good times! Continue reading...

Jack Dorsey dismisses ‘inaccurate press rumours’ about sudden departure of four senior staff, promoting Adam Bain and Adam Messinger to fill the gapsTwitter’s chief executive responded to the sudden departure of four senior executives on Sunday by tweeting a detailed statement emphasising their contribution to the company as it moved from “near zero revenue to the over-$2bn run rate it is today”.Jack Dorsey confirmed that senior vice-president of engineering Alex Roetter, vice-president of global media Katie Jacobs Stanton, HR vice-president Skip Schipper and senior vice-president of product Kevin Weil are all leaving the embattled social media firm. Continue reading...

Folding bikes used to be the preserve of cycle nerds and DIY engineers, but Brompton has changed all that. Now comes its sleekest model yetIn 1975 Andrew Ritchie was working as a landscape gardener when he came up with the idea of a folding bike. He named his design after the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary – aka the Brompton Oratory. Since then he’s gone on to sell more than 400,000 and this year his company plans to sell a further 48,000, making the Kew-based manufacturer Britain’s biggest bike builder. Some of these new bikes will be the latest Black Edition. For the first time the key components – rims, spokes, seat post, handlebars – will be sleek matt black rather than chrome, while the frame can be black, white, orange, lime or blue. The change is only cosmetic, but then they’re not going to mess with their winning formula: ride it, fold it, carry it, store it (brompton.com).Price: £945

The Outlander is a big, capable 4x4. It’s also Britain’s bestselling electric vehicle – and Boris Johnson loves itPrice: £28,304

Traditional toys are getting digital makeovers for tech-savvy childrenAn iPad loom for friendship bracelets, a wireless electronics kit you can activate with a tweet, and a hi-tech Scalextric race track you can play with via your smartphone.These are just a few of the traditional toys that have undergone a technological makeover to appeal to “digital natives” – or “children” as they are known outside the booming £3bn toy industry. The new toys are being shown at the annual Toy Fair at Kensington Olympia in west London, which begins today. Continue reading...

MPs’ report calls for BT to be split from Openreach over claims 5.7 million people have speeds so low they break rules

Keeping up with Serial? Your next spoken-word fix could come from Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro, Spotify or DeezerSerial didn’t singlehandedly revive the podcast as a media format – the efforts of radio broadcasters and many independent producers have grown and sustained audiences in the years since podcasts were hyped as the next big thing in tech.Yet, Serial has undoubtedly fuelled a surge in interest in spoken-word shows – which in 2016, are as likely to be listened to on a smartphone as a computer. And there are apps for that. Continue reading...

Warm arse? Check. Even for passengers? Why now you mention it, check!Describing your car as “ultimate red” sets up some fine expectations, and I approached the Hyundai Tucson like a winner. Gigantic boot. This is the living definition of success in life, maybe not for anybody all the time, but certainly for everybody sometimes: what can you fit in your boot? A bike plus superannuated VHS and stereo unit, or are you lucky to mash in a duvet and two pillows?This smallish SUV will give you a fillip, at least until you try to accelerate. Just kidding. It does accelerate, it just doesn’t make it a priority. Warm arse? Check. Even for passengers? Why now you mention it, check! Electric lumbar support for the driver? I don’t know what that means, but check! Leather-slathered everything? Check! Right, now we accelerate. Or, as I, Ultimate Red, like to say, we move slightly ponderously through my six automatic gears. Continue reading...

Breck Bednar, a 14-year-old boy who loved gaming, was groomed online and murdered in 2014. His mother, Lorin LaFave, was worried – would her pleas for help from police have been taken more seriously if he’d been a girl?I approach Lorin LaFave’s house in Caterham, Surrey, set back and unlit on a long dark road. My fear is that she’s behind the door, dreading my arrival. I’m thinking how difficult it will be for her to go over the grooming and murder of her son Breck yet again – and how difficult it must be to talk about Murder Games, a BBC documentary that unpicks each turn of the case, with interviews, analysis and sinister re-enactments.Very soon, though, Lorin curled up by the fire sipping tea in a silent house, I realise that recounting how her eldest child was lured to his death is no more or less difficult than anything else – getting up each morning, shopping, attending parents’ evening with her remaining three children. “It’s all equally hard and I kind of dread everything,” she says. Continue reading...

Wannabe entrepreneurs are still piling in to San Francisco, but there’s a sense that time is running out on the exuberant startup worldA sharply dressed French investor is leaning against a doorway, arms folded and his expression slightly bemused. Philippe Suchet is considering the latest raft of hopeful new technology entrepreneurs that have presented at 500 Startups – a major hothouse for up-and-coming Silicon Valley talent.There’s no shortage of enthusiasm and ideas in the valley, but Suchet is sceptical. Continue reading...

A judge ruled that Gregory Alan Elliott’s ‘incessant and obsessive’ tweets to two female activists were ‘obscene and homophobic’ but not threateningA Canadian man has been found not guilty of criminally harassing two women through Twitter.The case is believed to be the first example of Canadian courts weighing in on issues of harassment on the social media platform, according to the National Post. Continue reading...

Dating app’s decision comes after dispute with HIV/Aids foundation over a billboard that linked Tinder-like apps with sexually transmitted diseasesTinder’s decision to provide users with a link to find local STI clinics was agreed in a series of “conversations” with the president of the world’s largest HIV/Aids foundation following a spat over a billboard campaign that linked dating apps with sexually transmitted diseases.

The ad watchdog’s current rules allow companies to advertise a headline broadband speed even if it is available to only 10% of customers

An online petition accusing the company of creating ‘mountains of e-waste’ is gaining signatures, but this is an industry developing at breakneck speedThe annual cycle of the iPhone rumour mill has become almost as predictable as the launch of the handsets themselves. Leading the charge of this year’s batch of tittle-tattle is that the 3.5mm headphone jack is being ditched for the iPhone 7.It could make sense for Apple. Getting rid of the jack would allow it to make the handset even thinner, while potentially selling more products. Users are less enamoured with the idea, however, and a petition to keep the 3.5mm socket has attracted more than 290,000 signatures. Continue reading...

iPhone game live with Android to follow as creators target existing fans and new mobile audiencesCard game Exploding Kittens remains one of the most popular projects of all-time on crowdfunding site Kickstarter, having attracted 219,382 backers and $8.8m (£6.2m) of pledges in early 2015.Now the game’s creators are targeting a new, digital audience with the release of an Exploding Kittens iPhone app, with an Android version to follow. Continue reading...

MPs, television pundits and young Israelis say new app will encourage online bullyingA new Israeli mobile app heralded as the “next big messaging application” is coming under fire amid allegations that it will encourage online bullying and sexual harassment.Blindspot works by accessing a user’s contacts, allowing them to send text messages, videos, or photos to anyone without the receiver knowing who the message came from. To read the message, a recipient needs to download Blindspot, but would not know who sent it. It has been developed by a company with a number of celebrity investors, including the singers Nicki Minaj and will.i.am and the Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich.

Packed with sensors, comfortable to wear without being sweaty while providing interesting insights into your sleep, exercise and healthMicrosoft’s second attempt at making a fitness tracker is a lot more comfortable and attractive than its first, packed with sensors and relatively easy to live with.

Facebook Sports Stadium will be competing with Twitter in providing live updates, statistics and fan posts for its ‘650 million sports fans’Facebook is tackling the sports arena with a new platform called Facebook Sports Stadium, which the social media site said will provide real-time updates on games, popular posts from fans, statistics and commentary from experts.

Two months after opening its own shop, small independents in Seattle are feeling the pinch from the online behemothA 116-year-old independent bookstore in Seattle is feeling the threat from Amazon. But this time the risk comes not from the online behemoth – but the physical bookstore that the company opened just two months ago.Amazon Books, a brick and mortar shop in an upscale mall in Seattle, is a looming presence to the remaining independents that Amazon.com has yet to take down. Continue reading...

Company promises to add new protections agains malware and bots in 2016Google banned almost 800m “bad” adverts from its online ad networks last year as the web giant continued to crack down on advertising fraud.The figure of 780m was an almost 50% increase on 2014. Google also said that this year would see a major focus on stepping up efforts to fight back against bots – software applications that mimic the behaviour of internet users. Continue reading...

Berkeley researchers will get unprecedented access to data from both companies and riders to analyze if on-demand ride services are climate friends or foesAre on-demand ride services like Uber and Lyft good or bad for the environment? It’s an increasingly urgent question as the services proliferate, but the answer is currently unclear .The companies have held their data close and are only now beginning to share, making it hard to assess critical questions like how people would have gotten to their destinations if Uber and Lyft did not exist. Continue reading...

Federal safety commission investigating explosions warns self-balancing board users to ‘gear up’, keep off roads and keep fire equipment nearbyThe US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC) has warned hoverboard owners to have a fire extinguisher nearby while charging or using the self-balancing devices, after launching an investigation into a series of explosions.

From making your browser do a ‘barrel roll’ to playing a quick game of Breakout with your search results, Google’s full of quirky little easter eggsGoogle’s easter eggs – funny little images, programs or widgets – are legendary, but many of them lie dormant, just waiting for users to type the magic words into the search box.

The co-creator of id software’s legendary first-person shooter has revisited his masterpiece 20 years later. We ask him whyOn its release in 1993, Doom exploded onto the video game scene like nothing before or since. It wasn’t just faster, smoother and sexier than any other shooter around at the time, it introduced game design principles that can still be seen in hundreds of titles to this day. Admired by players and demonised by moral campaigners, it’s one of the most important video games ever made. And now, over 20 years later, co-creator John Romero has gone back to hell.The news came, as it usually does these days, via Twitter. On 15 January, Romero casually announced that he had created a new level for the original game – having not been involved with the series since his resignation from id software in 1996. To the delight of fans, the zip file came complete with a readme document, which contains the wry statement: “Other Files By Author: doom1.wad, doom2.wad.” The level can be played in a browser, but for a much smoother experience it should be experienced via the original game (instructions at the bottom of this article). The map is entitled Tech Gone Bad, and in the description Romero writes it is “my boss level replacement for e1m8 ... 22 years later.” Continue reading...

Linda’s old Windows XP system died, and she’d like to retrieve the data from the hard drive and transfer it to her new MacI have read with interest your article regarding the disposal of old PCs. I have a defunct Dell running Windows XP, which crashed out before I had a chance to retrieve any data. I am now wondering about safe disposal of the old PC and whether or not I can transfer any data to my Mac. I am not a technophile and this may be a silly question, but can you tell me where the hard drive is located? How can I access it, and should I keep this in a safe place even if I can no longer use it? LindaI wrote a comprehensive answer to How can I safely recycle my old PCs? almost a year ago, but it’s still a question that comes up often. For example, Kris has just asked a similar question, saying: “I seriously do not even know where a hard drive is located, let alone how to remove it.” The motherboard in Janice’s PC has failed so she wants to know if she can get access to her data, and wonders if “the only option is to take a sledge hammer to the hard drive and commit it to landfill”. And so on. Continue reading...

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

Twitter’s shares have risen on rumours that it is becoming viewed as an acquisition target, as unconfirmed chatter about News Corp interest circulatedRupert Murdoch’s News Corp said rumors about the company’s interest in buying microblogging site Twitter or building a stake in it were untrue.

Meaningful collaboration between people and machines must not subvert human creativity, feeling and questioning over speed, profit and efficiency

Judge says traditional cabs are ‘devoid of inherent distinctive character’, in legal row involving new eco-friendly taxi groupA high court judge has ruled that one of London’s most famous sights, the black cab, is not that unique after all, concluding that they are “devoid of inherent distinctive character”.

Our relationships are mediated by technology, surveilled by governments, with no guarantee our intimate words of digital love are privateIn John Cheever’s book The Enormous Radio, a couple purchase a radio after their old one stops working. What first sounds like static between stations turns out to be their apartment’s doorbells and lift shafts and, it transpires, the new radio can be tuned into the conversations of other tenants in the building.With a growing obsession, housewife Irene Westcott begins to spend her days listening to other people’s lives. She wakes up at night to sneak into the living room, to turn dials “flooded with a malevolent green light”.

Data shows average contribution from an AOL address is $159, compared to $31 from a Gmail address, as campaigns depend heavily on email fundraisingYou’ve got donations! Having an AOL email address might make you look about as cool as leg warmers but as far as the political class is concerned, you’re the hippest kid on the block.Data from email marketing firm Fluent has revealed the average contribution to a political campaign by email domain name, and while a donation-friendly user with a Gmail address will net a candidate an average of $31, the average donation from an AOL address is a full $159. Continue reading...

Analytics firm App Annie outlines the big trends in the Android and iOS world, as Apple and Google continue to do battleApple started 2016 with the boast that its App Store customers had spent more than $1.1bn on apps and in-app purchases over the Christmas period, including $144m on New Year’s Day alone.But there is more to the apps world than just Apple. Analytics firm App Annie spends its time crunching data from Apple and Google’s respective app stores, and its new 2015 Retrospective report sheds light on some key trends. Continue reading...

After hearing about the most recent one, Fridge cam, we thought we’d add names to the list so you know never to download any of themThere are a lot of apps available for your phones. Some of them are fun and perform an important service, like Instagram and Snapchat and that one with the candy. But many, if not most, are useless. And rubbish. And terrible. After hearing about the most recent one, Fridge cam, we thought we’d add names to the list so you know never to download any of them. Continue reading...

Monarch’s London home becomes first UK landmark in Google Expeditions Pioneer programme, offering 3D, fully immersive field trips to classrooms around the worldHundreds of thousands of schoolchildren around the world are to be “teleported” into Buckingham Palace as part of a virtual reality project with Google.The Queen’s London home is the first UK landmark to feature in the Google Expeditions Pioneer programme, an innovative virtual reality experience that brings 3D, fully immersive field trips right into the classroom.

Search company’s head of ideas sees short term wins against non-tech-savvy organisation, but says stifling group’s propaganda must not be neglectedGoogle’s head of ideas, tasked with building tools to fight oppression, has said that to stop Isis being able to publicise itself on the internet requires forcing Isis from the open web.During a talk with the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, Jared Cohen said that it will not be possible to stop terrorists such as Isis from using Tor and the dark web. The key to stopping the terrorist group from propagating online is therefore to hound them from the traditional web – that which can be indexed by search engines. Continue reading...

Blackmailers using sex tapes to extort money from victims in Newtownabbey, Carrickfergus and Antrim, say policeA number of men in Northern Ireland who were filmed performing sex acts have been targeted by blackmailers.A spokesman for the Police Service of Northern Ireland said there had been several local reports of cyber-related blackmail relating to men in Newtownabbey, Carrickfergus and Antrim. Continue reading...

If your password appears on this list, you should probably change it right awayGood news! People are still astonishingly bad at picking secure passwords, and if you run your fingers across the top row of your keyboard, you will probably type seven of the 15 most-used passwords at once.When we say “good news”, we mean “good news for people who want to break into password-protected accounts”, of course. If you are one of the people with a bad password, that is very bad news indeed. Continue reading...

Jamal Edwards’ 10-year-old channel follows example of Vice by moving from youth lifestyle into mainstream news

Android users can browse Facebook app anonymously after Tor support addedUsers of Facebook’s Android app can now privately browse the world’s largest social network through the anonymity service Tor, the company said on Tuesday.

Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency one of 61 agencies seeking warrantless access to telecommunications informationThe government agency overseeing doctors, dentists and chiropractors has applied to regain warrantless access to Australians’ phone and web metadata to help it investigate whether medical practitioners are sleeping with their patients.The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) is one of 61 agencies on a list released by the government who have applied to the attorney general, George Brandis, for ongoing access to be classed as enforcement agenciesto gain warrantless access to telecommunications data. Continue reading...

Microblogging site hit by global outage followed by intermittent access across all platformsA technical problem that affected access to Twitter for more than six hours has been resolved.The microblogging site posted an update on its status page that read: “The intermittent issue affecting some users between 00:40 to 06:50 PST (Pacific Standard Time) has now been resolved. The issue was related to an internal code change. We reverted the change, which fixed the issue. Thank you for your patience.” Continue reading...

Once worth £175m, the networking site has now closed. But what became of MySpace? When did we say goodbye to Ello? Not to mention Menshn …As with the fate of so many social networks, news of Friends Reunited’s closure was greeted with surprise that it had been continuing at all. Since its peak in 2005, when it was sold to ITV for £175m, the site’s key demographic – old people who wanted to snoop on the loves of their teenage years – had been in steady decline, cannibalised by Facebook stalking, LinkedIn lurking and a quick Google Image search.Like many of those teenage relationships, our online socialising platforms can make us think they are for ever. One day, we look back and wonder when or why it ended. So here’s a roundup of the flings and LTRs of our digital lives from the last decade or so, for a quick update on what they’re up to, whether they’ve gone bald yet, and if, just maybe, they still hold a candle for us … Continue reading...

French carmaker acts after admission that emissions filtering system did not work in all temperatures, but denies wrongdoingRenault has recalled more than 15,000 diesel cars after an admission that its emissions filtering system does not work in all temperatures.

Proposal from an activist shareholder would require Apple to adopt an ‘accelerated recruitment policy’ to increase diversity at senior levelsApple’s board has recommended against a shareholder motion that would commit it to increase the diversity of senior management and its board of directors.The motion, proposed by the Apple shareholder Antonio Avian Maldonado II, would require the board of directors to “adopt an accelerated recruitment policy” if it were voted in by a majority of shareholders. Continue reading...

Atlas robot assistant from Team IHMC has a way to go before it can perform tasks nearly as effectively as humans canRobotic humanoid butlers still have a way to go before you’ll be able to let them have free reign of the house, but Team IHMC from Florida and their multimillion dollar Google-developed US government Atlas robot are giving it a good try.

April event is centrepiece of £1.2m initiative to make London the world’s game development capitalThe mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is backing a new initiative to make London a leading creative hub in the global video games industry. Titled Games London, the project, backed with a £1.2m investment from the London Enterprise Panel, will include a two-week games festival taking place in venues around the city.Between 1-10 April, the first London Games Festival will include a consumer games exhibition at Somerset House, a series of talks at the British Film Institute and a London Games Fringe of smaller events. The festival is also set to feature two already established events: the popular indie games gathering, Rezzed, and the annual Bafta video game awards. Continue reading...