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Chris Dring meets the man who turned a curious concept into one of the most eagerly awaited gamesIt was 6am on 15 June in LA, and Swedish developer Martin Sahlin was wide awake.He had been for a while, anxiously preparing for “his moment” on stage, when he would announce Unravel – a 2D adventure game starring an anthropomorphised ball of yarn – to an audience of millions. It would be the culmination of the most unlikely of partnerships, proving that a tiny spark of genius can still make its mark on gaming’s big hitters. Continue reading...

The latest title in the billion-dollar Call of Duty franchise is out today. Here’s our take on its futuristic campaignIt is the future and everything has gone really wrong. The looming threat of nuclear annihilation is over thanks to the development of super reliable air defences but this has only led to an endless state of paranoid cold war. Armed factions gather around the world’s dwindling resources, mega corporations obsess over new ways to push their expensive technologies and government agencies seek ever more inventive ways to assassinate privacy. It’s a big old mess.The third Call of Duty: Black Ops campaign, then, is another globe-trotting conspiracy thriller filled with secret bases, covert government programmes and wise-cracking solders just trying to keep their shit together as the galaxy collapses around them. You enter the maelstrom as fresh-faced rookie, fighting for the Winslow Accord, which sounds like a Terrence Rattigan play, but is actually a gathering of countries looking to ring fence themselves from swarthy foreigners. An Egyptian minister has been kidnapped by the evil Nile River Coalition, and you need to get him back. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Call of Duty day, suckers! Continue reading...

Whether it’s voice control and fingerprint recognition you’re after, or improved ways to save time, energy and memory, this expert list will help you unlock Google’s latest confection Continue reading...

James Alan Craig, 62, tweeted bogus posts about two tech firms, causing their shares to crash before he tried to buy the stock at deflated pricesA Scottish man has been indicted by a federal grand jury in San Francisco for using Twitter to make bogus claims that drove down the stock prices of two companies, in an effort to profit from illegal trading.

Thousands of protesters, many wearing Guy Fawkes mask, gathered in London on Bonfire night to take part in the Million Mask march and demonstrate against the government’s austerity cuts and increased state surveillance Continue reading...

Email provider headquartered at Cern in Switzerland has internet connection cut off by hackers who did not cease attack even after $6,000 ransom was paidProtonMail, a Switzerland-based encrypted email provider, was forced offline on Thursday after hackers held the company’s internet connection for ransom by using a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.“ProtonMail is likely under attack by two separate groups, with the second attackers exhibiting capabilities more commonly possessed by state sponsored actors,” the company said. “It also shows that the second attackers were not afraid of causing massive collateral damage in order to get at us.” Continue reading...

The Bank of America Merrill Lynch report (Resistance is useless, 5 November) misses the point. As robots take over the jobs in the service industries of bankers, doctors and drivers, as well as many manufacturing jobs, there is the potential for many new directions, with associated jobs. This fourth industrial revolution, led by robots, signals both doom and opportunity – but this time the route taken rests even more on intelligent human reaction: in this case, education.Related: Robot revolution: rise of 'thinking' machines could exacerbate inequality Continue reading...

US officials working on Iran policy appear to be focus of recent surge in cyber attacks that could be linked to Iranian American’s arrest, Wall Street Journal saysIran’s Revolutionary Guards stepped up hacking of email and social media accounts of Obama administration officials in recent weeks in cyber-attacks believed linked to the arrest of an Iranian-American businessman in Tehran, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Kerry wants to buy her son a notebook or laptop for his ninth birthday and doesn’t want to spend too muchWe are thinking of getting our son a notebook or laptop for his ninth birthday. He will need software such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel, and in time he may get into internet coding. I also think it would be a good idea if he could dock it so he can use a separate mouse and keyboard.We want to ensure it lasts him for a while but we can’t afford to spend lots of money. KerryAs far as I can tell from my annual visit to BETT (formerly the British Educational Training and Technology Show), most schools now use consumer-grade Android/Apple tablets and Windows laptops. However, BETT 2015 showed a trend towards Windows 2-in-1 “detachables”, which is what I’d recommend. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterThursday cometh. Continue reading...

ACT attorney general says federal government’s proposed scheme would allow police access to personal information without sufficient safeguards restricting its useA new facial recognition database would give police “unprecedented and extraordinary” access to personal information without adequate safeguards restricting its use, the attorney general of the Australian Capital Territory has warned.Simon Corbell met his state and federal counterparts in Canberra on Thursday during a meeting of police, justice and law ministers. The issue of the National Facial Biometric Matching Capability database was raised, with Corbell expressing the ACT’s outright opposition to the federal government’s scheme. Continue reading...

Designer Stephanie Liu has come up with the Lumoscura mask to combat bad air beautifullySculpted, pristine and sparking with fibre optics, this mask is certainly a breath of fresh air for wearable tech, bringing style to the problem of pollution.Recently on show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Fashion 4wrd exhibition, the Lumoscura mask is the idea of designer Stephanie Liu, who created the piece this year while completing her industrial design degree at the Rhode Island School of Design. Continue reading...

Swedish car manufacturer has fitted anti-moose and -reindeer systems in northern hemisphere but says 60km/h, 90kg marsupials much more challengingVolvo is developing a kangaroo detection system designed to avoid collisions that can be deadly to man and beast.The Swedish car manufacturer has fitted some of its northern hemisphere models with systems tailored to moose and reindeer. But a senior safety engineer, Martin Magnusson, said dodging 60km/h marsupial missiles was much more challenging. Continue reading...

The social media site also made more money in mobile advertising alone than the entire business did, according to quarterly results announced WednesdayFacebook now averages 1.1 billion users per day, according quarterly results announced on Wednesday, which also revealed the company made more money on mobile advertising alone than the whole business took in during the same period last year.When its flagship product hit the billion-user milestone on 24 August, the company took a victory lap; now that appears to be slightly below the norm. Continue reading...

After Finland announced it would release some national symbol emojis, what should Australia choose if it were to follow suit?The Finnish government has launched a set of 30 national emojis, including people in a sauna, a headbanger and a Nokia 3310.If Australia were to follow suit, what items should be emojified? There’s already a surfboard and a snake in the standard set, but perhaps texters would find a use for an icon depicting a meat pie, or Warnie? Removed from any context, what would be the semiotic significance of a southern cross? Continue reading...

Tweets by former NSA whistleblower claim Theresa May’s plans are akin to compiling ‘a list of every book you’ve ever opened’Edward Snowden has outlined his opposition to the British government’s investigatory powers bill, arguing that Conservative politicians were “taking notes on how to defend the indefensible”.The former National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower, whose disclosure of top-secret documents ultimately led to the home secretary, Theresa May, proposing the bill, made a series of tweets on Wednesday warning that the communications data covered by the legislation was “the activity log of your life”. Continue reading...

Theresa May makes dramatic admission that ministers have directed firms to hand over communications data of UK citizens on day that redrafted bill is unveiledThe total redrafting of UK surveillance laws was under growing challenge on Wednesday night after an initially broad political welcome gave way to alarm at the detail of the proposed sweeping powers for spies.MPs and privacy groups raised concerns about the proposed judicial oversight regime set out by the home secretary, Theresa May, who made the dramatic admission that ministers had issued secret directions since 2001 to internet and phone companies to hand over the communications data of British citizens in bulk. Continue reading...

The new program will save time by studying how you communicate and answering emails for you. Here’s a quick sampling of what users can expectThis week Google – the enormous corporation that largely controls all of the information you see and share on the internet – is releasing a new program dedicated to making your life easier, by answering your email for you.The program, called Smart Reply, will pay attention to the way you communicate and over time manage to respond to certain emails based on your habits. Here’s a sampling of what users can expect from the new program: Continue reading...

Early UK-based internet mapping company Streetmap suing Google over alleged conduct that led to ‘dramatic loss of traffic’Google has been accused of abusing its search dominance to promote Google Maps over rivals by UK-based Streetmap.Streetmap, one of the first online mapping providers that launched in 1997, says Google is engaging in “anticompetitive conduct” and that its launch of Google Maps in 2007 lead to a “dramatic loss of traffic” to Steetmap’s website. Continue reading...

Legislation from Jason Chaffetz would make it illegal for Stingray technology to be deployed without a warrant: ‘If you’re just on a surfing expedition, back off’A bill has been introduced in Congress that aims to control the use of the sophisticated surveillance equipment known as Stingray, following a Guardian investigation which revealed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as the 13th federal agency known to possess the devices.Stingrays are one of a class of suitcase-size devices known as “cell-site simulators”, which work by pretending to be a cellphone tower in order to strip data and metadata from any phones which connect to them. Continue reading...

The respected and sometimes reviled CEO of Activision Blizzard is typically bullish about the takeover deal everyone in the industry is talking aboutThree years ago, a group of senior Activision executives led by CEO Bobby Kotick met with Stephane Kurgan and Riccardo Zacconi, the heads of mobile gaming company King. It was, says Kotick, a social engagement, two powerhouses of the global games industry shooting the breeze in a fancy restaurant. During an investor call this week, however, Zacconi talked about the “mutual fear and respect” at the table. Executives don’t meet like this for fun. They were sizing each other up.On Monday, Activision announced that it would be acquiring King, creator of the massively successful Candy Crush Saga game – as well as other more modest smartphone hits – for $5.9bn. Predictably, the revelation sent shockwaves through the industry: it’s a hefty sum – more than Disney paid for legacy entertainment companies Marvel and LucasFilm. What was Activision thinking? Continue reading...

Information Commissioner’s Office fines CPS £200,000 after finding that videos had not been kept securely by private film studioThe Crown Prosecution Service has been fined £200,000 after laptops containing videos of police interviews with victims of sex attacks were stolen from a private film studio.The highly unusual security breach and heavy penalty follow an inquiry by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which is responsible for enforcing data protection laws. Continue reading...

Company plans to help drivers ‘recognise and prevent’ offensive and inappropriate behaviour. Mada Masr reportsUber is teaming up with an Egyptian anti-sexual harassment initiative to train its drivers in how to “recognise, prevent and take positive action” against inappropriate behaviour, the company has announced.All drivers available on the app will undergo the training to ensure “Uber is offering the safest ride in Cairo,” the company said in a recent statement. Continue reading...

The Colombian pop star teams up with Angry Birds maker Rovio for gem-swapping puzzler, with ambitions to make it a wider brandMobile game Kim Kardashian: Hollywood has made more than $113m (£73.2m) according to its developer Glu Mobile’s financial results. No wonder so many celebrities are following in her footsteps.Glu alone has signed deals to make games for Katy Perry, Britney Spears and Nicki Minaj, but they have all been beaten to the app stores by Shakira, via her partnership with Angry Birds developer Rovio Entertainment. Continue reading...

16-year-old who was detained after search of an address in Norwich has been released on police bail until MarchA 16-year-old boy arrested in connection with alleged data theft from TalkTalk has been released on bail.He was detained after detectives from the Metropolitan police cybercrime unit and officers from the National Crime Agency searched an address in Norwich. Continue reading...

New wireless headphones are comfortable, have great controls and automatically pause the music when taken off your headThe latest Bluetooth headphones from Plantronics sound great, last ages and won’t break the bank.You may not have heard of Plantronics, but the US firm first made headsets for pilots and Nasa, including the headsets through which Neil Armstrong spoke the immortal words “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. Continue reading...

Voters rejected a proposal to restrict short-term rentals following $8m campaign by the online letting company, with 55% of citizens voting againstSan Francisco’s citizens have narrowly voted against controversial proposals to restrict short-term home and apartment rentals, handing a victory to companies such as Airbnb.The failure of “Proposition F” is a victory for the company which has been targeted by affordable housing advocates and tenants’ rights attorneys, though it won by a tighter margin than expected with 55% of votes. Continue reading...

Share price falls 27% as co-founder Eric Lefkofsky returns to chairman’s seat and company forecasts revenue below estimates through 2016Groupon, the daily deals website, has said co-founder Eric Lefkofsky is stepping down as chief executive and returning to the role of chairman, effective immediately.

Tesla announces it delivered slightly more vehicles in the quarter than it estimated, prompting a jump in share price in after-hours tradingElectric car maker Tesla Motors Inc delivered more vehicles in the third quarter than it had previously estimated, helped by the rollout of the Model X SUV.

Computer exploit merchant Zerodium says it paid research team that worked out how to ‘jailbreak’ latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 9.1.

Cyberpsychologist Mary Aiken thinks we need to understand cybercriminal motivations, while mentoring young people with tech and hacking skills“A humanistic, cognitive psychology approach to hacking would be to consider an emotion such as revenge… But my favourite explanation for the academic literature is a Freudian psychoanalytic approach to hacking, which actually conceptualises hacking in Freudian terms as a cyber-sexual urge to penetrate. And there are castration complex overtones in terms of being cut off from the network as well…”Mary Aiken knows what she’s talking about: she’s the cyberpsychology expert whose work was the inspiration for TV show CSI: Cyber. In a speech at the Web Summit conference in Dublin, she suggested that we have a lot to learn still about the motivation of the people behind hacks of companies like Sony and TalkTalk. Continue reading...

Palmer Luckey thinks virtual reality can bring ‘real-world experience’ to more children – and become ‘more ubiquitous than the smartphone’Games were the earliest showcases for virtual reality company Oculus VR’s technology, but its founder Palmer Luckey thinks it will have important applications for education in the future.“I think there’s a lot of potential for virtual reality in the education industry … Classrooms are broken. Kids don’t learn the best by reading books,” he said at the Web Summit conference in Dublin. Continue reading...

Hacktivist collective distances itself from data dump purporting to out several politicians as Ku Klux Klan members, which was quickly discreditedThe hacktivist collective known as Anonymous has denied involvement in a data-dump on Monday that incorrectly outed several politicians as being members of the Ku Klux Klan.

World’s biggest online retailer opens shop in Seattle’s University Village stocked with 6,000 books at same price as on its websiteAmazon is opening its first physical bookstore, 20 years after the world’s biggest online retailer started selling publications on the internet.The company will unveil a shop called Amazon Books at University Village in Seattle, its home city, on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Australian teenager with more than 612,000 Instagram followers radically rewrites her ‘self-promoting’ history on social media (and launches new website)An Australian teenager with more than half a million followers on Instagram has quit the platform, describing it as “contrived perfection made to get attention”, and called for others to quit social media – perhaps with help from her new website.Essena O’Neill, 18, said she was able to make an income from marketing products to her 612,000 followers on Instagram – “$2000AUD a post EASY”. But her dramatic rejection of social media celebrity has won her praise. Continue reading...

Classic design, slim bezels, a round, sapphire screen, two-day battery life and a heart rate monitor make the top-end smartwatch worth the extra costWho would have thought that a little-known Chinese smartphone manufacturer famous for budget smartphones would make the best Android Wear smartwatch going?

Firms such as Google and Facebook didn’t offer users basic disclosures about privacy and censorship. ‘The best-scoring company got a D,’ says thinktankThe world’s top tech companies are failing when it comes to privacy and freedom of expression, according to the most comprehensive assessment to date of their user agreement policies.Related: How a digital rights project ranks tech firms and attempts to fix global failure Continue reading...

The wearable activity tracker’s third-quarter earnings report showed growth, but stocks dropped Monday after news of more than 20m new shares in marketFitbit has announced that months after the company went public in June, its revenue is up 168% year on year, according to its third-quarter earnings report.Despite the better than expected revenue – rising to $409.3m from $152.9m a year ago – the stock for the company dropped by as much as 9% in early after hours trading on Monday. This was due to the company’s announcement that it will be selling additional 7m shares and some of its shareholders will be selling 14m shares. That means more than 20m more shares will flood the market.

Simply play the game and tweet your score to be in with the chance of winning a PlayStation 4‘Where the tech world meets’ Web Summit is the biggest tech conference in Europe, hosted in Dublin between 3 – 5 November. To celebrate the Guardian’s media partnership we’re giving you the chance to win a PlayStation 4. To enter: Continue reading...

After complaints from civil liberties groups, company promises more awareness of context of real-name complaintsFacebook has announced plans to water down its controversial “real names” policy, after lobbying from civil liberties groups worldwide.The new rules still officially require the use of “authentic names” on the site, something which has previously resulted in criticism from varied groups including the drag community, Native Americans, and trans people. While Facebook does not require the use of “legal names” on the site, it does demand that users identify with the name that other people know them by. Continue reading...

Who’s Down app for Android and iPhone acts as virtual notice board for friends to signal when they’re free for an impromptu meet up, activity or gaming sessionIs talking to people to tell them that you’re available to socialise too much effort for you? There’s an app for that.

The annual GameCity festival brought a cavalcade of weird, offbeat and beautiful games to Nottingham last week. Here are some of our favouritesIn an ornate office, on the first floor of Nottingham’s city hall, a woman is cautiously crawling across a vast rug, insensible to the room’s other occupants.It looks weird, but as far as she’s concerned, she’s a spy infiltrating the secret base of a dangerous enemy. She’s wearing a HTC Vive virtual-reality headset and playing a game named Unseen Diplomacy. This is the sort of thing you stumble across at the annual GameCity festival. Continue reading...

Former reviewer of terrorism legislation says it would be glib to require judicial oversight of applications by security services to intercept communicationsIt would be glib for the government to require judges to approve warrants to intercept communications, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has said, as he called for an end to the “demonisation” of the security services.Alex Carlile QC, a Liberal Democrat peer and former MP, was speaking ahead of the publication of a draft of the investigatory powers bill, due on Wednesday, amid a political debate about whether politicians should be stripped of the power to sign off intercept warrants. Continue reading...

There’s no question that Apple has had a legendary run and often exceeds Wall Street expectations. A company, however, is more than its numbers. Here’s whyLike clockwork Apple announced their quarterly results on Tuesday and Tim Cook spun out his narrative of Apple’s ever-increasing, ever-impressive numbers. And as usual the market responded by largely agreeing that the skies are bright in Apple’s land. Analysts have declared that the high-flying stock is still undervalued, making it feel like there’s an indefinite upside ahead.

Smart, beautiful and as relatively pricey as a certain lager, Apple products make the company huge profits. It was just a case of cracking the desirability codeApple lives on cream – the very top of the market. Researcher IDC says its larger-screened iPhone has pushed Samsung aside to hold a majority of the more expensive end of the market – devices costing more than $650. But it’s not just the phone cream that it has grabbed. After 30 years in the personal computer market, Apple has just recorded a historic sales high of 5.7 million Macs in a quarter. Like Stella Artois, Apple positions itself as reassuringly expensive; it is a top-end brand in markets that have mainly been commoditised, with profits drained from all but a few. Apple intends to remain one of the few.Apple does not break out profits from phones, tablets or laptops, but industry estimates suggest operating margins of at least 28% for the iPhone, on its average price of $670. South Korea’s Samsung, the only other phone maker generating substantial profit, has just announced operating margins in its mobile division of 9%. Apple makes more than three times as much profit from iPhones as Samsung does from its mobiles. And the two companies account for all the profit there is in smartphones – LG, Sony, HTC, Microsoft and BlackBerry are all losing money on handsets. (China’s fast-growing Huawei, the third-biggest maker, has not announced any results.) Continue reading...

Halo 5 is a superb connected experience, Rock Band 4 plays it safe, and Minecraft’s spinoff Story Mode turns up the emotionXbox One, Microsoft, cert: 16

Light, strong and durable, the Luath is a set of wheels your kids will loveLearning to ride should be the start of a love affair with bicycles. Yet our first set of wheels is usually heavy and unwieldy with binary brakes that knock our heads backwards and gears with teeth that shred the skin from our shins. But then along came Isla Rowntree. The former competitive cyclist set up her company in 2005 in Shropshire with the aim of making decent bikes for kids. Starting with balance bikes for two-year-olds and going through the range to this Luath, which is for age 13+, Islabikes are light, strong and so durable they’re usually handed down through families, before going on to cousins, neighbours and more. Thoughtful details, like the Luath’s short-reach brakes for little hands, make them brilliantly usable. They are expensive, but your children will appreciate the outlay.Price: £549.99

Miles Brignall talks to the people who lost thousands of pounds in an earlier data breach. They are furious that the telecoms company says it’s not to blameVictims of the first TalkTalk security breach last November are still fighting for compensation after losing thousands of pounds – and they say they are appalled that hackers have again been able to steal customer details from the telecoms giant.Graeme Smith lost £2,815 after being rung by fraudsters pretending to be TalkTalk staff. Dave Westwood suffered the same fate, losing £3,900. Last week a retired teacher, who declined to be named, said she was targeted by hackers and lost £2,800 made as a Swift payment converted to Hong Kong dollars. In each case TalkTalk has refused to accept responsibility or offer compensation. Continue reading...