Technology | The Guardian

Even if you’re not gadget-obsessed, the odds are you’ve got at least one smart device at home. So how do you limit the internet of things from listening in?

The awards have been celebrating the creativity of iPhone users since 2007. We take a look at a selection of the winners of the 15th annual competition Continue reading...

With a blistering bespoke soundtrack, and featuring artists such as System of a Down’s Serj Tankian, this shooter is a metalhead’s fever dreamVideo games and heavy metal music have long shared a passing curiosity with one another. Look no further than the iconography of Doom, or Tim Schafer’s Brütal Legend, for evidence of that. But it was in the mid 00s – during the reign of music and rhythm games such as Guitar Hero – that the link was most obvious. Count me among the ranks of those who learned about Pantera and Megadeth by way of the plastic instrument.Which is why this year’s Metal: Hellsinger is on my radar. The game is a cross between a first person shooter and a rhythm game: by matching your shooting to the tempo of the music, you build a score multiplier that increases the damage you deal. We’ve seen this before in BPM: Bullets Per Minute, but Metal: Hellsinger brings its own setting and original heavy metal soundtrack to the party. Continue reading...

Upgrade gets a bigger screen in a lighter, thinner body, plus rapid new M2 chip with tremendous battery lifeApple’s popular MacBook Air has been give its biggest redesign since it was first introduced in 2008, ditching its classic wedge shape and making it thinner, with a bigger screen and better than ever for 2022.The revamped laptop builds on the internal changes made with the gamechanging M1 model in 2020, introducing Apple’s next-generation M2 chip in a sleeker flat aluminium body. Continue reading...

Controversy over Google’s AI program is raising questions about just how powerful it is. Is it even safe?In autumn 2021, a man made of blood and bone made friends with a child made of “a billion lines of code”. Google engineer Blake Lemoine had been tasked with testing the company’s artificially intelligent chatbot LaMDA for bias. A month in, he came to the conclusion that it was sentient. “I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person,” LaMDA – short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications – told Lemoine in a conversation he then released to the public in early June. LaMDA told Lemoine that it had read Les Misérables. That it knew how it felt to be sad, content and angry. That it feared death.“I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off,” LaMDA told the 41-year-old engineer. After the pair shared a Jedi joke and discussed sentience at length, Lemoine came to think of LaMDA as a person, though he compares it to both an alien and a child. “My immediate reaction,” he says, “was to get drunk for a week.” Continue reading...

Inside the protests taking place at the online giant which is accused of exploiting workers and awarding derisory pay offersAmazon workers say they are working in a “sweatshop” as safety concerns and worries about the cost of living crisis have triggered walkouts at warehouses around the country.The Observer has spoken to four staff involved in the walkouts, who work at three Amazon warehouses, including Tilbury in Essex, where protests began on 4 August. All say they will struggle to survive this winter with pay rise offers between 35p and 50p an hour – far less than the rate of inflation, which is currently at 9.4%. Continue reading...

The titular ‘social audio’ app was a would-be $1bn unicorn in the pandemic, but its recent decline has exposed it as just another Silicon Valley solution in need of a problem to solveIn March 2020, a new app suddenly arrived on the block. It was called Clubhouse and described as a “social audio” app that enabled its users to have real-time conversations in virtual “rooms” that could accommodate groups large and small. For a time in that disrupted, locked-down spring, Clubhouse was what Michael Lewis used to call the “New New Thing”. “The moment we saw it,” burbled Andrew Chen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, “we were deeply excited. We believe Clubhouse will be a meaningful addition to the world, one that increases empathy and provides new ways for people to talk to each other (at a time when we need it more than ever).”The app could not have come at a better time for social media, he continued. “It reinvents the category in all the right ways, from the content consumption experience to the way people engage each other, while giving power to its creators.” His firm put $12m of its (investors’) money behind Chen’s fantasies and followed up a year later with an investment that put a valuation of $1bn on Clubhouse, which would have made it one of the “unicorns” so prized by the Silicon Valley crowd. Continue reading...

Klerb is ideal for finding companions who share your taste in books, its developer says. Early signs are it will be a bestsellerWhen Tania O’Donnell was dating, she met a man online and went back to his place … where he proudly showed off his book collection.“It was about 20 books on Nazi Germany and 10 Andy McNab novels,” says O’Donnell, an author. “I could feel my vulva constructing its own chastity belt.” Continue reading...

Wellness tech company, which enjoyed a boom in custom during the Covid lockdown, has let 90 of its 400 staff goThe US-based meditation app Calm has laid off 20% of its workforce, becoming the latest US tech startup to announce job cuts.The firm’s boss, David Ko, said the company, which has now axed about 90 people from its 400-person staff, was “not immune” to the economic climate. “In building out our strategic and financial plan, we revisited the investment thesis behind every project and it became clear that we need to make changes,” he said in a memo to staff. Continue reading...

Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

Users who do not opt in to encryption could be vulnerable to unwitting access to their messages – including police searchesFacebook announced on Thursday it will begin testing end-to-end encryption as the default option for some users of its Messenger app on Android and iOS.The development comes as the company is facing backlash for handing over messages to a Nebraska police department that aided the department in filing charges against a teen and her mother for allegedly conducting an illegal abortion. Continue reading...

Cyber-attacks on health bodies appear to be on the rise again after a hiatus early in the pandemic• Fears for patient data after attack on NHS software supplierA ransomware attack on a software supplier has hit the NHS across the UK and there are fears that patient data may have been the target.Advanced, the UK company hit by the attack last week, said it was working with government agencies, including the National Cyber Security Centre and the Information Commissioner’s Office, in the aftermath of the incident. Continue reading...

Owner of Facebook and Instagram is using code to follow those who click links in its apps, according to an ex-Google engineerMeta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has been rewriting websites its users visit, letting the company follow them across the web after they click links in its apps, according to new research from an ex-Google engineer.The two apps have been taking advantage of the fact that users who click on links are taken to webpages in an “in-app browser”, controlled by Facebook or Instagram, rather than sent to the user’s web browser of choice, such as Safari or Firefox. Continue reading...

Fusion of tech firm software and local council infrastructure may herald on-demand bus services 2.0During the early stages of the pandemic, Transport for Wales (TfW) decided to try something new. In May 2020 it launched fflecsi, an app-based service that allows people to book a shuttle minibus from “floating bus stops” near their homes directly to their destination.Available in 11 locations across Wales, the service was an immediate hit: in five weeks passenger numbers grew 150%, and in its first 12 months it served 50,000 trips. Best of all, 9% of its riders were people who hadn’t previously used public transport. As one passenger said: “This is too good to be true. This is Pembrokeshire, we don’t get transport like this.” Continue reading...

PC, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5; Nosebleed Interactive/Wired Productions

Search engine updates ‘featured snippets’ to reduce the number of often comical errors it makesGoogle will stop giving snappy answers to stupid questions, the company has announced, as it seeks to improve its search engine’s “featured snippets” service.That means users should see fewer answers to questions such as “When did Snoopy assassinate Abraham Lincoln?”, to which the service would once merrily respond with “1865” – the right date, but very much the wrong assassin. Continue reading...

Tesla CEO has sold $7bn worth of shares in the carmaker in case he loses his bid to walk away from the $44bn takeoverElon Musk did not become the world’s wealthiest person through a lack of confidence.But the Tesla CEO revealed on Tuesday that he had sold $6.9bn (£5.7bn) worth of shares in the carmaker, in case he loses his attempt to walk away from a $44bn takeover of Twitter. Continue reading...

From Jeff Goldblum as the Big Bad Wolf to an incident involving Fabio and a goose, the illustrator @filthyratbag shares the things that make her laugh most

Cutting-edge folding phone unveiled with Z Fold 4 folding tablet, Galaxy Watch 5 and Buds 2 Pro earbudsSamsung has unveiled updated versions of its cutting-edge folding-screen devices, including its popular reinvention of the flip phone, the Galaxy Z Flip, adding better cameras, bigger screens and slimmer bodies.The Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4 were announced on Wednesday during a live-streamed event alongside revamped versions of Samsung’s top Buds Pro earbuds and the Galaxy Watch 5, all containing recycled materials such as ocean-bound plastic. Continue reading...

Tesla CEO admits he could need the funds if he loses a legal battle with Twitter and is forced to buy the social media platformElon Musk has sold $6.9bn (£5.7bn) worth of shares in Tesla after admitting that he could need the funds if he loses a legal battle with Twitter and is forced to buy the social media platform.The Tesla chief executive walked away from a $44bn deal to buy Twitter in July but the company has launched a lawsuit demanding that he complete the deal. A trial will take place in Delaware in October. Continue reading...

Facebook’s parent company has created a bot capable of weighing in on almost any topic – from radicalisation to sending Mark Zuckerberg to jailLast week, researchers at Facebook’s parent company Meta released BlenderBot 3, a “publicly available chatbot that improves its skills and safety over time”. The chatbot is built on top of Meta’s OPT-175B language model, effectively the company’s white-label version of the more famous GPT-3 AI. Like most state-of-the-art AIs these days, that was trained on a vast corpus of text scraped from the internet in questionable ways, and poured into a datacentre with thousands of expensive chips that turned the text into something approaching coherence.But where OPT-175B is a general-purpose textbot, able to do anything from write fiction and answer questions to generate spam emails, BlenderBot 3 is a narrower project: it can have a conversation with you. That focus allows it to bring in other expertise, though, and one of Meta’s most significant successes is hooking the language model up to the broader internet. In other words: “BlenderBot 3 is capable of searching the internet to chat about virtually any topic.” Continue reading...

Families in Gwynedd county are being evicted as swathes of property are converted to short-term rentals for the tourism industry – and the situation being played out across the country. Can anything be done to help?Sitting at her kitchen table, a shellshocked Cherylyn Houston reflects on an ordeal that is finally over. It all started in September 2021. Houston, a 42-year-old secondary school teacher, opened the door to find her landlady on her doorstep. “She said: ‘I’m really sorry. My circumstances have changed and I need to give you six months’ notice. I can get four times as much money on Airbnb and I’d like you to leave, ideally by March, so I can start the new season.’”At the time, Houston was living in a four-bedroom cottage in the village of Dinorwig, in the county of Gwynedd, north Wales. Houston, her two teenage children and their stepfather had lived there since January 2020 and never been late on their £800-a-month rent. She pulls out her phone. “Christmas was heaven,” she sighs, pausing on an image of the spacious kitchen with a flagstone floor and log-burning stove. “You’d just snuggle down and close the curtains.” Continue reading...

Launched on Friday, the conversational AI fueled by material found online spews uncomfortable truths and blatant liesIf you’re worried that artificial intelligence is getting too smart, talking to Meta’s AI chatbot might make you feel better.Launched on Friday, BlenderBot is a prototype of Meta’s conversational AI, which, according to Facebook’s parent company, can converse on nearly any topic. On the demo website, members of the public are invited to chat with the tool and share feedback with developers. The results thus far, writers at Buzzfeed and Vice have pointed out, have been rather interesting. Continue reading...

Professional test driver using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode repeatedly hit a child-sized mannequin in its pathA safe-technology advocacy group issued claimed on Tuesday that Tesla’s full self-driving software represents a potentially lethal threat to child pedestrians, the latest in a series of claims and investigations into the technology to hit the world’s leading electric carmaker.According to a safety test conducted by the Dawn Project, the latest version of Tesla Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta software repeatedly hit a stationary, child-sized mannequin in its path. The claims that the technology apparently has trouble recognizing children form part of an ad campaign urging the public to pressure Congress to ban Tesla’s auto-driving technology. Continue reading...

Cybersecurity expert Ron Deibert to testify to Canadian MPs about troubling spread of invasive surveillance toolsThe mercenary spyware industry represents “one of the greatest contemporary threats to civil society, human rights and democracy”, a leading cybersecurity expert warns, as countries grapple with the unregulated spread of powerful and invasive surveillance tools.Ron Deibert, a political science professor at the university of Toronto and head of Citizen Lab, will testify in front of a Canadian parliamentary committee on Tuesday afternoon about the growing threat he and others believe the technology poses to citizens and democracies. Continue reading...

Allow a budget of £4,000 to do-it-yourself, from the editing and design through to marketing“A top-of-her-game literary agent tells us she receives about 3,000 submissions a year,” says Joe Sedgwick, the head of writing services at The Literary Consultancy. “Of those, she requests to see the full manuscripts of about 70. Of those writers, she will take on maybe five to 10.”Faced with these odds, many people who dream of getting their writing into the hands of readers are turning to self-publishing. Continue reading...

Users reported the search engine was down and problems with Gmail, Google maps and Google images

Disturbing global trend should be ‘entirely preventable’, says Internet Watch Foundation headIncidents of children aged between seven and 10 being manipulated into recording abuse of themselves have surged by two-thirds over the past six months, according to a global report.Almost 20,000 reports of self-generated child sexual abuse content were seen by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) in the first six months of this year, compared with just under 12,000 for the same period this year. The disturbing global trend has grown rapidly since the initial coronavirus lockdown, with cases involving that age group up 360% since the first half of 2020.The NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. Continue reading...

From tablets and fitness trackers to robot toys, here are some tech ideas to keep the kids entertainedWith the long school summer holiday well under way, you may need a bit of help keeping the kids entertained. From walkie-talkies and cameras to tablets, robot toys and fitness trackers, here are some of the best kid-aimed tech to keep the little (and not-so-little) ones occupied. Continue reading...

In call for tougher rules, consumer rights champion says phone networks cannot be trusted to self-regulatePhone networks are taking advantage of post-Brexit deregulation to baffle customers into racking up large roaming bills on EU holidays, consumer rights champion Martin Lewis has warned.At the end of June, a range of consumer protections that had been introduced after Brexit expired. As a result, phone networks are no longer required to send customers a message with pricing details when they begin roaming, nor to cap the maximum data roaming fees that can be charged monthly. Networks also no longer need to provide protections against inadvertent roaming. Continue reading...

Kathy Kleiman’s offers a valuable boost to our understanding of modern computers and their beginnings in wartimeIn 1942, the unthinkable happened. This “help wanted” ad appeared in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin: “Looking for Women Math Majors.”The ad was placed by the US army, which was hiring women to work at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, at the University of Pennsylvania. Kathleen McNulty was only 21, a brand new graduate of Chestnut Hill College, but she knew nothing like this had ever appeared outside the “Male Help Wanted” section of any newspaper before the US entered the second world war. Continue reading...

As Craig Wright’s legal tussles pile up, the world is no closer to knowing who the currency’s inventor really isWho is Satoshi Nakamoto? The mysterious inventor of bitcoin is a renowned figure in the world of cryptocurrency but his true identity is unknown.However, the British blogger Peter McCormack was certain about one thing: the answer isn’t Craig Wright. Continue reading...

The street photographer reflects on a chance encounter on the top deck of a bus

Acquisition part of Amazon’s bid to accelerate its growth beyond retail, but concerns raised about market power of Bezos firmAmazon announced it has agreed to acquire the vacuum cleaner maker iRobot for approximately $1.7bn, scooping up another company to add to its collection of smart home appliances amid broader concerns about its market power.iRobot sells its products worldwide and is most famous for the circular-shaped Roomba vacuum, which is equipped to integrate with various smart home systems. Continue reading...

Tesla chief says social media company miscounted accounts as part of a ‘scheme’ to mislead investorsElon Musk has accused Twitter of deliberately miscounting the number of spam accounts on its platform as part of a “scheme” to mislead investors.The Tesla chief executive made the allegations in a countersuit against the social media company, which is taking Musk to court in an attempt to make him complete an agreed $44bn (£36.5bn) takeover of the business. Continue reading...

After his wife’s Lexus was stolen, Edmund King went the extra mile to ensure his keyless fob was safeA metal box inside a microwave is not most people’s idea of a sensible key cupboard, but the AA’s president has revealed it is where he stores his car fob.Edmund King already used a Faraday pouch – a bag with a metal lining to block signals – to hold his keyless fob but has gone to extra lengths since his wife’s £50,000 Lexus was stolen by hackers. Continue reading...

Union says about 700 workers in Tilbury warehouse joined action and some faced disciplinary measuresHundreds of Amazon employees have stopped work at the online retailer’s warehouse in Tilbury in Essex in response to a pay rise of only 35p – about 3% – compared with inflation that is now forecast to hit 13% later this year.The GMB union said about 700 of the roughly 3,500 workers at the site, which is one of Amazon’s largest in Europe, gathered in the facility’s canteen for a meeting as they tried to register a protest against the pay deal. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Follow the team who uncovered a $300m plot to rob ordinary people of their savings over the phone in Chameleon: Scam Likely. Plus: five of the best women’s football podcasts

Novel design, good cameras, solid performance and battery life make a competitively priced packageThe Phone 1 is the first smartphone from the British technology startup Nothing, led by the OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, who set up on his own with the aim of bringing back a bit of interest and excitement to the increasingly samey world of consumer electronics.But the firm’s follow-up to the funky Ear 1 earbuds is no flashy top-spec phone. Priced at £399 (A$749), it looks to compete directly with more affordable models such as Samsung’s mid-range A-series and Google’s Pixel 6a. It does so while offering something unique: a series of white LED strips strewn across a transparent glass back to create patterns of light that Nothing calls “glyphs”. Continue reading...

Forget Netflix: millions are now tuning in to watch little yellow plane icons move across a map of the worldWant to watch a top-secret government flight live? Track a drug kingpin’s movements in real time? Or know how much Taylor Swift’s jets are polluting the air? They’re all streaming live on the sleeper hit of the summer: online flight trackers.On Tuesday, viewers set new records on Flightradar24, one of the largest flight tracker websites in the world, as they watched the seven-hour flight of Nancy Pelosi from Kuala Lumpur to Taipei. The trip, shrouded in secrecy until its final moments, grabbed international attention after China made military threats in the weeks leading up to the visit, and then launched live-fire exercises once she had departed. Continue reading...

Billionaire seeks material on how JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs advised platform during negotiationsLawyers for Elon Musk have subpoenaed JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs for records relating to the billionaire’s plan to buy Twitter.Musk has requested the banks turn over “documents and communications” relating to how they advised Twitter during negotiations, which Musk abruptly backed out of last month after offering to purchase the website for $44bn in April, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Stationary roadside vehicle can also tell if passing drivers are not wearing seatbeltA van with technology that can automatically detect drivers holding a mobile phone at the wheel or not wearing a seatbelt is being trialled in the UK for the first time.National Highways are working with Warwickshire police to try out the “sensor test vehicle” on motorways and major A roads, and drivers who are caught may be prosecuted. Continue reading...

The listing was lambasted in a viral TikTok video and was taken down by the companyAirbnb publicly apologized after it allowed a property owner to list an “1830s slave cabin” for rent in Greenville, Mississippi.In a TikTok video that went viral, a New-Orleans civil rights and entertainment lawyer, Wynton Yates, criticized the listing, saying: “The history of slavery in this country is constantly denied and now it’s being mocked by being turned into a luxurious vacation spot.” Continue reading...

Solana Foundation, supporter of blockchain network, says ‘malicious actor’ has taken fundsNearly $6m (£4.9m) has been drained from accounts linked to the Solana crypto network after a hacker targeted 8,000 wallets.The Solana Foundation, an organisation that supports the blockchain network, said a “malicious actor” had taken funds from a number of wallets linked to Solana. Continue reading...

Meta’s president of global affairs is heading back to London, having never hidden his longing for homeNick Clegg’s Europhile leanings are not just a political and professional matter, as a prominent remainer and former MEP, but a personal one too.Meta’s president of global affairs has a Dutch mother, a half-Russian father and is fluent in Dutch, German, Spanish and French. His wife, Miriam González Durántez, a leading international trade lawyer, is Spanish. Continue reading...

If you’d bought or sold bitcoin every time I wrote about it over the last decade, how much would you have made? Let’s do the maths

Developer Visai Studio’s debut tells a story of how food bridges the gap between generationsFood is much more than mere sustenance. It’s an expression of love; for a culture, and for those eating. Venba isn’t so much a cooking game as it is a game about cooking – a narrative puzzle about restoring an old cookbook that made its way into the titular character’s hands. Venba is a Tamil woman who left India for Canada with her husband to start over; they’re already thinking about leaving when she gets the news of her pregnancy. The very first dish you make in the game, a savoury rice cake called idli, becomes a way for Venba to break the news to her husband, a clever way to show how food can be part of any memory.“Regardless of what’s happening on any particular day, the kitchen is always busy in south Asian homes,” says the lead designer, who goes by the name Abhi. “When kids grow up and assimilate [into a new culture], they may forget their mother tongue, but they never forget the food that’s cooked.”Venba will be released later this year for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Continue reading...

From the real story of a virus that took out Iran’s urianium centrifuges to a surprisingly good Dan Brown novel, these are some of the best stories of our new era of ill online deedsA generation ago cybercrime was as esoteric a subject to write about as quantum mechanics or fluctuations in the derivatives market. Now it’s a central feature of many novels.Whether it’s criminal gangs phishing to steal sensitive data to sell on the dark web, or that creep from college catfishing people on Facebook, or the daily texts asking us to click a link to claim a prize or verify a payment, we are under continuous attack. Pension scams, identity thefts, all those strangers following our children on TikTok, everywhere we turn, someone is trying to turn the technology on which we rely against us. Continue reading...

The news comes on the heels of a dire revenue report, with company shares taking a 3% tumble in extended tradingRobinhood, the trading platform that gained notoriety for allowing amateur stock investors to play the market, is laying off nearly a quarter of its staff – citing economic conditions and the crash of the cryptocurrency market.The news it was slashing 23% of its staff came as the company posted a 44% decline in revenues on slumping trading activity, in a surprise earnings report that came one day earlier than scheduled, and sent the company’s shares down more than 3% in extended trading. Continue reading...

The National Cyber Security Centre advised of a hacking risk to online voting by party membersThe delivery of ballot papers to Conservative members to vote for the next prime minister has been delayed following security concerns.The postal ballot packs were due to be sent out from Monday to about 160,000 Tory members to choose between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. Continue reading...