Technology | The Guardian

The writer, who learned her craft playing 90s adventure games, on her love letter to a lifelong passion, the problematic aspects of the industry and the transformative power of playGames have always been a part of writer Gabrielle Zevin’s life. Her first experience, she recalls, was playing Pac-Man at the Honolulu hotel where her grandmother ran a jewellery store. “I was about three years old at the time and I remember thinking, wouldn’t it just be perfect if I wasn’t limited to a single quarter … if I could just keep playing this game for ever and ever?” Now 44, the veteran author has written her first novel about games. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is the story of two programmers, Sam and Sadie, who set up a studio in the mid-1990s and over the course of a decade, make interesting games while their lives and relationships entwine in complex, often heartbreaking ways.It is a künstlerroman for the digital age, an engrossing meditation on creativity and love and perhaps the first novel to wrestle with the culture and meaning of this often-misunderstood medium. It’s also been a resounding success, shooting straight into the New York Times bestseller list and earning her an interview on Jimmy Fallon. Continue reading...

Rockstar is the victim of one of the biggest data breaches in gaming history. It’s not only a blow to developers – it’s a loss for fans

Cameras on turbines being trained to recognise lesser spotted eagles, which are endangered in countrySmall in size, sensitive of constitution and with only 130 breeding pairs surviving locally in the wild, the lesser spotted eagle of the Oder delta lives up to its name. In Germany, key questions over the country’s energy future hang on the question of whether artificial intelligence systems can do a better job of spotting the reclusive animal than birdwatchers do.Lesser spotted eagles (named after the drop-shaped spots on their feathers) are fond of riding thermals over many of the flatlands earmarked for a mass expansion of onshore windfarms by a German government under pressure to compensate for a pending loss of nuclear power, coal plants and Russian gas. Continue reading...

The extent to which private companies should be held responsible for online content is a global issue yet to be resolved

Video and images posted online as hacker also threatens to leak source code for Grand Theft Auto V and VIThe next instalment of Grand Theft Auto will include a female playable character for the first time and is to be set in Vice City, the in-game universe’s ersatz Miami, leaked footage confirms.More than 90 videos and images of the long-awaited Grand Theft Auto VI were leaked online over the weekend in one of the biggest confidential data breaches in gaming history. Continue reading...

Owners report opening camera in apps such as TikTok and Instagram leads to grinding sounds and vibrations in entire phoneA major bug in Apple’s latest iPhone is causing the camera to physically fail when using apps such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, some owners have reported.The bug in the company’s iPhone 14 Pro Max, the most expensive model in the iPhone 14 range, appears to affect the optical image stabilisation (OIS) feature, which uses a motor to eliminate the effects of camera shake when taking pictures. Opening the camera in certain apps causes the OIS motor to go haywire, causing audible grinding sounds and physically vibrating the entire phone. Continue reading...

With students’ finances overstretched, it’s important to get the right tech at the right price. Here are some of the best dealsThe end of the summer is here, and with it the start of a new semester at university. The landscape of learning certainly looks brighter than it has for the last couple of years but the need to have the right gear is just as big, with many universities offering a mix of in-person and online learning.From laptops and phones to headphones and note-taking tools, here’s a guide to some of the tech that will help make the most of the student experience at a time of stretched finances. Continue reading...

Expo in east London shows how important augmented and virtual reality will be, as attractions move with the timesIn the fight for theme park visitors the battle lines have been drawn – monster trucks, virtual reality zombie warfare and “smellscaping”, just thankfully not all at the same time.And while there was a sombre atmosphere around parts of London as tens of thousands lined up to pay their respects to the Queen, there were 10,000 more gathered in a convention centre in East London experiencing the future of the theme park. Continue reading...

A court in Delaware will decide whether the Tesla chief can back out of his $44bn offer to buy the platformAs the Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko was telling US lawmakers of “egregious” security failings at the company last Tuesday, shareholders in the social media platform overwhelmingly voted to hand those problems over to someone else: Elon Musk.It is unlikely that the Tesla CEO, who owns more than 9% of Twitter and agreed to buy the company in April, was among the 99% of voting shareholders who backed that $44bn (£38.5bn) deal, given he is now determined to abandon it. A Delaware judge will decide at a trial beginning on 17 October whether Musk gets to walk away, or be forced to acquire the business on the terms that he had agreed upon. Continue reading...

Speaking to animals has long been a fantasy. But now a dizzyingly ambitious project is harnessing all the power of modern science in an attempt to understand what whales say – and then hold conversations with themTom Mustill was kayaking with his friend Charlotte in Monterey Bay, California, when an animal three times the size of the largest Tyrannosaurus Rex hurtled from the water and crashed down on their tiny craft. As the flying humpback whale fell upon them and their kayak was sucked beneath the waves, Mustill assumed he would die. Miraculously he and Charlotte found themselves gasping for breath, clinging to their capsized kayak. How had they survived a smash with a creature three times the weight of a double-decker bus?What happened next was almost as weird. Mustill and Charlotte went viral. Passing whale-watching tourists had videoed the pair’s near-death encounter and stuck it on YouTube. Mustill, a wildlife filmmaker, became what he calls “a lightning conductor for whale fanatics”. Interviewed by the global media, he was soon quivering with different and extraordinary stories of whale meetings from around the world: a submariner told him about whales singing to his ship; a book publisher reported being apparently scanned by the sonar-like echolocation of a pregnant female dolphin – a few days later, she discovered that she too was pregnant. “It was really addictive finding out all these other stories,” says Mustill, “because each one was like another lens on the animal and our relationship to them.” Continue reading...

Do Kwon’s whereabouts are still unknown since a South Korean court issued an arrest warrant earlier this weekDo Kwon, the South Korean founder of the failed cryptocurrency Terra wanted by police, has denied he was on the run after Singapore investigators said he was not in the city-state as had been believed.Kwon’s whereabouts have been thrown into question after a statement from Singapore police late on Saturday, and his tweets did not reveal where he was. Continue reading...

If you want to be an internet-age version of General Motors or IBM, you need to sell something people want and steer clear of political pitfallsA question: what’s the average lifespan of an American company? Not any old company, mind, but one big enough to figure in Standard and Poor’s index of the 500 largest. The answer is surprising: the seven-year rolling average stands at 19.9 years. Way back in 1965 it was 32 years and the projections are that the downward trend will continue.Remember that we’re talking averages here. The trend doesn’t mean that no companies currently extant will get to their first century. Some almost certainly will, as some have in the past: AT&T, for example, is 137 years old; General Electric is 130; Ford is 119; IBM is 111; and General Motors is 106. But most companies wither or are gobbled up long before they qualify for a telegram from the president. Continue reading...

A moment at a Rohingya refugee camp gave the photojournalist a sense of the surrealIn the shadow of Tangkhali refugee camp in Bangladesh, photojournalist Jashim Salam stood by a projection screen and surveyed the crowd of Rohingya refugee children. They were watching a health and sanitation awareness film.“In that particular moment it looked like a scene from thousands of years ago,” says Salam, who has documented the fallout from the crisis. “The landscape, the lighting just after sunset, the bewildered look in people’s eyes; it all felt surreal to me.” Continue reading...

President appears at Detroit auto show, where EVs are this year’s stars – but the road to electrification promises to be a bumpy oneFresh off signing legislation aimed at propelling the nation’s electric vehicle (EV) transition, Joe Biden was in Detroit last week to reaffirm his support for electrification ahead of the opening of the US’s largest annual car show.“The great American road trip is going to be fully electrified, whether you’re driving along the coast, or on I-75 here in Michigan,” he declared as the first North American International Auto Show since 2019 prepared to open its doors. Continue reading...

Rising interest rates, dampened growth and the public’s shifting views on Big Tech are giving experts pauseHuge layoffs at Snapchat, dramatic valuation drops at Meta and Apple, and hiring freezes at other Big Tech firms have given new fuel to an increasingly common question: Is Silicon Valley’s golden era coming to an end?The answer is complicated, experts say. The tech industry has been on a run of impressive growth for some time, bolstered in recent years by a pandemic that forced most of the world online and sent demand for tech services booming. That explosion – and the high salaries and office perks that came with it – seems to be slowing. Continue reading...

Bodegraven-Reeuwijk has been plagued by a conspiracy theory and wants tweets spreading it removedA small Dutch town took Twitter to court on Friday to demand the social media company take down all messages relating to a supposed ring of Satan-worshipping paedophiles alleged to have been active in the town in the 1980s.Bodegraven-Reeuwijk, a town of about 35,000 inhabitants in the middle of the Netherlands, has been the focus of conspiracy theories on social media since 2020, when three men started spreading unfounded stories about the abuse and murder of children they said took place in the town in the 1980s. Continue reading...

Ride-hailing company confirms attack after hacker compromises Slack app and messages employeesUber has been hacked in an attack that appears to have breached the ride-hailing company’s internal systems.The California-based company confirmed it was responding to a “cybersecurity incident”, after the New York Times reported that a hack had accessed the company’s network and forced it to take several internal communications and engineering systems offline. The hacker claimed to be 18 years old, according to the report. Continue reading...

Generational divide threatens future of tech firm as it seeks approval for $400m takeover by Facebook owner MetaIt is rare for a multimillion-dollar company to explicitly state that its business is dying because it is simply too uncool to live.But that is the bold strategy that the gif search engine Giphy has adopted with the UK’s competition regulator, which is trying to block a $400m (£352m) takeover attempt by Facebook’s owner, Meta. Continue reading...

PC (version tested), PlayStation 5, Xbox; The Outsiders/Funcom

Nintendo Switch; Nintendo

In this week’s newsletter: The British Somali migrant was wrongfully found guilty of murdering Cardiff shopkeeper Lily Volpert in 1952 – a new podcast finds out why. Plus: five of the best long podcasts

Research team hopes system could improve natural conversations between humans and AI systemsLaughter comes in many forms, from a polite chuckle to a contagious howl of mirth. Scientists are now developing an AI system that aims to recreate these nuances of humour by laughing in the right way at the right time.The team behind the laughing robot, which is called Erica, say that the system could improve natural conversations between people and AI systems. Continue reading...

The case mirrors a District of Columbia complaint alleging the company pushes sellers to maintain higher prices on other sitesCalifornia is suing Amazon, accusing the company of violating the state’s antitrust laws by stifling competition and engaging in practices that push sellers to maintain higher prices on products on other sites.The 84-page lawsuit filed on Wednesday in San Francisco superior court mirrors another complaint filed last year by the District of Columbia, which was dismissed by a district judge earlier this year and is now going through an appeals process. Continue reading...

Men allegedly tried to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from groups in US including domestic violence shelterThree Iranians have been charged with trying to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from organizations in the United States, Europe, Iran and Israel, including a domestic violence shelter, by hacking in to their computer systems, US officials said on Wednesday.Other targets included local US governments, regional utilities in Mississippi and Indiana, accounting firms and a state lawyers’ association, according to charges filed by the justice department. Continue reading...

Your device may be able to call emergency services if you get into trouble. It’s a genuine technological leap in a field where innovation is in short supply

As the games writer’s house move drags on, he seeks solace in old handheld consoles. But one held a surprise …As a result of a house move that grew more complicated with every passing day, I have spent another couple of weeks in the barbaric situation of not having a gigantic TV to play games on. So I have continued to seek solace in storage boxes containing handheld consoles of the past – specifically, this time, an old Nintendo DSi and assorted cartridges.This machine was mainly used by my kids more than a decade ago, when they were aged between six and 11, so the bag is full of loose games such as Nintendogs, Eco Creatures: Save the Forest, Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop and Catz – games that hold no interest for a man in his 50s, and whose spelling offends me. Continue reading...

Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko, former head of security, says ‘any employee could take over the accounts of any senator in this room’A Twitter whistleblower who accused the company of “egregious” security deficiencies testified in front of Congress on Tuesday, alleging those failures made the platform vulnerable to exploitation, including by foreign agents.Former hacker Peiter “Mudge” Zatko worked as head of security at Twitter from 2020 until he was fired in 2022, and says in that time he witnessed “extreme, egregious deficiencies by Twitter in every area of his mandate”. Continue reading...

From a creeping horror to a funny alien shooter, here are unexpected finds to play before the onslaught of big-name titles

Tech company accused of abusing its power in the ad tech marketGoogle faces a €25bn (£21.6bn) lawsuit in the UK and EU that accuses the tech firm of anticompetitive conduct in the digital advertising market.The company, which is a key player in the online ad market as well as being a dominant force in search, is accused of abusing its power in the ad tech market, which coordinates the sale of online advertising space between publishers and advertisers. Continue reading...

When children first started flocking to YouTube, some seriously strange stuff started to appear – and after much outcry, the company found itself scrambling to fix the problemHarry Jho worked out of a 10th-storey Wall Street office, in which one corner was stacked with treadmill desks and another was filled with racks of colourful costumes and a green screen for filming nursery rhymes. He worked as a securities lawyer. With his wife, Sona, Jho also ran Mother Goose Club, a YouTube media empire.Sona had produced short children’s segments for public-access TV stations before the couple decided to branch out on their own. As educators – the Jhos once taught English in Korea – they saw television’s pedagogical flaws. To learn words, kids should see lips move, but Barney’s mouth never did. Baby Einstein mostly showed toys. The Jhos, who were Korean American, had two young children, and noticed how few faces on kids TV looked like theirs. Continue reading...

Group chats were a lifeline during lockdown – but for many, the constant messages have become an oppressive distraction. Leaving, however, is not so simpleAs I write, I have 101 unread WhatsApp messages, 254 unread iPhone messages and 46,252 unread emails across three separate accounts. For me, Inbox Zero is a faraway goal, as unachievable as mastering the perfect cat’s-eye flick, or learning how to cook.But it is the WhatsApp messages, specifically the WhatsApp group chats, that terrorise me the most. If I were a woman of courage, I would simply exit these chats as soon as I am added to them; but I feel the weight of social obligation, and so I remain. Continue reading...

Rohan Wahi, the brother of a former product manager at the company, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy chargesThe brother of a former Coinbase Global Inc product manager pleaded guilty on Monday to a wire fraud conspiracy charge, in what US prosecutors have called the first insider trading case involving cryptocurrency.Nikhil Wahi, 26, admitted during a virtual court hearing before US district judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan that he made trades based on confidential Coinbase information. Continue reading...

MyCoinBanking was known to Barclays but the bank has only offered to repay him half of what he lostDuring the pandemic my 75-year-old father was targeted by scammers via email and WhatsApp who convinced him they were investment managers who could develop his life savings of £55,000 into a fantastic sum by investing in cryptocurrency.He had recently retired and was worried he had not saved enough for his, and my mother’s, retirement, so was easy prey. He also has very little nous and gave the scammers, an outfit called MyCoinBanking, his account details including sort codes and account numbers. Continue reading...

When 92-year-old Lillian’s video went viral, no one could believe it – least of all her… Introducing the older generation taking TikTok by stormTikTok? Why not? That is my motto. Making our channel was my grandson Kevin’s idea from the start. It’s his fault that I’ve got nearly 5m followers. We were just sitting in the kitchen one day and he filmed me chatting. I can barely remember what I said – I think something about clocks? That’s what I thought he was telling me to do: tick tock, a clock! It was meant to be a joke, but overnight that video got 1m views or something ridiculous. Continue reading...

Elon Musk was scorned when he set up Tesla, but his tech approach to electric vehicles has triumphed. However, when it comes to aftercare, the model’s not so greatThe first thing one learns when purchasing a Tesla, as this columnist did in December 2020, is that the neighbours immediately begin to hold one personally responsible for Elon Musk. The co-founder and now Supreme Leader of the company is, one finds, widely regarded by non-techies as a fruitcake with a bad Twitter habit, so it follows that anyone who buys one of his cars must be a devotee of the world’s richest nutter and therefore not properly earthed.Interestingly, there was a time, not so very long ago, 2005 to be precise, that this view of Musk was held by sensible German men in suits, who laughed at the idea of this jerk building automobiles. Didn’t he know that making cars is hard and that BMW, Mercedes, Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen, Toyota and the rest had spent the best part of a century figuring out how to do it profitably at scale? Sure, he might be able to produce expensive toys for Silicon Valley types – but real cars? Continue reading...

The BBC’s new wildlife series overcame photography challenges with hi-tech equipment and years of patienceThe tension in the air was palpable as the group of television producers waited with bated breath to see what would happen as the Siberian tiger crept into the bear’s cave. This was a groundbreaking moment in the making of wildlife documentaries, and one that will be seen by millions who tune into Frozen Planet II.It took three years of persistence and trial-and-error filming in Russian forests using remote cameras to get the footage of the tigers entering bears’ caves, said Elizabeth White – who worked on the original Frozen Planet and produced the award-winning “iguanas vs snakes” episode of Planet Earth II. Continue reading...

The French photographer on the joys – and difficulties – of taking pictures in Iceland’s Blue LagoonIt wasn’t until Magali Chesnel was on her flight back to Geneva that she figured out why the people she’d seen swimming earlier that day had been wearing bin bags on their heads. After a week of solo travel around the south of Iceland, the French photographer had spent the morning at the famous Blue Lagoon geothermal spa, just a short drive from the airport. Returning home, she realised her hair had turned coarse and brittle from the silica in the pools. “If you ever visit, use hair conditioner! Or a garbage bag!” she warns.While she expected the shots she took of the bag-wearing bathers to be her favourites, it was actually this one that came out best. The six Icelandic teenage boys were laughing, chatting and drinking ice-cold slushies in 38C water in a scene that later reminded her of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. “I studied art when I was younger. I like my photos to have an element of confusion; are they a photograph or a painting?” Chesnel says. Continue reading...

Other inventions include a humane insect remover, a gas-flushing toilet and a collar that stops dogs fightingAn artificial intelligence-driven toaster that gets the perfect level of brownness each time, a device to humanely remove flying insects from a room, and a sensor that tells you when a nappy needs changing. These were just three of the new things created by UK based inventors last year.A Guardian analysis of patent applications listed by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) found 6,087 patent applications published with at least one UK-based inventor listed in 2021. Continue reading...

Late monarch recognised the immediacy and connection that advanced technology could bring

Guardian Australia picture editor Carly Earl explains the dos and don’ts of photographing the moon

A Reddit subforum for people who are horrified by the proliferation of crypto scams and pyramid schemes pokes fun at cryptocurrencyAs bitcoin plunged below $20,000 in mid-June, many cryptocurrency users were distraught over massive losses – with some reporting they had lost their life savings. But one corner of the internet was cheering: Buttcoin, a Reddit subforum launched in 2011 to poke fun at cryptocurrency.“I’m addicted, I need help,” read one popular post. “I just love watching line go down too much. I always tell myself ‘after it breaks through this next support line, you’ll be satisfied’ but there’s ALWAYS another lower level after that.” “I’m actually hoping it levels off at 20K for tonight,” said another user. “I’m kinda tired and need more time to think of new lower priced memes.” Continue reading...

CEO says messaging app needs to focus on thirtysomethings and ‘big five’ countries – Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Spain and JapanSnapchat is coming for the oldies – in Gen Z terms, at least. The messaging app is focusing on attracting users in their 30s, according to a leaked memo from its co-founder and chief executive, Evan Spiegel, as part of a goal to increase usage “in at least one new large country or demographic”.In the memo, published by the Verge, Spiegel laid out his company’s plans for recovery after a year in which 20% of Snapchat’s staff were laid off, and four of its five stated goals missed. “While the macroeconomic environment certainly contributed to these misses, I believe we can do better,” he wrote. Continue reading...

Firm turns to features such as car crash detection and ‘no bars’ rescues rather than exciting new designsThe latest versions of Apple’s most important product of the year, the all-conquering iPhone, was unveiled with typical pomp on Wednesday to a willing global audience of millions. Its marquee feature: safety, in the flashy new emergency satellite communications but also in iterative design and minor upgrades.One look at the iPhone 14 evokes a feeling of déjà-vu. It has the same design introduced two years ago with the iPhone 12, with minor upgrades. In a first for Apple, it even has the same A15 chip as last year’s 13 Pro. Continue reading...

Welcome to Pokémon Worlds, the wholesome tournament where childhood dreams can come trueLike many 90s kids, when I was 10 I dreamed of becoming a Pokémon Master. From car journeys spent craning my neck over a Game Boy screen while battling through Victory Road, to cranking the Pokémon album on my Discman, I was determined to be the very best. Life had other plans for me but, as I discovered on a sunny August weekend this year, for 5,000 dedicated competitors across the globe the dream is very much alive.After a Covid-mandated three-year hiatus, the Pokémon World Championships have returned. And this year, Pikachu and pals took over London, coating the ExCel centre’s concourse with Poké-paraphernalia – even transforming the nearby cable car over the Thames. Surrounded by 100-foot-tall inflatable Pikachus and a stadium-worthy stage, this once drab conference hall is now a makeshift battleground for aspiring trainers young and… well, I’m not ready to call myself old yet. Less young? That’ll do. Continue reading...

Fully fledged self-driving technology appears to be pepetually just around the corner. It is a promise that the Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, has made almost every year since 2013. But in the real world, it is still an open question whether level five self-driving automation is actually possible. Josh Toussaint-Strauss finds out how close industry frontrunners have come to full automation and assess the scale of the problems standing in their way

Multisport tracker packs maps, GPS and battery upgrade alongside advanced training tools, plus solar-charging optionGarmin’s new Forerunner 955 multisport watch looks to be the ultimate training tool for enthusiasts, packed with advanced metrics, onboard maps, higher-accuracy GPS and a solar-charging option.The watch is the firm’s top running and triathlon model, costing £480 ($500/A$800), sitting above the £300 Forerunner 255 and loaded up with additional features such as offline maps, advanced training tools and longer battery life for serious runners and triathletes.Screen: 1.3in transflective MIP LCDCase size: 46.5mmCase thickness: 14.4mmBand size: 22mmWeight: 52gStorage: 32GB (up to 2,000 songs)Water resistance: 50 metres (5ATM)Sensors: GNSS (multiband GPS, Glonass, Galileo, BeiDuo, QZSS), compass, thermometer, heart rate, pulse OxConnectivity: Bluetooth, ANT+, wifi, NFC Continue reading...

Always-on display lets notification addicts stay connected but only ‘pro’ models get the latest A16 Bionic chipIf you feel like you never look away from your phone, Apple’s newest iPhones are for you, with an always-on display letting notification addicts stay connected all day, every day.Exclusive to the iPhone 14 Pro, the display preserves power by dropping down to an ultra-low refresh rate of just 1Hz, dimming the screen, and handing updates over to a dedicated low-power coprocessor to keep the time, widgets and notifications up to date even with the phone in sleep mode. Continue reading...

Case will go ahead next month but his countersuit can be expanded to include whistleblower’s allegationsElon Musk has failed in an attempt to delay a trial over his termination of a $44bn (£38bn) deal to buy Twitter.A judge ruled on Wednesday that the case would go ahead in Delaware from 17 October after deciding that Musk’s request to push it into November would damage Twitter’s business. Continue reading...

Unearthing beloved old gaming consoles that have been languishing in a freezer bag is a lesser-known plus side of moving house, as Dominik Diamond discoveredI recently moved into a new house and faced that most terrifying of prospects: a few days without internet access. On top of all the other dependencies that this enriching, vile invention has created in us, all the games I’ve been playing required patches, updates, or someone to play against. I was – gulp – gameless!Luckily, I had found my old Game Boy Advance while moving, rejected and forlorn in a freezer bag in the bottom of a box with a handful of game cartridges, unfingered for nearly 20 years. It had been my constant companion on flights to from Glasgow to London back when we didn’t have phones with games, and I was appearing on what seemed like every single one of those Top 100 War Movies/TV embarrassments/Songs That Use Flowers As Metaphors for Sex. (And Richard and Judy.) Continue reading...

When users of the far-right forum harassed and stalked a trans streamer to the extent she fled her home, this is how Cloudflare pulled the plug … finally