Technology news

• Whatever happened to the 'JD Salinger of gaming'?

  19-07-2015 19:15 via feeds.theguardian.com
  
  Matt Smith invented Manic Miner for ZX Spectrum … then disappearedOf all this year’s 80s revivals, the reappearance of the ZX Spectrum is the most eagerly awaited. At least, it is among middle-aged geeks who get a warm feeling just thinking about its tactile rubber keys and fuzzy sprites.Launched by Sir Clive Sinclair in 1982, the home gaming console sold a million, inspired a generation to program, and hit the start key on the British games industry. This month, two Spectrum replicas are be
  
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• Buyers guide: The best VR headsets 2015

  19-07-2015 17:30
  
  Intro2015 is the year of Virtual Reality. Mobile-compatible headsets such as Samsung's Galaxy Gear VR, Archos VR Glasses and Google Cardboard are available right now, while dedicated headsets such as HTC's Vive and, hopefully, Oculus Rift are set to appear before the end of the year. These are all the virtual reality headsets that you need to know about, in order of excellence, as selected by our resident expert goggle-wearer.HTC ViveAvailability Holiday 2015 | Price Unknown | Official pageValve
  
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• Updated: This obscure Dreamcast game revival is the biggest gaming Kickstarter ever

  19-07-2015 17:13
  
  Update: The Shenmue 3 Kickstarter raised a whopping $6,333,295 (about £4,059,025, AU$8,587,639) – to be exact – nearly another million in its final hours just before the weekend. The extra push helped solidify the PS4- and PC-bound revival of the Dreamcast cult-classic adventure game.Across digital and physical for both PS4 and PC (and it's several special editions), 66,282 copes of the game were paid for through the Kickstarter campaign that began its run from the stage at Sony's E3 2015 k
  
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• Email spam levels drop below 50 percent for the first time in 12 years

  19-07-2015 17:06
  
  49.7 percent of anything may sound like a lot, but it's a historical low for spam email levels - it's the lowest share recorded by Symantec since September 2003, so progress is being made.Back then, Tony Blair was the UK PM and Apple was about to release Mac OS X Panther. The world was still waiting for the final Matrix film and bopping along to the Black Eyed Peas' Where Is The Love?The figure is dropping slowly: it was 52.1 percent in April and 51.5 percent in May. Phishing rates and email-bas
  
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• VIDEO: Building the super search engine

  19-07-2015 14:44 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Could artificial intelligence help create the super search engine for the internet?
  
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• Phone Week: In pictures: a history of half a decade of Nexus phones

  19-07-2015 14:00
  
  The evolution of the Nexus: introductionThe Google Nexus phone has, in many ways, helped revolutionise the mobile market in much the same way that the Apple iPhone has. The Nexus devices may not have set the world alight in terms of sales, but they have served as important reference points for Android manufacturers. And some of them have been rather good.Apple's iPhone has undoubtedly been the catalyst that has changed the mobile market in ways that would have seemed so radical a few years back.
  
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• Phone Week: An Apple for teacher: how tablets are changing education

  19-07-2015 12:00
  
  A brave new world"If you're writing poetry, write it. Don't type it in just because you can."The classroom is changing, as new technologies dramatically alter the learning for both teachers and students. And at the heart of this change is the tablet. You might not think of the classroom as a key market for big companies such as Apple and Google, but according to research conducted by the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA), there will be nearly a million tablets in UK scho
  
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• Why appeasing governments over encryption will never work

  19-07-2015 11:00 via feeds.theguardian.com
  
  David Cameron and the director of the FBI have both asked for ‘backdoors’ to be included in encryption softwareEver since the internet emerged into public view in the 1980s, a key question has been whether digital technology would pose an existential challenge to corporate and governmental power. In this context, I am what you might call a recovering utopian – “utopian” in that I once did believe that the technology would put it beyond the reach of state and corporate agencies; and “
  
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• UK High Court outlaws CD and DVD ripping again

  19-07-2015 10:22
  
  Remember last October, when it became legal to copy your own CDs and DVDs for personal and private use? It was a surprising victory for common sense in our modern digital age.Well, it didn't last long: the High Court has now overturned that ruling after a challenge from musicians union Basca and industry outfit UK Music. Put your ripping software on standby again.So having legally paid cold hard cash for an album or movie, you're no longer allowed to keep a private backup on your computer or ind
  
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• 10 very old apps that still (somehow) work on Windows 10

  19-07-2015 09:47
  
  IntroductionPerhaps it is a testament to Microsoft's legacy that some popular applications that date from the late 1990s can still run on its latest OS, Windows 10.The operating system, which will launch on Wednesday 29 July, has already been tested (and been seen running) on some very, very old and very, very slow hardware.Many will describe such exercises as utterly futile, and those same people will likely question the point of this article. And that's fair enough, but there are also folks ou
  
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• Volkswagen Passat: car review | Martin Love

  19-07-2015 07:00 via feeds.theguardian.com
  
  Beneath its unremarkable exterior, VW’s Passat is bursting with gadgets. So why does everyone think it’s dull?Price £22,320
  MPG up to 76.3
  Top speed 149mphIn the list of adjectives used to describe Volkswagen’s Passat, the word “boring” crops up a lot. A Passat is a car – it’s not a queue, or an ad break, or a selfie, or Bono. How can it be boring? I’ve spent enough time waiting on the hard shoulder of life to know that being reliable might be boring in a partner, but it’
  
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• How technology will fill your shopping basket

  19-07-2015 01:05 via feeds.theguardian.com
  
  Supermarkets are going all-out for clever ways to make your shopping experience smootherYou’ve just finished off the last of the corn flakes, your other half is clearing up the breakfast things and about to throw away the empty box. Hang on a minute!You grab your new scanning device and zap the box before it hits the bin. The scanner is synced with your online supermarket account, so corn flakes are instantly added to your shopping list. The milk, eggs and flour are about to run out too, so yo
  
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