Technology: What Geeks are talking about from the BBC

Here is the latest Tech News from the BBC.

VIDEO: ‘Thiel needs to develop a thicker skin’
The founder of Gawker Media, Nick Denton, defends the company’s actions in the long-running legal battle against tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

Flat lens promises revolution in optics
A flat lens made of paint whitener on a sliver of glass could revolutionise optics, its US inventors say.

Gawker ‘confident’ about legal appeal
The boss of Gawker Media says he is “confident” of succeeding in an appeal in a costly legal case involving wrestler Hulk Hogan.

The digital nomads making the world their office
The digital nomads making the world their office

VIDEO: Asus unveils companion and helper robot
BBC Click’s Stephen Beckett looks at some of the best of the week’s technology news

VIDEO: Virtual reality app simulates dementia
A virtual reality app aims to provide a sense of what it is like to live with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

Lawsuit against models website revived
A lawsuit against a modelling website, alleging that it failed to warn members about rapists using the site, is revived by a US court.

Russian hackers held over $25m theft
Russia arrests 50 people accused of using malware to steal more than 1.7bn roubles from bank accounts.

Facebook sticks by Gawker attack funder
Facebook says the billionaire who is helping people sue Gawker Media – threatening the publisher’s future – will stay on its board.

Facebook uses AI to understand posts
Facebook has developed AI software to help understand what people are talking about in posts to the social network.

Spy bill ‘could meet privacy concerns’
Powers that allow UK security services to collect large volumes of personal data are not “inherently incompatible” with privacy laws, say MPs and peers.

VIDEO: Reddit boss: ‘An exciting time for us’
Co-founder and chief executive of Reddit, Steve Huffman, discusses his plans to evolve the company that aspires to be “the front page of the internet”.

Reddit boss hints at new direction
Co-founder and chief executive of Reddit, Steve Huffman, discusses his plans to evolve the company that aspires to be “the front page of the internet”.

Saudi wealth fund puts $3.5bn into Uber
Taxi app service Uber attracts a $3.5bn (£2.43bn) investment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to help it expand in the Middle East.

Xiaomi buys Microsoft phone patents
Smartphone maker Xiaomi buys the rights to hundreds of Microsoft smartphone inventions and will pre-install the US firm’s apps as part of the deal.

Outlook and Hotmail flooded by spam
Microsoft tackles a problem with its email filters that had prevented them from properly screening out spam.

British anti-drone ray gets US trial
A UK-developed system capable of jamming signals to small drones is to be trialled by the US aviation authority.

VIDEO: Concordski: How the Soviet Union lost the supersonic race
The Soviet Union’s hopes of winning the race to launch the first supersonic airliner was dealt a devastating blow in 1973 when their plane crashed at the Paris Air Show.

Periscope trolls to face ‘instant jury’
Periscope puts its users in charge of policing offensive comments with a crowd-sourced post moderation system.

US apartments demanded Facebook ‘likes’
Tenants in Utah are asked to sign a new lease agreement requiring them to “friend” and “like” their apartment complex on Facebook.

VIDEO: Exoskeleton is helping me to walk again
How an exoskeleton suit is helping a man paralysed from the waist down to walk

VIDEO: DiCaprio lurks at £11,400 phone launch
Hollywood stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy turn up – but won’t talk – at the launch of a high-end, high-price smartphone.

VIDEO: Could Brexit mean higher roaming costs?
Could leaving the EU cost you more to use your phone abroad? Rory Cellan-Jones has been finding out.

Facebook copy created in North Korea
A crude clone of the Facebook social media site briefly appears in North Korea before going offline.

Why Pikachu is making Hong Kong angry
Nintendo’s upcoming Pokemon games are causing controversy in Hong Kong because of plans to give Pikachu and his friends Mandarin names.

Web giants pledge to tackle online hate
Microsoft, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook pledge to remove hate speech within 24 hours, as they back an EU code of conduct.

Iran closes borders on messaging apps
Instant messaging apps must store data about Iranian users inside the country, Iran has ordered.

MySpace and Tumblr hit by ‘mega breach’
More than 400 million hacked account IDs from Tumblr and MySpace are being offered for sale on the net.

How happy chatbots could become our new best friends
Will giving computers emotions make them more useful at work?

EU data watchdog rejects privacy deal
The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) says a data transfer pact between the EU and US needs “significant improvements”.

VIDEO: Warcraft: from PC to the silver screen
Director Duncan Jones talks about bringing the popular video game to the big screen.

Australia to sell £8m of seized Bitcoin
A collection of bitcoins worth about £8m, confiscated by police in Australia, will be auctioned off in June.

VIDEO: Asus unveils ‘budget’ household robot
BBC’s Taiwan correspondent Cindy Sui meets with Zenbo – what its creator Asus says is the first ‘affordable’ household robot.

VIDEO: A shop to make you an internet star?
The BBC Business series My Shop visits The Startup Van team, who have now left their van and moved into a shop in order to offer their interview service.

VIDEO: Ice blocks make fridges less ‘stupid’
Roger Harrabin visits a factory in Wales that is using ice to make fridges more economical.

Cooling technologies become red hot
Sainsbury’s is trialling new food-cooling technologies that promise to be more eco-friendly than current alternatives.

VIDEO: Super-creepy robot has whiskers
BBC Click’s Nick Kwek looks at some of the best of the week’s technology news

Chinese backlash over Windows 10 push
Microsoft is facing criticism from Chinese users about the way it is trying to persuade people to upgrade to Windows 10.

Cameroon Cardiopad inventor wins award
A Cameroonian inventor wins a £25,00 ($37,000) innovation prize for creating a monitor that can diagnose heart conditions in remote areas.

Apple fights call to block Facetime
A patent owner wants Apple to suspend Facetime and iMessage chat apps because it claims its technologies have been infringed.

Three announces mobile ad-block trial
Mobile service provider Three confirms it will block advertising on its network for a day-long trial in June.

How ‘robo recruiters’ could affect your job prospects
How ‘robo recruiters’ could affect your job prospects

Paypal founder is ‘comic book villain’
Gossip site Gawker accuses Paypal founder Peter Thiel of being ‘vindictive’ and a ‘comic book villain’ who uses his billions to fund libel suits against the site.

N Korea ‘could be linked to bank heists’
A top cyber-security firm is investigating whether North Korea could be linked to attacks on banks in recent months.

Google defeats Oracle in Java code case
Google wins a major US court battle with software firm Oracle when a jury rules it did not unfairly appropriate parts of the Java programming language.

Highest capacity Atlantic cable planned
Microsoft and Facebook announce plans to build the highest capacity data link between the US and Europe.

Is there a place for old tech in the 21st Century?
Is still a place for old technology in today’s hi-tech world?

Isis addresses spark PayPal confusion
PayPal customers with addresses containing the word “Isis” fear their accounts are being blacklisted.

An appreciation of the floppy disk
The death of the floppy disk has been long predicted but the technology has persisted. Why?

Robots ‘being taught to feel pain’
Researchers are developing an artificial nervous system that will allow robots to feel pain.

Think tank: ‘Misogyny rife on Twitter’
Think tank Demos identifies 10,000 aggressive tweets using terms ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ sent from UK accounts over a three-week period.

US nuclear force ‘uses floppy disks’
The US nuclear weapons force still uses 1970s-era computer systems and floppy disks, a government report reveals.

Xiaomi Mi Drone poses price challenge
China’s Xiaomi announces its first drone, pricing it significantly lower than a comparable model by the market leader DJI.

VIDEO: Are people ready for robot colleagues?
Robot-makers descend on Paris to convince people that their gadgets are safe and easy to work with.

Norway stages 32-hour app term reading
The consumer agency in Norway stages a live reading of app terms and conditions lasting over 30 hours in protest against their “absurd” length.

Microsoft hangs up on phone workers
Microsoft reveals plans to cut up to 1,850 jobs as part of efforts to scale back its smartphone business.

Toyota hails a ride with Uber
Carmakers Toyota and Volkswagen have struck separate partnerships with rideshare companies Uber and Gett.

Foxconn replaces ‘60,000 with robots’
Apple supplier Foxconn replaces 60,000 factory workers with robots, according to Chinese media reports.

Microsoft U-turn on “nasty trick” pop-up
Microsoft has created an extra notification to allow customers to cancel Windows 10 upgrade after being accused of “nasty tricks”.

VIDEO: The modular, build yourself robot kits
BBC Click’s Lara Lewington looks at two of the kits which allow you to build your own robot

VIDEO: Tackling abuse on Twitter a ‘priority’
Twitter has introduced changes in the hope of regaining popularity, but progress takes time, chief executive Jack Dorsey tells the BBC.

Netflix faces locally-made quota in EU
On-demand video streaming services face a call that at least 20% of the catalogues they offer to EU subscribers should be made locally.

VIDEO: US Navy drones ‘shot into the sky’
US Navy researchers test drones that can be shot into the sky for rapid deployment.

Review of anti-terror bulk data powers
Theresa May agrees to establish an independent review to examine the operational case for powers which allow for the bulk collection of data.

Huawei sues Samsung over patents
Huawei is suing its tech rival Samsung in two countries over claims that several of its patents have been infringed.

Evolutionary engineer wins tech prize
US biochemical engineer Frances Arnold takes the million-euro Millennium Technology Prize for pioneering ‘directed evolution’.

Microsoft accused of ‘nasty trick’
Clicking the red cross on the Windows 10 pop-up box now activates the upgrade instead of closing the box.

Google’s Paris HQ raided in tax probe
French finance officials raid the Paris offices of US internet giant Google as part of a €1.6bn tax fraud investigation.

Overwatch seeks e-sports domination
World-of-Warcraft-maker Blizzard releases its first original gaming franchise in nearly two decades, and hopes it will resonate with e-sports competitors.

The gene’s still selfish: Dawkins’ famous idea turns 40
As The Selfish Gene notches up 40 years in print, Richard Dawkins discusses its legacy, the “resuscitation” of software he wrote in the 1980s – and giving up Twitter.

Juries ‘could enter virtual crime scenes’
Virtual reality technology used in the gaming industry could be utilised to recreate crime scenes for jurors, researchers claim.

Facebook to revamp Trending Topics
Facebook has announced changes to the way it runs its Trending Topics feed, following an internal investigation.

Spotify revenue and losses on the rise
Streaming music platform Spotify sees revenue top 1.95bn euros ($2.2bn;£1.5bn) over the past year, but has yet to make a profit.

How to check out your next penthouse from your armchair
How to check out that New York condo from Paris

Teenager faces Mumsnet hacking charge
A teenager is charged with a hacking attack on Mumsnet, which caused the parenting site to reset its 7.7 million members’ passwords.

Oculus anti-piracy update cracked
An anti-piracy update for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is cracked within a day of release.

VIDEO: Apps which could help with allergies
From a prototype device which can detect gluten in food to allergy apps, BBC Click’s Lara Lewington reports

Waterstones to stop selling e-books
Bookseller Waterstones is to stop selling digital books and will instead divert customers to Japanese e-book company Kobo.

Google rethinks Ara modular smartphones
Google revises its plan to make smartphones with swappable parts, to limit the kind of modules that can be bolted on.

Microsoft ‘terror content’ crackdown
Microsoft announces a new policy to remove “terrorist content” from its consumer-focused online services.

Anger over Facebook plus-size ad ban
An Australian feminist group expresses its fury after Facebook rejected an ad it created because of the image it used.

VIDEO: Why smartphones don’t make a revolution
Tyler Cowen: Innovation is lower now than at any point in the last century

VIDEO: Hoberman: ‘Set bright people boring tasks’
Brent Hoberman, co-founder of lastminute.com, offers the business advice he wishes he had been given before he started out, for the BBC News series CEO Secrets.

Japan cash machines hit by $12.7m theft
Cash worth 1.4bn yen ($13m; £8.8m) is taken from cash machines in Japan using credit cards made with stolen South African bank data.

India launches mini space shuttle
India launches an unmanned model space shuttle into orbit, joining the race to develop reusable space crafts.

Social media ‘must tackle ticket fraud’
Social media sites must do more to tackle online ticket fraud after being used for nearly half of all such scams last year, councils say.

The teenager obsessed with retro-tech
The teenager with hundreds of vintage Macs

Net use ‘growing’ among over-75s
Net use among British people aged over 75 has almost doubled in the last five years, suggest figures from the Office for National Statistics.

China ‘flooding’ media with fake posts
China is “flooding” social media with comments by paid supporters in an effort to sway public opinion, a report says.

Gaming ransomware gang shuts down
The gang who made the notorious Teslacrypt ransomware virus has shut up shop and released the master key it used to scramble data.

Pepper robot to open up to Android
Japan’s Pepper is to open up to Android developers which could offer greater capabilities for the little robot.

VIDEO: The Simpsons airs live animated segment
BBC Click’s Marc Cieslak looks at some of the best of the week’s technology news

Mini-robot perches like an insect
Miniature flying robot that can perch and take off could be used in search and rescue, scientists say.

Why is Apple’s Tim Cook visiting India?
Technology writer Prasanto K Roy analyses Apple’s plans to expand its presence in India.

Uber joins race for driverless cars
US car-hailing company Uber joins the race for driverless car technology, confirming it is testing a vehicle on the streets of Pittsburgh.

Is the ‘gig economy’ turning us all into freelancers?
How the ‘gig economy’ is turning us into freelancers

VIDEO: See a robotic insect in action
Miniature flying robot that can perch and take off could be used in search and rescue, scientists say.

Historic ’email’ hack details revealed
An archive detailing a historic hack and its fallout has been handed over to the UK’s National Museum of Computing.

Google fights data deletion order
Google appeals to France’s highest court after the country’s data watchdog orders it to delete some of its search results globally.

Spy service sets school challenge
For the first time France’s foreign spy service, the DGSE, sponsors a code-breaking competition in schools.