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Viktor Mayer-Schönberger says the ability to forget our past, both on and offline, is an essential part of what makes us human Share 63 inShare4 Email Kate Connolly in Berlin guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 April 2013 12.50 BST Viktor Mayer-Schönberger: 'Digital memories will only remind us of the failures of our past.' Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian He describes himself as the "midwife" of the idea of the right to be forgotten. And for Viktor Mayer-Schönberger , it's not just about the legal, moral and technical arguments – but about what it is to be human. "The more I've worked on data protection over the past 20 years, the more I've realised that at the heart of this, what matters as much as the privacy aspect is the issue of human decision-making," said Mayer-Schönberger, professor of internet governance at the Oxford Internet Institute. "Humans need to make decisions about the present and the future. The beauty of ...

New York hotelier and Lindsay Lohan friend Vikram Chatwal has been arrested on drug charges in Florida after he allegedly tried to board a plane with cocaine, marijuana, heroin and pills. The 41-year-old multimillionaire was arrested Tuesday at the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport after airport security found the drugs hidden in his bag and in his crotch, according to a report   by TMZ . He was booked on one count of trafficking six grams of heroin and seven counts of drug possession, including: cocaine, pot, ketamine, muscle relaxants, Xanax, sedatives and the opioid buprenorphine. Mug shot: Hotel owner and Lindsay Lohan friend Vikram Chatwal is shown in a police mug shot after his arrest on drug charges in Florida Chatwal told authorities that he illegally bought the drugs and they were in his possession, according to the police report. Chatwal is the owner of the Dream Hotel in New York that has been one of Lohan's favorite hotels. Lohan and Chatwa...

The teenage hiker who was still missing in a rugged canyon near Los Angeles was found safe and well today, just one day after her friend was rescued. Searchers looking for 18-year-old Kyndall Jack found her this morning near Holy Jim Falls in Cleveland National Forest after someone reported hearing a distressed voice ,   CBS Los Angeles   reported A helicopter hoisted her to safety and she was taken to a nearby hospital.   Her condition was not immediately reported. Officials say her family has been notified. 'They cried. They hugged us. They thanked us immensely,' Capt John Muir of the Orange County Fire Authority said. Her friend   Nicholas Cendoya, 19, from Costa Mesa, was discovered dehydrated and disoriented shortly before 8pm last night and was airlifted to hospital.   He was barefoot and wearing shorts.   He reportedly said today that he was forced to leave Kyndall behind after she twisted her ankle and could not keep up in the thic...

Recent calls for a severe reduction in pay for Iain Duncan Smith show that there is a lot of enthusiasm for online petitions. But evidence for their effectiveness doesn't necessarily support their widespread use Share 33 inShare1 Email Iain Duncan Smith, possibly contemplating a life on £53 a week. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images I'd like to say I support the sentiment behind the change.org petition demanding that Iain Duncan Smith back up his claims and live on £53 a week. I'm a scientist; of course I think that extraordinary claims should have extraordinary evidence to support them. However, it's important to consider alternative explanations too. Maybe Duncan Smith thinks £53 is worth considerably more than it actually is. Like much of the current government, his policies and views seem to be based in a bygone era, so maybe his economic knowledge is too? He may well think £53 is more than enough to dine at the Savoy several times a week, sampling the...

Nomad doesn't want an e-reader but he would like to buy a tablet for long hours of reading, particularly PDF files. Which one would be best? Share 7 inShare2 Email Google's Nexus 10 tablet, made by Samsung. Photograph: PR Tablets are becoming popular as e-readers, for books, documents, PDFs etc. I'm wondering if there is an ideal screen resolution for long hours of reading text. Will the difference in ppi of the Google Nexus 10 and Apple iPad 4 produce a different reading experience? In particular, can the lower resolution Atom-based tablets with detachable keyboards such as the Lenovo ThinkPad 2 (with stylus!) compete with them for reading PDFs? I'd like to reproduce a paper-based reading experience, though I don't want an e-reader. I'm not an Apple fan, but I'm willing to buy an iPad if it offers the best reading experience. Nomad There is no "best" tablet for all kinds of reading in all kinds of situations, which can range from sitti...

Released today on digital label Rice Games Yatagarasu is a gorgeous 2D fighting game in the style of Street Fighter and King of Fighters. But it's been developed by just three people as part of Japan's blossoming indie community Share 10 inShare2 Email Yatagarasu: a beautiful 2D fighting game, built by just three people Yatagarasu looks like the sort of super sharp 2D fighting game I used to love playing on the Saturn and Dreamcast. Imaginative characters, turbo-charged combos, an intricate fighting system, it pays homage to Third Strike era Street Fighter as well as SNK and Arc System Works titles like Blazblue and King of Fighters. But the difference here is that Yatagarasu wasn't produced by a large team of dedicated programmers and designers. It is the work of just three men: King of Fighters artist, Kotani Tomoyuki, coder Shiza, and fighting game player Umezono, a veteran of the Street Fighter: Third Strike circuit who handles balance and mechanics. Togethe...

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is the latest in a long line of women to have caught flak from other women for having the temerity to pronounce on feminism. Photograph: Laurent Gillieron/EPA There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women. The original quote came from Madeleine Albright in 2006, at a WNBA luncheon called Celebrating Inspiration, since then it has taken on a life of its own. Misquoted and misattributed, but never delivered with less than full feeling, it is the go-to putdown for any woman publically besieged by another woman; particularly, it seems, women vaguely on the conservative side, who get extra mileage, perhaps, from knowing how much Albright will be vexed by their use of it. ("There's a place in hell," said Sarah Palin, on the stump in 2008 and with characteristic ball-park accuracy, "reserved for women who don't support other women.") Albright's point was a valid one: female solidarity is not a quest...

Burma hopes to place mobile phones into the hands of between 75% and 80% of its 60 million citizens by 2016. Photograph: Alamy Vodafone and China Mobile have waded into battle in Burma against a consortium that includes billionaire speculator George Soros and Irish entrepreneur Denis O'Brien, as telecoms firms vie for a share of the world's largest untapped mobile phone market. Telecoms will be among the first industries to be liberalised under Burma's reformist government, which hopes to place mobiles into the hands of between 75% and 80% of its 60 million citizens by 2016, up from an estimated 6% today. If take-up is high, the entire mobile market in Burma – renamed Myanmar by the country's military junta – could be worth $10bn (£6bn) a year, with networks generating $7.3bn of those revenues, according to research by Ericsson. Foreign companies are eager to partake in what has been described as a mouthwatering opportunity, and by Thursday's deadline, 22 bids ...

Police at the scene of the shooting in Edmonton, north London. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA A 20-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of a teenager shot dead in north London this week. Mohammed Hussein, 19, was found collapsed in Bounces Road, Edmonton, at 9.45pm on Monday. A postmortem examination found he died of a shotgun wound to the chest. Police said a 20-year-old man had been arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of murder and remained in custody at an east London police station. A spokesman said officers were keeping an open mind about the circumstances of the incident and any motive. After the shooting, neighbours ran to help and paramedics tried for half an hour to save Hussein before he was pronounced dead at the scene. Jordan Simbananiye, 18, said: "They spent about 20 or 30 minutes trying to resuscitate him but then after about half an hour they put a blanket over him."

Disputed role … Ben Affleck as CIA fixer Tony Mendez in Argo. Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros/Sportsphoto It has caused anger in countries as far flung as Canada, Britain and Iran. Now Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning Argo must face up to a new challenge from diplomats in New Zealand who say they can prove that the Iran hostage crisis-set historical drama wrongly ignored their country's contribution to events shown in the film. Argo Production year: 2012 Country: USA Cert (UK): 15 Runtime: 120 mins Directors: Ben Affleck Cast: Alan Arkin, Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Christopher Denham, Clea DuVall, John Goodman, Kerry Bishe, Rory Cochrane, Scoot McNairy, Tate Donovan, Victor Garber More on this film Chris Terrio's Oscar-winning screenplay for Argo depicts New Zealand's embassy as unwilling to help with an ambitious plan to fly six US diplomats out of the country. The film implies that CIA fixer Tony Mendez, played by Affleck, is the main mover and shaker in a largely US-pla...

Not just music … Ono and her son Sean Lennon visit gas drilling sites earlier this year, for Artists Against Fracking. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP Patti Smith, Boy George, Siouxsie Sioux and Iggy and the Stooges will be among the performers at this year's Meltdown festival, curated by Yoko Ono. For a week and a half in June, London's Southbank Centre will host everything from Immortal Technique's hip-hop to the Pet Shop Boys' take on Battleship Potemkin. Yoko Ono's Meltdown festival Southbank Centre, London SE1 Starts 14 June Until 23 June Details "I'm not pursuing big names for the sake of big names," Ono said in November, when herMeltdown role was announced. "I'm thinking along the lines of a concept, which is more refreshing. There will definitely be an element of feminism and the plight of women … [and] I am thinking of having one or two events where I ask men to say something strong about themselves too." The festival's initial l...

In this week's edition of Tech Weekly, Aleks Krotoski talks to author Tom Chatfield about his new book Netyemology, an exploration into the role of the internet in reshaping and accelerating the creation of words and forms of language. And never judge a laptop by its cover, as Google releases its high-spec Chromebook Pixel laptop, Jemima Kiss is joined by the Guardian's developer advocate Michael Brunton Spall to take a look under its bonnet and see if this slick rival to the Apple Powerbook is up for a fight. Also, we review this week's tech news including the demise of the external hard drive and why the UK is resisting a legal right to be forgotten online.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's co-founder and chief executive made the announcement Menlo Park, California. Photograph: Robert Galbraith/Reuters Facebook launched its new Android "experience", Facebook Home, with a messaging feature called Chat Heads at its heart. When a user's Facebook friends start a new chat, their picture pops up on Android phone home page in a small bubble – a "chat head". "We think that Chat Heads are this great, personal way to do messaging," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the presentation in San Francisco, California. Adam Mosseri, Facebook product designer, said the feature would personalise people's phones better. "What we're trying to do is shift people's focus away from tasks and apps and toward people," he said, He demonstrated how the phone bounces back and forth between the various features. "There's nothing between you and your content. You can literally just reach out and tou...

She's being touted as Hollywood's next big thing, so it's no surprise that Lily Collins has been stepping up her style game. The British actress looked on-trend and effortlessly cool in an black and white outfit as she landed in New York on Wednesday, gearing up to promote new film Mortal Instruments. Proving that she's no A-list diva just yet, the daughter of Phil Collins looked like she put together a stylish look made up of affordable high street pieces.   Pared-back chic: Lily Collins touched down at New York's JFK airport wearing a stylish black and white outfit on Wednesday The down-to-earth 24-year-old, whose career is set to skyrocket after the new Twilight-style film is released, embraced her natural beauty by going fresh-faced. Instead of succumbing to the LA stereotype, Lily was making her pale complexion and dark hair work for her, cultivating a slightly Gothic look. Making quite an impact, the Mirror Mirror actress accentuated her ...