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Claim comes as GMB union prepares for three days of strike action at tech company's Coventry warehouse

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Despite healthy sales, publishers such as Epic Games and Activision Blizzard are making hundreds of employees redundant - which may radically reshape the industryIt is widely agreed that 2023 was a stellar year for video games. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur's Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 ... barely a week passed without some blockbuster hit or independent gem.But beneath these accolades there is a sadder, more worrying story: it was also a year of widespread industry redundancies, and the trend is continuing into the opening weeks of 2024. Microsoft laid off 1,900 staff after its $69bn purchase of Activision Blizzard. Publisher Embracer Group let at least 900 staff go across its many studios, as well as closing veteran UK developer Free Radical Design. Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, one of the most successful titles of the decade, laid off 830 employees; Electronic Arts shed 6% of its workforce, amounting to approximately 780 jobs. There have been similar grim stories from Ubisoft, Naughty Dog, Sega and Unity; major publishers and smaller studios alike are being affected. Continue reading...

Report is said to show that attacks on cryptocurrency-related companies helped development of dictatorship's weapons programmeUN sanctions monitors are investigating dozens of suspected cyber-attacks by North Korea that raked in $3bn to help it further develop its nuclear weapons programme, according to excerpts of an unpublished UN report reviewed by the Reuters news agency.The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) continued to flout security council sanctions," a panel of independent sanctions monitors reported to a security council committee, using North Korea's formal name. Continue reading...

US taxi app firm turns $1.8bn loss into $1.1bn profit after years of spending billions of investors' cash to expandUber has reported its first ever annual operating profit as a limited company, in a landmark moment for a business that spent billions of dollars of investors' money in an aggressive and often controversial expansion around the world.The US taxi app company said it made $1.1bn (870m) in 2023, compared with a loss of $1.8bn the year before. Continue reading...

A number of people have been spotted using Apple's VR headset in public including while driving. Some appear to have been using the gadget as a stunt. Others may just have been just learning how to use the headset while out and about.The new technology has prompted safety concerns, with the US transportation secretary reminding drivers they must pay attention at all times. The reminder was issued after one Vision Pro owner was filmed using the headset as he drove a car with assisted driving features Continue reading...

Ransomware gangs targeted hospitals, schools and bodies such as BA and the BBC, Chainalysis findsRansomware gangs staged a major comeback" last year, according to research, with victims of hacking attacks paying out a record $1.1bn to assailants.Cyber criminals stepped up their global operations in 2023 after a lull in 2022, with victims including hospitals, schools and major corporations. Continue reading...

Catherina De Solieux is one of several Australians taking legal action against banks who oversaw money transfers to the HyperVerse scheme

The self-described stupid gay clown' provides a who's who of queer comedians - including one he would like to ask out. Matt Rogers, if you're reading this ...

Rocksteady/Warner Bros; PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC

Snapchat owner's earnings fall short of predictions as it turns focus to user growth in monetizable' markets like North America and EuropeThe owner of Snapchat narrowly missed Wall Street's expectations as it continues to grapple with a slowdown in digital advertising. Shares in the social media company tumbled by nearly a third.While Snap said it was encouraged by the progress we are making", it cited factors including the conflict in the Middle East, which knocked its business. Continue reading...

Global executive Nick Clegg says users want to know where the boundary lies' amid rise in AI-generated contentMeta is working to detect and label AI-generated images on Facebook, Instagram and Threads as the company pushes to call out people and organisations that actively want to deceive people".Photorealistic images created using Meta's AI imaging tool are already labelled as AI, but the company's president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, announced in a blog post on Tuesday that the company would work to begin labelling AI-generated images developed on rival services. Continue reading...

The future of cybercrime resembles an arms race between an industry of hackers-for-hire and the UK's weak defencesIt is not quite accurate to say that the cyber-attack against the British Library took place on 28 October 2023. Most probably, Rhysida, the hacker gang that orchestrated the attack and is thought to be Russian, had already been creeping undetected through the digital territories of the British Library for months, Enrico Mariconti, a lecturer in security and crime science at UCL, told me.Once it broke through to the library's virtual private network (VPN) - the remote connection that allows employees to access its network from any location - it could in theory start making its way through locked door after locked door of the library's many online systems, trawling until it discovered emails and documents containing details such as employees' passport scans and work contracts. It hoped these documents might tempt a single bidder to pay 20 bitcoins (about 600,000) for privileged access to all that personal information.Lamorna Ash is the author of Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town Continue reading...

Britain has announced 10m for regulators but has done very little to mitigate the risks linked with artificial intelligence. Plus, Facebook's deep-fake Biden conundrum Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereBritain wants to lead the world in AI regulation. But AI regulation is a rapidly evolving, contested policy space in which there's little agreement over what a good outcome would look like, let alone the best methods to get there. And being the third most important hub of AI research in the world doesn't give you an awful lot of power when the first two are the US and China.How to slice through this Gordian knot? Simple: move swiftly and decisively to do ... absolutely nothing.The government will acknowledge on Tuesday that binding measures for overseeing cutting-edge AI development are needed at some point - but not immediately. Instead, ministers will set out initial thinking for future binding requirements" for advanced systems and discuss them with technical, legal and civil society experts.The government will also give 10m to regulators to help them tackle AI risks, as well as requiring them to set out their approach to the technology by 30 April.The Intellectual Property Office, the UK government's agency overseeing copyright laws, has been consulting with AI companies and rights holders to produce guidance on text and data mining, where AI models are trained on existing materials such as books and music.However, the group of industry executives convened by the IPO that oversees the work has been unable to agree on a voluntary code of practice, meaning that it has returned the responsibility back to officials at the Department for Science Innovation and Technology.Meta's oversight board has found that a Facebook video wrongfully suggesting that the US president, Joe Biden, is a paedophile does not violate the company's current rules while deeming those rules incoherent" and too narrowly focused on AI-generated content.The board, which is funded by Meta - Facebook's parent company - but run independently, took on the Biden video case in October in response to a user complaint about an altered seven-second video of the president. Continue reading...

In today's newsletter: As the mother of Brianna Ghey calls for social media blocks and smartphone age limits, we look at what protections exist - and whether they are enough Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning. Before the newsletter, an update on the news that broke last night that King Charles has been diagnosed with cancer. Buckingham Palace says that Charles is already undergoing treatment; it did not specify the type of the disease, other than to say it's not prostate cancer. You can read Rajeev Syal's analysis of the impact of the news on how the king carries out his role, and Andrew Gregory's cancer explainer.Today, we're covering online safety for children, starting with a grimly familiar feature of the age: a devastated parent, granted a platform they never wanted, and using it to demand greater guardrails on smartphones to protect others from the fate that befell their child. At the weekend, Brianna Ghey's mother Esther gave an interview to the BBC in which she called for social media apps to be banned on smartphones for under-16s. Esther Ghey said her daughter might have been saved if the searches being made by her eventual killers had been flagged to their parents.Crime | Detectives hunting the Clapham chemical attack suspect Abdul Ezedi have said they believe he is either being harboured from capture or is dead, with no trace of him for days despite a massive manhunt. Police said that a 22-year-old man arrested early on Monday for assisting an offender had been released on bail.Middle East | At least six US-backed Kurdish fighters have been killed in a drone strike on a US base in eastern Syria. The attack, the latest indicator of how conflict has spread across the Middle East since the beginning of the war in Gaza, was claimed by an Iranian-backed militia that on Friday was the target of US airstrikes.Child sexual abuse | Survivors and campaigners have criticised the failure to introduce mandatory reporting for child sexual abuse in England more than 15 months after it was one of the key recommendations by a public inquiry. None of the recommendations of the seven-year independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) has yet been implemented by the UK government.Labour | Labour has much work to do to retain support among Muslim voters, a senior party figure has said, as a poll suggested the party had lost a portion of its Muslim voter base over its handling of the Israel-Gaza war. Only 60% of British Muslims who backed Labour in 2019 are willing to do so again at the next general election, the survey finds.Restaurants | London restaurant the Ledbury has been awarded three stars in the Michelin Guide for Great Britain and Ireland, becoming the sixth in the capital to be given the accolade. London's Gymkhana and Birmingham's Opheem become the first two Indian restaurants in the UK to receive two stars, while Crieff's Glenturret Lalique has become the second two-star restaurant in Scotland. Continue reading...

Transportation head says drivers must pay attention at all times after clips emerge of some using what looks like Apple's Vision ProUS transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg on Monday said human drivers must pay attention at all times after videos emerged of people wearing what appeared to be Apple's recently released Vision Pro headset while driving Teslas.Buttigieg responded on Twitter/X to a video that had more than 24m views of a Tesla driver who appeared to be gesturing with his hands to manipulate a virtual reality field. Continue reading...

Crypto Open Patent Alliance seeking ruling in London that computer scientist is not pseudonymous author Satoshi NakamotoAn Australian computer scientist's claim to be the author of the founding text of bitcoin is a brazen lie", the high court has heard.Craig Wright's assertion that he is the pseudonymous author Satoshi Nakamoto was at the centre of a trial that began on Monday, where the 53-year-old is being sued by a group of cryptocurrency exchanges and developers. Continue reading...

Oversight committee attacks Meta's incoherent' policy on misleadingly manipulated videos as too focused on AIMeta's oversight board has found that a Facebook video wrongfully suggesting that the US president, Joe Biden, is a paedophile does not violate the company's current rules while deeming those rules incoherent" and too narrowly focused on AI-generated content.The board, which is funded by Meta - Facebook's parent company - but run independently, took on the Biden video case in October in response to a user complaint about an altered seven-second video of the president. Continue reading...

Two months after Rhik Samadder ended his phone detox, he realises some of its lessons actually stuck with him Sign up to our free coaching newsletter to help you spend less time on your phoneIn the final update in Rhik's journey to break his phone addiction, he manages a breakthrough. And a big one.Do you want to be my girlfriend?" I ask Almond one day. Continue reading...

Titanium superphone has serious speed, battery life and unrivalled camera zoom but is ultra-pricedSamsung's latest smartphone packs a plethora of the latest flashy AI tools in an attempt to improve text, images, video and search - with both hits and misses.The new Galaxy S24 Ultra comes equipped with a combination of Samsung and Google's latest AI layered on top of one of the most capable phones on the market, filled to the brim with competition-beating specs. Continue reading...

Matthew Butler-Hart's film lurches from social-media comedy to shaky-cam bloodletting, but never comes near the primeval emotions of the Blair Witch Project it so often referencesAt one point in this found-footage paganistic slasher from British director Matthew Butler-Hart, Thea (Ellie Duckles), one of a pair of stereotypically annoying YouTubers, ironically performs the I'm so sorry" monologue from the Blair Witch Project to camera. Dagr also comes prefaced with a Blair Witch-style opening statement that it has been cobbled together from their final footage. But Butler-Hart's film doesn't get anywhere near Blair Witch levels of primeval emotions - partly because of an ambitious and perhaps over-fussy structure, and partly because its digital-age perma-snark tone cancels out fear for much of it.Thea and her running buddy Louise (Riz Moritz) pride themselves on being online Robin Hoods - filming heists" of swag from the rich with their faces plastered over with giant emoticons, and then selling off the proceeds to give to those in need. But really they're massive narcissists. Their latest target is a commercial shoot in a remote country mansion being run by Tori (Tori Butler-Hart), where they plan to pose as caterers and then make off with high-end clothes and camera equipment. Bantering in the car on the way, they stop at a farm shop for directions; Louise picks up a creepy feathered mask and a local legend about a cult. But they're too busy mugging for their feed to pay much attention. Continue reading...

Party plans to replace voluntary agreement with statutory regime so we can see where this is taking us'Labour plans to force artificial intelligence firms to share the results of road tests of their technology after warning that regulators and politicians had failed to rein in social media platforms.The party would replace a voluntary testing agreement between tech companies and the government with a statutory regime, under which AI businesses would be compelled to share test data with officials. Continue reading...

Moody's warning over hacking's effect on debts may bolster water utilities' plans to hike bills to cover needed investmentsThe credit rating agency Moody's has warned that water companies face an elevated" risk from cyber attackers targeting drinking water, as suppliers wait on permission from the industry regulator to ramp up spending on digital security.Moody's said, in a report to investors, that hackers are increasingly zeroing in on infrastructure companies, including water and wastewater treatment companies, and the use of AI (artificial intelligence) could accelerate this trend. Continue reading...

As experts worry over privacy issues, ineffectiveness and even harm, the UK is looking at whether the plethora of digital mental health tools need regulatingWhat if I told you one of the strongest choices you could make was the choice to ask for help?" says a young, twentysomething woman in a red sweater, before recommending that viewers seek out counselling. This advert, promoted on Instagram and other social media platforms, is just one of many campaigns created by the California-based company BetterHelp, which offers to connect users with online therapists.The need for sophisticated digital alternatives to conventional face-to-face therapy has been well established in recent years. If we go by the latest data for NHS talking therapy services, 1.76 million people were referred for treatment in 2022-23, while 1.22 million actually started working with a therapist in person. Continue reading...

The Facebook boss faced the parents of victims in Senate hearings, but until legislators finally stand up to social media giants, nothing will changeI don't generally approve of blood sports but I'm happy to make an exception for the hunting and baiting of Silicon Valley executives in a congressional committee room. But then I like expensive, pointless spectacles. And waterboarding tech CEOs in Congress is right up there with firework displays, a brief, thrillingly meaningless sensation on the retina and then darkness.Last week's grilling of Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow Silicon Valley Ubermenschen was a classic of the genre: front pages, headlines, and a genuinely stand-out moment of awkwardness in which he was forced to facevictims for the first time ever and apologise: stricken parents holding the photographs of their dead children lost to cyberbullying and sexual exploitation onhis platform. Continue reading...

They promise more energy and a vastly improved range for EV drivers. But can they deliver on the hype?

The improved surveillance bill would force tech firms to tell the government about any new security measures - before they are introduced. Strangely, Apple won't stomach itWay back in 2000 the Blair government introduced the regulation of investigatory powers bill, a legislative dog's breakfast that put formidable surveillance powers on the statute book. This was a long time before Edward Snowden broke cover, but to anyone who was paying attention it indicated that the British deep state was tooling up for the digital age. Because the powers implicit in the bill were so sweeping, some of us naively assumed that it would have a tempestuous passage through the Commons.How wrong can you be? It turned out that the vast majority of MPs whom we canvassed seemed blissfully uninterested in it. It was, one remarked, just a measure designed to bring telephone tapping into the digital age". Of our 659 elected representatives, only a handful - and certainly no more than 10 - seemed at all concerned about what was being proposed. The most intriguing thing about the process, though, was that most of the work to improve the bill on its way through parliament was done, not by elected representatives, but by a handful of peers (some of them hereditary) in the House of Lords, who put in a lot of late-night work and trimmed some of the excrescences off the bill, which became law (nicknamed Ripa) in July 2000. Continue reading...

One-way video interviews, CV screeners and digital monitoring are among the ways employers are using tech to save time and money on recruitment. But do they work?Investigating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the world of work, Hilke Schellmann thought she had better try some of the tools. Among them was a one-way video interview system intended to aid recruitment called myInterview. She got a login from the company and began to experiment - first picking the questions she, as the hiring manager, would ask and then video recording her answers as a candidate before the proprietary software analysed the words she used and the intonation of her voice to score how well she fitted the job.She was pleased to score an 83% match for the role. But when she re-did her interview not in English but in her native German, she was surprised to find that instead of an error message she also scored decently (73%) - and this time she hadn't even attempted to answer the questions but read a Wikipedia entry. The transcript the tool had concocted out of her German was gibberish. When the company told her its tool knew she wasn't speaking English so had scored her primarily on her intonation, she got a robot voice generator to read in her English answers. Again she scored well (79%), leaving Schellmann scratching her head. Continue reading...

At a religious festival in Bangladesh, the photographer captured an extraordinary sightFrom a highway in Tongi, on the outskirts of Dhaka in Bangladesh, Azim Khan Ronnie surveyed his fellow worshippers. Ronnie, a Bangladeshi who now lives in France, had travelled back tohishome country toattend Bishwa Ijtema. The annual meeting of millions of Muslims from around the world isthe second largest Islamic congregationafter the hajj, in Mecca.Every inch of tarmac and pavement was filledwith worshippers," Ronnie recalls. Thousands of Muslims gathered to pray, bringing buses andlorries to a grinding halt. Many passengers were praying; the drivers were, too. In thebackground we could see the colourful tents where the pilgrims sleep. Some of the buildings also act asshelters." Continue reading...

Rogan's podcast has been exclusive to the app since 2020, with the firm saying its revenue grew by 80% last year compared with 2021Spotify Technology announced a new multi-year deal with the comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday, in a bid to tap into the popularity of his show to drive its advertising revenue.The multi-year deal with Rogan, which is estimated to be worth as much as $250m, involves an upfront minimum guarantee, plus a revenue sharing agreement based on ad sales, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The company declined to comment on the terms of the deal but in an email response said the estimated value of the deal mentioned in the WSJ report was incorrect. It did not provide a figure for the contract, however. Continue reading...

Recall of more than 2m Teslas will be done with a software update as company comes under increasing scrutiny from US officialsTesla is recalling nearly all of the vehicles it has sold in the US because some warning lights on the instrument panel are too small.The recall of nearly 2.2m vehicles announced on Friday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is a sign of stepped-up scrutiny of the electric vehicle maker. The agency also said it has upgraded a 2023 investigation into Tesla steering problems to an engineering analysis, which is a step closer to a recall. Continue reading...

Four years after Robyn Cory's daughter was groomed at 15 on Meta's platform and sold for sex by a gang, she is still missingRobyn Cory's daughter Kristen was 15 when she was allowed to open her own Instagram account. We thought we'd been responsible and done everything we could to make it safe," says Cory. Months later, Kristen disappeared from the family home after being groomed on Instagram's direct message service by a criminal gang, who then sold her for sex on the streets of Houston.Her daughter never recovered from her ordeal, Cory says. Kristen returned home but has since gone missing after being trafficked again. Her mother does not know if she is still alive. Continue reading...

We want to hear from young people and those who work with them about the misinformation and divisive narratives they are seeingFollowing research finding that a third of UK teenagers believe the climate crisis is exaggerated" and a backlash against feminism among young men, we want to learn more about the spread of misinformation and divisive narratives among young people in the UK.In the US, a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that teenagers were significantly more likely to believe online conspiracy theories than older generations, likely underscoring the impact of social media. Continue reading...

The fighting game was once at the bleeding edge of what games could do - as well as being great fun to play with your mates after the pubFriday night, back from the pub with your housemates and a few hangers on. Staple 1990s yoof TV show The Word has just finished with a raucous live performance by some up-and-coming grunge band and now it's time to play video games.In the decade of the original PlayStation and the Sega Saturn, there was no online multiplayer - if you wanted to compete against human beings, you did it in your living room with friends, and anyone else you found in the pub at closing time. It had to be something accessible, something competitive, something that allowed two or even four people to play at once. It needed to have short rounds, because everyone wanted to play. Invariably that would mean one of two options: a footie sim or a fighting game. Continue reading...

Genuine moral dilemmas are frustratingly rare in gaming - change that, and we could learn more about ourselves than any book might teach usI am at a fortunate stage of my parenting journey where I have a son old enough to have a girlfriend smart enough to give genuinely thoughtful gifts to her boyfriend's dad at Christmas. This is how I came to unwrap Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us (About Life, Philosophy and Everything) by Jordan Erica Webber and Daniel Griliopoulos. Books are a risky thing to give as gifts because they, like video games, require an investment of time. You don't throw them on calloused feet like a sock or slap them about your tired face like an aftershave. Or vice versa depending on the smell of your feet or coldness of your face.I find academic books about video games personally ironic because in the 90s I wrote and presented a BBC Radio 4 show called Are Books Dead? where I argued that video games had made the written word redundant. This was obviously a stupid question, but this was the decade of making loud statements without requiring intelligence to back them up, just one of the reasons it was such a glorious time to be alive, and why Liam Gallagher was its hero. Continue reading...

Organisers of Brisbane Portrait Prize back artificial intelligence stating art is not stagnant and traditionalists' once opposed photographs

House of Lords committee says copyright laws fall short as tech companies lift content without permissionMinisters must defend content creators whose work is being taken without permission by tech companies to build artificial intelligence products such as chatbots that generate vast financial rewards", a House of Lords committee has said.The legal framework in the UK is failing to enforce the basic principles of copyright amid a rise in AI development, said the Lords' communications and digital committee. Continue reading...

Cash flow beat investor expectations and shares rose as the tech giant authorized a $50bn share buyback program

Slumping global demand for smartphones did not bring down earnings, but investors were wary of decline in sales in ChinaApple has ended the quarter with its first revenue gain in over a year, but the company still struggled to cope with a decline in global smartphone demand. The company posted $119.58bn in revenue and $2.18 in earnings per share (EPS), beating Wall Street expectations of $117.91bn in quarterly revenue and $2.10 in EPS. Apple broke its four-quarter streak of declining revenue with a reported 2% growth in sales. Shares dropped in after-hours trading.However, the news wasn't all rosy for the iPhone maker. The company's sales in China, its third-largest market, dropped from $23.9bn to $20.8bn. Global iPad sales dropped to $7bn in the most recent quarter, from $9bn in the same quarter last year. Continue reading...

World's largest retailer clears Wall Street expectations with $170bn revenue as it continued to cut jobs in recent weeksProfits at Amazon have surged on strong seasonal trading and robust growth in its powerhouse cloud computing business.The world's largest retailer generated revenue of $170bn in the three months to December, up 14% on the same period of 2022, and clearing expectations on Wall Street of some $166bn. Continue reading...

Two occupants of a car that plunged into a freezing Oslo fjord escaped unharmed when a floating sauna came to their rescue, Norwegian police have said.A video obtained by NTB on Thursday shows the Tesla, partially submerged in the water, with its occupants sitting on the roof.The car can be seen sinking under the water just as the floating sauna pulls up next to it and people on the sauna boat pull the motorists from the freezing waters

Musician Richard Tornetta, who held just nine shares in Tesla, brought case against the company's CEOElon Musk suffered one of the biggest legal losses in US history this week when the Tesla chief executive was stripped of his $56bn pay package in a case brought by an unlikely opponent: a former heavy metal drummer.Richard Tornetta sued Musk in 2018, when Tornetta, a Pennsylvania resident, held just nine shares of Tesla. The case eventually made its way to trial in late 2022 and on Tuesday a judge sided with Tornetta, voiding the enormous pay deal for being unfair to him and all his fellow Tesla shareholders. Continue reading...

Tycoon announces shareholder vote on relocating after Delaware judge strikes down $56bn pay package as unfathomable'

The hacker whose involvement with anti-piracy software ended in a jail sentence has emerged from prison struggling to make rent as he starts paying his fine. It could be worse,' he saysIn April 2023, a 54-year-old programmer named Gary Bowser was released from prison having served 14 months of a 40-month sentence. Good behaviour reduced his time behind bars, but now his options are limited. For a while he was crashing on a friend's couch in Toronto. The weekly physical therapy sessions, which he needs to ease chronic pain, were costing hundreds of dollars every week, and he didn't have a job. And soon, he would need to start sending cheques to Nintendo. Bowser owes the makers of Super Mario $14.5m (11.5m), and he's probably going to spend the rest of his life paying it back.Since he was a child, Bowser's life has revolved around tinkering with electronics. His dad was a mechanical engineer, and he learned from him how to wire up model trains and mod calculators. As a teenager he already had a computer business: his mother died when he was 15, his father had retired and Bowser supported him. Continue reading...

From phone curfews to leading by example, parents from around the world share views on their children's screen timeFrom bizarre TikTok fads to evading parental controls, managing your child's relationship with screens can be a minefield.By age 11, 91% of children in the UK own a smartphone, according to data from the country's communications regulator, Ofcom, while a study of 19 European countries found 80% of children aged nine to 16 used one to go online daily, or almost daily. Meanwhile, recent survey data suggests 42% of US children have a smartphone by the age of 10, with 91% owning one by 14. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: Three esteemed lawyers team up to look at the news through a legal lens in Law and Disorder Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereYour Mama's Kitchen

Chris Wray tells House committee there has been been far too little public focus on a sleeper cyber threat that affects every American'US officials say they have disrupted a state-backed Chinese effort to plant malware that could damage civilian infrastructure, as the head of the FBI warned that Beijing was positioning itself to disrupt daily life in America were the US and China ever to go to war.The operation disrupted a botnet of hundreds of small office and home routers based in the US that were owned by private citizens and companies that had been hijacked by the Chinese hackers to cover their tracks as they sowed malware. Continue reading...

US senator Tom Cotton repeatedly asked TikTok's Singaporean chief, Shou Zi Chew, about his ties with China and if he had ever belonged to the Chinese Communist party during a hearing over alleged online harms to children. It was the first appearance by Chew before lawmakers in the US since March, when the Chinese-owned short video app company faced harsh questions, including some suggesting the app was damaging children's mental health and that user data could be passed on to China's government.

Teachers also using the generative technology to aid with lesson planning, with hopes it could ease the burden of their workloadMore than half of undergraduates say they consult artificial intelligence programmes to help with their essays, while schools are trialling its use in the classroom.A survey of more than 1,000 UK undergraduates, conducted by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), found 53% were using AI to generate material for work they would be marked on. One in four are using applications such as Google Bard or ChatGPT to suggest topics and one in eight are using them to create content. Continue reading...

This live blog is now closed. For more on today's testimony, you can read: