Technology | The Guardian

A 1999 note highlighted concerns of subpostmasters about the Horizon system and heralded decades of ministerial failingsIn any big scandal with the power to dominate the nation's attention, there are inevitably key moments when events could have been stopped in their tracks. Yet few early warnings could have been as prescient as a seven-page memo handed to a Post Office official 25 years ago.During a fractious meeting at Newcastle rugby club in 1999, the note set out a litany of concerns from subpostmasters in the north-east of England who had been piloting the now infamous Horizon accounting system. The issues, including with balancing their accounts, were causing stress and forcing some to work well into the night. Continue reading...

Study warns that lack of reporting may mask the dangers of still-mostly-illegal scooters on roads and pavementsThe majority of e-scooter accidents that involve someone needing hospital treatment are not being recorded in official road accident figures, a new study reveals, sparking fears that their dangers have been underplayed.The analysis found that just 9% of injuries involving e-scooters and recorded by 20 emergency departments over a two-month period were found in official figures. And just over a quarter of the most serious injuries were recorded in road casualty data. Continue reading...

As the Post Office debacle has amply demonstrated, putting blind faith into a new form of technology can be perilousIt doesn't take much imagination to describe what happens when a large corporation, over 16 long years, is allowed vindictively to prosecute 900 subpostmasters for theft, false accounting and fraud, when shortfalls at their branches were in fact due to bugs in the accounting software imposed on them by that corporation, as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation's history".But then Rishi Sunak is not the most imaginative of men. The US Marines, on the other hand, have an economical term that fits the Horizon fiasco like a glove: it was a clusterfuck" - primly defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as a very rude word for a complete failure or very serious problem in which many mistakes or problems happen at the same time". Continue reading...

If there's one area in which artificial intelligence could actually be useful, it's in the writing of computer codeAs you have doubtless noticed, we are in the middle of a feeding frenzy about something called generative AI. Legions of hitherto normal people - and economists - are surfing a wave of irrational exuberance about its transformative potential. It's the newest new thing.For anyone suffering from the fever, two antidotes are recommended. The first is the hype cycle monitor produced by consultants Gartner, which shows the technology currently perched on the peak of inflated expectations", before a steep decline into the trough of disillusionment". The other is Hofstadter's law, about the difficulty of estimating how long difficult tasks will take, which says that It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law". Just because a powerful industry and its media boosters are losing their marbles about something doesn't mean that it will sweep like a tsunami through society at large. Reality moves at a more leisurely pace. Continue reading...

Creators of these chatbots often tout them as a way to combat loneliness, but they can create unhealthy attachments and affect gender rolesIt is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a computer must be in want of an AI girlfriend. Certainly a lot of enterprising individuals seem to think there's a lucrative market for digital romance. OpenAI recently launched its GPT Store, where paid ChatGPT users can buy and sell customized chatbots (think Apple's app store, but for chatbots) - and the offerings include a large selection of digital girlfriends. Continue reading...

Walking the dog led the photographer to a magical, misty moment with an elephantHimanshu Roy was walking his dog, Rio, through his home area of Vesu, part of the Indian city of Surat, when he saw the man and the elephant.We don't often see elephants here; Vesu is a very developed and residential area," Roy says. She and her owner had just arrived for a diksha ceremony, when a person renounces their wealthy life and donates everything they have to follow a spiritual path." Continue reading...

With market capitalizations neck-and-neck at $2.887tn and $2.875tn, Microsoft pulls ahead due to worries about iPhone salesMicrosoft's stock market value ended a trading session higher than that of Apple's for the first time since 2021 on Friday, making it the world's most valuable company as worries about demand hit the iPhone maker's shares.Apple crept up 0.2% on Friday, while Microsoft added 1%. With that, Microsoft's market capitalization stood at $2.887tn, its highest ever, according to LSEG data. Apple's market capitalization was $2.875tn, calculated with data from a Thursday filing. Continue reading...

Research finds more than 100 paid ads impersonating PM were promoted on social media platform in last month

AI companions, hidden speakers, bird-spotting binoculars and sideways-driving cars shine at annual tech show in Las VegasThe next year in technology is to be dominated by upgrades for everything from catflaps to binoculars to cars, devices that disappear in your home including transparent televisions, plus a new era of spatial computing brought in by some very expensive goggles.Those are the predictions from the annual CES tech show in Las Vegas that drew to a close this week. Unlike previous years, the event was not dominated by the big technology and car firms but rather a record-breaking 1,400 startups displaying their prototypes in hopes of catching the eyes of consumers and investors alike. Continue reading...

For many, the game became the sound of the 90s - but Josh Mancell tells us how the music for PlayStation's first mascot game originated in Kraft cheese and KraftwerkWhen people are playing video games, they want to have fun," Josh Mancell, composer for Naughty Dog's early Crash Bandicoot games, tells me. It's a simple statement, but one that laid the foundations for everything the PlayStation's most famous mascot would come to represent. Even when players were banging their heads against their CRT TVs in frustration as the paranoid, eerie music of Slippery Climb began playing again for the hundredth time, Crash Bandicoot was fun. And Mancell's soundtrack was there, from beginning to end, to remind you of that.The characteristically eccentric, manic energy that fuelled Crash's madcap platforming adventures didn't come out of nowhere, though. As I was working on the game, I was definitely throwing stuff against the wall to see what would stick," Mancell says. Continue reading...

From the 80s driving experience of Outrun and After Burner's dogfighting F-14 to Golden Axe's high fantasy hack-'em-up - here's what you wished was in your local arcadeAt the close of 2023, Sega announced its plans to reimagine several of its greatest arcade games, including Crazy Taxi and Golden Axe, for current home consoles. It's a welcome endeavour as modern gamers reared on Sonic the Hedgehog may overlook the company's incredible heritage. While we've been trained to think of Sega as a perennial also-ran in the console wars, it dominated the arcade scene for years, some of its biggest hits occurring during the Sega Saturn era. So here's a gentle reminder of the greatest coin-op games in the manufacturer's long history. Continue reading...

Critics say assumption in English and Welsh law that computers are reliable' reverses usual burden of proof in criminal casesMinisters need to immediately" update the law to acknowledge that computers are fallible or risk a repeat of the Horizon scandal, legal experts say.In English and Welsh law, computers are assumed to be reliable" unless proven otherwise. But critics of this approach say this reverses the burden of proof normally applied in criminal cases. Continue reading...

Tech giant among others - including Amazon and Meta - to cut workforce as business predictions slowed down in the past yearGoogle has laid off a thousand workers in its hardware, voice-assistance and engineering teams as part of cost-cutting measures, according to the Alphabet Workers Union.The cuts come as Google looks towards responsibly investing in our company's biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead", the company said in a statement. Continue reading...

US justice department accuses company of absolutely horrific, criminal conduct' over targeted campaign waged by employeesThe online retailer eBay will pay a $3m fine to resolve criminal charges over a harassment campaign waged by employees who sent live spiders, cockroaches and other disturbing items to the home of a Massachusetts couple, according to court papers filed on Thursday.The justice department charged eBay with stalking, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. The employees already were prosecuted in the extensive scheme to intimidate David and Ina Steiner more than three years ago. The couple produced an online newsletter called EcommerceBytes that upset eBay executives with its coverage. Continue reading...

Kelly Carlin decries comedy special on YouTube that generated a fake Carlin, saying no machine will ever replace his genius'Kelly Carlin, the American radio host and daughter of the late comedian George Carlin, has criticized the release of a new comedy special featuring an AI-generated version of her father, who died in 2008 due to heart failure.My dad spent a lifetime perfecting his craft from his very human life, brain and imagination. No machine will ever replace his genius. These AI-generated products are clever attempts at trying to recreate a mind that will never exist again," Kelly Carlin wrote in a series of tweets on X. Continue reading...

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Chinese artist responds to debate about data-scraping as he prepares for new collaboration with AIArt that can be easily replicated by artificial intelligence is meaningless", according to the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who believes even Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their approach if AI had existed in their era.Ai Weiwei's comments feed into the current charged debate about the rise of AIs that use data scraped from artists' websites to create original" images in their style.Ai vs AI is part of CIRCA 20:24 and launches on 11 January Continue reading...

Through the new product models, chatbot agents could be developed with their own personalities or themesOpenAI on Wednesday launched its GPT Store, a marketplace where paid ChatGPT users can buy and sell specialized chatbot agents based on the company's language models.The company, whose wildly popular product ChatGPT helped kickstart the boom in AI, already offers customized bots through its paid ChatGPT Plus service. The new store will allow users to offer and monetize a broader range of tools. Continue reading...

Hackers posted false news about a widely anticipated announcement that the SEC was expected to make about bitcoinThe US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Wednesday that it is working with the FBI to investigate a fake message posted on its X social media account.On Tuesday hackers posted false news about a widely anticipated announcement that the SEC was expected to make about bitcoin, leading the cryptocurrency's price to spike and alarming observers. An SEC spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian in a statement that the unauthorized post on the @SECGov account was not drafted or created by the SEC". Continue reading...

Internal note says company has identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas' amid wave of layoffsAmazon will lay off several hundred employees in its streaming and studio operations, according to an internal note sent on Wednesday. The announcement came the same day as the live-streaming company Twitch, a subsidiary of the e-commerce giant, disclosed that it would lay off about 35% of its workforce, or 500 employees.Amazon last year cut more than 27,000 jobs as part of a wave of US tech layoffs, drawing a sharp line under the industry's recruitment spree during the pandemic. It was far from alone. Facebook and Microsoft each laid off 10,000 workers last year; Google cut 12,000. Continue reading...

Filing claims Meta did not adequately respond to Walmart and Match Group's complaints of deeply disturbing' images and videosFacebook and Instagram have been profiting from placing corporate adverts from companies such as Walmart and Match Group next to content potentially promoting child sexual exploitation, a legal filing alleges.The accusation is the latest in an explosive lawsuit initiated in December by Raul Torrez, the New Mexico attorney general, against Meta claiming the company enabled adults to find, message and groom minors" for sexual exploitation. The suit follows a Guardian investigation in April, which revealed that the tech giant is struggling to prevent people from using its platforms to buy and sell children for sex. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Stephen Harrison says he was paid to play role of chief executive of the crypto investment scheme but denies having pocketed' any of the money lostThe man who posed as the chief executive of the collapsed crypto scheme HyperVerse has confirmed he was paid to act the part, receiving 180,000 Thai baht (about A$7,500 or 4,000) over nine months and a free suit as payment.Stephen Harrison, an Englishman living in Thailand who posed as chief executive Steven Reece Lewis for the launch of HyperVerse in late 2021 and early 2022, has told Guardian Australia he was shocked" to learn the company had presented him as having fake credentials to promote the scheme. Continue reading...

Disclosures to Australia's eSafety commissioner are first specific details about online safety processes since Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter

The Scottish playwright's list is filled with divas both alive and re-animated, including Nigella, Cilla Black and drag Chloe Sevigny

How do smartphones really affect us - and our kids? We spoke to five experts with different viewpoints to capture the current state of discussion Sign up to our free coaching newsletter to help you spend less time on your phoneIn 2007, Steve Jobs presented the iPhone to the public. Several months later, the day the phones went on sale, the Guardian published an article headlined iPhone set to struggle".Apple's iPhone combines a phone, music and video player with web and email capabilities, but researchers found demand for these converged devices was lowest in affluent countries," the article said. Continue reading...

Price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000, as ETF would have given way to invest without buying outright on a crypto exchangeThe Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Tuesday that a post sent from the agency's account on the social platform X/Twitter announcing the approval of a long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded fund was unauthorized", and that the agency's account had been compromised".The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post on X claimed: The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges." Cryptocurrency investors had already driven bitcoin's price above $46,000 in anticipation of the approval. Continue reading...

Booksmart actor cast in apocalyptic drama as vengeful soldier Abby, as TV series creators eschew close physical likenesses to the video game characterShe's one of the most controversial video game characters of the last five years, and now her role has been cast for season two of HBO's The Last of Us adaptation. Booksmart and Justified actor Kaitlyn Dever will play vengeful soldier Abby who comes into deadly conflict with the main protagonist, Ellie, throughout video game sequel The Last of Us Part II.It's another intriguing casting choice by the makers of the TV series, who have eschewed close physical likenesses to the original game characters. Indeed, 27-year-old Dever was a fan favourite to play Ellie when the show was announced, due to her resemblance to the lead character and her short role in Uncharted 4, also developed by The Last of Us creator Naughty Dog. However, the showrunners opted for the younger actor, Bella Ramsey, who more closely matched Ellie in age. Continue reading...

Move comes as regulators around the world press Meta to protect children from sensitive posts on its appsMeta said on Tuesday it would hide more sensitive content from teenagers on Instagram and Facebook amid global pressure from regulators for the social media giant to protect children from harmful content on its apps.The move will make it more difficult for teenagers to come across sensitive content such as suicide, self-harm and eating disorders when they use features such as search and explore on Instagram, according to Meta. All teenagers' accounts will by default be under the most restrictive content control settings on Instagram and Facebook, and additional search terms will be limited on Instagram, Meta said in a blog post. Continue reading...

From bugs to unqualified staff, the Post Office's point-of-sale system was inadequate on many levelsThe Horizon IT scandal, frequently called the largest miscarriage of justice in British history, is back in the headlines thanks to a prime-time ITV dramatisation. The resulting surge of interest has led to Paula Vennells, who ran the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, agreeing to return her CBE. But there's also a technical underside to the very human story of power run rampant. Continue reading...

European Commission says it is checking whether multibillion-dollar stake is reviewable under merger regulationMicrosoft's multibillion-dollar investment in the ChatGPT developer OpenAI could face a merger investigation in the European Union, officials have said.Microsoft is the largest minority investor in OpenAI Global LLC, a capped profit" subsidiary company that is controlled by OpenAI Inc, the non-profit majority owner of the organisation. Its investment, given in the form of cloud-computing credits as well as cash, officially gives it no control of the company itself, but the possibility of a maximum of a 100-times return on its capital. Continue reading...

GMB union says up to 100 staff at fulfilment centre will take part in stoppage to boost profile of disputeAmazon faces fresh industrial action in the UK, after members of the GMB union at a new fulfilment centre in Birmingham voted to strike over pay and conditions later this month.The GMB says up to 100" workers will take part in the strike at the warehouse, which opened in October - a small fraction of the total workforce - but it hopes to use the action to boost the profile of the dispute and recruit more supporters. Continue reading...

Pioneering vandalism-reporting scheme will launch in January involving police, youth workers and housing officialsA groundbreaking scheme designed to help clear streets of hate graffiti and pinpoint flare-ups of racism and homophobia is being pioneered in Wales.At the centre of the project is an app called StreetSnap, developed by Swansea University, that will be formally launched in January in Bridgend county borough and is being looked at by local authorities across the UK including a central London council. Continue reading...

The world's largest tech event has cutting-edge TVs and even a VW with ChatGPT - but cheap gadgets and big tech have dented its influence. Plus, HMRC comes for side hustlers Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereThe Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which starts today in Las Vegas, is an odd beast. It is the biggest technology event of the year, a sprawling conference that spills over multiple casinos and convention centres to dominate a city that is hard to overshadow.But for the better part of a decade it has been an afterthought for some of the world's biggest businesses, led by Apple realising that if you can get the press to come to you, you don't need to risk burying your product launches under hundreds of competing newslines. The result is that CES is no longer where you see the future, but where you learn how that future will get copied into a thousand cheap plastic knockoffs. Continue reading...

Focusing on power and politics, this Macula Interactive docu-game draws on muralists, an assassination and newspaper reporting in painstakingly historically accurate detailHow many stories are hidden in the murals of Diego Rivera? What was it like to witness the creation of a modern Latin American nation, to sit in the classrooms of stridentism and surrealism? To travel in a tram through a capital city illuminated by the embers of a recent revolution yet disrupted by periodic presidential assassinations?These are just some of the questions that brought a young team of video game developers back 100 years to Mexico, 1921. Continue reading...

In 2008, Milda Mitkute and a friend set up a website to clear out her closet. It soon grew exponentially. Now Vinted has 16 million UK users and is the first Lithuanian unicorn'. Can it make secondhand our first choice?When is a jumble sale also a billion-euro tech startup? When it has 500m items for sale and 105 million users.I am in Vilnius, Lithuania, at the headquarters of Vinted, the slick, easy-to-use app where users can buy and sell secondhand clothes, shoes and gadgets. If you haven't used Vinted yet, you certainly know someone who has. In the UK, it has an astonishing 16 million users - nearly one-quarter of the population - and is taking on more established rivals, including Depop and eBay. Continue reading...

Beijing set the goal of being the global AI leader by 2030, but that was before the emergence of ChatGPTOf the many events that stand out as noteworthy in online discussions across Chinese social media in 2023, it's perhaps the rise of ChatGPT that will prove to be the most significant.Although the chatbot made by the US-based OpenAI was officially launched in late 2022, it took until 2023 for its unprecedented growth to raise eyebrows in China, where the government has set the goal of becoming the global AI leader by 2030. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Internal Revenue Service alleges Rodney Burton was part of a network that made fraudulent' presentations claiming high returns for investors based on crypto-mining operations that did not existA promoter of the HyperVerse crypto investment scheme has been arrested and charged in the US for his alleged role in the scheme, with court documents claiming he was part of a network that made fraudulent promotional presentations" to investors and potential investors.Rodney Burton, who goes by the name Bitcoin Rodney", was arrested in Florida on Friday and remains in custody pending transfer to Maryland, where the charges were laid. He has been charged with operating and conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. Continue reading...

It gave me friends, fun and new horizons - but the dark side of social media was a threat to democracy long before Elon MuskLast year was the year when Twitter, now known as X, broke irreparably. In 2023 engagement fell off a cliff, advertisers withdrew and long-term influencers stopped - or greatly reduced - posting. What was a busy global public forum now resembles an aggressive wasteland filled with hate and rumour. On 18 December, the European Commission opened infringement proceedings against X for allegedly breaking EU law on disinformation. It is high time there was a broader discussion about the challenges social media poses to liberal democracy. But to do that, we need to understand why it can be so appealing. The battle for balance and truth may be lost on X, but it continues elsewhere.I used Twitter very heavily for several years, and know that social media is not necessarily trivial. Long before I started to comment myself, I enjoyed it as a treasure trove of information. By following authors, experts, journalists, lawyers, politicians, officials and institutions around the world whose work was relevant to mine, or about whom I was simply curious, I could curate my own, transnational newspaper. As a researcher, Twitter saved me vast amounts of time, as long as I made sure to triple-check my sources and never rely solely on the information provided on the platform itself. As a writer it forced me to be concise and persuasive. When you have only 140, and later, 280 characters, every syllable counts.Helene von Bismarck is a Hamburg-based historian specialising in UK-German relations Continue reading...

Academics decry algorithmic monitoring of workers and call for stronger standards - but US unions have been slow to actFrom algorithms firing staff without human intervention to software keeping tabs on bathroom breaks, technologies including artificial intelligence are already upsetting workers and unsettling workplaces.At call centers, AI systems record and grade how workers handle calls, often giving failing grades for not sticking to the script. Some corporate software spies on workers to see whether they ever write the word union" in their emails. Continue reading...

The online publishing service has been criticised for the way it has allowed extremist propaganda to flourish on the siteIt's funny how naive smart people can be sometimes. Take the founders of Substack, a US-based online platform that enables writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. It also enables them to earn money from their writing if they wish to, though as far as I can see, most don't.I can personally testify to its merits. I've been a blogger for ever, but when Covid-19 arrived, I decided to also publish my blog as a free daily newsletter and started to look around for a way of doing that. Substack fitted the bill and it's delivered the goods; I've found it reliable, stable and easy to use. The experience has also been illuminating because the engagement one gets with newsletter readers is significantly more rewarding than is the case with a conventional online blog.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

The photographer on bringing a fresh perspective to snapping dancersMichelle Z Simmons met up with ballet dancer Lucas Labrador in downtown Roswell, a suburb of Atlanta. Simmons had been aphotographer for only a few years, but had developed a love of shooting dancers. Ihad photographed my niece, who is now with Virginia's Richmond Ballet, and wanted to get more experience," she explains. Dancers have been photographed many, many times, so I wanted something different from the classicballet shot."With that in mind, sheasked Labrador to wear casual clothes instead of traditional ballet attire and arranged to meet in an area filled with restaurants and shops. Unfortunately, as the sun went down and the lights were coming on, the traffic and crowds increased, making the location feel messy," Simmons says. We walked around to aback alley and it was perfect. Igrabbed some sunglasses and a hat out of my car, and we just played ideas off each other until we got some shots we loved." Continue reading...

While my friends swapped funny videos on their smartphones, I enjoyed my freedom. Then society made that impossibleMy gran has a new smartphone, and I am trying to help her navigate it. But she doesn't see the point. She says her smartphone is malevolent, sneaky and sly" because things on the screen disappear and cannot be retrieved. Her old dumbphone" is more reliable. I love it," she says. It never lets me down." I ask how she travels without maps. I work it out before I go." What about tickets for trains or events? Your mum's always sorted tickets." Even though I'm a tech-savvy, gen Z 24-year-old, I understand her arguments perfectly. I also made a choice to go without a smartphone for a whole decade, from 2010 to 2020. In 2020, my final year of university, I caved and bought one, a choice encouraged by my mum, who was anxious for me to be more contactable.Back in 2010, when I was 11, the small number of kids in my year who had smartphones were treated like celebrities. We would crowd round, heads bent over a video game or YouTube, snatching the phone off each other to have a go. But then, over the next couple of years, smartphones became the norm, and suddenly everyone was posting pictures and sending messages or even nude shots from their own.Isabel Brooks is a writer living in south-east London Continue reading...

Acts gathering in Birmingham for Elvis championships welcome forthcoming hi-tech concert experienceEvery year for more than two decades, Elvis Presley tribute acts have gathered at the European Elvis Championships competing to become that year's king of rock'n'roll.But at this year's event in Birmingham there was one particular Elvis on everyone's lips - hologram Elvis, set to make his debut in an immersive concert experience" in London in November. Continue reading...

Recall reportedly affects majority of cars firm has sold in China and follows recall of more than 2m Teslas in the US last monthTesla is recalling more than 1.6m Model S, X, 3 and Y electric vehicles exported to China for problems with their automatic assisted steering and door latch controls.The recall, Tesla's largest ever in China, affects the majority of the cars it has sold in the country, according to Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. Continue reading...

British influencer posted a weekly video for 10 years, about everything from pegasus crossings to the National GridTen years ago, Tom Scott held up his phone camera and recorded a 90-second video about traffic lights on bridleways. In Britain, we have pelican crossings, toucan crossings and puffin crossings, he explained, and then, because all those are named after flying things, we have this: a pegasus crossing. And that is a thing you might not know."And then, a day later, he posted another thing you might not know", about Battersea heliport. And then another, about flammable orange oil. And more and more. The cadence settled down to one a week, but the videos kept coming. Continue reading...

Many feel unhappy with their dependence on their cellphone, a wide-ranging Guardian project has found, but some insist not all screen time is equal Sign up to our free coaching newsletter to help you spend less time on your phoneDoomscrolling, mindlessly cycling through apps and feeling an urge to check your phone - does this sound familiar?If so, you're far from alone. Many smartphone users have difficult relationships with their screen time, a wide-ranging Guardian project has found, with many recognising they are unhappy with their dependence on their cellphone but feeling unable to cut down their use. Continue reading...

After a labyrinth of menus as intuitive as dadaist poetry, players are rewarded with knockoffs of decades-old games too maliciously bad to have been designed by AII am trying out YouTube Premium's games, but I can't find them. I assumed I would boot up the app and there would be a big red button saying GAMES ... but no. I have to sign up to PREMIUM. Then find the YOUR PREMIUM BENEFITS section. Then find EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES and select TRY EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES. Then find the TRY GAMES ON YOUTUBE part therein and tap on TRY IT OUT. There is an EXPLORE tab and a SEARCH tab just to make things as intuitive as dadaist poetry. I go through more menus than an entire series of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. It was quicker to load up and play Lords of Midnight on the ZX Spectrum.When I find it, the GAMING section contains not games but a fetid hellscape of people alternately mumbling or shouting over video game playing. These must be those Content Creators. They're all torturous. I am sure they play these videos to those inmates at Guantanamo Bay who they can't break with Metallica songs. How many prisoners must have finally cracked while watching I DID THIS IN ZELDA AND MY NOSE FELL OFF FOR LOLZ by CoolRizz23. Continue reading...

As AI and tech make their presence felt, new companies are emerging and older ones are adaptingAfter a year in which industry was knocked off its axis by the coming of age of artificial intelligence and the transition to an online world continued apace, new businesses are emerging and old industries reinventing themselves to adapt. Here, we look at five companies making the most of these turbulent times. Continue reading...

Two licensed handhelds from Taito and Capcom come with a host of old favourites from their back catalogues, and the quality of the game emulation is excellentThe world is certainly not short of retro video game hardware these days. We have the array of official Mini consoles released by Sega and Nintendo, and then there are the very much unofficial handhelds by companies such as Anbernic, that will play thousands of games - as long as you don't mind about the shady legality of homebrew emulators and downloadable rom files. With its Evercade series, however, British company Blaze Entertainment is taking a different approach, producing solidly built gaming machines that run fully licensed versions of games from the original creators. And, even better, the games come on cartridges.The Super Pocket is the company's miniature handheld games machine, much smaller and lighter than its EXP device. Designed quite literally to fit in your pocket it has a crisp 2.8in (7cm) LED screen, cute front-facing speaker (as well as a headphone port) and lots of carefully positioned buttons including a range of shoulder buttons on the rear. It uses a rechargeable battery and a USB-C charging cable, so it's quick to fill up with juice and it'll last around four hours. Continue reading...