Our writer trialled the most powerful robot vacuums - some of which even mop your floors - and these are the ones he rates The best window vacs for clearing condensation: seven expert picks for streak-free shineRobot vacuum cleaners take the drudge work out of cleaning your floors and carpets. No more tiresome weekly stints of vacuuming, and no more last-minute panic sessions when you have visitors on the way. Instead, your compact robot chum regularly trundles out from its dock, sucking up dust, hair and debris to leave your floors looking spick and span.Over the past few years, robot vacuums have become much more affordable, with basic units starting at about 150. They're also doing more than they used to, mopping areas of hard flooring and charging in sophisticated cleaning stations that empty their dust collectors and clean their mop pads for you.Best robot vacuum cleaner overall:
When the people making AI seem trustworthy are the ones who trust it the least, it shows that incentives for speed are overtaking safety, experts sayKrista Pawloski remembers the single defining moment that shaped her opinion on the ethics of artificial intelligence. As an AI worker on Amazon Mechanical Turk - a marketplace that allows companies to hire workers to perform tasks like entering data or matching an AI prompt with its output - Pawloski spends her time moderating and assessing the quality of AI-generated text, images and videos, as well as some factchecking.Roughly two years ago, while working from home at her dining room table, she took up a job designating tweets as racist or not. When she was presented with a tweet that read Listen to that mooncricket sing", she almost clicked on the no" button before deciding to check the meaning of the word mooncricket", which, to her surprise, was a racial slur against Black Americans. Continue reading...
Prepare to have your perspective shattered by the comedian's visits to our US tech overlords. The upcoming advancements for those with disabilities are life-changingWashing machines liberated women to get soul-crushing jobs that ate up their free time. Social media gave the world one revolution - before it destabilised democracies everywhere else. Now AI is here, and its main job seems to be replacing screenwriters. It's easy to fall into techno-pessimism, but new documentary Seeing into the Future (Sunday 23 November, 8pm, BBC Two) has a different angle. For disabled people, tech has already brought about life-changing advancements. And we haven't seen anything yet.It is presented by comedian and Strictly winner Chris McCausland, who is blind. Some of the most casually astonishing scenes occur early on, showing how he uses his phone - essentially, an eye with a mouth. What T-shirt is this?" he asks, holding up a garment. Agrey T-shirt with a graphic logo of Deftones," his phone obliges. It can even tell him if the shirt needs ironing. But it's where all this is going that fascinates McCausland, so he heads to the US, to see what's in development at the houses of our tech overlords. Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: When the video-sharing site launched in 2005, there were fears it would replace terrestrial television. It didn't just replace it - it invented entirely new forms of content. ASMR, anyone? Don't get The Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereBarely a month goes by without more news of streaming sites overtaking traditional, terrestrial TV. Predominant among those sits YouTube, with more than 2.5 billion monthly viewers. For people my age - a sprightly 28 - and younger, YouTube is less of an app or website than our answer to radio: the ever-present background hum of modern life. While my mum might leave Radio 4 wittering or BBC News flickering in the corner as she potters about the house, I've got a video essay about Japan's unique approach to urban planning playing on my phone. That's not to say I never watch more traditional TV (although 99% of the time I'm accessing it through some other kind of subscription streaming app), but when I get home after a long day and the thought of ploughing through another hour of grim prestige fare feels too demanding, I'm probably watching YouTube. Which means it's very unlikely that I'm watching the same thing as you.When Google paid $1.65bn for the platform in 2006, (just 18 months after it launched) the price seemed astronomical. Critics questioned whether that valuation could be justified for any video platform. The logic was simple - unless YouTube could replace television, it would never be worth it. Nearly two decades on, that framing undersells what actually happened. YouTube didn't just replace television - it invented entirely new forms of content: vodcasts, vlogs, video essays, reaction videos, ASMR and its heinous cousin mukbang. The platform absorbed new trends and formats at lightning speed, building what became an alternative online mainstream". Before podcasters, TikTokers, Substackers and even influencers, there were YouTubers. Continue reading...
Users noted that in a raft of now-deleted posts, the chatbot would frequently rank Musk top in any given fieldElon Musk's AI, Grok, has been telling users the world's richest person is smarter and more fit than anyone in the world, in a raft of recently deleted posts that have called into question the bot's objectivity.Users on X using the artificial intelligence chatbot in the past week have noted that whatever the comparison - from questions of athleticism to intelligence and even divinity - Musk would frequently come out on top. Continue reading...
While a robot pop star may be novelty now, young people are maturing with a scorn for generic digital productsXania Monet is the latest digital nightmare to emerge from a hellscape of AI content production. No wonder she's popular ... but how long will it last?The music iteration of AI actor" Tilly Norwood, Xania is a composite product manufactured of digital tools: in this case, a photorealistic avatar accompanied by a sound that computers have generated to resemble that of a human voice singing words. Continue reading...
The hot spot seemed the perfect place for Yuletide-loving royalists. But, as with the Eiffel Tower in Beijing and some of the most picturesque windmills in the Netherlands, there was much less to it than first met the eye ...Name: Buckingham Palace Christmas market.Age: Brand new this year. Continue reading...
A lawsuit over automated shopping reveals a deeper struggle over who will control the next generation of AI and what happens when autonomous agents start acting on our behalfHello, and welcome to TechScape. I'm your host, Blake Montgomery.Lies, damned lies and AI: the newest way to influence elections may be here to stayElon Musk's Grok AI briefly says Trump won 2020 presidential electionAI is guzzling energy for slop content - could it be reimagined to help the climate?How Google's DeepMind tool is more quickly' forecasting hurricane behaviorAnthropic announces $50bn plan for datacenter construction in USSoftBank sells stake in Nvidia for $5.8bn as it doubles down on OpenAI betsUS markets struggle amid tech sell-off and economic uncertainty Continue reading...
Gaming platform to use facial age estimation to limit chats to similar age groups, as allegations of grooming growThe online games platform Roblox is to start blocking children from talking to adult and much older teen strangers from next month as it faces fresh lawsuits alleging it has been exploited by predators to groom children as young as seven.Roblox has reached 150 million daily players of games including viral hits Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot but has been hit by legal claims alleging the system's design has made children easy prey for paedophiles". Continue reading...
Regulator found ads for mechanics skewed towards men while those for preschool teachers targeted womenThe French equalities regulator has declared that Facebook's algorithm for placing job adverts is sexist, after an investigation found that adverts for mechanic roles skewed towards men while those for preschool teachers were targeted at women.The Defenseur des Droits watchdog said the Facebook system for targeted job ads treated users differently based on their sex, and constituted indirect discrimination. The regulator recommended that Facebook and its parent company, Meta, took measures to ensure adverts were non-discriminatory, giving the company three months to inform the French body of the measures. Continue reading...
The internet has been rumbling about autocorrect for years - and now AI is changing how the technology worksDon't worry, you're not going mad.If you feel the autocorrect on your iPhone has gone haywire recently - inexplicably correcting words such as come" to coke" and winter" to w Inter" - then you are not the only one. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#711D9)
Third-gen watch adds 5G, satellite SOS and messaging, a bigger screen and longer battery life in same rugged designThe biggest, baddest and boldest Apple Watch is back for its third generation, adding a bigger screen, longer battery life and satellite messaging for when lost in the wilderness.The Ultra 3 is Apple's answer to adventure watches such as Garmin's Fenix 8 Pro while being a full smartwatch for the iPhone with all the trimmings. As such, it is not cheap, costing from 749 (899/$799/A$1,399) - 50 less than 2023's model - sitting above the 369-plus Series 11 and 219 Watch SE 3. Continue reading...
by Sacha Alanoca and Maroussia Lévesque on (#70Z2F)
Beneath the free-market rhetoric, Washington actually intervenes to control the building blocks of AI systemsAt first glance, today's artificial intelligence policy landscape suggests a strategic retreat from regulation. As of late, AI leaders such as the US have doubled down on this messaging. JD Vance champions AI policy with a deregulatory flavor". Congress considered a 10-year ban on state AI legislation. On cue, the Trump administration's AI action plan" warns against smothering the technology in bureaucracy at this early stage".But the deregulatory narrative is a critical misconception. Though the US federal government takes a hands-off approach to AI applications such as chatbots and image generators, it is heavily involved in the building blocks of AI. For example, both the Trump and the Biden administrations have been hands-on when it comes to AI chips - a crucial component of powerful AI systems. Biden restricted chip access to competing nations such as China as a matter of national security. The Trump administration has sought deals with countries such as the UAE. Continue reading...
Questions grow over water and energy costs of warehouse of computers in Sonoran desert - but will Project Blue be stopped?A company's opaque plan to build a huge datacenter outside Tucson, Arizona has roiled the desert city over the past few months, the latest US community to push back as tech companies aggressively seek to build out infrastructure for cloud computing and to power the AI boom.The proposed datacenter, known as Project Blue, would span 290 acres in Pima county, and become the biggest development ever in the county, or anywhere in the southern part of the state. Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: The series is known for its massive multiplayer shootouts, but there's a missed opportunity to tell a meaningful story about warAnd so Battlefield is back. The long-running military shooter series, which specialises in gigantic online multiplayer conflicts involving dozens of ground troops, tanks and aircraft, has returned for its sixth main instalment - and it's thrilling, epic and compulsive.Apart from the single-player campaign mode, which I absolutely hated. It's another oh-so-familiar tale of preternaturally talented soldiers just doing their jobs to defend the free world in the face of evil private military companies, terror organisations or double-crossing CIA operatives. It could be almost any military shooter of the last decade or any straight-to-streaming war film starring one of the Hemsworths. But it's not. It's a seven-hour cliche bombardment that you have to take an active part in. Continue reading...
Computers running software will still work but steadily become more vulnerable to viruses and malwareFrom Tuesday Microsoft will no longer offer free support as standard for Windows 10, an operating system that is used by millions of computer and laptop owners around the world.Figures for September suggest four in 10 of those using Microsoft Windows worldwide were still using Windows 10, despite the introduction of its successor, Windows 11, in 2021. Continue reading...
Names, email addresses and other contact details of users from around the world could also have been takenGovernment ID photos of about 70,000 global users of Discord, a popular messaging and chat platform among video gamers, may have been exposed after hackers compromised a company contracted to carry out age verification checks.Some users' names, email addresses and other contact details, IP addresses and messages with Discord's customer service agents may also have been taken. The attacker has been trying to extort a ransom from the company. No full credit card details or passwords were seized. Continue reading...
The IGDA Foundation broadened its reach by attending the world's biggest video games event this summer - but faces challenges funding its work helping underrepresented developersGamescom, the annual video game convention held in Cologne, Germany, is a unique event. It not only draws hundreds of thousands of players to pack out vast convention halls each year, but it also hosts professionals, offering them a chance to get their games into the hands of fans, and gives industry hopefuls a shot at passing their resumes to developers. For those based outside the US, it is the biggest event of the year by far. It is the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Foundation's first year here, and executive director Alyssa Walles is excited.The IGDA Foundation provides professional development for underrepresented and marginalised people hoping to enter the video game industry, a crucial service considering the many barriers prospective producers, developers and writers face. Though Walles is fairly new to the IGDA Foundation, having joined three years ago, she is a video game industry veteran. She knows how crucial it is to help those who aren't born into privileged situations, who can't afford to travel across the globe to conventions, or have not had traditional schooling in computer design or coding. Continue reading...
British Standards Institution study across seven countries found quarter of bosses believe entry-level tasks could be automated to reduce costsYoung people entering the workforce are facing a job-pocalypse", as business leaders invest in artificial intelligence (AI) rather than new hires, according to a study of global business leaders.Bosses are prioritising automation through AI to plug skills gaps and allow them to reduce headcount, instead of training up junior members of staff, a report by the British Standards Institution (BSI) found. Continue reading...
NHTSA reported Teslas driving through red traffic lights and driving against direction of travel during a lane changeUS automobile safety regulators have opened an investigation into Tesla vehicles equipped with its full self-driving (FSD) technology over traffic-safety violations after a series of crashes.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said the electric carmaker's FSD assistance system, which requires drivers to pay attention and intervene if needed, had induced vehicle behaviour that violated traffic safety laws". Continue reading...
Technology is radically reshaping how we make music. As I dug deeper into this for a radio 3 documentary I began to wonder if creative organisations are right to be so upbeat about AI. Are we riding the wave or will the wave destroy us?The hacker mansion is part startup commune, part luxury crash-pad, part sales floor for the future. They are dotted around Silicon Valley, inhabited by tech founders and futurists. The most opulent I've seen is in Hillsborough, one of the Bay Area's wealthiest enclaves, just south of San Francisco. Inside, marble floors gleam beneath taped-up portraits of tech royalty; in the gardens, gravel is raked into careful Zen spirals and pools shimmer beyond the hedges.It was a sunny June afternoon, and I had come with my producer, Fay Lomas, to record interviews for a BBC Radio 3 documentary about the collision of generative AI and classical music in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Continue reading...
Saudi Arabia's investment in Twitter increased its influence in Silicon Valley while being used at home to shut down critics of the regimeAli al-Ahmed didn't think that Elon Musk was responsible for the decline and fall of Twitter. Musk was another face representing an old regime. And its sins began well before Musk bumbled into Twitter HQ, in October 2022, carrying a porcelain sink. (In an attempt at humour, Musk posted a video of himself arriving at the Twitter offices carrying a sink with the caption Entering Twitter HQ - let that sink in!")Ahmed was a Saudi journalist and analyst living in the Washington DC area. He was a founder of the Institute for Gulf Affairs (formerly the Saudi Institute), a Saudi-focused thinktank with an emphasis on human rights reporting, and was the kind of expert - passionate, principled, always glad to hop on the phone - that journalists loved having in their digital Rolodex. Continue reading...
Video game chat platform tells users that driver's licences and passports were among the forms of data accessed via a third-party customer service providerVideo game chat platform Discord has suffered a data breach, informing users that their personal information - including identity documents of those required to prove their age - were compromised.The company stated last week that an unauthorised party had compromised one of Discord's third-party customer service providers, leading to the access of a limited number of users" who had been in contact with the customer service or trust and safety teams. Continue reading...
Asian migrant laborers who paid predatory recruiting fees say global mega-corporation has not kept its promise to pay them restitutionWarehouse laborers from Asia say the world's second largest employer, Amazon, has failed to live up to its promises to compensate them for financial abuses tied to their work for the online retailer in Saudi Arabia.In 2023, Amazon promised to reimburse recruitment fees to its contract workers from Asia who had been forced to pay large sums to secure jobs at the company's warehouses in Saudi Arabia. Since then, Amazon has paid more than $2.6m in compensation to roughly 950 workers from multiple countries. Continue reading...
Experts say attempting to extort children lost Radiant group credibility in hacking world, which made it take actionCybercriminals who stole pictures and the private information of thousands of nursery children have deleted the data after a backlash against the hack.A gang calling themselves Radiant have removed details of children at the UK-based Kido nursery chain from a website it had set up to extort victims. Continue reading...
We asked coaches and athletes to reveal the gizmos they use to get more from every workout. From smart goggles to turbo trainers, here's what they recommend The best massage guns: tried and tested relief for sore, tired musclesThe fitness-focused tech scene is booming, and there are now more ways than ever to track, analyse and dissect every run, ride and workout rep. From carbon-plated running shoes to form-boosting pool floats, a new wave of fitness kit promises to help you set PBs, win that next match and elevate your athletic abilities.Not every device, wearable or training tool will be right for your goals, so you'll need to be clued up on where to invest your hard-earned money. To cut through the marketing gumpf, I enlisted the help of experts across various disciplines and sports to identify the technology that can truly make a difference. And surprisingly, it isn't always the newest, most expensive releases - some aren't even smart". Continue reading...
A new platform will be an alternative to Kindle, and bookshops will earn 100% of the profit from salesThe online store Bookshop.org is launching a platform through which independent bookshops in the UK will be able to sell ebooks as an alternative to Amazon's Kindle offering.Independent bookshops will earn 100% of the profit from sales, and ebooks will be priced the same as they are on Amazon. Continue reading...
Super-budget Chinese retailer reports revenues of $63.3m last year, almost double its $32m in 2023The UK operation of the Chinese online marketplace Temu doubled revenues and pre-tax profits last year, as British consumers snapped up products offered by the super-budget retailer.Temu UK reported revenues of $63.3m (46.4m) last year, almost double the $32m in 2023, while pre-tax profits similarly surged from $2m to $3.9m, accounts show. Continue reading...
Preteens are parroting influencer speak and demanding anti-ageing products as the pressure to fit in intensifiesJessica, 25, was working a shift at Sephora when a little girl who looked about 10 ran up to one of her colleagues, crying. Her skin was burning," Jessica said, it was tomato red. She had been running around, putting every acid you can think of on the palm of her hand, then all over her face. One of our estheticians had to tend to her skin. Her parents were nowhere to be seen."Former Sephora employee KM, 25, has her war stories too. Like the day a woman was caught shoplifting and told the security guard she was trying to steal because her kid was getting bullied because she didn't have a Dior lip gloss. [The mom] couldn't afford it but her daughter told her she is going to get made fun of at school." Continue reading...
A growing number of shooters are in conversation with their digital communities, which are becoming extremeOn the day that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson shot and the killed rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, prosecutors say, he texted his roommate to confess what he had done. While appearing to admit to the murder and describe how he was planning to retrieve his gun, he pivoted to mention why he had carved messages into the ammunition.Remember how I was engraving bullets? The fuckin messages are mostly a big meme," Robinson texted, according to authorities. Continue reading...
Sam Altman said if there is doubt the system will default to the under-18 experience putting safety ahead of privacy and freedom for teens'OpenAI will restrict how ChatGPT responds to a user it suspects is under 18, unless that user passes the company's age estimation technology or provides ID, after legal action from the family of a 16-year-old who killed himself in April after months of conversations with the chatbot.OpenAI was prioritising safety ahead of privacy and freedom for teens", chief executive Sam Altman said in a blog post on Tuesday, stating minors need significant protection". Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#701KE)
Top-spec cameras, cutting edge AI, great software and stunning screen squeezed into a more manageable frameThe Pixel 10 Pro is Google's best phone that is still a pocketable, easy-to-handle size, taking the excellent Pixel 10 and beefing it up in the camera department.That makes it a contender for the top smaller phone with Apple's iPhone 17 Pro, offering the best of Google's hardware without an enormous screen. It is also the cheapest of three Pixel 10 Pro phones starting at 999 (1,099/$999/A$1,699) sitting below the bigger 10 Pro XL and the tablet-phone hybrid the 10 Pro Fold. Continue reading...
What once seemed a pretty fringe subculture of hobbyists riffing on stories that got them privately hot is now bringing mainstream cinema to a rolling boilThere was a time when fan fiction meant furtive scribbles uploaded to shadowy corners of the internet, in which Mr Darcy was recast as a moody vampire flatmate, Captain Kirk discovered his inner romantic, or Gandalf finally got around to opening an artisanal shop in the Shire. It was an underground hobby that could never trouble Tinseltown's accountants. And yet here we are in 2025, with the news in the Hollywood Reporter that Legendary Pictures has just paid at least $3m - (2.2m) - an unprecedented amount - for the screen rights to a forthcoming novel called Alchemised that began life as an unauthorised and kinky Harry Potter spin-off.The backstory behind Alchemised, by SenLinYu, sounds pretty freaky. SenLinYu's original book, titled Manacled, inhabited a strange sub-niche of Potterverse named Dramione" in which Hermione Granger finds herself regularly involved in unlikely and transgressive romantic encounters with Draco Malfoy. Now stripped of all reference to Hogwarts, butterbeer and Nimbus 2000s, and with renamed characters, Alchemised will hit shelves and online bookstores later this month as the dark fantasy tale of a young woman with memory problems who finds herself at the mercy of a powerful and cruel necromancer. Continue reading...
Justice department in lawsuit accuses company drivers of routinely refusing to serve people with disabilitiesThe US government sued Uber on Thursday, accusing the ride-sharing company of violating federal law by discriminating against passengers with disabilities.In a complaint filed in San Francisco federal court, the US Department of Justice said Uber drivers routinely refuse to serve riders with disabilities, including people who travel with service animals or stowable wheelchairs. Continue reading...
Move comes after parliamentary committee finds platform like a slow poison' to young peopleA French lawmaker has asked the state prosecutor for a criminal investigation into whether TikTok was responsible for endangering the lives" of its young users.Arthur Delaporte, a Socialist MP, said he co-chaired a six-month French parliamentary inquiry into TikTok's psychological effects on minors and heard testimony from families, social media executives and influencers. Continue reading...
Contracted AI raters describe grueling deadlines, poor pay and opacity around work to make chatbots intelligentIn the spring of 2024, when Rachael Sawyer, a technical writer from Texas, received a LinkedIn message from a recruiter hiring for a vague title of writing analyst, she assumed it would be similar to her previous gigs of content creation. On her first day of work a week later, however, her expectations went bust. Instead of writing words herself, Sawyer's job was to rate and moderate the content created by artificial intelligence.The job initially involved a mix of parsing through meeting notes and chats summarized by Google's Gemini, and, in some cases, reviewing short films made by the AI. Continue reading...
by Dan Sabbagh in the Pokrovsk sector. Pictures by Ju on (#6ZV1R)
Models for reconnaissance, rescue, interception and attack are changing the way both sides operateIt's more exhausting," says Afer, a deputy commander of the Da Vinci Wolves", describing how one of the best-known battalions in Ukraine has to defend against constant Russian attacks. Where once the invaders might have tried small group assaults with armoured vehicles, now the tactic is to try and sneak through on foot one by one, evading frontline Ukrainian drones, and find somewhere to hide.Under what little cover remains, survivors then try to gather a group of 10 or so and attack Ukrainian positions. It is costly - in the last 24 hours we killed 11," Afer says - but the assaults that previously might have happened once or twice a day are now relentless. To the Da Vinci commander it seems that the Russians are terrified of their own officers, which is why they follow near suicidal orders. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Workers say 500k contract with US tech firm which supplies Israeli forces raises serious ethical questions'Public sector workers have voiced deep concern" after Coventry city council signed a 500,000-a-year artificial intelligence contract with the US data technology company Palantir.The deal is the first of its kind between a UK local authority and the Denver-based company, which supplies technology to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and to help Donald Trump's mass deportation efforts. Continue reading...
It's bad for the planet and could make many jobs - including mine - obsolete. But my loathing runs deeper than thatIt's one of those topics that comes up over drinks or dinner at the moment: whether or not you think AI is going to steal your job. So far, I've felt relatively confident that while AI could no doubt have a fair crack at writing a newspaper opinion column, there is something I do as part of my work that AI cannot: reporting.Except now, it seems, AI is claiming to be doing that as well. Last week, it was revealed that at least six reputable publications have had to take down published articles because it turned out that they were probably pieces of fiction written by AI and then passed off by somebody as works of journalism under the name of Margaux Blanchard. One of these was a piece for Wired titled They Fell in Love Playing Minecraft. Then the Game Became Their Wedding Venue, which quoted a digital celebrant" called Jessica Hu, who does not seem to actually exist. Another publication, called Dispatch, received a pitch from Blanchard" about an ex-mining town called Gravemont that had been repurposed as a training ground for death investigation. Gravemont doesn't exist either.Imogen West-Knights is a writer and journalist Continue reading...
Lawsuit accuses companies of conspiracy to monopolize markets for smartphones and generative AI chatbots'Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI is suing OpenAI and Apple over allegations that they are engaging in anticompetitive conduct. The lawsuit, filed in a Texas court on Monday, accuses the companies of a conspiracy to monopolize the markets for smartphones and generative AI chatbots".Musk had earlier this month threatened to sue Apple and OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, after claiming that Apple was making it impossible" for any other AI companies to reach the top spot on its app store. Musk's xAI makes the Grok chatbot, which has struggled to become as prominent as ChatGPT. Continue reading...
Critics say Max, a WhatsApp rival, could be used to track users, though state media says it is not a spying appA Russian state-backed messenger application called Max, a rival to WhatsApp that critics say could be used to track users, must be pre-installed on all mobile phones and tablets bought in the country starting next month, the Russian government said on Thursday.The decision to promote Max comes as Moscow, locked in a standoff with the west over Ukraine, is seeking greater control over the internet. The Kremlin said in a statement that Max, which will be integrated with government services, would be on a list of mandatory pre-installed apps on all gadgets", including mobile phones and tablets, sold in Russia from 1 September. The firm behind Max said this week that 18 million users had downloaded its app, parts of which are still in a testing phase. Continue reading...
Whistleblower warns UK's top AI research body in danger of collapse due to threats over funding and new directionWhen the UK government announced the creation of the Alan Turing Institute in 2014 it promised a fitting memorial" to the renowned computer scientist and artificial intelligence pioneer.More than a decade on, Britain's leading AI institute is in turmoil as staff warn it may be in danger of collapse and ministers demand a shift in focus to defence and security work. Continue reading...
Mostly soundtracked by cats meowing a Billie Eilish song, these AI-generated fantastias tell tales of cheating, revenge and violence - and are being watched by millions
by Peter Walker Senior political correspondent on (#6ZC8F)
Deputy PM says move would cause rise in revenge porn', as Labour launches attack ads against Reform UK leaderNigel Farage is failing a generation of young women" with his plans to scrap the Online Safety Act, Angela Rayner has said, arguing the move would cause an increase in the prevalence of revenge porn".The comments by the deputy prime minister are the latest criticism of Farage from the government, with Labour launching a parallel series of attack adverts on the Reform UK leader, including one showing him alongside the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate. Continue reading...
Pilot at London trust aims to reduce paperwork and free up doctors, as UK brings AI to public servicesAn artificial intelligence tool designed to speed up the discharge of patients is being trialled at a hospital trust in London.The platform completes documents needed to send fit patients home, potentially saving hours of delays and freeing up beds. Continue reading...
Ditched single-use plastic bottles but can't find a good reusable one? I spent two months putting dozens through their paces - these are the ones worth buying The best travel mugs and reusable coffee cups for hot drinks, testedIf you think a water bottle is just a water bottle, it's time to wake up. In 2025, there's a lot riding on your choice of drinking vessel. The heady combination of worrying about the planet and, on a more day-to-day level, staying hydrated has made reusable water bottles a must-have.Once the preserve of hikers and gym-goers, water bottles have become a small but significant act of environmental virtue signalling. Not all bottles are created equal, though. Some are insulated, some leak, some weigh as much as a toddler, and some even infuse your water with hydrogen (more on that later). The choice is dizzying.Best water bottle overall:
Who has the time to help underprivileged children when you have a pickleball court and a president to attend to?If you put it in a novel - a ham-fisted satire of tech overlord hypocrisy, say - it would look too contrived to fly. But here we are, absorbing a story from the New York Times this week in which Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are discovered to have been running a private school out of their compound in Palo Alto, California, in violation of city zoning laws. More pertinently, the school of 14 kids, which includes two of the couple's three daughters, is less than a mile from the school for low-income families that the couple founded in 2016. Guess which school the world's second-richest man and his wife are shutting down?Say the word zoning infraction" to a certain stripe of American and the effect is equal to using queue jumper" on a Briton, but of course the broader point here isn't one about permits. (A spokesperson for Zuckerberg and Chan told the newspaper that the family was unaware about the zoning laws and that the private school, or pod of home schoolers" as they put it, is now moving to another location.) It is, rather, about Zuckerberg's perceived retreat from progressive social causes, starting with the shuttering of the school and ending with the announcement in May this year that the pair's charitable foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), will be pulling funding from almost all the affordable housing and homeless charities it supports in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as slashing diversity programmes.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian