Technology | The Guardian

National police agency says it is investigating 513 cases of deepfake pornography as a new scandal grips the countryThe anger was palpable. For the second time in just a few years, South Korean women took to the streets of Seoul to demand an end to sexual abuse. When the country spearheaded Asia's #MeToo movement, the culprit was molka - spy cams used to record women without their knowledge. Now their fury was directed at an epidemic of deepfake pornography.For Juhee Jin, 26, a Seoul resident who advocates for women's rights, the emergence of this new menace, in which women and girls are again the targets, was depressingly predictable. This should have been addressed a long time ago," says Jin, a translator. I hope that authorities take precautions and provide proper education so that people can prevent these crimes from happening." Continue reading...

Journalists and other writers are employed to improve the quality of chatbot replies. The irony of working for an industry that may well make their craft redundant is not lost on themFor several hours a week, I write for a technology company worth billions of dollars. Alongside me are published novelists, rising academics and several other freelance journalists. The workload is flexible, the pay better than we are used to, and the assignments never run out. But what we write will never be read by anyone outside the company.That's because we aren't even writing for people. We are writing for an AI. Continue reading...

The photographer co-opted hair artist Afro Ele to find the perfect rip curlLast year, visual artist Fede Kortez travelled to the west of Ghana to direct a documentary on surfers. His base was Busua Beach, well known for attracting the worldwide surfing community to its swells. Kortez took a day out of the documentary schedule for the shoot, the idea for which he had been ruminating on for more than a year.I wanted to take some boys with their boards and style them up with vibrant hairstyles and cool accessories, with the beach in the background," he says. Continue reading...

Following extraordinarily low sales and player counts, Sony has removed its latest shooter from sale on PC and PS5Sony has announced that new PlayStation 5 and PC shooter Concord, which released on 23 August, is to be taken offline just two weeks later, with refunds issued to every player who bought it.The game is a team-based hero shooter in the vein of Activision-Blizzard's hit Overwatch, pitting teams of five against each other in tight combat arenas, and its launch has been one of the most high-profile flops of the gaming year. It has recorded player counts in the mere hundreds on Steam, the most popular PC marketplace, and is estimated to have sold fewer than 25,000 copies, according to analysts at GameDiscoverCo. Continue reading...

As debate rages around the ethics and legalities of artificial intelligence, artists are exploring the technology's possibilities - and its precaritiesCate Blanchett - beloved thespian, film star and refugee advocate - is standing at a lectern addressing the European Union parliament. The future is now," she says, authoritatively. So far, so normal, until: But where the fuck are the sex robots?"The footage is from a 2023 address that Blanchett actually gave - but the rest has been made up.Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...

Get your controllers at the ready as Assassin's Creed visits feudal Japan, Indiana Jones goes to the Himalayas, a slacker gets off the couch and Zelda stars in a Zelda game for onceA deliriously joyful platformer which pays tribute to 30 years of PlayStation history via adorable, tiny robots riding a controller-shaped spaceship between delightful planet-sized levels. It looks cute but it is deceptively cutting-edge - developer Team Asobi really knows that PS5 inside-out. Think Sony's answer to Mario Galaxy.

PlayStation 5, PC; Game Science

Rob Minnick uses the platform to detail the dangers of gambling in an effort to tackle content that normalizes itRob Minnick was in a bathroom in Paris when it dawned on him that he might need some help. Having flown 3,700 miles to explore the French capital, he kept disappearing for 10 or 15 minutes at a time.People must have thought I had the worst stomach problems in the world," he said of his trip, in February 2022. While his stomach was fine, he was not. Minnick had developed an addiction to gambling. Continue reading...

Guidance comes after calls for a total ban for under-16s and a statuary ban on mobile phone use in schoolsPrimary school children should not be given smartphones by their parents, one of the UK's largest mobile phone operators has warned.EE is advising parents that children under 11 should be given old-fashioned brick or dumb" phones that only allow them to call or text instead. Continue reading...

The Brazilian photographer wanders the beaches of Rio in the late afternoon, aiming to capture the perfect shadow on his ageing iPhoneZal Riani calls himself ashadow hunter. The Brazilian photographer lives in Rio de Janeiro, and likes to take a walk along Ipanema beach to relax after work.He says: I love the light at the end of day, and the shadows that appear when the sun is leaving. Whenever I go out to take photos in the late afternoon it's because I'm looking forthe longest shadows Ican find." Continue reading...

Researchers say their creation has memory, which it can use to perform better by gaining experienceResearchers have found a soft and squidgy water-rich gel is not only able to play the video game Pong, but gets better at it over time.The findings come almost two years after brain cells in a dish were taught how to play the 1970s classic, a result the researchers involved said showed something that resembles intelligence". Continue reading...

Sound & Vision was so revered that Apple brought its first iPod to its offices by hand. It's now a victim of the industry it coveredSound & Vision once commanded respect. Sony, Netflix, even 60 Minutes all visited the magazine's 45th floor offices north of Times Square. Apple hand-delivered its first iPod to the magazine to get the opinion of technical editors before the company had even announced the game-changing product. I had the good fortune to jog around the Central Park Reservoir with a thousand tunes in my pocket when people were still carrying cassette players and radios.Today's version of the magazine is a far cry from those days. There is just one issue left. AVTech Media Ltd, a British publisher, confirmed to the Guardian on 20 August that it would shutter Sound & Vision's print edition after the forthcoming October/November issue. The magazine's website, which has a miniscule editorial budget compared to the print edition, will continue. The hard truth is that digital advertising has failed to live up to the revenue heights of print advertising. Continue reading...

Hackers reportedly compromised his email and used it to break into the account of a senior Trump campaign officialAn alleged Iranian hack on Donald Trump's campaign also saw hackers breach the email account of the longtime Republican operative Roger Stone, an adviser of the former president, according to reports.CNN reported that hackers had compromised Stone's email address and had then used his account to try to break into the account of a senior Trump campaign official". The Washington Post reported that phishing emails were sent to Trump officials from Stone's account. Continue reading...

The second tie-in to a video game for cosmetics chain Lush includes the most literal bath bomb ever and is part of a growing trendLast spring, one of my favourite brand tie-ins of 2023 saw high-street cosmetics chain Lush team up with Nintendo to create a range of products based around Super Mario. It was a riot of brightly coloured shower gels and super-sweet fragrances, including a divine Princess Peach body spray that I'm still using because screw gender-based perfume norms.Now, Lush has released a new video game range celebrating 15 years of Minecraft. There are 12 items in the collection, including easily the most literal bath bomb Lush has ever made - a TNT block - as well as Grass and Lava blocks, a Creeper head shower bomb and a Diamond Pickaxe bubble bar, which is genuinely quite hefty despite its diminutive size. Continue reading...

Several news outlets have reported receiving internal campaign documents, including dossier on VanceThe FBI confirmed on Monday that it was investigating a complaint from Donald Trump's presidential campaign that Iran had hacked and distributed a trove of sensitive campaign documents.A number of media outlets, including the Washington Post, New York Times and Politico, reported receiving internal campaign documents or emails, including a 271-page dossier about JD Vance, the Republican Ohio senator who is Trump's running mate. Continue reading...

Spokesperson Steven Cheung accuses foreign sources hostile to the United States' of leaking internal documentsDonald Trump's presidential campaign said on Saturday it had been hacked.Campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung released a statement about the alleged hack, following reports from Politico that it had begun receiving emails from an anonymous account with internal documents from the campaign. Continue reading...

Devolver Digital; PC

X owner deletes post sharing faked Telegraph article that claimed convicted rioters would be sent to detention campsElon Musk shared a fake Telegraph article claiming Keir Starmer was considering sending far-right rioters to emergency detainment camps" in the Falklands.Musk deleted his post after about 30 minutes but a screenshot captured by Politics.co.uk suggests it had garnered nearly two million views before it was deleted. Continue reading...

The rise of artificial intelligence has sparked a panic about computers gaining power over humankind. But the real threat comes from falling for the hypeIn Arthur C Clarke's short story The Nine Billion Names of God, a sect of monks in Tibet believes humanity has a divinely inspired purpose: inscribing all the various names of God. Once the list was complete, they thought, he would bring the universe to an end. Having worked at it by hand for centuries, the monks decide to employ some modern technology. Two sceptical engineers arrive in the Himalayas, powerful computers in tow. Instead of 15,000 years to write out all the permutations of God's name, the job gets done in three months. As the engineers ride ponies down the mountainside, Clarke's tale ends with one of literature's most economical final lines: Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."It is an image of the computer as a shortcut to objectivity or ultimate meaning - which also happens to be, at least part of, what now animates the fascination with artificial intelligence. Though the technologies that underpin AI have existed for some time, it's only since late 2022, with the emergence of OpenAI's ChatGPT, that the technology that approached intelligence appeared to be much closer. In a 2023 report by Microsoft Canada, president Chris Barry proclaimed that the era of AI is here, ushering in a transformative wave with potential to touch every facet of our lives", and that it is not just a technological advancement; it is a societal shift". That is among the more level-headed reactions. Artists and writers are panicking that they will be made obsolete, governments are scrambling to catch up and regulate, and academics are debating furiously. Continue reading...

Lighter weight, better screens, faster chip and fancy AI features are all welcome, but feel iterative for the priceSamsung's most advanced, hi-tech folding phone for 2024 is the Galaxy Z Fold 6, which looks to see off rivals from Google, OnePlus and others with a lighter frame, bigger and better screens, and the fastest chip available for Android.The latest phone-tablet hybrid from the category pioneer is designed to be the ultra-premium device of choice for buyers, but faces stiff competition from several worthy challengers, most of which undercut the South Korean firm on price. Continue reading...

In 2016, some said comparisons between the rises of Trump and Hitler were misguided. But as tech's titans donate millions, worrying new parallels emergeIn How Democracy Ends, his elegant book published after Trump's election in 2016, David Runciman made a startling point. It was that while the liberal democracy that we take for granted won't last for ever, it will not fail in ways familiar from the past: no revolutions, no military coups, no breakdowns of social order. It will fail forwards in an unexpected manner. The implication was that people making comparisons to what happened in 1930s Germany were misguided.Until a few weeks ago, that seemed like sound advice. But then something changed. Significant sectors of Silicon Valley - which for decades had been a Democrat stronghold - started coming out for Trump. In 2016, Peter Thiel, the contrarian billionaire and co-founder of PayPal, had been the only prominent Valley figure to support Trump, which merely confirmed the fact that he was the region's statutory maverick. But in the past few weeks, quite a few of the Valley's big hitters (Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen and David Sacks, to name just three) have revealed themselves to be supporters of - and donors to - Trump. Musk has set up and donated to a Republican-aligned political action committee (or Super Pac). On 6 June, the venture capitalist Sacks hosted a $300,000-a-plate fundraising dinner for Trump at his San Francisco mansion. And so on. Continue reading...

Sam Altman's ChatGPT promises to transform the global economy. But it also poses an enormous threat. Here, a scientist who appeared with Altman before the US Senate on AI safety flags up the danger in AI - and in Altman himselfOn 16 May 2023, Sam Altman, OpenAI's charming, softly spoken, eternally optimistic billionaire CEO, and I stood in front of the US Senate judiciary subcommittee meeting on AI oversight. We were in Washington DC, and it was at the height of AI mania. Altman, then 38, was the poster boy for it all.Raised in St Louis, Missouri, Altman was the Stanford dropout who had become the president of the massively successful Y Combinator startup incubator before he was 30. A few months before the hearing, his company's product ChatGPT had taken the world by storm. All through the summer of 2023, Altman was treated like a Beatle, stopping by DC as part of a world tour, meeting prime ministers and presidents around the globe. US Senator Kyrsten Sinema gushed: I've never met anyone as smart as Sam... He's an introvert and shy and humble... But... very good at forming relationships with people on the Hill and... can help folks in government understand AI." Glowing portraits at the time painted the youthful Altman as sincere, talented, rich and interested in nothing more than fostering humanity. His frequent suggestions that AI could transform the global economy had world leaders salivating. Continue reading...

Paul Givan says details of 407 people mistakenly sent out included names, addresses and personal commentsThe education minister in Northern Ireland has unreservedly" apologised after the personal details of more than 400 people who had offered to contribute to a review of special education needs were breached.The embarrassing data breach came to light on Thursday after the education department said it had mistakenly sent to 174 people a spreadsheet attachment that contained the names, email address and titles of 407 individuals who had expressed an interest in attending the end-to-end review of special education needs (SEN) events across Northern Ireland. Continue reading...

Lawsuit says TikTok violated law that prohibits collecting, using or disclosing personal information from children under 13 without parental consentThe US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have sued TikTok and its parent company ByteDance for allegedly failing to protect children's privacy on the social media app.The government said TikTok violated a law that prohibits collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children under 13 without parental consent. Continue reading...

PM accused of ignoring civil rights and aping autocracies as he proposes new powers after far-right unrestCivil liberties campaigners have said that a proposal made by Keir Starmer on Thursday to expand the use of live facial recognition technology would amount to the effective introduction of a national ID card system based on people's faces.Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, said it was ironic the new prime minister was suggesting a greater use of facial matching on the same day that an EU-wide law largely banning real-time surveillance technology came into force. Continue reading...

Robert Skidelsky is concerned about the surveillance potential or AI, while Brian Reffin Smith is worried about its capacity to hijack culture, and Michael Heaton warns that it relieves us of the need to thinkIn his interesting opinion article (Robots sacked, screenings shut down: a new movement of luddites is rising up against AI, 27 July), Ed Newton-Rex misses one of the most serious concerns about artificial intelligence: its surveillance potential. Governments have always spied on their subjects/citizens: technology multiplies their powers of spying.In his novel 1984, George Orwell had the authorities install a two-way telescreen system in every party member's home, and in all workplaces and public spaces. This allowed Big Brother to monitor individuals' actions and conversations, while he himself remained invisible. Continue reading...

Meet Friend: a Tamagotchi with a soul', wearable AI companion that records your interactions and texts backYour friend is named Amy. Or Jackson. Or whatever name you'd like. They support you, rib you and check in on how you're doing. They're a blisteringly attentive listener who will never ask you to help them move, or to come see their one-man play. They cost $99 and are expected to ship out in early 2025.Meet Friend: a new wearable AI companion that you wear around your neck. The small, white, puck-shaped device records your every word and interaction and responds accordingly by text. (The company says it does not store the audio; according to the website, data is encrypted and users can delete memories".) An ad for the product shows people wearing it while they hike, game, work and flirt. How's the falafel?" Friend asks a woman eating falafel wrap. You're getting thrashed, it's embarrassing!" Friend texts a guy playing video games with friends (human). Continue reading...

Workers picket at Warner Bros Studios against what they say is unwillingness from firms to protect union membersMore than 300 video game performers and Hollywood actors picketed in front of the Warner Bros Studios building on Thursday to protest against what they call an unwillingness from top gaming companies to protect union voice actors and motion capture workers equally against the unregulated use of artificial intelligence.Standing before the crowd, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Sag-Aftra), said that AI has become the most challenging issue in many of the union's negotiations. Continue reading...

Ex-CNN anchor alleges fraud and breach of contract after X Corp owner abruptly ended video series partnershipThe former CNN anchor Don Lemon has sued Elon Musk and X over a cancelled deal with the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.His filing in California superior court in San Francisco includes claims of fraud, negligent misrepresentation, misappropriation of Lemon's name and likeness, and breach of express contract. Continue reading...

Company says it will vigorously defend claim by pension fund that its stock price was kept artificially highCrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company behind July's mass computer outage around the world, has been issued with an investor lawsuit accusing it of defrauding investors.The class action suit, filed in Texas by Plymouth County Retirement Association, a pension fund, argues that CrowdStrike misled investors by attesting that the company's technology was validated, tested and certified". In fact, the investors say, CrowdStrike's software was no such thing. Continue reading...

Launched in 2012, the tile-matching puzzler quickly became ubiquitous on phones. More than 10 years later, 200 million people are still playing. Why?A lot of us were, at one point, in love with our smartphones. In the early days of Android and iPhone, apps seemed designed to delight; throw a few quid at the app store in 2010 and you could be playing some cute game, often involving birds, or messing around with a lightsaber within minutes. Social media apps designed for phones let us post artfully casual photos in a few taps, for our friends to drop hearts on. It was fun, once.But over time, it's become a toxic relationship. The fun got sucked out of everything. Social media morphed into a hellscape designed to ensnare and enrage us, providing just enough of our friends' posts to prevent us from actually quitting the platform but prioritising their own ads and algorithmic videos. Twitter used to be jokes and cat memes and now it's ... well, it's X, and I know I'm not the only one who's deleted it off their phone entirely. The experience of using apps, phones and the internet more generally has significantly degraded - and the same can be said for mobile games, most of which now give you about 83 seconds of entertainment before trying to extort you for a 7.99 monthly subscription or showing you misleading ads that are so fascinatingly terrible you can't look away. Continue reading...

President Javier Milei creates security unit as some say certain groups may be overly scrutinized by the technologyArgentina's security forces have announced plans to use artificial intelligence to predict future crimes" in a move experts have warned could threaten citizens' rights.The country's far-right president Javier Milei this week created the Artificial Intelligence Applied to Security Unit, which the legislation says will use machine-learning algorithms to analyse historical crime data to predict future crimes". It is also expected to deploy facial recognition software to identify wanted persons", patrol social media, and analyse real-time security camera footage to detect suspicious activities. Continue reading...

Stock price grew around 5%, which revealed the company outperformed analysts' expectations for its second quarterMeta's shares rose in after-hours trading on Wednesday off the back of a strong earnings report that comes as the company is spending heavily on AI tools.The company's stock price grew around 5% following the report, which revealed the company outperformed analysts' expectations for its second quarter. Continue reading...

More than 100 Silicon Valley investors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reed Hastings, launch website VCs for KamalaA group of more than 100 Silicon Valley investors, including Mark Cuban, the TV host and NBA owner, and Reed Hastings, a co-founder of LinkedIn, launched a website in support of Kamala Harris.A statement said vcsforkamala.org expressed support for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee from venture capital investors, founders and tech leaders who pledge to vote for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election". Continue reading...

The Gold Coast trio's frontwoman shares her list of clips - including Creed, dogs and multiple TikTok trends she wants to try with her bandmates

In this week's newsletter: We've become so used to digitally downloading games now that it's easy to forget how novel it once was, thanks to places like Xbox 360's Marketplace Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereThe Xbox 360 digital store is the latest to go offline, following the Wii U and 3DS store shutdown in March. It shut down on Monday, taking about 220 games with it, according to analysis by Video Games Chronicle. Preservation activists at the Video Game History Foundation even made a funeral cake.Microsoft is definitely the best of the major companies when it comes to backwards compatibility and game preservation - despite those 220 lost games, a huge percentage of the Xbox 360's back catalogue can still legally be played on later consoles. And it is remarkable that the Xbox 360 Marketplace lasted almost 20 years (the console was released in late 2005). It wasn't the first digital store on a console, but it was the first one I ever used, and I assume the same was true for a lot of British players - the Xbox 360 was the most popular console of its generation in this country. In retrospect, the Marketplace was astonishingly ahead of its time. Continue reading...

PC, PS4/5, Switch; Coal Supper/Panic

Set in the year between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Outlaws follows Kay, an ambitious street thief as she plots a giant heist. We meet the gang behind the gangAbout 10 minutes into the latest preview build of Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft's forthcoming open-world adventure, lead character Kay Vess enters Mirogana: a densely populated, worn-down city on the desolate moon of Toshara. Around us is a mix of sandstone hovels and metallic sci-fi buildings, crammed with flickering computer panels, neon signs and holographic adverts. Exotic aliens lurk in quiet corners, R2 droids glide past twittering to themselves. Nearby is a cantina, its shady clientele visible through the smoky doorway, and just to the side is a dimly lit gambling parlour.As you explore, robotic voices read out imperial propaganda over public address systems and stormtroopers patrol the streets, checking IDs. At least as far as this lifelong Star Wars fan is concerned, these moments perfectly capture the aesthetics and atmosphere of the original trilogy. Like A New Hope itself, it's a promising beginning. Continue reading...

CMA to consider whether deal with AI startup is a potential merger, which could prompt full investigationThe Competition and Markets Authority has begun a preliminary investigation into a partnership between Google and the AI startup Anthropic, marking the latest in a string of investigations into deals between big tech companies and smallerAI ones.Google invested $2bn (about 1.56bn) into Anthropic in 2023, shortly after signing a cloud computing agreement with the startup, which develops the Claude LLM and chatbot. Continue reading...

Watchdog reprimands Electoral Commission for not being up to date with security updates before hack in August 2021The UK's election watchdog has been reprimanded over online security lapses that allowed the personal information of 40 million voters to be hacked.The Information Commissioner's Office said the Electoral Commission had not kept its servers up to date with the latest security updates before the data breach, which occurred in August 2021 but was not identified until October 2022. Continue reading...

The ChatGPT maker is betting big, while Google hopes its AI tools won't replace workers, but help them to work better Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereWhat if you build it and they don't come?It's fair to say the shine is coming off the AI boom. Soaring valuations are starting to look unstable next to the sky-high spending required to sustain them. Over the weekend, one report from tech site the Information estimated that OpenAI was on course to spend an astonishing $5bn more than it makes in revenue this year alone:If we're right, OpenAI, most recently valued at $80bn, will need to raise more cash in the next 12 months or so. We've based our analysis on our informed estimates of what OpenAI spends to run its ChatGPT chatbot and train future large language models, plus guesstimates' of what OpenAI's staffing would cost, based on its prior projections and what we know about its hiring. Our conclusion pinpoints why so many investors worry about the profit prospects of conversational artificial intelligence.In this paper, we argue against the view that when ChatGPT and the like produce false claims, they are lying or even hallucinating, and in favour of the position that the activity they are engaged in is bullshitting ... Because these programs cannot themselves be concerned with truth, and because they are designed to produce text that looks truth-apt without any actual concern for truth, it seems appropriate to call their outputs bullshit.Part of what's tricky about us talking about it now is that we actually don't know exactly what's going to transpire. What we do know is the first step is going to be sitting down [with the partners] and really understanding the use cases. If it's school administrators versus people in the classroom, what are the particular tasks we actually want to get after for these folks?If you are a school teacher some of it might be a simple email with ideas about how to use Gemini in lesson planning, some of it might be formal classroom training, some of it one on one coaching. Across 1,200 people there will be a lot of different pilots, each group with around 100 people. Continue reading...

Hypnospace Outlaw's creative director Jay Tholen returns with a sequel that promises more tongue-in-cheek fun for people old enough to remember GeoCitiesIt's been five years since Hypnospace Outlaw, Tendershoot's brilliantly wacky 90s internet simulator, and this spiritual sequel was announced two years ago. In the intervening time, with tech moguls snapping up social media giants, Reddit getting monetised (and in effect, censored) against the wishes of its user base, and the ever-growing presence of AI, the millennial generation's yearning for the algorithm-free wild west days of the early internet has only become more intense. At least that's how creative director Jay Tholen feels.I thought it was already bad then, but I didn't know how bad it could get," Tholen says on the current state of the world wide web.Dreamsettler will (hopefully) be released in 2025, on PC and Xbox Series X. Continue reading...

Doctored campaign video featuring US vice-president reposted by Tesla chief executive watched 128m timesKamala Harris's election campaign has accused Elon Musk of spreading manipulated lies" after the Tesla chief executive posted a doctored video featuring the vice-president on his X account.Musk reposted a manipulated Harris campaign video on Friday evening in which a fake Harris voiceover says: I was selected because I am the ultimate diversity hire," and that anyone who criticises her is both sexist and racist". Continue reading...

In this uniquely absurd mishmash of adventure and dating game, you are a house looking for love on an island of eligible bachelor padsNavigating the perils of the contemporary dating scene is a formidable task for any singleton. How much do you really have in common with this stranger? Do you share the same values? Can you be vulnerable enough to let them in? With Building Relationships, game developer Tanat Boozayaangool considers all of these pressing questions, while asking one more - what if you were also a house?Yes, the title of this dating adventure game is to be taken literally. In Building Relationships, you play as the latest eligible bachelorx pad" on an island of romantic opportunity. Your main goal is to crack on with its other citizens, which include himbo tents, blunt houseboats, and a windmill, for good measure. Millie (the windmill) is pretty flirty, and it comes out of nowhere sometimes," says Boozayaangool. People are either really into it or not at all."Building Relationships will be released on PC; release date TBC Continue reading...

For the twin photographers, this spontaneous shot captures the timeless pleasures of a day by the seaConey Island beach and boardwalk is such an iconic fixture in so many people's New York summers," Mariel Tyler says of the location of this iPhone photograph. She and her twin sister, Katherine, make up the Tyler Twins, professional photographers who specialise in celebrity portraits, events and concerts. Past subjects include Jay-Z, Whoopi Goldberg and Lady Gaga.Mariel took this image in 2015. Normally when we shoot professionally, we pass the camera back and forth. Whoever is not shooting is directing. We rarely remember, or care, who took what shot. It's always a joint effort," Mariel says. This shot was entirely spontaneous. The work I do with my sister often has to be more thought out, so it's nice to shoot without expectations sometimes. On this occasion, Katherine was on a work trip in LA but, ironically, had taken photos of Santa Monica pier earlier that day." Continue reading...

Social media platform uses pre-ticked boxes of consent, a practice that violates UK and EU GDPR rulesElon Musk's X platform is under pressure from data regulators after it emerged that users are consenting to their posts being used to build artificial intelligence systems via a default setting on the app.The UK and Irish data watchdogs said they have contacted X over the apparent attempt to gain user consent for data harvesting without them knowing about it. Continue reading...

TikTok's highly active recommendation system is designed to keep users clicking on videos, even if they contain racist or homophobic content

Prototype, initially launching with select publishers and users, set to challenge Google's dominance of online searchOpenAI is testing a new search engine that uses generative artificial intelligence to produce results, raising the prospect of a significant challenge to Google's dominance of the online search market.SearchGPT will launch with a small group of users and publishers before a potential wider rollout, the company announced on Thursday. OpenAI ultimately intends to incorporate the search features into ChatGPT, rather offer a standalone product. Continue reading...

National Cyber Security Centre warns of global hacking effort to obtain nuclear and defence intelligenceNorth Korean state-backed hackers have mounted a campaign to obtain secrets related to nuclear materials, military drones, submarines and shipbuilding in the UK and US, as intelligence agencies warned of a global cyber-espionage campaign" targeting sensitive industries.A joint notice from the US, UK and South Korea warned that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) was using state-backed attackers to further the regime's military and nuclear ambitions. It added that Japan and India had also been targeted. Continue reading...

$10 UberEats vouchers sent to people who helped after global IT outage are flagged as potential fraudAn attempt by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to thank workers who tackled the recent global IT outage with a $10 UberEats voucher hit a stumbling block after Uber flagged the gesture as potential fraud.CrowdStrike confirmed that it sent the $10 voucher to teammates and partners" who helped customers affected by a faulty software update it issued. Continue reading...