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A cyberpunk cat, a murderous lamb and a lonesome fox battle Norse gods at this year’s Baftas for video games, with the winners to be announced on 30 MarchThe nominees for this year’s Bafta Games Awards have been announced, with God of War Ragnarök and Stray leading the field. This will be the 19th year that Bafta has honoured the work of the games industry with an awards ceremony, which will be held on 30 March.Sony’s PlayStation 5 big-hitters God of War Ragnarök and Horizon Forbidden West are prominent, nominated in 11 and 6 categories respectively. Stray, a French game about a cat stuck in an underground robot settlement, is up for nine awards, and FromSoftware’s 20m-selling open-world masterpiece Elden Ring is up for eight. Tunic, a homage to classic adventure games, is in with a chance at five awards. Continue reading...

A male voice offers ‘commentary’ as the service curates a stream of songs I’ve heard before. Do I really need this?I’m listening to Radiohead’s Creep on the radio. “You may not know this,” the DJ coos patronizingly, “but this song turns 30 this year.” So far, so titbit of trivia on FM drivetime. The only difference is this DJ is not a real person.AI DJ is the next move in Spotify’s never-ending goal to “personalize” our listening experiences. Like its Discover Weekly new music playlist, or its end-of-year Wrapped recap, the AI DJ curates a stream of songs it thinks I’ll like based on my listening history. Along with the tunes, I get segues of “commentary” from a male AI voice, which bursts with the forced friendliness of an over-invested high school guidance counselor. Continue reading...

Tesla chief executive was expected to lay out plan for a smaller, more affordable electric vehicle, but it did not materializeTesla will cut assembly costs by half in future generations of cars, engineers told investors on Wednesday, but Elon Musk did not unveil a much-awaited small, affordable electric vehicle.Shares fell more than 5% in after hours trade following presentations at the company’s investor day from its Texas headquarters. Continue reading...

Shareholders sue the Twitter CEO again, alleging they were defrauded with false claims of the vehicles’ capabilitiesElon Musk is facing yet another lawsuit as shareholders of Tesla accuse the chief executive and his company of overstating the effectiveness and safety of their electric vehicles’ autopilot and full self-driving technologies.Shareholders have alleged in the proposed class-action lawsuit that Tesla defrauded them over four years with false and misleading statements that concealed how its technologies – suspected as a possible cause of multiple fatal crashes – “created a serious risk of accident and injury”. The case was filed on Monday in a San Francisco federal court. Continue reading...

Ellie tended to Joel in a dilapidated basement, then flashed back to bliss, booze and photo booths with her best friend – just before disaster struckThis article contains spoilers for The Last of Us TV series. Do not read unless you have seen episodes one to seven …I can’t help but feel torn after this seventh episode. It has nothing to do with my enjoyment of it or the quality, but what it means for the rest of the series. Continue reading...

Using the platform to book an Evri delivery signs sellers up to PacklinkBefore Christmas my husband used eBay to sell two toys, and went on the site to book the parcels firm Evri to deliver them. The problem is that they didn’t arrive. In the past we have been able to claim whenever a parcel got lost but not this time.We have tried logging on via the website, chat, or the customer service phone line but to no avail. Whenever we give Evri the tracking number of our parcels, the company says they cannot be found and to follow “our protocols” for lost parcels. Continue reading...

Nancy Faeser says Ukraine war has exacerbated German cybersecurity concernsGermany’s interior minister has warned of a “massive danger” facing Germany from Russian sabotage, disinformation and spying attacks.Nancy Faeser said Vladimir Putin was putting huge resources into cyber-attacks as a key part of his war of aggression. “The cybersecurity concerns have been exacerbated by the war. The attacks of pro-Russia hackers have increased,” she said in an interview with the news network Funke Mediengruppe published on Sunday. Continue reading...

The widely popular chatbot is churning out uncanny animal designs and we tried one for a ‘hilarious’ outcomeThe meteoric rise of ChatGPT has sparked an artificial intelligence frenzy, stoking fears that the technology could upend jobs, search engines and schools. But online creators have identified one realm yet safe from the computer takeover: fiber arts.A number of TikTok users have deployed ChatGPT to write patterns for crochet creations, yielding “cursed” results that are testing the boundaries of nascent artificial intelligence capabilities. Continue reading...

PM under pressure to follow EU and US in taking step over fears Chinese-owned app poses cybersecurity riskRishi Sunak has been urged to ban government officials from using TikTok in line with moves by the EU and US, amid growing cybersecurity fears over China.Officials in Europe and the US have been told to limit the use of the Chinese-owned social video app over concerns that data can be accessed by Beijing. Continue reading...

I love games but they’ve never affected me like music or books … then I found one about parental regret and bad life decisionsI have always thought there is a contradiction at the heart of video games: by virtue of their interactivity, I find them much more engaging than TV, music, movies – but I’ve never related to them emotionally and psychologically to the same degree as I have with other entertainment forms. The Jam sang all the thoughts I had as a working-class teenager. Watching Friends, I aspired to be popping in and out of my pals’ apartments in our 20s, dropping quips. Bruce Willis movies always made me feel that I, too, could wisecrack my way out of any situation. And latterly, the books of Matt Haig have helped me analyse depression, anxiety, loneliness and what, if anything, I’ve done with my life.Video games never did that for me. Until I played Old Man’s Journey. Continue reading...

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers helps public defenders navigate new technologies used against their clientsThe first time Caleb Kenyon, a defense attorney in Florida, saw a geofence warrant was when a new client received an alarming email from Google in January 2020. Local police were requesting personal data from the client, Zachary McCoy, and Kenyon had just seven days to stop Google from turning it over, the email said.When Kenyon asked Google for more information, he received a copy of the warrant’s cover letter. It was unlike anything he or other lawyers in his network had ever seen. Continue reading...

The platform banned the Russia-controlled publication last year for its Ukraine falsehoods, but its content is still posted on various channelsHundreds of videos produced by the Russia-controlled publication RT have found their way on to YouTube in the past year, despite the platform’s ban of such media last year.YouTube, which is owned by Google, banned all Russian state-funded media from its platform globally in March 2022, citing a policy barring content that “denies, minimizes or trivializes well-documented violent events” as Russia sought to guide the narrative on its war in Ukraine. Continue reading...

Clamshell phone with longer battery life aims squarely at challenging Samsung’s Z Flip 4Oppo’s first folding flip phone to be sold outside its Chinese home market is the Find N2 Flip, an Android clamshell aimed squarely at challenging Samsung’s popular Z Flip 4.The next-gen flipper costs £849, undercutting Samsung by £50, and uses a different type of hinge that aims to help solve one of the most obvious flaws with folding phones: the crease in the middle of the screen. Continue reading...

Founding editor says 500 pitches rejected this month and their ‘authors’ banned, as influencers promote ‘get rich quick’ schemesOne of the most prestigious publishers of science fiction short stories has closed itself to submissions after a deluge of AI-generated pitches overwhelmed its editorial team.Clarkesworld, which has published writers including Jeff VanderMeer, Yoon Ha Lee and Catherynne Valente, is one of the few paying publishers to accept open submissions for short stories from new writers. Continue reading...

The game series formerly known as Yakuza has been an inroad to modern Japan for its legions of overseas fans. Now, it hopes to do the same for Japanese historyLike a Dragon – the game series formerly known as Yakuza – has been going for almost 20 years. These are melodramatic games about the feuds and inner humanity of Japanese gangsters, one part soap-opera, one part kerb-stomping, chair-throwing over-the-top brawler and one part surprisingly true-to-life recreation of Japanese city nightlife. In their cities, from Osaka to Yokohama, in between knocking thugs’ heads together and navigating Yakuza clan drama, you can eat and drink at real-world bars and restaurants, duck into an arcade and play the games there, visit hostess clubs and sing karaoke. For a lot of its overseas players, its vibrant, sleazy recreations of Tokyo’s nightlife have been their first introduction to modern Japan.But that was never the intention. “When we made this game, we never planned on releasing it overseas. We didn’t think people would like it,” says Hiroyuki Sakamoto, now series director, who’s been working on the series since its first planning meetings in 2003. “So we were able to focus on our Japanese audience, on making a game for and of Japan … we thought we were making a game that was probably only ever gonna be enjoyed by older guys with an interest in [Tokyo nightlife district] Kabukicho and its criminal underworld.” Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: The two tech behemoths are betting big that their ‘Bard’ and ‘Bing’ services will revolutionise the way we navigate the net

Could artificial intelligence offer a fairer and more efficient way of policing?San Francisco’s board of supervisors recently voted to let their police deploy robots equipped with lethal explosives – before backtracking several weeks later. In America, the vote sparked a fierce debate on the militarisation of the police, but it raises fundamental questions for us all about the role of robots and AI in fighting crime, how policing decisions are made and, indeed, the very purpose of our criminal justice systems. In the UK, officers operate under the principle of “policing by consent” rather than by force. But according to the 2020 Crime Survey for England and Wales, public confidence in the police has fallen from 62% in 2017 to 55%. One recent poll asked Londoners if the Met was institutionally sexist and racist. Nearly two thirds answered either “probably” or “definitely”.This is perhaps unsurprising, given the high-profile cases of crimes by police officers such as Wayne Couzens, who murdered Sarah Everard, and David Carrick, who recently pleaded guilty to 49 offences including rape and sexual assault. Continue reading...

With 15bn views to #MorningRoutine TikTok videos, Rachel Signer decided to wake up to the social media trend – and was served some societal critique with her cereal

The American writer on her film of the moment, a fantastic young novelist and an animated series that’s wonderfully humanThe novelist Gabrielle Zevin, whose Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow appeared on many of 2022’s books of the year lists, was born in New York in 1977. She studied English at Harvard, where she met her partner, the film director Hans Canosa. Zevin wrote the screenplay for Canosa’s 2005 film, Conversations With Other Women, and the pair adapted two of Zevin’s novels for the screen, most recently The Storied Life of AJ Fikry. She is working on a film version of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which follows two childhood friends as they reunite in adulthood to create video games. She lives in Los Angeles. Continue reading...

Sam Patten, an American consultant later mired in controversy, exploited emails obtained by Tal Hanan’s teamIn late December 2014, a team from Cambridge Analytica flew to Madrid for meetings with a handful of old and new contacts. A member of the former Libyan royal family referred to as “His Royal Highness” was there. So, too, was the son of a US billionaire, a Nigerian businessman and a private Israeli intelligence operative.For Alexander Nix, the Etonian chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, and his new employee Brittany Kaiser, who networked like most other people breathed, there may have been nothing unusual about such a gathering. Continue reading...

Artificial intelligence has implication across the board, solving problems and raising others

In the past, leaps in technology replaced low-paid jobs with a greater number of higher-paid jobs. This time, it may be different

Disappearance of China Renaissance chair raises fears of fresh crackdown on China’s finance industryA billionaire Chinese dealmaker has gone missing, plunging one of the country’s top investment banks into turmoil.Bao Fan, the founder and executive director of China Renaissance, is a major figure in the Chinese tech industry and has played an important role in the emergence of a string of large domestic internet startups. Continue reading...

Guardian revelations about the scale and reach of deliberate misinformation prove the need to reset our internetIn 1996, John Perry Barlow, former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and guru of Silicon Valley’s hippy-tech idealists, wrote a stirring utopian manifesto about the future of the internet. Addressing the leaders of the world order gathered at Davos, he declared:“Governments of the industrial world, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from cyberspace, the new home of mind … We will create a civilisation of the mind in cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.” Continue reading...

Revealed: Cache of 50,000 files lays bare deceptive methods used by Eliminalia to clear up its clients’ cyber profiles“We erase your past” declares the company’s tagline. Eliminalia, which has offices in several cities including Barcelona and Kyiv, is part of a growing industry that will clean up your online profile.Officially the company performs “a deep search across the internet for all information – whether it be an article, a blog, social media posts or even a mistaken identity”. It then endeavours, on behalf of its clients, to get any negative information removed. Continue reading...

Whether battling sophisticated civilisations, avoiding anal probes or shooting up monsters in Grimsby, here are the best games where you, and only you, can save the planetHalf-Life 2Valve’s brilliant shooter dumps scientist Gordon Freeman on a dystopian Earth crushed by the evil Combine alien invasion force. The visuals are wonderful, the physics are astonishing and the Orwellian setting of City 17 provides a nightmarish backdrop to the tense story of rebellion, sacrifice and shooting stuff. Continue reading...

NYT correspondent’s conversation with Microsoft’s search engine leads to bizarre philosophical conversations that highlight the sense of speaking to a humanIn the race to perfect the first major artificial intelligence-powered search engine, concerns over accuracy and the proliferation of misinformation have so far taken centre stage.But a two-hour conversation between a reporter and a chatbot has revealed an unsettling side to one of the most widely lauded systems – and raised new concerns about what AI is actually capable of. Continue reading...

Regulators say driver assistance system does not adequately adhere to traffic safety laws and can cause crashesTesla said it would recall 362,000 US vehicles to update its Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta software after regulators said on Thursday the driver assistance system did not adequately adhere to traffic safety laws and could cause crashes.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said the Tesla software allows a vehicle to “exceed speed limits or travel through intersections in an unlawful or unpredictable manner increases the risk of a crash”. Continue reading...

Spend increases by 40% to $14m after dismissing 11,000 employeesMeta, the parent company of Facebook, has said in a filing that it is increasing its spend on the personal security of chief executive and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg by $4m (£3.3m) to $14m, at a moment when the company has cut thousands of jobs in what Zuckerberg has called the “year of efficiency”.Meta’s board declared that the 40% increase was “appropriate and necessary under the circumstances” and was in place “to address safety concerns due to specific threats to his safety arising directly as a result of his position as Meta’s founder, chairman, and CEO”. Continue reading...

‘Under no circumstances will we pay that absurd amount,’ delivery firm says, telling hackers it is not the booming company they thinkRoyal Mail rejected an “absurd” ransom demand for $80m (£67m) from hackers linked to Russia, according to transcripts that offer a rare glimpse into negotiations when companies are hit by a ransomware cyberattack.The delivery company has been battling a ransomware attack since January, when the LockBit group hacked into its software and blocked international shipments by encrypting files crucial to the company’s operations. Continue reading...

After a quiet couple of weeks, something big was inevitably on the horizon … but who knew it would be that big? This excellent episode upped the ante with flames, explosions and tragedyThis article contains spoilers for The Last of Us TV series. Please do not read unless you have seen episodes one to five …We’ve had two very solid introductory episodes, the stellar episode three and then a rather more action-based fourth instalment – perhaps to be expected after the emotional heights of Bill and Frank’s tale. This fifth episode, brief flashbacks aside, followed a more traditional linear narrative and nicely moved the story along, with our duo now a foursome, trying to get out of Kansas City in one piece. Continue reading...

Power upgrade makes smallest Mac desktop more adaptable and better value alternative to iMacApple’s cheapest desktop computer has had a price cut and a power upgrade – making it one of the smallest, cheapest and most adaptable Macs yet.The Mac mini starts at £649 ($599/A$999) – £50 less than the 2020 model – and has Apple’s latest M2 or M2 Pro chips as used in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro to great effect.Processor: Apple M2 or M2 ProRAM: 8GB, 16GB, 24GB or 32GBStorage: 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB or 8TB SSDOperating system: macOS 13.2 VenturaConnectivity: wifi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, 2x USB-A, 2 or 4x USB 4/Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, Ethernet, headphonesDimensions: 197mm x 197mm x 35.8mmWeight: 1.18kg to 1.28kg Continue reading...

Report says pattern seen in films such as Ex Machina risks contributing to lack of women in techA relentless stream of movies, from Iron Man to Ex Machina, has helped entrench systemic gender inequality in the artificial intelligence industry by portraying AI researchers almost exclusively as men, a study has found.The overwhelming predominance of men as leading AI researchers in movies has shaped public perceptions of the industry, the authors say, and risks contributing to a dramatic lack of women in the tech workforce. Continue reading...

The social media giant knew I would enjoy a reaction series of The Hills, a show I was obsessed with in the early aughtsWhitney Port and her husband Tim Rosenman were surprised when I said I first found their video series on Facebook. Or rather, that it found me.I wasn’t expecting it myself. Though I mainly use Facebook to keep in touch with family all over the world, I occasionally find myself scrolling through an increasingly chaotic feed. It was there, in the abyss of poorly-produced, off-kilter videos that Port and Rosenman’s reaction series – where they watch and comment on episodes of the MTV hit reality show and my high school-favorite, The Hills – somehow found me. Continue reading...

British peers propose amendment to online safety bill requiring social media sites to consider how to keep female users safeSocial media platforms would be required to follow regulatory guidelines protecting women and girls from online abuse under an amendment to the online safety bill tabled this week.The proposed change would require Ofcom, the communications watchdog, to issue a code of practice on preventing violence against women and girls that social media platforms would have to follow when implementing their duties under the bill. Continue reading...

Bard’s misfire on launch cost owner $160bn but experts believe ChatGPT is also prone to errorsThe James Webb space telescope cost $10bn (£8.3bn) to build, but it left Google nursing losses of more than $160bn after the search engine’s new chatbot answered a question about it incorrectly.Google and Microsoft both announced plans for AI-enhanced search this week, taking the artificial intelligence space race into a new phase. However, the launch of the former’s new chatbot, Bard, misfired badly when the error appeared in a demo. Continue reading...

In our weekly interview about objects, the longtime ABC host tells us about her party-starter piano, and the retro record player she lost to a housemate

Bob Hoskins called the original Nintendo spin-off the ‘worst thing I ever did’, which has set the tone for video game movies ever since – can this latest effort buck the trend?“The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Bros. It was a fuckin’ nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fuckin’ nightmare. Fuckin’ idiots.”These are the words of the late, great Bob Hoskins to Simon Hattenstone of the Guardian in 2007. Anyone who has actually seen the horrifyingly bad 1993 film he is talking about, known for being the first mainstream Hollywood adaptation of a video game, might wonder why we are about to get a remake. Here’s Dennis Hopper, who played villain King Koopa on his own feelings about the movie: “I made a picture called Super Mario Bros, and my six-year-old son at the time – he’s now 18 – he said, ‘Dad I think you’re probably a pretty good actor, but why did you play that terrible guy King Koopa in Super Mario Bros?’ And I said: ‘Well, Henry, I did that so you could have shoes,’ and he said, ‘Dad, I don’t need shoes that badly.’” Continue reading...

SpaceX says satellite communications service ‘never, never meant to be weaponised’

Noise cancelling buds are some of the first to support Google’s new surround sound featureFinally, an Android rival to the AirPods Pro has arrived. OnePlus’s new Buds Pro 2 noise cancelling earbuds are some of the first on the market to support Google’s new spatial audio virtual surround sound tech, giving them a boost in a crowded market.The earbuds cost £179 and compete directly with the similarly priced Pixel Buds Pro and £249 AirPods Pro, but with the added advantage of having an app for Android and iPhone so they are truly cross-platform.Water resistance: earbuds IP55 (sweat resistant); case IPX4Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.3, SBC, AAC, LC3, LHDCBattery life: with ANC 6h earbud, 25h with case (9/39h ANC off)Earbud dimensions: 24.3 x 20.9 x 32.2mmEarbud weight: 4.9g eachDriver size: 11 and 6mmCharging case dimensions: 61 x 50 x 25.4mmCharging case weight: 47.3gCase charging: USB-C, Qi wireless charging Continue reading...

Yoel Roth testifies before congressional committee that Elon Musk’s release of company’s internal records led to harassmentA former Twitter executive testified on Wednesday that he was forced to leave and sell his home following a campaign of “homophobic and antisemitic” harassment over the company’s handling of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.Yoel Roth, the former head of safety at Twitter, made the comments while speaking to a committee in the newly Republican-controlled House of Representatives, at a hearing convened to scrutinize the social network’s handling of a 2020 report on Joe Biden’s son. Continue reading...

CMA says Xbox maker’s takeover of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft owner could lead to higher pricesThe UK’s competition regulator has ruled that Microsoft’s $68.7bn (£59.6bn) deal to buy Activision Blizzard, the video game publisher behind hits including Call of Duty, will result in higher prices and less competition for UK gamers.The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which launched an in-depth investigation in September after raising a host of concerns about the biggest takeover in tech history, said the deal would weaken the global rivalry between Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation consoles. Continue reading...

Some readers say software helps them write essays and emails, while others question its reliabilityChatGPT has been a godsend for Joy. The New Zealand-based therapist has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and often struggles with tasks such as drafting difficult emails, with procrastination kicking in when she feels overwhelmed.“Sitting down to compose a complicated email is something I absolutely hate. I would have to use a lot of strategies and accountability to get it done, and I would feel depleted afterward,” says Joy, who is in her 30s and lives in Auckland. “But telling GPT ‘write an email apologising for a delay on an academic manuscript, blame family emergency, ask for consideration for next issue’ feels completely doable.” Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: The big-budget Harry Potter spinoff should be an instant play for fans of the series, but for some author JK Rowling’s statements on sex and gender have made that decision complicated

Economists wary of firm predictions but say advances could create new raft of billionaires while other workers are laid offChatGPT is just the latest technology to fuel worries that it will wipe out the jobs of millions of workers, whether advertising copywriters, Wall Street traders, salespeople, writers of basic computer code or journalists.But while many workforce experts say the fears that ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will cause unemployment to skyrocket are overblown, they point to another fear about AI: that it will widen the US’s already huge income and wealth inequality by creating a new wave of billionaire tech barons at the same time that it pushes many workers out of better paid jobs. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: The social media network is putting its APIs – the under-praised tool that keeps the internet as we know it going – behind a paywall. And the ramifications are huge

US and European fears about China exploiting TikTok’s data harvest and promoting Beijing’s worldview look set to inspire an urgent overhaul in data privacy lawsThe FBI has called it a national security threat. The US government has passed a law forcing officials to delete it from their phones. Texas senator Ted Cruz has denounced it as “a Trojan horse the Chinese Communist party can use to influence what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think”. And in March its CEO will defend its existence before the US Congress. For those unaware of the debate broiling on the other side of the Atlantic, the target of this strong rhetoric might prove surprising: an app best known for viral dances, launching generation Z media stars, and sucking teens down an hours-long content abyss.But the rancorous debate over TikTok that began under the Trump administration has rolled on under President Biden. In addition to a ban of the app on all federal government devices, at least 27 states have blocked TikTok on devices they’ve issued, affecting a number of state schools and universities, too. A bipartisan bill, introduced in Congress last December, stipulates banning the app’s use by everyone in the United States. Continue reading...

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