Technology | The Guardian

The assistant US attorney also questioned Holmes on the nature of her romantic relationship to business partner Sunny BalwaniTheranos founder Elizabeth Holmes wept in court on Tuesday as a federal prosecutor grilled her over the nature of her relationship with Sunny Balwani, her former business and romantic partner, and her knowledge of problems at the company.Holmes, who faces 11 counts of fraud and up to 20 years in prison over charges that she lied about the company’s core blood-testing technology, had previously testified that she was emotionally and physically abused by Balwani. In Monday’s testimony, she said Balwani closely controlled how she ran the business, who she spent time with, and even what she ate. Balwani, who faces his own fraud trial in 2022, has strongly denied these accusations. Continue reading...

Move by Competition and Markets Authority is a welcome step against the power of big techBig tech has two faces. One face presents a new form of company: inclusive, socially liberal, very much with the zeitgeist, supporting the Democrats rather than the Republicans, and different from anything that has gone before.Strip away the makeup and a different face appears: the face of a monopoly seeking to protect itself from rivals. Over the years, the giants of Silicon Valley have used their financial clout to buy up smaller companies that might pose a threat to their market power. Continue reading...

Tech company fired three workers who raised concerns about potential sale of cloud technology to US immigration authoritiesA group of former Google employees have sued the company, alleging that it breached their employment contracts by not honoring its famous motto “don’t be evil”.In the lawsuit filed in California state court, former Google employees Rebecca Rivers, Sophie Waldman and Paul Duke alleged that they were fired two years ago for fulfilling their contractual obligation to speak up if they saw Google violating its “don’t be evil” pledge. Continue reading...

Holmes said in her fourth day of testimony that Sunny Balwani berated and controlled her to make her more disciplined and focusedElizabeth Holmes has testified that she was emotionally and physically abused by her former lover and business partner, Sunny Balwani, part of her attempt to refute accusations that she lied about Theranos’ core blood-testing technology.Monday marked Holmes’ fourth day on the stand as the continued to testify in her own defense in a fraud case that has gripped Silicon Valley. Continue reading...

The relatively unknown chief technology officer faces a political minefield in one of Silicon Valley’s top jobsJack Dorsey has stepped down as CEO of Twitter and passed the baton to the relatively unknown executive Parag Agrawal.Agrawal, who has been with the company for 10 years – most recently as chief technology officer – has emerged from behind the scenes to take over one of Silicon Valley’s highest-profile and politically volatile jobs. But who is he, and what can we expect for Twitter under his leadership? Continue reading...

New boss Richard Moore to say adversaries are ‘pouring money’ into technology and the agency needs outside funding to keep upMI6 will have to become “more open to stay secret” and work with tech companies to counter threats posed by China and Russia who seek to gain advantage by mastering artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.In his first speech as the foreign spy agency’s head on Tuesday, Richard Moore is expected to admit that “unlike Q in the Bond movies”, MI6 cannot develop the tools it needs in-house to counter hybrid physical and virtual threats. Continue reading...

The 45-year-old who dreamed of being a dressmaker steps down as social media industry becomes ever more competitive

Sunderland plant to play key role as carmaker says it will introduce 23 ‘electrified’ models by 2030Nissan is to invest almost 2tn yen (£13.2bn) into vehicle electrification over the next five years, including a key role for its plant in Sunderland, in its battle with rival traditional carmakers and specialists such as Tesla.The Japanese car manufacturer, which launched one of the world’s first mass market electric vehicles (EVs) with its Leaf model a decade ago, said it would introduce 23 “electrified” vehicle models by 2030, with 15 of them fully electric. The remainder would be hybrids. Continue reading...

Could AI turn on us, or is natural stupidity a greater threat to humanity?Ever since Garry Kasparov lost his second chess match against IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997, the writing has been on the wall for humanity. Or so some like to think. Advances in artificial intelligence will lead – by some estimates, in only a few decades – to the development of superintelligent, sentient machines. Movies from The Terminator to The Matrix have portrayed this prospect as rather undesirable. But is this anything more than yet another sci-fi “Project Fear”?Some confusion is caused by two very different uses of the phrase artificial intelligence. The first sense is, essentially, a marketing one: anything computer software does that seems clever or usefully responsive – like Siri – is said to use “AI”. The second sense, from which the first borrows its glamour, points to a future that does not yet exist, of machines with superhuman intellects. That is sometimes called AGI, for artificial general intelligence. Continue reading...

New M1 Pro and Max chips, larger screen, long battery life and more ports make for huge upgradeApple’s MacBook Pro has been given its biggest upgrade in power, ports and screen quality since 2016, ticking almost every box on the wishlist of eager Mac users.But the new 14in and 16in models are no longer machines for the average consumer. Costing from £1,899 ($1,999 or A$2,999) they are workstation laptops for creative pros and developers and priced accordingly. They leave the excellent £999 M1 MacBook Air as Apple’s foremost consumer laptop. Continue reading...

From smartphones to folding skis, the year’s top gizmos selected by tech experts from the Guardian, iNews, TechRadar and WiredCutting-edge tech is often super-expensive, difficult to use and less than slick. Not so for Samsung’s latest folding screen phones. The Z Fold 3 tablet-phone hybrid and Z Flip 3 flip-phone reinventions are smooth, slick and even water-resistant, packing big screens in compact bodies. The Fold might be super-expensive still, but the Flip 3 costs about the same as a regular top smartphone, but is far, far more interesting. Samuel Gibbs Continue reading...

The infamous hacking tool is now at the centre of international lawsuits thanks to a courageous research labIf you were compiling a list of the most toxic tech companies, Facebook – strangely – would not come out on top. First place belongs to NSO, an outfit of which most people have probably never heard. Wikipedia tells us that “NSO Group is an Israeli technology firm primarily known for its proprietary spyware Pegasus, which is capable of remote zero-click surveillance of smartphones”.Pause for a moment on that phrase: “remote zero-click surveillance of smartphones”. Most smartphone users assume that the ability of a hacker to penetrate their device relies upon the user doing something careless or naive – clicking on a weblink, or opening an attachment. And in most cases they would be right in that assumption. But Pegasus can get in without the user doing anything untoward. And once in, it turns everything on the device into an open book for whoever deployed the malware. Continue reading...

The company has set an example in the fight against carbon – but it retains ties to obstructionist groupsWhen the UN’s landmark climate report was released in 2018, calling for urgent and unprecedented changes, Microsoft executives were told to “commit it to memory”, said Elizabeth Willmott, who leads the company’s carbon program. “And so we did.”The report warned the world must reach net-zero emissions by 2050 in order to avert catastrophic climate change. To achieve this, not only must the emissions released by countries and companies be dramatically curtailed, but billions of tons of carbon dioxide must be sucked out of the atmosphere. Continue reading...

Apple is offering repair kits from next year so the Guardian spent a day in a specialist shop to see how it’s doneWhen fixing an iPhone screen, you have to be careful with the heat gun – the clue is in the name.If you overheat the handset you can damage the insides even before you can lever off a cracked screen, let alone replace it with another. And then you have to remember which screw is which. Continue reading...

There’s a wide choice of options, from credit cards to buy now, pay later services such as KlarnaBuying festive gifts used to be so simple but the march of technology, Covid and other factors have shaken things up and led to a dizzying array of payment options.Buy something on the fashion website Boohoo, for example, and you can choose from seven ways to check out: credit and debit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay and four different “buy now, pay later” companies. Continue reading...

Investors have salivated over the Illinois automaker – but juggernauts like Ford and GM still have plenty of advantagesNormal, Illinois, a town of just 55,000 people, could be the future of car manufacturing, according to Wall Street traders, at least. Six hours’ drive away in Detroit, home of the US auto industry for more than 100 years, they are not so sure.The town gained international attention earlier this month after the Amazon-backed Rivian, an electric vehicle startup, went public in one of the biggest stock market debuts since Facebook. Despite the fact that the company has delivered only about 150 trucks, Rivian is now valued at about $100bn, more than either Ford or General Motors, which produced about 10m vehicles between them in 2020. Continue reading...

Losing 10m followers on sites such as Instagram is a price worth paying for co-founder of ethical beauty empireQuitting social media is hard to do, even when it doesn’t cost you anything. So when Lush’s chief executive, Mark Constantine, shut its thousands of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok accounts on Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, he knew dropping off millions of customers’ screens would damage his business.Its Facebook and Instagram accounts alone had 10.6 million followers and the void will result in an estimated £10m hit to sales but Constantine, one of the business’s co-founders, said it had “no choice” after whistleblowers called attention to the negative impact social media sites such as Instagram are having on teenagers’ mental health. Continue reading...

Israeli spyware firm’s problems go from bad to worse as scathing Apple lawsuit follows US blacklistingShalev Hulio, the co-founder of Israel’s NSO Group, was in Washington DC on a mission to try to resuscitate the surveillance company’s battered reputation on Capitol Hill shortly before the news broke that he had probably arrived too late to make a difference.With little advance warning to its allies in Israel, the Biden administration announced on 3 November that it was putting the spyware maker – one of the most sophisticated cyber-weapons companies in the world – on a US blacklist, citing use of the company’s software by regimes around the world for “transnational repression”. Continue reading...

Activists target distribution network to highlight company’s treatment of workers and environmental impactClimate activists have blockaded Amazon distribution centres across the UK to highlight the company’s treatment of its workforce and what they say are its “environmentally destructive and wasteful business practices”.Scores of Extinction Rebellion (XR) activists locked themselves together and used bamboo structures in an attempt to disrupt the online retail company’s distribution network on Black Friday – one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Continue reading...

‘Threat horizon’ report by tech firm’s cybersecurity action team details hacking threats to cloud serviceCyberhackers are using compromised cloud accounts to mine cryptocurrency, Google has warned.Details of the mining hack are contained in a report by Google’s cybersecurity action team, which spots hacking threats against its cloud service – a remote storage system where Google stores customers’ data and files off-site – and gives advice on how to tackle them. Continue reading...

At least 17 people including protest leaders have received alerts about devices possibly being compromisedThai activists who have called for reform of the monarchy are among at least 17 people in Thailand who say they have been warned by Apple that they have been targeted by “state-sponsored” attackers.Warnings were sent to the prominent activists Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul and Arnon Nampa, according to Panusaya’s sister May and the administrator of Arnon’s Facebook page. Panusaya and Arnon are in pre-trial detention after leading demonstrations calling for the power of the monarchy to be curbed. Continue reading...

PC, Xbox One/Series X/S, PlayStation 4/5; Dice/EA

Electricals retailer has problems with supplies of items such as iPhones, PlayStations and XboxesAO World has warned of shortages of electrical products and delivery drivers before Christmas, as coronavirus disruption pushed one of the pandemic winners into a £10m loss between April and September.Issuing its second profit warning in two months, the online retailer said shortages had been particularly acute in electronics such as Apple’s iPhone and games consoles including Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox. Continue reading...

Promise of Sky without satellite dish held back by bugs, clunky catchup apps and content restrictionsGlass is Sky’s new voice-controlled streaming television – an ambitious attempt to ditch the satellite dish and provide pay TV straight to the screen, with no set top box required.The television comes in three sizes starting at £649 for a 43in screen, or £13 a month over four years, which works out at £25 cheaper too. Sky’s service costs from £25 a month on top. Continue reading...

Move comes as child safety campaigners express concern plans could shield abusers from detectionThe owner of Facebook and Instagram is delaying plans to encrypt users’ messages until 2023 amid warnings from child safety campaigners that its proposals would shield abusers from detection.Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire has been under pressure to abandon its encryption plans, which the UK home secretary, Priti Patel, has described as “simply not acceptable”. Continue reading...

Now that Alexa, Siri and Google have moved in, it’s only a matter of time before some of us are left out in the cold, says Emma BeddingtonI came into the kitchen recently to find my husband cradling our electricity smart meter with the kind of tender attention more usually directed to a new-born, his phone clutched in his free hand. “You didn’t turn your office heater off last night,” he said. I didn’t like his tone.“I did! I went in this morning to turn it on again!” Continue reading...

The former Theranos CEO took the stand on Friday, marking a pivotal moment in the fraud caseGovernment prosecutors in the trial of Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes ended their case on Friday, capping off 11 weeks of testimony from witnesses detailing allegations of fraud against the founder.The Theranos saga has been widely covered since cracks began to emerge in the glossy image of the blood testing startup in 2015. But the first phase of the trial revealed more startling new details. Continue reading...

The former CEO testified about the early days of setting up her company in surprise decision by her defense teamIn a surprise move, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her own defense on Friday during a fraud trial that has held Silicon Valley in its grip.The former CEO of the blood-testing company is charged with deceiving investors and customers about a supposedly revolutionary device that could perform hundreds of tests using just a drop of blood. She faces 11 counts of fraud and up to 20 years in prison. Continue reading...

Owning a classic car doesn’t make you a little Englander or a climate change denier, writes Ian AllenMartin Rowson’s insertion of a Morris Traveller into a fossil fuel nightmare scene sparked my interest (Political cartoon, 12 November). Nostalgia is a powerful thing, but it is clearly recognised that it is about the past. The ownership of a classic car of any sort is primarily about past memories, family, holidays and a love of simpler technologies.It is not emblematic of a wish to reintroduce societal inequalities or to endorse a little Englander mentality. Most owners would recognise that the use of a Minor on a high mileage basis is definitely over, and some have already adopted plug-in electric as everyday transport. I am certain that most would support an economy that had repair and viable reuse at the core. Give us a break, Martin!

Social media platform has been accused of not doing enough to curb inflammatory postsFacebook is testing a feature allowing users to control how much content they view from friends, groups and public figures, amid accusations that the social media platform is not doing enough to curb inflammatory posts.Users will be able to reduce or increase the amount of content that they see from specific categories on their news feed, a customised scroll of content from friends, pages and groups that is a central plank of users’ experience of the platform. Continue reading...

Aminatou Sow and guests look back at the connections forged by the Princess of Wales. Plus: powerful reporting on Asian American experiences in Self Evident, and Jon Ronson returnsWhen Diana Met …

Advertising Standards Authority receives complaints about ads for meme coin named after Elon Musk’s dogThe UK advertising watchdog has launched an investigation into a London bus and underground ad campaign for Floki Inu, a “meme coin” cryptocurrency named after a dog owned by Elon Musk, as pressure rises to ban the marketing of crypto products on public transport networks.The Advertising Standards Authority launched the investigation after receiving complaints about Floki’s latest campaign. Continue reading...

Video game company faces shareholder rebellion after workers protest against the response to sexual misconduct allegationsThe embattled boss of the video game company Activision Blizzard is facing a shareholder rebellion one day after employees staged a walkout to protest about the company’s response to sexual misconduct allegations at the firm.“In contrast to past company statements, CEO Bobby Kotick was aware of many incidents of sexual harassment, sexual assault and gender discrimination at Activision Blizzard, but failed either to ensure that the executives and managers responsible were terminated or to recognize and address the systematic nature of the company’s hostile workplace culture,” a group of shareholders, led by the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC) Investment Group and holding a total of 4.8m shares, wrote in a letter shared on Wednesday with the Washington Post. Continue reading...

Investment bank says it lost millions because of tweets by Elon Musk that he might take electric carmaker privateJPMorgan has sued Tesla for $162.2m, accusing Elon Musk’s electric car company of “flagrantly” breaching a 2014 contract relating to stock trading options that Tesla sold to the bank.The options, or warrants, give the holder the right to buy a company’s stock at a set “strike” price and date. The suit, filed in a Manhattan federal court, centres on a dispute over how JPMorgan repriced its Tesla warrants as a result of Musk’s notorious 2018 tweet that he was considering taking the carmaker private. Continue reading...

Ohio attorney general says Facebook ‘was creating misery and divisiveness for profit’Filing suit in response to whistleblower allegations which have rocked Facebook, the attorney general of Ohio, Dave Yost, accused the social media company of “creating misery and divisiveness for profit”.Yost sued Meta – as Facebook was recently renamed – after revelations from the whistleblower Frances Haugen shocked consumers and sent stock prices tumbling. Continue reading...

Canada-based researchers say new evidence suggests Candiru’s software used to target critics of autocratic regimesResearchers have found new evidence that suggests spyware made by an Israeli company that was recently blacklisted in the US has been used to target critics of Saudi Arabia and other autocratic regimes, including some readers of a London-based news website.A report by Montreal-based researchers from Slovakian company Eset, an internet security firm, found links between attacks against high-profile websites in the Middle East and UK, and the Israeli company Candiru, which has been called Israel’s “most mysterious cyberwarfare company”. Continue reading...

PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series X/S; Frontier Developments

Cindy Warner saw a promising career at the cloud computing company. What she found, she says, was ‘toxic’When Cindy Warner joined Amazon Web Services in February 2020, she saw it as an opportunity to increase diversity and reshape the company’s strategy. She recalls how AWS “aggressively” recruited her, offering a quick path to higher-level roles and better pay.But just over a year after she joined, the promising job had become a nightmare. Continue reading...

Parent company Meta denies data being used to target young users with ads based on their browsing activityFacebook and Instagram are gathering data from under-18s by using software that tracks users’ web browsing activity, according to research.The platforms’ parent company had announced in July that it would allow advertisers to target young users based on three categories only – age, gender and location – rather than a range of options including their personal interests. Continue reading...

Two decades on, developers for its original launch talk about creating games for Microsoft’s debut consoleTwenty years since the launch of the original Xbox, its manufacturer Microsoft remains the new kid on the block: no new competitor has entered the home games console field since. Before 2001, Sega and Nintendo were the main competitors to Sony’s ascendant PlayStation. Microsoft shoved both aside to eventually become Sony’s direct rival, and the battle for the space beneath your TV continues to this day.What separated the Xbox from other consoles of the time was not the power of its hardware or the appeal of its infamously chunky, almost brutalist design. It was the relationship between it, and the developers who made its games. The Xbox was easier to make games for than Sony’s or Nintendo’s consoles, and Microsoft went to previously unheard-of lengths to ensure that the Xbox’s launch titles were as strong as they could be. Continue reading...

Doctors have been surprised to see young adults developing tics and seizures that usually start in childhood. Social media has been blamed, but the reality is more complicatedMichelle Wacek was a TikTok fan years ago, back when the video-sharing app was called Musical.ly. “I went on it for a laugh,” she says. “And then I got sucked into the vortex.” She took part in lip-syncing challenges, and followed the influencer Evie Meg, who raises awareness about Tourette syndrome among her 14 million followers.In April 2020, Wacek was messing around in the kitchen when her husband accidentally clipped her in the face. The then 25-year-old chef had a panic attack. “It triggered a PTSD response from a previous abusive relationship I was in,” she says. Continue reading...

In a landmark US judgment, California official says the company failed to ‘adequately notify’ employees and local health agenciesAmazon has agreed to pay a $500,000 fine and be monitored by California officials after the state’s attorney general said the company failed to “adequately notify” workers and health authorities about new Covid-19 cases.Amazon employs about 150,000 people in California, most of them at 100 “fulfillment centers” – sprawling warehouses where orders are packed and shipped. The agreement, which must be approved by a judge, requires the Seattle-based retailer to notify its workers within a day of new coronavirus cases in their workplaces. Continue reading...

Disney+ has added enhanced Imax versions of a selection of Marvel adventures but does it make a shred of difference?It was not so long ago, children, that a person desiring to watch a movie at their leisure had no choice but to purchase a round, shiny object called a Digital Video Disc. The early days of DVD continued and widened a debate begun during the VHS era, in that many titles were released in both “widescreen” and “fullscreen” formats from which a discerning customer could make their own choice. The widescreen presentation would fit the theatrical projection to the average consumer TV, “letterboxing” the frame with black bars called mattes above and below to squeeze a long rectangle into a shorter one. As promised by the name, fullscreen versions instead filled the entirety of the TV by cutting off space on the left and right of a shot. This was the demonstrably inferior option – you’re missing parts of the movie, sometimes elements integral to the text – but customers kept buying. For them, the feeling of seeing more overruled the fact that they were in actuality seeing less.Fast-forward to today, and the cinematic medium now faces an odd inverse of this schism in visuals. The notion that every inch of our massive televisions should be put to active use has compelled Disney to re-release 13 of their Marvel Studios films in “Imax Expanded Aspect Ratio”, ostensibly bringing the immensity of the multiplex into the living room. In practice, this special feature of the Disney Plus streaming app unmasks the image, restoring space on the top and bottom that had previously been cropped out for ordinary theaters. The taller Imax screens allow for a width-to-height ratio of 1.90:1, as opposed to your given movie house’s anamorphic standard of 2.35:1, without the sacrifices in visibility of a fullscreen DVD. Disney wants to extend this experience to the home, where the usual high-def TV has a ratio of 16:9 (or more relevantly for comparison here, 1.77:1). As the press release on Marvel’s own web site puts it, this on-demand Imax “offers up to 26% more picture for select sequences – meaning more of the action is visible on screen, just as the film-makers intended”. Continue reading...

We are told these members-only groups are the beginnings of Web 3.0. Are they all they are hyped up to be?I have seen the light, and I was not convinced. This month, I was invited to a party hosted by Friends With Benefits, an exclusive club of artists and investors who have access to a private chatroom on Discord and parties in cities like Miami and New York. The image has a subversive sheen: techno DJs and venture capitalists in ripped designer jeans throwing secret raves. The club’s “manifesto” describes a “bright future” for the “ultimate cultural membership” where “prosperity is abundant” and “data and payments are fluid”, just like gender.Friends With Benefits was founded in 2020 by Trever McFedries who, after bringing the VR popstar Lil Miquela into the world, had higher ambitions than animating a robot to make out with Bella Hadid in an underwear commercial. “Capital as a weapon is intriguing to me,” said McFedries in a YouTube speech. Having seen Occupy “fail miserably” while GameStop “toppled a hedge fund in four days”, he set his sights on creating a DAO. Continue reading...

In the future, will we find a better way to live, or will our homes be taken over by surveillance and despotic appliances?Imagine, if you can, a small, bluish room. Wires, screens, sensors. A few keepsakes from the old world. The room’s fleshy inhabitant, confined indoors by a zoonotic pandemic, greenwashes a data-mining company from her bed. The government has made it illegal for her to step outside.There is a communal kitchen down the corridor, which she shares with a few strangers she met online, but mostly she orders her meals via an interface and eats them here. Microphones record her interactions. A motion sensor on her wrist reminds her to optimise her performance. Filled with saudade for the dying world outside, she has bought a few rainforest plants to brighten the space. Her pocket surveillance device reminds her to water them. She catches the news: the world’s richest man has just left the Earth’s atmosphere. Continue reading...

The UK automotive industry will need a large local supply of battery capacity. If it does not get it, it could shrink quicklyThe end of the internal combustion engine was one of the goals identified by Boris Johnson before Cop26.The climate summit in Glasgow has delivered in part – some manufacturers and a few big countries said last week they would end sales of fossil fuel cars by 2040. Neither Volkswagen nor Toyota, the world’s two biggest carmakers, signed up, because of concerns over electric charger availability in poorer countries, but nevertheless the path is clear. Petrol and diesel are on their way out. Battery electric cars are on the way in. Continue reading...

Companies offering remote monitoring software are booming. But spying on your employees is no way to treat peopleA year ago, while still in the grips of the pandemic, workers at many businesses – small and large – were continuing to work from home mostly due to either government or corporate mandates. Now, as the pandemic (hopefully) recedes, many workers are coming back to work but my smartest clients have learned that, to attract and retain the best people, a work-from-home option needs to be on the table.During the pandemic we were scrambling just to keep things going. But now we’re implementing policies that many feel should have supervisory controls. And many business owners, large and small, are asking themselves a question: is it time to monitor what our people are actually doing when they’re not working in the office? Continue reading...

How do musician Jessie Ware and her mother Lennie get everyone from popstars to politicians to tell all on their podcast? They cook them lunchIf the British media are still looking for the new Jeremy Paxman, she’s been hiding in plain sight under our noses for four years now: a Jewish grandma with sciatica who won’t retire from her social work job, who won’t let hairdressers touch her hair “because they don’t make it big enough”, and who every single week has a celebrity round to her house, gets them drunk and then they tell all about their life, and she records it for the world to hear. Yes, it’s Lennie Ware, the 70-year-old star of Table Manners, the food podcast she co-hosts with her daughter, Jessie Ware. Although she hates saying her age out loud, “because it’s so horrendous. I was never going to have a 70th birthday party. I wanted to have a soixante-neuf party, which sounded much more exciting. But now I’m soixante-dix.”I’m talking to them both over Zoom, but I have also spent time with them in person, and they’re exactly as they seem on the much-loved show. Bickering, shrewd, droll, over-involved in each other’s lives, barging in and out, utterly alive. Jessie’s third child, born this year, is asleep in a sling around her neck while we talk, and another, a couple of years older, is pottering around. The firstborn is at school. Continue reading...

Experts from Internet Watch Foundation demand UK uses online safety bill to protect childrenExperts are finding fifteen times as much child sexual abuse material online as they were a decade ago, figures show.The online safety organisation the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), said its analysts were facing a “tidal wave” of abuse material. It called on the government to ensure the online safety bill, intended to improve internet safety, was used to protect children.