Campaigners say watchdog must ensure Online Safety Act is rigorous enough, after allegations about gaming platformChild safety campaigners have urged the UK communications watchdog to make a step-change" in its implementation of new online laws after a video game firm was accused of making its platform an X-rated paedophile hellscape".Roblox, a gaming platform with 80 million daily users, was accused of lax safety controls last week by a US investment firm. Continue reading...
80% of elderly people have landlines, compared with just 50% of 18- to 29-year-olds. Will the joy of a great conversation lead to a revival?Name: Landlines.Age: 148 years old. Continue reading...
The UK sleep-tracker industry is estimated to be worth 270m a year - and forecast to double by 2030. Could all this data be making our insomnia worse?The other day, I was plodding away on the treadmill at the gym when I overheard two blokes chatting.I had a great night last night," said one. Continue reading...
Before it was shut down this year, the illicit and unmoderated chat site Coco had been implicated in killings, child sexual abuse and homophobic attacksThe trial of a 71-year-old man has gripped France and horrified the world after he admitted to repeatedly drugging his wife and, over the course of decades, soliciting dozens of men online to rape her while she was unconscious. Dominique Pelicot's confessions as well as the public bravery of his wife Gisele have forced a nationwide reckoning over sexual assault and the double lives people lead through the internet.As a court in Avignon has heard Pelicot's case and allegations against 50 other defendants over the last several weeks, a pattern has emerged of men who lived publicly upstanding lives while allegedly engaging in abhorrent acts online and in private. As the men accused of mass rape have taken the stand, they have detailed how Pelicot found them and coordinated his abuse on an illicit chat forum called Coco. Continue reading...
Recognition for Demis Hassabis and Geoffrey Hinton marks moment when important ingredients came togetherIt was more than even the most ardent advocates expected. After all the demonstrations of superhuman prowess, and the debates over whether the technology was humanity's best invention yet or its surest route to self-destruction, artificial intelligence landed a Nobel prize this week. And then it landed another.First came the physics prize. The American John Hopfield and the British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton won for foundational work on artificial neural networks, the computational architecture that underpins modern AI such as ChatGPT. Then came the chemistry prize, with half handed to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper at Google DeepMind. Their AlphaFold program solved a decades-long scientific challenge by predicting the structure of all life's proteins. Continue reading...
Billionaire says autonomous car expected before 2027' will have a pricetag of less than US$30,000, with a Robovan' that can carry 20 people to followTesla CEO Elon Musk has unveiled the company's robotaxi, Cybercab, promising it will cost less than US$30,000, and announced plans to bring autonomous driving to its Model 3 and Model Y cars in California and Texas by next year.At the much-anticipated We, Robot event hosted at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, the billionaire arrived in the Cybercab in his trademark black leather jacket, accompanied by a man dressed in a space suit. Human-like robots mingled in the crowd, danced and served drinks to those gathered for the party. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6RA3H)
Bigger screen, new camera control button, 5x optical zoom and faster chips squeeze flagship features into smaller frameApple has upgraded the iPhone 16 Pro by adding the 5x zoom camera from the big Pro Max line, making size its main differentiator and turning the smaller pro" into an instant candidate for the best small smartphone going.The 16 Pro costs the same - 999 (1,199/$999/A$1,799) - as last year's model, and sits between the 1,199 16 Pro Max and the vanilla iPhone 16, which starts at 799. That also puts it in direct competition with Google's 999 Pixel 9 Pro, which has the same-size screen.Screen: 6.3in Super Retina XDR (120Hz OLED) (460ppi)Processor: Apple A18 ProRAM: 8GBStorage: 128, 256, 512GB or 1TBOperating system: iOS 17Camera: 48MP main, 48MP UW and 12MP 5x zoom, 12MP front-facing cameraConnectivity: 5G, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3, Thread, USB-C, Satellite, UWB and GNSSWater resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)Dimensions: 149.6 x 71.5 x 8.25mmWeight: 199g Continue reading...
Facebook owner claims Movie Gen can create realistic-seeming video and audio clips that rival competitors'Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, announced on Friday it had built a new artificial intelligence model called Movie Gen that can create realistic-seeming video and audio clips in response to user prompts, claiming it can rival tools from leading media generation startups like OpenAI and ElevenLabs.Samples of Movie Gen's creations provided by Meta showed videos of animals swimming and surfing, as well as clips using people's real photos to depict them performing actions like painting on a canvas. Continue reading...
App that doesn't require users' emails or phone numbers secured over $1m in funding with help from Jack DorseySome far-right extremists have fled Telegram for a new haven: SimpleX, a messaging service that just secured over $1m in funding with the help of Jack Dorsey, once the CEO of Twitter, now known as X.The migration from Telegram began after the app's founder and chief executive, Pavel Durov, announced a crackdown on illegal content and cooperation with law enforcement requests. Just weeks ago, Durov was arrested in France on a litany of charges that allege Telegram helped spread child sexual abuse material and fuelled criminal activities among its users. Continue reading...
Museum features consoles from 1983's Famicom to 2017's Switch, as well as honouring Nintendo's pre-video-game eraTraditionally, visitors to Kyoto in October come for momijigari, the turning of the autumn leaves in the city's picturesque parks. This autumn, however, there is a new draw: a Nintendo museum.The new attraction, which opens on Wednesday, is best described as a chapel of video game nostalgia. Upstairs, Nintendo's many video game consoles, from 1983's Famicom through 1996's Nintendo 64 to 2017's Switch, are displayed reverently alongside their most famous games. On the back wall, visitors can also peer at toys, playing cards and other artefacts from the Japanese company's pre-video-game history, stretching back to its founding as a hanafuda playing card manufacturer in 1889. Downstairs, there are interactive exhibits with comically gigantic controllers and floor-projected playing cards. Continue reading...
Our photo dumps used to be an aesthetic disruption. Now we're just bending to the app's willLast year, I took 658 photos during my four-day trip to Venice. Fifteen years ago, I would have posted every single one of them to Facebook. And as I waited the three hours for them to upload, I would have opened another tab to look through all 500 photos in my second cousin's friend's FLORIDA 09 Facebook album, which would have included 48 shots of the same sunset and 16 of a chip flavor she didn't have back at home.Nowadays, with Instagram as our primary photo-sharing method, that packet of chips would end up on slide seven of what my second cousin's friend would call a dump: a retrospective of her summer compacted into a carousel of artfully artless images. Continue reading...
The Russian photographer sees this as a portrait of a family where everyone makes room for one anotherThe two main characters in this image, the Russian photographer Olga Ivanova says, are her mother, Zinaida, andIvanova's seven-year-old daughter, Maria. Ivanova and her daughter were visiting Zinaida at her house inNizhny Novgorod, Russia, for her 62nd birthday when this photo was taken. Having trained in rhythmic gymnastics since she was three, Maria was performing aroutine for her grandmother, who wastaking pictures onher phone and reading celebratory text messages from friends.My mother has always had a desire for self-improvement and never sat idle; she ran her own business foryears, and even now in retirement she loves Nordic walking and travel, especially to learn about new cultures and customs. My daughter is equally energetic. She spends a lot of time training, rejoicing at every success, and is happy to show off her skills." The trio were joined by Ivanova's son, Roman, who can beseen watching in thewindow. Continue reading...
Nordic country, paradoxically a major oil producer, has set target for all new cars sold to be zero emissionElectric cars now outnumber petrol cars in Norway for the first time, an industry organisation has said, a world first that puts the country on track towards taking fossil fuel vehicles off the road.Of the 2.8m private cars registered in the Nordic country, 754,303 are all-electric, against 753,905 that run on petrol, the Norwegian road federation (OFV) said in a statement. Continue reading...
by Raphael Rashid in Seoul and Justin McCurry in Toky on (#6QQCB)
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.
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...
by Richard Luscombe and Edward Helmore on (#6PXFY)
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...
by Eleni Courea Political correspondent on (#6PTQB)
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...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6PQXH)
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...
Technology | The Guardian