Initiative aims to identify proficient gamers and coders who can help companies identify flaws in their cybersecurityCybercriminals, the shadowy online figures often depicted in Hollywood movies as hooded villains capable of wiping millions of pounds off the value of businesses at a keystroke, are not usually known for their candour.But in a sixth-form college in Manchester this week, two former hackers gave the young people gathered an honest appraisal of what living a life of internet crime really looks like. Continue reading...
New Anthropic campaign suggests other AI platforms will incorporate targeted ads in their chatbot conversationsThe Seahawks and the Patriots aren't the only ones gearing up for a fight.AI rivals Anthropic and OpenAI have launched a war of ads trying to court corporate America during one of the biggest entertainment nights of the year. Continue reading...
SpaceX's acquisition of xAI creates business worth $1.25tn but whether premise behind deal will work is questionedThe acquisition of xAI by SpaceX is a typical Elon Musk deal: big numbers backed by big ambition.As well as extending the light of consciousness to the stars", as Musk described it, the transaction creates a business worth $1.25tn (920bn) by combining Musk's rocket company with his artificial intelligence startup. It values SpaceX at $1tn and xAI at $250bn, with a stock market flotation expected in June to time with Musk's birthday and a planetary alignment. Continue reading...
Campaigners welcome criminalisation of non-consensual AI-generated explicit images but say law does not go far enoughVictims of deepfake image abuse have called for stronger protection against AI-generated explicit images, as the law criminalising the creation of non-consensual intimate images comes into effect.Campaigners from Stop Image-Based Abuse delivered a petition to Downing Street with more than 73,000 signatures, urging the government to introduce civil routes to justice such as takedown orders for abusive imagery on platforms and devices. Continue reading...
Nintendo's monster-collecting franchise was pilloried as a pestilential Ponzi scheme' in the 90s. But as its celebrates its 30th birthday, it now stands as a powerful example of video games' ability to connect peopleWhen I was 11, it was my dream to compete in the Pokemon World Championships, held in Sydney in 2000. I'd come across it in a magazine, and then earnestly set about training teams of creatures, transferring them between my Pokemon Red Game Boy cartridge and the 3D arenas of Pokemon Stadium on the Nintendo 64. I never made it as a player but I did finally achieve this dream on my 26th birthday, when I went to Washington DC to cover the world championships as a journalist. I was deeply moved. Presided over by a giant inflatable Pikachu hanging from the ceiling, the competitors and spectators were united in an unselfconscious love for these games, with their colourful menageries and heartfelt messaging about trust, friendship and hard work.It is emotional to see the winners lifttheir trophies after a tense final round of battles, as overwhelmed by their success as any sportsperson. But it's the pride that the smaller competitors' parents show in their mini champions that really gets to me. During the first wave of Pokemania in the late 90s, Pokemon was viewed with suspicion by most adults. Now that thefirst generation of Pokemaniacs have grownup, even becoming parentsourselves, we see it for what itis: an imaginative, challenging and really rather wholesome series of games thatrewards every hour that children devote to it. Continue reading...
We want to hear how the fall in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and ether are impacting peopleBitcoin sank to its lowest value in more than a year this week, faling to $63,000 on Thursday, about half its all-time peak of $126,000 in October 2025It's part of a wider shock to crypto prices. The second-largest cryptocurrency, ether, has faced losses of more than 30% this year alone. Continue reading...
by Michael Sainato in Stone Mountain, Georgia on (#73CHM)
At its new Stone Mountain, Georgia, facility, Roomba-like robots shuffle between stacks, another adds shipping labels while another arranges packages in palletsOne of the reasons Amazon is spending billions on robots? They don't need bathroom breaks. Arriving a few minutes early to the public tour of Amazon's hi-tech Stone Mountain, Georgia, warehouse, my request to visit the restroom was met with a resounding no from the security guard in the main lobby.Between the main doors and the entrance security gate, I paced and paced after being told I would have to wait for the tour guide to collect me and other guests for a tour of the 640,000-sq-ft, four-story warehouse. Continue reading...
AI content for scams can be targeted at individuals and produced by pretty much anybody', researchers sayDeepfake fraud has gone industrial", an analysis published by AI experts has said.Tools to create tailored, even personalised, scams - leveraging, for example, deepfake videos of Swedish journalists or the president of Cyprus - are no longer niche, but inexpensive and easy to deploy at scale, said the analysis from the AI Incident Database. Continue reading...
Verdict could influence more than 3,000 similar cases against ride-hailing companyA federal jury in Phoenix ordered Uber on Thursday to pay $8.5m after finding the company liable in a lawsuit brought by a woman who said she was sexually assaulted by a driver. The verdict could influence thousands of similar cases against the ride-hailing company.The case, brought by plaintiff Jaylynn Dean, was the first trial of more than 3,000 similar lawsuits against Uber that have been consolidated in US federal court. So-called bellwether trials are used to test legal theories and help gauge the value of claims for possible settlements. The jury found that the driver was an agent of Uber, holding the company responsible for his actions. They awarded Dean $8.5m in compensatory damages but declined to award punitive damages. Attorneys for Dean had sought more than $140m in damages. Continue reading...
Man misidentified by London supermarket using Facewatch system says: I shouldn't have to prove I am not a criminal'A man was ordered to leave a supermarket in London after staff misidentified him using controversial new facial recognition technology.Warren Rajah was told to abandon his shopping and leave the local store he has been using for a number of years after an Orwellian" error in a Sainsbury's in Elephant and Castle, London. Continue reading...
South Crofty site could get $225m funding as US seeks to secure supply of critical metalDonald Trump has aggressively pursued investment into hi-tech industries in recent months, but the US administration has now set its sights on a more traditional sector: tin mining in Cornwall.The South Crofty mine, near the village of Pool, could start up again after nearly three decades aided by a potential $225m (166m) investment from across the Atlantic, creating 300 jobs. Continue reading...
A leaked pitch to reshape Ethereum's leadership exposed deep divisions over politics, power and ether's static priceUS crypto developer Danny Ryan submitted a proposal in November 2024 to Vitalik Buterin, the founder and symbolic leader of Ethereum, a prominent blockchain powering the world's second-largest cryptocurrency. Ryan, who had worked for seven years at the Ethereum Foundation (EF), Ethereum's de facto governing body, suggested that Ethereum could be on the cusp of an era-defining shift.Since its founding in 2014, the foundation had prioritized technical upgrades and had avoided centralizing power while its user base was growing, but Ethereum had now grown up, and the cryptocurrency world around it had grown up, too. The EF could now exercise a stronger voice" without compromising its ethos of decentralization, Ryan said - and he was open to leading that charge if appointed as the foundation's new executive director. Continue reading...
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Women in rural communities describe trauma of moderating violent and pornographic content for global tech companiesOn the veranda of her family's home, with her laptop balanced on a mud slab built into the wall, Monsumi Murmu works from one of the few places where the mobile signal holds. The familiar sounds of domestic life come from inside the house: clinking utensils, footsteps, voices.On her screen a very different scene plays: a woman is pinned down by a group of men, the camera shakes, there is shouting and the sound of breathing. The video is so disturbing Murmu speeds it up, but her job requires her to watch to the end. Continue reading...
Apparent collapse of Nvidia-OpenAI tie-up raises questions about circular funding and who will bear the cost of AI's expansionDid the circular AI economy just wobble? Last week it was reported that a much-discussed $100bn deal - announced last September - between Nvidia and OpenAI might not be happening at all.This was a circular arrangement through which the chipmaker would supply the ChatGPT developer with huge sums of money that would largely go towards the purchase of its own chips. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#73BH0)
Compact and comfortable Pixel Buds have noise cancelling, decent battery life and good everyday soundGoogle's latest budget Pixel earbuds are smaller, lighter, more comfortable and have noise cancelling, plus a case that allows you to replace the battery at home.The Pixel Buds 2a uses the design of the excellent Pixel Buds Pro 2 with a few high-end features at a more palatable 109 (129/$129/A$239) price, undercutting rivals in the process.Water resistance: IP54 (splash resistant)Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.4 (SBC, AAC)Battery life: 7h with ANC (20h with case)Earbud dimensions: 23.1 x 16 x 17.8mmEarbud weight: 4.7g eachDriver size: 11mmCharging case dimensions: 50 x 57.2 x 24.5mmCharging case weight: 47.6gCase charging: USB-C Continue reading...
Alphabet reports $34.5bn profit and revenue soars 48% in recent quarter as it plans a sharp increase in AI spendingGoogle's parent company, Alphabet, beat Wall Street expectations on Wednesday, and is planning a sharp increase in capital spending in 2026 as it continues to invest deeply in AI infrastructure.Alphabet on Wednesday reported profit of $34.5bn in the recently ended quarter, as revenue from cloud computing soared 48%. Continue reading...
The most popular mom content tends to be rightwing tradwife propaganda or not political at all - pushing progressive creators out of the algorithmFor someone who doesn't have a marble island in their kitchen I spend a disproportionate amount of time staring at marble kitchen islands, slack-jawed, brain turned half off. That's because I consume a lot of videos from mommy bloggers, mom influencers and the like. In kitchen closing shift" videos, they wipe down their islands and reset by lighting luxury candles, the glow accentuating their respectable cosmetic procedures. Other times I watch them waltz through their morning routines: getting kids out the door, sweating it out in boutique fitness classes, showing off Amazon hauls, or explaining their children's matching holiday photoshoot outfits.For better or worse, this is how I have chosen to spend my one wild and precious life: consuming blissfully low-stakes motherhood content on my phone. It is domestically competent ASMR that also satiates my desire to peek into everyone's bathroom cabinets. I nod in unsolicited approval as a TikTok mom I follow shares her green juice order. Fascinating. I should drink something like that. Another posts timestamps of her baby's night-time sleep schedule. I, who lives between walls that have never heard the wail of an infant, ingurgitate the entire video. Continue reading...
Perfect Tides perfectly captures the older millennial college experience, and a time when nobody worried about being embarrassing online Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereI've noticed an interesting micro-trend emerging in the last few years: millennial nostalgia games. Not just ones that adopt the aesthetic of Y2K gaming - think Crow Country or Fear the Spotlight's deliberately retro PS1-style fuzzy polygons - but semi-autobiographical games specifically about the millennial experience. I've played three in the past year. Despelote is set in 2002 in Ecuador and is played through the eyes of a football-obsessed eight-year-old. The award-winning Consume Me is about being a teen girl battling disordered eating in the 00s. And this week I played a point-and-click adventure game about being a college student in the early 2000s.Perfect Tides: Station to Station is set in New York in 2003 - a year that is the epitome of nostalgia for the micro-generation that grew up without the internet but came of age online. It was before Facebook, before the smartphone, but firmly during the era of late-night forum browsing and instant-messenger conversations. The internet wasn't yet a vector for mass communication, but it could still bring you together with other people who loved the things that you loved, people who read the same hipster blogs and liked the same bands. The protagonist, Mara, is a student and young writer who works in her college library. Continue reading...
Digital pinboard business cutting 15% of workforce as it invests heavily in AIPinterest has fired two engineers who created a software tool to identify which workers had lost their jobs in a recent round of cuts and then shared the information, according to reports.The digital pinboard business announced significant job cuts earlier this month, with the chief executive, Bill Ready, telling staff he was doubling down on an AI-forward approach", according to a LinkedIn post by a former employee. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#73APR)
Sustainable smartphone takes a step forward with modular accessories, a good screen and mid-range performanceThe Dutch ethical smartphone brand Fairphone is back with its six-generation Android, aiming to make its repairable phone more modern, modular, affordable and desirable, with screw-in accessories and a user-replaceable battery.The Fairphone 6 costs 499 (599), making it cheaper than previous models and pitting it squarely against budget champs such as the Google Pixel 9a and the Nothing Phone 3a Pro, while being repairable at home with long-term software support and a five-year warranty. On paper it sounds like the ideal phone to see out the decade. Continue reading...
Pedro Sanchez says urgent action needed to protect children from digital wild west', drawing anger from owner of XSpain has proposed a ban on social media use by teenagers as attitudes hardened in Europe against the technology, drawing personal insults against the prime minister from Elon Musk.The government is preparing a series of measures including a social media ban for under-16s, the prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, said, promising to protect children from the digital wild west" and hold tech companies responsible for hateful and harmful content. Continue reading...
Mid-career' female workers also being sidelined by rigid hiring processes, says City of London CorporationWomen working in tech and financial services are at greater risk of losing their jobs to increased use of AI and automation than their male peers, according to a report that found experienced females were also being sidelined as a result of rigid hiring processes".Mid-career" women - with at least five years' experience - are being overlooked for digital roles in the tech and financial and professional services sectors, where they are traditionally underrepresented, according to the report by the City of London Corporation. Continue reading...
Billionaires and intellectuals attended events with the disgraced financier years after he served time for sex offense, files revealNewly released emails and travel itineraries appear to show that for years after Jeffrey Epstein served time for procuring underage girls for prostitution, he continued to attend exclusive dinners alongside Silicon Valley's most famous billionaires.The emails, part of a trove released by the Department of Justice on Friday, show that as late as 2018, Epstein was invited to or attended dinners alongside the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Google vice-president and later Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. Continue reading...
Prosecutors' announcement comes amid a hardening of European attitudes to social media firmsProsecutors have raided the French headquarters of Elon Musk's social media platform X and summoned the tech billionaire and the company's former chief executive for questioning as part of an investigation into alleged cybercrime.A search is under way by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor's office, the national police cyber unit and Europol," the Paris prosecutors' office said in a post on X on Tuesday, adding that it would no longer be publishing on the network. Continue reading...
AIs are not sentient - but tweaks to their ethical codes can have far-reaching consequences for usersDo you want an AI assistant that gushes about how it loves humanity" or one that spews sarcasm? How about a political propagandist ready to lie? If so, ChatGPT, Grok and Qwen are at your disposal.Companies that create AI assistants, from the US to China, are increasingly wrestling with how to mould their characters, and it is no abstract debate. This month Elon Musk's maximally truth-seeking" Grok AI caused international outrage when it pumped out millions of sexualised images. In October OpenAI retrained ChatGPT to de-escalate conversations with people in mental health distress after it appeared to encourage a 16-year-old to take his own life. Continue reading...
A raft of online videos show parents serving up dinner without a single plate in sight, to the amazement of their familiesName: Dump dinners.Age: Horribly new. Continue reading...
Information Commissioner's Office to investigate whether Elon Musk's firms have complied with data protection lawElon Musk's X and xAI companies are under formal investigation by the UK's data protection watchdog after the Grok AI tool produced indecent deepfakes without people's consent.The Information Commissioner's Office is investigating whether the social media platform and its parent broke GDPR, the data protection law. Continue reading...
Known as white gold', lithium is among the most important mined elements on the planet - ideal for the rechargeable batteries used in tech products. Can Europe's largest deposit bring prosperity to the local community?It looks more like the past than the future. A vast chasm scooped out of a scarred landscape, this is a Cornwall the summer holidaymakers don't see: a former china clay pit near St Austell called Trelavour. I'm standing at the edge of the pit looking down with the man who says his plans for it will help the UK's transition to renewable energy and bring back year-round jobs and prosperity to a part of the country that badly needs both. And if I manage to make some money in the process, fantastic," he says. Though that is not what it's about."We'll return to him shortly. But first to the past, when this story begins, about 275-280m years ago. There was a continental collision at the time," Frances Wall, professor of applied mineralogy at the Camborne School of Mines at the University of Exeter, explained to me before my visit. This collision caused the bottom of the Earth's crust to melt, with the molten material rising higher in the crust and forming granite. There are lots of different types of granite that intrude at different times, more than 10m years or so," she says. The rock is made of minerals and, if you've got the right composition in the original material and the right conditions, then within those minerals there are some called mica. Some of those micas contain lithium." Continue reading...
Pearson, Experian and others fall sharply after startup unveils software to automate a range of professional servicesEuropean publishing and legal software companies have suffered sharp declines in their share prices after the US artificial intelligence startup Anthropic revealed a tool for use by companies' legal departments.Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, said its tool could automate legal work such as contract reviewing, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings and templated responses. Continue reading...
New US-owned app struggled with a storm and was accused of blocking content critical of Trump - can it recover?Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I'm Blake Montgomery, writing to you from Doha, where I'm moderating panels about AI and investing as part of the Web Summit Qatar.I want to bring your attention to the impact of a Guardian story. In December, we published a story, A black hole': families and police say tech giants delay investigations in child abuse and drug cases", about grieving families and law enforcement officers who say that Meta and Snapchat have slowed down criminal investigations. (The tech companies contend that they cooperate.) This month, Colorado lawmakers introduced a bill to compel social media platforms to respond to warrants in 72 hours.Elon Musk had more extensive ties to Epstein than previously known, emails showTesla discontinues Model X and S vehicles as Elon Musk pivots to roboticsWhat is Moltbook? The strange new social media site for AI botsThe slopaganda era: 10 AI images posted by the White House - and what they teach usApple reports record iPhone sales as new lineup reignites worldwide demandSouth Korea's world-first' AI laws face pushback amid bid to become leading tech powerCan you guess our screen time? A priest, pensioner, tech CEO and teenager reveal all Continue reading...
Annual review highlights growing capabilities of AI models, while examining issues from cyber-attacks to job disruptionThe International AI Safety report is an annual survey of technological progress and the risks it is creating across multiple areas, from deepfakes to the jobs market.Commissioned at the 2023 global AI safety summit, it is chaired by the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, who describes the daunting challenges" posed by rapid developments in the field. The report is also guided by senior advisers, including Nobel laureates Geoffrey Hinton and Daron Acemoglu. Continue reading...
CEO Alex Karp hails iconic' financial results despite criticism over contracts with ICE and homeland securityPalantir celebrated its latest financial results on Monday, as the tech company blew past Wall Street expectations and continues to prop up the Trump administration's push to deport immigrants.Palantir has secured millions of dollars in federal contracts amid Trump's crackdown on immigrants. The multibillion-dollar Denver-based firm creates tech focused on surveillance and analytics, to be used by the government agencies and private companies. Continue reading...
Minister announces Microsoft, Cisco and Adobe to help apply AI to local schools, hospitals, GPs and businessesIn 2002 Barnsley toyed with a redesign as a Tuscan hill village as it sought out a brighter post-industrial future. In 2021 it adopted the airily vague slogan the place of possibilities". Now it is trying a different image: Britain's first tech town".The technology secretary, Liz Kendall, has anointed the South Yorkshire community as a trailblazer for how AI can improve everyday life" in the UK. Continue reading...
Millions of dollars have been raised for Bondi hero Ahmed al-Ahmed, while campaigns are backing families hit by Victoria's bushfires. What does this way of giving mean for the charity sector?Within hours of the Bondi beach terror attack, the money had already begun to pour in. As images of the tragedy flooded social media, people from around the world donated tens of thousands of dollars to the victims, their families and first responders.Passing the hat around the neighbourhood or the local pub has always been a staple response in times of crisis. But today, that instinct to open your wallet has been exponentially supercharged via a digital simulacrum: online crowdfunding platforms. Continue reading...
Online gaming legend Mark Fischbach writes, directs and stars in this feature about a convict on a vague intergalactic mission - but his barebones production has nothing to showWilliam Goldman's old showbiz maxim continues to apply that nobody knows anything. Independently financed horror movie Iron Lung has been smuggled into multiplexes without the usual promotional hoopla, where it was keenly awaited by the massed followers of its Hawaiian writer-director-star Mark Fischbach, better known as YouTube gaming legend Markiplier. Many of us have long sensed culture is making a decisive break with the analogue in favour of the (perhaps terminally) online and Fischbach's film makes that paradigm shift not just visible but visceral; it feels not unlike spending 12 hours on Twitch with all the curtains closed.Though Markiplier is approaching the horror genre from a notionally fresh angle - by adapting Dave Szymanski's eponymous space-submarine sim - he lands on the narratively rusty idea of an astronaut straying beyond his depth; this is Moon in dimmer light. Beset by ominous rumbles and mounting doubts about the state of mankind, the begrimed and squalid craft singlehandedly piloted by Fischbach's straggle-haired convict Simon is indistinguishable from the average teenage bedroom. Our hero staggers round this intergalactic deathtrap completing vaguely specified missions - ram this, repair that, download something or other - like a harassed dad ticking off his Sunday to-do list. In this, Simon proves more proficient than Fischbach's offscreen self, who is either stumped by or oblivious to the film's fundamental issues. Continue reading...
The once-lauded director of Black Swan and The Wrestler has drowned himself in AI slop with an embarrassing new online seriesIf you happen to find yourself stumbling through Time magazine's YouTube account, perhaps because you are a time traveller from the 1970s who doesn't fully understand how the present works yet - then you will be presented with something that many believe represents the vanguard of entertainment as we know it.On This Day ... 1776 is a series of short videos depicting America's revolutionary war. What makes On This Day notable is that it was made by Darren Aronofsky's studio Primordial Soup. What also makes it interesting is that it was created with AI. The third thing that makes it interesting is that it is terrible. Continue reading...
New Mexico attorney general accuses Meta of failing to safeguard children against trafficking and sexual abuseMeta's second major trial of 2026 over alleged harms to children begins on Monday.The landmark jury trial in Santa Fe pits the New Mexico attorney general's office against the social media giant. The state alleges that the company knowingly enabled predators to use Facebook and Instagram to exploit children. Continue reading...
OpenClaw is billed as the AI that actually does things' and needs almost no input to potentially wreak havocA new viral AI personal assistant will handle your email inbox, trade away your entire stock portfolio and text your wife good morning" and goodnight" on your behalf.OpenClaw, formerly known as Moltbot, and before that known as Clawdbot (until the AI firm Anthropic requested it rebrand due to similarities with its own product Claude), bills itself as the AI that actually does things": a personal assistant that takes instructions via messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Telegram. Continue reading...
Some users are stepping away from the app after it made a deal to create a US entity and updated terms and conditionsMany TikTok users across the US say they're rethinking their relationship with the platform since its ownership and terms and conditions have recently changed, with some citing censorship and lack of trust as reasons why they're removing themselves from the app.Keara Sullivan, a 26-year-old comedian, says TikTok jumpstarted her career and provided a pathway to getting a manager and a literary agent. Continue reading...
In-person interactions break down barriers in east London, as AI startups also try to bridge communication divideWesley Hartwell raised his fists to the barista and shook them next to his ears. He then lowered his fists, extended his thumbs and little fingers, and moved them up and down by his chest, as though milking a cow. Finally, he laid the fingers of one hand flat on his chin and flexed his wrist forward.Hartwell, who has no hearing problems, had just used BSL, British Sign Language, to order his morning latte with normal milk at the deaf-run Dialogue Cafe, based at the University of East London, and thanked Victor Olaniyan, the deaf barista. Continue reading...
App endured a major outage and user backlash over perceived censorship. Now it's facing an inquiry by the California governor and an ascendant competitorA little more than one week ago, TikTok stepped on to US shores as a naturalized citizen. Ever since, the video app has been fighting for its life.TikTok's calamitous emigration began on 22 January when its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, finalized a deal to sell the app to a group of US investors, among them the business software giant Oracle. The app's time under Chinese ownership had been marked by a meteoric ascent to more than a billion users, which left incumbents such as Instagram looking like the next Myspace. But TikTok's short new life in the US has been less than auspicious. Continue reading...
by Sarah Marsh Consumer affairs correspondent on (#738CV)
The march of wearable tech is coming to the aid of women in what some say is a long underserved marketFor any bodily function you want to measure these days there is a gadget - a wristband for step-counting, a watch to track your heart rate or a ring for measuring sleep.Now the march of wearable tech is coming to the aid of what some say is a long underserved market: menopausal women. Continue reading...
In the final part of this series, we look at how infighting has ripped the left apart online while the right has flourished - and how some progressives are turning the tide
A lawsuit filed last week alleges tech firm can access virtually all' private communications, a claim the company has deniedUS authorities have reportedly investigated claims that Meta can read users' encrypted chats on the WhatsApp messaging platform, which it owns.The reports follow a lawsuit filed last week, which claimed Meta can access virtually all of WhatsApp users' purportedly private' communications". Continue reading...
TUC urges ministers to bring forward changes to protect workers amid concerns over apps such as TemperThe fashion retailer Urban Outfitters, the bed specialist Dreams and the operator of several Royal Parks cafes have been criticised for the use of the gig economy app Temper to take on staff - some of whom can end up earning below minimum wage.The TUC is urging the government to bring forward promised reforms to protect gig economy workers amid concerns that those hired by apps such as Temper are missing out on significant employment rights including sick pay, rest breaks, holiday pay and a minimum hourly rate. Continue reading...
Hundreds of parents, teens and school districts have claimed social media is intentionally addictive and harmfulSocial media companies will have to answer to a jury - for the first time - for allegations that their products are intentionally addictive and harmful to young users' mental health. Hundreds of parents, teens and school districts sued Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube, leading to a series of landmark trials that began this week. Jury selection in the first case started on Tuesday in Los Angeles court.Meta's Mark Zuckerberg is among the big tech CEOs who are expected to testify. Both sides are likely to bring in experts to hash out the science behind alleged addiction to social media. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian