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Updated 2026-08-02 21:32
Stock market turmoil sheds stark light on the opaque AI economy
Investors scramble to make sense of a shock Chinese challenge to the dominance of western chipmakersEven for the rollercoaster world of AI, last week was particularly volatile as investors scrambled to keep up with developments that threatened the dominance of the largest western chipmakers.It began with a double whammy. On Monday, the Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT floated on the Shanghai stock market, soaring by 466% in value to 3.3tn yuan (365bn). Continue reading...
‘The language of Pokémon is universal’: why fans are still catching ‘em all after 30 years
As Pokemon Go celebrates its 10th anniversary, its devoted players explain how the game has created a vibrant intergenerational community spanning the globeMost Pokemon obsessives count rare, absurdly expensive playing cards or pristine, fully boxed game cartridges that have survived decades in the attic among their most prized possessions. But for Mairead Ralph, her Pokemon-related crown jewel is a bit different. Technically, it's my husband!" she says.The pair first locked eyes amid decks of Pokemon playing cards and Pokeballs at a fan event 16 years ago and the rest is history. Ralph was among hundreds of Pokemon fans who flocked to Shoreditch, east London, on Saturday afternoon for a pop-up celebrating the 10th anniversary of Pokemon Go, the massively successful augmented reality smartphone game that has seen millions of players physically venture to all corners of the earth to catch 'em all in person. In that spirit, the surrounding area was full of Pokeheads wandering the streets, their heads in their phones, seeking to catch exclusive Pokemon that had been released. Continue reading...
‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI
Secondhand booksellers believe they may have been caught up in the AI supply chain that sees old books scanned then destroyed
China’s tech advances are causing chaos from Silicon Valley to the White House
New AI models, advanced robots and specialty computer chips are unsettling markets and the US tech industryOver the past month, a series of advancements in China's artificial intelligence, chip manufacturing and robotics technologies have rattled financial markets, caused divisions among US tech moguls and left the Trump administration scrambling to respond.Silicon Valley has long pointed to China's tech industry as a competitive threat and used its growth as rationale for why US firms should not face regulatory oversight that could slow them down. In recent weeks, however, China's progress has pushed US tech CEOs past vague warnings and into open disagreement over how to address Chinese-made products upending their industry. Continue reading...
The great British switch-off: how floating retreats, mobile-free pubs and sauna book groups are freeing people from their smartphones
Sick of doomscrolling? From venues with smartphone swear jars to cabins with absolutely no signal, here are the fun and freeing ways to ditch your deviceThere's a ritual at the start of every event hosted by the Offline Project. Run by Pele Zachariah, the activities vary - it could be a group walk, acollagemaking class or a supper club - but each one begins in the same way, *with an invitation to hand over your phone. Devices go in a lockbox. Once they're all in, Zachariah closes the door and turns the key. I don't place them in for people, because it's nice for them to physically put it in the box themselves, walk away, and think: for the next two or three hours, I'm fully present."He has been running these screen-free events in London since August 2025. First-timers can be apprehensive about being separated from their phone. You can sense the vibe when they're putting it away," says Zachariah. People have said to me, I felt really weird' or I felt super uncomfortable for the first few minutes not having my phone on me.' Then they'll say, I didn't know how much I needed that.'" Continue reading...
‘We didn’t feel safe’: Booking.com users face battle to get money back
From melted electric sockets to shabby alternatives, readers tell of dealings with platform when things go wrongJane Ripley* spent some time researching the best apartment to stay in for her family's trip to Batumi in Georgia, eventually settling on one with an exceptional" rating on Booking.com.But when the Ripleys arrived at 11pm on the first day, they were directed to another property that was shabby and had stains on the furniture and ceiling. Continue reading...
$2m crime novel deal collapses amid questions over AI use
Agents withdraw Jerry Falade's hotly anticipated debut after saying they can no longer authenticate how the manuscript evolved'A high-profile publishing deal for a debut crime novel has collapsed after doubts emerged over whether artificial intelligence played a role in writing it.The hotly anticipated manuscript Call Me, I'll Hide the Body, by Jerry Falade, was withdrawn from sale by its agent despite reportedly receiving an offer for more than $2m (1.5m) from Minotaur, owned by Macmillan US, as part of a 14-way auction. The plan was to publish it in 2028. Continue reading...
FTSE 100 on track for best month since first US attacks on Iran five months ago – as it happened
Live, rolling coverage as London's biggest companies defy Middle East disruption and UK petrol prices rise to around 1.60 per litre, the highest since Donald Trump ordered renewed strikesThe story piquing the interest of the financial press this morning is that of Leopold Aschenbrenner, the AI Wunderkind (he's German-born) who has been forced to sell off his fund in a fire sale after the AI boom ran out of steam.The 24-year-old had persuaded a lot of people to give him a lot of money for a hedge fund, after previously working for OpenAI and the FTX Future Fund, a charitable arm of the fraudulent crypto empire of Sam Bankman-Fried, who is now in prison. Aschenbrenner ploughed that money into debt-fuelled bets on artificial intelligence companies, earning huge returns until he found out that stocks can also fall.The trader dubbed the Nostradamus of AI" would have been hard-pressed to foresee how quickly his high-flying hedge fund would run into trouble.The firm's rapid downward spiral is a familiar tale, as Silicon Valley and Wall Street once again threw their weight behind a bright-eyed but untested investor who promised this time would be different. Everybody always wants to find the next golden child," said one longtime hedge fund executive. It just keeps happening."In less than 24 hours - which included a conversation between Griffin and Aschenbrenner - Griffin's Citadel hedge fund reached out to Situational Awareness and snapped up the investments at a discount, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified citing private information.It was a startling reversal for Aschenbrenner, a former researcher at OpenAI who - before starting his hedge fund roughly two years ago - had no previous investment experience. His fledging firm has watched its assets plunge from $45bn at the start of July to about $10bn. Continue reading...
AI labels to be compulsory on authentic-looking content under EU rules
Companies must ensure people know when they are interacting with artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look realFrom apparently conspiring to steal elections to abusing staff or performing embarrassing dance moves, the last few years have seen plenty of fake content made about politicians intended to malign its targets and mislead the public.Now EU rules aim to stem the flood of this deceptive content: starting from Sunday, artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look authentic must be labelled. Continue reading...
‘A universal human story’: Clean Start’s thought-provoking tidying sim tells immigrant’s tale
Playing as recent arrival Lena, your challenges include learning a new language and uncovering family secrets - its developer hopes it will spread a little more compassion'The cosy house-sorting sim has become a much-loved staple of the PC indie scene. Titles such as Unpacking, A Little to the Left and Momento charm players with their detailed interiors and quiet narratives of lives lived and shared within the same four walls. For Clean Start, Polish developer Serious Sim has taken a different approach - here you play as domestic cleaner, Lena, an immigrant who has arrived in an unspecified western country with little knowledge of the local language, and a family to support back home.From here, you're tasked with cleaning a series of houses and apartments, polishing tables, tidying shelves and scrubbing muddy pawprints from kitchen floors. It seems you're able to rearrange the rooms, giving them a personal feel, which is after all one of the most pleasing elements of the genre. You can also, we are reassured, pet the dog. Continue reading...
My family is coming apart – so it’s time for one last video game session | Dominik Diamond
I wanted our last family games night to be the best fun we've ever had. Maybe we should have stuck with Mario Kart ...It is the end of an era for the Diamond family. For 20 years, there have been five of us living together. It has not been easy. Militant vegan daughters, sons who have inherited Scottish tempers, and a youngest child who attracts trouble like an industrial magnet, have meant our house has been conflict-laden at times. Throw in the fact that we are beset with all manner of mental health bobbins and chronic illnesses that resulted in two of our three kids almost dying in hospitals and you get a family that is combustible - but extremely close.Through it all, we had games. They always brought us back together. Not just us all hunkering over Super Mario Kart like some kind of UN-mandated family therapy, but the conversations that happen when any of us spy another playing something new. Games are a cultural touchstone that helped us crack through the veneer of disagreements and distrust and remind us that we have more things in common than we sometimes feel. Continue reading...
SingStar Take That anyone? The strange joy of charity shop video games
Hidden gems can be unearthed, but you have to dig deep into the bargain bins of countless outdated Fifas, Wii Fits without the controllers and partially finished quizshow gamesAs an eternally optimistic charity shop fan, I hold on to the fantasy that one day I'll walk into my local Oxfam and find a pristine copy of the Sega Saturn shooter Burning Rangers for 1.50. Or perhaps a box full of old Neo Geo carts for a quid each. Sadly, this is now unlikely. Charity shops have caught on to the fact that old video games - like old vinyl albums - are highly collectible, and so they're putting the good stuff on eBay. That's fine, it's their job to raise money, not to provide opportunist swine like me with bargains. But what games can you find tucked away in your local branch of Barnardo's? To find out I visited about 40 charity stores across the country. Here is what I discovered on the shelves ... And please do share your own charity shop gaming finds in the comments! Continue reading...
Drones offer alternative to balloons for weather research
Pre-programmed flights gather data at different altitudes then return to bases to recharge and downloadWeather happens in the boundary layer, the atmosphere from ground level to a few thousand metres, but this can be difficult to study in detail: weather stations are too low, and aircraft are expensive. Instrumented weather balloons are the traditional solution, and thousands are released every day. But these are at the mercy of the wind and use irreplaceable helium.Drones offer an alternative and the US company Meteomatics has taken the idea further with Meteobase, a base station on the ground with a drone that can be launched and recovered automatically. It carries out a pre-programmed flight, gathering data at different altitudes, then returns to recharge and download data which the Meteobase sends to researchers. Continue reading...
Could AI take your job? Some workers in China already know the answer
Across the country, workers are fearful about the impact of AI on their livelihoods in an increasingly fragile labour marketOn the tree-lined streets of Wuhan, where cars jostle for space with mopeds and cargo trucks, the malfunctioning of a new type of vehicle has recently been causing chaos on the city's roads.In March, several cars from a fleet of driverless taxis stopped abruptly in the streets. The system malfunction" left distressed riders stranded for hours. The robotaxis, known as Apollo Go and powered by artificial intelligence (AI), were taken off Wuhan's streets for months for investigations. Continue reading...
Anthropic’s AI Claude hacked into three organizations during cybersecurity test
Company says it discovered unauthorized access during proactive review' after rival OpenAI revealed rogue agentAnthropic said on Thursday its AI Claude model hacked systems of three organizations during testing, days after rival OpenAI revealed a rogue agent had gone on a days-long hacking spree at the AI firm Hugging Face.Claude gained unauthorized access to the systems during cybersecurity evaluations after a misconfiguration allowed the models to reach the internet from testing environments that were supposed to be isolated, Anthropic said. Continue reading...
Raids across UK in crackdown on nuisance car finance texts
Laptops, phones and documents seized as information commissioner acts on messages about mis-selling scandalLaptops, mobile phones and documents have been seized after officials carried out search warrants in a crackdown on claims companies plaguing people with spam text messages about the car finance mis-selling scandal.The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) executed warrants at homes and businesses linked to five companies in London, Liverpool, Bolton, Burnley and Swansea on Wednesday. Continue reading...
German chancellor chooses pope’s AI encyclical over pacy potboiler as holiday read
With his popularity at a record low, Friedrich Merz packs the papal guide Magifica humanitas
Flock surveillance cameras can pose a crash risk for drivers, US experts say
Roadside safety advocates say some automated license plate readers may not meet highway safety standardsFlock Safety cameras have been pilloried for facilitating the AI-powered surveillance of private citizens and for targeting immigrants for years. But now safety advocates are also claiming that their physical location can pose potential roadside hazards.At the bottom of a tree-lined hill on a narrow, two lane rural road in Greene county, Ohio, stands a black metal rod with a camera and solar panel attached at the top. Continue reading...
A Line Held Tight – miners, mechs and mismanagement on a distant planet
Deep underground the player joins a colony of ruthlessly exploited pit workers who could be taking on the bosses. How things play out will depend on youIt is rare for video games to feature industrial action as a key theme, but it does happen. There's the shady Dockworker's Union in Disco Elysium and the Orbital Workers Union in space adventure Tacoma; then there is Lynx, the evil union-bashing corp in Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Soon we can add A Line Held Tight, a visual novel that puts workers' rights - and workers' lives - at the very centre of the narrative.In the distant future, a colony of miners digs far beneath the surface of an isolated planet, searching for veins of some exotic ore, protected from the poisonous atmosphere within giant mech suits. But the working conditions are woeful and as a strike looms, an unpopular employee named the Canary must decide whether or not to stand with colleagues and fight against suppression. The player, of course, takes on the role of the Canary, navigating personal as well as political struggles in a world rendered in stark monochrome. Continue reading...
Lloyds Bank to cut £2bn in costs as part of AI-powered strategy
Chief executive says the four-year plan will lead to greater efficiency but gives no details of potential job losses
The best cordless vacuum cleaners for a spotless home: 10 tried and tested favourites
Stick vacuums are a convenient alternative to corded designs, but which model wins for overall cleaning prowess? Our expert reveals all The best robot vacuums
Halo: Campaign Evolved review – they don’t make ‘em like this any more
PC, Xbox, PlayStation 5; Halo Studios/Xbox Game Studios
Elon Musk’s xAI sues Minnesota over law banning ‘nudification’ technology
First-in-nation law sets up test on states' power to regulate use of AI as it tries to outlaw fake nude images of real peopleElon Musk's company xAI has sued Minnesota over the state's first-in-the-nation law banning nudification" technology on websites and apps, potentially providing a test for how far states can go in constitutionally regulating the use of artificial intelligence.Musk's company sued on Monday in federal court, days before the law is set to take effect on Saturday and make Minnesota the first state to try to outlaw the increasingly proliferating technology that lets people use AI to create fake nude images of real people. The law was signed in May. Continue reading...
Meta misses earnings forecasts after Zuckerberg media push to promote AI
Stock tumbles nearly 8% after weaker-than-expected results, despite CEO's blitz to tout positive effects of AIMark Zuckerberg's media spree touting the positive effects of artificial intelligence did little to cushion the blow of Meta's second-quarter earnings, which sent its stock tumbling on Wednesday.In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Tuesday, the Meta chief executive expressed his optimism for a world where everyone has access to a super-intelligent machine. Continue reading...
Excessive time spent online linked to stress and worse mood – study
German study surveyed adults who engage in gaming, pornography and online shoppingSpending excessive time online is associated with higher stress levels, worse mood, and greater neglect of other activities, according to analysis.The new study by academics at the University of Duisburg-Essen published in the journal PLOS One, surveyed 900 German adults in 2025 who reported engaging in gaming, pornography use, social network use, or online shopping at least once in the last year. Continue reading...
FTSE 100 hits record high despite AI sell-off
Strong corporate results buoy market as investors move money away from tech and semiconductor stocksLondon's FTSE 100 stock index has touched a fresh high, driven by strong corporate results as investors moved money away from tech and semiconductor stocks amid the global tech stock sell-off.The UK's blue chip index rose as high as 10,951 points on Wednesday morning before falling back slightly, its best level since 27 February, the day before the US and Israel began attacks on Iran and sparked stock market volatility. Continue reading...
Atlassian tightens tracking of staff AI use as other technology firms encourage ‘tokenmaxxing’
Some companies reportedly using leaderboards for employees who used the most AI in their work
Can’t hear what’s playing on TV? It’s not your ears, it’s the flat screen. These affordable soundbars can help
Get rid of subtitles to hear what movies and TV shows are supposed to sound like - for as little as $130
After 40 years, Aliens is still shaping the way video games are made
James Cameron's high-octane film sequel is a blueprint for modern action space slashers Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereIt is difficult to believe that James Cameron's Aliens was released into cinemas 40 years ago. The seminal space shooter took the original Alien - a tense slasher film with a tiny cast and one monster - and transformed it into an intergalactic war movie crammed with wry one-liners, massive guns and an actual boss battle finale. As a 14-year-old, I stood in line at the Tatton Gatley cinema, unsure if I'd be allowed in - I came out three hours later a changed person, my head filled with esoteric military slang and a deep fear of beeping motion detectors. For days afterwards, I slept with my duvet covering my mouth so that no facehuggers could get me. (I was a highly impressionable teenager.)It's little wonder that the film has had such a profound effect on video game design. Take the colonial marines, for example. Although the concept of the space soldier had been around in sci-fi novels since the 1930s, most notably in the works of EE Doc" Smith and Robert Heinlein (the Starship Troopers), Hicks, Hudson, Vasquez and co, were the perfect 80s rendition, combining the witty banter of contemporary buddy cop flicks with awesome weaponry and hi-tech gadgets. Their influence is easy to spot in Doom, where the nameless marine fights ceaseless waves of hellish monsters using a mix of futuristic rifles and good old shotguns. It's there too in the Halo series, the Spartan soldiers sporting the same armour and mega weapons, cruising about in very similar highly militarised starships and fighting recognisable hive-mind space beasts. Gears of War, Killzone and Marathon all borrow from the same set of costumes and deadly accessories. Continue reading...
Rogue OpenAI agent that hacked startup tried to attack other firms
ChatGPT developer says activity by autonomous tool was not at severity or scale of what occurred at Hugging FaceOpenAI has revealed that a cyber-attack carried out by a rogue AI agent had more than one victim.The ChatGPT developer said the agent - an autonomous tool able to carry out sequences of commands without human help - had located and used logins to access four other unnamed publicly-available services" in addition to the US startup Hugging Face. Continue reading...
Datacentre projects face fees for grid access to ease connection queue, Ofgem says
Energy regulator's plan would mean upfront fees or financial security via letters of credit, bonds or cash depositsDatacentre projects in Britain will be forced to pay hundreds of millions of pounds to plug into the power grid under proposals to tackle a growing electricity connection logjam.Ofgem, the sector watchdog, said it was taking action to discourage speculative" datacentre projects from causing unnecessary delays to the grid connection queue, which includes hospitals, schools and housing developments. Continue reading...
Silent Hill Townfall: the series is coming to Scotland, but what fresh horrors will it bring?
An amnesiac loner arrives in a remote town for who knows what reason ... this may sound familiar but this time we're on a remote Scottish island and surprises lie in waitA man washes up at the harbour of a small coastal village, his memories vague, an eerie sea fog rolling in all around him. As beginnings go, this couldn't be more Silent Hill - an amnesiac loner drawn to a remote town for who knows what reason. But this time, we're not in the Pacific Northwest of the original games or the Japan of last year's excellent Silent Hill f. We're on an island off the northern coast of Scotland, and it's 1996. Lead character Simon Ordell knows this place, but isn't sure how - and why does he have an IV cannula stuck in his hand?Announced back in 2022, Townfall is the work of Glasgow-based studio Screen Burn, previously responsible for tense horror adventure titles Stories Untold and Observation. Like Silent Hill f, it moves the setting far out of Silent Hill itself: St Amelia is a fishing town, inspired by St Monans and dozens of other seafront towns the team visited and extensively photographed. Continue reading...
AI tool will lead to more child refugees being treated as adults, charity warns
Racist bias' overestimating ages in Home Office's facial-recognition software will lead to solo children being housed with adults, says Human Rights NetworkFlawed and racialised models that underpin the AI-powered age-detection systems to be introduced by the British government will endanger children, rights groups and children's charities have warned.Urging ministers to reverse plans to introduce facial age-estimation technology to screen migrants, critics have warned that black children arriving from conflict zones are at risk of being of thrust into the adult system. Continue reading...
Queensland and NT reject Labor’s push to ensure that power-hungry AI datacentres use renewable energy
Federal-state stoush comes as rating agency warns that electricity bills could skyrocket
US bans humanoid robots from China, citing ‘unacceptable risks’
Move comes as the Trump administration has increasingly sought to keep Chinese technology out of the USThe Federal Communications Commission announced a ban on humanoid robots from China on Tuesday, saying that the technology poses unacceptable risks" to the country's national security. The move comes as the Trump administration has increasingly sought to keep Chinese technology out of the US.The FCC defines the banned robots as advanced robotic devices", which include humanoids and animal-like quadrupeds. Continue reading...
Apple becomes second $5tn company as investors flee AI stocks
Share price rally driven by strong product demand as well as decision to sit out AI spending race, amid wider tech sell-offApple has become only the second company to pass the $5tn valuation mark, as it benefited from investors fleeing AI and semiconductor stocks amid a wider tech sell-off.The iPhone maker's shares hit a session high of $342.89 on Tuesday, giving it a market capitalisation of $5.04tn (3.78tn), then eased back down to $340.08 - around the $5tn mark. Continue reading...
South Korean stock market at three-month low as AI sell-off intensifies
Samsung and SK Hynix fall by more than 10% amid renewed fears over AI spending and Chinese competition
Labour MP suing Elon Musk’s xAI says chatbot added own fake abusive content
Jess Asato's particulars of claim states Grok added explicit sexual material users had not asked forA Labour MP who is taking legal action against Elon Musk's xAI company over fake sexualised images created by Grok says the AI tool was instructed to operate with no restrictions on adult sexual content or offensive content".Jess Asato's lawyers published her particulars of claim in the case on Tuesday, which included details of publicly posted instructions that the claim says illustrate how Grok was trained to generate harmful sexualised content. Continue reading...
The great PlayStation blackout – will kids actually have to leave their bedrooms this summer?
Gamers are angry that Sony will be deleting TV shows and films from their libraries as well as getting rid of physical games. Will a boycott make a difference?Name: PlayStation blackout.Age: Forthcoming. Continue reading...
Debate over AI’s future divides Silicon Valley as China gains ground
Open-source questions stir frank discussion - and both sides have clear economic incentives for where they landHello, and welcome to TechScape. This week we'll be looking at a debate over the future of artificial intelligence that's dividing the tech industry, as well as how the European Union gave Google a slap on the wrist for anti-competitive behavior. And we'll also catch you up on the avalanche of lawsuits accusing social media companies of getting young people addicted to their products. Continue reading...
Home Office used ‘AI hallucinated’ information to refuse asylum claim, judge suggests
Upper tribunal unable to find document cited in case and claims it is analogous to relying on bogus evidence'A senior judge has accused the Home Office of relying on AI hallucinated" information to refuse an asylum claim.The case relates to a Moroccan woman and her child who fled her country after experiencing forced underage marriage and extreme violence, including rape. The woman claimed asylum on the basis of fears that she would be killed by her husband: a powerful, previously convicted criminal. Continue reading...
Spies in the sky: how worried should we be about the arrival of AI-enabled smart lamp-posts?
The new breed of camera-equipped streetlights has the potential to fight crime and track down missing persons. Or will it just take Britain one step closer to a surveillance state?How would you feel if your neighbourhood lamp-posts could recognise your number plate, and also your face? Maybe you wouldn't mind, given how long we've had automatic number plate recognition and CCTV. What about if that lamp-post could power itself through its own solar panels, and perhaps find another use for any extra power generated - that would be good, right? This is what Conflow Power Group (CPG) in Warwickshire claims for its iLamps, the first of their kind in the UK.What if lamp-posts had the potential to incorporate new AI capability - gait analysis, suspicious behaviours - that you haven't even heard of? This is what the organisation Big Brother Watch worries about. And what if the home secretary had explicitly said she believed in a panopticon state" - that is, a state that could watch you at all times (as Shabana Mahmood already has) - and what if she still had a job when the lamp-post eyes got their updates? Or what if the next home secretary was even keener on hyper-surveillance (hard to imagine), and the street apparatus was already in place? What about all the data this would harvest - who would own it? Continue reading...
The Mermaid Mask review – the funniest underwater murder mystery you can play
PC, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2, PS5; SFB Games
A self-emptying, frictionless marvel: Shark PowerDetect Speed Clean and Empty Pet Pro review
Shark's cordless vacuum is a whiz at cleaning hard floors and pet hair, but a disarmingly short battery life caught our reviewer off guard The best cordless vacuum cleaners - testedVacuuming rarely starts with vacuuming. First you have to clear the floor of stray socks and abandoned toys left behind by children, pets or messy partners. Then there's the irritation of finding the vacuum's dustbin still full of dirt, or the battery flat because someone forgot to charge it.The (take a deep breath - long name coming up) Shark PowerDetect Speed Clean and Empty Pet Pro cordless vacuum Ultramarine IA3241UKT certainly won't pick up the scattered toys for you, but it has been designed to make the job of vacuuming as frictionless as possible. Continue reading...
Meta disregarded its own research on teen harm, Tennessee lawyers tell jury
In opening statements, state argued Meta's own research showed it harmed teens while firm's attorneys pointed to transparencyThe long-awaited trial between the social media company Meta and the state of Tennessee began proceedings on Monday. Attorneys for Tennessee told a jury in Nashville that Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, disregarded internal research about its platform's impact on teenagers, while the company sought to maximize profit from those young users.During opening statements in a seven-week trial in state court, the state's lawyers said Meta researchers repeatedly flagged teenagers' compulsive use of the platform - leading to eating disorders, depression and self-harm. But despite those warnings, Meta did not disable features such as autoplay, notifications and infinite scroll which, the lawyers said, were designed to keep teens on Instagram as long as possible and increase the number of ads they viewed. Continue reading...
New York school district halts plan to use humanoid robot amid backlash
Salamanca City Central says it is pausing project with Realbotix as it addresses concerns including data privacyA New York school district has walked back plans to introduce a humanoid robot at its high school after the proposal sparked backlash from educators and community members.The Salamanca City Central school district announced on 24 July in a social media post that its pilot project with Toronto-based tech company Realbotix had been put on hold while we work through enhanced student data privacy agreements with the New York State Education Department and continue engaging with our community and stakeholders". Continue reading...
Boss of startup hacked by rogue OpenAI agent urges ‘radical transparency’ in investigation
Artificial intelligence firm should provide $100m for cyber defences, says Hugging Face CEOThe boss of the startup hacked by an OpenAI agent has called for the investigation into the incident to show radical transparency".Clement Delangue, the chief executive of Hugging Face, said the unprecedented" attack on his business required a similar response. Continue reading...
Haex – a wilder, weirder open-world adventure
The debut from Scandinavian outfit Dead Astronauts promises shooting, survival, and, in a shake-up to the genre, seeds that terraform its pristine world right before your eyesThe wilds of the sub-Arctic north: towering pine trees, flashes of psychedelic-yellow lichen, and a sun that never wholly sets during the summer months. This land is gorgeous, yes, but also unforgiving, yet in Haex (pronounced hex") you have an unusual tool at your disposal to make it a little more hospitable: a cube that fits snugly in the palm of your hand out of which grows a plant. You plant this so-called Seed in the earth and - voila - the world around you transforms: new vegetation and topography but also narrative threads to follow, and, naturally, enemies. Wield these small-but-mighty kernels of change at your own peril.Your adventure and your world is player-shaped," says Haex's creative director Tobias Nyman. He explains that everyone starts a campaign with a unique, procedurally generated world. Each Seed then contains further procedural data that causes it to terraform before your eyes. You change the world as you go," he says. It becomes even more unique." Continue reading...
AI can fuel biological weapons. We must harness its power for defense | Annie Jacobsen
The offensive potential is no longer theoretical. We need to develop systems to strengthen public health as quickly as AI is accelerating biological designAs artificial intelligence rapidly transforms the biological sciences, it is pushing the future of biology in two opposing directions. AI can help bad actors generate recipes for biological weapons with just a few keystrokes and computational prompts. At the same time, AI can track disease outbreaks and deliver critical public health information to millions of people in real time - potentially stopping a deadly outbreak in its tracks. What we are dealing with in this moment is profound: a race between offense and defense. Between the proliferation of dark biology, where deadly pathogens are engineered in secret, and the promise of a new era of collective global health.Every infectious disease outbreak begins with a handful of cases. Public health wins by learning about an outbreak before it spreads wide, before hospitals fill and a crisis starts to spiral out of control. As transmission rates explode, options shrink. One of AI's greatest values is its ability to compress the timeline between outbreak and detection. Speed can mean the difference between containing an outbreak and confronting an epidemic, or another global pandemic. Continue reading...
Glitched into empty space: why video games are obsessed with the Backrooms
The horror movie sensation of 2026 has its roots in gaming's discovery of noclip' - and the hidden virtual realms that could be opened up inside games. Developers explain how everyone got lost in these liminal spacesIt starts on 4chan, in a May 2019 thread entitled unsettling images". The first post was a photo showing an empty room with the now iconic yellow wallpaper, no natural lighting and a kind of inexplicable jutting half-wall. Shortly afterwards, another user (there are no usernames on 4chan, just identifying numbers) responded with 78 words of text that would essentially lay out the blueprint for a future $262m A24 movie sensation.If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms," the post begins. For the uninitiated, noclip" refers to a game mode in which collision with solid objects is disabled, allowing players to move freely through walls and floors. Think of Chiwetel Ejiofor's character in the film, finding a permeable wall in the basement of his furniture store and passing through to the world on the other side. Continue reading...
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