Whether it's a super-glowy serum or a cult gardening tool, here are our writers' favourite buys from the past year Don't get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereThe Filter is turning two! To celebrate, we asked our contributors for their favourite products from the past year, and rounded up the team's picks too.From handbag-sized umbrellas and stylish yet practical wellies to reading lights and luxurious duvets, these are the products that stood out. Continue reading...
Fight in East Fishkill, New York, part of a growing divide over whether AI benefits outweigh enormous downsidesFor decades, East Fishkill helped build New York's tech industry.The hamlet, located 70 miles north of New York City, was home to a 460-acre campus where IBM researched and manufactured semiconductor chips for nearly 50 years. Continue reading...
Jeremy Strong's portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Reckoning shows how public opinion has changed around billionaire CEOs since The Social Network's releaseWhen The Social Network came out, Mark Zuckerberg organised a staff viewing of a film he described as fun".A group corporate outing to the sequel is unlikely. Continue reading...
Our reviewer sheds some light on the best dawn simulation alarms, from Lumie and Philips to Dreamegg The best eye masks to help you sleep betterTo wake each day in darkness is a plight you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, yet that's what many of us do routinely throughout winter. Getting up in the dark decouples our life from our circadian rhythm (our body clock), with bodily processes such as cognition and metabolism put to work before they're fully prepped.Thank heavens, then, for sunrise alarm clocks. These dawn simulation" devices glow with gradually intensifying brightness as your wake-up time approaches, kickstarting your circadian rhythm before you get out of bed. For many users, this results in a happier, healthier start to the day. Continue reading...
Former Labour deputy leader says tech firm would work with a Reform UK government on immigration crackdownsTom Watson, the former Labour deputy leader who recently joined Palantir, has warned against mob rule" when it comes to awarding public contracts.Lord Watson, now a senior vice-president at the US tech corporation, said UK ministers could get themselves in a lot of trouble" as he was questioned about concerns raised about the government working with his new employer. Continue reading...
A spokesperson behind the tech company's AI chatbot has not yet specified what counts as abusive or cruel contentAnthropic has barred users from exhibiting sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior" toward its models, as the company's leaders continue to ponder machine consciousness.The Verge first reported the change in policy. Continue reading...
Amid a cost-of-living crisis, with US midterms a month away, the president held a ceremony to celebrate our tech overlords - againHe stands accused of being out of touch, enriching himself and his family, building a lavish White House ballroom and, with elections looming, neglecting the hardships of the voters who brought him to power.Time for Donald Trump to show he still has the common touch? Nope. Continue reading...
A musical about a drama group's pilgrimage and reflections on activist art join an intriguing show about lost languagesIn a Dublin theatre festival programme tackling heavy themes of racism, conflict and prejudice, Lourdes! The Musical () promises something effervescent. Xnthony Ltd, the creators of Oliver Cromwell Is Really Very Sorry, have turned their lightly quizzical gaze to the French pilgrimage town - a holy Blackpool, a divine Las Vegas" and a site of hope or desperation for five unlikely travelling companions.Back in his home village in Countryland", in 2008, following a diagnosis of HIV that punctures his dreams of Los Angeles, singer-songwriter Matthew (Riain Cash) lends his star power to a parish drama group taking a musical about Saint Bernadette to Lourdes. Interweaving this show-within-a-show and the pilgrimage strands, Xnthony's lyrics and Matthew Floyd Jones's score blend pop, club beats and soulful ballads. Directed by Sarah Meadows, the supercharged ensemble joining Cash as, variously, a droll priest (Iestyn Arwel), a terminally ill mother and her transgender daughter (Nichola MacEvilly and Danielle James) and an eager tour manager (Molly Lynch) carry the music's tonal shifts effortlessly. Continue reading...
AI is already implicated in violent deaths and nearly started world war three. Those bad things? They only happen to other peopleSam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, has some words for you about his company and the future of artificial intelligence.One of the differences between us and some of the stricter AI safety people is that we believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency [to use it]," Altman told Politico's new technology podcast and newsletter Decoded.Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
Whistleblower says recording and analysis of all probate calls in Co-op Legal Services is oppressiveThe Co-op has become the latest employer to place workers under AI surveillance with an automated listening technology that rates every phone call some of them make to customers.In a system described as oppressive and dystopian" by a whistleblower, Co-op Legal Services is using AI models to record, analyse and award a percentage score for interactions between agents and customers seeking advice about probate, wills and estates. Continue reading...
Bejar's daughter was 14 when she told him Instagram was failing to keep her safe. So when he became part of Meta's wellbeing team', he knew he had to speak out - and his testimony cost it billionsThe Social Reckoning hits cinemas this Friday, but the real world has already been working on a sequel - or rather, a threequel. Directed by Aaron Sorkin, the movie is a follow-up to The Social Network, detailing the further misadventures of Mark Zuckerberg and his social media empire, and in particular Frances Haugen, the employee who in 2021 leaked internal documents that appeared to show Facebook was aware of the harms its products had inflicted.It's no spoiler to reveal the film climaxes with Haugen's testimony to the US Senate, on 5 October 2021. That very same day, Arturo Bejar, a consultant on the wellbeing team of Instagram (which is also owned by Facebook), hit send on a long-gestating email to Zuckerberg and other senior Facebook executives on a similar theme. I wanted to bring to your attention what I believe is a critical gap in how we as a company approach harm, and how the people we serve experience it," Bejar began, before laying out some shocking statistics from his team's survey. For example: 24.4% of 13-15-year-olds on Instagram said they had received unwanted advances, and 21.8% said they had been the target of bullying on the platform in the past seven days. Furthermore, 51% of Instagram users said they had had a bad or harmful experience in the past seven days. Only 1% of them reported it, and of those, 2% had the content taken down - so just 0.02%. This was a far greater degree of harm than the company's existing measurements suggested. Zuckerberg never replied. Continue reading...
In ad to be shown before The Social Reckoning, Ian Russell will say too little has changed' since death of Molly, 14Molly Russell's father will tell UK cinemagoers that Instagram helped kill my daughter" in an advert to be shown before screenings of a new film about Mark Zuckerberg's social media empire.In the 30-second ad before The Social Reckoning, released on Friday, Ian Russell says too little has changed" since the death of his 14-year-old daughter, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing harmful content on Instagram. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Revelation comes after executive told parliamentary inquiry he did not believe AI had been used to write message, but was happy to go and confirm'
by Aisha Down in London, Joseph Gedeon in Washington on (#78X5R)
Lithuania and Canada were also pressured to withdraw, and days before #Disinfo2026, logos were wiped off websiteThe Trump administration pressured multiple countries to withdraw their sponsorship of a leading European conference on disinformation, with Canada, Lithuania and the EU's diplomatic service subsequently agreeing to do so, the Guardian understands.The conference, #Disinfo2026, taking place on Wednesday and Thursday, is the annual meetup of Europe's counter-disinformation community and has drawn hundreds of researchers, journalists, technologists and policymakers to a hotel in Vilnius, Lithuania. It is run by an independent Brussels non-profit, EU Disinfo Lab. Continue reading...
Women hold just a fraction of new AI jobs but are overrepresented in roles with high risk of AI disruptionThere's a common fear among people who work in Silicon Valley: snag one of the fast-growing, high-paying jobs in artificial intelligence, or get trapped in the permanent underclass", a phrase describing the fate of those who won't have upward mobility in the age of AI.The phrase usually describes a future in which AI automates human jobs. But for women in tech, it's starting to look like the present. Continue reading...
Leaders worry OpenAI is not doing due diligence to vet results and that AI models aren't accessible to broader field of mathematiciansOpenAI has astounded mathematicians after releasing hundreds of new mathematical findings on Tuesday.The company published over 370 mathematical results across a variety of topics such as algebra, theoretical computer science and mathematical logic, showcasing what some of its most advanced artificial intelligence models are capable of. Continue reading...
Users reject site's explanations after detailed instructions for writing response to post on popular forum were publishedMumsnet has denied using AI to produce content after detailed instructions to help an AI model write one of its popular am I being unreasonable" (AIBU) posts appeared on a Mumsnet message board.Users of the long-established forum, which is known for its frank discussions of family tensions, were vexed when the AI prompt appeared in response to a user seeking advice about a family dilemma involving a neurodivergent uncle and a sick child. Continue reading...
The launch of a collector's box hints at a new reality: the kinds of games I grew up with are becoming a luxury item, locked behind a forbidding spending barrier Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereAs a parent (and partner) to a habitual collector, I do feel like an unwelcome portion of my life is occupied by an endless war against stuff. Surfaces in my home ceaselessly accumulate piles of random objects: a JoyCon wrist strap, a sticker sheet, an unidentifiable plastic piece of a toy or gizmo, an Xbox 360 controller with no batteries, cases for Switch cartridges lost down the side of the sofa ... Stuff encroaches everywhere, especially in a gaming household. Much as I regret the imminent disappearance of physical games, I do not regret the extra space I have in my attic as a result of switching almost entirely to downloaded games over the last decade or so.Speaking of the imminent disappearance of physical games: Rockstar recently announced a 350 ($400) collector's box" of Grand Theft Auto 6 goodies ... that doesn't include the game itself. Not even a download code. The Grand Theft Auto VI: The Goodtime State - Vice City Collection, to give it its full and unwieldy name, contains a hat, a bag, a pair of sunglasses, a figurine, a poster and more, including a mirror and a swizzle spoon" that looks, unambigiously, like a cocaine spoon. The game retails at 70, so if you want something to play alongside all your stuff, you're looking at an outlay of 420. Continue reading...
Jeremy Strong's slow-talking Facebook founder turns into a cameo, background to a thriller about a whistleblower that somehow never mentions TrumpHere is a film for all those people who solemnly deplore social media in conversation but haven't quite got round to deleting their accounts. Sixteen years have gone by since The Social Network, written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher; this was the addictive, obsessive-compulsive movie about the birth of Facebook in Harvard's macho-competitive cauldron of student sexism and nerdy self-pity, starring Jesse Eisenberg as the fast-talking, arrogant, not-necessarily-evil genius Mark Zuckerberg. Now Sorkin is back with a sequel of sorts, directing his own script - and now Zuckerberg is basically evil, but also weirdly slow talking, as if all the zinging, smart-alecky Sorkinesque dialogue energy of the first film has been siphoned away in early middle age and dispersed among the insurgents in the new cast.Sorkin's jittery, funny, syncopated style is unmistakable, as distinctive in its way as David Mamet, although he has one joke about spatula" being a Yiddish word that he has borrowed from Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint. It is the story of how in 2021, Zuckerberg's Facebook empire was challenged by courageous whistleblower-employee Frances Haugen and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz, who were on a mission to tell the world how Zuckerberg, scared by falling revenue, changed the algorithm so that engagement was supercharged by rage bait and hate speech, malice and envy. Facebook, moreover, didn't factcheck political ads, thus driving a huge, nationwide surge in extremist groups and teen bullying and becoming a major player in the Capitol riots. (Having said that, this film does not say aloud the word Trump" and rather cravenly declines to specify Maga activity.) Continue reading...
by Chris Osuh Community affairs correspondent on (#78WYT)
Project lead says it celebrates incredible contributions' Jamaica-born sociologist made to Britain's cultureWhether it was Thatcherism, populism or the story of the Sony Walkman, Stuart Hall was a public intellectual famed for defining the times. Now a major digital archive of his previously unpublished papers, notebooks, recordings and videos has been launched.When the Jamaica-born sociologist and seminal figure in postwar Black British history died in 2014 aged 82, his obituary in the Guardian said he had been among the first to identify key questions of the age". Hall coined the term Thatcherism and in 1985 warned of the dangers of authoritarian populism". Continue reading...
Suit says AI tool allows independently owned franchises to exchange nonpublic price and sales informationMcDonald's is facing a lawsuit in federal court over its alleged use of an AI tool to determine pricing across independent franchises, which prosecutors say violates antitrust laws and has unfairly inflated menu prices for Americans.The vast majority of McDonald's US stores are independently owned and are said to individually decide on prices under company policy. Antitrust laws require businesses to set prices independently from their competitors, as coordinating prices can stifle market competition and push up costs for consumers. Continue reading...
Lawyers launch super-complaint over finding that officers in England and Wales frequently dismiss image-based abusePolice forces are routinely failing to investigate complaints about the circulation of image-based abuse, previously known as revenge pornography", according to research that has triggered a super-complaint over the way such crimes are handled.Lawyers have gathered evidence from 100 people who reported intimate images being shared online without their consent. Their research suggests that image-based abuse is still frequently dismissed or not recognised as criminal offending, despite being described by the former prime minister Keir Starmer as a national emergency. Continue reading...
Techno-optimism' may lead to reliance on unproven solutions at expense of societal changes neededScientists who believe technology will largely solve the problems caused by the climate crisis are less likely to engage in civic action on the issue, according to a study.The report from the London School of Economics found they are 23% less likelyto sign petitions or take part in protests than peers who doubt that technology is the answer. They are also 18% less likely to make high-impact lifestyle changes, from reducing flights to changing to a vegan or vegetarian diet. Continue reading...
by Miranda Bryant Nordic correspondent on (#78W9H)
Order on two construction sites comes after Google failed to carry out environmental impact assessmentsGoogle has been ordered to temporarily stop work on two datacentres in Finland after failing to do the necessary environmental impact assessments on its construction sites.The planned datacentres in Muhos and Kajanni are part of a 13bn (11bn) project across multiple sites in northern Finland by the technology company amid huge demand for space to house online infrastructure. Continue reading...
New York film festival: The origin story of Sam Altman's company is reimagined as a campy comedy starring Andrew GarfieldOn the day that Luca Guadagnino's film about Sam Altman and OpenAI premiered, Vanity Fair released a cover story on Altman. Alongside glossy portraits from Annie Leibovitz, the world's pre-eminent portrait photographer, the story describes him as the Oppenheimer of his day, evoking the image of a man leading humanity towards its own inevitable demise at the hands of sentient robots. Altman doesn't seem to be grappling with much existential angst about the whole thing though: in an interview also released this week, he said that we should be prepared to accept bad things" in return for the benefits of AI.How much worse can things get? AI agents have already gone rogue, hacking into government systems and bruteforcing" UN databases. Last year, a young woman used ChatGPT as a therapist before she killed herself (the software helped her write her suicide note). Studies show that using AI is probably leading us all towards something called cognitive surrender, which does not seem like the best use of your one wild and precious life. Continue reading...
Copyright law in the US only applies to human-made creations, but AI characters like Tung Tung Tung Sahur are challenging thatOne of the most beloved characters in an absurdist genre of online video content has become the center of an international legal battle that could determine where human creativity ends and artificial intelligence begins.Tung Tung Tung Sahur, also known as Triple T, was created in 2025 by an Indonesian teen who goes by the username Noxa, using OpenAI's image-generation tool. Based on a kentongan - a type of drum used to wake south-east Asian Muslims for their pre-dawn meal during Ramadan - the character is an anthropomorphized version of the instrument with a broad smile and a vacant stare. He sits under the umbrella of Italian brain rot" internet videos. Continue reading...
New alliances between the White House, the Pentagon, US intelligence and AI companies are looming ominouslyHello, and welcome to TechScape. I'm your host, Blake Montgomery, writing to you as I sit under yellowing leaves in New York. Today in tech, we're discussing technocracy.OpenAI safety leader quits, warning AI company's culture is broken'Forget superintelligence': error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this monthAI chatbots remove hijabs from images of Muslim women when promptedGoogle rolls out new Gemini AI model but restricts access over safety concernsCalifornia issues investigative subpoena to OpenAI over rogue agents' hackingThe AI industry is booming. Women are getting left behindElon is my prophet': how Musk's Doge team took a wrecking ball to WashingtonRural Queenslanders have seen gas projects come and go - but a 725-hectare datacentre poses a whole new level of stupidity'Georgia holds emergency meeting on AI exposing voters' secret ballotsPeter Thiel revealed as secret buyer of Bel Air mansion that sold for $130mNew Google Maps images reveal massive scale of devastation in Gaza Continue reading...
Watchdog examining whether company carried out adequate risk assessment as required by Online Safety ActMark Zuckerberg's Meta is under investigation for a potential breach of the UK's digital safety laws after launching a Snapchat-style feature on Instagram.The communications watchdog, Ofcom, is investigating whether the $1.9tn (1.4tn) company infringed the Online Safety Act (OSA) by failing to carry out adequate checks on whether its Instagram Instants product could show illegal content or be accessed by children. Continue reading...
Firms working on reproducing compounds without need for repeated harvesting but conservationists are scepticalMany of the world's most expensive perfumes begin with a wounded tree. When some Aquilaria trees are damaged, they produce a dark, fragrant resin that becomes agarwood, or oudh - an ingredient so valuable that wild trees have been illegally felled in its pursuit.The result has devastated wild Aquilaria populations. But what if perfumers could create the smell without cutting down the tree? Continue reading...
Kwon's answers were provided in a helpful, quiet and calm manner, but his mea culpa left the audience not much the wiserOpen AI's Jason Kwon flew 15 hours from San Francisco to Sydney to give the company's first in-person mea culpa after it admitted - in an unsigned email, to a public departmental inbox - that one of its AI agents had accessed a Services Australia website without authorisation and grabbed data related to Medicare.Kwon - polite, friendly, even-toned - got through a potentially dicey parliamentary committee hearing unscathed, promising to do better and pledging assistance to Australia. No missteps, no viral moments, just delivering his answers helpfully, in a quiet and calm manner, sympathising with the questioner and the point they were making. Continue reading...
The findings come after warnings from tech leaders that AI placed in the wrong hands could trigger larger threats such as nuclear war or bioweaponry destructionMisusing artificial intelligence (AI) is the top threat to companies' reputations - more so than being accused of putting children in the way of mental, emotional or physical harm and issues exposed by the US-Israel war on Iran, among other brand risks, according to a new survey of more than 150 public affairs leaders.Those findings in the new edition of the quarterly Reputation Risk Index, released on Tuesday, came on the heels of other perhaps more dire warnings from leading tech figures that AI in the wrong hands could precipitate existential threats on a mass scale such as nuclear war or destruction by bioweaponry. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Campaign group's analysis of North Yorkshire plans finds datacentre would have to burn 4.9m tonnes of wood a yearDrax's planned datacentre could produce nearly double the emissions of all flights out of Gatwick airport each year by burning 4.9m tonnes of wood annually, an analysis has shown.Campaigners say this would make it one of the dirtiest datacentres out there". Continue reading...
A new documentary follows Kristin Bride as she takes on Congress after the death of her 16-year-old son who was cyberbulliedAt this point in time, going anywhere without your smartphone feels almost like leaving behind a limb. Whether it's for directions, distraction or the discourse on social media, our phones have become both a necessity and a crutch in our everyday lives, with our bodies literally evolving around the glow of the screen.But no matter how much we think we need all the bells and whistles of the attention economy, the attention economy actually needs us more than we need it. Continue reading...
In a parliamentary inquiry, OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon is questioned by independent senator David Pocock about the company's notification process after OpenAI agents accessed Australian government website data in June. Asked why OpenAI relied on an arbitrary department email rather than direct government contacts, Kwon acknowledges that 'in retrospect, we should have done what you're suggesting'. He explains that staff had treated the incident as a 'technical situation' and sought to contact technical counterparts, which he says was 'not good enough'
Campaign groups report surge in membership after a spate of AI safety alerts and apocalyptic warningsIn a bar below Waterloo Bridge, a cell of a fast-growing anti-AI protest movement met last week to plot their latest move: disrupting a tech industry dinner being addressed by a senior executive from the chip maker Nvidia.Emma, a 28-year-old bartender, had never before taken direct action and was the most nervous of the four plotters from Pull The Plug, one of a growing number of AI-focused campaign groups around the world. Continue reading...
During a joint parliamentary hearing on artificial intelligence, Anthropic's head of safeguards, Dave Orr, says that investigations of hundreds of millions of transcripts reveal no unauthorised interactions with Australian government systems. However, Orr acknowledges Anthropic has limited visibility into customer usage due to standard zero data retention' policies
Camera-enabled Meta spectacles are already restricted in UK and US because of fears about covert recordingNorway is planning a temporary ban on smart glasses in some public places, amid rising global concern at the spread of the AI-enabled recording devices.The Oslo government is planning a bill to prevent the use of the camera-enabled spectacles in parks, beaches, museums, shopping centres, schools, daycare centres, healthcare facilities, gyms and public events, although private use would still be allowed. Continue reading...
Boss of OpenAI calls for a regulatory light touch because of the good stuff' the technology can deliverSam Altman says he believes the world should accept bad things" happening with AI in exchange for the benefits of the technology.The chief executive of OpenAI cited hacks, scams and other bad things that will happen" in an interview that sparked an instant backlash from critics of the big AI companies. His comments came after one of his company's safety experts resigned, saying at the weekend that its culture is broken". Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#78V1W)
Longer battery life, better screen, upgraded Siri and new variable aperture camera in refreshed design from last year's modelApple's smaller Pro iPhone gets the best kind of spec bump for 2026: longer battery life, faster chips and a fancy new variable aperture for the main camera.The iPhone 18 Pro is one of a pair of slab phones launched alongside Apple's first folding phone, the iPhone Duo, and is the cheapest of the new phones, with a regular iPhone 18 yet to be announced.Screen: 6.3in Super Retina XDR (120Hz OLED) (460ppi)Processor: Apple A20 ProRAM: 12GBStorage: 256GB, 512GB or 1TBOperating system: iOS 27Camera: 48MP + 48MP UW + 48MP 4x, 18MP front-facingConnectivity: 5G, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 6, Thread, USB-C, Satellite, UWB and GNSSWater resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)Dimensions: 150 x 71.9 x 8.75mmWeight: 211g Continue reading...
Abuse material monitor says number of AI images assessed this year is already 40% higher than last year's totalAI-generated child sexual abuse material is proliferating online, with the amount of illegal material investigated this year already exceeding the total for 2025.Analysts at the Internet Watch Foundation have found more photorealistic child sexual abuse material in the first half of 2026 than for the whole of the prior year. The UK-based IWF, which monitors abuse material globally, said it had assessed 6,310 AI images that met the legal definition of child sexual abuse, 40% higher than last year's total of more than 4,500. Continue reading...
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