Technology | The Guardian

Silicon Valley titan desperately tries to detach self from power in amateurish talks attempting to ape his favorite philosopher

The political svengali and investor has been giving lectures on an evil king or tyrant ... who appears in the end times'

His AI video generator Sora 2 has been reviled for pinching the work of others. One giant leap for Sam: for everyone else, not so muchTake a look at Sam Altman. I mean, actually do it. Go to Google images, where you can find countless photos of the OpenAI boss smiling in a kind of wan genius way, the humble lost puppy of Silicon Valley. But I urge you to simply cover the bottom half of his face in any of these pictures, and you will immediately clock that Sam has the sad-psycho eyes of the lost woman's boyfriend who the police have asked to front the missing person's appeal. Please come home, Sheila - we're all worried sick and we just want you back.If that joke seems off-colour, or crass, or some kind of manipulative stretch - please, don't worry. I'm using the OpenAI gold standard of giving-a-toss, where the unwilling subjects of any generated content have to formally, time-consumingly and bureaucratically opt out of being used/abused/exploited any way anyone likes. I haven't heard from Sam, so my assumption is that he's fine with me saying that he knows exactly where Sheila is because he put her there. He is, after all, fast emerging as precisely the type to appear alongside the phrase in plain sight".Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnistA year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar

Carmakers accused of cheating air pollution rules have faced little punishment in UK but trial brought by 1.6m motorists is about to beginLittle lungs are still paying for Dieselgate every day," says Jemima Hartshorn, the founder of the Mums for Lungs campaign group. Her own young daughter has suffered serious breathing problems, which at their worst involved the harrowing experience of having to pin her to the floor to administer an inhaler.It is 10 years since the scandal erupted, exposing cars that pumped out far more toxic fumes on the road than when passing regulatory tests in the lab. But Dieselgate is far from over. Continue reading...

Chiptune alt-rock band Anamanaguchi are having a bumper year, culminating in an opportunity to create the soundtrack they've always wanted to make - for a new Scott Pilgrim gameScott Pilgrim, the series of pop culture-saturated graphic novels by Canadian author and comic book artist Bryan Lee O'Malley, has become a timeless epic about teenage insecurity, love and redemption, and the intersection of arrogance and self-esteem - as well as a Canadian interpretation of emo, indie rock and shnen-style comic books. It is a coming-of-age tale about an initially unlikable teenage boy growing up in the 00s, who matures through six graphic novels that deftly reference everything from Japanese manga to western superheroes, video games and Tintin. It is also, of course, a hit movie, a 2022 Netflix anime series, and a 2010 video game - the last two of which were soundtracked by New York City-based indie rock band Anamanaguchi.My favourite scene in the Scott Pilgrim anime is where Knives and Kim are just jamming in a room together, and almost nothing happens," laughs Peter Berkman, one of the lead songwriters and guitarists in the band. It's just one of those slice-of-life moments where you remember why you love music in the first place. It really struck a chord with me. No pun intended." Continue reading...

CMA puts Google under tighter regulation with strategic market status' designation and can enforce changes

Twelve months, thousands of tests and a revolutionary potato masher - here are our readers' and writers' ultimate buys Don't get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereThe Filter is turning one. Since we launched a year ago, we've run, hiked, camped and swum; we've drunk 455 cups of coffee; washed 34 loads of clothes; slept on mattresses for 2,240 hours, and much more, testing a total of 2,040 products - from coffee machines to gin - to bring you the most rigorous, informed and entertaining buying advice.We've even had a decent stab at identifying the preferred lipstick of a global icon. And we've helped you consume less - and look after your precious things, from your phone to your wooden kitchen utensils, to make them last longer. Continue reading...

Strava, the Instagram for exercise, is suing Garmin for allegedly copying its features. Josh Taylor explains it to Miles Herbert

Many US-built AI systems fall short but competing against tech giants neither easy nor cheapIn Singapore, a government-funded artificial intelligence model can converse in 11 languages, from Bahasa Indonesia to Lao. In Malaysia, ILMUchat, built by a local construction conglomerate, boasts that it knows which Georgetown you're referring to" - that is, the capital of Penang and not the private university in the US. Meanwhile, Switzerland's Apertus, unveiled in September, understands when to use the Swiss German ss" and not the German-language character ".Around the world, language models like these are part of an AI arms race worth hundreds of billions of dollars mostly driven by a few powerful companies in the US and China. As giants such as OpenAI, Meta and Alibaba plough vast sums into developing increasingly powerful models, middle powers and developing countries are watching the landscape carefully, and sometimes placing their own, expensive bets. Continue reading...

In a world of distraction, it's easy to jump from one interruption to another. Could sitting doing nothing for an hour help us cope - or is it just meditation by another name?Name: Rawdogging marathons.Age: In its therapeutic sense, brand new. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: The almost 50% increase in the cost of Microsoft's game-streaming service is step closer to the model of TV, music and filmIn the music, TV and film industries, streaming has completely upended the business model. Instead of buying albums and films, most of us pay for a few subscriptions depending on what we want to watch, and maybe supplement that with the odd vinyl or special-edition Blu-ray. This has been pretty terrible for musicians, who earn approximately $0.004 per play on Spotify, while Spotify itself made $1bn in profit last year (admittedly after many years of operating losses). On the TV front, it's increasingly annoying for customers: in my household we have to carefully bounce around between five different TV subscriptions depending on what series we're into, to keep costs down.This model hasn't really caught on in video games. Apple has its Arcade service that offers premium mobile games for 6.99 a month, but free-to-play games are the norm on phones and tablets and make gigantic profits through ads and in-game purchases. (Fun fact: around 85% of all revenue in the entire games industry comes from free-to-play games, mostly in territories such as China.) Netflix packages games as part of its subscription, but not very many people play them. PlayStation and Nintendo both have subscription services, but they only include older games, rather than brand new ones. And then there's Game Pass, the Xbox subscription service, which has offered a library of 200+ games including all of Xbox's brand new exclusives for an eyebrow-raisingly generous price. Until now. Continue reading...

Possibility of sharp market correction has increased', says Bank's financial policy committee

First new design in ages, upgraded camera, serious performance and longer battery life make it a standout yearThe 17 Pro is Apple's biggest redesign of the iPhone in years, chucking out the old titanium sides and all-glass backs for a new aluminium unibody design, a huge full-width camera lump on the back and some bolder colours.That alone will make the iPhone 17 Pro popular for those looking to upgrade and be seen with the newest model. But with the change comes an increase in price to 1,099 (1,299/$1,099/A$1,999), crossing the 1,000 barrier for the first time for Apple's smallest Pro phone, which now comes with double the starting storage. Continue reading...

Authorities in Japan are taking action against excessive phone time - but what is it like to restrict scrolling to 120 minutes a day?Despite working full-time for a company in Tokyo, Shoki Moriyama manages to eke out eight hours a day to devote to his smartphone.I need my phone to navigate my way through the information wars," says Moriyama, who at 25 is part of a generation that can't imagine life without scrolling through news and social media, messaging apps and off-the-wall video clips. Continue reading...

A new exhibition in Berlin shows how the notoriously paranoid East German state greeted the dawn of video gaming with surprising enthusiasmIn 2019 researchers at Berlin's Computer Games Museum made an extraordinary discovery: a rudimentary Pong console, made from salvaged electronics and plastic soap-box enclosures for joysticks. The beige rectangular tupperware that contained its wires would, when connected to a TV by the aerial, bring a serviceable Pong copy to the screen.At the time, they thought the home-brewed device was a singular example of ingenuity behind the iron curtain. But earlier this year they found another Seifendosen-Pong (soap-box Pong"), along with a copy of a state-produced magazine called FunkAmateur containing schematics for a DIY variety of Atari's 1970s gaming sensation. Continue reading...

The Guardian spoke with therapists, media experts and journalists about helping kids process bad news and develop healthy media habitsWhen rightwing commentator Charlie Kirk was killed last month, footage of his shooting spread rapidly across social media. Today, anyone with a smartphone can access gruesome videos and images - as well as troves of misinformation. Though some experts have been sounding the alarm about the potential harm of smartphones on children and teen's mental health, the fact is most young people still have access to phones - and the often disturbing content that flows out of them.The Guardian spoke with seven experts on how best to speak with kids about upsetting content and news, at what age to start those conversations - and what to avoid.Anya Kamenetz, journalist and publisher of The Golden Hour newsletterEugene Beresin, MD, psychiatrist and executive director of the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts general hospitalTara Conley, assistant professor of media and journalism at Kent State UniversityTori Cordiano, PhD, Ohio-based licensed clinical psychologistJill Murphy, chief content officer of Common Sense MediaAshley Rogers Berner, professor at Johns Hopkins UniversityHolly Korbey, author of Building Better Citizens Continue reading...

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 to keep your home clean and dust freeChoosing a cordless vacuum isn't a decision that should be taken lightly. You're likely to keep a vacuum cleaner for years, relying heavily on its ability to suck up dust, crumbs, mud, pet hair and any other dry spillages or sheddings that end up on your floor. Choosing the right model can be the difference between an effective cleaner that's a delight to pull out of the cupboard and a dud that you dread having to unblock, detangle and clean after every use.In this review, I took 10 of the leading cordless vacuum cleaners from a range of manufacturers and at various prices and inflicted the same cleaning tests on each one. That takes all the guesswork out of picking your next cleaner: I can tell you exactly which ones picked up the most mess.Best cordless vacuum cleaner overall:

Top Apple buds get upgraded sound, improved fit, live translation and built-in heart rate sensors, but are still unrepairableApple's extremely popular AirPods Pro Bluetooth earbuds are back for their third generation with a better fit, longer battery life, built-in heart rate sensors and more effective noise cancelling, and look set to be just as ubiquitous as their predecessors.It has been three years since the last model, but the earbuds still come only in white and you really have to squint at the details to spot the difference from the previous two generations. Continue reading...

Film-maker tells the public to stop sending her videos, saying: You're not making art, you're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings'Zelda Williams, the daughter of the late actor and comedian Robin Williams, has spoken out against AI-generated content featuring her father.Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad," Zelda wrote in an Instagram story on Monday. Stop believing I wanna see it or that I'll understand, I don't and I won't. If you're just trying to troll me, I've seen way worse, I'll restrict and move on. But please, if you've got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop. It's dumb, it's a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it's NOT what he'd want. Continue reading...

The criminal organisation is believed to have smuggled up to 40,000 stolen phones from the UK to China over the past 12 monthsPolice have disrupted an international network suspected of smuggling tens of thousands of stolen phones from the UK in its largest operation to tackle phone theft in London, the Metropolitan police said.The criminal organisation is believed to have smuggled up to 40,000 stolen phones from the UK to China over the past 12 months - up to 40% of all phones stolen in the capital, the Met said on Monday. Continue reading...

The deal offers the ChatGPT maker an opportunity to buy a 10% stake in chipmaker AMDOpenAI and the chipmaker AMD announced on Monday that they had signed a multibillion-dollar chip deal that would also give the ChatGPT creator the option to buy a large stake in the chipmaker.The deal offers OpenAI an opportunity to buy 10% in AMD and marks a major vote of confidence in the company's AI chips and software. Shares of AMD surged more than 30% and added about $80bn to its market capitalization after the announcement. Continue reading...

Your September favourites are all about getting cosy - with a little side of glam Don't get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereWhen the weather turns colder, we all crave a little comfort. For some, that's a cosier bed, complete with a new memory foam mattress topper, or a more comfortable office chair. For others, it's a waterproof hooded scarf to keep your hair dry in style - or a hair dryer to blast it again.And it seems that for some of you, it means fringed party skirts and a cheese box through the post. Who are we to judge? Here are the things you loved the most this month. Continue reading...

Hexecutable; PC

AI dating sites claim they remove potential for exploitation, but critics say they are reinforcing harmful stereotypesEleanor, 24, is a Polish historian and lecturer at a university in Warsaw; Isabelle, 25, is a detective serving with the NYPD; Brooke, 39, is an American housewife who enjoys an opulent Miami lifestyle financed by her frequently absent husband.All three women will flirt and chat and send nude photographs and explicit videos via one of a soaring number of new adult dating websites that offer an increasingly realistic selection of AI girlfriends for subscribers willing to pay a monthly fee. Continue reading...

In a Consumer Champions special, Anna Tims tackles online rental disasters, from a tree collapsing on to a cottage to being trapped in a flatThe 100-year-old oak fell on the first day of the holiday. It crashed on to the terrace where James and his partner, Andrew, had been breakfasting minutes earlier, smashing the table and chairs and crushing the windscreen of their hire car.The Airbnb cottage in Provence, France, was engulfed by the branches that broke the living room window and damaged the roof. I was sure the ceiling was going to come in," says James. If it hadfallen minutes earlier we would have been seriously injured or killed." Continue reading...

Bigger batteries, more scratch-resistant glass and new hands-free gestures are small but meaningful upgradesThe Apple Watch Series 11 adds the one thing most people actually want from a smartwatch: longer battery life.Otherwise the new model is a direct replacement for the Series 10, matching it in design, dimensions and features, with most of its upgrades coming from software. That makes it one of the very best smartwatches available, even if it hasn't changed much.Case size: 42 or 46mmCase thickness: 9.7mmWeight: about 30g or 37gProcessor: S10Storage: 64GBOperating system: watchOS 26Water resistance: 50 metres (5ATM)Sensors: HR, ECG, spO2, temp, depth, mic, speaker, NFC, GNSS, compass, altimeterConnectivity: Bluetooth 5.3, wifi 4, NFC, UWB, optional 5G Continue reading...

Company behind the AI video app says it will work with rights holders to block characters from Sora at their request'OpenAI is promising to give copyright holders more granular control" over character generation after its new app Sora 2 produced a flood of videos that depicted copyrighted characters.Sora 2, a video generator powered by artificial intelligence, was launched last week on an invite-only basis. The app allows users to generate short videos based on a text prompt. The Guardian's review of the feed of AI-generated videos last week showed copyrighted characters from shows such as SpongeBob SquarePants, South Park, Pokemon and Rick and Morty. Continue reading...

Hackers are more likely to target educational institutions than private businesses, government survey showsWhen hackers attacked UK nurseries last month and published children's data online, they were accused of hitting a new low.But the broader education sector is well used to being a target. Continue reading...

Silicon Valley is keen, once more, on a working pattern of 12-hour days, six days a week. It really is time for a new approach ...My current cultural comfort food is The Gilded Age, Julian Fellowes' deeply silly Manhattan toffs-in-bustles drama, in which one storyline (summarily dealt with due to lack of taffeta-rustling opportunities, I suspect) features a tycoon's downtrodden steelworkers going on strike for 888": eight hours each of work, sleep and recreation.That wasn't a revolutionary demand in the 1880s. The slogan, coined by the utopian social reformer Robert Owen, dates from 1817 (his New Lanark mill workers still did 10.5-hour days, though). Even then, it wasn't unprecedented: apparently, a 16th-century Spanish ordinance limited New World construction workers to eight-hour days. Continue reading...

Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term enshittification' explains what's gone wrong with the internet - and what we can do about itIt's not just you. The internet is getting worse, fast. The services we rely on, that we once loved? They're all turning into piles of shit, all at once. Ask any Facebook user who has to scroll past 10 screens of engagement-bait, AI slop and surveillance ads just to get to one post by the people they are on the service to communicate with. This is infuriating. Frustrating. And, depending on how important those services are to you, terrifying.In 2022, I coined a term to describe the sudden-onset platform collapse going on all around us: enshittification. To my bittersweet satisfaction, that word is doing bignumbers. In fact, it has achieved escape velocity. Itisn'tjust a way to say something got worse. It's an analysis that explains the way an online service gets worse, how that worsening unfolds, and the contagion that's causing everything to get worse, all at once. Continue reading...

Misinformation researchers say lifelike scenes could obfuscate truth and lead to fraud, bullying and intimidationOpenAI launched the latest iteration of its artificial intelligence-powered video generator on Tuesday, adding a social feed that allows people to share their realistic videos.Within hours of Sora 2's, release, though, many of the videos populating the feed and spilling over to older social media platforms depicted copyrighted characters in compromising situations as well as graphic scenes of violence and racism. OpenAI's own terms of service for Sora as well as ChatGPT's image or text generation prohibit content that promotes violence" or, more broadly, causes harm". Continue reading...

Ahti Heinla on bringing his tech to small towns, its effects on jobs - and whether he's still interested in moneyCity dwellers around the world have long been used to rapid delivery of takeaway food and, increasingly, groceries. But what they are not entirely used to - yet - is the sight of a robot pulling up to their front door. The co-founder of Skype, Ahti Heinla, believes his new venture is about to change that.Heinla is the chief executive of Starship Technologies, a startup that, he claimed, is able to operate deliveries run by trundling robots at a small profit - and cheaper than a human delivery driver, even in small towns and villages where delivery has not previously been viable. Continue reading...

From superintelligent AI to the climate and democracy, three leading thinkers discuss how to navigate the futureWhat happens when an internationally bestselling historian, a Nobel peace prize-winning journalist and a former politician get together to discuss the state of the world, and where we're heading? Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli medieval and military historian best known for his panoramic surveys of human history, including Sapiens, Homo Deus and, most recently, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. Maria Ressa, joint winner of the Nobel peace prize, is a Filipino and American journalist who co-founded the news website Rappler. And Rory Stewart is a British academic and former Conservative MP, writer and co-host of The Rest Is Politics podcast. Their conversation ranged over the rise of AI, the crisis in democracy and the prospect of a Trump-Putin wedding, but began by considering a question central to all of their work: how to live a good life in an increasingly fragmented and fragile world?YNH People have been arguing about this for thousands of years. The main contribution of modern liberalism and democracy was to try to agree to disagree; that different people can have very different concepts of what a good life is, and they can still live together in the same society, agreeing on some very basic rules of conduct. And the challenge was always that people who think they have the absolute answer to what is a good life try to impose it on others, partly because, unfortunately for many ideologies, an inherent part of the good life is attempting to make everybody live it. And even more unfortunately, in many cases, it seems that it is easier to impose it on others than to do it ourselves. If we take the original crusade in medieval Christian Europe, you have all these people who can't live a Christian life of modesty and compassion and love your neighbour, but they are able to travel thousands of kilometres to kill people and try to force them to live according to these principles. And what we are witnessing in the world right now is more of the same. Continue reading...

Readers respond to an article by Aleks Krotoski about dictators and tech billionaires wanting to solve the problem' of ageingLike Vladimir Putin, Joseph Stalin was interested in immortality (To them, ageing is a technical problem that can, and will, be fixed': how the rich and powerful plan to live for ever, 28 September). In 1939 he read Prolonging Life, a pamphlet promising a lifespan of 150 years, by Aleksandr Bogomolets, a haematologist famous for his rapid-healing serums and blood transfusion methods.Bogomolets promised to prolong life with cytotoxic proteins, herbs and transfusions of young blood. Stalin made him a Hero of Socialist Labour and gave him generous research funding, but was dismayed when he died aged 64 in 1946 (this was hardly Bogomolets's fault - as a boy in Tsarist times, he visited his mother, a revolutionary serving a sentence of hard labour in a Siberian prison, and caught tuberculosis).

From GPs using the technology to record consultations to AI detectives' finding brain lesions on scans, experts say it's only the beginning

Despite platform's limits on adult content, study finds it not only accessible but often suggestedTikTok has directed children's accounts to pornographic content within a small number of clicks, according to a report by a campaign group.Global Witness set up fake accounts using a 13-year-old's birth date and turned on the video app's restricted mode", which limits exposure to sexually suggestive" content. Continue reading...

Investigative journalist Emily Baker-White on the deal to transfer TikTok's US operations to Trump alliesLast week, Donald Trump signed an executive order approving a proposed deal to keep TikTok operating in the US. The $14bn deal, if finalised, would see the transfer of TikTok's US operation from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to a consortium which includes the American billionaires Larry Ellison, Oracle's co-founder, and Rupert Murdoch, as well as two investment firms with known ties to the Trump administration.It's owned by Americans, and very sophisticated Americans," Trump said while signing the order. This is going to be American-operated all the way." His administration claimed the deal would meet the requirements of a security law that required ByteDance to sell its American operation or face a ban in the US, after years of concern about data security and the risks of Chinese influence. Continue reading...

Lawsuit alleges the design of the vehicle's door handles is at fault for Krysta Tsukahara's deathTesla is being sued by the parents of a teenager killed in a crash involving one of its Cybertruck pickups last fall. The incident involved four passengers who were in the vehicle when it hit a tree and caught on fire in a quiet Bay Area town in California, according to court documents.Only one of the crash victims survived. Continue reading...

Resurfaced clip from Dead End: Paranormal Park led Musk to encourage his followers to cancel their subscriptionsElon Musk, the multibillionaire and self-proclaimed free speech absolutist", has in recent days trained his attention on getting people to cancel their Netflix subscriptions in protest of what he claims is the company's woke bias" and inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters.Musk, the richest person in the world with a net worth of approximately $500bn, has repeatedly encouraged his 227 million followers on X, the platform he controls, to cancel their Netflix subscriptions. In the past three days alone, he has posted or reposted calls to cancel Netflix for its content at least 26 times. Continue reading...

Some believe AI can spark their child's imagination through personalized stories and generative images. Scientists are wary of its effect on creativityJosh was at the end of his rope when he turned to ChatGPT for help with a parenting quandary. The 40-year-old father of two had been listening to his super loquacious" four-year-old talk about Thomas the Tank Engine for 45 minutes, and he was feeling overwhelmed.He was not done telling the story that he wanted to tell, and I needed to do my chores, so I let him have the phone," recalled Josh, who lives in north-west Ohio. I thought he would finish the story and the phone would turn off." Continue reading...

Tesla owner's wealth temporarily crosses half-trillion-dollar mark before retreating to $499bn

Jurgen Matthaus has for years been investigating the killer - and is confident he has finally solved the mysteryIt is one of the most chilling images of the Holocaust: a bespectacled Nazi soldier trains a pistol at the head of a resigned man kneeling in a suit before a pit full of corpses. German troops encircle the scene.The picture taken in today's Ukraine was long known, mistakenly, as The Last Jew in Vinnitsa, and was for decades shrouded in mystery. Continue reading...

If the first term of Donald Trump provoked anxiety over the fate of objective knowledge, the second has led to claims we live in a world-historical age of stupid, accelerated by big tech. But might there be a way out?The first and second Trump administrations have provoked markedly different critical reactions. The shock of 2016 and its aftermath saw a wave of liberal anxiety about the fate of objective knowledge, not only in the US but also in Britain, where the Brexit referendum that year had been won by acampaign that misrepresented key facts and figures. A rich lexicon soon arose to describe this epistemic breakdown. Oxford Dictionaries declared post-truth" their 2016 word of the year; Merriam-Webster's was surreal". The scourge of fake news", pumped out by online bots and Russian troll farms, suggested that the authority of professional journalism had been fatally damaged by the rise of social media. Andwhen presidential counsellor Kellyanne Conway coined the phrase alternative facts" a few days after Trump's inauguration in early 2017, the mendacity ofthe incoming administration appeared to be all butofficial.The truth panic had the unwelcome side-effect ofemboldening those it sought to oppose. Fake" was one of Trump's favourite slap-downs, especially to news outlets that reported unwelcome facts about him and his associates. A booming Maga media further amplified the president's lies and denials. Thetools of liberal expertise appeared powerless to hold such brazen duplicity to account. A touchstone of the moment was the German-born writer and philosopher Hannah Arendt, who observed in her 1951book TheOrigins of Totalitarianism that the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or thededicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction ... nolongerexists". Continue reading...

Prominent US Jewish advocacy and anti-hate organization removed over a thousand pages of researchThe Anti-Defamation League, one of the most prominent Jewish advocacy and anti-hate organizations in the US, removed over a thousand pages of extremism research from its site on Tuesday night following online backlash from rightwing influencers and Elon Musk.The ADL's now-deleted glossary of extremism" contained over a thousand entries that gave background information on groups and ideologies connected to racist, antisemitic and otherwise hateful incidents. Its pages on neo-Nazi groups, militias and antisemitic conspiracies now redirect to the landing page for its extremism research. Continue reading...

New access order by Home Office would seek access to the tech company's encrypted cloud backupsThe UK government has renewed its confrontation with Apple over access to customer data by demanding a backdoor into the tech company's cloud storage service - targeting British users only.The Home Office had previously sought access to data on Apple's advanced data protection (ADP) service uploaded by any user around the world, triggering a clash with the White House. Continue reading...

For 48 hours Afghanistan had been cut off from mobile and internet services in a Taliban-imposed shutdownJust before nightfall on Wednesday, the near-deserted streets of Afghanistan's capital suddenly filled with people - mobile phones everywhere had pinged back to life.With phones pressed to their ears or tightly gripped in their hands, Afghans poured on to the streets of Kabul to check if others were also online. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: The private equity effort to acquire the makers of Fifa and more is the biggest deal in gaming history - financially and morallyWhen Microsoft announced its intention to buy Activision-Blizzard for a touch over $68bn in 2022, it was the biggest deal ever struck in the games industry, and one of the most surprising. But that shock pales into comparison to the reaction to the latest big move in the industry: EA (Electronic Arts), the publisher best known for its juggernaut sports games Madden and EA Sports FC (previously called Fifa), is being taken private in the biggest leveraged buyout in history". It's a deal worth $55bn, by a trio of investors who, on paper, look like a collection of end-of-level bosses.Enter player one: Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund. The Saudi royal family has been investing its wealth in video games for some years now, and owns its own Savvy Games Group, led by crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, perhaps best known for mass-arresting his own citizens and ordering the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Player two: Affinity Partners, an investment company led by Jared Kushner, son-in-law of the current US president. And player three: Silver Lake, just your run-of-the-mill evil private equity firm, which currently owns a large stake in game engine-maker Unity. Game File's Stephen Totilo noticed that Affinity Partners' logo is a mirror image of that used by the evil corporation in the Assassin's Creed series. Truly you couldn't make this stuff up. Continue reading...

Net public backing for scheme has fallen to -14% after prime minister's announcement, according to pollingPublic support for digital IDs has collapsed after Keir Starmer announced plans for their introduction, in what has been described as a symptom of the prime minister's reverse Midas touch".Net support for digital ID cards fell from 35% in the early summer to -14% at the weekend after Starmer's announcement, according to polling by More in Common. Continue reading...

Safety evaluation of Claude Sonnet 4.5 raises questions about whether predecessors played along', firm saysIf you are trying to catch out a chatbot take care, because one cutting-edge tool is showing signs it knows what you are up to.Anthropic, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company, has released a safety analysis of its latest model, Claude Sonnet 4.5, and revealed it had become suspicious it was being tested in some way. Continue reading...

James Anderson voices concern over soaring valuations of artificial intelligence firmsA leading British tech investor has described soaring valuations of artificial intelligence companies as disconcerting", amid concerns of an AI stock market bubble.James Anderson was an early backer of Tesla, Amazon and China's Tencent and Alibaba, generating vast returns for Baillie Gifford's flagship fund. Now at the Italian investment company Lingotto, Anderson said he had not seen signs of an investment bubble until recently, when the ChatGPT developer, OpenAI, and its rival Anthropic announced hefty valuation increases. Continue reading...