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Standing in the driveway of the White House with Tesla vehicles, Trump said he would label violence against the company's showrooms as domestic terrorismDonald Trump said he is buying a brand new Tesla" and blamed Radical Left Lunatics" for illegally" boycotting Elon Musk's electric vehicle company. The announcement came a day after Tesla suffered its worst share price fall in nearly five years.Later, the president also said he would label violence against Tesla showrooms as domestic terrorism. Trump was responding to a question during a Tuesday press conference, in which a reporter said, Talk to us about some of the violence that's been going on around the country at Tesla dealerships. Some say they should be labeled domestic terrorists." Continue reading...

Can anyone, armed with just a dream and an AI chatbot, create a rudimentary version of a classic arcade game? I asked several enthusiasts who took a stab at it, with very mixed resultsThere's a lot going on with video games and generative AI right now. Microsoft and Google have each created models that can dream up virtual worlds, with significant limitations. And people have been using Grok, the gen-AI chatbot from Elon Musk's xAI, to make rudimentary clones of old arcade games.All you have to do is type write me Pong" and AI (sort of) does the rest, albeit quite badly. On Feb 21, xAI employee Taylor Silveira claimed to have created an accurate version of 1980 coin-op Pac-Man using Grok 3, all the ghosts moving perfectly around their maze while Pac-Man chomps down dots, power pills and fruit. Continue reading...

The belief that technology will usher in a golden age for humanity is in vogue once more with billionaires. But can the left offer its own vision for the future?Techno-optimism - the belief that technology will usher in a golden age for humanity - is in vogue once more.In 2022, a clutch of pseudonymous San Francisco artificial intelligence (AI) scenesters published a Substack post entitled Effective Accelerationism", which argued for maximum acceleration of technological advancement. The 10-point manifesto, which proclaimed that the next evolution of consciousness, creating unthinkable next-generation lifeforms and silicon-based awareness" was imminent, quickly went viral, as did follow-up posts. Continue reading...

Stripped back iPhone offers latest chips, AI and longer battery life, but with only a single camera on the backApple's cheapest new smartphone is the iPhone 16e, which offers the basic modern iPhone experience including the latest chips and AI features but for a little less than its other models.The iPhone 16e costs 599 (699/$599/A$999) and is the spiritual successor to the iPhone SE line. Where the iPhone SE still had the old-school chunky design with home button, the 16e has the body of the iPhone 14 with the chips of the 799 iPhone 16. Continue reading...

Billionaire owner claims attack' may have originated in Ukraine after site unresponsive for many usersElon Musk claimed on Monday afternoon that X was targeted in a massive cyber-attack" that resulted in the intermittent service outages that had brought down his social network throughout the day. The platform, formerly known as Twitter, had been unresponsive for many users as posts failed to load.We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources," the platform's CEO posted. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved." Continue reading...

President suspended implementation of law ordering app to divest from its Chinese owner ByteDance or face US banDonald Trump said on Sunday the United States was in talks with four groups interested in acquiring TikTok, with the Chinese-owned app facing an uncertain future in the country.A US law has ordered TikTok to divest from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or be banned in the United States. Asked on Sunday if there was going to be a deal on TikTok soon, Trump told reporters: It could be." Continue reading...

The 86-year-old author's social feed might be her greatest contribution to literature - with philosophical musings on everything from US politics to an infected foot

The billionaire and now Trump adviser grew up amid the collapse of white rule, attending an all-white school and then a more liberal oneWith an imposing double-winged redbrick main building, and school songs lifted directly from Harrow's songbook, Pretoria boys high school is every inch the South African mirror of the English private schools it was founded in 1901 to imitate.Elon Musk, who has rapidly become one of the most powerful people in US politics, spent his final school years in the 1980s as a day pupil on the lush, tree-filled campus in South Africa's capital, close to his father's large detached home in Waterkloof, a wealthy Pretoria suburb shaded by purple jacaranda blossoms in spring. Continue reading...

Microsoft and Google have both recently released new generative AI models that simulate video game worlds - with notable limitations. What can they do?Another month, another revolutionary generative AI development that will apparently fundamentally alter how an entire industry operates. This time tech giant Microsoft has created a gameplay ideation" tool, Muse, which it calls the world's first Wham, or World and Human Action Model. Microsoft claims that Muse will speed up the lengthy and expensive process of game development by allowing designers to play around with AI-generated gameplay videos to see what works.Muse is trained on gameplay data from UK studio Ninja Theory's game Bleeding Edge. It has absorbed tens of thousands of hours of people's real gameplay, both footage and controller inputs. It can now generate accurate-looking mock gameplay clips for that game, which can be edited and adapted with prompts. Continue reading...

The photographer Stefan Nieland has been working on a project about the role of smartphones in tourism in the city that gets about 32 million visitors per year: When moving here in October I wanted to observe and photograph tourism. I immediately felt there was one element that would be in every picture - the smartphone. I decided to shift my focus on people who are constantly with their mobile phones to capture everything during their holidays" Continue reading...

A hundred years ago the average person, in one of the the world's wealthiest societies, could expect to live until 40. Now global life expectacy is 73At the start of the millennium it was widely presumed each successive generation would achieve a higher level of prosperity than the last. Today that is no longer the case. Just 19% of Americans expect their children's lives to be better than their own, while two-thirds believe their country will be economically weaker by 2050.So our zeitgeist is increasingly one of pessimism, from anxiety about the climate crisis to concern over rising inequality. According to the historian Adam Tooze, we are living through a polycrisis" - where such challenges are not only simultaneous but mutually reinforcing.Aaron Bastani is the co-founder of Novara Media. He is also the author of Fully Automated Luxury Communism Continue reading...

Robert Pattinson, Robert De Niro and Michael B Jordan are all pulling double duty in their new films and that's just the startFor years, dual roles have been played largely for laughs. Think of Adam Sandler's Razzie-sweeping twin turn in Jack and Jill, or Lisa Kudrow as both Phoebe and Ursula Buffay on Friends. Eddie Murphy was always particularly prolific, his most multiplicitous performance as a clutch of Klumps for Nutty Professor II.There are exceptions, of course. But for every Legend or The Prestige there are 10 Austin Powers, Bowfingers and - shudder - Norbits. This year, however, is giving us a more dramatic breed of duplicate. Robert De Niro will pull double Don duty in The Alto Knights, Michael B Jordan will play twin leads in the supernatural Sinners and a pair of Robert Pattinson clones is currently headlining Bong Joon-ho's Mickey 17. Continue reading...

As a Paris film extra, I surrendered my device and discovered the extraordinary connections I miss while staring at my screenA few Thursdays ago was a wrap. For my brief acting career, that is. One of the benefits of having a writer's schedule in a city like Paris is the ability to say yes to the flurry of random opportunities that pop up. When an announcement flashed across a WhatsApp group that a Hollywood comedy-thriller with an all-star cast and a wacky plot was looking for extras, I thought why not - and sent in a few headshots. (I wish I could reveal more details, but I am, alas, bound by a non-disclosure clause that the production company declined to release me from.)I had little idea of exactly what to expect. But I certainly wasn't thinking that one of the biggest takeaways would be spending hours with other people without access to our phones.Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsI read that Skype is closing down, a few years after Covid brought video-calling to prominence like never before. So, my question is: what is the biggest missed opportunity in history? Quentin, ArizonaSend new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Continue reading...

Guardian readers share how the software connected them with loved ones when there were few affordable means to reach those for awayMicrosoft announced on the last day of February that it would sunset Skype. By the time the death knell tolled, the video chatting software that once revolutionized communications had become a ghost of its former self. Experts chimed in with half-hearted eulogies for the platform that Microsoft spent years neglecting, yet few were surprised, and even fewer shed tears.The fact that Skype was never integrated into any other Microsoft platform, nor redesigned to resemble other Microsoft solutions or included in any bundled commercial offerings - despite its loss of users - was a clear indication that Microsoft had long decided to discontinue the service," said Gianvito Lanzolla, a professor of strategy, at University of London. Continue reading...

Autonomous digital assistants are being developed that can carry out tasks on behalf of the user - including ordering the groceries. But if you don't keep an eye on them, dinner might not be quite what you expect ...I'm watching artificial intelligence order my groceries. Armed with my shopping list, it types each item into the search bar of a supermarket website, then uses its cursor to click. Watching what appears to be a digital ghost do this usually mundane task is strangely transfixing. Are you sure it's not just a person in India?" my husband asks, peering over my shoulder.I'm trying out Operator, a new AI agent" from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Made available to UK users last month, it has a similar text interface and conversational tone to ChatGPT, but rather than just answering questions, it can actually do things - provided they involve navigating a web browser. Continue reading...

More governments seeking to keep millions of people offline amid conflicts, protests and political instabilityDigital blackouts reached a record high in 2024 in Africa as more governments sought to keep millions of citizens off the internet than in any other period over the last decade.A report released by the internet rights group Access Now and #KeepItOn, a coalition of hundreds of civil society organisations worldwide, found there were 21 shutdowns in 15 African countries, surpassing the existing record of 19 shutdowns in 2020 and 2021. Continue reading...

A new BBC podcast recounts the ordeal endured by Hannah Mossman Moore, whose phone was bombarded by fake accounts and her personal data weaponised against herHi Hannah Mossman MooreStalking you has its benefits. Now watching your friend strip another blonde with perky tits. She's not more than 22. I have seen your tits so many times in the recording. You are late 20s now? Declining youth and saggy boobs... There is so much to learn when one just follows you around. Have you left Sri Lanka or just hiding from me? Tell me please. I will come and get you. Continue reading...

The company that pioneered voice communication over the internet has withered to dust in Microsoft's hands. Still, I for one am grateful for itSo Microsoft has decided to terminate Skype, the internet telephony company it bought in 2011 for $8.5bn (6.6bn). Its millions of hapless users are to be herded into Microsoft Teams, a virtual encampment with a brain-dead aesthetic that makes even Zoom look cool. This eventuality had been telegraphed for quite a while but, even so, it comes as a jolt because Skype was a remarkable venture, and its demise closes a chapter of an interesting strand of technological history.The internet has been around for much longer than most people realise. It goes back to the 1960s and the creation of Arpanet, a military computer network that emerged after the US had its Sputnik moment" - the awful realisation that the Soviet Union seemed to be racing ahead in the technology stakes. The design of Arpanet's successor, the internet we use today, started in the early 1970s and it was first switched on in January 1983. Continue reading...

Participants view scenes of daily life as well as travel adventures - then process the emotions they trigger through artOne Monday in July, Samantha Tovar, known as Royal, left her 6ft-by-11ft cell for the first time in three weeks. Correctional officers escorted her to the common area of the Central California Women's Facility and chained her hands and feet to a metal table, on top of which sat a virtual reality headset. Two and a half years into a five-year prison sentence, Royal was about to see Thailand for the first time.When she first put on the headset, Royal immediately had an aerial view of a cove. Soon after, her view switched to a boat moving fairly fast with buildings on either side of the water. In the boat was a man with a backpack, and it was as if she were sitting beside him. With accompanying meditative music and narration, the four-minute scene took Royal across a crowded Thai market, through ancient ruins, on a tuk-tuk (a three-wheeled rickshaw) and into an elephant bath with her backpacked companion. For Royal, these vignettes felt real enough to be deserving of a passport stamp. Continue reading...

From the woman who asks to see teenage boys' rooms to the gang who want to know how couples found love, some people are attracting a huge following (and financial rewards) from being nosy - and asking one killer questionRachel Coster, @boyroomshow

With sales down and electric vehicle rivals catching up, the rightwing politico's brand is driving into a stormGlobally renowned brands would not, ordinarily, want to be associated with Germany's far-right opposition. But Tesla, one of the world's biggest corporate names, does not have a conventional chief executive.After Elon Musk backed Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) - calling the party Germany's only hope" - voters are considering an alternative to Tesla. Data released on Thursday showed that registrations of the company's electric cars in Germany fell 76% to 1,429 last month. Overall, electric vehicle registrations rose by 31%. Continue reading...

The investor and former Twitter board member believes rejecting DEI initiatives is simply denying US firms talentAs Elon Musk grinned in the Oval Office, one of Britain's most influential tech investors looked on in horror. He is absolutely horrendous. I have said it multiple times: I think it is horrifying what is happening," says Martha Lane Fox.For the British peer and ex-Twitter board member, the sight of Musk holding forth from the bully pulpit of Donald Trump's White House shows the Silicon Valley dream has gone sour. Continue reading...

Chiefs from Coinbase, Ripple and Robinhood to strategize with president on how to make US crypto capital of world'Cryptocurrency industry elite met with Donald Trump at the White House on Friday to discuss how the government will enact Trump's vision of making the country the crypto capital of the world". During the round-table summit, which had more than a dozen attendees, the president thanked each of his guests.High-IQ individuals around this table, high-IQ," Trump said. We feel like pioneers." Continue reading...

Paolo Ardoino - head of the world's most traded cryptocurrency, which is backed by Trump aide Howard Lutnick - claims Tether is benefiting the USPaolo Ardoino, CEO of the cryptocurrency company Tether, was flying over Switzerland last week as he contemplated the changing regulatory landscape.Tether used to be at war with the establishment. Now it is the establishment. Continue reading...

British Fallout' became the almost-instant sobriquet for this game when it was announced - but that doesn't capture the breadth of its scary influencesThe year is 1962 and you've just woken up in the shadow of the Windscale (now Sellafield) nuclear power station in Cumbria, five years after its catastrophic meltdown. Trapped in the sizeable quarantine zone surrounding the accident site, you must stay alive long enough to figure out how to escape - a task made rather more challenging by the presence of aggressive cultists, irradiated monsters and highly territorial terror bees. Imagine Stalker, but set in northern England, and you're edging towards what Oxford-based developer Rebellion has in store.Fallout may seem like another obvious inspiration for this irradiated game world, but after playing a two-hour demo, it's clear the game draws more from classic British sci-fi. Here you are, stuck in the picturesque Lake District, with its lush woodlands, gurgling rivers and dry-stone walls. But all around you are the burned-out remains of 1960s cars and tanks, abandoned farm buildings and odd sounds and symbols that suggest something extremely sinister is happening. The development team have mentioned Dr Who, The Wicker Man the novels of John Wyndham as key inspirations, and you can see it in the grubby dislocated scene all around you. Approach a phone box and pick up the ringing handset, and you may hear a disembodied voice warning you about an apparently friendly character you met up the road. Stray into a cave and a ghost-like monster comes at you, infecting you with a paranoid mind virus. This is very much the stuff of Quatermass and Jon Pertwee-era Who. Continue reading...

World's richest man has spent years trying to get Starlink into the fast-growing economy. It could serve as a beachhead for his other business ambitions in IndiaIt is easy to believe that Elon Musk's reach knows no limits. But while the world's richest man may control a space satellite empire, own one of the largest social media platforms, produce the world's bestselling electric car, and have been given carte blanche by Donald Trump to gut the US government, there is one market that Musk has yet to properly crack: India.Now, with his newfound influence over the Trump administration and global geopolitics, it appears likely that Musk's entrance into the Indian market, both with his Tesla electric cars and his Starlink satellite internet, may come smoother and faster than expected. Continue reading...

Once again Lara Croft has appeared near the top of an arbitrary list of the hottest video game characters - but when are we going to admit there's something about Luigi's eyes?Is Lara Croft hot? It's a question that's plagued our greatest minds for almost three decades. Yes, she appeared on the cover of the Face magazine next to the tagline bigger than Pammy" in 1997, and yes, in 2006 lad mag FHM created a whole TV special designed to find the real" tomb raider. But what does science say? In a world where American academics can't use the word women" without jeopardising their scientific funding, it's a relief that a gambling site called Casino Days is willing to do this important work, recently ranking The Top 10 Most Attractive Video Game Characters According to Science".Using the so-called golden ratio" - which determines how beautiful someone is by measuring their facial features - the company has found that Lara Croft is the second most attractive video game character in the virtual world. In a move that will finally leave women with nothing to complain about, first place goes to The Witcher's Geralt of Rivia. Continue reading...

A generation who came of age online now feel deprived of real connections. The upside is they are doing something about itIt's the love-hate relationship that defined a generation. We think we know all about teenagers and the phones to which they're so umbilically tied: sleeping with them under the pillow, panicking at the prospect of ever being denied wifi, so glued to the screen that they're oblivious to the world unfolding around them. Yet the first generation to have never really known a life without social media - the drug that primarily keeps them coming back to their phones for more - is now grown up enough to reflect on what it may have done to them, and the answers are almost enough to break your heart.Two-thirds of 16- to 24-year-olds think social media does more harm than good and three-quarters want tougher regulation to protect younger people from it, according to polling for the New Britain Project, a thinktank founded by a former teacher, Anna McShane. Half think they spent too much time on it when they were younger, with regret highest among those who started using social media youngest. And most tellingly of all, four in five say they'd keep their own children away from it for as long as they could if they became parents. This isn't how anyone talks about something they love, but how you look back on a relationship that was in retrospect making you miserable.Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Boss says BBC News's reach is defying gravity' and it must use AI to support and accelerate our growth'BBC News is to create a new department that will use AI to give the public more personalised content, as its leader said the corporation had been defying gravity" in reaching audiences amid seismic changes in the way news is consumed.In a note to staff seen by the Guardian, Deborah Turness, the chief executive of BBC News, announced an overhaul of the organisation's structure, including the creation of a new department, BBC News growth, innovation and AI. It will have a particular focus on under-25s, amid a huge shift to news consumption on smartphones and on platforms such as TikTok. Continue reading...

AI is being used to recreate Charles Darwin talking about evolution and to reimagine Luton as a car - and teachers report students are more engagedCharles Darwin chatting with students about evolution, primary school pupils seeing their writing transformed into images, Luton reimagined as a cool automobile - artificial intelligence is invading schools across England in surprising ways.While Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, in January called for a digital revolution" involving AI in schools, it has already begun in places such as Willowdown primary school in Bridgwater, Somerset. Continue reading...

As Bafta launches a survey asking the public to nominate the most influential game of all time, we asked people from across games and culture for their picksAhead of the 21st Bafta games awards this April, the institution is running a public survey asking people to nominate the most influential video game of all time. As the survey points out, this is an open-ended question: early, groundbreaking titles such as Space Invaders and Pong regularly crop up as answers because they helped write the rules of the form, but on a personal level, the right game at the right time can be exceptionally influential, too. For players, it's often the games that made us feel differently about what games could do that feel the most influential. For a game designer, a film director, a writer or a musician, one particular game might inspire a whole creative era.Inspired by Bafta's survey, we asked people from across games and culture for their most influential game - and not one name cropped up twice. Continue reading...

Film-maker reacts after US president shares video on his Truth Social account last weekThe creator of the viral Trump Gaza" AI-generated video depicting the Gaza Strip as a Dubai-style paradise has said it was intended as a political satire of Trump's megalomaniac idea".The video - posted by Trump on his Truth Social account last week - depicts a family emerging from the wreckage of war-torn Gaza into a beachside resort town lined with skyscrapers. Trump is seen sipping cocktails with a topless Benjamin Netanyahu on sun loungers, while Elon Musk tears flatbread into dips. Continue reading...

New proposal calls for research instead of exclusion of under-16s from algorithms and mobile phone bans in schoolsA bill which campaigners hoped would ban addictive smartphone algorithms aimed at young teenagers has been watered down after opposition to tougher measures from the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, and the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson.The safer phones bill, a private member's bill from Labour MP Josh MacAlister, will come to the Commons on Friday. It had heavyweight cross-party backing from MPs and a string of child protection charities but will now commit the government to researching the issue further rather than immediate change. Continue reading...

Chair of wellbeing commission says countries should follow Denmark to halt digitalisation of children's livesThe whole of Europe should follow Denmark's lead by banning mobile phones from schools to stop them from being colonised by digital platforms", the chair of the country's wellbeing commission has said.Removing mobile phones from schools gave young people a pause" from online life, teaching them how to be part of analogue communities and train their attention spans, said Rasmus Meyer, who led the government commission to investigate growing dissatisfaction among children and young people. Continue reading...

CMA says tie-up does not qualify for an official investigation under Britain's merger control regimeThe UK's competition watchdog will not hold a formal investigation into Microsoft's partnership with the startup behind the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, stating that while the $2.9tn (2.3tn) tech company has material influence" over OpenAI it does not control it.The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest financial backer with a $13bn investment, acquired material influence over the San Francisco-based business in 2019 but did not exercise de facto control over it - and therefore did not meet the threshold for an official inquiry. Continue reading...

The judge rejected Musk's request for a preliminary injunction but fast-tracked the dispute for a trialA US judge on Tuesday denied Elon Musk's request for a preliminary injunction to pause OpenAI's transition to a for-profit model but agreed to hear a trial in the fall of this year, the latest turn in the high-stakes legal fight.The tech billionaire does not have the high burden required for a preliminary injunction" to block the conversion of OpenAI, said Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, a US district judge in Oakland, California. Continue reading...

The PlayStation Portal offers a new way to play PS5 games at home or on the go. But it struggles to match the seamless gaming experience I yearn forHappy Monster Hunter Wilds week to all who celebrate: Capcom's thrilling action game has sold 8m units in three days, which means that quite a lot of you are likely to be playing it. I'm a huge fan of this series and am delighted by the latest entry, but after filing the review last week, I've barely had a minute to play it since it came out. Regular readers will know that this is a familiar problem for me: I have two kids, so my gaming time is tight, and the living room TV is very often in use.I anticipated this, so in the run-up to Monster Hunter Wilds' release, I spent 200 on a PlayStation Portal - essentially a screen sandwiched between two halves of a PlayStation 5 controller. I can't decide whether it's one of the most unwieldy things that Sony has ever come out with, or one of the most elegant. It lets me stream games from my PS5, so the console can be whirring away under the TV and I can be on the sofa with my little screen, swinging a transforming axe at a dreadful octopus. Continue reading...

The comedian and broadcaster thanks the internet for its service, by which he means burping videos, stupid accents and classic fails

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox; Two Point Studios/Sega

How a group of Silicon Valley math prodigies, AI researchers and internet burnouts descended into an alleged violent cultYears before she became the peculiar central thread linking a double homicide in Pennsylvania, the fatal shooting of a federal agent in Vermont and the murder of an elderly landlord in California, a computer programmer bought a sailboat.The programmer was known to friends, foes and followers as Ziz. She had come to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016 as part of an influx of young people arriving to study the dangers that artificial intelligence could pose to humanity. Continue reading...

Sales of battery-powered cars jumped in February, with Model 3 and Model Y most popular after Mini CooperSales of Teslas in the UK rose by more than a fifth last month as demand for battery-powered cars increased, despite the prospect of a buyer backlash over Elon Musk's controversial and divisive behaviour since becoming a key figure in Donald Trump's administration.Almost 4,000 Teslas were sold in the UK in February, with the Model 3 and Model Y proving the second and third most popular after the Mini Cooper, according to the latest new car registration figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). Continue reading...

Card game Balatro was a huge hit last year - but a year-long struggle with the European age ratings board has exposed how well-meaning rules can have unintended consequencesOver the last few months, the makers of a popular card game have been wrestling with the byzantine process that surrounds video game age classifications. Age ratings are intended to help parents determine whether or not a game is appropriate for their children. But in practice, an erroneous label doesn't just mislead consumers - it can be the difference between success or failure.Balatro is an award-winning poker game made by an anonymous game developer known as LocalThunk, in which the only guiding principle is chaos. In each match the player must divine the best possible poker hand out of a randomised draw, but the conditions fluctuate constantly. In one round, the game might prevent you from using an entire suit or junk all your face cards, while the next round might challenge you to achieve an eyebrow-raising score with only a single hand. As the game progresses, players accrue jokers for their deck that add yet more wild rules. Continue reading...

Europe is on high alert after a series of outages to cables and pipelines. This visual guide explains what happened and what's being done Continue reading...

Survey of bosses and staff finds that more than half of executives feel their organisation has no official AI planSome companies are stuck in neutral" in their approach to artificial intelligence, according to Microsoft's UK boss, who said a significant number of private and public sector organisations lack any formal AI strategy.A Microsoft survey of nearly 1,500 UK senior leaders across public and private sectors, as well as 1,440 employees, found that more than half of executives feel their organisation has no official AI plan. Roughly the same proportion report a growing gap in productivity - a measure of economic efficiency - between employees who use AI and those who do not. Continue reading...

Georgia-based group used deepfake videos and false news featuring Martin Lewis, Zoe Ball and Ben Fogle to promote fraudulent crypto schemes

Musk plans cost-cutting - and Americans will end up footing the bill; the business of immigration surveillance; and a fond farewell to SkypeHello, and welcome back. In this week's Techscape: the cost of Elon Musk's cost-cutting, the emotional shutdown of Skype, and a new documentary on immigration and surveillance.Donald Trump's administration could rack up a monumental" bill and is breaking the law by firing government workers on spurious grounds, according to a top labor lawyer.Officials have cited poor performance" when terminating thousands of federal workers. In many cases it's not true, according to employees embroiled in the blitz, many of whom are now seeking legal advice.I'm selling the Nazi mobile': Tesla owners offload cars after Elon Musk's fascist-style salutesTrump cabinet flunkies hail wannabe Caesar and Elon, his oligarch pal Continue reading...

With Trump's tariffs and DeepSeek's AI tech in the news, China waits to see how the Communist party plans to revitalise a stagnating economyAs thousands of delegates from across China arrive in Beijing this week to participate in the annual parliamentary session, there is a barely perceptible shift in the mood in the capital. Though few ordinary Chinese pay much attention to goings-on inside the Great Hall of the People, the imposing 1950s modernist building that flanks the western edge of Tiananmen Square, the ripple effects of this week's conclave can be felt across the city.Security is heightened. Extra uniformed personnel have been deployed to stand guard on Beijing's bridges - lest anyone attempt a stunt inspired by Peng Lifa's protest at Sitong Bridge ahead of the 20th party congress in 2022. Guards at busy subway stations subject commuters to random scans of their identification cards. Continue reading...

While millions live with regular blackouts and limited energy, plants are being built to satisfy the global demand for digital storage and processing - piling pressure on an already fragile systemThirty-six hours by boat from Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, Deodato Alves da Silva longs for enough electricity to keep his tucuma and cupuacu fruits fresh. These highly nutritious Amazonian superfoods are rich in antioxidants and vitamins, and serve as a main source of income for farmers in Silva's area. However, the lack of electricity to refrigerate the fruit makes it hard to sell their produce.Silva's fruit-growing operation is located in the village of Boa Frente, in Novo Aripuana municipality, one of Brazil's most energy-poor regions, where there is only one diesel-powered electricity generator working for a few hours a day. Continue reading...