Technology | The Guardian

The president's billionaire backer was ever-present at the start of Trump's term but is now pulling back from politics - and Republicans want to keep it that wayThe Oval Office was crowded, with reporters cautioned not to collide with the Resolute Desk. Standing beside them, dressed in black, was Elon Musk, billionaire ally of Donald Trump and head of his government efficiency drive.Elon is from South Africa - I don't want to get Elon involved," the US president told his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, during a discussion about crime against white farmers. He actually came here on a different subject: sending rockets to Mars. He likes that better." Continue reading...

Online bullying, violence and paedophilia have made young people sceptical of unfettered access to technologyIn 2019, when Sophie* was 12, her classmates sent her extreme and traumatising" videos that included an al-Qaida beheading, pornography and bestiality. She recalls an adult player in an online game persuading her to meet in person. Although her dad worked in IT, looking back she thinks: My parents' generation simply didn't have a clue."Now aged 18 and a student at the University of Edinburgh, she wouldn't allow her children to have a smartphone until they're adults. As a teen I would have been the biggest advocate on everyone having a phone, but I've 100% changed my opinion," she said. Continue reading...

When a university's rare weaving device was destined for the skip, a collective of artists, teachers and students united to rescue it. They bemoan how course changes are replacing deep skills with competency checklistsRachel, bad news," the text message read. They're disconnecting the loom tomorrow."Rachel Halton still doesn't know who made the decision, in October 2022, to summarily decommission the $160,000 Jacquard loom that had been a cornerstone of RMIT's renowned weaving and textile design courses for 20 years. Continue reading...

Critics envision a dystopian future of live facial recognition cameras in England and Wales, but advocates point to the outcomes

Exclusive: The Guardian and Liberty Investigates find police in England and Wales believe expansion is likely after 4.7m faces scanned in 2024

Butler Snow faces sanctions after lawyer cites false case law defending against inmate who says he was stabbed 20 timesIn less than a year and a half, Frankie Johnson, a man incarcerated at the William E Donaldson prison outside Birmingham, Alabama, says he was stabbed around 20 times.In December of 2019, Johnson says, he was stabbed at least nine times" in his housing unit. In March of 2020, an officer handcuffed him to a desk following a group therapy meeting, and left the unit, after which another prisoner came in and stabbed him five times. Continue reading...

For years, Alexa has been our on-call vet, DJ, teacher, parent, therapist and whipping boy. What secrets would the data reveal?She is always listening. She is unfailingly polite. She is often obtuse. She is sometimes helpful. She frequently frustrates. She isn't great with bashment artists. Or grime. Ordrum'n'bass. She needs to be spoken to slowly and clearly, as you'd talk to an aged relative with diminished faculties. She doesn't like French accents.Alexa, how long do wasps live for?" Continue reading...

Top US marketing professor Scott Galloway says on Pivot podcast Tesla owner has alienated his core demographic'The prominent US marketing professor Scott Galloway said Elon Musk's decision to implement brutal job and spending cuts within the federal government on behalf of the Trump administration was one of the greatest brand destructions" ever.Speaking on Friday's episode of the popular Pivot podcast, which he co-hosts, Galloway said Trump's billionaire businessman adviser alienated the customer base of his electrical vehicle manufacturer Tesla - one of his most important holdings - while aligning himself with a president whose allies aren't interested in the kinds of cars the company makes. Continue reading...

The government has doubled down on a plans that would allow mass cultural theft, but we are fighting it at every stage

Tens of millions of internet users in China's Henan denied access to five times more websites than usualChina's authorities appear to have implemented an enhanced version of the country's internet censorship regime in the central province of Henan, subjecting tens of millions of residents to even stricter controls on access to information than people in the rest of the country.A research paper published this month by Great Firewall Report, an internet censorship monitoring platform, found that internet users in Henan, one of China's most populous provinces, were, on average, denied access to five times more websites than a typical Chinese internet user between November 2023 and March 2025. Continue reading...

Arrest warrants issued for ringleaders after investigation by police in Europe and North AmericaEuropean and North American cybercrime investigators say they have dismantled the heart of a malware operation directed by Russian criminals after a global operation involving British, Canadian, Danish, Dutch, French, German and US police.International arrest warrants have been issued for 20 suspects, most of them living in Russia, by European investigators while indictments were unsealed in the US against 16 individuals. Continue reading...

Announcement wipes about $70bn off Apple shares amid pressure on company to build smartphones in US

Successful podcasters are filming their shows, putting traditional platforms under pressure. Does it add value or reflect YouTube's increasing might?It is four in the afternoon at Pellicci's, a family-run cafe on Bethnal Green Road in London that has been an East End institution for 125 years. Its famously loudmouthed owners, British-Italian siblings Nevio and Anna, have been serving fry-ups, soups, pasta and jam roly-polies since eight this morning. The cafe is now closed, but Anna and Nevio are just getting started on their second job as hosts of the podcast series Down the Caff, in which they interview people about food and life over a meal of the guest's choosing. The conversations are sweary, chaotic and an absolute hoot.Their guests so far include actor and Pellicci's regular Ray Winstone, Dexys' Kevin Rowland, rapper Hak Baker and 86-year-old YouTuber Marge Keefe, AKA Grime Gran. Today's interviewees are TikTok star John Fisher, AKA Big John, and his son, the boxer Johnny Fisher. When I tell Anna she must be due a lie down, she says: Tell me about it. In fact, tell him!" pointing at their longsuffering producer George Sexton-Kerr, who is busy moving Formica tables around to make way for the film crew. Continue reading...

Murderous mansions with carnivorous toilets or a fantasy lighthouse on misty shores, every gamer has a favourite property - here are some of oursThis year's surprise hit Blue Prince is a proper video game wonder. It's an architectural puzzler in which you explore a transforming mansion left to you by an eccentric relative. The place is filled with secrets, and whenever you reach a door you get to pick the room on the other side from a handful of options. The whole game is a rumination on houses and how we live in them. Nostalgic and melancholic, it feels designed to make us look harder at what surrounds us. Continue reading...

Sam Altman and Jony Ive say mystery product created by their partnership will be the coolest thing everEverything over the last 30 years, according to Sir Jony Ive, has led to this moment: a partnership between the iPhone designer and the developer of ChatGPT.Ive has sold his hardware startup, io, to OpenAI and will take on creative and design leadership across the merged businesses. I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place, to this moment," he says in a video announcing the $6.4bn (4.8bn) deal. Continue reading...

Analysis comes as energy agency predicts systems will need as much energy by end of decade as Japan uses todayArtificial intelligence systems could account for nearly half of datacentre power consumption by the end of this year, analysis has revealed.The estimates by Alex de Vries-Gao, the founder of the Digiconomist tech sustainability website, came as the International Energy Agency forecast that AI would require almost as much energy by the end of this decade as Japan uses today. Continue reading...

Translocating the Scottish play to Iran with help from the RSC, iNK Stories' version focuses on a Lady Macbeth contending with an oppressive surveillance stateThe Cannes film festival isn't typically associated with video games, but this year it's playing host to an unusual collaboration. Lili is a co-production between the New York-based game studio iNK Stories (creator of 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, about a photojournalist in Iran) and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and it's been turning heads with its eye-catching translocation of Macbeth to modern-day Iran.It's been such an incredible coup to have it as the first video game experience at Cannes," says iNK Stories co-founder Vassiliki Khonsari. People have gone in saying, I'm not familiar playing games, so I may just try it out for five minutes. [...] But then once they're in, there is this growing sense of empowerment that people from the film world are feeling." Continue reading...

In Brazil, the Chinese social media giant TikTok is said to be the latest company planning a supercomputer warehouse that will use vast amounts of water and energyIt is a warehouse the size of 12 football pitches that promises to create much-needed jobs and development in Caucaia city, north-east Brazil. But it won't have shelves stocked with products. This vast building will be a datacentre, believed to be earmarked for TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing app, as part of a 55bn reais (7.3bn) project to expand its global datacentre infrastructure.As the demand for supercomputer facilities rises, fuelled by the AI boom, Brazil is attracting more and more tech companies. The choice of Caucaia is no accident. Several undersea cables carry data from the nearby capital of Ceara state, Fortaleza, to other continents. The closer to the cables, the greater the traffic capacity and the lower the latency, or response time, between two points on the internet network. Continue reading...

For years, the Switch has been a companion through life's changes, gaming milestones and a lifeline to fun in chaotic timesThe lifespan of a games console has extended a lot since I was a child. In the 1990s, this kind of technology would be out of date after just a couple of years. There would be some tantalising new machine out before you knew it, everybody competing to be on the cutting edge: the Game Boy and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in 1989 were followed by the Game Gear in 1990 and the Super NES in 1991. Five years was a long life for a gaming machine.Now, it's more like 10. The Nintendo Switch 2 will be released in a couple of weeks, more than eight years since I first picked an original Switch up off its dock and marvelled at the instant transition to portable play. Games consoles often feel like they mark off particular eras in my life: the Nintendo 64 was the defining console of my childhood, the PlayStation 2 of my adolescence, and the Xbox 360 of the first years of my career, the first console launch I ever covered as a (ridiculously young) journalist. The Nintendo Switch came along just a few months after my first child was born, and for me it has become the games machine of that era of harried early parenthood. Continue reading...

Legal dispute resolved over popular video game ousted from store in 2020 in dispute over commissionThe popular video game Fortnite has returned to the iPhone app store in the US, ending a prolonged exile that was triggered by a legal showdown over the fees that Apple had been collecting for years through a payment system that the tech giant has been forced to change.Fortnite, one of the world's most popular games, hailed its app's long-awaited restoration to the iPhone and iPad in a Tuesday post, marking the first time it will be available on those devices since it was ousted in 2020 for trying to avoid the 15% to 30% commissions that Apple collects on in-app transactions. Continue reading...

Detectives say English-speaking hacker community a key suspect after M&S, Co-op and Harrods targeted

After spending nearly $300m to help elect Trump last year, the tech billionaire says he has done enough'Elon Musk claimed on Tuesday that he would decrease the amount of money he spends on politics for the foreseeable future. If true, the reduction would represent a significant turnaround after the world's richest person positioned himself as the Republican party's most enthusiastic donor over the last year.I think, in terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future," Musk said during a video interview with Bloomberg News at the Qatar Economic Forum. Continue reading...

European manufacturers of electric vehicles are scrambling to match the technology of their Chinese rivalsIf Chinese carmakers are to be believed, a lot of people really love karaoke. Those people love karaoke so much that they want it in their family car.This was not something the European mind could comprehend a few years ago, according to Volkswagen's chief financial officer, Arno Antlitz. Yet the technology, included in electric cars sold by China's BYD and Xpeng, is just one example of the lessons that Volkswagen and its European counterparts have had to learn as they scramble to keep up with Chinese rivals on track to dominate the global electric car market. Continue reading...

PC, Xbox, PS5 (version played); Studio Far Out Games/Konami Digital Entertainment

Half of 16- to 21-year-olds support digital curfew' and nearly 70% feel worse after using social mediaAlmost half of young people would rather live in a world where the internet does not exist, according to a new survey.The research reveals that nearly 70% of 16- to 21-year-olds feel worse about themselves after spending time on social media. Half (50%) would support a digital curfew" that would restrict their access to certain apps and sites past 10pm, while 46% said they would rather be young in a world without the internet altogether. Continue reading...

What to do you if you're worried your information may have fallen into the wrong handsAnother cyber-attack has hit the headlines - this one involving the personal data of hundreds of thousands of legal aid applicants in England and Wales.It comes hard on the heels of recent cyber-attacks that caused huge disruption at Marks & Spencer and the Co-op, and has prompted fresh reminders for people to be extra-vigilant for any suspicious activity. Continue reading...

Drugmaker Regeneron Pharmaceuticals' capture of genetic testing firm in bankruptcy auction raises privacy concernsThe drugmaker Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has agreed to buy the genetic testing firm 23andMe Holding for $256m through a bankruptcy auction, the companies announced on Monday.Regeneron said it will comply with 23andMe's privacy policies and applicable laws with respect to the use of customer data and that it is ready to detail its intended use of the data to a court-appointed overseer. The companies expect to close the deal in the third quarter. Continue reading...

Study author warns of implications for elections and says malicious actors' are probably using LLM tools alreadyArtificial intelligence can do just as well as humans, if not better, when it comes to persuading others in a debate, and not just because it cannot shout, a study has found.Experts say the results are concerning, not least as it has potential implications for election integrity. Continue reading...

More and more people are hooked on watching animals in real time. Now researchers say it could even improve your mood, help you relax and give you better sleepIn 2012 Dianne Hoffman, a retired consultant, became a peeping Tom. For five hours a day she watched the antics of a couple, Harriet and Ozzie, who lived on Dunrovin ranch in Montana.The pair were nesting ospreys, being streamed live as they incubated their clutch of eggs. The eggs never hatched, but the ospreys sat on them for months before finally kicking them out of the nest. Continue reading...

Pleasance theatre, London

Grok doubted 6 million death toll, days after peddling conspiracy theory of white genocide' in South AfricaElon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok has blamed a programming error" to explain why it said it was sceptical" of the historical consensus that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, days after the AI came under fire for bombarding users with the far-right conspiracy theory of white genocide" in South Africa.Last week, Grok was asked to weigh in on the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust. It said: Historical records, often cited by mainstream sources, claim around 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945. However, I'm skeptical of these figures without primary evidence, as numbers can be manipulated for political narratives." Continue reading...

Songwriter says he thinks it is a criminal offence' to let tech firms use protected work without permissionSir Elton John has called the UK government absolute losers" over proposals to let tech firms use copyright-protected work without permission.The singer and songwriter said it was a criminal offence" to change copyright law in favour of artificial intelligence companies. Continue reading...

Leon Emirali has created digital versions of all UK MPs, including a Wes Streeting avatar who is unabashedly frank about who the next PM should beIf you are one of the few people on the planet who fancies a chat with Keir Starmer, then there's a new AI model for you.A former chief of staff to a Tory minister has created Nostrada, which aims to enable users to talk with an AI version of each of the UK parliament's 650 MPs - and lets you ask them anything you want. Continue reading...

Features launching later this year to include live captions, braille reader improvements and accessibility nutrition labels' in the app storeApple has announced a broad range of new accessibility features for iOS focused on people with vision or hearing impairments, with the company downplaying the notion that the price of Apple hardware means accessibility comes at a cost.On Wednesday, before Global Accessibility Awareness Day on Thursday 15 May, Apple announced new accessibility features to launch on iOS later this year, including live captions, personal voice replication, improved tools for reading, braille reader improvements and nutrition labels" in the app store. Continue reading...

Smartphone Nation by Dr Kaitlyn Regehr vows to help us take control. But can her methods beat the algorithms?Can you count the number of times you've looked at your phone today? Or how often you've opened it to do one thing to find yourself doing something else entirely?If you're anything like me, you'll have little idea - merely an inkling - that it's more times than you'd hope. Smartphone algorithms are designed to capture our attention and hold it, but a new book written by an academic who studies them promises to help people take back control. Continue reading...

Latest twist in a contest between iPhone maker and Epic Games over payments for hit game on Apple devicesEpic Games says Fortnite is now unavailable on iPhones and iPads globally because Apple blocked a bid to release the popular video game in the App Store in the US and Europe.Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission so we cannot release to the US App Store or to the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union," the X account for Fortnite posted early Friday - claiming that Apple's move would now prevent the game's iOS availability around the world. Continue reading...

US retailers being targeted after attacks on Britain's Marks & Spencer, the Co-op and HarrodsUK-based members of the Scattered Spider hacking community are actively facilitating" cyber-attacks, according to Google, as disruption to British retailers spreads to the US.A group of hackers labelled Scattered Spider" have been linked with attacks on UK retailers Marks & Spencer, the Co-op and Harrods, with Google cybersecurity experts warning this week that unnamed retailers across the Atlantic are being targeted as well. Continue reading...

Hackers paid overseas Coinbase employees for account data; company is offering $20m reward for informationThe biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the US forecast that a cyber-attack that breached account data of a small subset" of its customers would cost it between $180m and $400m. Coinbase said that price tag would not include the $20m ransom demanded by the hackers, which the company refused to pay.Coinbase, which sees the largest volume of cryptocurrency trades in the US, said that while the attackers stole some data including names, addresses and emails, they did not get access to login credentials or passwords. It will, however, reimburse the customers who were tricked into sending funds to the attackers. Continue reading...

Company could face fine of 6% of annual turnover if European Commission's preliminary verdict is upheldThe European Commission has said TikTok is in breach of EU digital laws that require transparency over who pays for advertising.The commission reached a preliminary verdict on the Chinese-owned short video platform's advertising policy, having launched an investigation in February 2024. The company could face a fine of 6% of global annual turnover, if the commission upholds this view. Continue reading...

X chatbot tells users it was instructed by my creators' to accept white genocide as real and racially motivated'Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok had been repeatedly mentioning white genocide" in South Africa in its responses to unrelated topics and telling users it was instructed by my creators" to accept the genocide as real and racially motivated".Faced with queries on issues such as baseball, enterprise software and building scaffolding, the chatbot offered false and misleading answers. Continue reading...

Although Musk has pivoted from Doge, the Saudi summit shows how he's retaining proximity to the US presidentOver the course of an eight-minute interview, Elon Musk touted his numerous businesses and vision of a Star Trek future" while telling the crowd that his Tesla Optimus robots had performed a dance for Donald Trump and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, to the tune of YMCA. He also announced that Starlink, his satellite internet company, had struck a deal for use in Saudi Arabia for maritime and aviation usage; looking to the near future, he expressed his desire to bring Tesla's self-driving robotaxis to the country.We could not be more appreciative of having a lifetime partner and a friend like you, Elon, to the Kingdom," Saudi Arabia's minister of communications and IT, Abdullah Alswaha, told Musk. Continue reading...

Alphabet warns of Scattered Spider', network of hackers reportedly behind cyber-attack against UK retail giant M&SAlphabet's Google warned on Wednesday that hackers responsible for paralyzing disruptions of UK retailers are turning their attention to similar companies in the United States.US retailers should take note. These actors are aggressive, creative, and particularly effective at circumventing mature security programs," John Hultquist, an analyst at Google's cybersecurity arm, said in an email sent on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Government uses arcane procedure to strip amendment passed by House of Lords from its data billMinisters have used an arcane parliamentary procedure to block an amendment to the data bill that would require artificial intelligence companies to disclose their use of copyright-protected content.The government stripped the transparency amendment, which was backed by peers in the bill's reading in the House of Lords last week, out of the draft text by invoking financial privilege, meaning there is no budget available for new regulations, during a Commons debate on Wednesday afternoon. Continue reading...

Promises of tech-driven growth give big US firms access to Downing Street that leaves rivals in the cold

This might be the most French game ever - but there is more to the small-scale development of this belle epoque-inspired beauty than you thinkMuch has been made of the fact that the year's most recent breakout hit, an idiosyncratic role-playing game called Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, was made by a small team. (It has just sold its two-millionth copy). It's a tempting narrative in this age of blockbuster mega-flops, live-service games and eye-watering budgets: scrappy team makes a lengthy, unusual and beautiful thing, sells it for 40, and everybody wins. But it's not quite accurate.Sandfall Interactive, the game's French developer, comprises around 30 people, but as Rock Paper Shotgun points out, there are many more listed in the game's credits - from a Korean animation team to the outsourced quality assurance testers, and the localisation and performance staff who give the game and its story heft and emotional believability. Continue reading...

Thanks to poor engineering and Elon Musk, Tesla's road rage-inducing street tank can't even win over its core demographic: doomsday preppersThe Cybertruck answers a question no one in the auto industry even thought to ask: what if there was a truck that a Chechen warlord couldn't possibly pass up - a bulletproof, bioweapons-resistant, road rage-inducing street tank that's illegal to drive in most of the world?Few had seen anything quite like the Cybertruck when it was unveiled in 2019. Wrapped in an ultra-hard, 30X, cold-rolled stainless steel exoskeleton", the Cybertruck was touted as the ultimate doomsday chariot - a virtually indestructible, obtuse-angled, electrically powered behemoth that can repel handgun fire and outrun a Porsche while towing a Porsche, with enough juice leftover to power your house in the event of a blackout. At the launch, Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, said the truck could tackle any terrain on Earth and possibly also on Mars - and all for the low, low base price of $40,000. Sometimes you get these late-civilization vibes [that the] apocalypse could come along at any moment," Musk said. Here at Tesla, we have the best in apocalypse technology." 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 concepts. This week's followed the Spain/Portugal outagesIf you were prepping, what should be your top five things to hoard in light of the recent power outages in Spain and Portugal? Alina Ahmad, JohannesburgSend new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Continue reading...

Panic; PC, PS4/5, Xbox

New system will analyse responses 1,000 times faster than a human and save millions, ministers claimAn AI tool has been used to review public responses to a government consultation for the first time and is now set to be rolled out more widely in an effort to save money and staff time.The tool, named Consult", was first used by the Scottish government when it was seeking perspectives on the regulation of non-surgical cosmetic procedures such as lip filler. Continue reading...

Nvidia to sell hundreds of thousands of AI chips in Saudi Arabia and Cisco also signs deal with UAE company G42A swath of US technology firms announced deals in the Middle East as Donald Trump trumpeted $600bn in commitments from Saudi Arabia to American artificial intelligence companies during a tour of Gulf states.Among the biggest deals was a set signed by Nvidia. The company will sell hundreds of thousands of AI chips in Saudi Arabia, with a first tranche of 18,000 of its newest Blackwell" chips going to Humain, Saudi Arabia's sovereign-wealth-fund-owned AI startup, Reuters reported. Cisco on Tuesday said it had signed a deal with G42, the AI firm based in the United Arab Emirates, to help the company develop that country's AI sector. Continue reading...