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Exclusive: Move follows outcry over use of Grok to digitally remove clothing from images of women and children

In this week's newsletter: Stranger Things' climactic showdown is the latest pop culture spectacle to feel like its been ported straight from a console. The industries' reciprocally influential relationship can be to everyone's gain Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereIt had begun to feel like an endurance test by the end, but nonetheless, like the sucker I am, I watched the Stranger Things finale last week. And spoiler warning: I'm going to talk about it in general terms in this newsletter. Because approximately 80% of the final season comprised twentysomething teenagers" explaining things to each other while using random 1980s objects to illustrate convoluted plans and plot points, my expectations were not high. After an interminable hour, finally, something fun happens, as the not-kids arm themselves with machine guns and molotovs and face off against a monstrously gigantic demon-crab. Aha, I thought - the final boss battle!The fight was like something out of Monster Hunter, all scale and spectacle with a touch of desperation. For a very long time, video games sought to imitate cinema. Now cinema (and TV) often feels like a video game. The structure of Stranger Things' final season reminded me a lot of Resident Evil: long periods of walking slowly through corridors, with characters exchanging plot information aloud on their way to the action, and occasional explosions of gunfire, screeching monsters or car chases. Those long periods of relative inaction are much more tolerable when you've got a controller in your hands. I am all for TV and film embracing the excitement, spectacle and dynamism of video games, but do they have to embrace the unnecessary side-quests and open-world bloat, too? Continue reading...

They may be small, but toothbrushes can create mountains of waste. Experts reveal how to clean and care for them and extend their life The best electric toothbrushes, testedIf toothbrushes were sentient, they'd complain about their lot in life. Their thankless existence involves repeatedly cleaning one of the grimmest parts of the body, then being thrown out once their bristles are insufficiently effective. Or, in the case of electric toothbrushes, decapitated before resuming their duties with a fresh head.This relentless cycle is essential for hygiene reasons: an ineffective brush can lead directly to tooth decay and gum disease. However, given the big dual crises of our time - climate and cost of living - it would certainly help for toothbrushes to last a bit longer. So what can we do to maximise their longevity without sacrificing dental hygiene? Continue reading...

This now venerable hardware remains an ideal platform for classics such as Minecraft and daring experiments from the brightest new developersNow surely approaching their twilight years, the Xbox Series S and X machines nevertheless still have plenty to offer both new and veteran owners. We have selected 15 titles that show the range of what's on offer, from the biggest blockbusters to lesser known indie gems you may have missed. Whether you're after tense psychological horror or wild escapism, it's all here and more. Continue reading...

AI company's chatbot faces criticism over its generation of sexualized, nonconsensual images of women and girlsElon Musk's artificial intelligence company has raised $20bn in its latest funding round, the startup announced Tuesday, even as its marquee chatbot Grok faces backlash over generating sexualized, nonconsensual images of women and underage girls.xAI's Series E funding round featured big-name investors, including Nvidia, Fidelity Management and Resource Company, Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, and Valor Equity Partners - the private investment firm of Musk's longtime friend and former Doge member Antonio Gracias. The funding round exceeded its initial $15bn target, according to xAI's press release. The company touted Grok's image-generation abilities in the announcement of its latest funding round. Continue reading...

The conveniences of modern life such as Uber Eats and ChatGPT are robbing us of satisfaction - and worse still, infantilising us. But should we really go back to the basics?Name: Friction-maxxing.Age: Brand new. Continue reading...

Liz Kendall calls on X to deal with this urgently' while expert criticises worryingly slow' government responseThe UK technology secretary has called a wave of images of women and children with their clothes digitally removed generated by Elon Musk's Grok AI appalling and unacceptable in decent society".After thousands of intimate deepfakes circulated online, Liz Kendall said X, Musk's social media platform, needed to deal with this urgently" and she backed the UK regulator Ofcom to take any enforcement action it deems necessary". Continue reading...

Our reviewer sheds some light on adding brightness to your mornings with the best dawn simulation alarms, from Lumie and Philips to Hatch The best sleep aids recommended by experts: from blue light-blockers to apps to help you napTo wake each day in darkness is a plight you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, yet that's what many of us do routinely throughout winter. Getting up in the dark decouples our life from our circadian rhythm (our body clock), with bodily processes such as cognition and metabolism put to work before they're fully prepped.Thank heavens, then, for sunrise alarm clocks. These dawn simulation" devices glow with gradually intensifying brightness as your wake-up time approaches, kickstarting your circadian rhythm before you get out of bed. For many users, this results in a happier, healthier start to the day.Best sunrise alarm clock overall:

New mind-bending puzzlers, landmark RPGs and furry multiverse adventures await you as the PlayStation 5 enters its sixth yearEntering its sixth year, the PlayStation 5 has built up a formidable library of epic adventures, button-pummelling shooters and even the odd cutesy platformer. So whether you've owned the machine for years or only just entered the current console generation, here are 15 titles we think you should have in your PlayStation collection. Continue reading...

Jensen Huang also announces at CES new, more powerful Vera Rubin chips that will arrive later this yearThe billionaire boss of the chipmaker Nvidia, Jensen Huang, has unveiled new AI technology that he says will help self-driving cars think like humans to navigate more complex situations.The world's most valuable company is to roll out the new technology, Alpamayo, which is designed to help self-driving cars handle tricky situations such as sudden roadworks or unusual driver behaviour on the road, rather than just reacting to previous patterns. Continue reading...

Former OpenAI employee Daniel Kokotajlo says progress to AGI is somewhat slower' than first predictedA leading artificial intelligence expert has rolled back his timeline for AI doom, saying it will take longer than he initially predicted for AI systems to be able to code autonomously and thus speed their own development toward superintelligence.Daniel Kokotajlo, a former employee of OpenAI, sparked an energetic debate in April by releasing AI 2027, a scenario that envisions unchecked AI development leading to the creation of a superintelligence, which - after outfoxing world leaders - destroys humanity. Continue reading...

Lack of verified information and advanced AI tools make it difficult to separate fact from fiction on US attackMinutes after Donald Trump announced a large-scale strike" against Venezuela early on Saturday morning, false and misleading AI-generated images began flooding social media. There were fake photos of Nicolas Maduro being escorted off a plane by US law enforcement agents, images of jubilant Venezuelans pouring into the streets of Caracas and videos of missiles raining down on the city - all fake.The fabricated content intermixed with real videos and photos of US aircraft flying over the Venezuelan capital and explosions lighting up the dark sky. A lack of verified information about the raid coupled with AI tools' rapidly advancing capabilities made discerning fact from fiction about the incursion on Caracas difficult. Continue reading...

You can't always get what you want - even when you review products for a living. From kitchen splurges to fashion staples, this is what our contributors dream of

Exclusive: Ashley St Clair says supporters of X owner are using his AI tool to create a form of revenge pornThe mother of one of Elon Musk's sons has said she felt horrified and violated" after fans of the billionaire used his AI tool, Grok, to create fake sexualised images of her by manipulating real pictures.The writer and political strategist Ashley St Clair, who became estranged from Musk after the birth of their child in 2024, told the Guardian that supporters of the X owner were using the tool to create a form of revenge porn, and had even undressed a picture of her as a child. Continue reading...

Rosen, who led Sega from the 1960s into the 90s and who died on Christmas Day, was a hugely important figure in the history of arcade and home gamingIt is difficult to think of a more influential figure in the arcade game industry than David Rosen, who has died aged 95. The co-founder of Sega, who remained a director of the company until 1996, was instrumental in the birth and rise of the video game business in Japan, and in the 1980s and 90s oversaw the establishment of Sega of America and the huge success of the Mega Drive console.As a US Air Force pilot during the Korean war, Rosen found himself stationed in Japan, and once the conflict was over, he stayed on, intrigued by the country and seeing possibilities in its recovering economy. In 1954 he set up Rosen Enterprises and noticing that Japanese civilians now required an increasing number of new ID cards he started importing photo booths from the US to answer the demand. From here he expanded to pinball tables and other coin-operated machines, importing them for installation in shops, restaurants and cinemas. In 1965, he merged the company with another importer, Nihon Goraku Bussan, whose coin-op business Service Games was shortened to Sega for the new venture. Continue reading...

Children are growing up as AI natives and experts say computing skills should be on par with reading and writingIn a Cambridge classroom, Joseph, 10, trained his AI model to discern between drawings of apples and drawings of smiles.AI gets lots of things wrong," he said, as it mistakenly identified a fruit as a face. He set about retraining it and, in a flash, he had it back on track - instinctively understanding the inner nature of artificial intelligence and machine learning in a way few adults do. Continue reading...

These inventions trigger rage, but also optimism. Maybe they will make people think more critically about debate and democracyIt was my blue shirt, a present from my sister-in-law, that gave it all away. It made me think of Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, the lowly bureaucrat in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella The Double, a disconcerting study of the fragmented self within a vast, impersonal feudal system.It all started with a message from an esteemed colleague congratulating me on a video talk on some geopolitical theme. When I clicked on the attached YouTube link to recall what I had said, I began to worry that my memory is not what it used to be. When did I record said video? A couple of minutes in, I knew there was something wrong. Not because I found fault in what I was saying, but because I realised that the video showed me sitting at my Athens office desk wearing that blue shirt, which had never left my island home. It was, as it turned out, a video featuring some deepfake AI doppelganger of me. Continue reading...

London predicted to be the first UK city to go diesel-free, largely because of the ultra-low emission zoneBattery electric cars are poised to overtake diesels on Great Britain's roads by 2030, according to analysis that suggests London will be the first UK city to go diesel-free.The number of diesel cars on Great Britain's roads in June had fallen to 9.9m in June last year, 21% below its peak of 12.4m vehicles, according to analysis by New AutoMotive, a thinktank focused on the transition to electric cars. Electric car sales are still growing rapidly, albeit more slowly than manufacturers had expected. Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers' questions ponders the online world - from what's despicable to what's indispensable This week's question: can you really fake it to make it?The internet has turned fringe belief into mainstream politics and policy - from authoritarianism to vaccines. With democracy itself threatened, is it time to go back to a previous world of landlines, letters and face to-face-contact, audiotapes and Ansaphones? What would we miss about the online world that is worth the risk to liberal culture and basic freedoms? Should we turn the internet off? Mees Visser, Groningen, the NetherlandsSend new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Continue reading...

AI safety expert David Dalrymple said rapid advances could outpace efforts to control powerful systemsThe world may not have time" to prepare for the safety risks posed by cutting-edge AI systems, according to a leading figure at the UK government's scientific research agency.David Dalrymple, a programme director and AI safety expert at the Aria agency, told the Guardian people should be concerned about the growing capability of the technology. Continue reading...

Fraudsters use phishing to steal card details, which fund a spending spree using Apple Pay or Google PayYou get a call from your bank and the informed voice asks to you to confirm the personal details they have on file, which you do. You are then asked whether you bought something at an electrical retailer recently for 120 and spent 235 in Birmingham, but neither transaction rings true.The caller tells you they have blocked the payments but they must now secure your account, and say they will send you a notification to approve, or a code to pass on to them. You feel under pressure to protect your money, so you do what is asked. Continue reading...

The novelty of eating at a diner owned by the richest person in the world seems to have worn off in just a few monthsLess than six months since it opened, Elon Musk's Tesla Diner has the feel of a ghost town. Gone is the Optimus robot serving popcorn, gone are the carnivore-diet-inspired Epic Bacon" strips, gone are the hours-long, hundred-person lines wrapped around the block. Even the restaurant's all-star chef, Eric Greenspan, is gone. The Hollywood burger-and-fries shop seems like a shell of the bustling eatery it was when it opened in late July.On a balmy Friday afternoon in December, the parking lot for Tesla car charging was, at best, half full. Inside what the company describes as a retro-futuristic" diner, a handful of people trickled in, ordering burgers and hotdogs or asking for merch. The upstairs deck, AKA Skypad", was vacant except for a pair of employees stringing holiday lights. More staff was busy at work, buffing fingerprints off the chrome walls and taking out the trash, than there were customers. The diner was spotless. Continue reading...

Defenders say AI can do good to fight the climate crisis. But spiralling energy and water costs leave experts worriedDuring a golden sunset in Memphis in May, Sharon Wilson pointed a thermal imaging camera at Elon Musk's flagship datacentre to reveal a planetary threat her eyes could not. Free from pollution controls, the gas-fired turbines that power the world's biggest AI supercomputer were pumping invisible fumes into the Tennessee sky.It was jaw-dropping," said Wilson, a former oil and gas worker from Texas who has documented methane releases for more than a decade and estimates xAI's Colossus datacentre was spewing more of the planet-heating gas than a large power plant. Just an unbelievable amount of pollution." Continue reading...

Platform is now Britain's fourth most visited social media site as users seek out human-generated contentReddit, the online discussion platform, has overtaken TikTok as Britain's fourth most visited social media service, as search algorithms and gen Z have dramatically transformed its prominence.The platform has undergone huge growth over the last two years, with an 88% increase in the proportion of UK internet users it reaches. Three in five Brits online now encounter the site, up from a third in 2023, according to Ofcom. Continue reading...

Lapses in safeguards led to wave of sexualized images this week as xAI says it is working to improve systemsElon Musk's chatbot Grok posted on Friday that lapses in safeguards had led it to generate images depicting minors in minimal clothing" on social media platform X. The chatbot, a product of Musk's company xAI, has been generating a wave of sexualized images throughout the week in response to user prompts.Screenshots shared by users on X showed Grok's public media tab filled with such images. xAI said it was working to improve its systems to prevent future incidents. Continue reading...

Tesla endured tough year in part thanks to some consumers' distaste for Elon Musk's embrace of rightwing politicsTesla has taken the unusual step of publishing sales forecasts that suggest 2025 deliveries will be lower than expected and future years' sales will be well below targets set by its chief executive, Elon Musk.The US electric vehicle maker published figures from analysts suggesting it will announce 423,000 deliveries during the fourth quarter of 2025, in a new consensus" section on its investor website. That would represent a 16% decline from the final quarter of 2024. Continue reading...

New year fitness goals? An elliptical will put you through your paces without the joint strain - our reviewer worked up a sweat testing the best The best treadmillsA quick admission: I absolutely love an elliptical or cross trainer. They don't always get the plaudits they deserve, but these low-impact cardio machines not only put less strain on your joints than a treadmill but also help you get an impressive, full-body workout. Whether you hop on one to warm up before an intense strength-training session or use it to gently burn calories while listening to your favourite podcast, the elliptical or cross trainer can strengthen muscle, reduce fat and improve cardiovascular fitness.However, there is a catch in that these machines vary wildly in their design - and therefore the emphasis they place on different muscles. Traditional elliptical machines eschew moving handles, instead opting for static poles, while cross trainers usually have dynamic handles that recruit the muscles in your back, shoulders and arms. On top of this, stride length, the shape of the handles and the positioning of the footplates can make a big difference to the type of workout you'll have.Best cross trainer overall:

How the tech CEO and Dogefather' made a mess of the year - from an apparent Nazi salute during his White House tenure to Tesla sales slumps and Starship explosionsThe year of 2025 was dizzying for Elon Musk. The tech titan began the year holding court with Donald Trump in Washington DC. As the months ticked by, one public appearance after another baffled the US and the world. Musk appeared to give a Nazi salute at Trump's inauguration, staunchly championed a 19-year-old staffer nicknamed Big Balls," denied reports of being a drug addict while advising the president, and showed up at a White House press conference with a black eye - all in the first half of the year alone.Elon's attitude is you have to get it done fast. If you're an incrementalist, you just won't get your rocket to the moon," Susie Wiles, Trump's chief of staff, told Vanity Fair in an expansive interview earlier this month. And so with that attitude, you're going to break some china." Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: The year's most popular stories reveal how play, power and politics collided in the past 12 months - and what you're psyched for in 2026 Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereWith the best games of the year duly noted (yours and ours), I'd like to highlight some of the work we've done covering them. Reviewing the top-performing articles that we published in 2025, I see a portrait of a conflicted year: plenty of great works and games that captured the imagination and the world's attention, but also growing anxiety about their place in the real world, and the political circumstances they reflect. And a lot of (justified) hand-wringing over Roblox.But first: I wanted to extend heartfelt thanks to everyone who reads this newsletter and the rest of our work at the Guardian. If you've enjoyed our coverage, do consider supporting us to do more of it - either through a recurring or one-off contribution. Without your support, none of the great journalism we produce would be possible. Thank you for being with us in 2025, and I hope you stick around to watch me slowly lose my mind working overtime in the buildup to Grand Theft Auto 6's release in November 2026. (Finally). Continue reading...

Safety researchers feel excessive financial rewards and an irresponsible work culture have led some to ignore a catastrophic risk to human lifeOn the other side of San Francisco bay from Silicon Valley, where the world's biggest technology companies tear towards superhuman artificial intelligence, looms a tower from which fearful warnings emerge.Right in the heart of Berkeley is the home of a group of modern-day Cassandras who rummage under the hood of cutting-edge AI models and predict what calamities may be unleashed on humanity - from AI dictatorships to robot coups. Here you can hear an AI expert express sympathy with an unnerving idea: San Francisco may be the new Wuhan, the Chinese city where Covid originated and wreaked havoc on the world. Continue reading...

Our reporting revealed a symbiotic relationship between the IDF and Silicon Valley - with implications for the future of warfareIn January this year, Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham first reported that Microsoft had deepened its ties to Israel alongside other major tech firms. Since then, the Guardian has published an award-winning series of investigations - in partnership with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call - that has revealed a symbiotic relationship between Silicon Valley and the Israeli military.One investigation exposed an Israeli mass surveillance program scooping up virtually all Palestinian phone calls and storing them on Microsoft's cloud services - setting off an inquiry that ultimately prompted the company to cut off Israel's access to some of its technology. Another story revealed that the Israeli military created a ChatGPT-like tool to analyze data collected through the surveillance of Palestinians. Yet another revealed that Google and Amazon had agreed to extraordinary terms to clinch a lucrative contract with Israel. Continue reading...

As 007 makes his gaming return, you can climb a mountain in Cairn, play a scaredy-cat in Resident Evil, and play a criminal couple in GTA VILive your mountaineering fantasies and brave the elements in a wonderfully illustrated climbing game. You must carefully place climber Aava's hands and feet to make your way up a forbidding mountain, camping on ledges and bandaging her fingers as you go. Like real climbing, it is challenging and somewhat brutal.

Whenever I'm out late with friends and we pass a photo booth, I drag them in so I can add to the gallery of faces I love seeing each dayLast New Year's Eve, I was out with a friend. We had no plans, so we met at a local cinema and then wandered the long street between our houses, pausing for a drink or two in various bars and chatting to strangers doing the same. We stopped when we became hungry and shared a plate of curries and drank beer in the window of an Indian restaurant, watching the parade of partygoers outside. Then we walked to the top of the hill to watch the fireworks lighting up the sky.It was after midnight as we strolled back but we weren't quite ready to call it a night, and we found ourselves in a games arcade where a bunch of women were cramming into a photo booth to take a strip of black-and-white photos together. Their enthusiasm was infectious and so we waited until they were finished and did the same. I now have the strip of photos stuck on my fridge, secured under a magnet for a local plumber. In them, we are both grinning wildly at the camera, our faces squashed close, the years of friendship evident in our expressions. Continue reading...

Calculating the actual savings and impact of the bulldozing US department that vowed to cut $1tn in waste is difficult

Exclusive: CST highlights volume of IS-supporting accounts and says social media firms putting all of us in danger'Facebook hosted terrorist propaganda that celebrated the murder of Jews and praised Islamic State, a leading anti-hate group has alleged.The posts included celebrations of the Bondi beach massacre that the Community Security Trust says Facebook has been too slow to take down. The posts were still on Facebook on 16 December, two days after the attack, and received shares and likes. Continue reading...

From Stanley Tucci's imperious tech titan to Lex Luthor's distractingly hot CEO and Elon Musk-esque blowhards, films this year took us inside the billionaire mindsetBetween the slash-and-burn US government reboot led by a dank meme fan and the relentless pushing of AI by venture capital-backed blowhards, 2025 has felt like peak obnoxious tech bro. Fittingly, jargon-spouting, self-regarding digital visionaries also became Hollywood's go-to baddies this year in everything from blockbusters to slapstick spoofs. Spare a thought for the overworked props departments tasked with mocking up fake Forbes magazine covers heralding yet another smirking white guy as Master of the Metaverse" or whatever.With such market saturation, the risk is that all these delusional dudes blend into one smarmy morass. It felt reasonable to expect that Stanley Tucci might sprinkle a little prosciutto on The Electric State, Netflix's no-expense-spared alt-history robot fantasia. As Ethan Skate - creator of the neurocaster" technology that quashed an AI uprising then turned the general populace into listless virtual-reality addicts - Tucci certainly looked the part: bald and imperious in retro Bond villain wardrobe. But even the great cocktail-maker couldn't squeeze much out of sour existential proclamations such as: Our world is a tyre fire floating on an ocean of piss." Continue reading...

Last few months of the year have seen $1tn in value wiped from the market, despite all-time-high price of bitcoinAs 2025 comes to a close, Donald Trump's favorable approach to cryptocurrency has not proven to be enough to sustain the industry's gains, once the source of market-wide optimism and enthusiasm. The last few months of the year have seen $1tn in value wiped from the digital asset market, despite bitcoin hitting an all-time-high price of $126,000 on 6 October.The October price peak was short-lived. Bitcoin's price tumbled just days later after Trump's announcement of 100% tariffs on China sent shockwaves across the market on 12 October. The crypto market saw $19bn liquidated in 24 hours - the largest liquidation event on record. Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, saw a 40% drop in price over the next month. Eric Trump's own crypto company endured a similar drop in its value in December. Continue reading...

Acquisition would further expand SoftBank's investments in artificial intelligence as it tries to center itself in the boomSoftBank Group will acquire digital infrastructure investor DigitalBridge Group in a deal valued at $4bn, the companies said on Monday, as the Japanese investment firm looks to deepen its AI-related portfolio.The acquisition would expand SoftBank's exposure to digital infrastructure as the Japanese conglomerate is positioning its portfolio to focus on artificial intelligence.

New head of preparedness at OpenAI will face unnerving in-tray amid fears from some experts that AI could turn on us'The maker of ChatGPT has advertised a $555,000-a-year vacancy with a daunting job description that would cause Superman to take a sharp intake of breath.In what may be close to the impossible job, the head of preparedness" at OpenAI will be directly responsible for defending against risks from ever more powerful AIs to human mental health, cybersecurity and biological weapons. Continue reading...

Cybersecurity experts reveal what they do for high-profile clients targeted by hackers such as Scattered SpiderThey call it stopping the bleeding": the vital window to prevent an entire database from being ransacked by criminals or a production line grinding to a halt.When a call comes into the cybersecurity firm S-RM, headquartered on Whitechapel High Street in east London, a hacked business or institution may have just minutes to protect themselves. Continue reading...

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Candidates will have to sit assessments in person unless there are exceptional circumstances, says ACCA

Republican senator Katie Britt also proposes AI companies be criminally liable if they expose minors to harmful ideasUS senator Bernie Sanders amplified his recent criticism of artificial intelligence on Sunday, explicitly linking the financial ambition of the richest people in the world" to economic insecurity for millions of Americans - and calling for a potential moratorium on new datacenters.Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democratic party, said on CNN's State of the Union that he was fearful of a lot" when it came to AI. And the senator called it the most consequential technology in the history of humanity" that will transform" the US and the world in ways that had not been fully discussed. Continue reading...

Gerstner was chair and CEO at a time when the firm was struggling for relevance faced with rivals such as MicrosoftLouis Gerstner, the businessman credited with turning around IBM, has died aged 83, the company announced on Sunday.Gerstner was chair and CEO of IBM from 1993 to 2002, a time when the company was struggling for relevance in the face of competition from rivals such as Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. Continue reading...

Online audiences seeking out authentic and passionate voices as antidote to AI-generated contentFor years, social media fame has been associated with the red carpet glamour of the Kardashians and Cristiano Ronaldo's megawatt sporting celebrity, but millions of users globally are increasingly turning their attention to unassuming heroes drawn from everyday life.TikTok says a range of accounts, from a bird enthusiast to an Italian grandmother and a doubledecker bus fan, have grown in popularity this year as social media users latch on to authentic voices. Continue reading...

We ran more than 1,000km to test top-rated GPS fitness watches including Apple, Garmin and the best for beginners The best running shoes for men and womenWhether you're hitting the pavements for the first time, running with a club or racing for personal glory, the ability to track your workouts has become an essential part of any training regime. Not only can it help you improve, but you can also use it to avoid injury and share in the social experience. A running watch isn't the only way to do this, but it is a pretty effective option.But with the market flooded with options, offering an array of features, you might find it difficult to answer all the questions that arise. Do you need offline maps? Do you want to listen to music while you run? Which brand is best, and how much do you really need to spend?Best running watch for beginners:

Flood of unreality is an endpoint of algorithm-driven internet and product of an economy dependent on a few top tech firmsIn the algorithm-driven economy of 2025, one man's shrimp Jesus is another man's side hustle.AI slop - the low-quality, surreal content flooding social media platforms, designed to farm views - is a phenomenon, some would say the phenomenon of the 2024 and 2025 internet. Merriam-Webster's word of the year this year is slop", referring exclusively to the internet variety. Continue reading...

MasterClass, Roku, Apple, Aritzia - we rounded up the best post-holiday sales for tech, fashion and more that you can snag before the end of the year

Merlin has been trained to identify the songs of more than 1,300 bird species around the worldWhen Natasha Walter first became curious about the birds around her, she recorded their songs on her phone and arduously tried to match each song with online recordings. After a friend recommended Merlin Bird ID, a free app, she tried it in her London garden and was delighted to discover the birds she assumed were female blackbirds - this is how bad a birder I was" - were actually song thrushes and mistle thrushes.I'm obsessed with Merlin - it's wonderful and it's been a joy to me," says Walter, a writer and human rights activist. This is what AI and machine-learning have been invented for. It's the one good thing!" Continue reading...

Date a vending machine, watch intergalactic television and make the most out of your short existence as a fly. Here are the best games you weren't playing this year