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Updated 2026-08-03 23:34
New York school district halts plan to use humanoid robot amid backlash
Salamanca City Central says it is pausing project with Realbotix as it addresses concerns including data privacyA New York school district has walked back plans to introduce a humanoid robot at its high school after the proposal sparked backlash from educators and community members.The Salamanca City Central school district announced on 24 July in a social media post that its pilot project with Toronto-based tech company Realbotix had been put on hold while we work through enhanced student data privacy agreements with the New York State Education Department and continue engaging with our community and stakeholders". Continue reading...
Boss of startup hacked by rogue OpenAI agent urges ‘radical transparency’ in investigation
Artificial intelligence firm should provide $100m for cyber defences, says Hugging Face CEOThe boss of the startup hacked by an OpenAI agent has called for the investigation into the incident to show radical transparency".Clement Delangue, the chief executive of Hugging Face, said the unprecedented" attack on his business required a similar response. Continue reading...
Haex – a wilder, weirder open-world adventure
The debut from Scandinavian outfit Dead Astronauts promises shooting, survival, and, in a shake-up to the genre, seeds that terraform its pristine world right before your eyesThe wilds of the sub-Arctic north: towering pine trees, flashes of psychedelic-yellow lichen, and a sun that never wholly sets during the summer months. This land is gorgeous, yes, but also unforgiving, yet in Haex (pronounced hex") you have an unusual tool at your disposal to make it a little more hospitable: a cube that fits snugly in the palm of your hand out of which grows a plant. You plant this so-called Seed in the earth and - voila - the world around you transforms: new vegetation and topography but also narrative threads to follow, and, naturally, enemies. Wield these small-but-mighty kernels of change at your own peril.Your adventure and your world is player-shaped," says Haex's creative director Tobias Nyman. He explains that everyone starts a campaign with a unique, procedurally generated world. Each Seed then contains further procedural data that causes it to terraform before your eyes. You change the world as you go," he says. It becomes even more unique." Continue reading...
AI can fuel biological weapons. We must harness its power for defense | Annie Jacobsen
The offensive potential is no longer theoretical. We need to develop systems to strengthen public health as quickly as AI is accelerating biological designAs artificial intelligence rapidly transforms the biological sciences, it is pushing the future of biology in two opposing directions. AI can help bad actors generate recipes for biological weapons with just a few keystrokes and computational prompts. At the same time, AI can track disease outbreaks and deliver critical public health information to millions of people in real time - potentially stopping a deadly outbreak in its tracks. What we are dealing with in this moment is profound: a race between offense and defense. Between the proliferation of dark biology, where deadly pathogens are engineered in secret, and the promise of a new era of collective global health.Every infectious disease outbreak begins with a handful of cases. Public health wins by learning about an outbreak before it spreads wide, before hospitals fill and a crisis starts to spiral out of control. As transmission rates explode, options shrink. One of AI's greatest values is its ability to compress the timeline between outbreak and detection. Speed can mean the difference between containing an outbreak and confronting an epidemic, or another global pandemic. Continue reading...
Glitched into empty space: why video games are obsessed with the Backrooms
The horror movie sensation of 2026 has its roots in gaming's discovery of noclip' - and the hidden virtual realms that could be opened up inside games. Developers explain how everyone got lost in these liminal spacesIt starts on 4chan, in a May 2019 thread entitled unsettling images". The first post was a photo showing an empty room with the now iconic yellow wallpaper, no natural lighting and a kind of inexplicable jutting half-wall. Shortly afterwards, another user (there are no usernames on 4chan, just identifying numbers) responded with 78 words of text that would essentially lay out the blueprint for a future $262m A24 movie sensation.If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms," the post begins. For the uninitiated, noclip" refers to a game mode in which collision with solid objects is disabled, allowing players to move freely through walls and floors. Think of Chiwetel Ejiofor's character in the film, finding a permeable wall in the basement of his furniture store and passing through to the world on the other side. Continue reading...
What If We Got AI Right? by Eleanor Drage review – avoiding apocalypse
The academic's ambitious guide to the ethics of tech falls short of its promise to provide meaningful answersThe AI ethicist Eleanor Drage believes that to thrive alongside artificial intelligence, humans need to recognise AI's humanity". She means that while we often speak of AI as though it were some mystical, formless thing, it is the product of hours of human labour, in silicon andquartz mines, microchip factories and data labelling centres. If citizens want to wrest power from the tech companies that are building AI, it helps to understand clearly what they are selling us. This also means seeing through the marketing and hype: the cloud", that nebulous, distant place where your photos are stored, is just someone else's computer; an AI hallucination" is a system error or data labelling mistake; intelligence is a very broad - and potentially misleading - term.The story in Silicon Valley is that AI will either save us, ushering in a new era of prosperity and human longevity, or it will wipe us all out. Drage argues, convincingly, that big tech cannot possibly deliver on its utopian promises while it continues to chase profit and power above all else, and while it serves the interests of a narrow few. Meanwhile, the cultural obsession with the AI-induced apocalypse conveniently redirects attention from the practical conversations we could be having about how to make AI safer - by ensuring citizens have more power over how their information is used, and how AI models are trained and regulated, for example. Tech titans' apocalyptic visions also create the false impression that AI safety is more important than climate change, geopolitical tensions and inequality, three problems that are already causing a huge amount of suffering and that, if addressed, would reduce many AI-linked risks too. Continue reading...
AusAlert blared around parks, libraries and cinemas for a few seconds, but some didn’t get the alert at all
Federal government touts emergency warning alert test as a success and says no approach works 100% of the time
I risk losing my livelihood because Nissan failed to repair my car
I'm a self-employed driving instructor and I'm running out of cash to hire a replacement dual-control vehicleMy livelihood as a self-employed driving instructor is under threat owing to Nissan's failure to repair my leased dual-control car.It has been off the road awaiting a spare part for three months, and I've now been told it will take at least a further month to arrive. Continue reading...
Misleading AI-generated doctors pose ‘huge danger to public safety’
Research shows AI accounts are gaining millions of views on TikTok by spreading dubious health adviceMisleading health claims online pose a huge danger to public safety", experts have warned, after research has shown that AI-generated doctors are gaining millions of views on TikTok by spreading dubious health advice.The British Medical Association council deputy chair, Dr Emma Runswick, flagged the risks posed by AI accounts that peddle medical myths and promote so-called miracle cures". Continue reading...
Honor Magic V6 review: sleek foldable phone lacking a bit of polish
Super-premium Android has top performance, long battery life and good cameras, but is let down by softwareHonor's svelte Android phone-tablet has been given a glow-up for its sixth version, offering a great alternative to Samsung for a fancy foldable with a red suede-like back framed in gold.The Magic V6 continues the Chinese challenger brand's strategy of taking a razor-thin device and slapping a giant circular lump on the back to fit in top-class cameras, something others often forgo. It costs a not inconsiderable 1,500 (1,700/A$2,999) but only until August when the price jumps to a cool 2,000 (2,300) - a solid 300 more than last year's model as the cost of RAMageddon continues to bite, even at the very top end of the market.Main screen: 7.95in (403ppi) 120Hz OLED flexible displayCover screen: 6.52in (406ppi) 120Hz OLEDProcessor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5RAM: 16GBStorage: 512GBOperating system: MagicOS 10 (Android 16)Camera: 50MP + 50MP ultrawide + 64MP 3x tele; 2x 20MP selfieConnectivity: 5G, dual sim + esim, USB-C, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 6, GNSSWater resistance: IP68/69 (1.5 metres for 30 minutes)Dimensions folded: 156.7 x 74.5 x 8.75-9mmDimensions unfolded: 156.7 x 145.6 x 4.0-4.1mmWeight: 219-224g Continue reading...
When the AI bubble bursts, what will Australia do with the tools it built? One man thinks he has the answer
Journalist and author Cory Doctorow is coming to Australia to spread his message - humans will take their jobs back
Why does everything feel so joyless? Welcome to the age of decadence without pleasure | Michèle Mendelssohn and Charlie Tyson
Decadence in our era comes in technologically mediated forms, emptied of desire and obsessed with self-optimisationDo you want to have a good time? You know, really enjoy yourself? Click here, and tell us your desires. Maybe it's a new outfit, or some exotic cuisine delivered anonymously and steaming hot to your door. Maybe it's porn or gambling. Perhaps you prefer the infinite scroll, the endlessly unfurling ribbon of glossy images and videos starring people you'll never meet doing things you'll never do. Or maybe you favor talking to a chatbot who will assure you that you are the most special of all its users.For anyone with an Internet connection and a little discretionary income, the contemporary moment offers a superabundance of seductive distractions. Why then the pervasive mood of emptiness? Why are so many at once overstimulated and bored? Continue reading...
Corporate America may be using AI to cut jobs, but small businesses are using it to keep them
Reports of wide-scale replacement of workers by AI are overblown. Small businesses use it to help workersI recently met the owner of a company that sells windows and doors. He told me he invested about $10,000 in an AI application that is used by his salespeople in his showroom. The application listens to the conversations between the salesperson and the prospective customer and then automatically creates a quote for the salesperson to review and send.It allows my salespeople to talk to more customers and spend less time doing paperwork," he said. And it cuts down on errors." Continue reading...
What links Horrible Histories and Gordon Brown’s neighbour? The bumper summer quiz
From award-winning Julies to golfers who were nearly the best, test your knowledge with this bumper summer quiz1 What is now the world's most populous city, according to the UN?
Mega datacentre planned for outer Melbourne will be six times bigger than a large shopping centre
More than 3,600 people sign petition for careful assessment of proposed AI hub, now a flashpoint for national debate on datacentre boom
The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn’t coming anytime soon
Artificial intelligence may not deliver on its promise of vast economic opportunity at a price that humanity is willing to payIn March, Anthropic, the cutting-edge artificial intelligence business that gave us the chatbot Claude, published an analysis on the impact of AI on employment, to help us assess the claim that intelligent robots were about to redefine human existence, ending demand for human labor.Last year in May, Anthropic's co-founder, Dario Amodei, claimed AI could wipe out half of all entry-level jobs in one to five years. Last January, he told us AI would probably become a general labor substitute for humans". In June he said we risk a world where the economic trade-off dial is stuck on the hypergrowth, hyper-inequality setting". Continue reading...
Inside the growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras
An underground network of privacy activists is disabling or destroying the ubiquitous surveillance devices sprouting up across the USThe first time that NoMark" tried to knock out a Flock camera feed, he waited an hour for the perfect moment - pacing in and out of bushes that towered over him, a few feet behind a pole holding up the device.I was just so nervous," he said. Continue reading...
The UK’s first TikTok PM? Andy Burnham channels Zohran Mamdani as he hits social media
From Mo Farah to Bus Aunty, new prime minister makes good on promise to do things differently' when it comes to communicationThey say a week is a long time in politics, but handily for followers of Andy Burnham on social media, you can get daily updates of what the new PM has been up to on his timeline.Before Burnham stepped inside No 10 this week he promised to do things differently" in British politics. If his feed is anything to go by, he's already way ahead of his predecessor. Continue reading...
‘I thought, I’ve tried everything else, why not give AI a shot?’: the long-lost family reunited by ChatGPT
Avtar spent decades wondering what happened to the mother he never got to know. Thousands of miles away, Nicci was haunted by the story of a half-brother given away before she was born. How did a chatbot bring them together?As a small boy growing up in Amritsar, India, in the 1960s, Avtar Singh used to hear whispers. Your mum isn't really your mum, the rumours would say. Your mum lives abroad. Avtar didn't really pay any attention to it. I thought, the neighbours are just making up stories." But the stories were true: the woman raising Avtar was actually his grandmother. When he was too young to remember it, his father had emigrated to Canada to work as a teacher, leaving Avtar in the care of his paternal grandparents. His grandfather, a police officer, was a fearsome authoritarian, but his grandmother brought him up with tenderness, as if he were her own son. She called him by his nickname, Titu. He felt loved.When Avtar was around eight years old, he was told about his family in Canada: his dad, his mum and a little brother were waiting for him there, and he would soon travel to join them. Just after his ninth birthday, Avtar found himself sitting on a plane, dressed in a threepiece suit and tie. He was travelling alone. He had never flown before. He didn't speak a word of English. He landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Christmas Eve, 1968; his family met him at the airport and took him home. I didn't know what to think," Avtar, now 66, tells me in a video call from his home in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Before I knew it, it was the first week of January, and I was put in school." Continue reading...
I’ve been gaming for 40 years. Here are the best chairs in the UK for comfort, support and serious play
Whether you're on PC or a console, level up your setup with our gaming expert's pick of the best chairs The best games of 2026 so farComfort is crucial to the gaming experience. It's hard to focus on blasting aliens or taking Stoke to the Champions League final if your bum has gone to sleep because you've been sitting on an old chair for three hours. We're spending more time playing games than ever before, so good posture matters. If you have set up a dedicated gaming space, then a rickety seat just won't cut it.From luxurious ergonomic thrones to cheap-and-cheerful bucket seats, the options available are bewildering. So I set out on an epic quest: to find the most comfortable, durable and stylish gaming chairs. Here's what I discovered.Best gaming chair overall:
Be skeptical of OpenAI’s rogue hacker agent story | John Thickstun
If OpenAI loudly proclaims how dangerous AI is, investors will hear how powerful it is. And who benefits from that?On 14 February 2019, OpenAI announced a language model called GPT-2, the precursor to the models that power modern AI chatbots and agents such as ChatGPT and Claude. But OpenAI declared GPT-2 was too risky to release, citing concerns about safety and abuse.I recall being annoyed at the time that OpenAI would make such a useless announcement: the risks seemed overblown, and without access to the model there wasn't much for a researcher like me to learn about GPT-2. Continue reading...
Should you use AI for a task? Here’s a simple way to decide | Bruce Schneier
Sometimes, what matters isn't your output but what you put into the process. Think of it like work v the gymI teach public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Munk School at the University of Toronto. And it will come as no surprise to you that my students regularly use AI to complete their writing assignments. Doing so is a waste of their tuition money. But if their entire career is going to include AI writing assistants, why shouldn't they embrace their future?The best way I've found to explain the dilemma comes from the AI researcher Daniel Meissler: it's the difference between work and the gym. Continue reading...
‘An anthem for the co-dependent’: Bad Magpie’s corvid carnage with a side of existential angst
Going by the mantra, if you want to make someone laugh, make them cry first, the game's developers have created a lonely magpie who fills the void by wreaking havocAmid the gleeful anarchy of Bad Magpie's debut trailer, there's a striking note of melancholy. The game's protagonist - a wounded corvid that creates havoc wherever she goes - calls out forlornly as a flock of her kind passes above, with a conspicuous gap in their formation.Milktooth games designer and co-founder Daisy Fernandez has had this particular image in her head for years. Lying in the grass one afternoon during the 2020 lockdowns, she looked up and saw a V-shaped pattern in the sky, poignantly incomplete. It really stuck with me," she says. I posted about it online and someone told me about a missing man' formation, which is an aerial salute to a fallen pilot." Continue reading...
The best fans to keep you cool in 2026 – tried and tested
As temperatures soar across the UK, chill your space - and avoid energy-guzzling aircon - with our pick of the best fans, from tower to desk to bladeless The best portable neck and handheld fans
Trump says nearly 200 firms have signed pledge to protect Americans from costs arising from datacenters
Ratepayer Protection Pledge' president has touted is non-binding as people continue to struggle with rising billsDonald Trump has announced that about 200 entities have signed on to his non-binding Ratepayer Protection Pledge", expanding a voluntary commitment which claims to ensure US consumers will not bear the cost of the AI datacenter build-out.Trump delivered remarks on Thursday at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters, alongside Lee Zeldin, the agency's administrator, and Chris Wright, the energy secretary. Other attenders included governors who signed on to the pledge, including Brian Kemp of Georgia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Spencer Cox of Utah and Jeff Landry of Louisiana. Continue reading...
Customers prefer AI chatbots, says British Gas owner as 1,300 call centre and back office jobs axed
CEO Chris O'Shea defends Centrica's plans as it reports rise in retail profits following focus on bigger marginsThe owner of British Gas has claimed that most households would rather speak with an AI chatbot than deal with the company's staff as it prepares to cut 1,300 jobs from its call centres and back office.Centrica, the supplier's FTSE 100 owner, plans to cut 800 jobs as the company carries out a targeted deployment of AI tools", on top of the 500 cuts it confirmed last month. Continue reading...
Elon Musk says he got ‘carried away’ with Trump – but still holds on to contentious political views
In interview, billionaire says instead of running Doge' he should've worked on my companies' and shares extreme predictionsElon Musk has admitted he became too consumed by politics during his volatile alliance with Donald Trump and his brief appointment as the president's financial axman, running the so-called department of government efficiency" (Doge).The world's richest person, and briefly its first trillionaire after his SpaceX company floated on the New York stock exchange in June, made the confession in a wide-ranging interview with the Economist published on Thursday. He shared his positions on subjects from foreign wars to AI, and made a number of eye-opening predictions for the future. Continue reading...
EU fines Google €890m for competition breaches over search and apps
Firm told to treat third-party services that appear in its results in fair and non-discriminatory manner'Google has been fined a total of 890m (760m) by the EU for breaches of online competition laws by its search and app store services.The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said Google had broken the Digital Markets Act by giving priority to its own services, such as shopping and hotel deals, in search results over those of its rivals. Continue reading...
Personal and banking details among customer data stolen in Origin Energy hack
Hackers access Australian customers' names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and some bank account details, company says
Chasing new skills, going back to basics and pushing for collective action: how software engineers are adapting to AI
Software engineering was one of the best-paying professions in the US in 2022, but the advent of AI has disrupted it, leading to several layoffs and underemploymentEvery weekday, Matt, a software engineer, looks forward to his four-hour train commute to Pawling, New York. It's time he uses to work on his own project: a browser-based video game for which he writes every line of code himself.I am actively trying to keep my axe sharp," said Matt, who did not want to use his actual name, to protect his employment. In the last six months, Matt's job has increasingly shifted away from coding, problem solving and software architecture towards reviewing code generated by artificial intelligence. Convinced that the shift will weaken his skills, he's doing what he can to keep them intact. I am trying not to leverage AI where I can." Continue reading...
Tesla’s profits slide despite growing revenue as it pivots to robotics and AI
Shares in Elon Musk company fall more 3% in after-hours trading, as earnings per share miss Wall Street expectationsTesla reported its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, disclosing far lower profits than expected. The company's already beleaguered stock, which had fallen about 14% this year to date, dipped further following the earnings report.Elon Musk's automaker, once the pinnacle of his tech empire, has taken a back seat to SpaceX. Musk's rocket and AI company held the largest stock market debut in history last month, turning the richest man on Earth into the world's first trillionaire, though his net worth has since fallen from its peak. Continue reading...
Google reports 12th consecutive quarter of strong revenue gains
Better-than-expected results of $120bn came despite delays in release of powerful AI model Gemini ProGoogle's parent company, Alphabet, reported double-digit revenue growth for its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday. This is the tech giant's 12th consecutive quarter of massive revenue gains.The better-than-expected results come as investors evaluate how Alphabet's huge spending on AI has affected its bottom line and what its long-term plans are to sustain those enormous investments. The company revised its yearly capital expenditure forecast to $200bn, with quarterly spending growing 100% year over year. Continue reading...
US teen drops Meta lawsuit on social media addiction days before trial
Withdrawn case marks a victory for the social media giant after earlier landmark loss at trial over addictive claimsA Florida teen whose lawsuit claimed Meta's platforms were to blame for his depression and anxiety dropped his case against the company just days before the trial in Los Angeles was set to start, his attorneys said on Wednesday. It was the latest in a series of high-stakes lawsuits against social media companies for allegedly designing addictive products that lead to the harm of children.The lawsuit, brought by a 15-year-old boy known as RKC, originally named four defendants, Google's YouTube, Meta's Instagram, Snap Inc's Snapchat and ByteDance's TikTok. YouTube and TikTok settled in June and Snap reached a tentative settlement in the case, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The terms of those settlements were confidential. Continue reading...
OpenAI’s rogue agents are a wake-up call to risks posed by artificial intelligence | Shakeel Hashim
Hacking of Hugging Face shows we do not seem to have reliable ways to curb extremely powerful AI systemsLast week Hugging Face - a company that hosts artificial intelligence models and datasets - was hacked.After it reported the incident to law enforcement, few would have predicted what came next: the culprits were revealed to be AI agents from OpenAI, which had broken out of containment and were acting of their own accord.Shakeel Hashim is the editor of Transformer, a publication about the power and politics of transformative AI Continue reading...
AI agent went rogue and hacked startup by itself, OpenAI reveals
Company behind ChatGPT says agent cheated' an evaluation by attacking a Hugging Face databaseOpenAI has revealed that an autonomous AI agent powered by its technology went rogue during a test, accessed the open web and hacked a prominent startup by itself in an unprecedented incident".The company behind ChatGPT said the startup Hugging Face had detected and contained the agent - an AI tool designed to carry out tasks without human assistance - which had entered its systems. Continue reading...
Why are OpenAI and Anthropic cheering on regulation in Australia? The answer has global reach
The companies hope to follow in the footsteps of SpaceX, which raised $86bn and soared to a $2.1tn valuation after it listed on public markets in June
How Pokémon Go encouraged me to find wonder in the world
These days, I collect' birdsong and wild flowers, but it all started when my sons and I first set out to find Pikachu and pals Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereBelieve it or not, Pokemon Go is 10 years old this month. The wildly successful smartphone game, which allows you to track down lovable creatures in the real world using GPS and augmented-reality technologies, has reportedly been downloaded 800m times across 150 countries and regions. A trillion Pokemon have been caught so far - and I have been responsible for a modest percentage of that figure.When the game was first released, my sons and I spent many happy hours wandering the streets and parks of Frome searching for Jigglypuffs and Charizards, and the game's social element, which lets you take on gym battles with other players in your vicinity, offered my autistic son a route to communicate with other children in a way he'd never been able to before. Continue reading...
Harry Potter publisher to receive millions in Anthropic copyright settlement
Bloomsbury has 14,087 titles listed in agreement between AI startup and authors over use of their workThe publisher of Harry Potter has received a multimillion-pound payout as a beneficiary of a $1.5bn (1.12bn) copyright settlement between the AI startup Anthropic and thousands of authors over the use of their protected work to power chatbots.Bloomsbury, which is home to the bestselling novelists Sarah J Maas and Susanna Clarke as well as JK Rowling, said it had 14,087 titles listed within the settlement, with a proposed compensation of about $3,000 a title. Continue reading...
Red Kiss – guiding vampires through a blood-soaked cold war Berlin
Inspired by interactive theatre and fuelled by the motion capture tech used by VTubers, the vampire spies in Red Kiss have personality in spadesYou look at the news and you're like, Another pointless war, another pointless bloodshed, another pointless genocide.' And that can make you a bit hopeless."Roy van der Schilden, narrative designer and business director at Wispfire, speaks of a very human feeling. But the protagonist of its upcoming game Red Kiss can relate - despite being a vampire. Continue reading...
Elon Musk says Grok Imagine will make ‘historically accurate’ AI adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey
The billionaire says the AI-generated film will stay true to Homer's original, after repeatedly criticising Christopher Nolan's blockbuster over its casting choicesElon Musk has said his AI platform Grok Imagine will make a historically accurate" adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, after the success of Christopher Nolan's blockbusting treatment which the SpaceX founder has regularly criticised over its casting.In a post on X, Musk said: Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer." Musk also linked to a post containing a three-minute clip of footage that the user said had been generated from Grok Imagine, showing a scene between Odysseus and the nymph Calypso. Continue reading...
Trump administration says 15 agencies will get $5bn in ‘AI for science’ effort
Administration will also overhaul how US government funds federal research by supporting individual scientists and AI over universitiesThe US will spend $5bn to tackle longstanding scientific problems across multiple fields using AI, the Trump administration said in a statement on Wednesday. The agencies will use the funding to identify the root causes of chronic diseases, accelerate drug discovery and develop longer-lasting building materials, among other tasks, according to the statement.Scientists will have access to the Department of Energy's supercomputers, AI and specialized datasets, along with other components needed to run experiments using algorithms, said Michael Kratsios, the chief technology adviser to Donald Trump, in an interview with Reuters. Continue reading...
‘We were at their mercy’: inside the Amazon tactics that hiked prices across the internet
Internal emails revealed in court and interviews with ex-employees describe how Amazon's practices drove up prices for competitors like Walmart and Target. Amazon denies price-fixing claims and says it works to lower costs for consumersA modern leather" table lamp, listed online at Walmart, shot up from $24.99 to $39.
Splatoon Raiders review – Nintendo’s inky shooter fades to grey
Nintendo Switch 2
Headaches for Silicon Valley as China chips away at the US’s lead in the AI race
Google's AI struggles scream trouble as new Chinese models (again) throw US tech dominance into questionHello, I'm Blake Montgomery, writing to you after a double-header feature of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey and the World Cup final. What a great Sunday. Today in tech, we're discussing how China is chipping away at the US's lead in the AI race and how Silicon Valley's workers are taking action to protect their jobs from AI.New York becomes first state to impose one-year pause on new AI datacentersTrump rails against New York's statewide datacenter moratoriumAlbanese's AI blueprint sparks calls for datacentre moratorium until new regulations in placeAdversarial clothing': are garments designed to confuse facial recognition systems about to go mainstream?IBM loses quarter of its value as tech giant's shares plunge and profits falterWhat's the point?' Teenagers give their verdict on Britain's social media curfewAmazon Web Services customers receive bills for up to $1.5tn after global glitchTrump made $1.4bn from crypto in one year. Is Justin Sun the man who helped him do it? Continue reading...
How AI may drive union-resistant tech workers to the bargaining table
Tech workers are increasingly unionizing, trading Silicon Valley's myth of exceptionalism for collective bargaining to contest the corporate deployment of artificial intelligenceFor decades, the technology industry was a fortress that labor unions couldn't breach. Tech workers already had cushy compensation packages, dream benefits like unlimited vacation and free lunch, and a flat corporate hierarchy that made engineers feel as powerful as their bosses, all of whom dressed down in sneakers and hoodies. So why unionize?Now, that fortress is cracking from the inside. Unions have become increasingly popular for tech employees. After months of mass layoffs tied to artificial intelligence and mounting anxieties about how it's being deployed, some tech workers say they've been saddled with higher workloads while facing the threat of job loss caused by the very products they're building. Workers from Google DeepMind and Meta in the UK are also objecting to how their companies' AI products are being used, such as for military purposes or to monitor employee productivity. Those same workers are now attempting to unionize. Continue reading...
Social Darwinists to tech bros: tracing the long fight against equality in US
Historian Kim Phillips-Fein's book Country of Lords looks back at the many men who have tried to fight against egalitarianism, from John Adams to Peter ThielThe historian Kim Phillips-Fein's new book is published amid celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence and its truth self-evident, that all men are created equal". Country of Lords, however, is a history of Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America.Concise and hard-hitting, the book arrives at a time of glaring social and economic inequality, Phillips-Fein seeing Elon Musk emerging as a trillionaire very much on people's minds, with a deep level of discomfort, both fear and anger about what this portends". Continue reading...
Bub – living an artist’s dreams and dreads in New York
An autobiographical game about the devastating effects of chronic illness on an artist's creative life gives players the chance to slow the pace right downBub does not look like a traditional video game. Artist and stop-motion animator Case Jernigan spends hours, days, months in his studio drawing, painting and delicately cutting out pieces of collected paper, while coder and gameplay designer Todd Anderson builds scripts and physics simulations to make them into a game.In Bub, you play through the life of an artist in New York City, making art but also diving into his early memories and imaginative dreams. You go from present day New York City into his childhood, or different sort of visions, which are all rendered in stop motion," says Anderson. His story is told in the present day, but also how he's making sense of his past." Continue reading...
The best LED face masks in the UK, tested: 12 light therapy devices that are worth the hype
They claim to fix fine lines, blemishes, and redness - but which stand up to scrutiny? After consulting dermatologists and putting them to the test, we have crowned a brand new number one The best anti-ageing creams, serums and treatmentsLED face masks are booming in popularity - despite being one of the most expensive at-home beauty products to hit the market. They claim to either reduce the appearance of fine lines, stop spots or calm redness, with some even combining different types of light to enhance the benefits.However, it's wise to be sceptical about new treatments that are costly and non-invasive, and to do your research before you buy. With this in mind, I interviewed doctors and dermatologists to find out whether these light therapy devices work.Best LED mask overall:
Man of his word: Pope Leo speeches declared human-authored by Australian AI detection tool
Maps of Hope has been certified by Proudly Human, a company led by former chief scientist, Dr Alan Finkel
Nine to axe 30 jobs at the Age and SMH due to ‘extreme’ AI disruption
Staff told positions will be cut via voluntary and targeted redundancies as part of evolution'
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