Technology | The Guardian

The band's Martyn Ware has hit out at the fee offered for Temptation in the Grand Theft Auto franchise. But as music becomes ever more central to gaming, the sums get complicatedThe 1983 song Temptation by Heaven 17 is an undisputed classic of the synth pop era, a glacial paean to sexual tension denied the number No 1 spot only by the sheer might of True by Spandau Ballet. So how much should it be worth to a video game publisher in 2024? That's the question many asked when Heaven 17's Martyn Ware recently tweeted about a licensing offer from Rockstar to use the track in Grand Theft Auto VI. IT WAS $7500 [5,600] - for a buyout of any future royalties from the game - forever," he typed. To put this in context, Grand Theft Auto 6 [sic] grossed, wait for it... $8.6 BILLION. Ah, but think of the exposure... Go fuck yourself."The thread went viral and Ware was inundated with reactions, ranging from support to bewildered chastisement. Ware later clarified that the figure he gave was his share of a $22,500 payment to the whole band; industry experts waded in pointing out that the record label would also need to be paid, bringing the total offer up to a possible $45,000. Would that be fair for a song that may just feature on the GTA radio stations? GTA V featured 240 tracks on release and now has more than 400. As one industry insider told me about the Heaven 17 offer, you multiply that by a few hundred and you've got the biggest ever music budget for a video game." Continue reading...

There has been a huge wave of parental concern about smartphones this year. So do kids without them feel deprived - or more alive?Nothing has been able to stop smartphones taking over our lives and those of our children. But the inevitable backlash is in full flow. It's not only about family arguments over screen-time restrictions, or the often futile efforts of parents to minimise exposure to adult, radicalising or consumerist content. With the rising perception that phones are addictive and interfere with children's learning, creativity and concentration, and with more than 97% of 12-year-olds owning a smartphone, schools have been taking action. In February, the UK government issued guidance on smartphones and some schools have since banned them.Also in February, two concerned parents created the WhatsApp group Smartphone Free Childhood. The online community now has more than 120,000 members, with a local group in every county in the UK and thousands of school groups within those", according to the co-founder, Daisy Greenwell. Continue reading...

Bright OLED screen, voice control and a torch only add to go anywhere, track anything ability, but price increase stingsThe Fenix 8 is a landmark moment for Garmin. By adding voice control, an OLED screen and other niceties, it has merged its top Fenix and Epix adventure watch lines to better compete with increasingly advanced smartwatches from Apple, Samsung and other major players.The Fenix has always been where Garmin debuts its technology and features first before trickling them down into other products, such as the popular Forerunner series. It certainly feels more modern, but at 870 (1,000/$1,000/A$1,699) - a 120 or so increase over its already pricy predecessor - these new advances including diving tracking and AI assistant access do not come cheap. Continue reading...

Immersive training scenarios highlight experiences of minority ethnic colleagues in health serviceIn one scene, a black nurse called Tunde is told by his manager that personal protective equipment (PPE) was being locked away at night to prevent its theft during night shifts, during the pandemic when ethnic minorities were more likely to work these hours.In another, an Asian female doctor called Jasmine is dismissed by an HR manager after raising a double standard regarding requests for shift changes during the pandemic over childcare, something which her white colleagues were granted. Continue reading...

For his explosion event in Los Angeles, Cai Guo-Qiang built his own version of ChatGPT and employed a drone army to answer the question: what is the fate of humanity and AI?For decades, Cai Guo-Qiang has been the world's foremost fine artist of explosions. He is famous for his massive fireworks displays, from his glowing footsteps in the sky at the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, to his 2015 Sky Ladder, a 1,650-foot flaming ladder to heaven featured in a Netflix documentary.Recently, the gunpowder artist has become obsessed with a new threatening technology: artificial intelligence. Continue reading...

The platform agrees to appoint a legal representative in Brazil, pays fines and takes down user accounts that the court had ordered removedElon Musk fought the law. The law appears to have won.X, Musk's social media platform, has backed down in its fight with the Brazilian judiciary, after complying with court orders that had blocked users in the country from accessing X. Continue reading...

The tech firm's federal approval to turn its earbuds into hearing aids is one in the eye for the monopolistic US healthcare agencyLike many professional scribblers, I sometimes have to write not in a hushed study or library, but in noisy environments. So years ago I bought a set of Apple AirPods Pro, neat little gadgets that have a limited degree of noise-cancelling ability. They're not as effective as the clunky (and pricey) headphones that seasoned transcontinental airline passengers need, but they're much lighter and less obtrusive. And they have a button that enables you to switch off the noise cancellation and hear what's going on around you.I remember wondering once if a version of them could also function as hearing aids, given the right software. But then dismissed the thought: after all, hearing aids are expensive, specialised devices that are often prescribed by audiologists - and also signal to the world at large that you are hard of hearing. Continue reading...

Offline Club's first global event on Sunday will begin with tips on how to be phone-free for 24 hours every weekHaunted by a pile of unread books? Or taunted by climbing equipment lurking in the cupboard? If you are one of the UK adults who spends on average five hours a day looking at screens rather than participating in pastimes, perhaps it's time to join the offline revolution.Instead of spending those five hours staring at a screen, you could read about 300 pages of a book, climb Mount Snowdon, or - depending on your pace - run a marathon. Some are even choosing to turn off their devices for the day. Continue reading...

Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek hopes his latest brainchild, the Neko Body Scan, will revolutionise healthcareIn the 2016 movie Passengers, the crew of a spacecraft bound for a distant planet had access to a scanning chamber known as Autodoc that could instantly diagnose their medical problems and even predict the time of their death.I'm reminded of this, and countless other sci-fi plots, as I strip off my robe and step semi-naked into the gleaming capsule of the Neko Body Scan. Like Autodoc, it promises to conduct a comprehensive examination of my health - inside and out - within minutes, and, while unable to estimate the timing of my demise (yet), it can identify whether I'm at imminent or future risk of developing some of the biggest killers and causes of chronic ill health. Continue reading...

Study says tagging posts with false claims on election fraud may make Trump voters more likely to think they're trueLabelling tweets featuring false claims about election fraud as disputed" does little to nothing to change Trump voters' pre-existing beliefs, and it may make them more likely to believe the lies, according to a new study.The study, authored by John Blanchard, an assistant professor from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Catherine Norris, an associate professor from Swarthmore College, looked at data from a sampling of 1,072 Americans surveyed in December of 2020. The researchers published a peer-reviewed paper on their findings this month in the Harvard Kennedy School's Misinformation Review. Continue reading...

Agency accuses Meta, Google, TikTok and other companies of sharing troves of user information with third-partiesSocial media and online video companies are collecting huge troves of your personal information on and off their websites or apps and sharing it with a wide range of third-party entities, a new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staff report on nine tech companies confirms.The FTC report published on Thursday looked at the data-gathering practices of Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Discord, Reddit, Amazon, Snap, TikTok and Twitter/X between January 2019 and 31 December 2020. The majority of the companies' business models incentivized tracking how people engaged with their platforms, collecting their personal data and using it to determine what content and ads users see on their feeds, the report states. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Tech company wants Labour to relax laws that prevent AI models being trained' on copyrighted materialsGoogle has said that Britain risks being left behind in the global artificial intelligence race unless the government moves quickly to build more datacentres and let tech companies use copyrighted work in their AI models.The company pointed to research showing that the UK is ranked seventh on a global AI readiness index for data and infrastructure, and called for a number of policy changes. Continue reading...

Justice Alexandre de Moraes imposes $900,000 daily fine on banned social media platform in dispute with Elon MuskIn the latest round of the dispute between Elon Musk and Brazil's top court, a senior judge has accused X of a willful, illegal and persistent" effort to circumvent a court-ordered block - and imposed a fine of R$5m ($921,676) for each day the social network remains online.The social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which has been banned by court order since 30 August, on Wednesday became accessible to many users in Brazil after an update that used cloud services offered by third parties, such as Cloudflare, Fastly and Edgeuno. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox series SX; Devolver

With no intensive care available in remote areas, many patients died on their way to city hospitals. Now rural medics are using tele-ICU systems to save lives Photographs by Elke Scholiers for the GuardianWhenever an ambulance arrived with a critically ill patient, Dr R Mubarak's heart would sink. His small country hospital in Bagepalli, like most rural government hospitals in India, had no intensive-care unit. Families had to take the patient, who was perhaps on the brink of death, on a two-hour drive to the general hospital in Bengaluru.Often the patient came back in the same ambulance, dead. They never made it," says Mubarak. I knew I could be signing their death warrant by sending them but I had no choice." Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: The Oscar-winning actress goes back to her roots in Mind Your Own. Plus: five of the best comic book podcasts Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereMind Your Own

Android cuts telephoto camera and high-end AI features for lower price, but ends up a little lost in the mixGoogle's cheapest Pixel 9 offers almost everything that makes its top-flight sibling one of the best smaller phones available, cutting a few key ingredients to price match Apple and Samsung.The Pixel 9 costs 799 (899/$799/A$1,349) shaving 200 off the asking price of the stellar Pixel 9 Pro while sitting above the excellent value sub-500 Pixel 8a from May. That pits the new Pixel directly against Apple's new iPhone 16 and Samsung's Galaxy S24.Screen: 6.3in 120Hz FHD+ OLED (422ppi)Processor: Google Tensor G4RAM: 12GBStorage: 128 or 256GBOperating system: Android 14Camera: 50MP + 48MP ultrawide, 10.5MP selfieConnectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 7, UWB, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3 and GNSSWater resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes)Dimensions: 152.8 x 72.0 x 8.5mmWeight: 198g Continue reading...

Amazon has told staff they must return five days a week - but experts don't all agree that flexible working cuts outputFour years ago when the world of work was upended by the Covid pandemic, confident predictions were made that a permanent shift in remote working would follow the removal of lockdown restrictions.Much has clearly changed since. Some of the earliest preachers of the brave new teleworking world - including the US tech companies Google and Microsoft - are among the most vocal to repent. Continue reading...

Officials say there is no indication Biden campaign responded to the emails, which offered information stolen from Trump campaignIranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden's campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump's campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people associated with the then-Democratic candidate in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other US agencies have said.The FBI confirmed on 12 August that it was investigating a complaint from Donald Trump's presidential campaign that Iran had hacked and distributed a trove of sensitive campaign documents. On 19 August intelligence officials confirmed that Iran was behind the hack. Continue reading...

World Health Organization and Great British Menu among accounts that posted this is a hacked account'British politicians and international organisations have had their accounts on X hacked on Wednesday night.MPs including Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, and the Labour MPs Chris Elmore and Carolyn Harris all shared the same message on the social media site. Although quickly removed, the messages could still be read on TweetDeck, a dashboard used to manage accounts on X, formerly Twitter. Continue reading...

Social media platform routes internet traffic outside of Brazil using a communications network updateSocial media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, became accessible to many users in Brazil on Wednesday as an update to its communications network circumvented a block ordered by the country's supreme court.The X update used cloud services offered by third parties, namely the security firm Cloudflare, allowing some Brazilian users to take a route outside of the country to reach X, even without a virtual private network, according to Abrint, the Brazilian Association of Internet and Telecommunications Providers. Continue reading...

Major entertainment company gives Runway access to vast portfolio to help film-makers augment their work'Lionsgate has signed a deal with the artificial intelligence research firm Runway, allowing it access to the company's large film and TV library to train a new generative model.According to the Wall Street Journal, the model will be customized to Lionsgate's proprietary portfolio" which includes hit franchises such as John Wick, Saw and The Hunger Games. The aim is to help film-makers and other creatives augment their work" through the use of AI. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: From platformers to side-scrolling space adventures and top-down racers, every experience from your gaming youth is recreated with passion and skill Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereI filed this issue of Pushing Buttons late, because I have become obsessed with a 1985 strategy game about armies of warring dinosaurs. It's called Avianos, and it's part of an anthology of 50 games made in the 1980s by a little-known but influential developer, UFO Soft.One minor detail: UFO Soft is fictional. All the games in this collection were made by a small group of modern developers. This anthology, UFO 50 (out today), is at once a tribute to imaginary 1980s game history and real 1980s game history. It impeccably imitates the look, feel and experimental creativity of the era, without the technical limitations. Continue reading...

The Microsoft founder's look at the challenges of AI might lack depth, but he does discover some chilling truths - including very odd conspiracy theories about himselfIn 2022 AI woke up."We are building something - wisely or not - way smarter than us". Continue reading...

Artist and musician Neil Harbisson claims to be the world's first cyborg in this engaging, amusing and sometimes preposterous documentaryThe subject of Carey Born's film is amusing, engaging and more than a little preposterous. It is about the talented artist and musician Neil Harbisson, who has colour blindness and has had an antenna fitted into the back of his skull - invented by cyborg tech specialist Adam Montandon - which loops over his head and bobs about in front of his face roughly at eye level, converting colour into sounds so that he can hear" these colours inside his head.Born's film takes with absolute seriousness his claim that he is a cyborg" at the forefront of a new transhuman age, although most of the people shown interviewing him end up having the same facial expression: intrigued, amused, politely sceptical. The one person who is actually shown putting him to any sort of test is Richard Madeley, in a 2004 episode of the Richard and Judy Show; Madeley presents him with an apple painted blue and asks him to divine what colour it is, by putting his microphone close to the object, and listening to the resulting note. Harbisson passes with flying colours, although a more interesting and rigorous test would surely require him to do it blindfolded, to show that he's not just a person with ordinary colour vision pranking us? Continue reading...

Doctors are using the technology for activities such as suggesting diagnoses and writing letters, according to BMAA fifth of GPs are using artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT to help with tasks such as writing letters for their patients after appointments, according to a survey.The survey, published in the journal BMJ Health and Care Informatics, spoke to 1,006 GPs. They were asked whether they had ever used any form of AI chatbot in their clinical practice, such as ChatGPT, Bing AI or Google's Gemini, and were then asked what they used these tools for. Continue reading...

Change giving parents greater control comes as governments consider social media age limitsMeta is putting Instagram users under the age of 18 into new teen accounts" to allow parents greater control over their activities, including the ability to block children from viewing the app at night.The change will apply to new teen users but will also be extended to existing accounts held by teenagers over the next few months. Continue reading...

Ex-president announces World Liberty Financial and publicly addresses second apparent assassination attemptDonald Trump launched his family's cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, on a livestreamed interview on the social media platform X on Monday. The Republican presidential nominee gave few details about the venture but did offer his first public comments on the apparent assassination attempt against him a day earlier.Trump did not discuss specifics about World Liberty Financial on Monday or how it would work, pivoting from questions about cryptocurrency to talking about artificial intelligence and other topics. Instead, he recounted his experience on Sunday, saying he and a friend playing golf heard shots being fired in the air, and I guess probably four or five. Continue reading...

MachineGames' long-awaited tie-in looks set to deliver the most authentic Indy adventure yet. And with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on board, hold on to your hats for an unforgettable rideIt's the spring of 1977, and George Lucas is petrified. Having just wrapped work on his third feature film, Star Wars, he retreats to Hawaii, unable to face the early reviews. Yet as he frets in a five-star resort, Lucas bumps into another Hollywood hideaway - Steven Spielberg. Making sandcastles together under the Maui sun, Lucas pitches Spielberg a story that riffs on the simpler era of 1950s' serials, an action-packed spectacular about a James Bond-esque archaeologist. This crypt-robbing Casanova's name? Indiana ... Smith.The hero's moniker certainly benefited from some finessing, and the action-packed Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) raked in $354m at the box office. Yet as great as Indy's influence was on cinema, it might have had an even bigger one on video games. It inspired Lara Croft's tomb-raiding antics and Uncharted's wise-cracking Nathan Drake. There have also been games starring Indy himself, most notably LucasArts' brilliant graphic adventures from the early-90s, but it's been decades since the last interactive Indiana Jones adventure that wasn't made of Lego. This December, he'll finally get another crack of the gaming whip with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, from the studio behind Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - in a game that actually looks like the films. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: The AI company says its o1' model is capable of reason, a key blocker in the way of truly gamechanging artificial intelligence. But is it that simple? Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereWe are fast approaching two years of the generative AI revolution, sparked by the November 2022 release of ChatGPT by OpenAI. So far it's been a mixed bag.OpenAI recently announced it had crossed 200 million weekly active users - nothing to be sniffed at, but it got its first 100 million within two months of release. A recent YouGov study found that the inclusion of AI in a product is as likely to turn off a potential purchaser as much as it is to get them to hand over their cash. Continue reading...

When I got a confirmation email addressed to the wrong name. I suspected an error and cancelled. Then 500 was taken from my accountEight months ago, I booked an Airbnb on my new iPhone. The confirmation congratulated someone called Rachel on the booking.I realised Airbnb tech had somehow logged me in to a stranger's account using my new work phone number and my Face ID. Airbnb later told me the phone number had been recycled and was previously owned by Rachel". No payment had been taken and I immediately cancelled the reservation and booked a different property. Continue reading...

RT, Rossiya Segodnya and others accused of using deceiving tactics on Meta's apps to carry out influence operationsFacebook owner Meta said on Monday it was banning RT, Rossiya Segodnya and other Russian state media networks, alleging the outlets used deceptive tactics to carry out influence operations while evading detection on the social media company's platforms.After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity," the company said in a written statement. Continue reading...

No one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,' X owner tweeted after apparent Trump assassination attemptThe White House has condemned Elon Musk for tweeting no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala" in response to an X user asking Why they want to kill Donald Trump?"The president's office issued a statement Monday criticizing the irresponsible" post, which was accompanied by an emoji face with a raised eyebrow. The White House said: Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible." The statement added that there should be no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country". Continue reading...

Andy Jassy, the CEO, said in note to employees that new requirement will strengthen our culture'Amazon said on Monday it would require employees to return to the office five days a week, effective 2 January.We've decided that we're going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID. When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant," Andy Jassy, the CEO, said in a note sent out to employees globally. Continue reading...

Mobile phone use is not the biggest issue facing schools - or society. But device-free time is importantThe genie is out of the bottle. With the advent of smartphones and smartwatches, human life has moved online. Anyone seeking to curtail young people's participation in the online world is as doomed as the fools who can't figure out how to use the wishes gifted them in fairytales. The social ills blamed on the internet have complex causes that can't be fixed by blocking children's access.This is a caricature of the tech-positive outlook. In real life, most people recognise that the portable computers we carry around with us make excessive demands on our time and attention. Just as children need support to develop healthy eating habits, they need encouragement to use the internet in moderation - especially when very young. But reluctance to give in to unrealistic ban them!" messages about smartphones can shade into an impression that there is really nothing to be done. Or that if there is, it should be done by parents.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

A visual neuroscientist realized he saw green and blue differently to his wife. He designed an interactive site that has received over 1.5m visitsIt started with an argument over a blanket.I'm a visual neuroscientist, and my wife, Dr Marisse Masis-Solano, is an ophthalmologist," says Dr Patrick Mineault, designer of the viral web app ismy.blue. We have this argument about a blanket in our house. I think it's unambiguously green and she thinks it's unambiguously blue." Continue reading...

TikTok asserts the law targeting it is a breach of the first amendment protecting freedom of speechTikTok took its case against a threatened US ban to a federal court on Monday where it contended that a law targeting the video platform was unconstitutional".TikTok argued its case to a three-judge panel at an appeals court in Washington DC on Monday. An attorney for TikTok and ByteDance, Andrew Pincus, said TikTok was entitled to a right to freedom of speech: The speech here that is being banned, we would say, or at a minimum burned, is the speech of the US speaker." Continue reading...

iPhone upgrade joined by watchOS 11, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, adding new features to Apple's devicesApple will release software updates for its iPhone, iPad, Mac and smartwatch on Monday, adding new features and designs for compatible devices.Announced at the company's developer conference in June, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, watchOS 11 and macOS Sequoia add extensive new home screen and control centre customisation options, smart handwriting and maths tools for Notes and new watch faces, among other new features. Continue reading...

The modern world just isn't set up for non-smartphone users, but after a few faltering steps away from mine, my life changedMy 16th birthday was a big deal. Not only was I allowed to throw a party at my dad's, I was also given a brand new mobile phone. I was giddy. Back in 2006, nothing said liberation to a teenager quite like unlimited texts and a free house.My friends and I set about creating the sort of chaos only a group of repressed teenagers yet to be fully exposed to the unadulterated excesses of the internet could. Little did we know that those heady days of pumping out noughties R&B from an iPod were to be some of the last of their kind. Just a few months later, Steve Jobs would unveil the first iPhone, altering the way we interact with ourselves and the world around us for ever. Continue reading...

Emissions from in-house data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple may be 7.62 times higher than official tallyBig tech has made some big claims about greenhouse gas emissions in recent years. But as the rise of artificial intelligence creates ever bigger energy demands, it's getting hard for the industry to hide the true costs of the data centers powering the tech revolution.According to a Guardian analysis, from 2020 to 2022 the real emissions from the in-house" or company-owned data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple are likely about 662% - or 7.62 times - higher than officially reported. Continue reading...

A Brazilian justice ordering the platform to be blocked until it complies with state laws is a first among non-autocratic nationsAt 10 minutes past midnight on 31 August, Elon Musk's X (nee Twitter) went dark in Brazil, a country of more than 200 million souls, many of them enthusiastic users of online services. The day before, a supreme court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, had done something hitherto unthinkable: ordered the country's ISPs to block access to the platform, threatened a daily fine of 50,000 Brazilian reis (just under 6,800) for users who bypassed the ban by using virtual private networks (VPNs) and froze the finances of Elon Musk's Starlink internet service provider in the country. The order would remain in force until the platform complied with the decisions of the supreme federal court, paid fines totalling 18.3m reis (nearly 2.5m) and appointed a representative in Brazil, a legal requirement for foreign companies operating there. Moraes had also instructed Apple and Google to remove the X app and VPN software from their stores, but later reversed that decision, citing concerns about potential unnecessary" disruptions.Cue shock, horror, incredulity, outrage and all the reactions in between. Musk - who has been sparring with Moraes for quite a while - tweeted: Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes." The animosity between the two goes back to 8 January 2023, after the defeat of Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 Brazilian presidential election, when a mob of his supporters attacked federal government buildings in the capital, Brasilia. The mob invaded and caused deliberate damage to the supreme federal court, the national congress and the Planalto presidential palace in an abortive attempt to overthrow the democratically elected president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Continue reading...

The SpaceX boss has envisioned people staying on the red planet in a self-sustaining city in 20 yearsAlmost buried beneath a recent avalanche of rightwing invective posted by Elon Musk on the platform he owns, X, was one eye-popping statement that made space watchers sit up and take notice: an assertion that humans could land on Mars within four years and be living there in a self-sustaining city in 20.It seemed a fanciful boast, even by the standards of the SpaceX founder and world's richest man, who transformed the logistics and cost of shorter-duration, near-to-Earth orbit space travel with his fleet of reusable Falcon rockets. The US government space agency, Nasa, which is collaborating with SpaceX over knowledge and technology to get astronauts to the red planet, believes a first crewed landing by 2040 would be audacious". Continue reading...

Roasting can be really brutal, but at least if we inflict it on ourselves, we can get ahead of the jokeA friend recently shared a comment someone had made about her online. Sophie was a middle-aged, never-was influencer, in this stranger's estimation, who exploited her children and alienated everyone she met. As I debated whether liking" the post would read as support or broad agreement, I noticed a strange watermark. The vicious words had been generated not by a bitter stranger, but an AI roast app. My demented friend had asked for this.Who would volunteer to be insulted? A wave of apps such as Roastai.app, Roastedby.ai, Roastik.com and er, Monica.im suggest the answer is loads of us. Every day, people upload selfies to the Reddit page r/RoastMe, begging to be taken down a peg or two hundred. You look like a series of circles stacked on top of one another," the users exult. Why does your forehead start at the back of your head?" There is a cruel craft to it. One sedentary rapper recently got called The Notorious BMI", while someone else, who I don't even think had strabismus, was accused of having mortgage eyes - one fixed, one variable." Continue reading...

A controversial tweet may make it to the news, but reading every post from the world's richest man shows how frenzied and extreme he really isIt's just after midnight mountain standard time in the US on 13 August when Elon Musk makes his first post of the day on X, the platform he bought for $44bn when it was known as Twitter. Musk has been tweeting for hours about his interview with Donald Trump, and he will continue into the night before taking a few hours' break - presumably to sleep - and then logging back on to tweet dozens more times.Over the next 24 hours, Musk will post over 145 times about a range of obsessions, projects and grievances to his 195 million followers. He will share anti-immigrant content, election conspiracies and attacks against the media. He will exchange tweets with far-right politicians, conservative media influencers and sycophantic admirers. He will send a litany of one-word replies that say yeah", interesting" or simply feature a cry-laughing emoji. Continue reading...

Customers are coming to Preston's Spud Bros from as far away as Australia thanks to a revival of the humble jacket potato on social mediaThe humble baked potato is enjoying a renaissance, with TikTok algorithms bringing the stuffed spud to new audiences and transforming this once-tired classic into the lunch of the moment.Young potato sellers are breathing new life into the traditional British meal, with modern twists on favourite toppings. Continue reading...

Tech billionaire has clashed with Australian government several times over past year, including a refusal to take down clips of a Sydney bishop allegedly stabbed

Consumers are the big losers in a world where top retailers get sweetheart deals' while small businesses get confused, advocates say

Exclusive: Ormiston academies trust says impact of phones on learning and mental health has been catastrophic'

At Tenbury High students play tag rather than stare at screens after it brought in one of toughest phone policies

Competition authorities were too slow to stop tech giants from dominating Web 2.0. They can't repeat that mistake with AIWhen a company triples in value in just a few months, as computer chip company Nvidia has, investors take notice. But regulators do too, because they know from experience how monopolies engage in illegal anti-competitive behavior that squashes competitors and manipulates the market to expand their dominance. The US Department of Justice (as well as other competition authorities and tech observers) suspects Nvidia has used such tactics to entrench its chips monopoly, and last month it was reported that the Department of Justice was opening an antitrust investigation. It's high time.Before the pandemic, few beyond video game enthusiasts - whose top-of-the-line gaming computers and consoles are built on high-capacity Nvidia chips - had ever heard of the company. But thanks to the generative AI boom, Nvidia has become one of the fastest-growing companies ever, and its chips have powered every important AI milestone - including OpenAI's development of ChatGPT, which holds two-thirds of the AI business tools market.Max von Thun is the director of Europe and transatlantic partnerships at the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly thinktank Continue reading...