With storms becoming more frequent due to the climate crisis, insurers are forcing operators to respondOne of the least considered hazards of climate change is the increasing frequency of hailstorms and the size and the impact of the pieces of ice they produce. This, in turn, threatens one of the most promising solutions to the climate crisis: solar farms.In the last year, the number of hailstorms in Europe exceeded 10,000 and the size of large hailstones reported from Italy and Germany increased to 10cm (4in) - enough to dent a car, smash greenhouses and break a solar panel. The frequency of storms and the size of the hail is increasing. Continue reading...
Strawberry' models can break down complex problems into smaller logical steps, an area where other AIs stumbleOpenAI said on Thursday it was launching its Strawberry" series of AI models designed to spend more time processing answers to queries in order to solve hard problems.The models are capable of reasoning through complex tasks and can solve more challenging problems than previous models in science, coding and math, the AI firm said in a blog post. Continue reading...
Meta's global affairs chief points to behavioural issue' around child safety tools on the social media platformsParents do not use parental controls on Facebook and Instagram, according to Meta's Nick Clegg, with adults failing to embrace the 50 child safety tools the company has introduced in recent years.Meta's global affairs chief said there was a behavioural issue" around using the tools, after admitting they were being ignored by parents. Regulatory pressure is building on tech companies to protect children from harmful content, with the Australian government announcing plans this week to ban younger teenagers from accessing social media. Continue reading...
When the Grok tool gave false information, a collection of election officials sprang into action to tamp it downSoon after Joe Biden announced he was ending his bid for re-election, misinformation started spreading online about whether a new candidate could take the president's place.Screenshots that claimed a new candidate could not be added to ballots in nine states moved quickly around Twitter, now X, racking up millions of views. The Minnesota secretary of state's office began getting requests for factchecks of these posts, which were flat-out wrong - ballot deadlines had not passed, giving Kamala Harris plenty of time to have her name added to ballots. Continue reading...
by Hannah J Davies, Alexi Duggins, Hannah Verdier, Ph on (#6QNV9)
In this week's newsletter: Radio host Carmel Holt explores the singer's cross-generational impact in The Road to Joni. Plus: five of the best podcasts about the future Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereJoanne McNally Investigates ... Did Furbys Spy on Us?
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6QNRR)
Book-style foldable is just like a regular phone when closed but opens to reveal large and bright tablet screenGoogle has cracked the foldable formula on its second attempt by creating a slightly chunkier Pixel 9 Pro that opens up for a large 8in tablet screen on the inside, beating Samsung at its own game.Compared with the previous efforts, from the squat and fat passport-shaped Pixel Fold to Samsung's many long and thin Galaxy Z Folds, the new Pixel's simple shape seems so familiar and easy to use you wonder why it took so long for anyone to try it. Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: Eight years and many millions of dollars in the making, the latest high-profile multiplayer flop points to an existential problem in game development Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereAs is now traditional, right after I'd filed last week's Pushing Buttons, huge gaming news broke: Sony was pulling its hero shooter Concord from sale just two weeks after launch - because nobody was playing it. Everyone who bought it on PlayStation 5 and PC was refunded, and the future of the game is now unclear.This is a brutal sequence of events. Sony bought the makers of Concord, Firewalk Studios, in 2023. Concord had been in development for eight years, and it was an expensive game, with bespoke cinematics and a long-term plan that would have cost $100m or more to develop. In its two weeks on the market, it sold fewer than 25,000 copies, according to estimates. This is a shocker, even compared with the year's other bad news for developers and studios. Continue reading...
An international writing organisation appeared to greenlight the use of AI, prompting anger, the resignation of four board members and an entire creative community to ask: What?!'Please spare a thought for artificial intelligence (AI). It may not have feelings yet but, if it did, it would feel devastated by all the nasty things people are saying about it. All it's trying to do is take our jobs and potentially destroy the world and people can't stop being mean.Exhibit one: a recent controversy with the organisation that runs National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a yearly challenge to produce a manuscript in a month. In a recent statement, NaNoWriMo wrote that it doesn't explicitly support or condemn any approach to writing, including the use of AI". Further: The categorical condemnation of artificial intelligence has classist and ableist undertones ... questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege."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...
Extra 300 on a Digital Edition PS5 buys an upgraded graphics processing unit and an 8K mode on enhanced gamesAfter months of rumours and speculation, Sony has finally revealed the PlayStation 5 Pro console, an update to its current machine, offering enhanced technical specifications and a 2TB solid state drive for 699/$699. It is launching on 7 November, with pre-orders beginning on 26 September.It is an expensive machine compared with current systems, coming in at 300 more than the Digital Edition PlayStation 5, which retails at 390. It's also digital only: if you want to play games or movies on Blu-ray discs, you'll have to add a Blu-ray player for an extra 100. Continue reading...
The Sapiens author may be a superb narrative writer, but his apocalyptic pontificating about AI stretches credulityAs befits a writer whose breakout work, Sapiens, was a history ofthe entire human race, YuvalNoah Harari is a master of the sententious generalisation. Human life," he writes here, is a balancing act between endeavouring to improve ourselves and accepting who we were." Is it? Is that all it is? Elsewhere, one might be surprised to read: The ancient Romans had a clear understanding of what democracy means." No doubt the Romans would have been happy to hear that they would, 2,000 years in the future, be given a gold star for their comprehension of eternally stable political concepts by Yuval Noah Harari.
Public-facing staff in shops and frontline services are donning cameras to help fight abuse and theftWhen you work in security it can be a battle to stop people stealing. Most thieves know that they have the same legal power as guards, and it's not easy trying to decide who gets to dole out reasonable force" when a teenager's cutting through a bike lock in front of you.My shift mates and I recently observed a heroin user cutting through our car park repeating a shopping list into her phone: shampoo, school uniform, other low order goods. She's part of a growing number of people stealing for others, focusing on stuff that people need but don't want to pay for.When to press buttons isn't my only fear around BWCs. My job's starting pay is 11.44 per hour, the current minimum wage; the camera I wear retails for 534. I don't want to think about what happens if I damage it. Sometimes I feel my uniform's more valuable than I am. Continue reading...
From crummy pubs to a cheeky Tesco run', some of the most mundane aspects of British life are going viralThink of British cultural exports in the 21st century and you might reach for the familiar examples: James Bond, Downton Abbey, Adele.But in the algorithm-driven universe of TikTok where a trend known as Britishcore" is one of the most in demand movements of the moment, it's the mundane aspects of life in the UK which are going viral. Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: Most European users won't be getting integrated AI on Apple devices, so are the updates offered by Apple just window dressing? Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereTrying to figure out what to focus on for the first post-Alex Hern TechScape was tricky. (If you missed it last week, you can and should revisit his valedictory newsletter after 11 years at The Guardian). Why? Well, everything is happening all the time now - so there are any number of topics to dive into.We could talk about the likelihood of Elon Musk running Donald Trump's government efficiency commission" if he is re-elected as US president. But that would involve doing another newsletter on Musk, and you may be as tired as Alex was of that. The likelihood of the latter is still a flip of the coin; the likelihood Musk would stop running his multi-trillion-dollar companies for a low-paying government job, less so. Continue reading...
Reactions to the trailer have ranged from awful' to horrendous'. But what does its target audience think?Nothing makes you feel older than watching someone two generations younger than you play Minecraft - except, perhaps, watching someone two generations younger watching someone else play Minecraft on YouTube. (What are they doing? Why are they always so over-excited?) This might all seem a bit 2011: gen A have generally moved on to watching YouTubers play Fortnite, Roblox and Elden Ring with their minds instead. But there are still millions of people, most of them kids, playing every month, and there's powerful nostalgia for this blocky virtual-Lego game among the gen Z young adults who grew up with it. A Minecraft movie was inevitable.This film has been on the cards since 2012, originally with Ryan Reynolds' Wrexham FC mate Rob McElhenney on to direct, and Steve Carell to star. Various botched attempts, Covid, and the pesky actors' strike, meant that filming didn't start (in Auckland, New Zealand) until early 2024. A Minecraft Movie, out April 2025, is directed by Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess, and stars Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Emma Myers, Jennifer Coolidge, Jermaine Clement and Matt Berry. From the trailer released this week, it's even more bonkers than you would imagine. Continue reading...
The author of the bestselling Sapiens offers a penetrating critique of the insidious dangers of machine learning and its capacity to manipulate the truthWhat jumps to mind when you think about the impending AI apocalypse? If you're partial to sci-fi movie cliches, you may envisage killer robots (with or without thick Austrian accents) rising up to terminate their hubristic creators. Or perhaps, a la The Matrix, you'll go for scary machines sucking energy out of our bodies as they distract us with a simulated reality.For Yuval Noah Harari, who has spent a lot of time worrying about AI over the past decade, the threat is less fantastical and more insidious. In order to manipulate humans, there is no need to physically hook brains to computers," he writes in his engrossing new book Nexus. For thousands of years prophets, poets and politicians have used language to manipulate and reshape society. Now computers are learning how to do it. And they won't need to send killer robots to shoot us. They could manipulate human beings to pull the trigger." Continue reading...
Company executives showcase range of new hardware and promise new colors and ability to create custom emojisApple sought to pitch the latest generation of iPhones as machines built around artificial intelligence as its biggest product event of the year, as the tech giant seeks a dominant position in the aggressive race around the technology.The company claimed iPhone 16, the smartphone's new model, had been designed from the ground up" for its Apple Intelligence" range of AI features, which include the ability to generate and edit text to fit certain tones, as well as use the device's camera to recognize real-world objects. Continue reading...
DoJ accused tech giant of more monopolistic behavior a month after judge found it illegally cornered online searchA second antitrust trial pitting Google against the US Department of Justice began on 9 September, with a federal judge in Virginia hearing opening statements over whether the tech giant illegally monopolized the digital advertising industry. The case could have far-reaching implications for Google's primary source of revenue as well as the tech industry and online publishers.The long-awaited trial is the second major US antitrust suit against Google, after the company lost a landmark case last month that determined the company illegally monopolized the online search industry. Unlike in that trial, the justice department is seeking specific remedies in its second case, ones that would force Google to break up parts of its business and divest some of its advertising technology. Continue reading...
As Bungie's storied online shooter completes its first decade, we look back on an odd game that has always been worth talking about - and ask why it's like Marks & SpencerDestiny is 10 years old, which is an aeon in video game terms. It's also one of the most fascinating games of the last decade, sometimes for unlikely reasons. On the surface, this is a lavish online prog-rock space shooter made by Bungie, the creators of the Xbox classic Halo. You bundle together with friends, deploy somewhere amid the glittering vistas of a futuristic version of our solar system, and then shoot people/aliens/robots to get better loot.None of this is exactly unprecedented, and that's maybe the point. You could argue that Destiny's touchstones are games like Halo, for its gunplay, World of Warcraft, for its persistent online spaces, and - this is where it gets a bit odd, granted - the deathless British retailer Marks & Spencer. This last point is because, above all else, Destiny is a game of fluctuating fortunes, and those fortunes seem to fascinate everyone close to video games, regardless of whether they actually play Destiny or not. Just as a lot of people in the UK seem to have a secret sense for whether M&S is currently on an upward or downward trajectory - there is no middle ground - everyone in games knows whether Destiny is in boom or bust mode. Is it now better than it's been in ages? Or is it a shadow of the game it was two, five, seven years back? Destiny is our ever-reliable topic of fretful conversation. Continue reading...
If you are expecting an authentic driving experience along the lines of Forza or Gran Turismo, think again. Instead, this new absurdist adventure features a car with legsImagine a new racing video game. Whatever you've pictured, What the Car? is not it. In a world where racing games pride themselves on the ever-increasing detail and authenticity of their driving experiences, pushing the speedometer towards realism with cutting-edge game engines as well as perfectly simulated motor ones, this is the opposite. This car is literally running around on foot.Described as an absurdly silly adventure full of racing, laughs, and surprises," What the Car? has you playing as a car with legs, sprinting and climbing through obstacles each more daft than the last, to get to the finish line. Not a single person in the team owns a car, or even likes cars," says Tim Garbos, the game's creative director at Copenhagen studio Triband. Continue reading...
Case set to test Julie Inman Grant's powers under the Online Safety Act, but it's only one of seven ongoing cases her office has with the Elon Musk-owned platform
by Ashifa Kassam European community affairs correspon on (#6QJYD)
Calvijn College was one of the first schools in the Netherlands to ban mobile phones. Four years on, officials report its culture has been transformedSix years ago, as officials at the Netherlands' Calvijn College began considering whether to ban phones from their schools, the idea left some students aghast.We were asked whether we thought we were living in the 1800s," said Jan Bakker, the chair of the college, whose students range in age from 12 to 18 years. Continue reading...
Platform run from industrial estate in Cumbria and catering to alternative relationships has expanded globallyA dating app aimed at alternative relationships nearly doubled its revenues last year as non-monogamous, queer and kinky users helped the UK-based business expand its reach across the world.Feeld, founded by an entrepreneur couple in an open relationship, has said it is on a mission to elevate the human experience of sexuality and relationships" from its registered office on an industrial estate in Carlisle, Cumbria. Continue reading...
Paulomi Debnath has shared a kiss with her husband every morning for 18 years. Ron Hill ran every day for more than 52 years. When does an enjoyable habit become a compulsion?Anyone who spotted the run Tom Vickery uploaded to exercise tracking app Strava on 18 February last year might have been a little confused. The 30-minute sprint appeared to have taken place right in the middle of the Channel, not far from Guernsey and heading towards the west coast of France. The run was also, curiously, a ruler-straight line, appearing on Vickery's public profile as an unbending, inch-long streak of orange in the blue swathe of the app's virtual sea. Oh, and it was at a world record-breaking pace.Of course, anyone who knows Vickery wouldn't have been surprised at all. The 38-year-old triathlon coach from Cambridge was on a two-day ferry trip to Bilbao for a holiday and this rather speedy jog was simply another run on his then nearly four-year daily running streak on Strava. Determined not to break his streak on board the ship, Vickery had risen at 5am to run up and down the deck for his allotted 30 minutes, and the boat's progress through the water meant he appeared to be running faster than any long-distance runner in the world. Continue reading...
by Tom Phillips on the Bóia River, Amazonas state, a on (#6QJG1)
Satellite internet service's antennas are everywhere, from illegal mining sites to isolated Indigenous villagesThe helicopter swooped into one of the most inaccessible corners of the Amazon rainforest. Brazilian special forces commandos leaped from its metal skids into the caiman-inhabited waters below.Their target, lurking in the woodland along Brazil's Boia River, was a hulking steel mining dredge, caught red-handed as it drilled into the riverbed, pulverising it in search of gold. Continue reading...
Millions are rejecting the culture-war hotspots of the major social media sites in favour of apps dedicated to activities they enjoy, while bonding with their fellow usersSingletons looking to shack up with their soulmates online have relied on two key routes in the past decade or so: take your chance on dating apps, or befriend as many mutuals as possible on social media, in the hope that you find the one.But some have found a third way, using services such as Goodreads and Strava to meet partners with whom they hope to spend the rest of their lives. Those couples proved to be trendsetters. So-called hobby apps - built around activites such as running, reading or movie-going - are having a moment, and not just for love. Continue reading...
Users say harmful content from accounts they do not follow appears even after requests to block itDebbie was scrolling through X in April when some unwelcome posts appeared on her feed. One showed a photo of someone who was visibly underweight asking whether they were thin enough. In another, a user wanted to compare how few calories they were eating each day.Debbie, who did not want to give her last name, is 37 years old and was first diagnosed with bulimia when she was 16. She did not follow either of the accounts behind the posts, which belonged to a group with more than 150,000 members on the social media site. Continue reading...
The detainment of the murky messaging service's founder in France shows online moguls can no longer act with impunityOn 24 August, a Russian tech billionaire's private jet landed at Le Bourget airport, north-east of Paris, to find that officers of the French judicial police were waiting for him. He was duly arrested and whisked away for interrogation. Four days later he was indicted on 12 charges, including alleged complicity in the distribution of child exploitation material and drug trafficking, barred from leaving France and placed under judicial supervision", which requires him to check in with the gendarmes twice a week until further notice.The mogul in question, Pavel Durov, is a tech entrepreneur who collects nationalities the way others collect air miles. In fact it turns out that one of his citizenships is French, generously provided in 2021 by France's president, Emmanuel Macron. Durov is also, it seems, a fitness fanatic with a punishing daily regime. After eight hours of tracked sleep," the Financial Times reports, he starts the day without exception' with 200 push-ups, 100 sit-ups and an ice bath. He does not drink, smoke, eat sugar or meat, and saves time for meditation." When not engaged in these demanding activities, he has also found time to father more than 100 kids as a sperm donor and to rival Elon Musk as a free-speech extremist.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...
Pavel Durov says feature - which has had issues with bots and scammers - will be replacedThe chief executive of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has announced the messaging app will improve moderation on the platform and has removed some features that have been used for illegal activity.The app's founder unveiled the changes on Friday hours after calling his arrest by the French authorities last month misguided". Durov has since been charged with allegedly allowing criminal activity on the app. Continue reading...
Experts are issuing stern warnings about business support for Trump - it could backfire badly and endanger democracyFrom Wall Street to Silicon Valley, a growing number of billionaires, tech titans and venture capitalists are backing Donald Trump's campaign for president, among them Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of Blackstone, the world's largest private-equity fund, Steve Wynn, the casino tycoon, Bill Ackman, the hedge fund manager, and Marc Andreessen, a leading venture capitalist.But many business school professors and historians are issuing stern warnings about this business support for Trump, saying that backing him could backfire badly for business and endanger America's democracy. These professors caution that corporate America - along with everyone else - should be hugely concerned about a candidate who has talked of being a dictator on day one, terminating the constitution, and weaponizing the justice department to exact revenge against his critics. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6QH0V)
Comprehensive sleep, recovery and health tracking without a smartwatch appeals, but cost and fit won't suit everyoneSmart rings are having a bit of a moment with the Oura seen adorning the fingers of celebrities and elite sportspeople alike. It promises the health-tracking features of a smartwatch squeezed into a much smaller, less techie device focused on sleep, recovery and resilience. But can it deliver for regular people, too?Now several years into its third iteration, the Oura Gen 3 is the most popular smart ring on the market, available in a range of attractive colours, metals and sizes. It looks and feels like an attractive piece of jewellery, and is priced accordingly, costing from 299 (329/$299) and requiring a 6-a-month subscription on top. Keeping up with celebrity crazes has never been cheap. Continue reading...
Russian-born billionaire detained last month in France denies app is anarchic paradise'The founder of the Telegram messaging app, Pavel Durov, under investigation in France, has said that French authorities should have approached his company with their complaints rather than detaining him, calling the arrest misguided".Durov, writing on his Telegram channel early on Friday in his first public comments since his detention last month, denied any suggestion the app was an anarchic paradise". Continue reading...
Also signed by the EU, US and Israel, the declaration aims to mitigate the threats that AI may pose to human rights, democracy and the rule of lawThe UK government has signed the first international treaty on artificial intelligence in a move that aims to prevent misuses of the technology, such as spreading misinformation or using biased data to make decisions.Under the legally binding agreement, states must implement safeguards against any threats posed by AI to human rights, democracy and the rule of law. The treaty, called the framework convention on artificial intelligence, was drawn up by the Council of Europe, an international human rights organisation, and was signed on Thursday by the EU, UK, US and Israel. Continue reading...
Platform will ensure algorithms do not keep pushing similar content to young viewers, even though it does not breach guidelinesYouTube is to stop recommending videos to teenagers that idealise specific fitness levels, body weights or physical features, after experts warned such content could be harmful if viewed repeatedly.The platform will still allow 13- to 17-year-olds to view the videos, but its algorithms will not push young users down related content rabbit holes" afterwards. Continue reading...
by Hannah J Davies, Hollie Richardson, Hannah Verdier on (#6QG55)
In this week's newsletter: Transmissions, which plots the story of Joy Division and New Order, returns for a second run. Plus: five of the best sci-fi podcasts Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereOrigins With Cush Jumbo
Shoppers can use technology to advise them on outfit choices based on their body shape and style preferencesMarks & Spencer is using artificial intelligence to advise shoppers on their outfit choices based on their body shape and style preferences, as part of efforts to increase online sales.The 130-year-old retailer is using the technology to personalise consumers' online experience, and suggest items to buy. Continue reading...
Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, I and many others have been looking for alternatives. Who wants to share a platform with the likes of Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson?I considered leaving Twitter as soon as Elon Musk acquired it in 2022, just not wanting to be part of a community that could be bought, least of all by a man like him - the obnoxious long hours at a high intensity" bullying of his staff began immediately. But I've had some of the most interesting conversations of my life on there, both randomly, ambling about, and solicited, for stories: Anyone got catastrophically lonely during Covid?"; Anyone hooked up with their secondary school boy/girlfriend?" We used to call it the place where you told the truth to strangers (Facebook was where you lied to your friends), and that wide-openness was reciprocal and gorgeous.It got more unpleasant after the blue-tick fiasco: identity verification became something you could buy, which destroyed the trust quotient. So I joined the rival platform Mastodon, but fast realised that I would never get 70,000 followers on there like I had on Twitter. It wasn't that I wanted the attention per se, just that my gang wasn't varied or noisy enough. There's something eerie and a bit depressing about a social media feed that doesn't refresh often enough, like walking into a shopping mall where half the shops have closed down and the rest are all selling the same thing. Continue reading...
After judge freezes assets of billionaire's internet service provider, company flip-flops to block social media platformElon Musk's satellite-based internet service provider Starlink backtracked late on Tuesday and said it would accept and enforce a Brazilian supreme court justice's order to block the billionaire's social media platform, X, formerly Twitter.Previously, Starlink informally told the telecommunications regulator Anatel that it would not comply until Justice Alexandre de Moraes reversed course. Now, Starlink has said in a statement posted on X that it will heed de Moraes's order despite him having frozen the company's assets. Continue reading...
The board rules that blanket ban on pro-Palestine slogan would hinder free speechMeta's content moderation board has backed the company's decision to allow Facebook posts containing the phrase From the River to the Sea" after ruling that a blanket ban on the pro-Palestine slogan would hinder free speech.The Oversight Board reviewed three cases involving Facebook posts that featured From the River to the Sea" and found they did not break Meta's rules involving restrictions on hate speech and incitement, while an outright ban on the phrase would interfere with political speech in unacceptable ways". Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: Fuelled by a backdrop of sexist culture, alarming censorship guidelines and anti-woke' ire, the summer's biggest hit has become a lightning rod in the video game culture wars Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereA Chinese game called Black Myth: Wukong has been the biggest hit of the summer, selling 10m copies in just three days, according to its developer Game Science, with over 1 million people playing it every day on games marketplace Steam. China's homegrown games industry is absolutely massive, but concentrated almost entirely on mobile phones: this is the country's first successful blockbuster console and PC game, which makes it very interesting in itself. It's also a massively successful single-player game arriving on the back of a few high-profile multiplayer flops, which suggests there is still more of a market for this kind of adventure than video game execs like to believe.But Wukong has been grabbing headlines for other reasons, too. Back in November, IGN put together a report compiling crude, vulgar public comments from a number of Game Science staff, some of whom are very well-known in China's games industry. IGN also spoke to several women who expressed their disappointment and despair over omnipresent sexism in games and in China more broadly. It is a very interesting and well-researched article that doesn't so much point the finger at Game Science specifically as set it within the context of a bigger Chinese feminist struggle. But of course, it attracted the ire of an increasingly vocal swathe of anti-woke" gamers that has found a gathering-place on YouTube and social media, some of whom accused IGN of trying to sabotage Black Myth: Wukong by making things up. Continue reading...
Increase will lift minimum rates by 9.8% and comes after online retailer defeated GMB union bid for bargaining rights on payAmazon has announced a pay rise worth nearly 10% for tens of thousands of UK employees, after defeating an attempt by the GMB trade union for bargaining rights over pay and conditions.The online retailer said the increase would lift minimum pay rates by 9.8% to between 13.50 and 14.50 an hour, depending on location. Staff with at least three years' service will receive a minimum of between 13.75 and 14.75 an hour. Continue reading...
Big brands already know far too much about us. But Cox Media Group's Active Listening' software adds a whole new layer of creepinessConspiracy theorists of the world, rip off that tinfoil hat and take a bow: you were (kinda) right. Despite the fact pretty much everyone has a story involving chatting about something only to see an ad for that something pop up on a device, the idea that your phone actively listens to you has long been dismissed as silly. After all, brands don't need to eavesdrop like that - they already have access to millions of data points that build up a detailed picture of your habits and predicted purchases.But just because brands don't need to listen to your conversations, it doesn't mean that there aren't companies figuring out creepy new ways to mine your data. 404 Media, a tech-focused news site, recently got hold of a pitch deck from Cox Media Group (CMG), touting its Active Listening" software, which targets adverts based on what people say near their device microphones. The presentation doesn't specify whether this voice data comes from smart TVs, smart speakers, or smartphones but the slide where it extols the power of voice (and our devices' microphones)" has a picture of people looking at their phones. Continue reading...
This seemingly minor addition allows players to sprint and dive in every direction so crunch moments can feel like a ridiculously fun John Woo shootoutHere is a statement of fact that I am not entirely proud of: I have played every Call of Duty game since the series launched in 2003. I've been there through the extremely good times (Call of Duty 4) and the extremely not good (Call of Duty: Roads to Victory). And while I may have cringed at some of the narrative decisions, the casual bigotry rife on the online multiplayer servers, and the general America, fuck yeah!" mentality of the entire series, I have always come back.In that time, I've seen all the many attempts to tweak the core feel of the games - from perks to jetpacks (thanks Advanced Warfare!) - but having spent a weekend in the multiplayer beta test for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, I think developer Treyarch may have stumbled on the best so far. It is called omni-movement. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian