A sleep-saving knee pillow, a grater that makes dinners healthier, and a hairdryer that saves time: these products have changed daily routines for the betterHave you ever bought something small that changed your everyday life for the better? It could be a product that helped you sleep more soundly, eat more healthily, or save money at the salon? Something that, for a minimal outlay, made a significant difference.We asked our team about the things that improved their lives, no matter how small. From a reading light to a hairdryer, a pair of walking shoes to tweezers, their answers inspired us - and we hope they inspire you, too. Continue reading...
Tech companies aren't transparent about what they do with our photos - we asked experts about best baby-pic practicesWelcome to Opt Out, a semi-regular column in which we help you navigate your online privacy and show you how to say no to surveillance. If you'd like to skip to a section about a particular risk you're trying to protect your child against, click the Jump to" menu at the top of this article. Last week's column covered how to opt yourself out of tech companies using your posts to train artificial intelligence.You've got the cutest baby ever, and you want the world to know it. But you're also worried about what might happen to your baby's picture once you release it into the nebulous world of the internet. Should you post it? Continue reading...
Finally, Lara Croft no longer looks like a strong wind would knock her over. Netflix's new animated series boldly reimagines the adventurer - with no thought to the male gazeHot on the heels of that Oasis reunion comes news of the return of another 90s icon - Lara Croft. She bounds back on to our screens with a new animated series, still sporting that holy triumvirate of classic ponytail, backpack and combat boots. From the get-go she's performing seemingly impossible feats in the name of archaeology: she outswims a ravenous crocodile, and uses her signature blend of parkour and gymnastics to avoid a pit of sharp spikes. But this isn't the Tomb Raider star quite as you might remember her.The eponymous star of Netflix's Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft - voiced by Agent Carter's Hayley Atwell - looks different to how she appeared in the original games. Her thighs are now strong enough to realistically run, climb, stomp, swim and do all the other myriad things Lara has to do on a daily basis, while her waist is more realistically proportioned. Her shoulders are broader, her arms more defined (biceps, triceps and flexors; oh my!), and those impossibly perky and oh-so-pixelated breasts have been deflated to a size that fits somewhere within the realms of reason. Continue reading...
by Alexi Duggins, Hannah Verdier, Hollie Richardson a on (#6RC6J)
Two journalists leaf through vintage magazines and reflect on their legacy in Mag Hags. Plus: five of the best US election podcasts Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereRumble: Ali/Foreman and the Soul of '74
Car was bought as part of the drug abuse education program that uses flashy vehicle to make police seem approachableA police department in California has purchased a flashy new piece of equipment to impress local children: a $150,000 Tesla Cybertruck.In a Facebook video featuring lightning graphics, the Irvine police department said it believed the vehicle to be the first police cybertruck in the nation". It's unlikely to be in any high-speed chases: police say it will mostly be used by officers for school programs, though it is able to respond to emergencies. Continue reading...
The assistant, which has sparked privacy concerns, can also be accessed on 299 Ray-Ban Meta sunglassesMeta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has launched its artificial intelligence assistant in the UK, alongside AI-boosted sunglasses modelled by Mark Zuckerberg.Meta's AI assistant, which can generate text and images, is now available on its social media platforms in the UK and Brazil, having already been launched in the US and Australia. Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: JRPGs can be an acquired taste - but fortunately it's one I can't get enough of. Plus, a bumper crop of games for horror fans Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereWhat I have always admired about Japanese role-playing games is their unashamed grandiosity. The likes of Final Fantasy, Persona and Shin Megami Tensei don't restrict themselves to the familiar trappings of good v evil, wizards-and-goblins, swords-and-magic; they absorb all of those things, and plenty else besides, from science fiction and mythology and comic books and psychology and classical art and whatever else interests their creators, and construct these absurdly ambitious worlds and narratives out of them. The themes are never small, the playtimes never short. Think of them as the operas of the video game world: a theatrical synthesis of different virtual arts, from storytelling and stagecraft to music and movement. And as something of an acquired taste.Metaphor ReFantazio - out this week - is the most extravagant example of this genre that I've played in many years. It is lavishly over-the-top. In the first few hours, you are introduced to a world segregated by a controlling monarchy, military and religion into strict racial hierachies, where people with cat ears and tails are subservient to those with horns, or longer elven ears. (Your perfectly manageable task? Dismantle all of this and bring forth a new age of equality.) Characters pull out their own metal hearts, engrave them and transform into robot-styled manifestations of their inner power. You encounter your enemies: monstrous, powerful chimeric grotesqueries, tangles of legs and tongues and spikes and teeth. They are called humans", and they are more powerful and crueller than any of the game's races. Subtlety is never on the table. Continue reading...
Snatch thefts of mobile phones soared by 150% in the last year, with victims left unable to work, use their bank, travel or use their diaries. Why are police finding it so hard to stop?Jenny Tian, 29, a comedian from Australia, had been in London for two weeks when she saw a group of guys in ski masks on a street in east London. I thought to myself: They're probably on their way to rob a home, they're not going to bother me.'" It was 5pm, still broad daylight, and she had her phone out, trying to find a venue on Google Maps. You know when you're turning yourself into a human compass, pivoting around, trying to work out where it's sending you? I looked very lost, I guess." The next thing she heard was the sound of running, then a whoosh of air, and her phone was gone.This was not OK. London's first independent victims' commissioner, Claire Waxman, stressed in a statement that she definitely gets it. Our lives are on our phones - our contacts, family photos, social media accounts, contactless payments, travelcards, emails. They are a form of safety and comfort for people but taking someone's device robs them of that security." For Tian, there was weeks of work on her phone - notes for her standup, edited videos for her Instagram feed, all her contacts with bookers, all her connections to home, her Apple Pay, her banking details, her diary, never mind she didn't know where she was. Continue reading...
Social platform was blocked after tech billionaire failed to name local representatives and pay finesBrazilians are set to regain access to X after a supreme court judge lifted a ban introduced nearly six weeks ago as a result of Elon Musk's failure to comply with the South American country's laws.X was blocked in Brazil, where it had more than 22 million users, at the end of August in what was the culmination of a months-long arm wrestle between the network's billionaire owner and the Brazilian supreme court. Continue reading...
TechScape's new writer on why a $60k-a-year middle school banned tech for a week and how to opt out of AI training Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereHello, and welcome to TechScape. I'm Blake Montgomery, the technology news editor at Guardian US.I'm taking over TechScape from Alex Hern, and I'd like to introduce myself and my ideas for this newsletter. Continue reading...
by Johana Bhuiyan, Nick Robins-Early and agencies on (#6RAJY)
Lawsuits allege platform's dopamine-inducing' algorithm can lead to anxiety, depression and body dysmorphiaMore than a dozen states and the District of Columbia filed lawsuits against TikTok on Tuesday, alleging the popular short-form video app is damaging children's mental health with a product designed to be used compulsively and excessively.The lawsuits stem from a national investigation into TikTok, which was launched in March 2022 by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from several states, including California, Kentucky and New Jersey. All of the complaints were filed in state courts and claim that TikTok's algorithm is especially dangerous given the platform's widespread use among young people and its ability to deliver quick hits of dopamine. Design choices such as infinite scrolling, push notifications and in-app purchases prey on youth and create addictive habits among users, prosecutors allege. There are over 170m monthly active TikTok users in the US, and over a billion worldwide. Continue reading...
An addictive example of a burgeoning genre, its elaborate widgets and logistics demand long shifts that have re-engineered my unconscious mindEveryone knows about the Tetris effect, named after the puzzle game that is so compelling players can find themselves visualising falling blocks and imagining how real-world objects could fit together long after turning off the Game Boy. Similarly, playing too much Burnout or Grand Theft Auto gave some of my uni friends pause before they got behind the wheel in real life. But few video games are so enthralling that they begin to invade one's subconscious. I would like to nominate a new candidate for this dubious pantheon: a factory-building game called, beautifully, Satisfactory.Satisfactory is part of an emerging genre of factory games. They're like a jacked-up version of survival-crafting games such as Minecraft. You craft things that build widgets you can use to build other things, in order to accomplish some far-off goal ... except the quantities of things needed are so ridiculously large that you need to automate it. So you set down extractors and feed raw materials into other machines via conveyor belts, and pretty soon you have a whole mini-factory ticking along, happily producing screws or plates or whatever while you run off to rig up another project elsewhere. Continue reading...
Questions raised about registration in Czech Republic of one of first models to reach continentTesla's Cybertruck is too big and sharp for European roads, transport campaigners have warned, as questions are raised about the registration of one of the first of the electric pickup trucks to hit the continent.There had been confusion about whether the Cybertruck could be driven in Europe, owing to strict road safety rules that ban sharp edges and require speed limiters on vehicles that weigh more than 3.5 tonnes when full. Tesla's manual lists the angular steel vehicle as having a gross vehicle weight of 4 tonnes. (The equivalent of a standard family car, such as a Ford Focus, is 1.9 tonnes.) Continue reading...
by Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent on (#6R9XP)
Almost half of girls aged 11 to 21 in Girlguiding survey say sexism and misogyny makes them feel less safeGirls and young women are seeing more unwanted sexual images and suffering more cyberstalking online, but still don't want to take a break from social media because of a fear of missing out, a survey for Girlguiding has found.Fomo" is keeping more than half of 11- to 21-year-olds on apps such as TikTok, Snapchat and WhatsApp despite nearly one in five saying they have been being stalked online and more than a third saying they are seeing sexual images they didn't wish to see, the survey of more than 2,000 girls and young women found. Continue reading...
Google must make Android apps available from competing sources and cannot forbid use of in-app payment methodsA US judge on Monday ordered Alphabet's Google to overhaul its mobile app business to give Android users more options to download apps and to pay for transactions within them, following a jury verdict last year for the Fortnite game maker Epic Games. The injunction by US district judge James Donato in San Francisco outlined the changes Google must undertake to open up its lucrative app store, Play, to greater competition, including making Android apps available from rival sources.Donato's order said that for three years Google cannot prohibit the use of in-app payment methods and must allow users to download competing third-party Android app platforms or stores. Continue reading...
The series' return was heralded by a Tears for Fears song - an unexpected tone for its chainsaw-guns and gore. We revisit how a splintering marriage gave birth to gaming's saddest shooterAt the Xbox Games Showcase this June, Microsoft debuted a trailer for the eighth game in the violent, grandiose and unexpectedly maudlin Gears of War series: a prequel. The sight of series heroes Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago as younger men is an emotional homecoming like no other", as Microsoft's Xbox blog put it. But the real tug at the heartstrings comes with the first notes of a slow, instrumental rendition of Tears for Fears' Mad World. As a 41-year-old man, that piano got me tearing up," wrote one YouTube commenter.It's a throwback to the original, iconic Gears of War trailer from 2006, in which a lonesome Fenix picks through his ruined world to Gary Jules' plaintive cover of the same song. And you can't blame Microsoft for leaning on nostalgia. As Mad Men's Don Draper once said, it's delicate, but potent. Eighteen years on, that Gears of War trailer is still some of the most effective video game marketing ever. It really spoke to the melancholy heart that beats within this superficially macho game. Continue reading...
Signatories to online pledge say it offers support in family reckonings over phone usageClassroom peer pressure is a problem for any parent considering a smartphone ban for their child.So when the Smartphone Free Childhood (SFC) movement launched an online pledge to withhold the devices from children until they are at least 14, thousands of parents saw an opportunity to gather moral support for looming arguments. Continue reading...
Hackney group Rise.365 is trying to tackle poor representation and spark discussions about discrimination with new designsIn her first year of culinary school, Reanna Bryan, 18, was told her braided hairstyle was not suitable for the kitchen. I was like, What do you mean, you can't have braids or dreads?' because this is what I wear. My hair is in braids the majority of the time," she says.When she shared her experience with the young woman's circle she is a member of at Rise.365, a community support group based in Hackney, similar stories were echoed back. Continue reading...
As blogging pioneer Dave Winer's site turns 30, it's a reminder that good writing and thinking has flourished beyond the reach of social mediaIf you log into Dave Winer's blog, Scripting News, you'll find a constantly updated note telling you how many years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds the blog has been running. Sometime tomorrow morning the year field will switch to 30. Which will mean that every single day for three decades Dave's blog will have been stirring things up.He's a truly remarkable figure, a gifted hacker and software developer who embodies the spirit of the early internet. In the 1980s he created ThinkTank, a new kind of software called an outliner", which computerised the hierarchical lists we all use when planning an article or a presentation, but which were up to then scribbled on paper. Like Dan Bricklin's spreadsheet, it was a novel idea at the time, but now you find outliners built into almost every kind of software for writing. There's even one in Microsoft Word, for God's sake! Continue reading...
The photographer and film-maker celebrates the beauty of brotherhood and male companionshipBrotherhood and male affection are rarely seen in a culture typically painted as hyper-masculine by the west," says Justin Attah Mensah, a film-maker and photographer from Accra, Ghana. This image showcases the beauty in this companionship, and celebrates it."Mensah had travelled to Kokrobite beach, about an hour from Accra, for this photoshoot. In the foreground is ayoung model called Nii Sowah Laryea; behind him, amodel with albinism whom I have since lost touch with." He used an iPhone 7 Plus to take the photo, which he admits can bring limitations. Continue reading...
Other submissions included a vertical grand piano, smart goalie gloves and cheese made of potatoesA robot dog that does the vacuuming, a flatpack coffin and a cross between a cookie and a cake were among the things that UK-based inventors thought up last year.A Guardian analysis of patent applications listed by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) found 5,955 involving at least one UK-based inventor had been published in 2023. Continue reading...
The billionaire's accusations about his satellite internet company are false, Fema and transportation secretary sayPete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, shot down criticism by Elon Musk on the government's handling of Hurricane Helene relief efforts, accusing the SpaceX CEO of spreading misinformation.Musk accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) of blocking his satellite internet company, Starlink, from delivering to parts of North Carolina decimated by the hurricane, a claim both Fema and Buttigieg said was false. Continue reading...
Universities are pivoting to incorporate generative AI into academic life - without the plagiarism - in the belief it will become an intrinsic part of life and work
Cody Matthew Johnson explains how he has scoured every sonic corner, from spider monkeys' chatter to gamelan, to write tunes a space travelling street thief would hearHave you ever thought what walking into a sweaty, dusty club on one of Star Wars' desert planets would sound like? About what plays on the radios in the casinos on those Las Vegas-like planets? What do the merchants and miscreants of Tatooine listen to when they're not working the moisture farms or fending off Tusken Raiders? Pondering questions like that has been Cody Matthew Johnson's life for the past few years. The composer and artist has flirted with video game music before, with credits on Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Bayonetta, and the cult indie Kurosawa-inspired side-scroller, Trek to Yomi. But for Ubisoft's Star Wars Outlaws, he was tasked with making music for its seedy criminal underbelly.There is a limited scope of in-world musical expression in the original trilogy, and this was our opportunity to explore music canonically during that time in a much wider scope," said Johnson, when I asked how much of a guideline the original trilogy provided for his work on Outlaws. There are some rules', per se, to creating cantina music in the style of the original trilogy, and while this game does take place during that time period, we were encouraged to only be slightly influenced by the original trilogy cantina music." Continue reading...
X owner has spent tens of millions to fund conservative causes including anti-immigrant and anti-transgender adsElon Musk has given tens of millions of dollars to rightwing groups in recent years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, revealing his backing for Republican groups began earlier than was previously known.Musk endorsed Trump earlier this year and has been a prolific booster of misinformation in support of the president's re-election bid on X, the website he owns. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that Musk had said he planned to donate $45m each month to a Super Pac backing Trump (Musk has denied the report). Continue reading...
This RPG is the third massively multiplayer online game Amazon has published in four years, and lets you morph your heroes into animals. Is it worth a shot?Amazon has been trying to break into the games industry for years, yet despite using the vast resources at its disposal to hire some of the best designers in the business, the company struggled for years to make headway. Lately, however, Amazon has found success publishing massively multiplayer online games. First came 2021's New World, Amazon Games' homebrew fantasy with an emphasis on survival and player-built settlements. The following year brought Lost Ark, developed by Korean studio SmileGate, which combined large-scale multiplayer with Diablo-style fighting. Critical reception was mixed, but both games proved popular with players. This week, Amazon publishes its third MMO in four years, Throne and Liberty, also developed in Korea. Here's everything you need to know about this latest free offering.What is Throne and Liberty? Continue reading...
Some California police departments are already using AI tools to help draft reports - and experts are concernedOfficer Wendy Venegas spoke softly in Spanish to the 14-year-old standing on the side of a narrow residential road in East Palo Alto. The girl's face was puffy from crying as she quietly explained what had happened.The girl said her father had caught her and her boyfriend doing stuff" that morning, and her dad had either struck or pushed the boy, Venegas later explained. Now, the police had arrived to interview all three of them. So far, this was all standard procedure. Continue reading...
by David Wolf, Hannah Verdier, Alexi Duggins, Hollie on (#6R6MQ)
In this week's newsletter: A serial killer strikes the seaside town in The Margate Murders. Plus: in celebration of its 10th anniversary, five of the best Guardian audio long reads Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereThis autumn marks 10 years since we launched the Guardian long read. Looking back now, it is hard to remember how counterintuitive the idea seemed at the time - this was a moment when more and more people were wondering whether readers still had the appetite for anything longer than a few hundred words, or even 140 characters. Creating a dedicated space within the Guardian for multiple pieces of 5,000 (or more) words a week - many of which would take months, even years, to produce - seemed like a quixotic project. Thankfully, our readers felt otherwise, embracing our deeply researched stories about everything from the cruel, paranoid, failing" Home Office and the battle against Islamic State to the strange world of competitive ploughing and the rise of hygge.Just a few months after the long read launched, our audio team had the brilliant idea of launching the audio long read podcast. The idea was simple: get a great voice actor to read the articles aloud. That was it. It turned out that listeners loved it. (A few years ago, I briefly met Ed Miliband, who told me he liked to listen to the podcast when swimming lengths in the pool.) Continue reading...
The startup behind ChatGP, which is reportedly planning to become a for-profit business, is now valued on par with UberOpenAI has raised $6.6bn (5bn) in a funding round that values the artificial intelligence business at $157bn, with chipmaker Nvidia and Japanese group SoftBank among its investors.The San Francisco-based startup, responsible for the ChatGPT chatbot, did not give details of a reported restructuring that will transform it into a for-profit business. The funding round was led by Thrive Capital, a US venture capital fund, and other backers include MGX, an Abu Dhabi-backed investment firm. Continue reading...
Event will push for greater transparency and aims to rank AI firms in terms of ability to meet climate goalsWorld leaders at the next AI summit will focus on the impact on the environment and jobs, including the possibility of ranking the greenest AI companies, it has been announced.Rating artificial intelligence companies in terms of their ecological impact is among the proposals under consideration, while other areas being looked at include the effect on the labour market, giving all countries access to the technology, and bringing more states under the wing of global AI governance initiatives. Continue reading...
Many historians of a certain age admit that the game reinforced their passion for the past and got them into the field. Four of them explain what drew them inMy dad is the kind of man who will find a game he enjoys and stick to it. While I have always flitted about, hopping between different genres, he remains the only person I know who does absolutely everything it has to offer. When people ask, who actually finishes these enormous games?", I can respond with confidence that it is a geordie man in his 60s with a love of Lego and creative swearing. Age of Empires II had a grip on him for well over a decade.The game came out in 1999, when I was five years old, and I am not exaggerating when I say that it was a permanent feature of our domestic life right up to when I moved out thirteen years later. The only thing that changed were the laptops he played on, which became progressively less bulky over the years. The sound effects, from the iconic wololo" of the priests and the villagers' warbles of acknowledgment as you sent them to chop wood, were the soundtrack to my childhood. Continue reading...
EV maker delivered 462,890 vehicles in three months to 30 September while Wall street expected on average 469,828Tesla missed expectations for third-quarter deliveries on Wednesday, hurt by stiff competition from rivals in China and Europe, sending shares of the world's most valuable automaker down 3%.The electric vehicles maker handed over 462,890 vehicles in the three months to 30 September up 6.4% from the preceding quarter. Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: Konami, cute RPGs, weird but wonderful indie games - everything I saw at Japan's biggest gaming convention Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereTokyo Game Show takes place at the Makuhari Messe, a series of cavernous halls in a suburban complex about 45 minutes east of Tokyo city centre, and given its late September slot in the calendar, it is always either horribly hot or pouring with rain. Either way, it's humid as heck, and there are many thousands of people crammed in, creating what can only be described as a suboptimal sweat situation. Nonetheless, I've always had a soft spot for TGS. I attended my first one in 2008, and so the experience of playing games in packed halls while understanding very little about what is happening has become powerfully nostalgic.And I surely wasn't the only person feeling nostalgic in Tokyo last Friday, because the halls were filled with series and characters from 15 years ago. Silent Hill 2 was back on the Konami stand, along with Solid Snake's grizzled face for the upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater remake. Capcom had two huge areas given over to Monster Hunter, a series that was unbelievably popular in Japan throughout the 00s and finally broke through to the world with Monster Hunter World in 2018. Sony was also back at the show in a big way for the first time in five years, showing off the PlayStation 5 Pro, and its especially gorgeous-looking PlayStation 30th Anniversary special edition. The Japanese-made Astro Bot was also everywhere at the show - I hope its sales have reflected how brilliant it is. Continue reading...
NCA says cybercriminal gang used family links to spy agency to shield members targeted by US authoritiesA prolific Russian cybercriminal gang carried out attacks against Nato countries at the behest of state intelligence services and used family links with Russia's domestic spy agency to protect its members after being targeted by US authorities, according to the UK's National Crime Agency.The dramatically named Evil Corp group had an unusually close relationship with the Russian state, said the NCA. Continue reading...
As the Goodbye Meta AI meme proved, many of us vastly overestimate our abilities to discern what's true online - but spotting misinformation isn't something we can do alone Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereIt's a wild world out there online, with dis- and misinformation flying about at pace. I'm part-way through writing a book about the history of fake news, so I'm well aware that people making stuff up is not new. But what is new is the reach that troublemakers have, whether their actions are deliberate or accidental.Social media and the wider web changed the game for mischief-makers, and made it easier for the rest of us to be inadvertently hoodwinked online (see: the odd Goodbye Meta AI" trend that I wrote about this week for the Guardian). The rise of generative AI since the release of ChatGPT in 2022 has also supercharged the risks. While early research suggests our biggest fears about the impact of AI-generated deepfakes on elections are unfounded, the overall information environment is a puzzling one. Continue reading...
The 271-page file overlooks almost everything that average voters, especially women, might find distasteful about VanceThe public got a peek into the inner workings of the Trump campaign last week, when the independent journalist Ken Klippenstein did what major news outlets refused to: he published the opposition research dossier on JD Vance's electoral vulnerabilities that was written by the Trump campaign in the lead-up to the VP announcement.The dossier, which was obtained in a hack thought to have been perpetrated by Iranian state interests, would have been compiled by Donald Trump's camp as part of a routine vetting process as the Republican campaign surveilled possible VP picks and assessed their strengths and weaknesses. It is thorough: at 271 pages, it contains a robust and factual accounting of the vice-presidential candidate's public statements and associations going back years. As such, it offers a unique perspective into how the Trump campaign views the race - and how they understand the controversial man who is now in their No 2 spot. Continue reading...
As generative AI advances, it is easy to see it as yet another area where machines are taking over - but humans remain at the centre of AI art, just in ways we might not expectWhen faced with a bit of downtime, many of my friends will turn to the same party game. It's based on the surrealist game Exquisite Corpse, and involves translating brief written descriptions into rapidly made drawings and back again. One group calls it Telephone Pictionary; another refers to it as Writey-Drawey. The internet tells me it is also called Eat Poop You Cat, a sequence of words surely inspired by one ofthe game's results.As recently as three years ago, it was rare to encounter text-to-image or image-to-text mistranslations in daily life, which made the outrageous outcomes of the game feel especially novel. But we have since entered a new era of image-making. With the aid of AI image generators like Dall-E 3, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, and the generative features integrated into Adobe's Creative Cloud programs, you can now transform a sentence or phrase into a highly detailed image in mere seconds. Images, likewise, can be nearly instantly translated into descriptive text. Today, you can play Eat Poop You Cat alone in your room, cavorting with the algorithms. Continue reading...
Fortnite maker's lawsuit says Samsung Auto Blocker deters users from app downloads outside Google's Play storeFortnite video game maker Epic Games on Monday accused Alphabet's Google and Samsung, the world's largest Android phone manufacturer, of conspiring to protect Google's Play store from competition.Epic filed a lawsuit in US federal court in California alleging that a Samsung mobile security feature called Auto Blocker was intended to deter users from downloading apps from sources other than the Play store or Samsung's Galaxy store. It's Epic's second antitrust suit against Google. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6R3T5)
Revamped open-fit earbuds improve popular formula with advanced features and smaller case, but are still disposableApple's latest AirPods have a new trick up their sleeves, offering noise cancelling without the need to block your ears with silicone tips.The AirPods 4 come in two versions. A standard set that are direct replacements for the outgoing model with a slightly refined shape, a smaller case and better sound for 129 (149/$129/A$219). But more interesting are the AirPods 4 with noise cancelling costing from 179 (199/$179/A$299).Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.3, SBC, AAC, H2 chipBattery life: up to five hours playback (30 hours with case)Water resistance: IP54 (splash resistant)Earbud dimensions: 30.1 x 18.3 x 18.1mmEarbud weight: 4.3g eachCharging case dimensions: 46.2 x 50.1 x 21.2mmCharging case weight: 34.7gCase charging: USB-C or wireless (Qi or Watch) Continue reading...
Abdul Hai, acquitted of murder over the death of Richard Everitt in 1994, said social media sites must be held accountableA man falsely accused of murder by Tommy Robinson on X has called for legislation to control Elon Musk's social media website, arguing it has become a platform for racism, bigotry, bias, prejudice and disinformation".Abdul Hai, who was acquitted of murdering the teenager Richard Everitt in 1994, told the Guardian that he is considering legal action against the social media site formerly known as Twitter, after Robinson, a far-right agitator, posted that he had been convicted of the crime. Continue reading...
by Carlos Mureithi in Kericho and Machakos on (#6R3RT)
AI apps are increasingly popular among small-scale farmers seeking to improve the quality and quantity of their cropSammy Selim strode through the dense, shiny green bushes on the slopes of his coffee farm in Sorwot village in Kericho, Kenya, accompanied by a younger farmer called Kennedy Kirui. They paused at each corner to send the farm's coordinates to a WhatsApp conversation.The conversation was with Virtual Agronomist, a tool that uses artificial intelligence to provide fertiliser application advice using chat prompts. The chatbot asked some further questions before producing a report saying that Selim should target a yield of 7.9 tonnes and use three types of fertiliser in specific quantities to achieve that goal. Continue reading...
New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac paint a damning portrait of the billionaire who turned the social media platform into a smaller business and a larger cesspoolIf Elon Musk is a name that sounds as if it was invented by Ian Fleming, there's more than a hint of the Bond villain about the South Africa-born American billionaire. It's not just the extraordinary wealth, which hovers around the quarter of a trillion dollars mark, but the SpaceX business that sends rockets into space and seeks Martian colonisation (very Hugo Drax and Moonraker) and the hypersensitive ego.All of these sides of Musk are on painful display in Kate Conger and Ryan Mac's book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. So unappealing is the portrait this pair of New York Times technology reporters paint that a more fitting title might be Character Assassination. Or it would if it wasn't for the fact that Musk himself provides most of ammunition discharged in this damning account. Continue reading...
By focusing on its strengths and pooling information, the west can disrupt Russia's war machine - but there's no time to loseRussia is a mafia state" trying to expand into a mafia empire", the foreign secretary, David Lammy, told the UN, nailing the dual nature of Vladimir Putin's political model. On one hand Russia represents something very old - a world of bullying empires that invade smaller countries, grab their resources and indoctrinate their people into thinking they are inferior. But it is also something very new, weaponising corruption, criminal networks, assassinations and tech-driven psy-ops to subvert open societies. And if democracies don't act to stop it, this malign model will be imitated across the globe.Ukraine is resisting the older, zombie imperialism every day on the battlefield, and democracies will have to arm Ukraine and ourselves to constrain Russia properly. But how should we fight the more contemporary tools of political warfare that Russia pioneers? These are becoming ever more prevalent. Globalisation was meant to make us all so integrated that it would diminish the risk of wars. Instead, the free flow of information, money and people across borders also made subversion easier than ever. At the Labour party conference, Lammy indicated that democracies need to work together to stop Russia: Exposing their agents, building joint capability and working with the global south to take on Putin's lies."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...
OpenAI o1, AKA Strawberry, appears to be a significant advance, but its chain of thought' should be made public knowledgeIt's nearly two years since OpenAI released ChatGPT on an unsuspecting world, and the world, closely followed by the stock market, lost its mind. All over the place, people were wringing their hands wondering: What This Will Mean For [enter occupation, industry, business, institution].Within academia, for example, humanities professors agonised about how they would henceforth be able to grade essays if students were using ChatGPT or similar technology to help write them. The answer, of course, is to come up with better ways of grading, because students will use these tools for the simple reason that it would be idiotic not to - just as it would be daft to do budgeting without spreadsheets. But universities are slow-moving beasts and even as I write, there are committees in many ivory towers solemnly trying to formulate policies on AI use". Continue reading...
Mark Zuckerberg's new revamp is a far cry from the zip-up hoodies and suits emblematic of earlier eras of FacebookMark Zuckerberg is revamping his public image with new threads. With a trio of bold shirts worn in recent appearances, he's communicating that he came, he saw, he conquered and he will win again at any cost. The fits might be sick, but we would do well to beware.During a live, packed-auditorium podcast interview last week, the CEO of Meta wore a drop-shouldered black shirt reading pathei mathos", Greek for learning through suffering". At his 40th birthday party in May, he donned a black tee with the motto Carthago delenda est," which translates from Latin to Carthage must be destroyed." He wore a black shirt with black text that read Aut Zuck aut nihil" during Meta's Connect product demonstration on Wednesday. Continue reading...
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