Technology | The Guardian

In response to the billionaire's scorched-earth raids on US government agencies, Tesla chargers and showrooms are being targetedIn the early morning hours of Donald Trump's inauguration day, a person wearing a long black cloak and face mask wheeled a cart down an Oregon sidewalk. He was headed toward a Tesla showroom in Salem, and his cart appeared to be loaded with molotov cocktails, according to court documents. One by one, he took out the handmade explosives, lit them on fire and lobbed them at the glass-walled dealership.By the time Salem police arrived, the showroom window was shattered, a fire was burning on the sidewalk out front, a nearby Tesla sedan was ablaze and the alleged vandal had fled. The whole scene was caught by security footage, according to an affidavit from a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The showroom's general manager estimated $500,000 in damages, with seven vehicles struck and one completely destroyed. Continue reading...

Photographers, translators, academics and GPs are among those whose jobs are either threatened or aided by the techOliver Fiegel, a 47-year-old photographer based in Munich, was reading a German national Sunday newspaper recently when he saw a front-page image that looked strangely off. The image showed a boy chasing a football on a pitch. But some of the wildflowers on the grass floated without stems. Half the goal net was missing. The boy's hands were misshapen.In previous years, many of Fiegel's photography clients had been newspapers and magazines. But that work has dried up recently. This image, he felt, showed one reason why: generative illustration", the supplied caption said. Continue reading...

One afternoon, as he passed a train station bench in Chicago, the street photographer spotted young men in uniform ...On his way to work at anorth Chicago public high school, Spiro Bolos has been making a photo series of people on this train station bench. On the way to visit his partner one Sunday afternoon, he saw these young men. The US navy's largest training camp is about an hour away; home to the force's only boot camp and 20,000 sailors, marines, soldiers and Department of Defense civilians.Bolos thinks these men had been given aweekend pass to visit the city. He says they were looking at their phones and preparing their backpacks when he took this shot. As one stood up to stretch, Bolos captured their image. Continue reading...

Christopher Tsai retains faith in carmaker's earnings potential despite backlash that has seen its shares take a hitA devoted investor in Elon Musk's Tesla - and once a close childhood friend of the US president's eldest son and namesake - says he hopes the world's richest man's role in cutting federal spending for Donald Trump's administration is short-lived" and that he returns to managing his businesses.Investment manager Christopher Tsai, whose firm has tens of millions of dollars tied up in Tesla, said the stock market had demonstrated clear signs of displeasure with Musk's activities at the so-called department of government efficiency". And in an interview with the Guardian, Tsai said: I hope his involvement with [Doge] is short-lived so he can spend even more time on his businesses." Continue reading...

Media organisations including the Guardian and the BBC fail to gain entry to proceedings

As they get ready to tour its mournful music, the band reflect on Disco Elysium, the video game whose soundtrack won them a Bafta - and plenty of new followersWhen Jan Scott Wilkinson, frontman of the band formerly known as British Sea Power, was first asked to work on a video game soundtrack, he was sceptical. We didn't know much about the game, but our manager Dave seemed to think there was something interesting about this Robert guy who had been pleasantly hounding him," he says. That was Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz, part of a team who had just started work on an esoteric video game about an alcoholic cop trying to solve a murder in an impoverished region of a war-torn country. The game was Disco Elysium, now regarded as one of the all-time great cerebral role-playing games: released in 2019, it sat atop PC Gamer's top 100 list for four years in a row.Kurvitz is a Sea Power superfan. Pick a random scene from the game and there'll be something - a bit of dialogue, a location, a theme - that has some sort of Sea Power reference in it. Wilkinson tells me that Kurvitz was captivating and full of a bubbling passion" and that he knew an unsettling number of strange details about our music". Kurvitz had already embedded some of those very obscure" Sea Power references in the world of Disco Elysium before they had even met. Whether the band liked it or not, they were already enmeshed in this eccentric Estonian's world. Continue reading...

Sam Altman, the OpenAI boss, has declared its new model good at creative writing'. We asked writers including Tracy Chevalier, Kamila Shamsie and David Baddiel if they agreeThis week has seen writers divided over a story written by an AI model that is good at creative writing" - at least according to Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT company OpenAI, which is developing the new model. Author Jeanette Winterson, writing in the Guardian on Wednesday, agreed with him, calling the story - which is a metafictional piece about grief - beautiful and moving". We asked other authors to assess ChatGPT's current writing skills - and what recent developments around artificial intelligence might mean for human creativity.Nick Harkaway is the author of Karla's ChoiceTracy Chevalier is the author of The GlassmakerKamila Shamsie is the author of Best of FriendsDavid Baddiel is the author of My Family: The Memoir Continue reading...

The UK's battle for access to encrypted services could define how companies are able to safeguard customer data in the future

Letter from Elon Musk's firm to US trade representative warns of downstream impacts' of tit-for-tat tariffs

Serve up perfect rice every time with our expert-tested rice cookers, from space-saving mini appliances to microwave steaming bowls The best blenders to blitz like a pro, tried and testedHow often do you eat rice? Even if it's not a daily staple in your house, it's safe to say most Britons cook and eat rice at least a few times a week. And while it may seem a simple thing to cook, it can be surprisingly difficult to get it right.From long-grain to quick-cook, brown basmati to jasmine, different rice grains have different cook times, different rates of absorption and varying starch levels, which can all affect the result. Instead of fluffy, individual grains, you may find your rice burnt, stuck to the pan or with a claggy, chalky or overly glutinous texture. Dinner ruined.Best overall rice cooker:

Diggs' harrowing music is a world away from his Hollywood films and a Tony-winning run in Hamilton. But his band's world-building - setting resource wars in imagined cyberpunk clubs - is no less dramaticAs a child, Daveed Diggs and his schoolfriend William Hutson drew pictures inspired by the space-age album covers of funk legends Parliament, filled with gleaming UFOs and eccentric interplanetary travellers. Diggs would grow up to become an actor, winning a Tony award as the first person to play the roles of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton. He's since voiced Sebastian the crab in The Little Mermaid's live-action remake and appeared in Nickel Boys, which was nominated twice at this year's Oscars. But away from Hollywood and Broadway, he's still dreaming up fantastical sci-fi worlds with Hutson - now through one of the most imaginative, harrowing projects in underground rap.Along with Hutson's college roommate Jonathan Snipes - who had a similar childhood experience, inspired by the otherworldly paintings adorning classical albums - the friends formed Clipping in Los Angeles in 2010. Over Hutson and Snipes's production, Diggs weaves blood-soaked horror stories about racial violence or fables of enslaved people in outer space. On their new album Dead Channel Sky, he raps with mechanical precision over warped rave music, creating a noirish cyberpunk world of hackers, clubgoers, future-soldiers and digital avatars. Continue reading...

Use of Freedom of Information Act to reveal Peter Kyle's ChatGPT queries has shocked experts and left journalists wondering what to request next

Incoming head is tasked with reviving chipmaker's fortunes after it experienced heavy losses over the past several years

Sarah Sorensen says we should be hanging up on surveillance capitalismThe Guardian has published quite a lot of articles recently expressing some concern over the use of smartphones. EmmaBeddington's piece (My phone knows what I want before I do. That should be worrying - but it's oddly comforting, 10 March) is perhaps the most alarming to date, mitigated to onlysome degree by herself-awareness. Buthelpisathand.There is a simple way in which we can set ourselves free. Remove the battery if possible, then take your biggest hammer and set to work on the rest. The more cost-effective solution is not to buy one in the first place. I never have and it's still rarely a problem, though surveillance capitalism tries hard to make it one. Oldish people like myself are less likely to own smartphones, increasingly likely to be marginalised as a result, lucky to remember life without their constant intrusion. Continue reading...

America's biggest crypto companies are riding high. Plus, can the left reclaim techno-optimism?Hello, and welcome to TechScape. In this week's edition, the crypto industry's political investments pay off in spades, the left attempts to reclaim an optimistic view of our shiny technological future, and your memories of Skype.SpaceX's Starship explodes in second failure for Elon Musk's Mars programMusk tells Republicans he isn't to blame for mass firings of federal workersMusk survives as fellow of Royal Society despite anger among scientistsWhite House to overhaul $42.5bn Biden-era internet plan - probably to Musk's advantage Continue reading...

Social media company wins emergency arbitration ruling on book, Careless People by Sarah Wynn-WilliamsMeta on Wednesday won an emergency arbitration ruling to temporarily stop promotion of the tell-all book Careless People by a former employee, according to a copy of the ruling published by the social media company.The book, written by a former director of global public policy at Meta, Sarah Wynn-Williams, was called by the New York Times book review an ugly, detailed portrait of one of the most powerful companies in the world", and its leading executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan. Continue reading...

An eye-opening insider account of Facebook alleges a bizarre office culture and worrying political overreachIf Douglas Coupland's 1995 novel about young tech workers, Microserfs, were a dystopian tragedy, it might read something like Careless People. The author narrates, in a fizzy historic present, her youthful idealism when she arrives at Facebook (now Meta) to work on global affairs in 2011, after astint as an ambassador for New Zealand. Some years later she finds a female agency worker having a seizure on the office floor, surrounded by bosses who are ignoring her. The scales falling from her eyes become ablizzard. These people, she decides, just didn't give a fuck".Mark Zuckerberg's first meeting with a head of state was with the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, in 2012. He was sweaty andnervous, but slowly he acquires ataste for the limelight. He asks (unsuccessfully) to be sat next to Fidel Castro at a dinner. In 2015 he asks Xi Jinping if he'll do him the honor of naming his unborn child". (Xi refuses.) He's friendly with Barack Obama, until the latter gives him a dressing-down about fake news. Continue reading...

Ivy Road/Annapurna Interactive; PC, PS5, Xbox

We would like to hear from people aged 18-24 about their childhood experiences with smartphones - positive or negativeWe would like to hear from people aged 18-24 about their childhood experiences with smartphones and social media, positive or negative.What approach would you take with your own children, as a result of lessons learned from your experience? Would you let them have access to a smartphone or social media, and how often? What rules would you put in place? Continue reading...

Surrey was region of UK with most sign-ups for Smartphone Free Childhood's parent pact, launched last yearAn online campaign committing parents to bar their children from owning a smartphone until they are at least 14 has garnered 100,000 signatures in the six months since its launch.The Smartphone Free Childhood campaign launched a parent pact" in September in which signatories committed to withhold handsets from their children until at least the end of year 9, and to keep them off social media until they are 16. Continue reading...

The new digital mantra' prompts unions to warn PM to stop blaming problems on Whitehall officialsAI should replace the work of government officials where it can be done to the same standard, under new rules that have prompted unions to warn Keir Starmer to stop blaming problems on civil servants.As part of his plans for reshaping the state, the prime minister will on Thursday outline how a digital revolution will bring billions of pounds in savings to the government. Continue reading...

Guardian understands tech company's appeal against Home Office request for encrypted data is to be heard by tribunal on FridayApple's appeal against a UK government demand to access its customers' highly encrypted data will be the subject of a secret high court hearing, the Guardian understands.The appeal on Friday will be considered by the investigatory powers tribunal, an independent court that has the power to investigate claims that the UK intelligence services have acted unlawfully. Continue reading...

As tech firms battle creative industries over copyright, OpenAI chief Sam Altman says he was really struck' by product's output

After failing to recreate success of augmented reality game, Niantic Labs plans to sell its video game division to ScopelyNiantic Labs said it would sell its video game division to Saudi Arabia-owned Scopely for $3.5bn, as the US augmented reality firm shifts focus to geospatial technology after failing to recreate the success of its 2016 smash hit Pokemon Go.The deal, announced on Wednesday, also advances Saudi Arabia's ambitions to become the ultimate global hub" for gaming. The kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, via Savvy Games, bought Scopely for $4.9bn in 2023 as part of a broader push by the country to diversify beyond fossil fuels. Continue reading...

Speed through your spring cleaning with our tried and tested steam mops and handheld cleaners, perfect for tackling everything from bathroom floors to kitchen tiles The best window vacs for clearing condensationIf something makes cleaning faster and easier, then it has to be a good thing. Steam mops are a great example, using steam to shift stains, spills and everyday grime from your hard floors in seconds, and even freshening up your carpets with the right attachment. Steam cleaners can go even further, dishing out gusts of steam that help with mucky jobs such as driving dirt and gunge from your bathroom sink and shower tray, and cleaning up tiles, kitchen sinks and worktops. Not only will you get these jobs done faster, but you'll get a great deep clean at the same time. What's more, the steam helps combat germs and hostile bacteria without the aid of bleach-heavy sprays.These mean cleaning machines don't have to be expensive, either, with simple steam mops starting at less than 50 and some of the best full-size steam cleaners costing 150 to 180. You'll spend more for extra power or a wide range of attachments, but you might not need to. With so many types, makes and models available, your biggest challenge is finding the right one for you. Having tested 12 of the best steam mops and cleaners, I'm in a good place to guide you on your way.Best overall:

The British comedian shares his list of mostly comedy classics. Then it gets existential

Nintendo Switch, iPhone/iPad, Mac, PC (version played); Inkle

Standing in the driveway of the White House with Tesla vehicles, Trump said he would label violence against the company's showrooms as domestic terrorismDonald Trump said he is buying a brand new Tesla" and blamed Radical Left Lunatics" for illegally" boycotting Elon Musk's electric vehicle company. The announcement came a day after Tesla suffered its worst share price fall in nearly five years.Later, the president also said he would label violence against Tesla showrooms as domestic terrorism. Trump was responding to a question during a Tuesday press conference, in which a reporter said, Talk to us about some of the violence that's been going on around the country at Tesla dealerships. Some say they should be labeled domestic terrorists." Continue reading...

Can anyone, armed with just a dream and an AI chatbot, create a rudimentary version of a classic arcade game? I asked several enthusiasts who took a stab at it, with very mixed resultsThere's a lot going on with video games and generative AI right now. Microsoft and Google have each created models that can dream up virtual worlds, with significant limitations. And people have been using Grok, the gen-AI chatbot from Elon Musk's xAI, to make rudimentary clones of old arcade games.All you have to do is type write me Pong" and AI (sort of) does the rest, albeit quite badly. On Feb 21, xAI employee Taylor Silveira claimed to have created an accurate version of 1980 coin-op Pac-Man using Grok 3, all the ghosts moving perfectly around their maze while Pac-Man chomps down dots, power pills and fruit. Continue reading...

The belief that technology will usher in a golden age for humanity is in vogue once more with billionaires. But can the left offer its own vision for the future?Techno-optimism - the belief that technology will usher in a golden age for humanity - is in vogue once more.In 2022, a clutch of pseudonymous San Francisco artificial intelligence (AI) scenesters published a Substack post entitled Effective Accelerationism", which argued for maximum acceleration of technological advancement. The 10-point manifesto, which proclaimed that the next evolution of consciousness, creating unthinkable next-generation lifeforms and silicon-based awareness" was imminent, quickly went viral, as did follow-up posts. Continue reading...

Stripped back iPhone offers latest chips, AI and longer battery life, but with only a single camera on the backApple's cheapest new smartphone is the iPhone 16e, which offers the basic modern iPhone experience including the latest chips and AI features but for a little less than its other models.The iPhone 16e costs 599 (699/$599/A$999) and is the spiritual successor to the iPhone SE line. Where the iPhone SE still had the old-school chunky design with home button, the 16e has the body of the iPhone 14 with the chips of the 799 iPhone 16. Continue reading...

Billionaire owner claims attack' may have originated in Ukraine after site unresponsive for many usersElon Musk claimed on Monday afternoon that X was targeted in a massive cyber-attack" that resulted in the intermittent service outages that had brought down his social network throughout the day. The platform, formerly known as Twitter, had been unresponsive for many users as posts failed to load.We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources," the platform's CEO posted. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved." Continue reading...

President suspended implementation of law ordering app to divest from its Chinese owner ByteDance or face US banDonald Trump said on Sunday the United States was in talks with four groups interested in acquiring TikTok, with the Chinese-owned app facing an uncertain future in the country.A US law has ordered TikTok to divest from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or be banned in the United States. Asked on Sunday if there was going to be a deal on TikTok soon, Trump told reporters: It could be." Continue reading...

The 86-year-old author's social feed might be her greatest contribution to literature - with philosophical musings on everything from US politics to an infected foot

The billionaire and now Trump adviser grew up amid the collapse of white rule, attending an all-white school and then a more liberal oneWith an imposing double-winged redbrick main building, and school songs lifted directly from Harrow's songbook, Pretoria boys high school is every inch the South African mirror of the English private schools it was founded in 1901 to imitate.Elon Musk, who has rapidly become one of the most powerful people in US politics, spent his final school years in the 1980s as a day pupil on the lush, tree-filled campus in South Africa's capital, close to his father's large detached home in Waterkloof, a wealthy Pretoria suburb shaded by purple jacaranda blossoms in spring. Continue reading...

Microsoft and Google have both recently released new generative AI models that simulate video game worlds - with notable limitations. What can they do?Another month, another revolutionary generative AI development that will apparently fundamentally alter how an entire industry operates. This time tech giant Microsoft has created a gameplay ideation" tool, Muse, which it calls the world's first Wham, or World and Human Action Model. Microsoft claims that Muse will speed up the lengthy and expensive process of game development by allowing designers to play around with AI-generated gameplay videos to see what works.Muse is trained on gameplay data from UK studio Ninja Theory's game Bleeding Edge. It has absorbed tens of thousands of hours of people's real gameplay, both footage and controller inputs. It can now generate accurate-looking mock gameplay clips for that game, which can be edited and adapted with prompts. Continue reading...

The photographer Stefan Nieland has been working on a project about the role of smartphones in tourism in the city that gets about 32 million visitors per year: When moving here in October I wanted to observe and photograph tourism. I immediately felt there was one element that would be in every picture - the smartphone. I decided to shift my focus on people who are constantly with their mobile phones to capture everything during their holidays" Continue reading...

A hundred years ago the average person, in one of the the world's wealthiest societies, could expect to live until 40. Now global life expectacy is 73At the start of the millennium it was widely presumed each successive generation would achieve a higher level of prosperity than the last. Today that is no longer the case. Just 19% of Americans expect their children's lives to be better than their own, while two-thirds believe their country will be economically weaker by 2050.So our zeitgeist is increasingly one of pessimism, from anxiety about the climate crisis to concern over rising inequality. According to the historian Adam Tooze, we are living through a polycrisis" - where such challenges are not only simultaneous but mutually reinforcing.Aaron Bastani is the co-founder of Novara Media. He is also the author of Fully Automated Luxury Communism Continue reading...

Robert Pattinson, Robert De Niro and Michael B Jordan are all pulling double duty in their new films and that's just the startFor years, dual roles have been played largely for laughs. Think of Adam Sandler's Razzie-sweeping twin turn in Jack and Jill, or Lisa Kudrow as both Phoebe and Ursula Buffay on Friends. Eddie Murphy was always particularly prolific, his most multiplicitous performance as a clutch of Klumps for Nutty Professor II.There are exceptions, of course. But for every Legend or The Prestige there are 10 Austin Powers, Bowfingers and - shudder - Norbits. This year, however, is giving us a more dramatic breed of duplicate. Robert De Niro will pull double Don duty in The Alto Knights, Michael B Jordan will play twin leads in the supernatural Sinners and a pair of Robert Pattinson clones is currently headlining Bong Joon-ho's Mickey 17. Continue reading...

As a Paris film extra, I surrendered my device and discovered the extraordinary connections I miss while staring at my screenA few Thursdays ago was a wrap. For my brief acting career, that is. One of the benefits of having a writer's schedule in a city like Paris is the ability to say yes to the flurry of random opportunities that pop up. When an announcement flashed across a WhatsApp group that a Hollywood comedy-thriller with an all-star cast and a wacky plot was looking for extras, I thought why not - and sent in a few headshots. (I wish I could reveal more details, but I am, alas, bound by a non-disclosure clause that the production company declined to release me from.)I had little idea of exactly what to expect. But I certainly wasn't thinking that one of the biggest takeaways would be spending hours with other people without access to our phones.Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsI read that Skype is closing down, a few years after Covid brought video-calling to prominence like never before. So, my question is: what is the biggest missed opportunity in history? Quentin, ArizonaSend new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Continue reading...

Guardian readers share how the software connected them with loved ones when there were few affordable means to reach those for awayMicrosoft announced on the last day of February that it would sunset Skype. By the time the death knell tolled, the video chatting software that once revolutionized communications had become a ghost of its former self. Experts chimed in with half-hearted eulogies for the platform that Microsoft spent years neglecting, yet few were surprised, and even fewer shed tears.The fact that Skype was never integrated into any other Microsoft platform, nor redesigned to resemble other Microsoft solutions or included in any bundled commercial offerings - despite its loss of users - was a clear indication that Microsoft had long decided to discontinue the service," said Gianvito Lanzolla, a professor of strategy, at University of London. Continue reading...

Autonomous digital assistants are being developed that can carry out tasks on behalf of the user - including ordering the groceries. But if you don't keep an eye on them, dinner might not be quite what you expect ...I'm watching artificial intelligence order my groceries. Armed with my shopping list, it types each item into the search bar of a supermarket website, then uses its cursor to click. Watching what appears to be a digital ghost do this usually mundane task is strangely transfixing. Are you sure it's not just a person in India?" my husband asks, peering over my shoulder.I'm trying out Operator, a new AI agent" from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Made available to UK users last month, it has a similar text interface and conversational tone to ChatGPT, but rather than just answering questions, it can actually do things - provided they involve navigating a web browser. Continue reading...

More governments seeking to keep millions of people offline amid conflicts, protests and political instabilityDigital blackouts reached a record high in 2024 in Africa as more governments sought to keep millions of citizens off the internet than in any other period over the last decade.A report released by the internet rights group Access Now and #KeepItOn, a coalition of hundreds of civil society organisations worldwide, found there were 21 shutdowns in 15 African countries, surpassing the existing record of 19 shutdowns in 2020 and 2021. Continue reading...

A new BBC podcast recounts the ordeal endured by Hannah Mossman Moore, whose phone was bombarded by fake accounts and her personal data weaponised against herHi Hannah Mossman MooreStalking you has its benefits. Now watching your friend strip another blonde with perky tits. She's not more than 22. I have seen your tits so many times in the recording. You are late 20s now? Declining youth and saggy boobs... There is so much to learn when one just follows you around. Have you left Sri Lanka or just hiding from me? Tell me please. I will come and get you. Continue reading...

The company that pioneered voice communication over the internet has withered to dust in Microsoft's hands. Still, I for one am grateful for itSo Microsoft has decided to terminate Skype, the internet telephony company it bought in 2011 for $8.5bn (6.6bn). Its millions of hapless users are to be herded into Microsoft Teams, a virtual encampment with a brain-dead aesthetic that makes even Zoom look cool. This eventuality had been telegraphed for quite a while but, even so, it comes as a jolt because Skype was a remarkable venture, and its demise closes a chapter of an interesting strand of technological history.The internet has been around for much longer than most people realise. It goes back to the 1960s and the creation of Arpanet, a military computer network that emerged after the US had its Sputnik moment" - the awful realisation that the Soviet Union seemed to be racing ahead in the technology stakes. The design of Arpanet's successor, the internet we use today, started in the early 1970s and it was first switched on in January 1983. Continue reading...

Participants view scenes of daily life as well as travel adventures - then process the emotions they trigger through artOne Monday in July, Samantha Tovar, known as Royal, left her 6ft-by-11ft cell for the first time in three weeks. Correctional officers escorted her to the common area of the Central California Women's Facility and chained her hands and feet to a metal table, on top of which sat a virtual reality headset. Two and a half years into a five-year prison sentence, Royal was about to see Thailand for the first time.When she first put on the headset, Royal immediately had an aerial view of a cove. Soon after, her view switched to a boat moving fairly fast with buildings on either side of the water. In the boat was a man with a backpack, and it was as if she were sitting beside him. With accompanying meditative music and narration, the four-minute scene took Royal across a crowded Thai market, through ancient ruins, on a tuk-tuk (a three-wheeled rickshaw) and into an elephant bath with her backpacked companion. For Royal, these vignettes felt real enough to be deserving of a passport stamp. Continue reading...

From the woman who asks to see teenage boys' rooms to the gang who want to know how couples found love, some people are attracting a huge following (and financial rewards) from being nosy - and asking one killer questionRachel Coster, @boyroomshow

With sales down and electric vehicle rivals catching up, the rightwing politico's brand is driving into a stormGlobally renowned brands would not, ordinarily, want to be associated with Germany's far-right opposition. But Tesla, one of the world's biggest corporate names, does not have a conventional chief executive.After Elon Musk backed Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) - calling the party Germany's only hope" - voters are considering an alternative to Tesla. Data released on Thursday showed that registrations of the company's electric cars in Germany fell 76% to 1,429 last month. Overall, electric vehicle registrations rose by 31%. Continue reading...

The investor and former Twitter board member believes rejecting DEI initiatives is simply denying US firms talentAs Elon Musk grinned in the Oval Office, one of Britain's most influential tech investors looked on in horror. He is absolutely horrendous. I have said it multiple times: I think it is horrifying what is happening," says Martha Lane Fox.For the British peer and ex-Twitter board member, the sight of Musk holding forth from the bully pulpit of Donald Trump's White House shows the Silicon Valley dream has gone sour. Continue reading...