Technology | The Guardian

AI experts cite ethical concerns over relationships humans may develop with such chatbotsThe next time you lie in bed and absent-mindedly ask your old friend Google for a piece of life advice, don't be surprised if it speaks back to you.

Guardian test highlights experimental' nature of ChatGPT service being made available in Tui's appHolidaymakers typically rely on experienced tour guides and local companies to recommend excursions to medieval castles and spectacular waterfalls, but the world's biggest tour operator has said it will entrust the service to artificial intelligence instead.The German travel company Tui has started using ChatGPT in its app to provide holiday recommendations, in the latest sign of traditional businesses racing to harness AI. Continue reading...

The comedians promise a space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted' in Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club. Plus: five of the best podcasts with multitasking hosts

The makers of Everybody's Gone to the Rapture return with a story about drilling down into something terrible lurking beneath the North SeaHow do you fancy making a 1970s horror game set in Scotland? That was the question that art director John McCormack recalls being asked by Dan Pinchbeck, co-founder of the Brighton-based studio The Chinese Room, when he joined the company a few years ago. McCormack's response was immediate: Well, as a Scotsman from the 70s, I would say that you've got me: I'm in."McCormack had been attracted to work for the studio by its reputation for storytelling and authenticity. The Chinese Room made its name with the cult hit Dear Esther in 2012, and went on to create the Bafta-award-winning Everybody's Gone to the Rapture in 2015, featuring an incredibly detailed recreation of a mysteriously deserted English village. Still Wakes the Deep carries on that tradition of faithful reproduction, although this time the setting is a North Sea oil rig rather than the bucolic English countryside.Still Wakes the Deep will be out in 2024 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Continue reading...

Fears that bias in training sets would mean minorities bearing brunt of scams, fraud and misinformationDetection tools being developed to combat the growing threat of deepfakes - realistic-looking false content - must use training datasets that are inclusive of darker skin tones to avoid bias, experts have warned.Most deepfake detectors are based on a learning strategy that depends largely on the dataset that is used for its training. It then uses AI to detect signs that may not be clear to the human eye. Continue reading...

Artificial intelligence could take personalized service a new, possibly sinister level - but can it really replace a chef?In the world of ultra-fine dining, service must run like clockwork. A team of specialists work together to create a seamless experience for customers from the point of booking reservations to the time the check is paid. Host, server, food runner, sommelier and dining room manager attend to - and even anticipate - guests' needs with unflinching poise. When it works well, customers feel cared for and pampered.It's time-consuming work to pay such attention to detail, and early advocates of artificial intelligence (AI) say that software could automize the most tedious parts of the job. Let workers focus on the food and service, they say. Others wonder if it will erode time-honed traditions in kitchens and dining rooms. So when considering the question of how AI might affect haute cuisine, it depends on who you ask. Continue reading...

Artist and designer Harry Nesbitt explains how his game pays homage to a countryside practice stretching back through historyIn the soft, rolling hills of the Derbyshire dales the grass is clipped to just a few centimetres by gently bleating sheep. For game artist and designer Harry Nesbitt who grew up here, this countryside is in his blood. There's something there deep in my subconscious," he says. I always want to tell stories or depict worlds that are close to my heart."Nesbitt's fondness for this terrain is visible the very first time you look at Summerhill, his forthcoming puzzle-adventure game that tasks the player with herding sheep through a bucolic landscape. You're accompanied by a dog who provides key assistance; you'll come across intriguing ruined structures, the remains of an ancient civilisation whose culture was centred on shepherding, through which you must guide your growing flock. Nesbitt says these ruins are designed in order to contain, funnel, or sort" sheep in certain ways, causing the player to rationalise" and reconfigure" the space in order to progress.Summerhill will be out on PC and unannounced platforms; release date TBA Continue reading...

Outsourcer Sama facing legal cases brought by Kenya-based employees alleging exposure to graphic contentThe chief executive of a company contracted to moderate Facebook posts in east Africa has said she regretted taking on the work, after its staff said they were left traumatised by graphic content on the social media platform.The US outsourcing firm Sama is facing a number of legal cases brought by Kenya-based employees, who alleged being exposed to graphic and traumatic content such as videos of beheadings, suicide and other material at a moderation hub. Continue reading...

I've been waiting to replay this taut, sometimes beautiful western since I binged it years ago. But fans are right to fear that a new port may not live up to its potential Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereIt's my birthday today, and Rockstar has been kind enough to rerelease its 2010 western opus Red Dead Redemption on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch (out tomorrow), as a slightly late birthday gift. It is indisputably a landmark game, less ambitious but also less self-indulgent than its 2018 sequel. The first game is tauter, its crafted set-pieces more memorable. Everyone who's played it remembers that moment when you cross the border into Mexico, and Jose Gonzalez starts to play as the sun rises. Few games boast a single moment that compares to it.I played Red Dead Redemption the summer after I graduated university, mainlining the whole thing in three days. I remember getting inordinately attached to my horse, the vast desert expanses, the encroaching inevitability of its shock ending at John Marston's farmhouse, which I saw coming but still gasped at. I remember hating the feds with every fibre of my being, and unexpectedly hating some of Marston's former outlaw friends just as much. It was a game with no real winners - still unusual at the time - and took the same bleak view of humanity's essential moral depravity as the Grand Theft Auto series, but with fewer off-colour jokes and more moments of fleeting beauty. I have been looking forward to playing it again. Continue reading...

America's richest and most cowardly man, Musk, proposed an idiotic fight, then came up with every excuse not to really do itNever challenge anyone to a fight. Not even if you think you would win. Especially not if you think you would win. To break this commandment is to invite the wrath of all universal karma down upon your head. It is to engage in the folly of hubris, to break the prohibition against violence, and to set oneself up as a poster child for getting what's coming to you". As a general rule, the people who forge ahead in defiance of this wisdom do so only because they are spoiled, confidence-poisoned children who can only learn things the hard way.Having $200bn only makes all of these poisonous characteristics more potent. But unlike most things, money cannot protect you from the consequences of this particular mistake.Hamilton Nolan is a writer based in New York City and a member of the WGAE Continue reading...

The rise of AI will destroy jobs - but also create them. And if you didn't nab that 700,000 role at Netflix, there are plenty of new positions in the offing, many in surprising areasThe conversation about AI and the workplace is understandably dominated by the downsides - after decades of automation eliminating manufacturing jobs, people in the service sector are worried about being replaced by robots".But every technological shift creates as well as destroys jobs. Artificial intelligence - at least in its current iteration, which uses large language datasets to create text, audio and video - is no different. What is, perhaps, surprising is the type of jobs it will create. Continue reading...

When content posted from critical news outlets and competitor apps was clicked, it opened a blank screen, delaying accessSocial media giant Twitter appeared to apply a five-second delay that would slow access to sites - a process known as throttling - including to the New York Times, Reuters, Instagram and Blue Sky, another social network, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.The sites with slowed links included competitors to Twitter and news publications that have been on Twitter owner Elon Musk's bad side due to critical reporting. The Washington Post tested the delays and found that if someone clicked a link on Twitter that would send them to another site, the link would open to a blank screen that lasted for a few seconds. Continue reading...

A dating-app meet goes wrong at the beginning of this action game when the world as we know it abruptly ends - but that won't stop love from flourishingEternights combines the action-packed spectacle of a PlatinumGames title with a darkly funny dating simulator. At the beginning of the game's Steam demo, you are building an online dating profile with your friend, and a woman texts you to meet up. By the time the demo is over, an apocalyptic calamity has destroyed the city you live in and turned its hapless citizens into mindless demons, and your arm has been cut off and turned into a sword. Oh, and the woman you thought you were going to go on a date with has ulterior motives. Standard romantic fare.Studio Sai founder Jae Yoo worked on the game on nights and weekends while doing a full-time job at Apple, before he eventually left to found his own studio. As Studio Sai's only full-time employee, he was responsible for the title's programming story, modelling and rigging animation - which he learned after downloading Unity and watching YouTube tutorials. He worked with two part-time artists and a part-time narrative designer, along with a composer and sound designer. Continue reading...

The head of the UK tech startup is as passionate about self-driving autonomy' as Elon Musk - but thinks it could be 20 years awayDriverless cars are here - if you happen to live in San Francisco, at least. Regulators voted last week to allow two companies to run driverless taxi services in the city. So it is surprising to hear from the British boss of an autonomous-car company that the next step - the dream of a car that can drive you anywhere - may still be a decade or more away.Gavin Jackson, of British startup Oxa, says it could be 10 or even 20 years before an Uber effect" takes over and robo-taxis are capable of going anywhere without human intervention. It's just the hardest problem you could possibly want to solve, because the variables are infinite," he tells the Observer over lunch in London. Continue reading...

When a pregnant Black woman was falsely arrested, she fought back. Here's what happened next. Plus, the week in AI Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article herePorcha Woodruff was eight months pregnant when police in Detroit, Michigan came to arrest her on charges of carjacking and robbery. She was getting her two children ready for school when six police officers knocked on her door and presented her with an arrest warrant. She thought it was a prank.Are you kidding, carjacking? Do you see that I am eight months pregnant?" the lawsuit Woodruff filed against Detroit police reads. She sent her children upstairs to tell her fiance that Mommy's going to jail". Continue reading...

PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Switch, PC; Summerfall Studios

NSPCC says tech firms and MPs must back bill after UK police data shows scale of child abuse happening on social media'Tens of thousands of online grooming crimes have been recorded during the wait for updated online safety laws.The online safety bill is expected to become law in the autumn, but has faced a lengthy route to the statute book with repeated changes and delays to the proposed legislation. Continue reading...

Social media app, launched in the wake of Twitter chaos, recorded 576,000 active users in August, down 79% from 2.3 million in JulyThe daily usage of Threads, Meta's answer to Twitter, continues to slump after a strong start in its first weeks of existence.Engagement with the social media app is down 79% from a high of 2.3 million active users in early July to 576,000 as of 7 August, according to Similarweb, a digital intelligence platform. Continue reading...

A hit-and-miss documentary often struggles to explain the hows and whys of the Bangladesh Central Bank cyber heist of 2016Cybercrime, on top of being difficult to detect and even more so to prove, is notoriously tricky to visualize. The impact may be tangible, even devastating - nuclear plants damaged, hospitals disabled, pipelines shut down - but the perpetrators are shadowy and inscrutable, the crime unseen and insidious, the methods vague and indecipherable to lay people without a knack for computer science.Billion Dollar Heist, a new feature-length documentary, attempts the formidable challenge of turning one of the biggest financial crimes in history - the February 2016 cyber heist of $81m from the US Federal Reserve accounts for the central bank of Bangladesh - into informative entertainment. Director Daniel Gordon employs a range of cinematic techniques - some illuminative, some overly cliched - to get at a highly sophisticated cyber crime involving several countries, time zones and financial institutions. Among them: animation, dramatic recreation, stock footage of beeping ones and zeros, archival footage on the relatively brief history of hacking, ominous narration from British broadcaster and cybersecurity journalist Misha Glenny. Continue reading...

Walking robot who looks like a Nazi youth leader turns out - surprise surprise - to have creepy designs on his ownerAs if the future of AI wasn't already nightmarish enough, along comes this British sci-fi thriller with its storyline about an AI servant becoming dangerously infatuated with his female owner. It's a creepy premise: a cross between Fatal Attraction and The Servant, Harold Pinter and Joseph Losey's 1963 drama about a malevolent manservant. Though in the end TIM might be too silly to be scary and yet not sharp enough to work as satire.Part of the problem is the AI itself, a humanoid robot inoffensively named TIM (short for technologically integrated manservant"), played by Eamon Farren. There's no question of keeping us guessing about his intentions: TIM is sinister from the get-go. With his slicked-down blond hair and penetrating blue-eye stare, he looks like a spoof of a Nazi youth leader with a flash of Hannibal Lecter. Continue reading...

Lighter, slicker, gapless folder has great multitasking software and rapid chip - but extremely high priceSamsung's latest folding phone-tablet sets new standards for the most hi-tech of gadgets - and with it comes a very high price tag.The Galaxy Z Fold 5 is an important update for Samsung in the face of stiff new competition from the Google Pixel line. The new folder costs 1,749 ($1,799.99/A$2,599), making it 100 more than last year's excellent Fold 4 and the same eye-wateringly expensive price as Google's Fold. Continue reading...

Meta boss says time to move on' after Twitter owner fails to name date and says he needs surgeryMark Zuckerberg has said he is moving on from a rumoured cage fight with Elon Musk, claiming the Tesla boss isn't serious".The rival billionaire tech bosses seemingly agreed to a brawl in June when Musk tweeted that he was up for a cage fight". Continue reading...

Technology proves able to identify dozens of species in thousands of hours of recordingsResearchers have developed arrays of AI-controlled cameras and microphones to identify animals and birds and to monitor their movements in the wild - technology, they say, that should help tackle Britain's growing biodiversity problem.The robot monitors have been tested at three sites and have captured sounds and images from which computers were able to identify specific species and map their locations. Dozens of different birds were recognised from their songs while foxes, deer, hedgehogs and bats were pinpointed and identified by AI analysis. No human observers are involved. Continue reading...

Lifestyle and shopping apps are the latest weapons in Beijing's information war against its neighbourAriel Lo spends a couple of hours most weeks sharing anime art and memes on Chinese apps, often chatting with friends in China in a Mandarin slightly different from the one she uses at home in Taiwan.People use English on Instagram, and for Chinese apps they use Chinese phrases. If I am talking to friends in China, I would use them," Lo said as she picked up a bubble tea at a street market in central Taichung city. Continue reading...

The most marvellous app I've had the good fortune to click on has become the subject of the latest moral panicFor the vast majority of human history, it has been impossible for anyone - no matter their wealth or status - to watch a video of a man who eats entire blocks of cheese followed by a video of a woman who dresses like Dr Nick Riviera from The Simpsons.I've done this - I have done what my ancestors could never have dared to dream - thanks to TikTok. The video-sharing app needs no introduction, because you've undoubtedly already read endless scaremongering headlines claiming it's about to destroy us all. Continue reading...

District 9 director Neill Blomkamp's true-life tale is unable to swerve the cliches yet delivers pedal-to-the-metal entertainmentSouth African-Canadian director Neill Blomkamp arrived with a bang in 2009 thanks to District 9, an urgent sci-fi fable that used modern fears of extraterrestrial invaders to tell an old-as-time story of racism and segregation. Blomkamp's interest in wryly satirical socioeconomic sci-fi continued through the big-budget ecocide parable Elysium (2013) and the altogether more anarchically scrappy Chappie (2015) in which a sentient armoured police robot is led into a life of crime.On the surface, this based on a true story" account of video gamer turned race car driver Jann Mardenborough may seem like a left turn for a film-maker whose career has been built on adventurous fantasy. But if the story of a Darlington-born son of a former professional footballer parlaying video-gaming skills into international racetrack success is not the stuff of fantasy, then frankly what is? While the narrative roots may be real", at heart this is essentially The Last Starfighter with fast cars standing in for spaceships. No wonder Speed Racer (the manga/anime hit that the Wachowskis adapted for the screen in 2008) gets a cheeky namecheck. Continue reading...

Artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Atmospheric Memory allows visitors to interact with generative tech - and become part of the show in unexpected ways

Using VR and haptic vests to transport users to a sweaty club in 1980s Britain, In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats is so realistic that you might need a lie down afterwards

UK governments let processor manufacturing drift overseas for years. Now Covid and war have shown how vital homegrown capability is, the country is scrambling to catch up. But so is everyone elseFor a short time in the late 1990s, passengers stepping off the train at Newcastle station were greeted with a bold slogan: Fish Into Chips - From Mackerel Economy To Micro Technology. Invest In North Tyneside - Siemens Did."As globalisation marched ever onwards after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this painfully British pun spoke of a swagger on the world stage. It referred to a vast 1.1bn microchip factory that the German industrial giant had just opened in the Wallsend area of the city, in a deal greased by taxpayer funding and personally brokered by John Major. Continue reading...

If you thought social media had a hand in getting Trump elected, watch what happens when you throw AI into the mixIt looks like 2024 will be a pivotal year for democracy. There are elections taking place all over the free world - in South Africa, Ghana, Tunisia, Mexico, India, Austria, Belgium, Lithuania, Moldova and Slovakia, to name just a few. And of course there's also the UK and the US. Of these, the last may be the most pivotal because: Donald Trump is a racing certainty to be the Republican candidate; a significant segment of the voting population seems to believe that the 2020 election was stolen"; and the Democrats are, well... underwhelming.The consequences of a Trump victory would be epochal. It would mean the end (for the time being, at least) of the US experiment with democracy, because the people behind Trump have been assiduously making what the normally sober Economist describes as meticulous, ruthless preparations" for his second, vengeful term. The US would morph into an authoritarian state, Ukraine would be abandoned and US corporations unhindered in maximising shareholder value while incinerating the planet. Continue reading...

Deputy PM says technology may aid faster government decisions - but warns of massive hacking risksArtificial intelligence could have a more significant impact on Britain than the Industrial Revolution, the deputy prime minister has said, but warned it could be used by hackers to access sensitive information from the government.Oliver Dowden said AI could speed up productivity and perform boring aspects of jobs. Continue reading...

X owner in talks with government over historic site for event - though Colosseum and Rome ruled outElon Musk is in talks with Italy's government about hosting his proposed cage fight with Mark Zuckerberg at a historic site in the country, but the Colosseum has been ruled out as a venue.The owner of X Corp and the chief executive of Facebook-owner Meta first raised the idea of a one-on-one scrap in a series of social media posts back in June. The challenge came as Zuckerberg prepared to launch Threads, a rival microblogging site to Musk's now rebranded Twitter platform. Continue reading...

When the Taiwanese photographer lived in Japan, he found the working days were long and conforming was essentialReflecting on his three years in Japan, Taiwan-based photographer Jeff Liang says, Someone said to me once that Japanese society is like nigiri rice - that's a perfect bowl' of rice, formed with your hands: nothing can fall out, or stick out - every single grain of rice must stick together to make it work. In Japanese culture, conforming is deemed essential."He had arrived in Japan on a working holiday visa and found a job as a souvenir shop clerk in Osaka, before being hired as a photographer and designer for an app. His office was in Shibuya, one of Tokyo's busiest areas. I was working for a Taiwanese company though, so my working day was only 10am to 8pm. It sounds long, but that's pretty short by Tokyo standards. From 8am to 10pm is more normal. People are afraid to leave early and make a bad impression." Continue reading...

This week in artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is either going to save humanity or finish it off, depending on who you speak to. Either way, every week there are new developments and breakthroughs. Here are just some of the AI stories that have emerged in recent days:Just accept the tech, architects!" Oliver Wainwright, our architecture and design critic, looks at whether AI will wipe out architects. Teaser: it can quickly show you what mosques in Abu Dhabi could look like, summarises local planning policies and allows the public to experiment with projects. If architects want to explore the endless world of AI, they can start by viewing AI as their perfectly on-time, organised and eager studio assistant.

For most, giving up a smartphone in 2023 would be an almost inconceivable inconvenience. But those who've done it say they found delight with dumber devices

Offer a wooden city a helping hand in this beguiling Australian climate puzzlerIf you've ever spent time in Melbourne, Australia, you will undoubtedly have heard a local explain their four seasons in one day" lifestyle. Perhaps you were told to pack a raincoat and some heavy-duty sunscreen, or warned of hail on a sunny day. This typical Melbournian weather chatter is something the team at Paper House revelled in when developing their cosy god game Wood and Weather, imbuing it with a distinctly local feel.What makes the weather interesting is how humans react and interpret it," says game director Terry Burdak, who took an introductory course at the Bureau of Meteorology during Wood and Weather's development. I wanted to create a game where you get to see a bunch of little people respond to the change of weather in unexpected ways and how it can influence their lives." Continue reading...

Surf across an ever-shifting ocean of sand and battle giant leviathans in the latest game from Giant Squid, makers of Abzu and The PathlessThere's a joyous moment in the 2012 game Journey where, in a break from trudging through the desert, your robed character surfs effortlessly down a mountain of shifting sand while Austin Wintory's award-winning soundtrack rises into an uplifting, triumphant melody. Sword of the Sea feels like that joyous moment has been stretched into an entire game.Matt Nava, director of Sword of the Sea, says that he set out to create something fresh in the snowboarding/surfing genre, where the sea is made of undulating, ever-moving sand, and your surfboard doubles up as a weapon. Nava was the art director for Journey, but he left thatgamecompany shortly after Journey's release to co-found Giant Squid, which launched the serene underwater exploration game Abzu in 2016, followed by third-person action adventure The Pathless in 2020. Sword of the Sea mixes elements from all of Nava's previous games. I think people definitely are going to feel that connection to Journey," he says, not least because Austin Wintory is returning to compose the soundtrack, but also because Sword of the Sea tells an emotive story without any dialogue - or as Nava puts it, creating narrative with colour and music and space". Continue reading...

Notice sent to employees who were not in office at least three times a week, after other tech firms' efforts to get workers back on siteAmazon workers in the US are being tracked and penalized for not spending sufficient time in the company's offices, an email sent to employees this week revealed, as tech companies push back against work-from-home practices that flourished during the pandemic.Some staff members were alerted on Wednesday they were not currently meeting our expectation of joining your colleagues in the office at least three days a week", according to emails shared with the Financial Times. The emails were also discussed on the anonymous corporate message board platform Blind. Continue reading...

Platform rebranded X last month lists 584 lots including Twitter signs, a wooden bird table and outsized bird cagesElon Musk is to auction Twitter memorabilia from its San Francisco headquarters following the social media platform's switch to the name X, including its former bird logo from the side of the building.The billionaire rebranded the site late last month with a new logo, an X, replacing its distinctive bird symbol. On announcing the move, Musk tweeted: And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds." Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: The Match of the Day presenter joins Alan Shearer and Micah Richards for The Rest Is Football, just in time for the new season. Plus: five of the best summer podcasts

More refined flip phone gets better screen on the outside, gapless hinge and faster chipsSamsung's popular folding-screen flip phone gains a bigger, more useful screen on the outside for its fifth generation, while keeping its stylish looks with a sleeker gapless design when shut.The new Z Flip 5 costs 1,049 ($999/A$1,649) - 50 more than last year's model - and comes with twice the starting storage and a collection of small but meaningful upgrades. There is no doubt that folding tech still commands a premium, with prices similar to high-end Androids and iPhones. Continue reading...

Ben Joseph Andrews' chronic vestibular condition leaves him with migraines and dizziness - which he has transformed into a VR experience. Luke Buckmaster gives it a go

Early stage talks are expected to include a potential tool fans could use to make AI-generated songsGoogle and Universal Music are negotiating a deal on how to license the voices and melodies of artists for artificial intelligence-generated songs.The talks are expected to include the potential development of a tool for fans where individuals could make AI-generated songs but the relevant copyright owners would be paid. The artists would have a choice to opt in to the process. Continue reading...

Creative director Hannah Nicklin explains how the narrative adventure game offers a far-reaching new take on storytellingWhat does it mean to play a video game as an ensemble rather than a single character? How would it change your experience of people and plot? What if there was no single hero, or perhaps no heroes at all? As Hannah Nicklin, a creative director at independent studio Die Gute Fabrik explains, these are questions that narrative adventure Saltsea Chronicles is attempting to answer, all while telling its own charming story of misfit sailors voyaging across a flooded archipelago to uncover a conspiracy.It's a lofty pitch, and one Nicklin brings back down to earth with a comparison: Star Trek: The Next Generation without the manifest destiny" - a description that hints at the game's politics and its structure. We take that ensemble cast, and we put you in the centre of a mystery that you are trying to uncover," she says. You're on the ship and often get to choose which islands to visit. You choose who forms the expedition party and what they say when they get there." All this plays out across gorgeously rendered environments, like a classic LucasArts adventure game of the 1990s with the visual the flair of a European arthouse cartoon. Logic puzzles make way for an emphasis on character, world-building, and exploration - the simple pleasures of getting to know a people and place. Continue reading...

The culture, media and sport select committee has warned of risks not just to workers' jobs but also their autonomyRishi Sunak will gather world leaders in London this autumn for a summit on safety in artificial intelligence, after expressing concern about the existential risks" of the rapidly evolving technology.Apparently, even our wannabe tech bro prime minister - currently holidaying in California - is willing to acknowledge the potential need for state intervention to prevent AI going rogue. Continue reading...

The tech company's latest proposal about generative AI turns copyright law on its head, and could especially hurt smaller content creators, say experts

Names and addresses of 40 million registered voters were accessible as far back as 2021 after cyber-attackConfidence in the UK's electoral regulator has been thrown into question after it emerged a hostile cyber-attack accessing the data of 40 million voters went undetected for a year and the public was not told for another 10 months.The Electoral Commission apologised for the security breach in which the names and addresses of all voters registered between 2014 and 2022 were open to hostile actors" as far back as August 2021. Continue reading...

Electoral Commission hack is reminder of importance of protecting democratic system where it countsIt turns out that while Conservative ministers were spending hours of parliamentary time in 2021-22 introducing requirements for voters to produce ID at polling stations - to protect elections against a threat most experts believed was negligible - the Electoral Commission was being hacked by hostile actors".These hackers, who have not been identified and whose motivations are unclear, were able to access the data, such as home addresses, of millions of voters, many of whom choose not to make that information publicly available. Continue reading...

From a sweetshop in Stevenage to good old Marks & Spencer, British businesses are using live events to spice up their online businesses. And the money is pouring in ...Zainab Hakim finds it tiring to go to the shops but thinks she might be addicted to shopping. She's a 23-year-old receptionist from Birmingham, and doesn't visit the high street to buy clothes - she watches sellers livestream on the social media site TikTok, peddling their wares in real time. With a couple of clicks, she can buy things via the app. I probably have an addiction at this point," she says. I just get sucked in."At any time of day, you can scroll through TikTok Live and see someone selling all sorts of things - from clothes to fitness equipment to toys to sweets, cakes, crystals and coffee mugs. One afternoon in 2022, Hakim bought eight items from eight sellers. It's things you don't even need," she says. Recently, she bought a kitchen gadget that spiralises potatoes, simply because it looked cool". She especially likes buying clothes because, You can ask them to show you the material and they'll bring it up close to the camera so you get an idea of what you're buying." Continue reading...

Inspired by folding up a piece of paper, Henry and Fred Hoffman explain their new game's spatial manipulation mechanic - even the British Origami Society likes itMany ideas start on paper, few go on to be made of it. Yet, when brothers Henry and Fred Hoffman, the duo behind Norwich-based Newfangled Games, sketched their level ideas for a new platformer and then began manipulating the A4 sheet in their hands, Paper Trail was born.The top-down puzzle adventure employs a spatial manipulation mechanic, allowing you to fold its planes and merge its sides to solve puzzles. You play as Paige (get it?), a budding academic leaving home for the first time to pursue her studies, spurred on by this unique ability. Continue reading...