by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6Q9VW)
New running headphones combine bone conduction and open-air speakers for more rounded soundSo-called bone conduction headphones are a runner's best friend, allowing you to be fully aware of the outside world while you listen to your motivational tunes. But the technology simply can't generate decent bass - a problem that the open-ear headphone firm Shokz thinks it has solved with its latest OpenRun Pro 2.The follow-up to the popular OpenRun Pro and OpenSwim lines, the OpenRun Pro 2 cost 169 (199/$175/A$299) and resemble most competitors, with bone conduction pods held in place in front of the ear by two loops and a band that runs behind your head.Water resistance: IP55 (spray resistant)Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.3 (SBC)Battery life: 12hDimensions: 30.9 x 21.7 x 24.3mmWeight: 30.3gDrivers: Air and bone conductionCharging: USB-C Continue reading...
A man in Washington state has trademarked the phrase - but all isn't lost for Jools LeBron, legal experts sayThe creator behind TikTok's demure" catchphrase has become more mindful of US trademark law.Jools Lebron, an influencer with over 2 million followers on the app, became an overnight sensation after advising on how to be demure", mindful" and cutesy" at work and in life. The trend picked up steam, with brands like Verizon and Netflix working with Lebron on sponsored content, and celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Olivia Rodrigo and Gillian Anderson using the phrase in their own videos. Continue reading...
Nvidia co-founder Curtis Priem has a vision for a quantum computing future and believes the area along the Hudson valley is fertile for the next tech boomThe quantum chandelier" that sits within a glass box in the chapel at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's campus in Troy, New York, is the symbolic centerpiece of an ambitious effort to turn upstate New York into an advanced technology center - what Silicon Valley is to social media or Cambridge, Massachusetts, is to biotech.The silver sci-fi object, named for interior gold lattices that suspend, cool and isolate its processor, is the heart of a quantum computing system" that could herald a new age of computing. It's the centerpiece of the dream Curtis Priem, a co-founder of Nvidia, the $2.8tn artificial intelligence hardware and software company, has of turning Rensselaer, or RPI, into an advanced computing hub and refashioning this area of upstate New York into a new Silicon Valley. Continue reading...
by Tom Phillips and Patricia Torres in Caracas on (#6Q950)
Journalists are using artificial intelligence avatars to combat Maduro's media crackdown since disputed electionThe Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who spent some of his happiest years chronicling life in Caracas, once declared journalism the best job in the world".Not so if you are reporting on today's Venezuela, where journalists are feeling the heat as the South American country lurches towards full-blown dictatorship under President Nicolas Maduro. Continue reading...
Meta boss regrets bowing to government power and says he would not make the same choices todayThe Meta boss, Mark Zuckerberg, has said he regrets bowing to what he claims was pressure from the US government to censor posts about Covid on Facebook and Instagram during the pandemic.Zuckerberg said senior White House officials in Joe Biden's administration repeatedly pressured" Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to censor certain Covid-19 content" during the pandemic. Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: Pavel Durov's detention by French authorities is a major break from the norm - but his low-moderation, non-encrypted app is an anomaly
He has been praised for refusing to share data with the Kremlin. But if targeting CEOs worries Musk, Zuckerberg et al, so be itThe shock arrest of Telegram chief executive Pavel Durov as he stepped off his private jet in the Bourget airport near Paris over the weekend is a startling, unprecedented event: he faces alleged offences that could include enabling fraud, drug trafficking, organised crime, promotion of terrorism and cyberbullying.He may not be an Elon Musk or a Mark Zuckerberg, but he is the CEO of a tech platform with 950 million monthly users, and is the first big name in tech to find himself potentially on the wrong side of the European Union's increasingly strict laws and regulations in the digital sphere. Continue reading...
AI images posted to Truth Social bore the watermark of a tiny Texas non-profit looking to bankroll X usersWhen Donald Trump shared a slew of AI-generated images this week that falsely depicted Taylor Swift and her fans endorsing his campaign for president, the former US president was amplifying the work of a murky non-profit with aspirations to bankroll rightwing media influencers and a history of spreading misinformation.Several of the images Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, which showed digitally rendered young women in Swifties for Trump" T-shirts, were the products of the John Milton Freedom Foundation. Launched last year, the Texas-based non-profit organization frames itself as a press freedom group with the goal of empowering independent journalists" and fortifying the bedrock of democracy". Continue reading...
Once nicknamed the Russian Zuckerberg', Durov has boasted of being the biological father of more than 100 childrenThe Russian-born tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov has founded wildly popular social networks as well as a cryptocurrency, amassed a multibillion dollar fortune and locked horns with authorities in Russia and around the world.Still a few months shy of his 40th birthday, the man once nicknamed the Russian Zuckerberg" after the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg now finds himself under arrest in France after being detained at a Paris airport this weekend. Continue reading...
by Zoe Wood Consumer affairs correspondent on (#6Q7TG)
Company says fungal chitosan, made from cell walls of oyster mushrooms, is active ingredient in new hair productsMushrooms are the wellness trend du jour, turning up in coffee, supplements and even beer. Now, we are being told to slather them on our heads after Dyson revealed they could be a secret weapon in the age-old battle with frizzy hair.Dyson researchers have discovered that fungal chitosan - which is found in the cell walls of oyster mushrooms and commonly used in skincare products - can be used to tame unruly hair. Continue reading...
A secondhand EV is a possibility for many families as the cost of desirable models, including Kias and Teslas, falls to 15,000If your current car is on the way out and you think an electric replacement is too expensive, think again. Three-year-old Tesla Model 3s and Kia e-Niros that will do 250-300 miles on a single charge can now be bought for as little as 14,000.In the last year, forecourt prices for used electric cars have tumbled to the extent that previously unaffordable models are now within the reach of many families for the first time. Continue reading...
Billionaire CEO, who was travelling aboard his private jet, was subject of arrest warrant, according to TV reportsPavel Durov, billionaire co-founder and chief executive of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at the Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening, TF1 TV said, citing an unnamed source.Durov was travelling aboard his private jet, TF1 said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France. Continue reading...
Apple is about to launch a ChatGPT-powered version of Siri as part of a suite of AI features in iOS 18. Will this change the way you use your phone - and how does it affect your privacy?Artificial intelligence (AI) is coming to your iPhone soon and, according to Apple, it's going to transform the way you use your device. Launching under the brand name Apple Intelligence" the iPhone maker's AI tools include a turbocharged version of its voice assistant, Siri, backed by a partnership with ChatGPT owner OpenAI.Apple isn't the first smartphone maker to launch AI. The technology is already available on smartphones including Google's latest Pixel and Samsung's Galaxy range. Continue reading...
With adjustments to the way we teach students to think about writing, we can shift the emphasis from product to processIt's getting close to the beginning of term. Parents are starting to fret about lunch packs, school uniforms and schoolbooks. School leavers who have university places are wondering what freshers' week will be like. And some university professors, especially in the humanities, will be apprehensively pondering how to deal with students who are already more adept users of large language models (LLMs) than they are.They're right to be concerned. As Ian Bogost, a professor of film and media and computer science at Washington University in St Louis, puts it: If the first year of AI college ended in a feeling of dismay, the situation has now devolved into absurdism. Teachers struggle to continue teaching even as they wonder whether they are grading students or computers; in the meantime, an endless AI cheating and detection arms race plays out in the background." Continue reading...
Gig economy workers for Deliveroo and Uber Eats in the city are living in appalling conditions, while putting in long hours, earning low pay and facing mental health problemsTwo lines of dirt-encrusted, ramshackle caravans stretch along both sides of a road close to the motorway that winds its way into the heart of Bristol. Rats dart between water-filled concrete sluices to rubbish-flecked mounds of vegetation. Drug users stumble out of the nearby underpass while lorries thunder overhead.This is the grim encampment where about 30 Brazilian delivery riders working for large companies such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats are forced to live to make ends meet. Continue reading...
Forget Hollywood depictions of gun-toting robots running wild in the streets - the reality of artificial intelligence is far more dangerous, warns the historian and author in an exclusive extract from his new bookThroughout history many traditions have believed that some fatal flaw in human nature tempts us to pursue powers we don't know how to handle. The Greek myth of Phaethon told of a boy who discovers that he is the son of Helios, the sun god. Wishing to prove his divine origin, Phaethon demands the privilege of driving the chariot of the sun. Helios warns Phaethon that no human can control the celestial horses that pull the solar chariot. But Phaethon insists, until the sun god relents. After rising proudly in the sky, Phaethon indeed loses control of the chariot. Thesun veers off course, scorching all vegetation, killing numerous beings and threatening to burn the Earth itself. Zeus intervenes and strikes Phaethon with a thunderbolt. The conceited human drops from the sky like a falling star, himself on fire. The gods reassert control of the sky and save the world.Two thousand years later, when the Industrial Revolution was making its first steps and machines began replacing humans in numerous tasks, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published a similar cautionary tale titled The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Goethe's poem (later popularised as a Walt Disney animation starring Mickey Mouse) tells of an old sorcerer who leaves a young apprentice in charge of his workshop and gives him some chores to tend to while he is gone, such asfetching water from the river. The apprentice decides to make things easier for himself and, using one of thesorcerer's spells, enchants a broom to fetch the water for him. But the apprentice doesn't know how to stop the broom, which relentlessly fetches more and more water, threatening to flood the workshop. In panic, the apprentice cuts the enchanted broom in two with an axe, only to see each half become another broom. Now two enchanted brooms are inundating the workshop with water. When the old sorcerer returns, the apprentice pleads for help: The spirits that I summoned, I now cannot rid myself of again." The sorcerer immediately breaks the spell and stops the flood. The lesson to the apprentice - and to humanity - is clear: never summon powers you cannot control. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Some fellows fear tech billionaire could bring institution into disrepute with incendiary commentsThe Royal Society is facing calls to expel Elon Musk from its fellowship over concerns about the tech billionaire's conduct.The Guardian understands Musk, who owns the social media site X, was elected as a fellow of the UK's national academy of sciences in 2018 in recognition of his work and impact in the space and electric vehicle industries, with some considering him a modern Brunel". Continue reading...
It is beautifully made but achingly familiar so could struggle to lure players away from what is already out thereIt is fair to say that the video game industry is undergoing a period of alarming disarray. Studios are closing, development budgets are exploding and profitable genres are becoming saturated by mega-budget pick-me candidates that feel utterly interchangeable.Into this troubling market comes Concord, Sony's new five-v-five hero" shooter, the subgenre of the multiplayer online blaster where players control characters with elaborate special powers rather than identikit spec-ops soldiers or space marines. Set in a warring galaxy controlled by an autocratic regime known as The Guild, the game gives us control of various Freegunners - mercenaries who plough the space lanes looking for jobs while also slinging one-liners at each other in the game's highly polished cutscenes. In the game, however, what they do is fight. Continue reading...
Case is seen by many as unsettling example of how AI might be used to influence groups of voters and democracyA company that sent deceptive calls to New Hampshire voters using artificial intelligence to mimic Joe Biden's voice agreed on Wednesday to pay a $1m fine and bolster its caller identification and authentication features, US regulators said.Lingo Telecom, the voice service provider that transmitted the robocalls, agreed to the settlement to resolve enforcement action taken by the Federal Communications Commission, which had initially sought a $2m fine. Continue reading...
Non-traditional pets get millions of online views. But the rising trend poses questions about animal welfareIn a quiet neighborhood in California's capital, residents have gotten used to the screaming temper tantrums of a two-year-old. No, Merlin!" they'll hear his mother shout whenever he's had enough of his favorite snack. No more ice cubes!"We haven't had any complaints from the neighbors yet," says Mia Alali, the mother in question. That might be because Merlin is just about the cutest two-year-old in California. He also happens to be a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. Continue reading...
The minds behind the forthcoming Monster Hunter Wilds talk about creating a world of extremes for players to exploreOut in the desert, the skies begin to darken. You're here to hunt the Doshagama, a kind of scaly lion with a squashed face that roams the dunes in small packs, an intimidating beast. But the incoming storm suggests that something bigger is on the way. Before long a giant silhouette descends from the heavens: the Rey Dau, a horned, gold-fringed dragon that commands the lightning. Are you strong enough to face it? Or is it time to run for the hills?Monster Hunter is one of Capcom's most successful game series - though it was not always thus. When I started playing it, in 2006 on the PlayStation Portable, almost nobody else was interested. It was fiddly, demanding, famously difficult, and online play didn't work well. In Japan, meanwhile, when I moved there in 2008, you couldn't go anywhere without seeing someone playing Monster Hunter on a train or in a cafe. It was 2018's Monster Hunter: World that truly turned the game into a global hit: technology had finally enabled the kind of expansive natural setting that did its huge, intimidating, eminently believable monsters justice - and frictionless online play was a reality. Continue reading...
by Hannah J Davies, Alexi Duggins, Hannah Verdier and on (#6Q5D8)
Olympic hero Michael Johnson and archer Matt Stutzman interview stars including Kadeena Cox in Rising Phoenix. Plus: five of the best podcasts about classic movies Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up here#1 Dad
Serbian green campaigner who co-drafted declaration against lithium exploitation now fears for his safetyWhen Aleksandar Matkovi received the first message threatening his life, he thought it was a prank. The text, sent to his Telegram account just after midnight on 14 August read: We will follow you until you disappear, scum."Matkovi is one of the campaigners who have been at the forefront of widespread protests against plans to develop a massive lithium mine in Serbia. He said: At first I thought someone was joking but during the morning I got another message, saying how is the struggle against Rio Tinto going?' from another profile I didn't know, and the app displayed the sender's distance as just 500 [metres] away." Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6Q5C0)
Top-class camera, huge screen, long battery life, Add Me photo trick and advanced Gemini Live are impressiveGoogle's new superphone goes all out on battery, camera and smarts, leading a new line of Android devices that can run the company's Gemini AI system with a next-generation conversational voice assistant that is a huge leap forward.The Pixel 9 Pro XL is the biggest normal phone Google makes, costing from 1,099 (1,199/$1,099/A$1,849) and is joined for the first time this year by a smaller 9 Pro model with the same specs and camera costing 999 (1,099/$999/A$1,699). The XL is therefore for people who want a huge screen and big battery. Continue reading...
by Damian Carrington and Ajit Niranjan in Berlin on (#6Q5AG)
Satellite image analysis shows 329 hectares of forest cleared during development of factory in GermanyThe development of a Tesla gigafactory near Berlin has resulted in about 500,000 trees being felled, according to satellite analysis.The building of the German factory has been highly controversial and attracted significant protests, as well as prompting a debate about the trade-offs involved in developing a green economy. Continue reading...
Victor Miller proposed customized ChatGPT bot to govern Cheyenne, Wyoming - but fared badly at the ballot boxA mayoral candidate in Wyoming who proposed letting an artificial intelligence bot run the local government lost his race on Tuesday -by a lot.The candidate, Victor Miller, announced his run for mayor of Cheyenne earlier this year, and quickly made headlines after he decided to run with his customized ChatGPT bot, named Vic (Virtual Integrated Citizen), and declared his intention to govern in a hybrid format, in what experts say was a first for US political campaigns. Continue reading...
Front and center roof cosmetic trim pieces may be adhered without a primer and could separate, increasing crash riskTesla has issued a recall for about 9,100 Model X sports utility vehicles in the US over a trim on the roof that could separate, it said on Wednesday, its second over the same issue since 2020.Front and center roof cosmetic trim pieces may be adhered without primer and could separate from the vehicle creating a road hazard and increasing the risk of a crash, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said. Continue reading...
The two are, after all, cut from remarkably similar cloth - each demands attention the way a flame demands oxygenWhat if Elon Musk went to Washington to serve in Donald Trump's White House? There have been worse pitches for a comedy sketch, I suppose. Veep's Armando Iannucci could probably do something with it. Sadly, the notion is all too real. Sort of.A Reuters reporter recently asked Trump whether he'd consider appointing Musk to his cabinet. He's a very smart guy," Trump responded. I certainly would, if he would do it, I certainly would. He's a brilliant guy." Musk replied with an AI-generated rendering of himself alongside a decade-old crypto meme and tweeted, I am willing to serve." It's not the first time the idea has come up - Trump floated the possibility in May - but it is the first time that Musk has responded in the affirmative, winkingly or otherwise. Continue reading...
Government denies new cybersecurity measures responsible for up to 40% drop in internet speeds across the countryFor the free online tech skill classes advertised, there were hundreds of Facebook likes" and in the end 1,500 people signed up. But on the first day last week, only a handful of those registered managed to log in to the live session. The internet was working at a snail's speed.We received hundreds of complaints," says the course tutor, Wardah Noor, founder of the IT training firm XWave, based in Layyah, in the Pakistani province of Punjab. Continue reading...
Rebellion's game imagines the aftermath of a UK nuclear disaster that mixes folk horror and 50s sci-fi with a dash of Last of the Summer WineWhen Atomfall was first revealed at the Xbox Games Showcase in June, it led many to ask: is this the UK's version of Fallout? In some respects, yes. In some respects, no," says Ben Fisher, associate head of design at Rebellion, the Oxford-based studio behind Atomfall, as well as games such as Sniper Elite 5 and Zombie Army 4. He explains that Rebellion head Jason Kingsley's initial idea was to look at the freeform, self-guided experience of Fallout and think how it could be applied closer to home.The difference with Atomfall is in the structure. It's a much denser experience," says Fisher. One of our reference points has been Fallout: New Vegas in that it's a more concentrated experience than, say, Fallout 3 and 4, and largely builds one story that's interconnected and has layers that are influenced by the choices the player makes." Rather than taking place on one giant, open-world map, Atomfall features a series of interconnected maps, similar to the levels of the Sniper Elite games. That's the kind of map that we excel in," says Fisher, adding that many of the game's most interesting secrets are buried in bunkers deep underground. Continue reading...
Deal meets audience where they are' by pairing publisher's content within tech startup's products, including ChatGPTConde Nast and OpenAI announced a multi-year partnership on Tuesday to display content from the publisher's brands such as the Vogue, Wired and the New Yorker within the AI startup's products, including ChatGPT and its SearchGPT prototype.The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The Microsoft-backed, Sam Altman-led firm has signed similar deals with Time magazine, the Financial Times, Business Insider owner Axel Springer, France's Le Monde and Spain's Prisa Media over the past few months. The deals give OpenAI access to the large archives of text owned by the publishers, which are necessary both for training large language models like ChatGPT and for finding real-time information. Continue reading...
Firaxis Games needed to move on from Civilization 6 because, its developers explain, it was getting too big for its britches'It's been eight years since Civilization 6 - the most recent in a very long-running strategy game series that sees you take a nation from the prehistoric settlement of their first town through centuries of development until they reach the space age. Since 2016 it has amassed an abundance of expansions, scenario packs, new nations, modes and systems for players to master - but series producer Dennis Shirk at Firaxis Games feels that enough is enough. It was getting too big for its britches," he says. It was time to make something new."It's tough to even get through the whole game," designer Ed Beach says, singling out the key problem that Firaxis aims to solve with the forthcoming Civilization 7. While the early turns of a campaign in Civilization 6 can be swift, when you're only deciding the actions for the population of a single town, the number of systems, units, and entities you must manage explodes after a while," Beach says. From turn one to victory, a single campaign can take more than 20 hours, and if you start falling behind other nations, it can be tempting to restart long before you see the endgame.Civilization 7 will be released on PC, Mac, Xbox, PlayStation 4/5 and Nintendo Switch on 11 February 2025. Continue reading...
Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson allege company misused work to teach chatbot ClaudeThe artificial intelligence company Anthropic has been hit with a class-action lawsuit in California federal court by three authors who say it misused their books and hundreds of thousands of others to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude, which generates texts in response to users' prompts.The complaint, filed on Monday by writers and journalists Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, said that Anthropic used pirated versions of their works and others to teach Claude to respond to human prompts. Continue reading...
My close read of the world's most powerful posting addict turned up surprising results. Plus, a viral press release about AI, and Nvidia is accused of unjust enrichment' Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereI hope I don't have to cover Elon Musk again for a while," I thought last week after I sent TechScape to readers. Then I got a message from the news editor. Can you keep an eye on Elon Musk's Twitter feed this week?"I ended up doing a close-reading of the world's most powerful posting addict, and my brain turned to liquid and trickled out of my ears:His shortest overnight break, on Saturday night, saw him logging off after retweeting a meme comparing London's Metropolitan police force to the Nazi SS, before bounding back online four and a half hours later to retweet a crypto influencer complaining about jail terms for Britons attending protests.AI poses no existential threat to humanity - new study finds.LLMs have a superficial ability to follow instructions and excel at proficiency in language, however, they have no potential to master new skills without explicit instruction. This means they remain inherently controllable, predictable and safe.Large language models, comprising billions of parameters and pre-trained on extensive web-scale corpora, have been claimed to acquire certain capabilities without having been specifically trained on them ... We present a novel theory that explains emergent abilities, taking into account their potential confounding factors, and rigorously substantiate this theory through over 1,000 experiments. Our findings suggest that purported emergent abilities are not truly emergent, but result from a combination of in-context learning, model memory, and linguistic knowledge.
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6Q3HM)
... but impressive, boundary-pushing device is priced so far out of reach for most that it isn't yet the next big thingOn a sweltering summer's day in London, I sat working in the middle of a snow-covered Yosemite national park surrounded by an array of floating apps and browser windows. Later I stared across a windswept Oregon beach reliving a holiday from years ago, and spent an evening sitting in a speeder on Tatooine watching Rogue One in 3D, before retiring for the night with some guided meditation.These are the sorts of immersive experiences that Apple's latest, most expensive gadget offers by blending the real and virtual world, all controlled by your eyes and hands. The Vision Pro may resemble virtual reality headsets such as Meta's Quest series but it is attempting to be so much more. Continue reading...
Boredom is linked to attention - so switching content or skipping forwards and backwards feels more tedious than watching one videoBrowsing videos on TikTok or YouTube can be a hit-and-miss affair, with gems lurking amid mediocre efforts. But researchers have found that switching to another video, or skipping forwards and backwards in the same one, actually makes people more bored.Dr Katy Tam at the University of Toronto Scarborough, the lead author of the research, said boredom was closely linked to attention. Continue reading...
by Philip Oltermann, and Deborah Cole in Berlin on (#6Q28J)
Artist Butterbro accused of walking fine line between parody and discrimination and helping make racial slur mainstreamA song about immigrants whose music, vocals and artwork were entirely generated using artificial intelligence has made the Top 50 most listened to songs in Germany, in what may be a first for a leading music market.Verknallt in einen Talahon is a parody song that weaves modern lyrics - many of them based around racial stereotypes about immigrants - with 60s schlager pop. Continue reading...
There's been an exodus of users from X, propelled by Elon Musk's lurch to the far right, but the alternatives have drawbacks tooBeing on @Threads this week has been a bit like sitting on a half-empty train early in the morning while it slowly starts to fill up with people jumping on with horror stories about how bad the service is on the other line," posted the actor David Harewood on Meta's Twitter/X rival, which from the volume of new joiners asking Hey, how does this work?" appeared, in the UK at least, to be having a post far-right riots bounce last week.To which some might ask, what's taken the Threads newbies so long? To say Elon Musk's tenure as the owner of the social network formerly known as Twitter and now renamed X has been unconscionable - recent highlights include unbanning numerous far-right and extremist accounts and his one-man misinformation campaign about the UK's far-right anti-immigrant riots - would be a criminal understatement. Continue reading...
Judge Alexandre de Moraes had ordered X to block certain accounts as he investigated fake news and hate messagesElon Musk announced on Saturday that the social media platform X would close its operations in Brazil effective immediately" due to what it called censorship orders" from the Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes.X claims Moraes secretly threatened one of its legal representatives in the South American country with arrest if it did not comply with legal orders to take down some content from its platform. Brazil's supreme court, where Moraes has a seat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Continue reading...
by Philip Oltermann European culture editor on (#6Q1TM)
This summer organisers are asking festival-goers to stop filming the event and live in the moment insteadMany partygoers who attended Amsterdam's No Art festival this summer will have had the time of their lives - but you wouldn't be able to tell that from their social media channels.At the gates of the all-day dance event at the Dutch city's Flevopark in July, ticket holders were told to drop their smartphones into provided envelopes, with the strict instruction not to retrieve the addictive electronic device until the end of the night. Continue reading...
Impersonators love tarot readers. Regulators and social media companies don't care. Mystic practitioners fight back with Moonlight, software for witches'Since tarot practitioner Rebecca Scolnick first began reading cards professionally in 2018, she has been impersonated more than 50 times on Instagram. The scams typically follow a similar pattern: someone creates an account that mirrors hers, using a nearly identical username and reposting all of her photos. The scammer then approaches her followers with enticing spiritual messages. Hello beloved," they usually begin. Have you ever had an in-depth psychic reading before?"Scolnick, who has more than 11,000 Instagram followers, regularly receives messages from her fans saying they have paid for a reading from someone who is not actually her. After years of being inundated with fraudsters and impersonators, she and many tarot readers like her, along with other mystical practitioners, are exhausted and frustrated. Continue reading...
Startups around the world are engaging in clinical trials in a sector that could change lives - and be worth more than 15bn by the 2030sOran Knowlson, a British teenager with a severe type of epilepsy called Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, became the first person in the world to trial a new brain implant last October, with phenomenal results - his daytime seizures were reduced by 80%.It's had a huge impact on his life and has prevented him from having the falls and injuring himself that he was having before," says Martin Tisdall, a consultant paediatric neurosurgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh) in London, who implanted the device. His mother was talking about how he's had such a improvement in his quality of life, but also in his cognition: he's more alert and more engaged." Continue reading...
As the civic hacker' who became Taiwan's first transgender cabinet minister, she is used to breaking boundaries. What can the rest of the world learn from her vision of a happy and inclusive web?Audrey Tang didn't have the easiest of starts in life. The Taiwanese hacker turned government minister was told at the age of four that she had a 50-50 chance of dying unless she had a major operation to fix a hole in her heart. Her doctor told her she could drop down dead at any moment if she got overexcited - and she had to wait eight more years for the op. This kind of news might bring out someone's selfish side - if your life is going to be so truncated, live for yourself. Not Tang, though. She was a tiny child with a whopping IQ and a precocious capacity to think. She decided she wanted to learn everything she could and share it with the world. At five, living with her family in Taipei, she started reading prodigiously - mainly classical Chinese literature. Huge tomes. Then she'd recount her own version of the stories to her classmates. I liked storytelling. When I was seven I'd speak to the entire school about stories I'd learned from a book and retell them in a way I found more interesting." Did she realise she was super bright back then? She shakes her head. No, I realised I was super ill."By six Tang was studying advanced mathematics; at eight she started writing code for video games, using pencil and paper because she didn't yet own a computer. And whatever she learned, it was with the intention of sharing her knowledge. Before long it became apparent she was a digital genius. Tang, 43, is roughly the same age as the internet (1 January 1983 is considered its birthday). She grew up alongside the world wide web; it was her playmate. In her teens, Tang believed the internet was there to bring her vision to fruition: to democratise knowledge, to make everything accessible, to make the world a better place. But then she saw it changing, being used to spread falsehoods and generate all-powerful companies that made digital capitalism's founding fathers unfeasibly rich while creating unimagined levels of inequality. Continue reading...
GMB union urges Health and Safety Executive to investigate shocking' figures revealed by the ObserverAmbulances have been called out to Amazon warehouses more than 1,400 times in the past five years, the Observer can reveal. The figures, which were described as shocking by the GMB trade union, raise fresh questions about safety at the American giant's UK workplaces.Amazon centres in Dunfermline and Bristol had the most ambulance callouts in Britain, listing 161 and 125 across the period respectively. Continue reading...
A lockdown bike ride through central London with his son led the photographer to a moment of serene, sunny solitudeCelebrating his 19th birthday with a six-hour bike ride through London's deserted streets was not the plan when photographer Gideon Mendel's son, Jonah, began university.He started the autumn before the first Covid lockdown and was flourishing and enjoying his social life," Mendel says. When lockdown was announced, he came home very abruptly and quite bewildered." Continue reading...
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