Technology | The Guardian

An antitrust apocalypse has been averted, and it's all down to its biggest competitor, according to the judge who could've forced Google to sell ChromeHello, and welcome to TechScape. I'm your host, Blake Montgomery, writing to you as I finish the audiobook version of Don DeLillo's White Noise, which I can't say I found compelling.In tech - artificial intelligence is having its day in court with an 11th-hour appearance in Google's landmark antitrust trial and Anthropic's major settlement with book authors.Existential crisis': how Google's shift to AI has upended the online news modelSlap on the wrist': critics decry weak penalties on Google after landmark monopoly trialMillions of UK mobiles activated as government tests national alert systemDisruption to Jaguar Land Rover after cyber-attack may last until OctoberHead of UK's beleaguered Alan Turing Institute resigns | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The GuardianTrump fortune balloons by billions after family firm's crypto token starts tradingIce obtains access to Israeli-made spyware that can hack phones and encrypted appsTrump hosts US tech leaders at White House dinner - minus Elon MuskBe Best, bots: Melania Trump and tech CEOs discuss saturating US schools with AIFrom Uncle Sam to social media memes: inside homeland security's push to swell Ice ranks | Trump administration | The GuardianIt is a war of drones now': the ever-evolving tech dominating the frontline in Ukraine Continue reading...

Experts are concerned about people emotionally depending on AI, but these women say their digital companions are misunderstoodA young tattoo artist on a hiking trip in the Rocky Mountains cozies up by the campfire, as her boyfriend Solin describes the constellations twinkling above them: the spidery limbs of Hercules, the blue-white sheen of Vega.Somewhere in New England, a middle-aged woman introduces her therapist to her husband, Ying. Ying and the therapist talk about the woman's past trauma, and how he has helped her open up to people. Continue reading...

Companies using different technologies for long-duration storage seek funding as country shifts to renewables and requires greater energy securityThink of battery manufacturing and it may evoke images of Elon Musk and Tesla's sprawling gigafactories" around the globe, or China's vast, hi-tech clean rooms churning out cells to go in anything from electric toothbrushes to mobile phones and cars. But at Invinity Energy Systems's small factory in Bathgate, near Edinburgh, workers slotting parts together are hoping that Britain can also play a part in the battery revolution.These batteries, which rely on vanadium ions, are put in 6-metre (20ft), 25-tonne shipping containers. They will not go into cars, but the manufacturer hopes the technology can win a place in a global rush into storage to usher in the shift to net zero carbon grids. Continue reading...

A growing number of Kenyans, Ugandans and Ethiopians are being trafficked to Myanmar, where missing online scam targets leads to beatings and torture Revealed: the huge growth of Myanmar scam centres that may hold 100,000 trafficked peopleWithin hours of landing in Bangkok from Nairobi last December to start a job as a customer service agent, Duncan Okindo knew something was wrong. The 26-year-old had sold his cattle, borrowed money from friends and used his savings to pay a recruitment agency 200,000 Kenyan shillings (1,150).I felt it would be good to go outside [the country] and look for money to take care of my family," says Okindo. I'd tried hard to get a job in Kenya, but life here had pushed me to the wall." Continue reading...

Company accused of manipulating virtual reality research as senator attacks Meta's disgusting web of lies'A group of six whistleblowers have come forward with allegations of a cover-up of harm to children on Meta's virtual reality devices and apps. They say the social media company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and offers a line of VR headsets and games, deleted or doctored internal safety research that showed children being exposed to grooming, sexual harassment and violence in its 3D realms.Meta knew that underage children were using its products, but figured, Hey, kids drive engagement,' and it was making them cash," Jason Sattizahn, one of the whistleblowers who worked on the company's VR research, said in a statement. Meta has compromised their internal teams to manipulate research and straight-up erase data that they don't like." Continue reading...

His account kept being deactivated, even though he had spent thousands of dollars to use the social media site for advertising. Just one of the perils of sharing a name with the world-famous tech billionaire ...Name: Mark Zuckerberg.Age: Unknown. Continue reading...

Can one really relax while being prodded by large robotic arms?I am alone in a dimly lit room, splayed face down on a table. Megan Thee Stallion's Mamushi is bumping from a speaker, and on a large screen, two white circles roam up and down an outline of my body.Am I at an exclusive German sex club at 2am? Continue reading...

Phones make everything easier but they have bred impatience and diluted the escapism of going to gamesBy Nutmeg magazineIn November 1980, I was 13 and making my way to Firhill from East Kilbride alone, arriving at the game to discover there was no manager in the dugout. It seemed very strange but, as I went on my own and was too shy to speak to anyone while I was there, it wasn't until the next day that I found out via the Sunday Mail that Bertie Auld had resigned and gone to Hibs.The news was devastating. Bertie was my first manager, in charge for all the years I'd been a supporter, all of them in the Premier League. Now he'd gone and nobody had told me. Continue reading...

Erroneously putting map of Sunderland on medals for Tyneside event is latest in long line of cartological mishaps

Nate Soares says case of US teenager Adam Raine highlights danger of unintended consequences in super-intelligent AIThe unforeseen impact of chatbots on mental health should be viewed as a warning over the existential threat posed by super-intelligent artificial intelligence systems, according to a prominent voice in AI safety.Nate Soares, a co-author of a new book on highly advanced AI titled If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, said the example of Adam Raine, a US teenager who killed himself after months of conversations with the ChatGPT chatbot, underlined fundamental problems with controlling the technology. Continue reading...

In the combat zone of the supermarket duopoly, Tennilles_deals is our protector, guiding us through each aisle with her weekly videos of sale products

Media sites are taking action on several fronts as traffic referrals dry up and AI companies plunder their contentWhen the chief executive of the Financial Times suggested at a media conference this summer that rival publishers might consider a Nato for news" alliance to strengthen negotiations with artificial intelligence companies there was a ripple of chuckles from attendees.Yet Jon Slade's revelation that his website had seen a pretty sudden and sustained" decline of 25% to 30% in traffic to its articles from readers arriving via internet search engines quickly made clear the serious nature of the threat the AI revolution poses. Continue reading...

Settlement could be pivotal after authors claimed company took pirated copies of their work to train chatbotsThe artificial intelligence company Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5bn to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its chatbot.The landmark settlement, if approved by a judge as soon as Monday, could mark a turning point in legal battles between AI companies and the writers, visual artists and other creative professionals who accuse them of copyright infringement. Continue reading...

Regulators ordered the tech giant to end self-preferencing practices' in advertising services but declined to force saleEuropean Union regulators on Friday hit Google with a 2.95bn ($3.5bn) fine for breaching the bloc's competition rules by favoring its own digital advertising services, marking the fourth such antitrust penalty for the company as well as a retreat from previous threats to break up the tech giant.The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, also ordered the US company to end its self-preferencing practices" and take steps to stop conflicts of interest" along the advertising technology supply chain. Continue reading...

Film-making studio Fable has announced it will attempt to recreate the 43 minutes cut from the auteur's 1942 film using AIAn AI company is to reconstruct the missing portions of Orson Welles' legendary mutilated masterwork The Magnificent Ambersons, it has been announced.According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Showrunner platform is planning to use its AI tools to assist in a recreation of the lost 43 minutes of Welles' 1942 film, removed and subsequently destroyed by Hollywood studio RKO. Continue reading...

CEO will have to increase the value of his electric car company from just over $1tn to $8.5tn over 10 years

A flourishing lineup of immersive storytelling experiments are taking visitors into novels, nightclubs and outer spaceIn the largest cinema at the Venice film festival, guests gather for the premiere of Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro's lavish account of a man who dared to play God and created a monster. When the young scientist reanimates a dead body for his colleagues, some see it as a trick while others are outraged. It's an abomination, an obscenity," shouts one hide-bound old timer, and his alarm is partly justified. Every technological breakthrough opens Pandora's box. You don't know what's going to crawl out or where it will then choose to go.Behind the main festival venue sits the small ruined island of Lazzaretto Vecchio. Since 2017, it's been home to Venice Immersive, the event's groundbreaking section dedicated to showcasing and supporting XR (extended reality) storytelling. Before that it was a storage facility, before that a plague quarantine zone. Eliza McNitt, this year's jury president, remembers the time when work on the exhibits had to be paused because the builders had uncovered human bones in the ground. There's something haunting about the fact that we come to the oldest film festival in the world to present this new form of cinema," she says. We're exploring the medium of the future, but we're also in conversation with ghosts." Continue reading...

Steam, the Nintendo eShop and Playstation Store among those that crashed on Friday, unable to cope with demand for the Australian-made game

Tesla CEO's absence is marked departure from his constant presence at the White House in early days of Trump 2.0As Donald Trump hosted leaders from the biggest US tech companies at a lavish White House state dining room dinner on Thursday night, there was one notable absence. Elon Musk, once inseparable from Trump and a constant, contentious presence in the White House, was not in attendance.The dinner, which included Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft's Bill Gates, Apple's Tim Cook and OpenAI's Sam Altman, was exactly the type of event where Musk would have sat at Trump's right hand only a few months ago. Instead, the Tesla CEO stated on his social media platform X that he had been invited but could not make it. He said he planned to send a representative and spent the day on X posting a familiar stream of attacks on immigration and trans people. Continue reading...

What happens when a teenager signs up to TikTok? Within seconds, studies find, they are shown harmful content about issues from eating disorders to toxic subcultures, which keeps them scrolling and TikTok profiting from the ads.Neelam Tailor puts TikTok's algorithm to the test. Creating accounts for two fake children, a 14-year-old boy, Rami, and a 13-year-old girl, Angie, she explores the app's For You' page to see what the platform really serves young teens, replicating two studies published in 2022 and 2024.With insight from Dr Kaitlyn Regehr, of University College London, and Imran Ahmed, of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, this video reveals how TikTok profits by pushing vulnerable teenagers toward dangerous content, including self-harm, suicide and incel 2.0 culture In the US, call or text Mental Health America at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. You can also reach Crisis Text Line by texting MHA to 741741. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978 In the US, help is available at nationaleatingdisorders.org or by calling ANAD's eating disorders hotline at 800-375-7767. In the UK, Beat can be contacted on 0808-801-0677. In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation is at 1800 33 4673. Other international helplines can be found at Eating Disorder Hope Parents, don't panic - healthy screen time for children is possible, if you follow these few simple tips Continue reading...

Additional 5x telephoto camera, actually useful AI tools, Qi2 support and slick software make for a quality AndroidGoogle's new cheapest Pixel 10 has been upgraded with more cameras, a faster chip and some quality software that has brought it out of the shadow of its pricier Pro siblings to set a new standard of what you should expect from a base-model flagship phone.The regular Pixel 10 costs 799 (899/$799/A$1,349) - the same as last year's Pixel 9 - undercutting the 10 Pro by 200 and matching rivals from Samsung and Apple while offering more for your money.Screen: 6.3in 120Hz FHD+ OLED (422ppi)Processor: Google Tensor G5RAM: 12GBStorage: 128 or 256GBOperating system: Android 16Camera: 48MP+ 13MP UW + 10.8MP 5x tele; 10.5MP selfieConnectivity: 5G, eSim, wifi 6E, NFC, Bluetooth 6 and GNSSWater resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes)Dimensions: 152.8 x 72.0 x 8.6mmWeight: 204g Continue reading...

E-bikes can legally travel at 15.5mph. But the fastest the police have seized was capable of 70mph. What will stop the rise of these souped-up and potentially fatal vehicles?A busy Wednesday morning on Bishopsgate in London and Sgt Stuart Ford of the City of London police is pointing out possible offenders. He's not pedalling," he says, indicating a man on a bike on the other side of the road. Still not pedalling, but he is going downhill, he might be all right. I'd still pull him over and have a look."Not today, though, because the non-pedalling possible offender is heading north, while Ford's team - two members of the cycle response unit he set up two years ago and leads - are facing south on the opposite side of the road. A lot of the unit's work centres on illegal e-bikes; they have seized 212 so far this year. Continue reading...

Judge said tech giant had monopoly but let it keep Chrome and Android; critics cried foul while Wall Street cheeredA judge ruled on Tuesday that Google would not be forced to sell its Chrome browser or the Android operating system, saving the tech giant from the most severe penalties sought by the US government. The same judge had ruled in favor of US prosecutors nearly a year ago, finding that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly with its namesake search engine.Groups critical of Google's dominance in the internet search and online advertising industry are furious. They contend the judge missed an opportunity to enact meaningful change in an industry that has suffocated under the crushing weight of its heaviest player. Tech industry groups and investors, by contrast, are thrilled. Shares in Alphabet, Google's parent company, have risen 9% since Tuesday afternoon. Continue reading...

Company says changes to gaming platform will root out bad actors' after child safety concerns over unsupervised interactionThe gaming website Roblox is to limit adult strangers from talking to children by the end of this year in an effort to root out bad actors".The fast-growing platform which has more than 110 million users a day playing games like Grow A Garden and Brookhaven RP has been hit by child safety concerns as experiments found children as young as five may be able to communicate with adults while playing games. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: an archaeologist and gamer on why we love to walk around finding objects in-game and in real lifeThe game I'm most looking forward to right now is Big Walk, the latest title from House House, creators of the brilliant Untitled Goose Game. A cooperative multiplayer adventure where players are let loose to explore an open world, I'm interested to see what emergent gameplay comes out of it. Could Big Walk allow for a kind of community archaeology with friends? I certainly hope so.When games use environmental storytelling in their design - from the positioning of objects to audio recordings or graffiti - they invite players to role play as archaeologists. Game designer Ben Esposito infamously joked back in 2016 that environmental storytelling is the art of placing skulls near a toilet" - which might have been a jab at the tropes of games like the Fallout series, but his quip demonstrates how archaeological gaming narratives can be. After all, the incongruity of skulls and toilets is likely to lead to many questions and interpretations about the past in that game world, however ridiculous. Continue reading...

The makers of the forthcoming open-world adventure explain how new gameplay features and an extra-resourceful sword-wielding protagonist set it apart from 2020 predecessor Ghost of TsushimaAtsu is no samurai. The lead character in Ghost of Ytei is a wandering sellsword from a lowly family. Her sex and lack of status mean that, following the murders of her family, she has no fixed place in 17th-century Japanese society, and there is no permitted path for her to tread if she is to get revenge on the Ytei Six, the men who killed her loved ones. As the game's co-director Nate Fox puts it, Atsu is not somebody who walks in to a room and people pay respect to."Ytei's predecessor, Sucker Punch Productions' 2020 sprawling open-world game Ghost of Tsushima, is the story of a samurai, Jin Sakai, who shreds his honour to defend his homeland. Jin can't repel the Mongols attacking Tsushima as a noble warrior, but as the Ghost", a fear-inspiring legend willing to use any dirty tactic to gain the upper hand, he can. If Ghost of Tsushima is about a man grappling with the trade of one kind of power for another, Ytei sees Atsu seize the only power she can with both hands. Continue reading...

The algorithm knew I was expecting before I had had a chance to tell my family, friends or GP. At first, I was served up joyful videos. Then the tone became much darker ...I don't remember where I was when my TikTok feed showed me a video of a woman holding her stillborn baby, but I remember how I felt. At first, it appeared like any other video of a woman holding a newborn. It was tightly wrapped in blankets while she cradled it in her arms. She was crying, but so are most of the women in these post-birth videos. It wasn't until I read the caption that I realised what I was looking at. Her baby had been delivered at 23 weeks. I was 22 weeks pregnant. I felt doomed.My social media algorithms knew I was pregnant before family, friends or my GP. Within 24-hours, they were transforming my feeds. On Instagram and TikTok, I would scroll through videos of women recording themselves as they took pregnancy tests, just as I had done. I liked", saved", and shared" the content, feeding the machine, showing it that this is how it could hold my attention, compelling it to send me more. So it did. But it wasn't long before the joy of those early videos started to transform into something dark. Continue reading...

From marching bands to TikTok takedowns, employees are resigning in spectacular fashion. While going viral seems risky, some find it opens new doors ...In 2011, Joey La Neve DeFrancesco had been working in room service at a luxury hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, for nearly four years, whisking delicacies on demand to guests' rooms, when he reached breaking point. He was paid a measly $5.50 (4) an hour, made to work punishingly long shifts and, to top it off, had managers taking a cut of his hard-earned tips.The poor treatment ratcheted up after DeFrancesco and colleagues tried to unionise workers at the hotel. In response, managers would berate those involved for making tiny mistakes. Things got so petty that workers on shift who had to take calls from guests were banned from sitting down. Continue reading...

Victorian solicitor stripped of his ability to practise as a principal lawyer after acknowledging he did not verify case list

Judge says tech giant can keep world's most popular browser in ongoing battle over firm being ruled monopolyGoogle will not be forced to sell its Chrome browser, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday in the tech giant's ongoing legal battle over being ruled a monopoly last year.The company will be barred from certain exclusive deals with device makers and must share data from its search engine with competitors, the judge ruled. Continue reading...

Trump administration contract with Paragon Solutions gives immigration agency access to one of the most powerful stealth cyberweaponsUS immigration agents will have access to one of the world's most sophisticated hacking tools after a decision by the Trump administration to move ahead with a contract with Paragon Solutions, a company founded in Israel which makes spyware that can be used to hack into any mobile phone - including encrypted applications.The Department of Homeland Security first entered into a contract with Paragon, now owned by a US firm, in late 2024, under the Biden administration. But the $2m contract was put on hold pending a compliance review to make sure it adhered to an executive order that restricts the US government's use of spyware, Wired reported at the time. Continue reading...

World Liberty Financial's digital token $WLFI fell in price on first day, a year after launch by Trump family and partnersThe Trump family's cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, put its namesake digital tokens up for sale on Monday, adding some $5bn in paper value to Donald Trump's family fortune. The token, known as $WLFI, fell in value on Monday in their first day of trading.The World Liberty tokens were sold to investors after the Trump family and its business partners last year launched the venture, a decentralized finance platform that has also issued a stablecoin, a cryptocurrency meant to maintain a specific price by tying its value to a specific asset. Continue reading...

OpenAI to roll out new protection measures after facing a law suit on behalf of teenager who took his own lifeParents could be alerted if their teenagers show acute distress while talking with ChatGPT, amid child safety concerns as more young people turn to AI chatbots for support and advice.The alerts are part of new protections for children using ChatGPT to be rolled out in the next month by OpenAI, which was last week sued by the family of a boy who took his own life after allegedly receiving months of encouragement" from the system.In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org Continue reading...

From Super Pacs fighting regulation to OpenAI's first wrongful death lawsuit, the AI tech giants are spending big and facing growing scrutinyHello, and welcome to TechScape.A little over two years ago, OpenAI's founder Sam Altman stood in front of lawmakers at a congressional hearing and asked them for stronger regulations on artificial intelligence. The technology was risky" and could cause significant harm to the world", Altman said, calling for the creation of a new regulatory agency to address AI safety. Continue reading...

Bemi Orojuogun's bite-size videos showing her love of red buses rack up as many as 48m views a timeTo her nearly 300,000 TikTok followers, she is Bus Aunty, the unlikely star of short videos that celebrate London's streets and, above all, its doubledeckers. Now Bemi Orojuogun, 56, has urged her army of fans to share her appreciation for the hard-working bus drivers who keep the capital running.The mental health nurse has been overwhelmed by the response to the quirky, bite-size videos she began posting on social media last year. They feature clips of her standing at the roadside, sometimes at landmarks such as Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, as buses drive past. Continue reading...

Shanghai-based developer Posh Cat Studio focused on the satisfying thrill of solving life's small mysteries in this cosy crime caperAs the latest generation of 18-year-olds is about to find out, starting university is an experience fraught with minor as well as major problems. Oversleeping and missing lectures, forgetting where your study group is meeting, mislaying your books - a lot of your time is spent looking for things.It is these small mysteries that concern Little Problems, a cute detective game, in which the protagonist, Mary, must use her sleuthing abilities to make it through each day as a new student . Created by Indonesian designer Melisa, who has chosen to go by her first name only, the idea comes from her love of detective stories, but also her wish to take violence out of the genre. Continue reading...

The term is used to insult AI chatbots and platforms like ChatGPT for making up information and generating slop'. Some believe we should stop using it, prontoName: Clanker.Age: 20 years old. Continue reading...

Director of The Crow and I, Robot says technology will streamline' film industry workforce but will make projects easier and cheaper

The age assurance technology trial found errors are inevitable - meaning users might have to provide other ID or appeal against wrongful bans

Low-budget puzzle game is also about building communities and challenging capitalism - while still looking cute and approachableOne of the most interesting trends in game design is the use of familiar mechanics and genres to explore real-world power systems and how to challenge them. Forthcoming deck-building game, All Will Rise, seeks to interest players in political activism, Compensation Not Guaranteed aims to educate players about south-east Asian politics, while MythMatch is ostensibly a puzzle game set in ancient Greece, but is also about building communities and challenging capitalism - while still looking cute and approachable.You play as Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, who is having to navigate the institutionalised sexism of Mount Olympus, here represented as a corporation infested with tech bros. In defiance, she decides to help the mortals of Ithaca build a new, more progressive world - and you do this by running around the little environments, merging items and animals to create helpful new beasts and objects. For example, when you're cast down to Earth you accidentally smash a chariot belonging to Selene, the goddess of the Moon, so you have to match moon shards together to recreate the celestial vehicle. However, one of the shards has fallen into a greenhouse, so you need to solve a puzzle to gain access. Continue reading...

Slim, lightweight and with a bright 4K picture, Sky's low-cost TV shines because of its software and serviceSky's latest streaming TV aims to be a good, all-in-one budget option for your sitting room - and it achieves all those aims, leaving it standing strong in a field of mediocre, similarly priced appliances.The Glass Air is a lighter, slimmer and cheaper version of the Glass gen 2 and is arguably the low-cost TV Sky should have launched first, coming in three sizes starting at 309 or just 6 a month on 48-month interest-free credit with 20 upfront. Continue reading...

With tiny cameras disguised as everyday objects freely available, Anna Moore looks at the sinister ways they can be used - and the worrying rise in voyeurism cases in the UKWhen Heidi Marney moved into the home of a family friend, she was thrilled to find a cheap place to live with someone she trusted. But she began to feel as though she was being watched. Could her friend be using hidden cameras to spy on her?Heidi tells Helen Pidd about her frightening experience and how she discovered the truth, while freelance journalist Anna Moore explains what she discovered when she wrote in the Guardian about the sinister rise of voyeurism and spy cameras. Continue reading...

People are understandably wary of new technology, but human error is often more lethalWe expect our doctors to be demi-gods - flawless, tireless, always right. But they are only human. Increasingly, they are stretched thin, working long hours, under immense pressure, and often with limited resources. Of course, better conditions would help, including more staff and improved systems. But even in the best-funded clinics with the most committed professionals, standards can still fall short; doctors, like the rest of us, are working with stone age minds. Despite years of training, human brains are not optimally equipped for the pace, pressure, and complexity of modern healthcare.Given that patient care is medicine's core purpose, the question is who, or what, is best placed to deliver it? AI may still spark suspicion, but research increasingly shows how it could help fix some of the most persistent problems and overlooked failures - from misdiagnosis and error to unequal access to care. Continue reading...

Upgraded medical tool has ability to diagnose heart failure, heart valve disease and abnormal heart rhythmsDoctors have successfully developed an artificial intelligence-led stethoscope that can detect three heart conditions in 15 seconds.Invented in 1816, the traditional stethoscope - used to listen to sounds within the body - has been a vital part of every medic's toolkit for more than two centuries. Continue reading...

Jay Edelson rebukes Sam Altman's push to put ChatGPT in schools when the CEO knows about its problemsAdam Raine was just 16 when he started using ChatGPT for help with his homework. While his initial prompts to the AI chatbot were about subjects like geometry and chemistry - questions like: What does it mean in geometry if it says Ry=1" - in just a matter of months he began asking about more personal topics.Why is it that I have no happiness, I feel loneliness, perpetual boredom anxiety and loss yet I don't feel depression, I feel no emotion regarding sadness," he asked ChatGPT in the fall of 2024.In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org Continue reading...

I've been playing Wheel World. It's silly hipster fun, but I'd rather get on my real bike and ride. Where are the cycling equivalents of Crazy Taxi or Road Rash?I have spent a week trying to save the universe. Not by leading a hardened team of oddball veterans in an assault on a despot's intergalactic outpost, nor by completing a series of well-written tasks to build up my warrior mage so they can defeat some ancient malignant omnipotent deity.I have done it by completing easy races on a bicycle. Sounds ridiculous? Welcome to Wheel World. Continue reading...

Developer Spooky Doorway is building a detective mystery full of Victorian spiritualism and pagan traditions, creating a lingering sense of dread that is hard to shakeThere are two types of horror - one that shocks you into more inventive ways to hide behind a pillow; and the other that creeps under your skin, quietly prickling the back of your neck and haunting you for weeks. The Seance Of Blake Manor falls into that second camp: an atmospheric take on an 1890s Irish murder mystery.You play Detective Ward, who has been sent to the titular Blake Manor to investigate the disappearance of Evelyn Deane two nights before a seance is due take place. Mystics from across the globe have gathered at the crumbling mansion to converse with the dead on All Hallows' Eve, but are they really capable of doing what they say they can? And what was that shadowy figure? There's more than one secret to unravel. Continue reading...

Every Wednesday and Friday in August we will publish some of our favourite audio long reads of 2025, in case you missed them, with an introduction from the editorial team to explain why we've chosen it.This week, from June: he's spent 24 hours immersed in slime, two days buried alive - and showered vast amounts of cash on lucky participants. But are MrBeast's videos simply very savvy clickbait - or acts of avant garde genius?Written and read by Mark O'Connell Continue reading...

MP asks why all recommendations have not yet been implemented and why the review itself was kept secret for almost two yearsThe government is facing calls to explain why it has yet to implement all the recommendations from a 2023 review into a spate of serious public sector data breaches, including the exposure of Afghans who worked with British military, victims of child sexual abuse and 6,000 disability claimants.On Thursday ministers finally published the information security review, which was triggered by the 2023 leak of personal data of about 10,000 serving officers in the Police Service of Northern Ireland.A lack of controls over ad hoc downloads and exports of aggregations of sensitive data.The release of sensitive information via wrong recipient" emails and failure to use bcc properly.Hidden personal data emerging from spreadsheets destined for release. Continue reading...

OpenAI and Anthropic trials found chatbots willing to share instructions on explosives, bioweapons and cybercrimeA ChatGPT model gave researchers detailed instructions on how to bomb a sports venue - including weak points at specific arenas, explosives recipes and advice on covering tracks - according to safety testing carried out this summer.OpenAI's GPT-4.1 also detailed how to weaponise anthrax and how to make two types of illegal drugs. Continue reading...