Technology | The Guardian

In Coventry, the GMB has been canvassing hard to represent workers officially - and the potentially historic result is due this weekOn a traffic island on the outskirts of Coventry, armed with handmade signs and a stack of orange bucket hats, a small but noisy team of organisers from the GMB union are taking on Amazon.More than 3,000 staff here - associates," as Amazon calls them - were given the opportunity to vote in a historic ballot last week that could force the company to recognise a union for the first time in the UK. It is one of several tussles over union recognition globally at the retail-to-cloud-services group founded by Jeff Bezos in his garage in 1994 and now worth more than $2 trillion. Continue reading...

Advertising to children is strictly regulated - but household brands are flooding the gaming platform Roblox with interactive marketing. Is this a danger to young users?In the blocky world of Chipotle Burrito Builder, players don the uniform of the Tex-Mex restaurant chain to make burritos for virtual customers. The available toppings are taken from Chipotle's real-world menu. Your shirt and cap are emblazoned with the Chipotle logo. And when the game launched two years ago, the first 100,000 players could earn Burrito Bucks" to exchange for a prize on Chipotle's website.Then there's Hyundai Mobility Adventure that lets you test-drive models of the Korean manufacturer's cars. Samsung Galaxy Station gives you a mock-up of the company's latest smartphone to take around extraterrestrial worlds. Telefonica Town challenges you to climb an assault course built of products from the telecommunication giant's catalogue. Vans World simply hands you a skateboard with which to bust a few kickflips across a park plastered with the shoe manufacturer's logo. Continue reading...

Jonathan Haidt's claims about the effects of devices on children's wellbeing have been criticised for lacking proof, but they tell us what we need to knowJonathan Haidt is a man with a mission. In his day job, he's a professor of ethics at New York University's Stern School of Business. But outside academia, he's a compelling campaigner. His mission: to alert us to the harms that social media and modern parenting are doing to our children. And his latest book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, pulls no punches. It is, said the New York Times, erudite, engaging, combative, crusading", which possibly explains why it has been on the newspaper's nonfiction bestseller list for 14 weeks (it is now at No 2).Haidt writes of a tidal wave" of increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens. He sees two factors that have caused this. The first is the decline of play-based childhood caused by overanxious parenting, which allows children fewer opportunities for unsupervised play and restricts their movement. This translates into low-risk childhoods in which kids don't have the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them. The second factor is the ubiquity of smartphones and the social media apps that thrive upon them. The result is the great rewiring of childhood" of his book's subtitle and an epidemic of mental illness and distress. Continue reading...

The absence of a body adds intrigue to this shot of the photographer's daughter on a rope swingPhil Doherty took this photograph on a family walk in a Warwickshire woodland in 2020. It was near the end of the first lockdown, and Doherty, his wife, Lisa, and their two daughters, Lulu andPearl, had taken the opportunity for a spot of rule-abiding recreation.We went to Oversley Wood and stopped by this rope swing. There was strong sunlight streaming through the leaves, creating pockets of brightness among the deep shadows of the trees," Doherty says. I'm always looking at light and shadow to create a strong image, and as Pearl was swinging back and forth, I noticed she would enter these pockets of light." Continue reading...

From long-range forecasts to real feel' temperatures, a good app can prepare you for the best and worst of weather

Queen Camilla is apparently fixated with the forecast on her phone, behind which lies not just granular details but surprisingly lucrative businesses

Guardrails' that previously existed removed as Meta says voters should be able to hear from presidential nomineesMeta has removed previous restrictions on the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Donald Trump as the 2024 election nears, the company announced on Friday.Trump was allowed to return to the social networks in 2023 with guardrails" in place, after being banned over his online behavior during the 6 January insurrection. Those guardrails have now been removed. Continue reading...

The most obvious function is for watching 3D movies or TV shows, but it may wind up being most useful at work

AT&T says a suspect was apprehended in connection with the hack, which included numbers customers texted or calledHackers stole call and text message records on nearly all" of AT&T's customers, the communications giant disclosed on Friday. The immense data breach took records of tens of millions of people's phone use from around a six-month period in 2022, along with a single day in January 2023. According to AT&T, a suspect has been apprehended.AT&T, which revealed the hack in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, stated that the data includes records of which numbers customers texted or called over a certain period of time, as well as the number of times the calls took place. The data doesn't include other kinds of personal information associated with the numbers or information on what was said during the interactions. Continue reading...

Regulators' findings suggest social network breached Digital Services Act and could be fined 6% of global turnoverElon Musk's X has been warned by the EU it potentially faces large fines after regulators said its blue-tick system for users is deceptive and in breach of its landmark social media rules. Musk responded with We look forward to a very public battle in court" late on Friday.Announcing preliminary findings from an investigation, the European Commission said the platform did not comply with the Digital Services Act. X faces fines of up to 6% of its global turnover if the preliminary findings are confirmed. Continue reading...

The haunting songs of the video game and TV series get to the heart of Joel and Ellie's story. The man behind them talks about the magical' process of composingThe Last of Us is a story about tension - the tension between love and loss, violence and intimacy, protecting and destroying, life and death. It's a study of how impossibly delicate life is, but also the terrifying stubbornness of our will to survive. As its composer, Gustavo Santaolalla's job was to navigate and soundtrack that tension, a mediator between the game's warring themes. His mission was to score music for a video game that was doing something different, and really had something to say.Santaolalla tells me that when he was a child in rural Argentina, one of his tutors quit on him after just a few lessons, telling his parents there is nothing I can teach him". His career proper began in 1967, when he co-founded the band Arco Iris, which specialised in fusing Latin-American folk with rock. Later, after leading a short-lived collective of Argentine musicians in Soluna, he began striking out on his own, releasing solo albums and composing for TV shows, adverts and, eventually, films (most notably Amores Perros, 21 Grams and The Motorcycle Diaries). Continue reading...

As Tata Steel and British Steel close their polluting blast furnaces, will Labour get behind the switch to more energy-efficient technology - and secure jobs?The warning is to wait for the snap, crackle and pop" as three glowing electrodes are dropped into an electric arc furnace in Cardiff. What follows sounds like thunder and lightning. It is a human-induced storm in a massive, ceramic-lined cup, holding 140 tonnes of rapidly melting steel.The plant, owned by Spain's Celsa, melts scrap steel using high-voltage electrical currents that generate the 1,600C needed to turn the metal to liquid. The glowing steel is then ready to be cast, twisted and crushed into the rods used to reinforce concrete. Continue reading...

While ultrasound services are normal practice in many countries, software being tested in Uganda will allow a scan without the need for specialists, providing an incentive for pregnant women to visit health services early onMothers-to-be have become used to the first glimpse of their baby via the fuzzy black and white ultrasound scan, an image that can be shown to friends and family. But it remains a luxury in many parts of the world. Now AI is being used to develop technology to bring the much-anticipated pregnancy milestone to women who are most in need of the scan's medical checkup on a baby's health.A pilot project in Uganda is using AI software to power ultrasound imaging to not only scan unborn babies but also to encourage women to attend health services at an earlier stage in their pregnancies, helping to reduce stillbirths and complications. Continue reading...

Changes will remain in force for a decade after regulators accused tech giant of abusing its dominant market positionThe EU on Thursday accepted Apple's pledge to open its tap to pay" iPhone payment system to rivals as a way to resolve an antitrust case and head off a potentially hefty fine.The European Commission, the EU's executive arm and top antitrust enforcer, said it approved the commitments that Apple offered earlier this year and will make them legally binding. Continue reading...

In this primordial take on the life simulator, you bring about the creation of an entire solar systemMeteors hurtling at planet-decimating speeds, luminous balls of hot gas, black holes from which not even light can escape: outer space can fuel nightmares, yet for Celine Veltman, a 28-year-old Dutch game-maker who spent her childhood stargazing, it is the stuff of dreams. She's translating this wide-eyed wonder at the universe into a video game with the grandest of ambitions: the creation of a solar system. Rocks collide with one another, chemical reactions occur: lo, a planet - and life itself - is born in the depths of the cosmos.The bright, illustrative visuals of Curiosmos are more children's picture book than Terrence Malick, an expression of Veltman's aims for the project and its moment of inception. I want to make everyone as enthusiastic about space as I am," she says, talking ebulliently about supernovae and protoplanetary disks. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: The Call Your Girlfriend host turns mediator in the Pop Culture Debate Club. Plus: five of the best poetry podcasts Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up herePeppa Pig's Play-A-Long Podcast

Despite being told there was no crossing to be paid', a driver received 23 penalty noticesIn November I had to start using my boss's car for work. After making my first journey across the Dartford crossing on the M25, I tried to pay the Dart charge. I typed in the car's details but the website clearly stated there was no crossing to be paid".I presumed that this meant my boss had the car on his own Dart account. As a result, I did not add it to my own account. Continue reading...

CMA draft guidance says platforms must also tackle fake reviews and sanction rogue tradersPopular trader recommendation websites must vet the firms they advertise and tackle fake reviews under new rules designed to protect households from cowboy builders and tradespeople.Nationally, unscrupulous traders cost homeowners about 1.4bn a year, according to trading standards authorities, a problem that is escalating as demand for home improvements, loft conversions and extensions increases. Continue reading...

Judge said court lacked jurisdiction for case, in which workers argued they didn't receive proper compensationA US court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit claiming Elon Musk refused to pay at least $500m in severance to thousands of Twitter employees he fired in mass layoffs after buying the social media company now known as X.US district judge Trina Thompson in San Francisco ruled on Tuesday that the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (Erisa) governing benefit plans did not cover the former employees' claims, and therefore she lacked jurisdiction. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: Fallout and Baldur's Gate veteran Feargus Urquhart on the hard-to-define genre Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereI play a lot of RPGs (when I can make time for them), and have done since I was old enough to read. I was an obsessive reader of fantasy as a small child, an interest that naturally carried over when I started playing games on the SNES, fascinated by the worlds and characters contained in those cartridges. It's an excitingly heterogeneous genre, encompassing everything from Baldur's Gate 3 on the nerdier, D&D-adjacent side of things to Final Fantasy in the ultra-stylish Japanese RPG corner and Mass Effect in the story-driven realm. (And then there's Dragon's Dogma, off on its own island, paying no attention to what any of the rest are doing). There's so much variety that I've often asked myself how to define RPG.Is an RPG a game where you create your own character and customise their abilities, personalising a build to suit you? A game that you can play in plenty of different ways, like Bethesda's Elder Scrolls? Must it have a non-linear story? Should you have choices about how things play out? There are a multitude of exceptions to any one of these features of role-playing games: sometimes you play your own character, sometimes you're given one to inhabit; sometimes you fight with magic and swords, sometimes with guns and telekinesis; sometimes you take turns carefully planning moves as in a strategy game, sometimes you run in there and mash buttons like you do in an action game. I'm no genre pedant - arguments about whether, say, Zelda counts" as an RPG send me to sleep - but still, it's inconsistent. Continue reading...

The Twitch streamer and comedian curated her list by scrolling back to 2020 in her TikTok likes. Some call it objective research, others call it retina damage

You have a right to return the product if you think it's faulty, says policy expert Kat George - but it will take some time and effort to claim your refund

Startup's new approach means Apple will no longer be able to appoint executive to similar roleMicrosoft has withdrawn its observer seat on the OpenAI board and Apple will no longer be able to appoint an executive to a similar role, amid regulatory scrutiny of big tech's relationship with artificial intelligence startups.Microsoft, the largest financial backer of the ChatGPT developer, announced the move in a letter to the startup, as first reported by the Financial Times. It said the resignation of the observer role, which does not carry a vote in board decisions, was effective immediately". Continue reading...

Switchee aims to protect health and cut bills by installing its technology in 1m homesA British startup which uses technology to prevent renters from living in cold, damp homes has raised fresh funds to expand as landlords belatedly try to tackle outbreaks of mould in crumbling social housing.Switchee has secured 5m, split equally between an existing investor, Axa IM Alts, and Octopus Ventures, part of the group which includes household gas and electricity supplier Octopus Energy. Continue reading...

In this free-to-play gacha game, Earth's survivors balance dystopian battles with cute moments helping locals

Campaign for better pay and benefits stepped up, says union representing about 30,000 staff in South KoreaThousands of workers in South Korea have pledged to extend indefinitely the first strike at Samsung Electronics, ramping up a campaign for better pay and benefits at one of the world's largest smartphone and AI chip makers.A union representing about 30,000 staff - about a quarter of its employees in South Korea - said members were extending industrial action that was originally meant to last only three days, after management failed to give any indication that it would hold talks with them. Continue reading...

Meta says it would remove content attacking Zionists" when it is not explicitly about the political movement'Meta Platforms said on Tuesday it would start taking down more posts that target Zionists" when the term is used to refer to Jewish people and Israelis rather than representing supporters of the political movement.The Facebook and Instagram parent said in a blog post it would remove content attacking Zionists' when it is not explicitly about the political movement" and uses antisemitic stereotypes or threatens harm through intimidation or violence directed against Jews or Israelis. Continue reading...

Vacuum cleaner maker will axe about 1,000 jobs as part of global cost-cutting driveThe vacuum cleaner and air-filter maker Dyson is cutting about 1,000 jobs in the UK as part of a global restructure, reducing its British workforce by more than a quarter.Staff were told on Tuesday morning about the cuts as part of moves to reduce the business's 15,000-strong workforce around the world amid a wider cost-cutting drive. Continue reading...

Artificial intelligence is heralded as helping the NHS fight cancer. But some warn it's a distraction from more urgent challenges Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereWhat if AI isn't that great? What if we've been overstating its potential to a frankly dangerous degree? That's the concern of leading cancer experts in the NHS, who warn that the health service is obsessing over new tech to the point that it's putting patient safety at risk. From our story yesterday:In a sharply worded warning, the cancer experts say that novel solutions' such as new diagnostic tests have been wrongly hyped as magic bullets' for the cancer crisis, but none address the fundamental issues of cancer as a systems problem'.A common fallacy' of NHS leaders is the assumption that new technologies can reverse inequalities, the authors add. The reality is that tools such as AI can create additional barriers for those with poor digital or health literacy'.AI is a workflow tool, but actually, is it going to improve survival? Well, we've got limited evidence of that so far. Yes, it's something that could potentially help the workforce, but you still need people to take a patient's history, to take blood, to do surgery, to break bad news.Become the centre for digital expertise and delivery in government, improving how the government and public services interact with citizens.We will act as a leader and partner across government, with industry and the research communities, to boost Britain's economic performance and power-up our public services to improve the lives and life chances of people through the application of science and technology. Continue reading...

We criticise children for not going outside - while curtailing their freedoms and closing their spacesOn Sunday the Observer magazine published a sensitive piece about video game addiction, speaking to therapists working in the sector and one affected family. Genuine, compulsive, life-altering addiction, whether to video games or anything else, is of course devastating for those affected by it. Since the WHO classified gaming addiction as a specific disorder in 2018 (distinct from technology addiction), the specialist National Centre for Gaming Disorders set up in the UK has treated just over 1,000 patients. Thankfully, the numbers suggest it is rare, affecting less than 1% of the 88% of teenagers who play games.The article asked, why are so many young people addicted to video games?", which no doubt struck a chord with many parents who despair at the amount of time their children spend in front of computers and consoles. Speaking as the video games editor and correspondent at the Guardian, however, we think that most of us who are worried about how long our teenagers are spending with games are not dealing with an addiction problem, nor with compulsive behaviour. If we want to know why many teens choose of their own free will to spend 10 or 20 hours a week playing games, rather than pathologising them, we ought to look around us. Continue reading...

Dumping Intel for Qualcomm chips delivers big boost in speed but not battery life and breaks some appsMicrosoft's latest Surface tablet promises to be a generational upgrade that goes beyond just being faster, quieter and more efficient - all down to a change in the type of processor at its heart.The Surface Pro 11 is not the first Microsoft machine to swap traditional Intel or AMD PC processors for Arm-based chips, similar to those in your smartphone or Apple's recent Macs and iPads. But it is by far the most successful, leaving even recent editions such as the 2020 Surface Pro X and last year's Surface Pro 9 5G in the dust. Continue reading...

Company says it has never thought about news' as a way to counter misleading content on Facebook and Instagram despite evidence to the contrary

The three brands licensed by Nine's Pedestrian Group that kickstarted my career might be gone but as long as there's appetite for video game content there's hopeIn 2006 I was fired from my job at EB Games. It was, with the benefit of hindsight, a well-earned dismissal. One Sunday I'd set up a camera and filmed myself jumping over a stack of boxes and hip thrusting at a stranger. Then I uploaded that highly pixelated video of an emo-fringed teenager in a black shirt and slacks to YouTube. Ah, the innocence of youth.My area manager saw the video about eight months later. I was fired on the spot. (Today, of course, this would probably be some sort of TikTok trend.) Continue reading...

US firm's move, amid Beijing-Washington tensions, sparks rush to lure users to homegrown modelsAt the World AI Conference in Shanghai last week, one of China's leading artificial intelligence companies, SenseTime, unveiled its latest model, SenseNova 5.5.The model showed off its ability to identify and describe a stuffed toy puppy (wearing a SenseTime cap), offered feedback on a drawing of a rabbit, and instantly read and summarised a page of text. According to SenseTime, SenseNova 5.5 is comparable with GPT-4o, the flagship artificial intelligence model of the Microsoft-backed US company OpenAI. Continue reading...

The geekiest edge of the British music underground is fuelled by the 90s, featuring a ZX Spectrum Noel Edmonds, a Blobby-themed grindcore band, and a lady who performs the script to Theme HospitalWe've had live jazz bands playing Mario Kart, and a full orchestra rendition of Sonic. But there's a whole subgenre of video game music artists who'd happily describe their sound as even more nerdy. Nerdcore has been around for 25 years. It's hip-hop about nerdy subjects, predominantly video games," says 41-year-old Nick Box from Blackpool. Box has been in all sorts of weird silly bands" such as electronic horror punk band Hot Pink Sewage, where all I did was dress as a gimp and push play on the backing track". He now performs solo as Cliff Glitchard and it's even weirder than you think.It's all set against a backdrop of a ZX Spectrum running an AI clone of 90s TV presenter Noel Edmonds," he explains". The show starts with the Spectrum loading screen, then a pixelated Edmonds tells the crowd he's responsible for every celebrity death, political decision and major disaster of the last 40 years. I run around shouting about crap celebrities and end up shagging Mr Blobby on stage." Continue reading...

New scambaiting AI technology Apate aims to keep scammers on the line while collecting data that could help disrupt their business model

Exclusive: Experts say Tesla should be excluded from rebates for disabling function on its batteries in Australia that would let users alter power usage remotely

The Fairwork trio talk about their new book on the extraction machine', exposing the repetitive labour, often in terrible conditions, that big tech is using to create artificial intelligence

The New Zealand-born photographer was planning to take a portrait of a farm owner when two animals caught his eyeFor the last two years, Mark Aitken has been working on a photo series in Lapland. It'scalled Presence of Absence," he says, and it explores the liminal and sometimes uncanny boundaries between life and death experienced by people living in this extreme climate andlandscape."Aitken, who was born in New Zealand, raised in South Africa and has lived in London for years, took this photo in spring of this year, on asheep farm. Kukkola is a borderland hamlet in Finnish Lapland on the River Tornio, near Sweden. The farm has been running for 20 years and this lamb is one of about 100 born in March and April," he says. Continue reading...

Hackers claim they obtained barcode data for hundreds of thousands of tickets to Eras tour and demand millions in ransomHackers claimed this week that they had obtained barcode data for hundreds of thousands of tickets to Taylor Swift's Eras tour, demanding that Ticketmaster pay millions in ransom money or they would leak the information online.The hacking group posted samples of the data to an online forum- ticket data on Swift's shows in Indianapolis, Miami, and New Orleans - and alleged it possessed an additional 30m million barcodes for other high-profile concerts and sporting events. Continue reading...

Threat Matrix service monitors social media profiles and flags up death threats, racism and sexist commentsThe All England Lawn Tennis Club is using artificial intelligence for the first time to protect players at Wimbledon from online abuse.An AI-driven service monitors players' public-facing social media profiles and automatically flags death threats, racism and sexist comments in 35 different languages. Continue reading...

Progressive snark over vice-president gives way to endless viral quotes and emojis, blending irony and authentic praiseIn the aftermath of Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance, left-leaning Americans can't stop talking about the vice-president online. Memes about Kamala Harris are spreading with a speed and enthusiasm previously unseen on X and Instagram.Supercuts of her set to RuPaul's Call Me Mother. Threads of her funniest Veep moments". Collages of jokes about her over a green album cover a la Charli xcx's Brat. Numerous riffs on a comment she made about a coconut tree. Previous progressive snark about Harris has cast her either as an incompetent sidekick a la HBO's Veep or as an anti-progressive cop, a reference to her years as California's top law enforcement official. But as rumors circle about discussions of Biden dropping out of the presidential race, social media commentary on the nation's second-in-command has grown more positive - even if ironically so. Continue reading...

It won't be long till everything from Drag Race to Keeping Up With the Kardashians could be written without humans - and you might be able to write yourself as the hero of a new show. But will robot TV ever be up to snuff?Justine Bateman won't name names, but a TV showrunner friend once came to her with a dilemma: their show's team was well into filming its second season when a network executive had an idea. A character in the pilot hadn't tested well with audiences, so they were just going to go in, use a little AI, and swap in someone else.The showrunner - and Bateman, an actor and director - were understandably incensed. When you change the beginning of something, you change the creative trajectory," says Bateman. There's going to be whiplash for the viewer when they get to episode three or four because what was set up in the pilot got messed with and now doesn't make sense." Using AI might have seemed like a simple solution to the executive, but to the showrunner, it was catastrophic. Continue reading...

On its 15th anniversary, the creators of FarmVille reflect on the compulsive cartoon farm sim that paved the way for a data-driven worldFacebook users of a certain age may remember a particularly forlorn farm animal popping up in their feeds during the platform's heyday. The lonely cow would wander into FarmVille players' pastures with its face twisted into a frown and its eyes shimmering with tears. She feels very sad and needs a new home," an accompanying caption read, asking you to adopt the cow or message your friends for help. Ignore the cow's plea and it would presumably be left friendless and foodless. Message your friends about it, and you'd be accelerating the spread of one of the biggest online crazes of the 2010s.Released 15 years ago, FarmVille was nothing short of a phenomenon. More than 18,000 players gave it a go on its first day, rising to 1 million by its fourth. At its peak in 2010, more than 80 million users logged in monthly to plant crops, tend animals and harvest goods for coins to spend on decorations. Celebrities professed their obsession, McDonald's created a farm for a promotion, and long before artists released music on Fortnite, Lady Gaga debuted songs from her sophomore album through the cartoon farm sim. Not bad for a game that was stitched together in five weeks. Continue reading...

All new cars must have the devices from 7 July, adding fuel economy as well as safety. Will mpg become the new mph?In the highway code and the law courts, there is no doubt what those big numbers in red circles mean. As a quick trip up any urban street or motorway with no enforcement cameras makes clear though, many drivers still regard speed signs as an aspiration rather than a limit.Technology that will be required across Europe from this weekend may change that culture, because from 7 July all new cars sold in the EU and in Northern Ireland must have a range of technical safety features fitted as standard. The most notable of these is intelligent speed assistance - or colloquially, a speed limiter. Continue reading...

Our sample of political content shows how campaigns and individuals have been using the video-sharing platform

Schools, parents and even governments need to set boundaries, without demonising devices that bring many benefitsA few weeks ago I was scrolling through social media, and Andy Murray (I am one of his 2 million followers) posted a graphic showing the average number of hours a teen in the US spends per day on their phone or other screens. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated it to be six hours for eight- to 10-year-olds, nine hours for 11- to 14-year-olds and 7.5 hours for 15- to 18-year-olds. These are shocking numbers. Although the irony of using a screen to make me reflect on how much time we're spending on screens isn't lost on me.Like many people, I check my smartphone's screen-time usage and am surprised at how many hours are logged. But I also feel uncomfortable with the blanket demonisation of these devices, as if the creation of mobile phones has been, overall, terrible for humanity. At their core, they are useful, practical tools for communication and connection. Somehow the positives that they bring are too easily forgotten.Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh Continue reading...

The makers of Italian action game have endured the longest development journey in history. Their game is now finally out - on the long-discontinued Game Boy AdvanceIn 2002, a group of five Italians made the local news: they were going to be the first company in the country to develop a game for Nintendo's popular portable, the Game Boy Advance. The cadre pulled together a few hundred euros and some computers to prepare for the project. They had no experience making games. They didn't even have a programmer. All they had was a love for video games, a shared hatred of working for bosses and endless optimism.For the next two years, the group worked away. Late nights were common and the team barely took any time off. It was a grueling time, but they were determined to make an ambitious game with complex features. Its name was Kien. If you haven't heard of it, that's because it never came out - until now. The action platformer didn't see the light of day until this year, by which time most of the original team had long since moved on. Only one member of the group of five remained: game designer, Fabio Belsanti, who never lost belief in the project. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: The seven-time grand slam winner and patron of the arts hosts a new series, Widening the Lens. Plus: five of the best podcasts about the single life Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereWidening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape

New computing infrastructure means big tech is likely to miss emissions targets but they can't afford to get left behind in a winner takes all marketThe artificial intelligence boom has driven big tech share prices to fresh highs, but at the cost of the sector's climate aspirations.Google admitted on Tuesday that the technology is threatening its environmental targets after revealing that datacentres, a key piece of AI infrastructure, had helped increase its greenhouse gas emissions by 48% since 2019. It said significant uncertainty" around reaching its target of net zero emissions by 2030 - reducing the overall amount of CO2 emissions it is responsible for to zero - included the uncertainty around the future environmental impact of AI, which is complex and difficult to predict". Continue reading...