Employees at facility in Kentucky allege Amazon is retaliating against them as they push for union representationWorkers at Amazon's largest air hub in the world allege Amazon is retaliating against them as they try to organize their first union.The workers at the 882-acre KCVG air hub in Hebron, Kentucky, have been organizing March on the Boss" actions at the Amazon facility in which staff confront managers en masse to demand an end to union busting", which they claim includes write-ups and other disciplinary actions against workers. Continue reading...
Ardent Health, which oversees hospitals in states including Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma said it was targeted over ThanksgivingA cyber-attack has shut down emergency rooms in at least three states, a hospital operator warned on Monday, forcing the organization to divert patients to other facilities.Ardent Health, which oversees 30 hospitals in states across the US, including New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma, said it had been targeted by a ransomware attack over the Thanksgiving holiday. The attack had shut down a significant number of its computerized services, the company said in a news release. Continue reading...
Private businesses, motivated by profit, can't be relied on to police themselves against the horrors unfettered AI could bringHow do we gain access to artificial intelligence's huge potential benefits - such as devising new life-saving drugs or finding new ways to teach children - without opening a box of horrors?If we're not careful, AI could be a Frankenstein monster. It might eliminate nearly all jobs. It could lead to autonomous warfare. Continue reading...
Instagram and Facebook parent company also knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, unsealed legal complaint saysInstagram and Facebook parent company Meta purposefully engineered its platforms to addict children and knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint.The complaint is a key part of a lawsuit filed against Meta by the attorneys general of 33 states in late October and was originally redacted. It alleges the social media company knew - but never disclosed - it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts. The large number of underage users was an open secret" at the company, the suit alleges, citing internal company documents. Continue reading...
US carmaker claims discriminatory attack' after industrial action stops new cars receiving Swedish platesTesla is suing the Swedish transport agency, accusing it of a discriminatory attack" on the US electric carmaker, after strike action prevented its new vehicles from getting licence plates in Sweden.The lawsuit is an escalation in a row that started between the car company and the union representing Swedish Telsa workers, who are calling for collective bargaining rights and have been on strike for five weeks. Continue reading...
Pair speak about Gaza conflict but not online antisemitism nor controversial post made by X owner this monthElon Musk has joined the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in visiting a kibbutz that was attacked by Hamas on 7 October, after criticism of his endorsement of an antisemitic post on X.The owner of X, the site formerly known as Twitter, has been criticised for supporting a post on his platform that falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people. High-profile advertisers have also suspended spending on the site after a report that ads were appearing next to pro-Nazi content. Continue reading...
Protection groups call for urgent action to help pupils understand risks of making images that legally constitute child sexual abuseChildren in British schools are using artificial intelligence (AI) to make indecent images of other children, a group of experts on child abuse and technology has warned.They said that a number of schools were reporting for the first time that pupils were using AI-generating technology to create images of children that legally constituted child sexual abuse material. Continue reading...
Isaac Herzog's office says president will emphasize the need to act' against rising anti-Jewish hate during tech billionaire's visitThe tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, accused by civil rights groups of amplifying anti-Jewish hatred on his Twitter/X social media platform, will meet Israeli president Isaac Herzog on Monday, along with Israelis whose relatives have been held by Hamas in Gaza.Herzog's office announced the meeting on Sunday night, saying: In their meeting, the president will emphasize the need to act to combat rising antisemitism online." Continue reading...
The development of supersmart AI needs careful handling - and that probably won't be made easier by a bout of corporate chaosIn the 1983 movie WarGames, the US defence department runs a superintelligent central computer that is hacked into by a teenager, who unwittingly almost causes a nuclear Armageddon. The end of the world is averted when the computer, known as Joshua, learns, after playing tic-tac-toe with the teenager, that nuclear war cannot have a winner. The insight causes him to rescind missile launch orders with the comment: A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."Joshua embodied the idea that a superintelligent AI would have an anthropomorphic mindset. Yet it was a human who saved the world that year. Lt Col Stanislav Petrov disobeyed orders for a catastrophic retaliatory nuclear strike when the automated early warning system of the Soviet Union in September 1983 falsely indicated an American nuclear attack. Supersmart machines cannot just be left to their own devices. They - and their development - need to be properly handled. Continue reading...
The US reproductive health expert on being sued for $1m, and winning a top prize for her fight for free speech in the public interestDr Chelsea Polis is a reproductive health scientist based in New York City. She was sued for $1m by a medical device company after speaking out about misleading marketing claims it had made about the use of its digital fertility tracker as a contraceptive method. After a two-year battle, the case was thrown out of court. Last month in London she won the 2023 John Maddox prize early career award, which champions those who stand up for evidence-based science in the face of hostility. She is a senior scientist for epidemiology at the Population Council's Center for Biomedical Research.In May 2020, you were sued for $1m for defamation by Valley Electronics of Zurich, Switzerland, the manufacturer of the Daysy fertility tracker and the DaysyView app, for voicing your concerns about the device being marketed as a contraceptive. How did it feel as an individual to be sued for $1m?
Electrification nonprofit says annual federal report on winter-fuels costs is misleading and leaves out critical nuanceWith the holiday season underway in the US, how Americans heat their homes this winter - and how much that will cost them - is the latest focus of the gas v electricity climate culture war.Earlier this year, Republicans and the fossil fuel industry were furious at suggestions from US regulators that gas stoves could be phased out over concerns about dangerous indoor air pollution, prompting Joe Biden to rule out such a ban. Continue reading...
Agnieszka Pilat calls herself a propaganda artist' for technology. But when the machines are sold to governments, police and military, what's the line between art and an ad?The artist is completely focused, a black oil crayon in her hand as she repeatedly draws a small circle on a vibrant teal canvas. She is unbothered by the three people closely observing her every movement, and doesn't seem to register my entrance into this bright white room inside the National Gallery of Victoria.The artist is a robot; more specifically, Basia is a 30kg Spot" robot dog designed by Boston Dynamics. You've probably seen videos of these dogs opening doors, climbing stairs and decorating Christmas trees, while performing eerily fluid actions that cause people to write comments like, Can't wait to have a pack of these chase me through a post-apocalyptic urban hellscape!" The robots are designed to perform tasks that are dangerous for humans: they tend to be bought by mining and construction corporations, as well as police and the military. You may have also seen them enforcing social distancing in Singapore, delivering food to hostages during a home invasion in Queens, dancing in a baseball stadium in Japan, or even in an episode of The Book of Boba Fett. Now you can watch them paint. Continue reading...
The chaos at OpenAI reveals contradictions in the way we think about the technologyAt times it felt less like Succession than Fawlty Towers, not so much Shakespearean tragedy as Laurel and Hardy farce. OpenAI is the hottest tech company today thanks to the success of its most famous product, the chatbot ChatGPT. It was inevitable that the mayhem surrounding the sacking, and subsequent rehiring, of Sam Altman as its CEO would play out across global media last week, accompanied by astonishment and bemusement in equal measure.For some, the farce spoke to the incompetence of the board; for others, to a clash of monstrous egos. In a deeper sense, the turmoil also reflected many of the contradictions at the heart of the tech industry. The contradiction between the self-serving myth of tech entrepreneurs as rebel disruptors", and their control of a multibillion-dollar monster of an industry through which they shape all our lives. The tension, too, between the view of AI as a mechanism for transforming human life and the fear that it may be an existential threat to humanity. Continue reading...
The Iranian photographer, in his hometown, flashed back to his youthIn Ahmad Abad, a suburb of the Iranian city of Tabriz, a gaggle of children were playing on a gas pipe. Akbar Mehrinezhad often took photographs here, on the edge of the city, drawn to the subjects he found. When he saw these children some way off in the distance, he had to move quickly. I ran to capture it. Even without seeing their faces, it's storytelling," he says of his choice to focus on their shadows, and one pair of dangling feet. Continue reading...
Challenging each other to cage fights, building apocalypse bunkers - the behaviour of today's mega-moguls is becoming increasingly outlandish and imperialEven their downfalls are spectacular. Like a latter-day Icarus flying too close to the sun, disgraced crypto-god Sam Bankman-Fried crashed and burned this month, recasting Michael Lewis's exuberant biography of the convicted fraudster - Going Infinite - into the story of a supervillain. Even his potential sentence of up to 115 years in prison seems more suitable for a larger-than-life comic book character - the Joker being carted off to Arkham Asylum - than a nerdy, crooked currency trader.But that's the way this generation of tech billionaires rolls. The Elon Musk we meet in Walter Isaacson's biography posts selfies of himself as Marvel comic character Doctor Strange - the Sorcerer Supreme" who protects the Earth against magical threats. Musk is so fascinated with figures such as Iron Man that he gave a tour of the SpaceX factory to the actor who plays him, Robert Downey Jr, and the film's director, Jon Favreau. As if believing he really has acquired these characters' martial arts prowess, in June Musk challenged fellow ubermensch Mark Zuckerberg to a cage match" after Zuck launched an app to compete with the floundering Twitter. Musk and Zuck exchanged taunts in the style of superheroes or perhaps professional wrestlers. I'm up for a cage match if he is," tweeted Musk. Send Me Location," responded Zuck from Instagram's Threads. Continue reading...
In the top company in the world's most explosive industry, the boss was fired and rehired - and no one has said why OpenAI was working on model so powerful it alarmed staff'The OpenAI farce has moved at such speed in the past week that it is easy to forget that nobody has yet said in clear terms why Sam Altman - the returning chief executive and all-round genius, according to his vocal fanclub - was fired in the first place. Since we are constantly told, not least by Altman himself, that the worst outcome from the adoption of artificial general intelligence could be lights out for all of us", somebody needs to find a voice here.If the old board judged, for example, that Altman was unfit for the job because he was taking OpenAI down a reckless path, lights-wise, there would plainly be an obligation to speak up. Or, if the fear is unfounded, the architects of the failed boardroom coup could do everybody a favour and say so. Saying nothing useful, especially when your previous stance has been that transparency and safety go hand in hand, is indefensible. Continue reading...
The surprise sacking of the AI venture's CEO was followed by a near mutiny at the company and his reinstatementOpenAI's messy firing and rehiring of its powerful chief executive this week shocked the tech world. But the power struggle has implications beyond the company's boardroom, AI experts said. It throws into relief the greenness of the AI industry and the strong desire in Silicon Valley to be first, and raises urgent questions about the safety of the technology.The AI that we're looking at now is immature. There are no standards, no professional body, no certifications. Everybody figures out how to do it, figures out their own internal norms," said Rayid Ghani, a professor of machine learning and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. The AI that gets built relies on a handful of people who built it, and the impact of these handfuls of people is disproportionate." Continue reading...
by Hannah Verdier, Hollie Richardson and Nicole Jacks on (#6GKJN)
In this week's newsletter: Journalists put the plant-based brand to the test in The Oatly Chronicles. Plus: five of the best Today in Focus episodes Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereBuild the Life You Want
Weeks after the Bankman-Fried trial, the billionaire founder of the largest cryptocurrency exchange has been fined $50m and resigned Crypto giant Binance admits to money launderingChangpeng Zhao, founder of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, warned last year that it was difficult to prevent illegal activity in the industry that he dominated. [If] somebody wants to violate the law, the law is not going to prevent that. The law can help to reduce that," the company's then chief executive said.But the authorities can catch up with you, as the 46-year-old found out this week. Zhao quit as Binance's chief executive on Tuesday after pleading guilty to breaking US anti-money-laundering legislation. He will pay a $50m fine and faces a possible prison term, while Binance has agreed to pay a $4.3bn settlement. Continue reading...
Hidden Pikmin, secret Mario logos and mad merch ... the world of Mario has been brilliantly reconstructed in real life, letting me live out a fantasy decades in the making Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereI've always written about the intersection of games and real life - that's where the interesting stories are often found - but rarely do I get the opportunity to do so quite so literally as I have this week. Yesterday I visited the Universal Studios theme park in Osaka, where the world of Mario has been reconstructed in the real world. You walk through a green warp pipe and, when you come out the other side, through Princess Peach's castle, you emerge into a primary-coloured, crowded Mario-scape, all green grass, yellow blocks and brown brick, with critters moving back and forth across banks of question-mark blocks and the yawning maw of Bowser's Castle across the way.My jaw dropped. I've been dying to see this Nintendo theme park since it opened, but I wasn't prepared for how impactful it would be to walk into a physical manifestation of my eight-year-old self's dreams. Super Mario World is constructed in such a way that you can't see the outside world when you're in there, helping you to disappear into the fantasy. Continue reading...
Ruling clears way for lawsuit brought against company over fatal crash in 2019 in which Stephen Banner was killed near MiamiA judge has found reasonable evidence" that Elon Musk and other executives at Tesla knew that the company's self-driving technology was defective but still allowed the cars to be driven in an unsafe manner anyway, according to a recent ruling issued in Florida.Palm Beach county circuit court judge Reid Scott said he had found evidence that Tesla engaged in a marketing strategy that painted the products as autonomous" and that Musk's public statements about the technology had a significant effect on the belief about the capabilities of the products". Continue reading...
TikTokers are sharing strangers' conversations, hoping to expose gossipers to the very people they're talking about. Is the humiliation worth it?Marissa Meizz was out to dinner with a friend when her phone started vibrating. It was an unusually frenzied buzz, unresponsive to the silence button - a flood of texts from friends, acquaintances and even an offline" aunt all linking to a TikTok video titled Send this to Marissa in NYC".She froze. Then she started watching. Continue reading...
A female student bravely investigates who is behind deepfake images of her online in this compelling documentaryGermaine Greer famously said that women have no idea how much men hate them. Her maxim has a new relevance in the light of this terrifying (and enraging) documentary about the explosion of deepfake porn targeting women: famous women, of course, like Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who dare to get above themselves, but also private women who are just trying to live their lives and have been hit with this revenge-hate tactic from fantasists, ex-boyfriends, would-be boyfriends, a range of misogynists and incels.Deepfake porn is booming and making serious money for the porn sites who refuse to take these images down and are under no legal compunction to do so. Last year, the YouTuber who goes by the name Gibi ASMR spoke publicly about experiencing a loathsome attack. Another Body's heroine is, however, someone else: a woman studying engineering who first alerted Gibi ASMR to her situation because it had also been done to her by the very same man, her face attached with startling realism to porn images, and using her actual name. She herself appears to have been told about it by a male friend, who presumably had to ride out his own embarrassment at thereby admitting to his porn use. To protect her privacy, Another Body gives this woman the pseudonym Taylor Klein" and actually uses a deepfake image of someone else's face in the interviews (I had assumed the film-makers would use an AI face, but an actual actor is credited). Continue reading...
Optimists and doomers' are fighting over the direction of AI research - and those who want speed may have won this roundIn November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a consumer-facing artificial intelligence tool that could hold a conversation with users, answer questions, and generate anything from poems to computer code to health advice. The initial technology was not perfect - it would sometimes hallucinate", producing convincing but inaccurate information - but its potential generated enormous attention.A year later, ChatGPT's popularity has continued, with 100 million people using it on a weekly basis, and over 92% of Fortune 500 companies and several competitor firms looking to cash in or improve on the technology. But that's not why ChatGPT's creator, OpenAI, was in the news this week. Instead, OpenAI was the center of a fierce philosophical debate about what it means to develop artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity.Sarah Kreps is a professor of government at Cornell University and the director of the Tech Policy InstituteThis article was amended on 22 November 2023 to reflect changing developments Continue reading...
New board announces agreement in principle' for return of former CEO after campaign by staff and investorsSam Altman is to return as chief executive of OpenAI after the ChatGPT developer said it had reached an agreement in principle" for his reinstatement.The San Francisco-based company made the announcement after days of internal turmoil after Altman's surprise sacking on Friday. Nearly all of OpenAI's 750-strong workforce had threatened to resign unless the board overseeing the business brought him back and then quit immediately afterwards. Continue reading...
Satya Nadella reveals Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest investor, was not consulted about Sam Altman's dismissal as fallout continuesThe boss of Microsoft has said there is no OpenAI" without his company's involvement, as he revealed the American tech behemoth was not consulted about the sacking of Sam Altman.Satya Nadella said Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest investor, was not contacted by OpenAI board members before they sacked Altman as chief executive on Friday. Continue reading...
While the great and the good worry about the dangers of artificial intelligence, my friends are embracing it to pad out their emails and cut corners in the kitchenIt's been a drama-filled week for OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. Its wunderkind CEO Sam Altman has been unceremoniously booted out by its board and more than 600 staff members are now threatening to quit unless he's allowed back in. (Don't be too sad for Altman - the 38-year-old has already been snapped up by Microsoft for an undisclosed sum.)As a writer, I am of course duty-bound to swear on my copy of McNae's Essential Law for Journalists that I did not use OpenAI's chatbot to write this column - or did I? Even if I did, why would I fess up to it? Thanks to disastrously unpopular attempts by the likes of BuzzFeed to create AI-assisted content, its name is mud in the media industry. Saying you use ChatGPT is like admitting you thought the T-1000 was just misunderstood or that Skynet had a point. Continue reading...
Online electrical goods seller still able to report pre-tax profits of 13m in the half year as cost-cutting measures bear fruitAO World has said consumers are holding off on updating their mobile phones amid the cost of living crisis, a lack of technological innovation and the higher cost of network contracts.UK consumers bought 13% fewer handsets with contracts in the last six months, forcing AO's mobile phone business into a loss. Analysts at stockbroker Jefferies said they estimated that the worse than expected mobile phone sales would hit the online electrical goods sellers' annual profits by about 4m. Continue reading...
Experts say figures like Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson bringing great replacement' theory mainstream signals growing extremismThe racist and antisemitic great replacement" theory is encroaching out of the far right and more visibly into mainstream US politics in the wake of its platforming by major figures like Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, in a move experts believe shows the growing extremeness of rightwing politics in the US.High-profile users of Twitter/X including rightwing personality Carlson and the platform's proprietor Musk, are helping to mainstream extremist narratives that are increasingly prevalent on the site, experts and advocates say. Continue reading...
As violence on the ground continues, emotions on social media are higher than ever - with critics asking if platforms need more transparency around their algorithms Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereAs the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas and its devastating effects play out in real time on social media, users are continuing to criticise tech firms for what they say is unfair content censorship - pulling into sharp focus longstanding concerns about the opaque algorithms that shape our online worlds.From the early days of the conflict, social media users have expressed outrage at allegedly uneven censorship of pro-Palestinian content on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Meta has denied intentionally suppressing the content, saying that with more posts going up about the conflict, content that doesn't violate our policies may be removed in error". Continue reading...
How the Streets of Rage and Etrian Odyssey composer was inspired by disco, city pop, and slyly recording music from arcade cabinetsFrom the urban warzones of Shinobi and Streets of Rage to the high fantasy realms of Ys and Etrian Odyssey, Japanese composer Yuzo Koshiro has seen (and heard) it all. His engineering wizardry helped establish video game music as a force to be reckoned with, alongside its cinematic and televisual siblings. His foresight allowed him to retain the rights to his own music, in an industry that's often keen on prising the art from the artist. In so many ways, and across so many disciplines, Koshiro has always been ahead of his time.And it all began with him secretly recording the music from his favourite games in arcades. When I was a teenager, spending time at amusement arcades, game developers would only release a few video game titles in a year," he explains. However, each game had its own distinct electronic sound that set them apart, creating an immersive atmosphere in the arcade halls." Koshiro - and many other Japanese game music enthusiasts of the era, he says - would go to a game centre with a tape recorder in hand, so he could thumb the cassette into a player at home and listen to the music whenever he wanted. Continue reading...
Companies such as IBM and Comcast pulled ads from the firm after the non-profits's report said ads appeared next to harmful contentThe social media platform X on Monday sued the media watchdog group Media Matters, alleging the organization defamed the platform after it published a report that said ads for major brands had appeared next to posts touting Nazism.X, formerly Twitter, has faced growing outrage since Media Matters published the report on Thursday, which led IBM, Comcast and several other advertisers to pull ads from the platform in response. Continue reading...
Thinktank study highlights productivity gains, as well as improvement in work-life balance for 28% of the workforce in Britain and the US, as a result of implementing artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence could enable millions of workers to move to a four-day week by 2033, according to a new study focusing on British and American workforces.The report from the thinktank Autonomy found that projected productivity gains from the introduction of AI could reduce the working week from 40 to 32 hours for 28% of the workforce - 8.8 million people in Britain and 35 million in the US - while maintaining pay and performance. Continue reading...
From Gen Z to boomers, each generation engages in some truly reprehensible smartphone behaviour. Don't get me started on voice notes...When Debrett's issued their ten commandments of mobile etiquette, the most surprising thing was that the first six were all a variation on don't just call someone, send a text first". So, in no particular order of importance because they are all the same; don't call without texting; don't call loads of times; don't be surprised if no one answers when you call, which you shouldn't have done; if you did all these bad things and no one picked up, send a text afterwards to explain why you are stupid; if someone does pick up, don't be surprised if they freak the hell out, because you shouldn't have called; make sure your opening gambit is nothing bad has happened".It reads like padding, which is weird, because there are at least a thousand other principles of mobile phone manners they could have mentioned. Please, gen X, stop leaving voice notes; it doesn't make you seem modern, it comes off as if some infirmity has prevented your texting, probably arthritic thumbs. Young people: Watch how I can text a perfectly accurate message without once looking at the screen" is not the spectator sport you think it is. Boomers: if you are in the middle of a conversation about something quite profound, such as the choreography of your low-carbon funeral, and whether a mariachi band would strike a discordant note against your wicker coffin, and the guy from the delicatessen calls, probably to tell you that he has made mini-lasagnes, you don't necessarily have to beg silence from the room and answer the phone. Continue reading...
Readers find themes that align with their values as they seek to grow empathy' for a religion long vilified in the westMegan B Rice loves reading. She started a romance novel club on the instant messaging platform Discord and posts book reviews on TikTok. Last month Rice, who is 34 and lives in Chicago, used her social media accounts to speak out about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.I wanted to talk about the faith of Palestinian people, how it's so strong, and they still find room to make it a priority to thank God, even when they have everything taken away from them," she said in an interview. Continue reading...
Not content with a billion fans, The Pokemon Company's COO Takato Utsunomiya talks about his plan to catch the rest of humanity - and for the far-reaching franchise to outlive us allWhen Satoshi Tajiri was a child, he developed a fascination with insects. Growing up in the greater Tokyo suburb of Machida, he'd spend summer days peeling back plants and scouring the undergrowth for creepy crawlies, carefully adding each new insect to his collection. This eyebrow-raising hobby earned him the playground nickname Mr Bug" from his teasing classmates, but Tajiri had the last laugh. After all, it was this formative obsession that inspired his crowning achievement - Pokemon.Thirty-three years later, that first duo of ambitious Game Boy games has blossomed into the world's highest-grossing media franchise, beating behemoths such as Star Wars and Marvel. Tajiri took a step back from his cutesy creation in 2012, and his developer Game Freak is now part of a larger Pokemon Company - whose COO, Takato Utsunomiya, now sits in front of me in Yokohama. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6GGNP)
Full-size portable speaker gets stereo and bass upgrade, plus better wifi, Bluetooth and touch controlsSonos's top-class battery-powered wifi and Bluetooth speaker has been given an all-round upgrade with double the battery life, impressive stereo sound and new touch controls.The Move 2 is certainly not your average portable speaker. It costs 449 (499/$449/A$799) and aims to be the only sound system you need for indoor and outdoor use, weighing 3kg and sized about the same as a traditional bookshelf speaker.Dimensions: 241 x 160 x 127mmWeigh: 3kgConnectivity: wifi 6, Bluetooth 5, USB-C, AirPlay 2, Spotify ConnectBattery: 44Wh (24 hours playback), 120 hours standby, three hours to chargeCharging: Included dock or USB-C 45WWater resistance: IP56 (dust and high-pressure water jets) Continue reading...
The first in a series exploring the myths and realities surrounding EVsWhen a fire ripped through a car park at Luton airport last month it set off a round of speculation that an electric vehicle was to blame. The theory was quickly doused by the Bedfordshire fire service, which said the blaze appeared to have started in a diesel car.Yet the rumour refused to be quelled, spreading on social media like, well, wildfire. Even when these stories are patiently debunked, they come back as zombie myths that refuse to die. Continue reading...
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsFor which tasks is artificial intelligence least well suited? Neil Hislop, ReadingPost your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published next Sunday. Continue reading...
Rising GMB membership, cross-border action and a probable new government point to better times for thousands of workersTen months after their first historic walkout, GMB members at Amazon's huge Coventry warehouse are staging a 28th day of strike action this week, to coincide with Black Friday.The seeds of the dispute were sown in summer 2022, when some staff reacted furiously to being told their pay would rise by 50p an hour, taking the basic rate to 10.50. Continue reading...
It can retouch, replace and remodel all it wants - I much prefer the fun and mess of unvarnished childhood snapsI love taking photos of my children. Not because I'm obsessed with sharing them on social media or anything like that (equally, I'm not one of those parents who considers doing this some sort of dreadful ethical violation). These are images to be scrolled through with their mother after we've spent another too-long day wearily struggling to look after them; to be shared, every now and again, on WhatsApp groups of family or friends.This has especially been the case since last year, when I, normally a committed luddite, finally got a smartphone with a camera good enough to take something other than murky, pixelated blurs. Now I long to do justice to the look of wild triumph on my son's face as he poses with the lollipop he has won for being the last reception kid standing at musical chairs; to catch my toddler daughter having inadvertently struck a pose straight out of a Mini Boden catalogue. I grab my phone, find the right angle, get a few shots - all before she spots me taking pictures and inevitably staggers over, gurning cheeeeeessse". Continue reading...
The conflicts of interest built into OpenAI's corporate structure may be a bigger story than the loss of its leaderThe news on Friday that Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, had been abruptly sacked by the company's board came as a shock to the tech industry.Mr Altman's departure," said the ponderous announcement, follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI." Continue reading...
When four gay men with an average age of 74 started appearing on TikTok, they became an instant hit. They talk about how, as their audience has grown, their outfits have shrunkNo written description quite captures the joy-inducing positivity of their online videos: bopping along to Taylor Swift in slinky striped swimwear; countless dance trends and TikTok challenges, completed in various seductive states of undress. Twirling and whirling in only feather boas and Speedos to Kylie. Clips neatly edited to cut from outfit to outfit, often climaxing in the skimpiest of one-piece swimwear. Over the last six years, the foursome have become certified social media superstars, but not like any other. We're The Old Gays," they say, collectively, a TikTok sensation with 11 million followers and counting. And if you're not on TikTok, honey, you're living in the past."Today, the four are sitting squarely together in front of a laptop camera: two on low chairs upfront, the others perched on stools right behind. We're here to discuss their new book: The Old Gays Guide to the Good Life. As always on occasions like this, they've coalesced at 80-year-old Robert's place: a house in Cathedral City, deep in the California desert. He's sitting back right, behind Mick, 67, a committed bodybuilder, and Robert's housemate for the past 10 years. Then there's Jessay, 70, whose home is directly across the street. He's a professional singer; the only Black member of the group. And I'm Bill, 79," comes the final introduction. I live a couple of miles down the road. Before the Old Gays, we'd all get together and have dinner parties, get stoned, celebrate the holidays. Now we see so much of each other at work we stay away in our spare time." He winks. More colleagues than friends." Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian