Technology | The Guardian

Is the reported rise in mental illness among under-25s down to more awareness and less stigma - or is something truly amiss with young people? We ask therapists, academics and survivorsIt's a rite of passage for any new generation to be labelled lazy and feckless by their elders, and so it was for twentysomethings last week with the news that they are more likely to be out of work because of mental health problems.Instead of taking seriously the idea that a mental health crisis was developing, it was far easier to re-ink some cliches about workshy snowflakes and generation sicknote. Such insults have been levelled at every generation, from those now labelled millennials, generation X, baby boomers and the silent generation, and even as far back as Horace and Aristotle in ancient times. Continue reading...

Kavita Puri's superb account of the 1943 Bengal famine needs to be heard; Alexi Mostrous chills with an investigation into social media hate; and the madly articulate' David Baddiel and Sayeeda Warsi tackle politics head-onThree Million (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds

It's cheap, quick and available 24/7, but is a chatbot therapist really the right tool to tackle complex emotional needs?Last autumn, Christa, a 32-year-old from Florida with a warm voice and a slight southern twang, was floundering. She had lost her job at a furniture company and moved back home with her mother. Her nine-year relationship had always been turbulent; lately, the fights had been escalating and she was thinking of leaving. She didn't feel she could be fully honest with the therapist she saw once a week, but she didn't like lying, either. Nor did she want to burden her friends: she struggles with social anxiety and is cautious about oversharing.So one night in October she logged on to character.ai - a neural language model that can impersonate anyone from Socrates to Beyonce to Harry Potter - and, with a few clicks, built herself a personal psychologist" character. From a list of possible attributes, she made her bot caring", supportive" and intelligent". Just what you would want the ideal person to be," Christa tells me. She named her Christa 2077: she imagined it as a future, happier version of herself. Continue reading...

The computing power for AI models requires immense - and increasing - amounts of natural resources. Legislation is required to prevent environmental crisisOne of the most pernicious myths about digital technology is that it is somehow weightless or immaterial. Remember all that early talk about the paperless" office and frictionless" transactions? And of course, while our personal electronic devices do use some electricity, compared with the washing machine or the dishwasher, it's trivial.Belief in this comforting story, however, might not survive an encounter with Kate Crawford's seminal book, Atlas of AI, or the striking Anatomy of an AI System graphic she composed with Vladan Joler. And it certainly wouldn't survive a visit to a datacentre - one of those enormous metallic sheds housing tens or even hundreds of thousands of servers humming away, consuming massive amounts of electricity and needing lots of water for their cooling systems. Continue reading...

Lives intersecting in the shared space of the city create a moment of visual serendipityMisha Vallejo Prut had just finished aclass at the London College of Communication where he was studying for an MA in photojournalism and documentary photography, and headed to a nearby cafe. It was 2014 and he was using an iPhone 5. The degree of pixelation in the image shows the inexorable march of time since I took this," says says Vallejo Prut, who is now based in Quito, Ecuador.Even so, I think the essence of that moment, the serendipitous intersection of lives within the shared space of the city, continues to echo the relentless pace of contemporary life." Continue reading...

Thief went on 9,000 spree with the victim's money before using her Uber account to travel to StanstedIf you are one of those people who keeps their debit card in their mobile phone case, has a note of their pin on their handset, or only ever uses mobile banking, you may want to rethink your setup after you read the case of Sami Souret*.On a recent night out the 28-year-old healthcare professional was kind enough to help a man who asked to borrow her phone. Less than six hours later, her 9,350 life savings had been spent by him on Apple products in London. And the final indignity: he used her Uber account to take a cab to Stansted airport. Continue reading...

Influencers advocating for mental health, self-love and parenting are reclaiming the space from Andrew Tate and his ilkInfluencers such as Andrew Tate have become bylines for toxic masculinity", attracting huge audiences of young men and boys with a mixture of quasi-motivational pep talks, fast cars and demonstrations of sexual prowess.But what about the other side of the coin? Are there any people making content for the same audience with healthier messages - or do men and boys just not want to hear it? Continue reading...

Three firms that represented a Tesla shareholder seek record fee from the electric vehicle maker because they benefited from the return of Musk's stock optionsThe lawyers who successfully argued that Elon Musk's $56bn pay package was excessive are seeking a record legal fee worth $6bn, payable in the electric car maker's stock, according to a court filing.We recognise that the requested fee is unprecedented in terms of absolute size," Friday's filing by the three law firms with the court of chancery in Delaware said. Continue reading...

Lawsuit says chief executive Sam Altman's deal with Microsoft has broken organisation's missionElon Musk has filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, of betraying its foundational mission by putting the pursuit of profit ahead of the benefit of humanity.The world's richest man, a founding board member of the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, claimed Altman had set aflame" OpenAI's founding agreement by signing an investment deal with Microsoft. Continue reading...

Fairshake Pac spends millions opposing progressive Senate candidate known for tough stance on crypto industryA Super Pac backed by the crypto industry has spent $10m on ads opposing Katie Porter's run for US Senate in California, as the young progressive congresswoman fights a tough battle to make it into a November Senate runoff with the Democratic frontrunner Adam Schiff.The Fairshake Pac announced early this year that it had raised $85m from leaders across the crypto community for the Pac and its affiliates, with the goal of supporting leaders who champion the interests of progressive innovation and responsible regulation". Continue reading...

Israeli company NSO Group is accused in lawsuit by Meta's messaging app of spying on 1,400 users over a two-week periodNSO Group, the maker of one the world's most sophisticated cyber weapons, has been ordered by a US court to hand its code for Pegasus and other spyware products to WhatsApp as part of the company's ongoing litigation.The decision by Judge Phyllis Hamilton is a major legal victory for WhatsApp, the Meta-owned communication app which has been embroiled in a lawsuit against NSO since 2019, when it alleged that the Israeli company's spyware had been used against 1,400 WhatsApp users over a two-week period. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Guardian investigation for podcast series Black Box reveals names connected to app that generated nonconsensual images of underage girls around the world

Singer had documented her experience with a rare form of cancer on platform and dedicated her last song to her sonCat Janice, the singer who went viral for dedicating her last song to her son and inspired a viral TikTok trend, has died from cancer, her family confirmed on Wednesday.Her family announced the news on her Instagram account: This morning, from her childhood home and surrounded by her loving family, Catherine peacefully entered the light and love of her heavenly creator. Continue reading...

Blaze Entertainment; Evercade consoles

Dead River investigates the cause and effects of the Brazil catastrophe. Plus: five of the funniest podcasts that also teach you something Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereHear Me Out

They appear on your phone uninvited, overlong and often three at time. This isn't a message. It's a one-woman showThere is a joke in the first season of the HBO show Hacks, pitched by Hannah Einbinder's gen Z character, Ava, to her boomer employer, Deborah Vance: I had a horrible nightmare that I got a voicemail," she says. Ha - gen Z hates voicemail; boomers don't understand jokes without punchlines. What?" shrieks Jean Smart's Vance. Ha - everyone's disgusting, and no single generation will give an inch to another.Sorry to insert gen X into the mix, but in the context of this particular flashpoint, we need to talk about voice memos. (Or audio messages, or voice texts, not to be confused with voice-to-text, which is something else entirely - all right, Grandma?)Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Liang Allan' Guo has been deemed a flight risk and ordered to hand over any passports in his possession

Lawsuit filed by publishers including Axel Springer allege Google abused its dominant position' in digital ad-techAlphabet's Google was hit with a 2.1bn ($2.3bn) lawsuit by 32 media groups including Axel Springer and Schibsted on Wednesday, alleging that they had suffered losses due to the company's practices in digital advertising.The move by the groups - which include publishers in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain and Sweden - comes as antitrust regulators also crack down on Google's ad-tech business. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: Sony's news that it is cutting jobs and cancelling projects for the mega-console underlines a depressing fact about game development - it's go big, or go home Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereI wrote last week about the decades-long console wars between Xbox and PlayStation - and how the Microsoft's looser attitude to releasing games everywhere people play them, even on rival consoles, might be the beginning of an end to them. Now we have news that Sony is laying off 900 people across its studios all over the world. Why is the maker of the hugely successful PlayStation 5, which has outsold its main rival by three to one, doing something so drastic? It seems that the end of the console wars might come not by choice, but by necessity: the way that the games industry worked in the past is simply not how it works now.The news that PlayStation would be laying off what amounts 8% of its workforce came via an all-company email from Jim Ryan, the company's outgoing boss - who, less than a week ago, was pictured celebrating his Sony career at London Studios with many people who now no longer have jobs: the company is closing it entirely, along with cuts at Firesprite, and there will be reductions in various functions" across the company in the UK. Guerilla Games (makers of the Horizon series), Naughty Dog (The Last of Us) and Insomniac (Marvel's Spider-Man) are also seeing reductions. At the time of writing, Sony employees at US studios were still waiting to hear how they would be affected. Please be kind to yourselves and to each other," the email ends, with almost jaw-dropping irony. Continue reading...

Sundar Pichai addresses backlash after Gemini software created images of historical figures in variety of ethnicities and genders

Stephen Joseph theatre, Scarborough

Little discussed outside its fanbase, it amassed 75 million registered users who provide a brilliantly welcoming community for neurodivergent gamersSix months ago my son Zac started to play a video game I knew very little about - which, as a games journalist, I found slightly disconcerting. Created by the Canada-based developer Digital Extremes, Warframe is an online sci-fi shooter, originally launched in 2013. Though little discussed outside its fanbase, it is consistently one of the biggest titles on Steam, with 75 million registered users.Set in a distant future version of our solar system, riddled with warring alien factions, the player takes part on the side of the Tenno, an ancient warrior race that employs barely sentient cybernetic fighters - the warframes of the title - as their primary weapons. Each day, Zac spends hours whizzing between planets, carrying out missions or exploring, all the while fighting enemies including a brutish clone army known as the Grineer, and the diseased, monstrous Infested. It sounds like a dozen other so-called live service games, which run indefinitely online, constantly adding new tasks, locations and items - the likes of Destiny, The Division and Final Fantasy XIV Online. But Warframe has held my son's attention, and there's one key reason for that: a remarkably friendly and welcoming community. Continue reading...

Entire online communities have developed around naming this 17-second snippet of catchy pop - and three years after it was uploaded no one has solved the mysteryIt's only 17 seconds long, and sounds a bit like 80s-era Genesis playing at the bottom of a swimming pool. But this snippet of bouncy yet sonically degraded pop has become one of the biggest and most enduring musical mysteries on the internet.The clip was uploaded in 2021 by someone called Carl92, who wanted to know if anyone could identify it. I don't remember its origin," he wrote on a site called WatZatSong, saying he found it between a bunch of very old files in a DVD backup ... it sounds somewhat familiar to me." But even after the 17-second sample was posted on Reddit, where the mighty pop-culture hive mind rarely fails, not a single person managed to identify the song or the artist. Continue reading...

Packed with swappable parts including the keyboard, ports and graphics card, this machine is uniqueFramework is back with the new, larger and more powerful Laptop 16 that is its most ambitious device yet: a highly modular and upgradeable 16in machine that can transform in layout and power in minutes. It is quite unlike anything else on the market.Packed with hot-swappable components, the laptop can be customised in myriad ways, converting from a fast but quiet workhorse by day into an LED-strewn gaming PC by night. Continue reading...

Reports say tech giant made announcement during meeting and forecast layoffs, ending secretive and resource-heavy projectApple is canceling its plans to build an electric car, according to multiple outlets, ending a secretive project that has consumed immense resources over the past decade. Executives from the company made the unexpected announcement during an internal team meeting on Tuesday, forecasting layoffs and telling employees that many of them would shift to working on generative artificial intelligence, per reports.Apple is believed to have spent billions of dollars attempting to develop an electric, semi-autonomous vehicle under the codename Project Titan, and its decision to kill the program is a major retreat from its previous strategy. Continue reading...

In a filing Monday, OpenAI claims a hired gun' took tens of thousands of attempts to generate the highly anomalous results'OpenAI has asked a federal judge to dismiss parts of the New York Times' copyright lawsuit against it, arguing that the newspaper hacked" its chatbot ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence systems to generate misleading evidence for the case.OpenAI said in a filing in Manhattan federal court on Monday that the Times caused the technology to reproduce its material through deceptive prompts that blatantly violate OpenAI's terms of use". Continue reading...

Company will cut 8% of workforce, citing changes in industry and a need to deliver on expectations from developers and gamers'Sony will cut about 900 jobs in its PlayStation division, or about 8% of its global workforce, becoming the latest company in the technology and gaming sector to announce layoffs.The company cited changes in the industry as a reason for the restructuring. The job cuts will occur in the Americas, Japan, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific region. Continue reading...

Awareness of the law is vital, so children under pressure feel empowered to say no, and parents know enough to support them

Federal judge in Texas says new requirement would cause irreparable injury' to industry amid surging electricity usageThe US government has suspended its effort to survey cryptocurrency mining operations over their ballooning energy use following a lawsuit from an industry that has been accused by environmental groups of fueling the climate crisis.A federal judge in Texas has granted a temporary order blocking the new requirements that would ascertain the energy use of the crypto miners, stating that the industry had shown it would suffer irreparable injury" if it was made to comply. Continue reading...

The US chip maker is the company to bet on if you want to invest in AI, but with the future of artificial intelligence in flux, staying on top of the game won't be easy Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereEveryone wants to be like Apple. The largest publicly traded company in the world, with a flagship product that prints money, and a cultural footprint that has reached world-historical importance: the 21st-century Ford.On a surface level, the companies that get slapped with that comparison are obvious enough. If you pump out well-made, slickly designed consumer electronics that arrive in a nice box, someone somewhere will compare you to the Cupertino giant.The AI supercomputer, dubbed AI Research SuperCluster (RSC) by Zuckerberg's Meta business, is already the fifth fastest in the world, the company said.The experiences we're building for the metaverse require enormous compute [sic] power (quintillions of operations/second!) and RSC will enable new AI models that can learn from trillions of examples, understand hundreds of languages, and more," wrote Zuckerberg. Continue reading...

Images created by AI are getting exponentially better, to the point where many people are unable to distinguish them from the real thing. As this technology continues to develop, challenges to our perception of what is real are immense, and our trust in what we are seeing is eroded. Fakes are already changing industries such as modelling and marketing, but can they offer a more diverse reflection of humanity than has historically been available - or are they destined to reflect the narrow standards of beauty these industries have long been drawn to?*With thanks to the Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona*Great British Brands is published by Country & Town House magazine Continue reading...

Last week, I downloaded a game called Balatro for a few casual turns on Steam Deck. I haven't been able to think of much else sinceI am one of those people who feels like crying when the rules of a board game are explained to me, so card games are generally not my thing. In real life poker, I inevitably get bored after a few rounds, go all in, and crash out spectacularly, just so something will happen. But real life poker is not Balatro. Balatro might be the best card game you will ever come across. I specifically left my Steam Deck at home this morning so that I would not sit at my desk playing Balatro instead of doing all the other, less fun things I am supposed to do at work, such as staring disconsolately at my perpetually overflowing email inbox. I think it will be one of the breakout games of the year. Join me, and it will suck you in, too.Here is how you play. You're dealt a hand of nine normal playing cards, and then you play the best four or five-card poker hand you can muster from them: flush, straight, three of a kind, all that. Then you're scored on the hand, with satisfying, ratcheting ding!"s, and you move on to the next one. You're only ever playing against yourself: beat the points target, which at the beginning is maybe a few hundred easily scored points, and you move on to the next round. Continue reading...

Tesla had ditched an order for 4,000 mini pies, but the X owner paid the debt after the incident received attention

World's biggest social media firms challenge state laws blocking them from moderating certain content or banning usersMembers of the United States supreme court expressed skepticism regarding two laws being debated in oral arguments on Monday, both of which deal with how social media platforms moderate content and could have broad implications for freedom of speech online.Filed by NetChoice, an association representing the world's largest social media firms, both cases challenge state laws blocking social media platforms from moderating certain user content or banning users. Arguments on Monday lasted longer than many experts anticipated, extending into a marathon four-hour session. Continue reading...

Stuart Harrington doubts that such a ban will work, while Oscar Acton spells out the benefits of smartphone access for school studentsThe members of the WhatsApp group Smartphone Free Childhood have an unrealistic expectation if they believe that banning under-14s from possessing smartphones and trying to prevent under-16s accessing social media is a practical way of protecting them from the very real dangers that the internet can unveil (It went nuts: Thousands join UK parents calling for smartphone-free childhood', 17 February).If the first duty of any parent or guardian is to provide a safe and healthy environment for their children, then showing them how to access and use the internet safely is their responsibility. Roads are also potentially dangerous for children, but we do not ban cars - instead we spend time teaching young people the safe way to navigate through busy traffic. Continue reading...

Gang sets up new site on dark web and releases rambling statement explaining how it was infiltrated by law enforcement agenciesThe LockBit ransomware gang is attempting a comeback days after its operations were severely disrupted by a coordinated international crackdown.The Russia-based group has set up a new site on the dark web to advertise a small number of alleged victims and leak stolen data, as well as releasing a rambling statement explaining how it had been hobbled by the UK's National Crime Agency, the FBI, Europol and other police agencies in an operation last week. Continue reading...

In part seven of our series exploring myths surrounding EVs, we look at claims friction on brakes and tyres will affect air quality

Robocalls of President Biden already confused primary voters in New Hampshire - but measures to curb the technology could be too little too lateThe AI election is here.Already this year, a robocall generated using artificial intelligence targeted New Hampshire voters in the January primary, purporting to be President Joe Biden and telling them to stay home in what officials said could be the first attempt at using AI to interfere with a US election. The deepfake" calls were linked to two Texas companies, Life Corporation and Lingo Telecom. Continue reading...

A tech company supported by Trump's former lawyer is injecting chaos into the state's vote-counting processA tech company supported by Donald Trump's former lawyer has been facilitating mass challenges to voter registrations in Georgia. State officials say its methods are inaccurate and likely skirt state law.Founded in the wake of the 2020 election, EagleAI, pronounced Eagle Eye", offers a tool that streamlines challenges to voter registrations. Pulling data from both public and purchased information, it allows anyone to investigate potential errors on voter registrations forms. With a few clicks to attach evidence of alleged disqualifying mistakes, EagleAI automatically fills out challenges to registrations. A local volunteer then downloads and emails them to their county election board. A successful challenge stops a person from voting unless they reregister. Continue reading...

Home secretary, who is due to meet US tech bosses, says states such as Russia and Iran could target other countries as wellCriminals and malign actors" working on behalf of malicious states could use AI-generated deepfakes" to hijack the general election, the home secretary has said.James Cleverly was speaking before meetings with social media bosses and said the rapid advancement of technology could pose a serious threat to elections across the globe. Continue reading...

Data from cyber security firm I-Soon offers a rare glimpse in to the inner workings of China's hacking programA massive data leak from a Chinese cybersecurity firm has offered a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Beijing-linked hackers.Analysts say the leak is a treasure-trove of intel into the day-to-day operations of China's hacking programme, which the FBI says is the biggest of any country. The company, I-Soon, has yet to confirm the leak is genuine and has not responded to a request for comment. As of Friday, the leaked data was removed from the online software repository GitHub, where it had been posted. 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 conceptsDoes spam email actually work? I don't mean dodgy phishing emails, but the annoying ads and sales pitches. Presumably the answer is yes, otherwise the spammers wouldn't bother, but I find it hard to believe. Ali Farhan, ManchesterSend new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Continue reading...

Is all this bunker-building a sign the 1% know something we don't and are preparing for end times?What's your plan for the apocalypse? I'll tell you what mine is: death. I am not really built for battle - I need five cups of coffee just to function and I have terrible allergies. My body can't even handle pollen, it's not going to do well with nuclear war. Plus, even if I was hardier - who wants to live a few extra months in a completely destroyed world?Billionaires. Billionaires do. As you have probably noticed bunkers have become the ultimate status symbol among the 1%. The bunker craze, accelerated by the pandemic, has been going on for a while now. However I'm starting to think that bunker-fever is getting out of hand. The rich are no longer content with run-of-the-mill $500,000 survival shelters, they're taking things to the next level: a development which should probably worry us all. Continue reading...

Experts alerted motor trade to security risks of smart key' systems which have now fuelled highest level of car thefts for a decade Gone in 20 seconds: how smart keys' have fuelled a new wave of car crimeThe car industry ignored warnings more than a decade ago that keyless technology on modern vehicles risked a surge in vehicle thefts, an investigation by the Observer can reveal.Legal and computer researchers claimed keyless entry and vehicle software would be subverted" because of inadequate security. Continue reading...

One London resident watched on CCTV as a thief walked up to his 40,000 car and drove away. Now manufacturers say they are being drawn in to a hi-tech arms race' with criminals Read more: car industry was warned keyless vehicles vulnerable to theft a decade agoWhen Steve Jessop's electric Hyundai car was stolen outside his west London house on a rainy day earlier this month, he appealed to neighbours for potential footage of the crime.He quickly secured a CCTV video and was stunned at the ease with which his car had been taken. A hooded figure approached it, opened the doors without forced entry, started the engine and drove off. Continue reading...

Frank Skinner's new Radio 4 panel show is a winner; the Daily Mail goes below the line; Misha Glenny gives us microchips with everything; and Capital gains Radio 1 star Jordan NorthOne Person Found This Helpful (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds

Our sugar problem could be solved by counteracting it after we've eaten it, as stomach sponges' and fibre-making enzymes head to marketI am in a kitchen shared by bio-based startups in San Francisco looking forward to a chocolate chip cookie. Having been diagnosed with prediabetes a few years ago, I usually stay well away from sweet treats. But I have a secret weapon: a sachet of Monch Monch, a proprietary plant fibre-based drink mix that has been engineered to expand in my stomach like a kitchen sponge and soak up sugar in food, rendering it unavailable for early absorption.The idea is that, locked in the sponge", a significant amount of the sugar will simply pass through. One gram of the product can absorb six grams of sugar according to lab tests by the startup behind it, BioLumen. Sucrose (table sugar), glucose, fructose and to a lesser extent simple starches can all be sequestered. Given there's just over four grams in the sachet, I calculate it should - if it works - nicely nullify the sugar in my treat and give my gut a fibre boost to boot. How do you eat food without paying the health price? We think we have figured out a way," says Paolo Costa, co-founder and CEO of the company, as I mix the powder in the sachet with water and drink it. Continue reading...

A Tesla employee ordered 2,000 mini pies from San Jose's Giving Pies, only to later cancel the $6,000 order from the small bakeryBillionaire Elon Musk has promised to make things good" with a California bakery after his company backed out of a pie order that cost the owner thousands of dollars.Just hearing about this. Will make things good with the bakery," Musk said on X (formerly Twitter) in response to a story about the cancelled order. Continue reading...

On the banks of Myanmar's largest river, the photographer captured the joy and spontaneity of five young boysAyeyarwady River is Myanmar's largest, andit was on its sandbanks near Sagaing Bridge that Kyaw Zay YarLin found these children playing.I often go there, because it's such abeautiful place," Kyaw says. I go to relax, enjoy the weather and the views, but that day I approached these five boys playing in the mud and asked permission to take their photo. Continue reading...

US enthusiasts who follow the tradition of sharing dough are now receiving about 1,000 requests a week, up from 30 to 60There's an old pioneer tradition" dating from the earliest days of the colonisation of the US west, says Mary Buckingham, that you shared your bread starter with anyone who asked."Which was all very well until TikTok came along. Continue reading...