Technology | The Guardian

AI art generators may provide five minutes of fun for most users, but the blurring of creative and ethical boundaries is leaving many artists raging against the machine‘Woman reading book, under a night sky, dreamy atmosphere,” I type into Deep Dream Generator’s Text 2 Dream feature. In less than a minute, an image is returned to me showing what I’ve described. Welcome to the world of AI image generation, where you can create what on the surface looks like top-notch artwork using just a few text prompts, even if in reality your skills don’t go beyond drawing stick figures.AI image generation seems to be everywhere: on TikTok, the popular AI Manga filter shows you what you look like in the Japanese comic style, while people in their droves are using it to create images for everything from company logos to picture books. It’s already been used by one major publisher: sci-fi imprint Tor discovered that a cover it had created had used a licensed image created by AI, but decided to go ahead anyway “due to production constraints”. Continue reading...

Social media platform faces $300m interest payment this week, and default could trigger debt restructuring – or bankruptcyElon Musk sold a statue of Twitter’s bird logo last week for $100,000 – and he needs the money. The social media platform that he owns reportedly faces an interest payment of about $300m (£242m) on its debt as soon as this week, amid difficult financial conditions for the company.Twitter has been a loss-making business, even in the good times, but its problems have worsened since it was bought by the Tesla chief executive less than three months ago. Musk himself has raised the spectre of Twitter entering chapter 11 bankruptcy, although he has since played that prospect down. How much trouble is Twitter in, months after it was bought by the world’s second richest man? Continue reading...

In Coventry, 300 GMB members plan to down tools over long hours, bad management and a 50p-an-hour pay riseAmazon workers at a vast depot in Coventry will stage a historic strike on Wednesday – the first time the delivery giant’s UK operations have ever been hit by industrial action.The immediate cause of the dispute was a 50p-an-hour pay rise offered to warehouse staff in the summer, which many felt was insulting – particularly after they had worked throughout the Covid pandemic. Continue reading...

Sensationalist headlines and reactionary calls for stricter moderation risk missing the forest for the treesIs there any platform that creates as much collective angst as TikTok?For some, TikTok is just a silly video app. For others, it’s a symbol of our most potent social and political fears. What are young people engaging with? Isn’t it collecting a huge amount of data? Are they being dragged down dangerous rabbit holes? And is China spying on them? Continue reading...

The carmaker co-founder said Twitter was the most democratic way to communicate but tweets didn’t affect stock as he expectedElon Musk testified on Friday as part of a trial over a 2018 tweet in which he claimed to have “funding secured” to take Tesla private, a tweet that shareholders allege cost them millions in trading losses.The Tesla CEO appeared in a San Francisco federal courtroom and defended himself by saying that “just because I tweet something does not mean people believe it or will act accordingly”. Continue reading...

Startup that hoped to transform UK car production was once valued at more than £800m, but collapsed worth a tiny fraction of thatWhen Britishvolt, a startup hoping to transform UK car production by making batteries for electric vehicles, rented a seven-bedroom £2.8m mansion with a swimming pool and Jacuzzi-style bath for workers, some employees were uncomfortable with the impression it gave of lavish spending.Founded in 2019, Britishvolt began with grand ambitions – hailed by the then prime minister, Boris Johnson – to become the first domestically owned battery factory in a car industry that employs tens of thousands of British workers, but where the big manufacturers are all overseas companies. The planned factory would have been able to supply 30 gigawatt hours (GWh) of batteries a year, enough for hundreds of thousands of cars. Continue reading...

Bosses at Davos say direct messaging can be more effective for Gen Z employees – but email still has a roleCould office emails go the way of the fax machine and the rolodex? They have not joined those workplace dinosaurs yet, but there were signs of evolutionary change at the annual gathering of business leaders in Davos this week, where tech bosses said emails were becoming outdated.The chief executive of the IT firm Wipro, which employs 260,000 people worldwide, said about 10% of his staff “don’t even check one email per month” and that he used Instagram and LinkedIn to talk to staff. Continue reading...

Company is latest large US tech player to announce sweeping job losses as global outlook weakensGoogle’s parent company is to cut 12,000 jobs worldwide as it becomes the latest large US tech firm to reduce its workforce after a pandemic-related hiring boom.Alphabet’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, said the redundancies followed a “rigorous review” of the business. The cuts come days after Microsoft said it would cut 10,000 jobs, citing a shift in digital spending habits and weakness in the global economy. Continue reading...

Uber files project revealed that company identified Emmanuel Macron as key allyUber’s lobbying activities in France and its relationship with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, are facing an official inquiry following an investigation led by the Guardian last year.A committee of French MPs will now investigate the ride-hailing company’s relationships with public officials, including with Macron, after journalists revealed extensive lobbying of politicians by the company. Continue reading...

Firm is latest casualty in sector as cryptocurrencies contagion spreads after FTX collapseThe cryptocurrency lender Genesis has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US, becoming the latest victim of the shakeout in the digital asset market after the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX.Genesis Global Capital, one of three Genesis entities that applied for bankruptcy protection on Thursday, froze customer withdrawals on 16 November, days after FTX made its own Chapter 11 filing.

Experts say banning the app over college networks will not stop students from accessing it over cellular dataThere’s a new frontline opening up in the US war on TikTok: college campuses.The China-based app has already been banned on all federal government devices and on government devices in 31 states over data privacy concerns. Now restrictions are spreading to universities, with the Auburn University, University of Oklahoma, Texas A&M and others all blocking the platform from school wifi networks in recent weeks. Continue reading...

Hastings will be succeeded by co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos, and will continue in the company as executive chairmanNetflix co-founder Reed Hastings, the entrepreneur who reshaped the media landscape and led the charge into streaming, announced he is stepping down as co-chief executive of the company on Thursday.Hastings, 62, co-founded the company in 1997 when Netflix delivered its subscribers movies on DVDs sent in the mail, will become chairman. Greg Peters, the company’s chief product and chief operating officer, will join Ted Sarandos, chief content officer, as a co-chief executive. Sarandos was elevated to co-CEO in July 2020. Continue reading...

The horror sequences are more vivid, the storytelling explores new worlds and it turns a familiar tale into something that grips you all over again. It’s the dream video game adaptationWhen it comes to video-game adaptations, TV and film producers have historically had an unfortunate habit of using the game as a kind of Mad Libs prompt for something completely unrelated. Characters you’ve spent 30 hours getting to know in a game might remain in name and appearance only, given personality transplants to fit into new, incongruous plots. There has been an endemic lack of respect for video games from decades’ worth of film-makers who, in the words of games satire site Hard Drive News, have been excited to take a beloved franchise and adapt it into something not for dumb little babies.HBO’s The Last of Us finally marks the end of this era. There’s been a shift in the tenor of game adaptations in the past few years; you could tell that Detective Pikachu was written by huge Pokémon fans, Cyberpunk 2077’s Netflix series was actually better than the game, and the plot of Paramount’s TV version of the military space-opera Halo is just as ponderous and self-important as the games. But the close involvement of The Last of Us co-creator Neil Druckmann in the TV series takes HBO’s adaptation to another level. The Last of Us doesn’t just preserve the premise and characters of the game; it tells us something new about them. Continue reading...

UK entrepreneur says economic strategy has left Britain in a ‘Covid inertia’ and calls for growth planSir James Dyson, the billionaire businessperson, has launched a withering attack on Rishi Sunak’s government, saying its “shortsighted” and “stupid” economic policies have left the country in a state of “Covid inertia”.The founder of the eponymous vacuum cleaner firm said “growth has become a dirty word” under the current leadership and that on current trends, the average British family will be poorer than their Polish counterpart by 2030. Continue reading...

It has introduced facial recognition, but does not recognise meNatWest recently introduced biometric approval on its app for transactions such as payments to a new account. It requires customers to look into the phone and blink (presumably to show we’re alive and not corpses propped up in front of the camera by some fraudster). And, in my experience, it hardly ever works. I’ve just sat here for four minutes, blinking like an idiot with the app telling me to move the camera closer until it’s virtually up my nose, until the approval time expired. This has been my repeated experience. Very annoying. But from a quick browse online I see I’m not alone.

Highlights of the sale following Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover of the company include kegerators and a planterWhat do you get the tech fan who has everything? Perhaps a statue of Twitter’s bright-blue logo, for a mere $100,000.That’s what the priciest item went for at an auction of the company’s office supplies, according to the BBC. The sale marks the latest episode in the continuing saga of Elon Musk’s $44bn takeover of the company, which has generated seemingly endless chaos – from sudden policy changes to the elimination of thousands of jobs.A 10ft tall neon Twitter sign, perhaps a nice companion piece to the statue, sold for a mere $40,000.A 6ft tall planter in the shape of the @ symbol – which is, of course, an icon of the platform – closed at $15,500, according to SFGate.A conference table made from reclaimed wood closed at nearly $10,500.A fancy espresso machine from La Marzocco went for about $13,500 – less than half its retail value – while an Eames chair apparently saw added value thanks to its Twitter associations. Normally, it would go for $1,195, but Twitter’s chair went for at least $1,400, as a company engineer pointed out. Continue reading...

Everyone from awkward boyfriends to supposedly nefarious fiances are being held to account. The jurors? A million deranged zoomersIf I was a more dedicated podcast listener, I am certain I would be a nutter for true crime, a genre with which I share many core values: a zeal for prying into the lives of total strangers, a generally melodramatic way of talking, an overactive imagination which crafts grand, paranoid narratives from the most quotidian of events. (These are also the traits of anyone who did theatre in high school.)TikTok, apparently, agrees. When Serial exploded the genre in 2014, the power of amateur sleuths – and the sway they possessed over the real-world results of justice – was still a novelty. Now, nearly a decade on, new mysteries sweep through TikTok at dizzying pace. Everyone from awkward boyfriends to supposedly nefarious fiances are held to account on the platform by users conducting their own frenzied investigations, hoping to catch their suspects cheating, philandering and premeditating. The jurors: a million deranged zoomers. The tone: nothing short of fever pitch – the type that accompanies all good conspiracy theories. Continue reading...

Tesla investor seeks ‘billions’ in damages on behalf of those who traded stock after Musk posted plan to take company privateElon Musk could end up taking the stand as early as Friday in the ongoing San Francisco trial alleging that he deceptively drove up the price of Tesla Motors’ stock by tweeting about a plan to take the carmaker private, which never came to pass.As arguments began on Wednesday, the attorney for a group of shareholders charged that Elon Musk “lied” when he tweeted in 2018 that he had “secured” funding to take Tesla private. The case seeks to hold the firm’s CEO responsible for “billions” investors say they lost after the claim drove up the share price. Continue reading...

Prosecutors allege Anatoly Legkodymov’s company became a ‘safe haven’ for proceeds of criminal activityA Russian national who founded a cryptocurrency exchange that the justice department says became a haven for the proceeds of criminal activity has been arrested, federal officials said on Wednesday.Anatoly Legkodymov, who lives in China, was arrested on Tuesday night in Miami and was due in court on a charge of conducting an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Continue reading...

PC, Mac, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch (version played); Mojiken Studio/Toge Productions

The HBO version of the post-apocalyptic has had rave reviews. From Silent Hill to Broken Sword, here are others that could really shine on the small screen

Internet dating can feel soul-destroying, unnerving and transactional. Couples explain how their love lives were transformed when they finally stopped swipingWhen Georgie Thorogood’s date made a sleazy joke about “horsey girls carrying whips”, she knew it was time to make a hasty exit. After meeting Tom through a dating app in the summer of 2021, she had been hoping for some polite conversation over a few drinks, maybe some romantic chemistry if she was lucky. What she got was a two-hour rant about his ex-wife and some creepy innuendo. “I knew straight away he wasn’t for me. I politely told him I didn’t want to see him again, but he took the rejection really badly. I work in music communications and at the time I was setting up a festival. He started getting aggressive and telling me that I was destined to fail,” she says. “I don’t know how he could possibly know that, as he didn’t ask me a single question about myself all night.”Her bad experience, which came after months of mindless swiping, was the final straw for Georgie, 40. “Not only did I find dating apps soul-destroying, I was also happy with my single life, so I decided to quit them completely and focus on that instead,” she says. “I found so many of the men on apps had serious issues, too. Another guy became abusive when I turned down an offer to meet for a walk in a remote location because it didn’t feel safe. You never know who people are online.” While Georgie acknowledges that people with emotional baggage aren’t exclusive to dating sites, she feels the apps give them a chance to hide their bad behaviour. “The problem is that you don’t have to reflect or make changes when something goes wrong – you can just swipe to the next person.” Continue reading...

Meta’s advisory board says policy impedes right to expression for women and trans and nonbinary peopleFacebook and Instagram’s parent company could soon free the nipple. More than a decade after breastfeeding mothers first held a “nurse-in” at Facebook’s headquarters to protest against its ban on breasts, Meta’s oversight board has called for an overhaul to the company’s rules banning bare-chested images of women – but not men.In a decision dated 17 January, the oversight board – a group of academics, politicians, and journalists who advise the company on its content-moderation policies – recommended that Meta change its adult nudity and sexual activity community standard “so that it is governed by clear criteria that respect international human rights standards”. Continue reading...

Video from 2016 was promoted by Elon Musk as evidence that ‘Tesla drives itself’A 2016 video that Tesla used to promote its self-driving technology was staged to show capabilities like stopping at a red light and accelerating at a green light that the system did not have, according to testimony by a senior engineer.The video, which remains archived on Tesla’s website, was released in October 2016 and promoted on Twitter by Elon Musk as evidence that “Tesla drives itself”. Continue reading...

One new provision targets senior managers at tech platforms who ignore Ofcom enforcement notices

Afghanistan’s hardline Islamist rulers had never carried a verification tick mark before the launch of Twitter BlueTwitter account verifications bought by the Taliban appear to have been removed, after many expressed outrage that the social media platform had given its blue check marks to Afghanistan’s hardline Islamist rulers.Twitter previously only gave blue “verified” check marks to accounts that were considered “active, notable and authentic accounts of public interest”. But since Elon Musk acquired the platform last year, users can buy them from the Twitter Blue service for a fee – an option at least two officials of the Taliban government in Afghanistan had exercised. Continue reading...

The Swedish-based electric carmaker has pulled ahead of rivals thanks to its no-factory model and Chinese partner, but its boss want to remove carbon from the production process too“I was never ever that car guy who was interested in designing a Ferrari,” says Thomas Ingenlath. It’s a surprising thing to hear from a former designer for Audi, Skoda and Volvo. It makes more sense for the chief executive of an electric car startup, Polestar, launched in 2017 as a subsidiary brand of Volvo.Ingenlath’s design ideals stretch way beyond car marques to include Apple products and high-end sports clothing. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: The government’s proposed legislation seeks to keep children safe from harmful content and hold tech CEOs accountable. Can it?

This desperately moving drama set in a zombie-ravaged US is a phenomenal blend of horror and heart, with a cast that could not be more perfect• The Last of Us recap episode one – welcome to the mushroom apocalypse! What if it wasn’t a flu-like virus that threatened the existence of humankind, but a parasitic fungus that used rising temperatures to evolve and switch hosts, from ants to humans? That is the terrifying premise of The Last of Us, another post-apocalyptic prestige drama in a TV landscape that, for understandable reasons, is stuffed with game-over scenarios. While its zombie skeleton brings immediate comparisons to The Walking Dead, its beating heart is more in line with last year’s Station Eleven, with which it shares a surprisingly steady and meditative pace.Much has been made of its origins as a video game, in part because the source material looked as if it might offer the best chance yet of a convincing transition from console to screen. The series was adapted by the game’s creator, Neil Druckmann, and Chernobyl’s showrunner, Craig Mazin, a combination that suggested it might buck the trend of video games reworked into another format. (Thirty years on, the Super Mario Bros film is still cited as a cautionary tale.)The Last of Us is on Sky Atlantic and Now in the UK, HBO in the US and Binge and Foxtel in Australia. Continue reading...

Ian Russell says inquest into daughter’s death is ‘unique’ opportunity to make online platforms saferMolly Russell’s father has called for a stronger UK online safety bill, including criminal sanctions for tech executives who endanger children’s wellbeing, after criticising social media platforms’ responses to a coroner’s report on his daughter’s death.Ian Russell said the inquest into the death of Molly, 14, was a “unique” opportunity for the tech industry and government to make online platforms safer. A coroner ruled in September that harmful online content contributed to the death of Molly, stating that she “died from an act of self-harm whilst suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content”. Continue reading...

Court documents reveal reasons for Awad Al-Qarni’s arrest – even though rulers are major investors in social media platformsA prominent pro-reform law professor in Saudi Arabia is facing the death penalty for alleged crimes including having a Twitter account and using WhatsApp to share news considered “hostile” to the kingdom, according to court documents seen by the Guardian.The arrest of Awad Al-Qarni, 65, in September 2017 represented the start of a crackdown against dissent by the then newly named crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Continue reading...

Some claim the rise in winter infections has been caused by the reduction of seasonal bugs during lockdowns. But experts are sceptical about these oversimplified explanationsThe deaths of at least 190 people, including 30 children, from the invasive bacterial infection group A streptococcus, or strep A, are the most extreme consequences of a wave of winter infections that have seemingly left most of the country coughing and sneezing. The parlous state of the nation’s health has prompted suggestions that we are now paying an “immunity debt” incurred by the reduction of common infections during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. But experts seem divided about whether the debt concept is genuine, let alone whether it explains the prevalence of non-Covid afflictions.As with so many of the debates about the outcomes of the pandemic, there do not appear to be simple answers – but no shortage of self-proclaimed “experts” ready to give them anyway. While there are good reasons to believe that the measures taken to reduce the spread of the coronavirus have broader implications for common infectious diseases, there is no one-case-fits-all explanation for the spate of winter bugs, much less any obvious conclusions to be drawn about pandemic management. Continue reading...

Investors are pursuing legal action against Virgin Galactic, claiming its carrier aircraft and space vehicle were not designed for regular space travelIn a desert basin in New Mexico, Richard Branson hopes history will be made later this year with the launch of Virgin Galactic’s first commercial flights to the edge of space, with tickets costing about $450,000 (£370,000) each.It is an ambitious schedule to launch the “world’s first commercial spaceliner” at Spaceport America, even though it is already more than a decade late. Continue reading...

An art historian, a critic and a gallerist are tasked with guessing whether a piece is by an important artist or a clever bot. It turns out it’s harder than it looksThe year 2022 was when AI-generated images went viral. Online, you may have come across very realistic yet suspiciously improbable images of, say, an astronaut riding a horse through space or an avocado doubling as an armchair.Numerous new generators – including Dall-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion – offer anyone with an internet connection the chance to conjure up their own strange apparition, simply by typing in a “prompt” for the AI. (For example, “astronaut astride horse on Mars”. Or, for this article, “Mark Rothko Abstract Expressionist oil painting” – yes, the image above isn’t a real Rothko.) The possibilities have been endless, the opportunity for meme-making infinite. Continue reading...

Ask the AI program a question, as millions have in recent weeks, and it will do its best to respond

For at least a decade, researchers have speculated that sex with robots is just around the corner but that is yet to materialiseThe man leans towards the woman on his couch. “What is your favourite meal?” he asks, his accent French. “Electricity,” she says, with a strong Scottish inflection. “It provides me energy and has a kick to it.”The slight, bespectacled, increasingly bemused man peppers her with questions as they sit. Her blond hair gleams, her dark-rimmed eyes are placid, her lips a full and glossy pout. “Can I call you Charlotte?” he asks. Continue reading...

Price of cheapest Model 3 saloon car dropped by £5,500 to £42,990 to combat slowing demand as carmaker shares dropTesla has cut the prices of its cars in the US and Europe by up to a fifth as it contends with slowing demand and increased competition.The US carmaker expanded its sales by 40% during 2022 to 1.3m, making it the world’s largest manufacturer of pure battery electric cars, ahead of China’s BYD. However, investors have started to worry that sales growth will be limited by economic slowdowns in some of its key markets. Continue reading...

Guardian science correspondent is put to the test in the panic-inducing VR world of a game that teaches breathing techniqueTethered to a chair, in a gloomy basement, I’m doing my best not to panic – by breathing in for four seconds, holding for seven, and slowly releasing for eight. But when a bloodthirsty monster appears at my feet and starts crawling towards me, I don’t need a dial to tell me that my heart is pounding, and I’m in imminent mortal danger.Welcome to the future of anxiety treatment: a virtual reality (VR) game that teaches you a breathing technique to help calm your nerves, and then pits you against a monstrous humanoid that wants to eat you, to practise deploying it in genuinely panic-inducing situations. Continue reading...

‘Compensation’ for CEO down from $99.4m in 2022 to an expected $49m for current yearThe Apple chief executive, Tim Cook, is expected to have his pay cut by almost 50% this year to about $49m (£40m) after the billionaire boss asked the company to “adjust his compensation” in the light of feedback from shareholders disappointed at the fall in the company’s share price.Cook, 62, who became CEO after the co-founder Steve Jobs stepped down before his death in 2011, was paid $99.4m in 2022 and $98.8m in 2021. But the company said in a regulatory filing late on Thursday night that it had set a “target compensation” of $49m for 2023. Continue reading...

Social media bosses who breach child safety rules may face jail if Ofcom given powers to prosecute

Postal service has been unable to send letters and parcels overseas since Wednesday due to hackingRoyal Mail has been hit by a ransomware attack by a criminal group, which has threatened to publish the stolen information online.The postal service has received a ransom note purporting to be from LockBit, a hacker group widely thought to have close links to Russia. Continue reading...

Lawsuit targets Voyager after Guardian investigation uncovered police partnership and company’s claims it could predict crimeMeta has sued to block a surveillance company from using Facebook and Instagram, alleging the firm, which has partnered with law enforcement, created tens of thousands of fake accounts to collect user data.A complaint filed on Thursday asks a judge to permanently ban Voyager Labs from accessing Meta’s sites and comes after a Guardian investigation revealed the company had partnered with the Los Angeles police department (LAPD) in 2019 and claimed that it could use social media information to predict who may commit a future crime. Continue reading...

The Louis Thorold Foundation, set up by Rachael and Chris Thorold in memory of their son, campaigns for safer roadsLouis Thorold was “just a perfect little baby, smiley and happy”, recalls his father, Chris. One of the five-month-old’s favourite toys was a plush elephant with crinkly ears. His mother, Rachael, remembers how relaxed Louis was, sleeping easily and even nodding off in her arms when she took him for weekly swimming lessons. “We were so happy, we thought we had a lifetime of days like this ahead.”Yet for eight weeks after her son was killed in a road accident that left her with catastrophic injuries, Rachael had no memory that she had even had a child. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch; Sidebar Games

Workers received no warning before the termination of their jobs in December, shortly after Elon Musk’s takeover of the companyLaureta, a single mother and janitor for years at Twitter’s offices in New York City, would like Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest people and the new owner of the social media giant, to know just how he ruined her Christmas.Like other janitors at Twitter – and many other employees at the troubled company, which has shed thousands of staff – she said she never received any explanation for her sudden layoff. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Investors threw millions at a coin themed on the Netflix hit – that never appeared. Find out how in The Squid Scam. Plus: five of the best podcasts about celebrity scandals

So much is happening, both wonderful and terrible – and it matters how we tell it. We can’t erase the bad news, but to ignore the good is the route to indifference or despairEvery crisis is in part a storytelling crisis. This is as true of climate chaos as anything else. We are hemmed in by stories that prevent us from seeing, or believing in, or acting on the possibilities for change. Some are habits of mind, some are industry propaganda. Sometimes, the situation has changed but the stories haven’t, and people follow the old versions, like outdated maps, into dead ends.We need to leave the age of fossil fuel behind, swiftly and decisively. But what drives our machines won’t change until we change what drives our ideas. The visionary organiser adrienne maree brown wrote not long ago that there is an element of science fiction in climate action: “We are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced. I believe that we are in an imagination battle.” Continue reading...

Media firm says personal data of UK staff members was accessed in ‘highly sophisticated’ cyber-attack last monthThe Guardian has confirmed it was hit by a ransomware attack in December and that the personal data of UK staff members has been accessed in the incident.The Guardian Media Group’s chief executive, Anna Bateson, and the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, confirmed the news in an update emailed to staff on Wednesday afternoon. Continue reading...

Princeton senior Edward Tian says GPTZero can root out text composed by the controversial AI bot, but users cite mixed results

In this week’s newsletter: The boom years of smartphone gaming have given way to a naked cash-grab that rewards player-unfriendly design