Ex-president announces World Liberty Financial and publicly addresses second apparent assassination attemptDonald Trump launched his family's cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, on a livestreamed interview on the social media platform X on Monday. The Republican presidential nominee gave few details about the venture but did offer his first public comments on the apparent assassination attempt against him a day earlier.Trump did not discuss specifics about World Liberty Financial on Monday or how it would work, pivoting from questions about cryptocurrency to talking about artificial intelligence and other topics. Instead, he recounted his experience on Sunday, saying he and a friend playing golf heard shots being fired in the air, and I guess probably four or five. Continue reading...
MachineGames' long-awaited tie-in looks set to deliver the most authentic Indy adventure yet. And with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on board, hold on to your hats for an unforgettable rideIt's the spring of 1977, and George Lucas is petrified. Having just wrapped work on his third feature film, Star Wars, he retreats to Hawaii, unable to face the early reviews. Yet as he frets in a five-star resort, Lucas bumps into another Hollywood hideaway - Steven Spielberg. Making sandcastles together under the Maui sun, Lucas pitches Spielberg a story that riffs on the simpler era of 1950s' serials, an action-packed spectacular about a James Bond-esque archaeologist. This crypt-robbing Casanova's name? Indiana ... Smith.The hero's moniker certainly benefited from some finessing, and the action-packed Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) raked in $354m at the box office. Yet as great as Indy's influence was on cinema, it might have had an even bigger one on video games. It inspired Lara Croft's tomb-raiding antics and Uncharted's wise-cracking Nathan Drake. There have also been games starring Indy himself, most notably LucasArts' brilliant graphic adventures from the early-90s, but it's been decades since the last interactive Indiana Jones adventure that wasn't made of Lego. This December, he'll finally get another crack of the gaming whip with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, from the studio behind Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - in a game that actually looks like the films. Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: The AI company says its o1' model is capable of reason, a key blocker in the way of truly gamechanging artificial intelligence. But is it that simple? Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereWe are fast approaching two years of the generative AI revolution, sparked by the November 2022 release of ChatGPT by OpenAI. So far it's been a mixed bag.OpenAI recently announced it had crossed 200 million weekly active users - nothing to be sniffed at, but it got its first 100 million within two months of release. A recent YouGov study found that the inclusion of AI in a product is as likely to turn off a potential purchaser as much as it is to get them to hand over their cash. Continue reading...
When I got a confirmation email addressed to the wrong name. I suspected an error and cancelled. Then 500 was taken from my accountEight months ago, I booked an Airbnb on my new iPhone. The confirmation congratulated someone called Rachel on the booking.I realised Airbnb tech had somehow logged me in to a stranger's account using my new work phone number and my Face ID. Airbnb later told me the phone number had been recycled and was previously owned by Rachel". No payment had been taken and I immediately cancelled the reservation and booked a different property. Continue reading...
RT, Rossiya Segodnya and others accused of using deceiving tactics on Meta's apps to carry out influence operationsFacebook owner Meta said on Monday it was banning RT, Rossiya Segodnya and other Russian state media networks, alleging the outlets used deceptive tactics to carry out influence operations while evading detection on the social media company's platforms.After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity," the company said in a written statement. Continue reading...
No one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,' X owner tweeted after apparent Trump assassination attemptThe White House has condemned Elon Musk for tweeting no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala" in response to an X user asking Why they want to kill Donald Trump?"The president's office issued a statement Monday criticizing the irresponsible" post, which was accompanied by an emoji face with a raised eyebrow. The White House said: Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible." The statement added that there should be no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country". Continue reading...
Andy Jassy, the CEO, said in note to employees that new requirement will strengthen our culture'Amazon said on Monday it would require employees to return to the office five days a week, effective 2 January.We've decided that we're going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID. When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant," Andy Jassy, the CEO, said in a note sent out to employees globally. Continue reading...
Mobile phone use is not the biggest issue facing schools - or society. But device-free time is importantThe genie is out of the bottle. With the advent of smartphones and smartwatches, human life has moved online. Anyone seeking to curtail young people's participation in the online world is as doomed as the fools who can't figure out how to use the wishes gifted them in fairytales. The social ills blamed on the internet have complex causes that can't be fixed by blocking children's access.This is a caricature of the tech-positive outlook. In real life, most people recognise that the portable computers we carry around with us make excessive demands on our time and attention. Just as children need support to develop healthy eating habits, they need encouragement to use the internet in moderation - especially when very young. But reluctance to give in to unrealistic ban them!" messages about smartphones can shade into an impression that there is really nothing to be done. Or that if there is, it should be done by parents.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
A visual neuroscientist realized he saw green and blue differently to his wife. He designed an interactive site that has received over 1.5m visitsIt started with an argument over a blanket.I'm a visual neuroscientist, and my wife, Dr Marisse Masis-Solano, is an ophthalmologist," says Dr Patrick Mineault, designer of the viral web app ismy.blue. We have this argument about a blanket in our house. I think it's unambiguously green and she thinks it's unambiguously blue." Continue reading...
by Dan Milmo, Johana Bhuiyan and agency on (#6QRV3)
TikTok asserts the law targeting it is a breach of the first amendment protecting freedom of speechTikTok took its case against a threatened US ban to a federal court on Monday where it contended that a law targeting the video platform was unconstitutional".TikTok argued its case to a three-judge panel at an appeals court in Washington DC on Monday. An attorney for TikTok and ByteDance, Andrew Pincus, said TikTok was entitled to a right to freedom of speech: The speech here that is being banned, we would say, or at a minimum burned, is the speech of the US speaker." Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6QRV4)
iPhone upgrade joined by watchOS 11, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, adding new features to Apple's devicesApple will release software updates for its iPhone, iPad, Mac and smartwatch on Monday, adding new features and designs for compatible devices.Announced at the company's developer conference in June, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, watchOS 11 and macOS Sequoia add extensive new home screen and control centre customisation options, smart handwriting and maths tools for Notes and new watch faces, among other new features. Continue reading...
The modern world just isn't set up for non-smartphone users, but after a few faltering steps away from mine, my life changedMy 16th birthday was a big deal. Not only was I allowed to throw a party at my dad's, I was also given a brand new mobile phone. I was giddy. Back in 2006, nothing said liberation to a teenager quite like unlimited texts and a free house.My friends and I set about creating the sort of chaos only a group of repressed teenagers yet to be fully exposed to the unadulterated excesses of the internet could. Little did we know that those heady days of pumping out noughties R&B from an iPod were to be some of the last of their kind. Just a few months later, Steve Jobs would unveil the first iPhone, altering the way we interact with ourselves and the world around us for ever. Continue reading...
Emissions from in-house data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple may be 7.62 times higher than official tallyBig tech has made some big claims about greenhouse gas emissions in recent years. But as the rise of artificial intelligence creates ever bigger energy demands, it's getting hard for the industry to hide the true costs of the data centers powering the tech revolution.According to a Guardian analysis, from 2020 to 2022 the real emissions from the in-house" or company-owned data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple are likely about 662% - or 7.62 times - higher than officially reported. Continue reading...
A Brazilian justice ordering the platform to be blocked until it complies with state laws is a first among non-autocratic nationsAt 10 minutes past midnight on 31 August, Elon Musk's X (nee Twitter) went dark in Brazil, a country of more than 200 million souls, many of them enthusiastic users of online services. The day before, a supreme court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, had done something hitherto unthinkable: ordered the country's ISPs to block access to the platform, threatened a daily fine of 50,000 Brazilian reis (just under 6,800) for users who bypassed the ban by using virtual private networks (VPNs) and froze the finances of Elon Musk's Starlink internet service provider in the country. The order would remain in force until the platform complied with the decisions of the supreme federal court, paid fines totalling 18.3m reis (nearly 2.5m) and appointed a representative in Brazil, a legal requirement for foreign companies operating there. Moraes had also instructed Apple and Google to remove the X app and VPN software from their stores, but later reversed that decision, citing concerns about potential unnecessary" disruptions.Cue shock, horror, incredulity, outrage and all the reactions in between. Musk - who has been sparring with Moraes for quite a while - tweeted: Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes." The animosity between the two goes back to 8 January 2023, after the defeat of Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 Brazilian presidential election, when a mob of his supporters attacked federal government buildings in the capital, Brasilia. The mob invaded and caused deliberate damage to the supreme federal court, the national congress and the Planalto presidential palace in an abortive attempt to overthrow the democratically elected president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Continue reading...
The SpaceX boss has envisioned people staying on the red planet in a self-sustaining city in 20 yearsAlmost buried beneath a recent avalanche of rightwing invective posted by Elon Musk on the platform he owns, X, was one eye-popping statement that made space watchers sit up and take notice: an assertion that humans could land on Mars within four years and be living there in a self-sustaining city in 20.It seemed a fanciful boast, even by the standards of the SpaceX founder and world's richest man, who transformed the logistics and cost of shorter-duration, near-to-Earth orbit space travel with his fleet of reusable Falcon rockets. The US government space agency, Nasa, which is collaborating with SpaceX over knowledge and technology to get astronauts to the red planet, believes a first crewed landing by 2040 would be audacious". Continue reading...
Roasting can be really brutal, but at least if we inflict it on ourselves, we can get ahead of the jokeA friend recently shared a comment someone had made about her online. Sophie was a middle-aged, never-was influencer, in this stranger's estimation, who exploited her children and alienated everyone she met. As I debated whether liking" the post would read as support or broad agreement, I noticed a strange watermark. The vicious words had been generated not by a bitter stranger, but an AI roast app. My demented friend had asked for this.Who would volunteer to be insulted? A wave of apps such as Roastai.app, Roastedby.ai, Roastik.com and er, Monica.im suggest the answer is loads of us. Every day, people upload selfies to the Reddit page r/RoastMe, begging to be taken down a peg or two hundred. You look like a series of circles stacked on top of one another," the users exult. Why does your forehead start at the back of your head?" There is a cruel craft to it. One sedentary rapper recently got called The Notorious BMI", while someone else, who I don't even think had strabismus, was accused of having mortgage eyes - one fixed, one variable." Continue reading...
A controversial tweet may make it to the news, but reading every post from the world's richest man shows how frenzied and extreme he really isIt's just after midnight mountain standard time in the US on 13 August when Elon Musk makes his first post of the day on X, the platform he bought for $44bn when it was known as Twitter. Musk has been tweeting for hours about his interview with Donald Trump, and he will continue into the night before taking a few hours' break - presumably to sleep - and then logging back on to tweet dozens more times.Over the next 24 hours, Musk will post over 145 times about a range of obsessions, projects and grievances to his 195 million followers. He will share anti-immigrant content, election conspiracies and attacks against the media. He will exchange tweets with far-right politicians, conservative media influencers and sycophantic admirers. He will send a litany of one-word replies that say yeah", interesting" or simply feature a cry-laughing emoji. Continue reading...
Customers are coming to Preston's Spud Bros from as far away as Australia thanks to a revival of the humble jacket potato on social mediaThe humble baked potato is enjoying a renaissance, with TikTok algorithms bringing the stuffed spud to new audiences and transforming this once-tired classic into the lunch of the moment.Young potato sellers are breathing new life into the traditional British meal, with modern twists on favourite toppings. Continue reading...
Tech billionaire has clashed with Australian government several times over past year, including a refusal to take down clips of a Sydney bishop allegedly stabbed
Competition authorities were too slow to stop tech giants from dominating Web 2.0. They can't repeat that mistake with AIWhen a company triples in value in just a few months, as computer chip company Nvidia has, investors take notice. But regulators do too, because they know from experience how monopolies engage in illegal anti-competitive behavior that squashes competitors and manipulates the market to expand their dominance. The US Department of Justice (as well as other competition authorities and tech observers) suspects Nvidia has used such tactics to entrench its chips monopoly, and last month it was reported that the Department of Justice was opening an antitrust investigation. It's high time.Before the pandemic, few beyond video game enthusiasts - whose top-of-the-line gaming computers and consoles are built on high-capacity Nvidia chips - had ever heard of the company. But thanks to the generative AI boom, Nvidia has become one of the fastest-growing companies ever, and its chips have powered every important AI milestone - including OpenAI's development of ChatGPT, which holds two-thirds of the AI business tools market.Max von Thun is the director of Europe and transatlantic partnerships at the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly thinktank Continue reading...
With storms becoming more frequent due to the climate crisis, insurers are forcing operators to respondOne of the least considered hazards of climate change is the increasing frequency of hailstorms and the size and the impact of the pieces of ice they produce. This, in turn, threatens one of the most promising solutions to the climate crisis: solar farms.In the last year, the number of hailstorms in Europe exceeded 10,000 and the size of large hailstones reported from Italy and Germany increased to 10cm (4in) - enough to dent a car, smash greenhouses and break a solar panel. The frequency of storms and the size of the hail is increasing. Continue reading...
Strawberry' models can break down complex problems into smaller logical steps, an area where other AIs stumbleOpenAI said on Thursday it was launching its Strawberry" series of AI models designed to spend more time processing answers to queries in order to solve hard problems.The models are capable of reasoning through complex tasks and can solve more challenging problems than previous models in science, coding and math, the AI firm said in a blog post. Continue reading...
Meta's global affairs chief points to behavioural issue' around child safety tools on the social media platformsParents do not use parental controls on Facebook and Instagram, according to Meta's Nick Clegg, with adults failing to embrace the 50 child safety tools the company has introduced in recent years.Meta's global affairs chief said there was a behavioural issue" around using the tools, after admitting they were being ignored by parents. Regulatory pressure is building on tech companies to protect children from harmful content, with the Australian government announcing plans this week to ban younger teenagers from accessing social media. Continue reading...
When the Grok tool gave false information, a collection of election officials sprang into action to tamp it downSoon after Joe Biden announced he was ending his bid for re-election, misinformation started spreading online about whether a new candidate could take the president's place.Screenshots that claimed a new candidate could not be added to ballots in nine states moved quickly around Twitter, now X, racking up millions of views. The Minnesota secretary of state's office began getting requests for factchecks of these posts, which were flat-out wrong - ballot deadlines had not passed, giving Kamala Harris plenty of time to have her name added to ballots. Continue reading...
by Hannah J Davies, Alexi Duggins, Hannah Verdier, Ph on (#6QNV9)
In this week's newsletter: Radio host Carmel Holt explores the singer's cross-generational impact in The Road to Joni. Plus: five of the best podcasts about the future Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereJoanne McNally Investigates ... Did Furbys Spy on Us?
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6QNRR)
Book-style foldable is just like a regular phone when closed but opens to reveal large and bright tablet screenGoogle has cracked the foldable formula on its second attempt by creating a slightly chunkier Pixel 9 Pro that opens up for a large 8in tablet screen on the inside, beating Samsung at its own game.Compared with the previous efforts, from the squat and fat passport-shaped Pixel Fold to Samsung's many long and thin Galaxy Z Folds, the new Pixel's simple shape seems so familiar and easy to use you wonder why it took so long for anyone to try it. Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: Eight years and many millions of dollars in the making, the latest high-profile multiplayer flop points to an existential problem in game development Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereAs is now traditional, right after I'd filed last week's Pushing Buttons, huge gaming news broke: Sony was pulling its hero shooter Concord from sale just two weeks after launch - because nobody was playing it. Everyone who bought it on PlayStation 5 and PC was refunded, and the future of the game is now unclear.This is a brutal sequence of events. Sony bought the makers of Concord, Firewalk Studios, in 2023. Concord had been in development for eight years, and it was an expensive game, with bespoke cinematics and a long-term plan that would have cost $100m or more to develop. In its two weeks on the market, it sold fewer than 25,000 copies, according to estimates. This is a shocker, even compared with the year's other bad news for developers and studios. Continue reading...
An international writing organisation appeared to greenlight the use of AI, prompting anger, the resignation of four board members and an entire creative community to ask: What?!'Please spare a thought for artificial intelligence (AI). It may not have feelings yet but, if it did, it would feel devastated by all the nasty things people are saying about it. All it's trying to do is take our jobs and potentially destroy the world and people can't stop being mean.Exhibit one: a recent controversy with the organisation that runs National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a yearly challenge to produce a manuscript in a month. In a recent statement, NaNoWriMo wrote that it doesn't explicitly support or condemn any approach to writing, including the use of AI". Further: The categorical condemnation of artificial intelligence has classist and ableist undertones ... questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege."Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
Extra 300 on a Digital Edition PS5 buys an upgraded graphics processing unit and an 8K mode on enhanced gamesAfter months of rumours and speculation, Sony has finally revealed the PlayStation 5 Pro console, an update to its current machine, offering enhanced technical specifications and a 2TB solid state drive for 699/$699. It is launching on 7 November, with pre-orders beginning on 26 September.It is an expensive machine compared with current systems, coming in at 300 more than the Digital Edition PlayStation 5, which retails at 390. It's also digital only: if you want to play games or movies on Blu-ray discs, you'll have to add a Blu-ray player for an extra 100. Continue reading...
The Sapiens author may be a superb narrative writer, but his apocalyptic pontificating about AI stretches credulityAs befits a writer whose breakout work, Sapiens, was a history ofthe entire human race, YuvalNoah Harari is a master of the sententious generalisation. Human life," he writes here, is a balancing act between endeavouring to improve ourselves and accepting who we were." Is it? Is that all it is? Elsewhere, one might be surprised to read: The ancient Romans had a clear understanding of what democracy means." No doubt the Romans would have been happy to hear that they would, 2,000 years in the future, be given a gold star for their comprehension of eternally stable political concepts by Yuval Noah Harari.
Public-facing staff in shops and frontline services are donning cameras to help fight abuse and theftWhen you work in security it can be a battle to stop people stealing. Most thieves know that they have the same legal power as guards, and it's not easy trying to decide who gets to dole out reasonable force" when a teenager's cutting through a bike lock in front of you.My shift mates and I recently observed a heroin user cutting through our car park repeating a shopping list into her phone: shampoo, school uniform, other low order goods. She's part of a growing number of people stealing for others, focusing on stuff that people need but don't want to pay for.When to press buttons isn't my only fear around BWCs. My job's starting pay is 11.44 per hour, the current minimum wage; the camera I wear retails for 534. I don't want to think about what happens if I damage it. Sometimes I feel my uniform's more valuable than I am. Continue reading...
From crummy pubs to a cheeky Tesco run', some of the most mundane aspects of British life are going viralThink of British cultural exports in the 21st century and you might reach for the familiar examples: James Bond, Downton Abbey, Adele.But in the algorithm-driven universe of TikTok where a trend known as Britishcore" is one of the most in demand movements of the moment, it's the mundane aspects of life in the UK which are going viral. Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: Most European users won't be getting integrated AI on Apple devices, so are the updates offered by Apple just window dressing? Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereTrying to figure out what to focus on for the first post-Alex Hern TechScape was tricky. (If you missed it last week, you can and should revisit his valedictory newsletter after 11 years at The Guardian). Why? Well, everything is happening all the time now - so there are any number of topics to dive into.We could talk about the likelihood of Elon Musk running Donald Trump's government efficiency commission" if he is re-elected as US president. But that would involve doing another newsletter on Musk, and you may be as tired as Alex was of that. The likelihood of the latter is still a flip of the coin; the likelihood Musk would stop running his multi-trillion-dollar companies for a low-paying government job, less so. Continue reading...
Reactions to the trailer have ranged from awful' to horrendous'. But what does its target audience think?Nothing makes you feel older than watching someone two generations younger than you play Minecraft - except, perhaps, watching someone two generations younger watching someone else play Minecraft on YouTube. (What are they doing? Why are they always so over-excited?) This might all seem a bit 2011: gen A have generally moved on to watching YouTubers play Fortnite, Roblox and Elden Ring with their minds instead. But there are still millions of people, most of them kids, playing every month, and there's powerful nostalgia for this blocky virtual-Lego game among the gen Z young adults who grew up with it. A Minecraft movie was inevitable.This film has been on the cards since 2012, originally with Ryan Reynolds' Wrexham FC mate Rob McElhenney on to direct, and Steve Carell to star. Various botched attempts, Covid, and the pesky actors' strike, meant that filming didn't start (in Auckland, New Zealand) until early 2024. A Minecraft Movie, out April 2025, is directed by Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess, and stars Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Emma Myers, Jennifer Coolidge, Jermaine Clement and Matt Berry. From the trailer released this week, it's even more bonkers than you would imagine. Continue reading...
The author of the bestselling Sapiens offers a penetrating critique of the insidious dangers of machine learning and its capacity to manipulate the truthWhat jumps to mind when you think about the impending AI apocalypse? If you're partial to sci-fi movie cliches, you may envisage killer robots (with or without thick Austrian accents) rising up to terminate their hubristic creators. Or perhaps, a la The Matrix, you'll go for scary machines sucking energy out of our bodies as they distract us with a simulated reality.For Yuval Noah Harari, who has spent a lot of time worrying about AI over the past decade, the threat is less fantastical and more insidious. In order to manipulate humans, there is no need to physically hook brains to computers," he writes in his engrossing new book Nexus. For thousands of years prophets, poets and politicians have used language to manipulate and reshape society. Now computers are learning how to do it. And they won't need to send killer robots to shoot us. They could manipulate human beings to pull the trigger." Continue reading...
Company executives showcase range of new hardware and promise new colors and ability to create custom emojisApple sought to pitch the latest generation of iPhones as machines built around artificial intelligence as its biggest product event of the year, as the tech giant seeks a dominant position in the aggressive race around the technology.The company claimed iPhone 16, the smartphone's new model, had been designed from the ground up" for its Apple Intelligence" range of AI features, which include the ability to generate and edit text to fit certain tones, as well as use the device's camera to recognize real-world objects. Continue reading...
DoJ accused tech giant of more monopolistic behavior a month after judge found it illegally cornered online searchA second antitrust trial pitting Google against the US Department of Justice began on 9 September, with a federal judge in Virginia hearing opening statements over whether the tech giant illegally monopolized the digital advertising industry. The case could have far-reaching implications for Google's primary source of revenue as well as the tech industry and online publishers.The long-awaited trial is the second major US antitrust suit against Google, after the company lost a landmark case last month that determined the company illegally monopolized the online search industry. Unlike in that trial, the justice department is seeking specific remedies in its second case, ones that would force Google to break up parts of its business and divest some of its advertising technology. Continue reading...
As Bungie's storied online shooter completes its first decade, we look back on an odd game that has always been worth talking about - and ask why it's like Marks & SpencerDestiny is 10 years old, which is an aeon in video game terms. It's also one of the most fascinating games of the last decade, sometimes for unlikely reasons. On the surface, this is a lavish online prog-rock space shooter made by Bungie, the creators of the Xbox classic Halo. You bundle together with friends, deploy somewhere amid the glittering vistas of a futuristic version of our solar system, and then shoot people/aliens/robots to get better loot.None of this is exactly unprecedented, and that's maybe the point. You could argue that Destiny's touchstones are games like Halo, for its gunplay, World of Warcraft, for its persistent online spaces, and - this is where it gets a bit odd, granted - the deathless British retailer Marks & Spencer. This last point is because, above all else, Destiny is a game of fluctuating fortunes, and those fortunes seem to fascinate everyone close to video games, regardless of whether they actually play Destiny or not. Just as a lot of people in the UK seem to have a secret sense for whether M&S is currently on an upward or downward trajectory - there is no middle ground - everyone in games knows whether Destiny is in boom or bust mode. Is it now better than it's been in ages? Or is it a shadow of the game it was two, five, seven years back? Destiny is our ever-reliable topic of fretful conversation. Continue reading...
If you are expecting an authentic driving experience along the lines of Forza or Gran Turismo, think again. Instead, this new absurdist adventure features a car with legsImagine a new racing video game. Whatever you've pictured, What the Car? is not it. In a world where racing games pride themselves on the ever-increasing detail and authenticity of their driving experiences, pushing the speedometer towards realism with cutting-edge game engines as well as perfectly simulated motor ones, this is the opposite. This car is literally running around on foot.Described as an absurdly silly adventure full of racing, laughs, and surprises," What the Car? has you playing as a car with legs, sprinting and climbing through obstacles each more daft than the last, to get to the finish line. Not a single person in the team owns a car, or even likes cars," says Tim Garbos, the game's creative director at Copenhagen studio Triband. Continue reading...
Case set to test Julie Inman Grant's powers under the Online Safety Act, but it's only one of seven ongoing cases her office has with the Elon Musk-owned platform
by Ashifa Kassam European community affairs correspon on (#6QJYD)
Calvijn College was one of the first schools in the Netherlands to ban mobile phones. Four years on, officials report its culture has been transformedSix years ago, as officials at the Netherlands' Calvijn College began considering whether to ban phones from their schools, the idea left some students aghast.We were asked whether we thought we were living in the 1800s," said Jan Bakker, the chair of the college, whose students range in age from 12 to 18 years. Continue reading...
Platform run from industrial estate in Cumbria and catering to alternative relationships has expanded globallyA dating app aimed at alternative relationships nearly doubled its revenues last year as non-monogamous, queer and kinky users helped the UK-based business expand its reach across the world.Feeld, founded by an entrepreneur couple in an open relationship, has said it is on a mission to elevate the human experience of sexuality and relationships" from its registered office on an industrial estate in Carlisle, Cumbria. Continue reading...
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