Month: June 2024

Current and former workers sign letter warning of lack of safety oversight and calling for more protections for whistleblowers A group of current and former employees at prominent artificial intelligence companies issued an open letter on Tuesday that warned of a lack of safety oversight within the industry and called for increased protections for whistleblowers. …

OpenAI and Google DeepMind workers warn of AI industry risks in open letter Read More »

In this week’s newsletter: All-powerful ‘microtargeting’ swaying the masses into voting a certain way was always overblown, but these days social media has moved on – and so have the parties You’ve heard the one about the drunk man looking for his keys under the streetlamp? After an age pacing back and forth, scouring the …

Why Facebook won’t be influential in the UK general election Read More »

Company’s long-awaited headphones deliver top sound, long battery life, supreme comfort and killer home-cinema feature The wifi hi-fi maker Sonos has finally released its much-anticipated first set of headphones, the Ace, which combine the best elements from Bose, Apple and other high-end rivals with supreme comfort, sleek styling and a killer party trick for owners …

Sonos Ace review: quality noise-cancelling headphones worth the wait Read More »

Neurodivergent people can struggle with timekeeping. Don’t rely on your phone, try one of these to kickstart your day Cheap and cheerful, basic distraction-free alarm clocks cost about £10 and come in analogue or tick-free digital versions, such as Acctim’s Remi Analogue clock with beep alarm, £10 from Argos. Continue reading… Neurodivergent people can struggle …

The best alarm clocks to make sure you wake up and don’t go back to sleep, if you have ADHD Read More »

Charity Ekezie has made it her mission to educate naive westerners about her continent on social media, and have some fun along the way When Charity Ekezie first joined TikTok and started posting videos from her home in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2020, she had just left a job at a radio station and thought it …

‘Africa has zero PR in the west’: the Nigerian influencer using sarcasm on the clueless Read More »

The social media network’s new rules, announced on Monday, come after regulator pressure around the world to better protect children from inappropriate content Elon Musk’s X now officially allows pornographic content on its platform but says it will block adult and violent posts from being seen by users who are under 18 or who do …

X changes porn policy to opt-in system that blocks under-18 users Read More »

Fake video uses AI-generated audio of the movie star to disparage the Olympic Committee Russia is targeting the Paris Olympics with a disinformation campaign that includes deploying a deepfake Tom Cruise to narrate a documentary criticising the organisation behind the games, according to a new report from Microsoft. Microsoft said a network of Russia-affiliated groups …

Russia targets Paris Olympics with deepfake Tom Cruise video Read More »

A South Australian museum honours the man who changed the way dentistry was done ‘on a global scale’ In medieval Europe, barber-surgeons might cut your hair, shave your face, do a bit of blood-letting and tend to a broken limb. They might also pull a tooth out with a “pelican” – a crude beak-like shank …

Oral history: how Tick Begg revolutionised braces and made 1920s Adelaide ‘the orthodontic centre of the world’ Read More »

Far from a business sim, players act as tastemaker for a litany of lovable oddballs that swing by, using clues to deduce the perfect album recommendation Every time I go through a breakup, I’m compelled to rewatch the noughties classic High Fidelity, in which OG softboi John Cusack mournfully chronicles a “top 10 list” of …

Wax Heads, the record-shop video game that channels High Fidelity Read More »

The online safety bill was a start, but campaigners are right to demand more, especially in situations where a child has has died Bereaved parents of children whose deaths have been linked to social media are crucial voices in the debate over how to ensure that under-18s are not harmed by their experiences online. Two …

The Guardian view on social media harms: the tech giants must be more open | Editorial Read More »