Miku is a ‘Vocaloid’ – a holographic avatar that represents a digital bank of vocal samples – and performs sellout tours for thousands of very real mega-fans Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email Countless flowing green wigs risked spontaneous combustion on a 36-degree Melbourne evening as thousands of J-pop fans queued outside John Cain …
As tech giants hook us into endless scrolling, we are becoming less engaged, less creative, less connected, less human. Art reminds us to look outwards at the things that truly matter How often do you look up at the sky, rather than down at the black mirror on which you might be reading this column? …
Headset offers near top-tier experience at cut-down price with good fit, fast chip, great controllers and large games library Meta’s latest virtual reality headset offers almost everything that makes its top model the best on the market but at a price that is far more palatable as an entry into VR. The Quest 3S costs …
Meta Quest 3S review: the best bang for your buck in VR Read More »
Young people in Birmingham attest that violent content on apps is having a real-world impact It took about 90 seconds for Rianna Montaque to see violence on her X account: a fight in a restaurant that escalated into a full-on brawl with chairs smashed over heads and bodies sprawling. The “Gang_Hits” account has plenty more …
‘You get desensitised to it’: how social media fuels fear of violence Read More »
It’s a war that will never end. But for small-business owners, it’s all about managing risk while reaping rewards We humans are simply too dumb to use passwords. A recent study from password manager NordPass found that “secret” was the most commonly used password in 2024. That was followed by “123456” and “password”. So let’s …
The fast-developing technology is providing opportunities in ‘any crime type’ – and police must ‘move fast’ to catch up Paedophiles, scammers, hackers and criminals of all kinds are increasingly exploiting artificial intelligence (AI) to target victims in new and harmful ways, a senior police chief has warned. Alex Murray, the national police lead for AI, said …
AI increasingly used for sextortion, scams and child abuse, says senior UK police chief Read More »
Santa has a new little helper. But can an AI-powered shopping assistant really master the subtle art of gift giving? Some people love buying Christmas presents. Polly Arrowsmith starts making a note of what her friends and family like, then hunts for bargains, slowly and carefully. Vie Portland begins her shopping in January and has …
Don’t know what to buy your loved ones for Christmas? Just ask ChatGPT Read More »
The flourishing new platform may be like Twitter once was. The problem is the limited algorithmic scope of all social media As I write, there’s a window on my laptop screen that is providing a live view of a stampede. It’s logging the numbers of people joining the social network Bluesky. At the moment, the …
The US media pundit on the dangers of overregulation online, why he’s more frightened of the tech bros than AI itself, and how to reclaim the web by getting rid of the geeks Jeff Jarvis was born in 1954 and studied journalism at Illinois’s Northwestern University. He worked as a TV critic and created the …
We recommended them in the Filter; now we’ve sifted through all the offers to find the genuinely good discounts on our favourite products Black Friday is still a few days away on 29 November, but stores are already dropping prices to compete for our attention and cash – and they’re offering some delectable discounts on …
