Month: April 2025

Dr Amy Orben says there are no ‘one-size-fits-all answers’ given importance of access to online information A leading academic tasked by the UK government with reviewing the effects of smartphones on teenagers has suggested blanket bans are “unrealistic and potentially detrimental”. Amy Orben, from the University of Cambridge, will lead the work on children and …

Blanket ban on teen smartphone use ‘potentially detrimental’, says academic Read More »

Son of murdered academic calls on Facebook owner to ‘radically change how it moderates dangerous content’ Meta faces a $2.4bn (£1.8bn) lawsuit accusing the Facebook owner of inflaming violence in Ethiopia after the Kenyan high court said a legal case against the US tech group could go ahead. The case brought by two Ethiopian nationals …

Meta faces £1.8bn lawsuit over claims it inflamed violence in Ethiopia Read More »

Sedentary lifestyles are bad for us, but which under-desk treadmills and walking pads are worth the cost? Our expert stepped up to find out • The best treadmills for your home Various guidelines suggest we all try to walk at least 10,000 steps a day to improve our overall health and wellbeing. Public Health England …

The best walking pads and under-desk treadmills, tried and tested to turn your workday into a workout Read More »

Full-throttle star turns from Jack Black and Jennifer Coolidge raise laughs but don’t help the perfunctory plotting in this screen take on the game franchise If you’re not familiar with Minecraft as a game then this film, notionally a big screen version of same, won’t necessarily solve that. Minecraft, even more than most computer games, …

A Minecraft Movie review – building-block game franchise spin-off is rollicking if exhausting fun Read More »

The bestselling video game ever has a devoted, vocal, following. Can a faceless corporation make a successful film based on such beloved IP without involving its fanbase? By any estimation, Minecraft is impossibly successful. The bestselling video game ever, as of last December it had 204 million monthly active players. Since it was first released …

Block-busted: why homemade Minecraft movies are the real hits Read More »

I bought it to be part of a greener future, but that was before Musk proved so awful. I’d sell it now, but prices have dropped After our children left home, my wife and I decided to treat ourselves and buy a new car for a driving holiday in Europe. We’d been driving a family …

Trapped with a Tesla: my dream car has become a living nightmare | The secret Tesla driver Read More »

There are new ways to catch goombas, a Mario Kart battle royale and innovative gameplay ideas abound, but Nintendo will need to work hard to sell its next-gen machine After Nintendo’s intriguing hour-long live stream on Wednesday, we now know a lot more about its follow-up to the phenomenally successful Switch. But how does the …

I got to play Nintendo Switch 2: hands-on with 2025’s gaming must-have Read More »

The idiosyncratic adventure from 1999 beat the likes of Doom and Super Mario Bros in a public vote, proving that, in a world of blockbusters, there’s still room for strange, exotic games It is a game about love and identity, but it also has forklift truck races. It is a game about bloody revenge, but …

Shenmue voted the most influential video game of all time in Bafta poll Read More »

Afrofuturism knows that futures are made – and that who gets to make them is a political question The digital age sings a seductive song of progress, yet a deliberate erasure echoes within its circuits. We stand at a crossroads, where technology, particularly the promise of artificial intelligence, threatens both to illuminate and to obliterate. …

How Afrofuturism can help us imagine futures worth living in | Lonny Avi Brooks and Reynaldo Anderson Read More »

Forty items on display in Manchester, collated by information commissioner, chart evolution of personal data usage over 40 years Forty years ago, it would take a four-drawer filing cabinet to store 10,000 documents. You would need 736 floppy disks to hold those same files; now it takes up no physical space at all to store …

Floppy disks and vaccine cards: exhibition tells tale of privacy rights in UK Read More »