Month: August 2025

Employees outraged by report Azure platform used by Israel to store surveillance data collected on Palestinians Dozens of Microsoft employees occupied the company’s east campus in Redmond, Washington to protest against what they say is the use of its software by the Israeli military to carry out operations in Gaza and enable the surveillance of …

Microsoft workers occupy HQ in protest against company’s ties to Israeli military Read More »

Tulsi Gabbbard says Home Office no longer demanding ‘backdoor’ to encrypted material The UK government has dropped its insistence that Apple allows law enforcement officials “backdoor” access to US customer data, Donald Trump’s spy chief, Tulsi Gabbard, says. The US director of national intelligence posted the claim on X following a months-long dispute embroiling the …

UK has backed down on demand to access US Apple user data, spy chief says Read More »

Palantir and others boast ‘bombastic’ growth, Microsoft helps monitoring of Palestinian phone lines, Meta faces backlash over child safety Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, currently enjoying Shirley Jackson’s eerie final novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Russia restricts WhatsApp and Telegram, alleging apps used for fraud and terrorism …

US surveillance firms run a victory lap amid Trump’s immigration crackdown Read More »

Children’s commissioner for England says findings show little had improved despite new law and tech firms’ promises Exposure to pornography has increased since the introduction of UK rules to protect the public online, with children as young as six seeing it by accident, research by the children’s commissioner for England has found. Dame Rachel de …

Children’s exposure to porn higher than before 2023 Online Safety Act, poll finds Read More »

Researchers who set up dummy accounts as 15-year-old girl were bombarded with self-harm and depression posts Social media platforms are still pushing depression, suicide and self-harm-related content to teenagers, despite new online safety laws intended to protect children. The Molly Rose Foundation opened dummy accounts posing as a 15-year-old girl, and then engaged with suicide, …

Social media still pushing suicide-related content to teens despite new UK safety laws Read More »

Shares in chip maker rise amid reports US government is also considering taking a stake Business live – latest updates SoftBank has agreed to invest $2bn (£1.5bn) in Intel, amid reports that Donald Trump’s administration is also considering a stake in the struggling US chip maker. The Japanese technology investor announced the multibillion-dollar deal on …

Intel secures $2bn lifeline from Japan’s SoftBank Read More »

Nintendo Switch 2; NintendoNintendo’s latest sports game showcases its Joy-Con upgrades but sacrifices playability in the process When a new console is released, you can always expect at least one first-party game designed specifically to showcase its novel features. The PlayStation 5 had Astro’s Playroom, the Steam Deck had Aperture Desk Job, and for the …

Drag x Drive review – wheelchair basketball in wrist-cramping mouse mode Read More »

Anthropic found that Claude Opus 4 was averse to harmful tasks, such as providing sexual content involving minors The makers of a leading artificial intelligence tool are letting it close down potentially “distressing” conversations with users, citing the need to safeguard the AI’s “welfare” amid ongoing uncertainty about the burgeoning technology’s moral status. Anthropic, whose …

Chatbot given power to close ‘distressing’ chats to protect its ‘welfare’ Read More »

Grownups get thrills from opening these collectibles they buy without knowing what they’re getting – but experts warn the craze is akin to gambling Jess has never touched a slot machine, played the lottery or bought a scratch-off, but she fears she may have a gambling problem nonetheless. This July, the 28-year-old found herself spending …

‘My buyer’s guilt is insane. It’s $1,300 on trash’: the adults addicted to blind box toys like Labubus Read More »

Sympathy Tower Tokyo attracted controversy for being partly written using AI. Does its author think the technology could write a better novel than a human? “I don’t feel particularly unhappy about my work being used to train AI,” says Japanese novelist Rie Qudan. “Even if it is copied, I feel confident there’s a part of …

Author Rie Qudan: Why I used ChatGPT to write my prize-winning novel Read More »