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In this week’s newsletter: The show fan favourite plays wing-woman for listeners seeking the ‘Bone Zone’ in Queen of Hearts. Plus: five scandal podcasts we couldn’t switch off Don’t get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article here Queen of HeartsAll episodes widely available from Tuesday“Dating is a drag, but …

Best podcasts of the week: Drag Race’s Jujubee helps fans win the dating game Read More »

Bitcoin requires vast amounts of electricity to facilitate its transactions around the globe. More than twice the energy usage per year of Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon combined. This demand has led cryptocurrency mining companies to seek out the cheapest electricity possible, and it doesn’t get much cheaper than coal. New bitcoin server farms …

Why bitcoin is reviving fossil fuel plants – video Read More »

The story of the modern web is often told through the stories of Google, Facebook, Amazon. But eBay was the first conqueror One weekend in September 1995, a software engineer made a website. It wasn’t his first. At 28, Pierre Omidyar had followed the standard accelerated trajectory of Silicon Valley: he had learned to code …

‘Wallets and eyeballs’: how eBay turned the internet into a marketplace Read More »

Last week an engineer at Google claimed that an AI chatbot he worked with, known as LaMDA, had become ‘sentient’. Blake Lemoine published a transcript of his conversations with LaMDA that included responses about having feelings and fearing death. But could it really be conscious? AI researcher and author Kate Crawford speaks to Ian Sample …

How Google’s chatbot works – and why it isn’t sentient – podcast Read More »

Consumer champion Justin Gutmann alleges older iPhones made slower to cope with software updates A consumer champion has launched a more than £750m legal claim against Apple, linked to an incident in 2017 relating to a power management tool on older iPhones. Justin Gutmann has accused the tech giant of slowing down the performance of …

Claim for £750m against Apple launched alleging battery ‘throttling’ Read More »

The comedian shares his favourite online laughs, including an Instagram account dedicated to terrible real estate agents and a rooster attacking a weatherman Read more funniest internet things here Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email and listen to our podcast I used to work at a skimpy bar in Perth. One of the bar …

Brett Blake: the 10 funniest things I have ever seen (on the internet) Read More »

Three Arrows Capital founder takes to Twitter to assuage fears after 25% drop in price of bitcoin in a single day The “bloodbath” in the cryptocurrency sector may claim another victim, with the co-founder of multibillion dollar hedge fund Three Arrows Capital using Twitter in an attempt to battle rumours that the company is insolvent …

Cryptocurrency ‘bloodbath’ threatens multibillion-dollar hedge fund Read More »

A researcher says Google has created an AI being with smarts and soul, but my own attempt reveals the truth behind those claims. Plus, the latest crypto crash Don’t get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up here Blake Lemoine, an AI researcher at Google, is convinced the company has created intelligence. Others disagree. From …

TechScape: why you shouldn’t worry about sentient AI … yet Read More »

A tech watchdog group reveals users can purchase materials to build high-powered, automatic weapons in a few clicks Guns, weapon parts and ammunition are widely available for sale on Facebook and Instagram, new research shows, as experts say Meta is not doing enough to stop deadly weapons getting into the wrong hands. Meta policy since …

Meta banned firearms sales. Why are they still available on Facebook and Instagram? Read More »

It’s easy to be fooled by the mimicry, but consumers need transparency about how such systems are used The Google engineer Blake Lemoine wasn’t speaking for the company officially when he claimed that Google’s chatbot LaMDA was sentient, but Lemoine’s misconception shows the risks of designing systems in ways that convince humans they see real, …

Human-like programs abuse our empathy – even Google engineers aren’t immune | Emily M Bender Read More »