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Tech
Industry, products, and the wires that hold it all together.
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The best fans to keep you cool in 2026 – tried and tested
Missed out on a fan this summer? Chill your space with our pick of the best still in stock, including tower and misting models • The best portable neck and handheld fans • Dyson HushJet Mini Cool fan review Our world is getting hotter . Summer heatwaves are so frequent, they’re stretching the bounds of what we think of as summer. Hot-and-bothered home working and sweaty, sleepless nights are now alarmingly common. Get a good fan and you can dodge the temptation of air conditioning. Aircon is incredibly effective, but it uses a lot of electricity … and burning fossil fuels is how we got into this mess in the first place. Save money and carbon by opting for a great fan instead. Continue reading...
Nvidia buys Hugging Face, the GitHub of AI, for $13 billion
Nvidia says Hugging Face will stay open even as the chipmaker takes control of a key AI hub.
John Lewis to launch YouTube chatshow to improve AI search results
Department store chain’s Gift List ‘vodcast’ will be hosted by TV presenter Angela Scanlon Business live – latest updates John Lewis is launching an online chatshow and social media studio to help make itself and its products more visible to chatbots and more prominent in AI search results. The department store chain’s Gift List “vodcast” hosted by TV presenter Angela Scanlon will air on YouTube with clips disseminated via other social media channels and comes after the success of its sister chain Waitrose’s Dish podcast. Continue reading...
Black Box: The Chatbots | Spirals | Ep 1 – podcast
Across the world, hundreds of people have come to believe they have made extraordinary scientific discoveries with AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Others say their AI has ‘awakened’, or is leading them to a higher spiritual realm. The Guardian journalist Michael Safi begins investigating a phenomenon labelled ‘AI psychosis’, travelling to the US to meet two people who have been on weird journeys with their chatbots Continue reading...
Bring on the drones: how a technology revolution is being rolled out across Africa’s nature reserves
As graduates of an online training course gather from across the continent, the consensus is overwhelming: computers and saving animals go together On a bitingly cold night in Lapalala Wilderness nature reserve in South Africa’s Limpopo province, Duncan Kanyakera watches as instructor Jacques Viljoen deploys a thermal drone in search of a lone cheetah. Once the drone has disappeared into the inky sky, Kanyakera, from Tsavo in Kenya, and 20 other conservation professionals from across Africa turn their attention to the open-air screen in anticipation. Many of the students – from 11 African countries as far flung as Benin, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Madagascar – witnessing the demonstration have earned their places at Lapalala after performing well on an online training programme for protected area technicians (PAT) run by the Connected Conservation Foundation (CCF). Also on the course, are five members of Peace Parks staff in training. Continue reading...
Child sexual abuse survivor alleges Elon Musk’s AI chatbot used photos of her to generate new illegal images
Musk denied he was aware Grok ever produced ‘any naked underage images’ A survivor of child sexual abuse has sued Elon Musk ’s artificial intelligence company, alleging that its chatbot used pictures of her abuse to generate new illegal pornographic images that depict her. “Using real images of Plaintiff and class members, Grok generated child pornography depicting Plaintiff and class members,” states the complaint, which was filed last week in a US district court in California. Continue reading...
‘Ruin and decay bring a chance of rebirth’: Hidetaka Miyazaki on uniting players in a damaged world
As FromSoftware’s new multiplayer game The Duskbloods nears release, the legendary game director behind Dark Souls talks connection, pessimism and of course, feet Since 2020’s Demon’s Souls, Japanese video game director Hidetaka Miyazaki has shown the world a different way to think about game design. His games defy convention with punishing fights, obscure rules, and unknowable, inhospitable worlds. The “Soulslike” genre – named after Demon’s Souls and its sequel Dark Souls – is now ubiquitous, influencing multimillion-sellers from God of War and Star Wars: Jedi to Hollow Knight. Miyazaki’s most recent success, 2022’s Elden Ring , which credited Game of Thrones author George RR Martin as a co-creator, sold over 30m copies and inspired Alex Garland to adapt it for the big screen at A24. It earned Miyazaki a spot on Time magazine’s “most influential” list, an accolade he shares with just one other game developer: Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyazaki is now 51 and has been FromSoftware’s president since 2014, elevated from game designer to CEO after the success of the Souls series. He has a cherubic face that could pass for 35. He rarely speaks publicly, and never on camera. When he does speak, he answers questions like one of his characters – softly, sadly, his head bowed, making eye-contact only when I am speaking. Outside the studio where we speak is the sprawl of Tokyo’s Shinjuku, an ever-changing maze where tourists get lost and pop-up stores appear and vanish without a trace. Today, a J-pop band performs in the square as the cicadas scream from the trees. A gilded statue of Melania, one of Elden Ring’s toughest bosses, looms over this dimly lit conference room inside From’s headquarters, a bonfire checkpoint away from the chaos. Continue reading...
London’s first self-driving taxis for hire hit the streets
Wayve robotaxis added to Uber app and will have human in front ready to take over if needed – but only 15 cars licensed Londoners are now able to hire self-driving taxis for the first time, after rides in Wayve’s autonomous vehicles were added to the Uber app on Thursday. The chances of landing a robotaxi on request immediately are slim, with only 15 vehicles so far licensed. That contrasts with the more than 100,000 private hire vehicles in the capital – roughly the same number of Uber customers who have registered to take autonomous rides. Continue reading...
Spending deal comes with a bonus: Blocking political control of grants
Congress pauses the OMB's attempt to rewrite how research is funded.
I rented a car, and within hours, my driver's license was for sale
The FBI is reportedly investigating a massive data breach that is unfolding in real time.
FCC plans robocall scorecard to grade phone companies on spam call blocking
Carrier scorecards may include call-blocking stats and data on customer complaints.
Wary of Artemis IV timeline, NASA is changing lunar spacesuit design
"Requirements are being adjusted to reflect near-term mission needs."
How the Hell Did an Island Suddenly Appear, Then Vanish?
A floating mass of trees and vegetation in British Columbia’s Williston Lake attracted international attention after it was filmed this summer by boaters—and then seemed to disappear.
Google defeats US justice department bid to force ad tech sale
Judge declines to make Google sell AdX in win for firm against US antitrust enforcers’ attempts to break up big tech Alphabet’s Google escaped a breakup of its advertising technology business on Wednesday, when a judge in Virginia rejected US antitrust enforcers’ bid to force a sale of Google’s online advertising exchange. While the ad exchange is a small part of Google’s business, the ruling is the second powerful symbolic victory against the US Department of Justice in its efforts to force Google to sell assets to address illegal monopolies. Continue reading...
Google releases Gemini 3.8 Flash, its third Flash model in six weeks
Google's Pro model updates are seemingly paused, but there's yet another Gemini Flash today.
Trump may be forced to reveal secret rules feds use for AI safety testing
Trump’s secret reviews of frontier AI models may hide corruption, lawsuit says.
US court rules Google will not have to sell ad exchange after losing antitrust case
The DOJ proved to the court that Google acted illegally, but it won't get the big win it wanted.
A16z Says You Actually Love Social Media, Enshittification Isn’t Real
An a16z article argues that enshittification isn’t real and that people actually love social media.
Texas Police Used AI to Write Report About Using Flock to Search for Woman Who Had Abortion
The incident shows how quickly police departments have come to use AI surveillance tools even in critically sensitive cases
Uber drivers launch European class action over ‘soulless’ and ‘scary’ AI algorithm
Landmark lawsuit claims tech company’s pay-setting system has breached privacy laws and pushed down earnings Uber drivers have launched a landmark legal action against the ride-hailing company claiming they live in “constant fear” of a “soulless” algorithm it uses to set pay and allocate jobs. Drivers from the UK, the Netherlands and other countries have joined the compensation claim that could run into billions of dollars. It alleges an AI-powered pay-setting system breaches data protection laws and pushes down their earnings. Continue reading...
The Republican Nominee for New York Governor Made a Creepy, AI-Generated Video of Mamdani and Hochul
The video makes Zohran Mamdani and Kathy Hochul look like they're hanging out in a prescription medication commercial.
Toyohiro Akiyama, first Japanese citizen and journalist in space, dies at 84
He reported from space that only "fat" Japanese tree frogs enjoyed weightlessness.
Cops Are Asking Axon to Make Their Cameras Look Different From Flock So People Don't Destroy Them
“Is there any talk to redesign the Outpost to not look exactly like the Flock camera — I think it will help agencies with the optics while we batten down the hatches,” one apparent cop asked during a now deleted Axon webinar.
Grand Theft Auto VI is a phenomenon – but there is much more to the gaming world
As Rockstar’s blockbuster prepares to dominate the headlines, it’s time for the mainstream media to stop treating video games as a novelty that needs explaining Predictably, the Grand Theft Auto VI “extended look” which premiered on Netflix last week was a success for all involved. The 30-minute preview scorched to No 1 on the viewing chart and even brought the site down for a few minutes as millions of gamers tried to watch what was, effectively, a very long teaser trailer. According to data collated by Eurogamer , more than 9,000 Twitch streamers covered the show leading to 5,227,798 hours of viewing there alone. And this was just the beginning of what will surely be two months of escalating hype – and unprecedented media attention. Call me cynical, but I suspect the coverage of GTA VI in the media over the next few weeks will follow a familiar pattern. Mostly, it will be five-minute slots wedged in near the end of news bulletins in which games journalists, industry analysts and other pundits will be asked why the game is such a big deal, how much it cost to make and how much revenue it will generate. Perhaps a few will try to reignite the hoary old “violence in video games” debate, there will be presenters laughingly admitting they’ve not touched a game since Pac-Man, rolling their eyes and wallowing in their ignorance, in a way they never would while discussing any other art form. Somebody will venture the subversive view that “games are no longer just for kids”; somebody else will say “games make more money than films and music put together”. And that will be that, job done for another decade … or until there’s a funny story about Pokémon. Continue reading...