The Guardian

Value of banknotes in circulation rises from €1bn in 2016 to €1.6bn in 2026 as people advised to keep stash of cash The number of banknotes in circulation in the EU is increasing despite widespread smartphone payments, new data shows, with wildfires ripping through parts of Europe fuelling demand for an emergency stash of cash. While cash plays second fiddle to contactless payments in many cities…

Kyle Spitze of Tennessee faced federal charges for targeting girls online as part of ‘764 network’ investigated by FBI A 27-year-old Tennessee man described by the US justice department as a “nihilistic violent extremist” was sentenced to 77 years in prison on Wednesday for his targeting of girls online as part of the 764 network , an online group the FBI calls a form of “modern-day terrorism”. K…

Racism and misogyny are becoming normalised as a result of rightwing politics and the ‘cesspit’ of social media, says Labour’s Bridget Phillipson. In an extended interview, the minister for women and equalities and new party chair sits down with Kiran Stacey to talk about her fears for British society, the climate crisis, what Burnham is really doing differently from Starmer, and whether her part…

Online ratings | School holiday scam | Back-row kisses | Barking | Champagne populism To Stuart Heritage’s excellent list of words to describe our tech dystopia ( 18 August ), can I add “iRate”? This is when you make an online purchase and, even before you’ve had time to remove the packaging, receive an email asking “How was it for you?”, followed by another a few days later if you fail to review…

Also: AI’s implications on cybersecurity in an era of private attacks Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian. Today in tech, we’re discussing Meta ’s legal danger in the US and the implications of artificial intelligence for cybersecurity in an era of private cyberattacks. Why the US government is banning Chinese robots – video explainer S…

Creators of chase compilations reject any moral qualms and say they show ‘death is waiting’ for those who join war To many observers they will appear dehumanising and offensive. To many Ukrainians, however, they are a brutal reminder of the fate that awaits Russian soldiers who take part in Vladimir Putin’s invasion, as well as a potent propaganda weapon. Over the past year and a half, videos of …

There are many tech irritants that are a scourge of modern life, yet we have lacked the vocabulary to describe them ... until now The “dickover” is the scourge of the modern age. Coined in May by John Gruber, a tech writer, it is defined as “a modal panel, popover, or curtain presented by a website or app, deliberately obscuring its own content to frustrate the user”. Essentially, it is the thing…

Many hoped that the march of technology would usher in an egalitarian utopia – but some foresaw the threat it would pose to liberal society. Why did nobody listen? One of the stranger things about this dizzying, headlong moment in time is that it doesn’t have much of a past. Everything is about the future of this, the future of that: the future of work, the future of humanity, the future of the p…

Anthropic says it will change way chatbot makes small, random choices, to comply with EU regulation The world is familiar by now with the usual tropes of machine-generated text: overuse of the word “delve”, an excess of em dashes, and the chirpy, relentless construction of “it’s not X but Y” . But is it about to get even worse? Continue reading...

Development comes after Anthropic was found to have spent millions on books to scan for ‘data acquisition’ Secondhand booksellers in the UK and Ireland are reporting a flurry of bulk orders from mystery buyers, amid speculation AI companies are acquiring the tomes for their data. Bookshops contacted by the Guardian say they have been receiving orders from buyers in the US, Canada, continental Eur…

There’s a lot to unpack as this proud son of Toronto closes in on 40 – from his gambling to his very public dates. Here goes! Even if you can only name a handful of rappers, Drake is probably one of them. Not so many years ago, he was among the planet’s biggest celebrities, named in the same breath as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé and breaking chart records set by the Beatles. Many of his dozens of hi…

Taiwan practiced cutting off internet for the first time on Thursday, amid concerns about the safety of the undersea cables that form its ‘digital lifeline’ In Taipei, the streets swiftly empty as air raid sirens ring out and alerts ping on mobile phones. Police officers usher any stragglers into shelters, leaving the capital suddenly deserted. In cities across Taiwan, these kinds of drills are a…

Zoo Playground, Edinburgh Veering from confident to crumbling, Verona Verbakel delivers a vivid show mixing humour with trauma We are all familiar with the cliche of the influencer narrating their daily routines – or should I say, their journey? – and trying to convince us, and perhaps themselves, they are living their best life. We know, too, about the websites offering intimate access in exchan…

Exclusive: Analysis shows 55% of accounts were located overseas – and seven of 12 most-read posts came from US More than half the accounts that posted on Elon Musk’s X about the rioting in Belfast and the civil disorder in Southampton in June were based outside the UK, an analysis by the Guardian can reveal. Of the 8,672 accounts whose combined posts about the events exceeded 1,000 views, just 45…

Exclusive: anonymous flagging service says cases have surged, as watchdog says AI is making sexualised or ‘nudified’ content easier to produce Children in the UK have reported a surge in explicit deepfake images featuring their likenesses, as a safety watchdog warned AI is making such content easier to produce. The Report Remove service, which blocks intimate images from appearing online, said th…