The Guardian

As SpaceX impacts Ukraine and AI-generated music divides artists and fans, critics are asking what happens when technology has too much control over our lives This was originally published in TechScape, a newsletter about how technology shapes our lives. Sign up to receive it here Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you while sitting i…

Low-cost broadband provider Jio Platforms aims for £81bn valuation when it floats on the stock market on Wednesday Business live – latest updates India’s second-richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is launching what could be the country’s biggest-ever initial public offering (IPO), despite a stock market downturn. Mumbai-based Jio Platforms, a telecoms company backed by Meta Platforms and Google, is hopin…

I have long known that internet detritus is bad for me. But with these dramas told in episodes under two minutes, I swear I can actually feel the damage being done Seven or eight years ago, a new kind of televisual entertainment was born in China. Microdramas: over-the-top, soap opera-type series with splashy, schlocky premises such as infidelity, arranged marriage and secret billionairehood, in …

Wikipedia’s 68m articles have been consulted trillions of times. Not bad for a website that has barely changed since it was founded 20 years ago A few years ago, I was struck by the tension between how Wikipedia was used, and how it was talked about. Everyone was on it all the time, and yet its reputation had stalled at “don’t trust it”, because it was the “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”…

The tech company says successful AI worms need more capability on less powerful devices, but current trends make that feasible by the end of the year Warnings about what artificial intelligence might do in the future – together with alarming reports of what it has gotten up to already – are being issued so quickly that even security experts have difficulty triaging what to worry about. Yet a repo…

Whether it was youngsters proving their skills or state sabotage, Europe’s most hacked country was left with a mountain of waste after food began cooking in freezers Shortly before midnight last Sunday, the digital thermostats controlling hundreds of supermarket cold aisles across France began to flicker and rise. In a “bizarre and unprecedented” cyber-attack, hackers had remotely overridden the …

We need to work together to build a more inclusive history, writes Mags L Halliday . Plus a letter from Shane Ritchie Sandi Toksvig is right to highlight the systemic bias in information about women’s lives in history ( Pass notes: Is Wikipedia ‘deeply biased’? Sandi Toksvig says it is – so she’s backing a rival, 12 October ). Her comment about Wikipedia, however, implies that no one is working t…

Ethical shopping | Ottolenghi’s fanbase | Successful Lib Dem leaders | Global taxation policies | Good riddance to billionaires Happily, Amazon thinks nothing about me because it doesn’t know me ( I’ve seen what Amazon thinks about me – and it revealed a depressing truth, 11 October ). I’ve boycotted Amazon for as long as I can remember, and I can promise anybody thinking of taking this step that…

Jean-Noël Barrot criticises X owner in speech attacking foreign efforts to destabilise France before 2027 election France’s foreign minister has accused Elon Musk of using his social media platform to orchestrate “massive online harassment campaigns” against European leaders as he took aim at foreign efforts to destabilise the country before next year’s presidential election. Speaking at an Organ…

Move aimed at firms such as Amazon and eBay could raise up to £1bn more for Treasury, says report A tax crackdown on online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay that could raise up to £1bn more for the Treasury is reportedly being drawn up for John Healey’s first budget. The chancellor is said to be preparing to announce that online marketplaces will be made responsible for collecting tax owed by…

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Just 19% of the online encyclopedia’s biographies are of women. Is this because it’s edited by ‘mostly white, middle-aged, European men’, as the comedian claims? Name: Wikipedia. Age: 25. Continue reading...

Kanishka Narayan, concerned by Australian incident, says British cyber defences could be bypassed by AI agent UK politics live – latest updates An AI-driven cyber-attack like the OpenAI breach of Australia’s healthcare system is likely, “if not inevitable”, in the UK, according to a senior minister. Kanishka Narayan, the UK AI minister, indicated that the British government’s own cyber defences w…

Chantel Contos talks about her campaign against social media algorithms and how it has helped shape a groundbreaking bill in her native Australia to increase regulation of big tech Chanel Contos is in her mid-20s and has already changed Australia once. As she tells Annie Kelly , after she founded Teach Us Consent at university, the advocacy group successfully campaigned to change Australian’s nat…

Thinking Allowed, The Artificial Human and Free Thinking among other programmes hit by £500m cuts BBC Radio 4’s consumer rights show You and Yours is to be axed after more than 50 years, becoming one of the latest victims of the corporation’s £500m cuts plan. The programme, once described by the former Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer as “one of the most important” on the station, is one of a hand…