3 d. ago Steam down as devastated gamers worldwide fail to get onto online game platform

Gamers across the world are stuck without access to Steam following an outage as status monitoring service Downdetector reported a sudden surge of people being unable to access the network

Events

4 d. ago 7 things we know as Bella May Culley struggles in Georgia jail hell on drugs charges

Bella May Culley, 18, from Teesside faces life in prison after she was detained in Georgia on drugs charges after she was reported as missing in Thailand by her family

Events

5 d. ago The AI Con by Emily M Bender and Alex Hanna review – debunking myths of the AI revolution

Will new technology help to make the world a better place, or is AI just another tech bubble that will benefit the few?At the beginning of this year, Keir Starmer announced an “AI opportunities action plan”, which promises to mainline AI “into the veins of this enterprising nation”. The implication that AI is a class-A injectable substance, liable to render the user stupefied and addicted, was presumably unintentional. But then what on earth did they mean about AI’s potential, and did they have any good reason to believe it?Not according to the authors of this book, who are refreshingly sarcastic about what they think is just another tech bubble. What is sold to us as AI, they announce, is just “a bill of goods”: “A few major well-placed players are poised to accumulate significant wealth by extracting value from other people’s creative work, personal data, or labor, and replacing quality services with artificial facsimiles.” Continue reading...

Politics

6 d. ago Congo's coltan miners dig for world's tech — and struggle regardless of who is in charge

Nestled in the green hills of Masisi territory in Congo, the artisanal Rubaya mining site hums with the sound of generators, as hundreds of men labor by hand to extract coltan, a key mineral crucial for producing modern electronics and defense technology

Politics

6 d. ago PHOTO ESSAY: Congo coltan miners dig for world's tech — and struggle regardless of who is in charge

Nestled in the green hills of Masisi territory in Congo, at the artisanal Rubaya mining site, hundreds of men labor by hand to extract coltan, a key mineral crucial for producing modern electronics and defense technology.

Culture

7 d. ago Swiss firm that captures carbon from air to cut workforce by more than 10%

Downsizing at Climeworks comes amid economic uncertainty and ‘reduced momentum’ for climate techA Swiss startup that has led the way in sucking carbon out of the air has announced plans to cut its workforce by more than 10% amid economic uncertainty and “reduced momentum” for climate tech.The downsizing at Climeworks, the company that built the world’s first direct air capture facilities, comes one week after journalists in Iceland revealed its two flagship plants have captured far less carbon than their advertised capacity. A spokesperson said the timing of the redundancies was unrelated. Continue reading...

Economics

9 d. ago Mike Lynch: Autonomy founder who fought to clear his name for 13 years

The tech tycoon scaled the heights of the business world by founding software giant Autonomy, before a massive lawsuit threatened his reputation.

Politics

2 w. ago Scientists blast through battery world record in major hope for breakthrough new technology

Scientists have broken through a battery world record and could be on their way to entirely new kinds of batteries.

Science

2 w. ago Survival and stoicism: stories of women born before the second world war

Christian Doyle’s series Quietly Getting On focuses on women in their late 80s and 90s, their memories of a wartime childhood and how they live nowAs a way of maintaining contact with my elderly neighbours during the Covid restrictions of 2020, we set up a project where each person held up a card showing the age they felt inside. From their life stories, a new idea formed in my mind.This is a generation of women who had experienced first-hand the impact of war on the domestic front, who had been evacuated to strangers across the country, not seeing their parents for months on end. Maybe these experiences created a different mindset; a resilience and stoicism, where the self is less important than being part of a community. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Tech oligarchs are gambling our future on a fantasy | Adam Becker

Musk and Bezos are the heirs to a quasi-religious belief in tech salvation. The rest of us are stuck in the real worldIt’s tempting to believe that tech billionaires’ embrace of Donald Trump and the far right is a sudden rupture with the usual political ideology of Silicon Valley. Op-eds in the New York Times and elsewhere have made this case. Even Marc Andreessen, one of the billionaires in question, claims that this is what happened – he said that it was a change in the Democratic arty that pushed him and his fellow oligarchs into the arms of the GOP.Yet this is a serious misunderstanding of the situation. There wasn’t a sudden shift in the politics of tech – it was a homecoming. While it’s true that Silicon Valley has long supported Democratic candidates for political office – and that rank-and-file tech workers still vote overwhelmingly for Democrats – the fundamental ideology underpinning the culture of Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists and CEOs has always had a far-right li...

Politics

3 w. ago Profits up, stocks down and angry calls: Tech giants playing nice with Trump hasn’t translated to a windfall

In the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, the president has presided over a chaotic and turbulent economy

Politics

3 w. ago PHOTO ESSAY: Immigrants in the Texas Panhandle live in limbo under Trump's crackdown

This is a documentary photo story curated by AP photo editors.

Events

3 w. ago PHOTO ESSAY: For the Vietnamese diaspora, Saigon's fall 50 years ago evokes mixed emotions

When the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese forces 50 years ago this week, it prompted a mass exodus of some 2 million people — hundreds of thousands fleeing perilously on small boats across open water to escape the communist regime.

Culture

3 w. ago Russia accuses World of Tanks developer of 'extremist activities' as assets seized

Lesta Games, the developer of the Russian version of World of Tanks and World of Warships, has had its assets seized by the Russian government last week after accusations of 'extremist activities'

Events

4 w. ago These four UK tech stocks are undervalued and their technology is world

Most UK technology stocks have long been outgunned by their American cousins. But there are some which, while not on the same scale as the Mag 7, may produce splendid returns.

Politics

4 w. ago 5 loved relics of the tech world that have made a retro comeback as analogue landline phone switch off looms

Here’s five pieces of old technology which have had a resurgence, including boomboxes and instant cameras.

Politics

last month Google broke the law. It’s time to break up the company | Courtney C Radsch

Two recent US cases have found the search giant is functioning as an illegal monopoly. This should be a turning pointIn less than a year, US courts have ruled that the world’s most powerful tech company broke the law – twice.In August, a federal judge in Washington ruled that Google illegally maintained its search monopoly by locking up defaults on browsers and devices. In April, a federal judge in Virginia found that Google illegally monopolized the digital advertising market, manipulating auctions, restricting and stifling competitors. These two rulings, the most significant antitrust wins against a tech giant in decades, should be a turning point in the digital economy.Dr Courtney C Radsch is director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty at Open Markets Institute Continue reading...

Events