Britain needs new state aid rules in order to be able to protect itself against hostile states intent on stealing technological secrets and jobs, Rishi Sunak has said. The chancellor said the UK had benefited from foreign investment but the government had to keep its eyes wide open to possible threats. In a discussion on […]
Amazon has revealed that almost 20,000 of its workers in the US have contracted Covid-19 after months of demands for public disclosure from activists. The US tech company has been one of the biggest corporate winners during the pandemic, with people across the world switching to online shopping during lockdowns. However, Amazon has faced criticism […]
Residents watch as a coronavirus-themed robot sprays disinfectant in Chennai, India Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images The England cricket captain, Joe Root, talks to the Sky Sports robot after the toss at Emirates Old Trafford in Manchester Photograph: Gareth Copley/Getty Images for ECB An AI robot runs a health check on a visitor at the China […]
Twitter users rarely see or retweet anti-vaccination content generated by bots, a study of millions of tweets found, suggesting the role of bots in spreading vaccine misinformation is limited. The study was led by the University of Sydney’s associate professor Adam Dunn, who said despite growing concern about the influence of bots in spreading misinformation, […]
Hold music could one day be a thing of the past thanks to a service coming to Google’s smartphones. Hold for Me, which launches on Thursday in the US for owners of Google’s Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a phones, involves Google’s AI tools taking over as an automatic secretary when on hold to a call […]
Microsoft has launched a cheaper version of its popular notebook Windows 10 PC, the Surface Laptop Go, alongside a faster Surface Pro X tablet. Announced via blogpost rather than a press event because of the pandemic, the Surface Laptop Go is a smaller, lighter and lower-cost version of the excellent Surface Laptop 3 and seeks […]
Powered by chugging guitars, frenetic fighting and luscious, flamboyant depictions of figures from Greek mythology, this excellent action game from the arthouse studio Supergiant has been many years in the making. We play as Zagreus, wayward son of the underworld, trying to escape his father’s gloomy domain and see the world above. As an immortal, […]
Anyone who went to school during the Thatcher years will remember adventure games as something experienced on the class computer, typically a BBC Micro. Educational titles such as Granny’s Garden and Flowers of Crystal were as compulsive as they were frustrating. These were the prototype point-and-click games, incorporating graphics into riddles and thinly disguised geography […]
Facebook has removed a number of ads from the Trump campaign for making misleading and inaccurate claims about Covid-19 and immigration. On Wednesday the social media platform took down the Trump-sponsored advertisements which claimed, without evidence, that accepting refugees would increase Americans’ risk of Covid-19. The ad, which featured a video of Joe Biden talking […]
Google has announced four new additions to its own-brand hardware line including two new Pixel smartphones, a new Chromecast and Nest Audio smart speaker. The Pixel 5 is Google’s new top phone, which slots in above the well received but heavily delayed Pixel 4a and the new Pixel 4a 5G, which also launches today. Announced […]