Technology

Why Trump’s White House is using video game memes to recruit for ICE

A recent spate of posts has garnered attention, but Trump and his allies have long been using gaming imagery to mobilise a toxic subculture of ‘rootless white males’ Just days after Microsoft annou...

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‘DeepSeek is humane. Doctors are more like machines’: my mother’s worrying reliance on AI for health advice

Tired of a two-day commute to see her overworked doctor, my mother turned to tech for help with her kidney disease. She bonded with the bot so much I was scared she would refuse to see a real medic...

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I tried out a virtual Halloween festival – and got more than I bargained for

Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival began as a lockdown project and has now become an annual gaming tradition. My children and I paid it a visitIn an attempt to avoid spending £80 to walk around a local pa...

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The Séance of Blake Manor review – gripping gothic detective game steeped in mystery and menace

Raw Fury/Spooky Doorway; PCAn atmospheric folk-horror adventure combines colonial guilt, spiritualism and supernatural chills in a tale of secrets and seances on Ireland’s haunted west coastA remot...

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‘People thought I was a communist doing this as a non-profit’: is Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales the last decent tech baron?

In an online landscape characterised by doom and division, the people’s encyclopedia stands out – a huge collective endeavour giving everyone free access to the sum of human knowledge. But with Elo...

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Virtual Monopoly, Uno and Yahtzee over the real thing? No thanks | Dominik Diamond

When our family board game night got cancelled, I sampled digital spins on the classics instead. I’m not sure I should have bothered – with one exception…I don’t play video game versions of board g...

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Don’t be fooled. The US is regulating AI – just not the way you think

Beneath the free-market rhetoric, Washington actually intervenes to control the building blocks of AI systemsAt first glance, today’s artificial intelligence policy landscape suggests a strategic r...

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I thought I hated working out until I tried this fitness app

Future Fitness bottles the best parts of a personal trainer in the convenience of an app – here’s why it’s worth the $199 a monthThis natural rubber yoga mat lasted me a decade of daily practiceSig...

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Average-but-arresting games used to be the backbone of the industry. What price perfection?

In this week’s newsletter: It used to be OK for games like Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 to be just, well, OK – but today’s boom and bust economy has almost erased an important genreIt sho...

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Joke’s on you, fleshbag! Channel 4’s first AI presenter is dizzyingly grim on so many levels

The AI-generated host of Dispatches raises worrying questions about Channel 4’s environmental impact. She’s also a dead-eyed host who might leave Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Kevin McCloud fearing for ...

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Major internet outage hits websites, apps and Lloyds Bank after issue at Amazon Web Services – business live

Fortnite, Roblox, SnapChat, Lloyds Bank and Ring doorbells among services hit by online outage Heads-up: UBS have upgraded their view on global equities to ‘attractive’, a sign that they think inve...

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Techno-capitalists think innovation can save the planet. But that same thinking is what got us here

An upside-down mindset is emerging around the world. We have to rethink our relationship with the environment and the technology that’s caused it harmGet our breaking news email, free app or daily ...

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Are we living in a golden age of stupidity?

From brain-rotting videos to AI creep, every technological advance seems to make it harder to work, remember, think and function independently …Step into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (...

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Happy birthday to the NES, companion to millions of Nintendo childhoods

Forty years ago today, the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in the US – and a generation of kids were sucked into video games for lifeThe Nintendo Entertainment System was released in the...

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Keeper review – a sparkling ecological fantasia of pure imagination

This whimsical action-adventure game sees you stomping through nature as a life-giving lighthouse – and it only gets weirder from thereThe world of Keeper looms from the screen like a dream coloure...

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Silent Hill f review – fascinating horror game maims the monsters teenage girls face

PC, PS5, Xbox; KonamiAfter an apocalyptic supernatural fog descends, school girl Hinako wakes up in a town populated by psychosexual beasts and gaslighting men in masksThere are some horror games y...

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ROG Xbox Ally X review – like nothing handheld gaming has seen before, for better or worse

Xbox’s portable console combines the openness of PC gaming and Microsoft’s desire for you to play its titles anywhere – but it doesn’t come cheap or without hitchesThe ROG Xbox Ally X, the handheld...

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Space Harrier at 40: how Sega’s surreal classic brought total immersion to arcades in the 80s

As they flew above Yu Suzuki’s innovative, psychedelic 3D landscapes combating space dragons and alien rock monsters, the moving arcade cabinet would fling players around and physically involve the...

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Battlefield 6 review – operatic, ear-shattering all-encompassing warfare

Electronic Arts; PC, PS5, XboxIn contrast to the blast-em-ups this franchise drops players into a vast and vividly realised military offensive and the latest instalment is a brilliant return to for...

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‘I realised I’d been ChatGPT-ed into bed’: how ‘Chatfishing’ made finding love on dating apps even weirder

Where once people were duped by soft-focus photos and borrowed chat-up lines, now they have to watch out for computer-generated charm. But it’s one thing to use a witty phrase – another thing entir...

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It’s Sam Altman: the man who stole the rights from copyright. If he’s the future, can we go backwards? | Marina Hyde

His AI video generator Sora 2 has been reviled for pinching the work of others. One giant leap for Sam: for everyone else, not so muchTake a look at Sam Altman. I mean, actually do it. Go to Google...

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