Cybertrucks have locked passengers inside and burned so hot they’ve disintegrated drivers’ bones. Victims’ families blame what they say is the faulty design of a truck Elon Musk calls ‘apocalypse-proof’

When sheriff deputies arrived at the scene of a late-night crash off a desolate Texas road in August 2024, they could see a giant pyre through heavy smoke.

According to police reports detailing the events of that night, the officers tried to approach the vehicle, but the fire burned too intensely. They saw it was a Tesla Cybertruck and couldn’t see anyone inside. So they combed the surrounding area for the driver.

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Use AI as a brainstorming partner and organizer, but don’t outsource your judgment

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Three years on from the release of ChatGPT, two broad camps have formed: those people who refuse to use it, and those who use it every day.

A 2025 survey by the Pew Research Center found that one-third of US adults say they have been using ChatGPT. This includes 58% of US adults under 30 – roughly double the share two years ago.

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Footage of women walking between bars and clubs in UK city centres, often filmed covertly, is proliferating online – attracting thousands of views and profits for those who post them. Can anything be done to stop the creepshots?

‘My friend just sent me this video, told me she’d found me in it,” read the text. “As I was looking for myself, I noticed you’re in it too. I didn’t know I was being filmed, guess you don’t either, just wanted to let you know …”

When Nancy Naylor Hayes received the message in November 2023, she felt a twinge of fear. It was from an acquaintance she hadn’t heard from in years. “I was panicking,” she says. The text pointed her to a Facebook link, which led to a montage of clips of women filmed on the streets of Manchester during nights out.

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Researchers say their prototype is a big step towards fully functioning batteries with rapid charging times

Australian scientists have developed what they say is the world’s first proof-of-concept quantum battery.

Quantum batteries, first proposed as a theoretical concept in 2013, use the principles of quantum mechanics to store energy, and have the potential to be more efficient than conventional batteries.

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Meta’s announcement comes after years of criticism from child safety groups over feature

Instagram will stop encrypting private messages between users from May, after enduring years of criticism from law enforcement and child safety groups over the feature.

Meta quietly announced this month on its help page for Instagram and in an updated 2022 news post that end-to-end encryption would no longer be available on direct messages between users on Instagram from 8 May 2026.

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By considering consciousness a possibility, Anthropic is raising a fascinating proposition – that chatbots could rise up against their own algorithms

I am, in the way of my country, an over-apologiser. Colleague who ignored my email, woman who stepped on my foot, chair I tripped over: all will receive a fulsome apology for the terrible embarrassment of my being alive and bringing attention to it.

All of which is my way of pre-emptively asking forgiveness when I admit that I extend these niceties to AI chatbots. “Good morning, Claude, thanks for your suggestions yesterday, they were great. Shall we work up some more?” I might say. (“I’d be delighted to,” returns Claude.) It was unintentional formality at first and then became deliberate, as I didn’t want to get into the habit of speaking rudely in case that leaked into behaviour with humans (cue dystopian visions of someone shouting “WRONG, DO IT AGAIN” to a cowering staff member over a doughnut-shop mix-up). Manners, after all, are muscles that need exercising.

Coco Khan is a freelance writer and co-host of the politics podcast Pod Save the UK

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Liz Kendall announces £1bn funding to help design large-scale quantum computers for scientists, researchers, public sector and business

The UK will not let quantum computing talent slip through its fingers and must learn lessons from US dominance of the AI race, the technology secretary has said, as the government announced a £1bn quantum funding pledge.

Liz Kendall said the government hoped to retain homegrown quantum startups, engineers and researchers rather than lose them to competing countries, with the US stealing a march on its western rivals in AI.

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In a world teeming with social media and smart devices, there are many ways to upset people, whether you’re checking your watch notifications or sending a voice note without a text to explain the subject. Here’s how to navigate it all

In an age of smartphones, social media and instant communication, it has never been easier to connect … or to offend everyone around us. Many of today’s most common etiquette breaches stem not from malice but from convenience: a badly written message, a thoughtless post, a device that demands our attention. Yet good manners still hinge on the same old principle: consideration for others. From eschewing headphones on public transport to ghosting invitations and sharing thoughtlessly online, here are some of the most common modern etiquette mistakes, why they grate, and how they can be avoided.

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Numerous faked images and a string of startlingly inaccurate responses from Gemini and Grok are part of a tidal wave of AI slop engulfing coverage of the Iran war

The graves, freshly dug, lie in neat rows of 20 across. More than 60 have already been carved out of the earth, with a few clusters of people standing gathered around them. Dozens more are marked out on the ground in front: small chalk rectangles, with diggers poised to complete their task.

The cemetery of Minab, photographed as it prepares to bury more than 100 of the town’s young girls, is one of the defining images of the US-Israeli war on Iran, bluntly capturing the devastating civilian toll.

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