Economic benefits of generative AI, which may take time to show, put ahead of impact of datacentres on energy and water

Jensen Huang, the boss of the chipmaker Nvidia, had some advice for UK ministers last week as they signed a multibillion-pound tech deal with the US: burn more gas.

“I’ve every confidence that the UK will realise that it takes energy to grow new industries,” he said. “Sustainable power like nuclear and wind and of course all of that solar is all going to contribute. But I’m also hoping that gas turbines can also contribute.”

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Exclusive: Sarah Wynn-Williams faces $50,000 fine every time she breaches order banning her from criticising Meta

A former Meta executive who wrote an explosive exposé making allegations about the social media company’s dealings with China and its treatment of teenagers is said to be “on the verge of bankruptcy” after publishing the book.

An MP has claimed in parliament that Mark Zuckerberg’s company was trying to “silence and punish” Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former director of global public policy at Meta’s precursor, Facebook, after her decision to speak out about her time at the company.

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The barely there iPhone Air is in line with trends in tech, design and art – unsullied by thought, risk or humor

There’s a new iPhone. Again. Improbably, we are on the 17th iteration ( give or take ) of the product that single-handedly ruins our lives every day with incessant vibrations alerting us to some horrifying calamity, plus every song in the Bruce Springsteen back catalog. Coming up with new features for the never-ending information machines we all keep in our pockets isn’t easy, but this time, Apple managed to develop a big (or should I say small) one. There’s now a thinner iPhone Air, which is being marketed as the thinnest iPhone ever . These gadgets have never exactly been gargantuan, so it’s kind of like identifying the tiniest grain of sand in the desert. Still, people around the world are fascinated by the sheer lack of phone here.

Technology, design, and art are all trending toward a certain scarcity model, prepping us for a lack of bells and whistles, as though both your parents are unemployed and they want you to expect fewer trips to Disneyland. Life on Earth feels more and more like the experience of entering a Sweetgreen – beige, spartan and unobtrusive. Sure, iPhones haven’t gotten cheaper, but they have certainly gotten … lesser. The iPhone Air is so small, I feel like I’ll sit on it and it will slide seamlessly up my rectum, never to be seen again. For some, I’m sure losing your device inside your bowels might be a feature, but I think it’s a rather uncomfortable bug.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

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ManticAI ranked eighth in the Metaculus Cup, leaving some believing bots’ prediction skills could soon overtake experts

An artificial intelligence system has beaten scores of forecasting enthusiasts, including several professionals, in a contest to predict events ranging from bust-ups between Donald Trump and Elon Musk to Kemi Badenoch being removed from the Conservative party leadership.

A British AI startup, co-founded by a former Google DeepMind researcher, has ranked in the top 10 of an international forecasting competition, which requires entrants to forecast the likelihood of 60 events over the summer.

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Exclusive: Instagram pictures of girls as young as 13 were posted to promote Threads site ‘as bait’, campaigner says

Meta has used back-to-school pictures of schoolgirls to advertise one of its social media platforms to a 37-year-old man, in a move parents described as “outrageous” and “upsetting”.

The man noticed that posts encouraging him to “get Threads”, Mark Zuckerberg’s rival to Elon Musk’s X, were being dropped into his Instagram feed featuring embedded posts of uniformed girls as young as 13 with their faces visible and, in most cases, their names.

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Being a carmaker where ‘everything is connected’ has left JLR unable to isolate its plants or functions, forcing a shutdown of most systems

The first external signs of the chaos about to hit JLR, Britain’s largest automotive employer, came on the quiet last Sunday of August. Managers at a factory in Halewood, Merseyside, told industry contacts there might have been a hack – although it was not clear then just how bad the situation was.

That changed quickly on the Monday morning. JLR, the maker of the Jaguar and Land Rover brands, quickly shut down systems after realising the severity of the cyber-attack . Three weeks later, the carmaker is still incapacitated, unable to produce at any of its factories across the UK, Slovakia, Brazil and India (although a Chinese joint venture is thought to be operating).

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Trump has said deal is agreed but details remain unclear, while both sides say leaders’ call was positive

Donald Trump’s attempts to broker a deal that would transfer TikTok from Chinese to US control remained unresolved on Friday despite a call between the US president and Xi Jinping.

China and the US have been at loggerheads over trade negotiations and the future of TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media platform that faces a ban in the US.

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Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal issues decision in case against Claire Gill, a partner at Carter-Ruck, over legal threats on behalf of client

A partner at the top libel firm Carter-Ruck was hired “in furtherance of fraud” when she sent legal threats on behalf of a multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency scam, a tribunal has ruled.

Claire Frances Gill is being prosecuted by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for allegedly issuing an inappropriate threat on behalf of the scheme, OneCoin, and its mastermind, Ruja Ignatova.

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The band cited a ‘moral and ethical burden’ placed on artists by revenue from their work ultimately funding lethal technologies

Massive Attack have become the latest act – and first major-label one – to pull their catalogue from Spotify in protest at founder Daniel Ek investing €600m (£520m) in the military AI company Helsing.

In June, Ek’s venture capital firm Prima Materia led the defence tech firm’s latest funding round. Helsing’s software uses AI technology to analyse sensor and weapons system data from battlefields to inform real-time military decisions. It also makes its own military drone, the HX-2. Ek is also chairman of Helsing.

Unconnected to this initiative and in light of the (reported) significant investments by its CEO in a company producing military munition drones and AI technology integrated into fighter aircraft, Massive Attack have made a separate request to our label that our music be removed from the Spotify streaming service in all territories.

In our view, the historic precedent of effective artist action during apartheid South Africa and the apartheid, war crimes and genocide now being committed by the state of Israel renders the No Music for Genocide campaign imperative.

In 1991 the scourge of apartheid violence fell from South Africa, aided from a distance by public boycotts, protests, and the withdrawal of work by artists, musicians and actors. Complicity with that state was considered unacceptable. In 2025 the same now applies to the genocidal state of Israel. As of today, there’s a musician’s equivalent of the recently announced @filmworkers4palestine campaign (signed by 4,500 filmmakers, actors, industry workers & institutions) – it can be found @nomusicforgenocide & supports the wider asks of the growing @bds.movement . We’d appeal to all musicians to transfer their sadness, anger and artistic contributions into a coherent, reasonable & vital action to end the unspeakable hell being visited upon the Palestinians hour after hour.

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