Young people feel their internet activity is overwhelmed by betting promotions and similar content, says GambleAware Children are “saturated” with betting promotions and gambling-like content while using the internet, despite restrictions on ad campaigns targeting young people, new research reveals. GambleAware, the charity funded by donations from gambling firms, commissioned research that found the risks of online gambling were not understood by children because of the “blurred line” between betting ads and popular online casino-style games. It warns gambling ads with cartoon graphics a ..read more

The handheld console introduced millions to the joy of video games, and remains one of the best-selling consoles ever On April 21, 1989, Nintendo released a chunky grey game-playing rectangle to stores in Japan. It’s fair to say that nobody expected much of it. Internally, at Nintendo’s Kyoto HQ, the portable console was reportedly not a well-loved project. But within two weeks, it had sold out its entire 300,000-unit initial run. The Game Boy would arrive later that year in the US, and across the rest of the world over the next couple of years. Everywhere it went, it proved just as popular. T ..read more

The decision could set a precedent for future monitoring of people convicted of indecent image offences A sex offender convicted of making more than 1,000 indecent images of children has been banned from using any “AI creating tools” for the next five years in the first known case of its kind. Anthony Dover, 48, was ordered by a UK court “not to use, visit or access” artificial intelligence generation tools without the prior permission of police as a condition of a sexual harm prevention order imposed in February ..read more

After a car crash nearly killed her 20 years ago, the dotcom entrepreneur is climbing three peaks to make £300,000 for charity Even to the able-bodied, climbing Britain’s three highest peaks might seem like a test of resolve. But Martha Lane Fox has had 47 operations, struggles with her balance, nerve damage and constant pain, and needs two sticks to walk anywhere – the legacy of a car crash 20 years ago that nearly killed her. On Saturday she completed the first leg of “Martha’s Mountain Mission” by reaching the summit of Snowdon, or Yr Wyddfa. England’s highest peak, Scafell Pike, comes next ..read more

Microsoft, Meta and Google are snapping up small players in the burgeoning industry – but the Competition and Markets Authority is demanding fair play “Monopoly,” said Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley’s answer to Darth Vader, “is the condition of every successful business.” This aspiration is widely shared by Gamman, the new acronynm for the Valley’s giants – Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Nvidia. And the arrival of AI has sharpened the appetite of each for attaining that blessed state before the others get there. One symptom of their anxiety is the way they have been throwing unconscio ..read more

Recent controversies, including Civil War posters and altered photos in a Netflix documentary, have led to concern over the growing use of artificial intelligence on screen Though last year’s writers’ and actors’ strikes in Hollywood were about myriad factors, fair compensation and residual payments among them, one concern rose far above the others: the encroachment of generative AI – the type that can produce text, images and video – on people’s livelihoods. The use of generative AI in the content we watch, from film to television to large swaths of internet garbage, was a foregone conclusion ..read more

Todd Baker composed the soundtrack for the indie puzzler as he was living through the loss of his mother. On the series’ 10th anniversary, he reflects on the experience ‘The part where the mother and child are separated on a red mountain, in a level quite early on in the game where you have to get back to the mother and find her … I was completing the sound design and music for that in a hospital, right beside my mum when she was sleeping, recovering from open heart surgery.” Todd Baker pauses for a second. He is recalling the development process of 2017’s Monument Valley 2, an indie puzzler ..read more

As the show becomes a global hit and is renewed for a second season, experts say game adaptations are the new superhero movies In the first few days of its release, Fallout – the Prime Video adaptation of the post-apocalyptic video game franchise – has become a hit with global audiences, shooting to the top of the UK chart and ranking among Prime’s top three most-watched titles ever. On Friday, just a week after the show debuted in more than 240 countries and territories, Amazon announced it had renewed it for a second season. “The bar was high for lovers of this iconic video game and so far w ..read more

Process has coincided with a rise in price in the past and is due to take place again on Saturday Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin, still has an influence on the cryptocurrency nearly 14 years after disappearing. This week the protocol designed by Nakamoto – an individual or group of individuals who went silent in December 2010 – will trigger what is known as a “bitcoin halving”, a process that has coincided with price increases in the past. The latest halving is expected to take place on Saturday ..read more

Jonathan Hall, Britain’s reviewer of terrorism legislation, says more children could be exposed to encrypted extremist content The UK’s terror watchdog has criticised Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta for lowering the minimum age for WhatsApp users from 16 to 13, warning that the “extraordinary” move could expose more teenagers to extreme content. Jonathan Hall KC said more children could now access material that Meta cannot regulate, including content related to terror or sexual exploitation ..read more