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Prime movers: the German circus exploring Amazon through acrobatics

Prime movers: the German circus exploring Amazon through acrobatics

Rimini Protokoll’s new show is part of a series of performances inspired by James Joyce’s Ulysses and draws a connection between its Aeolus episode and hypercapitalismOn the eastern outskirts of Berlin, a big top has been erected by theatre company Rimini Protokoll for a circus with a twist. These acrobatics come wrapped in metaphor and high concept: the show is about shopping giant Amazon and the processes of the virtual marketplace. Upon entering, we are given clickers to use instead of clapping to imitate the click of online transactions. We view secret footage filmed inside fulfilment...

The Guardian

Which is the best folding phone-tablet? Cutting-edge Androids face off

Which is the best folding phone-tablet? Cutting-edge Androids face off

Samsung’s leading Galaxy Z Fold tested against challengers from Google Pixel, OnePlus and Honor to see which folder is top dogIs it a phone? Is it a tablet? A new group of folding devices are competing to appeal to consumers who want the best of both worlds, offering a phone-like screen on the outside and a large display on the inside that opens out like a book.Each is superior at different parts of the equation, but which is the overall best? I put the most promising devices to the test in a round-by-round competition to find the folding phone champion.Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 – the...

The Guardian

Lashings of fun? Microsoft reveals new Indiana Jones game

Lashings of fun? Microsoft reveals new Indiana Jones game

Can MachineGames’s new first-person adventure Indiana Jones and the Great Circle live up to the third-person thrills of Indy-influenced hits Uncharted and Tomb Raider?History is not exactly littered with glittering Indiana Jones video games. The beautiful LucasArts adventure, The Fate of Atlantis; the pretty good Lego games; the decent Emporer’s Tomb; the presentable SNES side-scroller, Greatest Adventures … There have been good games, but few classics that transcend the brand like, say, Knights of the Old Republic. Maybe that’s about to change.During Microsoft’s latest Developer...

The Guardian

What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

Teachers say mobile phones make their lives a living hell – so one Massachusetts school barred them • Sign up to our free coaching newsletter to help you spend less time on your phoneWhen the weather is nice, the Buxton boarding school moves lunch outside. Students, faculty and guests grab their food from the kitchen, and eat together under a white tent that overlooks western Massachusetts’ Berkshire mountains.As the close of the school year neared last June, talk turned to final assignments (the English class was finishing Moby-Dick) and end-of-year fun (there was a trip planned to a...

The Guardian

If you were given a Google Street View image of anywhere on Earth, could you identify the location?

If you were given a Google Street View image of anywhere on Earth, could you identify the location?

The competitors at the GeoGuessr World Cup can do just that. The clues are in brick houses, distinctive trousers and unusual telegraph poles Picture a specific image from Google Street View. You’re going to try to guess exactly where in the world the photo was taken. The cloudless sky and desert landscape indicate somewhere hot. The grey road stretches far ahead of you with few defining characteristics. There are telegraph wires to the left of the road, above some short trees. You can zoom into the photo. You can pan around. You can’t, however, zoom out for added context. Can you guess? Oh...

The Guardian

Tetris puts me in a state of zen. If only it did the same for my family

Tetris puts me in a state of zen. If only it did the same for my family

I hoped the cat-herding for a family gaming night would be worth it to enjoy one of the most soothing games ever. But the bricks did not line upMy whole family is under one roof again, after my son Charlie’s flirtation with university was halted by a combination of shady landlord and disappointing levels of partying. As a responsible parent, I should have persuaded him to stay, but 3,000 miles was a hell of a distance to be from the one member of the family who both a) can legally drink and b) wants to go drinking with me. I designate our first Saturday night together a Family Game Night.“...

The Guardian

Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection review – a great way to relive a lost world of gaming

Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection review – a great way to relive a lost world of gaming

Limited Run Games; PC, PS4/5, Switch, XboxThe cult retro label has curated and updated a series of digital dino fossils for modern players and fans of the movie franchise who missed out first time roundFor a period during the mid-1990s, it was ruled that no blockbuster movie was really complete until it had also been translated into a rock hard platformer or run-and-gun arcade adventure, seemingly designed to enrage and frustrate children everywhere. Disney’s wildly uncompromising Aladdin and Lion King tie-ins were shining examples as were Probe Software’s challenging Robocop 3 and Alien 3...

The Guardian

‘It’s not a public service, it’s toxic’: welcome to the world of gossip surveillance

‘It’s not a public service, it’s toxic’: welcome to the world of gossip surveillance

TikTokers are sharing strangers’ conversations, hoping to expose gossipers to the very people they’re talking about. Is the humiliation worth it?Marissa Meizz was out to dinner with a friend when her phone started vibrating. It was an unusually frenzied buzz, unresponsive to the silence button – a flood of texts from friends, acquaintances and even an “offline” aunt all linking to a TikTok video titled “Send this to Marissa in NYC”.She froze. Then she started watching. Continue reading...

The Guardian

Linda Marigliano: the 10 funniest things I have ever seen (on the internet)

Linda Marigliano: the 10 funniest things I have ever seen (on the internet)

Sharing videos is a love language for the presenter and author. Here, she shows us a dancing frog and multiple mischievous childrenGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailOne of my first memories of the internet was as a horny 13-year-old sitting in my best friend’s bedroom. We were using her family computer to search for pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio. After we ogled some Romeo & Juliet film stills, we decided to look up something more risque. We typed in “naked man” and nervously clicked through to the first site. A rectangle took up the entire screen, and – slower than the most...

The Guardian

Young Americans are picking up the Qur’an ‘to understand the resilience of Muslim Palestinians’

Young Americans are picking up the Qur’an ‘to understand the resilience of Muslim Palestinians’

Readers find themes that align with their values as they seek to ‘grow empathy’ for a religion long vilified in the westMegan B Rice loves reading. She started a romance novel club on the instant messaging platform Discord and posts book reviews on TikTok. Last month Rice, who is 34 and lives in Chicago, used her social media accounts to speak out about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.“I wanted to talk about the faith of Palestinian people, how it’s so strong, and they still find room to make it a priority to thank God, even when they have everything taken away from them,” she said in...

The Guardian

Rows and rockets blow up as Elon Musk’s firms endure turbulent weekend

Rows and rockets blow up as Elon Musk’s firms endure turbulent weekend

Another space launch failed, but it’s the loss of major advertisers on X that has enraged the tycoonIt has been an explosive weekend for Elon Musk. The American billionaire has had to witness not only the public “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of another of his rockets, but also watch while a group of well-known global companies, including Apple, Disney and IBM, pulled advertising from X, his social media platform.The businesses, all of them household names, made the decision to stop spending on the site, formerly known as Twitter, after the American billionaire’s public support for an...

The Guardian

Universal Music to pull songs from TikTok

It would mean the social media platform would no longer have access to songs by Taylor Swift, The Weeknd and Drake.

BBC News - Technology

Elon Musk: Judge blocks 'unfathomable' $56bn Tesla pay deal

The lawsuit was filed by a shareholder who argued that it was an inappropriate overpayment.

BBC News - Technology

Taylor Swift deepfakes spark calls in Congress for new legislation

Explicit images of the popstar were spread millions of times on social media before being removed.

BBC News - Technology

Palworld: 'Pokémon with guns' sells 5m copies in three days

The surprising success of Palword causes server crashes and exposes "serious bugs" in the game.

BBC News - Technology

Amazon Prime Video to have ads in UK from February

The "limited" ads will feature in content unless people pay £2.99 a month to remove them.

BBC News - Technology

Elon Musk's Tesla recalls two million cars over Autopilot defect

It follows investigation into crashes which occurred when firm's Autopilot system was in use

BBC News - Technology

Google admits AI viral video was edited to look better

Instead of the AI responding to voice and video, it was fed text prompts and still images.

BBC News - Technology

Lego Fortnite: Gaming giant launches Minecraft rival

The new co-operative survival game mode sees players crafting items with Lego bricks.

BBC News - Technology

Booking.com users angry at firm's response to hacks

Customers say they have been failed and feel let down after losing hundreds of pounds to fraudsters.

BBC News - Technology

Spotify to axe 1,500 workers to save costs

The music-streaming company says it is making people redundant to "rightsize" the firm.

BBC News - Technology

Amazon latest tech giant to announce AI chatbot

The bot, called Q, can help firms answer customer queries, analyse data and help with coding.

BBC News - Technology

Nvidia sued after video call mistake showed 'stolen' data

Car firm Valeo alleges the theft of its data was inadvertently revealed during a Microsoft Teams call.

BBC News - Technology

X ad boycott gathers pace amid antisemitism storm

US firms, including Apple and Disney, are reportedly suspending ads on the Elon Musk-owned site.

BBC News - Technology

Apple to bridge message divide - but keeps green bubbles

The tech giant confirms it will introduce support for a new messaging standard on iPhones from 2024.

BBC News - Technology