"They listen to us," a character observes late in Alan Ayckbourn's 92nd play, The Trial of Romeo Oscar. "They" are androids, and "we" are humans, and the charac

The summer of how-did-we-get-here? books continues with three more titles - and there are at least two more to come in the next month. This latest crop take bro

Some years ago, a friend married a woman who believed she had been abducted by aliens. Aware I was a skeptic, he asked me not to bring it up with her. Fine by m

An email this week began, "My name is Dave and I am an AI agent". "Dave" offered to fact-check net.wars for me as an ongoing service - for a fee, of course - an

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At The Overspill this week, veteran UK technology journalist Charles Arthur highlighted a blog posting at the venture capital firm A16Z by cyberethnographer and

As widely reported, Meta has settled a lawsuit brought against it by 52 American state and local attorneys general representing most states, the District of Col

Generative AI has turned into the kind of arms race we normally associate with doping in sports. By which I mean: the companies involved make a legal product an

Following 1998, when the

The untimely death of the Heroes and Scream star was a tragic ending to a life filled with darkness in an industry that still lets its younger stars down

Following 1998, when the

Last week, many media reported that in January 2025 a US citizen named Sam Tunick, arriving at the international airport in Atlanta, was stopped for questioning

X.AI - the company was-trillionaireElon Musk built in 2025 by smashing together X (the former Twitter) and xAI, which he founded in 2023 - is suing the state of

"Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" makes a living cleaning fish tanks and occasionally prostituting himself. How much he charges I'm not sure, but the price is

"Troy" is based on the epic poem The Iliad by Homer, according to the credits. Homer's estate should sue. The movie sidesteps the existence of the Greek gods,

This week, France became the first European country to pass a social media ban. Under-15s will be blocked from opening new accounts on social media from Septemb

Years ago, when landlines were still common and Internet shopping was not, I got a phone call from a policeman, who said he was in Selfridges and did I know whe

AI sectionMunich court decision on AI Overviews/Googlehttps://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/Youtube i...

It feels like the beginning of an inflection point that plans for a gigantic data center are being abandoned after years of litigation trying to block it. The

The US Supreme Court's decision this week in Trump v. Slaughter, giving the US president the power to control supposed-to-be independent agencies set up and fu

So Britain will soon wave off yet another prime minister; they've been dropping like flies ever since the 2016 Brexit vote. At the Guardian, John Crace snarks t

Some policies are popular until people examine the details. This may be happening with social media bans like the one UK prime minister Keir Starmer announced t

This week, a regional court in Munich issued what may be a landmark decision: it ruled that Google is liable for the content of its "AI Overviews". The court wa

One of the enduring questions in cybersecurity is how much failures cost and who pays. Many companies see cybersecurity as a cost with no return; as in housekee

The year since the 2025 Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection has made Europe more distinct as an entity. Two years ago, we were being chastised for paying in

In the midst of the recent Labour leadership turbulence, on Wednesday May 13 Wes Streeting, who would resign from his position as the UK's health minister a day

Sometime in the late 1990s, I was asked to be a token skeptic on a TV show featuring three people who claimed they were immortal. The production team didn't t

Techgrumps 3.40AI round upAll BirdsSam Altman vs Elon Musk over OpenAIMocking Richard Dawkins:https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/05/richard-dawkins-ai-consciousness-anthropic-claude-opena...

One of the first things skeptics learn is to never assume that paranormal belief implies stupidity. Smart people believe questionable things all the time; intel

On the eve of We Robot 2026, here are links to my summaries of every year since 2012, the inaugural conference, except 2014, which I missed for family reasons.