Mark Sellman

Which is the best child-friendly smartphone? Concerns about screen time, cyberbullying and toxic content have led some parents to ban phones altogether. But if your child insists, here are some options

Some child-friendly smartphones have appeared on the UK market in the last few months (Pinwheel, HMD Fusion X1 and Sage). We asked one family to test them out and this is their verdict
www.thetimes.com/article/a535...

Businesses banned from paying hackers’ ransoms to target cybercrime New laws mark some of the strictest in the world to target hackers, requiring the private sector to seek government permission before paying cybercriminals

Part-ban on ransom payments to hackers set to come into force in the UK. It will be fascinating to see the impact of this in the next few years. Most experts welcome it but Jamie MacColl of RUSI sceptical it will work until a full ban

www.thetimes.com/article/cf85...

Erdogan and Spotify battle over playlists that mock wife’s ‘gold toilet’ The streaming platform has threatened to withdraw from Turkey as the government condemns content that targets the couple’s lavish spending

EXC: Spotify threatens to quit Turkey in row over playlists that mock the Erdogans’ ‘golden toilet’
www.thetimes.com/article/946b...

Britain’s biggest fact-checking company goes into administration Logically, which worked with the government to counter disinformation during the Covid pandemic, had recently lost contracts with social media giants

Exc: Logically, the UK's biggest fact checking and anti-disinfo company, has gone into administration. The causes are in dispute, but it's another blow for a beleaguered industry www.thetimes.com/uk/media/art...

Four-year-olds ‘exploited’ by tech giants’ app store age ratings Games with in-app purchases and targeted advertising are being marketed by Apple and Google at children far younger than the limits set by developers

Why is the age rating for some of the most popular games 4+ when the terms and conditions say you need to be a teenager?
www.thetimes.com/article/034f...

British ‘hacker’, 25, accused of $25m cybercrimes in the US The US agency claims Kai West, who was arrested in France in February, is a hacker known as IntelBroker who stole data and tried to sell it on the dark web

Kai West, 25, a Briton, has been accused by the US of being the notorious hacker IntelBroker. For those wondering whether he worked for the NCA and HackerOne, both orgs have denied it.

www.thetimes.com/article/ea3f...

New online laws fail to stop promotion of terror groups Content urging the killing of ‘Zionists’ and videos of Israeli hostages being executed remains despite social media platforms having a legal duty to take it down

A huge chunk of terror content has been sitting on social media despite the illegal harms section of Online Safety Act being in force for months. It raises questions for Ofcom as to whether their methods are effective

www.thetimes.com/article/0acc...

Students ‘will spend 25 years on their mobiles’ Smartphones wreck our ability to study, with most people surveyed unable to focus for an hour without using them

Yes, we all know we spend a lot of time on our smartphones, but when you put it this way ... www.thetimes.com/article/f02c...

Steven Bartlett warns YouTube over using creators’ videos for AI The Diary of a CEO podcast host says that the video-sharing site will he ‘hollowed out’ if it continues to take videos to train AI without paying creators

Stephen Bartlett has decided to take a stand over Google/YouTube taking creator content to train on AI. It's not well known in the industry, but as it does become it will be interesting to see if more big names like him speak out www.thetimes.com/article/b3db...

How Russian hackers hoodwinked Chatham House’s Kremlin critic Keir Giles has revealed how he fell for a sophisticated phishing attack that gave cybercriminals posing as the US State Department access to his Gmail account

The Chatham House Russia expert Keir Giles has done everyone a great service by releasing all the details of how Russian intelligence hacked his Gmail account. As he says: “people finding out about this problem is more important than my embarrassment”.

www.thetimes.com/article/a9b1...

Elton John: Labour is like an ostrich on AI copyright bill The singer condemned the parliamentary stand-off and praised peers who voted for new measures to protect the creative ­industries

Sir Elton John finds a new insult for the government over its copyright plans. Definitely one of the more unusual headlines .... www.thetimes.com/article/0aa4...

Businesses ignore advice on preventing cyberattacks, says GCHQ The chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre tells British firms to ‘implement our advice immediately’ after a spate of hacks of commercial websites

GCHQ's top cyber official has expressed his frustration that organisations are not following his advice on cyber security. Those I spoke to said that the NCSC lacks teech to implement its guidance and the big picture is that the market incentives need to change www.thetimes.com/article/9aca...

Artists reject concessions in revolt over AI copyright law MPs, peers and creative industry figures demand measures to force AI companies to reveal what copyrighted works they have used

So the government concessions in the copyright row have failed to move the needle. Next stop, report stage of the data bill on May 7 and then onto the Lords on May 12. If the Kidron amendments go back in, it's ping-pong and tick-tock ...what will ministers do then? www.thetimes.com/article/2bd8...

Jordan Stephens ‘too sober’ to be a hero for zero alcohol The hip-hop star says a deal promoting Madri ­Excepcional was withdrawn because he was too open about his journey to sobriety

I had a chat with Jordan Stephens from Rizzle Kicks about being too sober for one 0 per cent brand ...some interesting commentary from Millie Gooch too.

www.thetimes.com/article/fb3c...

Mother feeling lonely? Pay for an AI app to give her a call Inventor is selling a £24.90 per month artificial intelligence caller, which checks-in with elderly people every day and chats about their lives

I anticipate there will be some quite divergent views about this AI service that calls your elderly parents for you ...
www.thetimes.com/article/651e...

AI minister who hailed AI revolution has not used AI at work Feryal Clark told MPs that generative artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT would be ‘at the heart’ of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology

Sometimes the response you get from a freedom of information request is not the one you expected .... AI minister who hailed AI revolution has not used AI at work

www.thetimes.com/article/5f26...

Don’t relax tech laws to appease Trump, campaigners tell PM Online safety groups and newspapers including The Times do not want legislation sacrificed in trade negotiations

Don’t relax tech laws to appease Trump, campaigners tell PM

www.thetimes.com/article/02e9...

Academic accused of bias for opposing smartphone ban in schools Amy Orben, a Cambridge psychologist leading a government review, does not believe there is a simple solution to protect youngsters

Academic accused of bias for opposing smartphone ban in schools

www.thetimes.com/article/1eab...

We don't tend to talk about that that much, butt's not some new outlier they found, but it's, it's impressive."

I think one of the things that people talk about is the efficiency of the model, but actually our models, our Gemini models, our latest versions, the flash versions, are more efficient for performance.

"But it's exaggerated a little bit ... I think the hype that we've seen about it, but it nonetheless is a very good model, although it's not some new...

"But it's very well implemented and it shows they can do extremely good engineering. And, you know, it's definitely an interesting thing that's arrived on the market. And it changes things, I think, on a geopolitical scale. So there's a lot of implications there.

"But it's important to understand that despite the hype, there's no actual new scientific advance there. It's using known techniques, actually, many of the techniques we invented, things like AlphaZero and some of the reinforcement learning they use.

Sir Demis Hassabis lays down his and Google's response to DeepSeek in Paris before AI summit: - 'no new scientific advance' : "It's an impressive piece of work, and I think it's probably the best work I've seen come out of China.

Bill Gates: Trump, Musk and how my neurodiversity made me He frequently failed at school, so how did the ‘weirdo’ teenager Bill Gates go on to found Microsoft and become a billionaire by 31? He talks about his memoir, Source Code — and what happened when he ...

Apparently there is no Nobel in maths because Nobel’s wife had an affair with a mathematician. Hat tip Bill Gates
www.thetimes.com/article/0811...

Marvel game ‘bans’ the words ‘free Taiwan’ and ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ Players of Marvel Rivals, developed with the Chinese firm NetEase, have accused the company of blocking phrases that are deemed unacceptable in China

Marvel game ‘bans’ the words ‘free Taiwan’ and ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’

www.thetimes.com/article/281c...

‘Soon there will be thousands of delivery robots on British streets’ Starship Technologies has been delivering to towns and cities for six years and the man behind them says they are so cheap every firm will use them

‘Soon there will be thousands of delivery robots on British streets’: an interview with Ahti Heinla, Skype co-founder and robot delivery pioneer

www.thetimes.com/article/d33a...

‘My company thrived for 150 years — then Russian hackers brought it down in three months’ Paul Abbott, a former director of a logistics company that went under after a ransomware attack, is intent on warning others of the growing danger

Thanks to Paul Abbott for telling his story. Hopefully it will encourage others to do the same as a public service

‘My company thrived for 150 years — then Russian hackers brought it down in three months’

www.thetimes.com/article/622d...

Australia bans kids from social media. Could it work here? The Story · Episode

A chat with Manveen Rana on The Story podcast about the Australian social media ban and the UK’s approach

pod.fo/e/28aea1

The end of EV range anxiety? Solar paint could power your car Mercedes-Benz announces plans to develop paint that could generate enough electricity to enable a vehicle to travel 12,000km a year

Solar paint for cars ? Really? Yes apparently
www.thetimes.com/article/4673...