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Received — 21 October 2026 ⏭ The Guardian - Technology

‘I’m always being real’: what on earth persuades disgraced people like Elizabeth Holmes to let the cameras in?

21 October 2026 at 16:02

With You Can See Everything, Holmes joins other such high-profile subjects as Lance Armstrong, Imelda Marcos and Anthony Weiner to allow film-makers to document their lives. But do they ever come out well?

In You Can See Everything, convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes invites film-makers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim into her home in a supposed act of “radical transparency”. Holmes is filmed, along with her partner, Billy Evans, and their two young children, in the weeks before starting a prison sentence for defrauding Theranos investors. “The best way for people to see who she is,” Evans says, “is to give as much access as possible into our daily lives”. It may also be the best way to market “Theranos 2.0”, which the couple are working on during filming. But the documentary questions whether Holmes is presenting her authentic self or a manufactured persona. Fielder speaks for the audience when he asks Holmes in a tense exchange whether she’s “being real” with him. “I’m always being real,” she says.

That question of authenticity is at the heart of documentary film-making. You Can See Everything is as much about the ambiguous relationship between film-maker and subject as it is about Holmes herself. There is often a power struggle over narrative control in documentaries, with both sides of the dynamic wanting different outcomes from the final film. Watching You Can See Everything inevitably prompts the question: why would Holmes, days before she heads to jail, invite the scrutiny of a film crew?

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© Photograph: Courtesy of A24

© Photograph: Courtesy of A24

© Photograph: Courtesy of A24

New prize launches for books co-written with AI

21 October 2026 at 15:59

After months of controversy over the possible use of AI by winners of prestigious awards, the Prix Pascal de Littérature IA is rewarding fiction written with the help of LLMs

A prize for AI-written books has launched this week.

The Prix Pascal de Littérature IA invites submissions of manuscripts co-written with AI tools, with the winner promised publication.

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© Photograph: Cheng Xin/Getty Images

© Photograph: Cheng Xin/Getty Images

© Photograph: Cheng Xin/Getty Images

‘The audience gets to be in on it’: How narrative-led gameplay is Call of Duty’s greatest weapon

21 October 2026 at 15:00

As video games chase spectacle, Modern Warfare 4 makes a case for putting character and consequence at the heart of its biggest battles

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In these strange, subdued weeks before the much-anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto VI, there have still been some welcome surprises. Onimusha: Way of the Sword revived a half-forgotten samurai action series with much aplomb, while Silent Hill: Townfall transported all of the franchise’s bloody, dread-filled psychological horror to … the picturesque Scottish coast. Even more shocking to games writers, though, is the fact that the forthcoming Modern Warfare 4 has one of the best Call of Duty campaign modes for at least six years – and might even be up there with the original Modern Warfare trilogy.

The setting is an invasion of South Korea by its northern neighbour – a setup that could have fuelled a hundred instantly forgettable Netflix films, but has proved controversial in a video game. The authoritarian regime has a new (fictitious) ruler and a powerful experimental weapon, which it’s not afraid to use as the opening gambit in an explosive attack. You take on the role of Park Hyun Jun, a conscripted South Korean soldier who, along with his small unit of similarly inexperienced grunts, gets caught in the firestorm as cities burn and enemy paratroopers fill the skies.

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© Photograph: Activision

© Photograph: Activision

© Photograph: Activision

The best Kindles in the UK for every bookworm and budget – tested

21 October 2026 at 15:00

Whether you want a colour screen, somewhere to scribble notes or a child-friendly model, here’s what we recommend from Amazon’s e-reader range

• The best e-readers

From that fresh paperback smell to the wrinkles in the spine, nothing beats a real book. But if you’re sick of the space they take up in your home, or the weight they steal from your holiday luggage allowance, it might be worth considering an Amazon Kindle. It can fit thousands of weighty reads into as little as 158g, and as tech goes, it’s almost immune to the sort of pathological time-wasting features that come with modern phones and tablets.

Amazon Kindles have been available in the UK for more than 15 years, so they’re an old-school gadget at this point. But in 2024, the biggest update yet arrived: colour, which added an important extra option to the existing Kindle lineup, alongside readers for children, for note-taking and for tighter budgets.

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© Composite: PR Image

© Composite: PR Image

© Composite: PR Image

The best gifts for nine-year-olds, picked by nine-year-olds and parents

21 October 2026 at 10:00

Popcorn makers, Lego Fortnite and the coolest water bottle around … surprise the mini tween in your life with our pick of the top gifts and toys

• The best gifts for eight-year-olds

The start of the tween years, nine years old, is a sweet spot between curiosity and growing independence, making it a fun, though sometimes tricky, age to buy for.

Kids at this age are up for a challenge, whether that means trying a trickier craft set, playing a more complex game or stepping up their sporting interests. Pitch a gift right and you’ll not only get the whoop of joy when they first receive it, but something that will hold their interest and help them develop their skills, interests and hobbies over time.

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© Composite: PR Image

© Composite: PR Image

© Composite: PR Image

‘A difficult line’: meet the editors tackling Wikipedia’s arms trade pages

21 October 2026 at 06:00

Volunteers and new recruits come together for ‘wikithon’ to put more detail about industry into public domain

“Anyone can edit Wikipedia,” the adage goes. But, it turns out, a relatively small number actually do.

What is worthy of a digital page in the world’s largest and most-read encyclopedia is decided by roughly 270,000 active volunteers, enthusiasts who populate the online resource with information on anything from 19th-century medicine to TikTok trends. Inevitably, some subjects are sidelined – the global south, notable women – but a new batch of Wikipedian recruits are waging war on one neglected topic: the arms industry.

Last week, in a classroom in central London, two dozen volunteers huddled around laptops and free servings of vegan Ethiopian food for what is known as a “wikithon”, an event of collective and in-person Wikipedia editing. Some were veteran editors in their 70s, others young students who had never registered an account before. But their targets include subjects such as Palantir, Project Maven and Nitro-Chem.

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© Photograph: Lily Renshaw/The Guardian

© Photograph: Lily Renshaw/The Guardian

© Photograph: Lily Renshaw/The Guardian

UK watchdogs urged to tackle suicide social media content after death of girl, 14

Adriana Retyte took her own life after viewing ‘high-risk’ material on the video-sharing platform TikTok

A 14-year-old schoolgirl’s death after TikTok served her suicide content has prompted renewed calls for UK watchdogs to crack down on “toxic” social media feeds.

Adriana Retyte, a pupil at Langley school in Norfolk, took her own life after she viewed videos and images related to suicide on the video-sharing platform, according to a coroner who last week found her access to the material on TikTok “may have played a significant part in her decision to take her life”.

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© Photograph: The Good Brigade/Getty Images

© Photograph: The Good Brigade/Getty Images

© Photograph: The Good Brigade/Getty Images

Americans, this is your chance to slap down the tech broligarchs

20 October 2026 at 20:16

The midterms will be a referendum on the GOP’s alignment with tech overlords over the public they’re meant to serve

Welcome back to How We Win, a Guardian opinion series with leading thinkers, offering bold ideas for America’s political future. Last week, Robert Reich highlighted the link between corruption and affordability. Today’s edition was written by Guardian US columnist Rebecca Solnit. Sign up for future editions here.

“The world should accept some bad things happening,” Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, said recently, “for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.” Like so many things tech oligarchs say, it’s incoherent, since Altman would like to deny the world and the people in it the agency to decide whether or not we should accept his bad things. Surveys show that most Americans would like to pause AI; opposition to AI datacenters is a factor in many races in the midterm elections. People are outraged and anxious about what tech hath wrought, mad enough to fight back in what is coming to seem like a human v machine battle.

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© Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

© Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

© Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

‘Too big to not fail’: Google outage exposes UK reliance on a handful of cloud providers

20 October 2026 at 17:50

Our dependence on internet services of a few key tech companies leaves us vulnerable to cloud failures, bugs and more, experts say

It happened again. A power outage hit a datacentre in London, and things cascaded from there: multiple banking services faltered, court hearings were put on hold and patients reported temporary glitches on the NHS app.

The datacentre in question was in Google’s europe-west2-b zone, one of more than a dozen “zones” that the US search giant maintains in Europe to service its clients.

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© Photograph: Google Handout/EPA

© Photograph: Google Handout/EPA

© Photograph: Google Handout/EPA

US judge dismisses sexual abuse lawsuit from Sam Altman’s sister

20 October 2026 at 16:34

Ann Altman, the Open AI CEO’s sister, accused her brother of repeatedly sexually abusing her over two decades ago

A judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Sam Altman’s sister against him on Tuesday. Ann Altman accused the OpenAI CEO of repeatedly sexually abusing her more than two decades ago, which he has denied.

In dismissing Ann Altman’s ⁠lawsuit, the US district judge Zachary Bluestone wrote that she had refused to appear for an independent medical examination despite warnings ⁠that failure to do so would result in the case’s dismissal.

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© Photograph: Lev Radin/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Lev Radin/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Lev Radin/Shutterstock

The dangers of letting tech billionaires shape our world

20 October 2026 at 15:31

As SpaceX impacts Ukraine and AI-generated music divides artists and fans, critics are asking what happens when technology has too much control over our lives

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you while sitting in front of Roy Lichtenstein’s monumental Drowning Girl, on view in New York City. Today in tech, we’re discussing the perils of Elon Musk’s one-man global infrastructure, AI-generated music and a Guardian AI conference in Paris.

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© Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

© Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

© Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

Labor and the Coalition are poised to take a reckless gamble on AI. Haven’t they realised community support has collapsed? | Edward Santow and Sarah Sacher

Australian workers expect the government to act to protect them from AI harms. There is a clear reform solution at hand

Australia’s major political parties are edging towards rare consensus. Labor and the Coalition increasingly want to take a major bet on artificial intelligence. Yet, just as the parties are coming together, the Australian community is running the other way.

Last year, only 30% of Australians believed the benefits of AI outweighed the risks. In 2026, community trust in AI appears to be falling even further.

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© Photograph: James Ross/AAP

© Photograph: James Ross/AAP

© Photograph: James Ross/AAP

US bans use of China’s DeepSeek AI tools by government agencies

20 October 2026 at 13:33

Use of tools ‘may result in the transfer of sensitive data’ to China, defense department says

The US government on Monday ordered its agencies to stop using artificial intelligence (AI) tools from the Chinese startup DeepSeek, as the countries race for dominance in the fast-moving sector.

A notice from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the ban on products developed by DeepSeek – and tools created using DeepSeek by third parties – saying they must be removed from IT devices.

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© Photograph: Andy Wong/AP

© Photograph: Andy Wong/AP

© Photograph: Andy Wong/AP

I’m a CTO. AI still needs your human expertise | Madhu Shashanka

20 October 2026 at 13:30

AI is increasingly getting good at doing some tasks, but it can never replace human workers’ judgment

Autonomous cars, which may be the safest we have built, keep getting easily avoidable parking tickets. While Waymos crash far less often than human drivers over tens of millions of miles, they’re still terrible at performing basic tasks – keeping out of disabled parking spots and tow-away zones, or steering clear of a church garage during Sunday service, according to the Wall Street Journal.

That is the state of AI today: impressively capable at something complex, yet embarrassingly clumsy at something easy. And it has implications for what work will remain human and what will be automated by AI.

Madhu Shashanka is co-founder, chief scientist and chief technology officer at Concentric AI, a data security software company

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© Illustration: Guardian Design/Westend61/Getty Images

© Illustration: Guardian Design/Westend61/Getty Images

© Illustration: Guardian Design/Westend61/Getty Images

Google cloud failure hits millions as UK courts and banks knocked offline

Services restored for most users, but power fault stalled hearings and left Revolut, Lloyds and HSBC customers unable to pay or move money

An outage at Google’s cloud services in the UK has caused widespread disruption, hitting courts and leaving millions of customers unable to access or send cash at banks including Lloyds, HSBC and Revolut.

Google blamed a “power event” for the failure at its London-based Cloud computing operations on Tuesday, which affected its “europe-west2-b zone”.

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© Photograph: Mateusz Słodkowski/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Mateusz Słodkowski/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Mateusz Słodkowski/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

Googlebook review: Google’s new laptops are woefully underbaked

Great hardware let down by software flaws on these pricey machines that combine ChromeOS with Android

Google’s attempt to create a new type of laptop to compete with Windows and macOS machines is finally here, combining the best of ChromeOS and Android into the new Googlebook. With advanced links to Android phones and the best of Google built in, can these Googlebooks really compete with a MacBook Air or Surface Laptop? I took two for a spin to find out.

For years, Chromebooks have been the boss of budget laptops, but Googlebooks take a different, far more premium approach. Made by a range of traditional PC makers, including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo, they start at £999 (€1,099/$899/A$2,299) – a far cry from the £160 Chromebooks.

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© Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

© Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

© Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

‘These risks are real’: the threat of AI bioweapons – podcast

In his annual speech on threats to the nation, Sir Ken McCallum, the head of the UK’s intelligence service, MI5, warned that AI had the potential to ‘change the stakes’ on existing and even new bioweapons. To find out why, and how, Ian Sample speaks to Dr Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He explains what has governments so worried and what measures could be put in place to reduce the risks

Could AI ‘change the stakes’ in the development of bioweapons?

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

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© Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images

New AI tool can predict cancer survival by a single patient selfie, study suggests

System can estimate a person’s biological age and predict chances of cancer survival from a single photograph

Doctors have developed an artificial intelligence tool that can predict a cancer patient’s chances of survival from a single photograph of their face.

The AI system was custom-built by experts at Mass General Brigham, a nonprofit, integrated academic healthcare system in Massachusetts, to estimate biological age and directly predict survival outcomes in patients diagnosed with cancer.

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© Photograph: Addictive Stock Creatives/Alamy

© Photograph: Addictive Stock Creatives/Alamy

© Photograph: Addictive Stock Creatives/Alamy

Calls to strengthen workplace privacy in Australia as employers turn to AI to track staff

Monitoring tools common in a range of workplaces, including factories, office jobs, delivery work and in retail – often without employees being informed

Employers are increasingly using technology, from CCTV to keystroke monitoring, to track workers’ moves and it is being accelerated by the use of AI, the Human Technology Institute has warned.

Examples provided to Guardian Australia by the institute include a fast-food restaurant using surveillance cameras to stop workers using their phones, and AI tracking leading to a cashier warned over making a mistake once every 533 scans.

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

AI firm Anthropic to commit 5% of shares to fund for ‘public good’

19 October 2026 at 13:51

The $48bn giveaway comes amid concerns about the tech and as the company prepares for a stock market listing

Anthropic has said it will commit 5% of its shares to a fund for the “public good”, as the AI developer behind the Claude chatbot seeks to bolster its appeal before its stock market listing.

The company announced it would commit the shares, worth around $48bn (£36bn) at its latest valuation in May, subject to shareholder approval. It will add a further 2% of its stock to the fund for every 50% increase in its value above an undisclosed baseline.

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© Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

© Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

© Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

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