Science and Tech

Chinese technology giant Tencent has made a €1.2bn ($1.25bn) investment in a spin-off from Ubisoft, the maker of the Assassin’s Creed video games. Shenzhen-based Tencent will own about a quarter of the new business, with Ubisoft holding the rest of the new subsidiary, which is valued at around €4bn. The unit will run some of the French firm’s biggest franchises, …

Shubham Agarwal Technology Reporter Jay Springett Jay Springett experimented with new social platforms Jay Springett, a tech strategist and podcast host, joined the social media app Butterflies AI out of curiosity, and ended up staying for more than six months. The idea of Butterflies is to allow human and AI personas to interact. Mr Springett’s online persona developed over time, …

Liv McMahon Technology reporter Getty Images Fashion retailer H&M is to use artificial intelligence (AI) to create digital “twins” of 30 models. It says it will use the AI doppelgangers in some social media posts and marketing in the place of humans, if given permission by models. “We are curious to explore how to showcase our fashion in new creative …

Tom Singleton Technology reporter Getty Images OnlyFans’ parent company has been fined £1.05m after giving inaccurate information about the measures it had in place to check the age of its users. The platform – which is known for hosting sexually explicit material – says people who visit it must be at least 18 years old. It uses facial age estimation …

The government needs to do more to protect young people from violent and harmful content online, a new report suggests. The Youth Select Committee, a parliamentary group of 14 to 19-year-olds, said the Online Safety Act was not robust enough to protect children from being exposed to dangerous material. But the young people on the committee argued against calls to …

US President Donald Trump says he may cut tariffs on China to help seal a deal for short video app TikTok to be sold by its owner ByteDance. Trump also said he is willing to extend a 5 April deadline for a non-Chinese buyer of the platform to be found. In January, he delayed the implementation of a law passed …

An NHS software provider has been fined £3m by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) over security failings that led to a ransomware attack on the NHS. The Advanced Computer Software Group was fined for a breach that put personal information of 79,404 people at risk, the UK’s data protection watchdog said. The firm provides IT and software services to organisations …

Peter Gillibrand & Tom Richardson BBC Newsbeat Rebellion Atomfall is inspired by a fire at a nuclear reactor in Cumbria in 1957 Fukushima. Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Places that will forever be remembered as the sites of nuclear disasters. Most people will have heard of them. But fewer are aware of the Windscale fire. It was one of the world’s …

Lily Jamali Reporting fromSan Francisco EPA Signage outside of the offices of the biotechnology company 23andMe in South San Francisco. Photo by GEORGE NIKITIN/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock The computer systems of 23andMe have been struggling to cope with the sheer volume of customers racing to delete their data, after the DNA-testing company announced that it was filing for bankruptcy protection. The firm says …

Noland Arbaugh has a chip in his brain to translate his thoughts into computer commands.