Science and Tech

Steven Kahn Half a billion fans, a multi-million dollar personal fortune and a global business empire. It would take a lot to dethrone YouTube’s biggest influencer Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast. But a 54-page court document could be his toughest test yet. Five female contestants on upcoming Prime Video show Beast Games are launching legal action against his production company MrB2024 …

Getty Images Tamagotchi is having a moment – again. The egg-shaped toy housing a virtual pet was one of the biggest crazes of the 1990s. And several attempts to reignite the brand over the years appears to have now paid off for owner Bandai Namco. Global sales more than doubled between 2022 and 2023, it tells the BBC, and Tamagotchi …

LinkedIn has suspended the use of UK user data to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models after a regulator raised concerns. The career-focused social networking site, owned by Microsoft, quietly saw users around the world opted into their data being used to train its AI models. But the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said on Friday that it was “pleased” LinkedIn …

Hundreds of Sky Glass television and Sky streaming service customers have reported issues with their devices. Users first reported technical glitches seemingly preventing some Sky Glass TVs from working properly, or even turning on, on Thursday evening. Reports to platform outage monitor Downdetector were in the hundreds shortly before 21:00 BST on Thursday. But many customers were still flagging issues …

Ross Jarman Ihab Amed working on the test jet engine In a building on the edge of a business park outside Sheffield, researcher Ihab Ahmed is preparing to fire up a small jet engine. Originally used as an auxiliary power unit for a commercial airliner, it has been turned into a testbed for new fuels developed in a laboratory next …

The Taiwanese government has said none of the components in thousands of pagers used by the armed group Hezbollah that exploded in Lebanon earlier this week were made on the island. Fragments of the pagers that blew up had labels which pointed to Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo. But the firm denied making the devices used in the attack. The Lebanese …

Jason Brown Jason Brown was happy with the AI input into his holiday to Ireland When Jason Brown organised his summer holiday to Amsterdam and Ireland this year, he didn’t turn to a travel book or check out Instagram. Instead the founder of recruitment company People Movers consulted ChatGPT, Open AI’s generative artificial intelligence tool. He asked the AI a …

Reuters More than a thousand workers are participating in the strike For the past 11 days, about 1,500 workers of South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics have been striking work in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, leading to major disruptions in production. The plant in Chennai city, one of Samsung’s two factories in India, employs nearly 2,000 workers …

A school in Sheffield has banned the use of smart devices including phones and watches. Forge Valley School no longer allows the use of smartphones, watches or headphones on its premises. Any student found to be using them has to hand them in, with the gadgets not returned for 24 hours. Head teacher Dale Barrowclough said children were previously left …

How live updating of online maps is helping humanitarian work around the world.