Tech

It’s easy to get carried away when looking into upgrading your gaming hardware.Just recently Sony announced their new PS5 Pro to much fanfare (and astonishment at the £699 price tag), meanwhile Nintendo fans hotly anticipate the Switch 2, whose launch date has reportedly been brought forward.However, one vital part of the gaming rig often goes forgotten when gamers build their ‘battlestations’ – the screen.To many people, all flatscreen TVs are created equally – but nothing could be further from the truth.So what should gamers look out for when choosing the perfect gaming screen?Firstly, there are big differences between television screens and computer monitors. PC monitors often boast higher pixel-density than TVs, which simply means they manage to cram in more pixels per inch of screen, ...

A new rocket thruster could enable “never-ending” voyages into deep space by using any type of metal as fuel.A team at the University of Southampton is testing a new propulsion system which would allow metals found on comets and moons to be harvested in order to propel a spacecraft indefinitely.Most current rocket propulsion systems for spacecraft that have left Earth’s atmosphere use rare gas phase fuels such as xenon or krypton, which are easy to supply on Earth but difficult to get in space. Image:The rocket thruster ‘opens a new way to explore planets and space’. Pic: University of Southampton Image:Scientists measure the propulsion system’s thrust. Pic: University of SouthamptonBut using metals a spacecraft could harvest along its journey “opens a new way to explore planets and spac...

Millions of people can book their flu and COVID vaccines from today, which officials hope will ease pressure on the health service ahead of the winter months.It comes amid concerns from NHS England over a so-called “tripledemic” of flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).Bookings open at 9am on Monday and can be made through the NHS website, app or by calling 119.Who can get the free jabs?Adults aged 65 and over, long-term care home patients and people in clinical risk groups are all eligible for the COVID and flu vaccines – as are frontline social care workers and people providing care for elderly or disabled people.Pregnant women are also eligible to get the flu jab. Children from six months to 18 in clinical risk groups are also invited to get the vaccine.RSV vaccine availab...

TikTok has said it’s removed accounts associated with Russian state media for “engaging in covert influence operations”.It’s part of the site’s efforts to prevent disinformation in the run up to November’s US presidential election.Accounts affected are those from media group Rossiya Segodnya, which owns the RIA Novosti and Sputnik news services; and TV-Novosti, the parent body of the RT news channel.TikTok said the accounts were previously restricted in the UK and EU, and that their worldwide content was marked as state-controlled media.However, they are now understood to have been permanently banned.It follows a similar move last week by Instagram and Facebook owner Meta, which banned Rossiya Segodnya, RT and others for “foreign interference activity”.RT – which lost its UK broadcast lice...

A man has been arrested after train passengers at some of the country’s biggest rail stations have been hit by a “cyber security incident” which saw them exposed to Islamophobic messages.Manchester Piccadilly, Birmingham New Street and 11 stations in London were affected by the cyber attack on Wednesday.The man is an employee of Global Reach Technology, which provides some WiFi services to Network Rail, British Transport Police said after an investigation. He has been arrested on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and offences under the Malicious Communications Act 1998.Passengers trying to log on to public WiFi at the Network Railway-managed stations were targeted with the Islamophobic message.The message sent out in place of the WiFi login page, which has been seen ...

Teenage Instagram users will get new privacy settings, its parent company Meta has announced in a major new update.It is an attempt by Meta, which also owns WhatsApp and Facebook, to reduce the amount of harmful content seen online by young people.Instagram allows 13-year-olds and above to sign up but after the privacy changes, all designated accounts will be turned into teen accounts automatically, which will be private by default.Those accounts can only be messaged and tagged by accounts they follow or are already connected to, and sensitive content settings will be the most restrictive available.Offensive words and phrases will be filtered out of comments and direct message requests, and the teenagers will get notifications telling them to leave the app after 60 minutes each day.Sleep m...

A new map made with AI has been launched to help shed light on life in under-mapped parts of the world.This week, the UN and Google launched the first map to show high-resolution building footprints and heights in Africa and across the global South, covering every year from 2016 to 2023.Those parts of the world were often only mapped with low-quality images that made it hard to see how settlements changed over time or how people lived.However, the team used AI to extract building footprints and heights from low-resolution satellite images that were already being taken every five days.“Not knowing where buildings are is a big problem for lots of practical reasons,” said Google researcher John Quinn. “If you’re creating services or vaccination campaigns or rescuing people after an emergency,...

Scientists are creating “humanity’s last exam” to test AI and see when it has reached expert-level intelligence.People are being asked to submit their questions and create “the world’s most difficult artificial intelligence test” by the Center for AI Safety (CAIS) and Scale AI.“Existing tests now have become too easy and we can no longer track AI developments well, or how far they are from becoming expert-level,” said the quiz creators in a statement about the test.A few years ago, AI was giving almost random answers to questions on exams – that’s no longer the case.Last week, OpenAI’s newest model, known as OpenAI o1, “destroyed the most popular reasoning benchmarks”, according to Dan Hendrycks, executive director of CAIS.However, AI still isn’t able to answer difficult research questions...

One-year-old twin girls, conjoined at the head, have been successfully separated during a 14-hour operation led by a leading British surgeon.Professor Noor ul Owase Jeelani, from Great Ormond Street Hospital, used leading mixed reality technology to complete the complex procedure on Minal and Mirha in Turkey.Both are recovering in hospital and are expected to make full recoveries and lead normal lives when they return home to Pakistan next month.“They’re making an excellent recovery, really wonderful,” Professor Jeelani told Sky News. “They should be in a position to go back to Pakistan in a few weeks.”The operation at the Ankara Bilkent City Hospital on 19 July, which included a local team of medics, required two surgical stages and was completed over three months, with the final surgery ...

David Lammy chose to make his first major policy speech as foreign secretary in the lush surroundings of a glasshouse at Kew Gardens.He recalled how his father brought him to Kew as a schoolboy to experience the rainforest environment of his native Guyana.The sort of opening you might expect to hear from a politician – especially one promising to make climate change and biodiversity “central to all the foreign office does.”There’s evidence Mr Lammy’s ambition for a new kind of foreign policy is genuine, however.Take the education centre he and his wife founded in Guyana four years ago for local students to learn about the country’s last remaining rainforest and how to conserve it. Image:Foreign Secretary David Lammy at Kew Gardens. Pic: PABut delivering on his pledge would test even the g...