Technology

UK’s leading AI research institute told to make ‘significant’ changes
Posted on Friday April 03, 2026

Alan Turing Institute told by funder to offer better strategy and more value for money after board was reminded of legal duties by watchdog

The UK’s leading AI research institute has been told to make “significant” changes by its main source of taxpayer funding.

The Guardian revealed last week that the board of the Alan Turing Institute was reminded of its legal duties by the charity watchdog after a whistleblower complaint.

Goodbye mrbrightside416: Google allows users to alter quirky Gmail addresses
Posted on Thursday April 02, 2026

Those in US given chance to have more professional usernames without losing access to account

Did your McLovin!1976!@gmail.com email address seem funny at the time but less so now you are applying for dozens of jobs?

Google has said it is giving US users a chance to appear more professional by letting them change their Google account username – whatever appears before @gmail.com in an email address – without losing access to their account.

UK social media users less active on tech platforms due to rise of video apps
Posted on Wednesday April 01, 2026

Ofcom research shows people also concerned old posts could affect personal or professional life

Social media users in the UK are becoming less active on tech platforms due to the rise of video apps and fears that posts could come back to haunt them, according to the communications watchdog.

Ofcom said just under half of adult social media users (49%) now post, share or comment compared with 61% in 2024. The proportion exploring new websites has also fallen, from 70% to 56%.

Pupils in England are losing their thinking skills because of AI, survey suggests
Posted on Thursday April 02, 2026

Two-thirds of secondary school teachers report a decline in core abilities such as writing and problem-solving

Pupils using artificial intelligence are losing their capacity for critical thinking, according to a survey of secondary school teachers in England.

Two-thirds said they had observed the decline among children who they also said no longer felt the need to spell because of voice-to-text technology.

World’s oldest tortoise caught in viral crypto death scam
Posted on Thursday April 02, 2026

Fake X account posing as his vet sparked global false reports of Jonathan’s death while soliciting crypto donations

At 194 years old, Jonathan the giant tortoise was a youngster when Queen Victoria ascended to the throne – and has now lived long enough to fall victim to a crypto scam.

News outlets including the BBC, Daily Mail and USA Today falsely reported his death after an X account posing as Jonathan’s vet broke the news.

‘Tinder for Nazis’ and the woman who hacked it - podcast
Posted on Thursday April 02, 2026

Anonymous activist Martha Root on how she hacked into, and took down, a dating site for white supremacists. With reporting from investigative journalist Eva Hoffman

There’s a dating site for everyone: Jdate for Jews, Muzz for Muslims and Raya for celebrities. And for white supremacists? WhiteDate, “for Europids seeking tribal love”.

The mysterious hacker/activist Martha Root tells Helen Pidd how, live on stage and in disguise, she hacked into WhiteDate and exposed a network of thousands of neo-Nazis looking for Aryan love.

Claude’s code: Anthropic leaks source code for AI software engineering tool
Posted on Wednesday April 01, 2026

Nearly 2,000 internal files were briefly leaked after ‘human error’, raising fresh security questions at the AI company

Anthropic accidentally released part of the internal source code for its AI-powered coding assistant, Claude Code, due to “human error”, the company said on Tuesday.

An internal-use file mistakenly included in a software update pointed to an archive containing nearly 2,000 files and 500,000 lines of code, which were quickly copied to developer platform GitHub. A post on X sharing a link to the leaked code had more than 29m views early on Wednesday, and a rewritten version of the source code quickly became GitHub’s fastest-ever downloaded repository. Anthropic issued copyright takedown requests to try to contain the code’s spread. Within the code, users spotted blueprints for a Tamagotchi-esque coding assistant and an always-on AI agent, per the Verge.