Tech company predicts rise of ‘frontier firms’ – where a human worker directs AI agents to carry out tasks

Microsoft has good news for anyone with corner office ambitions. In the future we’re all going to be bosses – of AI employees.

The tech company is predicting the rise of a new kind of business, called a “frontier firm�, where ultimately a human worker directs autonomous artificial intelligence agents to carry out tasks.

Report suggests tech firm – swept up in Donald Trump’s trade war – will make change as soon as 2026

Apple is reportedly planning to switch assembly of all iPhones for the US market to India as the company seeks to reduce its reliance on a Chinese manufacturing base amid Donald Trump’s trade war.

The $3tn (£2.3tn) technology company aims to make the shift as soon as next year, the Financial Times reported.

Watchdog’s new codes of practice are not strong enough, says children’s commissioner for England

The communications watchdog has been accused of backing big tech over the safety of under-18s after the children’s commissioner for England criticised new measures for tackling online harms.

Rachel de Souza said she warned Ofcom last year that its proposals for protecting children under the Online Safety Act were too weak. New codes of practice issued by the watchdog on Thursday have ignored her concerns, she said.

Requiring social media platforms to deploy “highly effective� age checks to identify under-18s.

Ensuring algorithms filter out harmful material.

Making all sites and apps have procedures for taking down dangerous content quickly.

Ensuring children must have a “straightforward� way to report content.

Hearing scheduled for Friday as residents receive anonymous leaflets that downplay pollution dangers

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) company is stirring controversy in Memphis, Tennessee. That’s where he’s building a massive supercomputer to power his company xAI. Community residents and environmental activists say that since the supercomputer was fired up last summer it has become one of the biggest air polluters in the county. But some local officials have championed the billionaire, saying he is investing in Memphis.

The first public hearing with the health department is scheduled for Friday, where county officials will hear from all sides of the debate. In the run-up to the hearing, secretive fliers claiming xAI has low emissions were sent to residents of historically Black neighborhoods; at the same time, environmental groups have been amassing data about how much pollution the AI company is likely generating.

Invitations to private reception with US president fuel $TRUMP’s 50% price rise and add to conflict of interest fears

The value of Donald Trump’s meme coin jumped by more than 50% on Wednesday after its official website said the coin’s top 220 holders would be invited to a private gala dinner with the president on 22 May.

The top 25 holders of the coin would also get “an ultra-exclusive VIP reception with the president�, as well as a special tour, the website said.

From remotely locking your phone to changing passwords, do this quickly to protect yourself and restore peace of mind

Smartphones contain the entirety of our modern lives, from photos, messages and memories to credit cards, bank accounts and all life admin, so when one gets lost or stolen it can be far worse than the cost of the actual handset.

Here’s what to do if the worst happens. Quickly taking these steps will help protect yourself against data theft, scams and fraud, and with luck could even lead to you being reunited with your phone.

Try to locate your phone with Find My on Apple or Google, if you have it turned on. You can use a browser on a computer, tablet or even a friend’s phone.

Remotely lock your phone using Find My and mark it as lost, which helps protect your data, blocks the use of Apple or Google Pay and can leave a message on the screen for anyone who finds it. You can also remotely erase your phone from here too.

Contact your network provider and block your sim to stop thieves running up bills. Also ask it to check for any new “charge to bill� activity and to disable the feature.

Contact your credit card company for any cards you have stored on your phone and disable Apple or Google Pay.

Report the theft to the police and give them your phone’s IMEI number, which may be on the box, in your Apple or Google account or their Find My services.

Contact your insurance company if you have phone cover.

Change your passwords for important accounts. Start with your email account so that thieves can’t gain access to your other accounts through password resets.

Remove your phone from your accounts and services, which will log it out and stop thieves accessing saved details.

He slept in cars, found notoriety on social media and could be pop’s next superstar. The singer of Ordinary, the longest-running No 1 of the year, talks about his journey to breakout success

At 18, Alex Warren was homeless, sneaking into the gym of a gated community in his home town of Carlsbad, California, to shower for job interviews and film TikTok videos of himself singing in the bathroom. Six years later he is one of pop’s next potential superstars. His bombastic ballad Ordinary has been No 1 in the UK charts for five weeks, the longest-running chart leader this year, and entered the US Top 10 last week. As soon as he heard the finished version, he was “freaking out – my wife and I listened to it on repeat for our entire drive home, for 45 minutes.�

Ordinary may be Warren’s breakout hit but he’s been famous for a long time. He gained notoriety on social media in his teens by making hugely popular videos with titles such as “BROTHER WAKES UP IN MIDDLE OF LAKE PRANK!� In 2019 he co-founded the Hype House, a shared house of content creators (including the D’Amelio sisters and Addison Rae) known for Covid-era internet videos, as well as at least one controversial facemask-free influencer party and, eventually, a $300,000 (£226,000) lawsuit – which Warren wasn’t named in – which alleged property damage and unpaid rent.

More people are switching to deals with greater flexibility and value, and there are a growing number of providers

People are rejecting mobile “bundles� that include a new phone and data contract, and are increasingly turning to sim-only deals that offer better value for money.

A growing number of consumers are not getting a new phone when they change their mobile ­contract and are instead holding on to their existing handset or ­buying a ­secondhand one, according to analysts.

Whether you’re eating out or settling up households costs, here are ways to make it as fair and painless as possible

Income disparity in friendships can sometimes lead to conflict. A study published last year by a US financial services company, Bread Financial, found 26% of people felt they were “financially incompatible� with their friends, while 21% said they had lost a friendship because of money.

The navigation app might be built for function – but dig deeper and you’ll find a trove of inside jokes, neighbourhood quirks and charming errors

• Read more in the Internet wormhole series

There is a certain kind of guy who looks at Google Maps for fun. I am that guy. As a kid I went through a cartography phase, drawing elaborate maps of fictional islands and poring over the family street directory in an effort to reconcile the lines and dots on the overcrowded pages with the streets, shops and friends’ houses in my mind’s eye. You could say that phase never really ended.

In much the same way as some people will pull up a movie’s IMDb entry the second they start watching, any time I come across an interesting town, country or geographical oddity (which is often in the news business), I’m firing up Maps to see what topographical morsels I can uncover. I’m no GeoGuessr savant, but I’ve spent many pleasant hours puzzling over interesting enclaves and panhandles, or pootling around far-flung locales in Street View. After finishing a recent episode of Severance I opened a tab and took an armchair tour through the remote Newfoundland island where it was shot.

Class-leading camera, top-tier chip, very long battery life, AI and quality software dominate mid-range rivals

Google’s latest cut-price Pixel offers the best bang for your buck in Android phones and is arguably better in many areas than some models costing twice the price.

The Pixel 9a starts at the same £499 (€549/$499/A$849) as last year’s equally good value model. That makes it £300 or so less than Google’s regular Pixel 9 and places it up against mid-rangers such as Nothing’s Phone 3a Pro and Samsung’s Galaxy A56.

Screen: 6.3in 120Hz FHD+ OLED (422ppi)

Processor: Google Tensor G4

RAM: 8GB

Storage: 128 or 256GB

Operating system: Android 15

Camera: 48MP + 13MP ultrawide, 13MP selfie

Connectivity: 5G, Sim/eSim, wifi 6E, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3 and GNSS

Water resistance: IP68 (1m for 30 minutes)

Dimensions: 157.7 x 73.3 x 8.9mm

Weight: 185.9g

Transparent back, flashing LEDs, novel design, long battery life and huge triple camera help this Android stand out

London-based Nothing has brought one of the last things setting top-level phones apart from cheaper mid-range models down to a more affordable price: high-quality camera zoom.

Cameras have long been the battleground of the most expensive phones, each vying for better quality, longer reach and multiple lenses. While much of this costly progress has trickled down to cheaper models, optical zoom cameras are few and far between below the £600 mark.

Screen: 6.77in 120Hz FHD+ OLED (387ppi)

Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3

RAM: 12GB

Storage: 256GB

Operating system: Nothing OS 3.1 (Android 15)

Camera: 50MP main, 50MP 3x tele and 8MP ultrawide, 50MP selfie

Connectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 6, NFC, Bluetooth 5.4 and GNSS

Water resistance: IP64 (spray resistant)

Dimensions: 163.5 x 77.5 x 8.4mm

Weight: 211g

Stripped back iPhone offers latest chips, AI and longer battery life, but with only a single camera on the back

Apple’s cheapest new smartphone is the iPhone 16e, which offers the basic modern iPhone experience including the latest chips and AI features but for a little less than its other models.

The iPhone 16e costs £599 (€699/$599/A$999) and is the spiritual successor to the iPhone SE line. Where the iPhone SE still had the old-school chunky design with home button, the 16e has the body of the iPhone 14 with the chips of the £799 iPhone 16.

Compact phone has flagship chip and buckets of AI, but hasn’t changed much from predecessors

The smallest and cheapest of Samsung’s new Galaxy S25 line might be the one to buy, offering top performance and the very latest AI features for less and proving that smaller-sized Androids can still be great.

Unlike previous generations of Samsung’s smaller models sold in the UK and Europe, the regular S25 has the same top-flight chip as the enormous and pricey Ultra model, offering a lot of performance while costing £799 (€919/$800/A$1,399).

New iPad has laptop-level power, reliable battery life, great video call camera and a choice of screen sizes

Apple’s iPad Air continues to be the premium tablet to beat, with the latest version featuring a chip upgrade to keep it ahead of the pack.

The new iPad Air M3 costs from £599 (€699/$599/A$999) – the same as its predecessor – and comes in two sizes with either an 11in or 13in screen. It sits between the base-model £329 iPad A16 and the £999 iPad Pro M4, splitting the difference in price and features.

Screen: 11in or 13in Liquid Retina display (264ppi)

Processor: Apple M3 (9-core GPU)

RAM: 8GB

Storage: 128, 256, 512GB or 1TB

Operating system: iPadOS 18.4

Camera: 12MP rear, 12MP centre stage

Connectivity: Wifi 6E (5G optional eSim-only), Bluetooth 5.3, USB-C, Touch ID, Smart Connecter

Dimensions: 247.6 x 178.5 x 6.1mm or 280.6 x 214.9 x 6.1mm

Weight: 460g or 616g

With launch problems fixed, first colour Kindle improves reading experience – but it is pricey and too small for comics

Amazon’s first Kindle with a colour screen had been a very long time coming and then suffered a rough landing last year, plagued with yellowing screen issues and shipping delays. But with those problems fixed, is a splash of colour the revolution the Kindle needs?

Amazon isn’t the first to use a colour e-ink screen in an e-reader, but it thinks its upgrades meaningfully improve on the tech used by others such as Boox and Kobo over the past four years by offering greater contrast and speed.

Chip, memory and webcam upgrades are joined by welcome price cut for the top premium notebook

Apple’s much-loved MacBook Air gets even more power, a much better webcam and an unexpected price cut for 2025, making one of the very best consumer laptops even more tempting.

The company’s thinnest and lightest laptop currently starts at £999 (€1,199/$999/A$1,699) – £100 less than last year’s model – and has Apple’s top M4 chip with a minimum of 16GB of memory, making the cheapest model much more capable.

Better fit, great sound, noise cancelling, longer battery life and heart rate sensors upgrade just about everything

After five years, Apple is back with a full revamp of the earbuds that put its Beats headphones brand on the map for athletes and sports people: the Powerbeats Pro 2.

Designed to hook on to the ear and stay put without wires, the original Powerbeats Pro were the best earbuds for working out and were worn by sports superstars including LeBron James and Anthony Joshua.

PC; Strange Scaffold
What looks like a glitchy dinosaur-hunting puzzler turns out to be a meta game about game development that the player patches as they go

The haunted house has become a ripe location in which to set weird video games. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Blue Prince, Botany Manor and Layers of Fear spring to mind. The manor as a site of danger, supernatural peril, untrustworthy architecture – perfect, surely, for an unsettling experience. Or even a silly experience in unsettling surroundings.

Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 promises much in its title. It presents initially as a high-concept dinosaur-hunting adventure in spooky house run by a sinister old mogul, then quickly reveals to the player that it knows it is a video game. A broken video game, that is, and it is up to us to patch it as we go.

PC, PlayStation 5 (version played); Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive
Boasting a unique world, challenging combat and great writing, this RPG has a lot going for it, if only it didn’t revel in its own mysteriousness so much

When we meet Clair Obscur’s protagonist Gustave, he’s getting ready to say goodbye to his ex-girlfriend, Sophie. Once a year the Paintress, a giant god-like woman visible from across the sea, wakes, paints a number on a large monolith, and in the peaceful town of Lumière, everyone whose age corresponds with the number dies. This process, called the Gommage, has shortened people’s lives for 67 years, and now it’s Sophie’s turn. Immediately after this heart-wrenching goodbye, Gustave and his adopted sister Maelle get ready to set sail as part of Expedition 33, on a journey to defeat the Paintress and end her gruesome cycle.

While stunningly beautiful, the continent you arrive at is no friendly place, and the path to the Paintress is filled with surreal monsters called Nevrons, which you fight in turn-based battles. Characters have a melee attack and a long-range attack, but most importantly, they have a large variety of unique skills including elemental magic attacks and strong attacks with multiple hits that have the chance to stun. Each member of your team has a special way of building up damage even further; Maelle for example uses a defensive, offensive or aggressive combat stance, inspired by fencing, while the magic that Lune wields builds up so-called stains that you can then spend to make other spells more powerful. Add to this long list of optional passive skills called Pictos, and soon you have a wide array of ways to enhance your characters. The interplay between building up action points to use skills, building up damage and defending is really interesting, and I enjoyed trying out different tactics, even as it meant that a lot of my time was spent in menus.

PC, PS5, XBox; Don’t Nod
The concluding half of this two-parter may be lacking in interactive challenges, but is profound, sensitively structured and emotionally resonant

One thing you realise as you get older is that memories are plastic and that the stories you tell about your life change with every recollection, depending on who you are at the time. This is one of the themes – and indeed the mechanics – of Lost Records, a narrative adventure about four teenage girls who develop an intense friendship in rural Michigan during the summer of 1995. In the first instalment, they form a band, discover an old shack in the woods to use as a clubhouse, and encounter a supernatural force emanating from a deep hole they discover nearby. But as autumn draws in and the girls plan a climactic rock gig, tragic secrets are uncovered.

Cleverly, the story is told mostly in flashback, as the characters meet again, decades later, in their long-abandoned home town – they’re older, wiser and with new perspectives on what happened to them as teenagers. Lead character Swann, a keen photographer whose video camera provides a key game interface in the first episode, is living a solitary life, while Autumn is still filled with anxiety and Nora is now an influencer. Missing is Kat whose terminal cancer diagnosis obliterates their world at the close of part one.

When his mum found their old family NES covered in dust and rust, Thomas Hobbs cleaned it up, got it working and reconnected with his childhood and late father

One of my earliest memories is watching my mum and dad play the opening level of Super Mario Bros in cooperative mode on the Nintendo Entertainment System. This was the early 1990s, and they were joined at the hip on the sofa, laughing at the idea of two portly plumbers becoming gigantic after consuming copious amounts of magic mushrooms.

In this moment I sensed their natural chemistry, while the intoxicating mix of 8-bit visuals and perky, synth-heavy music blew my toddler mind. Although it was irritating seeing them constantly fail to jump high enough to hit the top of the flagpole at the end of the level, I remember being transfixed by the TV screen, and I’m pretty sure this was the first time I connected properly with a video game.

This story from Charlie Brooker’s dystopian series is set at PC Zone magazine and thrillingly close to true events at one dingy London office in the 90s

Out of all the episodes in the excellent seventh season of Black Mirror, it’s Plaything that sticks out to me and I suspect to anyone else who played video games in the 1990s. It’s the story of socially awkward freelance games journalist, Cameron Walker, who steals the code to a new virtual pet sim named Thronglets from the developer he’s meant to be interviewing. When he gets the game home, he realises the cute, intelligent little critters he’s caring for on the screen have a darker ambition than simply to perform for his amusement – cue nightmarish exploration of AI and our complicity in its rise.

The episode is interesting to me because … well, I was a socially awkward games journalist in the mid-1990s. But more importantly, so was Charlie Brooker. He began his writing career penning satirical features and blistering reviews for PC Zone magazine, one of the two permanently warring PC mags of the era (I shared an office with the other, PC Gamer). In Plaything, it’s PC Zone that Cameron Walker writes for, and there are several scenes taking place in its office, which in the programme is depicted as a reasonably grownup office space with tidy computer workstations and huge windows. I do not think the production design team got this vision from Brooker.

Dogubomb/Raw Fury; PC, PS5, Xbox
Thoughtful design details and puzzles will keep you returning to an atmospherically uninhabited family mansion to search for a hidden room and family secrets

My first day with Blue Prince, I told myself I’d just have a little taste before turning to my usual evening K-drama. Before I knew it the sun had long since set and my lounge was lit only by my Steam Deck and a game that had fast become my new obsession. It is the sort of game that feels as though it were made just for you – and the elements that make it truly special are best discovered without forewarning, so forgive any vagueness in what follows.

In a similar style to What Remains of Edith Finch or Gone Home, Blue Prince has you exploring your character’s atmospherically uninhabited family home. But as in Outer Wilds, your exploration is limited: you are frequently forced to start afresh with little more than the snippets of knowledge you’ve gained. Each expedition is further complicated by Rogue-like randomisation: the house’s shapeshifting floor plan is a five-by-nine grid to be filled anew each day with tiles drafted by you, a feature that some players may recognise from the board game Betrayal at House on the Hill. But in this case there’s a random choice of three options whenever you open a door.

Protesters gathered outside Tesla showrooms around the world on Saturday as part of a global day of action against billionaire chief executive Elon Musk. The protest is part of the Tesla Takedown movement — a grassroots campaign that calls for people to boycott Tesla, sell their shares and join local picket lines in a peaceful demonstration against Musk’s influence

• Protests hit Tesla dealerships across the world in challenge to Elon Musk

The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said more than 1 million US federal employees responded to an email sent by Elon Musk's Department of government efficiency asking them to list five things they had accomplished in the last week. 'It took me about a minute and a half to think of five things I did last week. I do five things in about 10 minutes, and all federal workers should be working at the same pace that President Trump is working,' said Leavitt. She added that a new email was being sent threatening employees that they will be fired if they don’t respond

• More than 20 Musk staffers resign over Doge’s ‘dismantling of public services’

• Trump defends Musk as backlash to federal workers ultimatum grows

• US politics live

Collaboration and opportunity were at the centre of the talks, as JD Vance urged his ‘European friends’ to view the technology with ‘optimism rather than trepidation’. The US and the UK refused to sign a declaration on ‘inclusive and sustainable’ artificial intelligence at the summit. Campaign groups criticised the UK’s decision and said it risked damaging its reputation in this area

• US and UK refuse to sign Paris summit declaration on ‘inclusive’ AI

• Europe live