The joy of railways is shared by millions | Letters
Although a not a full-on Thomas the Tank Engine fan, I have for 65 years been an out-there and unashamed enthusiast for anything running on rails (‘Thomas the Tank Engine clung to me like a disease’: the film about the choo-choo’s global grownup superfans, 22 July),My wife and I sometimes do front-of-house at a heritage railway and can confirm the attraction of railways for those with autism, particularly young people,There is a predictability about railways, timetables, signals and all the other paraphernalia that is very attractive,Also, there is endless scope for studying minutiae and collecting odd bits of information,Numbers and names on the engines, liveries (colours of trains to you), performance records and endless other statistics.
And, as honoured by Brannon Carty’s film, discussed in your article, you don’t have to be a loner if you don’t want to: there are millions of others to share your passion,The study of Thomas’s creator, the Anglican cleric Wilbert Awdry, is recreated at the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum in Tywyn: a small collection of theological texts on one side, a joyful collection of railway books on the other, with a model railway spread across his desk,Wonderful!Rev David GibsonNewark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section,
YouTube to gauge US users’ ages with AI after UK and Australia add age checks
YouTube announced on Tuesday that it will begin to use artificial intelligence to estimate the ages of users in the US, in order to show them age-appropriate content.The rollout of the new feature comes one day after Australia’s government announced it would ban children under 16 from using YouTube and less than a week after the UK implemented sweeping age checks on content on social networks.YouTube’s AI age verification on its home turf indicates it is putting into place a form of compliance with the Australian and UK requirements, despite its persistent opposition to age-check requirements.“Over the next few weeks, we’ll begin to roll out machine learning to a small set of users in the US to estimate their age, so that teens are treated as teens and adults as adults,” wrote James Beser, director of product management for YouTube Youth, in a blogpost titled Extending our built-in protections to more teens on YouTube.YouTube was promised an exemption from Australia’s social media ban last year by the then communications minister, but the Australian government said on Monday that the platform would, in fact, be included in the country’s ban on children under 16 using social networks
UK online safety law leads to 5m extra age checks a day for pornography sites
Five million extra online age checks a day are being carried out in the UK since the introduction of age-gating for pornography sites, according to new data.The Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA) said there had been a sharp increase in additional age checks in the UK since Friday, when age verification became mandatory for accessing pornography under the Online Safety Act.“As a result of new codes under the Online Safety Act coming into force on Friday, we have seen an additional 5m age checks on a daily basis, as UK-based internet users seek to access sites that are age-restricted,” said Iain Corby, the executive director of the AVPA.The UK has also seen a surge in popularity of virtual private networks, which obscure a user’s real location and thus allow them to access sites blocked in their own country. Four of the top five free apps on the Apple download store in the UK are VPN apps, with Proton, the most popular, reporting a 1,800% increase in downloads
People in the UK: have you been the victim of phone theft recently?
According to data compiled by an insurance firm, nearly two in every five mobile phones stolen in Europe are taken in the UK. Claims made to the American insurance company SquareTrade showed 39% of all phone thefts across the company’s 12 European markets were in Britain.The data revealed that phone theft claims in the UK had increased by 425% since June 2021 and 42% of phone thefts in the UK occurred in London.We’d like to hear from people who have been the victim of phone theft in the UK in the last six months? Has your phone been snatched out of your hands? What happened next and how easy was it to secure your data and accounts? Did you report it to the police? Has it changed your behaviour using your phone or sense of safety on the streets? Why do you think that the UK is the phone theft capital of Europe.You can tell us if you have been the victim of phone theft in the UK by filling in the form below
UK viewers: are you watching YouTube on your TV more than other channels?
YouTube has become popular to watch on TV with children and older people choosing the video platform when they first switch on their televisions.Viewers aged 55 and over watched almost twice as much YouTube than they did in 2023, with 42% of them watching on a TV. The platform is also the most popular first TV destination for generation Alpha viewers, aged four to 15.We’d like to hear from people who watch YouTube on their TV more than other channels. When and why did your watching habits change and how does it differ to what you grew up with? What are your favourite YouTube shows and why?You can tell us why you watch YouTube more than other broadcast channels on your TV by filling in the form below
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 review: great-looking and fun, but iterative Android
Samsung’s seventh-generation Flip phone trims the fat, gains a bigger cover screen on the outside and a larger folding display on the inside, but fundamentally doesn’t reinvent the wheel.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.The Galaxy Z Flip 7 joins the book-style Z Fold 7 as Samsung’s two flagship folding phones for 2025
YouTube most popular first TV destination for children, Ofcom finds
Children are now heading to YouTube from the moment they turn on the television, in the latest sign of the video platform’s migration from the laptop to the living room.YouTube is the most popular first TV destination for generation Alpha, according to a comprehensive survey of the UK’s viewing habits by Ofcom, the communications regulator.One in five young TV viewers aged from four to 15 turned straight to the platform last year. The survey showed Netflix close behind. While BBC One was in the top five first destinations, children were just as likely to choose BBC iPlayer
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