‘A stomach of steel’: amateur investors ride out dips amid talk of an AI bubble

It was more than just a hunch, says Jacob Foot of his first foray into US tech stock investments back in 2020.The 23-year-old says he played around with artificial intelligence tools in his first job and thought to himself: this technology is going to be a big deal.Foot put his savings each month into US shares and in particular the biggest investors in AI, the Magnificent Seven (M7). For several years the list has included the chipmaker Nvidia, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Alphabet (the owner of Google) and Meta (the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp).Five years on, Foot expects to complete the purchase of a “bigger house in London than I expected”, a dream he could not have realised without his stock market bets paying off

Ben & Jerry’s owner stopped brand developing flavour for peace in Gaza

The co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s has accused its owner of being part of a movement of “corporate butt kissing” of Donald Trump and says management blocked the ice-cream brand from producing a flavour in support of peace in Gaza.Ben Cohen told the Guardian that Unilever was pursuing a “corporate attack on free speech” by blocking the development of a special flavour in solidarity with the Palestinian people. It is understood the flavour had been approved by Ben & Jerry’s independent board and first mooted about a year ago.Magnum, the group’s ice-cream arm, confirmed it had not gone ahead with the board’s suggestion for a Palestine product this summer.Cohen has mounted a “Free Ben & Jerry’s” campaign to persuade Unilever to sell the brand to a group of socially minded investors who he says have pledged to allow it to continue its “social mission

Alan Turing institute launches new mission to protect UK from cyber-attacks

Britain’s leading AI institute has announced a new mission to help protect the nation from cyber-attacks on infrastructure, including energy, transport and utilities, after it was embroiled in allegations of toxic work culture and the chief executive resigned amid ministerial pressure.The Alan Turing Institute will “carry out a programme of science and innovation designed to protect the UK from hostile threats”, it announced on Tuesday as part of changes following the resignation last month of Jean Innes, its chief executive, after a staff revolt and government calls for a strategic overhaul of the state-funded body.The mission comes amid growing concern over Britain’s vulnerability to internet outages and cyber-attacks after this month’s incident affecting Amazon’s cloud computing globally and recent cyber-attacks crippling production at Jaguar Land Rover factories, and supply chains at Marks & Spencer and the Co-op.Blythe Crawford, the former commander of the UK’s air and space warfare centre , will report back next month on how the government-funded institute “can best support the scale of government AI ambitions in defence, national security and intelligence”.The chair, former Amazon UK boss Doug Gurr, said 78 different research projects at the 440-staff institute have been closed, spun out or completed because they do not align with the new direction

Tech chiefs tell Trump to call off troops – will Firefox go ‘full AI’?

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, confounded by the ending of Bugonia and looking forward to seeing Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.In this week’s newsletter: the head of Firefox talks AI-integrated browsers; the tech billionaires’ support of Trump and their successful request to defer national guard deployment to San Francisco; and the growing prevalence of face-scanning in online dating. Thank you for reading.Do you need an assistant for your online activities?Multiple major players in artificial intelligence are moving on from chatbots like ChatGPT and are now focusing their efforts on new browsers with deep AI integrations

New Zealand beat England by five wickets in second men’s cricket one-day international – as it happened

Simon Burnton’s report:So, once again, England lose in New Zealand before most of their fans back home have even woken up, skittled cheaply for a second game in a row against a New Zealand who remain a serious ODI force, particularly at home, and for whom Blair Tickner was excellent on his return to the side.Not a serious ODI force, at present, are England, who for all their occasional record-breaking fireworks are struggling to pace an innings with the bat and to excel consistently. Probably because they don’t play 50-over cricket consistently. To think that a decade ago this was the form of the game English men’s cricket prioritised.Anyway, Simon Burnton’s report from Hamilton will be up shortly and then English women’s cricket is in the spotlight next, with the big World Cup semi-final against South Africa

Australian women’s cricketers exceed $1m in earnings – with more riches on the horizon

Five of Australia’s all-conquering team set for a showdown against hosts India in the women’s cricket World Cup semi-final on Thursday have surged through the threshold of $1m annual earnings, as the growing financial opportunities in the global game approach and even exceed the value of Cricket Australia contracts.That group might soon expand too, given an Indian Women’s Premier League “mega auction” is scheduled for November. The Australians – who have won three of the past four world T20 titles and are defending 50-over champions – are set to attract significant interest from the five franchises, each of which have approximately $2.6m to spend for the month-long tournament.Australian Cricketers’ Association chief executive Paul Marsh said he expected women’s salaries to continue to grow