Salesforce’s CEO backtracks after saying Trump should send troops into San Francisco

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host and editor, Blake Montgomery. What I’m watching this week: South Park’s caricature of Peter Thiel and his obsession with the antichrist. Read our reporting on the show’s inspiration: Thiel’s bizarre off-the-record lectures on the subject. And now, let’s get into things

UK women in tech: we would like to hear from you

The Lovelace Report 2025 in collaboration with WeAreTechWomen has found that between 40,000 and 60,000 women leave the UK’s tech sector every year, costing the economy an estimated £2 billion to £3.5 billion annually.They either exit the industry altogether or move to a new tech employer. An estimated £1.4 billion to £2

Garmin Fenix 8 Pro review: built-in LTE and satellite for phone-free messaging

The latest update to Garmin’s class-leading Fenix adventure watch adds something that could save your life: phone-free communications and emergency messaging on 4G or via satellite.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.The Fenix 8 Pro takes the already fantastic Fenix 8 and adds in the new cellular tech, plus the option of a cutting-edge microLED screen in a special edition of the watch

Bryan Cranston thanks OpenAI for cracking down on Sora 2 deepfakes

Bryan Cranston has said he is “grateful” to OpenAI for cracking down on deepfakes of himself on the company’s generative AI video platform Sora 2, after users were able to generate his voice and likeness without his consent.The Breaking Bad star approached the actors’ union Sag-Aftra with his concerns after Sora 2 users were able to generate his likeness during the video app’s recent launch phase. On 11 October, the LA Times described a Sora 2 video in which “a synthetic Michael Jackson takes a selfie video with an image of Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston”.Living people must ostensibly give their consent, or opt in, to feature on Sora 2, with OpenAI stating since launch that it takes “measures to block depictions of public figures” and that it has “guardrails intended to ensure that your audio and image likeness are used with your consent”.But when Sora 2 launched, several publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Hollywood Reporter and the LA Times reported widespread anger in Hollywood after OpenAI allegedly told multiple talent agencies and studios that if they didn’t want their clients or copyrighted material replicated on Sora 2, they would have to opt out – rather than opt in

Amazon Web Services outage shows internet users ‘at mercy’ of too few providers, experts say

Experts have warned of the perils of relying on a small number of companies for operating the global internet after a glitch at Amazon’s cloud computing service brought down apps and websites around the world.The affected platforms included Snapchat, Roblox, Signal and Duolingo as well as a host of Amazon-owned operations including its main retail site and the Ring doorbell company.More than 2,000 companies worldwide have been affected, according to Downdetector, a site that monitors internet outages, with 8.1m reports of problems from users including 1.9m reports in the US, 1m in the UK and 418,000 in Australia

‘Every kind of creative discipline is in danger’: Lincoln Lawyer author on the dangers of AI

He is one of the most prolific writers in publishing, averaging more than a novel a year. But even Michael Connelly, the author of the bestselling Lincoln Lawyer series, feared he might fall behind when writing about AI.Connelly’s eighth novel in the series, to be released on Tuesday, centres on a lawsuit against an AI company whose chatbot told a 16-year-old boy that it was OK for him to kill his ex-girlfriend for being unfaithful.But as he was writing, he witnessed the technology altering the way the world worked so rapidly that he feared his plot might become out of date.“You don’t have to lick your finger and hold it up to the wind to know that AI is a massive change that’s coming to science, culture, medicine, everything,” he said