Author Stuart Turton lets AI loose on his novel and gives us his verdict on its writing skills — To put writer’s-block-beating AI Sudowrite to the test, we fed the AI an extract from The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton, which is out now in paperback. Here you’ll see the extract from Stuart’s book that was given to Sudowrite, where the software took the story next…

GPT-3 promises to write fresher, more realistic copy than ever before. Maresa Manara puts it to the test — The publishing industry has proven strangely resilient to the march of new technology, with only ebooks significantly disrupting a business that’s been going along in much the same way for hundreds of years. That could be about to change, however. Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) is a deep-learning neural network…

Nik Rawlinson reveals how to reduce the amount of sensitive you’re (unknowingly?) sharing on Facebook — We’re the over-sharing generation. You might think that your Facebook posts, Titter missives and LinkedIn musings are all suitably considered and circumspect, but over time your accumulated posts will inevitably build up a picture of who you are — perhaps including where you live, what you do for a living…

Graphics processing has made a massive comeback. Darien Graham-Smith reveals how it came back into fashion — In 2008, GPU computing was supposed to be the next big thing. Before that time, we had always been held back by the limitations of our CPUs, while the vast power of our graphics hardware sat idle. …

It’s long been heralded as the future of computing, but as Dick Pountain finds, it’s by no means a home run — Recently, I read Quantum Computing: How it Works and Why it Could Change the World by Amit Katwala. It’s a great intro to the present state of and prospects for quantum computing — not too technical, wasting little space on the basics but avoiding the hieroglyphics of quantum algorithms. …

Nik Rawlinson reveals the strategies that will boost sales on your website — Websites can be many things: a placeholder, a way for clients to get in touch, somewhere to sell your products and services, or a means of generating leads. If you’re not doing the latter, you’re wasting a good domain. Probably the only part of your business that’s open 24/7, your…

Web error messages need to be more helpful and written in plain English, argues Barry Collins. — On the morning of 8 June, a good chunk of the internet decided to take a little nap. The Guardian, the Financial Times, The Verge, Forbes, PayPal, Vimeo, HBO Max and plenty of others were all knocked offline. The first I became aware of a problem was when I went…

We list the big new features that will appear in the soon-to-be-released Windows 11 — If you’re going to release a major new version of Windows, it needs more than a lick of a paint. …

PC repair expert Lee Grant on Apple’s crusade to prevent the repair of its devices — Jessa Jones is a repair superstar with over ten million views on YouTube. Her iPadRehab business focuses on Apple’s products, but her passion for fixing is so great that she runs residential board-repair and micro-soldering training courses to pass her skills on to other businesses. Jessa has earned a reputation…