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Mozilla, Stop Killing Games and more team up to tell the UK to stop making the internet worse
Multiple notable groups, including Stop Killing Games, Mozilla, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and numerous others have come together to pressure the UK government to stop "[undermining] the open internet."
In a joint statement, 19 organisations (listed below) wrote that "the open Internet is a global public resource that has long since become foundational to the flourishing of individuals, businesses, and societies… This openness and the opportunities it affords are coming under threat in the UK."
The letter refers specifically to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which passed the final stages of the UK's legislative process on April 29, but the British government has been at this kind of thing for a while. Last year's Online Safety Act has—as UK readers will be excruciatingly aware—made using the internet in the country a great deal more invasive and tedious, as various services are now compelled to verify their users are over 18 years of age.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 grants the government new powers to impose restrictions on social media use for under-16s (after an ongoing consultation closes on May 26) and implements a statutory ban on smartphones in schools.
"Ministers are consulting on which platforms and specific features should be placed behind age gates as part of a national consultation on online harms. This approach focuses on restricting young people’s access, rather than ensuring services are designed to uphold their rights and interests by default," says the joint statement from Mozilla and co.
"Even targeted age restrictions of specific features could mean that all users are required to complete intrusive age assurance processes to retain full access… Implementing such access restrictions hinges on all users having to verify their ages, not just young people, and places the burden on providers to comply in ways they consider appropriate.
"As the UK’s experiences with age assurance under the Online Safety Act have shown, deploying age assurance technologies at scale comes with significant trade-offs: Existing age assurance technologies are either insufficiently accurate, undermine privacy and data security, or are not widely available across populations."
In other words, measures such as those implemented by the UK government in the past two years are a sledgehammer approach that makes life harder for everyone without really doing much to protect the kids it ostensibly hopes to. If nothing else, they can always draw on a moustache.
The statement also rings alarm bells for kids seeking information they might not otherwise feel safe to access. "The internet is an essential resource that enables young people to engage with the world in a way that transcends their immediate environment, as well as find information they may not feel safe to access offline, such as about family abuse, politics, or their sexuality. At the same time, however, digital spaces can carry risks for different populations, including young people. These risks are real and require thoughtful policy interventions that address the root of the issue, not just simplistic policies like access bans."
For its part, the British government has previously said that it has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, and has shown no indication that it will change that position for the online portions of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026.
Here's the full list of signatories to the joint statement:
- Big Brother Watch
- Defend Digital Me
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- ExpressVPN
- Gamers Voice
- Global Partners Digital
- Index on Censorship
- Internet Society
- IPVanish
- Mozilla
- Mullvad VPN
- NO2ID
- Open Rights Group
- Privacymatters
- Proton
- Stop Killing Games
- Tor Project
- Tuta
- VPN Trust Initiative
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Pave Leo XIV markerer sitt første jubileum som de underprivilegertes stemme og motstander av nykolonialisme
Han er kanskje ikke lenger en skikkelse som avgjør den vestlige verdens skjebne, men paven, den romersk-katolske kirkens øverste autoritet på jorden, er fortsatt et fyrtårn for mer enn en milliard katolikker over hele verden. Denne uken markerer pave Leo XIV sitt første jubileum i embetet, og han gjør det med et travelt program bak seg, etter å ha benyttet enhver anledning til å ta til orde mot de problemene som for tiden rammer menneskeheten.
Selv om Hans Hellighet i de første månedene holdt seg unna de mest kontroversielle sakene, begynte han i september å kritisere Trumps harde innvandringspolitikk, noe som fremprovoserte en negativ reaksjon fra konservative amerikanske katolikker. Samtidig ble han stadig mer populær blant de mer ydmyke klassene i Latin-Amerika, der paven for øvrig i en årrekke tjenestegjorde som misjonær i Peru. Som Reuters skriver i en artikkel i dag, advarte paven under sin ti dager lange reise til Afrika i april om at innfallene til verdens rikeste truer freden, fordømte "nykoloniale" verdensmakters brudd på folkeretten og sa at verden "ødelegges av en håndfull tyranner".
I juni neste år skal paven for første gang i Spanias historie tale til deputertkongressen i Madrid, og det er ventet at han vil komme inn på noen av de andre punktene på programmet for besøket, deriblant besøk til migrantmottak, veldedige organisasjoner, hjemløse og fanger.
Innvandringsspørsmålet ser ut til å være Leo XIVs korstog (om jeg får lov til å bruke dette uttrykket), og 4. juli skal han besøke øya Lampedusa, et av de mest omstridte innfallsportene for ulovlig innvandring til Europa fra Nord-Afrika.
Selv om det ennå ikke er bekreftet av Vatikanet, er det ventet at pave Leo XIVs første encyklika vil bli publisert innen utgangen av denne måneden.
Halo Infinite bekommt mit dem von Firefight inspirierten Spielmodus The Gauntlet neues Leben
Es gibt noch Leben in Halo Infinite. Halo Waypoint hat angekündigt, dass ein Update veröffentlicht wurde, das etwas hinzufügt, von dem wir wissen, dass viele Fans es lieben werden. Halo Studios hat Firefight (eingeführt in Halo 3: ODST) wieder hervorgeholt und einen neuen Spielmodus namens The Gauntlet entwickelt.
Falls du mit diesem PvE-Modus nicht vertraut bist: Es ist klassischer wellenbasierter Kampf, bei dem immer schwierigere Gegnerhorden angreifen und du und bis zu drei Freunde versuchen müsst, zu überleben. Halo Waypoint erklärt die einfache Grundidee dahinter:
"Bringt eure mächtigsten Krieger mit, denn jede Phase des Handschuhs ist schwerer als die vorherige. Während unzählige Feinde von allen Seiten stürmen, besteht die einzige Hoffnung deines Teams darin, die Bosse in jeder Arena zu besiegen, um ihre Verstärkungen zu stoppen und zum nächsten Kampf voranzukommen."
Die Kämpfe finden auf fünf miteinander verbundenen Karten statt, mit einer kleinen "Versorgungszone" zwischen jeder Karte, auf der du Ausrüstung und Munition auffüllen und deinen Charakter aufleveln kannst. Es gibt auch eine kleine Wendung:
"Profi-Tipp: Wenn du den Oddball vom Harbinger holen kannst, bring ihn zurück in die Versorgungszone, um Schädelmodifikatoren zu aktivieren und während des Matches die persönliche Punktzahl aller zu erhöhen."
Der Gauntlet wurde jetzt für Halo Infinite veröffentlicht, sodass du direkt in die Kämpfe einsteigen kannst. Viel Glück, Spartaner!
The Order: 1886‑producenten: "PS4 var sista riktiga generationsklivet"
När Ready at Dawn släppte {The Order: 1886} för drygt ett decennium sedan visade det sig vara ett ganska kontroversiellt spel, en titel med mycket höga ambitioner som kanske inte riktigt lyckades uppfylla alla mål som på förhand utlovats. Resultatet blev en lansering där spelare var osäkra på vad de skulle tycka, med vitt skilda åsikter och recensioner.
Sedan dess har synen på The Order: 1886 mjuknat, och spelet har blivit något av en kultfavorit bland dem som spelade det och minns det. I takt med att uppfattningarna förändrats fick vi nyligen möjlighet att prata med Andrea Pessino, som var exekutiv producent för The Order: 1886 under hans tid på Ready at Dawn, för att höra tankarna om spelet över tio år senare:
"Well, it's been interesting in the past 11 years now - which since we met actually is kind of crazy - that a lot of things have changed, you know, even in the reception of the game. It was definitely a controversial title when it came out and the criticism was also kind of a product of its time in many ways. There were certainly... I'm the first one to admit, there were aspects of the game that deserved the criticism. It was a bit of a struggle, a lot of the development we prioritised certain things and the audiovisual part clearly was the target. We built the technology completely from scratch for this title and it was a huge endeavour."
Pessino berörde också hur generationsskiftet med Playstation 4 påverkade produktionen av The Order: 1886, och menade att den eran var det sista riktigt stora tekniska språnget för spelhårdvara:
"I think that sometimes when you go a little too far in terms of the way you plan and you prioritise games that are very much, you know, we were very much at the crossing point of a generation. The Playstation 4 represented a real opportunity to explore new technical limits. It was the last... I believe it was the last real generational leap that could happen in the world of video games. These days it's much more, you know, proportional. I don't expect to see really big jumps anymore, because the hardware has really unified a lot, has become a lot more homogeneous."
Han avslutade med att tala mer om The Order: 1886 och uttryckte en önskan om att spel i framtiden ska ta fler kreativa risker:
"So it's been really interesting to see how there's been a bit of a cult following that has built around this game. I think a lot of people appreciated some of the things that we tried to do, and particularly what our artists and designers tried to do that were very unique and continue to be very unique. I think these days games are starting to look a little bit too similar. I miss a little bit the time where you could take those risks and try to explore different, particularly in our case, it was particularly an artistic and audiovisual experiment. But it's encouraging to see that the general attitude towards it has changed somewhat from the controversial release time. And I think there is a more healthy discussion about the merits and the non-merits of this game."
Du kan se hela vår intressanta intervjun med Pessino nedan, där vi också pratar om vad som väntar för {God of War}, läget för virtual reality inom spelbranschen, vad han planerar härnäst på sitt nya företag och mer därtill.