The Present

New head of National Cyber Security Centre to warn of risk to infrastructure in first major speech Hostile activity in the UK cyberspace has increased in ‘frequency, sophistication and intensity’, Richard Horne will say. Photograph: Tim Goode/PA The UK is underestimating the severity of the online threat it faces from hostile states and criminal gangs, the country’s cybersecurity chief will warn. Richard Horne, the head of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, will cite a trebling of “severe” incidents amid Russian “aggression and recklessness” and China’s “highly sophisticated” digital operations. In his first major speech as the agency’s chief, Horne will say on Tuesday that hostile activity in UK cyberspace has increased in “frequency, sophistication and intensity” from enemies who want to cause maximum disruption and destruction. In a speech at the NCSC’s London HQ, Horne, who took on the role in October, will point to “the aggression and recklessness of cyber-activity we see coming from Russia” and how “China remains a highly sophisticated cyber-actor, with increasing ambition to project its influence beyond its borders”. “And yet, despite all this, we believe the severity of the risk facing the UK is being widely underestimated,” he will say. One expert described the comments as a “klaxon” call to companies and public sector organisations to wake up to the scale of the cyber-threat facing the UK. Horne will make the warning as the NCSC reveals a significant increase in serious cyberincidents over the past 12 months. Its annual review shows that the agency had responded to 430 incidents requiring its support between 1 September 2023 and 31 August 2024, compared with 371 in the previous 12 months. It says that 12 of those attacks were at the “top end of the scale” and were “more severe in nature” – a trebling from the previous year. “There is no room for complacency about the severity of state-led threats or the volume of the threat posed by cybercriminals,” Horne will say. “The defence and resilience of critical infrastructure, supply chains, the public sector and our wider economy must improve.” Last week the Cabinet Office minister, Pat McFadden, warned that Russia “can turn the lights off for millions of people” with a cyber-attack . The NCSC review does not reveal the split between state-executed attacks and incidents perpetrated by criminal gangs. However, it is understood that a significant amount of its time is spent supporting organisations responding to ransomware attacks, where criminal gangs paralyse their targets’ IT systems and extract confidential data. The gangs then demand a ransom payment in bitcoin to return the stolen data. Recent ransomware attacks against high-profile UK targets include the British Library and Synnovis , which manages blood tests for NHS trusts and GP services. The NCSC says it received 317 reports of ransomware activity last year, of which 13 were “nationally significant”. “The attack against Synnovis showed us how dependent we are on technology for accessing our health services. And the attack against the British Library reminded us that we’re reliant on technology for our access to knowledge,” Horne will say. “What these and other incidents show is how entwined technology is with our lives and that cyber-attacks have human costs.” Ransomware gangs typically originate from Russia or former Soviet Union countries and their presence appears to be tolerated within Russia, provided they do not attack Russian targets. However, one Russian cybercrime gang, Evil Corp, has carried out attacks against Nato countries at the behest of state intelligence services, according to the UK’s National Crime Agency . Horne adds: “What has struck me more forcefully than anything else since taking the helm at the NCSC is the clearly widening gap between the exposure and threat we face, and the defences that are in place to protect us.” “And what is equally clear to me is that we all need to increase the pace we are working at to keep ahead of our adversaries.” It is understood the “underestimated” warning is directed at public and private sector organisations in the UK. The NCSC says the top sectors reporting ransomware activity this year were academia, manufacturing, IT, legal, charities and construction. The agency’s review says that the Russian regime, through its invasion of Ukraine, is inspiring non-state actors to carry out cyber-attacks against critical national infrastructure in the west. The review points to Chinese hackers such as the Volt Typhoon group, which has targeted US infrastructure and “could be laying the groundwork for future disruptive and destructive cyber-attacks” while in the UK Beijing-linked groups have targeted MPs’ emails and the Electoral Commission’s database. The report also warns that Iran “is developing its cyber-capabilities and is willing to target the UK to fulfil its disruptive and destructive objectives” while North Korean hackers were targeting cryptocurrency to raise revenue and attempting to steal defence data to improve Pyongyang’s internal security and military capabilities. The NCSC also believes that UK firms are almost certainly being targeted by workers from North Korea “disguised as freelance third-country IT staff to generate revenue for the DPRK regime”. Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at Surrey University, said NCSC was warning the private and public sectors not to “take their eye off the ball”. “The government is trying to sound the klaxon,” he said. “The feeling is that not everybody is listening yet.” Source: The Guardian

As the software used by millions around the world nears its 40th birthday, here are some of the low points The US scholar James Kwak noted that Excel’s accessibility makes it easy to use but easy to insert mistakes. Photograph: IB Photography/Alamy For millions of people, from accountants to the person in charge of the work rota, Microsoft Excel has been been a godsend. But as the spreadsheet software nears its 40th birthday, spare a thought for those who misplaced a decimal, left out a row or got their cut and paste wrong. Here are some of the most memorable examples. Austerity error In 2010, two respected economists released a paper that made an influential case for the years of austerity that followed. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff argued in Growth in a Time of Debt that once a government’s debt reaches 90% of gross domestic product – a measure of a country’s economic output – growth goes into reverse. However, in 2013 it emerged that the Harvard economists had made an error in an Excel spreadsheet: instead of falling by 0.1%, their work should have found that the economies in question grow by 2.2%. “It is sobering that such an error slipped into one of our papers,” they said in a statement. They nonetheless stood by their broad conclusion – debt hinders growth – but the error was jumped on by critics. “This can’t possibly be good for Team Austerity,” wrote the US economist Paul Krugman. Utter dis-mae Fannie Mae, the US mortgage lender, issued a quarterly results statement in 2003 containing accounting errors that totalled more than $1bn. Fannie Mae said the mistakes were due to a company accountant putting the wrong formula into an Excel spreadsheet, as the financial firm sought to comply with a new accounting standard. The company stressed that the errors did not affect profits, but questions were raised about Fannie Mae’s internal controls at the time. Five years later, Fannie Mae was rescued by the US government as the credit crunch took hold. Computer says 000 MI5, the UK’s domestic spy agency, tapped 134 incorrect telephone numbers in 2010 following a spreadsheet error that altered the last three digits in the numbers to “000”. A report admitted the errors were caused by “a formatting fault on an electronic spreadsheet”, adding euphemistically that “a degree of unintended collateral intrusion occurred”. Virus problems During the coronavirus pandemic, nearly 16,000 cases went unreported in England after an Excel error. The Guardian reported that the mistake may have been caused by a file containing test results , sent from NHS test and trace to Public Health England, exceeding the number of rows it could contain. As a consequence, test reports were missed off and thousands of potentially infectious people were missed by contact tracers. The then health secretary, Matt Hancock, said the incident “should never have happened”. Whale-sized mistake An internal report into a $6bn trading loss at the US investment bank JP Morgan, at the hands of a trader known as the London Whale , found flaws in how an important measure of financial risk at the institution was being calculated. One problem was that the risk model monitoring the fateful portfolio operated “through a series of Excel spreadsheets, which had to be completed manually, by a process of copying and pasting data from one spreadsheet to another” – a process that might ring bells for some Excel veterans. An error was created after a cell mistakenly divided by the sum of two interest rates, rather than the average, according to the report. James Kwak, a US scholar , said the report outlined one of Excel’s main issues: its accessibility. “The biggest problem is that anyone can create Excel spreadsheets – badly,” he wrote . Source: The Guardian

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X looks on during the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference Sessions at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California. David Swanson/Reuters Ne w York CNN —  El on Musk’s SpaceX has accused a California regulator of political discrimination after it voted to block the rocket company from conducting more launches on the state’s central coast. SpaceX claimed in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that members of the California Coastal Commission violated Musk’s right to free speech and overstepped the agency’s authority after members cited the billionaire’s conspiratorial comments on his social media platform X in denying the bid. The commission oversees development and environmental protection of the state’s coastline. It’s not clear whether the commission was ever in a position to block the project, and the increased number of Falcon 9 rocket launches was previously recommended by the US Air Force. But the incident marks one of the most tangible examples yet of Musk’s controversial presence on X potentially impacting his other companies, after having contributed to the declining value of his social media platform. The US Space Force, which partners with SpaceX to transport some NASA astronauts , proposed in September that SpaceX could increase its number of annual rocket launches at Vandenberg Space Force Base, a military base on the coast near Santa Barbara, California, from 36 to 50. SpaceX also conducts commercial launches from the base to deliver its Starlink satellites into orbit. But the California Coastal Commission opposed the plan. At an October 10 meeting , members voted 6 to 4 against increasing the launches. At the meeting, commissioners “raised other concerns wholly unrelated to coastal effects,” SpaceX alleged in the complaint, filed in California Central District Court. Members allegedly referenced SpaceX’s employment practices — which have been the subject of lawsuits from the US Justice Department and former employees — as well as the use of Musk’s Starlink in global geopolitical conflicts . “Commissioner (Mike) Wilson wanted to ‘acknowledge’ that the outcome of the Starlink program will be Mr. Musk having control over ‘one of the most extensive communications networks on the planet,’ and further stated that ‘just last week’ Mr. Musk was ‘speaking about political retribution on a national stage,’” the complaint states. SpaceX accused the commission of showing what it described as “overt, and shocking, political bias.” It cites statements by commissioners during the meeting, including one from commissioner Gretchen Newsom, who noted Musk’s “hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet.” (Newsom is unrelated to California Gov. Gavin Newsom.) Musk, who has endorsed former President Donald Trump for reelection, repeatedly posted rumors and false claims denigrating the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene, adding to a flood of misinformation about the storm online, and portrayed President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as incompetent. Musk has also previously promoted racist conspiracy theories about immigrants and Jewish people . And in a now-deleted post following the first assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, he seemed to question why “no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.” The lawsuit also alleges that launches on the base are federally regulated activities, not subject to the approval of state regulators like the coastal commission, and seeks a ruling from the judge confirming that claim. SpaceX is also seeking monetary damages. Joshua Smith, public information officer for the California Coastal Commission, told CNN the agency declined to comment on the lawsuit. Source: CNN

A Meta logo is displayed during the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair, at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, on May 22, 2024. Julien de Rosa/AFP/Getty Images/File Sydney Reuters —  Australia plans new rules to “create a financial incentive” for big tech firms to pay Australian media companies for news content on their platforms, Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones announced on Thursday. The move, described as a “news bargaining initiative,” piles pressure on global tech giants like Facebook-owner Meta Platforms and Google to pay publishers for content or face the risk of paying millions to continue operations in Australia. “The News Bargaining Initiative will … will create a financial incentive for agreement-making between digital platforms and news media businesses in Australia,” Jones told a press conference. The platforms at risk of the charge will be significant social media platforms and search engines with an Australian-based revenue in excess of 250 million Australian dollars (about $160 million), he said. The charge will be offset for any commercial agreements that are voluntarily entered into between the platforms and news media businesses, he added. Australia in 2021 passed laws to make the US tech giants, such as Alphabet’s Google and Meta, compensate media companies for the links that drive readers - and advertising revenue - to their platforms. “We agree with the government that the current law is flawed and continue to have concerns about charging one industry to subsidise another,” a Meta spokesman said after Jones’ announcement. “The proposal fails to account for the realities of how our platforms work, specifically that most people don’t come to our platforms for news content and that news publishers voluntarily choose to post content on our platforms because they receive value from doing so.” Meta struck deals with several Australian media firms including News Corp and national broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corp but has since said it will not renew those arrangements beyond 2024. Source: CNN

Australian federal police says it has ‘no choice’ due to the vast amount of data examined in investigations The Australian federal police has faced criticism over its use of artificial intelligence, including when its officers used Clearview AI, a facial recognition service built off photos taken from the internet. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP The Australian federal police says it had “no choice” but to lean into using artificial intelligence and is increasingly using the technology to search seized phones and other devices, given the vast amount of data examined in investigations. The AFP’s manager for technology strategy and data, Benjamin Lamont, said investigations conducted by the agency involve an average of 40 terabytes’ worth of data. This includes material from the 58,000 referrals a year it receives at its child exploitation centre, while a cyber incident is being reported every six minutes. “So we have no choice but to lean into AI,” he told a Microsoft AI conference in Sydney on Wednesday. “It’s beyond human scale, so we need to start to lean in heavily on AI, and we’re using it across a number of areas.” Aside from being part of the federal government’s trial of Copilot AI assistant technology, the AFP is using Microsoft’s tools to develop its own custom AI for use within the agency, including undertaking work translating 6m emails that were all in Spanish, and examining 7,000 hours of video footage. “Having … a human sitting there going through 7,000 hours – it’s just not possible. So AI is playing a heavy role in that,” Lamont said. One dataset the AFP is now working on is 10 petabytes (10,240TB), and an individual phone seized could involve 1TB of data. Lamont said much of the work the AFP was seeking to use AI for was structuring of obtained files to make them easier for officers to process. “When we do a warrant at someone’s house now, there’s drawers full of old mobile phones,” Lamont said. “Now, how do we know that those mobile phones haven’t been used in the commission of an offence? We have to go through them and then identify those components and see if there was … any criminality in there.” The AFP is also developing AI to detect deepfake images and has been seeking to figure out how to quarantine, clean and analyse data obtained during investigations, through operating in a secure, fully disconnected environment. The agency is also exploring whether generative AI could be used to create text summaries of images or videos before they are viewed by officers, to prevent them being unexpectedly exposed to graphic imagery. The AFP is also looking at whether AI could modify such content by converting images to greyscale or removing audio. The AFP has faced criticism over its use of the technology, most notably when its officers used Clearview AI , a facial recognition service built off photos taken from the internet. Lamont said the AFP “haven’t always got it right”. “We’ve had to strengthen our processes internally and I think this … has been really key, because it’s not just a set and forget,” he said. “As technology evolves and as the processes evolve … we have to continually look at how we’re making sure that it’s ethical and responsible, and so we’ve created a responsible technology committee within the organisation to assess emerging technology.” He said it was also important for the AFP to discuss its use of AI publicly and ensure that there was always a human in the loop making the decisions formed from AI use. Source: The Guardian

From football to food to Taylor Swift, many of the most common subjects were what you expect – but others less so Some of the most common questions asked Amazon’s virtual assistant this year were slightly leftfield, such as ‘who was Henry VIII married to?’ Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian Virtual assistant units have become a staple in many UK households, telling people whether it is expected to rain, what the time is, and what the result in the football was. Among the most common used is Alexa, whose parent company Amazon has released the top questions and requests given to the software during 2024. Some were ones you would expect: “What is the value of bitcoin?”; “what is the population of earth?”; and “what does AI mean?”. But some of the other most popular questions were slightly more leftfield, such as “how long do you cook a sausage for?”, “who was Henry VIII married to?” and “how tall is Tom Cruise?”. In the kitchen, a lot of people used Alexa as a virtual sous chef, fielding other food-related questions and helping with recipes for pancakes, yorkshire puddings and banana bread. Celebrities were the most discussed topic with Alexa, with David Attenborough and Paul McCartney joining Cruise in having their private lives inquired about by users. Monarchs and world leaders were also highly searched for. King Charles III’s age, the former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s height and the US president-elect Donald Trump’s net worth were among the more commonly asked questions. Overall, Henry VIII attracted more questions than anyone else living or dead in relation to who he was married to. One name that dominated the searches was Taylor Swift. The US megastar appeared top of the list of questions regarding celebrities’ heights and ages, as well as being the second-most searched for net worth, after Elon Musk, the richest person in the world. On top of this, Swift was the most-played music artist on Alexa, ahead of the likes of Eminem, Ed Sheeran, Adele and Beyoncé. She also had three of her albums included in the top five most played of the year, though they all fell behind Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet, which came first. Football dominated the sports side of the list, with all 10 of the sporting questions relating to Premier League clubs of the England national team. Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Harry Kane and Erling Haaland were all highly searched players during the year and, with the love for the sport probably peaking in the summer during England’s European Championship campaign, one of the most popular questions posed to Alexa was: “Alexa, is it coming home?” Source: The Guardian

Exclusive: Age, disability, marital status and nationality influence decisions to investigate claims, prompting fears of ‘hurt first, fix later’ approach Claims for advances on universal credit payments are being examined by a biased AI system designed to detect fraud, it has emerged. Photograph: Mina Kim/Reuters An artificial intelligence system used by the UK government to detect welfare fraud is showing bias according to people’s age, disability, marital status and nationality, the Guardian can reveal. An internal assessment of a machine-learning programme used to vet thousands of claims for universal credit payments across England found it incorrectly selected people from some groups more than others when recommending whom to investigate for possible fraud. The admission was made in documents released under the Freedom of Information Act by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The “statistically significant outcome disparity” emerged in a “fairness analysis” of the automated system for universal credit advances carried out in February this year. The emergence of the bias comes after the DWP this summer claimed the AI system “does not present any immediate concerns of discrimination, unfair treatment or detrimental impact on customers”. This assurance came in part because the final decision on whether a person gets a welfare payment is still made by a human, and officials believe the continued use of the system – which is attempting to help cut an estimated £8bn a year lost in fraud and error – is “reasonable and proportionate”. But no fairness analysis has yet been undertaken in respect of potential bias centring on race, sex, sexual orientation and religion, or pregnancy, maternity and gender reassignment status, the disclosures reveal. Campaigners responded by accusing the government of a “hurt first, fix later” policy and called on ministers to be more open about which groups were likely to be wrongly suspected by the algorithm of trying to cheat the system. “It is clear that in a vast majority of cases the DWP did not assess whether their automated processes risked unfairly targeting marginalised groups,” said Caroline Selman, senior research fellow at the Public Law Project, which first obtained the analysis. “DWP must put an end to this ‘hurt first, fix later’ approach and stop rolling out tools when it is not able to properly understand the risk of harm they represent.” The acknowledgement of disparities in how the automated system assesses fraud risks is also likely to increase scrutiny of the rapidly expanding government use of AI systems and fuel calls for greater transparency. By one independent count, there are at least 55 automated tools being used by public authorities in the UK potentially affecting decisions about millions of people, although the government’s own register includes only nine. Last month, the Guardian revealed that not a single Whitehall department had registered the use of AI systems since the government said it would become mandatory earlier this year. Records show public bodies have awarded dozens of contracts for AI and algorithmic services. A contract for facial recognition software, worth up to £20m, was put up for grabs last month by a police procurement body set up by the Home Office , reigniting concerns about “mass biometric surveillance”. Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science and technology, has previously told the Guardian that the public sector “hasn’t taken seriously enough the need to be transparent in the way that the government uses algorithms”. Government departments, including the Home Office and the DWP have, in recent years, been reluctant to disclose more about their use of AI, citing concerns that to do so could allow bad actors to manipulate systems. It is not clear which age groups are more likely to be wrongly targeted for fraud checks by the algorithm, as the DWP redacted that part of the fairness analysis. Neither did it reveal whether disabled people are more or less likely to be wrongly singled out for investigation by the algorithm than non-disabled people, or the difference between the way the algorithm treats different nationalities. Officials said this was to prevent fraudsters gaming the system. A DWP spokesperson said: “Our AI tool does not replace human judgment, and a caseworker will always look at all available information to make a decision. We are taking bold and decisive action to tackle benefit fraud – our fraud and error bill will enable more efficient and effective investigations to identify criminals exploiting the benefits system faster.” Source: The Guardian

Chip takes minutes to complete tasks that would otherwise take 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years Dr Erik Lucero, lead engineer of Google Quantum AI, points to motherboards while leading media on a tour of the Quantum Computing Lab in September 2022. Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images It measures just 4cm squared but it possesses almost inconceivable speed. Google has built a computing chip that takes just five minutes to complete tasks that would take 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years for some of the world’s fastest conventional computers to complete. That’s 10 septillion years, a number that far exceeds the age of our known universe and has the scientists behind the latest quantum computing breakthrough reaching for a distinctly non-technical term: “mindboggling”. The new chip, called Willow and made in the California beach town of Santa Barbara, is about the dimensions of an After Eight mint, and could supercharge the creation of new drugs by greatly speeding up the experimental phase of development. Reports of its performance follow a flurry of results since 2021 that suggest we are only about five years away from quantum computing becoming powerful enough to start transforming humankind’s capabilities to research and develop new materials from drugs to batteries, one independent UK expert said. Governments around the world are pouring tens of billions of dollars into research. Significantly, Willow is claimed to be far less prone to error than previous versions and could swell the potential of the already fast-developing field of artificial intelligence. Quantum computing – which harnesses the discovery that matter can exist in multiple states at once – is predicted to have the power to carry out far bigger calculations than previously possible and so hasten the creation of nuclear fusion reactors and accelerate the impact of artificial intelligence, notably in medical science. For example, it could allow MRI scans to be read in atom-level detail, unlocking new caches of data about human bodies and disease for AI to process, Google said. But there are also fears that without guardrails, the technology has the power to crack even the most sophisticated encryption, undermining computer security. Google Quantum AI is one of numerous groups wrestling with how to harness the computing power of quantum mechanics including Microsoft , Harvard University and Quantinuum , a firm with UK links. A key problem is reducing the fragility of quantum chips as even microscopic material defects, cosmic rays and ionising radiation tend to knock them off course. “Quantum processors are peeling away at a double exponential rate and will continue to vastly outperform classical computers as we scale up,” said Hartmut Neven, the founder of the firm, who said that the latest test results, published on Monday in Nature magazine, “cracks a key challenge in quantum error correction that the field has pursued for almost 30 years”. He said the far greater speed of the new chip than classical computers “lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse”. Simply put, if a quantum computer can be in many different states at once, it can get more done at the same time. Dr Peter Leek, research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Quantum Institute and founder of Oxford Quantum Circuits, said: “It’s definitely thought-provoking to put it that way. What it really does is show that quantum computing technology is rapidly moving forward. It really is working.” He described the Google results as a “shining example” of improvements in error correction, but he cautioned that the very fast processing results related to calculations that were “not of much real-world use”. “I’m very optimistic,” he said. “I think we’re going to see a real acceleration over the next five years and then we’ll be able to say, look, this machine has calculated an interesting thing that I can explain to someone, and how it could be used in the real world.” Asked about the risks of high-powered quantum computers wrecking current systems of encryption, Charina Chou, the director and chief operating officer of Google Quantum AI, said: “Security experts have been working on this, and they’ve had ample time over the last many years to really figure out what the right standards should be, what post-quantum encryption should look like.” She added: “We’re working with a number of both large companies, as well as academics and startups in this space, right of physics, of chemistry, material science that seems very, very ripe for collaboration.” Source: The Guardian

Yumi Stynes It helps me to think of myself as my child’s support animal. It doesn’t berate or problem solve. It just shows up and sits with the child through their big feelings Sharing the Load  is a column about parenting children of all ages ‘If the child is upset, their first need is to be seen and acknowledged,’ Yumi Stynes writes. Photograph: Katrina Wittkamp/Getty Images I was at a kids’ soccer game and there were children everywhere. The environment was high-stress and even as an adult it was easy to feel overwhelmed just from being there. (Children in groups inexplicably scream.) Among the chaos was a little girl about three years old, crying and flailing on the floor of the grandstand, while her mum paced around her, urging her to get up, leave the grounds and walk to the car so they could drive away. It went on for several minutes and the mother was starting to shout and threaten, demanding the kid comply: “Let’s go. Come on. We need to go to the car. Hurry up. Get off the ground.” People were watching. The kid wouldn’t have a bar of it and was screaming to the point where I was wishing I’d brought earplugs. I was ALMOST tempted to weigh in. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should be out in the world giving advice about parenting. Advice is like debt: no one wants it and if we get some, we’ll do our best to ignore it. Parenting advice is particularly fraught. Vulnerable mums who are tired, struggling and already dealing with enough extrinsic pressure to be “perfect” do not need to hear our thoughts and opinions. Having been one of those mothers myself, I can say that getting unsolicited advice on what you’re doing wrong as a parent is the last thing you want. That said, what may seem obvious to one of us may have utterly eluded another. It took me to some advice I heard when I used to interview experts on TV. This particular expert was a child psychologist who came on to talk about how to deal with meltdowns. And their advice was so basic and applicable and such common sense that I took it – because I needed to be told – and have been applying it ever since. When anyone – child or other – is having an intense emotion, whether it be rage, despair, terror, happiness, exhilaration, anything, they’re not going to be taking in information. If the child is upset, their first need is to be seen and acknowledged. So for instance, if they hurt themselves, they don’t want to hear you say, “It didn’t even bleed! You’re fine. Up you get.” They need you to say something like, “Ouch! That must have hurt! Oh, you’re so upset. It really got you, didn’t it?” If they fall, they don’t want to hear, “You shouldn’t have been climbing that tree!” They need to hear something like, “Wow, I saw you fall! Are you OK? That would’ve knocked the wind out of me. Did it knock the wind out of you?” If they’re angry, they don’t want to hear, “Stop it and get in the car!” They need their experience to be validated. So you say, “Oh, honey, I see that you’re angry right now. It’s a big emotion. What happened?” The kid doesn’t need you to leap into problem-solving, and definitely not that particularly scary breed of parental vigilantism that is expressed through declarations such as: “Show me who did this to you!” “Wait til I get my hands on them” or “I’m going directly to the principal!” It helps me to think of myself as my child’s support animal. The support animal is stoic and silent. They can’t berate or problem solve. (I always picture a beautiful, dignified chocolate labrador called Houndypoo.) Houndypoo just shows up in stillness and sits with the child in a state of calm. He sits with them through their big feelings. He doesn’t try to hurry the child along to “finish” having the feeling. He’s just present, witnessing. This is so helpful to the child. They can exhaust their tantrum and stroke their support animal. They can be petted and kissed and heard. And then when it’s over, when they’re ready, they can talk it through. The thing I like about the support animal is that picturing him helps me calm down. I find my centre and then I am regulated, ready to show up in support of my person. And if you’re the child’s parent, you ARE their best, most favourite and trusted support animal. There is no one better qualified for showing up as the labrador than you. I asked one of my adult children what she thinks makes good parenting when a child is upset. She’s now 20 and still actively remembers being a kid. “I remember when I had my first heartbreak and I told you about it while you were rubbing my back in bed. My heart was hurting so much! “There was a boy who I’d gone ghost hunting with twice at recess and I told him at the start of school that I liked him, and he told me by lunch that I was dumped. And I just cried! In the bathroom. Our relationship lasted two whole hours. “Looking back it’s funny and it’s fine but at the time I felt like I had genuinely experienced a tragedy. I didn’t even tell Mira (my best friend) because I was so embarrassed. But I did tell you that night and you just listened while you scratched my back. And you said, ‘That sounds so hard, Dee Dee!’ And I said, ‘Yeah!’ and you repeated the feeling back to me. And we felt it together while you rubbed my back.” Yumi Stynes is an Australian TV and radio presenter, podcaster and writer Source: The Guardian

Nearly 5bn lb of gift returns end up in landfills every year and yet there is a certain taboo around compiling a gift list Asking for what you want can feel strange, inducing guilt about making demands. Photograph: Nora Carol Photography/Getty Images The first Christmas that I was with my boyfriend, his family asked for my Christmas wishlist. I was unused to the concept, apart from writing to Santa as a kid. Usually, my family’s norm is to haphazardly guess what each person might want – with a pretty conservative success rate, if I’m being honest. So I was surprised by the tradition of requesting and sharing wishlists – and even more surprised by how much I liked it. I’m the kind of gift-giver who keeps an eye out year-round for what people might enjoy, picking things up in advance and delighting them with my acuity and taste. Nonetheless, I don’t find the perfect gift for everyone every single year like clockwork, because I am not superhuman. Ever since adopting the wishlist tradition into my own family I find having gift ideas direct from the people in my life is unbeatably practical, massively stress-reducing and satisfying. When I first broached the idea one November, my family accused me of materialism and besmirching the spirit of giving. But by December, all of them were clamouring for lists. Now my dad just tells me what incredibly specific Home Depot item he actually needs, instead of me wondering whether he’d like Ottessa Moshfegh or wear Lululemon shorts. Recently, a 33-year-old Redditor made waves on the Am I the Asshole forum by sharing an “anti-wish list”, sick of receiving endless pyjama sets from her mom. While she could have been more diplomatic, she did have a point: we really do accumulate a lot of unnecessary stuff. The holidays can be extremely wasteful , thanks in part to people shopping while bewildered and under pressure; in the US, an estimated 5bn lb of gift returns end up in landfills every year. Yet there is a certain taboo around wishlists. Some think they’re tacky. But why? When Dr Julian Givi (yes, that’s his name), West Virginia University professor of marketing, began studying contemporary gift-giving rituals a decade ago, he thought gifts were “basically about making recipients happy”. What he’s learned since then is that the ritual is equally about making the giver happy. “We want to give something that makes us feel thoughtful,” he says. But studies “tend to find that people generally, perhaps unsurprisingly, actually appreciate gifts that they explicitly request” more than surprises, says Givi. Givers tend to focus on the “moment of unwrapping” – the gratification of confronting someone with our acuity and taste – while receivers are more tuned into what they’ll actually enjoy or use down the line. Wishlists can also feel openly transactional – both to the giver, who might feel obliged to buy only specific or expensive gifts, and the receiver, who must specify the items. Asking for what you want can feel strange, inducing guilt about making demands, discomfort with revealing our needs and a fear of coming across as rude. My friend Carine Redmond, a PR professional, tells me her dad always asks for her Christmas wishlist, but finds the lists “weird” to write. “It’s … juvenile?” she says. “I’m not going to be like, ‘I’d like these leggings from Aritzia in an XL and this maternity bra.’ I would never send that to anyone.” I get where she’s coming from, but in practice, I find writing my wishlist and seeing other people’s lists interesting. Casey Lewis, a cultural insights expert and author of the After School newsletter, monitors wishlist content on social media platforms like TikTok, where posting one’s wishlist items is a huge trend , and Pinterest, where a representative told me searches for “shopping wish list” are up 950% from this time last year. “I understand that there are capitalist and consumption concerns, but for me, it’s just so much fun to see what people want,” Lewis says. Lewis observes that trends often start with teens and end up influencing adult culture. That applies not just to slang and pant width, but also etiquette norms like sharing wishlists without shame. Gen Z has embraced wishlists in a way that goes far beyond scribbling down a few ideas. They’re making PowerPoints, designing Canva presentations and setting up registries on platforms like Giftful . “There’s no stigma around that any more,” says Lewis. “I would have felt so tacky sending my grandma a registry for gifts. And now it’s kind of the norm.” Source: The Guardian