come on in and on in north london. come on in and will show you. this is an exhibition called... chinese multimedia artist lou yan takes us through the journey of their weird world. the company was created using motion capture and sd game engines. created using motion capture and sd game enginee— game engines. what i like is the artist has created _ game engines. what i like is the artist has created all— game engines. what i like is the artist has created all new - game engines. what i like is the artist has created all new video | artist has created all new video games in the classic style, but they've retrofitted them to existing arcade game hardware. how you doing over there? arcade game hardware. how you doing overthere? i’m arcade game hardware. how you doing over there? �* ., , arcade game hardware. how you doing over there? �* . , , ., over there? i'm glad this is an actual motorbike! _ over there? i'm glad this is an actual motorbike! i— over there? i'm glad this is an actual motorbike! ijust - over there? i'm glad this is an actual motorbike! i just crash | over there? i'm glad this is an . actual motorbike! ijust crash and do something i'm not meant to. a good or bad thing?— do something i'm not meant to. a good or bad thing? this take me back to a time where i _ good or bad thing? this take me back to a time where i would turn - good or bad thing? this take me back to a time where i would turn up - good or bad thing? this take me back to a time where i would turn up to - good or bad thing? this take me back to a time where i would turn up to a l to a time where i would turn up to a place like this with a pocket full of coins. that was until home

computers and home games consuls came along, which meant we didn't need to go out any more.— came along, which meant we didn't need to go out any more. these days, ou need to go out any more. these days, you don't need — need to go out any more. these days, you don't need to _ need to go out any more. these days, you don't need to be _ need to go out any more. these days, you don't need to be tied _ need to go out any more. these days, you don't need to be tied to _ need to go out any more. these days, you don't need to be tied to your- you don't need to be tied to your home to be a gamer, you canjust use one of these. the home to be a gamer, you can 'ust use one of these-— one of these. the mobile gaming industry is _ one of these. the mobile gaming industry is huge _ one of these. the mobile gaming industry is huge and _ one of these. the mobile gaming industry is huge and growing. - one of these. the mobile gaming industry is huge and growing. it's freed us all play on the go, even on the lou stop what you don't, do you? i don't. ,, , ., ., ., , the lou stop what you don't, do you? i don't. ,, , ., ., .,, , the lou stop what you don't, do you? i don't. ,, , ., ., ., , , ., i don't. stephan powell has been at the heart of — i don't. stephan powell has been at the heart of the _ i don't. stephan powell has been at the heart of the mobile _ i don't. stephan powell has been at the heart of the mobile gaming - the heart of the mobile gaming world. or maybe singapore. you might not be thinking of this place. you like �* , , , , ., not be thinking of this place. you like 2 ,, ,~ like it's these streets of helsinki, 'ust the like it's these streets of helsinki, just the size _ like it's these streets of helsinki, just the size of _ like it's these streets of helsinki, just the size of glasgow - like it's these streets of helsinki, just the size of glasgow that - like it's these streets of helsinki, just the size of glasgow that held j just the size of glasgow that held

some of the most innovative, influential and successful mobile games companies in the world. this place is home to some of the best games talent out there. so how has this happened? better to start giving us answers than someone with over a game to make a decade of game making experience. we over a game to make a decade of game making experience.— making experience. we could build somethin: making experience. we could build something big _ making experience. we could build something big from _ making experience. we could build something big from finland, - making experience. we could build something big from finland, from | something big from finland, from helsinki. it actually showed the example that, you know, we could build something big from finland orfrom helsinki, but we didn't do. as i said, like, we didn't really have any, like, big publishers or studios. we don't need the connections with the publishers. we don't need to travel the other side of the world. we canjust do it, like, from here with nokia's support.

does the fact that there was such a successful mobile product from finland encourage people from finland to want to stay in that space? yeah, of course. yeah. because i think that was the example. you can actually make it big. people here do seem proud of the city's success in mobile tech, always happy to chat about it in bars and cafes. but heritage and goodwill only get you so far. well, this is really kind of where we have... reacted as a company that helps tech businesses, game studios included, makes sure they have the right infrastructure in place to succeed. i think we're just generally very interested in technology. i'm sure that you could also then say that that comes from some war background or something back in the day. but then i think in very many ways, it's about the cultural sort of situation that we've had here, that essentially finns — we have this ability of — and it's in the culture — that we can try and then we can fail and then we try again. you don't have to worry about failing. and when you don't have to worry about failing, you're obviously much braver. and then also, the government is supporting gaming companies a lot. nobody wants to come to helsinki because of the climate, for example! so we have to have other reasons to attract people here. i've bought a new coatjust for this trip, so that sort of says it all.

the latest figures suggest that more than s0% of the developers who work in the games sector here have come to helsinki from around the world, and attracting the best talent to the city is a key part of the plan to stay on top of the tree. so important, in fact, there's an organisation here whose job is to go out and attract the best gaming talent in the world. we have a good life here and life is quite easy. all these soft values, they are coming more and more important. we don't have those money incentives for many things. but, actually, many people say that when people do their math correctly, you get more here because, yes, we have maybe less salaries than in silicon valley, but you don't have to pay for the schools, so you don't have to pay for the health insurance, and everything like that is covered. so, actually, you have more money in your pocket in the end. this blend of history, public investment and talent chasing is working for helsinki. the 200 game studios here made £2.8 billion in 2022.

now, to put that into context, the games market in the uk was worth 4.7 billion in the same period, but that's a country with a population 12 times bigger. finland is punching well above its weight here, but, really, it shouldn't be a surprise. the first—ever angry bird was flicked across the screen of an ipad in this city. last year, netflix said it was setting up its first—ever internal games company here because it has some of the best talent in the world. and then there's supercell. supercell are a giant of the mobile game space, responsible for some of the most famous titles in the world. and it's a man from scotland who's in charge of arguably their most celebrated — clash of clans. yeah, ithink, you know, like, many people remember playing snake on the nokia ssio. what a game!

yeah. you know, and heard that it's a finnish company and, you know, working in the mobile games industry in particular, you know, kind of be aware of, like, all these great companies that were based in finland. finland wasn't that wealthy a country not that long ago. people had, like, computers, maybe, but not, like, consoles and things. so people were like...just the pc and they maybe weren't the best computers at the time either. so it led to this, like, cool kind of demo scene of trying to make the most out of these, like, crazy, crazy kind of hackers trying to figure out how to make the best of the most. then, obviously, when phones came out, you know, they were, like, very constrained in how powerful they were. and that led to, like, you had all these programmers who are really, really clever at getting the most out of not very much. people hear, you know, they heard so much about the stories of companies like supercell that have been very successful and really punching above their kind of weight for a country this size. so i think, you know, people know it's more of a thing. you know, maybe back in the uk, when you sort of said you're working in games, you get more of this, oh,

so you just play games all day, kind ofjoke, and you're like, no! you know? i think people here, like, respect it as, like, a real important industry. now, cities in the uk won't be able to replicate that nokia heritage. but there are plenty of lessons here that show big things can happen in small places. that was steffan. ever since we've been able to play online with people around the world, i think it's taken gaming to a whole new level. but we also know that the online world can come with its dark side. it opens up the risk of unwanted attention or even abuse, and that could come in the form of grooming. now, the social networks would say that they are working hard on the problem, but some are doing better than others. and joe tidy has been to meet an american woman, who we are calling alice, who was groomed on a platform that's popular with teenagers and operates around the globe. i was reallyjust like any other child.

i was always an a—student. everything on my marks from teachers was always about how i was so sociable and a pleasure to have in class. i think i lived a relatively normal, happy childhood. omegle is a free website linking up people at random for video chats around the world. it's been a popular site for over a decade, but exploded in popularity during the pandemic. 7s million people, mostly teenagers, log on a month, and the site is notorious for being a wild place. but alice had no idea it was also a dangerous place when she logged on at the age of ii. he had ill intentions, evil intentions. i was consistently being forced to do things that a child should not have to do. police found her abuser, s7—year—old ryan fordyce, hundreds of miles away in canada. i'm constable pam klassen. i'm a 19—year member

of the brandon police service. i located an ip address out of brandon that was sharing these child sexual abuse materials, and then i was able to get a search warrant. fordyce had seven folders on his computer, all with a different girl's name. one of them was called alice. it contained 220 images and videos of her when she was between 11 and ia. i had no idea where in the world she was. i found pictures of her where she was wearing an outfit from school that had the initials of the school and a logo on the shirt. and i was able to reach out to the law enforcement agency there and they were able to find her. it felt like the world froze and everything stopped and... ..my parents crumbling to the ground, like any parent would. ryan fordyce was sentenced to eight years in prison. it was discovered that he'd used omegle to meet three of his victims, including alice.

his playbook was similar in each case — get matched at random with a child, groom them and convince them to hand over private details so that he could carry on talking to them on messaging apps. often, i was sent back to, in a sense, recruit more, as if it was a cult. recruit more children? more children. so you were a child, you were 12, is or something, and he would say, "i want you to go back on..." and find more. "..and find more." alice is suing omegle in a landmark case against the social media company. she's hired a new york law firm that's known for going after tech giants. omegle is a hunting ground for predators. it invites children and adults to be matched randomly and privately and anonymously for chatting. what would you say to people who think that it's up to parents to stop their children going on websites like this? i would say they're wrong. i would say that there's absolutely

no way that anybody can account for their child's use of technology 21w. people don't know about omegle. parents don't know what this is. and it quite literally encourages them to "talk to strangers." alice's suit, known as am versus omegle, is likely to be one of, if not the first time a tech platform is put on trial for the way it's built. these so—called product liability lawsuits are a growing trend and a potential new way for social networks to be held accountable for their alleged wrongdoings. in the united states, we have section 2s0 of the communications decency act, which makes it incredibly difficult to ever sue an online platform. it was originally intended to make it difficult to sue a platform for defamation, but it's been interpreted to make it difficult to sue them for anything, whether it's child sexual exploitation, revenge porn.

but we, a few years ago, brought a case against a different platform, saying that let's start treating these as just basic products. let's look at them as... you know, if somebody gets injured, let's look at if there was a defect in the design or the coding that made this harm happen. as soon as the platform realised that this is how it was being used, then it had the duty to innovate. whether through age verification or some other means, they needed to fix their product. leif brooks is the ceo and founder of omegle. he launched it when he was just 18 years old. mr brooks has repeatedly ignored calls for changes to his site from child protection agencies, including at the united nations. i've asked leif brooks for an interview multiple times in the past two years. he's never accepted. so we travelled to florida to try to speak to him directly. mr brooks.

can we ask you some questions, please? from the bbc. mr brooks, we just want to ask you some questions. it's about your website, mr brooks. it's about omegle. mr brooks did reply to an email. he said people are solely responsible for their own behaviour while using his website, but that omegle takes the safety of users extremely seriously. he said the site is moderated by ai tools and human moderators. he also says he works with law enforcement and organisations working to stop the online exploitation of children. days later, alice's lawsuit took another big step forward. omegle tried to get the product liability case thrown out, denying that it was a product, but failed. a trial date could soon be set.

meanwhile, carrie and her team say they've been contacted by two other families which say their children were groomed on omegle in the last year. everyday things remind me of what i've been through. there's healing. but i can't gain those years back. and it presents itself in even the smallest of ways. in doing my hair... fordyce wanted me to look as young as possible, and having my hair in a ponytail to the left side was a favourite of his. and if my hair even gets pulled to that side in a ponytail accidentally, it can run shudders through my body. this platform has allowed abuse that carries through a lifetime. ok, time for a look at this week's tech news now. details of websites offering support are available at our website.

ok, time for a look at this week's tech news now. amazon subsidiary zoox says it's reached an autonomous driving milestone after rolling out its robotaxis on public roads for the first time. after a successful test, zoox will make a robotaxi shuttle service exclusively available to employees. apple retail workers in the us have accused the tech giant of deploying anti—union tactics against them. staff at two apple stores lodged the complaints after employees at two branches voted in favour of union recognition. the firm says it believes it has an open, direct and collaborative relationship with its valued team members. the workers in oklahoma city that now have a union, the workers in maryland who now have a union, they've shown the world, and certainly within apple, you can stand up for yourself and win a voice at work. bigscreen has unveiled what it's calling the smallest vr headset. the beyond headset weighsjust 127

grams, but packs high—resolution, oled displays to its pancake lenses. norwegian web browser opera says it will add popular ai services like chatgpt to its sidebar, and then try and build features which interact with the ai, like intelligently summarising webpage content at the click of a button. in the heart of scotland, this is a city packed full of history. stirling is somewhere many people from all over the world choose to come and visit. and itjust so happens to be the place where i grew up. but today i'm forgetting everything i know about this place to become a tourist again — with the help of this. because stirling now has an augmented reality layer to its streets,

allowing visitors to explore and learn about its history. you get directions to different historic attractions. it lets you explore more around the city, inspect information about each building, get who built it, when it was built. all those sort of things that you might be wondering as you're walking around, but you actually get to see that in a visual way. it's using google geospatial anchors. so, what that does is, it anchors the augmented reality experiences direct to pinpoint accuracy within the city. unlike similar apps, the technology being used here means visitors aren't forced to follow a set trail. they can go where they like and find out information along the way. on the ground there, on the cobbles, it says the new port gate. this is an old gate that used to block off the city. click on this coin, and then it recreates it in front of you. incredible. yeah. and this is part of a gamified element of the app, where you can actually collect the keys to it, and then lock the gates later on to sort of protect the city from invaders.

and that car had no idea it was going through. no! it's brilliant, yeah. and it's notjust artists' impressions you can unlock, but you can also go back in time through photos. and there's items to collect, as well. tell me about collecting. what's that in the app? well, what we've done is, throughout the city, we've got all these little coins dotted around, and when you tap on them, they unlock a story close to that area. so, right here we've got the stirling wolf, which over a thousand years ago, there's a great story behind the city, a key part of the city history. you can collect it, bring it to life. we can click on it, you get a lot of animations. it turns visiting the city into a game. absolutely. the app is free to use — but developing it has cost the local council £200,000. they're hoping that will prove worth it. our economy relies upon visitors, especially of tourism. the key thing about the app is the fact that you cannot view, you know, everything that it has

to offer from your home, or from anywhere else in the world. you physically have to be here, and you physically have to move around stirling, which also impacts the businesses, as well. for stirling, the short—term success will be if the app attracts visitors in the coming summer season. but the long—term success will be determined by how it is developed over the next decade. of course, it wouldn't be a trip as a tourist without something for instagram. freedom! now, then, movie fans, it's award season. and i know, spencer, that one of your favourite films of the year is... everything everywhere all at once. this is right up your street. yeah. but what do you think it is about it that made it stand out? well, i mean, it isjust great fun. i mean, it's totally bonkers. but, also, the best thing

about it is how the film was made. i mean, the visual effects do look great, but they were, for the most part, made by five guys in their bedroom. ijust think, every so often a movie comes along which gives us all hope that we can do our own vfx. so, we spoke to the team behind it to see what tools they used from home to smash through the multiverse. pow! mrs wang... mrs wang, are you with us? i am paying attention. it does not look good. agh! this film told its story with a very special visual language that used these effect shots to really communicate a lot. and we even had to rely mostly on 2d effects over sd effects, simply because we didn't have the computing power, or the time, or the resources,

or even the expertise to do anything so fancy. sometimes a good movie can be made just through, i think, tasteful application of simple choices. if you can do the effects creatively and keep it focused on the creative, and not about pushing technological boundaries, anything is possible. i think the coolest thing - about the visual effects on this film is that they're all feasible on a budget — for the cost - of a subscription to adobe, and a sd programme like blender is free. - any shot that you've seen in this ifilm, there no price point on iti that's particularly high. it'sjust about learning how to craft the shot. i i had just started kind of messing around with blender. _ a lot of people did that during the pandemic. l they downloaded blender. and there's this one specific thing that everyone does first _ when you download blender, i which is, you do this doughnut

tutorial that andrew price - of blender guru has put together. the bagel that's in every shot of that movie is essentially . doughnut tutorial, that so many people have done. _ i think that's the big secret here. we found a way to pare it all down into a very modest and workable pipeline, using off—the—shelf prosumer technologies. and it sort of is a sign of the times that now a movie like this can be made in this way, and ten years ago, that was not the case. it's all about the bagel. it's making me hungry. don't eat that bagel. and stay away from the hot dogs in the film, as well. if you've seen it, you know what i'm talking about. i will be looking at another nominee in a few weeks' time. meanwhile, that's it

from us for now. thanks for watching. we'll see you soon. bye—bye. hello there. let's take a look at the weather for the week ahead. february draws to a close next week, and it's the start of meteorological spring on wednesday. now, you'll have noticed just how dry this february has been so far. in fact, some spots across southern england in particular had only seen around 5% of the normal february rainfall at the start of the week. you can see that indicated by the darker colours here on the met office anomaly map. these totals don't include the rainfall that we saw on wednesday, when some stations in the south of england doubled the rainfall total. and there's no appreciable rain in the forecast as we head through the weekend and into the start

of next week either. so it is looking largely dry and settled for most of us. now, on friday, there will be a few spits and spots of rain, i think, for many. there will be some cloud sinking southwards. this is a cold front. sunny spells developing for much of the midlands, northern england, northern ireland. we could see i—2 showers here, and maybe a wintry shower or two across the hills of scotland, too. temperatures a little higher than thursday's but, in reality, it's going to feel colder than this because there'll be a brisk northerly wind blowing, particularly, towards eastern coastal areas. so plenty of wind—chill to factor into the temperatures, notjust on friday but over the next few days, as well. so we've still got the strength of the wind towards the east coast on friday night. the best chance of any frost out towards western spots, sheltered areas away from the wind and the cloud, where temperatures could drop perhaps below freezing into saturday morning. and then over the weekend, high pressure is out towards the west and it will be slowly building in. it'll be dominating the weather not just for the weekend but also into much of next week as well. so looking largely dry and very

settled, but on the edge of the high we've got plenty of cloud, and that'll be working its way in from eastern areas, out further west i think on saturday afternoon, so turning cloudy probably wherever you are. the best of the brighter spells always the further west you are. there will be plenty of added wind—chill again, mostly towards north sea facing coasts, maybe i—2 showers. temperatures just slightly below where they'd normally be at this time of year for many but, of course, you have to factor in the wind—chill again. temperatures could be slightly higher, the winds a little lighter perhaps on sunday, but still coming in from the east so again, for eastern—facing coasts, it's going to be quite a bitter—feeling day. some sunny spells again, always best the further west you are. temperatures peaking between 7—9 celsius for the vast majority of us, which is round about the seasonal average. the wind turns a bit more northeasterly, and it will strengthen, especially towards southern counties of england as we head through monday. so really quite blustery here. further north, the winds are a lot lighter. there will be some sunshine around at times again, mostly out towards the west.

top temperatures once again 7—9 celsius. this is about the seasonal average, or slightly below for a few areas. so we are staying in that rather chilly air as we head through next week. it won't be feeling particularly warm but of course the sunshine has got a little bit more strength now. so the high pressure just set to dominate and for most of us it's looking completely dry. there could, however, be 1—2 showers blowing in at times, most likely for eastern areas. parts of scotland could see i—2 showers. the best of the sunshine always further west. these are the temperatures for scotland and northern ireland over the next few days and into the start of next week. further south, across much of england, the winds will eventually ease down. there will be some sunshine, always best the further west you are and brightening up again for the start of the meteorological spring, which is also looking dry.

when they hello, i'm christian fraser. you're watching the context on bbc news. ukraine braces for the one year anniversary of the war. security measures have been stepped up across the country as they prepare for a potential russian bombardment. just days after suspending russia's participation in the new start arms treaty, president putin puts his nuclear forces on a war footing. in new york, the un general assembly has just adopted a new resolution, calling on russia to end hostilities and withdraw its armed forces from ukraine. tonight with the context, evelyn farkas, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defence for russia and ukraine in the obama administration, lord richard dannatt, formerly head of the british army,