Apple’s first Macintosh – the technology that revolutionised personal computers – turns 40 today.

The “game-changing” computer first went on sale on 24 January 1984, two days after being introduced to the world in a big-budget Super Bowl advert, by renowned British director Sir Ridley Scott.

The advert, referencing George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, was itself considered a watershed moment in advertising – later being described as “more successful than the Mac itself” by Apple’s then marketing guru Regis McKenna.

Starring the British athlete Anya Major breaking a screen showing the book’s chief antagonist Big Brother, the advert ended with the tagline: “On 24 January, Apple will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984’.”

Ron Gutman, an inventor, healthcare and technology entrepreneur and Stanford University adjunct professor, said the “legendary” video correctly foreshadowed the change the new machine was about to bring.

“[It was] a symbol of overturning the era of Big Brother PC makers that was more functional and business management-focused into a consumer-facing, easy to use and beautifully designed Macintosh,” he told Sky News.

“Apple highlighted the geeks behind the scenes – engineers and designers – making them the rock stars that created a new paradigm of relationship-computing and delightful user interaction.”

While the big-budget advert to promote the computer was deemed a massive success, the computer itself would prove groundbreaking in its own right.

Its most significant development was its move away from the traditional command-line interface of blocky text in favour of a graphic interface of logos and icons we still see today.

Dr Robert Jones, a tech expert and data analyst for tech firm Hackr, told Sky News: “Before the Mac, most personal computers still required typing in codes and commands just to get anything done.

“Only real tech wizards could figure it out. But the Mac changed all that with its graphical user interface and mouse.

“Ordinary people could start to access what computers had to offer just by pointing and clicking icons. In a lot of ways, I’d say the Mac is what really introduced mainstream society to digital life for the first time.

“Even four decades later, you can still see the Mac’s fingerprints all over how we interact with technology nowadays.”

Costing $2,495 – equivalent to $7,500 now – the first Apple Macintosh featured a built-in screen and mouse and 128kb of memory – a fraction of the size of today’s devices.

However, despite the high cost and the idea of personal computers being a relatively new concept, the Macintosh was an immediate hit, selling 70,000 units within the first four months.

It was the first commercially successful personal computer to utilise a graphic user interface (GUI), an idea which had originally been developed by lead designer Jef Raskin, under project Apple Lisa – named after the daughter of co-founder Steve Jobs.

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However, Jobs was pushed off the project amid infighting in the team, leading him to jump across to project Macintosh, which would ultimately prove to be the more successful product.

The success of the Macintosh would pitch Apple against the likes of IBM – the dominant force in the market at the time – and start the company and Jobs on a path towards further innovations, such as the iPhone.

And while Macs, have moved away from the boxy white desktops of the 80s and 90s, they still live on, in the form of much more powerful and streamlined laptops.

A spokesperson for Apple said: “40 years ago Mac revolutionised personal computing and today the Mac line-up continues to push the limits of computing, empowering all kinds of people to do their life’s best work.”

Britons must “strengthen their defences” against the growing threat posed by ransomware developed or enhanced using artificial intelligence (AI), the head of the UK’s cyber security agency has warned.

It comes as a new report from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has found that AI is lowering the barrier of entry to novice cyber criminals.

The NCSC – which is a part of GCHQ – has also warned that bad actors are using AI to better find and target victims and that the technology will almost certainly increase the volume and impact of cyber attacks in the near term.

The agency has previously identified ransomware as the biggest cyber threat facing the UK.

NCSC chief executive Lindy Cameron said: “We must ensure that we both harness AI technology for its vast potential and manage its risks – including its implications on the cyber threat.

“The emergent use of AI in cyber attacks is evolutionary not revolutionary, meaning that it enhances existing threats like ransomware but does not transform the risk landscape in the near term.

“As the NCSC does all it can to ensure AI systems are secure by design, we urge organisations and individuals to follow our ransomware and cyber security hygiene advice to strengthen their defences and boost their resilience to cyber attacks.”

Ransomware involves hackers gaining access to a user’s system and then either stealing or locking access to files using encryption, demanding a ransom to return the data.

One of the largest incidents seen so far was the 2017 WannaCry attack, which affected computers worldwide, including car firms such as Nissan, Honda, and dozens of NHS trusts across England.

The attack, believed to have originated from North Korea, severely disrupted services and left thousands of appointments cancelled, while an October 2018 report found the hack and the fall-out from it had cost the NHS as much as £100m.

The British Library also experienced a major ransomware attack in October last year, in which hackers stole personal data.

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The NCSC said analysis from the National Crime Agency (NCA) suggested that cyber criminals had already started to develop criminal versions of generative AI models, making better hacking tools available to anyone willing to pay.

The warning comes after the government, in partnership with the NCSC and other industry figures, published new guidance for business leaders on boosting their cyber security protections.

They asked them to treat the issue in the same way they would any other vital business or financial issue.

James Babbage, director-general for threats at the NCA, said: “Ransomware continues to be a national security threat.

“As this report shows, the threat is likely to increase in the coming years due to advancements in AI and the exploitation of this technology by cyber criminals.

“AI services lower barriers to entry, increasing the number of cyber criminals, and will boost their capability by improving the scale, speed and effectiveness of existing attack methods.

“Fraud and child sexual abuse are also particularly likely to be affected.

“The NCA will continue to protect the public and reduce the serious crime threat to the UK, including by targeting criminal use of generative AI and ensuring we adopt the technology ourselves where safe and effective.”

Scientists say they have discovered the oldest black hole ever – and it dates back to the early universe more than 13 billion years ago.

The supermassive black hole – about six million times the mass of the sun – is so huge that it should have taken a billion years to grow to its observed size, according to current theories.

Instead, this behemoth grew just 400 million years after the Big Bang, which makes it about 200 million years older than any other known blackhole.

“It’s very early in the universe to see a black hole this massive, so we’ve got to consider other ways they might form,” said Cambridge University’s Roberto Maiolino, who led the team of scientists.

Spotted using the James Webb Space Telescope, the black hole is devouring an ancient galaxy called GN-z11, 13.4 billion light years away.

It’s gobbling up material from the galaxy at a far quicker rate than black holes from later epochs, potentially five times faster.

Astronomers estimate black holes like the one at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, developed over billions of years.

‘Born big’

But the size of the latest discovery suggests some may form in other ways and could be “born big”.

“Very early galaxies were extremely gas-rich, so they would have been like a buffet for black holes,” Professor Maiolino said.

These masses form from the remnants of dead stars, according to current models, and collapse to create a black hole about 100 times the mass of the sun.

If it grew in an expected way, this newly-detected black hole would take about a billion years to grow to its observed size.

Like all black holes, this one is consuming material from its host galaxy, which is possibly about 100 times smaller than the Milky Way as a result.

When a black hole consumes too much gas, it pushes the air away like an ultra-fast wind, which could stop star formation and slowly kills the galaxy.

It will also kill the black hole itself, as it would cut off its source of fuel.

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As the black hole is so far away, it takes more than 13 billion years for the light around it to reach the Earth – which means what the scientists are observing is a scene from that long ago.

As a result, it’s impossible to know how long the mass and its host galaxy lasted.

The study detailing the team’s findings is published in the journal Nature.

An 11-year-old boy, who is now free of blood cancer after undergoing a new type of treatment, has told Sky News the drug gave him a “burst of energy”.

Arthur D’Hulst had leukaemia but traditional chemotherapy failed to clear it, leaving him very weak, and the side effects were rough.

He was offered a new drug to try called blinatumomab, or blina, which is an immunotherapy that is “kinder” and more targeted and far less toxic than chemo.

Arthur was one of the first children to take part in the trial at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH).

Blina made him feel much better. It works by targeting a protein, called CD19, on the leukaemia cells so the person’s immune system can recognise them.

The immune system can then attack and kill the leukaemia cells.

Arthur told Sky News: “Chemo was very tiring and made me feel like I always wanted to sleep and I never had any energy to do anything.

“But blina was like, I had a burst of energy. I could go outside.”

The drug comes in a bag of liquid that is administered through a plastic tube which goes into a vein.

GOSH said on its website: “It is usually given 24 hours a day for four weeks followed by a two-week break without the infusion. It may be given at home using a portable infusion pump.”

Arthur carried the treatment with him in a rucksack which he called his “blina backpack” that pumped the drug into his body day and night.

Although Arthur had to return to GOSH every four days to have the drug topped up, the rest of the time he was at home with his family.

It meant he could do other things – like playing on swings in a park – while the treatment was happening.

The backpack stayed with him continuously including in bed and he was able to get a good night’s sleep despite the pump making a noise.

His mother Sandrine Heutz said blina “feels like the future”.

She said: “It did feel so effective in terms of doing the job of getting rid of the cancer but also in the way that he was able to live with it.”

At the end of last April, Arthur had the final operation to remove the tubing from his arm which his mother said was a big step and he was “free”.

In the UK, about 450 children each year are diagnosed with Arthur’s type of cancer.

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Dr Sujith Samarasinghe, from GOSH, explained that chemotherapy “is like a poison” which “hits everything, the leukaemia cells, as well as all your normal cells within the body”.

“What the antibody does is it’s like a homing beacon. It lights up the leukaemia cells so that the children’s immune system can kill the leukaemia cells, and just the leukaemia cells.”

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Blina is not officially licensed for use in children like Arthur but it is being tentatively used in 20 hospitals around the country with good results.

Artificial intelligence will affect up to 40% of jobs worldwide, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned.

This could rise to 60% of roles in advanced economies like the UK – but it is believed that, in half of these cases, AI will benefit the workforce.

In a new report, the IMF warned that AI’s consequences for society remain difficult to foresee, but the technology is likely to exacerbate income and wealth inequality.

Developing economies are much less likely to “seize” AI’s advantages, fuelling a digital divide and increasing income disparity between countries.

Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, said the world is “on the brink of a technological revolution that could jumpstart productivity, boost global growth and raise incomes around the world” – but some could lose their livelihoods as a result.

While automation and IT have often affected routine tasks, she explained that AI is unusual because of its ability to impact well-paid careers.

“Jobs that require nuanced judgment, creative problem-solving, or intricate data interpretation – traditionally the domain of highly educated professionals – may now be augmented or even replaced by advanced AI algorithms,” the IMF report says.

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Although younger workers may find it easier to embrace the opportunities that artificial intelligence brings, older workers could struggle to adapt.

“In most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality, a troubling trend that policymakers must proactively address to prevent the technology from further stoking social tensions,” Ms Georgieva warned.

The UK is said to be among the countries that is best prepared for the disruption AI will bring – based on digital infrastructure and the education of its workforce.

In other developments, the Information Commissioner’s Office is launching a consultation to examine how data protection law should apply to the development and use of generative AI apps.

It will first examine whether it is lawful to train models such as ChatGPT on personal data scraped from the web.

Generative AI technology can be used to create new content including words, pictures, video, computer code and music from scratch, but based on large amounts of data the program has been trained on, much of which is often scraped from internet and fed into the system.

The spacecraft which attempted the first US moon landing in more than 50 years is to be allowed to “burn up” during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, the company behind the mission has said.

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic said it had made the “difficult decision” to maintain the craft’s trajectory and was working with NASA and the space community to take the “safe and responsible” course of action.

The Peregrine lander developed a “critical” fuel leak hours after its launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on 8 January.

The company said it had been “evaluating” the best and safest way to end the mission to ensure the protection of satellites and not create debris in cislunar space – the area between the Earth and the outer reaches of the moon’s orbit.

Astrobotic had aimed for a soft lunar landing on 23 February and to become the first private company to complete such a mission – but said last week there was “no chance” it would achieve its goal following the propellant leak.

In an update, Astrobotic said: “The recommendation we have received is to let the spacecraft burn up during re-entry in Earth’s atmosphere.

“Since this is a commercial mission, the final decision of Peregrine’s final flight path is in our hands.

“Ultimately, we must balance our own desire to extend Peregrine’s life, operate payloads, and learn more about the spacecraft, with the risk that our damaged spacecraft could cause a problem in cislunar space.

“As such, we have made the difficult decision to maintain the current spacecraft’s trajectory to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere.

“By responsibly ending Peregrine’s mission, we are doing our part to preserve the future of cislunar space for all.”

The mission is expected to reach its conclusion on Thursday, according to Astrobotic CEO, John Thornton.

“This mission has already taught us so much and has given me great confidence that our next mission to the moon will achieve a soft landing,” he added.

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NASA had paid Astrobotic $108m (£85m) to fly a range of experiments to the moon on the Peregrine mission as part of the agency’s commercial lunar programme.

It said on its website: “Spaceflight is an unforgiving environment, and we commend Astrobotic for its perseverance and making every viable effort to collect data and show its capabilities of Peregrine while in flight. Together, we will use the lessons learned to advance CLPS.”

Earlier, the space agency had said that several of the experiments had been able to operate in space, despite the mission being unable to land on the moon.

Postings on X from Astrobiotic suggest it travelled as far from the Earth as the moon but was not able to enter its orbit, and it then began to head back towards the planet.

A second lander from a Houston company is due to launch a similar mission next month.