My town’s schools just banned smartphones. I think that’s a bad idea. Which, as I’ve discovered this week, isn’t a popular take. But there’s too much blaming of tech itself rather than how it’s supplied, managed and used, and less attention paid to the benefits it can bring. The column looks at the practical ramifications of a ban, from personal security to e-waste. (Katie Spalding a while back expertly called parent pledges to ban phones themselves “abstinence only phone education”. Brilliant.)

The next ZX Spectrum will also be a Commodore 64. Seriously. Well, sort of. The third and final run of the ZX Spectrum Next, a super-Speccy that uses FPGA to ‘be’ any Sinclair machine, will now be able to become Commodore’s finest too. Which is deeply funny, because that’s basically a 1980s British playground argument in a box.

Another Sinclair wants to spark a gaming revolution. Sir Clive’s nephew launched featherweight handheld GamerCard. It’s a bizarre thing – ultra-skinny with weird controls. It’s hard to imagine how it’ll be when actually playing games – even Pico-8, for which its display is ideal. Still, it’s tempting, despite being painfully spendy.

Sony’s first portable console turned 25. No, not that one. I’m talking about the PS One, which I wrote about along with a handful of other interesting Sony console side-quest updates.

UK websites want to verify your age. The Verge reported Bluesky and Reddit are early out of the blocks. Brits on Bluesky lost their minds, apparently unaware that this isn’t about one or two sites – it’s all of them. And the system doesn’t scale, demanding account creation and age verification with each individual site, entrusting numerous third parties with your personal data. At some point, this will end in a massive data breach. I also imagine we’ll see many sites simply block UK traffic rather than deal with the hassle. And, no, “just use a VPN” is not the answer to tech overreach.