Start-ups turn to heat over batteries as they aim to industrialise the practice

Think of battery ingredients and lithium, cadmium and nickel come to mind. Now think again. What about salt, air, bricks, and hand-warmer gel? In our electricity-hungry future they’re set to provide heat to manufacturers who need it, and to help keep the lights on at times when energy is short.

Energy storage has a dual purpose: it plugs gaps when the wind drops or the sun stops shining, and it allows users to buy cheap off-peak power and use it when they need it.

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Rates for phone, broadband and water will increase from Monday and other rises are in the pipeline

Consumers are braced for huge rises in their household bills on everything from water to broadband, as the cost of living crisis continues to bite.

Despite inflation easing, Monday will see the cost of a host of bills and taxes increasing, adding further pressure to household finances more than two years after bills began to rise significantly.

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Flammable material found in more than one in 10 blocks over 11 metres tall, and action is urged on smaller buildings, government figures show

Nearly 2,000 social housing blocks in England have “life-critical” problems with their external cladding, government figures show.

The data released earlier this month showed that 1,911 social housing blocks above 11 metres in height had been assessed as having “life-critical fire safety defects” linked to the materials in their external walls.

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Exclusive: Whistleblower raised concerns about security of in-branch coin-counter software

The Bank of England is examining claims that the high street lender Metro Bank allegedly put customers’ data at risk by misusing software at the centre of a long-running legal dispute.

Last month, the central bank’s whistleblowing team was contacted by a person raising concerns about the integrity and security of software used to connect Metro Bank’s in-branch coin-counters – known as Magic Money Machines – to customer accounts.

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Fern Stroud got inspired on a later wine tour in South Africa, so after a pandemic layoff, she started her business, sip by sip

When Fern Stroud was growing up, she would tag along with her father as he drove a tour bus taking visitors from their hometown of Berkeley, California, to Napa valley’s wine country. She would notice how happy people were after a couple hours into the trip, and think: “I can’t wait until I’m 21.”

However, Stroud’s first visit to wine country as an adult was anything but pleasant. The name of the winery has faded from her memory, but Stroud, who’s now 45 and identifies as LGBTQ, remembers the feeling and her unhealthy efforts to belong. “I would go into that space with my braids, just being me and be ignored,” she says. “I didn’t feel very welcomed. I would overdo it, spending way too much money to prove to them that I can be in that space. … I was like, that’s BS. Why can’t I just be treated like anyone else?”

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The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

Why is alcohol advertised openly in the UK, without pictures on the packaging highlighting the medical effects, for example, when tobacco is treated so differently? John Fisher, by email

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com .

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David Al-Mudallal, who joined from Sports Direct, was appointed to parent company’s board last month

The owner of Sports Direct, Frasers Group, has promoted the boyfriend of Mike Ashley’s youngest daughter to the company’s board, it has emerged.

David Al-Mudallal, 31, the chief operating officer at Frasers, has been appointed to the board of Frasers, making him one of the youngest directors of a FTSE 100 company.

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With cocoa and sugar prices at record highs and tougher regulation to fight rising obesity, the head of Cadbury’s has a lot on her plate over the peak chocolate season of Easter

It’s Easter and chocolate is very much on the menu. But it could be meltdown for the industry as the cost of cocoa soared to a historic high of more than $10,000 a tonne last week after two years of poor harvests in the key west African growing region.

Sitting calmly among the relics of Cadbury’s history in the company archive, Louise Stigant, the boss of Mondelēz’s UK arm – which includes the British chocolate brand celebrating its 200th anniversary this year – is charged with making sure it has a future, as key ingredients, including sugar as well as cocoa, have soared in price .

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Portable AI-powered devices that connect directly to a chatbot without the need for apps or a touchscreen are set to hit the market. Are they the emperor’s new clothes or a gamechanger?

Imagine it: you’re on the bus or walking in the park, when you remember some important task has slipped your mind. You were meant to send an email, catch up on a meeting, or arrange to grab lunch with a friend. Without missing a beat, you simply say aloud what you’ve forgotten and the small device that’s pinned to your chest, or resting on the bridge of your nose, sends the message, summarises the meeting, or pings your buddy a lunch invitation. The work has been taken care of, without you ever having to prod the screen of your smartphone.

It’s the sort of utopian convenience that a growing wave of tech companies are hoping to realise through artificial intelligence. Generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT exploded in popularity last year, as search engines like Google, messaging apps such as Slack and social media services like Snapchat raced to integrate the tech into their systems. Yet while AI add-ons have become a familiar sight across apps and software, the same generative tech is now making an attempt to join the realm of hardware, as the first AI-powered consumer devices rear their heads and jostle for space with our smartphones.

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