Thursday newspaper round-up: Subsidised energy, John Lewis boss, Anthropic

(Sharecast News) - In order to cut rising bills all UK households should receive a minimum amount of energy at rates subsidised by the government through North Sea taxes, a thinktank has suggested. Providing all homes with enough energy to heat two rooms, provide hot water and run key appliances such as a fridge and washing machine, at rates frozen at current levels, would require a subsidy of about �4.5bn, according to the New Economics Foundation. - Guardian

Britain's sunny spring weather powered the grid to new solar energy records on two consecutive days this week. Solar farms in England, Wales and Scotland generated 14.1GW of low-carbon electricity at lunchtime on Monday, surpassing the previous high of 14GW in July last year. And that record was toppled a day later when power generation from the sun's energy climbed to another new high of 14.4GW on Tuesday afternoon. - Guardian

The boss of John Lewis was handed the biggest pay package since 2020 last year even as the retailer suffered heavy losses and cut thousands of jobs. The John Lewis Partnership, which also owns Waitrose, paid Jason Tarry a total of �1.26m last year, including a bonus of �22,700 and a pension cash supplement of �93,200. It means Mr Tarry was paid more than his predecessor Dame Sharon White ever received during her four-and-a-half-year tenure as chairman of the partnership. - Telegraph

Silicon Valley start-up Anthropic has restricted access to its latest AI system, saying it is currently too dangerous to release to the public. The company said its Claude Mythos Preview model was so good at finding critical security flaws in computer systems that it could "reshape cybersecurity", wreaking havoc if it ended up in the wrong hands. The system has already discovered thousands of security vulnerabilities including flaws in all the most popular web browsers and operating systems. - Telegraph

Adam Back has denied that he is the founder of bitcoin after the New York Times published a lengthy investigation suggesting that the British computer scientist was the cryptocurrency's mysterious creator. Back, who has previously been suggested as a candidate to be Satoshi Nakamoto, was a pioneer of early digital asset research in the 1990s and developed Hashcash, a proof-of-work system that later influenced bitcoin. He founded the blockchain company Blockstream in 2014. - The Times