A government Bill has laid out a new UK data protection regime (which diverges from EU regulations) and which the government says will ease the burden of compliance on businesses. Data Reform Bill The government says that the ‘Data Reform Bill’, announced in this year’s Queen’s Speech, and outlined as part of London Tech Week, has been designed to: …
A Strengthened EU ‘Code of Practice on Disinformation’ will require big tech companies to take more action to ensure that purveyors of disinformation do not benefit from advertising revenues. Broader Range Of Commitments The strengthened ‘Code of Practice on Disinformation’ will aim to achieve the objectives of the European Commission’s Guidance presented in May 2021, by setting a broader…
In this insight, we look at what ‘data gravity’ is, what challenges it creates, and some ways in which businesses can tackle data gravity challenges. What Is Data Gravity? Working with (larger) datasets means the need to collect, store and manage the data and move it around to different applications. The data then accumulates (builds mass), attracts services and…
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser has been retired after 27 years and here we take a brief look back over its history and why it fell behind competitors before being succeeded by Microsoft Edge. It Came From ‘Mosaic’ Microsoft first launched its Internet Explorer (IE) browser in 1995. The browser was built under license to Microsoft using the code from…
Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have created renewable, sustainable ‘biocement’ made entirely from waste materials, making it a greener and more sustainable alternative to regular cement. How? The NTU scientists have used two common waste materials, industrial carbide sludge (the waste material from the production of acetylene gas) and urea (from the urine of mammals) to create the…
Security company PIXM has warned of a Facebook scam, active since Q4 2021, which has ensnared nearly 10 million users. The credential harvesting scam uses a fake Facebook login page. When a user logs in, the threat actor gets their credentials and can then use an automated program to send out the link to the user’s Friends via Facebook…
If you want to add an extra layer of privacy to sending a photo or video in WhatsApp (e.g. a photo of a password), adding a “view once” designation before sending the message means that the photo or video will disappear as soon as the recipient has opened the message and exited the media viewer. Here’s how to use…
Vodafone has announced the switch-on of the UK’s first wind and solar-powered mobile phone mast in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Wind And Solar Power The mast, designed to provide 4G coverage to the community of Eglwyswrw (pronounced Egg-lis-oo-roo), incorporates a wind turbine, solar panels, and on-site battery storage. This makes the mast off-grid and self-powering and enables it to function with…
Following the recent story about how a Google Bot was reported to have said things that a sentient being may say, we take a brief look at how good chatbots are now. What Happened? Google engineer, Blake Lemoine, recently reported that The Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA ) AI system bot may have feelings and said things that…
In this insight, we look at what edge computing is, why it’s necessary, the benefits it delivers, and some examples of how it’s being used. What Is It? Edge computing is a computing architecture and distributed computing framework which means the computing and data storage is done near the source of the data. The idea is that it improves…
