IBM and Vodafone’s $550m joint venture secures first deal August 28, 2019 IBM and Vodafone’s $550m partnership has signed its first contract, an eight-year partnership with National Express. The deal is intended to ensure that the UK-based leading transport provider can “adapt to today’s digitally savvy customers”. IBM and Vodafone joined forces in January of this year, bringing together their respective strengths in connectivity and hybrid cloud [...]
Apple apologises for listening to Siri conversations August 28, 2019 Apple has apologised after it emerged the tech giant allowed contractors to listen to conversations customers had with its voice assistant Siri. Workers are hired to grade Siri’s responses on a variety of factors in order to help the technology “learn”, however, last month it was revealed that contractors regularly picked up recordings of private [...]
Watch Elon Musk’s Space X Starhopper rocket hit new heights on Texas hover test August 28, 2019 Elon Musk’s Space X took another small step – or giant hop – on the entrepreneur’s mission to colonise Mars yesterday, as a prototype of its next generation Starhopper rocket reached its highest altitude yet on a hover test. The next generation rocket slowly climbed to 150m above Space X’s test site in Texas before [...]
Mitsubishi leads $50m funding round for London solar startup August 28, 2019 A clean energy startup based in Chiswick has closed a $50m (£40.7m) series D funding round, led by Japanese car giant Mitsubishi. Bboxx, which provides pay-as-you-go solar energy using in-home solar systems paid for via mobile top-ups, will use the funding to power up its international expansion efforts. Other investors included the European funds Bamboo [...]
Hey up, Siri: BBC to launch ‘Beeb’ voice assistant that recognises regional accents August 27, 2019 The BBC is preparing to launch a digital voice assistant next year that will be trained to recognise different regional accents from across the UK. The new assistant will not be a hardware device, but will be built into the BBC’s website and will also work across smart speakers, TVs and mobile phones. Read more: [...]
Meet Par Hedberg – the godfather of Sweden’s tech startups August 27, 2019 If you were asked where the most tech innovation comes from, you’d probably answer Silicon Valley – the home of Google, Amazon and Facebook. And you’d be right. But what you might not know is that Stockholm is a close second. The Swedish capital produces more billion-dollar companies per capita than any other region in [...]
Filled with HS2 fever? No? Then let’s think up something better August 27, 2019 HS2, the unloved child of British infrastructure, looks like a goner. And while those into trains might spot that there is a review underway, there can be little doubt that this in itself sends a terminal signal to a project that once seemed to offer a glimpse of what a brave new British future might [...]
League One side Sunderland in advanced sale talks with MSD Capital partners and Michael Dell August 23, 2019 US investors and partners at MSD Capital are closing in on an agreement to buy League One football club Sunderland. John Phelan, Glenn Fuhrman and Rob Platek, who are the most senior figures at MSD Capital, a private investment firm that exclusively runs billionaire Michael Dell’s fortune, are in advanced talks to buy the English [...]
DEBATE: Will email die out? August 23, 2019 Will email die out? Morten Brøgger, chief executive of collaboration platform Wire, says YES. Almost 50 years on since its inception, email is fast becoming no longer fit for purpose as a communication tool. Given that 90 per cent of cyber attacks begin with a phishing email, today it’s the equivalent of leaving the house [...]
EU considers giving citizens explicit rights over facial recognition data August 22, 2019 The European Commission is considering introducing strict regulations governing the use of facial recognition technology that would give EU citizens explicit rights over the use of their facial recognition data. The Commission’s plans, which were first reported in the Financial Times, would be part of a wider overhaul into how the EU regulates artificial intelligence [...]