Consumers hurt by lack of tech giant regulation, independent review finds March 13, 2019 Tech giants do not face enough competition and new laws are required to increase consumer choice in the digital sector, an independent review has found. The report, which was commissioned by chancellor Philip Hammond, states tech firms have become increasingly dominant in the market, limiting the control consumers have over their personal data. Read more: [...]
How the arrival of the World Wide Web has changed the mortgage market March 12, 2019 In 1989, the Swiss physics laboratory, CERN, was buzzing with information but it had one big problem: ideas, data and knowledge held by the lab was stored across incompatible computers. A young scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, envisioned creating a unifying structure for sharing information across its computer systems. He wrote a proposal for a linked information [...]
‘Serious First Amendment issues’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s lawyers slam SEC’s latest attack on tweets March 12, 2019 Lawyers for Elon Musk say that the US financial regulator's claims that the Tesla chief executive violated a previous settlement by posting a tweet has serious implications for First Amendment issues. Read more: Regulator accuses Elon Musk of misleading investors with new Tesla tweet The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had asked a New York [...]
Computacenter shares jump on strong 2019 outlook March 12, 2019 Shares in Computacenter jumped nearly five per cent today, despite the FTSE 250 company reporting a slight drop in profit in its annual results. The company said profit fell 3.2 per cent to £108.1m, despite a nearly 15 per cent increase in revenue to £4.4bn. It increased its dividend 16 per cent to 30.3p per [...]
EU drops plans for digital tax as pressure builds for global reform March 12, 2019 The EU has scrapped plans to roll out a digital tax on tech giants due to opposition from several member states. Romanian finance minister Eugen Teodorovici today told representatives of EU governments the plan has been axed as no agreement could be reached after months of talks, Reuters reported. Read more: EU digital tax could [...]
World Wide Web: Google Doodle marks 30th anniversary of Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s invention March 12, 2019 It’s become such a fundamental part of our daily lives that it’s now almost impossible to imagine a world without the World Wide Web. But on 12 March 1989 the system we've come to rely on across the glove was just an inchoate proposal for an information management system, written by 33-year-old software engineer Tim [...]
Google paid $105m to two executives accused of sexual harassment March 12, 2019 Google paid a total of $105m (£79m) to two executives after they were accused of sexual harassment, according to court documents released last night. The lawsuit, filed by shareholder James Martin, confirms previous reports that Android creator Andy Rubin was paid $90m after he allegedly coerced sex from a colleague. Read more: Fintech superstar Marta [...]
30 years since the dawn of the World Wide Web, Britain is still at the heart of tech success March 12, 2019 It has been 30 years since Sir Tim Berners-Lee sat down at his desk at Cern and changed the world with a humble sounding document called “Information Management: A Proposal”. The memo, piloting a system to allow computers to share information via an emerging technology called hypertext, did not catch many people’s eyes as it [...]
Natwest launches fingerprint payment trial for contactless card purchases March 11, 2019 Natwest will trial fingerprint payment technology to allow customers to make purchases worth more than £30 when using their contactless card. The trial, which will begin in the next few weeks, will allow shoppers to verify payments above the £30 contactless limit using their fingerprint rather than having to enter their Pin number. Read more: [...]
AI’s success story still has a few missing chapters March 11, 2019 This article is not written by robots – we promise – but apparently the day when they could be is already upon us. We have just finished reading about the GPT-2 text generator which, according to this Spectator piece, “not only does text analysis and augmentation, but generates highly sophisticated content”. “It can effectively write articles,” [...]