Category Archives: Technology

Microsoft to buy 4% stake in London Stock Exchange

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US tech company signs 10-year strategic partnership with LSEG for data analytics and cloud technology

Microsoft will buy 4% of the London Stock Exchange as part of a multibillion-pound deal to work together on data analytics and cloud technology.

The US tech company will buy the stake from a consortium of Blackstone and Thomson Reuters, and will take a seat on the board of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). The consortium previously sold the financial data company Refinitiv to LSEG in a £22bn takeover.

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Twitter relaunches blue tick service with higher price for iPhone users

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Those willing to pay $8 on the web or $11 a month via Apple’s app store will get more prominence

Twitter is relaunching its subscription service on Monday, offering users verified status for $8 (£6.50) a month or $11 a month on their iPhone.

The move follows a botched revamp of the service last month that resulted in a host of impersonator accounts appearing on the platform as some users took advantage of the chance to launch bogus “verified” accounts for major companies and public figures.

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Bankman-Fried ‘would give anything’ to start new business to repay FTX users

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Former boss of collapsed crypto-exchange says he has duty to try to recoup investors’ lost money

Sam Bankman-Fried, the former boss of the failed crypto-exchange FTX, has said he hopes to start a new business to help pay back the victims of his old firm’s collapse.

Speaking to the BBC from the Bahamas, he said he would “give anything” to be able to begin a new venture in order to recoup his users’ lost investments.

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FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried to testify before Congress next week

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Founder and former CEO says he could talk about what he thinks led to crash and ‘my own failings’

Sam Bankman-Fried is set to testify before Congress next week about the collapse of FTX, as regulators investigate the cryptocurrency exchange he led until its recent demise.

The US House Committee on Financial Services said in a statement on Friday that the panel would hear from FTX’s newly-appointed CEO, John Ray, and from Bankman-Fried on 13 December.

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Twitter sued for disproportionately firing female workers after Musk buyout

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The proposed class-action lawsuit alleges that after the takeover, 57% of women were laid off compared with 47% of men

Twitter has been hit with another lawsuit in the wake of Elon Musk’s mass layoffs, with the latest legal action accusing the company of disproportionately targeting female employees for cuts.

The proposed class action, which was was filed late on Wednesday in San Francisco federal court, said that after Twitter was taken over by Musk, the world’s richest person, it laid off 57% of its female workers compared with 47% of men.

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Elon Musk accused of turning Twitter offices into bedrooms

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San Francisco investigating Twitter after complaint says it converted rooms in its HQ into sleeping quarters

Twitter is under investigation by city officials in San Francisco following a complaint that the company allegedly converted rooms in its headquarters to sleeping quarters, an inquiry that has drawn scorn from Elon Musk.

As of Monday, the office has “modest bedrooms featuring unmade mattresses, drab curtains and giant conference-room telepresence monitors” with four to eight beds a floor, employees told Forbes. The changes appear to be part of Musk’s plan for “hardcore Twitter” in which he’s demanded workers dedicate “long hours at high intensity” after he fired nearly half the company’s workforce.

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‘When will the rain stop?’: Australia’s most searched words on Google in 2022

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Australians also searched for ‘floods’ and ‘La Niña’ more than any other country in the world

Australians searched for “floods”, “La Niña” and “when will the rain stop?” more than any other country in the world in 2022, according to Google.

As a year of floods and wet weather hit large parts of the eastern seaboard, Google recorded more searches for “mould” in Australia than ever before.

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UK new car sales rise as industry leaders say recovery ‘within grasp’

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Increase for fourth consecutive month, with almost 143,000 new vehicles registered in November

Sales of new cars in the UK have risen for the fourth month running, with purely electric vehicles accounting for a fifth of the total.

In the best November for the industry since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, almost 143,000 new vehicles were registered.

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Risky online behaviour ‘almost normalised’ among young people, says study

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EU-funded survey of people aged 16-19 finds one in four have trolled someone – while UK least ‘cyberdeviant’ of nine countries

Risky and criminal online behaviour is in danger of becoming normalised among a generation of young people across Europe, according to EU-funded research that found one in four 16- to 19-year-olds have trolled someone online and one in three have engaged in digital piracy.

An EU-funded study found evidence of widespread criminal, risky and delinquent behaviour among the 16-19 age group in nine European countries including the UK.

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Chinese security firm advertises ethnicity recognition technology while facing UK ban

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Campaigners concerned that ‘same racist technology used to repress Uyghurs is being marketed in Britain’

A Chinese security camera company has been advertising ethnicity recognition features to British and other European customers, even while it faces a ban on UK operations over allegations of involvement in ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang.

In a brochure published on its website, Hikvision advertised a range of features that it said it could provide in collaboration with the UK startup FaiceTech.

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Password app LastPass hit by cybersecurity breach but says data remains safe

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Company says its security system prevented the hacker accessing customer data or encrypted passwords

Password manager LastPass has told customers that some of their information has been accessed in a cybersecurity breach, but says passwords remain safe.

LastPass is one of several password managers in the market that aims to reduce the reuse of passwords online, by storing themin a single app. It also makes it easier for users to generate strong passwords as required.

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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried says he ‘screwed up’ but didn’t commit fraud

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Disgraced CEO said he ‘didn’t knowingly comingle funds’ with FTX’s sister company Alameda Research

“Look, I screwed up,” fallen crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried told a conference in New York on Wednesday, but he maintained he “didn’t ever try to commit fraud” and was “shocked” by the collapse of his businesses.

Bankman-Fried, with glassy eyes and visibly shaking at times, appeared via video conference from a nondescript room in the Bahamas. He told the New York Times’s DealBook Summit he was “deeply sorry about what happened” but consistently argued he did not have a full picture of what was going on within the various branches of FTX, his now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, and its offshoots.

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Medibank hackers announce ‘case closed’ and dump huge data file on dark web

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The size of the data file suggests it may be the full trove of hundreds of thousands of customers’ private records that were stolen from the health insurer

The cybercriminals behind the Medibank cyber-attack have posted on the dark web what appears to be the remainder of what customer data they took from the health insurer, stating it is “case closed” for the hack.

On Thursday morning, the blog – which returned online after several days of being offline last week – posted “Happy Cyber Security Day!!! Added folder full. Case closed.” and included a file that has several compressed files amounting to over 5GB.

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San Francisco approves police proposal to use potentially deadly robots

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Decision comes after heated debate as police oversight groups warn over further militarization of law enforcement

Police in San Francisco will be allowed to deploy potentially lethal, remote-controlled robots in emergency situations. The controversial policy was approved after weeks of scrutiny and a heated debate among the city’s board of supervisors during their meeting on Tuesday.

Police oversight groups, the ACLU and San Francisco’s public defender had urged the 11-member body to reject the police’s use of equipment proposal. Opponents of the policy said it would lead to further militarization of a police force already too aggressive with underserved communities. They said the parameters under which use would be allowed were too vague. Supporters argued that having these robots as an option in dangerous situations was necessary given what they see as an ever-increasing risk of a high-profile shooting hitting the city.

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Social media firms face big UK fines if they fail to stop sexist and racist content

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Revised online safety bill proposes fines of 10% of revenue but drops harmful communications offence

Social media platforms that breach pledges to block sexist and racist content face the threat of substantial fines under government changes to the online safety bill announced on Monday.

Under the new approach, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter must also give users the option of avoiding content that is harmful but does not constitute a criminal offence. This could include racism, misogyny or the glorification of eating disorders.

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Pegasus spyware inquiry targeted by disinformation campaign, say experts

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European parliament is investigating powerful surveillance tool used by governments around the world

Victims of spyware and a group of security experts have privately warned that a European parliament investigatory committee risks being thrown off course by an alleged “disinformation campaign”.

The warning, contained in a letter to MEPs signed by the victims, academics and some of the world’s most renowned surveillance experts, followed news last week that two individuals accused of trying to discredit widely accepted evidence in spyware cases in Spain had been invited to appear before the committee investigating abuse of hacking software.

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Amazon’s UK tax bill could rise by £29m amid business rates overhaul

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Hikes set to hit warehouses and online retailers hardest in 2023 as UK government addresses ‘brick v clicks’ tax gap

Amazon’s UK tax bill jump could jump by £29m next year as a result of changes to business rates that are scheduled to hit warehouses and online retailers the hardest.

The online retailer is likely to be among firms facing big tax rises following the chancellor’s autumn statement, according to analysis from the real estate adviser Altus Group.

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BT asks ministers to help pay for low-cost broadband for poorest customers

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Critics say telecoms firms such as BT – which made £1.9bn profit last year – can afford to keep customers on benefits connected

BT has warned that the telecoms industry cannot afford an estimated potential loss of up to £2bn annually providing low-cost broadband to millions of the UK’s most financially pressured households, but critics have said they have an obligation to do so.

Marc Allera, the chief executive of BT’s consumer division, which includes the mobile company EE, said the industry needed government support to help cover the ongoing cost of providing cheap tariffs, the same way households have been helped with energy bills.

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Gangs of cybercriminals are expanding across Africa, investigators say

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Online scams such as banking and credit card fraud are the most prevalent cyberthreat, say Interpol

Police and investigators fear organised gangs of fraudsters are expanding across sub-Saharan Africa, exploiting new opportunities as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the global economic crisis to make huge sums with little risk of being caught.

The growth will have a direct impact on the rest of the world, where many victims of “hugely lucrative” fraud live, senior police officials have said.

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US bans new Huawei equipment sales over ‘unacceptable risk’ to national security

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Bar on telecommunications products from firms including ZTE, Dahua and Hikvision are part of latest crackdown on Chinese tech giants amid spying fears

The Biden administration has banned approvals of new telecommunications equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies and ZTE because they pose “an unacceptable risk” to US national security.

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Friday it had adopted the final rules, which also bar the sale or import of equipment made by Chinese surveillance equipment maker Dahua Technology, video surveillance firm Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology and telecoms firm Hytera Communications Corp.

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