Materials that could help protect British satellites from lasers and missiles fired by adversaries will be developed by scientists at a new centre opened by the top-secret Porton Down laboratory. As part of a £42.5 million project, leading experts will be tasked with creating new technology for extreme physical environments. They will aim to develop…
How do you put out a dumpster fire? Don’t call in professional firefighters; let volunteers show up with buckets and get to work. This is, in essence, how Reddit, the 19-year-old social media site, turned itself from one of the darkest corners of the web into something of a model for how content moderation should…
News Corporation beat Wall Street estimates for second-quarter revenue driven by growth in its digital real estate services, Dow Jones and book publishing divisions. The media and information services group, which owns publications including The Times, The Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Australian and The Sun, reported that revenue in the three months…
Apple has lost a €13 billion battle over unpaid taxes in a landmark legal defeat in the European Union over “sweetheart” tax deals. The European Court of Justice overturned an earlier ruling in the technology group’s favour and concluded that the Republic of Ireland had “granted Apple unlawful aid”, which the country was required to…
At July’s summer party, as he celebrated having “the greatest number ever of literature’s finest in one room”, Daljit Nagra told the assembled fellows he was “blushing ever so chocolatey”, adding: “And I can say that.” Six months later, the 200-year-old Royal Society of Literature (RSL) that he chairs is facing its biggest crisis —…
Google Chrome, Britain’s favourite internet browser, has begun slowly turning the lights out on the buying signals that brands have used for more than a decade to plan their digital advertising campaigns. The tech giant blocked so-called third-party cookies for 1 per cent of Chrome users globally in January, roughly 30 million people. In agreement…
Q: Do I really need to give staff travelling to high-risk countries a new laptop and burner phone? Aren’t the surveillance concerns overblown? A: Good device security is advisable wherever you are, but you should tighten this for travel to “high-risk” countries, writes Shaun Reardon, a former Scotland Yard detective who now works in cybersecurity….
Social media sites are labelling women’s health advice as “pornographic” or “prostitution” because the posts use anatomical terms such as breast, research has showed. Practical health information including warnings on how to identify cancer is being censored by social media giants including Instagram and Facebook. Campaigners say that the algorithms used by the sites typically…
The need for sustained, long-term economic growth has come to define virtually every discussion on Britain’s future and its path to greater prosperity. Too often, pessimism and gallows humour haunts these conversations. In fact, as the American economist Tyler Cowen has suggested, this self-deprecation might be one of the factors that is holding us back….