Dyson has scrapped its £2.5 billion ‘N526’ electric car project with Sir James Dyson announcing that it was “not commercially viable”. So Close The project, which could be traced back to 1993 with the development of a cyclonic vehicle exhaust that could 95 cut per cent of harmful emissions, evolved into the full-blown development of Dyson’s own electric car.  The ‘N526’ project employed 500 UK workers (aimed to roll out the first vehicles for sale in 2021) had a driveable prototype, and was on the verge of kitting-out its production factory in Singapore before the plug was pulled on what [...]

Amendments to the UK’s Electronic Communications Code will give broadband operators compulsory rights to install their apparatus on another person’s property, thereby getting around the problem of landlords not responding to requests for access to blocks of flats and apartments. The Challenge The challenge that has prompted the government to seek changes to the current legislation has been a claim by broadband operators that 40% of their requests for access to blocks of flats and apartments have routinely received no response. This has been blamed for slowing down the UK government’s plans to deliver the target of national full-fibre coverage by 2025 [...]

A report by IT company Prism Solutions has highlighted how traditional accountancy firms are having to change rapidly to meet challenges such as Cloud computing, GDPR and HMRC pressing quickly ahead with ‘Making Tax Digital’ (MTD). MTD According to the report, the whole accountancy profession is now on the verge of an evolutionary change and accountancy firms will need to develop into digital practices in order to compete and survive. One of the key change drivers and challenges for accountancy firms is HMRC’s ongoing ‘Making Tax Digital’(MTD) initiative which has been designed to eradicate paper from the tax filing process [...]

Any.do is an award-winning to-do list, calendar, planner and reminders app that can help you to increase your productivity and stay on top of things. The app allows you to add tasks and manage shared projects, and to create a prioritised to-do list that you can actually stick to. The app also gives you classic, location-based, recurring, missed call, and follow-up meeting reminders, while providing a calendar that can be turned into a powerful productivity tool.  You can also use hands-free to add tasks and voice commands to manage your to-do lists. The Any.do app is available on the Google Play [...]

Security researchers at Skurio Ltd have warned employees and customers of Thomas Cook to be vigilant after it detected the registration of 53 Thomas Cook-related domains in the week after the travel operator went into receivership. Phishing Risk The risk is that cyber-criminals may be seeking to exploit a search for information from customers and staff affected by the company’s collapse to launch phishing attacks.  For example, Thomas Cook-related domains that have been registered but don’t have a holding page or landing-page on them could be used to create a legitimate-looking email address as part of phishing attempts. German Site [...]

PayPal has announced that it is not going to be a part of the Switzerland-based Libra Association that is overseeing the introduction of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency. What Is Libra? Libra is a cryptocurrency, designed and coded by Facebook, that will enable payments to be made by a special phone app and by messaging services such as WhatsApp so that spending the new currency could be as easy and fast as texting.  Libra was announced as being targeted at the 1.7 billion adults worldwide who do not have a bank account (unbanked). Unlike other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Libra will offer the [...]

In a “post-truth” era, AI is one of the many protective tools and weapons involved in the battles that male up the current, ongoing “fake news” war. Fake News Fake news has become widespread in recent years, most prominently with the UK Brexit referendum, the 2017 UK general election, and the U.S. presidential election, all of which suffered interference in the form of so-called ‘fake news’ / misinformation spread via Facebook which appears to have affected the outcomes by influencing voters. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, where over 50 million Facebook profiles were illegally shared and harvested to build a software program [...]

Figures gathered by insurance broker Gallagher – through the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act – have shown that UK local authorities were hit by an average of 800 cyber-attacks every hour in the first six months of this year. Problem Could Be Bigger Than Figures Show The figures, which were based upon the 203 (out of 408) local authorities that responded, showed that there were more than 263 million incidents in the first six months of 2019.  This could mean that even though 76 local authorities reported a cyber-attack between January and June 2019, the fact that only half of UK local authorities responded [...]

Google has announced that in a series of steps starting in Chrome 79, all mixed content will gradually be blocked by default. What Is Mixed Content? Mixed content refers to the insecure http:// sub-resources that load into https:// pages, thereby creating a possible way in for attackers to compromise what appears to be a secure web page.  For example, this could be any audio, video, and images that are loaded insecurely from HTTP but appear as part of an HTTPS page when it loads.  Many browsers are already able to block other types of mixed content by default such as scripts [...]

New email client app 'Twobird' allows you to put all your emails in one place and create notes and reminders on the fly (and attaches the notes on emails). Twobird has been billed as “a new kind of email app” that offers email at the speed of live chat.  It includes all your everyday tools - writes emails, creates notes, set reminders and assign to-dos — all in your inbox. If, for example, if you’ve scheduled an appointment it will alert you at just the right time. Features include: - Remind: allowing you to schedule an email or note to [...]