Category: News
ShinyShiny snippets: Netflix password sharing crackdown to begin soon
Squid Game is the most popular series ever on Netflix. Image: Netflix Netflix's long-promised crackdown on password sharing will begin in the coming months, the firm says. The plan means members who want to share accounts with people outside of their household will face an extra fee. The move, aimed at…
ShinyShiny snippets: Sega buys Angry Birds creator, Rovio Entertainment
The maker of Angry Birds video games has agreed to be bought by the Japanese gaming giant behind the Sonic the Hedgehog character. Japan's Sega Sammy Holdings is paying €706m (£625m) for Finland-based Rovio Entertainment. Rovio has said Angry Birds was the first mobile game to be downloaded one billion times, and the brand has…
7 Common Cyber Threats That Can Affect Businesses and Individuals
As a modern business, cyber security is something you should be very concerned about. Unfortunately, criminals target businesses on an almost hourly basis, trying to steal money and information from them. Because most businesses store customer data online criminals make a habit out of targeting them as it enables them to steal information that can…
ShinyShiny snippets: ‘Russian and Chinese propaganda accounts thriving on Twitter’, says BBC
Hundreds of Russian and Chinese state propaganda accounts are thriving on Twitter after Elon Musk wiped out the team that fought these networks, the BBC has found. The unit worked to combat "information operations", coordinated campaigns by countries such as Russia, China, and Iran, made to influence public opinion and disrupt democracy. But experts and…
ShinyShiny snippets: Ford gets UK approval for hands-free driver assistance
Ford has received regulatory approval for the introduction of Level 2 hands-free advanced driver assistance – the first system of its kind approved in Europe. Drivers of 193,000 BlueCruise-equipped Ford and Lincoln vehicles have already driven more than 64 million hands-free miles (102 million kilometres) in Canada and the US, where BlueCruise was also recently named…
ShinyShiny snippets: Elon Musk admits running Twitter has been ‘quite painful’
Elon Musk and James Clayton. Image: BBC Elon Musk has said running Twitter has been "quite painful" and "a rollercoaster", in a last-minute interview with the BBC. The multi-billionaire entrepreneur also said that he would sell the company if the right person came along. The interview, aired live from Twitter HQ,…
ShinyShiny snippets: Amazon’s Book Depository to close down
UK-based online store Book Depository is being closed down by its parent company, the US technology giant Amazon. Book Depository has told customers it will cease operations later this month after almost two decades in business. It comes after Amazon announced plans to cut thousands of jobs as it shakes up its businesses globally. The…
ShinyShiny snippets: TikTok fined £12.7m by UK’s data watchdog
TikTok has been fined £12.7m for failing to protect the privacy of children, the UK's data watchdog has said. An investigation conducted by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) found the video-sharing app breached data protection law. It says the breaches happened between May 2018 and July 2020. TikTok says it disagrees with the ICO's decision.…
ShinyShiny snippets: Elon Musk among those calling for halt in AI training
Key figures in artificial intelligence want training of powerful AI systems to be suspended amid fears of a threat to humanity. They have signed an open letter warning of potential risks, and say the race to develop AI systems is out of control. Twitter chief Elon Musk is among those who want training of AIs…
ShinyShiny snippets: Pope Francis in puffer jacket was (not surprisingly) a deep fake
On March 25, 2023, a photo that appeared to show 86-year-old Pope Francis out and about in a fashionable white puffer jacket went viral on social media. As many who saw it suspected, it was actually a deepfake image created via artificial intelligence (AI). It originally appeared on Reddit in the r/midjourney subreddit. Midjourney is an app that generates images from natural-language…
