BATTERYFORPC BLOG
Google will spend £730m to 'reinvigorate' its UK offices
Google is backing a return to the office with an investment that will expand its UK capacity by 50% and "reinvigorate" the work environment. The search giant is spending £730m ($1bn) and expects headcount to rise from 6,400 to 10,000. It is buying one of the London sites, Central Saint Giles, in which it is currently a tenant. Google's UK boss Ronan Harris told the BBC the investment ... Read more
2022-01-16 23:19:40
Tech Tent: Has Theranos changed Silicon Valley?
Elizabeth Holmes told investors she could diagnose hundreds of diseases with just a few drops of blood. She couldn't. Last week she was found guilty of fraud. But with so much money sloshing around in Silicon Valley, will the verdict change anything? On this week's Tech Tent, we speak to people who think the Theranos debacle could be good for Silicon Valley in the long term - and to some who don ... Read more
2022-01-14 19:16:30
Meta faces billion-pound class-action case
Up to 44 million UK Facebook users could share £2.3bn in damages, according to a competition expert intending to sue parent company Meta. Dr Liza Lovdahl Gormsen alleges Meta "abused its market dominance" to set an "unfair price" for free use of Facebook - UK users' personal data. She intends to bring the case to the Competition Appeal Tribunal. A Meta representative said us ... Read more
2022-01-14 19:15:28
Ukraine cyber-attack: Russia to blame for hack, says Kyiv
The Ukrainian government has accused Russia of being behind Friday's cyber-attack on dozens of official websites. About 70 government websites were temporarily down, in the largest such attack on Ukraine in four years. Before the sites went offline, a message appeared warning Ukrainians to "prepare for the worst". Access to most of the sites was restored within hours. The US and Nato ... Read more
2022-01-14 19:15:10
Twitter agrees to Nigeria's demands to end seven-month ban
Twitter has agreed to register in Nigeria and pay local taxes to end a seven-month ban, the BBC understands. This will come as a big surprise to many Nigerians, who had assumed that the Nigerian government had backed down following months of negotiations, says the BBC's Nduka Orjinmo in Abuja. Nigeria suspended the social media firm last June after it deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhar ... Read more
2022-01-13 18:45:58
Apple removes Wordle clones from App Store
Multiple copycat versions of the hugely popular word game Wordle have been removed from the App Store, Apple has confirmed to BBC News. BBC News found several similar-looking games still available, however. A different game with the same name has been on the store for five years. On Google Play, the equivalent for Android phones, there were two games called Wordle but neither was similar. The n ... Read more
2022-01-13 18:45:35
Largest darknet stolen credit card site closes
The administrators of the largest illegal marketplace on the darknet for stolen credit cards are retiring after making an estimated $358m (£260m). The anonymous owners of UniCC thanked the criminal fraternity for their business, citing age and health for the closure. Many other illegal darknet marketplaces have also shut down voluntarily over the winter for unknown reasons. Police say the trend ... Read more
2022-01-13 18:45:06
Meta monopoly case from FTC given go-ahead
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been given the go-ahead to take Facebook to court over anti-trust rules. The competition and consumer regulator is trying to make Facebook - now called Meta - sell off Instagram and WhatsApp. A previous version of the same action failed last year because of a lack of detail. The FTC has since revised the case and a federal judge has said the claim is no ... Read more
2022-01-12 20:40:36
A year on, has Trump benefited from a Twitter ban?
In 2016, fresh from his stunning presidential victory, Donald Trump sat down to be interviewed on the prestigious US news show 60 Minutes. He was asked about his use of social media. "I'm going to be very restrained, if I use it at all," he said. That didn't quite work out. He used it continuously, racking up more than 20,000 tweets during his presidency. Mr Trump's strategy was to d ... Read more
2022-01-12 20:40:03
Fact-checkers label YouTube a 'major conduit of online disinformation'
Fact-checking organisations around the world say that YouTube is not doing enough to prevent the spread of misinformation on the platform. Some 80 groups have signed a joint letter to the Google-owned platform's chief executive Susan Wojcicki. The letter says it is "one of the major conduits of online disinformation and misinformation worldwide". The organisations want YouTube to take ... Read more
2022-01-12 20:39:36