BATTERYFORPC BLOG
Could reading instruction manuals become a thing of the past?
When you last bought a new electronic device did you look at the instruction manual? If your answer is a resounding “no”, then you are not alone. Studies show that many of us don’t bother to read the user guide. One UK survey found that one in five of us skips the manual, while a US report said it was as high as 50%. Caspar Herzberg, boss of UK industrial software firm Aveva, says he likes ... Read more
2024-08-07 19:35:31
Watchdog to fine NHS IT firm £6m after medical records hack
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has provisionally imposed a £6m fine on an NHS software provider over a data breach which affected more than 80,000 people. The breach took place in 2022 and included sensitive personal information including medical records and "how to gain entry to the homes of 890 people". But the ICO stressed it was a provisional fine, and it would wai ... Read more
2024-08-06 20:02:47
Is carbon capture an efficient way to tackle CO2?
It could be a scene from science fiction. Towering over dark, mossy lava fields are stacks of noisy machines the size of shipping containers, domes, and zig-zagging silver pipes. Found 30km (19 miles) southwest of Iceland’s capital Reykjavik, this is the world’s largest direct air capture (DAC) facility. Called Mammoth, it has been developed by Swiss firm Climeworks. It has been running for ... Read more
2024-08-05 19:33:19
Police investigate Amanda Abbington 'death threat'
Police are investigating a reported death threat sent to actress Amanda Abbington. She received an email warning she would "die on stage" unless she retracted a complaint about her former Strictly Come Dancing partner Giovanni Pernice, according to the Sun newspaper. A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said officers were called to the Park Theatre in London - where Abbington is star ... Read more
2024-08-04 19:33:41
The strange tastes of a restaurant at the end of the world
When your restaurant is high in the Arctic Circle, and most ingredients have to come in on a boat or a plane, you have to get pretty creative with your fine dining. That means seal, whale, reindeer – and plankton? The sommelier warns me about the buckshot. "The kitchen is double-checking, but you never know," she adds, pointing out that a ptarmigan shot by a local hunter yielded the exq ... Read more
2024-07-30 03:38:34
CrowdStrike IT outage affected 8.5 million Windows devices, Microsoft says
Microsoft says it estimates that 8.5m computers around the world were disabled by the global IT outage. It’s the first time a figure has been put on the incident and suggests it could be the worst cyber event in history. The glitch came from a security company called CrowdStrike which sent out a corrupted software update to its huge number of customers. Microsoft, which is helping custome ... Read more
2024-07-21 19:21:07
Is AI the answer for better government services?
Long before ChatGPT came along, governments were keen to use chatbots to automate their services and advice. Those early chatbots "tended to be simpler, with limited conversational abilities," says Colin van Noordt, a researcher on the use of AI in government, and based in the Netherlands. But the emergence of generative AI in the last two years, has revived a vision of more efficien ... Read more
2024-07-08 19:07:45
Amazon at 30: What next for 'The Everything Company'?
Three decades on from the day it began, it is hard to get your head around the scale of Amazon. Consider its vast warehouse in Dartford, on the outskirts of London. It has millions of stock items, with hundreds of thousands of them bought every day - and it takes two hours from the moment something is ordered, the company says, for it to be picked, packed and sent on its way. Now, picture th ... Read more
2024-07-07 21:58:13
How Microsoft and Nvidia bet correctly to leapfrog Apple
Life comes at you fast. Last month, AI chip giant Nvidia briefly became the world’s richest company, overtaking Microsoft, which had in turn risen above Apple. When this news was mentioned on stage at a tech industry event I attended in Copenhagen, there was spontaneous applause from the audience. As I write, Nvidia is now back in second place, after a fall in its share price took its combi ... Read more
2024-07-02 20:36:58
Why data is being stored in glass and holograms
The year 2039 might seem like a long way off, but Ian Crawford is already planning for it. It will mark the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two - a big year for his employer, the Imperial War Museum. Mr Crawford is chief information officer at the museum, and oversees a project to digitise its huge collection of pictures, audio and film. With a collection of around 24,000 hou ... Read more
2024-06-11 18:56:01