Looking back, 2014 was not a good year for keeping things safe under digital lock and key. If a score was being kept, it might seem that the cybercriminals are in the lead, despite the valiant efforts — and own goals — from the cybersecurity profession worldwide. Cast your mind back
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People of the western world have been making resolutions for the new year for over 4 000 years. The Babylonians, along with the Romans who later developed the idea further, made resolutions in the hope of favourable returns from the gods. In the current day, self-interest has
Additive manufacturing – or 3D printing – is 30 years old this year. Today, it’s found not just in industry but in households, as the price of 3D printers has fallen below US$1 000. Knowing you can print almost anything, not just marks on paper, opens up unlimited opportunities for us to
Fast-growing African-focused tower operator IHS Holding has won another deal to operate towers on behalf of a mobile operator, this time involving 1 100 sites from Bharti Airtel in Zambia and Rwanda. The latest deal expands IHS’s tower footprint in Africa to 21 000. Operators typically sell
For years, the development of full artificial intelligence has been the brass ring of computer science. So many of our machines already “think” for themselves in terms of repetitive duties based on human programming, of course. But when the day comes when computers can actually interpret
It is now a journalistic cliché to remark that George Orwell’s 1984 was prophetic. The novel was so prophetic that its prophecies have become modern-day prosaisms. Reading it now is a tedious experience. Against the omniscient marvels of today’s surveillance state, Big Brother’s fixtures – the watchful
The famous theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, has revived the debate on whether our search for improved artificial intelligence will one day lead to thinking machines that will take over from us. The British scientist made the claim during a wide-ranging interview with the BBC. Hawking has the motor neurone
UK’s telephone companies have yet again announced inflation-busting increases in telephone line rental charges. Why, in a world that is increasingly mobile-first – or even mobile-only – are we still paying so much for landlines? The latest figures from UK telecoms regulator Ofcom show that around 16% of
Alan Turing is one of the world’s best known mathematicians, and probably the best known in the past century. This is partly for his work on cracking German codes in World War 2, and partly for his arrest, conviction and punishment for homosexuality in the 1950s. The mathematics that made him
Samsung’s third-quarter results were just as bad as the company warned as tougher competition caused profits to tumble by 74% in its mobile business. Overall, the Korean electronics giant on Wednesday reported a 60% drop in company-wide operating profit — its fourth consecutive decline and