Silicon UK Pulse: Your Tech News Update: Episode 13

Welcome to Silicon UK Pulse

This is your weekly round-up of the top tech news stories.

Every Friday, Silicon UK surveys the week’s tech news.

Stay up-to-date with what’s happening in your industry or sector.

I’m James Marriott with all the big technology news from the last week.

Welcome to Silicon UK Pulse

I’m James Marriott with all the big technology news from the last week.

The Ministry of Defence is investigating after a ‘small number’ of emails were accidentally sent to a Russian ally.

The MOD launched the probe after emails containing classified information were mistakenly sent to a close ally of Russia due to a typing error.

Defence ministry officials were trying to send messages to the US military, whose internet domains end with “.mil”, but instead typed “.ml”, which is the top-level domain for the country Mali, which has ties to Russia.

Two ambulance services in the UK have been affected by a cyberattack.

Reports say South Central Ambulance Service and South Western Ambulance Service, were left unable to access electronic patient records after the attack on a supplier.

The services cover Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset, the Isles of Scilly and Wiltshire.

An £8 million pound project for hydrogen-powered transport developments in the North East has been given the go-ahead.

The Government confirmed the funding this week.

The Tees Valley hydrogen transport hub will develop supermarket delivery trucks and airport ground vehicles that run on the gas.

Four publicly accessible hydrogen refuelling stations will also be created in the project.

Now since we last spoke – Twitter has become X.

Tweets are now Xs. Retweets are reshares. Twitter Blue is now X Blue. Everything else was pretty much as it was.

Unsurprisingly though, the change has met its fair share of criticism and controversy.

The company actually landed in trouble after putting up a giant flashing X sign on the roof of its headquarters in San Francisco.

Authorities say X Corp, as it’s now known, didn’t have permission for the giant illuminated installation, so it had to come down.

Before that, they got in trouble while taking the old Twitter sign down and had to abandon it with just the letters ‘e’ and ‘r’ still up.

As ever, plenty more news floating around about Twit.. er, sorry, X.

It’s threatening to sue an anti-hate organisation which criticised the platform.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate has offices in the US and the UK.

X Corp has accused the group of “unlawful acts” to “improperly gain access” to its data.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk says users of the platform have reached a ‘new high’ despite everything.

He shared a graph on X claiming 541 users but didn’t indicate any sort of time frame.

That’s as the honeymoon officially comes to an end for Threads – that’s Meta’s Twitter rival – or X rival, I should say.

It saw an explosion in sign ups after launching, some 112 million.

But half of those have now left.

The app had an update recently, and Mark Zuckerberg says changes are planned to help keep users.

Now, could Facetime and iMessage be withdrawn by Apple in the UK?

That’s what the tech firm is threatening.

It’s all over controversial changes the Government is planning to the Investigatory Powers Act.

Reports say Apple has warned that the planned changes could affect iPhone users’ privacy going forward, which it wouldn’t accept.

In turn that could force it to withdraw security features, which could ultimately lead to the closure in the UK of services like FaceTime and iMessage.

Quick update now on the ongoing Microsoft deal to buy games developer Activision Blizzard.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority has asked for public comment on whether the takeover should be allowed to go ahead.

It has also published Microsoft’s arguments as part of its reconsideration of the planned acquisition.

Microsoft is saying the $69 billion deal should be approved by the regulator in light of changed circumstances.

Meanwhile – The EU says it’ll investigate how Microsoft integrates Teams into Office 365.

The European Commission announced this week that it has opened an investigation into “possible anticompetitive practices by Microsoft regarding Teams.”

It’s not a surprise – the investigation has been expected.

Earlier this month it was revealed Microsoft was reportedly facing a new antitrust investigation over the integration after remedy talks had failed.

In the US, more people are seeing a doctor through their Amazon service.

Amazon Clinic as it’s known has been rolled out to all 50 states and Washington DC.

It provides video consultations and messaging services for what it calls ‘common health conditions.’

The convenience of Amazon Clinic is apparently very popular, with customers giving it a 96% customer satisfaction rating.

People in Hertfordshire have had their broadband restored after it went off – because of rats chewing the cables.

Openreach described it as a ‘rare’ incident.

Engineers worked through the night to repair the damage in the Tring area of the county.

Apparently nesting rats had chewed their way through ducting, outer casing and multiple cables in order to take down people’s connections.

And could this be the beginning of the end for Postman Pat and his black and white cat?

Well, this week saw the first Royal Mail deliveries done by a drone.

This is in the remote Orkney Islands, off the coast of Scotland.

Royal Mail has teamed up with drone services provider, Skyports Drone Services, to launch the fully electric drone deliveries in Orkney.

The project will initially operate for three months, with the intent to extend in the future.

That’s the latest from Silicon UK Pulse – for more tech news and features, head to silicon.co.uk