Queen Elizabeth II -- a life packed with technological change
As you've probably learned elsewhere already, Queen Elizabeth II died yesterday at the age of 96 after an extraordinarily long reign.
For anyone under the age of 70 she has been the constant center of life in the UK, a relic of an earlier era, perhaps, but she's also lived through an age of huge and rapid technological advances.
Western Europe dominates broadband speed tables
Western European countries take seven of the top ten fastest spots in the world for broadband, with Macau, Taiwan and Japan the only locations elsewhere to make it into the top ten fastest in the world.
The five places with the fastest internet in the world are: Macau (262.74Mbps), the Channel Island of Jersey (256.59Mbps), Iceland (216.56Mbps), Liechtenstein (166.22Mbps) and Gibraltar (159.90Mbps).
YouTube TV let me watch New York Mets games from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean while on a Royal Caribbean cruise
With COVID-19 pretty much over now, I decided to take my first vacation since the pandemic started (I am vaccinated and double-boosted). And so, I booked a Royal Caribbean cruise to Bermuda (Enchantment of the Seas) that left from Baltimore. I returned from that vacation this week -- the trip was quite lovely, as is typical with Royal Caribbean.
Believe it or not, this was my 10th Royal Caribbean cruise! Normally, I would use it as an opportunity to unplug from the internet and relax offline. This time, however, things were a bit different. You see, I adopted a chihuahua from a shelter a few years back, and I wanted to keep an eye on her by way of Wi-Fi cameras. She's a great dog, but very scared and skittish -- I needed to know she was OK at all times.
Over 65s feel excluded by online brands
New research from customer engagement platform Twilio shows older consumers are being left behind when businesses digitize their customer facing operations.
Although consumers over 65 hold significant digital shopping power, with 76 percent relying on online shopping in the UK, only 12 percent say they feel understood by brands they interact with digitally.
Now that 5G is becoming widespread what can we expect from 6G? [Q&A]
The 5G rollout is continuing, but technology companies, academics, service providers, and even governments are already starting to look ahead to the next generation of mobile technology.
So, what is 6G and what benefits will it offer over earlier standards? We spoke to Roger Nichols, 6G program manager at Keysight Technologies, to find out.
Wordle finally offers to sync your game stats between devices
Word-guessing game Wordle took the world by storm, so it was little surprise when it was snapped up by a big name -- the New York Times. There were promises that the game would not be changed and that it would remain free, and players raised a collective eyebrow skeptically.
Anyone playing the game in the last few days will probably have noticed something. While the NYT is not going back on the promises it made, players are being encouraged to create a New York Times account. The carrot being dangled as an incentive is the ability to have game statistics synchronized between devices.
Ten years of IPv6 and how it's changed the internet [Q&A]
The IPv6 protocol reached its 10th birthday in June this year. By using more address bits than the earlier IPv4 it opened up the way for more connected devices.
But IPv6 has other benefits too. We spoke to Akamai fellow and chief architect Erik Nygren to find out more about them and how they've changed the internet.
5G could boost the UK economy by billions but more investment is needed
The benefits of 5G could be worth up to £7bn ($8.5bn) a year to the UK economy by 2030, but more needs to be done to ensure the country doesn't miss out on the benefits.
Research from Vodafone shows that while the 5G rollout has so far focused on major cities, towns and smaller cities are at risk of losing out.
How web scraping has gone from niche to mainstream [Q&A]
Web scraping -- collecting data from websites -- has been around almost as long as the internet has existed. But recently it's gone from a little-known niche to a serious activity, using automation to collect large amounts of information.
We spoke to Julius Černiauskas, CEO of data acquisition company Oxylabs to find out more about web scraping and how it has evolved.
New UK data laws set to make annoying cookie pop-ups crumble
Website pop-ups asking you to consent to cookies have become a regular -- if irritating -- feature for European internet users since the introduction of GDPR in 2018.
As part of a post Brexit shake up of data law the UK government has announced that its Data Reform Bill will cut down on the number of times these 'user consent' boxes will be shown.
How to enable the secret side search feature in Chrome
It is easy to perform searches in Chrome, but you can make things easier. You probably currently either launch Google (or your preferred search engine) in a new tab, or just type a search term in the address bar, but there is another somewhat secret option.
Google’s browser has an optional search sidebar that not very many people know about. Called simply Side Search, this useful left-hand panel makes it easy to explore search results at speed.
DuckDuckGo has been quietly permitting Microsoft trackers in its 'private' web browser
Many internet users with concerns about online privacy have turned to DuckDuckGo with the impression that the browser will enable them to enjoy the web without having their activity tracked. But a discovery by a security researcher reveals that things are not as private as users would have hoped and expected.
DuckDuckGo was spotted allowing data to be transmitted via Microsoft trackers to LinkedIn and Bing ad domains. What's more, DuckDuckGo admits that an agreement exists between itself and Microsoft that allows trackers from the Windows-maker on third-party sites.
Consumers want digital identity verification from online brands
Providing a digital identity to create an online account or complete a transaction is becoming more commonplace globally and consumers are now expecting this as part of their engagement with a business.
Research carried out by Opinium for Jumio surveyed 8,000 adult consumers split evenly across the UK, US, Singapore and Mexico. It finds that 57 percent now say they have to use their digital identity 'constantly' or 'often' to access their online accounts.
Rise of the bots -- 42.3 percent of internet traffic in 2021 wasn't human
The latest Bad Bot Report from Imperva shows that bots are an increasingly significant part of the web, accounting for over 42 percent of traffic overall.
More concerning still is that bad bots accounted for a record-setting 27.7 percent of all global website traffic in 2021, up from 25.6 percent in 2020. The three most common bot attacks are account takeover, content or price scraping, and scalping to obtain limited-availability items.
How you can take back control of your online data [Q&A]
If you use the internet then it's certain that some organization somewhere is storing data about you. Indeed research shows that people are happy to share information in exchange for a better consumer experience.
However, that data is still yours, so how can you understand what information you're giving away and how can you take better control?
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