Chief scribe
It is with great sadness that we have to pass on the news that Linda Bell, former Chair of Bristol Wireless, passed away in her sleep on 25th January 2018 at the nursing home where she had been since Christmas 2017. Linda had a long association with Bristol’s community and voluntary section, being perhaps best […]
Bristol Wireless is pleased to announce that funding has been secured for 2 years to keep the network running courtesy of the University of the West of England (UWE) and High Tech Bristol & Bath CIC. The funding will be used to ensure the Bristol Wireless volunteers can continue to operate the network – including […]
Cryptography is vital today to protect information online and keep it secure, whether that’s for ordinary folks doing online banking and shopping or for commercial organisations and governments wishing to keep commercial and state secrets confidential. However, the advent of powerful quantum computers might leave such information vulnerable to attack. To counter such a threat […]
Welsh Assembly member Russell George, who is chair of the Assembly’s Economy, Infrastructure &Skills Committee, is hosting a Broadband Summit to be held Monday 20th March 2017. Mr George has been a long-term campaigner for improved broadband coverage in North Powys and at the summit community leaders and representatives from across the area will be […]
Whenever your correspondent visits Malmesbury in Wiltshire, it has an unhurried air. This is in spite of some past events that happened very quickly but added to its history, such as Eilmer, the local 11th century monk at the local abbey who made an early yet unsuccessful attempt at a gliding flight using wings, or […]
In the spirit of the 18th Century Longitude Prize – a competition that set the task of determining a ship’s exact location at sea – NESTA‘s Longitude Explorer Prize focuses on how to solve a contemporary challenge using technology. The Longitude Explorer Prize challenges young people to develop innovative, practical solutions that use the Internet […]
Germany’s Federal Government wants to make administrative data accessible as the “raw material of the future” and has published a draft for an open data law. Unprocessed electronically stored data from federal authorities should be made available to the public free of charge, transparently and in a machine-readable format. The Federal Cabinet also wants to […]
A Raspberry Pi is a low-priced base for IoT projects. However, with these computers attackers also find systems that are easy to capture for botnets. An update for Raspbian should make attacks more difficult in future.
Yesterday the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced a £7 mn. programme to arm young Londoners with the skills needed to get jobs in the city’s thriving digital, technology and creative sectors. Called the Digital Talent Programme, the scheme will have a particular focus on boosting the proportion of women in the industry (currently just […]
Russian security software company Kaspersky has announced the development of a secure operating system. Installed on a network switch, this K-OS has been designed from scratch without borrowing from Linux, yesterday’s Le Monde Informatique reports In security as doubtless elsewhere we are never better looked after than by ourselves. That’s what Kaspersky must be thinking […]
Bristol Wireless member Nigel Legg writes: The focus of the fourth Bristol & Bath IoT meetup on Monday 21st November was security – making your things secure. There have been some DDoS attacks that used insecure internet-connected consumer goods to create botnets, and Carl Shaw from Cerberus Security Labs talked us through a process to […]
Some 15,000 households in Stoke-on-Trent (population: 251,000) don’t have an internet connection at present, but Stoke-on-Trent City Council wants to change that, according to yesterday’s Sentinel, by offering cut-price broadband deals. The local authority estimates estimates this “digital divide” is costing the Potteries’ poorest families up to £21 mn. per annum and is looking to […]
Yesterday’s Wales Online reports that Swansea will be first cities in Britain where residents will be able to enjoy ultra-fast broadband with download speeds of up to 330Mbps, i.e. up to 10 times the UK’s current average download speed. Details are still scant, but “thousands” of Swansea premises will be able to access this new […]
Broadband “not-spots” across Shropshire will be tackled in a £12 mn. scheme to connect more than 16,000 properties, Saturday’s Shropshire Star reports. Phase 2b of the Connecting Shropshire broadband programme is now being launched with the emphasis on bringing decent broadband to those Salopians who currently don’t have it. Of the 16,000 properties being targeted, […]
Russia’s legislators have drafted a bill (PDF – in Russian) that will boost free software on many levels within the country’s public sector. The draft, approved by the Duma (lower house of parliament) in mid-October, requires the public sector to prioritise free software over proprietary alternatives, gives priority to local IT businesses offering free software […]
The Centre for Modelling & Simulation (CFMS), a not-for-profit organisation that specialises in high value design capability, which is based at the Bristol & Bath Science Park, launched a new supercomputer last week. Announced in June 2016, CFMS awarded the contract for the refresh of its high performance computing infrastructure to Cray Inc., a global […]
MTL Group company NfP Services are hosting a free CiviCRM seminar at their offices at 340 Gray’s Inn Road London, WC1X 8BG (map). The seminar will also include refreshments and lunch and will run from 10.00 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. During this session the organisers will be demonstrating CiviCRM’s amazing functionality and flexibility and explaining […]
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has announced that Alessandro Rubini has stepped down as Vice-president of the FSFE. Alessandro, an electronic engineer with Ph. D. in a computer science, brought invaluable insight to the internal discussions within the FSFE and has worked tirelessly to push the Free Software envelope in Italy and the rest […]
French railway company SNCF has announced that free and unlimited wifi is available at 180 French railway stations and deployment is currently underway at stations in the Ile-de-France region. Wifi access is available in station passenger buildings; this excludes platforms, subways and station forecourts). It will also be available at underground stations in the Ile-de-France […]
Today Collabora announced that Pydio 7, the latest release of the popular open source synchronisation & sharing platform, includes LibreOffice Online functionality created by Collabora Productivity. Collabora Productivity is the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the cloud, providing a range of products and consulting to enterprise and government. It’s a leading contributor to the […]