Today the Bristol Post reports that the world’s first cyber crime fighting training centre has opened with the aim to help businesses, government agencies and even police forces keep ahead of this allegedly growing threat. The £5 mn. centre, at Aztec West on the outskirts of the city in South Gloucestershire, was officially opened by […]
A new way to run a quantum algorithm using much simpler methods than previously thought has been discovered by a team of researchers at the University of Bristol, according to a university press release. These findings could dramatically bring forward the development of a ‘quantum computer’ capable of beating a conventional computer. Theories show how […]
We’ve gleaned from our friends at Connecting Bristol that online takeaway meals ordering outfit Just Eat is sponsoring a hackday this coming Saturday, 26th July at the Engine Shed in Bristol from 8.00 am to 9.00 pm. The programme of events is: 8.00am – 8.30am: Breakfast 8.30am – 9.30am: Team formation and pitching 9.30am – […]
Yesterday, while David Cameron was rearranging his Cabinet, one significant piece of news (apart from the DRIP Bill. Ed.) seems to have escaped the personality-obsessed British media. The news was the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills announced that Companies House is to make all of its digital data available free of charge. It has […]
Bristol City Council is working with the Future Cities Catapult and the Connected Digital Economy Catapult on a new open data initiative that will help Bristolians improve their city with the help of local authority data. The partners are working together to release Bristol civic data sets such as traffic management and land use databases […]
Were you aware that Bristol’s University of the West of England (UWE) has a Professor of Unconventional Computing? Professor Andrew Adamatzky (for it is he! Ed.) and a German colleague have recently been engaged in some interesting research according to a UWE press release. Professor Andrew Adamatzky and Theresa Schubert (Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany) have constructed […]
Germany’s Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has filed a lawsuit against the German Federal government and other agencies in conjunction with human rights organisation the Liga für Menschenrechte e. V. (League for Human Rights). The government and its agencies are being charged with violating citizens’ personal lives by security services surveillance and toleration of such surveillance, […]
An international research group of scientists and engineers led by the University of Bristol has made an important advance towards a quantum computer by shrinking key components and integrating them into a microchip.
At the start of the week, China suffered a major internet outage for several hours, Le Monde Informatique reported yesterday. Experts are wondering about the cause; was it hacking (to use the verb ‘to hack’ in its Daily Mail sense. Ed) or a technical problem with the country’s censorship mechanisms? Last Tuesday more than two-thirds […]
Coming soon: the fair city of Manchester is holding its first Free Software festival between Monday 3rd February and Saturday, 8th February 2014. To quote from the FSFE Manchester website: We are delighted to announce that FSFE-mcr and friends will be running a whole week of Free Software fun in Manchester’s very first Free Software […]
The initiatives for encouraging young people to get into programming are multiplying, writes French news site Le Monde Informatique. With CodeCombat the work is both study and play. Now released as open source, CodeCombat is a video game devoted to teaching programming. The platform is multi-player and uses CoffeeScript, a programming language that transcompiles to […]
Bristol University seems to be doing a fair bit at present on cyber security matters. Following on from last week’s research contributions to an EU cyber security attacks white paper (news passim), the university has now advised the European Union’s Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) on how to protect the personal data of millions […]
Bath University’s press office reports that computing student Robin Lee single-handedly solved 9 out of 11 computing problems to win the first ever United Kingdom & Ireland Programming Contest (UKIEPC) held on Saturday 5th October. Robin, a final year Computer Science degree student, worked alone during the five-hour contest which saw 55 teams in five […]
We have some really talented people volunteering at Bristol Wireless. One of them is Jules, our treasurer. Jules got really frustrated at the lack of a decent accounts package for Linux. There is GNUCash of course, which we’ve reviewed in the past, and KMyMoney. However, neither of these is really up for doing a proper […]
Following recent revelations about massive extent of telecommunications and internet traffic surveillance carried on by the USA’s NSA and the UK’s GCHQ (news passim), revelations have now emerged in Le Monde, one of France’s leading national newspapers. In a post today entitled “Revelations about the French Big Brother”, Le Monde reveals that France has a […]
As an organisation, Bristol Wireless has been closely involved in campaigning against the UK government’s plans for mass communications surveillance under the Communications Data Bill, also known as the “Snooper’s Charter” by its opponents (news passim). It now appears that all this work might have been in vain. Amongst the revelations that have come to […]
In the midst of all the recent revelations about the US National Security Agency’s Prism surveillance programme and GCHQ’s Tempora snooping on telecommunications and internet traffic, comes a small but welcome bit of good news. the Sydney Morning Herald reports that a controversial Australian government data retention scheme that would have required Australians’ internet and […]
This Saturday 15th June a Raspberry Pi boot camp will be taking place at At-Bristol, Anchor Road, Bristol BS1 5DB (map) from 10.30 am to 4.30 pm. Entry to the event is free, but does not include access to the exhibits of At-Bristol. The event aims to provide fun hands-on workshops for beginners through to […]
Yesterday, the Bristol Wireless members of the production crew returned to Bristol from this year’s Barncamp event (the fifth that has been organised. Ed.) after clearing out all the kit. Barncamp is a joint event organised by HacktionLab, Bristol Wireless and FLOSS Manuals, and has been described by our friend Charlie as follows: …hanging out […]
The Centre for Machine Vision (CMV), part of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, is one of only a handful of centres in the world dedicated to exploring the potential of machine vision. It is conducting some interesting research at present into enabling computers to detect human emotions, as well as detecting threats to health and possible […]