I know the last thing anyone wants to talk about is GDPR, but judging by the amount of emails I received about it, the Dixons Carphone data breach was the biggest story of the week, so that’s what we’re opening with.

 

In July 2017, attackers gained access to the payment card details of a staggering 5.9 million customers alongside an additional 1.2 million records containing personal information such as names, addresses and email addresses.

 

Despite the criminals infiltrating the database 12 months ago, the company only disclosed the findings on Monday. It’s still unclear when they were alerted to the breach but it’s the first high-profile case since the GDPR came into force, which states “if the breach is likely to result in a high risk of adversely affecting individuals’ rights and freedoms, you must also inform those individuals without undue delay.”

 

Dixons Carphone CEO Alex Burdock told reporters that only details from 105,000 cards included in the breach would have the potential to be used fraudulently, as they belonged to individuals living outside the EU and lacked chip and pin protection. However, this might not be enough to stop the company receiving a €20million fine.

In other data breach news, the ICO has finally fined Yahoo for failing to protect the personal information of 515,000 British citizens in its 2014 data breach. An investigation into the unprecedented breach of over 3 billion accounts found Yahoo’s UK subsidiary guilty of failing to ensure proper data protection protocols were followed, which allowed hackers to make off with both personal, identifiable information as well as unencrypted passwords and answers to security questions. Early this year a judge ruled they would also be facing legal action in the US as a result of the breach.

It’s been a busy week for everyone’s favorite real-life Bond villain, Elon Musk. The Boring Company’s $500 ‘Not-A-Flamethrower’ flamethrowers sold out in three days when they were released at the start of the year and on June 9th buyers were finally able to pick up their purchases at a ‘Not-A-Flamethrower pickup party'.

 

Cue social media platforms becoming awash with videos of people trying to toast a marshmallow on a stick with an actual, real-life flamethrower.

 

Earlier in the year, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago sought to introduce a bill in California that would ban the unregulated sale of flamethrowers to the public. However, the proposal faced opposition from none other than the gun lobby and was ultimately buried this week.

 

It doesn’t stop there though. In the same week Musk announced “difficult, but necessary” job cuts that will affect 9% of the 40,000 strong Tesla workforce, his underground transportation and flamethrower production organization ‘The Boring Company’ won a contract to build a high-speed rail line that stretches from O’Hare International Airport to downtown Chicago. The trains will cut journey time from 40 minutes to just 12 and tickets with cost an estimated $25. Musk or the Chicago Mayor are yet to announce a timeline or how much this project might cost.

Samsung has just announced that it is going to be powering all its factories and offices in Europe, US and China with 100% renewable energy by 2020. While this is undoubtedly a step in the right direction for the company who already trail their competitors in actively working to offset their contribution to climate change, they’ve only explicitly announced this policy for 17 of their 38 buildings across the globe. They have also committed to the construction of solar and geothermal energy plants in South Korea to align with the government’s pledge of increasing the use of renewable energy.

As it’s been a couple of weeks since our last News Roundup, today’s mergers and acquisitions span the last two weeks.

The biggest acquisition was Microsoft’s $7.5billion purchase of the OpenSource repository GitHub. Not content with that, the company also announced that they’ve acquired a number of gaming studios. The United States District Court has finally ruled in favor of the AT&T acquisition of Time Warner, Splunk has snapped up VictorOps, Smoothwall has bought Future Digital, Tableau now owns Empirical Systems, Patreon has picked up Kit, Workday has snaffled Rallyteam.

Uber have come under fire this week for filing a patent that would allow the use of artificial intelligence to help drivers identify how drunk their potential customers might be before deciding to pick them up.

 

While stopping drivers from having to clean sick up on the back seat of their car isn’t a bad idea in theory, critics have argued that this could lead to the exploitation of potentially vulnerable people; 31 Uber drivers in the US have already been convicted of false imprisonment and rape. There are also fears around the policy’s potential to discriminate against people with disabilities and a number of privacy concerns due to the information Uber have proposed it needs to collect.

 

The company has already been in trouble for illegally collecting data on passengers and drivers through its ‘God View’ software. They then suffered a data breach where hackers gained access to information about 57 million passengers and drivers. To make matters worse, they paid hackers $100,000 to conceal the fact and took a further 12 months to disclose the breach.

In an attempt to boost the UK tech scene in the wake of Brexit, the notoriously anti-immigrant government used London Tech Week to announce the launch of a new ‘startup visa’. Designed specifically for those wanting to start a business in the UK, the home secretary stated the new visa “will help to ensure we continue to attract the best global talent and maintain the UK’s position as a world-leading destination for innovation and entrepreneurs”.

However, it’s not all smiles in government land. Legal challenges have been bought against police forces in South Wales and London over their use of automated facial recognition technology. The complainants argue that this Big Brother style technology violates their privacy rights as the surveillance technique is unregulated, a claim backed by a number of human rights organizations.

 

This isn’t the first time the government’s attitude to biometrics has come under fire. After continuously delaying the release of their biometrics strategy for the past five years, they’ve finally announced it will be in the public domain later this month. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…

If, like me, your ambivalence towards football has been further cemented by the fact you’ve also pulled a terrible team in the office sweepstake, you might want to skip this last bit (and avoid all social media/television/conversation for the next month).

 

For those Russian readers of ours that weren’t lucky enough to get tickets to the Morocco vs. Iran match, don’t fear; the Krestovsky Stadium has been kitted out with a number of high-definition cameras that will broadcast the match via a 5G test network to residents in Moscow. A dedicated ‘5G zone’ will be set up in the town center that supporters can head down to with their VR glasses and have a 360-degree view of the match.

 

The tournament will also be the first World Cup to trial the use of the apparently controversial Video Assistant Referee. Designed to ensure decisions are fair and that match officials don’t miss potentially game-changing fouls (because we don’t need to be talking about Maradona’s Hand of God for another 32 years…) the use case is clear, but the technology is still relatively new and both football fans and match officials are still unsure about how it should be implemented to ensure it provides the most value.

 

In the meantime, enjoy this video of a 3D printed robot learning to play football.