Eye on UK growth, Facebook to hire 1,000

Facebook is about to go a hiring spree in the UK as it looks to increase its presence in the region. The company is looking to add approximately 1,000 new hires to its workforce. Most of these jobs are being said to be tasked with taking down harmful content on the social media platform. The addition of the new roles will take the total workforce in the UK to over 4,000.

Apart from taking down the harmful content like child pornography and terrorist propaganda, these new jobs will center on software engineering, product design, product development, and data science. The company has also said that it is looking to expand its London-based AI, augmented/virtual reality and engineering infrastructure teams.

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of the social media giant said: “The UK is a world leader in both innovation and creativity. That’s why I’m excited that we plan to hire an additional 1,000 people in London this year alone. London is home to Facebook’s biggest engineering hub outside the US and we’re committed to investing here for the long-term.”

Facebook has been the target of a massive backlash as communities all over the globe are starting to get concerned over the safety and security standards of the company. The new jobs in the UK will help address these issues to at least some extent.

UK’s Labour party is prepped up to acquire unoccupied retail properties

The UK’s Labour party decided to permit local authorities to purchase properties to uplift the country’s retail market.

The stores that are being purchased are unoccupied for not less than 12 months as mentioned by Financial Times. Approximately, 11.8 percent of stores across the UK are empty according to Local Data Company. It is speculated that in some towns the rate has crossed 20 percent with the highest being 33 percent. An estimated 29,000 retail units have been vacant for 12 months.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said, “Labour has a radical plan to revive Britain’s struggling high streets by turning the blight of empty shops into the heart of the high street, with thousands of new businesses and projects getting the chance to fulfill their potential.”

This is just part of the plan and others include an annual revaluation of business rates, free WiFi in town centers, free bus travel for under-25s, and ending ATM charges and Post Office closures.

Ion Fletcher, director of finance and commercial policy at the British Property Federation said that many landlords are giving away the land with little or no rent but it is unfortunate to know many landlords are finding it difficult to find an occupier even at zero rent.

UK’s NHS is setting up a National AI Lab

UK’s Health Secretary has announced a massive £250 million investment in Artificial Intelligence which will help the NHS system tap into the power of AI. The European superpower is setting up a National AI Lab to make this happen.

The Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: “The experts tell us that because of our NHS and our tech talent, the UK could be the world leader in these advances in healthcare, so I’m determined to give the NHS the chance to be the world leader in saving lives through artificial intelligence and genomics.”

The NHS Long Term Plan had earlier pledged to use AI to help clinicians eliminate various variations in care. This investment will augment the pledge.

The newly appointed Prime Minister Boris Johnson commented: “Today’s funding is not just about the future of care though. It will also boost the frontline by automating admin tasks and freeing up staff to care for patients.”

Through the National AI Lab, NHS plans to bring together the best minds in the country together along with path-breaking companies to solve the biggest challenges that plague the healthcare scenario in the country. Cancer detection, new dementia treatments, and a better designed personalized care are among the many things that the new AI Lab will be working towards.

UK multinational Pearson notifies customers about a data breach

The UK educational/publishing company has notified thousands of its users of a data breach. The data breach reportedly has mostly affected only its U.S. based customers.

The data breach has exposed data of approximately 13,000 schools and university AIMSweb 1.0 accounts. The exposed data included first names, last names, and in some cases date of birth and e-mail addresses.

Till now, there have been no reports on whether the leaked information was misused. But the affected customers were notified of the cybersecurity compromise. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the FBI notified Pearson about the breach on March 2019.

Pearson in its customer statement notification has said: “We have strict data protection in place and have reviewed this incident, found and fixed the vulnerability.” The company further apologized for the inconvenience in its statement.

Pearson had previously experienced a data breach in the later part of 2018. The news of recent breach comes close to the Capital One breach which was covered widely by news portals earlier this week. The Capital One data breach had affected roughly 100 million people in the U.S. and 6 million more in Canada.

O2 rolling out its 5G network in October for the UK

O2, The UK telecom services provider has announced that it will be launching its 5G network in October. The service will go live for 20 towns and cities in the UK this year.

The UK-based telecom company owned by Telefónica has said that the service will reach out to as many as 50 towns and cities by next summer. The company has announced that the coverage will begin from the key areas of Belfast, Edinburgh, London, Cardiff, Leeds, and Slough.

Mark Evans, the CEO of Telefónica UK said: “As we switch on our network across the country, our intelligence-led roll-out prioritizes the key areas in towns and cities first – the places where our customers need and will use, 5G the most. We’re also giving our customers maximum flexibility with our industry-leading custom plans, letting people adopt 5G at a time that’s right for them.”

O2 is working with major businesses like Northumbrian Water Group and Network Rail to build the 5G network. The company has also announced that it will be opening “5G innovation spaces” with the 5G rollout. These spaces will be dedicated to startups to test 5G environments.

UK Netflix subscribers are charged high

Netflix has shocked its users with the price rise. The rise is nearly 20 percent! The company said that the extra amount is charged to pay for the upcoming UK shows.

The same is followed in the US for the first time since 2017, wherein the company said it would also take care of funding the original content.

The plan goes up by £1, which means if the plan permits people to enjoy HD and watch things on two devices simultaneously then they will be charged from £7.99 to £8.99.

If you would like to enjoy 4K streaming and view things on four devices together, then you will be charged £2, which will be £11.99.

A Netflix spokesperson quotes, “We change our prices from time to time to reflect the significant investments we’ve made in new TV shows and films, as well as improvements to our product.”

The spokesperson added by saying, “We have more than 50 productions planned in the UK this year, including new seasons of Black Mirror, Sex Education and After Life. Our basic membership will remain at the same price, ensuring as many people as possible can enjoy our content.”

Users could see the difference in the charges when they tried to sign up. Some were highly charged opposing to the announcement made.

5G is debuting in the UK today

The telecom leader EE is launching the first 5G consumer mobile network in the UK today. The network is beginning with a launch in six cities.

Starting with today, EE is making 5G cellular connectivity in six locations in the U.K. London, Cardiff, Belfast, Manchester, Birmingham, and Edinburgh will be the first cities to get this connectivity. Of course, customers seeking to get onboard with the 5G experience will have to avail a 5G handset. EE is making four 5G smartphones which will help customers access the 5G network including Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, Oppo Reno 5G, LG V50 ThinQ 5G, and OnePlus 7 Pro 5G.

EE is expecting that the customers will get to experience speeds of around 100-150 Mbps. EE’s 5G plan will start at £53 per month. Though EE’s offering is not a standalone deployment, it is combining 4G and 5G to provide its customers with the best “broadband experience they’ve ever had”. It was reported that EE plans to build its coverage further by establishing 100 cell sites to 5G per month.

The company plans to roll out 5G further to ten more cities in the country by the end of this year. Among the cities touted to get 5G are: Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, and Sheffield.

Deliveroo raises $575 million is Series G

The UK based online delivery company has raised $575 million in its series G round of funding. The funding round is led by the retail giant Amazon with the participation of existing investors T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Management and Research Company, and Greenoaks. The new investment is due to be completed in a few months’ time and is subject to customary approvals.

The new round of funding takes Deliveroo’s total funding up to $.1.53 billion. Thanking the investors, Will Shu, founder, and CEO of Deliveroo said: “This new investment will help Deliveroo to grow and to offer customers even more choice, tailored to their personal tastes, offer restaurants greater opportunities to grow and expand their businesses, and to create more flexible, well-paid work for riders.”

Deliveroo was founded in 2013 by William Shu and Greg Orlowski and provides services in 14 countries including the U.K., Germany, Spain, France, Singapore, Australia, Taiwan, and the UAE. It helps over 80,000 restaurants and takeaways. The company is headquartered in London and employs 2,500 around the world.

Commenting on the impressive funding round, Amazon UK’s Country Manager: “We’re impressed with Deliveroo’s approach, and their dedication to providing customers with an ever increasing selection of great restaurants along with convenient delivery options.”

The UK to introduce new laws to raise security for IoT devices

The Digital Minister of the UK, Margot James, has set to motion a new proposal for laws which will help secure IoT devices. One of the laws drafted will look to mandate the IoT devices to be sold with a unique password.

In a press statement, the Digital Minister said that consumer products which are connected to the internet are insecure and put consumer privacy at risk. “These new proposals will help to improve the safety of internet-connected devices and is another milestone in our bid to be a global leader in online safety.”

The UK government wants to label products such as smart TVs, toys, appliances which use the internet to provide service. They will be making consultations to explore the options for their labeling scheme. The consultation will focus on unique passwords for IoT devices, manufacturers providing a public point of contact as part of their public disclosure policy and manufacturers stating the minimum length of time these devices are expected to receive security updates for.

After the government is done with consultation, the security label is going to be launched as a voluntary scheme which will allow consumers in identifying products with basic security features.

UK team finds an alarming number of security issues in Huawei

Security flaws in Huawei’s mobile network equipment have only piled-up over the years – revealed a report from the U.K. Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Center (HCSEC). The security officials’ team, which issues a report on Huawei’s products every year, was established by the company itself and is overseen by British intelligence. The team’s 2019 report revealed that there are “several hundred vulnerabilities and issues” with Huawei products, some of them unaddressed holdovers from the 2018 report.

“If an attacker has knowledge of these vulnerabilities and sufficient access to exploit them, they may be able to affect the operation of the network, in some cases causing it to cease operating correctly,” the British watchdog agency warned. The new report comes at a time when the US is strongly recommending its allies to refrain from purchasing any Chinese electronics saying that it may include “deliberate security vulnerabilities that may serve as a backdoor for the Chinese Intelligence Agencies” to spy on foreign nations. And hence, this new report may strongly influence the soon-to-be-announced British government’s final decision on whether to use Huawei products in its 5G wireless network.

With that said, the UK evaluators did not think that the defects were a “result of Chinese state interference.” They also said that they had no faith in Huawei’s $2 Billion Cybersecurity Reboot plan (announced last year), because, “similar strongly-worded commitments from Huawei in the past have not brought about any discernible improvements,” they added. Reiterating on the Reboot plan and responding to HCSEC report, a Huawei spokesperson said, “We understand these concerns and take them very seriously.”