Silicon UK Pulse: Your Tech News Update: Episode 17

Welcome to Silicon UK Pulse

This is your weekly round-up of the top tech news stories.

Every Friday, Silicon UK surveys the week’s tech news.

Stay up-to-date with what’s happening in your industry or sector.

I’m James Marriott with all the big technology news from the last week.

Welcome to Silicon UK Pulse

I’m James Marriott with all the big technology news from the last week.

The UK’s largest chip making factory is reported to be cutting jobs.

Around 100 positions are under threat at Newport Wafer Fab.

That’s around a fifth of the workforce.

It follows national security concerns about a takeover of the firm by Dutch chip maker Nexperia, which is owned by a Chinese company.

Details have emerged of yet another cyberattack affecting a Government agency in the UK.

A British high-security fencing supplier, Zaun Ltd, based in Wolverhampton, has confirmed a “sophisticated cyberattack,” that apparently compromised data belonging to the Ministry of Defence.

It’s the work of the LockBit Ransom group.

It’s believed they’ve gained access to some historic emails, orders, drawings, and project files, but the firm doesn’t think any classified documents have been compromised.

More cybersecurity news this week.

The UK Electoral Commission has admitted it failed a cybersecurity test in the same year that hackers attacked the organisation back in 2021.

Details of that attack only emerged last month, as the Commission warned that “hostile actors” had breached its systems and obtained data on all registered voters in the United Kingdom.

We reported last week that the countdown is on to the new iPhone launch.

Over in China though, government officials are apparently being banned from using iPhones for work.

The Chinese government has reportedly stepped up its response to growing Western sanctions and trade restrictions.

Reports suggest Beijing has ordered officials at central government agencies not to use iPhones and other foreign-branded devices for work, or even bring them into the office.

Microsoft is to ‘unbundle’ its Teams software from the Office suite in Europe.

The move is designed to appease antitrust concerns.

It comes after the European Commission opened an investigation in July into the bundling of Office and Teams, following a complaint by Salesforce-owned workspace messaging app Slack back in 2020.

Video and audio calling options are being added to what used to be Twitter.

It’s now X of course – with Elon Musk planning to turn it into the ‘everything app.’

This is the next stage in that ambition.

Interestingly – it won’t be tied to a phone number to make video or voice calls, giving it a point of difference over Meta’s WhatsApp.

There’s no timeline yet for the update.

Meanwhile – X is going to collect our biometric data in an update to its privacy policy.

That could include a photograph of a user’s face.

The update also reveals X could collect employment and educational history.

It’s rumoured the app could be looking offer recruitment services further down the line.

TikTok has opened its first European data centre.

The unit is in Dublin in Ireland.

It’s part of Project Clover, launched by TikTok’s owner ByteDance, designed to alleviate fears about security because of its Chinese ownership.

Several more data centres in Europe are planned.

If you’ve had issues making some calls from your mobile this week, then you’re not alone.

EE, Vodafone and O2 say they’ve seen problems for customers trying to make calls between the networks.

It sounds like the issue was for people who’d ported their number from EE to one of the other networks.

That caused a problem with the call routing because three of the digits were still being recognised as EE numbers.

And – happy birthday to Google!

(I’m not going to sing, don’t worry)

The site turns 25 this month.

Plenty of changes along the way but of course the Google Doodle has been one consistent through the years.

And to celebrate the landmark, the site’s launched a ‘birthday surprise spinner’ – think along the lines of wheel of fortune, with a number of games and other cool mini apps available to play depending on where the wheel stops.

That’s the latest from Silicon UK Pulse – for more tech news and features, head to silicon.co.uk