Silicon UK Pulse: Your Tech News Update: Episode 26

Welcome to Silicon UK Pulse

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

Ofcom has released its first guidance for tech platforms on complying with the new Online Safety Act.

The communications watchdog’s draft code of conduct covers how platforms should tackle illegal online content, including child abuse.

Among the guidance in the 1500-word document, are changing default settings so children don’t come up as suggested friends, ensuring young people’s location information isn’t shown in their profile or posts, and blocking messages sent to them from anyone not in their friends list.

Ofcom is asking social platforms for their feedback.

Hundreds of jobs have been saved after a new buyer was found for the UK’s largest microchip plant.

It comes after the Chinese firm Nexperia was forced to sell 86% of its shares in Newport Wafer Fab by the Government over security concerns.

American company Vishay has stepped in and bought the plant for $177m.

Around 580 people are employed there, although plans to make 100 people redundant are expected still to go ahead under the new owner.

Sam Bankman-Fried is facing decades behind bars after being convicted of fraud and money laundering.

He was arrested last year after his crypto firm FTX went bankrupt.

His trial in New York that lasted a month, it took the jury less than five hours to find the 31 year old guilty.

Sentencing has been scheduled for 28 March next year.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has acknowledged concerns over the role of AI in the future.

He took part in a 50-minute live stream interview with X and Tesla boss Elon Musk at the end of last week’s AI summit at Bletchley Park.

Of course, it was Musk who stole most of the headlines, with his own predictions about the impact of artificial intelligence.

He said it could mean none of us have to do any work in the future – sounds alright.

But he also warned of humanoid robots that could end up chasing us up trees – not so sure.

Meanwhile, X – formerly Twitter – has launched an AI chatbot.

It’s called Grok but don’t worry if you can’t find it in your app – it’s only available to what’s described as ‘selected’ users at the moment.

Elon Musk said that Grok loves sarcasm and would answer questions with ‘a little humour.’

It’s expected to be rolled out to paid subscribers but Musk also said it would be getting its own standalone app in the future too.

Chat GPT suffered a major outage this week.

It was down briefly for around an hour and a half on Wednesday morning.

It also took out Open AI’s API services as well which are used by around two million developers.

Everything seems to be running fine again though after the fix.

Looks like there won’t be any new laws on electric scooters coming any time soon.

It was thought that something would be included in this week’s King’s Speech, outlining planned legislation for the year ahead.

But – no mention of e-scooters.

They are of course quite widely used around the UK but are technically still illegal on public roads outside of trial schemes in certain areas.

Those trials will run to May 2026.

Campaigners say it’s a missed opportunity and the UK is falling behind the rest of the world.

GTA 6 is edging closer.

Rockstar Games has confirmed a trailer for the hotly anticipated game will go live in December, although no exact date for the release of the game itself just yet.

The previous instalment of Grand Theft Auto sold 185 million copies, making it the second bestselling video game ever.

Altogether the franchise has shipped over 400 million copies.

More video game news this week – we’re getting a live action Zelda movie.

Nintendo and Sony Pictures are teaming up to create the film.

Wes Ball will direct it but no word yet on cast, storyline or when it’ll be released.

It’s believed that production is underway though.

The Zelda franchise has sold around 150 million copies since it launched in the mid 80s.

Google Street View is going underground.

Around 30 tube stations are going to be added including Westminster, Waterloo, and Kings Cross St Pancras.

It means we’ll soon be able to access 360-degree images of the stations.

Transport for London hopes it’ll help people plan their journeys better.

The images will be captured in the next few weeks, and they’ll be added to street view next year.

Now you may remember a story many years ago about a guy who owned millions in Bitcoin but had lost the hard drive in a rubbish dump.

Well, a decade on – it turns out he’s still looking for it.

James Howells is now 38 and according to online reports this week is now going to use AI scanners to help his search.

It was worth around £4m when it went missing, but he reckons that value has now risen to something like £227m.

He thinks it’s buried in a landfill site in Newport but the local council has refused to let him in to search.

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