Skill Zone News issue 124
When a mission critical system fails, a lot of people notice. When a mission critical system at a bank fails, the whole country notices. TSB planned to save £160 million in hosting fees by moving its banking system away from Lloyds. This will have involved months of planning, checking, and dry runs, and yet it still went badly wrong and is likely to drag into next week. Will the savings in fees offset the damage done by the move? Only time will tell.
27th April 2018
The ethics of search engines
Two important and linked UK court cases occurred this month in which Google challenged "right to be forgotten" claims, and presented a novel argument that a search engine is a form of journalism and entitled to journalistic privilege.
The responsibilities of platforms
The consumer rights advocate, journalist, TV personality, and founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, Martin Lewis OBE, is taking on Facebook in what could be, and should be, a ground-breaking challenge to the social media giant's advertising practices.
Reds under the bed
With all the paranoia about homeland security, and arguments about Russian interference with US elections, you might be surprised to discover that someone might be hiding spying equipment in plain sight in the heart of Washington.
Using your car boot as a mailbox
Amazon is always on the look out for new ways to deliver parcels, and its plans to fill the skies with fleets of delivery drones catches a lot of headlines, but they do have other radical ideas in the pipeline too.
Another April, another fool
I feel April Fool's pranks get more tedious every year, and more commercialised too. This year we seem to have had a record number of lame pranks devised by marketing departments and ad agencies with too much budget for their own good, who gleefully announce "April Fool" and promptly issue a press release about how clever they think they are.
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.