Day: January 11, 2021

  • BT removes mobile data charges for BBC Bitesize educational content

    Aiming to expand its scheme to support access to education while schools are closed to most pupils during the latest UK lockdown, BT and the BBC have announced plans to remove mobile data charges by the end of January for BBC Bitesize, the remote learning programming slot for British students.

    With the key objective of minimising disruption to children’s education and providing rhythm and routines during the first UK lockdown in March 2020, BBC Bitesize expanded its programme offering in April 2020 to ensure every child in the UK had the opportunity to continue to follow the appropriate core parts

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  • Major facial-recognition supplier builds system to identify masked faces

    Japanese biometrics firm NEC Corporation has launched a facial-recognition system specifically for identifying people wearing masks, which it claims is 99.9% accurate and takes less than one second for verification.

    In a NEC blogpost from 24 September 2020, the company positioned its new facial-recognition engine, which was still in development at that point, as adapting to a “new normal” where face coverings have become a key protection against the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus.

    “Face recognition operates by extracting feature points, such as the position, shape and size of a subject’s eyes, nose and mouth, and matching and identifying

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  • Tech sector reacts to Trump social media bans

    Internet experts have welcomed the bans placed on US president Donald Trump by major social media platforms following his incitement online of the mobs that invaded the US Capitol, but they remain critical of these firms’ role in allowing disinformation and other harmful content to spread.

    On 6 January 2020, right-wing protestors, in support of Trump’s baseless claims of electoral fraud, stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to stop the election certification process from taking place.

    It has been confirmed that five people were killed in the violence and a further 60 arrested.

    Writing in Wired, early

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