Peeple, the controversial human-reviewing app, has the right idea. Let’s start rating one another constantly October 15, 2015 Peeple, the controversial new rating app that’s been dubbed “Yelp for people”, launches this week amid concerns that giving star ratings to fellow human beings is unethical, creepy and will render us all vulnerable to a horrifying new realm of online abuse the likes of which the internet has never seen. Which is all well [...]
Rock Band 4 review: The plastic guitars are back October 15, 2015 Rock Band 4 | ★★★★☆ Xbox One, PS4 Remember all of those rhythm action music games? They were here for a while, and then they went away. But they were fun, weren’t they? With the pretend guitars and the pretend drums and the parties and the jumping around. It was the mid 2000s, we were younger, more [...]
Airbus designs next-generation Concorde 2 that can fly from London to New York in an hour October 14, 2015 Airbus has won a patent to design the next-generation “Concorde 2”, capable of flying from London to New York in an hour The “hypersonic” plane, which has the ability to travel at 4.5 times the speed of sound, would be fuelled by a system of ramjets, turbojets and a rocket motor. Read more: Airbus files patent [...]
Four things Jack Dorsey got right in his email to staff about layoffs October 14, 2015 Poor Jack Dorsey. Not even back with the Twitter flock on a permanent basis for more than a week, and he's already had to play the bad guy. Wielding the axe to chop eight per cent of its workforce is the kind of tough decision the social network needs to make in the face of sluggish [...]
It’s totally fine for GCHQ and MI5 to spy on MPs’ communications like the rest of us, tribunal rules October 14, 2015 MPs keep insisting they're just like the rest of us. But now judges have ruled they actually are – when it comes to spying, at least. A tribunal has ruled spy agencies such as GCHQ and MI5 are allowed to eavesdrop on the communications of MPs in the same way as they would anyone else. Read more: Web inventor Tim [...]
It turns out worker ants are actually lazy layabouts October 13, 2015 We’ve all been duped: Despite their name, worker ants are nothing but slackers. This is according to a new study published in the journal Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology, which has found that a significant proportion of ant colonies’ so-called “workers” spend most of their time “completely inactive”. Just three per cent of worker ants were [...]
Twitter confirms 336 jobs will go a week after Jack Dorsey joins flock permanently October 13, 2015 Twitter has confirmed it's making job cuts just a week after founder Jack Dorsey made a permanent return to the flock as chief executive. Up to 336 staff will go – around eight per cent of the company's global workforce. "The restructuring is part of an overall plan to organise around the company’s top product [...]
Blockchain platform Setl hits one billion daily transactions – 1,000 times faster than Bitcoin’s blockchain October 13, 2015 Blockchain platform Setl claims to be capable of processing one billion transactions per day – matching every electronic payment made globally. Scaling up to this extent makes blockchain an even more attractive rival to traditional financial systems, as the booming fintech sector is increasingly seen not just as a viable but a cheaper alternative. The company [...]
Just like football and rugby, professional video gaming events in the UK attract millions of views from around the world October 13, 2015 A UK-based sporting competition featuring some of the best professionals from across the globe competing for huge sums of money has recorded almost 60m views. This isn't the Rugby World Cup – but the Gfinity Championship Series, a series of 23 weekly eSports (professional, competitive video gaming) tournaments, hosted by Aim-listed company Gfinity. The UK-based company exceeded [...]
UK Green Investment Bank says it has raised £818m for offshore wind farms October 13, 2015 The UK Green Investment Bank (GIB) has so far raised £818m for its offshore wind fund, the government-owned bank announced today. The bank said that it had executed a second close on new commitments of £355m for the offshore wind fund, bringing the total amount raised to £818m after a £463m initial close earlier this [...]