GCHQ gives you homework in its 2015 Christmas card

Keen codebreakers can have a crack at a brainteaser this festive season in the form of a Christmas card challenge set by GCHQ’s director Robert Hannigan. The traditional grid-shading puzzle invites those who dare (or care) to fill in the squares black or leave them white depending on the pattern indicated by the numbers on each column and row. Each number indicates there should be a black square, with at least one white one left in between. Some have already been filled in to give you a head start. Once you’ve filled in all the squares, the image you’re left with leads…

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from The Next Web » UK http://thenextweb.com/uk/2015/12/10/gchq-gives-you-homework-in-its-2015-christmas-card/

Hit US delivery startup Postmates is launching in London next year

Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann has announced today that the company will be launching a UK operation in 2016. In conversation with Mike Butcher at TechCrunch Disrupt London, Lehmann said that the service would launch first in London. Postmates delivers restaurant food and other items on-demand in cities across the US, and has established partnerships to quickly deliver Starbucks and Apple orders in certain markets. Lehmann said that the plans for a London launch are still at an early stage and the company still needs to hire a general manager for the operation. The move will throw Postmates into direct competition with…

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from The Next Web » UK http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/12/07/hit-us-delivery-startup-postmates-is-launching-in-london-next-year/

The BBC is testing TV shows that adapt to your tastes and personality

The BBC has today unveiled ‘Visual Perceptive Media,’ an experimental project that creates video stories that are automatically edited on the fly to suit individuals’ tastes and personalities. The work follows the earlier audio-based Perceptive Media project, where a radio drama changed based on factors like the listener’s location and the time of day. That spawned a ‘Perceptive Radio’ concept device that adjusted the content it played based on location, time, proximity to the device and background noise. The new video project begins with a personalization process that is conducted via a mobile app. The app tracks your music taste and asks you questions about…

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from The Next Web » UK http://thenextweb.com/media/2015/12/03/the-bbc-is-testing-tv-shows-that-adapt-to-your-tastes-and-personality/

Adele fans’ credit card details reportedly exposed in online ticketing glitch

Numerous Adele fans in the UK have reported that they were presented with other people’s credit card details when attempting to buy tickets online for the singer’s upcoming European tour. Several fans told the BBC that when they tried to complete their purchase, they were taken to checkout pages listing tickets for other shows than the ones they had selected, along with personal information that wasn’t their own. It’s possible that live concert tracking and ticketing service Songkick, which ran the sale, had a glitch in its system that caused the mix-up. The company said in a statement: Due to…

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from The Next Web » UK http://thenextweb.com/uk/2015/12/01/adele-fans-credit-card-details-reportedly-exposed-in-online-ticketing-glitch/

Teacher ordered to pay £25,000 in ‘groundbreaking’ UK sexting case

An unprecedented compensation payment of £25,000 ($37,545) has been awarded to a girl who was encouraged to send sexually-explicit text messages to a teacher at her school. As well as receiving a three-year criminal sentence for manipulating the girl into sending sexual images, William Whillock, vice-principal of The New School for children with special needs, is the first person in the UK to be made to pay civil damages. Speaking to the BBC, lawyer at Bolt Burdon Kemp, David McClenaghan, said: “This is groundbreaking law… This case establishes that anybody who is manipulated into sending or receiving sexually-explicit text messages or images – we call it…

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from The Next Web » UK http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/11/30/936377/

You could be jailed for backing up your music collection in the UK

It is once again illegal to make personal copies of your own music, videos and ebooks in the UK, thanks to the withdrawal of last year’s private copying exception. The exception, which was introduced in October 2014, was the subject of a judicial review sought by music industry stakeholders including the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, the Musicians’ Union, and UK Music. In June, it was ruled that the decision to usher in the private copying exception was flawed because “the evidence relied upon to justify the conclusion about harm was inadequate/manifestly inadequate.” Rather than research whether copyright…

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from The Next Web » UK http://thenextweb.com/uk/2015/11/27/you-could-be-jailed-for-backing-up-your-music-collection-in-the-uk/