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A ROUND-UP OF THE LATEST NEWS IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
UK BUYS SHARE IN SATELLITE FIRM
THE UK government has raised eyebrows with a £500m investment in a OneWeb company that specialises in satellite internet.
OneWeb has not been a huge success, though – it filed for bankruptcy protection in the US just three months ago, and to date has launched only 74 of the 650 satellites it had planned to put in low Earth orbit.
The cash boost from the UK, which is mirrored by a further £500m being put in by Indian telecom company Bharti Global, will allow OneWeb to complete its network. It says it will be resuming its work shortly.
There is some speculation that the move is in response to the UK losing access to the EU’s Galileo GPS satellite network after its departure from the Union.
But that’s different technology to internet connectivity. It remains to be seen what the UK government plans to do with its 20% stake.
IOS 14 PRIVACY FEATURES REAP REWARDS EVEN BEFORE IT SHIPS
ONE of the main features of iOS 14 – the next generation software for Apple’s iPhone – is a much more robust approach to user privacy.
And that approach has already produced results, even before the software is officially released.
iOS 14 is now available to developers, who are testing their own apps against the software.
And the new privacy features seem to have flagged up the fact that a number of apps were peeking at the contents of the user’s clipboard – which contains items copied from other apps, like photos or text.
There seems to be no reason why these apps, which include the official Reddit client, TikTok and WhatsApp, should be looking at what you’ve copied from elsewhere.
All three developers of those apps have said they will be releasing updates to stop the apps acting in this way, and denied wrongdoing.
It’s not a massive deal, but it does show just how useful these features will be in safeguarding privacy when iOS rolls out to the millions of iPhones in use across the globe. Apple says iOS 14 will be released to the general public for free in the autumn.