All posts by Paul Stradling

News

Featured Article : WhatsApp’s UK Threats Over Online Safety Bill

The boss of WhatsApp, Will Cathcart, has said he would rather stop users in the UK from using the app than lower its security, as suggested by the UK’s Online Safety Bill.

End-to-end Encrypted App 

One of the key security features of Meta’s WhatsApp is its end-to-end encryption. This ensures that only the intended recipient can access and read the message or data, because the information is encrypted on the sender’s device and decrypted on the recipient’s device, without being accessible or readable by any intermediaries or third parties, including the service provider or government agencies. Crucially, this complete encryption also means (in relation to the latest developments) that not even WhatsApp itself can read users’ messages.

However, this was identified as being a problem for the UK government back in 2017 (when Amber Rudd) was Home Secretary following reports that London terror attacker Khalid Masood used WhatsApp’s encrypted message service minutes before the killings, and there were calls for a ‘back door’ being built into the app.

The Online Safety Bill 

The UK government’s Online Safety Bill, originally proposed by former PM Teresa May, is (draft) legislation that’s designed to place a ‘duty of care’ on internet companies which host user-generated content in order to limit the spread of illegal content on these services.

The idea of the bill is to prevent the spread of illegal content and activity (e.g. images of child abuse, terror material, and hate crimes), as well as to protect children from harmful material.

The proposed bill, in its current form however, means that WhatsApp would be required to scan messages within its app for child abuse material, something that would not be possible unless the security of the app’s encryption was weakened or removed. It has been proposed, for example, that under the bill, secure apps like WhatsApp would need to adopt “accredited technology” to identify and remove child-abuse material.

Would Rather Block UK Users 

The suggestion that WhatsApp’s security would be required to be weakened in any way under the requirements of the Online Safety Bill has led to WhatsApp boss saying he would refuse to comply if asked to weaken the privacy of encrypted messages and would rather block UK users than weaken privacy.

Mr Cathcart highlighted reasons why he would be happier to block UK users as being:

– 98 per cent of WhatsApp users are outside the UK anyway, and don’t want WhatsApp to lower the security of the product.

– WhatsApp has accepted being blocked in other parts of the world, e.g. Iran.

– Proposing government scanning of private messages could embolden other countries, with different definitions of illegal content, to propose the same thing, i.e. using WhatsApp as a government mass surveillance tool.

Support For WhatsApp 

Support for WhatsApp’s refusal to comply and threat to block has come from Signal president Meredith Whittaker who has suggested that blocking UK users would be the right response and that a “push back” is needed against the bill’s requirements in relation to secure apps.

Also, Dr Monica Horten of the Open Rights group had also highlighted the “potentially damaging consequences for privacy and free-expression rights” that giving the government the ability to scan private messages could bring.

Element, the U.K. startup behind the decentralised messaging E2EE Matrix protocol has also criticised the current draft of the Online Safety Bill as “an attack on encryption” and a proposal of “state surveillance and censorship” that’s reminiscent of “regimes in Russia and China” .

The UK Government 

The UK government is currently sticking to its stance on the bill and re-iterating that technology companies need do more to tackle online child abuse and stop giving paedophiles a way to continue their online activities in secret.

Other organisations, such as The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) have supported the idea that the Online Safety Bill could help protect children by making legal requirement for platforms to identify and disrupt child sexual abuse taking place on their platforms and sites. The NSPCC’s chairman has also said that “Experts have demonstrated that it’s possible to tackle child-abuse material and grooming in end-to-end encrypted environments.” 

UK Businesses Would Be Hit Hard By WhatsApp Blocking Them 

If WhatsApp were to block UK users, it could have a significant impact on UK businesses that rely on the platform for communication with their customers, suppliers, and employees. For example, some potential impacts include:

– Loss of communication with customers. Many UK businesses use WhatsApp as a key or primary means of communicating with their customers, e.g. messaging and groups. If WhatsApp were to block UK users, businesses would lose a key channel for engaging with their customers, potentially leading to a decline in sales and customer satisfaction.

– Disruption of supply chains. WhatsApp is also widely used by businesses to communicate with their suppliers and vendors. If WhatsApp were to block UK users, it could lead to disruptions in the supply chain, resulting in delays and increased costs for businesses.

– The need to find and increase reliance on alternative platforms (which may also come under the requirements of the bill). Businesses may need to find alternative platforms to communicate with their customers and suppliers, which could be time-consuming and costly. Furthermore, not all customers and suppliers may be on the same alternative platform, creating additional challenges for businesses to maintain their communication channels.

– Data privacy concerns. If WhatsApp were to block UK users, it could raise concerns about data privacy and the security of other popular communication platforms. Businesses may need to reassess their data privacy policies and take additional steps to ensure the security of their communication channels.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

WhatsApp’s privacy, provided by end-to-end encryption, is a much-valued aspect of the app, especially since so much sensitive personal and business data is shared on the app. Also, many UK businesses (and even UK government members in relation to the recent Matt Hancock message debacle) use WhatsApp daily as an important business tool, so blocking UK users could cause huge disruption and even have a negative effect on the UK economy at particularly precarious time. It is unlikely that anybody would disagree that tech companies need to do more to tackle online child abuse but the bill in its current form will doubtless create many other problems. Allowing governments to scan private messages may set a worrying precedent and embolden other countries with concerning regimes and motivations to call for similar measures as a means to conduct potentially dangerous mass surveillance. WhatsApp’s powerful indication that it is willing to ditch UK users rather than put the 98 per cent of its users who are outside of the UK at risk is a real possibility and businesses may now be looking at the UK government to take a better- informed look at the bill and enter into negotiations with WhatsApp to resolve the matter.

News

Tech News : Business ChatGPT API Launched

OpenAI has announced the general release of API access to ChatGPT and their ‘Whisper’, which is an automatic speech recognition (ASR) AI model.

What Does This Mean? 

An API is a set of protocols, routines, and tools for building software applications that specify how software components should interact with each other. In simpler terms, an API is a way for different software applications to communicate with each other and share data.

OpenAI is an AI research lab which has developed a number of powerful AI models, including the ChatGPT and Whisper models. Whisper is an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system that enables transcription in multiple languages, as well as translation from those languages into English.

By making the ChatGPT and Whisper models available on its API, OpenAI is allowing developers and other users to access these models and integrate them into their own applications.

What’s The Benefit Of This To Developers? 

This means that developers can now use these models to generate natural language text, perform language tasks such as text classification or sentiment analysis (and more), without having to build their own models from scratch. By providing access to these models through an API, OpenAI is making it easier for developers to create powerful AI applications that leverage the latest advances in AI technology using just a few lines of code to do so. With the ChatGPT and Whisper models available on its API, companies will find it more accessible and affordable to add AI capabilities to applications, and having access to Whisper will allow developers to add voice interfaces to a much wider set of applications.

Open AI says “Developers can now use our open-source Whisper large-v2 model in the API with much faster and cost-effective results. ChatGPT API users can expect continuous model improvements and the option to choose dedicated capacity for deeper control over the models.” 

Popular Apps Already Using  ChatGPT API 

Examples of some of the popular apps already using the ChatGPT API include Shop, and Shopify’s commerce app which uses it to improve the accuracy of in-app searches and personalised product suggestions for users.

Opportunity 

Some tech commentators have also highlighted how the general release of API access to these models could provide real commercial opportunities to (up until now) hobbyist developers. This could trigger a wave of new software development which could ultimately benefit many businesses in terms of added efficiency, cost and time savings.

Change To Data Retention Policy Could Help

The recent change to OpenAI’s data retention policy, whereby it will now only retain users’ data for 30 days and promises not to use data that input to train its models, could also provide the reassurance needed for more companies to try ChatGPT. This could further fuel the rise in software incorporating these powerful AI models.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

For OpenAI, this API offering is another move towards the full monetisation of ChatGPT, which OpenAI needs to do in order to keep running its expensive AI models. Making ChatGPT (and Whisper) available on its API means greater opportunities for developers and companies to develop more powerful apps that utilise the cutting edge of AI in a relatively easy and affordable way. This could make the app market much more competitive, and we could see AI being used in many more areas of our lives. For businesses of all kinds, this could open the door to the introduction of value adding, efficiency-improving and cost saving apps that could improve competitiveness.

News

Sustainability : How Businesses Are Cutting Their Website’s Carbon Footprint

In this article, we look at how slimming down websites is another way that businesses are helping to cut their carbon emissions.

Websites And Carbon Emissions 

According to the Eco-Friendly Web Alliance, the internet has a significant carbon footprint, contributing to 3.7 per cent of global emissions – more than the aviation industry!

The amount of carbon emissions created by a website and its hosting can vary widely depending on several factors, such as the size of the website, the amount of traffic it receives, and the type of hosting service used. That said, a study by the Website Carbon Calculator found that the average website produces 1.76 grams of CO2 per page view.

An example of how traffic can drive this figure up comes from Eco-Friendly Web Alliance figures which show that a website with 10,000 monthly page views and an average of 1g of carbon per page view can create around 100 kg of carbon per year and this figure could rise to 1 tonne for the year with 100k monthly page views.

Sources Of Carbon Emissions For Websites 

How much carbon a website produces includes the emissions from the user’s device, the network infrastructure used to deliver the content, and the servers that host the website. However, the carbon footprint can be significantly higher for large websites that receive a lot of traffic or use resource-intensive features such as video streaming. There are also certain elements of a website that can drive up its carbon footprint such as large unoptimsed images, JavaScript, heavy animations, and too many plugins. There is also an argument that today’s faster internet connections have caused web designers to think less about optimising the size of the files they use, thereby adding to the website carbon emissions problem.

How Do You Know How Much Your Website’s Carbon Footprint Is? 

Although it’s not possible to work out exactly, knowing the average emissions per page view and multiplying the number of monthly page views by this figure gives a rough estimate of the amount of carbon produced by a website.

There are tools and methods available to help indicate how green your website may be and how you could bring the carbon footprint down.  For example, using the Green Web Foundation tool is a way of checking if your website has green hosting: https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/green-web-check/

Ways To Reduce Your Website’s Carbon Footprint 

Known ways to reduce a website’s carbon footprint include:

– Using efficient website design. One of the main causes of carbon footprint from websites is the energy used by servers to load and display web pages. By using efficient website design practices, such as optimising images and using efficient code, businesses can reduce the amount of energy required to load their website.

– Choosing a green web hosting provider. Businesses can choose a web hosting provider that uses renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind power, to power their servers. This can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of a website.

– Minimising website resources. Businesses can reduce the carbon footprint of their website by minimising the number of resources it requires to load. For example, they can reduce the number of plugins, optimise images, and compress files to reduce their size. Making sure that videos on the website that play automatically are set to only play when the viewer chooses to watch them, using a zoom effect for product image rollovers rather than a new image appearing on rollover, and using a static image on the home page rather than several full-screen photos set to a cycle can also help.

– Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN can distribute website content across multiple servers around the world, reducing the energy required to load a website by reducing the distance data must travel.

– Encouraging website visitors to reduce their carbon footprint. Businesses can educate their website visitors on ways to reduce their carbon footprint, such as by choosing green energy providers, reducing energy usage, and minimising resource consumption.

– Measuring, offsetting, and insetting carbon emissions. Businesses can measure the carbon footprint of their website and offset the emissions through investments in renewable energy or other carbon reduction projects. Businesses can also work to decarbonise their own value chains to do more good rather than doing less bad i.e., carbon insetting.

Green Energy 

In addition to choosing a web host that uses green, renewable, and sustainable energy, other ways that green energy can be used to reduce the carbon footprint of a website could include:

– Renewable energy certificates (RECs). RECs allow businesses to offset the carbon emissions produced by their website by purchasing certificates that represent the generation of renewable energy. This way, the emissions produced by the website are effectively offset by the generation of renewable energy, reducing the overall carbon footprint.

– On-site renewable energy generation. If a business has the resources and infrastructure, they can generate their own renewable energy on-site using solar panels or wind turbines. This way, the energy used to power the website is generated from renewable sources, which reduces the carbon footprint of the website.

– Virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs). A VPPA is a financial agreement between a business and a renewable energy provider, where the business agrees to purchase renewable energy at a fixed price over a certain period of time. This way, the business can ensure that the energy used to power its website is generated from renewable sources, which reduces the carbon footprint of the website.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

While many people may have heard of how data centres are trying to reduce their carbon footprint, many businesses are unlikely to have given much thought to the carbon footprint of their website and may consider it less of priority than the carbon footprint of other parts of their operations. However, collectively, a web full of heavy websites is responsible for surprisingly large carbon emissions. In the age of fast internet connections, Whatsapping large photos to eachother and trusting design-heavy website building platforms to make websites that also act as online shops vital to the life of the business, optimising website elements and thoughts of slimming down websites have been lost in the need to compete. It makes sense that choosing a green web host could be a good way to reduce the carbon footprint of a business website but for many businesses it’s probably a case of striking a balance between giving the right experience to customers on the website, keeping up with the competition online, and making things slimmer where it can be done so in the light of these factors. That said, having a low carbon footprint for a website may be something that businesses may want to advertise, has value to increasingly environmentally conscious consumers, and is very much in keeping with an overall business push to reduce carbon emissions all the way along the value chain.

News

Security Stop-Press : Multi-Factor Authentication Limitations Highlighted

It has been reported that although Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) has long been a standard security practice for guarding against account takeovers, it does nevertheless have limitations. For example, as highlighted by The Hacker News, MFA solutions don’t offer protection to remote command line access tools like PsExec, Remote PowerShel. This means that even though a fully functioning MFA solution is in place, workstations and servers remain vulnerable to lateral movement, ransomware spread and other identity threats.

Also, it reports that MFA limitations in the on-prem environment could lead to cloud SaaS resources being attacked. The advice is to regard MFA as a partial solution and to seek extra security measures.

News

Tech Tip – How To Add Emphasis To Your Words In WhatsApp

If you’d like to be able to add a bit more emphasis to some of your messages in WhatsApp, here are some fast and easy manual ways to add bold, italic, or strikethrough.

– To make word or phrase bold, put asterisks either side of the word or phrase e.g., *text*

– To put a word or phrase in italics, put an underscore either side of the word or phrase e.g., _text_

– To strikethrough a word, put a tilde either side e.g., ~text~.

News

Tech-Insight : Even After Opting Out, Your Data May Still Be Shared

A recent US research paper entitled “Opted Out, Yet Tracked: Are Regulations Enough to Protect Your Privacy?” highlights how, in many cases, user data is still being collected, processed, and shared, even when users opt out through a Consent Management Platform (CMP).

The Issue  

The research was based around developing a framework to measure how well Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) worked in terms of data protection and privacy for website users because websites and regulators don’t currently have an effective mechanism to audit advertisers’ compliance with user consent.

Data protection regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, require websites and embedded third parties, especially advertisers, to seek user consent before they can collect and process user data. Under these regulations, only when the users opt in, should these entities collect, process, and share user data.

CMPs Audited 

Computer scientists Zengrui Liu (Texas A&M University), Umar Iqbal (University of Washington), and Nitesh Saxena (Texas A&M University) published a paper outlining the results of their audit of Consent Management Platforms (CMPs). These are the software tools that helps website owners and operators with the data protection of their users by managing user consent for data collection, tracking, and other online activities that may involve personal data, and to help with compliance with world’s major data privacy laws, e.g. GDPR, UK-GDPR, California’s CCPA/CPRA and more. CMPs are, therefore, a way to solicit and convey user consent to the embedded advertisers, with the expectation that the consent will be respected.

CMPs also allow website visitors to manage their preferences for data collection, storage, and sharing, along with the ability to choose to accept or decline cookies, tracking pixels, and other tracking technologies.

OneTrust and CookieBot Audited 

The auditing framework used by the researchers assessed the violations of data protection regulations and evaluated two of the most widely deployed CMPs, i.e. OneTrust and CookieBot, as well as advertiser-offered opt-out controls, i.e. National Advertising Initiative’s opt-out, under GDPR and CCPA, arguably two of the most mature data protection regulations.

The Conclusion – Users Are Still Tracked When They’ve Opted Out 

The results of the research (published on the Cornell University website) show that user data is still collected, processed, and shared – even when users opt-out, and that it is, therefore, doubtful if regulations are effective at protecting users’ online privacy.  The findings, published in the paper, also appear to suggest that several prominent advertisers (e.g. AppNexus and PubMatic) may even be in potential violation of GDPR and CCPA. The researchers say that the results of their study have “cast a serious doubt on the effectiveness of regulations as a sole means of privacy protection. Specifically, even after users opt-out through CMPs, their data may still be used and shared by advertisers.” 

How Can Your Data Still Be Shared Despite Opting Out? 

The research paper highlights two main ways in which advertisers might be able to process and share user information despite negative consent. These are:

1. Through the inaccurate deployment of CMPs, e.g. the tracking code may execute first before CMPs even have a chance to block cookies or website developers may inaccurately list non-essential cookies as essential.

2. Advertisers using side-channel information to circumvent enforcement by CMPs. For example, advertisers may change their cookies to avoid detection or rely on browser fingerprinting to track users.

Roles And Responsibilities 

In the light of the results, the researchers say that regulators have a responsibility to ensure that online services abide by the laws and should be using automated mechanisms (such as the framework created by the researchers) to deploy infringements of regulations at scale. The researchers say this could be done by periodically using their framework at several vantage points, or as a browser extension.

The researchers also pointed to the fact that website developers have an important role in enforcement of regulations and could deploy CMPs that are better at conveying and enforcing user consent.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

The research has revealed that some CMPs may not be effective in terms of compliance with data protection laws due to the fact that they can be inaccurately deployed, or advertisers can use side-channel information to get around matters of consent. This means that that although CMPs are being trusted to handle consent and compliance with data protection and privacy laws, some prominent advertisers using them may actually be in potential violation of GDPR and CCPA, plus users’ negative consent is effectively being ignored in some cases, which may also be a violation of their rights under data protection laws. It could be concluded, therefore, that CMPs can be unreliable and regulations as a sole means of privacy protection can’t be relied upon.

Without the research, this would not have been known about because there doesn’t appear to have been a framework that could be used to test the effectiveness of CMPs until the researchers made one, which indicates that the problem may be more widespread than first thought.

Advertisers and businesses may, therefore, be leaving themselves open to potential fines under data protection and privacy laws because they are not respecting user opt-out decisions. Regulators may now need to increase detection and enforcement, and businesses may need to check that their CMPs are working properly and may need to consider additional measures to cover themselves. Also, as suggested by the researchers, “CMPs, advertisers, website developers, and regulators should work together to define protocols for conveying and enforcing consent.” 

News

Featured Article : Dealing With Social Media Addiction

With TikTok announcing new features for teens and families, including a 60-minute daily screen time limit, we look at the issue of social media addiction and ideas for tackling it.

TikTok Time Limit 

(Short) video sharing app TikTok has just announced that every account belonging to a user below age 18 will automatically be set to a 60-minute daily screen time limit. TikTok says that if the 60-minute limit is reached, teens will be asked to enter a passcode to continue watching, requiring them to make an active decision to extend that time. Also, for children under 13, under the new changes, the TikTok daily screen time limit will be set to 60 minutes, and a parent or guardian will need to set or enter an existing passcode to enable 30 minutes of additional watch time.

Consulted Research 

TikTok says that it consulted the current academic research and experts from the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital in choosing this limit and cites research from internationalmatters.org and TikTok that focuses on how the “mindful use of digital technology can benefit our wellbeing.”

The Problem(s) 

TikTok has carefully worded its announcement to avoid focusing too much on the problem of the negative effects on young people of too much screen time, saying there’s “no collectively-endorsed position on the ‘right’ amount of screen time or even the impact of screen time more broadly.” However, others would argue, while there’s research to suggest that too much screen time can be harmful for teens and younger children. For example, other research has shown that too much screen time can result in:

– Physical health problems. Spending long hours sitting in front of screens can lead to a sedentary lifestyle, which can increase the risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease, and other physical health problems.

– Disrupted sleep. Disrupting the circadian rhythm can make it difficult to fall asleep and get restful sleep, which can affect overall health and wellbeing.

– Eye strain, dry eyes, and other vision problems.

– Poor posture, neck and back pain, and musculoskeletal problems.

– Mental health issues such as increased anxiety, depression, and other issues, especially among teenagers and young adults.

– Interference with face-to-face social interactions and the reduction of the development of social skills.

– Poor academic performance. Spending too much time on screens can lead to poor academic performance, as it can interfere with homework completion and studying.

Can People Be ‘Addicted’ To Social Media? 

Spending a lot of time using social media isn’t the same as suffering from addiction. In the US, for example, internet gaming disorder and social media addiction are currently not recognised as official mental disorders, but research suggests that excessive use of social media can have addictive properties and can lead to negative consequences.

Social Media Activates Reward Centres and ‘FOMO’ 

Several studies have found that part of the big attraction of social media usage is that it can activate the reward centres in the brain, leading to feelings of pleasure and reinforcement, which can create a kind of craving for more social media use. For example, studies published in the journal Psychological Science in 2016, and the journal Addictive Behaviours in 2017 made links between social media use and the activation of the brain’s reward centre as well as symptoms of addiction, including withdrawal, craving, and tolerance.

Additionally, social media platforms are designed to be highly engaging and can trigger a fear of missing out (FOMO) among users, leading to compulsive use.

This, coupled with studies that have made a link between excessive social media use and negative mental health outcomes have fuelled the idea that there are elements in social media use that appear related to addiction.

Are We All Addicted To Social Media? 

While social media use is becoming increasingly common and many people use it regularly, technically, not all individuals experience addictive behaviours or negative consequences as a result of their social media use.

The extent to which social media use can become addictive or harmful may depend on a variety of factors, including individual differences in personality, social context, and patterns of use. Some people may be more prone to addictive behaviours or may use social media in a way that interferes with other aspects of their life, while others may use social media in a more balanced and healthy way.

Let’s Not Forget The Positive Role That Social Media Plays 

Worries about the harm that excessive use of social media and becoming addicted can overshadow the fact that social media can play several positive roles in the lives of young people and meet a variety of needs, including:

– Social connection. Social media provides a way for young people to connect with others, including friends and family members, and can help them feel more connected to their peers.

– Communication. Social media platforms provide a convenient and efficient way for young people to communicate with others, regardless of their location or time zone.

– Information sharing. Social media can be a valuable source of information and news for young people, allowing them to stay informed about current events and topics of interest. In fact, most young people get most of their news from social media rather than traditional older sources such as the TV, newspapers, or even news websites.

– Entertainment. Social media platforms offer a wide range of entertainment options, including videos, music, and games, which can provide a fun and engaging way for young people to pass the time.

– Creative expression. Social media can provide an outlet for creative expression, allowing young people to share their artwork, writing, music, and other creative endeavours with a wider audience.

– Professional networking. Social media can be a useful tool for young people who are just starting out in their careers, allowing them to network with others in their field and potentially find job opportunities.

A Guide

Given that although media can fulfil many needs in a positive way, but excessive use can be bad for us, here’s a short guide for ‘weaning ourselves off social media ’ and avoiding the negative issues of excessive social media use:

– Set goals. Start by setting clear goals for how much time you want to spend on social media each day or each week. This can help you stay focused and motivated to reduce your use.

– Track your use. Keep track of how much time you spend on social media each day or each week. This can help you identify patterns of use and areas where you may need to cut back.

– Establish boundaries. Set clear boundaries around when and where you will use social media. For example, you may decide not to use social media during mealtimes, or to avoid using it in the bedroom.

– Try replacing social media with other activities. Identify other activities you enjoy that can replace your social media use. This could include reading, exercise, spending time with friends, or pursuing a hobby.

– Unfollow or mute negative content. Unfollow or mute accounts or pages that make you feel anxious, stressed, or unhappy. This can help reduce your exposure to negative content on social media.

– Take breaks. Schedule regular breaks from social media, such as taking a day or a weekend off from using it. This can help you reset and refocus your attention on other activities.

– Seek support. If you are struggling to reduce your social media use, consider seeking support from friends, family, or a mental health professional. They can help provide encouragement, accountability, and strategies for reducing your use.

– Remember to be patient with yourself and to celebrate your progress along the way.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

It seems clear that excessive use of social media (particularly among more vulnerable groups or those more prone to addictive behaviours) can contribute to many different problems. It’s important, therefore, to be mindful of social media use and to establish healthy boundaries and habits around its use, such as setting limits on screen time, taking regular breaks, and engaging in other healthy activities. TikTok’s latest move reflects this but there is also likely to be an element of good PR and a chance to get some good headlines at a time when the TikTok app is being banned from government devices in many countries over security concerns and current poor political relations between China and the West.

Although there are many issues related to how social media can affect users, social media platforms are big businesses supported by advertisers and, as such, need us to keep using (and be engaged with) their platforms. Also, social media has become an increasingly important platform for businesses to reach their target audience and promote their products or services. If people were to spend less time on social media, this could lead to a decrease in the number of people that businesses are able to reach with their marketing campaigns, which could ultimately impact their revenue and profitability.

However, it is important to note that social media is just one of many marketing channels available to businesses, and there are other ways to reach customers and promote products or services, e.g. email marketing, search engine optimisation or traditional advertising methods like print or radio ads. Additionally, if people were to spend less time on social media, this could also lead to a shift in the way that businesses approach their marketing strategies. For example, they may need to focus more on building relationships with customers through other channels.

Overall, while a decrease in social media use could have an impact on businesses that rely on this platform for marketing and advertising, many businesses already recognise the need for using a multi-channel / omni-channel approach to reach their target audiences.

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Tech-Insight : What Is OLED?

In this article, we look at what OLED is and its advantages, and we take a brief look at the other types of LED displays available.

What Is OLED? 

OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode. This is a display technology that’s used in many modern electronic devices such as smartphones, televisions, and wearable devices.

When? 

The first OLED display was developed in the late 1980s by researchers at Eastman Kodak Company, but it wasn’t until the early 2000s that OLED technology began to be commercially produced and used in electronic devices. The first commercial OLED products were small displays for mobile phones and MP3 players, which began to appear in the market around 2003. Since then, OLED technology has continued to advance, and it is now used in a wide range of electronic devices, from smartphones and tablets to televisions and wearable devices.

Not Backlit 

Unlike traditional displays that rely on a backlight to illuminate the screen, OLED displays use an organic compound that emits light when an electric current is passed through it.

The Pixels Can Be Turned Off 

With OLED, the pixels produce the light and when they need to be black, they can turn off completely, rather than relying on a backlight to turn them off. This gives an absolute rather than a relative black, thereby adding to superior picture quality.

Superior Image Quality & Faster Response Time 

OLED displays are known for their superior image quality, including high contrast ratios, deep blacks, and vivid colours. They also have a faster response time and consume less power than traditional displays, which makes them ideal for portable devices that need to conserve battery life.

Two Types Of OLED Displays 

There are two types of OLED displays which are:

1. Passive-matrix OLED (PMOLED) displays. These are typically used in small devices such as wearable technology and digital cameras.

2. Active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) displays. These are used in larger devices such as smartphones and televisions.

Other Advantages 

Some other advantages of OLED include:

– Responsiveness. This is particularly appealing to gamers and home cinema enthusiasts. With a refresh rate as low as 0.001ms, OLED panels are significantly faster than standard LED-backlit LCD panels and even outperform the now-discontinued plasma technology.

– The ability to produce deep blacks, bright whites and improved colour accuracy. This is because OLED panels use a tiny lighting source, which allows for an incredibly thin and lightweight form factor that enhances the viewing experience. OLED TVs, for example, offer a depth of just a few millimetres, making them much thinner and lighter than many LED TVs.

Overall, OLED technology provides superior image quality, faster response times, and a more efficient use of power compared to traditional display technologies, making it an ideal choice for a wide range of electronic devices.

Other Types Of LED Displays 

There are several other popular types of LED displays. These include:

– LED-backlit LCD displays which use an LCD panel with a backlight made up of an array of LEDs. The LEDs illuminate the LCD panel from behind, allowing for brighter images and a wider colour gamut.

– Mini-LED displays: These displays are similar to LED-backlit LCD displays but use a much larger number of smaller LEDs to create more localised dimming zones, resulting in better contrast and deeper blacks.

– MicroLED displays. These displays use tiny, self-emitting LEDs to create images, which offers excellent brightness, contrast, and colour accuracy. MicroLED displays are still in the relatively early stages of development and are not yet widely available.

– Quantum Dot displays. These very grand sounding displays use a layer of tiny nanocrystals called quantum dots to enhance colour accuracy and brightness. Quantum Dot displays are often used in conjunction with LED-backlit LCD technology.

– Emissive displays are like OLED displays in that they use self-emitting pixels to create images. However, emissive displays can be made from materials other than organic compounds, such as quantum dots or inorganic materials. Emissive displays are still in development and are not yet widely available.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

The introduction of OLED displays has had a significant impact on the electronics market for both businesses and end users. The superior image quality OLED offers compared to traditional display technologies has helped manufacturers to produce devices with higher resolution, better contrast, deeper blacks, and more accurate colours, which is a major selling point.

The fact that OLED enables manufacturers to make thinner and lighter devices has enabled manufacturers to produce more portable devices, e.g. smartphones and tablets, where size and weight are important factors for end users, thereby saving shipping costs, and getting more revenue from new types of products that are valued by today’s consumers who like to do many things on the run.

The increased energy-efficiency of OLED (no backlit function required) has enabled electronics manufacturers to produce devices with longer battery life, which is also a major selling point for end users.

The thin and flexible nature of OLED displays has also enabled manufacturers to create more innovative and unique designs for their devices. For example, curved and flexible OLED displays are now being used in smartphones, televisions, and other devices.

Overall, the introduction of OLED displays has brought significant benefits to both businesses and end users. Manufacturers are able to produce more advanced and innovative devices, while end users are able to enjoy better image quality, longer battery life, and more unique designs.

There are several different types of LED displays in addition to OLED and each type of LED display technology has its own unique advantages and disadvantages, with manufacturers choosing the technology that best suits the needs of the device they are producing.

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Tech News : Could ‘Organoid’ Computers Be Next?

Researchers from the John Hopkins University working with Dr Brett Kagan (chief scientist at Cortical Labs in Melbourne) have reported that brain ‘organoid’ biocomputing devices could be the next ‘big thing’ in computing.

What Is A Brain Organoid? 

Computers powered by brain cells could use ‘brain organoids’, which are (pen) dot-sized clusters of cell cultures made from stem cells, grown in a dish in the lab, containing neurons that can perform brain like functions and form a multitude of connections.

Example 

In October last year, the same Dr Brett Kagan of Cortical Labs (and his team) reported having developed a lab-grown a ‘DishBrain’ system, made up of human or rodent neural networks (brain cells), hooked up to a computer using electrodes. Dr Kagan’s team used the electrodes and a recording to embed the mini lab-grown brain “in a simulated game-world” which was designed to mimic the arcade game ‘Pong.’  The team reported that the DishBrain took only 5 minutes to learn to play the Pong video game, with a success rate that appeared to be greater than could be expected from random chance. During the game, the mini lab-grown brain produced its own electrical activity and generally expended less energy as the game progressed. The mini-brain displayed “synthetic biological intelligence” by showing that it could self-organise activity in a goal-directed way in response to sparse sensory information about the consequences of its actions, i.e. it was able to learn without being taught.

Organoid intelligence – The Future Of Computers?

In a new paper, published in the journal ‘Frontiers In Science’ under the title “Organoid intelligence (OI): the new frontier in biocomputing and intelligence-in-a-dish”, Dr Kagan and his research team have outlined their vision of computers of the future. In the paper, the researchers suggest that biological computing/biocomputing could harness brain organoids into a type of biological hardware which could be faster, more efficient, and more powerful than silicon-based computing and AI, and only require a fraction of the energy. The team say in the research paper: “We anticipate OI-based biocomputing systems to allow faster decision-making, continuous learning during tasks, and greater energy and data efficiency.” 

Current Computers Face Limitations 

Thomas Hartung, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Whiting School of Engineering has highlighted how biological computing may be better than current silicon-based computing because it could:

– Dramatically reduce the energy-consumption demands of supercomputing that are becoming increasingly unsustainable. For example, although the Kentucky-based Frontier computer has just exceeded the computational capacity of a single human brain cell, it used a million times more energy.

– Real brains are better at making complex logical decisions.

– Real brains have an incredible capacity for storing information (an estimated 2,500 terabytes), and “We’re reaching the physical limits of silicon computers because we cannot pack more transistors into a tiny chip.”

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

As the research team admit, it’s likely to be decades before organoid biocomputers are comparable to any type of contemporary computer, but the team feel it’s important to begin the research now. It is envisioned by the research team that OI biocomputers could be used in drug testing research for neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodegeneration such as autism, and as “complex, networked interfaces whereby brain organoids are connected with real-world sensors and output devices, and ultimately with each other and with sensory organ organoids (e.g. retinal organoids), and are trained using biofeedback, big-data warehousing, and machine learning methods”. Also, if there was scaled up production of brain organoids and they could be trained with AI, biocomputers could support superior computing speed, processing power, data efficiency, and storage capabilities, and could benefit many more industries, meet many more human needs, and help tackle our most pressing and complex challenges, e.g. climate change.

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Sustainability : How Edible Food Packaging Could Reduce Plastic Waste

With eco-friendly packaging being considered as part of the green product decision-making process of today’s customers, here we look at food packaging that could save on plastic waste because it is edible!

Edible Food Packaging 

The concept of edible food packaging is not new and has been around for centuries in the form of natural materials like leaves, fruits, and vegetables used to wrap food. However, the first commercial edible packaging was developed in the early 21st century.

In 2010, a company called WikiCell Designs, Inc. developed the first edible food packaging made from natural ingredients like fruits, vegetables, and nuts. The packaging consisted of a thin edible membrane that could be filled with liquids or semi-solids like ice cream, yogurt, or beverages.

Since then, other companies have also developed edible food packaging, such as Skipping Rocks Lab’s “Ooho” which is made from seaweed extract and can hold water or other liquids, and Loliware’s “HyperChiller” which is a coffee cup made from a seaweed-based material that can be eaten after use.

What Are The Benefits Of Edible Food Packaging?

Some of the main benefits of producing edible food packaging include:

– Reducing plastic waste. Edible food packaging has the potential to significantly reduce the amount of plastic waste generated by traditional packaging materials. This is because edible packaging can be consumed after use, eliminating the need for disposal.

– Sustainability. Edible packaging made from natural ingredients can be more sustainable than traditional packaging materials, which are often made from non-renewable resources.

– Convenience. Edible packaging can be a convenient option for on-the-go consumption, eliminating the need for additional utensils or packaging.

– Novelty. Edible packaging can be a unique and interesting way to package food, which can be a selling point for certain products.

– Health benefits. Some types of edible packaging can even provide additional health benefits, such as fibre or vitamins from the natural ingredients used to make the packaging.

Examples Of Edible Food Packaging Available Now 

Some prominent examples of edible food packaging manufacturers include:

Notpla 

Notpla (a play on the term ‘Not Plastic’) says its “on a mission is to make packaging disappear and are focused on providing sustainable alternatives to single-use packaging through the use of seaweed and plants.” Its edible, seaweed-based food packaging is described as being “neither plastic nor bioplastic. “ Notpla’s products include:

– Ooho: created for drinks and designed to be 100 per cent edible.

– Notpla Film: designed to replace conventional fossil-derived, and bioplastic based, flexibles, and will breakdown naturally without releasing any microplastics.

– Notpla Paper: made from the fibres and biomass of seaweed, this paper enables a new circular way for Notpla to use entire seaweed and creates an eceo-friendly, edible alternative to normal paper.

Evoware 

Also mostly seaweed based, Evoware’s products include biodegradable, home compostable, and planet friendly packaging products like bags and mailers, sachets and wrappings, straws and cups, food containers and cutlery. Evoware also makes packaging products from rice, cassava, sugar cane, bamboo, birchwood, and the leaves of Areca palm trees. Edible packaging products from Evoware include ‘Ello Jello cups’ made in different colours and with different flavours such as peppermint, orange, lychee, and green tea. Also, Evoware make edible food wraps and edible sachets which are odourless, tasteless, and biodegradable.

Traceless 

Traceless says it envisions “a world where the materials we use impact positively on the planet, rather than leading to pollution and waste.” In line with this vision, it makes naturally compostable and edible packaging out of biopolymers which have been extracted from plant residues and by-products of agricultural food production. An example of the German company’s edible packaging include edible ‘plastic’ films and coatings made entirely from plant residue, which are also completely compostable so if they end up in the environment or oceans, they break down completely into CO2 and H2O, leaving no residues, or can be eaten by animals with no ill-effects.

What Does This Mean For Your Organisation? 

The huge environmental problem of plastic waste pollution and microplastics in the seas and water supplies, and mountains of other non-biodegradable or compostable and toxic food packaging waste pose a huge challenge. Creating edible and sustainable packaging alternatives, as the above-named companies (and others) are doing, is an innovative way of reducing the environmental burden of food packaging and its manufacture, and of creating more of a circular and sustainable packaging production model. Edible packaging manufacture may also present exciting new opportunities for many businesses and start-ups. While still in the early stages of development, edible food packaging, therefore, has the potential to reduce plastic waste and provide a sustainable alternative to traditional packaging materials, but there may be challenges to overcome in terms of scalability, cost-effectiveness, and food safety. Additionally, not all types of food can be packaged using edible packaging, as some foods may require more durable or moisture-resistant packaging materials.