US President Donald Trump has requested more information on how the Pentagon is developing its JEDI cloud computing contract following concerns from Republicans that other providers were unfairly excluded.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Ron Johnson said in an interview that he had discussed the contract with Trump aboard Air Force One adding that the president «wanted to understand what the issues were, what our concerns were,» according to a Bloomberg report.

There are also reports of a letter sent from Senator Marco Rubio to national security advisor John Bolton requesting the contract be delayed. A spokesperson for Rubio said he and Trump had discussed the letter.

«I respectfully request that you direct the delay of an award until all efforts are concluded in addition to evaluating all bids in a fair and open process in order to provide the competition necessary to obtain the best cost and best technology for its cloud computing needs,» Rubio reportedly wrote.

According to Bloomberg‘s unnamed source, who allegedly heard the call, Trump sounded as though he was considering cancelling the contract outright.

The highly sought after Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract is worth $10 billion and is part of a broad modernisation of Pentagon information technology systems that could take up to 10 years. Some have argued that the single nature of the contract favours Amazon Web Services, which, along with Microsoft, are the remaining contenders.

A number of cloud providers and experts would be in agreement with Trump if the reports are true. Both IBM and Oracle have raised concerns over the fact the contract will be awarded to one provider, which both companies have condemned and also taken legal action over.

A decision to review the contract process would also be seen as yet another clash between Trump and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, following a string of public snubs.

«So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post. Hopefully the paper will soon be placed in better & more responsible hands!» he posted in January, in relation to Bezos’ divorce from his now ex-wife Mckenzie Bezos.

Microsoft has a new vision for Cortana that involves a shift in focus towards enterprise customers and further integrations with Amazon’s Alexa.

The changes will involve conversations and interactions that are part of the software and services the company offers to businesses, but it will be one of multiple digital assistants available on Windows 10 in the future.

This is because Microsoft is opening Windows 10 even further to third-party digital assistants. In the next update to Windows 10, due in September, Microsoft will allow voice assistants like Alexa to activate on the lock screen. The change will allow third-party assistants to be activated from their wake words when the PC is locked. So calling out ‘Alexa’ will open your laptop as well as your Amazon Echo device.

These digital assistant changes will be in the September update, codenamed 19H2. Unlike previous Fall updates, this one will be a lot smaller in size with fewer new features and changes.

Although the changes are minor, it does show that Microsoft is willing to work with its rivals, particularly as its own voice assistant, Cortana, hasn’t been as popular as the likes of the Google Assistant.

Earlier in the year, Amazon enabled its Alexa wake word on the Windows 10 app and Microsoft also made changes, moving Cortana into a separate app in the Microsoft store and away from the built-in search experience in the operating system, which was arguably one of the more annoying features of Windows 10.

For Amazon, Alexa has been widely adopted in the home and in business. Most recently, the digital voice assistant has been announced as an asset for the NHS as it will be used both in the service and as a replacement for calling your GP.

A satellite station has opened the UK’s first green high-performance computing platform for artificial intelligence and machine learning on demand.

The Cornwall-based Goonhilly Earth station is one of the first organisations in the UK to deploy a liquid immersion cooling system to mitigate the power demands of high-performance computing.

Its green platform consists of an onsite array of solar panels that can support the data centre’s full power requirements of 500KW, with local wind power to be added in the near future, according to the company. The system has been designed to particularly target the data-intensive needs of the automotive, life sciences and aerospace marketplaces.

«There are people working on some clever algorithms to save our planet from climate change,» said Chris Roberts, head of data centre and cloud at Goonhilly. «The irony is that these models require heavy processing power.

«Fortunately, new technology is helping, such as immersion cooling which is 45-50% more efficient than air cooling, cuts electricity demand in half, and also allows us to use the exhaust heat elsewhere.»

According to Goonhilly, the platform delivers high-performance GPU-based compute and storage for decentralised and centralised AI and machine learning applications. By provisioning both compute, AI and machine learning resources on demand, customers can reduce the cost of deployment and accelerate the launch of products.

Goonhilly has also joined the Nvidia Inception programme for businesses, furthering its AI work and granting it access to Nvidia’s DGX-1, the world’s first supercomputer purpose-built for enterprise AI and deep learning.

To mark the opening of the data centre, and also celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, Goonhilly is hosting an event on-site on Thursday 18 July for space industry partners, academia, customers and prospects. It includes a panel discussion on trends in AI, cloud and edge computing.

«Through our strong partnerships with industry and academia, we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of innovation. Our new green data centre is no exception. It is satisfying to open our doors to the many businesses and organisations with data-intensive applications who can benefit from this facility and the community we are creating,» said Ian Jones, the CEO of Goonhilly.

File hosting platform Dropbox has launched a file-sharing service called ‘Dropbox Transfer’, as a form of alternative to email.

According to the company, which recently reinvented itself with a new design, email has limitations. You can only attach files up to a certain size and its not always clear if your recipients have received them.

«Transfer offers the convenience of email, without the 25 MB limit on attachments,» the company said. «With Transfer, you can send up to 100 GB of files – five times what some other services allow – in just a few clicks.

With Dropbox Transfer, users will have the option to drag and drop files to upload from their computer or skip the wait by adding items stored in Dropbox. Once they’ve created a transfer, they’ll get a link that can be pasted anywhere. This link can be sent to anyone, even if they don’t have a Dropbox account, the company said.

Recently an email platform called Superhuman hit the headlines after it was revealed it used ‘read receipts’ which tracked when and where emails were opened – without consent. Dropbox seems to have added a similar feature – sans the location tracking – where users can customise their transfers with notifications for when they’ve been opened – and also how many times.

There’s also a set of tools to create bespoke designs for a more professional look, where logos and branding can be added, rather than just a simple shared file link.

Dropbox Transfer opens today as a private beta, regardless of whether you’re using a free or paid account. There’s a beta waiting list on the company’s website for those that want to try the new service out.

Apple is testing biometric security for iCloud in its beta programmes for the next raft of operating systems, according to reports.

Last month, the tech giant announced the beta versions of iOS13, iPadOS 13 and MacOS Catalina, which is being rolled out to testers in the coming weeks. Now, according to 9to5Mac, these operating systems will test a new sign-in process for iCloud on the web meaning that users can sign-in using either Face ID or Touch ID.

When you visit iCloud in the Safari browser on a device running any of the new operating systems, you’ll see a new pop-up prompting you to sign-in using your Apple ID with biometrics. Tapping «continue» automatically signs the user in.

Users on devices with Touch ID, including the 2018 MacBook Air and Touch Bar-equipped MacBook Pro models, will also be met with a similar sign-in process that uses their fingerprint to authenticate without requiring two-factor authentication.

Apple’s testing of this easy way of signing into the iCloud website is likely related to its forthcoming Sign In with Apple feature – announced last month – which allows users to sign in to apps and websites using their Apple ID.

The feature is being touted as a more secure alternative to similar sign-in services offered by Facebook, Google, and Twitter since it authenticates the user with Face ID or Touch ID and doesn’t send personal information to app and website developers.

Further privacy boosts are being reported with Sign In with Apple also allowing users to create a randomly generated email address that hides their real one when signing up for a third-party app or service.

The new sign-in feature is coming with Apple’s new operating systems when they’re released this fall and will be available across macOS, iOS, and through websites.

West Sussex and Surrey Fire and Rescue services have come together for a digital transformation project that will see both units’ IT operations move to the cloud. 

The first phase of the endeavour will see the two agencies move to an Infographics platform called FireWatch, which is a fully managed cloud delivery and maintenance model running on Microsoft’s Azure platform.

Infographics said the FireWatch Cloud platform will provide a range of benefits to both fire and rescue services, including a connected application for integrated HR, payment, training and development, fleet monitoring and staff availability systems. It will also provide flexible and remote access to their fire service management system, including full management and upgrades, the company claimed.

At the same time as moving to FireWatch Cloud, West Sussex and Surrey fire services will also be moving to a joint control operation using the Vision mobilisation and control platform from Capita. Phase two of the project will see Infographics deploy a single interface, with FireWatch processing live incident data from Capita Vision.

Jon Lacey, West Sussex Fire and Rescue’s acting deputy chief fire officer, said that working in collaboration with the team in Surrey enables them both to become more effective and efficient as a service, as well as opening up the possibility of future collaboration.

«The opportunity to work in collaboration with Infographics and Surrey Fire and Rescue Service will transform the way we mobilise our assets to emergency incidents and provide improved support to our teams across our service,» he said.

A premium email startup which gained notoriety for letting users see who opened their messages and the location they were opened, by default, has apologised and promised to change its service.

Superhuman, a plugin for email accounts that aims to speed up emailing, came under fire for using ‘pixel tracking’ by default and without consent from those that receive messages sent from users of the service.

But, after a number of complaints and a critical blog post that went viral, the company has issued an apology and promised to change its service.

Faster Emails

A lot of people became aware of Superhuman via a New York Times profile. Under a picture of a diamond-encrusted ‘new message’ pendant, the startup was described as a premium app for speeding up emails with AI-powered shortcuts and quirks. One of the reasons it attracted such attention was because it’s a $30 a month service and invitation-only – aspiring users need to fill in a questionnaire about their email usage to determine whether they need it.

«We have the who’s who of Silicon Valley at this point,» the company’s founder Rahul Vohra, told the NYT. It’s alleged that 180,000 people are on a waiting list to use the service. «We have insane levels of virality that haven’t been seen since Dropbox or Slack,» Vohra added.

What these people are supposedly desperate for is an app that plugs into their existing email account (currently only works with Gmail and Google G Suite addresses) that promises to speed up the process of emailing others. There are features that let users undo sending, buttons to automatically pull up a contact’s LinkedIn profile, an «instant intro» shortcut that moves the sender of an introductory email to bcc, and a scheduling feature, which sees that you’re typing «next Tuesday» and automatically pulls up your calendar for that day.

But one feature that was briefly mentioned in the piece caught the attention of users on Twitter; email tracking.

Read Receipts

«Superhuman is a surveillance tool that intentionally violates privacy by notifying senders every time their emails have been viewed by recipients,» Mike Davidson, a VP at InVision, tweeted. «I would never trust this company. Only way to make sure your own privacy isn’t violated is to disable images in your own email app.»

Later, in a blog post that went viral, Davidson explained out that the email tracking, called ‘Read Receipts’ on Superhuman, is a default setting for the service. He wrote that the read/unread status of an email is not something the receiver can opt-out of. He showed an example of an email he had sent via Superhuman.

«A running log of every single time you have opened my email, including your location when you opened it,» he explained. «Before we continue, ask yourself if you expect this information to be collected on you and relayed back to your parent, your child, your spouse, your co-worker, a salesperson, an ex, a random stranger, or a stalker every time you read an email. Although some one-to-many email blasting software has used similar technologies to track open rates, the answer is no; most people don’t expect this. People reasonably expect that when – and especially where – they read their email is their own business.»

Pixel Tracking

Every time you view an image while browsing the Web, that image is stored on a server and downloaded to your computer. As such the host server has knowledge of where that computer is and when it downloaded the image. 

This technicality can be used to embed a tiny image, often a mere pixel wide, into web pages and emails, which can be very difficult to spot or transparent.

As such, opening an email with such an image in it triggers a download from a server which effectively exposes the time the recipient opens the email and the computer’s location, essentially serving at the foundations for automatic read receipts. 

As Davidson’s example showed, the emails not only show when they were opened but also where they were opened. So in a sense, Superhuman could be used to track the location of people by simply sending them an email. This is down to IP addresses as the downloaded tracking pixel records it – this how the internet determines where your computer is physically and digitally. Criminals sometimes exploit this to work out if a house is empty and ripe for looting.

The Outcome

The exposure Superhuman received in the NYTs quickly turned to controversy, but the company has been swift to offer a fix. CEO Vohra posted an apology in a blog and said that effective immediately, Superhuman will stop tracking locations, will delete existing location information and will turn off read receipts by default.

«When we built Superhuman, we focused only on the needs of our customers,» he wrote. «We did not consider the potential bad actors. I wholeheartedly apologize for not thinking through this more fully.

«We are removing location information in all read statuses for all emails sent with Superhuman, effective immediately. This will also apply to emails sent in the past.»

On the 1 July, the Wimbledon Championship will start off a fortnight of grand slam tennis at the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), one of the world’s most traditional sporting events. But the competition isn’t strictly all heritage and old fashion values, it’s also one of the most technologically advanced sporting spectacles around.

In its 49th year, the Championship is using more artificial intelligence technology than ever before to capture the best bits. Powered by sophisticated cloud computing, the tournament now has a raft of data-powered and AI services for organisers, fans and even players to use. From automated highlights packages to performance analytics, Wimbledon is a hive of cutting-edge technology.

Data Points

For 30-years, IBM has been in partnership with Wimbledon and since 1990 the tech giant has collected 62.8 million data points from the championships. There are 18 courts at the AELTC, each with an average of four matches per day (weather permitting) and scanning through this mass data would take many humans far longer than the two weeks of the competition. Instead, IBM’s cloud platform runs in the background, capturing the data and spinning it into everything from player insights to fan based applications.

«It’s about trying to uncover those stories,» said Sam Sneddon, IBM’s client executive. «It’s about trying to help fans, in the moment, when they’re consuming sport, to really know what it takes. Which are the most exciting moments, what are they thinking, and being able to provide those insights to fans wherever they’re watching it.

AI-powered returns

While Roger Federer may be the most successful Wimbledon player of all time, IBM’s Watson AI is the most efficient. Launched last year, the AI-powered service uses cameras and sensors to track the play and create an automated highlights reel. Each bit of action is monitored and ranked via its statistical importance within the match and how much of a cheer it receives from the crowd; even the sound of racket on the ball is measured. At the end of each match, Watson then creates a highlights package within two minutes.

For this year’s competition, players can expect to have their tense facial expressions or celebratory body language examined by Watson, which will use visual image recognition technology to capture their reactions in order to add these to the automated highlights reel. Watson can pick up anything from an agonising grimace to a celebratory roar, which will prompt the machine to automatically clip that point in the match.

«This allows us to clip the highlights package to be really tight, so it knows exactly when play is happening,» Seddon told the Telegraph. «We asked ourselves how do we create video content that’s available really quickly? What are the most exciting moments in a match? You can sit there as a digital editor in a match and make that decision yourself, or you can turn that question over to an AI system.

«Then we had to define what exciting is – well, let’s listen to how excited the crowd are, let’s look how animated the players are, let’s analyse the data and see whether this is a turning point in the match and use of that to generate highlights.»

Player-coach data sets

All these data points are not just for the TV, however, as IBM also provides data analytics to players and coaches to help them read insights into their performance. After each match, personal analysis is available within 20 minutes of it finishing.

All this data is monitored by 48 IBM recruited and trained tennis experts, who capture match statistics at courtside and report back in sub-second response times. IBM says that using tennis players trained on its systems to capture data ensures they read the game faster and can provide data more accurately.

Former champion Andy Murray is set to make a comeback in the doubles, following a serious hip injury and thanks to similar tech provide by Catapult, Murray has been analysing the previous form and comparing it his post-operation technique. Jozef Baker, a product specialist at Catapult, has worked closely with Murray and his strength and conditioning coach Matt Little since 2017.

«The credit for his return to play belongs entirely with Andy and his team, but we look to provide the best tools and hardware and software for Matt to make the best decisions for Andy and his health,» he told Forbes.

«We have been able to use the technology to identify tennis strokes so we have utilised some of that work and we have detected serves from historical data on Andy. We have managed to compare that to what he is doing at the moment during his recovery and from there we took conclusions from a pre-injury Murray and compared them to help Matt in building that workload.»

As such, Wimbledon may be the key event in the tennis calendar, but it also stands as a quiet showcase of some of the most cutting-edge AI and data analysis technology currently available, demonstrating that if the tech can stand up in a high-speed, intense environment, it’s poised reap rewards for the businesses that adopt it. 

Every NHS Wales worker will be given access to Microsoft’s enterprise programs such as Outlook and Teams, aiding digital transformation in Britain’s healthcare system.

As part of a country-wide focus on digital transformation, more than 100,000 NHS employees, including GPs, consultants, nurses, therapists, paramedics and support staff, will have access to Microsoft 365.

This will include Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint and Yammer and will be available to staff on multiple devices, such as phones, tablets and laptops.

According to Microsoft, the move is expected to help NHS staff save money and time by not having to travel to face-to-face meetings, freeing them up to focus on patients who need the most help.

«This new national agreement is part of our commitment to refresh NHS Wales IT infrastructure and ensure it supports the transformational changes taking place across health and social care,» said Andrew Griffiths, director of NHS Wales Informatics Service. «It moves our digital estate away from locally managed services and into cloud-based services, delivering efficiencies and economies of scale.

«Frontline staff who work in our health and care services rely on technology, to help them deliver services in new, innovative ways that put the needs of patients first. I am very pleased that we are able to deliver the most up to date tools to our NHS Wales staff to help them with the fantastic work they do every day.»

This is not the first deal Microsoft has gone into with the Welsh public sector. In March, the country became one of the first in the world to give all local authority schools access to Microsoft 365.

The Welsh government paid for all 1,521 «maintained» schools to have access to Microsoft programs in a bid to boost the use of technology among pupils and reduce costs for families and headteachers, as part of the £1.2 million investment.

The agreement with NHS Wales will see Microsoft migrate all its digital estate from locally managed services to a cloud-based service, which has potential risks, particularly for an organisation as large as NHS Wales. As an example of what can go wrong, TSB bank spent the majority of 2018 fixing a botched IT upgrade than cost it almost £100 million.

Then there is the risk of outside threats, similar to the WannaCry attacks. According to Microsoft, the deal also includes an upgrade to Windows 10 E5, which comes with cutting-edge security features to prevent, detect, investigate and respond to potential risks.

«It’s essential that NHS Wales has secure systems that health staff and patients trust and this agreement will help achieve that,» Griffiths added. «It will increase resilience and mean our services are running on the most up-to-date operating system at all times.»

Oracle delivered better than expected earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter, topping Wall Street estimates and marking a return to growth following a difficult period of restructuring and job losses.

The California tech firm’s revenue rose 1% year on year, with its largest business segment, Cloud Services and License Support, delivering $6.80 billion in revenue.

Oracle executives pointed to growth in cloud applications such as NetSuite and Fusion, in a recent earnings statement. Its Fusion cloud application suites saw 32% revenue growth in the fiscal year, with NetSuite cloud apps revenues also up by 32%.

«Our high-margin Fusion and NetSuite cloud applications businesses are growing rapidly, while we downsize our low-margin legacy hardware business,» said Oracle co-CEO, Safra Catz. «The net result of this shift away from commodity hardware to cloud applications was a Q4 non-GAAP operating margin of 47%, the highest we’ve seen in five years.»

The results end a difficult quarter for the company, one that saw a major restructuring to focus more on cloud services. It was reported that 352 jobs would disappear as of 21 May, including 255 at its headquarters in California and 97 jobs from its Santa Clara campus.

More recently, the company announced a partnership with cloud rival Microsoft to deliver multi-cloud services such as Azure analytics and AI. This gave customers the ability to seamlessly use multiple clouds with much greater effectiveness. However, it was largely seen as somewhat of a concession by Oracle that it would be unable to keep pace with the likes of AWS and Google without help.

«As our cloud business grows, we will continually balance our resources and restructure our development group to help ensure we have the right people delivering the best cloud products to our customers around the world,» an Oracle spokesperson said, speaking to Bloomberg.