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CodeSignal Inc., the San Francisco-based skills assessment platform trusted by Netflix, Meta, and Capital One, launched Cosmo on Wednesday, a mobile learning application that transforms spare minutes into career-ready skills through artificial intelligence-powered micro-courses. The app represents a strategic pivot for CodeSignal, which built its reputation assessing technical talent for major corporations but always harbored ambitions to revolutionize workplace education. Cosmo delivers over 300 bite-sized courses across generative AI, coding, marketing, finance, and leadership through an interactive chat interface powered by an AI tutor. “Cosmo is like having an AI tutor in your pocket that can teach you anything from GenAI to coding to marketing to finance to leadership, and it does it through practice,” said Tigran Sloyan, CodeSignal’s co-founder and CEO in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. “Instead of watching a video or reading about something, you immediately start practicing.” The launch comes as organizations grapple with massive skills gaps created by rapid AI adoption. According to the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 76% of developers are now using or plan to use AI tools, yet most workers lack the practical knowledge to harness these tools effectively. Traditional corporate training programs, which can cost $20,000 to $40,000 per person for executive-level instruction, have proven inadequate for scaling AI literacy across entire workforces. AI Scaling Hits Its Limits Power caps, rising token costs, and inference delays are reshaping enterprise AI. Join our exclusive salon to discover how top teams are: Turning energy into a strategic advantage Architecting efficient inference for real throughput gains Unlocking competitive ROI with sustainable AI systems Secure your spot to stay ahead: https://bit.ly/4mwGngO How CodeSignal pivoted from tech hiring platform to mobile education powerhouse CodeSignal’s journey into mobile learning culminates a decade-long vision that took an unexpected detour through the hiring technology space. Sloyan originally founded the company in 2015 with educational ambitions but quickly realized that without skills-based hiring practices, alternative education would fail to gain traction. “I started the company with that dream and mission: I want to help more humans achieve their true potential, which naturally leads to better education,” Sloyan explained in an interview. “But roughly two years into the company’s history, I realized that without knowing companies would actually care about the skills you build through alternative education — rather than just asking ‘where did you go to college?’ or ‘what did you major in?’ — it wouldn’t work.” The company spent the next six years building what became the leading technical assessment platform, processing millions of coding evaluations for over 3,000 companies. This hiring-focused period provided CodeSignal with crucial intelligence about which skills employers actually value — data that now informs Cosmo’s curriculum development. “We know exactly what companies are looking for,” Sloyan said. “Without that, I feel like you’re shooting in the dark when you’re trying to prepare people for what is going to help them get that job, what is going to help them advance their career.” Why AI tutors could finally solve the personalized learning problem Cosmo differentiates itself through what CodeSignal calls “practice-first learning,” where users immediately engage with realistic workplace scenarios rather than consuming passive video content. The app’s AI tutor, also named Cosmo, guides learners through conversational exchanges that adapt to individual knowledge levels and learning pace. The platform addresses what educational psychologists call “Bloom’s two sigma problem” — a 1984 study showing that one-on-one tutoring produces learning outcomes two standard deviations above traditional classroom instruction. For four decades, this remained theoretically interesting but practically impossible to scale. “We know one-on-one personalization and tutoring really makes a difference in learning, but it can’t be done at scale. How do you get a tutor for every human?” Sloyan said. “In 2023, when I saw early versions of generative AI, I thought: this is the moment. This technology, especially if it keeps getting better, can be uniquely used to help humans learn the way learning was meant to happen.” The app combines predetermined course content with real-time personalization. Each lesson follows a structured curriculum, but learners can interrupt with questions that prompt immediate AI-generated explanations before returning to the main content thread. Generative AI skills training takes center stage as workforce scrambles to adapt Nearly one-third of Cosmo’s launch content focuses on generative AI applications, reflecting what CodeSignal identifies as the most critical skills gap in today’s market. The app offers role-specific AI training paths for sales professionals, marketers, engineers, healthcare workers, and other specialties. “The biggest emphasis is on generative AI skills, because that’s the biggest career skills gap right now for both students and working adults,” Sloyan explained. “Everything from how to understand and use GenAI, how to think about its limitations, how to be better at prompting, and how to understand the entire landscape.” This focus addresses a broader workforce transformation driven by AI adoption. While some fear job displacement, Sloyan predicts increased demand for skilled workers who can effectively collaborate with AI systems. “I don’t believe we’re going to reach a point where humans are no longer needed in the workforce. I think it’s going to be the opposite. We’re going to need more humans, because what an individual human can do in the age of AI is going to be so much bigger than what we could do before,” he said. Mobile-first learning strategy targets both individual workers and corporate clients CodeSignal positions Cosmo as fundamentally a consumer application that also serves enterprise customers — a reflection of how workplace learning actually occurs. The company already provides its GenAI Skills Academy to corporate clients, and Cosmo extends this training to mobile devices for on-the-go learning. “Even though some of the largest educational companies, like Coursera and Udemy, are making the majority of their income, or at least half, from companies, at the end of the day, education is a consumer business,” Sloyan noted. “Who are you educating? You’re not educating a company — you’re educating individuals.” The app launches free on iOS with premium subscriptions at $24.99 monthly or $149.99

The next time you shop at a grocery store, you might want to thank this AI startup for keeping the shelves stocked with your favorite food products — and keeping them fresh and safe to eat. That would be Keychain an AI-powered marketplace for retailers to buy the consumer packaged goods (CPG) on their shelves started by former Angi (formerly Angie’s List) CEO and Handy co-founder and CEO Oisin Hanrahan back in 2023. An ERP is enterprise software that integrates essential business functions — such as finance, HR, manufacturing, procurement, and supply chain — into one unified platform, giving organizations a real-time, single source of information about what’s happening across the entire organization at any given moment. AI Scaling Hits Its Limits Power caps, rising token costs, and inference delays are reshaping enterprise AI. Join our exclusive salon to discover how top teams are: Turning energy into a strategic advantage Architecting efficient inference for real throughput gains Unlocking competitive ROI with sustainable AI systems Secure your spot to stay ahead: https://bit.ly/4mwGngO The global ERP market is expansive and growing fast, valued at an estimated $81.15 billion in 2024 and forecast to reach  $229.79 billion by 2032. It makes sense, then, that Keychain would try to take some of this market share, especially since they’re already assisting CPG manufacturers with their current product search and cataloging software. In contrast to the current ERP market, KeychainOS is being touted as a faster, CPG-specific alternative to systems like Oracle, QAD, and Plex, which often require months of setup and multiple add-ons before becoming fully usable. The funding round was led by Wellington Management with participation from BoxGroup and other existing investors, bringing Keychain’s total capital raised to $68 million just 18 months after launch. Building on a successful initial rollout Keychain’s story began with a narrower entry point into the CPG supply chain. “We started with a big vision: build the operating system for CPG. Our first product was a search-and-discovery tool so brands and retailers could find manufacturers,” said Hanrahan in a video call interview with VentureBeat recently. Keychain co-founding team from L to R: Jordan Weitz, Oisin Hanrahan, and Umang Dua That initial product has grown quickly with more than 20,000 brands and retailers as customers, thousands of manufacturers — and more than a billion dollars of search-and-discovery volume a month. In fact, Keychain states it’s currently being used by 8 of the top 10 U.S. retailers and 7 of the top 10 CPG brands, including 7-Eleven, Whole Foods, and General Mills. Expanding into ERP KeychainOS extends beyond sourcing into the core functions of manufacturing operations. Hanrahan emphasized that the expansion builds on Keychain’s existing customer base. Unlike traditional ERP systems, KeychainOS is designed to be implemented in days and integrates seamlessly with Keychain’s sourcing platform. The system responds to a need Hanrahan says he hears directly from the market. “Every four to eight weeks we host industry dinners with 80 to 200 people,” he told VentureBeat. “A constant theme is how hard it is to customize non-CPG software to run a plant, and the lack of connectivity between food safety, procurement, planning, and cost accounting.” KeychainOS was born to solve these difficulties far more quickly, efficiently, and smoothly. “We’re starting with customers who already use us for search and discovery—people paying us millions in aggregate. It’s a natural expansion,” Hanrahan offered. “Ultimately, it’ll be everywhere—like water. We’ve already had teams rip out existing food-safety software and replace it with Keychain OS.” Using AI to augment food safety and manufacturing process checking One of the ways KeychainOS differentiates itself from legacy ERP platforms is how it handles data entry. Traditional systems often require extensive manual input, which can slow operations and introduce errors. “Tools are fragmented and hard to use,” Hanrahan stated. “Today the expectation is natural-language interfaces and automated data ingestion—not smashing a keyboard to enter data.” Promotional image of KeychainOS on a processing facility floor. Credit: Keychain This reflects a design choice to minimize repetitive entry by enabling the system to capture and organize information in the background. The company is also expanding how workers interact with the software on the factory floor. At present, the primary interface is tapping on a screen through tablets placed in production environments. However, Keychain is building toward multimodal input. “On the floor, the primary interface is tapping on a screen—today it’s screen, tap, and type—while we add computer vision, connected scales, and voice,” Hanrahan explained. This means over time, facilities may be able to automatically record temperatures, weights, or other production data without manual input. Another feature of KeychainOS is the use of adaptive checklists powered by AI. Instead of static, paper-based forms where workers tick boxes regardless of context, the system can adjust based on responses. For example, if an operator records that two batches of a product or component were mixed together, the software automatically prompts additional required steps, rather than leaving that compliance process to chance. This allows food-safety audits and quality checks to be both standardized and responsive, ensuring that no steps are missed in daily operations. Competitive positioning The shift puts Keychain in competition with large, established, legacy ERP vendors. But Hanrahan believes the new KeychainOS arrives at a moment when manufacturers are crying out for alternatives. “We think the moment is here to build a better AI-native ERP without the 14 dropdowns and 17 checkboxes people hate in traditional SaaS,” he said. The company is betting that its vertical focus and AI capabilities will appeal to manufacturers weary of fragmented software. Instead of stitching together different tools, KeychainOS offers integrated modules for compliance, planning, and traceability, with the ability to share data across the supply chain. Customer and investor perspective Whole Foods Market is among the retailers already using Keychain. Tom Hermes, Vice President of Sourcing and Product Development, said the tool helps his teams identify prospective manufacturers who can meet new product development requirements. Wellington Management’s Molly Breiner praised Keychain for combining speed and substance in

In mid-June 2025, Microsoft made an announcement about a suite of “Sovereign Cloud solutions” designed to ensure that data belonging to European customers remains stored and processed entirely within Europe. Judson Althoff, executive vice-president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft, said this “evolution and expansion” will be offered across all existing European datacentre regions, for all European customers. This was part of the company “constantly look[ing] for new ways to ensure our European customers have the options and assurances they need to operate with confidence”. In particular, Althoff said that in a “time of geopolitical volatility, we are committed to providing digital stability”. That mention of volatility and the deliberate offering of European-focused services follows a trend of digital sovereignty, where users of cloud services, in this case, can be sure that their data is where the provider says it is. Control and govern According to Geopol, digital sovereignty refers to a country’s ability to control and govern its own digital infrastructure, data and technologies in alignment with national laws, values and interests. “In simple terms, it’s about who owns, controls and protects data and digital systems within a given territory,” it says. This has been present for many years, with China’s tactic to inspect web traffic passing through its networks well documented. An article on the Comparitech web site claims China “will first demand that a western tech company comply with its surveillance or censorship demands in order to continue operating in the country. This constant surveillance leads to what it calls “an atmosphere of distrust, and has a chilling effect on freedoms of speech, expression, movement and assembly.” In the past few months, though, especially since the second US presidency of Donald Trump, there has been increased searches of electronic devices at ports of entry, while Greg Nojeim, director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, told Reuters there was an increased concern by Europeans about the US government accessing their data, whether stored on devices or in the cloud. “Not only does US law permit the government to search devices of anyone entering the country, it can compel disclosure of data that Europeans outside the US store or transmit through US communications service providers,” said Nojeim. This is leading to a concept of digital sovereignty for Europe, with providers seeking more local hosting and cloud-based storage, as well as using more non-US services. For example, use in Europe of Swiss-based ProtonMail rose 11.7% year-on-year, and Germany’s new government has committed to make more use of open-source data formats and locally based cloud infrastructure. Realistic option So, all of a sudden, it seems that the US is the bad guy? With American companies still dominating the cloud market, is digital sovereignty a realistic option? Brian Honan, CEO of BH Consulting, says that with the current uncertainty around the geopolitical environment, organisations need to acknowledge that digital sovereignty is no longer an abstract concept, but a very real issue that could impact them. “We are already witnessing organisations taking proactive steps to reduce their dependence on US-based technology providers, such as the municipality of Aarhus in Denmark, which has recently announced its plans to phase out Microsoft products due to concerns over control and long-term resilience,” he says. “Similarly, in the Netherlands, government agencies have raised serious questions about the compatibility of US cloud services with EU [European Union] data protection laws such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR] and the EU Artificial Intelligence Act.” Honan says that organisations need to review the risk associated with their dependency on systems and services that are provided by suppliers outside their jurisdiction, and the potential impact on their business should one, or all, of those suppliers restrict access to their services. “The cost of disruption, regulatory exposure and data loss will far outweigh the perceived convenience of doing nothing,” he says. “Now is the time for organisations to assess their digital supply chain, understand their exposure and put appropriate remediation measures in place. Hopefully, the measures may never be needed, but it is better to be prepared than to react to a crisis.” Taking action That move by the Danish government came at a time when the concept of digital sovereignty increased, and more European governments took action against more suspicious applications. For example, Czechia banned DeepSeek in July 2025, following a similar move in January by Italy, over cyber security concerns, when Czech prime minister Petr Fiala said the government acted after receiving a warning about the threat of unauthorised access to users’ data. Research published in mid-June 2025 by cloud computing services supplier Civo said 83% of UK-based IT decision-makers worry about the impact of international developments on data sovereignty, with 61% of UK IT leaders now considering data sovereignty a strategic priority as 35% of survey respondents have complete knowledge of the location and jurisdiction in which their organisation’s data is hosted. One company making efforts to enable European organisations is Zscaler, whose Zero Trust Exchange is designed to securely connect users, devices and applications while upholding the highest standards of privacy, security and operational resilience. Announced in June, the company said its platform meets these challenges with a commitment to privacy by design and privacy by default. Casper Klynge, vice-president and head of EMEA government partnerships at Zscaler, said it was focused on helping its customers navigate complex compliance requirements, and empowering them to modernise securely, innovate confidently and maintain control over their most sensitive data. Speaking to Computer Weekly, Klynge says there is a global trend to seek digital sovereignty, but the European motivation is where there are concerns about dependencies, and retaining Europe’s global competitiveness. “What we’ve seen in the last four to five months in terms of the change of mindsets, the psychology on the European side, is in my view unprecedented,” he says. “It’s a massive change and it goes back to the question about trust, and therefore, there are some hesitations of using

Mr Doomits – stock.adobe.com Metropolitan Police-led investigation into Post Office scandal is expected to run to 2030 and cost taxpayers tens of millions of pounds By Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA Published: 21 Aug 2025 16:41 The national police investigation into the Post Office Horizon scandal is expected to cost taxpayers more than £50m. Scandal victims accept the cost, but demand accountability. Operation Olympos has consumed more than £6m since 2019, but over the next five years, costs are expected to increase significantly to about £10m per year until its completion in 2030, according to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request response. The FOI request, submitted by a campaigner known on X as Monsieur Cholet, sought information on the total cost of Operation Olympos to date. In addition to that information, Monsieur Cholet received forecast costs for the next five years. Investigation formalised The national police investigation, Operation Olympos, was set up in May 2024, following the broadcast of the Post Office scandal-based drama, Mr Bates versus the Post Office, and the public anger it triggered. The Post Office scandal saw hundreds of subpostmasters wrongly prosecuted and convicted of financial crimes due to unexplained account shortfalls that were eventually found to have been caused by errors in the Horizon system. Thousands lost their livelihoods and had their lives turned upside down after repaying the unexplained losses. The police investigation initially looked at the potential crimes of perjury and perverting the course of justice, and focused on “key individuals” involved in subpostmaster prosecutions. Phase two will investigate wider offences. In December 2024, police said they were not ruling out any person or crime in the Post Office scandal investigation. The team of 100 officers from across the country originally had 1.5 million documents to review. In June, after an initial investigation, the number had reached the six million mark. The number of documents and suspects is expected to rise further, according to a statement by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC). At the time, police said they were investigating 45 people in relation to potential crimes, with seven formally identified as suspects. Sir Alan Bates, who led subpostmasters in their fight against the Post Office, asked: “What price do you put on justice?” He pointed to the huge amount spent by the Post Office on “defending its lies” over the years, adding: “If it holds the real guilty in all this to account, then it’s worth every penny.” Cost acceptance, but accountability must follow Former subpostmaster and victim of the scandal, Lee Castleton, accepted that the police investigation would take time and cost a lot of money, but he demanded accountability. “Accountability is really important,” he said. “All police investigations are expensive, and I can imagine that it will be very detailed and very difficult to investigate, with unhelpful witnesses.” There has to be corporate accountability and there should be heavy fines Lee Castleton, former subpostmaster Castleton said accountability should go beyond individuals and include the companies involved. “There has to be corporate accountability and there should be heavy fines.” As Computer Weekly revealed in 2020, the Met Police began assessing evidence of potential perjury offences committed by Fujitsu staff in criminal trials of subpostmasters prosecuted for accounting errors caused by a computer system. In January that year, the director of public prosecutions (DPP) referred the concerns of High Court judge Peter Fraser about the accuracy of evidence given by Fujitsu staff in criminal trials to the Metropolitan Police. This followed his judgment that found errors in the Horizon system had caused the unexplained branch account shortfalls experienced by subpostmasters. Three months later, the Met began assessing the evidence, and in November 2021, it opened a criminal investigation into Fujitsu staff who gave evidence in trials of subpostmasters, namely Gareth Jenkins and Anne Chambers. The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, when it revealed the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to the accounting software (see timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal below). Read more on IT for retail and logistics Subpostmaster federation accepted money from Fujitsu in run-up to High Court Post Office trial By: Karl Flinders Kroll reviewing Post Office Horizon’s current integrity and discrepancy identification By: Karl Flinders Post Office scandal data leak interim compensation offers made By: Karl Flinders Government announcement on Fujitsu talks add ‘vague words’ and no interim payment By: Karl Flinders Read More

J_News_photo – stock.adobe.com The National Federation of Subpostmasters accepted sponsorship money from Fujitsu in the run-up to a High Court case examining the IT firm’s faulty Post Office system By Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA Published: 21 Aug 2025 14:36 Fujitsu sponsored an annual event held by the National Federation of Subpostmasters (NFSP) just months before a High Court trial examined claims that its system wrecked the lives of subpostmasters. A document about the annual NFSP conference, which was held in Nottingham in February 2018, stated that Fujitsu was sponsoring an evening event during the conference. The NFSP failed to support subpostmasters and defended the Fujitsu system during the legal battle, which began later that year. When the conference was held, the High Court battle was approaching. Planning for legal action by affected subpostmasters began in 2015. In January 2017, the group litigation order (GLO) was given the go-ahead, and it began in November 2018. The court case saw subpostmasters try to prove, against huge financial odds, that the Fujitsu Horizon system used in Post Office branches was responsible for unexplained accounting shortfalls that they had been blamed for. Many were prosecuted and wrongly convicted of financial crimes as a result, in what is today widely known as the Post Office Horizon scandal. The NFSP did not support the action brought by Sir Alan Bates and 554 other claimants, and did not endorse the claims against Fujitsu’s system. The organisation has been accused of taking the Post Office’s side as a result of its financial reliance on it. GLO managing judge Peter Fraser said in his judgment: “The NFSP is not remotely independent of the Post Office, nor does it appear to put its members’ interests above its own separate commercial interests.” The 2018 annual conference itinerary document reveals the NFSP was accepting sponsorship from Fujitsu. Subpostmasters won the court case, which ended in December 2019. That victory paved the way for wrongful convictions to be overturned, the statutory public inquiry and the ITV drama that widened public awareness of the Post Office scandal. The NFSP later said it had been misled by the Post Office about the robustness of Fujitsu’s Horizon system. But as recently as last year, George Thomson, NFSP general secretary from 2007 to 2018, told the Post Office Horizon scandal statutory public inquiry that the Horizon system was robust while he headed up the organisation. In his witness statement, he wrote: “The sheer volume of transactions against the small percentage of claims proves beyond any doubt that the system was robust.” This is despite subpostmasters contacting him directly on numerous occasions to explain the difficulties they were having with the system, and the landmark High Court judgment in 2019 that found the Horizon system was not robust. The NFSP was unavailable for comment when this article was published, but speaking following Thomson’s evidence last year, current NFSP CEO Calum Greenhow said: “The NFSP of today was shocked by the evidence given by Thomson at the inquiry. This is especially so given the number of people who suffered as a result of the Horizon scandal, and the clear evidence at the inquiry which shows that Horizon was not ‘robust’. “It is clear that more could and should have been done for them and for others. Sadly, due to Mr Thomson’s position on Horizon during his time as general secretary, this did not happen, and for that we are truly sorry.” The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, when it revealed the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to the accounting software (see timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal below). Read more on IT for retail and logistics Kroll reviewing Post Office Horizon’s current integrity and discrepancy identification By: Karl Flinders Post Office scandal data leak interim compensation offers made By: Karl Flinders Government announcement on Fujitsu talks add ‘vague words’ and no interim payment By: Karl Flinders Metropolitan Police concern puts brakes on Post Office Horizon data migration By: Karl Flinders Read More

Carsten Reisinger – stock.adobe. Appeal tribunal dismisses doctor’s bid to quash decision that cleared London hospital trust of concealing evidence through attempted destruction of electronic documents during live court proceedings By Tommy Greene Published: 21 Aug 2025 14:00 An NHS doctor has lost his appeal to challenge a court decision that cleared a hospital trust over allegations of deliberately concealing evidence. The Employment Appeal Tribunal, which considers appeals where mistakes are believed to have been made in the employment tribunal system, has dismissed NHS whistleblower Chris Day’s appeal, concluding the errors made by a previous judge “were immaterial to the outcome”. Day brought an appeal against a ruling in 2022 which cleared Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Foundation Trust (LGT) of claims that it concealed evidence after one of its communications chiefs had deleted as many as 90,000 “potentially” critical emails midway through a legal hearing. Appeal tribunal judge Clive Sheldon KC said on 19 August that the 2022 tribunal’s “reasoning [was] found to be within its discretion and supported by the evidence”. The appeal tribunal heard in July that LGT had displayed “at best cavalier, at worst deceitful behaviour” over its disclosure of evidence in the 2022 case brought by Day over public statements made by the trust he considered to be defamatory and detrimental. His barrister Andrew Allen KC cited an attempt by a trust employee to mass delete electronic evidence while the 2022 tribunal hearing was live, “incorrect” evidence given by trust CEO Ben Travis and the trust’s withholding of records of an extraordinary board meeting held during the course of a previous court hearing as evidence of alleged poor conduct. Questions over e-discovery LGT’s barrister, Daniel Tatton Brown KC, downplayed the importance of the trust’s late evidence disclosures and argued the ex-communications director, David Cocke, had in fact brought additional material to the tribunal’s attention, in spite of his attempts to delete up to 90,000 emails. Cocke did not ultimately make himself available for cross-examination in 2022. An e-discovery expert who Computer Weekly spoke with following the 2022 tribunal questioned LGT’s claims over “permanent” evidence deletion. No independent IT experts were present at the 2022 or the 2025 appeal hearings, with key questions remaining unanswered over the targeted electronic documents’ status. Judge Sheldon concluded that the 2022 ruling by Judge Anne Martin erred on two grounds. He found that Martin, who cleared LGT of wrongdoing, had not considered whether the trust’s “refusal to remove public statements after concerns from the Care Quality Commission [a watchdog body] constituted a detriment”. Former health minister Norman Lamb argued in the 2022 hearing that these statements were potentially “defamatory” to Day. Martin’s decision also “wrongly” determined that Day’s “claim fell outside section 47B” of the Employment Rights Act, which protects workers from detriment from their employer in retaliation for whistleblowing. “The Employment Appeal Tribunal concluded that the errors were immaterial to the outcome, as the Employment Tribunal had correctly found that the protected disclosures did not materially influence the Respondent’s actions,” according to the judgment. Judges ‘ignored’ destruction of emails Day told Computer Weekly that tribunal judges had “ignored” and effectively trivialised the attempted destruction of evidence in his prolonged court battle. “The case is about MPs and the press being misled about an NHS whistleblowing case, and why it suddenly settled,” he said. “To get to their destination now two judges have ignored large swathes of evidence and multiple acts of destruction of evidence. People should be asking how and why this has happened.” A trust spokesperson said: “We note the outcome of the Employment Appeal Tribunal and have no further comment to make.” Read more on IT news in your industry sector NHS trust accused of ‘at best cavalier, at worst deceitful’ behaviour after deleting emails By: Tommy Greene Investigatory Powers Tribunal has no power to award costs against PSNI over evidence failures By: Bill Goodwin Met Police spied on BBC journalists’ phone data for PSNI, MPs told By: Bill Goodwin Questions raised over NHS deletion of thousands of emails during whistleblower tribunal By: Tommy Greene Read More

The UK’s equality watchdog has been granted permission to intervene in a judicial review of the Met Police’s live facial-recognition (LFR) technology use, which it claims is being deployed unlawfully By Sebastian Klovig Skelton, Data & ethics editor Published: 21 Aug 2025 14:00 The Metropolitan Police’s use of live facial-recognition (LFR) technology is unlawful, according to UK equality watchdog, citing the need for deployments of the technology to be necessary, proportionate and respectful of human rights. John Kirkpatrick, chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), acknowledged that while the tech could be used help to combat serious crime and keep people safe, the force is currently failing meet key legal standards with its deployments. “The law is clear: everyone has the right to privacy, to freedom of expression and to freedom of assembly. These rights are vital for any democratic society,” he said. “As such, there must be clear rules which guarantee that live facial-recognition technology is used only where necessary, proportionate and constrained by appropriate safeguards. We believe that the Metropolitan Police’s current policy falls short of this standard.” The EHRC added that the Met’s current approach to LFR is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, specifically Articles 8 (right to privacy), 10 (freedom of expression) and 11 (freedom of assembly and association). It further highlighted how, when used on a large scale, even low error rates can affect a significant number of people by brining unnecessary and unwanted police attention, and warned that its use at protests could have a “chilling effect” on people’s freedom of expression and assembly. Senior police officers from both the Met and South Wales Police have previously argued that a major benefit of facial-recognition technology is its “deterrence effect.” The EHRC added that the “high risk” nature of LFR means it should only be used when strictly necessary and subject to safeguards. The regulators’ comments follow it being granted permission to intervene in an upcoming judicial review of the Met’s LFR use, which was launched by anti-knife crime campaigner Shaun Thompson after he was wrongly identified as a suspect by the Met’s system. Thompson, who was returning home from a volunteer shift in Croydon with the Street Fathers youth outreach group when he was wrongly stopped in February 2025, previously described the system as “stop and search on steroids,” and said it felt like he was being treated as “guilty until proven innocent”. The EHRC said that data shows that the number of Black men triggering an “alert” by the technology is higher than would be expected proportionally when compared with the population of London. According to data gathered by Green Party London Assembly member Zoë Garbett, more than half of the Met’s 180 LFR deployments that took place during 2024 were in areas where the proportion of Black residents is higher than the city’s average, including Lewisham and Haringey. While Black people comprise 13.5% of London’s total population, the proportion is much higher in the Met’s deployment areas, with Black people making up 36% of the Haringey population, 34% of the Lewisham population, and 40.1% of the Croydon population, where the Met is also planning to deploy permanent LFR cameras. While the review will not take place until January 2026, the EHRC will now be able to submit evidence on the “intrusive ways” the force has been using the technology in recent years. Responding to the EHRC’s claims, a Met Police spokesperson said: “The Met is committed to making London safer, using data and technology to locate offenders that pose the greatest risk to our communities. It helped us to take hundreds of dangerous offenders off London’s streets, including those wanted for rape and domestic abuse. “We continue to engage with our communities to build understanding about how this technology works, providing reassurances that there are rigorous checks and balances in place to protect people’s rights and privacy. “A judicial review hearing is scheduled for January 2026, and we are fully engaged in this process. We are confident that our use of live facial recognition is lawful and follows the policy which is published online.” At the start of August 2025, the Met said it will more than double its number of LFR deployments to cover the loss of 1,400 officers and 300 staff, amid a £260m budget shortfall for the coming year. The Met also said in July this year that since the start of 2024, more than 1,000 arrests have been made using LFR – 773 of which led to the individual being charged or cautioned. In the same month, home secretary Yvette Cooper confirmed for the first time that the UK government will seek to regulate police facial recognition by creating “a proper, clear governance framework”, citing police reticence to deploy systems without adequate rules in place. However, she declined to say if any new framework will be statutory. While there have been repeated calls from both Parliament and civil society over many years for the police’s use of the technology to be regulated, the Home Office has consistently maintained that there is already a “comprehensive” framework in place. Such calls include three separate inquiries by the JHAC into shoplifting, police algorithms and police facial recognition; two of the UK’s former biometrics commissioners, Paul Wiles and Fraser Sampson; an independent legal review by Matthew Ryder QC; the UK’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission; and the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, which called for a moratorium on LFR as far back as July 2019. More recently, the Ada Lovelace Institute published a report in May that noted the UK’s patchwork approach to regulating biometric surveillance technologies is “inadequate”, placing fundamental rights at risk and ultimately undermining public trust. Read more on Data quality management and governance Met Police to double facial recognition use amid budget cuts By: Sebastian Klovig Skelton UK to create ‘governance framework’ for police facial recognition By: Sebastian Klovig Skelton Met Police to deploy permanent facial recognition tech in Croydon By: Sebastian Klovig Skelton Met Police challenged on claim LFR supported by ‘majority of Lewisham residents’ By: Sebastian Klovig Skelton Read More

We learned in July that Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl would come to PlayStation later this year. On Thursday, developer GSC Gameworld gave us a specific release date: November 20. That’s exactly a year after its PC and Xbox launch. The PS5 version will support adaptive triggers, haptic feedback, gyro aiming and more. Meanwhile, PS5 Pro users will see upgraded resolution, shadows and reflections (among other enhancements). The game will be available in a $60 standard edition, an $80 deluxe one and a $110 ultimate edition. GSC Gameworld The game had quite a development process: It lasted 14 years. (Amusingly, “Stalker 2 sneaking up on a 2012 launch” was our first headline about the game.) GSC Gameworld was plagued by funding issues, a near shutdown and a transition to a new game engine. Then, Russia threw another wrench in the Ukrainian studio’s plans, with its 2022 invasion. Sadly, the company even lost a team member in the war. When the game finally launched in 2024, it still had plenty of bugs. However, the team has worked hard to patch those ever since. Hopefully, the PlayStation version will benefit from the extra clean-up time and offer a polished experience from day one. You can pre-order Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl today from the PlayStation Store. Read More

Google’s seemingly unrelenting quest to infuse AI into every aspect of your online life just got a lot more global in scope, with the company expanding its AI Mode in Search to over 180 new countries. AI Mode has previously only been available in the US, India and the UK, and while English remains the only supported language right now, Google says it’ll add more soon. Google is also expanding its AI Mode’s agentic capabilities, so you can now use natural language to find restaurant reservations. Google says you can ask about getting a dinner reservation with conditions such as group size, date, location and your preference of cuisine, all of which be taken into consideration when AI Mode pulls in its results from across the web. Suggestions will be presented in list form with the available reservation slots. It’ll also provide a link to the booking page you need. Google also plans to add local service appointments and event ticketing capabilities soon, with Ticketmaster and StubHub among its partners. AI Mode leverages Google’s web-browsing AI agent Project Mariner’ its direct partners on Search and resources like Knowledge Graph and Google Maps when prompted to find you somewhere to eat. It has partnered with the likes of OpenTable, Resy and Tock to incorporate as many restaurants as possible and streamline the booking process. Right now, this feature is exclusive to those subscribed to the wildly expensive Google AI Ultra plan in the US, and can be accessed through its Labs platform. If you opt into the AI Mode experiment it can also remember your previous conversations and searches to give you results that more closely match your preferences. Finally, if your AI-powered conversations are simply too interesting to keep to yourself, Google will now let you bring others in when you tap the “Share” button on a response. This allows your chosen contact to join the conversation at that point and ask their own follow-up questions. Google uses planning trips or parties as examples of when you might want to collaborate with someone else on an AI-assisted task. The original sender can delete shared links whenever they like. Read More

Apple is once again raising the price of its streaming service. Apple TV+ is shooting up to $13 per month, from $10 per month. This is effective immediately. Current subscribers will see the price change 30 days after the next renewal date. There’s one spot of good news here. The pricing for the yearly subscription remains unchanged, as does the cost of an Apple One bundle. Many platforms start cheap before slowly turning the heat up, using the drug dealer method of salesmanship. However, Apple really did a speed run here. The platform isn’t very old and cost $7 per month as recently as 2023. Now it’s nearly twice that amount. In a recent earnings call, the company said that overall Apple TV+ viewership rose “strong double digits year over year.” The platform has been generating mainstream buzz. Severance has proven to be a gigantic hit and The Studio scooped up plenty of Emmy nominations this year. The platform’s also a sci-fi powerhouse, releasing shows like For All Mankind, Invasion, Foundation, Murderbot, Silo and Dark Matter, among others. If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission. Read More