Technology News https://www.techticker.net stay informed Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:22:16 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 https://www.techticker.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/96430-150x150.png Technology News https://www.techticker.net 32 32 London not calling as planning regs mar mobile development https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/london-not-calling-as-planning-regs-mar-mobile-development/ https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/london-not-calling-as-planning-regs-mar-mobile-development/#respond Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:22:16 +0000 https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/london-not-calling-as-planning-regs-mar-mobile-development/

Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) is calling for UK planning rules to be updated to ensure mobile network operators can provide reliable coverage in London after warning that planning delays are putting the capital’s mobile growth at risk as buildings that currently host mobile equipment are redeveloped.

VMO2 said it has been forced to switch off dozens of cell sites across the capital as current planning regulations mean operators can be ordered to remove infrastructure within 18 months, while replacement sites can take years to secure.

This means mobile operators are having to remove equipment from buildings faster than it can be replaced, resulting in a slow erosion of mobile coverage and capacity in parts of London. This is leaving busy areas blighted by poor quality communication, despite operators being ready to deploy new sites.

Current planning regulations allow developers looking to rebuild or revamp a building that currently houses mobile equipment to serve a mobile operator with a “notice to quit” within 18 months, even though, on average, it takes more than two years to replace a site.

Moreover, while planning red tape holds up the deployment of masts in various locations, VMO2 emphasised that in London, there are typically few viable alternative sites nearby or lengthy approval processes for sites that are suitable, which is causing coverage gaps and weak mobile signals for customers.

Explaining that it was “sounding the alarm” on the issue, VMO2 said it was acting after being told to vacate key sites in the City and West End, leaving high footfall areas with reduced coverage despite the operator having the equipment and investment ready to deploy new sites and plug the gaps.

Mobile connectivity overlooked in planning process

The company stressed that operators are experiencing delays in securing approval for replacement locations, which means alternative sites are not being found fast enough. And, citing data from UK trade union Unison, it suggested that with just one in five planning departments across the UK fully staffed, delays in decision-making are leaving many areas without sufficient coverage.

Mobile operators are being hit by a double whammy as developers force them to remove mobile equipment while also bringing more people into an area, all of whom rely on their phones
Robert Joyce, VMO2

To compound the problem, VMO2 believes that many new developments are being built with little consideration of their impact on mobile connectivity. It added that while tall buildings may block existing masts and bring more people into an area – most of whom will want to use their phones – developers are not required to assess how a project will impact mobile services or support operators in finding alternative sites.

This, argued the operator, is creating a perfect storm for mobile connectivity in London, which now has fewer than seven 5G sites per 10,000 people –  according to a study from UK mobile trade body Mobile UK – lagging behind other major cities and falling short of what’s needed for a thriving capital.

The trade association also recently published a report that found small changes to the planning system could unlock up to £230bn for the economy by 2035 while freeing up local authority planning teams to tackle other issues like housebuilding.

VMO2 suggests improvements to planning rules

Convinced that targeted changes to planning rules will make a big difference to mobile coverage, VMO2 is now calling for them to be updated to ensure operators can provide reliable coverage in the capital.

Among the updates called for is a commitment to ensuring the UK’s National Planning Policy Framework “clearly” prioritises telecommunications infrastructure as a driver of economic growth, alongside reducing the number of applications requiring full planning or prior approval to ease pressure on local authorities.

The operator is also calling for greater flexibility to deploy infrastructure more efficiently, including encouraging the use of rooftops, particularly in conservation areas, and increasing the number of antennas permitted under existing rules to enable faster 4G and 5G upgrades.

Virgin Media O2 additionally believes that new developments should be required to consider their impact on mobile connectivity from the outset, ensuring appropriate infrastructure is incorporated early in the process to maintain and enhance coverage. The operator has submitted these policy requests to the UK government as part of its National Planning Policy Framework consultation, with a response expected in the coming months.

Commenting on the issue and potential solution, Robert Joyce, director of mobile access engineering at VMO2, said: “Mobile operators are being hit by a double whammy as developers force them to remove mobile equipment while also bringing more people into an area, all of whom rely on their phones.

“With planning teams under real pressure, delays in approving replacement sites are having a direct impact on customer experience in parts of the capital, which poses a real risk to London’s long-term growth prospects. Planning rules must evolve so that this investment goes into building infrastructure and delivering a reliable network for customers – not into delays, fees and compromised site choices.”

]]> https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/london-not-calling-as-planning-regs-mar-mobile-development/feed/ 0 Windows 11’s June update is here — these are the 3 most important features, including a huge move to make apps and menus load much faster https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/windows-11s-june-update-is-here-these-are-the-3-most-important-features-including-a-huge-move-to-make-apps-and-menus-load-much-faster/ https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/windows-11s-june-update-is-here-these-are-the-3-most-important-features-including-a-huge-move-to-make-apps-and-menus-load-much-faster/#respond Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:11:35 +0000 https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/windows-11s-june-update-is-here-these-are-the-3-most-important-features-including-a-huge-move-to-make-apps-and-menus-load-much-faster/

  • The Windows 11 June update is now here
  • It packs three key features, one of which speeds up the loading of core Windows 11 menus and apps
  • There’s also a nifty shared audio feature, and a boost for search

Windows 11‘s latest update is here, and the June patch brings with it a few key changes, and some useful complementary tweaks.

I’ve picked out the top three features as announced by Microsoft in what’s officially called the KB5094126 patch (where does it get these catchy names from?) for Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2. I’ll also round up the minor changes in a closing section, so that you can see everything that’s new with the June update.

]]> https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/windows-11s-june-update-is-here-these-are-the-3-most-important-features-including-a-huge-move-to-make-apps-and-menus-load-much-faster/feed/ 0 Dutch critical infrastructure lags Europe’s cloud sovereignty divide, SAP executive warns https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/dutch-critical-infrastructure-lags-europes-cloud-sovereignty-divide-sap-executive-warns/ https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/dutch-critical-infrastructure-lags-europes-cloud-sovereignty-divide-sap-executive-warns/#respond Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:00:42 +0000 https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/dutch-critical-infrastructure-lags-europes-cloud-sovereignty-divide-sap-executive-warns/

Europe’s debate over cloud sovereignty has moved from ideology to engineering. The question is no longer whether organisations should control their data and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, but whether their governments have built the frameworks that make such control possible in practice.

The answer, according to Martin Merz, president of Sovereign Cloud at SAP, depends entirely on where you are.

“It starts with each and every country,” Merz told Computer Weekly at SAP Sapphire Europe in Madrid. “They have their own regulations, their own national security requirements, and I think that needs to be honoured.”

He understands the frustration that comes with this reality. European politicians, he said, regularly point out that 450 million citizens and a combined budget of comparable scale to the US should make Europe a formidable force. But the US is one country. Europe is not, and its cloud sovereignty landscape reflects that.

For SAP, sovereignty is not a single property but a stack of four distinct obligations: data sovereignty, which requires that data and metadata remain within the country or region; operational sovereignty, meaning that only individuals with the appropriate nationality and security clearances handle that data; technical sovereignty, including an in-country control plane rather than a centralised one; and legal sovereignty, ensuring that the applicable regulatory framework is the one the customer and government actually signed off on.

Sovereign cloud, in SAP’s definition, is not a configuration choice. It is a compliance state. “Either it’s sovereign, or it’s not sovereign. You can’t have it halfway,” said Merz.

That positioning sounds straightforward. The European reality is considerably messier.

Different speeds, different distances

France and Germany have each moved beyond policy aspiration, though they are at different stages of maturity. France built its sovereign cloud framework around SecNumCloud, the certification standard maintained by cyber security agency ANSSI that sets strict requirements for data isolation, operational control and legal sovereignty.

In March 2026, SAP launched its sovereign cloud offering in France on the Bleu platform, a joint venture between Orange and Capgemini that runs Microsoft Azure technology under French ownership and is working towards full SecNumCloud qualification.

[Cloud sovereignty] starts with each and every country. They have their own regulations, their own national security requirements, and I think that needs to be honoured
Martin Merz, SAP

Germany’s Delos Cloud, an SAP subsidiary operating Microsoft Azure infrastructure under active oversight of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), launched for productive use in early 2026. The platform is designed specifically for Germany’s public sector and meets the cloud platform requirements set by the BSI, which also monitors and controls outgoing telemetry.

Merz confirmed he met with Germany’s digital minister, Carsten Wildberger, two weeks before Sapphire to work through sovereign deployment requirements. Both countries have defined architectures and active deployments. The frameworks exist, and public sector organisations are running on them.

The Netherlands is not at that stage. The country has been active in European sovereignty discussions, most visibly through a non-paper adopted by the Dutch Council of Ministers calling for stronger cloud sovereignty frameworks for public administrations.

But the document is telling in what it does not do: rather than setting out a Dutch national framework, it asks Brussels to define one. The Netherlands, it argues, believes the definition and criteria for cloud sovereignty are best established within the proposed EU Cloud and AI Development Act.

A January 2025 report by the Netherlands Court of Audit found that two-thirds of government cloud services examined had not completed a mandatory risk assessment, leaving digital sovereignty and data protection inadequately assured. The findings echoed concerns reported by Computer Weekly in June 2025, when independent experts warned that Dutch sovereign cloud initiatives remain too fragmented to serve critical infrastructure at scale.

The court’s vice-president warned bluntly that foreign governments, including the US, could potentially access or modify information held on Dutch government systems.

When asked directly whether any Dutch critical infrastructure operator is currently running on SAP sovereign infrastructure at a comparable level to deployments in France or Germany, Merz was notably cautious. “We work with the Netherlands,” he said. He did not name a certified deployment.

That gap matters because the stakes are not abstract. The Netherlands is home to some of Europe’s most strategically significant critical infrastructure, and organisations across those sectors have already made significant investments in cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP).

The question of what sovereign protection those deployments carry is one that regulators, boards and procurement teams across the Dutch public and regulated private sector will need to answer.

The hyperscaler paradox

One reason the conversation is complicated is that SAP’s sovereign cloud offering does not resolve neatly into a simple alternative to hyperscale infrastructure. SAP offers sovereign deployments on Amazon Web Services (AWS), on Microsoft Azure via partnerships such as Delos, on its own cloud infrastructure, and on-premise for customers such as intelligence agencies that require data to stay within their own facilities.

Which option is sovereign depends entirely on what the relevant regional cyber security agency has approved.

“If AWS is approved by the cyber security agency, then it’s sovereign for us,” said Merz. Some military customers in Europe, he noted, are comfortable running sovereign workloads on AWS provided the regulatory sign-off is in place. Others are not. The result is that sovereignty is defined not by the underlying infrastructure but by a compliance status that varies by sector, by nation, and by the specific requirements of each organisation.

“There are customers for whom none of these options is valid,” Merz acknowledged. “They want it solely in their own datacentre. Only then is it sovereign for them.”

That compliance question does not stop at the infrastructure layer. As SAP pushes its Autonomous Enterprise vision, the governance of AI agents introduces a parallel accountability gap that organisations in regulated sectors cannot afford to ignore.

SAP’s chief technology officer, Philipp Herzig, addressed this directly in a media roundtable at Sapphire. When an autonomous agent makes a wrong call, he said, accountability does not sit with SAP alone. “At the end of the day, that’s a shared responsibility,” Herzig said.

AI governance, he explained, sits primarily with the customer, through the AI Agent Hub, where IT departments set the policies, architecture and boundary conditions that govern what agents can and cannot do.

For organisations in regulated sectors, that governance layer is not optional, and it has to be designed before AI is switched on.

An industrial speed bump

The operational consequences of Europe’s fragmented sovereignty landscape are visible at the company level.

Damen Shipyards, the Dutch maritime group that builds vessels for navies and commercial operators across more than 20 countries, has spent several years consolidating around 80% of its entities onto a single SAP S/4Hana Cloud platform via Rise with SAP. The roll-out is largely complete, and the focus has shifted to unlocking AI value across finance, procurement, supply chain and project management.

Han Coenraad, who oversees the SAP programme at Damen, described genuine enthusiasm for the direction, particularly around SAP Joule. “Young professionals are using it, and the acceleration they get from it is really something to see,” he said.

But Damen Naval, the division that designs and builds warships for European defence ministries, remains on an on-premise SAP instance. Defence compliance rules require personnel to be screened by Dutch intelligence services in first- and second-line support, a standard that current cloud deployment models do not yet structurally accommodate.

“We see internally already a difference in adoption speed developing,” said Coenraad. “And that is not what we want.”

His colleague Kenny van Sleuwen, system architect for ERP, sees SAP Sovereign Cloud as a potential route to bringing both environments onto a common platform, and expects Dutch defence to follow Germany and France in formalising such requirements. But until that framework exists, the gap remains.

That is not a technology problem. It is a policy problem.

The pragmatism trap

Merz is not without sympathy for the difficulty of European convergence. He acknowledged that the US operates as a single regulatory market, while Europe is attempting to coordinate sovereign cloud standards across member states with different legal traditions, different national security agencies and different threat assessments.

The most successful countries and customers are those who start in a pragmatic way. Fulfil the requirements but stay open for new technology
Martin Merz, SAP

His prescription is pragmatism. “The most successful countries and customers are those who start in a pragmatic way,” he said. “Fulfil the requirements but stay open for new technology.”

The challenge with pragmatism as a long-term strategy is that it tends to lock in the advantages of those who moved earliest. France and Germany have invested heavily in building sovereign cloud infrastructure that meets their own standards. Organisations in those countries, including defence contractors and critical infrastructure operators, can adopt cloud and AI at a pace that regulators have approved. The Netherlands is still building the framework that would allow equivalent certifications to take place.

Merz said he would welcome one regulation for the whole of Europe. He was not optimistic about the timeline. For Dutch organisations that cannot wait for convergence, the practical questions are what sovereign cloud looks like under the current Dutch framework, whether that framework is developing fast enough, and what the cost of the delay is in terms of AI adoption that the most regulated and strategically significant sectors cannot yet pursue.

Those are questions that SAP’s engineering teams cannot answer. They are questions for The Hague.

]]> https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/dutch-critical-infrastructure-lags-europes-cloud-sovereignty-divide-sap-executive-warns/feed/ 0 We asked 1,500+ Apple fans what they wanted from WWDC 2026, and Tim Cook delivered — but excitement levels waned elsewhere https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/we-asked-1500-apple-fans-what-they-wanted-from-wwdc-2026-and-tim-cook-delivered-but-excitement-levels-waned-elsewhere/ https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/we-asked-1500-apple-fans-what-they-wanted-from-wwdc-2026-and-tim-cook-delivered-but-excitement-levels-waned-elsewhere/#respond Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:34:56 +0000 https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/we-asked-1500-apple-fans-what-they-wanted-from-wwdc-2026-and-tim-cook-delivered-but-excitement-levels-waned-elsewhere/

  • Apple delivered exactly what users wanted at WWDC 2026
  • Almost half of 1,500+ TechRadar readers wanted more AI features
  • iPadOS, watchOS and visionOS all saw marginal updates

Now that Apple‘s annual developer keynote has wrapped and we’ve digested all the major updates from WWDC 2026, did Tim Cook deliver what users actually wanted to see? Based on 1,529 responses to a poll we ran last week, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’.

Nearly half of the TechRadar readers who voted in our ‘What we expect to see at WWDC 2026‘ poll (see some of the results below) told us that artificial intelligence (AI) — to be clear, I mean machine learning, not the sentient kind — was the number one update they most wanted.

]]> https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/we-asked-1500-apple-fans-what-they-wanted-from-wwdc-2026-and-tim-cook-delivered-but-excitement-levels-waned-elsewhere/feed/ 0 Microsoft smashes record for biggest ever Patch Tuesday update https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/microsoft-smashes-record-for-biggest-ever-patch-tuesday-update/ https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/microsoft-smashes-record-for-biggest-ever-patch-tuesday-update/#respond Wed, 10 Jun 2026 07:20:41 +0000 https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/microsoft-smashes-record-for-biggest-ever-patch-tuesday-update/

Microsoft has issued patches for about 200 flaws in its latest monthly Patch Tuesday drop, blasting past a previous record high of almost 170 common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) set in October 2025.

Among a great many others, the latest update from Redmond fixes a total of 32 critical CVEs and three zero-day flaws.

Dustin Childs, head of threat awareness at TrendAI’s Zero Day Initiative, said: “We are heading into a high-stakes summer for cyber security. June’s record-shattering drop … is a stark warning that AI is supercharging flaw discovery at an uncontrollable scale. The current number of CVEs shipped by Microsoft this year exceeds the total number of CVEs shipped in all of 2018. It is extraordinary that Microsoft can produce so many patches in a single month, and I expect many testers are wondering what quality issues may exist.”

And with the addition of hundreds of CVEs in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge (Chromium) and other third-party flaws taking the total to almost 600, Chris Goettl, vice president of security product management at Ivanti, said talk of a ‘Patch Apocalypse’ was no longer unwarranted.

“We are in the Patch Apocalypse. The Patch Apocalypse is now,” said Goettl. “This is not intended to be a scare tactic. It is meant to outline the challenge that many organisations were anticipating, but the new generation of LLMs [Large Language Models] has accelerated significantly in the first half of 2026. 

“There are going to be more CVEs resolved by vendors at a faster and more continuous pace than we have ever seen previously. Unfortunately, this will also include more zero-day and n-day exploits than previously seen as well. The window from release from a vendor to exploitation had already shortened to five days as of 2023 threat intelligence data.”

Goettl said that many suppliers have acknowledged the need to use AI tools in their security research to identify and resolve flaws, with Oracle, Google Chrome and Mozilla all upping the cadence of their updates. Whether or not Microsoft follows suit remains to be seen.

Zero-days

This month’s zero-days are tracked as follows, in numerical order:

  • CVE-2026-45586, an elevation of privilege (EoP) flaw in Windows Collaborative Translation Framework (CTFMON);
  • CVE-2026-49160, a denial of service (DoS) flaw in HTTP.sys;
  • And CVE-2026-50507, a security feature bypass (SFB) flaw in Windows BitLocker.

All three of these flaws carry CVSS ratings of between six and eight, and all three have been reported publicly, but are not yet known to have been exploited.

Alex Vovk, CEO and Co-Founder of Action1, explained how CVE-2026-45586 could enable a local, authenticated attacker to gain system-level privileges with ease.

“The issue is caused by improper link resolution before file access, also known as link following. A low-privilege foothold can become full system control when Windows follows the wrong link at the wrong time,” said Vovk.

“System access can allow malware installation, defense evasion, credential theft, data modification, and deeper movement across the environment. For businesses, this can increase the impact of phishing, stolen credentials, or compromised standard user accounts. 

“This patch should be prioritised. Even though active exploitation is not reported, this type of bug can turn a minor local compromise into full endpoint control,” he added.

Meanwhile, CVE-2026-49160 in HTTP.sys stems from an uncontrolled resource consumption issue that could allow an unauthenticated threat actor to cause a DoS over the network.

“While the vulnerability does not expose data or allow code execution, it can disrupt services that depend on affected Windows systems,” said Action1 president and co-founder Mike Walters.

“Successful exploitation could disrupt web services, internal applications, APIs [application programming interfaces], and business systems that rely on affected Windows HTTP services. Outages may lead to downtime, failed transactions, loss of productivity, customer impact, and increased operational response costs.”

With exploitation considered more likely, CVE-2026049160 is another prime candidate for prioritisation, particularly since it is both network-accessible and requires zero authentication.

Finally, CVE-2026-50507 in Windows BitLocker – arising from a protection mechanism failure in how BitLocker handles device encryption – enables an attacker to access encrypted, stored data with no need for credentials, if they have physical access to the device.

While the need for physical access will be an effective blocker for many attackers, the potential impact is significant, as Action1 vulnerability research director Jack Bicer noted.

“BitLocker is commonly relied upon to protect sensitive business and personal data when devices are lost, stolen, or accessed by unauthorised individuals,” he said. “A successful bypass undermines this security control and can expose confidential business information, customer data, intellectual property, financial records, and regulated data.

“In environments where endpoint encryption is a compliance requirement, exploitation could result in regulatory exposure, breach notification obligations, reputational damage, and financial losses.”

Businesses with dispersed mobile estates and plentiful remote or hybrid workers should prioritise the fix for CVE-2026-50507, said Bicer.

]]> https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/microsoft-smashes-record-for-biggest-ever-patch-tuesday-update/feed/ 0 Is Microsoft finally going to de-spam Windows 11 search? It looks that way — and I’m shocked that my most-wanted change could be incoming https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/is-microsoft-finally-going-to-de-spam-windows-11-search-it-looks-that-way-and-im-shocked-that-my-most-wanted-change-could-be-incoming/ https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/is-microsoft-finally-going-to-de-spam-windows-11-search-it-looks-that-way-and-im-shocked-that-my-most-wanted-change-could-be-incoming/#respond Wed, 10 Jun 2026 07:10:58 +0000 https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/is-microsoft-finally-going-to-de-spam-windows-11-search-it-looks-that-way-and-im-shocked-that-my-most-wanted-change-could-be-incoming/

  • Windows 11 search could give you the option to turn off web results
  • Microsoft is already giving those results a lesser priority, but might go even further, and also remove results pointing to its store
  • All this is based on changes seen in a meet-up with Windows 11 testers, but it remains a rumor for now

In what will hopefully be one of the most refreshing changes yet to be visited upon Windows 11, Microsoft is rumored to be working on letting users ditch web results (and therefore Bing) from the search function in the OS.

Windows Latest reports that it was present at a private meeting of Windows 11 testers where Microsoft revealed that the ability to turn off web results in search was inbound.

]]> https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/is-microsoft-finally-going-to-de-spam-windows-11-search-it-looks-that-way-and-im-shocked-that-my-most-wanted-change-could-be-incoming/feed/ 0 The politicisation of Silicon Valley https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/the-politicisation-of-silicon-valley/ https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/the-politicisation-of-silicon-valley/#respond Wed, 10 Jun 2026 06:58:59 +0000 https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/the-politicisation-of-silicon-valley/

An interview with Nick Clegg during the South by SouthWest (SXSW) 2026 show in London for The Rest is Money podcast is illustrative of just how out of touch the tech giants are.

Speaking to ITV political editor Robert Peston, the former UK deputy prime minister spoke about the politicisation of Silicon Valley – and the fact that no one else had any experience in politics.

Present at the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2025 were Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple boss Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Also present was SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk, who went on to head up the US Department of Government Efficiency, which oversaw the closure of and funding cuts to numerous US government departments and programmes. 

Looking at the tech sector’s attitude to the new administration, Clegg said: “Rather than shun politics, they have decided to embrace Maga [make America great again] politics for a whole bunch of reasons.”

Dell is the most recent company to benefit from its CEO’s open support of the US president. In 2025, after Trump won the US presidential election, Dell CEO Michael Dell tweeted: “Congratulations to President Trump on a successful campaign and election win. We look forward to continued progress and opportunity under his leadership and working together toward a strong and unified future for all.”

In May 2026, Dell won a $9.7bn contract with the Pentagon, described by the US Department of War’s chief information officer, Kirsten Davies, as a “second-generation blanket purchase agreement” to streamline and consolidate critical Microsoft software and services across the department, the intelligence community and the US Coast Guard.

With Trump’s latest executive order of 2 June, which aims to promote advanced artificial intelligence (AI) in the US, questions are being raised over how much the tech giants supporting the US administration will benefit from their closeness to the president.

Political shift in Silicon Valley

Clegg joined Meta, the owner of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, in 2018 and left in 2025. “When I arrived in Silicon Valley in the autumn of 2018, it was a completely different time. Silicon Valley was still a bit hippy-dippy, very much left-leaning, for better or for worse. But crucially, social media was a social thing. It was about human beings,” he said.

In 2025, rather than shun politics, Clegg said the whole of Silicon Valley decided to embrace Maga politics. He said they did this “for a whole bunch of reasons – some high-minded and some more self-interest”.

Speaking about Meta specifically, he said: “Certainly the product in the company I work for has changed utterly from being a sort of human-centric product to one which is now much, much more about content, often synthetic content, being algorithmically recommended to you. To put it mildly, it was not exactly the kind of thing that appealed to me.”

Risk of political change

Clegg questioned the longevity of the tech giants, given that they have now shifted from being apolitical to being heavily supportive of the Trump administration.

“I’m not talking about my old life as a politician because I wasn’t employed at Meta as a politician, but I actually don’t think it’s sensible for business to flip-flop every time the political weather changes in Washington,” he said.

Clegg said it was particularly difficult for a social media business like Meta to balance freedom of speech with freedom of expression.

“About one half of the US thinks that companies like Meta actively censor and suppress their view of the world, and another half yell at them and say, ‘You’re not censoring enough to keep us safe’,” he said. “There’s a much more polarised debate, and I think if you’re dealing with something as sensitive as speech, and where speech moderation ends and free expression begins, it’s more sensible to refrain from jumping into one political camp or another.”

From his experience of working at Meta, Clegg said: “Silicon Valley is always susceptible to ludicrous hyperbole, which, for better or for worse, they then go and act upon. They’re not politicians and, oddly enough, in conversations, I was often the only person who’d ever been elected to anything.”

According to Clegg, Silicon Valley considered the Trump victory a paradigm shift. “Everything was different compared to before, and they needed to adjust accordingly.” But the political pendulum will eventually swing the other way and people’s attitudes will change. 

When asked whether tech bosses were driven purely by money, Clegg said he wasn’t sure it was only about money, adding that they tend to have an undergraduate-level fascination with ancient Rome. “Am I going to be remembered in a thousand years’ time as the person who helped inhabit Mars?” he said, implying that they see themselves as empire-building and want to be recognised for their achievements.

“They want to live in a world where great men – and it’s always men – do great things, while the rest of us Lilliputian individuals scurry around in the sort of lower divisions and erect statues, which will last for hundreds of years.”

Clegg said this tendency to want to leave a legacy drives their behaviour much more than having an extra few billion dollars compared with a competitor.

]]> https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/the-politicisation-of-silicon-valley/feed/ 0 Congratulations, Apple Intelligence can now effectively generate fake images just like all the other AI and I hope you’re happy https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/congratulations-apple-intelligence-can-now-effectively-generate-fake-images-just-like-all-the-other-ai-and-i-hope-youre-happy/ https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/congratulations-apple-intelligence-can-now-effectively-generate-fake-images-just-like-all-the-other-ai-and-i-hope-youre-happy/#respond Wed, 10 Jun 2026 03:34:06 +0000 https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/congratulations-apple-intelligence-can-now-effectively-generate-fake-images-just-like-all-the-other-ai-and-i-hope-youre-happy/

Schrödinger sock. That’s how I describe the child’s foot apparel that was not visible but brought to photo-realistic life by Apple Intelligence running on iOS 27 Dev Beta. The sock exists in the liminal space between assumption and reality. Only generative AI can make it real, even if the child in the photo was never wearing his other sock. Such is the power of the upcoming update to Apple’s iOS and other platforms, and of the up-to-now relatively disappointing Apple Intelligence: Apple takes on Artificial Intelligence so carefully applied that it seemed woefully behind the competition.

But that was before.

]]> https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/10/congratulations-apple-intelligence-can-now-effectively-generate-fake-images-just-like-all-the-other-ai-and-i-hope-youre-happy/feed/ 0 BT looks to strengthen network defences with Project Glasswing https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/09/bt-looks-to-strengthen-network-defences-with-project-glasswing/ https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/09/bt-looks-to-strengthen-network-defences-with-project-glasswing/#respond Tue, 09 Jun 2026 22:18:34 +0000 https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/09/bt-looks-to-strengthen-network-defences-with-project-glasswing/

As Anthropic looks to allow global critical infrastructure providers to secure their systems by giving controlled access to Claude Mythos Preview, BT has become the first UK company to confirm its membership of the AI provider’s Project Glasswing programme to beef up protection against cyber security threats for its networks and customers.

In essence, Project Glasswing brings together critical infrastructure providers to secure the data and systems that underpin services. It is designed to allow trusted organisations to use Anthropic’s AI systems to rapidly identify vulnerabilities and secure the world’s most critical software before criminals can take advantage.

Founder members of the initiative include Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorganChase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, Nvidia and Palo Alto Networks.

The consortium formed Project Glasswing because of the capabilities observed in the Claude Mythos Preview, which Anthropic says has changed the rules of cyber security. Indeed, it is said to have revealed the stark fact that AI models have reached a level of coding capability where they can surpass all but the most skilled humans in finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities.

Indeed, it is said to have found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities already, including some in every major operating system and web browser. Anthropic believes that given the rate of AI progress, it will not be long before such capabilities proliferate, potentially beyond actors who are committed to deploying them safely.

The fallout – for economies, public safety and national security – could be severe. At the recent Cisco Live expo, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said that from a technological, geopolitical and business perspective, the world was moving faster than at any time before, and a key driver of this change was the release of the Mythos AI tool, revealing companies’ strengths and weaknesses in the AI era.

One major result has been the increased engagement of CEOs in technology decision-making. Robbins was adamant that traditions and norms have gone for his fellow CEOs as they try to meet the Mythos moment and simply have to invest in step-change technologies.

“We’re in a full-out sprint. In the world we live in today, in the last half hour, a new model could have been launched, and we’d all be scrambling; an attacker might have taken down some major system; some political statement could have caused a seismic shift in the global geopolitical landscape. This is what we’re dealing with,” he said.

As part of Project Glasswing, the launch partners listed above will use Mythos Preview as part of their defensive security work. The consortium has also extended access to a group of over 40 additional firms that build or maintain critical software infrastructure so they can use the model to scan and secure both first-party and open source systems. Anthropic is committing up to $100m in usage credits for Mythos Preview across these efforts, as well as $4m in direct donations to open source security firms.

Opening the UK government’s AI Adoption Summit, BT chief executive Allison Kirkby stressed the importance of future-ready networks that are secure, resilient and safe to realise the benefits of AI, and emphasised BT’s commitment to developing UK capability in digital sovereignty and to ensuring responsible adoption of AI.

BT emphasised the critical role of connectivity in ensuring the UK can seize the growth potential of AI.

“AI only works at scale when it is underpinned by future-ready networks that are secure, resilient and safe. [BT is committed] to working with government to support the further development and deployment of sovereign British AI capability, so that the UK can be an AI maker and not just a taker, [and to acting as an] enabler of responsible adoption and a responsible adopter ourselves in AI,” it said.

BT added that its participation in Project Glasswing reflects its role in securing the UK’s critical national infrastructure, and as one of the country’s leading providers of security managed services. The company said it currently prevents four million cyber attacks across its networks every day, underlining the scale of the threat and the importance of staying ahead of it.

“AI is changing cyber security fast, and businesses need trusted partners who can help them stay one step ahead,” noted BT Business CEO Jon James. “By joining Project Glasswing, BT will strengthen its own cyber security capability to protect our networks, our customers and the wider UK.”

BT Business provides AI-powered cyber security solutions, including new products for small businesses, and recently announced a collaboration with Accenture to develop advanced AI-powered cyber operations to respond to cyber threats at machine speed.

]]> https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/09/bt-looks-to-strengthen-network-defences-with-project-glasswing/feed/ 0 I tried Siri AI on the iPhone, Mac, and iPad — here’s why I’m convinced Apple’s long-overdue next-gen assistant will win you over https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/09/i-tried-siri-ai-on-the-iphone-mac-and-ipad-heres-why-im-convinced-apples-long-overdue-next-gen-assistant-will-win-you-over/ https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/09/i-tried-siri-ai-on-the-iphone-mac-and-ipad-heres-why-im-convinced-apples-long-overdue-next-gen-assistant-will-win-you-over/#respond Tue, 09 Jun 2026 22:08:59 +0000 https://www.techticker.net/2026/06/09/i-tried-siri-ai-on-the-iphone-mac-and-ipad-heres-why-im-convinced-apples-long-overdue-next-gen-assistant-will-win-you-over/

I come here to celebrate Apple delivering. It’s not overshooting the mark with the new Siri AI, which it unveiled at WWDC 2026, but it is finally delivering on the promises it made at WWDC 2024.

Sure, it’s beta (again), and there’s a wait list (again), but I’ve now seen it at work, in person, in live and potentially unpredictable demos. Siri AI, as it’s now called, works across platforms, and it has the potential to change how you use your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

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