Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The cost of living crisis continues to challenge UK shoppers, as prices for food essentials like bread, milk and cheese continue to rise. The stark reality of the impact of food price inflation can be seen in the latest figures from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) which tell us that 3 percent of families across the United Kingdom (2.1 million people) used a food bank in the year ending March 2022. In a true north/south divide reality, families in the north of England and Scotland were most likely to interact with a food bank service in the last year. As the appetite for non-essential shopping continues to be suppressed, more consumers are turning to second hand sales platforms and discount retailers as a way to save. UK sales volumes saw a 1.2 percent in February 2023 according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS); the most significant increase since October 2022 but nonetheless subdued. … [Read more...] about Reviving Retail: The Recommerce Revolution Is Helping Cash-Strapped Consumers
Fintech uk startups
Lies, Cursed Lies, And Spreadsheets: A History Of Financial Calculations
Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Bruce V. Roberts, CEO of Carofin , arranges direct private investments in growth companies by family offices and high net worth individuals. For over 100 years there has been debate among historians, and a few eccentric mathematicians, over the origin of the quote, “There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” If you’re English, you could go with the 1st Earl of Balfour in 1892 or Benjamin Disraeli, a leading politician at that time. If you’re American, you’re probably thinking Mark Twain came up with it (he didn’t). Either way, it’s time to update this clever phrase—given today’s technologies. Spreadsheets, created on personal computers, now generate most of the financial reports and other more challenging computations used worldwide, including the statistics our forebears were so suspicious of. Complex analysis doesn’t necessarily lead to better conclusions. Monster spreadsheets, … [Read more...] about Lies, Cursed Lies, And Spreadsheets: A History Of Financial Calculations
What Automation Means For Cybersecurity—And Your Business
Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Co-Founder and CEO of Varonis , responsible for leading the management, strategic direction and execution of the company. In the movie Apollo 13 , three astronauts returning to Earth are unaware of their perilous reentry. Back in Houston at Mission Control, chief flight director Gene Kranz (played by Ed Harris) comments on the unfortunate events, saying: "Is there anything they can do about it?" No one dared to speak. "Then they don't need to know." If Kranz was in IT security, he'd probably have a thing or two to say about actionable information and how there's sometimes too little and many times far too much. In this article, I'll share how automation can help turn the right information into action, helping to defend against cyberattacks, mitigate risk, shore up compliance and improve productivity. You Can't Unbreach Data The biggest security risk businesses face is lasting damage, which … [Read more...] about What Automation Means For Cybersecurity—And Your Business
Turtle Launches Electric Bike Cab To Whisk Riders Around Streets Of Paris
Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Micro-mobility startup Turtle has launched an on-demand electric bike service that allows riders to order via an application a bike cab driven by a chauffeur. Turtle says its new urban passenger transport service targets both Parisians and tourists who want a unique and affordable alternative to ride-sharing services like Uber. The vehicle has three wheels and the company says that it emits no emissions and is made entirely of recycled material. The launch of the service comes after 5 months of testing including 3,100 trips. Because Turtle can use Paris’ growing network of bike lanes, the company is betting that it can deliver faster trips than cars or even public transportation, particularly during periods of heavy traffic. To attract riders, the application will display the price before the ride begins. And all the drivers have completed a training program and will be salaried employees rather than independent … [Read more...] about Turtle Launches Electric Bike Cab To Whisk Riders Around Streets Of Paris
A Quantum Leap In Timing
Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Paul is President of Quantum Computing at ColdQuanta , where he leads the team building the world’s most useful quantum computer. So much of modern life relies on GPS that it has been estimated that an outage would cost the U.S. economy over $1 billion per day. Such an outage isn’t too far-fetched. We have seen recent examples of GPS being blocked in conflict zones, spoofed for nefarious purposes and disrupted by solar storms. At its heart, GPS is a timing system. To understand how timing relates to navigation, and how quantum technology will enable us to overcome the limitations of GPS, we need to go back in history a few hundred years. Dava Sobel’s book Longitude recounts the tale of John Harrison’s mechanical clock that revolutionized maritime navigation and global trade. In the same way that Harrison’s clock accelerated economic growth through the 18th and 19th centuries, optical clocks are … [Read more...] about A Quantum Leap In Timing
Activists Push, But Europe Hesitates To Call Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Terrorists
Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin In late February, British-Iranian human rights activist Vahid Beheshti set up camp opposite the entrance to the Foreign Office in central London and began a hunger strike. He had one main demand: that the UK government designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp as a terrorist group. More than a month later, he is still there, having lost around 11 kilos. “Sometimes I get cold. Sometimes I get weak and sometimes I think I have energy. Then the next hour it drains out again,” he said on March 24, on the 30th day of his hunger strike. “Physically [I’m] getting weaker but internally [I’m] getting stronger and I'm determined to continue until we achieve this great goal.” His aim is a policy that, until recently, seemed to be high up the agenda of the London government. At the start of the year, the UK seemed to be on the verge of proscribing the IRGC. Government minister Leo Docherty told the House of Commons on … [Read more...] about Activists Push, But Europe Hesitates To Call Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Terrorists
Large Language Models & AI In Healthcare
Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Over the past few weeks, we have seen an ever-increasing number of companies that integrate generative artificial intelligence (AI) into their products. ChatGPT or other Large Language models are being added to features from Notion , Salesforce , Shopify , Quizlet , and others. What is the impact on healthcare? It will improve our last mile with our patients. This is huge as Engaging patients improves outcomes . Or said differently, Large Language Models (LLM) will save lives. Large language Models have existed for several years, with their development and popularity growing rapidly since the mid-2010s. The rise of large-scale neural networks and advancements in natural language processing (NLP) techniques have enabled the creation of increasingly powerful language models. All of those models are so-called transformers and were initially introduced in 2017 by Vaswani et al.. There were a few very successful early … [Read more...] about Large Language Models & AI In Healthcare
Sagi Rodin Creates Frontegg Customer Management And Identity Platform For SaaS App Builders
Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The arrival of Software as a service or SaaS platforms may have started with Salesforce.com in 1999, but the business model has reached near ubiquity today. Yet the challenge for creating in-house the underlining systems that manage multi-user logins and security for it remains for many SaaS app developers. Sagi Rodin encountered the same challenge while working as a software engineer for the Israeli-based Check Point Software, one of the world’s most innovative and largest security companies. For each new application he worked on, he had to build from scratch the customer identity and access management application (CIAM). So he decided to leave Check Point to solve the problem. Founded in Israel in 2019 by Sagi Rodin, CEO and Aviad Mizrachi, CTO, Frontegg is a platform that supports app builders by covering all aspects of authentication from single-sign on to complex, multi-tenancy authorization, API-token management … [Read more...] about Sagi Rodin Creates Frontegg Customer Management And Identity Platform For SaaS App Builders