EE customers to share £1m refund

19 January 2015 Last updated at 11:57 By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

A "small" number of EE customers will share a refund of roughly £1m after they were wrongly charged VAT.

Customers who went outside of the EU and used internet data between October 2012 and October 2014 are affected - about 0.5% of EE's total customers.

The company told the BBC the money "was never EE's" and that the overcharge, blamed on a system-configuration error, went directly to Revenue & Customs.

Refunds will range from about £2 to £80 per customer.

"Due to a configuration error in our billing system, made following a system change, a small number of customers were wrongly charged VAT on the Data Roaming bundle outside of Europe," spokesman David Nieberg said.

"This was a mistake, and we are now refunding these charges and contacting affected customers to apologise for the error."

He added: "We've claimed that money back from HMRC, and then it goes back to the customers."

Good news text

EE has about 28 million customers, making it the largest mobile provider in the UK.

Customers affected by the error are being contacted via text message and told the amount they are owed.

EE would not be offering a cash refund, it said, but would instead give customers credit on their accounts.

Former customers who believe they may be eligible have been told to contact customer services.

The mistake had been discovered after a customer complained, the company said.

In December it was announced that BT was in talks with EE over a possible £12.5bn takeover.

Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC

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Tycoon proposes Texan 'Hyperloop'

16 January 2015 Last updated at 14:20

An ambitious plan to build a transport system that could theoretically travel at speeds of up to 700 miles per hour has taken a step closer to reality.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk tweeted he would build a test track for his Hyperloop "most likely in Texas".

He provided few details about timetable or cost, although he said that he planned to use the test track to hold annual pod racer competitions.

Mr Musk envisages the system operating between cities.

There has not been much development since the founder of PayPal announced his plans in 2013.

But this week he tweeted :

And later added:

Later he told the Texas Tribune that the expected the test track would be about five miles long.

Air hockey

Mr Musk, founder of Space X and chief executive of Tesla Motors, first announced plans for the Hyperloop in August 2013.

The system, he suggested, could transport passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than 30 minutes thanks to an innovative design that Musk has described as a cross between Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table.

This would see passengers sit in cars that were then fired down a tube which had had most of its air removed. A system of magnets would accelerate and brake the capsules, and also keep them from touching the sides of the tube.

Mr Musk said that a passenger-only model would cost about $6bn and that a prototype would take three or four years to complete.

Already there is a crowd-funded California-based project - Hyperloop Transportation Technologies - that has begun thinking about how such a system could be constructed, although they have not yet produced a working prototype.

Some 100 engineers from across the US are working on the development of the system but say that they are at least 10 years away from a commercially operating Hyperloop.

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Dating apps 'expose' location data

19 January 2015 Last updated at 13:08

Many mobile dating apps can be hacked to expose the exact location of users, warn security experts.

The vulnerability might leave users open to stalking, harassment or persecution, said the researchers.

By spoofing requests to the servers behind the apps, researchers were able to track people as they moved around during the day.

One app maker has fixed the loopholes in some nations but most users are still at risk, they warned.

Core function

The location-leaking vulnerabilities were found by Colby Moore and Patrick Wardle from cybersecurity firm Synack. The pair focused most of their attention on gay dating app Grindr but said other dating apps were vulnerable in the same way.

They found that they could exploit a feature of Grindr that tells users how far away they are from other people who have signed up to use the service and share where they are. The app calls on several different sources of data to provide very precise measurements of this distance.

To exploit the loophole the researchers sent several requests to servers behind Grindr, each one appearing to come from a different location. This let them get multiple estimates of a target's distance from these separate places. This made it possible to calculate a person's exact location by triangulation.

In a presentation at the Shmoocon conference, Mr Colby showed how he was able to use the loophole to map all Grindr users in San Francisco's Bay Area and those at the Sochi winter Olympics. Correlating this location data with information from social media sites would make it easy to find out someone's identity, he said.

While exploiting the loophole was not straightforward, said the researchers, there was evidence that it was being abused in Egypt to harass some dating app users.

He said Synack had told Grindr about the vulnerability which prompted the firm to update versions of its app available in nations where homosexuality is illegal or which have a history of violence against gay people.

It added that it had made it easy for people to stop sharing their location if they were worried about how it could be abused.

In a blogpost published soon after it was told about the problem, Grindr said that it had no plans to change the location finding system in nations where it was used because it was a "core function" of the service rather than a security flaw.

As a result, Mr Moore told tech news site Ars Technica, the problem still existed for Grindr users outside nations where location sharing was turned off.

"We were able to replicate this attack multiple times on willing participants without fail," he said.

He said Grindr could make it much harder to exploit the bug by checking where people were making location requests from and stopping those that were obviously spoofed. In addition, he said, the firm could make the location data less precise to help obscure people's locations.

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'Islamist cyber attacks' hit France

16 January 2015 Last updated at 15:36 By Kevin Rawlinson BBC News

Numerous French media websites have gone down a day after warnings of a wave of Islamist cyber attacks.

The sites of Le Parisien, Marianne and 20 Minutes were among those affected, although most were soon restored.

The French government said some 20,000 sites had been targeted after terror attacks in Paris left 17 dead.

The media sites' web host said that it was investigating whether it was one of them but it has ruled out an external distributed denial of service attack.

On Thursday, the head of cyber security for the French military, Vice Admiral Arnaud Coustilliere, said that "structured" groups and "well known Islamist hackers" were behind the attacks against the 20,000 sites, but did not elaborate.

The outage among the media websites began the following day. It is not yet known if the two are linked.

The web host Oxalide told the BBC that no line of enquiry was being dismissed, but that its initial investigations had ruled out the possibility of an external distributed denial of service attack.

Such an attack involves flooding servers with requests to render the target site, thereby causing it to fail to load.

The company told the BBC it was still in the process of determining who was behind the attack.

It said it would release a report in the early afternoon on Friday. None was forthcoming at the time of publication.

'Attacks'

That came after the vice admiral said he believed the first wave of attacks was a retaliation against Sunday's solidarity march in Paris, itself held in response to the Paris terror attacks.

According to to Agence France-Presse (AFP), he said "people who do not adhere to a certain number of values" expressed on that march were to blame.

Vice admiral Coustilliere added that some of the first wave of cyber attacks involved French army regiments and that the defence ministry "has decided to boost its security vigilance".

Besides the three named above, AFP reported that Friday's outage affected the websites of L'Express, Mediapart and France Info.

Those for France Inter, Slate and ZDNet were also among those affected from around 8am GMT on Friday.

High demand

The BBC checked the sites over the next five hours and most were quickly restored. Le Parisien and 20 Minutes remained down for a longer period but were available again by around 1pm.

The news came as it was announced that Charlie Hebdo, the magazine whose headquarters were attacked with the loss of 12 lives, has released its latest edition as a smartphone app to meet demand.

The magazine's front cover featured a weeping Muhammad and the message "all is forgiven". Millions of copies were printed - many times more than its usual circulation of around 60,000.

The print magazine went on sale in the UK on Friday. Many French outlets sold out within minutes and queues began forming in Britain early in the morning.

The app was available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

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Uber promises 50,000 jobs in Europe

18 January 2015 Last updated at 21:30

The chief executive of the online taxi-sharing firm Uber has said he wants to make 2015 a year of rapid expansion in Europe.

Travis Kalanick told a conference in Munich that Uber could create 50,000 jobs as part of a "new partnership" with European cities.

Fast-expanding Uber has drawn criticism across the world from regulators and established taxi operators.

Mr Kalanick's comments were seen as a bid to build bridges with critics.

Uber, which helps users summon taxi-like services on their smartphones, started four years ago and now operates in 250 cities worldwide.

The San Francisco start-up is valued at $40bn (£25.5bn), based on the latest fundraising from investors.

But critics have accused Uber of flouting competition rules and of not carrying out sufficient safety checks on drivers and their vehicles.

Uber has been hit with court injunctions in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, and has faced protests from taxi firms in major cities, including London.

A woman in India who was allegedly raped by an Uber taxi driver is suing the company in the US courts.

Some of the criticisms of Uber have provoked a combative response from the company, with Mr Kalanick a frequent critic of the red-tape and regulation that he says cities use to protect the interests of entrenched taxi firms.

Too flippant

But Mr Kalanick told the DLD conference for the media and tech industry: "Uber is committed to establishing new partnerships with Europe's cities to ensure innovation, harness powerful economic benefits and promote core city functions."

He acknowledged the need for rules and safety checks for drivers, saying it had been "easy to say something flippantly negative about every law" in the past.

Uber is working with governments on new rules to ensure public safety is protected, choice and competition thrive and economic growth and tax revenue rise, the chief executive said.

He said that Uber is developing new technology tools that improve safety and do background checks, and "improve communication with local officials and law enforcement.

And he said that city authorities that free up Uber's service would see the creation of thousands of jobs and higher tax revenues.

"At the end of 2015, if we can make these partnerships happen, we create 50,000 new EU jobs," Mr Kalanick said.

"Uber wants to partner closely with tax authorities to increase transportation providers' compliance and overall tax revenue for cities and countries across Europe," he added.

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Free online textbooks from top school

19 January 2015 Last updated at 01:23 By Sean Coughlan Education correspondent, BBC News

A leading private school, with some of the best results in England, is publishing digital textbooks which are available to download free online.

The Stephen Perse Foundation in Cambridge is publishing 12 multimedia textbooks for IGCSE biology.

They are being made available on Apple's iBooks online store to use on iPad tablet computers.

It is believed to be the first UK school to publish free online textbooks covering an entire exam syllabus.

Schools and pupils are "hungry" for such digital resources, says principal Tricia Kelleher.

With the exam revision season approaching, the Cambridge school is pioneering the publication of its own bespoke textbooks, which will be open to anyone without charge.

School publishing

This first set of books will cover the Cambridge IGCSE biology course, with touchscreen, multimedia explanations, covering topics such as molecules and enzymes and animal nutrition.

The textbooks will be available for download worldwide and cover a course taken by 500,000 students in 160 countries.

The school, the current Independent School of the Year, has already made resources available online through iTunes U. It has been a leading innovator of the idea of schools using digital technology to produce their own customised course materials.

"It's important to us that these resources are being offered to the world without charge. There is a world of learning and we want to continue to be at the hub of this approach," said Ms Kelleher, the principal.

"The reception that we have received for bringing nearly 100 iTunes U courses to the world has been tremendous.

"It's about helping teachers to deliver the lessons that they have always wanted to, but now the technology allows it to happen."

Tablet computers

The school has been a proponent of using technology in lessons, every pupil in the school has their own iPad which they can use to access the school's online resources, produced and updated by their own staff.

"Traditional textbooks are so much more limited with static content that is often not up-to-date," says Daniel Edwards, the school's director of innovation and learning.

He says it is a "real bonus" to have materials produced by teachers for the specific needs of their own students with a particular course specification.

The author of the textbooks is biology teacher Alex van Dijk, who says the "ability to make instant updates is invaluable. No more need to re-print or wait for a new edition".

In terms of whether there will be a wider range of subjects and textbooks, senior teacher Simon Armitage says it "feels a little bit like looking at the starting years on Wikipedia".

"For the future we see digital resources as being integral to how teachers teach and how students learn. We want our students to use the very best resources whether they are digital or traditional.

"However, the flexibility of digital resources is hard to beat, so we do see that it will be likely that more subjects will be producing resources along these lines."

A study from the National Literacy Trust and Pearson, published last month, suggested that touchscreen computers were particularly useful in helping boys and poorer pupils to learn to read.

It showed children in poorer households were particularly likely to read on touchscreen computers rather than printed books.

Another study from Ofcom last year showed how tablets have spread quickly within families with children. About 70% of five to 15-year-olds had access to a tablet at home.

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Jet data theft 'shows cyber-spy risk'

19 January 2015 Last updated at 06:07

The reported theft by Chinese spies of designs for Australia's new warplane, the US-built F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet, highlights the risk of cyber-espionage, an Australian minister said.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop also told Sky News she was confident that the US would guard its intellectual property.

She was responding to media reports, citing leaked US documents, of the theft of a huge amount of F-35 data.

Australia has ordered 72 F-35 jets, due to come into service in 2020.

The F-35 is the most expensive defence project in US history. The stealth aircraft, manufactured by US-based Lockheed Martin, was developed at a cost of around $400bn (£230bn), in a process dogged by delays and unforeseen costs.

The US, British and Australian militaries are among the major customers for the jet. Australian and British firms have also been involved in manufacturing parts of the aircraft.

Billion-dollar deal

A report by Australia's Fairfax Media says China stole "many terabytes of data" for the new aircraft, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, a former intelligence contractor who worked at the US National Security Agency (NSA).

The report cites documents posted by German magazine Der Spiegel, which has access to NSA files leaked by Mr Snowden.

In 2013, US newspaper The Washington Post said Chinese hackers had accessed sensitive documents about several US weapons projects, including the F-35.

Fairfax Media says the latest documents detail the scale of the breach, indicating that Chinese cyber-spies acquired the designs for the F-35's radar, engine and exhaust cooling systems.

The Australian government has ordered 72 of the new jets, with an option to increase the order to 100, in a deal worth billions of dollars.

Ms Bishop told Sky News that the report "does highlight the challenges of cyber attacks".

However, she said, she was "confident that the United States has taken measures to ensure its intellectual property is protected".

Mr Snowden leaked a vast tranche of information to the media in 2013, revealing the scale of internet and phone surveillance carried out by US intelligence agencies.

He left the US, where he faces espionage charges, and currently lives in Russia.

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AI Mario character plays his own game

Sometimes when you're playing a game it can feel like the character you're controlling has a mind of its own.

Now, thanks to a team of German researchers, gaming's most famous plumber can actually think for himself.

The Mario A.I. Project has developed an artificially intelligent Mario which is aware of himself and his environment and responds to spoken instructions.

The character will also make decisions on what to do based on what he has learned.

The Cognitive Modelling Group at Germany's University of Tubingen has released a video showing how the artificial intelligence has been applied.

Mario can be taught that jumping on a Goomba (one of his recurring enemies) will definitely kill it.

The character will also respond to how he is "feeling" - having been programmed with "internal emotive states".

If he is hungry, he will find and collect coins, or if he is curious he will happily explore the Mushroom Kingdom.

A logic and grammar tree allows Mario to respond to commands and take action based on what he has learned

Perhaps most usefully from a gaming point of view, Mario can calculate how many moves he needs to make to reach a certain position.

Students at the University of Tubingen have used Mario as part of their efforts to find out how the human brain works.

The cognitive modelling unit claim their project has generated "a fully functional program" and "an alive and somewhat intelligent artificial agent".

It's not Mario's first venture into the world of artificial intelligence, a competition has been running for several years using the character as a platform.

Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter, BBCNewsbeat on Instagram and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube

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Micro-machines journey inside animal

19 January 2015 Last updated at 11:55 By Paul Rincon Science editor, BBC News website

In a case of science fiction meeting reality, microscopic "machines" have journeyed inside a living animal for the first time.

The tiny devices delivered a cargo of nano-particles into the stomach lining of a mouse.

The research by scientists at the University of California is published in the journal ACS Nano.

Medical applications for micro-machines include the release of drugs into specific locations within the body.

But until now, they have only been tested in laboratory cell samples.

Wei Gao and colleagues from UC, Berkeley, fed the tiny motors to mice.

The machines, made of polymer tubes coated with zinc, are just 20 micrometres long - the width of a strand of human hair.

In stomach acid, the zinc reacts to produce bubbles of hydrogen, which propel the machines into the lining of the stomach, where they attach.

As the machines dissolve, they deliver their cargoes into the stomach tissue.

The researchers say the method may offer an efficient way to deliver drugs into the stomach, to treat peptic ulcers and other illnesses.

In their paper, they suggest that further work is needed to "further evaluate the performance and functionalities of various man-made micro-motors in living organisms. This study represents the very first step toward such a goal".

The idea of molecular-scale surgery can be traced back to a lecture by celebrated physicist Richard Feynman in 1959 called There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom.

In the talk to the American Physical Society (APS), he explained: "Although it is a very wild idea, it would be interesting in surgery if you could swallow the surgeon.

"You put the mechanical surgeon inside the blood vessel and it goes into the heart and 'looks' around. It finds out which valve is the faulty one and takes a little knife and slices it out."

The basic idea has found its way into science fiction, including the 1966 cult film classic Fantastic Voyage. Although in this case, miniaturised humans journeyed inside the body rather than tiny machines.

Follow Paul on Twitter.

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US 'tapped N Korea computers in 2010'

19 January 2015 Last updated at 12:47

The US knew North Korea was behind the Sony Pictures hack because it had secretly infiltrated the country's computer networks in 2010, according to the New York Times and Der Spiegel.

The newspapers cited US officials and leaked documents from the National Security Agency.

The New York Times said hidden software had alerted US intelligence services to North Korean hacking activity.

North Korea has consistently denied involvement in the security breach.

American investigators believe the hackers spent two months building up a map of Sony's systems before the hack took place, the papers say.

November's attack on the company saw the leak of sensitive documents including salary details and confidential emails between executives.

It also resulted in Sony film The Interview, a comedy about an assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, being briefly shelved and then released online.

Damage control

Cyber-security expert Dr Steven Murdoch, from University College London, said it was likely that the NSA had at least tried to access North Korean networks before.

"I'm almost certain they were doing it long before 2010," he told the BBC.

"North Korea has been a target for the US for quite some time."

Dr Murdoch said that if the NSA had been aware of the hack before it had happened, it may have chosen not to warn Sony for its own security reasons.

"One possibility is that they didn't know how damaging the attack was going to be, and didn't want to risk revealing their sources by mentioning it to Sony," he added.

"Or maybe they did know [how harmful it was] but it wasn't that damaging by intelligence community priorities - this was very damaging to Sony but in terms of national security it's not as significant."

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