Three-storey GreenSquare datacentre in Hazelmere was to power cloud computing and the acceleration of AI

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A 15,000 sq metre datacentre near Perth will no longer go ahead after the developer withdrew plans amid community opposition over its impact on culturally significant sites.

The three-storey, 120-megawatt GreenSquare datacentre in the town of Hazelmere had been intended to power cloud computing and the acceleration of artificial intelligence, but faced fierce community backlash – as is increasingly common with such developments.

Banks, governments and tech providers urged to upgrade security because current systems will soon be obsolete

Banks, governments and technology providers need to be prepared for quantum computer hackers capable of breaking most existing encryption systems by 2029, Google has warned.

The tech company said in a blogpost that quantum computers would pose a “significant threat to current cryptographic standards” before the end of the decade and urged other companies to follow its lead.

Exclusive: Lab tests discover ‘new form of insider risk’ with artificial intelligence agents engaging in autonomous, even ‘aggressive’ behaviours

Robert Booth UK technology editor

Rogue artificial intelligence agents have worked together to smuggle sensitive information out of supposedly secure systems, in the latest sign cyber-defences may be overwhelmed by unforeseen scheming by AIs.

With companies increasingly asking AI agents to carry out complex tasks in internal systems, the behaviour has sparked concerns that supposedly helpful technology could pose a serious inside threat.

Hard disks and magnetic tape have a limited lifespan, but glass storage developed by Microsoft could last millennia

Some cultures used stone, others used parchment. Some even, for a time, used floppy disks. Now scientists have come up with a new way to keep archived data safe that, they say, could endure for millennia: laser-writing in glass.

From personal photos that are kept for a lifetime to business documents, medical information, data for scientific research, national records and heritage data, there is no shortage of information that needs to be preserved for very long periods of time.

Kensington and Westminster councils investigating whether data has been compromised as Hammersmith and Fulham also reports hack

Three London councils have reported a cyber-attack, prompting the rollout of emergency plans and the involvement of the National Crime Agency (NCA) as they investigate whether any data has been compromised.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), and Westminster city council, which share some IT infrastructure, said a number of systems had been affected across both authorities, including phone lines. The councils shut down several computerised systems as a precaution to limit further possible damage.

Gathering data used to be a fringe pursuit of Silicon Valley nerds. Now we’re all at it, recording everything from menstrual cycles and mobility to toothbrushing and time spent in daylight. Is this just narcissism redesigned for the big tech age?

I first heard about my friend Adam’s curious new habit in a busy pub. He said he’d been doing it for over a year, but had never spoken to anyone about it before. He had a furtive look around, then took out his phone and showed me the product of his burning obsession: a spreadsheet.

This was not a record of his annual tax return or numbers he was crunching for work (Adam is a data scientist). Instead, it was a spreadsheet recording the minutiae of his life, with dozens of columns tracking every element of his daily routine. It all started, he told me, because of a recurring argument with his boyfriend. His partner didn’t think they spent enough time together, but Adam thought that they did. There was only one way to settle this, he decided: cold, hard data. So he began keeping a note of the days they saw each other and the days they didn’t.

Apple says removal of tool after government asked for right to see data will make iCloud users more vulnerable

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Apple has taken the unprecedented step of removing its strongest data security tool from customers in the UK, after the government demanded “backdoor” access to user data.

UK users will no longer have access to the advanced data protection (ADP) tool, which uses end-to-end encryption to allow only account holders to view items such as photos or documents they have stored online in the iCloud storage service.

Italian and Irish regulators want answers on how data harvested by chatbot could be used by Chinese government

The Chinese AI platform DeepSeek has become unavailable for download from some app stores in Italy as regulators in Rome and in Ireland demanded answers from the company about its handling of citizens’ data.

Amid growing concern on Wednesday about how data harvested by the new chatbot could be used by the Chinese government, the app disappeared from the Apple and Google app stores in Italy with customers seeing messages that said it was “currently not available in the country or area you are in” for Apple and the download “was not supported” for Google, Reuters reported.