Tech Digest daily roundup: Instagram influencer received ‘hundreds’ of obscene photos
A social media influencer said she had been the victim of cyber-flashing for the past 10 years. Podcaster Jess Davies, from Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, said she had received hundreds of unsolicited obscene images. Calls are growing for cyber-flashing to become a crime as part of measures to toughen laws on online safety. The UK government said its plans would “force social media companies to stamp out online abuse”. Jess, who has 151,000 followers on Instagram, said she has become almost “numb” to the images she is sent, adding: “What’s illegal offline should be illegal online.” BBC
“Every mile you drive, electric versus diesel is much cheaper. But you have to drive enough miles today to rack up that savings to justify the higher capital,” says Asher Bennett. “And that’s where the conundrum of electric trucks is right now”. The Israeli founder of Essex-based truck maker Tevva is taking on the electric truck market, banking on growing demand from builders and parcel delivery firms attempting to shed their carbon output. But the road ahead is bumpy. If range anxiety is putting some customers off an electric car purchase, it’s an existential threat for trucks that can spend an entire day on the road. Each minute spent looking for sparse chargers equates to lost money. Telegraph
Greater scrutiny is needed over what the UK’s top spies say and do once they leave government service to safeguard state secrets, parliament’s intelligence watchdog has said. The senior group of MPs and Peers expressed “concern” at the potential for former spymasters to divulge sensitive information, apparently without sanction, as they seek a second career as a “talking head”, claiming this could set a bad example to others. But the comment, in an annual report by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) prompted warnings from ex-security chiefs about the danger of an over-secretive culture leading to a poorly informed public. Sky News
You might be perfectly happy with your current smartwatch, but what if its screen could roll out and extend to become bigger? And what if it had a little camera for snapping pictures from your wrist too? Interested? Samsung patent filings spotted by LetsGoDigital suggest that these features are in the pipeline, perhaps in time for the Galaxy Watch 5 – although that’s perhaps a little early for this technology to make it from the drawing board into a real product. The Galaxy Watch 4 and the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic broke cover in August, marking the switch back to Google’s Wear OS software rather than Samsung’s own Tizen operating system, and so we’d expect any follow-up devices to appear in August 2022. Tech Radar
The Pokémon Center UK is now open. Though currently running as a “beta” site – which means we’re to expect “a few hiccups” – the Pokémon Center UK site caters directly to fans in the UK, offering a flat shipping fee of £5 per order. Right now there’s a host of Christmas jumpers up for sale, as well as pins and plushies. Beyond that, you won’t see much else, but the company says it “plans to expand [its] range over 2022 and beyond”. “Welcome to Pokémon Center UK,” the website exclaims (thanks, NME). “Congratulations on being one of the first to discover this site-our recent expansion of the Pokémon Center! “We’re excited to welcome you with the best possible experience, but this site is still in its early stages, so you may see a few hiccups.”
