Tech Digest daily roundup: IT worker wants to dig up tip to recover £140m in Bitcoin
A computer engineer who claims he accidentally threw away £140m worth of Bitcoin will ask a local council for permission to dig up a landfill site. James Howells, 36, is set to ask Newport City Council if he can spend £10m and use robot dogs, as well as an intricate Artificial Intelligence-powered machine, to try and locate a hard drive on which the bitcoin are stored. Mr Howells says he acquired the 7,500 bitcoin back in 2009 for next to nothing, but threw the computer hardware away in 2013 while he was clearing out his old office. For the past nine years, Mr Howells has put in repeated requests with Newport Council to allow him to dig up the rubbish tip, but all of those requests have been denied. Telegraph
An abuse survivor can sue Visa over videos of her posted to Pornhub, a US court has ruled. Serena Fleites was 13 in 2014 when, it is alleged, a boyfriend pressured her into making an explicit video which he posted to Pornhub. Ms Fleites alleges that Visa, by processing revenue from ads, conspired with Pornhub’s parent firm MindGeek to make money from videos of her abuse. Visa had sought to be removed from the case. Ms Fleites’ story has featured in the New York Times article The Children of Pornhub – an article which prompted MindGeek to delete millions of videos and make significant changes to its policies and practice. BBC
Researchers in South Korea are developing a new health monitoring device in the form of an e-tattoo that can automatically alert the wearer to potential health problems. The team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have created an electronic tattoo ink made of liquid metal and carbon nanotubes that effectively functions as a bioelectrode. The device could be used to send a readout of the wearer’s vital signs if connected to biosensors, including for instance an electrocardiogram. Alongside heart rates it could be used to read glucose or lactate levels for people with diabetes or sepsis. Sky News
Spotify is announced it will be fully separating the play and shuffle buttons across the entire app. Providing you’re a paying subscriber on the Premium tier, of course. The music streaming app will begin rolling out individual play and shuffle buttons for playlists and artist pages. Those using Spotify’s free tier will continue to only see the shuffle button. Spotify made the decision to let listeners play albums in order, but has stubbornly stuck to shuffle in other places. The Swedish company’s fondness for shuffle has, occasionally, drawn criticism from artists. Last year, Adele tweeted the company saying she and other musicians ‘don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason.’ Metro
Microsoft have justified their $68.7 billion ($56 billion) purchase of Call Of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard by telling regulators that the company doesn’t produce “must have” games. If that’s making you ask why they’d stump up more than any other tech buyout in history for the privilege of owning a company that doesn’t have any killer apps in its stables, then you can line up right behind me, bosmang. Microsoft have been in the process of buying Activision Blizzard since the deal was announced in January this year, with their buyout pending approval by competition regulators in many countries. RockPaperShotgun
