Sync NI Recap: Top 5 tech stories of the week (Feb 18th - Feb 22nd)

This week saw several global stories hit the local tech industry, with a critical flaw being reported in all password manager software and research firm OpenAI creating an AI so dangerous that the group refused to release it for further study. The local NI tech and business sector is having a pretty good month so far though, with Bank of Ireland lauinching a £1.75bn brexit fund, a 75m office redevelopment programme being given the green light, and a Belfast-based medtech firm securing a very important contract.

It can be difficult to follow all of the tech news as it comes out, but you don't want to miss a big announcement or the latest development in the NI business scene. With that in mind, below is a list of the top five tech stories we covered last week with links and an excerpt from each:


[Visit Post] Bank of Ireland launches £1.75bn fund to mitigate Brexit
Businesses across the UK and Ireland have been trying to prepare for Brexit for the past several years, but a lack of clarity from the UK Goverment has made planning extremely difficult for many businesses. It now seems likely that the UK will exit the EU without a deal on March 29th next month, and some businesses aren't prepared to deal with that scenario.

Today Bank of Ireland has announced the launch of a massive new £1.75bn All-Ireland Brexit Fund to help businesses in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland handle disruption caused by Brexit. [Continue Reading]



[Visit Post] ISE reports critical security flaw in all password managers
Independent security consulting company ISE reports that it's found critical flaws in popular password manager software that allow an attacker to uncover your passwords.

In today's age of regular data breaches, hackers have access to massive databases of email addresses and associated passwords. The average person can be signed up for hundreds of different websites, and the only way to secure your accounts across the internet is ... [Continue Reading]



[Visit Post] £75m Belfast Telegraph building redevelopment given green light
Plans for a £75 million redevelopment of the former Belfast Telegraph building have officially been approved by Belfast City Council’s planning committee.

The historic Belfast Telegraph building has been disused for a number of years, but will be getting a new lease of life thanks to a £75m redevelopment programme that will see the building reimagined as The Sixth. Situated at the bottom of Royal Avenue, the scheme includes 230,000 sq feet of creative workspace and ground floor commercial space for cafes, restaurants, and retail units. ... [Continue Reading]


[Visit Post] OpenAI creates an AI so dangerous it's refusing to release it
It seems like we can't go a week without hearing about the Artificial Intelligence apocalypse, but those warnings may not be so far-fetched. AI research organisation OpenAI has announced that its created an AI system so dangerous that researchers are refusing to release it to the scientific community for fear that it could cause wide-spread harm.

The new AI model is called GPT-2 and it's been developed using deep learning technology trained on a large dataset of over 8 million webpages. Like the previous model (GPT), its task is simply to predict the next word in a webpage when given all of the previous text. This sounds innocent enough, but training GPT-2 on ten times as much data as GPT has yielded some disturbing results. ... [Continue Reading]



[Visit Post] Belfast-based Blue Zinc to provide new connected healthcare platform
Blue Zinc has been operating in the health sector for a number of years and provide the industry's leading practice and clinical records system. Now the firm has signed a 6 year deal with Nuffield Health, one of the UK’s leading not-for-profit healthcare organisations, to consolidating its clinical services systems into a single platform.

Nuffield Health aspires to deliver a unique vision of connected health, bringing health and wellbeing together through its network for 31 hospitals and over 100 fitness and wellbeing centres. Blue Zinc will provide a single platform solution for ... [Continue Reading]