The UK government Department of Health (DOH) is facing criticism over a report that says it spent more on new Apple iPhones than it did on defibrillators last year.

£1.5 Million Spent On iPhones For Whitehall Staff 

The report from the Mirror newspaper highlighted how, in 2022, the DOH spent £1.5 million buying iPhones for Whitehall staff, whereas it only spent around only £1 million on defibrillators, which would be installed in a variety of locations for public use.

Defibrillators Save Lives 

There are an estimated 100,000 defibrillators across the UK. According to the British Heart Foundation, the use of a defibrillator, along with CPR, can increase the chance of survival following a cardiac arrest by up to 75 per cent.

In the UK, defibrillators are widely available in public places such as train stations, airports and shopping centres. There are also community defibrillator schemes that place defibrillators in public places and train local people to use them in emergencies.

450 Per Cent Increase On iPhone Spending Last Year 

The iPhone purchases are reported to have included 1,570 brand new iPhone 13s and 650 iPhone SEs. The Mirror’s report says that if the DOH averaged just under 4,000 staff in its core Whitehall team last year, it looks as though one in every two workers got a new iPhone. The report highlights the fact that 2022 spending on iPhones at the DOH appears to have been up by a massive 450 per cent compared to 2021.

Misplaced Priorities? 

The report highlights a quote from Labour’s Shadow Attorney General, Emily Thornberry, in response to the report’s findings, saying: “You have to question not just the misplaced priorities but the warped mentality of ministers at the Department of Health, when they are willing to spend £550,000 more on buying the latest iPhones for their own staff than on installing defibrillators in our local communities.” 

Spending Was On Necessary Replacements? 

According to the Mirror’s report, the response from a spokesperson was to say that DOH staff needed “access to the appropriate tools and resources to do their jobs effectively” and the 2022 iPhone purchases were to “replace iPhones that could no longer receive vendor updates and represented a cyber vulnerability.” 

Prices 

iPhone 13s, of which 1,570 were reportedly bought brand new for DOH staff in 2022 generally retail (at today’s prices) at around £700.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

The UK government is known to buy-in Apple iPhones in large numbers for government departments. For example, back in February 2021, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was widely reported to have purchased 11,000 64GB iPhone SE 2020’s. Its preference for iPhones could be due to their security, reliability, ease of use, and compatibility with some government back-end systems and, of course, deals struck with certain suppliers. In the case of the Mirror’s report, the DOH spokesperson suggested that the larger spending was because of the need to buy replacements. Contrasting spending on iPhones with life-saving for communities, however, was always going to lead to questions and criticism about values and priorities and it could, of course, be argued that defibrillators can be priceless life-saving tool that benefit everyone and worth allocating more of the department’s budget to.

In this insight, we look at what GPL is, how it relates to the right to repair, and how businesses can be affected if other businesses don’t fulfil their obligation under GPL.

General Public License (GPL) 

The General Public License (GPL) is a widely used open-source software license that grants users the right to use, study, modify and distribute software that is licensed under it. The GPL is designed to ensure that software remains free and open, and that users have the freedom to modify and distribute the software as they wish

What Obligations Do Companies Have Under GPL?

Under GPL, companies (e.g. manufacturers who make a product which has a software element) have number of compliance obligations which are:

– Providing the source code. If a company distributes software that is licensed under the GPL, it must also make the source code available to anyone who receives the software. This ensures that users have the ability to modify and distribute the software themselves.

– Providing a copy of the GPL. Companies must include a copy of the GPL with the software they distribute. This ensures that users are aware of their rights under the license.

– Allowing modifications. Companies must allow users to modify the software as they see fit. This means that users have the ability to customise the software to meet their specific needs.

– Releasing modifications. If a company modifies software that is licensed under the GPL, it must also release those modifications under the GPL. This ensures that modifications remain free and open.

– Providing notices. Companies must provide notices to users that the software is licensed under the GPL and that they have certain rights under the license.

Failure to comply with these obligations can result in legal consequences and damage to a company’s reputation within the open-source community.

Providing The Source Code & The ‘Right To Repair’ 

The ‘right to repair’ refers to the legal right of consumers to repair or modify the products they own, including electronic devices and appliances. The right to repair is often associated with open-source software because access to the source code is essential for repairing and modifying software.

If a company does not provide the source code for software that is subject to the GPL, it can make it difficult or even impossible for users to exercise their right to repair. Without access to the source code, users cannot modify or repair the software, which can lead to increased costs, waste, and environmental harm.

For example, if a user has a device that relies on open-source software and that device malfunctions, the user may need to modify the software to fix the problem. If the company that produced the software does not provide the source code, the user may be unable to fix the issue themselves, which can result in unnecessary waste and expense.

Reasons For Withholding Source Code 

In some cases, companies may intentionally withhold source code as a way to limit competition or maintain control over their products. However, this can be detrimental to consumers and the environment, which is why the GPL requires companies to make the source code available to anyone who receives the software. By providing access to the source code, the GPL helps ensure that users can exercise their right to repair and reduce waste, while also fostering innovation and competition in the software industry.

A Recent Example – John Deere 

A recent example of how businesses can be affected by not being given access to the source code of a product is featured on the Software Conservancy website in a recent post from Denver Gingerich, a member of a farming family. In the post, Gingerich explains that he is from a farming family and that farmers have the right to repair their tools, including tractors and other farming equipment. Gingerich alleges that some farm equipment manufacturers like John Deere (the largest manufacturer of farm equipment in North America and one of the largest worldwide) are not complying with the right to repair licenses for the software used in these tools. The effect of this is that farmers are cut off from their livelihood if the manufacturer does not wish to repair their farming tools, even when the farmer could easily perform the repairs themselves.

Gingerich suggests that John Deere may have been failing to meet the requirements of the software right to repair licenses they use for some time and haven’t yet provided complete corresponding source code to the farmers who are entitled to it.

Depending on the veracity of Gingerich’s claims, this potentially illustrates how a manufacturer, by not complying with its obligations under GPL, could have far-reaching implications for (in this case) farmers’ livelihoods and even food security throughout the world. Gingerich has reportedly called upon John Deere to immediately resolve all its outstanding GPL violations, across all lines of its farm equipment, by providing complete source code to the farmers and others who are entitled to it.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

With so many important business-products which are essential tools for organisations now having an open source software element to them, providing the source code with the product is an important obligation that enables users to exercise their right to repair. Not providing the source code can seriously affect the businesses of users by stopping them from using vital work tools and lead to increased costs, waste, and environmental harm as products are scrapped that could otherwise be repaired.

For companies that don’t provide the source code for products (or withhold it), this could lead to legal consequences and damage to their reputation within the open-source community. Depending on your viewpoint (and any impacts to guarantees/warranties aside), it could be argued that it is in the interest of businesses to keep a free and open system where users are given all the tools they need (i.e. the code as well as the products) to enable them to make modifications where they see fit and exercise their right to repair.

UK data centre startup Deep Green is using servers submerged in mineral oil as “digital boilers” to turn server heat into free hot water for swimming pool owners, distilleries, and large apartment blocks.

Digital Boilers 

Harnessing the heat form decentralised data centre models is one of the new ideas that several companies are adopting to offer data centre capacity without having to build and run costly data centres, and offer free or cheap energy, reduce the environmental cost by making use of existing heat, and enable users to cut their costs and carbon emissions.

How It Works 

Unlike other businesses like Heata, which offers to provide free hot water using the heat from a cloud business server installed onto the side of domestic hot water tanks in homes, Deep Green is focusing on business customers in industries using large volumes of hot water e.g., swimming pools. Deep green uses ‘immersion cooling’ technology i.e., immersing servers in mineral oil to capture the operating data server heat and transfer it into a site’s existing hot water system, for free. Deep Green supplies these Green “digital boilers” (a server and heat transfer system) for free, pays the business where it’s installed for the energy the digital boiler uses and, in return, asks for space for containers and sufficient grid and internet connection.

Benefits 

In this way Deep Green gets to expand its data centre server capacity and network and the business where the server is installed gets to dramatically reduce its energy costs while providing the same service to its customers, reduces its businesses carbon emissions, and improves its ESG credentials.

Example 

In what’s been described as a “UK first” in technology heating solutions, Exmouth Swimming Pool ‘took the plunge’ by having a Deep Green ‘digital boiler’ installed. It’s been reported that this has reduced the pool’s gas requirements by a massive 62 per cent, thereby saving LED Community Leisure, who manage the centre for East Devon District Council (EDDC), over £30,000 a year and reducing carbon emissions by 25.8 tonnes.

Peter Gilpin, CEO of LED Community Leisure, said of the new technology: “Deep Green’s innovative technology will dramatically reduce our energy bills and carbon footprint, meaning we will continue to be a key asset for the local community. We are already seeing the benefit. I’m certain this will transform leisure centres up and down the country for the better.” 

Pools Are Just The Start 

Although there are 1,500 pools in England that could all benefit from reduced energy costs, Mark Bjornsgaard, CEO of Deep Green, plans to focus on any businesses needing large amounts of hot water saying, “Pools are just the start.” Bjornsgaard says: “By moving data centres from industrial warehouses into the hearts of communities, our ‘digital boilers’ put waste heat to good use, saving local businesses thousands of pounds on energy bills and reducing their carbon footprint.” 

What Does This Mean For Your Organisation? 

This technology could solve several problems ate once – increasing data centre capacity in a more environmentally friendly way, reducing data centre carbon footprints, reducing business energy costs and carbon footprints, and tackling server heating problems in a productive and mutually beneficial way. Immersing servers in liquid to cool them down and installing servers and using their heat to heat water is already being done by other companies, but Deep Green’s model is different in that it combines the two and focuses on businesses (with major hot water requirements) rather than homes. At a time when electricity and gas prices are super-high and swimming pools are struggling to ‘stay afloat’ as a result, this type of service is likely to be very attractive.

On 14th March 1950, the first prototype of the silicon transistor was demonstrated by researchers at Bell Labs, the company spawned from its eponymous founder Alexander Graham Bell (i.e. the person widely accredited with inventing the telephone).

This incredible breakthrough device then paved the way for modern digital electronics. Some people may even remember the valves they replaced which were relatively slow, bulky, expensive, unreliable and which created significantly more waste heat. The fact that transistors could be miniaturised and printed onto integrated circuitry (i.e. silicon ‘chips’) meant they revolutionised electronics and ushered in the modern computer age. A modern mobile-phone can contain in the order of 20 billion transistors. A phone containing that many valves would be bigger than an international soccer stadium!

As computers became increasingly powerful and ubiquitous, they facilitated the development and expansion of the Internet and on March 15, 1985, the first internet domain name, symbolics.com, was registered, almost exactly 21 years before Twitter was launched (21st March 2006).

Given that there are around 500 million tweets sent every day now (and that’s just Twitter – think of all the other social updates) perhaps spare a thought for the rise of transistor next time your phone pings with a new message.

In addition to Windows Defender, Windows 10 has a Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) that’s designed to remove hidden malware from your device, and normally receives regular updates and runs itself in the background. However, if you’re worried you have a malware infection, you can download and run it manually. Here’s how:

– Click on the Start menu and type “mrt.” If it’s already shown on your device and click ‘run’ or follow the link to Microsoft’s MSRT page and click on ‘download’.

– When running MSRT, you can choose ‘Quick scan’ to search through the most likely places for malware, a ‘Full scan’ for a complete system scan or a ‘Customised scan’ for specific drives or folders.

– MSRT is not a replacement for good antivirus software but is another tool that could help, post-infection.

There was some relief from UK businesses hoping for government help following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) after HSBC rescued the UK arm of the bank by buying it for £1.

What Happened? 

Due to what many financial analysts believe to be SVB making some bad investments and betting (badly) on interest rates, SVB was shut down by US regulators last week in what has been reported as the largest failure of a US bank since 2008.

The UK Arm Important To The Tech Sector 

SVB was mainly a ‘tech bank’ with the kind of tech start-up customers that many other more traditional banks may see as too risky to deal with. The UK arm of this US-based bank has 3,000 customers who, following the collapse of the bank, were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to access cash and pay wages this week. These customers looked to the UK government for help after the US government quickly agreed to guarantee the money of US customers affected. HSBC then quickly stepped-in to buy what was a financially healthy UK arm of the bank for juts £1 in a deal described by HSBC boss Noel Quinn as “too good an opportunity to miss”. 

Risk To A Vital UK Growth Sector & Risk Of Spreading 

With the UK government’s emphasis on the importance of the technology sector to the future growth of the UK economy, there were crisis talks between UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, the prime minister, the Bank of England governor, and HSBC to get a rescue deal together that wouldn’t involve taxpayer money.

Another major fear since the news of the collapsed bank has been the possibility of the collapse becoming contagious. Despite assurances that no other UK banks had been materially affected by SVB’s collapse, and European finance ministers and the EU’s economics commissioner playing down the contagion risk, the markets are showing some signs of panic. For example, last Friday, the Pan-European STOXX banking index (.SX7P) was down as much as 10.4 per cent in afternoon trade and hit its lowest level since early January, and the FTSE has suffered a series of sharp falls as investors remain uneasy.

Still Frozen 

Despite the HSBC rescue, reports indicate that the UK SVB online banking facility remains frozen, meaning that tech company customers, many of whom have SVB as their only bank, remain unable to access their money as normal.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

For 3,000 UK business customers (plus their supply chains and stakeholders), this is an incredibly stressful time and especially for those who had put all their eggs in the one SVB basket. The ripples have hit the financial markets and, therefore, the wider business community and there are still fears of further contagion. For HSBC, buying the UK arm of SVB which was an essentially healthy bank for just £1 appears to have been an exceptionally good deal. For the UK government, which is relying on the tech sector to help grow the UK economy, the collapse of a bank that served start-up tech companies has proved to be a very worrying development that prompted frantic crisis talks. HSBC’s rescue deal, however, has given some feeling of security and hope to the 3,000 UK (mostly tech) business customers affected by the collapse who will hopefully be able to use the online banking facility soon.