If you’d like to make it faster and easier to navigate between different document sections in Google Docs, here’s how to insert anchors (known as ‘bookmarks’):

– In Google Docs, type the name of the document in the Title column and open your chosen document.

– Put the cursor at the beginning of where you want to put the bookmark.

– From the document navigation bar select “Insert” > “Bookmark”.

– Go to the section of the document where the link to the Bookmark should come from and click “Insert” > “Link”.

– Type your link text In the Edit Link dialog box.

– Click on “Bookmark” in the “Link To” section to open the Bookmarks list, select your bookmark, and click on the “OK” button to complete the link.

In this article, we look at how the weather can affect your Internet connection, and therefore the fortunes of the Web.

Vulnerabilities

Thinking beyond the router that is indoors, and protected from the weather, the rest of the infrastructure that brings your broadband is outdoors, and vulnerable to the effects of the UK weather.

Physical Damage To The Network

Much of our phone network is still made up of underground copper cable, fibre optic cable, and connections. This means that your Internet connection could be affected by:

– Flooding from heavy rainfall dislodging cables and water getting into the connections.

– Hot weather causing networking devices to perform more slowly and cables perhaps suffering physical damage that affects the connection.

– Climate change and extreme weather having had an impact in the form of extreme weather events that disrupt data centre sites. A recent Uptime Intelligence survey, for example, showed that 45 percent of data centres have experienced an extreme weather event that threatened their continuous operation. In the UK, a flood in 2016 at the Vodafone data centre in Leeds resulted in customers getting only intermittent services of voice and data. Data centres around the world are now taking measures to protect themselves from extreme weather that can cause damage and disruption to services.

– Underwater/undersea mudslides, linked to river flooding (from heavy rainfall) in West Africa recently caused oceanographic moorings of cables to surface, thereby damaging subsea cables.

– Rising temperatures (from climate change) increasing humidity across the world by causing the atmosphere to absorb more water vapour, which in turn can affect data centre operations and interfere with tech equipment, affect the strength of wireless signals, and cause slower broadband connection speeds.

– Wireless signals (outside the building) that are part of the communications network can suffer from lower levels of coverage due to rain droplets absorbing and interfering with the signal.

– Satellite dishes and aerials being shaken and/dislodged by very high winds.

Humans

When there are adverse weather conditions outside, this often results in increased use of the Internet and high bandwidth streaming services as people stay indoors and seek online entertainment. These periods of very high demand and high traffic can result in the slowing of Internet connections for many users.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Communications businesses such as ISPs, phone companies, and companies in charge of the maintenance of communications infrastructure now face more challenges from the weather than ever as the effects of climate change drive up temperatures, increase humidity, and cause more extreme weather events. This has resulted in the need to try to incorporate more weatherproofing into their communication infrastructures to guard against the kinds of weather events and threats that this changing climate brings.  Also, as in the case of Openreach, trying to maintain telephone cables (many of them being old, copper cables), ducts, cabinets and exchanges that are all subject to the UK’s changing (but often wet) weather is also a major challenge, at the same time as businesses and homes rely more upon more smart gadgets, devices and the IoT, and use more streaming services for entertainment. These and other earth-bound coverage challenges are the reasons why ideas such as satellite broadband are beginning to look like attractive communications options. SpaceX, for example, has launched/is launching thousands of small satellites into low Earth orbit to provide a global high-speed broadband coverage in a way that may offer protection, to some degree, from weather events.

In this article, we take a broad look at copyright and how it may apply to your business online, plus what exceptions there may be to the law.

This Article

Firstly, it is important to make clear that this article does not offer any definitive legal advice but merely takes a broad look at the subject of copyright. Those seeking accurate advice about their own copyright issues should, of course, consult with a qualified legal professional.

Copyright Law and Software

Many businesses produce digital materials such as software or designs that are published online by themselves, for specific clients or for usage by third parties e.g., templates and photos.  In this article, we take a look at some of the main laws governing this digital material and what implications these laws can have for the producers and users of this material.

Copyright

So much digital (and non-digital) work is continuously created that there is no copyright register for the online world, as such, in the UK.  Instead, the law simply states that a person automatically gets copyright protection when they create something e.g., original literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic work, (including illustration and photography). This automatic ownership also applies to creating original non-literary written work, such as software, web content and databases.

If you have copyright protection in the UK, it should mean that nobody else can copy, distribute (paid or free), rent, or lend copies of your work, make an adaptation of your work, or put your work on the Internet.

At Work or At Home?

There have been cases, however, such as the one highlighted on the Mills & Reeve legal website, whereby a person who was employed to write software for his job, as stipulated in his employment contract(s), wrote some software out of hours, out of the office, for which he claimed copyright. The court’s decision was that since he was employed to write software, it didn’t matter whether he wrote it in his own time on his own devices, his company still owned the copyright.  This is because:

– In UK law, if an employee creates an original work as part of their employment (they’re employed to do that job), the copyright is owned by their employer.

– An accurate employment contact, stating clearly what the employee’s work is for the company, e.g., writing software, makes it much easier for ownership (by the company) to be established.

Social Media Sharing and Copyright Infringement

The advent of social media, however, where work is routinely shared globally makes the matter of copyright seem a little more complicated because permission to post is rarely sought. For this reason, the concept of ‘fair use’ and the social media company’s licensing terms that users sign up to when joining the platform can also apply when deciding matters of copyright.  An example of Twitter’s copyright policy, for example, can be seen here. https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/copyright-policy

Fair Use

Broadly speaking, the idea of ‘fair use’ (US) / fair dealing (UK) on social media means that copyrighted material can be shared/reproduced if one of a group of certain conditions are met. These conditions are that:

– If its sharing/usage is for research or private study purposes.

– If the copyrighted work is being used/shared for review or being quoted.

– If the copyrighted work is being used to report current events.

It is worth noting, however, that fair use/fair dealing doesn’t give a carte blanche to the sharing/reproducing on social media, and that each case could be considered legally on its own merits.

Protecting Your Own Copyrighted Material on Social Media

Although using a social media channel essentially gives the platform’s owner permission to use your content, there are some steps you can take to indicate that your work is under copyright.  For example, this could mean adding a copyright notice to posts or a watermark to images.

What If Your Copyrighted Work Is Shared Without Your Permission?

If your copyrighted work is shared without your permission (possible infringement of copyright) on social media, you can (firstly) contact the person who shared it.  If this is not possible (or there in no response/an unsatisfactory response) submit a report to the social media platform via their copyright form.  Facebook’s, for example, can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/1758255661104383?helpref=faq_content

Images

Many companies use and share images and the best advice is that images should be purchased or downloaded from reputable websites where it is made very clear, and where you understand what kind of licence you have and in what way you can legally use the image.

Royalty Free?

Many businesses use ‘royalty free’ images.  This means that the images have a special license so that the user can pay for the image license once but then continue to use the image in perpetuity without having to keep buying or renewing a new license.

If you need to check whether an image is copyrighted, a reverse search in Google images or other platforms such as Tineye (a reverse image search engine) can give a good indication.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Copyright and intellectual property are legal areas that businesses need at least a basic understanding of to avoid the painful consequences of infringement or being infringed. The safest route is, of course, to always seek permission and/or always check the copyright policies of the services/platforms that you sign up to and use where copyright could be an issue. Although the UK law is clear, there are of course exceptions (fair dealing) and it is always worth remembering that despite these exceptions, in the event of an infringement complaint, the individual circumstances are likely to be considered. Accurate employment contacts can also be a way to help protect your own copyright matters e.g., for software writing.

AI can now design AI chips hundreds of times faster (and better) than humans. Where will this lead? A recent research paper has described how a deep reinforcement learning approach to chip ‘floorplanning’ has led to AI generating chip floorplans that are superior or comparable to those produced by humans.

Floorplans

Chip floorplanning is the term for designing the physical layout of a computer chip.

Why Is It So Important?

The way a chip is designed impacts upon its performance (e.g. power consumption). Also, if a faster way can be found to design chips, this could save the months of effort spent by physical design engineers (and the associated costs) to produce manufacturable chip layouts.

Method

The paper, written by Googlers Azalia Mirhoseini, and Anna Goldie et al, highlighted how the researchers used a deep reinforcement learning approach, coupled with an edge-based graph convolutional neural network architecture.  The object was to design the next generation of Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators, and this method enabled the AI to learn from past experience in chip floorplanning and to become better and faster at solving new instances of the problem.

The Result

The researchers found that in just under six hours, instead of the months it would have taken for human engineers, the AI design method automatically generated chip floorplans that are superior or comparable to those produced by humans in all key metrics, such as power consumption, performance, and chip area.

Also, the researchers believe that in addition to AI’s success in designing chips for AI, more powerful AI-designed hardware is likely to fuel advances in AI itself, thereby creating a kind of symbiotic relationship between the two fields.

AI Being Adopted By More Businesses

A recent Google Cloud (Harris Poll) survey found that the pandemic has led to more businesses adopting AI. The survey of 1,154 senior manufacturing executives revealed that 66 percent of manufacturers now use AI on a daily basis, with over a third (34 percent) saying that the daily use of AI and machine learning (ML) is helpful for their employees.

Challenges

Although these figures indicate that AI is almost mainstream, some of the challenges that business still have in the adoption of AI are finding ways to move from pilot schemes to live adoption (partly due to too much legacy technology on the shop floor), and not having enough people who are trained in deploying AI.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

It is clear that many more businesses are adopting AI to solve real problems, save time and save money but are running up against the problem of a talent gap.  It is particularly interesting, therefore, that in chip design, AI has bridged that talent gap by training itself to be more experienced and knowledgeable than human chip designers, and in doing so has proved (in research) that it could save vast amounts of time and money. Also, in doing so, its continuous learning means that it will not only become better and faster at solving new instances of the problem going forward but will be able to design better hardware that can fuel advances in AI itself, thereby creating a kind of value-adding, symbiotic loop.  This is an example for businesses of how AI can help them bridge skills gaps in a cost-effective way, and create competitive advantages going forward that they may not even have been thought about.

A recent Citizens Advice survey has revealed that 2.5 million people are behind on their broadband bills, with 700,000 of these falling into the red during the Covid pandemic.

Young, With Children Under 18, Or Receiving Universal Credit Most Affected

The survey of 6,001 adults living in the UK revealed that 18 to 34-year-olds and those with children under 18 are three times as likely to be behind on their broadband bills as older groups and households without children.  This may be due to people becoming more reliant on broadband to work and help their children with schoolwork during the pandemic, with UK adults spending an average of 22 hours online each week.  The survey also found that Households on Universal Credit are nine times as likely to be behind on their broadband bill compared to those not on the benefit.

Another Hurdle In The Hunt For Jobs

Citizens Advice points out that being without broadband in today’s society simply creates yet another hurdle in the hunt for jobs, or in being able to help children with their schoolwork, and in being able to access help, information and completing forms online.

Broadband Is An Essential Utility

Dame Clare Moriarty, Chief Executive of Citizens Advice, argues that “Broadband is not a luxury, it’s an essential, like gas and electricity” and has called on Ofcom and the government to ensure that everyone is able to afford their broadband, no matter which provider they are with. The Citizens Advice CE also stressed that “people shouldn’t be penalised simply because their provider isn’t one of the few firms that offers a cheaper tariff.”

February Survey

Back in February, a similar survey by Citizens Advice also revealed one in six people were struggling to afford their broadband during the third lockdown and that poorer people were being locked out altogether. It was already known from previous surveys that groups struggling most with their broadband bills were people with children, disabled people, people from Black, Asian or ethnic minority backgrounds, those who were shielding, young people, and those in receipt of low-income benefits (e.g. Universal Credit) were found to be almost twice as likely to struggle to pay their bill as other customers.

Only Two Offer Cheaper Tariffs

Ofcom urged all providers back in December 2020 to consider offering cheaper broadband tariffs for those on a low income or who are struggling financially.  At the time, Ofcom found that if households were paying the average £37 a month for landline and broadband, this would take around four times the proportion of a low-income household’s budget, compared to an average household.

Only two nationwide and two local providers now offer these tariffs to those on Universal Credit.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The pandemic lockdowns have highlighted just how essential having a broadband connection has now become in society for everything from working online (remotely), study for young people and children, communication, online shopping, job applications or job interviews and more. In fact, broadband is now essential to allow people to participate fully in society and, as Citizens Advice has pointed out, not having a broadband connection (due to being unable to afford it) can put people and their children at a considerable disadvantage going forward. This also highlights another inequality in society based on income. Although broadband companies are businesses, the service they provide is now essential and has a major influence on society and the life chances and opportunities of UK citizens. Despite being urged by the regulator to offer lower tariffs for low-income groups, the lack of action by broadband companies may now mean that, under the European Electronic Communications Code, which is now part of UK law, broadband providers may be forced into offering affordable tariffs to people on low-income benefits.

If you’re switching devices or need to re-install Google Chrome from scratch but don’t want to lose your collection of bookmarks, here’s how to export and import them.

Export

– From Chrome’s ‘More’ menu (the three dots, top right) select ‘Bookmarks’ > ‘Bookmark manager’.

– Go to the three-dot menu (top right) and select ‘Export bookmarks’.

– Save the bookmarks as a html file.

Import

– Follow the same process, but from the menu in ‘Bookmark manager’ select ‘Import bookmarks’ and upload your saved html file.