Information Society

Another busy week in the tech market saw a varied mix of stories ranging from data dumps by hackers to GCSE Computing results. We’ve rounded up some of the best stories, interviews, features and reviews from the past week for you to catch up on.

Students taking Computing GCSE double in a year with 121 percent rise in female pupils

The number of students taking the Computing GCSE has more than doubled over the past 12 months from 16,773 to 35,414.

Figures released by the Joint Council for Qualifications also showed that record numbers of female students took the Computing GCSE, up from 2,568 to 5,678 and equating to a 121 percent increase.

A total of 24,058 male students took the Computing exam this year compared with 5,678 females, while 64,777 male students took the ICT exam compared with 47,157 females.

Ashley Madison hackers release huge second batch of data including CEO’s email address

The hacking collective behind the cyber attack on adultery website Ashley Madison has uploaded a huge 19GB file that appears to contain source code to the website and the personal emails of Avid Life Media CEO Noel Biderman.

The release, roughly double the size of the original 9.7GB release, seems to be a response to an interview ALM conducted with security researcher Brian Krebs in which former Ashley Madison chief technical officer, Raja Bhatia, claimed the initial data dump was fake.

Technology and machines create jobs and improve humanity’s happiness

Fears that robots and other automated machines will replace jobs and create a world devoid of work are unfounded, according to a study by Deloitte economists.

The report, entitled Technology and people: The great job-creating machine, looked at long-term historical trends relating to new technologies and their impact on employment and society, and found that in almost all instances the effect is positive in the long term.

CIO Insight: British Gas IT boss on open source, smart meters, cloud and digital skills

V3 spoke to David Cooper, chief information officer at British Gas, to discuss the use of technology at the firm.

Zero-day flaw found in Mac OS X Yosemite security update

An Italian teenager has discovered a previously unknown zero-day vulnerability in Apple’s Mac OS X platform that could be exploited by hackers to allow privileged access to Mac systems.

A proof-of-concept has been released by Luca Todesco, 18, who said the exploit uses bugs to corrupt the memory in the operating system that can then be used to access the system root shell.

The flaw, dubbed ‘tpwn’, is said to affect all versions of Yosemite, including the recently patched 10.10.5, but reportedly does not affect El Capitan.