Amazon to finally launch Leo satellite internet in ‘mid-2026’, says CEO
Amazon has said its long-awaited satellite internet rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink will finally go live in “mid-2026”.The chief executive, Andy Jassy, said in a letter to shareholders that the technology company was “on the verge of launching Amazon Leo” and had secured “revenue commitments from enterprises and governments” for the scheme.Originally conceived in 2019 as Project Kuiper before being renamed last year, Leo now has 200 low-orbit satellites in space, with Jassy promising “a few thousand more” in the years to come.While on track to make Leo the second commercial satellite presence in space, the plans would still leave it far behind SpaceX’s Starlink, which has nearly 10,000 satellites in space and aims to have as many as 42,000 operational in the future.Jassy promised Leo would incorporate the successful Amazon Web Services cloud computing software into its function, writing: “Leo will seamlessly integrate with AWS to enable enterprises and governments to move data back and forth for storage, analytics, and AI.
”He also said Delta Air Lines had named Leo as its future onboard wifi provider and would begin using it on 500 planes in 2028.Jassy said Delta would be joining “other Leo customers like JetBlue, AT&T, Vodafone, DIRECTV Latin America, Australia’s national broadband network, Nasa, and others”.As well as being some years behind rivals such as Starlink and OneWeb, Amazon’s efforts to join the internet space race have also been hampered by having to rely on competitors’ rockets for launches, though plans have been announced for Blue Origin, also owned by Jeff Bezos, to take primary responsibility for launching Leo satellites from 2027 onwards.The rivalry between Amazon and Space X, and by extension their owners, is expected to shape the coming decades of the commercial space industry, with Bezos and Musk both eager to set up datacentres in orbit as well as being interested in normalising commercial space travel, a field where Bezos’s Blue Origin has the edge.It remains to be seen whether Leo will join Alexa, Audible and the Kindle as one of Amazon’s successful ventures into other fields, or noteworthy failures such as the Fire phone, which was launched in 2014 and lasted little over a year before being discontinued, and Amazon Fresh, which closed all of its brick-and-mortar UK and US stores between 2025 and 2026.
Amazon upsets ebook lovers by ending support for old Kindle devices
Amazon is to stop supporting older Kindle models leaving longtime ebook fans unable to access new content from the Kindle store.Devices released during or before 2012 will no longer receive updates from 20 May, affecting owners of older Kindles, including the earliest models such as the Touch and some Fire tablets. It is thought that 2m e-readers could be affected.Users will still be able to read ebooks they have downloaded, and their accounts and their Kindle library will remain accessible on mobile and desktop apps. Active users have been offered discounts to help “transition to newer devices”
OpenAI shelves Stargate UK in blow to Britain’s AI ambitions
OpenAI has put on hold plans for a landmark UK investment citing high energy costs and regulation, in a blow to the government which has put AI at the centre of its growth strategy.Stargate UK was a part of the UK-US AI deal announced last September, in which US companies appeared to commit £31bn to the UK’s tech sector, part of a larger series of investments intended to “mainline AI” into the British economy.It came as the Labour government seeks to make AI and datacentres the engine of its growth plans, alongside closer ties with Europe and regional growth.“This is a wake-up call for the government to manage energy costs in the UK and foundation infrastructure,” said Victoria Collins MP, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for science, innovation and technology. “We cannot be dependent on US tech companies to build our own sovereign capabilities – whether that’s energy cost, supply or even data and phone signal
British computer scientist denies he is bitcoin developer Satoshi Nakamoto
A British computer scientist has insisted he is not the elusive developer of bitcoin, after a report claimed to unmask him as its creator.A story in the New York Times details a years-long effort to unmask Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious author of the bitcoin white paper which laid the theoretical foundations for modern digital currencies.It names Adam Back, a London-born computer scientist and entrepreneur. In a thread on X, Back promptly denied being the mysterious – and presumably ultra-wealthy – technologist.“I also don’t know who satoshi is, and i think it is good for bitcoin that this is the case, as it helps bitcoin be viewed [as] a new asset class, the mathematically scarce digital commodity,” he wrote
Britons warned about Russian hackers targeting internet routers for espionage
Russian hackers are exploiting commonly sold internet routers to harvest information for espionage purposes, the UK’s cybersecurity agency has said.The hack could allow attackers to obtain users’ credentials, redirect them to fake sites, and potentially access other devices on their home network such as phones and PCs, said Alan Woodward, a professor at the University of Surrey.The National Cyber Security Centre said on Tuesday the operations were “believed to be opportunistic in nature, with the actor targeting a wide pool of victims and then likely filtering down for users of potential intelligence value at each stage of the exploitation chain”.It follows a common pattern of cyber-actors targeting edge devices – hardware such as internet routers or internet-connected security cameras – that act as a bridge between users and the cloud.Woodward said: “It’s not the first time that warnings have come out about routers
The life-changing magic of wearing smartglasses | Letters
I read with sympathy the concerns of Elle Hunt in relation to privacy issues around Meta smartglasses (I wore Meta’s smartglasses for a month – and it left me feeling like a creep, 1 April). Clearly there needs to be ongoing development of technology and protocols that protect the public from ill-intentioned users. As the chief executive of a charity supporting people with a visual impairment, however, I would like to emphasise the point touched upon in your article: how transformative this technology is already proving for blind people.We are seeing significant numbers of our visually impaired staff and clients using Meta glasses in conjunction with their mobile phones to improve their ability to perform ordinary functions that most of us take for granted. A visual impairment can be disempowering and isolating
Tell us: do you use AI chatbots to make decisions for you?
AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are now a part of everyday life.More and more people are using them to help make decisions in their lives, like sending text messages, deciding what to cook, or navigating relationships.We want to hear about your experiences of using chatbots. Are you addicted to them? And what type of decisions are you using them for?You can tell us your experiences of using chatbots using this form.Please include as much detail as possible
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