Europe’s top tech Inventions and Innovations as @ Nov. 30th, 2015

A map of scientific collaboration within Europe

Ah, November. Finally a brief respite from the craziness of September and October, until everything starts hotting up again in January. The top tech news in Europe this month was a fairly muted affair: except for a couple of acquisitions and one or two startups coming out of stealth, November mostly saw the continuation of long-running sagas, such as the questionable legality of Uber, the UK's incoming Snooper's Charter, mid-range smartphones gaining ground on the iPhone and Galaxy flagships that have dominated Western Europe for so long.
Without further ado, here's Europe's top tech news for November 2015.
It is once again illegal to make private copies of music in the UK. The UK Intellectual Property Office has withdrawn the 2014 private copying exception, under which anyone could make personal copies of their own music, including format-shifted versions (taking a DVD that you own and playing it on your iPad, for example). As a result, now you can possibly be jailed for making copies of your audio tracks, videos, or e-books, as well as uploading any of those to the cloud.
Uber’s struggles in Europe are not coming to an end in the near future. In Germany, the company has “paused” its service in Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Dusseldorf because of legal complications. In the United Kingdom, new documents have been made public that show Uber’s UK General Manager, Jo Bertram, threatening drivers that tried to unionise fellow drivers. In Spain, Uber has shut down it’s meal delivery service UberEats and announced that it will soon start working under a VTC (aka black cab) licence.

Enlarge / The Vivaldi browser

The highly customisable Vivaldi browser has begun beta testing. Created by the co-founder and former CEO of Opera Software Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, Vivaldi has been around since earlier this year, when we did a detailed hands-on review of it. Aimed primarily at power users, Vivaldi allows for a wide range of tweaks and fine-tuning options, including changing the location of main elements, powerful “Quick commands” tools, notes panel, and so on.UK parliament is scrutinising the new Investigatory Powers Bill, also known as the Snooper’s Charter, which would force all ISPs to store the browsing history of users for the previous year. What’s even more interesting, though, is that the bill allows the UK government to demand backdoors of “any relevant operators” and even give prison sentences for disclosing them. The bill has already provoked a negative reaction by computer security researchers and ISPs. The latter have said that the supporters of the bill “do not understand how the Internet works,” as well as pointed out that it could significantly push up broadband bills in the UK.
Raspberry Pi Foundation has released the cheapest Pi computer so far, the £4 Pi Zero, which sold out within 24 hours. The tiny computer is about the size of a credit card and packs a 1GHz ARM11 CPU core, 512MB of RAM, micro SD slot, two micro USB sockets, and a mini HDMI socket that can output at 1080p60. Raspberry Pi says that the ARM CPU is 40 percent faster than the original Raspberry Pi 1 Models A, A+, B, and B+.
The Welsh startup behind the Zano drone has lost its CEO and collapsed. Ivan Reedman resigned on November 10, citing "personal health issues and irreconcilable differences." About a week later, the startup sent its backers on Kickstarter a statement saying that the company has “made the difficult decision to pursue a creditors' voluntary liquidation.” Kickstarter itself sent a separate note to the backers, stating it’s “committed to helping backers get to the bottom of what happened here.” In the most recent statement, the makers of Zano denied that they cheated their customers.
Google was given another month to comply with the ruling of Russia’s antitrust authority, which says the corporation has to correct its contracts with phone vendors. Google has also stated that it will contest the decision and “explain in court why we consider it unfounded.” At the same time, Yandex revealed that it not only complained to Russia’s FAS over Google’s practices but also asked the European Commission to investigate the search giant. For a 10-minute explanation of the whole thing going on between Yandex and Google, head to this podcast.

Enlarge / If you pre-ordered a Jolla device, we have bad news...

Finnish mobile devices and OS maker Jolla is in big trouble. The company has released a statement saying that its latest funding round has been postponed indefinitely. This has reportedly resulted in half of the company’s 100 employees being let go. Jolla has also filed for a debt restructuring program in Finland. Moreover, thousands pre-orders are still unfulfilled, while no one can say for certain when (and if) the backers will receive their devices.Airbus has proposed new drop-in airplane “cabin modules” to speed up boarding. The company has been granted a patent that essentially turns an airplane into an articulated truck with a huge hole in the middle. Instead of boarding the plane directly, passengers and luggage would be loaded into a separate "cabin module." Then, when the module is ready to go, it's simply dropped into the airplane.
The interior and justice ministers of the EU have agreed to strengthen regulatory and legal controls of bitcoin, prepaid cards and any other payment methods that can be used anonymously. The ministers called on the European Commission members to present proposals on the plan of actions to be taken to step up checks on these payment methods. "Among the sectors under assessment, the use of virtual currencies will be subject to particular attention," a European Commission official told Reuters.
UK government has promised that all homes in the country will have a legal right to 10Mbps broadband by 2020. Prime minister David Cameron has pledged to introduce a "universal service obligation," which puts broadband on same footing as water and electricity. By 2020, it's promised that residents will be able to request a connection of at least 10Mbps, and an ISP will have to connect them no matter where in the country they live or work.
European game developer King Digital, the maker of Candy Crush, is to be bought by Activision Blizzard for £3.9 billion. When the company went public in 2014 on NYSE, it was valued at about £4.7 billion. King’s CEO Riccardo Zacconi will continue to run the company independently, at least until the deal is completed in early 2016.
German banks have launched a PayPal rival, Paydirekt. The initiative, which is supported by at least 20 banks and a bunch of e-tailers, came after a series of complaints regarding PayPal's dominance of the online payments market. The new platform complies with the notoriously strict German privacy laws and regulations, which could help it to win the trust of the local audience.
European officials seek to reach a new data transfer agreement in place of the Safe Harbour by early 2016. However, this work could be in vain, as a group of human rights and privacy organisations warned the European Commission that the Safe Harbour 2.0 “will not provide a viable framework for future transfers of personal information.” Going further, the 20 EU and 14 US NGOs stated that “a revised Safe Harbour framework similar to the earlier Safe Harbour framework will almost certainly be found invalid by the national data protection agencies and ultimately by [Europe's highest court, the EU Court of Justice]."



 The teaser trailer for Eve: Gunjack.

Iceland-based CCP Games, known primarily by its widely popular Eve Online game, has secured $30 million in funding and released its first VR title. Dubbed Eve: Gunjack, the game is an arcade shooter for the Samsung Gear VR platform. The game, in which you operate a gun turret on a mining vessel in the space, was acclaimed as “one of the most visually impressive mobile VR games we've seen to date.”
Europe has received its first carrier-backed phone running Cyanogen. Telefonica has launched the BQ Aquaris X5 handset powered by the OS on its Movistar carrier brand. The device costs €209 (£150) SIM-free or €8.7 (£6.1) per month on a two-year contract. Later this year, the phone will be launched in Germany and in the UK, where it will land on O2. In Europe, the mobile OS is also used by the UK-based Wileyfox.

Enlarge / Ugears automotive, made entirely out of wood, without glue or tools.

Ukrainian startup Ugears has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its beautiful plywood models that can teach you basic mechanical principles. The units—steam locomotives, trams, tractors—can be assembled without glue or any tools. When put together, the unit will run a few metres, demonstrating how the mechanical elements work together. The project creators claim that a model will last a few years.
London-based startup Limejump claims that its “virtual power plant” will be capable of powering Birmingham and Leeds in three years. The company appears to have applied the model of Uber and Airbnb to the energy market by collating supply from small generators, such as farmers with solar panels or producing biogas.