Britain's Top Spy Agency Has the Most Bizarre Recruitment Ads
Consider them “classifieds.”
Banksy has competition. From the establishment, no less.
Graffiti art was popping up on sidewalks around England last week, advertising jobs at the Government Communications Headquarters, also known as the United Kingdom’s equivalent of the United States’ National Security Agency.
The spy agency confirmed with Fortune by email that the ads are legitimate. “The method is known as ‘clean graffiti,'” the agency’s press office said Thursday. “The ads were placed at the beginning of the week and are designed to fade over time.”
The classifieds read: “GCH-WHO? | TECHNICAL OPPORTUNITIES | GCHQ-CAREERS.CO.UK.”
James Cook, a tech reporter at Business Insider who spotted the ads last week in the London neighborhood of Shoreditch, noted that the careers website failed to load when he attempted to access it. “Forbidden,” the error page said, a bit ironically. “You do not have permission to access / on this server.” (The page now works.)
Victoria Turk, a UK-based editor at Vice Motherboard, initially speculated that the impediment might have been an intentional challenge designed for computer whizzes. “Knowing GCHQ’s previous attempts to recruit talent using codes and puzzles,” she writes, “I wondered if it was a secret test to weed out candidates who weren’t up to the task.”
According to GCHQ, she said, this was not so. It was a browser issue.
East London, where the ads appeared, is known for its high concentration of tech talent, which may explain the agency’s interest in targeting the neighborhood. The area has been branded “Silicon Roundabout.”
“We look at areas which are likely to contain a high proportion of people we would like to recruit,” the GCHQ press office told Fortune, “in this case people with technical skills and experience.”
Following the terror attacks in Paris on Friday, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said he plans to boost the country’s security spending, the Guardian reports. The extra investment will provide for a headcount bump of 1,900 intelligence and security officers in UK spy agencies, an increase of 15%.
Subversive street artists need not apply.
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China Still Has the World's Most Powerful Supercomputer
China’s Tianhe-2 machine once again leads the world as the most powerful supercomputer, according to researchers.
China leads the world once again when it comes to supercomputing.
The country’s Tianhe-2 (or “Milky Way-2”) supercomputer is the most powerful machine in the world, according to a list of the top 500 supercomputers compiled by researchers from institutions like the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
This makes for the sixth straight time China’s supercomputer has topped the biannual list from the Top500 organization. The list also shows that China now has 109 of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers, or almost three times more than in the last report six months ago.
Meanwhile, the Unites States has 200 supercomputers on the list, which the authors said is the “lowest number of systems installed in the U.S. since the list was started in 1993.” The authors didn’t address why this may be. But it could be related to the rise of cloud computing, in which organizations can buy computing resources on demand from companies like Amazon AMZN 0.85% and Microsoft MSFT 1.75% . Companies and researchers no longer need to own a computer to be able to crunch large amounts of data.
Still, the U.S. aims to eventually lead the world in supercomputing. Last fall, IBM IBM 1.49% said it would develop two new supercomputers, dubbed Summit and Sierra, for the Energy Department that will be more powerful than China’s Tianhe-2 machine. However, those supercomputers won’t be ready until 2017.
Additionally, President Obama signed an executive order in July calling for the U.S. to create the world’s most powerful supercomputer under the National Strategic Computing Initiative. The Energy Department, Defense Department, and the National Science Foundation will lead the push. There’s no deadline for when the supercomputer will be complete, but initiative members are expected to give annual updates on their progress over the next five years.
As far as the top vendors in the top 500 list, the authors said that Hewlett Packard (Now, Hewlett Packard Enterprise) HPE -0.07% is the leader with 156 supercomputers. Supercomputer maker Cray followed with 69 machines and IBM with 45.
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Lowe's Has Big Plans for its New Home Smart Hub
The home improvement retailer wants to recast its image based on connected home technology.
After three years, Lowe’s is giving its Iris home automation hub a facelift, reducing the price, and expanding its capabilities.
On Monday, it introduced a new hub to let people automate the lights, locks, cameras, and even pet doors in their homes.
The chain store also wants to rebrand “from a home improvement retailer to a home improvement company,” says Mick Koster, who leads Lowe’s Iris home systems. That means the company plans to focus more on installing connected home products, as well as focus on providing recommendations to consumers related to home services like electricians and plumbers.
The latest version of the Iris hub costs $59.99, down from $99.99. The price is $10 more than the corresponding Wink hub sold at rival Home Depot stores.
Lowe’s is also reducing the number of premium plans it offers for the Iris hub from three to two. One is a paid plan costing $9.99 monthly that allows users to notify up to six people when an event occurs, create conditional rules for the devices (if my garage door opens, turn on the porch light), and store video for up to two weeks.
The other is a free plan that lets users get notifications sent to their own phone, let users remotely control their gadgets, and stores video for 24 hours.
Lowe’s was early in the home automation when it introduced the Iris platform in 2012. Since then, the company has pulled together a compelling array of connected devices that work with the hub.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the Iris platform because the free features and the number of compatible devices felt too limited. Other options from SmartThings and other Do-It-Yourself hubs out there offered more.
With the upgrade, Lowe’s has addressed some of those concerns. It works with 75 devices that are branded with the Lowe’s Iris name, up from a couple dozen. It also operates with Bluetooth, which means that it will likely add coming Bluetooth light bulbs and some of the new connected locks over time.
The hub also supports the AllJoyn standard ,which means it should work with a surprising array of other devices outside of the hub. For example LG TVs support AllJoyn so an Iris hub might be able to one day send a message that an Iris water sensor noticed a leak to an LG TV in the house, letting someone get a message that their home was in danger of flooding even while immersed in watching the big game.
And from a functionality and use perspective, the Iris platform does have good customer support and fairly intuitive software.
What’s more interesting, is where Lowe’s intends to take the Iris platform and its retail strategy as consumers become more willing to purchase connected products. “Obviously we are a DIY focused retailer, and we continue making Iris more intuitive and simpler to manage on your own,” said Koster.”But we want to integrate more smart tech into other categories where it is relevant.”
That might start with the addition of more obscure devices outside the Iris platform such as Wi-Fi enabled water heaters.
Lowe’s plan is to sell services in addition to the Iris hub like home security monitoring, which costs $9.99 monthly. The idea is transform Lowe’s beyond its roots as a home improvement retailer into a company homeowners can go to directly for fixing problems with their homes.
Koster cites Lowe’s involvement with Porch.com last year, as an example of this mindset. Porch.com offers recommendations to homeowners seeking services like plumbers or electricians.
As more complicated devices such as water flow measurement sensors are offered, they require professional installation which Lowe’s could offer through Porch.com. Koster views connected devices, not as whiz-bang gadgets, but as devices that improves the home itself.
“As connectivity becomes omnipresent, that becomes just another check in the box of features, so we have look at how it adds to the value of our brand and the device,” Koster says.
He declined to say how much money Lowe’s currently makes from Iris or from selling connected home devices. But he clearly thinks it will rise considering his interest in the market.
Overall, he said that he expects prices for connected products to decline, so consumers won’t have to spend $250 for a connected thermostat forever. That’s good news for mainstream consumers who are interested in the technology.
Of course, it’s also potentially good news for Lowe’s, which wants to help install and manage connected devices for customers.
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