Tech Brief 21 November 2025 lands at a moment when the digital present is all frayed edges and fresh fights. Balancing trustworthy learning, contract politics, and the slippery realities of internet crime is not for the faint-hearted. If you missed yesterday’s Tech Brief, you can catch up here before diving in.
Students Critique University’s AI-Led Coding Module
One student summed it up: “We could have just asked ChatGPT.” At University of Staffordshire, forty-one apprentices discovered that their much-advertised digital careers module was largely delivered by AI. The virtual tutors handled lessons by voiceover, missed out on human context, and left students feeling “robbed” of both enjoyment and confidence.
The gap here is practical, not just emotional. Genuine learning, especially in coding, thrives on awkward questions and unexpected sidetracks. Archive interviews from classic UK computing mags regularly stress that real skills are built via hands-on frustration and a teacher’s honesty; something no algorithm can replicate.
For anyone who learned by typing in code from magazines and hammering out errors on real hardware, this shift feels cold. If AI teaching is the future of digital training, who checks the robot’s lesson plan?
Fujitsu Gains £110m in Quiet Deals with HMRC
Here’s a cold fact: since March 2025, Fujitsu secured £110 million worth of contracts with HMRC, continuing the thread of megavendor relationships that seem older than the Internet itself. Public scrutiny was almost non-existent, even as the memory of the Horizon scandal lingers.
Why this matters is obvious to anyone who ever tried to get help for a locked-up database in the 90s. Vendor lock-in has been a staple of British public IT, often leaving real-world users with systems that break, stall or simply disappear.
This story links back to the AI teaching issue above. Both students and civil servants end up relying on expertise that can be faceless or inaccessible. There’s an uneasy continuity in trusting giants, especially when everyone’s left to pick up the pieces after things fail.
Is there any true digital sovereignty if the keys are always kept offshore?
National Crime Agency Hits ‘Bulletproof’ Hosting Used by Ransomware Gangs
How do you clean up a digital back alley? The National Crime Agency (NCA) has launched a crackdown on “bulletproof” hosting; servers rented out to cybercriminals with little scrutiny. For years, these anonymous networks have enabled ransom payments, data attacks, and a thriving shadow market.
This assault is technical and human. “Bulletproof” hosts mean criminals rent infrastructure designed to ignore takedown notices. The NCA’s action means they’re now fighting on home turf, treating cyber protection as seriously as street policing.
Unlike the surface web most use daily, these underground services thrive on secrecy. It is a major leap from the days of quirky BBS run in sheds across Britain. The real risk isn’t technical failure, but the normalisation of digital black markets. How many more networks are stitched together by silent partners, waiting to be discovered?
From the Wayback Machine
On This Day: 1969 – The First Permanent ARPANET Link
Fifty-six years ago, an SDS Sigma 7 mainframe at UCLA established a permanent connection with the SDS 940 at Stanford Research Institute. This was the practical beginning of ARPANET, the system that became the Internet. Leonard Kleinrock’s team tested packet switching, while BBN’s Interface Message Processor made data-sharing between universities possible. Britain was building packet-switched networks at the same time, led by Donald Davies at the National Physical Laboratory.
Packet switching is now in every network we run. The collaborative approach behind ARPANET still shapes the way open-source and modern protocols function. One question lingers: what might Kleinrock or Davies make of our messy, mega-connected world today?
What This Means
Tech Brief 21 November 2025 is less about nostalgia and more about accountability. Whether it’s students relying on AI tutors or civil servants navigating vendor contracts, the common thread is trust, and who holds it. From AI in the classroom to government purchasing, today’s tech events remind us that real progress depends on humans willing to ask tough questions. If you trust the system, human or digital, who’s watching the watchers?
If today’s Tech Brief made you curious, frustrated, or just want to power up your old BBC Micro, mission accomplished. Stay alert for tomorrow’s digital mysteries.
Missed yesterday’s Tech Brief? Catch up here
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