Posts by David Pearce

Two Android 0-day bugs disclosed and fixed, plus 105 more to patch

Some already do

HSBC for a start demand minimum OS versions

Palo Alto CEO tips nation-states to weaponize quantum computing by 2029

Assuming quantum computing actually happens, is anyone really sure how to mitigate it yet?

From Intel to the infinite, Pat Gelsinger wants Christian AI to change the world

Remember Dark Star

At the end when the AI bomb explodes

"Let there be light"

Britain's AI gold rush hits a wall – not enough electricity

Re: SMRs

Obsolete nuclear submarines tend to be quietly scuttled in deep water. Nobody decontaminates old reactor compartments

Amazon grounds drone deliveries in Arizona after two crashed into a crane

I used to fly Cessna. I was capped at 2000 ft by controlled airspace and supposed to keep 500 ft from buildings, so tightly sandwiched. Cranes near the airport caused NOTAMs. Drones and later, robot air taxis, are going to want to fly in denser populated surroundings because that is where the demand is. Some of the buildings already exceed the 2000 ft cap, so any optical detection system is looking against a building background, not sky. Are these drones under VFR rules?

Crane jibs and cables can be hard to spot by a human pilot.

BT promises 5G Standalone for 99% of the UK by 2030

Note this says 99% of the population, not area. That probably equates to 80% of the area or worse. Many parts of Scotland and Wales are very sparsely populated

New Zealand’s Institute of IT Professionals collapses

I presume the members had to pay some fee?

California cops confused after trying to give ticket to self-driving car

Self driving cars have to follow the rules, else humans will tend to copy them.

Running a red light is really dangerous - we know these cars have problems detecting cyclists and pedestrians.

Feds put finger on H-1B lottery scale to favor higher earners

Re: Tariffs on imported goods, fees for visas...

Most of the rest of the world has work done in the US that earns money in them, so US workers maybe should have to file over 100 tax returns for these countries too?

US tech giants pledge $42 billion in UK investment as Trump tours Blighty

Data centres provide few jobs, just security guards and cleaners. They do consume huge amounts of power and drinking water. Fortunately England never needs hose pipe bans.

Samsung fixes Android 0-day that may have been used to spy on WhatsApp messages

This bug is in Android itself, so not Samsungs fault. I'm still waiting for the patch to roll out my phone

1,200 undergrads hung out to dry after jailbreak attack on laundry machines

Until someone spoils it

Inevitably someone will try to run a laundry business for outsiders and spoil the model for everyone

FBI used bitcoin wallet records to peg notorious IntelBroker as UK national

Re: What ? Bitcoin ?

What about the cash deposit ATMs that pay out someone else's deposit? I see people banking in very large stacks of notes, maybe money laundering

Chinese memory-maker YMTC sues US rival Micron for defamation instead of the usual patent breaches

It's still much easier to spy from the CPU, all of these "management engines" from Intel and AMD

Forked-off Xlibre tells Wayland display protocol to DEI in a fire

Wayland lacks many features by design that CAD and GIS software needs

https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support/

Trump lifts US supersonic flight ban, says he's 'Making Aviation Great Again'

Re: In other news...

Around 1970, Concord used to do Mach 2 test runs up and down the West coast of Wales to see how bad the surface noise was. The boom was annoying and cracked the rendering of my parents and many other houses.

Meanwhile I want my plastic straw back. How many tons of fuel to fly a supersonic private jet across the US?

Tesla FSD ignores school bus lights and hits 'child' dummy in staged demo

Kids crossing from a yellow bus are one of the few times when pedestrians have priority on US roads. Jaywalking and lack of pavements is a thing there.

Good luck to FSD dealing with European mixed traffic safely.

Euro techies call for sovereign fund to escape Uncle Sam's digital death grip

Re: GPS

Why Galileo exists, the US GPS cannot be relied upon

GitHub supply chain attack spills secrets from 23,000 projects

Re: Really ??

Except that you have probably agreed that you cannot sue them in a 50 page EULA

China to probe US chip subsidies as export curbs rattle allies

Japan

I watched a Youtube video last nigh about the fall of the Japanese semiconductor industry, largely blamed on the US objecting to their government driven R&D as subsidised.

Starlink clashes with Telecom Italia over frequency data sharing

The 1900/1910 MHz block is reserved for railway communications in Malaysia (and other countries I believe) - a safety critical usage, so interference from satellites would be a serious issue.

Nokia brainwave turns cell towers into cash cows with backup batteries

A lot of the cost of backup is the security guards you need to stop your batteries being stolen. This is a cost that doesn't go up as you add more batteries

AI flips the script on fingerprint lore – maybe they're not so unique after all

Fingerprints are not compared as images. There are several proprietary and incompatible systems that classify what are considered as important details of a print. This data reduction greatly increases the probability of false positives.

SpaceX sends first direct-to-cell Starlinks to orbit

Re: Beam forming technology

3G and LTE smartphone uplink is usually just 200 mW, GSM was 2W

Overheating datacenter stopped 2.5 million bank transactions

Re: Global warming???

Singapore has hit all time temperature records this year. Even the equator is getting hotter

UK to crack down on imported Chinese optical fiber cables

Prysmian Group headquarters are in Milan

Over the years they have eaten the UK suppliers like BICC. They also own Draka

You shouldn't be able to buy devices that tamper with diesel truck emissions on eBay, says DoJ

Re: no ..but

"You are getting into the same thing as an ISP being held liable for people pirating movies and music. How about people that post albums to YouTube without permission"

But does your ISP act as a middleman and collect a payment from you to watch this pirate movie?

South Korea's biggest mobile telco says 5G has failed to deliver on its promise

5G is working fine in urban parts of Malaysia now. It does drain your phone battery faster.

So far the telcos have been unable to charge the premium price they were hoping for and my monthly data cap is an order of magnitude higher than my usage.

The IOT hype for 5G has not worked out at all and I cannot see 6G helping.

To me 6G is really about patent control and excluding China.

TV and film extras fear generative AI will copy their faces and bodies to take their jobs

Cloning research?

Trying to make a clone of Steve Jobs perhaps?

AMD Zenbleed chip bug leaks secrets fast and easy

Re: Also, I just noticed...

On a PC, it's easy to never open multiple tabs when banking and close the browser after use. On cellphones it's much harder to keep your banking App isolated

Tech support scammers go analog, ask victims to mail bundles of cash

The scammers have found that cryptocurrencies are very public and hard to spend without being arrested

Want to feel old? Ethernet just celebrated its 50th birthday

Remember PLANET?

Before Token Ring, RACAL had its PLANET dual rotating ring "LAN". This staerted life as a method of networking RS232, PC connection was added in the mid 80s.

This one failed to get the IEEE blessing.

A lot of what we now are familiar with in Ethernet was borrowed from AT&T Starlan, which was a 1 Mbps tree and branch

Sci-fi author 'writes' 97 AI-generated tales in nine months

There are many "real authors" who have done nothing more than rehash existing stories without an original idea over the years.

This is what the AI basically does

West warns Malaysia to keep Huawei out of 5G networks

Re: Global Policing.....

The 5G incumbent is Ericsson.

They were recently fined by the US for bribing in some neighbouring countries.

Huawei are widely used in Malaysia on other networks

Google: Turn off Wi-Fi calling, VoLTE to protect your Android from Samsung hijack bugs

I checked and found an unexpected security update for my A53G, the last only on 6th March, so maybe connected

Funnily enough, FDA forbids Elon Musk's Neuralink human experiments

This is about immortality really

The SciFi dream is of moving the mind out of the biological brain

Yukon UFO could have cost unfortunate balloon fan $12

Helium is rare

The Earths supply of helium is very limited, so why waste it in an unmanned balloon.

Bonus that hydrogen is a little lighter and doesn't leak as much

Intel Sapphire Rapids workstation chips tout up to 56 cores, unlocked SKUs

56 Cores

So only useful for massively threaded applications then

Amazon convinces FCC it can avoid space junk chaos

Congestion

So Kuiper is just above the Starlink orbit and they in turn are just above Hubble, the ISS a bit lower.

Any launch failures and you will risk collisions

China to stop certifying fax machines, ISDN and frame relay kit

PABXs

There are still plenty of analog telephony PABXs out there with 2 Mbps trunk lines.

I had trouble buying a fixed line telephone recently to replace a broken set which was on my VOIP gateway box at home.

BT in tests to beam down 5G coverage from the stratosphere

Looks like someone chose hydrogen without thinking about its abysmal energy density. Those high pressure tanks are heavy

Atlassian CEO's bonkers scheme to pipe electricity from Australia to Singapore collapses

Politics too

Any cable from Australia to Singapore inevitably passes through Indonesian territorial waters..

The North Sea cables don't have these 3rd party problems

Intel casts doubt on Italy for chip factory location

Packaging and test requires cheap labour, which is why Malaysia and the Philippines have so much.

Italy is an unsuitable candidate for the fabs as it is prone to earthquakes and the odd volcano, plus short of water

CEO told to die in a car crash after firing engineers who had two full-time jobs

International traffic

A Teams meeting for me that includes people outside my office, but still in Malaysia, is usually hosted by a server in Japan or the USA. This leads to horrible packet loss and latency

Engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

Asimovs Foundation series

If you remember, in the Foundation series the "Engineers" had become a cult trying to maintain a technology that they did not understand.

The West is well down the road in following that as a script.

US House boots TikTok from government phones

I was surprised to see a TikTok app installed during a clean Windows10 install.recently

Intel settles to escape $4b patent suit with VLSI

Nationality again?

Softbank is Japanese and the US courts have plenty of track record in favouring US companies in patent cases

Too big to live, too loved to die: Big Tech's billion dollar curse of the free

Re: Monetise Me If You Can!!!

Many countries insist on proof of identity to get a SIM card