Find out how WithSecure harnesses the power of offensive security to drive business resilience and enhance protection for its clients!
WithSecure Drives Business Resilience Through Offensive Security!
WithSecure (formerly known as ‘F-Secure Business’) is harnessing the power of offensive security in its co-security and co-monitoring products and services. This revolutionary approach is designed to anticipate and mitigate cyber threats by understanding them from an attacker’s perspective.
During the SPHERE security conference 2023, WithSecure’s Chief Product Officer, Antti Koskela, shed light on their game-changing offering called ‘attack surface management.’ This managed service offers a comprehensive view of vulnerabilities in a company’s cloud-based estate.
As a result, WithSecure’s focus on the digital perimeter empowers businesses to reduce their overall attack surface, enhancing their cybersecurity posture in the ever-evolving threat landscape.
How WithSecure Offensive Security Drives Business Resilience!
WithSecure also introduced three groundbreaking services that amplify their commitment to ‘outcome-based security’ and ‘co-security’. This groundbreaking development was revealed by WithSecure Executive Vice President (Solutions) Scott Reininga, also at the SPHERE security conference 2023.
Reininga underscored WithSecure’s unparalleled expertise in offensive security, revealing that they are the home of one of the world’s most proficient offensive security teams. This team, a fusion of penetration testers (pentesters), red, blue and purple teamers, has profound knowledge of adversary tactics, tradecraft, and techniques.
Penetration testing is a cybersecurity practice that aims to discover vulnerabilities in a system by simulating controlled attacks. Their goal is not to cause damage but to pinpoint weaknesses for rectification. This proactive method, which can involve exploiting software vulnerabilities or simulating social engineering tactics, is key in any comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, offering a practical evaluation of potential risks rather than a theoretical one.
Our relentless pursuit of research and system testing allows us to uncover system vulnerabilities proactively. This crucial data is the building block of our products that are proactive, minimally disruptive, and crafted from the perspective of an attacker.
– Scott Reininga, WithSecure Executive Vice President (Solutions)
These insights were unveiled by Reininga during his recent product launch event titled ‘Co-security and co-managed services for partners’. He was joined on stage by WithSecure Vice President (Offering and Customer Experience) Niko Isotalo.
Expanding on WithSecure’s strategic approach, Isotalo said that the company’s outcome-based security framework model “connects Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and board members, offering clarity about the interplay between security outcomes and business objectives.”
This alignment clarifies the indispensable role of security in the core business framework to board members.
– Niko Isotalo, WithSecure Vice President (Offering and Customer Experience)
Reininga and Isotalo unveiled the three new offerings during their joint session. The first, termed “co-monitoring,” is a partnership model. WithSecure validates the genuineness of security incidents before alerting the duty manager, effectively curbing false alarms.
WithSecure collaborates with clients to supervise their digital ecosystems, particularly during periods when they are stretched thin on resources. This service, providing support beyond standard working hours, can also deliver round-the-clock monitoring if necessary.
Isotalo further introduced the second service, incident readiness software, recognising that many organisations lack comprehensive incident readiness plans.
Our software simplifies the creation, testing, and updating of such plans, which serve as essential shields against cyber threats.
Focusing on the urgency of immediate incident response, Reininga introduced the third service, an incident response retainer.
Our incident response retainer provides unlimited incident response within the critical initial 72 hours of an event. We eliminate the need for negotiation about budget and resource allocation.
We engage consultants rapidly, supported by our globally lauded 24/7 incident response team and top-tier threat intelligence unit, guaranteeing our customers industry-leading service level agreements (SLAs).
By integrating offensive security acumen, co-monitoring capabilities, incident readiness software, and swift incident response, WithSecure empowers organisations to effectively safeguard their digital assets and curtail the impact of potential breaches.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Avanade just unveiled new generative AI services to help organisations and their people work responsibly and innovate with artificial intelligence!
Avanade Launches New Generative AI Services!
July 10, 2023 – Avanade, the leading Microsoft solutions provider, today unveiled new services to help clients address the pressing challenge to ready their people, processes, and technologies for artificial intelligence (AI).
As generative AI technology continues to transform the way we work, live and conduct business in every part of the world and in every industry, expectations are growing exponentially.
Avanade’s Trendlines research reveals that 85 percent of organisations expect AI to increase revenue growth by 2025, with more than two-thirds anticipating AI to be responsible for up to 16 percent growth in global annual revenue. All this points to lucrative rewards for those that seize the growth opportunities of AI now.
Avanade’s new services will enable leaders to assess and monitor multiple business and IT domains to prioritise actions, so they can responsibly harness the benefits of AI.
However, the research also indicates organisations are not ready. Trendlines shows that only 36 percent of business and IT leaders are completely confident that their organisation currently has sufficient checks and balances in place to mitigate the potential risks and harms of AI. Meanwhile, nearly half (48 percent) admit to not having specific guidelines and/or policies put into effect yet for responsible AI.
There is no end point to AI readiness. As generative AI continues to reshape the global business landscape, the importance of adopting an AI-first mindset cannot be overstated.
To seize the growth opportunities of AI and mitigate risks for unintended consequences through continual change, leaders need to consider more than the technology implications of AI. Ultimately, AI-first is people-first.
– Jillian Moore, Global Head of Advisory at Avanade
Avanade’s new services have been designed to expedite business value derived from AI while cultivating an AI-first mindset:
The Avanade AI Organisational Readiness Framework provides a comprehensive assessment of an organisation’s business and IT areas. It offers detailed insights into AI readiness across people, processes, and technologies, enabling leaders to prioritise responsible actions for leveraging AI’s benefits.
The service includes executive coaching, tailored employee training, and an innovative “AI control tower” with cloud-based tools, dashboards, and knowledge resources. This ensures continuous AI readiness and empowers leaders to monitor and take real-time actions.
The Avanade AI Governance Quick Start Service addresses the crucial requirement for responsible AI governance. It enables leaders to translate corporate values into guidelines and practices for governing the ethical use of AI.
With a strong framework and methodology, organisations can proactively assess risks in AI projects and enhance their existing business and IT governance processes, policies, and behaviours to effectively manage and reduce AI risks across all functions.
These new services compliment Avanade’s existing portfolio of generative AI strategy workshops, with options ranging from a 2-hour workshop to a 6-week strategy Proof of Concept engagement.
As generative AI gains momentum in Southeast Asia, we see a profound shift in how people engage with technology and how organisations function. Avanade is committed to helping our clients navigate this dynamic landscape, focus on doing what matters, and fully embrace the potential of generative AI responsibly.
By evaluating their AI readiness and establishing an ethical technology framework, organisations can ensure their digital advancement aligns with their core values – enabling them to simultaneously prioritise innovation and responsibility.
Bhavya Kapoor, Southeast Asia Managing Director, Avanade
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
WithSecure is harnessing the power of the offensive security approach in tackling evolving cloud threats!
WithSecure Takes Offensive Security Approach For Cloud Threats!
In a shifting cybersecurity landscape, WithSecure (formerly known as ‘F-Secure Business’) is harnessing the power of offensive security in its co-security and co-monitoring products and services. This revolutionary approach is designed to anticipate and mitigate cyber threats by understanding them from an attacker’s perspective.
During the recent SPHERE security conference 2023 in Helsinki, Finland, WithSecure’s Chief Product Officer, Antti Koskela, shed light on this approach.
We’ve done identity assessments for many cloud-based companies, unveiling weaknesses in their cloud platforms.
Our offensive security approach is about understanding the attack surface of a cloud-based estate. We focus on the digital perimeter, which is crucial to reducing the overall attack surface.
Koskela went on to explain that WithSecure has distilled this insight into an innovative managed service offering called ‘attack surface management’. This service provides a comprehensive view of a company’s vulnerabilities, including IP addresses, port vulnerabilities, exposed APIs and web services, identity matters, patching levels and more.
With more open architecture, control over your attack surface becomes paramount. ‘Zero trust’ alone isn’t the answer as human errors happen. Our holistic approach helps mitigate this.
WithSecure’s product suite integrates various cloud-native solutions to deliver protection based on specific client requirements. This collaborative process, termed ‘co-security’, is driven by the security and business outcomes defined by the clients. Koskela emphasised the tripartite focus of their solution:
It’s about process, people, and technology. We collaborate to secure the outcomes, letting company directors steer the course of business.
Our WithSecure Elements platform is the cornerstone of our technology, built collaboratively with our clients.
Koskela acknowledged the evolution of the IT industry, from client-server in the ‘90s to hosted services in the 2000s, cloud computing in the 2010s and cloud-native in the 2020s. He underscored the need for a new security approach to match the evolving business environments:
The cloud offers agility, speed, cost-efficiency. But with new technologies come new security considerations.
WithSecure has been proactive, creating solutions for every technological shift – be it firewalling and endpoint protection during the hosted services era, or data security and VPNs for the cloud computing era.
And now, with the rise of cloud-native tech, we’re helping clients to understand and secure their digital perimeter through our offensive security approach.
WithSecure Chief Product Officer, Antti Koskela (left), and APAC Regional Director Yong Meng Hong (right)
WithSecure Elements Picking Up In APAC
Since its mid-2021 debut, WithSecure’s Elements platform has gained considerable momentum here in Malaysia and the broader Asia-Pacific region. This comprehensive cybersecurity platform has made its mark by providing organisations with a unified solution to their security needs.
Elements equips enterprises with the insight, adaptability, and technology to tackle evolving threats and changing business environments.
Offering unified endpoint protection across devices, clouds and servers, Elements consolidates everything from vulnerability management and collaboration protection to detection and response into one easy-to-navigate security console.
– WithSecure Asia-Pacific Regional Director Yong Meng Hong
Yong further emphasised that the cloud-based Elements platform provides real-time visibility across an entire IT infrastructure, simplifying how enterprises manage their cybersecurity.
Flexible licensing options, including fixed-term subscriptions and usage-based billing, ensure that organizations can tailor their cybersecurity services according to their specific needs.
Elements offers centralised management capabilities, giving IT managers a comprehensive overview of their enterprise’s IT infrastructure, enhancing their reassurance and control.
Today, WithSecure is globally recognised, trusted by a myriad of enterprises to safeguard against cyber threats, while also protecting tens of millions of consumers through over two hundred service providers and telecommunications partners.
For organisations looking to navigate the cloud’s security challenges, WithSecure’s offensive security approach could be just the safeguard they need.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Timothy Shim gives us the low-down on the 5 strategies for negotiating airfare discounts with SAP Concur!
Negotiating Airfare Discounts with SAP Concur!
Whether it’s a short hop to a neighboring city for a client meeting or an international conference halfway around the globe, airfare costs can significantly dent your company’s budget. That’s where systems like SAP Concur step in.
From leveraging data to setting up effective travel policies, we will explore five strategies for negotiating airfare discounts with SAP Concur. But before we dive into the nitty-gritty, let’s understand what SAP Concur is and how it functions as a critical part of your corporate travel management toolkit.
5 Minute Read
Use SAP Concur’s robust reporting tools to gain insights into your company’s travel patterns and use this information to identify potential areas for negotiation with airlines.
Centralize your company’s travel bookings with SAP Concur and present your travel volume data to airlines when negotiating for discounts.
Use SAP Concur to plan and book corporate travel in advance, demonstrating your commitment to airlines and leveraging this in your negotiations for better rates.
Track airfare fluctuations with SAP Concur and use your active engagement with market trends to secure better deals from airlines.
Leverage SAP Concur to manage and track your company’s relationships with airlines, leveraging your loyalty and long-term commitment to negotiate for ongoing discounts.
5 Strategies for Negotiating Airfare Discounts with SAP Concur!
SAP Concur is a cloud-based solution integrating travel, expense, and invoice management into one unified system. It aims to simplify these processes and provide a seamless, user-friendly experience.
Travel Management with SAP Concur
Concur Travel is a feature within the platform that allows businesses to manage and streamline their corporate travel processes. It offers a comprehensive range of services, including online booking tools, travel management services, and mobile applications.
These services aid companies in reducing costs, enforcing travel policies, and providing travelers with a smooth and efficient experience.
Expense and Invoice Management
Concur Expense and Concur Invoice are additional features to simplify the expense and invoice management processes. Concur Expense lets employees quickly capture and submit expense reports from any location.
That does much to reduce errors and improve compliance. Concur Invoice automates invoice processing, helping businesses manage spending and cash flow more effectively.
SAP Concur’s Impact on Business Operations
By integrating travel, expense, and invoice management, SAP Concur gives businesses visibility and control over their spending. It also offers valuable insights into spending patterns, helping companies make informed decisions and save money.
Whether a business has a small travel team or a large multinational operation, SAP Concur is designed to adapt to unique needs and deliver tangible benefits.
The first step to effective negotiation is knowing your ground, and in the context of airfare discounts, that means understanding your travel data. SAP Concur shines here, providing businesses comprehensive insights into their travel habits.
Key Data Points to Focus On
First, pay close attention to your company’s frequently traveled routes, preferred airlines, and ticket classes. Focus on asking the right questions to provide the most actionable insights for your business. For example;
Which routes are your employees traveling the most?
Which airlines are they choosing?
Are they booking economy, business, or first-class tickets?
These data points provide a solid foundation for negotiation discussions with airlines.
Analyzing Trends and Patterns
SAP Concur allows you to analyze trends and patterns in your travel data over time. For instance, you may find that your employees travel more frequently during certain times of the year or prefer specific airlines for international flights. These patterns can provide leverage when negotiating airfare discounts.
Translating Data into Negotiation Power
Armed with this data, you can approach airlines with confidence. Showcase your loyalty to specific airlines, emphasize the volume of business you bring, and demonstrate your understanding of your company’s travel needs.
When airlines see that you know your travel patterns and preferences, they’re more likely to consider offering discounts.
Actionable Tips
Use SAP Concur’s reporting tools to gain a comprehensive overview of your company’s travel patterns.
Analyze the data to identify trends, such as the most frequently traveled routes, the most used airlines, and peak travel periods.
Use this information to identify potential areas for negotiation with airlines.
Once you’ve grasped your travel data, it’s time to focus on volume. As with many things in business, higher volumes can often lead to better deals, and air travel is no different.
With SAP Concur, you can aggregate your travel data to demonstrate the volume of your bookings, forming a compelling case for discounts.
Consolidating Travel Bookings
It’s essential to consolidate your company’s travel bookings as much as possible. Instead of allowing your employees to book flights individually, use SAP Concur to centralize your travel bookings.
This simplifies the booking process and allows you to negotiate with airlines as a single, high-volume customer.
Presenting Your Case to Airlines
When you approach airlines with a substantial volume of business, you’re in a much stronger negotiating position. Airlines are always looking for consistent, reliable customers. Showing them that you provide significant business can encourage them to offer you better rates.
The Win-Win Situation
By offering airlines a substantial and steady volume of business, you’re creating a win-win situation. The airline gets a reliable source of revenue, and in return, your company gets more favorable airfare rates. This symbiotic relationship is the heart of effective negotiation.
Leveraging SAP Concur’s Tools
SAP Concur provides the tools necessary to leverage your travel volume effectively. This platform is an essential partner in your negotiation journey, from consolidating bookings to presenting comprehensive reports.
Using SAP Concur to showcase your travel volume, you can confidently negotiate airfare discounts and ensure your company gets the best possible deals.
Actionable Tips
Use SAP Concur to centralize all your company’s travel bookings.
Make a report showcasing your company’s travel volume.
Present this report to airlines when negotiating discounts.
Strategy #3: Utilize Advanced Booking
We’ve all heard the saying, “The early bird gets the worm,” right? In our case, replace “worm” with “discount.” Being an early bird can be a real game-changer when bagging those sweet airfare deals. And here’s where SAP Concur comes in handy, making advanced booking a breeze.
Think about it – when airlines see steady, early bookings, they’re more willing to give us a break with some discounts. Plus, it’s a stress reliever! You get to avoid the last-minute scramble for tickets, and it’s easier to plan your budget when you know the costs upfront.
SAP Concur is like that incredibly organized friend we all wish we had. With its advanced booking feature, planning your corporate travel well in advance is simple. You can book flights, reserve hotels, and even arrange ground transport, all in one place.
The Art of Negotiation with Advanced Booking
But let’s get back to the discounts. Advanced booking can give you a leg up when negotiating with airlines. Showing them that your company is organized and committed to booking in advance can be a persuasive argument for a lower rate.
Creating a Win-Win Situation (Again!)
Just like with travel volume, advanced booking creates a win-win situation. The airlines have the security of early and regular bookings, and you get to bag those tempting discounts. It’s like a beautiful dance, and SAP Concur is your dance partner, guiding you through each step.
So, remember to plan. It’s not just about saving your sanity; it’s about saving dollars. Advanced booking with SAP Concur? That’s a smart move.
Actionable Tips
● Use SAP Concur’s booking tools to plan and book corporate travel well in advance.
● Track the cost savings achieved through advanced booking.
● Highlight your company’s commitment to early booking when negotiating with airlines.
Next up on our list of strategies is dynamic pricing. That might sound like some sort of jargon straight out of a business textbook, but trust me, it’s more complex than it sounds. It’s all about adaptability, flexibility, and being ready to ride the ever-changing airfare prices.
Airfare prices are like a rollercoaster—they go up, down, and make sudden turns. As a savvy business, we must monitor these fluctuations and use them to our advantage. When we know that prices are changing, we can swoop in and grab those discounts when they pop up.
This is where SAP Concur struts its stuff. It allows us to track these price changes and alerts us when prices drop. It’s like having a vigilant guard dog that barks (or, in this case, sends notifications) when a good deal is on the horizon.
Dynamic Pricing and Negotiation
When you’re at the negotiating table with airlines, being able to talk about dynamic pricing can give you an edge. It shows airlines that you’re not only aware of the market trends but you’re also ready to react to them. This can make them more willing to offer special deals and discounts.
Creating Yet Another Win-Win
By now, you’ve probably noticed a pattern—we’re all about creating win-win situations. With dynamic pricing, the airlines get a customer who’s engaged and responsive to the market, and you get to save some of those hard-earned dollars.
So, let’s embrace the rollercoaster of dynamic pricing. We can ride the ups and downs with great discounts with SAP Concur. Remember, being adaptable in business is a virtue; in this case, it can save you money!
Actionable Tips
Use SAP Concur’s tracking features to keep an eye on airfare fluctuations.
Book immediately to secure the lower rate when you notice a significant price drop.
Mention your dynamic pricing strategy during negotiations with airlines to show that you’re an active and engaged customer.
Last but not least is the power of long-term partnerships. We’re not just talking about fleeting, one-off deals here. No, we’re looking at the big picture—establishing relationships with airlines that can lead to ongoing discounts.
Loyalty goes a long way in business, and air travel is no different. Airlines appreciate customers who stick around. Knowing they can count on your company’s regular patronage gives them stability.
This is where SAP Concur’s ability to track and manage your travel data shines. It helps you keep track of your company’s relationship with each airline and makes it easier to demonstrate your loyalty when negotiating for better rates.
Using Partnerships to Negotiate Discounts
When you’ve established a long-term relationship with an airline, you’re no longer just another customer—you’re a valued partner. This gives you a significant advantage when negotiating airfare discounts.
Airlines are more likely to give better rates to customers who will continue to bring them business.
The Long Game Wins
Establishing long-term partnerships is like playing the long game. Yes, it requires commitment and consistency, but the payoff can be substantial. Airlines get the assurance of your loyalty, and you get the benefit of ongoing discounts. It’s a classic win-win.
Actionable Tips
● Use SAP Concur to track your company’s relationship with each airline.
● Share this data with airlines to demonstrate your loyalty and commitment.
● Leverage your long-term relationship with airlines to negotiate for ongoing discounts.
Final Thoughts: Turning Strategies into Savings with SAP Concur
We’ve certainly covered some ground! From understanding your travel data, leveraging your travel volume, utilizing advanced booking, and implementing dynamic pricing, to establishing long-term partnerships, it’s clear that there are multiple strategies for negotiating airfare discounts.
And guess what? SAP Concur has been our faithful companion, offering us the tools and features to implement these strategies effectively. It’s more than a travel, expense, and invoice management platform.
It’s a powerful ally that helps us navigate the tricky terrain of corporate travel and airfare negotiation.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Avanade and Accenture have just been named 2023 Microsoft Global SI Partner of the Year, for the 18th time!
Avanade + Accenture: 2023 Microsoft Global SI Partner of the Year!
Avanade and Accenture have been named 2023 Microsoft Global SI Partner of the Year. This is the 18th time that Avanade and Accenture received the Global SI Partner of the Year recognition from Microsoft.
In total, Avanade and Accenture received close to 120 Partner of the Year awards across various technology and country categories throughout their history, for helping clients transform their employee and customer experiences by creating and delivering leading-edge solutions using Microsoft solutions.
Both companies were also recognised with 17 other awards including Malaysia Partner of the Year and Singapore Partner of the Year.
Dynamics 365 Sales & Marketing Partner of the Year
Low Code Application Development Partner of the Year
Automotive, Mobility and Transportation Partner of the Year
Customer Experience Partner of the Year
Malaysia Country Partner of the Year
Singapore Country Partner of the Year
Germany Country Partner of the Year
Greece Country Partner of the Year
France Country Partner of the Year
Portugal Country Partner of the Year
UK Country Partner of the Year
Denmark: Azure Core: Cloud Infrastructure Partner of The Year
Finland: GSI Growth Champion Partner of The Year
Asia Pacific: Azure Data & AI Partner of the Year
Asia Pacific: Azure Infrastructure Partner of the Year
Singapore: Financial Services Industry Partner of The Year
Japan: Energy and Resources Partner of the Year
The companies were also named finalists in the following five categories: Retail & Consumer Goods Partner of the Year; Dynamics 365 Finance Partner of the Year; Dynamics 365 Services Partner of the Year; Security Compliance Partner of the Year; Business Intelligence Partner of the Year
The unique partnership between Avanade, Accenture and Microsoft truly enables us to do what matters for our clients – building more resilience in a world of continuous change, empowering employees to embrace new ways of working, strengthening customer experience and now, guiding them on their journey to an ‘AI-first’ world.
Being recognized as Microsoft’s Global SI Partner of The Year for the 18th time is a remarkable achievement that is only possible because of our people all over the world who, every day, bring unrivalled expertise, experience and insights to help our clients solve their toughest business challenges.
Avanade + Accenture Collaborates With Microsoft On AI
Avanade, Accenture and Microsoft recently announced an expansion of their close collaboration to help organizations adopt the disruptive power of generative AI, accelerated by the cloud, to fundamentally transform their businesses.
By tapping into the new Accenture Center for Advanced AI, with its deep focus on generative AI and large language models, and the new Avanade AI Organizational Readiness Framework, the companies can help their clients take advantage of generative AI for safe and responsible innovation at scale.
Over the past year, we’ve expanded our partnership with Microsoft by helping more clients transform their organizations through the adoption of data and AI, cloud, metaverse, sustainability and other technologies.
Together with Avanade, we take great pride in helping clients accelerate change to achieve new growth and value, and we look forward to an exciting journey forward with Microsoft.
– Chris Howarth, Senior Managing Director and Accenture Microsoft Business Group Lead
Combined, Avanade and Accenture now have more than 65,000 professionals dedicated to delivering Microsoft technologies.
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Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Telcos in Malaysia will soon ban SMS messages with personal information, as part of the MCMC’s initiative to prevent scams! Here is what you need to know!
Malaysia To Ban SMS With Personal Details!
On Sunday, 2 July 2023, four Malaysian telcos – Maxis, Celcom, Digital and U Mobile will ban SMS messages containing personal information , as part of the MCMC’s initiative to prevent scams.
In addition to the May ban of SMS links, both local and international users will be prevented from sending any SMS message containing:
personal details
mobile or fixed line phone number
banking details like account number
MyKad number
All SMS messages containing these forbidden items will not be blocked, but their senders won’t be charged for those blocked messages.
No Ban For SMS With Personal Details Via Short Codes
It should be noted that this ban on SMS messages with personal details do NOT apply to businesses using legitimate Enterprise short codes. They will still be allowed to issue SMS messages with URLs (links), phone numbers, and personal details.
Here are the current Enterprise short codes for Celcom and DIGI, from which you “may” continue to receive SMS messages with hyperlinks (URLs) and personal information.
Maxis has 5-digit short codes like 1XXXX, 2XXXX, and 6XXXX, but has chosen to block SMS messages containing personal information from their Enterprise short codes:
In order to prevent individuals from becoming online scam scams, the Malaysia Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has issued a directive to all telcos on 14 February 2023 to block sending and receiving of short messaging service (SMS) from local, international mobile numbers and applications containing below contents:
URL link and any clickable link e.g. shorten URL; shorten URL;
Request for user’s personal information e.g name, IC number, account number and
Mobile and fixed line number
Blockings are being implemented in stages; started from 2 May 2023 for SMS between individuals; the next and last stage is the blocking of SMS containing the above 3 elements from mobile and applications such as Enterprise SMS service and Maxis IoT SIM from 2 July 2023.
Risky SMS Ban Helpful, But Other Platforms Still A Risk
While this measure is really helpful in reducing scams, the ban is limited to SMS messages. It does not prevent scammers from sending similar scam messages through instant messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, etc.
I should also point out that links are not inherently bad. Links in messages, even SMS messages, are mostly safe.
Perfectly Fine
Clicking on a link to read an article / terms and conditions of a promotion
Clicking on a link to enrol in a promotion which does not require you to log into any website
Clicking on a link to check in for a flight, or get a travel update
However, they can be used to send you to a phishing website which is designed to look like a genuine bank / payment website. Hence, it is critical that you should NEVER log into any website through a link.
NEVER DO THIS
Clicking on a link to log into a bank website
Clicking on a link to make a purchase or payment
Clicking on a link to log into any account / email
Phishing attacks work by tricking you into going into a fake website that looks like the real website. But you still have to log into the fake website to give the scammers your login details.
If you click on a link, and you are asked to login – this is likely a phishing attack. But don’t worry – as long as you refuse to log into any website after clicking on a link, the phishing attack fails.
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Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Microsoft will no longer issue major Windows 10 updates, and will end support for the operating system in October 2025!
Microsoft : No More Windows 10 Updates, EOL In 2025!
On Thursday, 27 April 2023, Microsoft announced that it will no longer issue any further major Windows 10 update. The current 22H2 version that was released in October 2022, and entered broad deployment on November 18, 2022, would be the final version of Windows 10.
In addition, Microsoft announced that all editions of Windows 10 will reach the end of support on October 14, 2025.
Windows 10 Home
Windows 10 Pro
Windows 10 Enterprise
Windows 10 Education
Windows 10 Pro Education
Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise
However, Microsoft will continue to issue monthly security update releases (including Windows Defender updates) until that EOL date.
Windows 10 will reach end of support on October 14, 2025. The current version, 22H2, will be the final version of Windows 10, and all editions will remain in support with monthly security update releases through that date. Existing LTSC releases will continue to receive updates beyond that date based on their specific lifecycles.
The only exception will be existing LTSC (Long Term Servicing Channel) releases – they will continue to receive updates beyond that EOL date, based on their specific lifecycles.
Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019 : Jan. 9, 2029
Windows 10 IoT LTSC 2019 Core : Jan. 9, 2029
Windows 10 IoT Core LTSC : Jan. 9, 2029
Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 : Jan. 12, 2027
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2019 : Jan. 9, 2029
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 : Jan. 13, 2032
Microsoft also took the opportunity to announce that two Windows 11 LTSC releases will be available in the second half of 2024:
Windows 11 Enterprise LTSC
Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC
Enterprise users who want to plan and test applications and hardware while waiting for a Windows 11 LTSC release, should start doing so with the current Windows 11 22H2 edition.
Microsoft : Please Upgrade Before Windows 10 EOL!
Microsoft is therefore encouraging users to transition to Windows 11, because it will no longer release any feature upgrades.
Despite Windows 11 being introduced over 1.5 years ago, many Windows 10 users still refuse to upgrade / migrate to Windows 11.
According to the both Steam Store’s March 2023 and StatCounter’s survey, more than 73% of Windows-based PCs are still running on Windows 10!
On its part, Microsoft stopped selling Windows 120 downloads in January 2023, but until Microsoft starts cutting off security updates in October 2025, there will be little impetus for Windows 10 users to migrate to Windows 11.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
HP just launched its new 2023 Smart Tank and LaserJet printers targeted at home / hybrid workers, and enterprises!
2023 HP Smart Tank 580 / 520 Printers
HP just unveiled a new line of budget-friendly 2023 Smart Tank printers to cater to home- and office-based hybrid workers.
The 2023 HP Smart Tank 580 and 520 printers offer an intuitive setup process, with smart features and better connectivity, including self-healing Wi-Fi, and Smart App and Smart Advance capabilities.
They also offer low printing costs with a pre-filled ink supply that can print up to 6,000 black or colour pages. Assuming a monthly output of 150 pages a month, that’s almost 3 years of printing from the start!
Smart Experience
HP Smart App helps to guide you through everyday tasks like print, scan, copy and fax.
Automatically detects IDs, and prints with the ID copy button
Comes with self-healing Wi-Fi and better mobility with Smart App and Smart Advance.
Protected by HP Wolf Essential Security to protect sensitive information.
Affordable Cost
Engineered for high-volume printing with cost-effective colour and monochrome printing
Up to 6,000 pages of black or colour from ink bottles provided in-box
Easy monitoring of ink levels with integrated ink sensors
Sustainably Designed
Sustainably manufactured using 45% post-consumer recycled content.
HP also introduced new laser printers – the LaserJet Managed E800 and E700 series printers, which are intelligent solutions to streamline enterprise workflows.
The new HP LaserJet Managed E800 / E700 series offers enterprises centralised control with HP Web Jetadmi, and HP Workpath for personalised, integrated digital workflow.
Customisable design – they come with five colour panels, to match your office decor, and HP Speed Licence for flexible configurations to meet different business needs
Comprehensive workflow solutions with new Flow 2.0 features, including the ability to make edits directly to the content on the control panel (highlight, redact, even sign) as customised shortcuts.
Reverse and Retry technology which detects and resolves double feed issues and paper jams.
Better performance with up to 70 ppm print speed, and 300 ipm duplex scan, powered by HP’s custom-designed quad-core processor.
Auto-sensing technology to save time with tone and colour management, two sided document detection, and automatic job separation features.
Protected by HP Wolf Enterprise Security, the HP LaserJet Management E800 / E700 series protects, detects, and self-recovers. They also come with Memory Shield, which helps to detect malicious attacks on the printers, and automatically self-heals if detected. Memory Shield uses a hardware-protected solution called Runtime Intrusion Detection to actively scan memory for anomalies, and Guard CFI from Karamba to monitor the execution flow of the printer firmware to help prevent zero-day attacks.
HP is giving away a RM50 e-wallet rebate for the Smart Tank 580, and a RM100 e-wallet rebate for the Smart Tank 520. And if you purchase any of these printers from now until 30 April, you will get an extra black ink bottle.
Here are online purchase options for your convenience:
HP did not reveal the prices for the LaserJet Managed E800 or E700 series printers, but they are available for sale to interested enterprise customers.
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Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Did China just catch 250 lab workers who were paid by the West to spread COVID-19?!
Take a look at the viral claim, and find out what the facts really are!
Claim : China Caught Lab Workers Paid To Spread COVID-19!
The Chinese 50 Cent Army (wumao, 五毛) and pro-CCP netizens are now promoting a video as evidence that 250 lab workers were just caught spreading COVID-19 in China for Western countries!
China wonders why there is no end to covid, it turns out that there are 250 laboratory people who are accomplices of the West to spread the virus, have been arrested by the police, it can be confirmed that the punishment is death by firing squad.
Western countries have a cheap & effective way to stop China’s progress. . .
Truth : China Did Not Catch Lab Workers Paid To Spread COVID-19!
This is yet another example of FAKE NEWS created and propagated by the Chinese 50 Cent Army (wumao, 五毛), and pro-CCP netizens, and here are the reasons why…
Fact #1 : Video Was Taken From Kuaishou
The original video was posted on Kuaishou – a Chinese short-video platform like Douyin / TikTok, by a user called 水果花花 (Fruit Blossoms) on November 30, 2022.
Fact #2 : Video Was About Fake / Wrong PCR Test Results
My Mandarin isn’t good, but with a ton of help from Chai, I was able to determine that the video was not about lab workers spreading COVID-19 in China.
Instead, the narrator of the video was talking about a person called Zhang Shanshan who is backed by Zhang Hezi (who may or may not be her father) who owns a company which conducts PCR tests.
Unfortunately, the company was found to be falsifying test results, because they can make more money from more testing. Allegedly, that is why whenever they open up a new testing centre, there is a surge of COVID-positive cases.
The video did not mention anything about these lab workers spreading COVID-19, only that they were falsifying or making mistakes in PCR test results.
Here is a rough transcript of what the narrator in the video was saying:
On the 27th (November), Zhang Shanshan was said to be connected to 35 Nucleus Gene Technology, which was related to the incident of PCR test forgeries.
This company is Lanzhou Huaxi, which Zhang Shanshan was the supervisor. Based on the research of netizens, Zhang Shanshan was backed by Zhang He Zi, who owns 62 companies, of which 33 was managed by Zhang Shanshan.
According to info, Zhang He Zi enrolled into China Medical Univerity, specialising in DNA. After his Masters, he setup one of the first DNA test labs in China.
In the recent years, they opened 37 PCR test centers all over China. The strange thing is – wherever they open (a test centre), there will be outbreak in that area. And within a few days of the company registration, mass nucleic acid tests were ordered. Their business was skyrocketed. If there is no dark secret behind this,they must be really good at prediction.
Questions raised:
1. In 2022, sixteen He Zi Huaxi companies were setup. Registration time was within these 3 months.
2. What’s the greatest is – being a new setup company with unconfirmed capital, they managed to dominate the local nucleic test business, which should be an open tender by the government. Within just 3 months, they managed to expand their business empire and predicted the trend of COVID spread. After their business registration, the local city started to have outbreak and mass testing– which was the reason of the Lanzhou test results inconsistency. This is not an isolated case.
If this has become a business, the pandemic will never end. We must break this profit chain in order to have the air of freedom again.
Incidentally, here are some translations of the labels in the video:
后梅当初 : Back then
被告人: 希望审判长 少判我一点 : Defendant: I hope the presiding judge will give me a milder sentence
被告人: 少判我一点 : Defendant: Please give me a shorter sentence
一副手铐 锁住一个人 : A pair of handcuffs for each person
Fact #3 : Arrested Lab Workers Not Accused Of Spreading COVID-19
The lab workers, including Zhang Shanshan, were arrested because they were accused of giving false PCR test results, either intentionally or due to negligence.
They are all from the Chinese testing company called Shenzhen Nucleus Gene Technology Go. which is being accused of falsifying or improperly conducting PCR tests.
To be clear – the lab workers were not accused of helping Western countries spread COVID-19.
Fact #4 : There Were Only 8-9 People In The Video
If you look carefully at the video, there were only 8-9 lab workers who were standing trial in that courtroom.
There is no evidence of 250 lab workers being arrested in China for falsifying or mishandling PCR testing, never mind working for Western countries to spread COVID-19.
Fact #4 : Shenzhen Nucleus Gene Technology Co Is Under Investigation
Shenzhen Nucleus Gene Technology Go. (核子基因科技) is currently in hot water after on-site inspection by local authorities in Lanzhou (in the northwest province of Gansu) found inconsistencies in their PCR test results.
On November 25, 2022, the Lanzhou Municipal Health Commission reported that when they transferred people who tested positive in tests conducted by Nucleus Gene, some of them had green health codes which meant that their PCR test was negative.
Their investigation found that the staff of the Lanzhou Huaxi laboratory (华曦医学检验灾验室, owned by Nucleus Gene) mistakenly entered the wrong information into the health code database.
Chinese media outlets have accused Nucleus Gene of crimes like manipulating test results to create demand for more tests.
Since April 2020, Nucleus Gene has been fined at least 10 times for mishandling test samples to lying and manipulating test results, as well as forging medical certifications.
Nucleus Gene was also fined for hiring unqualified personnel to handle test samples, and wrongly labelling people as COVID-19 positive.
After recent Nucleus Gene testing controversy came to light, Chinese netizens began looking into its supervisor, Zhang Shanshan.
They found that Zhang Shanshan allegedly supervises 35-38 medical testing companies across China, most of them only registered in recent months.
In fact, the Lanzhou Huaxi laboratory was only registered in August 2022, with a capital of 10 million yuan (US$1.4 million), and immediately secured a large contract to provide PCR testing in Lanzhou.
Netizens joked that, “Where her company is found, that’s where a pandemic breaks out!”, and “Give an umbrella seller the ability to make rain, will the rain stop?”.
While it is not confirmed, Zhang Shanshan is allegedly the daughter of Zhang Hezi, who owns Nucleus Gene – the parent company which was established in Shenzhen in 2012.
He [Zhang Hezi] told us himself that he had a daughter who was studying abroad. He didn’t say what his daughter’s name was. My friends said his daughter’s name is Zhang Shanshan.
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Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Here is a short summary of what Zoom Video Communications Inc. announced at the Zoomtopia APAC 2022 conference!
Zoomtopia APAC 2022 : What Is It?
Zoomtopia APAC 2022 was the Asia Pacific edition of Zoom Video Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM)’s annual conference.
Hosted virtually on Zoom Events (obviously), Zoomtopia APAC 2022 featured a distinguished array of guest speakers, as well as announcements on Zoom Phone and other products.
Education: Developing the next generation of changemakers with digital innovation
How to unify communication and collaboration in the new world of work
The Trust Imperative: How you can build (or destroy) trust in a hybrid world
Financial services: How secure digital collaboration tools are transforming the future of finance
Is Voice DEAD? The future of conversation is in the cloud
Reimagine the future of customer experience in a video-first world
Improve the Customer Experience and Agent Productivity with Conversational AI
What’s new with Zoom Phone?
Zoom Events Product Tour
How to Create a Buying Experience Your Customers Love with Zoom IQ for Sales
The Future of Asynchronous Collaboration
Transforming for the Future Office: Enabling the Flexible, Hybrid Workplace
Eric Yuan, CEO and Founder of Zoom, also shared his vision for Zoom at Zoomtopia APAC, distilling the next phase of Zoom’s evolution and the key innovations that will underpin the Zoom platform in this new era.
“We have always been a company built to connect and bring people together. As many people around the world start rethinking what really makes them happy, we want to empower them to zoom in on what matters.
Zoom’s vision for the future is about bringing physical and digital environments together in new ways to create more inclusive, immersive, collaborative experiences.
We are focused on giving organisations, their employees and customers a platform that works best for them, their lives and their workflows.”
What Zoom Announced @ Zoomtopia APAC 2022!
For those who could not make it, here is a short summary of what Zoom Video Communications Inc. announced at the Zoomtopia APAC 2022 conference!
New Zoom Platform Innovations
Zoom has launched more than 1,500 features and enhancements on the Zoom platform this year.
The Zoom Mail and Calendar clients work together with the communication and collaboration offerings already available within Zoom Meetings, Phone, Whiteboard, and Team Chat. Now, teams can move quickly and seamlessly from email to a video meeting, elevate a chat message to a phone call, collaborate on projects and early next year, they can share out whiteboards, all without ever leaving the Zoom app.
Zoom also rolled out Zoom-hosted email and calendar service options available in beta, directly integrated with the Zoom platform, ideal for businesses without dedicated IT services looking for enhanced privacy in their business communications.
Zoomalso introduced Zoom Spots – its virtual co-working space. Coming in 2023, Zoom Spots is a video-enabled persistent space, integrated with the Zoom platform, to help foster inclusive discussions, keep colleagues connected and bring the fluid interactions of in-person work to distributed, hybrid teams throughout their day.
Fuelling APAC Innovation Together With Customers
In his keynote, Ricky Kapur, Head of APAC at Zoom, was joined by Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), and Australian online employment marketplace SEEK.
Highlighting innovative use-cases in which Zoom was utilised for each of these organisations, the speakers discussed the role of Zoom in driving digital inclusion, transforming employee experience as well as reshaping the future of banking, among others.
Zoom is also collaborating with workspace on-demand marketplace Switch (part of JustCo Group), to equip physical work booths or co-working spaces in Singapore with video-conferencing capabilities. This will take the work-from-anywhere model to the next level, as individuals will be able to comfortably attend virtual meetings at a location of their choice.
Continued Growth Of Zoom’s Partner Ecosystem In APAC
Since the Zoom Up Partner Programme was launched in March 2022, over 800 channel partners across APAC have signed up for the programme, comprising of over 25% of Partner Demand Centre adoption globally.
These partners which are focused on helping customers address their communication and collaboration needs yield 35% in channel contribution to the overall Zoom business in APAC.
As of FY23Q3, Zoom has onboarded DMOA as its new distributor in South Korea, adding to Zoom’s extensive APAC partner ecosystem which includes Dicker Data in Australia, Tradewinds in New Zealand, rhipe in Asia, and Savex Technologies in India.
The strength of Zoom’s partner ecosystem has contributed to the resounding success of Zoom Phone, which hit four million seats globally in just 3.5 years.
Building A Platform APAC Users Can Trust
As trust becomes the business currency of the future, Zoom is accelerating efforts to keep security and privacy of its platform at the forefront, and building a platform users can trust.
Amongst the company’s host of updates announced at Zoomtopia APAC 2022, its latest security offerings include:
an end-to-end encryption feature (in Beta stage) as part of Zoom Mail Service (also in beta stage),
advanced encryption for Zoom Phone voicemail, and
the rollout of automatic Zoom client updates for enterprise customers (to help users take advantage of Zoom’s latest features and security updates).
Zoom has also recently completed the Australian Information Security Registered Assessor Program (IRAP) assessment, demonstrating that Zoom’s products are well-positioned when judged against Australian security standards for delivering communications services to the Australian public sector.
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Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Did the Kelana Jaya LRT service fail because Prasarana used cracked software downloaded on BitTorrent?!
Take a look at the viral claim, and find out what the facts really are!
Claim : Kelana Jaya LRT Failed After Using Cracked Software!
After the Kelana Jaya LRT service was shut down for a week after multiple failures, this message went viral on WhatsApp and social media, claiming that it was due to the use of cracked software Prasarana downloaded on the BitTorrent network!
LRT KELANA JAYA MALFUNCTION DUE TO CRACKED SOFTWARE THAT PRASARANA USED IN THEIR SYSTEM. THIS MAY CAUSED BY LIMITATION OF SOME ACCESS DUE TO NEW UPDATE TO THE SOFTWARE. ISSUE HAS BEEN HIGHLIGHTED TO HIGHER MANAGEMENT TO PURCHASE THE SOFTWARE BUT PRASARANA DECIDED TO DOWNLOAD IT USING TORRENT.
Truth : Kelana Jaya LRT Did Not Fail Because Of Cracked Software!
This is yet another example of FAKE NEWS circulating on WhatsApp and social media, and here are the reasons why…
Fact #1 : Kelana Jaya LRT Problems Due To ATC System Failure
On 9 November 2022, Prasarana conducted a special media briefing, in which it confirmed that the failures encountered by the Kelana Jaya LRT service was due to its malfunctioning Automatic Train Control (ATC) system.
In fact, they were forced to turn it off several times, and resort to manually driving the trains, which caused further delays to their train schedules.
Prasarana CEO admitted that they knew about the problem earlier, and had already approved the RM150 million ATC system replacement, but it would take a few months to complete.
Fact #2 : ATC System Is More Than Just Software
From what I can find out, the Kelana Jaya LRT service is using the SelTrac Communications Based Train Control (CBTC) signalling system from the Thales Group.
This automatic train control system is a combination of both communications and control hardware on the train, communications and control in the trains and station, as well as both hardware and software in the Operation Control Centre.
This isn’t like your typical Windows PC, where you can just mix and match compatible components, and then install and run cracked versions of Microsoft Office or Photoshop, to get some work done.
That’s why the ATC system replacement that Prasarana approved in October 2022 would take several months to complete. It isn’t simply a matter of installing new software.
The ATC system used in the Kelana Jaya LRT line is more than 24 years old. Not only is the software outdated, the hardware is likely way past its lifespan!
Fact #3 : Unlikely For Thales ATC Software To Feature Copy Protection
Automatic train control (ATC) software is proprietary and designed to work only with specific hardware. So it is unlikely that Thales would bother to add copy protection to their ATC software.
There is no reason for them to add copy protection, because no one would be able to use it with other hardware. They can reverse-engineer and learn from the software, but not actually do anything with it.
In short, even if someone gets a copy of the Thales ATC software, there is no need for him/her to “crack” the software to share them on BitTorrent.
Even if you get a copy of the Thales ATC software, what are you going to install it on? Your laptop? To run what? Your kids’ toy train set??
Fact #4 : Thales ATC Software Isn’t On BitTorrent
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing network, which people use to share files with each other.
Because the files being shared are stored on your computer, generally people will only share popular files – music, videos, and yes, games and office applications.
Thales automatic train control (ATC) system software is sadly, much too niche to be found on the BitTorrent network.
A search for everything Thales related, only shows three files with Thales in their name and none of them have anything to do with trains, or even software. In fact, all three are just ebooks.
Thales the Measurer
Unlocking the Customer Value Chain by These S Telxelra, Greg Piechota EPUB
Drawing Physics – 2,600 Years of Discovery from Thales to Higgs (2017) (Pub) Gooner
No matter what we may think of Prasarana, it’s really stupid to suggest that they would even be able to find a cracked version of the latest Thales ATC software on BitTorrent!
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Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Find out how NVIDIA created the new A800 GPU to bypass the US ban on sale of advanced chips to China!
NVIDIA Offers A800 GPU To Bypass US Ban On China!
Two months after it was banned by the US government from selling high-performance AI chips to China, NVIDIA introduced a new A800 GPU designed to bypass those restrictions.
The new NVIDIA A800 is based on the same Ampere microarchitecture as the A100, which was used as the performance baseline by the US government.
Despite its numerically larger model number (the lucky number 8 was probably picked to appeal to the Chinese), this is a detuned part, with slightly reduced performance to meet export control limitations.
The NVIDIA A800 GPU, which went into production in Q3, is another alternative product to the NVIDIA A100 GPU for customers in China.
The A800 meets the U.S. government’s clear test for reduced export control and cannot be programmed to exceed it.
NVIDIA is probably hoping that the slightly slower NVIDIA A800 GPU will allow it to continue supplying China with A100-level chips that are used to power supercomputers and high-performance datacenters for artificial intelligence applications.
As I will show you in the next section, except in very high-end applications, there won’t be truly significant performance difference between the A800 and the A100. So NVIDIA customers who want or need the A100 will have no issue opting for the A800 instead.
However, this can only be a stopgap fix, as NVIDIA is stuck selling A100-level chips to China until and unless the US government changes its mind.
The US government considers the NVIDIA A100 as the performance baseline for its export control restrictions on China.
Any chip equal or faster to that Ampere-based chip, which was launched on May 14, 2020, is forbidden to be sold or exported to China. But as they say, the devil is in the details.
The US government didn’t specify just how much slower chips must be, to qualify for export to China. So NVIDIA could technically get away by slightly detuning the A100, while offering almost the same performance level.
And that was what NVIDIA did with the A800 – it is basically the A100 with a 33% slower NVLink interconnect speed. NVIDIA also limited the maximum number of GPUs supported in a single server to 8.
That only slightly reduces the performance of A800 servers, compare to A100 servers, while offering the same amount of GPU compute performance. Most users will not notice the difference.
The only significant impediment is on the very high-end – Chinese companies are now restricted to a maximum of eight GPUs per server, instead of up to sixteen.
To show you what I mean, I dug into the A800 specifications, and compared them to the A100 below:
NVIDIA A100 vs A800 : 80GB PCIe Version
Specifications
A100
80GB PCIe
A800
80GB PCIe
FP64
9.7 TFLOPS
FP64 Tensor Core
19.5 TFLOPS
FP32
19.5 TFLOPS
Tensor Float 32
156 TFLOPS
BFLOAT 16 Tensor Core
312 TFLOPS
FP16 Tensor Core
312 TFLOPS
INT8 Tensor Core
624 TOPS
GPU Memory
80 GB HBM2
GPU Memory Bandwifth
1,935 GB/s
TDP
300 W
Multi-Instance GPU
Up to 7 MIGs @ 10 GB
Interconnect
NVLink : 600 GB/s
PCIe Gen4 : 64 GB/s
NVLink : 400 GB/s
PCIe Gen4 : 64 GB/s
Server Options
1-8 GPUs
NVIDIA A100 vs A800 : 80GB SXM Version
Specifications
A100
80GB SXM
A800
80GB SXM
FP64
9.7 TFLOPS
FP64 Tensor Core
19.5 TFLOPS
FP32
19.5 TFLOPS
Tensor Float 32
156 TFLOPS
BFLOAT 16 Tensor Core
312 TFLOPS
FP16 Tensor Core
312 TFLOPS
INT8 Tensor Core
624 TOPS
GPU Memory
80 GB HBM2
GPU Memory Bandwifth
2,039 GB/s
TDP
400 W
Multi-Instance GPU
Up to 7 MIGs @ 10 GB
Interconnect
NVLink : 600 GB/s
PCIe Gen4 : 64 GB/s
NVLink : 400 GB/s
PCIe Gen4 : 64 GB/s
Server Options
4/ 8 / 16 GPUs
4 / 8 GPUs
NVIDIA A100 vs A800 : 40GB PCIe Version
Specifications
A100
40GB PCIe
A800
40GB PCIe
FP64
9.7 TFLOPS
FP64 Tensor Core
19.5 TFLOPS
FP32
19.5 TFLOPS
Tensor Float 32
156 TFLOPS
BFLOAT 16 Tensor Core
312 TFLOPS
FP16 Tensor Core
312 TFLOPS
INT8 Tensor Core
624 TOPS
GPU Memory
40 GB HBM2
GPU Memory Bandwifth
1,555 GB/s
TDP
250 W
Multi-Instance GPU
Up to 7 MIGs @ 10 GB
Interconnect
NVLink : 600 GB/s
PCIe Gen4 : 64 GB/s
NVLink : 400 GB/s
PCIe Gen4 : 64 GB/s
Server Options
1-8 GPUs
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Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
New research from Oxford Economics and SAP has revealed that Malaysian companies have yet to gain from their sustainability plans.
SAP: Malaysian Companies Yet To Gain From Sustainability Plans
Sustainability goals are a key part of any company’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) efforts, but many companies still find it difficult to derive significant value from their sustainability strategies.
Verena Siow, President and Managing Director of SAP South East Asia, share key findings from new research from Oxford Economics and SAP that showed that Malaysian companies have yet to gain from their sustainability plans.
While 60% of businesses don’t think it’s difficult to be sustainable and profitable at the same time, just 4% say that they actually benefited significantly from their sustainability strategies.
That may be due to a disconnect between the organisations’ plans and its actions. While 63% of Malaysian businesses have a clearly communicated sustainability plan, only 23% have incentivised leaders to achieve those goals, and only 33% say that their employees are active participants in their efforts.
It is an encouraging sign that businesses across South East Asia are increasingly mindful of sustainability practices along their entire supply chain, including those of their suppliers.
There is no time to waste to move beyond strategy and to achieve real, tangible results. In three years, almost a third of businesses expect significant value from their sustainability strategy – and we believe that with the right focus, this number can be even higher.
Public, private and plural partnerships are quintessential to affect the required change for a green economy in ASEAN. Business leaders in South East Asia should not perceive sustainability action as a risk mitigation measure only. It is an opportunity to realize new sustainable revenue streams, find new efficiencies, and build new business models based on low-emission, circular, and ultimately regenerative concepts to benefit both the organization and for our society at large.
Regulatory Compliance : Sustainability Driver + Challenge In Malaysia
Sustainability strategies are largely driven by regulatory compliance in Malaysia, with survey respondents noted that these are the primary drivers in their businesses:
the threat of regulatory mandates : 52%,
operational efficiencies : 54%, and
market reputation (48%).
That focus aligns with regulatory compliance being the second biggest benefit derived from sustainability so far (39%), behind only reduced carbon emissions.
It’s clear that organisations may need to refocus their strategies to achieve greater value from sustainability. Too much focus on compliance was cited as the third highest challenge to sustainability success by Malaysian respondents, trailing only the lack of reinvention of business strategy and ineffective data.
Data Is Key To Improving Sustainability Outcomes
According to the survey, the key to improving sustainability outcomes will be the effective use of organisational data to make more informed decisions.
Accurate data was ranked as among the most significant activities to help reach carbon reduction goals, only trailing sustainable sourcing and monitoring energy among respondents.
Unfortunately, ineffective data for decision-making is considered a moderate challenge for 75% of Malaysian businesses. The research also found that:
less than a quarter (23%) businesses have calculated their total organisational carbon output,
although a majority (77%) have begun the process in some areas.
Of the businesses who have made begun measuring their carbon, only 33% actually made changes to their processes based on the data. More obviously needs to be done.
Just over a third (35%) of Malaysian respondents said they had invested in data analysis to measure sustainability in their business, while half (50%) said they were training staff how to capture sustainability data.
Malaysian Companies Need Sustainability Leadership
Action on sustainability is needed urgently in Malaysia, and has to be driven from the top down.
Beyond the impact on the environment, just 21% of Malaysian businesses say that their workforces are not even aware that missing sustainability targets will drive customers to their competitors.
Businesses that have obtained value from their efforts have these qualities :
they set clear expectations at the strategic level,
they apply the transformative power of technology and data management, and
they engage with important audiences such as employees, supply chain partners and policymakers.
“Sustainability leaders go beyond vision to ensure that sustainability initiatives are acted upon,” said Edward Cone, editorial director, Oxford Economics. “They communicate with key constituencies both inside and outside the company, and they use integrated technologies to measure and track performance in a way that drives accountability.”
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
NetApp just introduced BlueXP – a new unified control plane for hybrid multicloud environments. Here is what you need to know.
NetApp BlueXP : A New Unified Hybrid MultiCloud Control Plane!
On November 3, 2022, NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) announced the availability of NetApp BlueXP – a unified control plane designed for easy hybrid multicloud management for storage and data services across on-premises and cloud environments.
NetApp BlueXP allows users to manage their broader hybrid multicloud data estate, including on-premises unified storage and first-party native storage with the leading public cloud providers like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and AWS.
Offering a simple, yet powerful experience driven by AIOps, BlueXP delivers integrated, broad data service capabilities to deploy, automate, discover, manage, protect, govern and optimize data, infrastructure, and the business processes that support them – with the flexible consumption options required in today’s cloud-led environment.
“We are excited to deliver a whole new, unified cloud experience that is simple, secure, sustainable and cost effective,” said Sanjay Rohatgi, Senior Vice President and General Manager, NetApp Asia Pacific & Japan. “With BlueXP, our customers and partners in Asia Pacific can better compete in the hyper-dynamic digital economy of tomorrow and realize the full potential of a true hybrid multicloud world.”
NetApp BlueXP is the preferred method to manage NetApp ONTAP, NetApp’s industry-leading data management software, both in the cloud and on-premises.
The latest release of ONTAP, announced today, contains over twenty major innovations including a new tamper-proof snapshot feature and integrated AIOps-driven anti-ransomware protection, making ONTAP the leading option for secure data storage.
In addition, an expansion of NetApp’s innovative unified multi-protocol technology allows simultaneous NAS file and S3 object access to the same data, increasing the flexibility of ONTAP as a repository for massive data lakes used for today’s modern AI/ML pipelines.
“Organisations today have increasingly moved to hybrid multicloud environments to accelerate their digital transformation and drive growth, even in uncertain times. But in managing these environments, companies face daunting challenges and inefficiencies that can impede innovation.”
“With BlueXP, NetApp is leading the way to a more ‘evolved cloud’ to simplify and automate critical operations across on-premises and public clouds in order to help organizations drive business impact and improve customer experience.”
“Today’s cloud environments are complex. Organizations are looking for a better cloud experience – simpler, streamlined, governed, and optimized for performance and cost across their entire hybrid multicloud environment,” said Archana Venkatraman, Research Director, Cloud Data Management, IDC. “An ‘evolved cloud’ is one of the most grounded, AI-driven, and practical approaches to cloud management as a whole – and organizations will quickly benefit from migration to operations, to FinOps, to innovation.”
“With the launch of BlueXP, NetApp is uniquely positioned to help organizations unlock the promise of the cloud by making infrastructure, applications and data true assets to their business,” said George Kurian, Chief Executive Officer at NetApp. “By taking an evolved cloud approach, customers can integrate cloud into their architecture and operations, eliminate complexity and increase their speed of innovation to deliver quickly on the business outcomes that matter most.”
NetApp BlueXP Capabilities
NetApp BlueXP capabilities include:
Unified Storage Management: The SaaS-delivered BlueXP global control plane gives a single point of visibility and management over wide-ranging hybrid multicloud environments. This includes the ability to manage NetApp AFF, FAS, StorageGRID, and E-Series on-premises storage, as well as the major clouds with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, Azure NetApp Files, Google Cloud Volumes Service and Cloud Volumes ONTAP, all in a single console.
AIOps-Driven Health: Integrated AI/ML-driven automation reduces manpower demands, resource loads, and risk profile, while AI-enabled health and status monitoring not only alerts of infrastructure and workload issues, but offers proactive guidance to avoid trouble scenarios. BlueXP integrates NetApp’s leading Active IQ technology for always-on telemetry across the hybrid multicloud.
Cyber Resilience: Unified control of data protection and security with an integrated zero-trust model. A single ransomware dashboard provides company-wide visibility into ransomware vulnerabilities with the ability to fix many issues automatically with a single click.
Governance at a Glance: A complete view of the digital estate to monitor compliance and permissions. The AI/ML capability audits both user and data level activity, immediately detecting anomalies and taking prescribed actions.
Seamless Mobility: Integrated data movers allow for copying, syncing, tiering, and caching data across all major clouds and the data center as easily as “drag and drop.” Integrated security and efficiencies ensure data is protected in transit and stored on the lower-cost storage tier possible.
Flexible Consumption: BlueXP allows customers to only pay for the capabilities they need, billed on usage. A Digital Wallet allows for licenses for data services to be easily interchanged as an enterprise’s needs change. NetApp Keystone, the leading Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) offering, is integrated into BlueXP to allow customers to manage their consumption-based data center storage side by side with their cloud storage.
NetApp BlueXP Offer
NetApp currently has a special BlueXP offer for new users (excluding current Cloud Manager users):
30 days of free BlueXP data protection
30 days of free BlueXP tiering
1 TB of free BlueXP governance and ransomware protection.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Artificial intelligence chip developer, Habana Labs, just laid off over 10% of its workforce, just as Intel plans to layoff up to 20% of its employees.
Intel’s Habana Labs Cuts Over 10% Of Workforce!
Intel acquired artificial intelligence chip developer Habana Labs in 2019 for $2 billion. The acquisition allowed Habana Labs to rapidly increase its workforce from 180 people to over 900.
That breakneck expansion has not only come to a shuddering halt, it is being reversed – Habana Labs is laying off 100 of their employees. According to an Intel statement:
Habana Labs assesses and updates its technical and business focus from time to time in order to adapt to the current business reality and to continue and improve its competitiveness.
As part of these processes, it makes adjustments to its workforce and the balance between different disciplines from time to time. This is a normal process which occurs constantly and allows Habana to continue and develop attractive and competitive products and solutions.
Habana Labs was founded by David Dahan and Ran Halutz in San Jose in 2016, for the purpose of developing processors optimised for Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications.
Both Dahan and Halutz were former executives of PrimeSense Limited, which was acquired by Apple for $360 million in 2013. Its first investor and chairman was Israeli tech entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz.
Habana Labs Cuts Employees Before Major Intel Layoffs
Habana Labs functions as an independent unit within Intel, which is why it announced its layoffs before Intel announced its own major layoffs later this month.
According to Bloomberg News, Intel is planning major layoffs of its staff, “as early as this month” – around the same time its third quarter earnings report is announced on October 27.
This reduction in headcount will be substantial, affecting Intel sales and marketing team the hardest – around 20% of their members are expected to receive pink slips.
This decision comes after two years of booming sales during the COVID-19 pandemic, and just as Intel is set to receive billions in funding from the US government under the CHIPS Act.
Gartner recently announced that worldwide PC shipments only totalled 68 million units in the third quarter of 2022 – a 19.5% drop from a year ago. This was the steepest market decline it recorded since it started tracking the market in the mid-1990s.
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Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Dell Technologies just conducted a new 40+ country survey to find out things have changed after two years of accelerated digital transformation!
Take a look at their results, and find out why most businesses consider employees as their greatest asset!
Dell 40-Nation Survey : Employees Are Greatest Asset!
After two years of accelerated digital transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, 64% of IT leaders in Malaysia (APJ: 45%; Global: 50%) say their organisations know what it takes to digitally transform a workforce.
But after such rapid change, many employees now face the challenge of maintaining the pace. What’s more, more than two-thirds of the 10,500 respondents believe that their organisations are not able to engage with their employees properly when planning transformation programs.
The results suggest that after 2 years rapid transformation, businesses and their workforce are in need of time to recharge, reflect and refine before embarking on new or iterating projects.
The research also highlights how there is still the danger os digital transformation stalling, as 68% of Malaysian respondents (APJ: 72%; Global: 64%) believe that their employees’ resistance to change can lead to failure.
Over half or 57% of Malaysian respondents (APJ: 62%; Global: 53%) fear that they will be shut-out of the rapidly-evolving digital world due to a lack of people with the right authority or vision to capitalise on opportunities offered by new technologies, like as-a-Service models.
Most organisations around the world – including Malaysia – realise the need to digitally transform, but they find digital transformation hard, and their people don’t always embrace change.
This human-technology friction is only compounded by the pandemic and what we end up with is businesses that are more digitally resilient, but many of their people are exhausted.
Today, businesses aspiring for sustainable success need to be asking themselves how they can thoughtfully and purposefully help their people navigate further change.
– Mak Chin Wah, country manager, Malaysia and general manager, Telecom Systems Business, South Asia, Dell Technologies.
Dell 40-Nation Survey : Readiness For Digital Change
Dell and independent behavioural experts also studied survey respondents’ appetite for digital change, and they found that only 8% of the Malaysian workforce – from senior business leaders to IT decision-makers and staff – are pursuing modernisation projects (APJ: 7%; Global: 10%).
Furthermore, 40% of Malaysian respondents are slow or reluctant to embrace change (APJ: 46%; Global: 42%).
Breakthrough Benchmark
Malaysia
APJ
Global
Sprint: Will chase innovation and
trailblaze technological change.
8%
7%
10%
Steady: Poised to adopt technological
change, selected by others.
50%
41%
43%
Slow: Inclined to hold back and
observe / deliberate.
40%
46%
42%
Still: Tend to anticipate problems and
resist proposed technology innovations
based on perceived risk.
4%
6%
5%
Dell 40-Nation Survey : The Way Forward
The Dell study also charts a way forward for businesses to focus on keeping pace with digital transformation:
1. Connectivity
Businesses performed tremendous feats to connect, collaborate, and conduct business online during the pandemic, but the job is not done.
Around 76% of Malaysian respondents say they need their organisations to provide the necessary tools and infrastructure to work anywhere (along with the autonomy to choose their preferred working pattern) (APJ: 78%; Global: 72%).
In fact, they worry their employees might be left behind because they do not have the right technology to shift to a highly distributed model (where work and compute are not tied to a central place, but occur everywhere).
Technology alone is not enough. Businesses also need to make work equitable for employees with different needs, interests, and responsibilities, including the 82% Malaysian employees (APJ: 78; Global: 76%) that would like their organisation to do any of the following:
Clearly define their ongoing commitment to flexible work arrangements and the practicalities of making it work – Malaysia: 54% (APJ: 46%; Global: 40%)
Equip leaders to effectively and equitably manage remote teams – Malaysia: 41% (APJ: 42%; Global: 42%)
Empower employees to choose their preferred working pattern and provide the necessary tools / infrastructure – Malaysia: 49% (APJ: 47%; Global: 44%)
Every employee’s time is limited and there are now too few qualified candidates for open roles. To address these limitations, businesses can delegate repetitive tasks to automated processes and free-up employees to focus on higher-value work.
At present, 19% of Malaysian respondents say that their work is stimulating and not repetitive (APJ: 32%; Global: 37%). With the opportunity to automate more repetitive tasks, 81% of Malaysian respondents would look forward to learning new, sought-after skills and technologies, like leadership skills, courses in machine learning, or focusing on more strategic opportunities to elevate their role (APJ: 74%; Global; 69%).
However, businesses with limited budgets are concerned they will not be able to advance their workforce and compete.
3. Empathy
At their heart, businesses must builda culture, modelled by empathetic leaders, that treats people as their greatest source of creativity and value.
The research shows there is still work to do and empathy has to inform decision making – from simplifying technology for approximately half (Malaysia: 51%; APJ: 52%; Global: 49%) who often feel overwhelmed by complex technologies, to tailoring change programs to individuals’ skills (Malaysia: 54%; APJ: 50%; Global: 41%;) of employees believe their leaders do this).
To find out how things have changed after two years of accelerated digital transformation, Dell Technologies conducted a survey across 40+ countries from all regions of the world, from August to October 2021.
Fieldwork was conducted by Vanson Bourne, and involved 10,500 senior business decision-makers, IT decision-makers and knowledge workers (employees involved in digital transformation).
In Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ), 2,900 respondents across 11 locations were surveyed. The APJ locations include Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. In Malaysia, 200 number of respondents were surveyed.
On 22 September 2022, Dell Technologies presented their key findings at the Dell Technologies Forum 2022, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Google just cancelled their next Pixelbook, and dissolved the team behind it, but don’t worry – the Chromebook lives on!
Google Kills Pixelbook + Dissolves Team
Google just cancelled the next-generation Pixelbook laptop that was supposed to debut next year. They also dissolved the team developing it, and transferred its members to other teams.
This sudden decision came after Google said in May 2022 that it planned to continue its Pixelbook laptop business.
Then in July, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that he wanted to slow down hiring and cut some projects :
In some cases, that means consolidating where investments overlap and streamlining processes. In other cases, that means pausing development and re-deploying resources to higher priority areas.
It looks like Google decided that their next Pixelbook would be a waste of resources, and killed it to shift their resources elsewhere.
Google Pixelbook Is Dead, But Chromebook Lives On!
While there will no longer be a new Pixelbook laptop in 2023, that does not mean Google has given up on ChromeOS or Chromebook laptops.
In fact, Google likely canned their Pixelbook project because their OEM partners are doing a great job of producing a plethora of good or even great Chromebook laptops.
As Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh pointed out at Google I/O 2022 in May, the Chromebook market had matured and would last a long time.
Google have always developed hardware as a way to push the envelope, and to show its partners what can be achieved. It doesn’t benefit Google to directly compete with its partners.
Now that OEM partners like Acer, Lenovo and HP are offering Chromebook laptops in a wide range of price points and configurations, it just doesn’t make sense for Google to muddle the market with a new Pixelbook.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Japan is being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century – its government has FINALLY decided to kill off floppy disks!
Japan Is Still Using Floppy Disks + CD-ROM!
Most of the world began transitioning from floppy disks to USB flash drives and rewritable CDs (yes, they exist!) in the late 1990s.
By the 2000s, floppy disk sales tanked globally … except in Japan, where they continued to thrive.
That’s partly because government agencies in Japan continue to require data to be submitted using floppy disks or CD-ROM.
So while the world moved to USB flash drives capable of storing gigabytes of data, Japan remained loyal to floppy disk with its storage capacity of 1.44 MB or 2.88 MB.
Today, Japan is arguably the only country in the world where kids do not stare blankly if you mention “floppy disk”.
Japan To FINALLY Kill Off Floppy Disks + CD-ROM!
On 31 August 2022, Taro Kono – the Minister of Digital Transformation of Japan, announced that the government will rewrite rules requiring the use of floppy disks or CD-ROM.
This is part of the Japanese government’s plan to introduce a national identification number for its citizens, called MyNumber.
MyNumber will be the lynchpin for many of the Japanese government’s future digital services, and will require significant amounts of data to be uploaded to its online databases.
That was when Kono’s department found more than 1,900 regulations regulating how data should be shared with the government, and many of them required the use of floppy disks or CD-ROMs. Even worse – uploading data over the Internet was forbidden for security reasons.
So the Ministry of Digital Transformation will have to fix these regulations before both the Japanese government and its citizens can rid themselves of 1970s-era technology once and for all.
Digital Minister declares a war on floppy discs. There are about 1900 government procedures that requires business community to use discs, i. e. floppy disc, CD, MD, etc to submit applications and other forms. Digital Agency is to change those regulations so you can use online.
But updating those old regulations is only part of the solution. Kono still has to deal with poor digital literacy, as well as the bureaucratic and conservative culture in Japan which are obstacles to its digital transformation.
Some Japanese government officials continue to insist that floppy disks offer a degree of security and authenticity that an email just cannot. Yoichi Ono – a Tokyo official – claimed in 2021 that floppy disks “almost never broke or lost data”.
That is not true, as many tech old-timers who had to put up with a corrupt disk or two in a multi-disk installation can attest to. But it speaks to the great reluctance in many Japanese organisations to do away with old tech.
Unbelievably, many Japanese companies and government agencies continue to rely significantly on an even older technology from the past – the fax machine.
“I’m looking to get rid of the fax machine, and I still plan to do that,” Kano told a news conference this week.
He will be fighting against hundreds of government officials who claim that “banishing fax machines would be impossible” because of “security of sensitive information” and “anxiety over the communication environment (email)”.
I wish Minister Kono all the best in his attempt to drag Japan into the 21st century.
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Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Both AMD and NVIDIA have just been banned from selling high-performance AI chips to both China and Russia!
Here is what you need to know…
AMD, NVIDIA Banned From Selling AI Chips To China + Russia!
On Friday, 26 August 2022, NVIDIA and AMD were both ordered by the US government to stop exporting high-performance AI chips to both China and Russia.
In its regulatory filing to the SEC, NVIDIA stated that the US government introduced this ban to prevent them from being used for military purposes, or by the Chinese or Russian military.
The ban uses the A100 Tensor Core GPU as the baseline for NVIDIA, and the 3rd Gen Instinct MI250 accelerator chip for AMD.
Effective immediately, anything equal to, or faster than, the NVIDIA A100 or the AMD Instinct MI250 can no longer be exported to either China or Russia. That includes the upcoming H100 chip.
On August 26, 2022, the U.S. government, or USG, informed NVIDIA Corporation, or the Company, that the USG has imposed a new license requirement, effective immediately, for any future export to China (including Hong Kong) and Russia of the Company’s A100 and forthcoming H100 integrated circuits.
DGX or any other systems which incorporate A100 or H100 integrated circuits and the A100X are also covered by the new license requirement.
The license requirement also includes any future NVIDIA integrated circuit achieving both peak performance and chip-to-chip I/O performance equal to or greater than thresholds that are roughly equivalent to the A100, as well as any system that includes those circuits. A license is required to export technology to support or develop covered products.
The USG indicated that the new license requirement will address the risk that the covered products may be used in, or diverted to, a ‘military end use’ or ‘military end user’ in China and Russia. The Company does not sell products to customers in Russia.
I should point out that the NVIDIA A100 was launched two years ago – on June 22, 2020, while the AMD Instinct MI250 was introduced on November 8, 2021.
So it appears that the US government wants to maintain at least a 1-year advantage in high-performance AI chips.
AMD, NVIDIA Set To Lose Billions From AI Chip Sales To China!
Both AMD and NVIDIA stopped selling chips to Russia, after the invasion of Ukraine, so there is no material loss from such a ban on sales to Russia.
However, they both stand to lose billions of dollars worth of sales to China. NVIDIA alone estimates that the ban will affect US$400 million of sales, just in the third fiscal quarter.
Even more worrying was the likelihood that this ban may delay the H100 chip’s launch, and force NVIDIA to move “certain operations” out of China.
The new license requirement may impact the Company’s ability to complete its development of H100 in a timely manner or support existing customers of A100 and may require the Company to transition certain operations out of China.
AMD however claims that the ban will not have a material impact on its business, because shipments of its less powerful MI100 chips are not affected.
At this time, we do not believe that shipments of MI100 integrated circuits are impacted by the new requirements.
We do not currently believe it is a material impact on our business.
Both AMD and NVIDIA will now have to discuss with their customers in China on using alternative (less powerful) chips, or obtaining special licenses from the US government.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Find out how a prankster used Wikipedia to fool Google into “killing” Conor McGregor!
Google Fooled Into “Killing” Conor McGregor!
On August 5, 2022, Google was fooled into “killing” Irish mixed martial artist, Conor McGregor.
Many people started posting screenshots of Google Search showing that Conor McGregor died on August 4, 2022.
But the truth was – Conor McGregor is very much still alive. In fact, he posted photos he took with Arnold Schwarzenegger a day after he purportedly died…
I’ll be back! For the sake of humankind! I must return! 🦸♂️ Happy birthday my man, @Schwarzenegger! Hope you and H are proud of my recovery / work and my latest move on the board. Fun times ahead, bring it 🦿❤️ pic.twitter.com/v7z2Fppn9K
Despite those social media posts, people were still confused, asking why is Google showing that Conor McGregor died on August 4, 2022.
why does it say conor mcgregor is dead if you google it?
Wtf is this? Searched Conor dead and this is what came up? @TheNotoriousMMA you good champ? Google saying you’re dead
Are we not gonna talk about this how he is allegedly dead 🤷🏼♀️@TheNotoriousMMA
How Wikipedia Was Used To “Kill” Conor McGregor!
This Google search debacle was traced to a prankster who edited the Spanish Wikipedia article about Conor McGregor, to include a date of death.
Due to the importance Google Search gives information on Wikipedia, and how Knowledge Graph pulls from Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, the false date of death was given undue prominence.
Even after the fake date of death was removed from Wikipedia, it remained cached in the Google search results, prolonging the confusion.
This was what a spokesperson for Wikimedia Foundation explained :
It looks like the Spanish Wikipedia article about Conor McGregor was vandalized yesterday to include a date of death and has since been resolved.
Given the way Knowledge Graph results pull from Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, this can (in rare instances) result in some vandalism being cached in search results, sometimes even after it’s already been addressed on Wikipedia.
It appears that the issue has also been addressed in search results.
This death hoax highlights the dangers of open databases like Wikipedia, and the importance Google Search gives its information.
This makes us wonder – what other Wikipedia entries have been faked / vandalised without admins realising it, that are reflected in Google Search results.
Perhaps Google needs to tune down its reliance on Wikipedia entries…
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Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
IBM just expanded the Power10 server line with new mid-range and scale-out systems with flexible consumption options!
Here is what you need to know…
IBM Expands Power10 Server Line With New Models!
IBM announced a significant expansion of its Power10 server line on July 12, 2022, with the introduction of new mid-range and scale-out systems.
The new IBM Power10 servers tout improved performance, scalability and flexibility with new pay-as-you-go options for clients looking to deploy new services quickly across multiple environments.
Joining the Power10 E1080 server that was introduced in September 2021, are these new models :
Power10 Midrange E1050 – a 4-socket rack server
Power S1014 – a 1-socket, 4U server
Power S1022 – a 2-socket, 2U server
Power S1024 – a 2-socket, 4U server
These new servers offer 2x more cores, and more than 2x more memory bandwidth than the previous Power generations.
IBM Partners Ready To Leverage Power10 Server Capabilities
The newly expanded IBM Power10 Server Line now offers a flexible and broad range of servers for data intensive workloads such as SAP S/4HANA, and SIBS from Silverlake Axis.
The Power10 Midrange E1050 server, for example, delivers scale (up to 16 TB) and 4-socket performance for clients who run BREAKTHROUGH with IBM for RISE with SAP.
Regional banking solution provider, Silverlake Axis, is also ready to leverage the increase compute capabilities and scalability of the new Power10 servers for their Integrated Banking Solution – SIBS.
“Today’s highly dynamic environment has created volatility, from materials to people and skills, all of which impact short-term operations and long-term sustainability of the business,” said Steve Sibley, Vice President, IBM Power Product Management.
“The right IT investments are critical to business and operational resilience. Our new Power10 models offer clients a variety of flexible hybrid cloud choices with the agility and automation to best fit their needs, without sacrificing performance, security or resilience.”
IBM Offers Power10 Server Line With Flexible Consumption Options
IBM also recently announced new flexible consumption choices with pay-as-you-go options, as well as by-the-minute metering for IBM Power Cloud.
These flexible consumption models offer clients more opportunities to lower their cost of running OpenShift solutions on IBM Power, compared to alternative platforms.
In addition, the IBM I subscription offers clients a comprehensive platform solution with hardware, software as well as support and services included in the subscription price.
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Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Did China successfully fabricate 7nm chips, despite US sanctions on advanced chip manufacturing technology?
Well, yes, but not quite. Here is what you need to know about China’s mysterious 7nm chips!
China Made 7nm Chips In Spite Of US Sanctions!
A TechInsights report recently concluded that China has successfully created 7nm chips since last year.
This caused quite a ruckus, because it essentially meant that China jumped two generations ahead in chip manufacturing technology!
The TechInsights team bought a MinerVa mining ASIC which used a custom chip that has been manufactured by China’s SMIC since July 2021.
When they examined the chip, they discovered that it was fabricated on a 7nm process that appears to be a “close copy” of a 7nm process used by TSMC – the Taiwanese foundry giant.
The MinerVa chip is small – at just 19.3 mm², with 120 chips populating the MinerVa board. Each mining ASIC has 3 of these boards, for a total of 360 chips and a total power consumption of 3300 watts.
This discovery is deeply concerning to many people, because it meant that China has more advanced chip manufacturing technology than is even available in the United States or EU.
After all, US sanctioned the sale of advanced chip manufacturing technology to China – which was meant to crippled China’s ability to manufacture such chips.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer used this report to stress the danger of delaying the $50 billion subsidy package for semiconductor manufacturing in the United States.
Members of both sides know that America’s chips crisis is sending shock waves across the economy.
It is endangering our national security. […] China’s top chips maker has now likely advanced its tech by two generations, threatening U.S. competitiveness.
But the situation really isn’t as dire as many people make it out to be…
SMIC / China Barely Made Those 7nm Chips
After the report was released, the Internet fell into two main camps – American politicians and China hawks bemoaning the “loss” of Western chip making advantage, and pro-CCP netizens celebrating it.
First, let me start by congratulating China / SMIC on achieving this feat despite being hobbled by US sanctions on crucial chipmaking technology.
Whether China / SMIC “copied / stole / bought” the technology knowhow from TSMC whose 7nm process it closely resembles, it is still a remarkable achievement.
That said, SMIC / China barely made those 7nm chips, and here are the reasons why…
SMIC manufactured these 7nm chips using older Deep Ultraviolet Lithography (DUV) machines, instead of the state-of-art Extreme Ultraviolet Light (EUV) lithography machines made by Dutch company ASML.
This isn’t extraordinary in itself – TSMC and Samsung had much earlier developed 7nm process nodes using the older DUV machines. However, this comes at the cost of “increased process complexity and design rule restrictions“.
That is likely why the MinerVa chip is not only very small, it actually lacks SRAM (Static Random Access Memory) that is critical in processors that run our computers and smartphones.
The simpler design and small size allow SMIC to obtain sufficient workable chips, even with a poor yield. However, the cost of chip would be much higher than if it was manufactured on a higher-quality process.
So for all intents and purposes – this should be considered as a niche / prototype 7nm process, and not a true 7nm process node.
On top of that, SMIC apparently isn’t capable of producing large quantities of these 7nm chips, suggesting either a yield problem, or difficulty in scaling up.
MinerVa has not been able to deliver the mining ASICs based on these SMIC 7nm chips in large numbers. A Bitcoin mining company – Stronghold Digital Mining, for example, said that it ordered 15,000 miners from MinerVa but only received about 3,200 units as of March 2022.
For China / SMIC to present a true “threat” as far as chipmaking is concerned, it would have to be capable of manufacturing MILLIONS of chips, not thousands.
Regardless of whether the Americans are howling in despair, or the pro-CCP netizens are howling in delight, China really does not have true 7nm chipmaking capability for mass production yet.
And even if they somehow manage to improve and scale up this 7nm DUV process, they cannot make more advanced chips without EUV machines made by ASML.
As long as the Dutch government holds firm on blocking sale of ASML’s EUV machines to China, this is likely as far as they can go… unless they invade Taiwan, which is where TSMC is based and has the world’s most advanced chip manufacturing facilities.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Maybank just announced that their MAE and M2U mobile banking apps are now up and running, after going down for several hours!
Here is what you need to know…
Maybank MAE + M2U Mobile Apps Down!
On the morning of 25 July 2022, the MAE and M2U mobile apps went down, which Maybank confirmed.
As it so happened, both apps failed on the 25th of the month, which is when Malaysian civil servants and many other employees receive their pay.
That led to a lot of complaints, as people could not transfer the funds using the apps.
Fortunately, the Maybank website itself was operational, so users were advised to access the Maybank2U website using their web browser instead.
#MBBAlert Dear valued customers,
Kindly be informed that you may perform your banking services on Maybank2u web. We are currently experiencing intermittent slowness on our MAE and M2U MY apps.
Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused and we are working to resolve the matter as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and continuous support.
Maybank did not reveal what was the reason both their M2U mobile banking app, and their MAE ewallet failed.
They finally resolved it several hours later, just before 2:30 PM.
#MBBAlert Dear valued customers,
Kindly be informed that all our services are back to normal and you may perform your banking transactions across our platforms.
Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused today. We thank you for your continued patience and support.
This isn’t the first time Maybank users had trouble with their banking services. On 17 January 2022, all of Maybank’s online and banking services went down!
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
China just fined Didi Global a whopping $1.2 billion for violating its cybersecurity, data security and privacy laws!
China Fines Didi Global $1.2 Billion For Violating Laws!
On Thursday, 21 July 2022, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced that Didi Global breached the country’s cybersecurity law, data security law, and personal information protection law.
The Chinese cyberspace regulator fined Didi Global 8 billion yuan ($1.2 billion), as well as a personal fine of 1 million yuan ($148,000) each on Chairman and CEO Cheng Wei, as well as President Liu Qing (also known as Jean Liu).
The facts of violations of laws and regulations are clear, the evidence is conclusive, the circumstances are serious, and the nature is vile.
Didi Global responded to the regulator’s announcement with a contrite statement “sincerely” accepting the judgement and penalties :
We sincerely accept this decision, and resolutely obey it. We will strictly follow the penalty decision and the requirements of relevant laws and regulations, conduct comprehensive and in-depth self-examination, and actively cooperate with supervision and complete rectification carefully.
We will take this as a warning and further strengthen the construction of cyberspace security and data security, strengthen the protection of personal information, and earnestly fulfill our social responsibilities. We will serve every passenger, driver and partner well, and realize the safe, healthy and sustainable development of the enterprise.
What Did Didi Do To Incur China’s Wrath?
According to an FAQ by the CAC, its investigators started their investigation of Didi in July 2021.
After conducting an extensive investigation, they found that Didi conducted data processing activities that “seriously affected national security”, and refused to comply with “the explicit requirements of regulatory authorities” and conducted “malicious evasion” of regulatory supervision.
They also stated that Didi Global committed 16 violations of China’s laws, including :
Didi illegally collected 11.9639 million screenshots from its users’ mobile phone photo albums.
Didi excessively collected 8.323 billion pieces of its users’ clipboard information, and application list information.
Didi excessively collected 107 million pieces of passenger face recognition information, and 53.5092 million pieces of age group information, 16.3556 million pieces of occupational information, 1.3829 million pieces of family relationship information, and 153 million pieces of taxi address information.
Didi excessively collected passengers’ evaluation of the drivers, when the app is running in the background, and 167 million pieces of precise location (longitude and latitude).
Didi excessively collected 142,900 pieces of driver education information, and 53.976 billion pieces of “intent information”, 1.538 billion pieces of resident city information, and 304 million pieces of non-local business/travel information.
Its users are frequently asked to provide “telephone permissions” while using its services.
Inaccurate and clear description of user personal information processing, including device information.
The CAC noted that Didi started its bad practices in June 2015, and continued even after the Cybersecurity Law was implemented in June 2017, the Data Security Law started in January 2022, and the Personal Information Protection Law was implemented in November 2021.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Microsoft Teams has finally been restored after suffering a massive outage that lasted many hours!
Here was what happened…
Microsoft Teams Suffers Massive Outage!
On Wednesday, 20 July 2022, thousands of users were unable to access Microsoft Teams, and it continued into Thursdays, 21 July 2022.
This was a big problem, because Teams had become an integral part of daily operations for many businesses that had adapted to a hybrid work pattern during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Microsoft Teams users relied on the service to organise their workflow and communicate internally like making calls and messaging each other.
The MS Teams problem also affected other services downstream, with some users reporting issues with Microsoft Office 365 as well.
Microsoft acknowledged the downstream impact to multiple Office 365 services with Teams integration, like Microsoft Word, Office Online and SharePoint Online.
Why Microsoft Teams Suffered Such A Massive Outage!
After 1.5 hours after Teams went down, Microsoft announced that they found the root cause – “a recent deployment contained a broken connection to an internal storage device, which result in impact“.
That’s tech-speak for “we installed a system upgrade that pointed to a storage device that does not exist, so MS Teams stopped working“.
They quickly redirected traffic to “a healthy service to mitigate impact“, which have allowed unaffected users to continue using MS Teams, but it did not seem to help those who lost access.
Although they identified the root cause, restoration appears to be taking time. Two hours later, they could only report that “Microsoft Teams functionality is beginning to recover“, which they repeated two hours later.
In the meantime, affected MS Teams users are creatively expressing their “frustration” on social media…
Update @ 3:56 PM (GMT+8) : The Microsoft 365 team announced that Teams availability has “mostly recovered“, but “a few service features” still required attention.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
The country-wide mobile and Internet outage in Canada was due to a software update, not hacking by China!
Take a look at the viral claim, and find out what the facts really are!
Claim : China Responsible For Mobile + Internet Outage In Canada!
Within hours of news breaking that Canada suffered a massive Internet outage, Vancouver Times posted a story claiming that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) identified China as the responsible party.
Vancouver Times also claimed that the RCMP will issue arrest warrants for the hackers responsible, who are connected to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Chinese state hackers are responsible for a massive internet outage that paralyzed large parts of Canada, according to the RCMP. The federal police agency is in the process of issuing arrest warrants for several people they believe are connected to the People’s Liberation Army.
The RCMP will be holding a press conference in the next few days to announce the arrest warrants, according to sources. Canadian intelligence agencies are reportedly receiving guidance from the CIA and the FBI.
On Friday a widespread network outage from Rogers left many Canadians without mobile and internet service. The outages caused significant problems for police, courthouses, passport offices and other facilities.
The outage also disrupted services across retailers, courthouses, airlines, train networks, credit card processors and police forces, pushing many to delay business transactions. Many people were seen at Starbucks, trying to use their internet service.
The mainstream media and big tech want to hide the truth. Beat them at their own game by sharing this article!
Truth : Canada Internet Outage Due To Software Update, Not China!
This is yet another example of FAKE NEWS created by Vancouver Times to generate page views and money from gullible people.
Fact #1 : Vancouver Times Is A Fake News Website
Vancouver Times is a “content aggregator” (copy and paste) website that is known for creating fake news to generate more page views and money.
To look legitimate, they copy and paste news from legitimate news organisations. To drive traffic, they create fake news, sometimes masked as “satire”.
To give themselves a veneer of deniability, they label themselves as a “satire website” in their About Us section.
Vancouver Times is the most trusted source for satire on the West Coast. We write satirical stories about issues that affect conservatives.
Here are some of their fake news that we debunked :
Fact #2 : Outage Only Affected Rogers Communications
On Friday, July 8, 2022, Canada was hit by a massive mobile and Internet outage that hit businesses, banks, and even police emergency lines.
However, it only affected Rogers Communications, and did not affect rivals like BCE, Telus and Shaw Communications.
The outage was extensive because Rogers is Canada’s leading telecommunications provider, with about 11.3 million wireless subscribers, and 2.25 million retail Internet subscribers.
Fact #3 : RCMP Did Not Blame China For Mobile + Internet Outage
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police did not blame China for Rogers Communications’ mobile and Internet outage.
This was made up by Vancouver Times to trigger right-wing conspiracy theorists, to go viral and draw more page views.
Fact #4 : Rogers Did Not Blame China For Mobile + Internet Outage
Rogers Communications themselves did not blame China for their mobile and Internet outage.
Fact #5 : Canada Confirmed Outage Was Not A Cyberattack
While the reason behind the outage was still unknown, a spokesperson for Canadian Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino confirmed to CTV News that “the outage was not due to a cyberattack“.
Fact #6 : Rogers Confirmed Outage Due To Maintenance Update
On 11 July 2022, Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri apologised for the country-wide outage of its services.
He also said that the failure was due to “a maintenance update in our core network“. The maintenance work “caused some of our routers to malfunction early Friday morning“.
Fact #7 : Prior Rogers Outage Also Due To Software Update
This wasn’t the first time Rogers Communications’ network failed so drastically.
Just 15 months earlier – Rogers and its subsidiary, Fido, experienced a nationwide cellular service outage in April 2021.
That outage was ultimately traced to “a recent Ericsson software update” that “affected a piece of equipment in the central part” of their network, leading to “intermittent congestion impacting many customers across Canada“.
Fact #8 : It Would Have Been Considered An Act Of War
China attacking Canada’s mobile and Internet network would have been considered an act of war, if it was proven.
The Canadian government would at least have issued a strong statement, if not cut diplomatic ties with China and/or enact sanctions against the Chinese government.
Fact #9 : No One Else Reported This Story
China attacking Canada’s mobile and Internet infrastructure would have been major international news, reported across the globe.
Yet not only did no mainstream media cover this incredible story, it hasn’t even been reported in the usual conspiracy theory websites!
That’s because it was a fake story created by one publication – Vancouver Times, in their attempt to go viral again for more page views and ad money.
Fact #10 : There Is No Such Thing As A Publication Ban
Vancouver Times likes to use the “media blackout” claim, to explain why you can’t find any reputable media outlet reporting on China attacking Canada’s mobile and Internet infrastructure.
That’s utter and complete bullshit. No one – not a judge, not even the Canadian government – can control the worldwide media, or prevent anyone from writing about such an incredible story.
You can also be sure that even if the mainstream media in the Canada refused to run the story, it would have been reported by foreign media outlets, websites and blogs.
Yet, not a single foreign media outlet or online website published their account of this incredible story? That’s because IT NEVER HAPPENED…
Fact #11 : Mainstream Media + Big Tech Would Have Loved The Hype
Vancouver Times is gaslighting you about how mainstream media and Big Tech want to hide the “truth” about China attacking Canada’s infrastructure.
They would all loved such shocking news, because it would have driven tons of traffic and engagement to their websites / platforms.
In fact, that was precisely why Vancouver Times created the fake story – to drive traffic, for the ad money.
Everything that Vancouver Times publishes should be regarded as FAKE NEWS, until proven otherwise.
Please help us fight fake news websites like Vancouver Times – SHARE this fact check out, and SUPPORT our work!
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Support my work through a bank transfer / PayPal / credit card!
Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
It’s official – Elon Musk moved to officially terminate his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter!
Find out why he backed out, and if he can really do that!
Buyer’s Remorse : Elon Musk Backs Out Of Twitter Deal!
On Friday, July 8, 2022, Elon Musk moved to terminate his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter.
According to the official SEC filing, Musk is ending the deal because he believed that Twitter was “in material breach of multiple provisions” of the April 2022 agreement he signed to buy Twitter.
For the past month, Mr. Musk has been clear that he views Twitter’s non-responsiveness as a material breach of the Merger Agreement giving him the right to terminate the Merger Agreement if uncured.
Thus, Mr. Musk has been clear about his requests, his right to seek such information, and his view regarding Twitter’s material breach of the Merger Agreement.
Elon Musk’s lawyer pointed out to Twitter’s Chief Legal Officer, Vijaya Gadde, that Twitter failed to provide “much of the data and information” repeatedly requested by Musk “over the past two months” :
Information related to Twitter’s process for auditing the inclusion of spam and fake accounts in mDAU (monetizable Daily Active Users)
Information related to Twitter’s process for identifying and suspending spam and fake accounts.
Twitter shares fell nearly 6% in after hours trading immediately following the news, after ending the day down 5%.
Twitter board chair Bret Taylor responded that they will pursue legal action against Elon Musk for reneging on the deal :
The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement.
We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.
The April 2022 deal actually allows Elon Musk to terminate the deal, but he has to pay a cool $1 billion termination fee. It looks like he is trying to get out of that, by blaming Twitter for not providing him with information.
Elon Musk Backing Out Of Twitter Deal : Was It Ever In Doubt?
The writing was on the wall right after Elon Musk agreed to purchase Twitter for $44 billion.
Instead of celebrating the purchase with champagne, he started raising doubts about actually going through with the deal.
Even though he claimed he wanted to buy Twitter to eradicate bots, he started to complain that Twitter did not provide him with the data he needs to evaluate the number of bots and fake accounts on Twitter.
Then in May – just a month after agreeing to buy Twitter – he put the deal “on hold”. In June, he directly threatened to walk away from the deal.
His contradictory moves are perplexing considering the fuss he kicked up to buy Twitter – buying a ton of shares, and then turning down a board seat while threatening a hostile bid.
Even more perplexing – Elon Musk explicitly waived due diligence, in his eagerness to sign the April 2022 contract to purchase Twitter.
It was not like Musk didn’t know about Twitter’s bot and spam problem. He knew. He also chose to waive due diligence… and he chose to sign a contract.
It is possible that Musk is pressuring the Twitter board to renegotiate the purchase price, now that Twitter shares have fallen significantly. Twitter shares have fallen about 32% – down from $54.20 when he announced the offer, to just $37 on Friday, when he moved to terminate the deal.
It is also possible that Musk is forced to renegotiate the deal, because Tesla shares that he relied on to finance Twitter’s purchase has taken a beating since he signed the deal. Tesla shares have fallen about 31% – down from $985 when he announced the offer, to just $682 when he moved to terminate the deal.
Ultimately, the Twitter deal may go through at a lower price, or this will end up in court with an expensive breakup lesson for Elon Musk.
Elon Musk – Twitter Saga : A Timeline
Here is a quick timeline summary of the Elon Musk – Twitter saga :
March 28 : Elon Musk says he seriously thinking about building the “next Twitter”
April 4 : Twitter announces that Elon Musk had purchased 9.2% of Twitter shares, worth about $2.9 billion
April 5 : In an effort to ward off a hostile bid, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal offered Musk a Twitter board seat, which he accepted.
April 10 : Elon Musk reverses his decision to join the Twitter board, implying he intends to mount a hostile bid.
April 14 : Elon Musk offers to pay $54.20 per share to buy 100% of Twitter, valuing the company at $43.4 billion.
April 15 : Twitter board announces a poison pill defence to block Musk’s anticipated hostile bid.
April 25 : Twitter board accepted Elon Musk’s offer to purchase the entire company at $54.20 per share, and take it private. Both parties agreed to pay a $1 billion termination fee, if either party reneges on the deal.
May 13 : Elon Musk announces that the Twitter deal is “temporarily on hold” pending “details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.” He then quickly “clarified” that he is “still committed to acquisition”.
June 6 : In a legal letter to Twitter Chief Legal Officer, Vijaya Gadde, Elon Musk alleged that Twitter was “actively resisting and thwarting his information rights”, and that he reserves the right “not to consummate the transaction” and “to terminate the merger agreement”.
July 8 : Elon Musk officially moved to terminate his Twitter purchase agreement.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
ViewSonic just launched new solutions for the corporate and education segments!
Here’s a quick look at the new ViewSonic LED projectors, and the ViewSonic Studio!
ViewSonic Launches New Corporate + Education Solutions!
Thanks for the COVID-19 pandemic, many of those working in the corporate and education industry are looking for a hybrid approach to combine in-person and online meetings and education.
Capitalising on the increased demand in those market segments, ViewSonic is introducing two new 3rd Generation LED projectors, as well as their Hybrid Ecosystem ViewBoard Interactive Display.
3rd Gen ViewSonic LED Projectors
ViewSonic is offering two new 3rd Generation LED projectors – the LS500WHE and the LS550WHE, both offering a maximum brightness of 3,000 ANSI lumens, as well as greater energy efficiency, and a longer lifespan.
The ViewSonic LS500WHE delivers 125% Rec.709 colour gamut, with 50% lower power consumption, and an LED light source that does not require replacements (thanks to its 30,000 hour lifespan), and is mercury-free.
Its optical engine is sealed against dust, with an IP5X rating, ensuring optimal image quality regardless of the environment. And the LS500WHE offers a 360-degree tilt angle projection to support floor and ceiling projections.
The ViewSonic LS550WHE is a short-throw version that offers all of the LS500WHE’s capabilities, with a 0.49 short throw lens, together with horizontal and vertical keystone correction, as well as 4-corner adjustments to eliminate crooked or distorted images.
ViewSonic LS500WHE (left) and LS550WHE (right)
ViewSonic Studio For Education Tech Solutions
ViewSonic also launched the first ViewSonic studio in Malaysia, which offers educators and policy makers access to their latest edtech solutions, like the ViewBoard Interactive Display, and the myViewBoard visual learning software suite.
The ViewBoard interactive display has made significant inroads in the Malaysian education system, taking up 43.5% of the market share up to Q1 2022.
ViewSonic hopes to expand on this through their myViewBoard software suite, which would allow for Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies (SCALE-UP).
The integration of the ViewBoard interactive display, with their myViewBoard software suite will allow classrooms to adopt group work, with better engagement through enriched content and an immersive learning system.
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Name : Adrian Wong Bank Transfer : CIMB 7064555917 (Swift Code : CIBBMYKL)
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
Cryptocurrency hedge fund, Three Arrows Capital (3AC) just filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy! Here is what you need to know…
Crypto Hedge Fund 3AC Filed For Chapter 15 Bankruptcy!
The 2022 Crypto Winter continues to blow hard and cold…
On Friday, July 1, 2022, Singapore-based cryptocurrency hedge fund, Three Arrows Capital (3AC) filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York.
Representatives from the law firm Latham & Watkins filed the Chapter 15 bankruptcy filing to legally protect its US assets from creditors in the United States.
In the legal filing, they stated that “the Debtor’s business has collapsed in the wake of extreme fluctuations in cryptocurrency markets” and “the Debit commenced a liquidation processing before the BVI Court” on June 27, 2022.
This move came after a British Virgin Islands court ordered the liquidation of 3AC on Monday, June 27, 2022.
Voyager Digital revealed that 3AC failed to make payments on loans made up of US$350 million in USDC and 15,250 BTC (worth US$306 million), and issued them a notice of default on the same Monday, June 27.
3AC Founders Remain Silent On Bankruptcy, Location Unknown
Founded in 2012 by Zhu Su and Kyle Davis, 3AC managed about $10 billion in assets as recently as March 2022, but that sank to just $3 billion a month later.
3AC was dogged by persistent insolvency rumours in the last few weeks, with rumours of more than US$400 million in losses when the cryptocurrency markets collapsed between May and June 2022.
Zhu and Davis admitted in a WSJ interview that 3ACa lost their $200 million investment following the collapse of Luna and its sister coin, TerraUSD.
8 Blocks Capital chief executive Danny Yuan also alleged that 3AC had misappropriated US$1 million of its funds to pay off their margin calls.
Both co-founders have remained silent over the implosion of 3AC, and its bankruptcy. Zhu’s last Twitter post was on June 15, in which he sought to allay rumours of insolvency, while Davies has not said a word.
According to the lawyers from Latham & Watkins, their current locations are unknown, and they are “rumoured” to have left Singapore.
The foreign representatives understand and believe that while the debtor has had certain operations in Singapore, Mr. Davies and Mr. Zhu’s current location remains unknown. They are rumored to have left Singapore.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr just publicly asked Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores!
Here is what you need to know about the renewed heat on TikTok!
FCC Commissioner Asks Apple + Google To Remove TikTok!
On June 29, 2022, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr publicly called on Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores.
This move came after leaked TikTok audio recordings obtained by Buzzfeed News revealed that ByteDance staff in China (and possibly the Chinese government) retained extensive access to data on US citizens.
In his public letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the FCC Commissioner asked that TikTok be removed for “its pattern of surreptitious data practices”.
It is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data.
But it is also clear that TikTok’s pattern of conduct and misrepresentations regarding the unfettered access that persons in Beijing have to sensitive U.S. user data – just some of which is detailed below – puts it out of compliance with the policies that both of your companies require every app to adhere to as a condition of remaining available on your app stores.
Therefore, I am requesting that you apply the plain text of your app store policies to TikTok and remove it from your app stores for failure to abide by those terms.
FCC Commissioner Carr also labelled TikTok as a “sophisticated surveillance tool” that is designed to harvest “personal and sensitive data“.
At its core, TikTok functions as a sophisticated surveillance tool that harvests extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data.
Indeed, TikTok collects everything from search and browsing histories to keystroke patterns and biometric identifiers, including faceprints – which researchers have said might be used in unrelated facial recognition technology – and voiceprints.
It collects location data as well as draft messages and metadata, plus it has collected the text, images, and videos that are stored on a device’s clipboard. The list of personal and sensitive data it collects goes on from there.
This should come as no surprise, however. Within its own borders, the PRC has developed some of the most invasive and omnipresent surveillance capabilities in the world to maintain authoritarian control.
Carr ended his letter with an “ultimatum” of sorts – if Apple and Google do not remove TikTok from their app stores, they need to provide “separate responses” to him by July 8, 2022, explaining why TikTok does not contravene their App Store policies.
As of June 30, 2022, TikTok is still available to download in the US app stores of both Apple and Google.
If Apple and Google acts on the FCC Commissioner’s request, TikTok will only be removed from their US app stores. It won’t affect downloads in other countries.
Neither would it prevent users in the US from continuing to use TikTok. They just won’t be able to download it any longer, or update to newer versions.
FCC Commissioner Lists History Of TikTok Data Practices!
While the leaked TikTok audio recordings may have precipitated this open letter to Apple and Google, FCC Commissioner Carr pointed to a list of questionable data practices by TikTok in the past.
The list makes for really interesting reading, especially for those who are not up to date on TikTok’s privacy and data security issues :
In August 2020, TikTok circumvented a privacy safeguard in Google’s Android operating system to obtain data that allowed it to track users online.
In March 2020, researchers discovered that TikTok, through its app in the Apple App Store, was accessing users’ most sensitive data, including passwords, cryptocurrency wallet addresses, and personal messages.
In 2021, TikTok agreed to pay $92 million to settle lawsuits alleging that the app “clandestinely vacuumed up and transferred to servers in China (and to other servers accessible from within China) vast quantities of private and personally identifiable user data and content that could be employed to identify, profile, and track the physical and digital location and activities of United States users now and in the future.”
In March 2022, a report included current and former TikTok employees stating in interviews that TikTok delegates key decisions to ByteDance officials in Beijing and that an employee was asked to enter sensitive information into a.cn domain, which is the top-level domain operated by the Chinese government’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Earlier, in 2019, TikTok paid $5.7 million to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations that its predecessor app illegally collected personal data on children under the age of 13.
India- the world’s largest democracy–has already banned TikTok on national security grounds for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting user data in an unauthorized manner.
Multiple U.S. military branches have also banned TikTok from government-issued devices due to national security risks, including the Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps.
U.S. government officials have also urged troops and their dependents to erase the app from their personal phones.
U.S. national security agencies have similarly banned TikTok from official devices citing national security risks, including the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the TSA.
The RNC and DNC have warned campaigns about using TikTok based on security concerns and the threat of officials in Beijing accessing sensitive data.
Citing data security concerns, private U.S. business operations have also banned TikTok from company devices, including Wells Fargo.
Once accessed by personnel in Beijing, there is no check on the CCP using the extensive, private, and sensitive data about U.S. users for espionage activities because compliance with the PC’s 2017 National Intelligence law is mandatory in China.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
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