NEWS
US tech reacts to Trump becoming President Less than 24 hours have passed since Donald Trump became President-Elect of the USA, but that hasn't impeded the flow of hot takes about how it'll impact the tech scene in the USA. Some in Silicon Valley want California to secede from the USA. The eBay CEO has sent a company wide email saying diversity is vital to eBay, despite what the majority of voting Americans think, as has Microsoft. Buzzfeed have an overview of how the tech industry's rampant collection of data will bite them in the arse when Trump wants to use it for some not so innocuous things. Discuss
What a Trump presidency might do with the US tech industry There's also policy decisions Trump may or may not make that'll impact the tech sector in the USA. Trump has said in the past that Amazon has some serious anti-trust issues and personally he hates the Washington Post, which Bezos owns and bankrolls. Net neutrality is back in the firing line as Trump's team looks to slash perceived unnecessary regulation. Apple too could be in for some shit as Trump wants to bring back jobs and income to the USA - who better to target as a traitor to the US than the world's largest company? Arstechnica has a good overview of the policy decisions Trump and a Republican led government might do to science and technology. TechCrunch has a similar overview too. Discuss
Some random bits of Apple news A few pieces of Apple news that on their own aren't worth much but lumped into one thing are kinda interesting. The new MacBook Pro, despite nerd protestations that it's a dud, is selling like hotcakes. Ireland has formally lodged an appeal against the EU's finding that its deal with Apple is a form of illegal state aid. According to Worldpanel ComTech, Android phones have a 58.2% market share in Australia, with iOS claiming 37.1%. Discuss
Australia appoints an Ambassador for Cyber Affairs Australia has an inaugural ambassador for cyber affairs. The Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Cyber Security, Dan Tehan announced that Dr Tobias Feakin will be Australia's international cyber envoy, to make sure nobody hacks us and to learn how we can be the hacker, not the victim. Dr Freakin (hah) claims that his priority is to make sure "bad actors" don't use "cybercrime safe havens" across the Asia-Pacific region to hack Australia. Cyber is such a stupid word. Discuss
Victoria's rail network is a hacker's paradise Speaking of hacking, a report by the Victorian Auditor-General has found that the Victorian train system is ripe for some "bad actors" inflicting serious damage. The report found that there's "incomplete and inadequate cyber security frameworks in train operators" and "no strategic direction to develop minimum security requirements for control systems". What's worse is that most of this stuff was raised as an issue in 2010 and nothing has been done since. The full report is in this PDF. Discuss
COOL SHIT
A 2012 look into whether Apple could make the iPhone in the USA In the wake of Trump's election and his promise that working class jobs will be returned to America, I was reminded of this article in the New York Times from 2012 about what it would take to have Apple (America and the world's most profitable company) manufacture the iPhone (one of the most popular ever American designed products) in the USA. The article pretty much concludes that even if Apple wanted to (it doesn't really), it would be difficult to the point of impossible due to the lack of engineering talent in the USA and the inferior supply chain compared to China. Discuss
The little Nintendo emulator went on sale today, but good luck finding one If you've been wanting one of those cute little old school Nintendos, too bad, there's no more left until December. Vooks had a little rant about how Nintendo constantly fucks up these launches and stores like EB and JB Hi-Fi mishandled pre-orders. Even Big W and Target were shitshows. The lesson here is clearly, don't get between a nerd and their toys. Discuss
Veertu is a new virtualisation option for macOS There's a new option for macOS virtualisation - Veertu. Apparently it uses macOS's built in virtualisation framework (which I had no idea existed) and performs pretty well. It's free and open source too. I've been using VMWare Fusion for a long time now, but apparently it's been on life support since Jan this year, when VMWare sacked the entire Fusion and Workstation team and replaced them with outsourced developers tasked to simply maintain the software. I'll try Veertu out later, but it looks great on paper. Discuss
Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!) --Anthony
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