NEWS
Mobile network roaming will not be happening in Australia The ACCC has spent a few months looking into if it would be a good thing if it forced mobile telcos to enable roaming between networks. So if you were on say, Vodafone and went to an area where there was no Vodafone coverage, but there was Telstra coverage, you could use Telstra's network - at an inflated price or reduced speed or something like that. Telstra was very much against it (for obvious reasons) but Vodafone and Optus were warm to the idea. It isn't happening though, as the ACCC agrees with Telstra that if roaming was a thing, Vodafone and Optus would just stop building rural networks and just let Telstra do it all, which would be a bad thing for everyone, even Telstra. Discuss
Xeon CPUs soon to come in bronze, silver, gold and platinum Intel is fucking up how Xeon CPUs are named. Instead of stuff like E5-4655 v4 (which is already a stupid name, I know), Intel's server class CPUs will now be given Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum branding. Yep, you could have an Intel Xeon Gold 6152 CPU in your server. Intel calls this the "Xeon Scalable Processor Family" where special features (e.g: Ethernet controller or QuickAssist built in to the CPU) can be made to order for OEMs. This means there will be heaps more SKUs and make picking a Xeon CPU even more confusing. These are gonna be fun to look up in ARK. More details on how the CPU naming convention works will be drip fed throughout the year until Skylake based Xeon CPUs hit the market. Discuss
Apple starts a US$1b fund to invest in USA manufacturing Apple has started a US$1b fund for advanced manufacturing in the USA. It will use this money to invest in companies making stuff in the USA, in the hopes it make more jobs and spur more investment in the USA's ability to make the cool shit that's being made elsewhere *cough* Germany and China *cough* now. Tim also went to great pains to explain that Apple already spends US$50b in America and has created over 2 million jobs. Apple hasn't said which companies it'll invest in, but will announce something soon. The full interview between Jim and Tim where the news is announced can be seen on Twitter. Here's a section of Apple's website talking about how much it loves the USA. All its missing is a bald eagle flying across the screen whilst shooting machine guns. Would this have happened without Trump? I doubt it. Is it good for America? Probably. Discuss
COOL SHIT
SpaceX really are going to launch 4400 satellites to cover the globe in internet Absolutely wild news that SpaceX is really going to create that sweet satellite system covering the globe in internet. In testimony to some US Senate committee, one of the SpaceX bosses confirmed that it plans to start testing a satellite internet system that can deliver gigabit bandwidth with ~25ms latency. It'll leverage it's reusable rockets to bring the price of launching stuff into space down so much that it'll be economically feasible to have 4,425 satellites orbiting 1100-1300km above our heads. I absolutely love everything about this. All those areas where it is too expensive to run fibre will be able to access proper internet speeds! The NBN will be fucking useless though, but we knew that already. If you've got time, read the full SpaceX submission, it explains in some decent detail what they plan to do. Discuss
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