It has been a somewhat busy week in TechnologyLand. Let's start in New Zealand with the Commerce Commission. The watchdog has released its Annual Telecommunications Monitoring Report which it is by law required to compile.
Our Telecommunications Commissar, sorry Commissioner, Tristan Gilbertson, is excited about the Elon Musk operated SpaceX Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite delivered broadband. It's disrupting the rural broadband market, Gilbertson says, and forces a response from existing providers, he added. That seems mainly to be that said providers are signing up for Starlink resale deals.
Alleged content pirate, crypto bro and Russia supporter Kim Dotcom's fate has moved one step closer towards getting kicked out of New Zealand to face trial in the United States. That's what Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith ordered. Dotcom and his legal team disagree, and have said they'll contest the order with a judicial review.
Our legal team is working on judicial review to the High Court for @KimDotcom in NZ.
— Ira Rothken (@rothken) August 15, 2024
After 12+ years of injustice:
-Illegal Gov raid on family home
-Illegal spying (PM apologized)
-Withholding of evidence
-Destruction of evidence
-US blocked legal funding
-US judge recused…
Meanwhile, Dotcom's former associates Bram van der Kolk and Mathias Ortman were sentenced to more than two years each in 2023 for their roles in the Megaupload file locker, and are in prison currently. The fourth member of the Megaupload crew, Finn Batato, died of cancer in 2022.
How fast does your machine learn? Now you can get an idea, with Geekbench AI 1.0 for Windows, macOS and Linux. The main Geekbench utility is a go-to for testing system performance across platforms, and the AI tool is very welcome indeed to go through neural processing units.
OK, the killer... not application but accessory for virtual reality is here, the Roto VR Explorer chair for Meta Quest headsets.
Yes, the world never asked for that, but I still want to try it out. It'll never make it to New Zealand, most likely. We've yet to try out the Quest headsets.
The same goes for Google's new Pixel 9 range of smartphones. The Aussies get them, but not us. Yes we asked because they do look rather cool in many ways. If a Pixel phone arrives, we might have to overlook some rather hairy and scary security issues, which are apparently so bad that data analytics company Palantir, founded by famous New Zealand technology entrepreneur Peter Thiel, a not so secret Lord of the Rings tragic, has ditched the devices, Wired reports.
12 Comments
kick him out dot com he lied on his immigration application when he came here in the first place then he insulted us as well when he said we bowed to the USA when we have extradition treaties that work both ways .His other partners pleaded guilty so why does he think hes not.A pure w**ker
I don't like him but what crime did he commit while living in NZ? If he did commit a crime here then prosecute him here. What crime did he commit while living in the USA? Even if he is the world's most evil man why does it take over a decade to process an extradition in NZ? What is wrong with our bureaucracy?
New Pixel phones abet missing a key update for now (and hopefully not for too long):
"Google's master software for some Android phones includes a hidden feature that is insecure and could be activated to allow remote control or spying on users, according to a security company that found it inside phones at a U.S. intelligence contractor."
"The feature appears intended to give employees at stores selling Pixel phones and other models deep access to the devices so they can demonstrate how they work, according to researchers at iVerify who shared their findings with The Washington Post. The discovery and Google's lack of explanation alarmed the intelligence contractor, data analysis platform vendor Palantir Technologies, to the extent that it has stopped issuing Android phones to employees, Palantir told The Post. "Mobile security is a very real concern for us, given where we're operating and who we're serving," Palantir Chief Information Security Officer Dane Stuckey said. "This was very deleterious of trust, to have third-party, unvetted insecure software on it. We have no idea how it got there, so we made the decision to effectively ban Androids internally." The security company said it contacted Google about its findings more than 90 days ago and that the tech giant has not indicated whether it would remove or fix the application. On Wednesday night, Google told The Post that it would issue an update to remove the application. "Out of an abundance of precaution, we will be removing this from all supported in-market Pixel devices with an upcoming Pixel software update," said company spokesperson Ed Fernandez. He said distributors of other Android phones would also be notified."
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