» SHARMISHTA SARKAR & BEN MANSILL BRING YOU THE NEED-TO-KNOW TECH NEWS
Teslas will get a lot more
expensive when full
self-driving goes
mainstream
MUSK SAYS HIS COMPANY’S CARS
ARE AN INVESTMENT.
Tesla cars will become a lot more
expensive when fully self-driving models
are available, says the company’s CEO
Elon Musk. When responding to a tweet
questioning whether customers had a
limited time to snap one up, Musk stated
that the “price will rise significantly” due to
the expected autonomous capabilities and
the value add that this provides.Leading forensics firm
reportedly pays
ransomware demand
EUROFINS SCIENTIFIC WON’T
CLARIFY WHETHER IT HAS PAID
OR NOT THOUGH.Eurofins Scientific, the leading forensic
services outfit in the UK, has paid out to
criminals who hit the company with a
ransomware attack, according to a report.
The attack occurred in early June, with the
company stating that its operations would
be returning to normal almost a month
later, although it refused to state why it
was able to do so.Sony is reportedly
working on a new
smartphone that rolls
right up
ROLLING TAKES ON FOLDING.As folding phones begin to slowly trickle
out to the consumer market, a rumour has
arisen that Sony is working on a prototype
of a rolling phone. The handset will
apparently sport a Snapdragon 855 with
5G connectivity. While it is only a rumour,
it joins similar talk of Samsung and LG
aiming for the same form factor, the latter
of which already has an OLED TV on the
market that rolls up.A
study commissioned by the Australian Communications and Media
Authority (ACMA) has revealed that several ISP-supplied modems are
incapable of handling 100Mbps speeds on a fibre-to-the-node/building
(FTTN/FTTB) connection. The study has also found that several of
these modems have poor Wi-Fi performance, further lowering the average
download speeds the end user can expect. 43 modems from 11 manufacturers
and 10 ISPs were tested in laboratory conditions during December and January
and not one was able to deliver 100Mbps download speeds over a 450m copper
stretch (the average length of copper on an FTTN connection). Most devices
could only deliver 80% of the advertised speed.
In terms of Wi-Fi performance, 30% of the modems were unable to achieve
100Mbps on 2.4GHz over a range of 5m, which is unexpected as 2.4GHz is touted as
the better option for long-range communication. Instead, tests showed that 5GHz
Wi-Fi outperformed 2.4GHz. With walls coming in the way of Wi-Fi signals, the
study found that 26% of the modems tested could achieve 10Mbps download
speeds on the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi band, while 40% hit 80Mbps when using 5GHz Wi-Fi.technotes
Study reveals ISP-supplied
broadband modems are
under-performing
TESTS PROVE WORST OFFENDERS BARELY COPE WITH 50MBPS.Australian ISPs want stronger
laws on blocking malicious
online content
ASKS GOVERNMENT TO CLARIFY MURKY LAWS.A taskforce made up of tech companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Amazon,
alongside Australian ISPs, has proposed specific laws be put in place giving the
country’s eSafety Commissioner more power to block sites sharing malicious and
abhorrent violent content online. This proposal comes in the wake of the Christchurch
shootings in March when ISPs began proactively blocking websites hosting the video
or sharing the shooter’s manifesto. They relied on a vague subsection of the 1997
Telecommunications Act which gives the eSafety Commissioner the power to issue
written directives to ISPs.
Now, however, the taskforce wants more concrete legislation, asking the government
to develop a “protocol [that] would set out the arrangements and process for
implementing blocks of websites hosting offending content, including the means of
determining which ISPs would be subject to blocking orders, the length of time that the
ISPs will be required to implement the blocks, and the process for removing the blocks”.