The New York Times has a report on the use of facial recognition technology in Gaza by the Israeli military's cyber-intelligence division, Unit 8200. They've deployed software by a company called Corsight across networked surveillance cameras all over Gaza and initially it was used to try and find Israelis who were taken hostage by Hamas, but is now cataloging innocent Palestinians without their consent. The problem lies when the software (which isn't perfect, we know this) identifies people incorrectly and the heavily armed and nervous soldiers refuse to believe the human, assuming the computer is correct every single time. The Israelis are also using Google Photos to do face matching in addition to Corsight's platform.
Telstra has explained what happened to cause a 90-minute outage of 000 on March 1st that lead to 148 people seeking help unable to be transferred to the right service and one Victorian man dying. The root cause of the outage was a combination of "a high volume of registration requests" from medical alert devices combined with "other system activity that resulted in connections to the database reaching the maximum limit". The backup system then failed because "Telstra had stored the wrong alternative number for eight emergency services", which "prevented our team from making the manual transfer of the call to the respective emergency services operator".
ACMA's announced a new Financial Hardship Standard for telcos. It means that "telcos must take all reasonable steps to proactively identify customers who may be experiencing financial hardship" and make sure internet and mobile phone services remain connected, including small businesses. It reflects how important these services are now and that removing access is probably going to make it harder for someone to pay what they owe, similar to water and electricity. More details about the Telecommunications Financial Hardship Industry Standard are on ACMA's website.
A French Apple blog has revealed information about Presto, Apple's system for updating iPhones wirelessly while they're still in the box. The Verge describes the setup as "like little pizza ovens but for phones". Some poor sap at the Apple Store loads up a dozen or more of the phones into this box while the phones are still in their unopened packaging and it uses MagSafe power plus some wireless comms (dunno what exactly) to turn the iPhone on, run an update, then turn it off when complete. This is so when the customer buys it, it has the latest version of iOS on it, not what was shipped with the device from the factory. Impressive overkill.
French IBM poster from 1987 about the then new line of PS/2 computers. (Jonas-fr / Internet Archive)
📻 Parking Lot - Spiderbait
😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.
💬 Checked out the paid subscriber only forum? It's a tidy little place to discuss tech with like minded Aussies.
👋 Forums not your thing? The Sizzle has a Slack group you can procrastinate in and chat with other nerds bored at work.
💳 Paid subscriber looking to manage your billing info, change email address or cancel your subscription? Visit the customer portal.
🎁 Make someone's day and buy them a 12 month gift subscription to The Sizzle.
📚 Browse The Sizzle Archive. A few issues are missing and it's not searchable, but it's better than nothing.
🫂 Friends of The Sizzle is a small group of businesses or organisations operated by Sizzle subscribers. Support your fellow Sizzler!
💔 Tired of my bullshit? Unsubscribe and I'll never speak to you again.
The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.
