The Truth: Apple for 5G, Xerox Threatening Hostile Takeover of HP, Microsoft Selling to Huawei Again
Friday, 22 November 2019
How are you all doing? I hope you’re well. I’m once again here to bring you a selection of interesting tech news to save you from having to wade though all the crap that’s being propagated out there on your own. This is the last newsletter for this week, of course, but I won’t pick it back up immediately on Monday. I’m away on an short holiday break starting this weekend, which means it will be a few days until the next issue of The Truth. So don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a few days. Here’s what’s been going on in the news today.
Microsoft is allowed to sell software to Huawei again, Reuters says. “The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump said this week it would allow some suppliers to restart sales to the Chinese telecoms giant, which was placed on a trade blacklist over national security concerns six months ago.” The story doesn’t mention there being any time limit on these licenses, so I guess this is different from the 90-day extension for telecoms providers I reported on in my Tuesday newsletter.
Meanwhile, Trump wants Apple to start producing 5G telecommunications infrastructure for the US, Reuters is reporting. Yeah, because Apple is well known for producing telco infrastructre. I mean, iPhones are basically telco infrastructure right? And those are made in the US, right? I don’t get it… Why didn’t he ask Cisco? At least those guys know how to build routers and wireless access points… Can’t make this shit up.
Lot’s of name changes being suggested or undertaken in the open source world right now. The newest candidate is Docker. Its core open source project was renamed to Moby a few years back. Now that the company is in trouble, there have been suggestions from the community to revert the name change: “Considering the recent news of spinning off Docker Enterprise and the refocusing of the company on developers I personally feel as though Docker needs to move back to its original home of github.com/docker/docker.” So far, it has not been addressed by the company in any official capacity, but the guy who was CTO back when the original change happened has chimed in to defend the move. He isn’t really refuting the arguments for changing the name back, though. If anything, his points underscore the proposal somewhat.
The thing between Xerox and HP is now getting more serious. Xerox is now threatening a hostile takeover of HP: “An open letter to HP’s board posted on Thursday demands that the printer and PC arm of the legendary technology biz agree to enter the next phase of merger talks or face a share buyout campaign. In other words, unless HP agrees to move forward with the merger proposal, Xerox will go directly to its shareholders and buy enough of a stake in HP to oust the board entirely and put its own people in charge.”
Speaking of takeovers… The takeover of the .org registrar by a for-profit company has been approved and has already taken place. It’s a done deal. But there’s now a change.org petition to stop it. Oh good! That will solve it!
Apparently, digital radio waves travel faster than analogue radio waves. At least that’s what DAB radio maker Halfords is claiming: “Digital transmissions contain more information than conventional FM/AM, thanks to the super-fast wavelength of around 220 MHz in the UK, compared to the 75KHz or so wavelength of analogue FM/AM radio broadcasts.” Nice catch by The Register.
I’m leaving you with a song by Sting from 1985 for the weekend. Some very smart lines in that one which are as poignant today as they were back then. See you in a few days.
This is an archived issue of my daily newsletter FOXTROT/ALFA. You can find more information about it, including how to subscribe via email, on this page.