Optus has told ACMA that at least 2,697 calls to 000 didn't go through during its network outage on the 8th of November last year. Those calls also did not receive a follow-up welfare check once the outage. That's a significant number more than the 229 they initially told the government. Optus said they are "writing to each customer individually to apologise for this and provide the opportunity to discuss their specific circumstances and whether there is anything we can do to assist them further". If I had to guess why these emergency calls didn't work, I would say that these 2,697 people had some Optus signal so it didn't fall back to another network when the call goes through, as that only happens when you have no signal at all on your "home" network. Will be interesting to see if any recommendations are made in the government's review into this situation, which is due to report to the minister by the 29th of Feb.
Back in 2022, Aditya Verma was about to board a plane at Gatwick airport in the UK on his way to Menorca in Spain had a bit of cheeky banter with the lads on Snapchat with his mates, saying "On my way to blow up the plane (I'm a member of the Taliban)". A few hours later two Spanish F-18 jets intercepted his flight mid-air and escorted the Easyjet plane to Menorca, where Aditya was arrested, questioned, held in prison for 2 days, released on bail, sent back to the UK, questioned again by MI5 and MI6 then charged with "public disorder". Aditya's lawyer is arguing the joke was made "in a private group that British authorities had intercepted in breach of his right to privacy", which raises the question, how the hell did Spanish and UK authorities manage to get fighter gets in the air so quickly based on a random kid's private Snapchat conversations??! No details on how the messages were intercepted are in any other news articles about this story.
Gough Lui has a very thorough review of the Xinfrared InfiRay P2 Pro Smartphone Thermal Camera. It's cheaper, lighter and better quality than the popular FLIR thermal cameras you can stick to a smartphone. In his words: "There really is no competition – the FLIR ONE and FLIR ONE PRO both have lower resolution, worse NETD of 70mK and 8.7Hz frame rates. Worst of all, they are bulkier and have their own batteries that need charging and can wear out", further adding that "the Xinfrared InfiRay P2 Pro really is an outstanding, well-designed, well-performing, value-for-money product which is really hard to fault". So there you go, if you want a little IR camera to slap on a smartphone, get this one.
A prototype of the Macintosh from 1981 at the Computer History Museum (Wikimedia Commons)
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