While Chinese officials are smashing the offices of Samsung and SK Hynix, fans are being hounded in Volgograd with Novichok! Horror!
Another round of development of digitalization in China. Are we next?
Electronics in the service of the state is not only about spy gadgets or GLONASS. The time has come, when with the help of electronics the state will begin to control not only citizens, but also their property. We are all accustomed to the fact that Europeans and Americans who come to our country admire the electronic “strapping” of the state. This includes mobile Internet coverage, data transfer rates, digital tracking of urban infrastructure and transport. But this is only the first stage in the digitization of the entire country. The second stage is the penetration of figures into the legal sphere, into the area of regulation of rights, collection of taxes and fines. And to find out what we will have in a few years, just look at the leaders – the Asian region of the planet. For example, traffic safety systems in China no longer only photograph the intruder's car, but also carry out the identification of the driver's face by electronic means. The windshield is not a hindrance to the eagle-eyed Chinese electronic traffic cops. The next step is the mandatory installation of an electronic identifier on the car itself. Obviously, the legal neural network of the future needs a complete puzzle of the form 'Mr. So-and-so violated the traffic rules in a car belonging to such-and-such, then and there'. After confirming this fact, it becomes possible to completely refuse to participate in the legal proceedings of a human judge. Car theft or speeding as types of offenses will sink into oblivion. Let's see together what the Chinese have come up with.
The electronic ID tag will be located on the windshield and will not have its own power source. A chipped car passes under an arch containing equipment similar to huge NFC antennas and a reader; at this time, activation takes place, and all the information that is on the car in the registration data of the state leaks into the network. Serial number, year of manufacture, date of the last technical inspection, owner, etc.
The installation program for such systems involves the installation of more than a million road readers throughout China, and iron horse chipping will become mandatory from 2019. It's unclear whether the passive chip will simply stick to the windshield or become part of its structure. But in the end, it will be possible to completely abandon the usual license plates, which, frankly, only disfigure the design of the car. At the same time, it will not be possible to evade responsibility by covering the license plate with dirt.
Friends, do we need such a system? What do you think?
China goes to Samsung and SK Hynix. Who can save yourself? Or prepare a billion dollars?
An interesting situation has developed in the South Asian region. The main production facilities are located in China, hi-tech patents are in South Korea, and between them are factories for the production of electronics in the disputed territory of Taiwan. The political situation is complex, and economic ties and patent ownership issues are even more complex.
What do Chinese electronics manufacturers want? Quite simply, they want lower licensing fees, more favorable terms for borrowing technology from their neighbors, and participation in cross-technology ownership. How might it look like? A silicon substrate (or a rare earth semi-finished product) produced in China and supplied to Korea with its subsequent forwarding through a gasket company to Taiwan (laws and agreements that restrict trade with the illegally separated island are directly prohibited) should give grounds for entering Samsung high technologies and SK Hynix? Where is the logic here? Unclear.
Meanwhile, THE KOREA TIMES (TKT) talks about the practical steps being taken by Chinese officials. The officials' main weapon was a truncheon called “antitrust law”, and it was aimed at obtaining concessions in the field of the latest DRAM (random access memory) technologies from Samsung and SK Hynix.
Samsung Complaints:
According to TKT, a Samsung representative said that officials from the Chinese Antimonopoly Service came to units operating in China and “looked for some information.” The imagination draws a pogrom with the overturning of office desks and the confiscation of computers. The representative did not give details, but noted that they cooperate with the authorities. In the words of an unnamed Samsung insider: “A new war is looming! This time, the war is not only about money, but also about the corporate future. Chinese companies want more active cross-licensing with Samsung and SK Hynix and drastic reductions in patent royalties. And Korean companies want more support from the Ministry of Commerce (probably Korea). '
SK Hynix complaints:
A company spokesman said their offices were also ransacked by Chinese security officials. Which, oddly enough, also led to cooperation between the company and the authorities.
Unfortunately, China's own DRAM technologies are 3-5 years behind the world leaders, which, apparently, caused an aggravation of the crisis. Let's add two more facts here – Samsung and SK Hynix, from their own words, were not included in any price agreement. If you think about it, they cannot influence pricing and royalties, both companies operate according to the European model, and their board of directors can be entire conglomerates of funds and companies, huge and tiny. And the market determines the price. And the second fact – there have already been similar cases in history. Then the American company Qualcomm easily and simply ransacked the antimonopoly commission of China, paying the largest fine in the entire history of foreign business in the Middle Kingdom – about 1 billion US dollars. For the same reasoning – price collusion and violation of antimonopoly legislation.
With the Chinese special forces you will not be spoiled, if that!
How this particular confrontation will end, we will find out closer to the fall.
Is HiSilicon using cheap marketing techniques? WTF ?!
Only in the spring we discussed the new processor from Qualcomm – Snapdragon 710. A very good processor (on paper) is made using Samsung's 10 nm technology, equipped with two Cortex A75 cores (the very top) and six Cortex A55 cores, and Adreno 616 is used as a graphics chip ( dark horse, which the manufacturer promises + 35% performance in rendering compared to what is unknown). It is known for certain that the chipset is used in the fresh Xiaomi Mi 8 SE and, according to a well-known person in narrow circles, is planned in a new smartphone from Google (Bonito project), as well as in a Nokia project codenamed Phoenix. The last name of the project suggests that Nokia wants to impress us all this fall / winter, but we are not talking about that now.
And that the henchman company Huawei – the hardware manufacturer HiSilicon – is secretly developing a new chipset for new smartphones called Kirin 710. According to leaks that got to the Gizmochina publication, the new chipset is an upgraded version of the Kirin 659 chipset (Cortex A73, 12nm TSMC). Officially, the newborn may appear in smartphones Nova 3 (Paris) or P20 Lite.
I propose to discuss whether it happened by chance that two new chipsets will appear this fall / winter, the names of which will appear very similarly on the price tags in stores that offer approximately the same performance and play in the same price group? Do you have vague doubts that Huawei …?
Where have British scientists gone?
Over the past few weeks, not a single significant British invention or discovery has been made in the world. This is very strange, they usually pour like a cornucopia, and the publicist always has a choice of what to talk about, be it a battery inserted into an earthworm or a smartphone with a donut antenna. To investigate the case of the missing British scientists, it was enough to go to the pages of the famous publication The Sun. If you are a real scientist, then you will certainly be interested in a poster with a human 'dismemberment':
Photo by THE SUN, part of the 'Bed' interior
And if we are talking about Russia, then in the heading the letter 'R' will necessarily be turned in the other direction:
Photo THE SUN
Knowing these perfectly logical initial data, it was not difficult to find all the necessary information. It turned out that in the Volgograd bar (and club) 'Gryadushka' an insidious trap had been placed on British scientists – it is obvious that they should be looked for there. Of course, the MR editors did not allocate funds for more serious research and a trip to Volgograd. But from the scant data and the satisfied faces of The Sun journalists, two conclusions can be drawn:
- Volgograd 'Novichok' has a strength of about 80 ° and consists of three nerve components: vodka, birch sap and absinthe.
Photo THE SUN
- If the British scientists are really there, then they will not finish their research on 'Novichok' very soon!
Friends! Have you attended World Cup games? How are things going with communication in the stands? Please tell us everyone is interested!