IT News for July You Might Have Missed
“The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed yet.” – William Gibson
The most interesting thing about any news is what it means and what changes it heralds. In this selection, I have collected and divided the news into groups so that you will pay attention to interesting trends in history.
So, under the cut — business redefines critical needs, breakthrough technologies are stalled, but still move the world forward, and much more. Let's go!
And what's going on in the labor market? While HR experts are excitedly discussing four-day workweeks and the balance between remote work and the office, the news suggests that on the one hand, the workload will be greater, and on the other, it will disappear altogether.
Don't want to go to the office and are reading with gusto about the four-day week? Get ready for 64 hours
Something strange is going on in South Korea. The country already has a lot of overtime at a variety of companies. Now the region's largest corporation, Samsung, has decided enter six-day, 64-hour work week.
She filed a request with the Ministry of Labor of the Republic of Korea to raise the maximum working hour limit to 64 hours per week. The country's labor law currently caps the threshold at 52 hours – 40 regular hours and 12 hours of possible overtime.
On June 8, Samsung Group already moved employees of its semiconductor and smartphone R&D teams to a 64-hour workweek. South Korean media reported that the new measures were being introduced due to income decline corporations.
Glory to the robots! They are slowly beating humans in another area. The only question is whether it is marketing or not
Chinese company Xiaomi launched new project — autonomous factory Xiaomi Smart Factory. Only machines work there, collecting one smartphone per second. The factory operates 24 hours a day without people, and cleaning is also done by robots.
Company invested about $330 million in the development of the new production process. The factory occupies an area of 81 thousand square meters. Xiaomi indicated that the annual production volume is 10 million smartphones.
Business redefines critical needs
In mid-July, Microsoft completely cut its DEI unit, which was responsible for diversity, equity, and inclusion. The company explained its decision by changing business needs. One of the insiders statedthat Microsoft no longer views equity, equality, and inclusion as critical as it did in 2020.
The as-a-service model has proven itself so well that it has begun to be pulled into completely different areas. Not everyone agrees with this.
The clouds are coming
Unfortunately, an entire era is ending – once extremely popular laser discs are becoming less and less in demand. Sony, which has a plant for the production of such media, decided close production.
It is profitable for Sony to sell content in digital format, in an online store. This reduces costs – there is no need for digital media and production facilities. The Japanese company says that it is closing the plant due to a drop in demand for content recorded on laser discs.
We are not only talking about CDs, but also about DVDs, as well as the most modern laser discs at the moment – Blu-ray. Let us recall: the capacity of a single-layer disc reaches 23.3 GB, a double-layer disc – 46.6 GB, a triple-layer disc – 99 GB. These media have not become very widespread simply because of their high cost. Sony Corporation plans to gradually reduce the volume of laser disc production, and then completely close all or almost all factories associated with such production.
As long as the printer you buy remains yours and not rented
In March 2024, Hewlett-Packard released new firmware for inkjet printers, in which the option to block printing when a non-original cartridge is detected is activated by default. And in April, it disabled the ability to print for some models of its devices until an additional HP Smart application is installed in the system in addition to the drivers.
The company's actions caused a wave of negativity from HP product users. For some time, the corporation's management tried to ignore what was happening. But after HP's printer sales dropped in March 2024 fell by 17%had to take action.
The company decided close production and stop sales of LaserJet printers that cannot be made to work without an Internet connection. HP has stopped producing not all LaserJet printers, but only those with the letter “e” in their model name. For example, the Laserjet M110w is still being produced and sold, but the LaserJet M110we and M209dwe versions will no longer be sold.
The development of technologies always has its risks. Somewhere it is slowed down by inertia and complexity, and somewhere by the triggering of these very risks
Unfortunately, for now energy problems will be solved the old-fashioned way
Project organizers statedthat the tests are not only postponed for 11 years, but will also require an increase in costs – by 5.4 billion dollars at once. The postponement itself is caused by technical problems and a lack of funds.
ITER head Pietro Barabaschi said that even without the defect, the deadlines could not have been met. The process of creating ITER turned out to be more complicated than planned. But the postponement of the reactor launch does not mean that the site will turn into a sleepy kingdom for 11 years: scientific research will continue, for example, experiments with small plasma currents. The head of the project added that even mastering controlled nuclear fusion will not solve the most pressing problems that humanity currently faces.
IT products are becoming increasingly intertwined and involve more processes. And the risks are becoming higher and higher
After the world's largest companies update the CrowdStrike app happened A global outage that affected the IT infrastructure of many organizations, banks, and airports around the world. Many flights were cancelled, cashless payments did not work, and automatic checkouts in stores were disabled.
The cause of the failure was an update to the CrowdStrike Falcon software and an error in its interaction with Microsoft services. In a normal situation, the software “provides highly accurate detection and automatic protection in real time” against possible cybersecurity threats. But something went wrong during the update.
At the end of July, the situation was stabilized.
But I will still be an optimist. After all, technologies and adequate business models are developing and overcoming risks.
Open source software is becoming more and more common
JSC MCST, the developer of Elbrus-based processors and the Elbrus Linux operating system, has decided to open the source codes of many of its software products. It is planned to gradually disclose the codes of Linux kernel components, system libraries, compatibility patches for open-source software, and additional developer tools for the Elbrus platform.
The code is brought to a form in which it can be used without access to the internal resources and tools of “MCST”. The source texts and patches are published “as is”, without a guarantee of suitability for assembly by third-party systems and without a guarantee of compatibility of patches with other versions of the original source texts, except for those for which they were created.
The company's goal is help developers to create their own products for Elbrus, as well as modify existing ones.
Space technology advances despite setbacks
And this future missionwhich will take place on July 31, if it is not postponed. It is called Polaris Dawn – the first of the private Polaris manned spaceflight program. The ship's crew is going to go into outer space in spacesuits from SpaceX.
During the spacewalk, the astronauts will conduct several scientific experiments. The mission will take them to an altitude of about 700 km above Earth, the highest altitude of a crewed flight since the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s. By comparison, the International Space Station is located at an altitude of about 400 km.
Well, that's all for today. In the comments, you can offer your own versions of events and trends that you consider important and relevant.
