I know the word rare gives it away but the world is facing a rare earth metals shortage. The Chinese are currently the largest producers of this resource and they recently cut their production by half. Turkey is another potential source but that region has been unstable for centuries. Most modern technology cannot expand further without these resources and the whole idea of ramping up renewables requires lots of them. Elon Musk has said we don't have enough in the world for all the plans of our governments and other experts agree.
- I love leading-edge technology and the world is working on alternatives, but regardless of how exciting they appear, most don't make it out of the lab. Clean coal, gas and nuclear are still the only realistic options right now. Most of the proposed alternatives rely on possible future technology that as of yet doesn't exist or can't scale outside of research centres. We are in uncertain times and many countries are facing energy shortages that are impacting their manufacturing and populace. However, none of this is slowing down Japan from looking at ammonia powering data centres, Denmark from building the first solar panel that produces electricity and hydrogen, or a few places working to finally bring fusion power into reality.
- Information technology is changing so rapidly in the development space that something written three years ago can already be considered old technology. In contrast, working on the old adage "if it ain't broke don't fix it", many of the world's financial, stock exchange management and ERP systems are over 30 years old and still performing what they do reliably. The problem is that the people who wrote those old systems have retired or moved on so maintenance becomes an issue. Then, if you want to convert a huge system to a new platform the technologies change so rapidly that by the time you are even halfway through, the development team wants to move to yet another technology instead. It's getting harder and harder to be a development manager in this fast-moving environment. It's also too easy to get caught up in the latest changes and associated marketing.
- If you use Windows 7 or 8.1 and you are a Microsoft 365 user, then come the end of the year you will not be getting any more updates and will be blocked from any new installations. Windows 7 went out of support for most of us in 2020, but they are really serious this time, unless of course enough of their customers kick up about it. Security patches will also stop, even for those on the ESU (extended support) plan. According to the asset management platform Lansweeper, Windows 7 only accounts for 4.7% of PCs these days, so this is not a big issue for most.
- In completely unrelated news, there are 84 security fixes in this month's security update from Microsoft, including four critical bugs including one that's currently being actively exploited. In related news, Microsoft has also just turned on its Autopatch system but this requires so many things to be turned on that for the average user it may as well not be a thing. However, if you are an E3 or E5 user with Azure Active Directory Premium and Microsoft Intune, and have your Active Directory as the source of authority for all user accounts, and you have a proxy or firewall that uses TLS 1.2, and you ensure that four Microsoft URLs are always available, then no problem.
- In addition to earlier AI news, researchers at China's Comprehensive National Science Center in Hefei said they have developed "mind-reading" artificial intelligence capable of measuring citizens' loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. It sounds like a sci-fi movie and due to a public outcry, the video and article have since been removed with the purported analysis based on facial expressions and signals from the brain. Western experts have weighed in and said it is impossible to prove the validity of the Chinese claims. Dr Lance Eliot, an AI and machine learning expert, said that a line has been crossed when governments are making such claims or developing such products. It is worth noting that there have been reports from Business Insider that at the end of last year, the US Department of Commerce sanctioned several Chinese institutes for helping develop biotechnology, including "purported brain-control weaponry". I'd be willing to bet that other countries are looking into this and we'll see more of these stories in the future.
- I never thought I'd see this headline, "Leaders at hundreds of top US tech companies, universities, and non-profits have called for computer science to be taught to kids in American schools". I just assumed every school in the US taught programming. Apparently not, and the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Meta and Amazon have signed a letter to complain about it. They ask that computer science be introduced early and taught all the way through to high school. I agree with them that these days it should indeed be a core subject.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.
