ASIA IN BRIEF Lenovo has denied it sells laptops that include banned Chinese storage devices where they’re not allowed.<\/p>\n
An outlet called Notebookcheck recently reported<\/a> that it a ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL and found a solid-state disk made by Chinese company YMTC inside. Some observers joined the dots and decided the laptop could be a problem for Lenovo because a Biden administration decision saw the US ban the company on national security grounds.<\/p>\n Lenovo dug into the matter and found the laptop in question was not sold into the US market, but was a model destined for Germany. As Notebookcheck\u2019s headquarters is Romania, and the team responsible for the review are in Austria, a made-for-Germany laptop crossing one of the European Union\u2019s internal borders is a long way short of a scandal.<\/p>\n Lenovo\u2019s use of a Chinese SSD is, however, notable for two reasons.<\/p>\n One is that Beijing encourages Chinese companies to buy from their local peers.<\/p>\n The other is that the AI boom has sent prices for memory and storage devices soaring, and YMTC is one of few alternatives to leading suppliers Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. Apple reportedly<\/a> wants the Trump administration to reconsider the USA\u2019s ban on YMTC, to help it find the parts it needs to keep cranking out iThings.<\/p>\n China recovers a rocket for the first time<\/p>\n China\u2019s National Space Agency (CNSA) last Friday recovered the first stage of a rocket for the first time.<\/p>\n The Agency announced<\/a> it used a ship-borne net to catch the first stage of a Long March-10B carrier rocket that launched a satellite, then guided itself to safety.<\/p>\n SpaceX has been doing this for years, because re-using the first stage of a rocket saves a lot of money. China naturally wants the same capability as it will advance its commercial and national security interests.<\/p>\n Japan has the same ambition and on Saturday conducted a successful test<\/a> of a rocket that took off, reached an altitude of 11 meters and hovered there briefly before settling back to Earth without incident.<\/p>\n In other China space news, CNSA announced its Tianwen-2 probe arrived<\/a> at asteroid 2016HO3, pulling to within 20 kilometers of the space rock on a mission that aims to retrieve a sample of the object and return it to Earth.<\/p>\n Australia signals strong AI regulation \u2013 including copyright protection<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s prime minister Anthony Albanese will this week deliver a speech outlining a revised AI policy.<\/p>\n The PM\u2019s speech will come a week after Andrew Charlton, assistant minister for science, tech, and the digital economy, observed<\/a> \u201cAI\u2019s social licence is precarious\u201d and added \u201cThe point of AI safety is not to slow the future down. It is to make sure the future remains human, aligned with our values, and advancing our interests.\u201d<\/p>\n Albanese has also mentioned social license ahead of his speech.<\/p>\n One issue the PM is expected to address is amendments to Australian copyright laws that would allow AI companies free access to content to train their models. Musician Holly Rankin today told<\/a> Australian radio she has had assurances such amendments are not part of the government\u2019s AI plan \u2013 setting a stage for a showdown with Big Tech.<\/p>\n A datacenter for Bhutan, serving India, via Canada<\/p>\n The AI datacenter boom has reached the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.<\/p>\n The tiny landlocked nation, population 750,000, is blessed with impressive hydro-electric power resources. The developer of this project, Canadian company Sato, plans to use renewable energy generated by those resources to power a datacenter in the Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC), a district located just over the border from India.<\/p>\n The local authority that runs GMC will reserve 100MW of firm power for the project, and could in future allocate 500MW.<\/p>\n Sato will use the juice to power a datacenter that serves clients in India, a nation the Canadian company says<\/a> has huge appetite for AI, but struggles to develop datacenters due to electricity supply constraints.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Project is anticipated to deliver low-latency AI compute to India’s major demand centres,\u201d Sato says.<\/p>\n APNIC to Malaysia: Your own NIR would change nothing<\/p>\n The Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC), the regional internet registry for the region, has published<\/a> [PDF] its submission to the Malaysian government\u2019s consultation<\/a> on forming a new national internet registry (NIR) and argued that doing so would essentially be futile.<\/p>\n \u201cCybersecurity, IPv6 acceleration, cost, and local support are not dependent on, and in several respects would not be advanced by, the establishment of a Malaysian NIR,\u201d the submission argues. APNIC also argues that if Malaysia were to establish a NIR it would not increase the availability of IPv4 addresses in Malaysia, or change the criteria for allocation of IPv6 addresses or autonomous system numbers. Nor would it confer any preferential access to resources for Malaysian-based parties.<\/p>\n \u201cAPNIC makes these observations not to oppose the establishment of a Malaysian NIR, but to assist MCMC and Malaysian stakeholders in calibrating the expected outcomes of such a step,\u201d the submission states.<\/p>\n Crims targeting Chinese VPN users<\/p>\n