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Broadband / Telco

AWS and Google Cloud collaborate to simplify multicloud networking - As organizations increasingly adopt multicloud architectures, the need for interoperability between cloud service providers has never been greater. Historically, however, connecting these environments has been a challenge, forcing customers to take a complex "do-it-yourself" approach to managing global multi-layered networks at scale.

To address these challenges and advance a more open cloud environment, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud collaborated to transform how cloud service providers could connect with one another in a simplified manner. 

My Take: AWS and Google Cloud working together is a sign that customers want choice, not lock-in. AI workloads move across different clouds, so the network connecting them has to be simple and fast. If multicloud becomes easy, the power shifts back to users, not the cloud giants. This could change how companies build and run AI for years to come. Where does this leave Azure? What about carriers selling premium cloud connectivity?

Survey: Households concerned over broadband price increases - More than half of households globally (57 per cent) are worried about annual broadband price increases and, crucially, the majority think these increases are unfair, unreasonable (60 per cent) and difficult to understand (48 per cent), according to the latest EY decoding the digital home study.

My Take: a base of 20,500 surveyed folks is pretty statistical. The volatile geopolitical environment may influence supplier choices in new ways, Broadband reliability in focus, More than one-third of customers have recently switched or plan to switch, There is resistance to broadband upgrades while loyalty conceals inertia, Disruption ahead as satellite and FWA gain favour, Bundles remain in demand although households seek improved broadband and TV packages, AI assistance is welcomed, but human touch remains vital..

🇨🇦 District of Barriere warns of scam calls ahead of fibre-optic installation - However, on Thursday, Nov. 27, the district said it has received reports from residents about potential scam calls from individuals claiming to represent Telus. “These reports come shortly after council announced the upcoming fibre-optic infrastructure build,” the district said. Telus informed the district that, like the Canada Revenue Agency and financial institutions, it will never ask people to provide personal, login or account information through unsolicited emails, texts or phone calls.

My Take: Sneaky. And sad. That’s all I have to say about that. Aside from that, “The district recently announced that Fibre Connect, in partnership with Ledcor Technical Services and Telus,” so now they have F3 and Fibre Connect building for them? Who will be their balance sheet partner in Ontario?

Read more at: https://coastmountainnews.com/2025/11/28/district-of-barriere-warns-of-scam-calls-ahead-of-fibre-optic-installation/

Cisco: Service provider market is 'recovering nicely' - Service provider spending is showing strong signs of picking up after a slow few years, driven by the need to refresh equipment, to serve broadband penetration and demand for data center interconnectivity, said Guru Shenoy, Cisco SVP, data center and provider connectivity.

My Take: More “AI” related spending on infrastructure that’s been chugging along fine, until now. Double-digit sequential growth is good for Cisco.

T-Mobile has promoted Easy Switch as a way for new customers to join its network in as little as 15 minutes - AT&T is suing T-Mobile US in federal court over the latter’s new “Easy Switch” onboarding tool, alleging that the feature uses AI bots to unlawfully access and scrape customer data from AT&T’s systems.

My Take: I wrote about how brilliant this app (possibly) was last week. ATT customers now have to manually input their data following an injunction or two. Nice try, though.

The Americanization of Ericsson and Nokia - Ericsson and Nokia are undergoing a process of Americanization in response to Trump's economic policies and Europe's unfriendliness.

My Take: If networks are national infrastructure, then who builds them becomes a security decision, not just a purchase. Now you know why Nokia is spending a fortune on R&D facilities in Kanata, ON.

A $20B fight looms over BEAD non-deployment funds - A fight is brewing over Broadband Equity, Access & Deployment (BEAD) funds that will be left over after all the states and territories complete their mission to connect broadband to unserved homes in their locales. These remaining monies – known as BEAD non-deployment funds – could total as much as $20 billion.

My Take: I feel like I’ve seen this story - like 10 times already. So the program was ~$42B and close to ½ of it will go towards non-broadband related items? Is that what I get from this?

Huawei ban in Europe may be €2.5B opportunity, says Nokia - An aggressive replacement of Huawei across Europe could be worth billions to local vendors, according to Nokia's CEO.

My Take: Remember, trust and security now matter as much as speed or price. Always should have, as far as I’m concerned.

NTIA to Review Federal Spending on Broadband, Tech for Education - The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is starting an effort to review technology use in schools, including federal broadband spending on educational technology.

My Take: Did all that broadband money actually help students? Did they get the service and the reliability they were promised? Too often, we focus on the dollars instead of the outcomes. Reset. Find gaps. Cookie cutter what worked.

HPE to stop AI failure and keep networks safe with Juniper magic - All the latest from Discover Barcelona 2025

My Take: Some new switches.. Some stuff with new APs supporting Aruba and MIST.. And an MX301 supporting some crazy throughput in 2RU. It’s all in there if you’re interested in camp Juniper, I mean HPE.

Network APIs could find new life with help from AI agents - Before they ever really got going, telco APIs veered off the road into a ditch and have seemingly been stuck there for years. But the advent of agentic AI could very well change that, for one big reason, AWS’ Head of Telecom Jan Hofmeyr told Fierce. 

My Take: Instead of apps manually calling telco APIs, AI agents could automatically request better network performance, analyze data, adjust connectivity, or trigger workflows. If it’s all dynamic and invisible, maybe telcos become part of the application and not just the pipe.

DOCSIS spending dips again ahead of expected 2026 rebound - Cable operator spending on DOCSIS infrastructure dropped 31% in Q3 2025 as new products equipped with 'unified' silicon start to take hold. Spending in the category is expected to accelerate in 2026.

My Take: Based on the next article, it makes sense. Although spending in 2026 doesn’t correlate with the expected lack of subscriber growth rates - unless the reference in to CPE. WiFi7 integrated CMs seem to be on a sharp incline.

Ouch. Broadband study casts cable as 'the new copper' - 'With industry growth remaining below pre-pandemic levels and FWA adds remaining strong, we don't expect Cable to grow subscribers this decade,' New Street Research notes in its latest broadband trends study.

My Take: Wow. I don’t understand why MSOs couldn’t transition themselves to “Communication Providers”, cap DOCSIS and grow with PON. Look at what sticking to Coax has gotten them?

Wi-Fi 8, AI, and why the future of Wi-Fi is managed - It’s hard to keep up with Wi-Fi. Even as telecommunication providers continue rolling out Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7, the next generation is already taking shape. Wi-Fi 8 is now being defined, with early pre-standard products expected around 2027 and standardized devices in 2028. And while the step up to Wi-Fi 7 focused largely on speed—almost four times that of Wi-Fi 6—Wi-Fi 8 shifts the conversation to something arguably far more important for real-world performance: reliability and stability.

My Take: Well, I guess the future is now because managed WiFi has been around for a while, and automation has been driving it behind the scenes for some time. Not sure it’s really “AI.” I guess the point is that as the technology gets more complicated, the systems that manage it need to follow suit.. or do they?

Fiber Broadband Association Releases Paper on How Rural Providers Can Capture the Edge Compute and AI Opportunity - This latest analysis from FBA emphasizes that while national attention has focused on broadband deployment, the next wave of infrastructure investment will center on where and how data is processed—and rural communities can play a critical role in that future. The paper explains how the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud applications, and data-intensive workloads is reshaping the data center landscape and creating new demand for power and connectivity in non-traditional markets. With available land, community trust, and robust local fiber networks, rural providers are uniquely positioned to meet these needs.

My Take: Telus decided to turn underused COs into residential developments. Likely a better proposition. Rural providers should consider providing DCI fiber, securing it with fiber sensing to make it a more valuable asset.

Fiber Sensing

LSTM Boosts Fiber Sensing Beyond Spectral Limits - In a groundbreaking advancement poised to revolutionize optical fiber sensing technology, researchers have unveiled a novel method that shatters the longstanding constraints of free spectral range (FSR) in interferometric systems. At the heart of this innovation lies the integration of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, a class of recurrent neural networks renowned for their sequence prediction prowess, with optical fiber interferometry. This synthesis not only resolves one of the persistent obstacles in high-precision sensing applications but also sets a new benchmark for accuracy and range in environmental, structural, and biochemical monitoring.

My Take: I asked ChatGPT to treat me like a 10-year old and explain this to me. You’re welcome for saving you the time.

Imagine you have a long piece of string that can feel tiny changes. It can feel shaking, bending, heat, or tiny movements. Scientists use this special “string” made of glass. It is called optical fiber.

But there has been a problem. The fiber can only feel changes up to a certain limit. After that limit, the signals get mixed up and hard to read. This limit is called the “free spectral range,” or FSR. Think of FSR like a measuring ruler that isn’t long enough.

Now the new idea. Scientists used a type of computer brain called an LSTM. This brain is very good at understanding patterns that happen over time. They connected this brain to the fiber sensor system.

The result. The computer brain helps read the fiber’s signals much better. It can understand things the old system couldn’t. This means the fiber can measure more things, more accurately, and over a bigger distance.

Why this matters. It helps people monitor bridges, buildings, pipes, oceans, weather, and even chemicals. It makes the world safer because we can feel problems before they become big.

So in simple terms. They made the fiber sensors much smarter by giving them a brain. Now they can “listen” farther. They can “hear” more detail. And they “understand” changes that were impossible to read before.”

And that is why you should care about fiber sensing. Check out Fiber Optic Sensing: New Applications and Revenue Opportunities for CSPs and Fiber Providers in North America to understand more.

Data Centres

A different kind of data center: DartPoints expanding in Greenville, Columbia to meet AI needs - Data center operator DartPoints plans to up the capacity of its Greenville center by 400%. But unlike the super centers popping up around the Palmetto State, each gobbling upwards of 100 megawatts of power, DartPoints’ growth is on a much smaller scale — 12.5 megawatts, up from a 2.5-megawatt starting point.

My Take: 12.5MW? Research institutions, smaller firms, and regional players could run advanced AI workloads without building their own massive infrastructure.

Keeping cool: heat a key challenge for data centers and AI - The global boom in data centers as companies increasingly outsource information storage and ramp up use of energy-intensive artificial intelligence is creating a key challenge for the industry - how to keep cool.

My Take: Tidbit - “More data centers are looking to use water or specialized coolants instead of air cooling, as liquid cooling can be 3,000 times more efficient than air at removing heat.”

Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.- There is a rush for AI companies to team up with space launch/satellite companies to build datacenters in space. TL;DR: It's not going to work.

Google CEO: Data Centers in Space Could Be the Norm in About a Decade - Google's Sundar Pichai indicates the company sees orbiting data centers as a real solution, rather than merely a moonshot, to help address power-hungry AI systems.

My Take: Tell us what you really think. Stop holding back. Many online say much of what the author speaks of is being, or has been addressed.

🇨🇦 Alberta gov't proposes bill to incentivize self powered data center developments - If passed, Bill 8, also known as the Utilities Statutes Amendment Act, 2025, would create a new framework that would allow data center developers to power their installations through offtake agreements with power producers or by generating electricity at the data center site.

My Take: 9GW of development pipeline. That’s a lot. Why not fast-track the ones who bring their own power? Anything to remove permitting barriers is a great move.

Trump’s push for more AI data centres faces backlash from his own voters - The residents came in camouflage hats and red shirts signaling unity, more than 300 of them packing into a rural Pennsylvania planning commission meeting to protest a proposed data center they feared would carve up their farmland and upend the quiet rhythms of their valley.

My Take: Solution: build them underground.

🇨🇦 Do AI data centres have a PR problem? A look inside a ‘sustainable’ high-tech facility - You’d drive by CAL-2, the largest operating data centre in the Calgary area, in an industrial park northeast of the city, without ever realizing it has 26 megawatts of power capacity to run what’s inside — enough electricity for roughly 26,000 homes.

My Take: Not much to say. Nice article. Pretty pictures. People don’t want them in their neighbourhoods because they don’t understand. They don’t all suck up jillions of litres of water a day for cooling. Many air-cool.

Overheating Financial Markets Reveal Data Center Capacity Strain - The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) trading platforms were shut down for approximately 4 hours due to overheating after its cooling system at its Illinois data centre failed. The outage began around 10:00 p.m. ET on November 27, halting about 90% of global derivatives volume on the Globex platform across futures and options for equities, bonds, commodities, and currency markets.

My Take: Is there really a data centre crunch, or was this just poor planning? Those with power wield the power.

🇨🇦 Why AI Infrastructure Could Be Canada’s Hidden Asset Boom - AI infrastructure could become Canada’s hidden asset boom because the country already has the building blocks the world is scrambling to secure. This includes abundant clean energy, vast land suited for industrial development, a cold climate ideal for cooling data centres, and a tech ecosystem capable of supporting advanced computing.

My Take: ..but you can’t do it without training talent, enforcing data governance and continuous investment.

What’s Happening In Space?

A Closer Look at VLEO: The New Frontier in Orbit - VLEO, which begins at the Kármán line, requires constant propulsion or re-boosting to maintain its altitude. And VLEO’s location in the upper atmosphere means it’s surrounded by atomic oxygen. In contrast to O2, which is essential for life, atomic oxygen is short-lived and quickly reacts with almost everything. It causes significant aerodynamic drag, leading to rapid orbital decay for satellites and systems.

My Take: VLEO brings satellites close enough to Earth that the data starts to feel almost real-time. If companies can solve the drag and durability challenges, this could trigger a major shift. Earth observation, communications, and data services all get sharper, faster, and far more accessible. It opens the door to making satellite data part of everyday infrastructure - integrated into hybrid terrestrial offerings and , not something only governments or big space players control.

🇨🇦 Kepler Selected by Canadian Space Agency to Develop Next-Generation Earth Observation Concept Study - Kepler Communications today announced that it has been awarded a contract by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to develop a concept study for Canada’s next-generation Earth observation satellite system. The award is part of the Government of Canada’s long-term investment to maintain sovereign access to critical satellite data and ensure continued leadership in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) capabilities. 

My Take: Canada needs to own “eyes in the sky”. Great that Canada is betting on a homegrown company to design a next-gen Earth observation backbone.

Starlink on Track to Receive $661 Million From Federal Broadband Program - Close to $1 billion from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program will go to SpaceX and Amazon's Leo to help bring high-speed internet to underserved areas.

My Take: And you all thought it would never happen…

Beijing space lab targets orbital data centers for AI era - An institute in Beijing plans to launch its first high-computing-power experimental satellites by late 2025 or early 2026 as part of a wider effort to move intensive data processing into orbit while easing pressure on power and land resources on the ground.

My Take: Oh, sure. Just copy what US-based companies are doing 😉 “According to the institute, the plan calls for a constellation of 16 centralized space data centers in a dawn-dusk orbit 700 to 800 kilometers above Earth, where the satellites would remain in sunlight for most of each orbit and together could receive about 16 gigawatts of solar-generated power.”

🇨🇦 Canada’s NordSpace announces 2026 satellite launch on SpaceX rocket - The Terra Nova satellite mission, announced today, is part of NordSpace’s new Space Systems Lab, which the company says reflects its long-term goal of supplying technology for space missions. The Markham, Ont.-based aerospace startup wants to develop space launch vehicles, spaceports, and satellites entirely in Canada, and has repeatedly attempted to launch its first suborbital rocket from its Atlantic Spaceport Complex.

My Take: Go NordSpace!

NATO, German BSI, and Israel’s Rafael Share Strategies for Securing Space Systems - As space becomes a domain of warfare, democracies across the globe will increasingly rely on commercial satellite operators and private sector space companies to wage it, a senior NATO official told last week’s CyberSat conference.

My Take: Satellites and orbital infrastructure are now seen as strategic assets worth defending and attacking. That raises the stakes for every company that builds or operates in space.

How satellite connectivity is transforming the telco mainstream - Once considered an isolated, highly specialist field serving niche markets and remote communities, satellite connectivity has evolved into a critical component of digital infrastructure strategy. In an era marked by geopolitical instability, cable cuts, climate-related disruption and exponential demand for data, the convergence ofs atellite and terrestrial networks is not merely desirable; it is inevitable. 

My Take: When we combine ground networks with satellites, our communications get a lot tougher and more reliable when disasters strike or infrastructure fails. That matters for emergency teams, national security, and anyone who needs the network to stay up. We’re moving from a world built on cables and towers to a hybrid system of ground and sky, where satellites aren’t the backup anymore, they’re part of the core.

Standardization of Space Traffic Management Terminology - The rapid expansion of the global space economy has introduced a complex array of challenges regarding how objects move, interact, and operate above the Earth. Thousands of satellites now populate Low Earth orbit, joined by rocket bodies, mission-related debris, and fragments from past collisions.

My Take: Space Traffic Coordination. Sounds cool. Cool picture. Many problems to solve. Take a page from the V2V space. Have them all speak with each other with positional data. Another new protocol and standard.

Amazon’s Cloud-Native LEO Arrives: Leo Ultra Targets 1 Gbps; Can it Beat Starlink’s 2026 Gigabit Plan? - The global push for high-speed satellite internet access has entered a critical phase, shifting the focus from initial deployment to enterprise-grade performance. Amazon’s newly branded Leo Ultra system represents a significant marker in this shift, offering an enterprise satellite broadband solution that targets high speeds of up to 1 Gbps download and 400 Mbps upload.

My Take: The cloud-native part will be the real differentiator with closed-loop L2 pt-pt available from day one, so I’ve been told in a LinkedIn post today. Speed will help as well, I suppose, if they actually launch that sort of service.

Congress desires LEO, but threats are real - Just before the holiday the U.S. Congressional Research Service (a non-partisan research operation) released a study which addressed the potential to bridge the ‘digital divide’. There are filings with the International Telecommunication Union for some 1 million proposed non-Geosynchronous Orbit (GSO) satellites. This means multiple headaches for the regulators and existing operators.

My Take: The threat of lots of stuff floating around and possible “conjunctions”. The “I was here first” rule means nothing.

Starlink Mini Turned My Family Road Trip Into a Remote Office - After experiencing flaky mobile hotspot connections, throttled data, and connection complaints from kids in the backseat, I decided to try something different on a road trip from Texas to Florida. We brought a Starlink Mini along for the ride so we’d have a reliable connection.

My Take: I think there’s a strong rental business with these things. Not sure how much they charge, but even if it’s $20/day, it’s cheaper than investing in one for the odd trip here and there.. Although I think it’s probably more than that. Either way, great tool to have kicking around (on standby) if you can pick up the panel on some crazy Elon sale.

Japan Rising: Tokyo-Based Axelspace is Making Microsatellites with a Big Impact - Japan is a lion in kittens’ clothing. In both land area and population, it pales in comparison to the likes of the United States, China, India, Brazil, and Russia. In influence, significance, and impact, however, it consistently punches above its weight. In fact, Japan’s economy is the world’s fourth largest, according to the International Monetary Fund, which says the country’s GDP is a massive $4.28 trillion—despite a shrinking population and a paucity of natural resources.

My Take: Traditional satellites are expensive and slow to build. Microsatellites are cheaper, faster to market, and can be deployed in constellations that image the Earth more often. That means more up-to-date data, better responsiveness, and wider global coverage.

Telecom Innovation is Pivotal to Business Success in the New Space Economy - Telecom business leaders should be optimistic about how the future will play out, but need to be mindful of the need for collaboration. The road ahead is as complex as it is commercially promising – and no one can hope to navigate the journey alone. It’s also vital for the industry to play a leading and influential role in defining the standards that will shape the space ecosystem. Integral to this is the imperative for interoperability and system integration.

My Take: The article says telecom firms and space/satellite operators must collaborate, define common standards, and work on interoperability - because the “space + telecom” future will require a mix of hardware, software, regulation, and global coordination.

Direct To Device

Survey says… This section will probably be going away soon!

Nothing this week anyway. Sort of a slow week overall.

Enabling AI

OpenAI API breached after old fashioned phishing campaign exposes user details - A phishing incident at third-party data analytics provider Mixpanel compromised user details, including names, email addresses, and locations based on API user browser activity.

My Take: What do they call it? Sideways assessments or something? That’s where companies look at their partners and assess their security postures. It’s like when you audit a SaaS platform and you want to assess all the sub-component software pieces.

An AI model trained on prison phone calls now looks for planned crimes in those calls - Securus Technologies president Kevin Elder told MIT Technology Review that the company began building its AI tools in 2023, using its massive database of recorded calls to train AI models to detect criminal activity. It created one model, for example, using seven years of calls made by inmates in the Texas prison system, but it has been working on building other state- or county-specific models.

My Take: When a call goes like this - “When I get out, I’m going to burn your house down, kill your dog and you wife, in that order” - it’s probably not to hard to preduct a crime. Of course, recording calls between an inmate and their lawyer would be bad. It’s kinda like a self-inflicted Minority Report.

The web's data, unlocked - Discover, access, extract, and interact with any public website. Get structured, reliable, real-time or historical data at petabyte-scale. Ready for any model, pipeline, or workflow.

My Take: Bright Data is a really cool tool for data extraction. Doesn’t look like it’s cheap, but some of the stuff shown in the demos is very cool. So many data sets all “pre-scraped” for you to search on, including over 650,00 LinkedIn profiles (I think)

AI anxiety is real and it’s shaping the workplace - One of the biggest concerns people have is skill loss. Nearly one in four workers say they’re afraid they are losing abilities they used to have and 21 per cent say they’ve already noticed they’re struggling with tasks they used to handle easily, now that AI is doing it for them.

My Take: Here’s an idea. Learn something new, or learn how to do what you used to do better, or more efficiently. “In some cases, workers aren’t just relying on AI professionally, they’re turning to it emotionally. Twenty-four per cent use it for stress management, and one in six say they’ve formed friendships or even romantic connections with AI.” 😳

Fearing AI job losses, some young workers in Britain shift towards skilled trades - In a labour market where artificial intelligence is quickly transforming and sometimes replacing jobs, student Maryna Yaroshenko wanted to find a future-proof career that offered long-term stability.

My Take: 👏 Good for them for taking the initiative instead of just complaining about big, bad AI coming for their jobs.

🇨🇦 Accenture Canada’s head of AI is hiring for a skill you can’t automate - Good judgment is becoming vital for aspiring consultants in the AI age, says Krish Banerjee

My Take: No, you can’t automate good judgment, and it’s good that they’re asking new employees to think as opposed to just “do” and pass all decisions to more senior people. As for automating good judgment, if you train a model long enough with the right information, can’t it get you most of the way there?

The AI frenzy is driving a memory chip supply crisis - An acute global shortage of memory chips is forcing artificial intelligence and consumer-electronics companies to fight for dwindling supplies, as prices soar for the unglamorous but essential components that allow devices to store data.

My Take: See Chip crunch: how the AI boom is stoking prices of less trendy memory for more info on the shortages. Between this and an expected fiber shortage into early 2026, is it COVID-era supply chain issues all over again?

Microsoft denies report of lowering targets for AI software sales growth - Microsoft on Wednesday denied a report from The Information that multiple divisions at the company lowered sales growth targets for certain artificial intelligence products after several sales staff missed their goals in the fiscal year that ended in June.

My Take: “The source-based report cited two salespeople in the Azure cloud-computing unit, which is closely watched by investors.” Anyway.. AI is new, and markets are still figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Maybe some product folks just got a little excited.

This and That!

$1 billion Supreme Court music piracy case could affect internet users - A decision by the high court that fails to hold internet service providers accountable for piracy on their networks would “spell disaster for the music community,” according to groups representing musicians and other entertainers.

My Take: Hmmm.. Should ISPs be held accountable for what their users do? Doesn’t that mean that evil-DPI comes back into play? I blame the parents. That’s the easy answer.

Why Sam Altman and Jony Ive Are Building a Computer You Can't Look At -Sam Altman and Jony Ive have been teasing their collaboration on a new AI hardware device. It is reported to be backed by up to $1 billion in funding and described as screen-free, smartphone-sized, and designed to be so appealing you'd "want to take a bite out of it." They aren't just launching another product. They are placing a billion-dollar bet that the smartphone's fifteen-year reign as the central computing platform is ending.

My Take: It’s about moving from attention-based computing (screens that interrupt us) to intention-based computing (AI that works quietly in the background).

🇨🇦 Small Modular Reactors to Power Northern Development Require New Approaches to Infrastructure Security - As Canada looks to new technologies to reduce these burdens, small modular reactors (SMRs) have emerged as a promising complement or alternative to diesel-based microgrids. Their ability to deliver long-lived, emissions-free, high-capacity power makes them technologically suitable for mines, remote communities, and strategic sites. The 2018 Canadian Roadmap for Small Modular Reactors[1] formally recognized this potential, emphasizing the importance of “remote deployment,” “security,” and anchoring Canadian leadership in advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, materials science, and remote operation.

My Take: Before we rush to build reactors, we need to build resilient, sovereign telecommunications infrastructure.

TSA Warning—Do Not Use These Networks On Your Smartphone - TSA tells the traveling public: “Don’t use free public WiFi.” And now, with the holiday season underway, this will be front of mind. TSA has faced some criticism for its alert, not least indirectly from the FTC, but Google has now said exactly the same.

My Take: Is this new? With 200G of data in my mobility plan, I can’t remember the last time I even needed to connect to public WiFi.

🇨🇦 Canada launches first register of AI uses in federal government - The Register marks an important milestone in the ongoing implementation of the federal public service’s AI Strategy, which guides AI adoption across federal institutions. It also aligns with the government’s commitment to modernize public services, strengthen productivity, and ensure every public dollar delivers the greatest value for Canadians. By giving institutions a clearer view of AI activity across government, the Register will serve as an additional tool to support planning, reduce duplication, and to help departments identify opportunities to work more efficiently.

My Take: “ensure every public dollar delivers the greatest value for Canadians.”.. Is that like “we’re from the Government. We’re here to help?” Looks like they have 40 projects on the go.

🇨🇦 Ottawa puts $42.5M into new AI infrastructure at University of Toronto - The money will bolster the computing capacity researchers use to power their AI-driven work with new infrastructure that’s not currently available in Canada. It will help more than double the number of chips it uses to train and run AI models, and pay for newer, more powerful chips for the university’s supercomputer system.

My Take: “The investment is designed to address concern among academics and AI startups that Canada doesn’t have enough domestic compute power to meet the growing demand. Researchers have said the shortage limits the scale and speed of their work.”

AWS debuts new Frontier Agents. Amazon workers aren't thrilled. - AWS is rolling out agentic AI products at its AWS re:Invent conference today. At the same time, more than 1,000 Amazon employees (and counting) have signed an open letter saying the company needs to slow down with AI. The letter says AI has caused Amazon to abandon its climate goals, among other charges

My Take: I wrote about this last week as well. Seems odd to have people who are working for a company that is all about innovation complaining about innovation.

Life Advice that Sounds Good But Will Destroy You

My Take: Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs Guy) has a great video about not following your passion. I was kinda surprised at Daniel Pink’s take on things, but it makes a lot of sense! Send this to your kids ;)

Science history: 'Patient zero' catches SARS, the older cousin of COVID — Nov. 16, 2002 - A person came down with an atypical form of pneumonia in November 2002, but it would be two months before anyone realized it was the start of a pandemic.

My Take: I remember SARS. I remember a neighbour across the street wearing a mask. I remember everyone turning to look at whoever around them coughed. The good thing about SARS was that it didn’t spread quickly, and pockets of outbreaks were identified and isolated quickly. I’ll take SARS over COVID.

Infographic Of The Week

My Take: “Rare earth elements (REEs) are the backbone of modern technology, from EV motors and wind turbines to smartphones and precision-guided systems,” and China has ½ of them.

Podcast Recommendation

In this hour devoted to stories about footwear, walk a mile in another person's shoes. Every journey begins with a single step, and hopefully, some comfortable kicks. This episode is hosted by Moth Senior Director Jenifer Hixson. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media.

Relax, and listen to a story or two! or five..

Listen Here!

Movie/Streaming Recommendation

IMDb: 4.6/10 (note: this is the lowest rated movie ever watched…)

JMDb: 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿/10 (closer to a 5 than a 4)

Dirty Angels is a 2024 action thriller directed by Martin Campbell, who previously helmed Casino Royale. The film stars Eva Green as Jake, a battle-hardened soldier who leads an all-female commando unit on a dangerous rescue mission in Afghanistan. The team poses as medical relief workers to save teenage girls kidnapped by terrorists during the U.S. withdrawal.​

Green delivers one of her most raw and committed performances, anchoring the film with steely determination despite an uneven script. The action sequences are tense, well-choreographed, and Campbell demonstrates his reliable hand at directing explosive set pieces. However, the film struggles with generic dialogue, underdeveloped characters, and tonal inconsistencies that undermine its emotional impact. Supporting cast members Maria Bakalova, Ruby Rose, and Jojo T. Gibbs fill functional roles but rarely stand out beyond their mission specialties.​

While Dirty Angels offers solid R-rated thrills and doesn't shy away from brutal violence, it ultimately plays as a serviceable but forgettable rescue mission film that brings little new to the genre.

Horrible acting. Lousy script. Great violence.

Until Next Time

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