Disclaimer: Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed below belong solely to the author.

Given the number of various support schemes provided by the government in Singapore, one might question whether there aren’t too many of them and if it wouldn’t be simpler to simply disburse one cash payment to every eligible person.

After all, it’s not like the government isn’t doing that already, depositing funds directly for GST Vouchers, Assurance Package payments and cost-of-living support, regularly appearing in recent years.

So why bother with CDC Vouchers, which require an entire digital infrastructure to allow their issuance and redemption? Wouldn’t a simple bank transfer be better?

Cash is not king

At least not for everybody, and certainly not for the government, which is using its power to direct the money to specific parts of the economy.

Cash is liquid, and you can do whatever you want with it, including going for a nice day trip to JB to spend it there instead of Singapore. You may also use it for online shopping on one of the many ecommerce platforms, with most of the funds being sent to sellers in China or other countries.

This sees Singapore dollars exiting the domestic economy, benefiting others instead.

More prudent Singaporeans could opt to save it instead, which isn’t terrible in itself, but does keep the funds out of circulation.

Finally, the more reckless consumers could simply waste it on more “sinful” pleasures, still ending up short of money for daily necessities.

The voucher format allows the government to set strict rules on their use: with 50% allocated to shopping in supermarkets and another half to hawkers and smaller, heartland merchants.

This ensures that this pool of money is spent in the most beneficial way and provides the authorities with data on how the money is spent and where.

There is, however, one other purpose they have served very well since their launch six years ago, which is not spoken of.

Going digital—and staying there

CDC Vouchers originated as a COVID-19-era relief scheme, originally issued on paper and directed to the poorest households.

With the pandemic dragging on throughout 2021, the scheme was ultimately expanded to all citizen households by the end of the year and went digital with the launch of the RedeemSG app. Merchants could use it to accept the vouchers by scanning digital QR codes on customers’ phones, instead of dealing with paper.

In parallel, the government launched the Hawkers Go Digital scheme in Jun 2020, with generous subsidies and transaction fee waivers, which were meant to help hawkers adopt digital payments and reduce the risk of spreading the virus.

It was also a good opportunity to prod them to adopt mobile payments, which have become a staple in many countries around the world (most notably China, through its giant superapp WeChat).

The final waiver of the 0.5% fees ended just recently on Jun 30, 2026, after several past extensions. This means that hawkers are now going to have to bear the cost themselves, which might mean that some of them may prefer to return to cash-only payments.

But this is where the CDC scheme comes in.

Throughout the push for digital payments, the critics lamented that many elderly sellers might be struggling with the transition, not being very tech-savvy. What’s more, a skill once developed needs to be kept in use before it falls out of favour. Old habits die hard, after all.

Well, while we might see some return to cash, there is no returning to paper for CDC vouchers.

And because of the scale of the program, currently exceeding S$1 billion annually, hawkers have a strong incentive to keep their RedeemSG app to accept voucher QR codes.

In other words: there’s no exit from the QR era.

Of course, using the CDC app doesn’t force merchants to accept all digital payments, but since they still have to deal with QR codes to accept the vouchers, it provides very useful stickiness, which is going to keep most of them on the digital train.

• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

Featured Image Credit: CDC/ depositphotos

Nvidia is hyping up its new Vera Rubin chip system this week, revealing new performance benchmarks for the GPU and CPU combo ahead of rival AMD’s annual product event in San Francisco on Thursday.

During a lengthy technical workshop last week at the company’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, Nvidia executives boasted to a small group of journalists about the chip system’s increased power and efficiency capabilities. The biggest takeaway: Nvidia, which has long specialized in making GPUs, is increasingly trying to position itself as a supplier of CPUs that can power AI agents.

While GPUs are still the main hardware that companies use to train and run their AI models, the industry’s shift toward more complex, agentic systems has increased demand for CPUs, which can orchestrate data flows, networking, and other software tasks. That’s likely one reason Nvidia has been eager to promote itself as a supplier of complete AI systems rather than just AI chips.

Vera Rubin is Nvidia’s successor to its hybrid superchip system Grace Blackwell and represents the linchpin of its near-term future powering the AI industry. It’s designed to offer one CPU for every two GPUs. In a single Vera Rubin NVL 72 super chip system, there are 36 Vera CPUs for every 72 Rubin GPUs. Nvidia is also selling the Vera CPU as a stand-alone product, and it has reportedly told Chinese customers these could be ready as soon as August.

The CPU chip Nvidia is using for its new Vera Rubin hardware system.

Courtesy of Nvidia

Nvidia executives emphasized that its new Vera Rubin NVL72 racks—a stack of chips packed into a single liquid-cooled platform—are much more “plug-and-play” than some of its earlier products. During a brief tour of a Nvidia data center lab in Silicon Valley, Nvidia executives shared that OpenAI already has one Vera Rubin rack in use.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang didn’t make an appearance at the workshop in Santa Clara last week; he was in Japan announcing the chipmaker’s new partnerships with a number of Japanese firms to develop AI for robotics. The briefings were instead led by Ian Buck, Nvidia’s longtime vice president of accelerated computing and the architect behind the company’s CUDA software.

“We’re on a road map to crank out new architectures, not just GPUs but CPUs,” Buck told reporters. “We’re going to keep innovating, because it’s do this or die in Silicon Valley.”

The meetings were held in Huang’s executive briefing center, where multiple desks nearby were piled with bags of Taiwanese snacks that the CEO brought back from his recent trip to Computex, a massive annual semiconductor trade show in Taipei, an Nvidia spokesperson told WIRED.

• Chris Fall, the head of CAISI, has resigned
• Fall only took up the job three months ago in April 2026
• The departure is likely to once again shake up the administration’s AI strategy

The head of the Trump administration’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) has resigned from his role, Axios has reported.

Chris Fall served in the role for just three months following his appointment in April 2026, and no reason has so far been given for his departure from the agency.

Physical media collectors have three very different 4K restorations to keep on their radar: Michael Mann’s Manhunter, Hammer’s Dracula, and Criterion’s upcoming 4K edition of 12 Angry Men.

This is a weird trio, which is exactly why it works for me.

Manhunter is Michael Mann before everyone decided they had discovered Michael Mann. It is cold, controlled, stylish as hell, and still one of the most unsettling serial-killer films of the 1980s. It needs 4K because the color, lighting, architecture, and dead-eyed calm are the movie.

Dracula is Hammer at full strength: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, blood, capes, religious dread, and enough Gothic atmosphere to make modern horror look like it was assembled in a conference room. If the restored footage and color work are handled properly, this could be the Hammer release fans have been waiting for.

12 Angry Men is the outlier, but only on the surface. No monsters. No synth score. No blood. Just Henry Fonda, twelve men in a room, and a film that gets tighter and more suffocating by the minute. That is exactly the kind of black-and-white classic that can benefit from a serious 4K restoration because every face, bead of sweat, cigarette, shirt collar, and hard stare is what made this film interesting in the first place.

The important caveat: only 12 Angry Men currently has a fully confirmed 4K UHD release date, price, disc configuration, HDR format, audio format, and supplement list. Manhunter and Dracula are confirmed new 4K restorations with theatrical and home entertainment plans, but final 4K UHD disc specifications and pricing have not been fully announced yet.

Related Reviews:

Mann’s Neon Nightmare Needs the Right 4K Treatment

Michael Mann’s Manhunter is returning as Manhunter: The Final Cut, with StudioCanal celebrating the film’s 40th anniversary through a new 4K restoration. The film opens in select U.S. theaters through Rialto Pictures on July 24, 2026, followed by a StudioCanal UK theatrical release on September 25, 2026, with further international releases planned for the fall. 4K Blu-ray and Blu-ray release details are expected later this year.

That means buyers should not treat this as a finalized UHD preorder yet. There is no confirmed U.S. 4K disc price, HDR format, audio format, region coding, packaging, or supplement list at this stage.

What we do know is enough to make this one worth watching. Manhunter was shot by Dante Spinotti and remains one of Mann’s most visually controlled films. Its cold architecture, blues, greens, whites, glass surfaces, and nightmarish calm are central to the experience. A strong 4K restoration should preserve the film’s hard visual edge without scrubbing away the texture.

The cast also makes it more than a Mann completist title. William Petersen, Joan Allen, Dennis Farina, Tom Noonan, and Brian Cox give the film its unnerving edge. Cox’s Hannibal Lecktor, spelled that way in Manhunter rather than Thomas Harris’s original “Lecter,” is not the grand theatrical monster Anthony Hopkins later created. Hopkins is the more iconic nightmare. Cox is colder, quieter, and more clinical, which makes his version unsettling in a very different way.

Hammer’s Full Restoration Is the Collector Hook

Hammer’s Dracula from 1958, released in the U.S. as Horror of Dracula, is also receiving a major 4K restoration. Hammer has confirmed that Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee will return in 4K, with the film coming back to cinemas and making its worldwide home entertainment debut in 4K.

This is not just another catalog cleanup. Hammer says the new restoration uses film materials supplied by Warner Bros. and restores the full version of the film as director Terence Fisher intended it before censorship cuts. Hammer also says the release will include the newly restored full-length version alongside the UK theatrical version and the U.S. Horror of Dracula version.

That is the real hook for collectors. Dracula has existed in several versions, and earlier releases have had to deal with incomplete or compromised Japanese elements. Hammer says Warner’s archive uncovered pristine reels of the Japanese version, allowing the restored material to be reintegrated properly.

A combo pack release of the 4K restoration is scheduled to arrive later this year, with theatrical screenings planned for early October in association with Warner Bros.

Pricing has not been confirmed. Final disc specs, HDR format, audio format, region coding, and complete extras have not been announced. Hammer has said this will be part of its Limited Collector’s Edition range, so expect collector packaging and supplements, but do not treat any price as final until Hammer posts the actual preorder.

Why should buyers care? Because Hammer horror lives or dies by color, contrast, and atmosphere. Jack Asher’s cinematography, the blood, the costumes, the candlelit interiors, and Lee’s physical menace all need careful handling. Bad compression and weak grading make Hammer look cheap.

For more information: hammerfilms.com

Criterion Sends 12 Angry Men Back to the Jury Room in 4K

Criterion’s 12 Angry Men is the safest confirmed buy of the three because the details are already listed.

The 4K UHD plus Blu-ray special edition arrives September 8, 2026 for $49.95, along with standard Blu-ray at $39.95, and DVD version at $29.95.

The 4K edition includes a new 4K digital restoration, Dolby Vision HDR, and an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. The package includes one 4K UHD disc with the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features.

Criterion also lists the 1954 television version directed by Franklin J. Schaffner for Studio One, archival Sidney Lumet interviews, production history material, interviews related to Reginald Rose and Boris Kaufman, Lumet and Rose’s 1956 teleplay Tragedy in a Temporary Town, the trailer, English SDH subtitles, and an essay by Thane Rosenbaum.

Technically, this is not a spectacle disc. It is black and white, 1.66:1, mono, and 96 minutes long. A good 4K restoration should improve texture, facial detail, sweat, cigarette smoke, white-shirt contrast, window light, and the claustrophobic feel of the jury room. If the transfer is done right, the walls should feel like they are moving inward.

Where to pre-order: $49.95 at Amazon or Criterion.com

Related Reading:

Apple says it fixed a vulnerability that could expose real addresses behind Hide My Email on or around July 3, but we reproduced the flaw two weeks after the company’s claimed repair date.

The company told 404 Media that it deployed a patch on July 3, 2026, and fully resolved the vulnerability. AppleInsider successfully reproduced the behavior on July 17.

Our test found that a sender who possessed a specific Hide My Email alias could reveal the real address behind it with much technical knowledge.

We’ve reached out to Apple about the matter. We will update when we hear back from the company on the matter.

Apple spent roughly a year responding to the flaw

The vulnerability affected iCloud Hide My Email, which creates aliases that forward messages to a user’s real inbox. Users can provide a different alias to each website or service instead of sharing a permanent email address.

EasyOptOuts co-founder Tyler Murphy began reporting Hide My Email vulnerabilities to Apple in mid-2025. 404 Media says Murphy first alerted Apple in June 2025, while EasyOptOuts’ published timeline lists a related report on July 9.

Murphy and EasyOptOuts co-founder Ben Weiner exchanged reports and test results with Apple for roughly a year. EasyOptOuts says Apple declared the vulnerabilities fixed on March 3 and June 30, but the researchers reproduced the problems after both claims.

Murphy later contacted 404 Media, which reported the flaw on July 1 without publishing instructions that could help others exploit it.

Apple told 404 Media that a patch deployed on July 3 fully resolved the vulnerability. The company hasn’t said whether July 3 marked the start or completion of the deployment, but we expect it is the former.

AppleInsider reproduced the flaw on July 17

AppleInsider tested the flaw on July 17 and confirmed that the process could reveal the real address behind a Hide My Email alias.

The process required little technical knowledge once the sender possessed a specific alias, though each address had to be targeted individually. We withheld the instructions because publishing them while the vulnerability remained reproducible would have created unnecessary risk.

The test doesn’t prove the vulnerability remained active for every user or mail provider. It does show that July 3 can’t be treated as a definitive endpoint without further explanation from Apple.

Apple hasn’t explained whether the patch was deployed in stages, when the rollout finished or why the July 17 test succeeded. Without those details, the company’s claim of a complete July 3 resolution remains difficult to reconcile with independent testing.

The vulnerability was real, but its practical risk was limited

The flaw undermined the core promise of Hide My Email. A sender who possessed an alias could potentially discover the permanent address that the service was supposed to conceal.

EasyOptOuts said every address in its limited volunteer tests was vulnerable. Murphy and Weiner also said the vulnerability had been fixed, but warned that the privacy risk may continue after the patch.

Hide My Email on an iPhone

Murphy and Weiner told 404 Media that rejected messages may have exposed real addresses still retained in third-party logs. EasyOptOuts recommends treating addresses linked to aliases created before July 7 as potentially exposed.

EasyOptOuts’ warning doesn’t mean every Hide My Email user was affected. A sender first needed a specific alias, which limited the number of accounts that person could target, and there’s no public evidence of a coordinated exploitation campaign.

The vulnerability didn’t expose passwords, unlock Apple Accounts or grant access to inboxes. The demonstrated consequence was the loss of an alias’s privacy protection, which could allow a permanent address to be connected with leaked or publicly available information.

A proposed class action filed after the disclosure seeks repayment of subscription fees and other relief. The complaint doesn’t allege that the named plaintiff’s address was exposed or that anyone exploited the vulnerability against him.

Apple still needs to explain the conflicting dates

The available evidence supports calling the flaw a genuine privacy failure. It doesn’t show widespread exploitation or measurable harm to subscribers.

Apple says the vulnerability has been eliminated, and Murphy and Weiner also say the bug has been fixed. We can’t reproduce it today, after our July 17 testing.

The available evidence doesn’t show that users need to disable Hide My Email entirely. Users should nevertheless treat real addresses attached to older aliases as potentially disclosed and understand that deleting an alias won’t erase information already retained in another provider’s logs.

from the dysfunctional-government dept

Earlier this year “Border Czar” Tom Homan, with an apparently straight face, told the media that if Democrats didn’t stop calling ICE murderers for the murders they committed, then they would have no choice but to murder more people. A few weeks later, when ICE did murder another person, he doubled down and blamed people for calling ICE murderers for the additional murder. So it’s little surprise that he’s at it again. He’s taking the fact that ICE has been on something of a killing spree over the last few weeks as… vindication for the batshit crazy statement he made earlier about how calling ICE murderers makes them only more likely to murder.

This is classic psychopathic abuser language. “Baby look what you made me do.”

It should never be coming out of the mouth of a government official. It’s horrifying and disqualifying. No, calling ICE murderers for the murders they committed should have zero impact on future murders, and if (accurately) calling ICE murderers leads them to murder more people, then what the fuck are we doing here? Shut down ICE. Fire everyone associated with them, including Tom Homan.

Of course, Homan wasn’t just blaming people for calling murderers murderers. He also wanted to blame the people they murdered for not “complying.”

Once again, saying shit like that should lead to an immediate firing and possibly an investigation. First of all, it’s clear from the videos released after some of the recent ICE shootings that it had nothing to do with people not complying, and appeared to be almost entirely about raging ICE agents who had no interest in de-escalating situations and seemed to be looking to cause harm.

But, more to the point, not complying with a law enforcement demand (especially a ridiculous one) should not result in your execution.

Tom Homan has been credibly accused of accepting $50,000 in a fast food bag to try to curry favor with President Trump. Does Tom Homan think it would have been okay for law enforcement to shoot Tom Homan dead in a Cava restaurant, claiming that he was clearly violating the law in accepting a bribe? Or does he only accept due process when it comes to himself and his friends?

And just as bad, Tom Homan, like so many MAGA leaders, absolutely positively refuses to take any responsibility at all for his own mistakes. First he claims that the mess in Minnesota he inherited didn’t involve any mistakes at all.

Of course it’s funny because in that clip he suggests that he was the one who refused to buy ICE body cams because of the government shutdown (which is a lie; ICE received a ton of money in the earlier budget bill, and Homan knows this. ICE can afford body cameras). But then a couple minutes later, when a reporter asks about the now-revealed anger issues and mental health problems of one of the ICE murderers from last week, suddenly Homan deflects and says to talk to someone at ICE instead.

Dude. Weren’t you just talking about how you were in charge of properly outfitting ICE.

It’s truly astounding how this MAGA administration appears to be fundamentally allergic to ever taking responsibility for anything. This seems like an impossibly short-term strategy. Or simply the product of a government run by people who are in way, way over their heads, but too vain to admit it.

Filed Under: dhs, ice, ice murders, murderers, tom homan

Apple may be getting ready to let you pay off your next iPhone, iPad, or Mac in installments. The company is reportedly planning to introduce a new financing option called “Apple Upgrade” in the US on July 28 in partnership with Klarna, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

Payment terms may vary by device

Gurman says Apple could offer the buy-now, pay-later (BNPL) program for most current iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch models, though the specific terms may vary depending on the product’s typical price and expected upgrade cycle. Buyers could get a 24-month payment plan for new iPhones and Apple Watch models, likely reflecting how often people tend to upgrade these devices, while the payment plan may stretch to 36 months for iPads and Macs.

The plan may offer buyers some level of flexibility, allowing them to pay off the remaining balance early, switch to a newer device before their term wraps up, or hold onto their device once they’ve finished paying for it. Cheaper models across Apple’s product lineup might be left out, including the Apple Watch SE, the base iPad, the iPhone 16, and the MacBook Neo.

The current iPhone Upgrade Program is reportedly going away

Apple already offers financing through its iPhone Upgrade Program, which launched back in 2015 and bundles AppleCare+ coverage into monthly payments. According to Gurman, the company plans to stop accepting sign-ups for the iPhone Upgrade Program once Apple Upgrade goes live, effectively phasing it out in favor of the Klarna partnership.

Unlike the iPhone Upgrade Program, Apple Upgrade reportedly won’t include AppleCare+ as part of the base plan. That means anyone financing a new device may need to add coverage separately. Apple hasn’t confirmed any of these details publicly, and pricing for the financing plan and added AppleCare coverage, if any, remains unclear.

Have you ever found out that something you remember from your youth is now gone, and you didn’t even notice? If you are a certain age, you might feel that way when I deliver the news: You haven’t been able to buy International Reply Coupons (IRCs) at a US Post Office since early 2013. By the end of 2026, you won’t be able to buy them anywhere. The age of the IRC is over.

What’s an IRC?

If that didn’t mean anything to you, you might be too young to remember, or maybe you just weren’t into shortwave listening or ham radio. Although there were other reasons to get IRCs, a radio hobby is the most likely reason a Hackday reader would have bought an IRC.

For radio purposes, here’s the problem. You’ve worked on your station for months, and one winter night, you finally pull in that rare station from Luxembourg. They’ll send you a QSL card to verify that you heard them. You only have to send them a letter telling them what time you heard them, what frequency, and some details about the program you heard. But they probably don’t want to pay the postage required to send hundreds or thousands of cards overseas.

While this is a radio-specific problem, you might find the same issue with pen pals or when trying to buy things from an overseas company.

SASE

If everyone were in the same country, the solution would be easy. Take a stamp, put it on an envelope that has your address on it, and stuff it in with the letter. Or, you could just drop a stamp or two in the letter you sent.

The problem is, US postage won’t help Radio Luxembourg. On the other hand, the effort required for you to buy postage that works in Luxembourg would have been a nightmare.

Enter the UPU

The Universal Postal Union is a UN agency that is effectively an association of post offices in 192 countries. Their charter is to facilitate mailing things worldwide.

The IRCs date back to 1906. The idea is you buy an IRC at your post office. You send it to Radio Luxembourg, or wherever. There, the mail person at the radio station could go to their post office and trade the coupon for enough local postage to send a surface letter worldwide.

Slow Death

As demand has dwindled, post offices worldwide have quit selling IRCs. As of last year, Australia still did. But Germany, Britain, the United States, and many other countries gave up on them long ago. In fact, Britain’s Royal Post claimed that the average post office sold less than one IRC per year at the time it threw in the towel.

UPU decided to end IRCs altogether by December 31, 2026. The end of an ear and, apparently, not just for radio hobbyists. It is telling that the UPU’s recent editions of IRCs had print runs of 1,000 or even 500. So they obviously weren’t selling very many.

IRCs Other Claim to Fame

If you’ve heard of these before and you aren’t interested in radio, then it might have been in economic history. Have you heard of the Ponzi scheme? It has become a generic term for any business scheme that relies on raising money from new investors to service debt owed to old investors.

However, the original Ponzi scheme dates back to 1920, when Charles Ponzi realized he could buy IRCs in a country where they were cheap and sell them for more in another country. He was happy to accept investors, of course.

The problem is that profits are thin, and the costs of acquiring and transporting large numbers of IRCs quickly swamp most potential profits. Fluctuations in currency exchange rates take the rest.

Goodbye!

So the end of the IRC marks a closed chapter for ham radio and swindling. There were probably other uses, too, that are now consumed by electronic mail, payment systems, and the like.

You have to wonder what adventures IRCs went on during their global travels. The video below shows one’s story.