Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by GOPI56

Merz EV Become Exploding Vehicle In Singapore

GOPI56 — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:25:38 +0800

SINGAPORE: An electric vehicle (EV) caught fire near the entrance of an HDB carpark near Vista Point in Woodlands on the morning of July 21.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said it was alerted to the fire near the entrance of a multi-storey carpark at Block 548 Woodlands Drive 44 at around 10.10am.

The fire involved the interior of the car, SCDF said.

Firefighters put out the blaze with one water jet. No injuries were reported.

“The cause of fire is under investigation,” SCDF said.

Speaking to Chinese-language news publication Shin Min Daily News, the car driver said on July 21 she was driving out of the carpark when she noticed a burning smell.

After pulling over, she realised there was smoke coming out of the vehicle.

SOS: https://www.thestar.com.my/aseanplus/aseanp...juries-reported

[video]https://thumbsnap.com/i/r6qpZtva.mp4[/video]

Video SOS:https://www.tiktok.com/@asiaone/video/7664945769274723604

Singkie Is Sinking Slowly

GOPI56 — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:21:24 +0800

SINGAPORE: The devastating 9.2-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in 2004 has caused land in Singapore to sink gradually in the years that followed, scientists have found.

While the shift was just up to several millimetres annually, it is important to take such measurements into account when studying sea level rise and developing plans for adapting to climate change, they said.

Research led by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) revealed that large tremors in Sumatra have caused land to dip not just in the Republic, but neighbouring Malaysia and Thailand as well.

The geologists found that ground continued to shift even in places more than 600km away from where the earthquakes occurred.

SOS: https://www.thestar.com.my/aseanplus/aseanp...tly-study-finds

I think I know Which Hotel Is This..

GOPI56 — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 16:00:17 +0800

Immigration raids Cheras hotel, nabs eight over alleged vice activities

KUALA LUMPUR: The Immigration Department has uncovered an alleged prostitution syndicate operating out of a three-star hotel along Jalan Cheras following an early morning raid on Saturday (July 11).

The operation, conducted at about 1.05am by the Kuala Lumpur Immigration Department, was carried out following intelligence gathering and surveillance.

During the raid, enforcement officers found several foreign women entertaining customers in designated hotel rooms. Investigators also believed one of the hotel rooms was being used as a waiting area for the women before they met clients.

Initial investigations revealed that the alleged sex services were advertised through social media applications, with customers paying between RM200 and RM230 before being arranged by a local man believed to be acting as the syndicate's coordinator, or "captain".

Hint: Near Cheras Sental Mall, connected with MRT station easy for people to take piap piap service and go back.

SOS: https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2026...vice-activities

Where should LRT 4 be built next?

GOPI56 — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 13:38:41 +0800

Since LRT 3 has already finished and is going to be launched and put into operation soon,

Where should LRT 4 be built next?

Let's discuss.

Oracle Cloud Free Tier Changes

GOPI56 — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 22:16:05 +0800

Anyone here using Oracle Cloud Free Tier for Ampere Instance, please change your configs by 15 June 2026.

Oracle’s Always Free Ampere A1 allowance now lists 2 OCPUs and 12 GB RAM, down from the previous 4 OCPUs and 24 GB limit.

Oracle has quietly halved its Always Free Ampere A1 (ARM) cloud compute limits without any public announcement.

The Cut: Your free resource allowance has dropped from 4 OCPUs and 24 GB RAM down to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB RAM.

The Catch: This new restriction applies to both pure free-tier accounts and Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) accounts.

The Risk: If you leave your old 4 OCPU / 24 GB configuration running, PAYG accounts will likely face unexpected charges, while standard free accounts risk having their instances stopped or deleted.

Action Needed: Audit your Oracle Cloud tenancy immediately and downsize your active ARM instances to a combined total of 2 OCPUs and 12 GB RAM to keep them entirely free.

[reddit]/r/selfhosted/comments/1u4wqnj/psa_oracle_is_changing_free_tier_limits_update_by/[/reddit]

SOS: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comment...mits_update_by/

System Glitch Triggers Booking Nightmare at Melaka

GOPI56 — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 09:37:56 +0800

Melaka hotel apologises, offers full refunds after system glitch triggers check-in chaos

KUALA LUMPUR: A hotel in Melaka has apologised to guests affected by a severe check-in disruption over the weekend.

In a statement posted on its Facebook page, Birkin International Hotel said it had offered refunds and compensation to all affected guests.

The hotel also said it has taken additional measures to strengthen its booking controls and operational processes to prevent a recurrence.

"We acknowledge the challenges experienced during the recent check-in process and sincerely apologise to those affected. Due to an unexpected system glitch that led to overbooking and operational challenges, room preparation took longer than anticipated, resulting in delayed check-ins for some guests," the statement said.

The glitch allegedly allowed a massive and uncontrolled influx of last-minute bookings and walk-in reservations to continue being processed until 10pm, overwhelming the property's available room inventory.

SOS: https://www.nst.com.my/news/regional/2026/0...r-system-glitch

Four in 10 wealthy Asian boomers lack succession

GOPI56 — Fri, 29 May 2026 17:43:42 +0800

Four in 10 wealthy Asian boomers lack succession plans, survey shows

(May 28): Asia’s rich baby boomers are failing to discuss wealth transfer with family members or establish formal governance structures despite wanting to preserve fortunes across generations, according to a survey from a Geneva-based private bank.

Only 26.9% of high-net-worth individuals surveyed across Asia-Pacific said they had a full succession plan in place, while 39.4% said they had no succession planning at all, according to a study by Switzerland’s Banque Lombard Odier & Cie SA.

The survey suggested older generations are keeping greater control over investment decisions, but also reflected what the report described as a “degree of complacency” towards succession planning.

Wealthy families around the world are preparing to pass down trillions to their heirs. In Asia, many ageing tycoons are grappling with whether to hand over the reins of their business dynasties to their offspring, or hire outside professionals to manage them.

A father-son feud inside Singapore’s richest family underscored what can go wrong, while in Hong Kong, the Cheng real estate dynasty’s debt troubles showed how the city’s next generation of scions faced difficulties in carrying forward their family legacy.

SOS:https://theedgemalaysia.com/node/805197

Gardenia Singapore moves bakery ops to MY, staff

GOPI56 — Thu, 21 May 2026 12:17:30 +0800

Gardenia Singapore moves its bakery operation to MY, staffs retrenched.

SINGAPORE: Bread manufacturer Gardenia Foods will retrench 141 employees at its manufacturing facility in Pandan Loop after announcing on Wednesday (May 20) that it is shifting its bakery production to Johor Baru.

“The move is part of Gardenia’s ongoing efforts to enhance operational efficiency and maintain competitiveness amid an increasingly challenging global environment,” the company said in a statement.

Production at the manufacturing facility will cease on June 30, it added. The affected workers’ last work day is on June 30.

SOS:https://www.thestar.com.my/aseanplus/aseanp...ore-to-malaysia

The COBOL Time Bomb & Anthropic's "Mythos"

GOPI56 — Wed, 20 May 2026 09:19:17 +0800

[YOUTUBE]/tNI1aEXUs8o?si=nPX12OvzJz9-s6s1[/YOUTUBE]

1. The Global Banking "Time Bomb": COBOL & Mainframes

a. The Roots: COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) was created in 1959. Because it was incredibly reliable at processing high volumes of transactions without crashing, banks, airlines, and governments built their core architectures on it during the 1970s and 80s [01:14].

b. The Current Scale: Today, COBOL still handles 95% of all ATM transactions globally, and 44 out of the top 50 banks in the world rely on these legacy mainframes [01:55].

c. Why It Was Never Replaced: Replacing these systems is incredibly risky and expensive. For example, when the UK bank TSB tried to migrate off COBOL in 2018, the system broke, locking out 2 million customers and costing over $300 million [02:26]. Furthermore, the original programmers have retired, and much of the documentation is lost, meaning banks literally don't fully understand their own core systems anymore [02:42].

d.The "Three-Layer" Problem: To adapt to the internet age, banks left the COBOL core alone and built layers on top of it: a modern front-end (like React), a 2010s-era middleware layer to translate web requests, and the 1980s mainframe at the bottom [03:09].

2. What is Anthropic's "Mythos"?

a.A Vulnerability Specialist: Unlike general AI models like Claude, Mythos is a highly specialized model built for one specific task: reading code and finding critical security bugs [05:55].

b.Unprecedented Capabilities: In internal testing, Anthropic pointed Mythos at OpenBSD (an operating system audited by top human experts for decades) and it immediately uncovered a security bug that had been hidden for 27 years [06:32].

c.Weaponized Exploits: While Anthropic's previous best model (Claude Opus) had a 0% success rate in writing functional code to exploit the bugs it found, Mythos successfully generated working exploits 72% of the time [06:59].

3. Why Central Bankers are Panicking

a.Central banks worldwide—including the US, UK, EU, Singapore, and India—held emergency risk meetings in May 2026 because of the sheer asymmetry Mythos introduces [00:00]:

b.Massive, Unreviewed Attack Surfaces: Large banks hold upwards of 300 million lines of private, legacy COBOL code that has often never been audited by modern security tools [08:07].

c.Patching Speed Asymmetry: When an AI finds a bug, it takes hours to weaponize. When a bank tries to patch a core bug, compliance, testing, and regulatory sign-offs mean it takes months. The attacker moves in hours; the defender moves in months [08:50].

d.The Leak: Anthropic tried to keep Mythos contained, sharing it with only 60 trusted partners under "Project Glasswing" [10:06]. However, an unauthorized group managed to gain access almost immediately by guessing Anthropic's predictable URL endpoint patterns and using leaked API credentials from a third-party contractor [10:36]. The model is essentially already "in the wild."

4. Action Plan for Software Engineers

a.The video estimates that open-source models with Mythos-level capabilities will be widely available within the next 12 to 18 months, giving organizations a very tight window to secure their infrastructure [11:23]. Senior engineers are advised to:

b.Audit Immediately: Run modern AI-driven code reviews and security tools on legacy codebases right now [11:35].

c.Reduce Public Exposure: Take old, unused, or internal APIs off the public internet [11:43].

d.Adopt the Strangler Pattern: Stop writing new features directly into the legacy core. Build modern microservices alongside the old system and slowly migrate capabilities over, draining the old system one piece at a time [12:17].

e.Map Vendors & Improve Observability: Audit third-party access tightly and invest heavily in robust logging so anomalies can be caught in minutes rather than days [12:03].

Japan’s Eneos to acquire Caltex stations in

GOPI56 — Fri, 15 May 2026 06:27:52 +0800

Japan’s Eneos to acquire Chevron’s downstream businesses in Malaysia, Southeast Asia

Japanese oil giant Eneos has announced it has struck a deal with Chevron to acquire 100% of the US firm’s Southeast Asian downstream fuels and lubricants business, including in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, Vietnam and Indonesia. As part of the arrangement, Eneos will take over the more than 450 Caltex petrol stations in Malaysia.

SOS:
https://theedgemalaysia.com/node/803542

RTM channels no more on Astro from 1st July 2026

GOPI56 — Wed, 13 May 2026 16:31:41 +0800

KUALA LUMPUR: Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) will stop broadcasting services of its channels on Astro's satellite platform from July 1, after almost 30 years of collaboration.

In a circular dated May 11, RTM said both parties had found difficulties at this time to "reach a pricing agreement" and contact that meets their needs and financial capabilities.

SOS:https://www.nst.com.my/business/corporate/2...ro-july-1-watch

IQ Group factory in Penang closed down.

GOPI56 — Mon, 04 May 2026 20:37:07 +0800

IQ Group factory in Penang closed down. Staffs retrenched.

KUALA LUMPUR (May 4): IQ Group Holdings Bhd (KL:IQGROUP) is shutting down its Penang manufacturing operations that make motion sensors and lighting as orders fell.

“The closure…will not affect the group’s other manufacturing operations in China, and offices in Taiwan, Japan and the UK,” IQ Group said.

IQ Group Sdn Bhd, the company’s wholly-owned subsidiary which runs the factory, has seen substantial decline in orders over the past three financial years ending March as customers shift their orders to China where costs are lower. Volume was also hit by US tariffs.

Production in Malaysia is no longer commercially viable after the final production batch was completed in April with no further orders since then.

SOS: https://theedgemalaysia.com/node/802211

IQ Group factory in Penang closed down.

GOPI56 — Mon, 04 May 2026 20:36:17 +0800

What is wrong with this pic…

GOPI56 — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 22:16:50 +0800

What is wrong with this pic. Only legends will be able to guess it.

Glove Maker, WRP Asia Pacific closed down.

GOPI56 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:08:44 +0800

Glove Maker, WRP Asia Pacific closed its factory in Sepang, Selangor. More than 1K workers retrenched.

PUTRAJAYA: The Ministry of Human Resources (KESUMA), through the Peninsular Malaysia Department of Labour (JTKSM), is closely monitoring the closure of operations involving WRP Asia Pacific Sdn Bhd to ensure the rights and welfare of its 1,426 affected workers are protected.

SOS: https://www.thestar.com.my/business/busines...orkers-laid-off

A lot of Bolt Drivers Online This Week.

GOPI56 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 10:13:02 +0800

Heard this from my colleague doing part time Bolt, say this week his earnings have dropped because many Bolt drivers online but less riders.

Any special campaign this week for Bolt drivers?

My Review of Tu.. Car Care Malaysia.

GOPI56 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 10:51:36 +0800

My Experience at Tu.. Car Care Malaysia

I recently decided to give Tu.. Car Care a try for my secondary car. Since it’s a vehicle I don’t drive as often, I wanted a straightforward, regular maintenance session without the premium price tag of a dealership.

The Package & Services;
I opted for a standard maintenance package which included:
Engine Oil Change
Oil Filter Replacement
Air Filter Replacement

The pricing was competitive, and the digital booking process felt streamlined and transparent.

One of the main reasons I chose this package was the Full Car Inspection service. It was advertised as a comprehensive health check, which is always good for a car that sits idle often.

However, the execution was disappointing;

Observation: I monitored the service closely. While the oil and filters were changed efficiently, the inspection was completely skipped.

The Result: The technicians moved straight to completion without checking the tires, brakes, or fluid levels as promised. It felt like they were just ticking boxes on a screen rather than actually looking at the car.

While Tuhu is convenient for a quick, cheap oil change on a secondary vehicle, the experience reminded me why "cheap" isn't always "better."

Moving forward, I think I would stick with the official car service center. Even though they are quite pricey, the service quality and the assurance that every point on the checklist is actually inspected make the premium worth it. For a vehicle's longevity and safety, the peace of mind you get at a specialized service center is hard to replicate at a high-volume budget workshop.

My Take: Great for a bargain, but if you value thoroughness and professional accountability, pay the extra for the official guys.

Wood Gas Powered Vehicle.

GOPI56 — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 07:49:39 +0800

Wood gas was famously used during World War periods where there was fuel shortages.

[YOUTUBE]bWnhtqDJwIU?si=3e95p7sDp_0jbASl[/YOUTUBE]

Mini PC Scams On Online Platforms

GOPI56 — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 08:03:41 +0800

Come across a lot of Mini PC being sold online claiming to have Intel i9 processors in it but selling for unbelievable prices.

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

So decided to do some research online, it seems the sellers are using registry hack in Windows to make the system show the processor as Intel i9.

But actually it is Intel Celeron processors when enter into system bios.

UPSI staff RIP after getting trapped in storeroom

GOPI56 — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:12:14 +0800

TANJUNG MALIM: A 53-year-old Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI) staff member died early Tuesday after being trapped in a locked storeroom at the university's sports facility.

Mohd Radzi Ariffin was found dead in a cleaning equipment storeroom at the university's sports complex.

Perak Fire and Rescue Department operations assistant director Sabarodzi Nor Ahmad said it received an emergency call at 1.57am requesting assistance from police to gain entry into the locked room.

Firefighters from Tanjung Malim arrived at the scene at 2.07am.

Health Ministry officers pronounced the victim dead at the scene.

Nine personnel were deployed to the scene, supported by a fire engine and an emergency medical rescue unit.

https://www.nst.com.my/news/regional/2026/0...ocked-storeroom

What was he doing in the storeroom early in the morning?