New Samsung Galaxy Note 10, Book S and Watch Active2
NHTSA annoyed with Tesla’s safety claims
ACCC takes HealthEngine to court for abusing patient data & manipulating GP reviews
Intel vPro and Meshcommander make it easy to remotely manage a PC when the OS is busted
Cheap Lenovo ThinkPad E495
Samsung had a big event overnight, unveiling the Galaxy Note 10, Galaxy Book S and the Galaxy Watch Active2. The Note 10 is like the other Samsung Notes - big screen and top end specs (including a 5G model) and goes sale August 23rd. The Galaxy Book S is the latest ARM-based laptop running Windows. It's got a Qualcomm 8cx SoC which includes an LTE modem and promises around 23-hours of battery life yet is super thin and light (960g & 11.8mm). Should go on sale in September in the US, no AU info yet. The Galaxy Watch Active2 is I think, Samsung's flagship smartwatch. I reckon it looks nicer than the Apple Watch.
Tesla’s pissed off the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) again because Tesla said that the Model 3 has “the lowest probability of injury of all cars the safety agency has ever tested”. The NHTSA sent Tesla a cease and desist and asked the FTC to take a look into Tesla’s potential stretching of the truth, saying it’s not the first time Tesla has embellished crash testing results and that its data shouldn’t be represented in the way Tesla did in their blog post. Stretching the truth is Tesla’s forte (“self-driving”, “price includes gasoline savings”, “US$35,000 Model 3“) and despite this little hiccup, they’ll do it again.
Remember HealthEngine? About a year ago they got busted for not publishing over 17,000 negative reviews of GPs on their service and altering 3,000 other comments to remove negative aspects before publishing them. It’s now come out that they sold patient data to private health insurance brokers without telling users that their data would be used for that purpose. The ACCC has taken them to court, saying that “the alleged conduct by HealthEngine is particularly egregious because patients would have visited doctors at their time of need based on manipulated reviews that did not accurately reflect the experience of other patients”. I hope these ratbags get a very juicy fine that sends em broke.
I asked on Twitter last night how to remotely control a PC with Intel AMT/vPro support and the lovely @stuckatthisbit told me to use Meshcommander. If you've got a PC with vPro support (most of the Intel i5/i7 based PCs have it) you can use Meshcommander to do all kinds of stuff to it over a network. My use case was to have a remote console going for a headless Dell Optiplex 9010 SFF PC, so I don't have to bother plugging in a monitor when something goes wrong and I can't log in via a terminal/web interface. I used to think using vPro required some OEM-provided software package that requires a support contract and costs a fortune, but Meshcommander is free. Perfect for home use.
Just one bargain today - the Thinkpad E495 (14" 1080p, Ryzen 5 3500U, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM) laptop. $739 from Lenovo, but use Cashrewards and get 12% cashback and the price drops to just $650.32. That’s bloody amazing value. If I wasn’t a Mac tragic, I’d buy that, slap in some extra RAM and use it as my primary PC.
🎶 The Grudge - TOOL
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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.