Cruise has been granted a permit by the Californian government to operate a fleet of 30 robotaxis commercially without a supervising driver. The licence states that "Cruise will be operating its passenger service at a maximum speed of 30mph between the hours of 10pm to 6am on select streets in San Francisco". This is very different to Waymo's operations in Phoenix which also ferries around paying customers in a robotaxi, as San Francisco's streets are crazy and the weather varied compared to Phoenix's wide cookie cutter avenues and stable climate. I'd love to have a ride in one of these things, can tell kids in 30 years time I was one of the first passengers!
Good news for people stuck on fibre to the curb who want access to 250mbit or 1000mbit plans - NBN has announced that 160,000 premises across VIC, NSW & SA can now apply to upgrade to FTTP. You need to be connected to a participating provider (Aussie, Launtel, Superloop are all there) and you need to remain on a 100mbit or faster plan for ast leat 12 months. If you downgrade the speed you'll be stung $200 - which honestly still a bargain. A list of the suburbs in NSW, VIC & SA currently eligible is in this NBN press release. Up to 1.5 million FTTC premises across Australia will be eligible for an FTTP upgrade by the end of 2023. You'd be a fool not to take advantage of this upgrade.
Cryptocurrency miners have flocked to New York state, an area blessed with relatively cheap electricity thanks to hydroelectricity and nuclear power. Unfortunately, they're creating such a burden on the local power supply that gas powered peaking units are fired up to support the grid. Miners are also reviving abandoned or failing coal power plants to secure a steady supply of electricity. NY is so concerned that they're debating a law that'll "put a two-year moratorium on mining that uses proof of work". Of course, cryptocurrency lobbyists are "influencing" weak and gullible politicians to vote against the law, citing jobs for poor areas. Fuck cryptocurrency.
IPv4 addresses are running out and when things become scarce they go up in price, which is exactly what's happening with the cost of an IPv4 address lately. Seth Schoen, founder of the very awesome Let's Encrypt, has a plan to bring the price down - and it's not simply transitioning to IPv6. He's come up with the IPv4 Unicast Extensions Project to unleash huge chunks of the reserved IPs that arguably, don't need to be reserved. Doing so would unleash over 400,000,000 new IPv4 addresses for use on the internet. If it makes renting a VPS cheaper (a large portion of the cost is the IPv4 address), I'm all for it.
Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.
📻 Magnolia Caboose Babyshit - Mudhoney
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