Financial results for Alphabet, Apple, Amazon and Meta are out and are semi-interesting. Shows how despite the general economy slowing and these companies having a mid-life crisis, they're still insanely profitable and still maintain an incredible amount of wealth at a scale society has never seen.
Twitter suddenly announced it's gonna disable free access to the API on Feb 9. There will be a "paid basic tier" according to the solitary tweet that is the source of information about this major change, but it didn't include any info on how much that will cost or what limits will be placed on it. This means pretty much every fun or important posting bot (images, RSS importers, etc), utility that improves quality of life (tweet deleters, bulk blockers, etc), research projects and God knows what else are in a state of limbo. Elon hinted at around $100/m for access to the API, which would kill off many of the non-commercial uses, but probably is low enough for the scammers and spammers to justify paying for it despite Elon saying the main reason for this change is to defeat the bots. Like most things Twitter related the last few months, I doubt any thought went into the ramifications of this.
Everyone's favourite workplace collaboration app, Microsoft Teams, has a new premium tier plan that includes OpenAI's GPT-3.5. It's used in a feature called "intelligent recap" that uses GPT-3.5 to "generate meeting notes and highlights even if you weren't present in a meeting". When a "colleague mentions you in a meeting, you'll even get personalized timeline markers to quickly see what was shared and discussed". Other features of Teams Premium include webinars with "registration waitlists, customizable start and end times, and virtual green rooms" and "advanced meeting protections" that'll add "safeguards like watermarking and labeling sensitive content during meetings, or the ability to restrict users from recording meetings and copying text from the meeting chat". Oh and there's an official plug-in for the Elgato Stream Deck.
Camera tripods are boring and pretty much a solved problem - or so I thought until I gazed upon the Benro Theta. It's a goddamn self-leveling tripod. Check out the article and the animated GIF/video inside. The motherfucker adjusts each leg to perfectly line up the camera. Never again will you need to worry that your beautiful image of that sunset, ocean view or majestic piece of architecture has a wonky horizon. The good thing is that it's not even that expensive at around $500, which isn't that bad considering it's also made out of carbon fibre and includes a ball head plus a battery. Unfortunately you can't buy one yet as it's a Kickstarter project. Benro is a proper tripod manufacturer, so I assume this is just them testing the water to see if there's any demand for a self-leveling tripod (umm, yes!) before putting it into production.
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.
Signed and dated lower right below printed image in black pencil, 'Diane Mantzaris 1991'. Titled lower left below printed image in black pencil, ' 'Exchanging Data' '. Inscribed lower left below printed image in black pencil, '3/55'. (National Gallery of Australia)
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