NBN's CEO said at a CommsDay conference yesterday that around 5,000 premises a week are taking part in their "Fibre Connect" (i.e: FTTN/FTTC upgrades to FTTP) program and that NBN is "extremely focused on driving volumes of Fibre Connect orders". The $3 million dollar a year CEO - yes that's really how much Stephen Rue is paid - also mentioned they are hoping to have the fixed wireless network upgrade to 5G by the end of 2024, enabling speeds of up to 325 Mbps possible and that "competition" is forcing NBN's hand to try and achieve speeds beyond 320 Mbps. Meanwhile, Aussie Broadband has a blog post about the new NBN SAU, explaining why their 50/20 plan is going up to $85/m but the 1000/50 plan is dropping to $129/m.
There's new Threadripper CPUs utilising the latest Zen 4 cores from AMD. The 7000 series Threadripper has between 24 and 64 cores, with the Threadripper Pro 12 to 96 cores. Max TDP is 350W and they both use the sTR5 socket. Besides the beautiful amount of cores available, the main reason to go Threadripper over a Ryzen is the insane amount of RAM you can use. While Ryzen CPUs max out at 192GB, you can access up to 1TB of ECC RAM with the Threadripper and a whopping 2TB with Threadripper Pro. There's also a shitload more PCIe 5.0 lanes (x48 on the Theadripper, x128 on the Threadripper Pro). If you need it, the Threadripper Pro supports AVX-512 instructions, just like an Intel Xeon CPU. These CPUs will go on sale late November (probably via OEMs like Dell, HP & Lenovo first) and if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it.
Chargelab has a list of magnetic cooling devices for your iPhone. These RGB LED infused contraptions use MagSafe to draw power and stick to the back of the phone, running a fan to dissipate heat while you're playing games or any other CPU intensive activity. Some of them have USB charging so you can charge your device while using the fan and playing a game. The pièce de résistance however is the OnePlus 45W Liquid Cooler. That's right, a goddamn liquid cooler like a gaming PC. There's a bit that goes on the bakc of your phone and a large external box with a radiator and pump. Who knew there were people that passionate about phone gaming?!
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.
The Pitch Drop Experiment at the University of Queensland holds the Guinness World Record for the longest-running laboratory experiment. I look this photo while visiting the university's small, but interesting physics museum. (The University of Queensland)
📻 Eliza - Jackson Jackson
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