It's the 1st of December and that means Christmas soon and what better way to celebrate the birth of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ, than buying a gift subscription to The Sizzle! Find out more at https://thesizzle.com.au/gift
They're perfect as a workplace perk, with a few businesses buying a couple and giving them to all their employees so they can spend more time on their tasks instead of trying to keep up to date with tech news. If you want to give your underlings The Sizzle, let me know and I can give you a nice discount on a bulk purchase (i.e more than 5x). I can even send you an invoice and you can pay like that instead of via credit card if that's how your workplace does things.
The Senate's "Final Report on the Inquiry into the Influence of International Digital Platforms" has been made public today and it makes some spicy recommendations. The big one is a "new standalone watchdog that would coordinate 'collaboration efforts, common responsibilities and tasks' between the existing regulators and would give consumers and digital platforms a central place to turn to". More interesting is "legislating an individual's right to delete personal data in order to give users more control" and "laws and mandatory reporting in cases where big tech companies self-preference on their platforms, by giving their own content prominence over competitors". Dunno how many of these recommendations will come to fruition, lets see what happens in 2024. Check out the full report on Parliament's website.
Tesla's Cybertruck electric ute/pickup is now officially for sale, with Elon Musk presenting the first 10 production vehicles to hand picked owners that put an initial deposit on the car back at its unveiling in 2019 - that memorable event where Elon threw a ball bearing at the glass to demonstrate how tough it is and the glass broke (that they're now selling decals of). The base RWD Cybertruck has a range of around 400km and will set you back US$60,990 (almost A$100k) when deliveries start in 2025. A far cry from the US$39,990 promised in 2019. No word if this monstrosity will ever be sold outside the USA, but going by the unfortunate popularity of the Dodge RAM and Ford F-150 in Australia I wouldn't count it out. On Telsa's website there's a brief mention of a "range extender" battery that can plonk into the Cybertruck's bed for "up to 470mi of total range". That's interesting. The full "delivery event" can be viewed on X if you feel like cringing your way through a Friday afternoon.
Chinese chip designer Loongson has shown off its latest x86-64 compatible CPU, the 3A6000, which they claim performs around the same as the Intel Core i3-10100 CPU in various benchmarks. Now this might not sound impressive as the i3-10100 isn't exactly cutting edge, but it's impressive when put into context. This is a pure Loongsoon design, nobody's IP (well, legally) is used here and it's fabricated in China using a 12nm process. No western technology involved, it's all homegrown Chinese stuff. Combined with SIMC & Huawei's 7nm process SoCs in the Mate 60 Pro and YMTC's quite good NAND chips going in SSDs like the Fanxiang S770 and S880, it feels like it's only a matter of time Chinese semiconductor manufacturing is on-par with Intel/TSMC/Samsung. The USA's sanctions on high end semiconductor manufacturing may have had the opposite desired effect.
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.
Personal Care Connect: devices such as the blood pressure cuff (left) and pill boxes (right) send data to the mobile phone via Bluetooth. The mobile hub software integrated into the mobile phone (center) forwards the data to a care center for monitoring (screen in the back) and returning reminders or alarms in an emergency. (IBM Research / Flickr)
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