You know Amazon's fancy grocery stores where you "Just Walk Out" with your items instead of scanning them? That's no longer a thing, Amazon's getting rid of it from stores and replacing it with Dash Carts, "a scanner and screen that's embedded in your shopping cart, allowing you to checkout as you shop" and self-checkout counters. It appears that the Just Walk Out technology didn't really work as "700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022". Those human reviewers being a team of 1,000 people in India who watched and labelled videos of people shopping to make sure the customers were billed correctly for the things they took off the shelf.
OpenAI has been busy the last few days. Last week it was revealed that they're teaming up with Microsoft to build a US$100b on a supercomputer dubbed Stargate. It would need up to 5GW of power, which to put into perspective, is roughly the peak power generation of the entire state of Victoria. ETA on that bad boy is 2028. They also announced Voice Engine, "a text-to-speech AI model for creating synthetic voices based on a 15-second segment of recorded audio" that they're not releasing because it's too good and society isn't ready for it. As Dave Karpf explains, there's no way this thing isn't being primarily used for crime. Meanwhile, Sam Altman was in Hollywood giving demos of its Sora model that can make videos from a text prompt to major studios. Fun times ahead!
As I prepare today's issue of The Sizzle much earlier than usual because I have to take my shitbox 2021 Model 3 all the way to Richmond due to a fault with DC charging where the car randomly decides I can't use a Supercharger, making journeys more than 200km from home impossible. This is the 3rd time in 3 years I've had to take it in for something relatively major. The heat pump shit the bed while I was in Brisbane a few months ago requiring a total replacement and it was delivered from the factory with a totally misaligned suspension that was unsafe to drive (Tesla deemed within spec, my local mechanic is the one who fixed it), so it is of no surprise to me that Tesla's sales numbers are collapsing. In Q1 2024 they built 433,371 cars but only managed to "deliver" 386,810 of them. Over on Reddit someone realised that since 2022 Tesla has built 144,000 more cars than they've given to a customer - where are the cars? Has everyone who wants an expensive EV got one? Are people put off by Elon Musk's awful personality? Do Tesla simply make poor quality vehicles? Is it all of the above???
Wafer of electronic grade polycrystalline silicon, 250x magnification. Joseph A Psioda & Eric D Bieler, Union Carbide Corp. (1983 Nikon Photomicrography Competition)
📻 Puss - The Jesus Lizard
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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.