To the ~320 paid subscribers that gave me their address for a free copy of a Sizzle zine I cooked up last week - thanks for your patience! I've finally printed, folded, bound and trimmed each issue and 400 mailing boxes arrived off eBay this morning. This weekend I'll be getting them all packed then dropping them off at the post office Monday morning. I can't wait for you to read it.
Meta's unleashed its latest and greatest LLM - Llama 3. They reckon they've got "the best models existing today at the 8B and 70B parameter scale" and posted Llama 3's benchmark results compared to Mistral, Gemini and Claude (but not GPT4?). I have no idea if any of this is legit or not, but Meta has been busy with AI stuff for a while so I assume as far as LLMs go, it's half decent. Unlike previous models Meta's crapped on about, you can actually try this one out yourself with a chatbot style interface on the web, for free and not logged into any Meta stuff. Being a Meta thing, it's also baked in to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. I've already seen it enabled in Facebook groups where it comments on posts trying to be helpful but usually missing the point. No different than most Facebook comments to be honest.
Australian EV charging manufacturer Tritium continues to circle the drain, having called in KPMG as administrators because it has declared itself insolvent because it hasn't got enough money to pay its bills. No other details were added to the Nasdaq announcement. As much as Tritium copped a lot of shit for their unreliable chargers and poor after-sales support, it does suck to see an innovative Australian company actually making things here that the world was frothing over, fizzle out like this at the hands of Wall Street fatcats that in hindsight, pushed it too hard, too fast.
The citizens of Colorado can sleep easy at night knowing their state is the first in the US (possibly the world?) to make it illegal for companies to use their neural data without consent. An update to Colorado's privacy law requires companies to get consent to collect neural data, be transparent about how it is used, easy to access, delete or correct that data and make it easy to opt out of the sale of neural data or its use in targeted advertising. I wasn't even thinking about my brainwaves being used to target ads towards me. That's a thing I have to worry about now? Fucks sake.
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.
For All Mankind NYCC Posters (Danamania)
📻 Ugly - The Smashing Pumpkins
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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.