If that photo doesn’t kick start you this week, I don’t know what will!

Just a note to say that the book’s launch went well last week, and thanks for putting up with me being pretty busy! CW

The News

Tesla partly responsible for wrongful Autopilot death: court

Tesla was partially responsible for the death of a pedestrian and the serious injury of another by a car with Autopilot engaged, a Miami court has found (Ars Technica). In a first for the company, the Elon Musk-run carmaker has been ordered to pay part of a $500M penalty because a Tesla using Autopilot ran a stop sign, went through an intersection, and hit two people by the side of the road. Tesla says it plans to appeal.

The Sizzle: Tesla is on the hook for a third of the pay-out for selling a vehicle “with a defect that was a legal cause of the damage”. This seems to be because plaintiffs’ lawyers successfully argued (with the assistance of the driver, who wasn’t sued) that the car was sold with the claim it would help avoid or stop errors — meaning that it’s not enough for Tesla to say the driver was at fault. Every legal jurisdiction is different so hard to know how relevant the precedent will be elsewhere but you can bet other lawyers are paying close attention.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

There is A Lot riding on AI making money eventually

WSJ’s columnist Christopher Mims had a jaw-dropping chart in his piece this week showing how much money tech companies are funnelling into AI infrastructure (WSJ, gift link). Pulling together all the capital expenditure from the Magnificent 7 tech companies — primarily Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon — shows they’re buying actual things, like chips and cords and land and factories, at a rate higher than the dot com boom as a percentage of GDP.

The Sizzle: I gulped when I read this sentence:

There’s a lot of talk about how big tech has a lot riding on AI. Now, it appears as though the biggest economy in the world — and therefore the rest of us — is pretty dependent on this, too. Yikes.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

I want the Rolling Laptop That Screams

For those of you crying out for some of the new folding, rolling energy taking over the mobile market to come to computers, meet the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6. The Verge reviewed this “actually good” laptop with a screen that rolls up to get bigger. Click a button, and the 14.7 inch (2000×1600) screen grows to become 16.7 inches (2000×2350).

The Sizzle: I actually love it. It’s got a few kinks because of its form factor (like weirdly placed speakers) but I am smitten by a laptop that has a small form factor that can get bigger! Also, I love that it screams: “If you start closing the lid with the screen extended, or you move the screen while it’s rolling, the laptop emits a high-pitched tone.” It’s time to bring weird back to laptops!

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

Download the games that have been censored

As indie game platform Itch begins to bring some NSFW games back on its platform (Aftermath), a handful of other gaming-related platforms and creators have banded together to release some of the games for free. Freedom to Buy lets people download these games that are being targeted by various groups as a way of making sure they don’t disappear — for the next hour or so!

As one Bluesky user Ashley Lynch put it “These are all objectively awful games, but that's not the point. It's the principle that these games should be available.”

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electronics & electrical

Computing

Mobile

The End

😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.

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Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

The Sizzle is created on Gadigal 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.