Mentioned in today’s edition: Waymo, FSD, Anthropic, Meta, Android, 4chan and the Insane Clown Posse. Plus, deals on Sennheiser headphones, Samsung soundbars and Asus mesh routers.

The News

Some self-driving cars seem very safe. Others, not so much

Waymo's self-driving cars continue to be much safer than human drivers, even as its fleet grows and adds new cities (The Verge). The Google-owned autonomous car company has updated its public safety data which shows its cars have 92% fewer crashes with serious injury or worse, and 92% fewer pedestrian crashes than human drivers (Waymo). Safety advocates note that Waymos drive a fraction of the distance of human drivers, in fewer areas and scenarios, and a few other quibbles. Meanwhile, Tesla is reportedly moving towards a potential US recall over its FSD assisted driving because of incidents in poor conditions (Reuters). 

The Sizzle: It seems pretty clear that self-driving can be much safer than human driving in the real world. I know it's not cool to give too much credit to big tech, and there are definitely questions about Waymo commercialising, but completely self-driving cars is like sci-fi, but it's real! The big risk for Waymo? Now Tesla, which opted for cameras over LIDAR for cost reasons, is now rushing into this. Clearly, not all self-driving cars have the same safety standards. And if Tesla continues to recklessly rollout its self-driving, I can definitely see it feeding a backlash that will make it harder for more ethical providers. And not to be dramatic, but if self-driving cars are really safer, then slowing down their roll out will literally cost lives in another way. 

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OpenAI's world domination plans aren't going as well as they hoped

Things are looking increasingly stormy for OpenAI. Its top execs have told OpenAI staff to stop "doing sidequests" and instead focus on enterprise and coding (WSJ, gift link). ChatGPT's user growth is slowing (TechCrunch) and businesses that are using AI for the first time are going to Anthropic (X). The ChatGPT maker has ditched its in-app product buying feature because no one was using it, despite once having high hopes it would be a massive money maker (Futurism).  What does this mean? Well, Mumbrella of all places had a great read on this: this is all putting an insane amount of pressure on OpenAI to make a lot of money through ads very quickly. And nothing we've seen yet suggests that it can beat the well-oiled ad machines of Google and Meta. 

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The Sizzler Say: Dad jokes, pair programming and killing cancer with a gun

As always, if you wanna get involved (or even be able to read what's on Slack) you can join the Slack server and forum via these links.

****** it didn’t really

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Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of World

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Oh, Also

A simple, cheap and no-brainer way to protect yourself from facial recognition

It's harder than ever to stay anonymous in public because of facial recognition software that's in everything from smart glasses to ubiquitous CCTV. But, as it turns out, we've had the solution all along: in 2018, someone noticed that the typical make-up of Juggalos, the fans of hip-hop duo, Insane Clown Posse, thwarts typical facial recognition software by obscuring the shape of the face.

So, next time you go to pick up the kids or pop down to the corner shops, do yourself a favour and paint up. 

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Bargains

Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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