### Issue 1374 - Thursday 27th May, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- Amazon buys MGM movie & TV studio
- More big dollar sales of memes as NFTs
- Tesla decides radar is obsolete, using cameras alone for safety features
- Snowden exposes real estate shyster live at own conference
- Cheap Sony headphones, FIFA 21, refurb Alienware monitor, Spotify Premium, iPhone 12 mini on a Telstra plan

## The News

### Amazon buys MGM movie & TV studio

Amazon dug around the back of the couch and found a lazy US$8.45b to buy MGM, the famous movie studio known for the roaring lion, owning 4,000+ movies (including all the Bond films) and 17,000+ TV shows (I assume that's episodes, not individual TV shows???). According to Recode, the point of Amazon buying MGM is not to "compete with Netflix or the other biggies for watch time and subscriber dollars. It just wants you to watch some video and spend some money" - i.e: sell more and retain more Amazon Prime customers, probably bump up the cost eventually. Oh and also in Amazon news, they've confirmed that Andy Jassy (who was previously in charge of AWS) will take over the CEO role once Bezos becomes executive chair of Amazon's board on July 5th.

### More big dollar sales of memes as NFTs

Who remembers the classic proto-meme "Charlie Bit My Finger"? Well it's about to be taken off YouTube because its owner, the family of Charlie and his finger, sold it as an NFT for half a million UK pounds and part of the sale included taking it down. A user called 3fmusic beat mememaster for the total controlling rights of this bit of content that's had 880m views on the YouTube. The new owner will also get permission to create a parody video of the original, featuring the stars Charlie and Harry Davies-Carr. Another classic meme, that photo of a young girl standing in front of a burning house with a cheeky grin, sold for almost half a million US bucks as an NFT a few weeks ago. There's more money than sense floating around the world lately. As someone on Hacker News said, "I'm not stupid enough to make money in this market".

### Tesla decides radar is obsolete, using cameras alone for safety features

Tesla is ditching the installation of radars from upcoming builds of the Model 3 and Model Y. Normally these are used to determine the existence and distance of an object from the vehicle and are commonly used for adaptive cruise control, but Tesla reckon its new "Tesla Vision" camera-based Autopilot system is so good, that radar is now useless. Considering how radar hardware is now a commodity and how useful they are, it's mind boggling that Tesla wouldn't utilise them to aid the cameras. They're saving what, a few hundred bucks at best? After experiencing camera and radar based Autopilot shit the bed numerous times (constant misalignment, sunset/dusk disabling cameras, dirty cameras, rain obscuring view), I'm skeptical that relying on 1.2MP cameras from 2015 alone for emergency braking, adaptive cruise and others features is smart. But hey, Elon is the big brained genius here, I'm sure my safety is his number 1 priority.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Snowden exposes real estate shyster live at own conference

A Canadian bloke called Sunil Tulsiani hosted a get rich quick conference that somehow had Edward Snowden lined up to speak at. God knows why he was asked and why Snowden agreed, but when it was time for Ed's appearance, he let loose on Sunil, sharing his screen with the audience to display a news article explaining how Sunil was involved in a ponzi scheme that got him banned from trading securities for life by Canadian regulators. Ed departed the Zoom chat saying that the things he heard in the preceding talks disturbed him and that everyone watching should do their research on this fuckwit (my words, not Mr. Snowden's) Tulsiani. The video of it going down in real time is glorious.

## Bargains

- Sony WH-1000XM4 bluetooth noise canceling headphones - $292 from etrade's eBay store
- FIFA 21 for PS4/XB1 - $19 at Amazon
- Refurbished Alienware AW3418DW 34" gaming monitor (with 3 year warranty) - $845 from Dell Outlet
- 3 months free Spotify premium for new customers
- $900 off an iPhone 12 mini if you go on a 12m $99 Telstra plan at The Good Guys

## The End

📻 Vitriol - Bluejuice

😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.

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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.​