### Issue 1431 - Tuesday 17th August, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- NHTSA to do an in-depth investigation of Tesla's Autopilot crashing into parked emergency vehicles
- Intel announces early-2022 date for consumer gaming-centric discrete GPUs called Arc
- OnlyFans made a non-explicit app to get past app store censorship & wants to be the next Patreon
- Yet another app developer is cutting features because Apple can't make up its mind on what is or isn't allowed
- Cheap iPad Air, Netgear M5 LTE modem, Dell 34" USB-C monitor, VentraIP shared hosting, Optus plans for 2nd number

## The News

### NHTSA to do an in-depth investigation of Tesla's Autopilot crashing into parked emergency vehicles

The USA's National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has launched a formal investigation into "the entire scope of the Autopilot system, including how it monitors and enforces driver attentiveness and engagement, as well as how the system detects and responds to objects and events in or near the roadway". Their probe will cover 11 crashes since 2018 where a Tesla using Autopilot crashed into stopped emergency vehicles. It's pretty fucked that a car claiming to be "full self driving" (in beta, lol) can't detect a parked ambulance or fire truck and stop safely 100% of the time. Shit, I drive under a bridge using "traffic aware cruise control" and the car freaks out. Hope the NHTSA throw the book at Tesla.

### Intel announces early-2022 date for consumer gaming-centric discrete GPUs called Arc

Intel is gonna release "their first high-performance discrete GPUs and video cards" in the first quarter of 2022. They'll be branded as "Arc" cards based on the "Alchemist" generation of hardware, which uses the Xe gamily of GPU microarchitecture Intel has shipped in a few products already (mostly compute modules for servers). There's not much in the way of specifics, but Arc is designed to be a mainstream card to compete with Nvidia and AMD's mainstream GPUs, with full DirectX 12 support (even the fancy features). Intel has a good opportunity here to sell well-priced, useful GPUs to a market that is frothing for it as buying an Nvidia or AMD card is a massive pain in the arse due to cryptocurrency mining and semi-conductor manufacturing difficulties that haven't impacted Intel like they have TSMC.

### OnlyFans made a non-explicit app to get past app store censorship & wants to be the next Patreon

According to OnlyFan's CEO, the most common question he gets from customers is why the insanely popular platform doesn't have an app. To get around Apple and Google's "no sex please, we're from Silicon Valley" stance on their app stores, OnlyFans made OFTV. It's been around since Feb but they've only started to promote the app now. OFTV is pretty much a showcase of popular people on Only Fans doing interviews and "original videos from pilates instructors, chefs and podcasters" - fully clothed. OnlyFans hopes that a more mainstream app like OFTV will help it to "shed its reputation as a purveyor of pornography and rebrand itself as a vital tool for all online creators". Dunno about that, but good luck with it.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Yet another app developer is cutting features because Apple can't make up its mind on what is or isn't allowed

Apple-watchers might be familiar with the name Kosta Eleftheriou, who has been doing the Lord's work in highlighting blatant scam apps on Apple's app store that Apple themselves turn a blind eye to until public critiscm raises above a whsiper. Now Kosta has had enough of Apple placing "obstacle over obstacle" with his app FlickType and is removing "an iPhone keyboard component designed specifically for blind and low-vision VoiceOver users that features large keys, high-contrast colors, and VoiceOver feedback" because Apple flip-flop between allowing these features, then banning his app because of them. Putting on my tin-foil hat, I wonder if Apple's inconsistency here is because of Kosta's inconvienent App Store discoveries and/or his lawsuit against Apple?

## Bargains

- iPad Air 4th Gen 64GB Wi-Fi - $749 at Officeworks
- Netgear Nighthawk M5 LTE modem - $546 from Telstra
- Dell U3419W 34" curved USB-C monitor - $909.54 + delivery from Megabuy
- 70% off all shared hosting plans at VentraIP
- Port a 2nd number to an Optus account and get 50% off that number's plan for 12 months

## The End

📻 USA - Mr. Bungle

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