### Issue 1313 - Friday 26th February, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- Twitter shows off new features Super Follows, Communities and Safety Mode
- Framework is making a modular, user-serviceable laptop with no compromises
- CEFC lay down the cash for a giant battery in Geelong to be built by Tesla
- Load balancing Plex and a platform for billing for access to a Plex server
- Cheap Coles Mobile SIM, Limbo & Inside game bundle, iPhone 12 Mini plan, Cisco & Microsoft exams, DJI Mini 2 Fly More Combo

## The News

### Twitter shows off new features Super Follows, Communities and Safety Mode

Twitter has cooked up a new feature called Super Follows to tap in that direct payment model for content made popular by Patreon, OnlyFans and Substack. Super Follows will allow "Twitter users to charge followers and give them access to extra content. That could be bonus tweets, access to a community group, subscription to a newsletter, or a badge indicating your support". Twitter will also be launching Communities, kinda like a zone for tweets on a particular topic in the vein of Facebook Groups and Safety Mode, a setting you can enable to "mute accounts that might be using insults, name-calling, strong language, or hateful remarks".

### Framework is making a modular, user-serviceable laptop with no compromises

Framework is a fresh startup looking to make a modular laptop in the fashion of a Fairphone smartphone, but also not a brick sized unit that looks ridiculous next to its non-modular contemporaries. According to the Arstechnica profile, the specs of Framework's first laptop is pretty similar to a Dell XPS 13, but 100g heavier and 1.1mm thicker. Hardly noticeable to be honest. It's designed from the ground up to be user-serviceable, with everything in a socket and a few expansion bays that allow users to configure their laptop with the ports they want. Will be interesting to see what it's like on release in mid-2021.

### CEFC lay down the cash for a giant battery in Geelong to be built by Tesla

The federal government's Clean Energy Finance Corporation is providing $160m of debt financing to build the "Victorian Big Battery" out near Geelong that'll be built by Tesla using its Megapack product for Neoen who will operate it - pretty much just like that one in Adelaide but bigger. And big it is, being able to store 300MW and output 450MWh of electricity (I think I got that right??). The VBB's main job is to take part in the System Integrity Protection Scheme, acting as a buffer for electricity generation as it flows around the grid in Victoria.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Load balancing Plex and a platform for billing for access to a Plex server

Wanna share your Plex library with multiple people but don't have the upload bandwidth to handle it? Someone by the name of bolagnaise on the Plex forums detailed how to setup a Ubiquiti Edgerouter to "load-balance" Plex across two different ISPs - perfect if you've got FTTP NBN and can have up to 4 ISPs running simultaneously at your premises to aggregate your upload speeds. Wouldn't need it if we had proper internet like New Zealand, but here we are. If you're that kinda nerd, you might even want to look into Kronos ("smooth and easy management of thousands of Docker containers running Plex or Emby, across a multitude of dedicated servers, while also providing your customers a front-end dashboard to manage their docker container") to take it a step further.

## Bargains

- Coles Mobile (Optus MVNO) 120GB 365-day pre-paid SIM - $129 from Coles
- LIMBO & INSIDE Bundle for PS4 - $10.23 on the PlayStation Store
- $349 up front for an iPhone 12 Mini 64GB on a Telstra 150GB plan for $99/m at The Good Guys
- 50% off Cisco certification exams at Pearson Vue
- DJI Mini 2 Fly More Combo drone - $759.20 at Anaconda
- A free Microsoft exam voucher for completing a challenge in the Microsoft Ignite Cloud Skills Challenge

## The End

📻 Where's Your Head At - Basement Jaxx

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