### Issue 1779 - Monday 6th February, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- Jury finds Elon Musk not guilty of lying to investors over funding secured tweet
- Google invests $400m in OpenAI rival Anthropic despite being a leader in AI reseach itself
- Australian Treasury releases cryptocurrency token mapping consultation paper
- The new Apple HomePods are pretty good
- Cheap SSDs, Sony a7C camera, Kogan Mobile pre-paid SIM, Kayo, Philips 49" monitor, WD 5TB portable HDD, Dell & HP micro PCs, RTX 4070 Ti, Ozito cordless screwdriver, Apple Watch Ultra

## The News

### Jury finds Elon Musk not guilty of lying to investors over funding secured tweet

The jury in Elon Musk's trial over the "funding secured" tweet found him not guilty of lying to investors that funding was secured. The judge told the jury that the actual tweet was "untrue", but the jury had to decide if Elon was "untrue" on purpose or he actually believed funding to take Telsa private was secured and it not happening was simply bad luck/bad business - not a lie. In less than 2 hours the jury decided that they believed Musk's side of the argument and he slips away once again, like the greasy little capitalist piggy he is. One of the jurors said after the trial that "the overall message, it just didn't land" and that there was "nothing there to give me an 'aha' moment" to find Musk guilty of deliberately misleading investors with the tweet.

### Google invests $400m in OpenAI rival Anthropic despite being a leader in AI research itself

Google is dropping US$400m in a company called Anthropic, "an AI safety and research company" who has now "selected Google Cloud as its preferred cloud provider" - pretty much following what Microsoft has (so far) successfully done with vast investments in OpenAI. Anthropic is stacked with former OpenAI employees and is building its own rival to ChatGPT dubbed Claude. It's kinda weird Google is doing this and shitting their pants so hard at the rise of OpenAI. They have vast amounts of AI/ML experience, researchers, published papers, patents and various other technologies. Is Google's product pipeline so stunted that releasing products using the tech they've spent billions of dollars and years of effort on so difficult for them?

### Australian Treasury releases cryptocurrency token mapping consultation paper

Treasury has released a "token mapping" consultation paper. Token mapping in this context is "identifying the key activities and functions of products in the crypto ecosystem and mapping them against existing regulatory frameworks" - i.e: figuring out what the fuck is going on and if any laws we've got already can rein these cowboys in and if not, get feedback from the public about what any regulation the government can cook up to make sure people don't get burned when things go bad. I only took a quick skim of the consultation paper, but if you wanted to waste brain cells understanding what's going on with crypto, it seems like a good unbiased take of the scene.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### The new Apple HomePods are pretty good

After sending out Friday's issue of The Sizzle I went down to the Apple Store and picked up a pair of the new HomePods, curious as to how they sound against the speakers I spent the last month deliberating over and just finished setting up in my study. I wrote a blog post about it, but the short version is that the HomePods are great little units and most people would find them awesome in a stereo pair if they're Apple Music users and watch all their content via an Apple TV. They compete with my much bigger and uglier studio monitors that are fed via a pre-amp with Dirac Live room correction. Oh and they about half what this setup set me back.

## Bargains

- Patriot P210 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD - $79.15 from Amazon
- Sony Alpha a7C mirrorless full-frame camera - $2097 from JB Hi-Fi
- Kogan Mobile 365-day SIM with 500GB data - $180 from Kogan
- Buy a Western Bulldogs AFL membership and get 12 months of Kayo Sports Basic (and a scarf) for free - $220 from the Western Bulldogs
- Philips 499P9H1 49" 5120x1440 monitor - $1440 + delivery from Harris Tech
- Western Digital Elements SE Portable 5TB Hard Drive - $159 from Officeworks
- Dell Optiplex 7070 Micro (i5-9500, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) - $351.12 from BNEACTTRADER's eBay store
- HP Prodesk 400 G4 Mini PC (i3-8100T, 8GB RAM, no SSD/HDD) - $149 from UN Tech
- Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra 1TB & bonus $250 Amazon credit - $2197 from Amazon
- MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Gaming X Trio 12GB - $1299 + delivery & surcharge from Shopping Express
- Ozito 3.6V Cordless Screwdriver with USB Charging Base SDL-5000 & 24-bit CRV bits - $24.99 at Bunnings
- Apple Watch Ultra - $1199 + delivery & surcharge at Centrecom (good for Officeworks price matching)

## Image Of The Day

An unidentified Caltex employee sitting at a computer terminal of the digital control system in front of a display board showing examples of refinery instrument modernisation. (National Library of Australia)

## The End

📻 Hail Mary - CVC

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## Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

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.