### Issue 1977 - Monday 20th November, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- OpenAI sacks CEO, senior scientists quit, Microsoft very upset, board begs for CEO back
- Optus CEO calls it quits after cyber security and network outage debacles
- eSafety releases draft Industry Standards & believes in Qanon conspiracy theories
- Starship's 2nd launch goes a bit better, 25th anniversary edition of Half-Life, Amazon sacks big chunk of Alexa team
- There's 60 bargains in today's issue, I ain't listing them all here, scroll down!

## The News

### OpenAI sacks CEO, senior scientists quit, Microsoft very upset, board begs for CEO back

OpenAI's board had a busy weekend, sacking CEO Sam Altman because "he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities". This lead President Greg Brockman and "three senior scientists" to resign in protest. Apparently the OpenAI board saw the recent Dev Day keynote and were pissed off that OpenAI is straying from its non-profit mission (I forgot OpenAI is a non-profit!) of "ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity" - essentially a power struggle between the academics and the startup bros. This left OpenAI's major partner and compute cow Microsoft "blindsided" and Satya Nadella so "furious" that they're agitating to sack the OpenAI board and bring Sam Altman back. Get the popcorn out folks.

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### Optus CEO calls it quits after cyber security and network outage debacles

Also in unceremonious exits, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has resigned as CEO of Optus. She said in a statement that "having now had time for some personal reflection, I have come to the decision that my resignation is in the best interest of Optus moving forward". Kinda expected considering the absolute shitshow that was the "cyber attack" a few months ago that will probably see the OAIC hand out some punishments and/or legal proceedings and the recent network outage. I missed it on Friday, but Optus' managing director of networks Lambo Kanagaratnam admitted in the Senate that "we didn't have a plan in place for that specific scale of outage". Come on man, you're the 2nd biggest telco in the country and you didn't have a plan for a a total network outage? Lambo should follow Kelly out the door.

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### eSafety releases draft Industry Standards & believes in Qanon conspiracy theories

eSafety has released draft Industry Standards that applies to basically every website and app in Australia and any service where people can chat to each other. The headline demand from eSafety is mandatory, proactive and automated monitoring of these services for kiddie porn or terrorist content where "technically feasible" (so E2EE is safe for now), and if not feasible, "take appropriate alternative action". The Commissioner used WhatsApp as an example, who she claims can "pick up on a range of behavioural signals that they've developed over time, and they can scan non-encrypted parts of the services, including profile and group chat names, and things like cheese pizza emojis, which is known to stand for child pornography" - err, the US Qanon nutjob conspiracy theory cheese pizza??? I know the commissioner is a crank, but this is next level naive. Fact sheets explaining the Industry Standards are on eSafety's website.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Starship's 2nd launch goes a bit better, 25th anniversary edition of Half-Life, Amazon sacks big chunk of Alexa team

- SpaceX's Starship made a little more progress over the weekend, with the largest rocket ever built managing to reach space for the first time. It failed on its aim of reaching orbit, but it was the first time all 33 Raptor engines ignited at the same time, making for an immense spectacle. Watching one of these take off is absolutely on my bucket list.
- Valve has released a 25th anniversary remaster of Half-Life. It has updated graphics with support for widescreen field of view and up to 3840x1600 resolution, gamepad support out of the box and "various bug fixes" among other things. There's also a 1 hour documentary about the game if you're a super keen fan. It's free until 5AM on the 21st of Nov if you don't already have Half-Life in your Steam library.
- Amazon has begun firing "several hundred" people in its Alexa division. A memo to employees said that "we're shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers — which includes maximizing our resources and efforts focused on generative AI". There's only so many things you can jam a voice assistant into where people will actually use it!

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## Bargains

- 6% off eGift cards (including Amazon) at Gift Card Exchange
- 1TB Kingston NV2 PCIe 4.0 SSD - $67.83 from Amazon
- GL.iNet GL-A1300 travel router - $84 from Amazon
- Belkin BoostCharge Pro 4-Port GaN Charger 108W - $78 from Amazon
- 8BitDo Ultimate 2.4G or Pro 2 controllers - $60/$58.99 from Amazon
- Apple AirPods 2nd-gen - $158 from Amazon
- SanDisk Ultra 1TB MicroSDXC card - $108.86 from Amazon
- Kingston A400 120GB 2.5" SATA SSD - $17 from Amazon
- PNY CS900 250GB 2.5" SATA SSD - $20.10 from Amazon
- Xbox Series X & Diablo IV Bundle - $695 from Amazon
- Ultimate Ears Megaboom 3 portable Bluetooth speaker - $197.13 from Amazon
- Nintendo Switch Online membership 12 month, family/individual (can stack up to 3 years) - $25.45/$46.70 from Amazon
- Sennheiser HD 599 Special Edition open back headphones - $125 from Amazon
- Bose Smart Soundbar 900 - $846.60 from Amazon
- Amazon eero Pro 6 mesh wi-fi kit (3-pack) - $499 from Amazon
- Logitech MX Keys S Combo (mouse, keyboard & palm rest) - $239.62 from Amazon
- Logitech MX Keys S Wireless Keyboard - $146.64 from Amazon
- Elgato Wave Mic Arm (High Rise) Black - $119 from Amazon
- Elgato Wave Mic Arm LP White Low Profile - $125 from Amazon
- Silicon Power Ace A55 2TB 2.5" SATA SSD - $118.99 from Amazon
- Meta Quest 2 128GB & $100 Amazon Gift Card - $439.99 from Amazon
- Samsung 2TB T7 Shield Portable SSD - $179 from Amazon
- Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 40mm LTE or 40mm Bluetooth - $389/$294 from Amazon
- EA Sports FC24 for Playstation & Xbox - $49 from Amazon
- Logitech Signature K855 Wireless Mechanical TKL Keyboard - $74 from Amazon
- Sony PlayStation 5 DualSense controller - $75 from Amazon
- NVIDIA Shield TV Pro - $278 from Amazon
- Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd Gen) - $57 from Amazon
- Crucial T500 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD - $174.96 from Amazon USA
- Intel Optane P1600X 118GB PCIe 3.0 SSD - $92.94 from Amazon USA
- IK Multimedia iLoud MTM Compact Studio Monitor Speaker (single) - $394 from Amazon UK
- Jabra Elite 8 Active wireless earbuds - $238.09 from Amazon Germany
- Philips Fidelio X2HR/00 headphones - $151.84 from Amazon UK
- 15% off JB Hi-Fi gift cards at Coles starting Wednesday
- Audio-Technica Sound Burger Bluetooth Turntable - $257 at JB Hi-Fi
- Kindle Scribe 10.2" with Premium Pen 16GB/32GB/64GB - $489/$519/$569 from JB Hi-Fi
- 30% off Blu-ray movies & TV shows at JB Hi-Fi
- Diablo IV Standard Edition - $65.95 on Battle.net
- Samsung HW-Q930C/XY soundbar, sub & surrounds - $745 from Betta Electrical
- Google Nest Hub Gen 2 - $79 from Telstra
- Sennheiser HD 600 open back headphones - $359.10 from Sennheiser
- Apple Watch SE 40mm/44mm - $349/$399 from Big W
- Bose Smart Soundbar 600 - $559 from Myer
- Apple TV 4K (2022) 128GB - $233 from Centrecom
- Binge Basic (with ads) - $2/m for 3 months via Binge
- Sonos One SL wireless speaker - $185 from The Good Guys
- LG 42" OLED42C3PSA 4K OLED TV - $1348 at Harvey Norman
- Sonos Beam (2nd-gen) soundbar - $588 from Harvey Norman
- Backbone One for Android or iOS - $125 from Harvey Norman
- Bose QuietComfort SE Headphones - $283 from Harvey Norman
- 1000/50 NBN - $99/m for first 6 months from Swoop Broadband
- Powkiddy RGB20S 3.5" Handheld Game Console - $98 from Tomtop
- Circle.Life (Optus MVNO) 600GB/m data & unlimited calls SMS - $55/m from Circle.Life
- Amaysim 365-day SIM unlimited calls & SMS, 150GB/200GB data - $130/$170 from Amaysim
- Sony WH-1000XM4 Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones - $349 from Sony's eBay store
- TCL C845 65" 4K Mini LED TV - $1310 + delivery from Powerland's eBay store
- Double load credits at Timezone on 24th & 25th of Nov
- No Man's Sky - $39.97 on the Nintendo eShop
- Portal Companion Collection - $9.51 on the Nintendo eShop
- Xbox wireless controller - $59 at Officeworks & The Good Guys
- Flip Connect (Optus MVNO) pre-paid 100 min calls, 100 SMS, 500MB data - $4/m from Flip Connect

## Image Of The Day

Expedition 70 Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko from Roscosmos is pictured during a spacewalk to inspect a backup radiator, deploy a nanosatellite, and install communications hardware on the International Space Station's Nauka science module. (NASA Johnson / Flickr)

## The End

📻 Virginia Reel Around The Fountain - The Halo Benders

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