### Issue 2195 - Tuesday 15th October, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Adobe pumps more AI into Creative Suite at MAX conference
- Smith Family wants a "national device bank" to close the digital inclusion gap
- Windows 10 support ends in 365-days, but vast majority of Windows installs are still using it
- Crikey's coverage of the NSW & SA social media summit is worth a read
- Samsung S24 Ultra, AirPods Pro, Anker Prime USB charger, TCN Ultimate gift cards, Catch Connect 365-day pre-paid SIM

## The News

### Adobe pumps more AI into Creative Suite at MAX conference

Adobe is adding more AI features to its Creative Suite, with the headline feature being "Generative Extend" for Premiere. It allows users to "extend the end or beginning of footage that's slightly too short, or make adjustments mid-shot, such as to correct shifting eye-lines or unexpected movement" for up to 2 seconds. Useful for filling in small gaps between scenes, or even camera errors. Photoshop gets a "Distraction Removal" tool and existing features like Generative Fill, Generative Expand, Generate Similar, and Generate Background get access to an updated version of Adobe's Firefly model.

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### Smith Family wants a "national device bank" to close the digital inclusion gap

The Smith Family is using Anti-Poverty Week to highlight the increasing digital divide and in an interview with The Guardian, wants the "federal government to create a national device bank in order to close digital inclusion gaps among young people". They don't go into much detail, but essentially its taking corporate devices that are no longer used and giving them to disadvantaged families so the kids can have a computer. You'd probably pair it with some form of tax incentive so companies have some motivation to do that instead of letting the leasing supplier sell them at auction. Sounds like a great idea to me.

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### Windows 10 support ends in 365-days, but vast majority of Windows installs are still using it

Heads up - there's one year left of security updates for Windows 10, with Microsoft re-confirming that October 14th, 2025 is the end date for updates unless you pay for three more years of support - but they haven't announced a price for that yet. Operating system support ends all the time, but Windows 10 is still really damn popular. Two thirds of all active Windows systems worldwide are using Windows 10 as adoption for Windows 11 has been very slow due to the relatively high hardware requirements. Gonna be fun to see what happens in a year's time!

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Crikey's coverage of the NSW & SA social media summit is worth a read

Crikey has had the only coverage of last week's "social media summit" co-hosted by the NSW & SA state governments, that bothered to read between the lines instead of taking whatever the two Premiers said at face value. Cam Wilson's piece once again reminds us that the only way to actually achieve what the Premiers are agitating for is a national ID verification scheme for social media. Axel Bruns, who actually attended the summit, writes that "the prevalent mood varied between frustration with the lack of meaningful expert consultation, exasperation over Australia's political leaders and their advisers either having swallowed this confected moral panic whole or actively exploiting it for political gain, and a small flicker of hope that the bans will be neither implementable nor enforceable in practice".

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## Bargains

- Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, 12GB RAM, 256GB storage - $1734.30 from Amazon
- AirPods Pro (2nd Gen) w/ MagSafe Case (USB-C) - $294.99 from Costco
- Anker Prime Charger (250W, 6 Ports, GaNPrime) USB charger & bonus Anker Nano USB-C powerbank - $254.95 from Anker
- 10% bonus credit (e.g: buy $100 card for $100, has $110 credit on it) on TCN Ultimate Gift cards at Woolworths
- Catch Connect 365-day SIM with 360GB data, unlimited calls & SMS - $180 from Catch

## Image Of The Day

Optical disk manufactured by Eastman Kodak Company, USA, and used as a test disk by Kodak Australasia Pty Ltd software engineers working in the Advanced Imaging Systems (AIS) group, at Kodak's Coburg factory in the late 1980s. The donor of the disk was the AIS group projects manager who worked with the team from the late 1980s to mid 1990s. The Eastman Kodak optical disks were designed to store digital data, and represented one of the earliest commercial products for electronic image and document storage, before the era of digital cameras. Sold commercially from about 1988, the Eastman Kodak 14 inch diameter disks were 'write once-read many times' with a 100 year archiving guarantee, and were typically used in automated libraries, with readers colloquially known as 'jukeboxes', which had up to 100 disk capacity. The disks were typically sold to system developers, who had to develop their own software to operate the disks. This particular optical disk was used to test the formatting of data relating to a document digitisation system that the Kodak Australasia Advanced Imaging Systems group developed in the late 1980s. The Advanced Imaging Systems group was a Kodak Australasia department established in Melbourne in 1988 to develop new business for the company outside traditional product lines. The focus of this group was to find technical solutions to making permanent and accessible electronic copies of legal and archival documents. The group developed software, which was based on a Unix system, for use on commercial hardware systems available from Eastman Kodak and other leading firms, including Eastman Kodak optical disks, scanners and 'jukebox' retrieval systems. Their clients included the Australian Securities Commission at Morwell, and the Land Titles Office in Perth. Their solutions for the digital management of paper documents included digitisation of documents, storage on permanent optical disk media, and fast and efficient electronic retrieval systems. Despite multi-million dollar contracts, developing successful business solutions and expanding from 3 staff to 14, the group ultimately did not fit with the company's future plans and was not continued past the late 1990s. (Museums Victoria)

## The End

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