### Issue 1632 - Tuesday 21st June, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- SAPOL keen to use facial recognition in Adelaide CCTV network
- NSW throws some cash at kerbside and apartment EV charging
- TPG goes 10gbit, ARM ThinkPad, WA deep space satellite, heat pump breakthrough, Bitcoin mining turns unprofitable
- If you have to ask how much Synology's 60-bay NAS costs, you can't afford it
- Cheap Jabra earbuds, 8TB WD HDD, Anker headphones, Paragon Disk Manager, refurb iPhone 11, Vodafone SIM cashback, Anker USB charger

## The News

### SAPOL keen to use facial recognition in Adelaide CCTV network

The City of Adelaide is installing a new CBD wide CCTV system with the South Australian Police. As part of their agreement the city wants a formal promise from SAPOL that it won't use the CCTV system's facial recognition capabilities "unless and until the parliament of South Australia adopts legislation". This was in November 2021 and the SA state government hasn't passed any laws and the police are yet to respond to the city's demand. SAPOL told iTnews that "should a facial recognition capability be available investigators will consider the seriousness of the matter and evidentiary value when determining if it is appropriate to use the technology". Reading between the lines - fuck you City of Adelaide, we'll do what we want.

### NSW throws some cash at kerbside and apartment EV charging

EV charging for apartment owners is a massive pain in the arse, so it's nice to see that the NSW state government is gonna spend an extra $38m to co-found "500 more kerbside charge points and dozens more within apartment carparks". There are about 20 of these kerbside chargers in Sydney already, installed in Blacktown and Canada Bay (here's a video). They're new light poles, but with a socket on them to plug a car into and a little computer to manage the billing. If you live in an apartment and want an EV, you might like this document from the state government about how to get your building EV ready.

### TPG goes 10gbit, ARM ThinkPad, WA deep space satellite, heat pump breakthrough, Bitcoin mining turns unprofitable

- TPG is upgrading business fibre network to enable over 137,000 businesses in the footprint to get 10gbit speeds. It'll cost ya $2,499/m plus GST and you need to be in a specific area of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra. I wish they had a map.
- Lenovo has started selling the ThinkPad X13s, which features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx gen 3 ARM-based SoC. Some early Geekbench submissions show it to be much faster than the previous Snapdragon SoC, but still a fair way behind Apple's M1, let alone the new M2.
- The federal government will chip in $4m for a new deep space antenna in New Norica, 130km north-east of Perth. The antenna will be mostly funded by the European Space Agency and will help communicate with spacecraft, monitor for asteroids and study the sun.
- The US Department of Energy has announced that Lennox is the first company to meet their Residential Cold Climate Heat Pump Technology Challenge - one year ahead of schedule. It means those living in freezing conditions can get off fossil fuel to warm their homes.
- The price of Bitcoin crashing is good news for the environment. Miners are reducing activity as the cost of electricity exceeds the value of any Bitcoin mined. That electricity can then be used for more productive things or in the case of fossil fuel generated electricity, shut off all together.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### If you have to ask how much Synology's 60-bay NAS costs, you can't afford it

Synology's got a new-ish NAS - the HD6500. It contains 60x 3.5" HDD bays in a 4U rack chassis. Inside are 2x 10-core Xeon CPUs, 64GB of RAM (upgradeable to 512GB), 2x 1GbE and 2x 10GbE Ethernet and a couple of PCIe slots. CPL has the HD6500 on pre-order for $31,770.60. Without disks. Chuck in 60x 20TB HDDs ($821 each off Amazon, $49,260 for 60), you're looking at just over $81,000 for just under 1.1PB of raw storage. If 60 HDDs isn't enough, you can expand the array to 300 with up to four RX6022sas expansion units ($12,119 each, which is the HD6500 but without a computer), which also have capacity for 60 drives per unit. I'll add it to my Christmas wishlist.

## Bargains

- Jabra Elite 7 Active/Pro wireless earbuds - $178/$198 from Amazon
- WD80EAZZ 8TB SATA 3.5" HDD - $188 from Umart
- Anker Soundcore Life Q35 noise cancelling headphones - $149.99 from Amazon
- Paragon Hard Disk Manager 25th Anniversary Edition - free from Paragon
- Refurb iPhone 11 64GB - $499 from Coles
- 65% cashback on prepaid Vodafone SIMs via ShopBack (365-day SIM not eligble)
- Anker 543 (65W II) slim USB charger - $62.39 from Anker's eBay store

## The End

📻 Urethane - Fu Manchu

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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.