### Issue 1707 - Thursday 6th October, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- Google has its own AI based video generator, Imagen (not a typo)
- Tesla removes ultrasonic sensors from new cars, will use cameras & AI instead
- Intel Arc graphics cards reviews are out, hardware good but drivers suck
- Optus class action, experts say Tesla's robot is average, Aus Post now sells NBN
- Cheap AirPods Pro, 24m Telstra plan, Macs, Samsung S22, Fallout 4, Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones, Wacom graphics tablet

## The News

### Google has its own AI based video generator, Imagen (not a typo)

Last week we saw Meta's impressive Make-A-Video artificial intelligence research that'll generate video clips based on a text prompt. Now Google's gone and one-upped its Californian cousin with Imagen Video. It'll take text description and generate "a 16-frame, three-frames-per-second video at 24-by-48-pixel resolution. Then, the system upscales and "predicts" additional frames, producing a final 128-frame, 24-frames-per-second video at 720p (1280×768)". One thing Imagen does better than other AI-art generators is render text properly. None of this stuff is perfect, but there's already a CG video guy on Hacker News shitting themselves at being disrupted by future versions of Make-A-Video or Imagen.

### Tesla removes ultrasonic sensors from new cars, will use cameras & AI instead

Tesla is going to stop installing ultrasonic sensors in their cars, relying on cameras and AI instead to determine how close you are to objects. This means new cars won't have "Park Assist, Autopark, Summon, and Smart Summon" as the cameras aren't up to the task yet. They'll return once "they perform equally well using its camera-based system". A few months ago Tesla did the same thing with the radar sensor used for adaptive cruise control and recently figured "Tesla Vision" was so good that it disabled the radar on cars with one. This resulted in an increase of dangerous "phantom braking" reports to the NHTSA. Personally I haven't had any issues with the vision-only cruise control on my Model 3 in the month or so since that update dropped.

### Intel Arc graphics cards reviews are out, hardware good but drivers suck

Intel's Arc A750 and A770 GPUs are finally in the hands of reviewers. Anandtech is a shadow of its former self, so that leaves Gamers Nexus on YouTube (ugh, video) as the best review out there. They found that the cards are pretty good and the A770 competes with the RTX 3600 very nicely at the 1080p/1440p level for less money - with a catch. The drivers seem to be a steaming pile of shite. Buggy to the point that the Arc cards have trouble connecting to some monitors and crash some games. Intel will probably fix this stuff sooner or later, but unless you're very tolerant of what Gamers Nexus classifies as a "beta" piece of hardware, wait, or grab an AMD RX 6600 XT instead.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Optus class action, experts say Tesla's robot is average, Aus Post now sells NBN

- Maurice Blackburn is seeing if there's enough people interested in a class action lawsuit against Optus for you know what. I put my name down, not that I expect anything besides a $25 cheque in 6 years.
- IEEE Spectrum asked wide range of experts what they think of Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot. Most of the reactions are "cool they got it done so quickly, but it's nothing special, good luck to them".
- Australia Post is now an NBN reseller. Insert joke about packet loss here. Not sure who's network they're reselling. Their mobile phone service is TPG, so maybe they've done a deal with them for NBN too?

## Bargains

- AirPods Pro 2nd Gen - $351.12 from Titan Gear's eBay store
- $1200 JB gift card if you go on a $99/m 300GB Telstra 24m contract (works out to $48.75/m)
- 10% off Apple Macintosh personal computers at JB Hi-Fi
- Samsung Galaxy S22 5G 128GB - $1049 at JB Hi-Fi
- Fallout 4 Game of the Year edition for PC - $13.73 on Steam
- Sony WH-1000XM5 noise cancelling wireless headphones - $510 at JB Hi-Fi
- Wacom Intuos Pro Medium Paper Edition - $369 from Bargain Avenue

## The End

📻 Enter Sandman - Art vs Science

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