### Issue 1667 - Tuesday 9th August, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- BlenderBot 3 is Meta's attempt to make a machine learning chatbot
- Nvidia takes a hit due to reduction in crypto mining
- Lots of used Teslas in Australia, Linktree to sack 10% of staff, Reserve Bank looks into a digital currency
- Continuity Camera in iOS 16 looks alright, Desk View is cool too
- Cheap JB, Apple & Amazon gift cards, iPhones, Pixel 6 Pro, Logitech keyboard, iPad Mini, SVS subwoofer, Surface Duo 2

## The News

### BlenderBot 3 is Meta's attempt to make a machine learning chatbot

Meta has unleashed BlenderBot 3, "the first 175B-parameter, publicly available chatbot complete with model weights, code, datasets, and model cards". Meta says BlenderBot 3 is an experiment and the purpose of making it public (US only at the moment) is so people can interact with BlenderBot and tell Meta when it does dumb stuff and they can refine it. Vice/Motherboard played around with BlenderBot and found its "responses are also just generally not very realistic or good", "frequently changes topics apropos of nothing, and gives stilted and awkward answers that sound like a space alien who has read about human conversations but never actually had one".

### Nvidia takes a hit due to reduction in crypto mining

Nvidia's Q2 financials are probably going to suck because they're releasing some info early so the bed wetters (aka investors) don't have to buy a new mattress. They forecasted US$8.1b in revenue but only achieved US$6.7b. Nvidia reckons it's due to companies like Gigabyte and Asus not ordering as many GPUs as expected. Why would there be such a lull in demand for what are arguably the best graphics cards money can buy? The cryptocurrency crash and in particular, Etherum. It's no longer profitable to mine Etherum so all those mining rigs/fire hazards are up for sale and flooding the 2nd hand market, with gamers picking up some deals instead of buying new. AMD actually increased its gaming revenue in the same period but their GPUs aren't used by crypto miners.

### Lots of used Teslas in Australia, Linktree to sack 10% of staff, Reserve Bank looks into a digital currency

- There's over 300 used Tesla Model 3 cars for sale at the moment in Australia, mainly due to Model Y deliveries kicking off locally. You'd think such a glut of vehicles would mean lower prices, but no, the asking prices are mostly more than RRP.
- Linktree (an Australian startup, if you didn't know - I didn't!) is sacking 17% of their staff, so about 50 people. Their justification is "to emerge stronger from the economic downturn". Linktree is valued at $1.78b. Not bad for such a simple idea.
- The Reserve Bank of Australia announced it is starting a "one-year research programme into the case for a central bank digital currency" and "identify innovative use cases and business models". Good luck to everyone involved.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Continuity Camera in iOS 16 looks alright, Desk View is cool too

During WWDC 2022 Apple showed off an iOS 16/macOS 13 feature called Continuity Camera that allows you to use an iPhone as a webcam, no cables required. The good news is that it seems to work well and offers superior image quality than the built-in webcam on a Mac. Desk View was the feature I'm most interested in as I had no idea how a camera pointing at you could give a usable image of what's on the desk! In practice it's a bit wonky. Anything flat seems to work well, but anything with some height (like hands) looks weird. Here's a video of Desk View in action. Looks useful in very specific situations.

## Bargains

- 5% off JB Hi-Fi gift cards via Cashrewards
- Apple iPhone SE (3rd Gen) 64GB - $619 from David Jones
- Google Pixel 6 Pro - $999 from Telstra
- iPhone 13 128GB, iPhone 13 Pro 128GB, iPhone 13 Pro Max 128GB - $999/$1449/$1599 from Telstra
- Logitech MX Keys Mini - $126 from AMazon
- 20x Everyday Rewards points on Apple gift cards & 10x points on Amazon gift cards at Big W
- Apple iPad Mini 2021 (6th Gen) 64GB Wi-Fi - $649 at Amazon
- SVS SB-1000 Subwoofer (white) - $788 from West Coast Hi-Fi
- Microsoft Surface Duo 2 256GB - $1575.20 from Microsoft's eBay store

## The End

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