### Issue 1766 - Tuesday 17th January, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- Artists sue AI art generation apps for ripping off their work
- Plans to build big battery factory in Geelong
- Boost gets access to full Telstra 5G network but adds a speed cap
- 20 years since Bill Gates sent an angry to his underlings about Microsoft Movie Maker
- Cheap Seagate 8TB HDD, C&C Remastered Collection, Crucial 4TB SSD, free Shure mic with KRK speakers, Lenovo Windows Hello webcam, Dahua 4K monitor, 10% off JB gift cards, EKO 24" monitor, Rode Wireless GO II mic kit

## The News

### Artists sue AI art generation apps for ripping off their work

Artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz have sued Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt over their AI art generation tools. The trio reckon that these companies are ripping off their work by feeding it "millions—and possibly billions—of copyrighted images", "without the knowledge or consent of the artists". While the images they spit out " may or may not outwardly resemble the training images", "they are derived from copies of the training images, and compete with them in the marketplace. At minimum, Stable Diffusion's ability to flood the market with an essentially unlimited number of infringing images will inflict permanent damage on the market for art and artists". Good luck to them.

### Plans to build big battery factory in Geelong

Geelong might be getting Australia's first battery "gigafactory" (i.e: a factory than can pump out more than 1 GWh of batteries a year). A mob by the name of Recharge Industries has "already secured the equipment for the first 2GWh production line and that it will produce batteries for both electric vehicle and the stationary storage market". They'll start off with 2GWh, ramp up to 6GWh by 2026 and if all goes well the factory could handle up to 30GWh of production a year. It plans to use the skills and factories left behind by the auto industry in Geelong to build "state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery cells" with Australian minerals. They've also engaged "Accenture's engineering and capital projects expertise", which I guess is good if you need to lobby government for some grants.

### Boost gets access to full Telstra 5G network but adds a speed cap

Probably the best MVNO in Australia, Boost Mobile, has added 5G support to their plans. It's by far the cheapest way to get access to Telstra's full 5G network (unlike every other Telstra MVNO) when you consider you can get a 12 month SIM for around $150 or less. Unfortunately they've added a speed cap of 150Mbps on most of their plans, with only the most expensive getting uncapped speeds. Honestly, 150MBps is not that bad, but could be a deal breaker for some people. There's unfortunately no eSIM (handy for people with a work SIM & personal SIM) and still no Apple Watch/One Number support.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### 20 years since Bill Gates sent an angry to his underlings about Microsoft Movie Maker

It's the 20 year anniversary of a classic email Bill Gates sent to his crew after trying to download and install Microsoft Movie Maker on his computer and experiencing the same frustration we do whenever we try to use a Microsoft product. There's some fantastic, evergreen quotes in his rant:

- "they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated"
- "the download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is"
- "So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there. It is not there. What is there? The following garbage is there"
- "The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up. But that is just the start of the crap"
- "after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven't run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package"

After using Windows 11 a bit lately, not much has changed in 20 years over at Redmond.

## Bargains

- Seagate Barracuda 8TB HDD - $165.36 from GGTech365's eBay store
- Command & Conquer Remastered Collection for PC - $4.49 on Steam
- Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (14", Ryzen 7 4980U, 16GB RAM, 512GB) - $1448 from Microsoft's eBay store
- Crucial MX500 4TB 2.5" SATA SSD - $383.89 from Amazon USA
- Buy a pair of KRK V6 or V8 studio monitor speakers and get a free Shure SM7B microphone
- Lenovo 510 1080p webcam with Windows Hello support - $71.20 from Lenovo's eBay store
- Dahua LM28-F400 28" 4K monitor (VA-panel) - $186.42 from Futu Online's eBay store
- 10% off JB Hi-Fi gift cards at Woolworths
- EKO 24" 1080p monitor - $99 at Big W
- RØDE Wireless GO II microphone kit - $296.28

## Image Of The Day

At its Goulash Programming Night in May, Chaos Computer Club ran a pop-up, high-capacity network to meet 800 hackers' bandwidth needs, while mammoth drums of stew filled their bellies. (Antoine Bruy / Bloomberg)

## The End

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