### Issue 1693 - Wednesday 14th September, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- Twitter probably had a Chinese spy working there along with the Saudis
- Google's internet balloon idea, Loon, spun off from Alphabet as Aalyria
- Sonos mini sub, new Kindle, Goldeneye for Switch & Xbox, 2022 Adobe Emoji Report, 27th Sep for Artemis
- Cool looking mini-ITX case and Raspberry Pi mini-tower case
- Cheap Baseus powerbanks, Life is Strange for Switch, Elgato Stream Deck, Bose Sports Earbuds & Frames audio sunnies, Amazon Echo Show & Ring combo, Anker USB-C charger, Gran Turismo 7, Bose soundbar, Logitech vertical mouse, RTX3060 Ti graphics card

## The News

### Twitter probably had a Chinese spy working there along with the Saudis

Peiter Zatko/Mudge fronted a Senate Judiciary Committee to answer politician questions about Twitter's lax infosec after his whistleblower complaint a few weeks ago. The only new info revealed seems to be "at least" one Chinese spy was "suspected" of working at Twitter. When Peiter told management about his concerns, they replied with "well, since we already have one, that's better if we have more. Let's keep growing the office". Twitter's boss Parag Agrawal was invited to attend, but said he can't due to the ongoing situation in the courts between Twitter and Elon Musk. Meanwhile, Twitter's shareholders approved its sale to Elon Musk. As if they were gonna say no to US$44b after all this.

### Google's internet balloon idea, Loon, spun off from Alphabet as Aalyria

Remember Google Loon? It was one of their "moonshot" ideas to have weather balloons floating around sparsely populated areas, disseminating radio signals so people could access the internet and shooting lasers between the balloons as backhaul. The idea was doing this would be cheaper than setting up towers. Very much like Starlink, but with balloons instead of satellites. Loon was shut down in 2021 after 8 years of trying to monetise it. Now the technology has been spun off into a new company called Aalyria. They're got two key technologies - Tightbeam "the world's most advanced coherent light free space optics technology" (i.e: lasers instead of radio or cables) and Spacetime "a software platform for orchestrating networks of ground stations, aircraft, satellites, ships, and urban meshes". Good luck to everyone involved.

### Sonos mini sub, new Kindle, Goldeneye for Switch & Xbox, 2022 Adobe Emoji Report, 27th Sep for Artemis

- Sonos announced a cheaper wireless subwoofer that plays nice with their ecosystem, the Sub Mini. A$699, can pre-order now, goes on sale October 6th, available black or white.
- There's a new entry-level Amazon Kindle. 300ppi screen (but not "paperwhite") and USB-C seem to be the main upgrades from the previous model. It's also the lightest Kindle. On sale now for $179.
- The Nintendo 64 classic, Goldeneye 007, is coming to the Switch and Xbox. The Nintendo version will have multiplayer, but the Xbox one doesn't. It will however be in 4K and on Game Pass.
- Adobe's 2022 Emoji Trend Report (lord help us) reckons the USA'a most popular emoji is face with tears of joy. The least favourite is pile of poo. They actually surveyed 5,000 people to discover this.
- NASA has rescheduled the launch of Artemis 1. Tune in on September 27th to watch the big fucken rocket go up. If that date doesn't happen for whatever reason, October 2nd is next launch window.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Cool looking mini-ITX case and Raspberry Pi mini-tower case

Check out this classy little mini-ITX case. The Taku looks like a modern Scandinavian inspired coffee table, but is actually a computer case roughly the size of a keyboard with space for an SFX power supply and 280mm long graphics card. You can even place a monitor (up to 15kg) on top of it. Dunno how much it costs, where you buy it from, or even if it's still available to buy (this was stored deep in my bookmarks) but it looks cool. Here's a Raspberry Pi case that looks like a computer mini-tower. Has a little screen, a heatsink and fan for the CPU and a spot for an SSD.

## Bargains

- Baseus 20W output 20Ah/30Ah powerbank - $31.19/$35.87 from Baseus eBay store
- Life is Strange: True Colors for Switch - $37.46 from Amazon
- Elgato Stream Deck MK.2 (15 Keys) White - $205.98 from Amazon UK
- Bose Sports Earbuds - $165.90 from David Jones
- Bose Frames Soprano Audio Sunglasses - $221.90 from David Jones
- Amazon Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen) + Ring Video Doorbell (2nd Gen) - $133 from Amazon
- Anker Nano II 65W USB charger - $62.39 from Anker's eBay store
- Gran Turismo 7 for PS4 - $39 from Amazon
- Bose Smart Soundbar 700 - $789 from Amazon
- Logitech MX Vertical Advanced Ergonomic Mouse - $129 from Amazon
- Gigabyte RTX3060 Ti 8GB graphics card - $677.82 from Shopping Express Clearance's eBay store

## The End

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