### Issue 1567 - Wednesday 16th March, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- AMD has new cheaper Ryzen CPUs based on Zen 2 & 3
- QLD introduces $3,000 subsidy for electric cars
- Zuck announces NFTs coming to Instagram soon
- The effects of taking away online safe spaces for kids online
- Cheap 77" LG OLED TV, Sensibo Sky, Mirabella smart LEDs, Anker Soundcore Motion+, Bose QC45 headphones

## The News

### AMD has new cheaper Ryzen CPUs based on Zen 2 & 3

AMD's got new CPUs to fill out the medium-to-low end of their product stack to better compete on price with Intel's latest. The Ryzen 7 5700X, Ryzen 5 5600, and Ryzen 5 5500 are Zen 3 based CPUs. The Ryzen 3 4100, Ryzen 5 4600 and Ryzen 5 4600G are Zen 2 CPUs built on the current 7nm process. All of these are designed to be under US$300. The most interesting CPU in this announcement is the 8-core Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which AMD reckons is "The World's Fastest Gaming CPU" thanks to a whopping 96MB of L3 cache. Expect these CPUs to filter down to your favourite PC store by the end of April. They'll all work with existing AM4 mobos too - even the 300 series chipsets, pending a BIOS update.

### QLD introduces $3,000 subsidy for electric cars

Queensland has joined the club of states offering a $3,000 subsidy for buying an electric car, starting July 1st. The state already had reduced stamp duty, so this new bonus is nice, as is an extra $10m to add more rapid chargers to the Queensland Electric Super Highway. It is capped at cars priced less than $58,000 - quite different to other states like NSW & VIC where the limit is more like $68,000, which means Austraila's most popular EV, the Tesla Model 3, is ineligible for the subsidy because the government did not want to subsidise people "who can easily afford well-off vehicles". EV Central has a list of Australian EV incentives.

### Zuck announces NFTs coming to Instagram soon

This could be good news or bad news depending how you see the world, but Mark Zuckerberg was on a panel at South By Southwest yesterday and said "we're working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term", adding that "I'm not ready to kind of announce exactly what that's going to be today. But over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment". Also on the topic of NFTs, Zuck said that "the clothing that your avatar is wearing in the metaverse, you know, can be basically minted as an NFT and you can take it between your different places". Mmmm, I can't wait.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### The effects of taking away online safe spaces for kids online

Junkee has a great article highlighting how important the internet is for LGBTIQ people, which the government, influenced by disingenuous "save the children" groups, are slowly eroding. Whilst not LGBTIQ, I understand how important having a place on the internet to call your own is for kids. As a shy, moody teenager with immigrant parents in a working class suburb that didn't really have much in common with the other kids at school, the internet in the late 90s and early 2000s was one of the few things to give me joy. Constant surveillance of what I was up to, ratting me out to teachers, parents or the government, or those places shutting down entirely would have been devastating.

## Bargains

- LG 77" OLED C1 (2021) with bonus $1000 Harvey Norman gift card - $5995 at Harvey Norman
- Sensibo Sky smart air conditioner controller - $118.95 from Reduction Revolution
- Mirabella Genio Smart LED 9W bulbs - $4.50 at Woolworths
- Anker Soundcore Motion+ Bluetooth speaker - $109.99 from Amazon
- Bose QuietComfort 45 Bluetooth headphones with bonus $40 Amazon credit - $399 from Amazon

## The End

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