### Issue 1593 - Tuesday 26th April, 2022

I'm back! Thanks Josh, Chris and Joel for keeping the news flowing while I spent some time away from my desk. I should do it more often.

## In Today's Issue

- Twitter board accepts Elon Musk's takeover offer
- Boring Company to build Hyperloop test, Hawaiian Airlines to offer Starlink on flights, Elon's beef with Bill Gates
- EU outlines 2nd batch of serious tech regulations, the Digital Service Act
- Raspberry Pi 4 can boot off the internet, PXE or USB and even has a PoE hat
- Cheap 1TB microSD, Kindle Paperwhite, Lenovo Smart Frame, Lenovo Smart Clock, Samsung 1TB portable SSD, Jabra earbuds, Crucial NVMe SSD, Megaboom 3 Bluetooth speaker, AirPods Pro, AudioTechnica turntable, RTX3060 GPU, Coles Mobile SIM, Baseus LED bar, SanDisk 256GB flash drive, Dell 34" monitor, Ryzen 9 CPUs, AirPods Max

## The News

### Twitter board accepts Elon Musk's takeover offer

Twitter's board has accepted Elon Musk's US$44b offer to buy all its shares and take it off the public market. It's pretty tough to look at that offer, a 38% premium over Twitter's current share price, and say no when you consider the struggles Twitter has had trying to turn a buck since its IPO. What's the plan now? Musk says he wants to "make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans". Vox explores some scenarios where Musk tries to make Twitter worth the US$44b he's on the hook for, The Atlantic ponders various worst-case scenarios and The Verge reckons employees aren't happy about their new boss.

### Boring Company to build Hyperloop test, Hawaiian Airlines to offer Starlink on flights, Elon's beef with Bill Gates

I'm sorry to have to keep talking about him, but Elon's been pretty noisy the last few days:

- The Boring Company casually tweeted this morning that "Hyperloop testing at full-scale begins later this year" and Elon tweeted "In the coming years, Boring Co will attempt to build a working Hyperloop".
- Hawaiian Airlines signed a deal with Starlink to provide "complimentary high-speed, low-latency broadband internet access to every guest onboard flights between the islands and the continental U.S, Asia and Oceania".
- Elon confirmed that he doesn't like Bill Gates because he learned that Bill has a "half billion short against Tesla" stock, which Elon confronted Gates about in a text message. Elon has moved on apparently.

### EU outlines 2nd batch of serious tech regulations, the Digital Service Act

The European Parliament and EU Member States have agreed on details regarding one the EU's big sticks for regulating tech companies - the Digital Services Act. The DSA aims to set a "new standard for the accountability of online platforms regarding illegal and harmful content". It's pretty detailed and hard to summarise in a single paragraph, but essentially the EU wants to see platforms make their algorithms transparent, limit the use of personal data for targeted advertising and give users a way to challenge content moderation. This page has a good introduction to the DSA if you'd like to know more.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Raspberry Pi 4 can boot off the internet, PXE or USB and even has a PoE hat

This happened a few months ago, but the Raspberry Pi 4 can now boot off the internet (like a Mac in recovery mode) and write an OS to the microSD card. No need to download an image and write to the card on a separate computer! How nifty is that? This is even older, but the Raspberry Pi has an official PoE "hat" that'll power the unit and send data, as well as the ability to boot off an external USB drive, allowing the use of heaps faster (and more reliable) SSDs. Maybe you'd prefer to boot off the network instead via PXE? You can do that! I love this little computer.

## Bargains

- SanDisk Extreme 1TB microSD card - $249.99 from Amazon
- Kindle Paperwhite 5 (8gb, 11th-gen) - $199 from Officeworks
- Lenovo Smart Frame 21.5" - $379.05 from The Good Guys eBay store
- Lenovo Smart Clock Essential - $39 at Officeworks
- Samsung T7 1TB portable SSD with bonus $20 Steam gift card - $127.88 from Bing Lee's eBay store
- Jabra Elite 7 Active or Elite 7 Pro wireless earbuds - $179/$199 from The Good Guys
- Crucial P1 NVMe 1TB SSD - $118.95 from Shopping Square
- UE Megaboom 3 portable Bluetooth speaker - $183.08 from ITS Australia's eBay store
- Apple AirPods Pro - $299 from Amazon (or get Officeworks to price match down to $284.05)
- Audio Technica AT-LP2X turntable - $299 from JB Hi-Fi
- Colorful iGame RTX 3060 Mini OC 12GB video card - $549 from BPC Tech
- Coles Mobile 365-day SIM with 60GB data - $99 from Coles
- Baseus monitor LED bar - $29.69 from Baseus' eBay store
- SanDisk 256GB Ultra USB 3.0 flash drive - $31.99 from Amazon
- Dell S3422DW 3440x1440 100Hz 34" monitor - $499 from Dell's eBay store
- AMD Ryzen 9 5900X or 5950X CPU - $559.23/$764.52 from Scorptec's eBay store
- Apple AirPods Max in Pink/Green or Blue/Silver - $619/$624 from Harris Technology (also an Officeworks price match opportunity)

## The End

📻 Elektrobank (Demo 3/6/96) - The Chemical Brothers

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