### Issue 2232 - Friday 6th December, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Bitcoin surprasses US$100,000 because Bitcoin boys are taking over Washington DC
- OpenAI's 12 days of ship-mas & $200/m ChatGPT Pro
- Waymo expanding to Miami, Kagi Teams, xAI wants 1,000,000 GPUs
- Law professor thinks bannking kids from social media is likely unconstitutional
- Friday Forum Update
- Cheap short throw laser projector, Belkin wireless charging stand, 10% off first purchase JB Hi-Fi Business

## The News

### Bitcoin surprasses US$100,000 because Bitcoin boys are taking over Washington DC

Just when we thought it was safe to ignore cryptocurrency and pretend it doesn't exist, it's come roaring back into mainstream attention as the value of one Bitcoin has surpassed US$100,000 for the first time. There's no doubt this incredible rise in price has been given a boost by the fact Trump will sit in the White House again soon. Trump picked Paul Atkins to lead the SEC - a bloke who "leads Patomak Global Partners, a financial services advisory group that works with crypto industry clients. He also serves as an adviser to the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a crypto advocacy group". A stark difference from the current SEC boss who has been cracking down on cryptocurrency scams and adding more checks and balances to the industry. He also assigned hedge fund manager Scott Bessent and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnik to head the Secretary of Treasury and Commerce departments, another big cryptoguy.

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### OpenAI's 12 days of ship-mas & $200/m ChatGPT Pro

OpenAI announced "12 days of ship-mas", a series of "new features, products, and demos during all 12 days starting December 5th". The first of these announcements is a US$200/m ChatGPT Pro subscription that includes "unlimited access to OpenAI o1, GPT-4o, and Advanced Voice mode. It also includes a version of o1, exclusive to Pro users, that uses more compute to provide the best possible answer to the hardest problems (called o1 pro mode)". Compared to the o-1 preview model ChatGPT Plus subscribers have had for a few months, subscribers to ChatGPT Plus can expect a faster, more powerful, and more accurate model that is better at coding and math. It can also provide “reasoning” responses to images. And OpenAI promises it’s been trained to be more concise, which should result in faster response times than o1-preview". OpenAI also mentioned that they've struck a deal with Future (who I used to write for!) to suck up content from Tom's Guide, PC Gamer, TechRader and more.

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### Waymo expanding to Miami, Kagi Teams, xAI wants 1,000,000 GPUs

- Waymo is expanding its robotaxi fleet to Miami. Training kicks off in 2025 and they hope to offer taxi services to the public via the Waymo One app in 2026. Folks on Hacker News reckon it's a big deal because it rains way more in Miami and their current locations (SF, LA, Phoenix) and when it does rain, it's often a heavy downpour.
- Kagi launched a Teams product that lets you provide access to Kagi's search engine and/or AI tools to a group of people. Business accounts also get "priority support, custom onboarding on-demand, and a dedicated success manager for teams over 50 users". In a nice touch, "if team members are away, inactive or cancelled, their unused balance automatically convert to credits for future use".
- According to the Financial Times, xAI is is aiming to expand the Memphis based "Colossus" cluster from 100,000 GPUs to over 1,000,000 after raising an extra US$5b of investment. On one hand, this is very cool and I love big fast computers. On the other, wow what a waste of resources. Isn't there anything more useful it can do than a spiteful version of ChatGPT?

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Law professor thinks bannking kids from social media is likely unconstitutional

Sarah Joseph, a Professor of Law at Griffith University specialising in human rights law and Australian constitutional law, wrote an article explaining how they reckon the government's law banning kids under 16 from social media is likely a breach of the constitution. Sarah argues that kids have "implied freedom of political communication" under the constitution since 1992 when the High Court interpreted it as such and confirmed again in 1997. By blocking kids from social media, it could be implied that the government is placing a "burden" these citizens from political communication. I look forward to someone (maybe one of the various lobby groups the big tech companies fund??) testing this in court.

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## Friday Forum Update

Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.

- FiCan noticed the smartmoney.gov.au website's unclaimed money feature exposes the addresses of those with unclaimed funds
- netizen needs a hand connecting some speakers to an amplifier
- warkolm started a thread for Kagi subscribers to share their 3 month free trial links with those keen to give Kagi a shot
- davo67 is wondering if it's worth moving to Boost or Telstra pre-paid over Aldi so they can get 5G now that 3G isn't a thing
- evilalpaca is after suggestions for a laptop that'll suit a kid starting year 10

## Bargains

- Formovie short throw laser projector & 120" ALR screen - $3040 from Nothing Projector
- Belkin BoostCharge Pro wireless charging stand - $175 from Amazon
- 10% off your first purchase via JB Hi-Fi Business (check OzBargain thread on how to get access)

## Image Of The Day

Listening Post 2SER FM 107.5 Radio Guide November 1982 (National Library of Australia)

## The End

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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.