### Issue 2059 - Wednesday 3rd April, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Amazon to stop using "Just Walk Out" tech in supermarkets, 70% of transactions were human reviewed
- OpenAI building a very big computer, pitches Sora to Hollywood & holds back voice cloning tech for the good of society
- Tesla making way more cars than they can sell
- Starlink map, Diffusion Bee, disable browser push notifications
- Cheap Vimeo Plus, NVMe USB enclosure, Samsung SSD, portable 144Hz 1080p monitor, UE Epicboom speaker, Panasonic S5iiX camera

## The News

### Amazon to stop using "Just Walk Out" tech in supermarkets, 70% of transactions were human reviewed

You know Amazon's fancy grocery stores where you "Just Walk Out" with your items instead of scanning them? That's no longer a thing, Amazon's getting rid of it from stores and replacing it with Dash Carts, "a scanner and screen that's embedded in your shopping cart, allowing you to checkout as you shop" and self-checkout counters. It appears that the Just Walk Out technology didn't really work as "700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022". Those human reviewers being a team of 1,000 people in India who watched and labelled videos of people shopping to make sure the customers were billed correctly for the things they took off the shelf.

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### OpenAI building a very big computer, pitches Sora to Hollywood & holds back voice cloning tech for the good of society

OpenAI has been busy the last few days. Last week it was revealed that they're teaming up with Microsoft to build a US$100b on a supercomputer dubbed Stargate. It would need up to 5GW of power, which to put into perspective, is roughly the peak power generation of the entire state of Victoria. ETA on that bad boy is 2028. They also announced Voice Engine, "a text-to-speech AI model for creating synthetic voices based on a 15-second segment of recorded audio" that they're not releasing because it's too good and society isn't ready for it. As Dave Karpf explains, there's no way this thing isn't being primarily used for crime. Meanwhile, Sam Altman was in Hollywood giving demos of its Sora model that can make videos from a text prompt to major studios. Fun times ahead!

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### Tesla making way more cars than they can sell

As I prepare today's issue of The Sizzle much earlier than usual because I have to take my shitbox 2021 Model 3 all the way to Richmond due to a fault with DC charging where the car randomly decides I can't use a Supercharger, making journeys more than 200km from home impossible. This is the 3rd time in 3 years I've had to take it in for something relatively major. The heat pump shit the bed while I was in Brisbane a few months ago requiring a total replacement and it was delivered from the factory with a totally misaligned suspension that was unsafe to drive (Tesla deemed within spec, my local mechanic is the one who fixed it), so it is of no surprise to me that Tesla's sales numbers are collapsing. In Q1 2024 they built 433,371 cars but only managed to "deliver" 386,810 of them. Over on Reddit someone realised that since 2022 Tesla has built 144,000 more cars than they've given to a customer - where are the cars? Has everyone who wants an expensive EV got one? Are people put off by Elon Musk's awful personality? Do Tesla simply make poor quality vehicles? Is it all of the above???

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Starlink map, Diffusion Bee, disable browser push notifications

- Someone's made a live updating map of all 5,600 Starlink satellites orbiting Earth. It's mesmerising. Starlink isn't perfect (astronomers kinda hate it for getting in the way of their view of space) and Musk is a prick (do I really need to explain?) but you gotta admit, Starlink is pretty fucking cool.
- If you've got a Mac and want to fuck around with some AI image generation, check out Diffusion Bee. It uses the latest open source Stable Diffusion models, including Stable Diffusion XL and runs entirely offline. No quotas or limits like DALL-E and Midjourney, just how much GPU power you've got to spare.
- Lloyd Atkinson makes a post explaining how if you care for your friends and loved ones, you will disable push notifications in their web browser as a security measure. What would otherwise be a useful feature is once again ruined by scammers looking to frighten non-technical users and deliver malware. Fuckers.

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## Bargains

- 40% off a yearly or monthly subscription to Vimeo Plus
- Samget M.2 NVMe USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 20Gbps USB-C SSD Enclosure - $23 from Aliexpress
- Samsung 980 PRO 1TB Gen 4 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD - $123.19 from Amazon USA
- ARZOPA 16.1" 144Hz 1080p portable monitor - $137 from Aliexpress
- Ultimate Ears EPICBOOM Bluetooth speaker - $329 from LTS eBay store
- Panasonic Lumix S5iiX w/ 20-60mm kit lens - $2669 from Digital Camera Warehouse

## Image Of The Day

Wafer of electronic grade polycrystalline silicon, 250x magnification. Joseph A Psioda & Eric D Bieler, Union Carbide Corp. (1983 Nikon Photomicrography Competition)

## 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.