### Issue 1975 - Thursday 16th November, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- Microsoft designs their own Arm CPU & AI accelator/GPU while OpenAI pauses ChatGPT Plus signups
- YouTube to mandate realistic AI disclaimers & Google GraphCast AI weather forecasting model looks good
- Twitter hasn't paid eSafety fine, Australia needs 1.4m tech workers by 2030, remotely witness your NOIM
- The freshest webcam news you didn't know you cared about, Logitech Reach & Opal Tadpole
- Cheap Xbox Series X, Moza smartphone gimbal, GL.iNet router, Nintendo eShop gift cards, Sonos soundbar, TCL & LG TVs, EA Sports FC 24, Apple Music, Sennheiser earbuds, Weller soldering station, Apple Pencil, Zoom H4n Pro, Samsung 990 Pro SSD

## The News

### Microsoft designs their own Arm CPU & AI accelator/GPU while OpenAI pauses ChatGPT Plus signups

Microsoft's gone and designed its own CPU and AI chip for Azure. The Cobalt CPU is a "128-core chip that's built on an Arm Neoverse CSS design" that'll be used to power "general cloud service" on Azure, which right now are being tested with Teams and SQL servers. Azure customers will be able to run VMs on the Cobalt CPUs "next year". This is pretty similar to Amazon's Graviton Arm-based CPUs. The Maia AI accelerator was made in collaboration with OpenAI and is a similar chip to AMD's MI300X or Nvidia's H100, albeit probably not as powerful as either of those. It looks like the main reason Microsoft bothered to do this is so they actually have access to this type of hardware, as it's so hard to compete with everyone else over a limited supply of chips. SemiAnalysis has way more info, but it's paywalled so I couldn't read it all. Maybe this increase in compute capacity will allow OpenAI to resume new subscriptions for ChatGPT Plus, as they've "paused" signups today after "surge in post devday" activity "exceeded our capacity".

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### YouTube to mandate realistic AI disclaimers & Google GraphCast AI weather forecasting model looks good

Here's two stories that show the dichotomy of AI at the moment. YouTube will "require creators to disclose when they've created altered or synthetic content that is realistic, including using AI tools". Particularly important for "sensitive topics, such as elections, ongoing conflicts and public health crises, or public officials". Very bad, do not like this, please make it stop. On the other hand, Google DeepMind has a new AI meteorology model called GraphCast that "demonstrated superior performance over the world's leading conventional system, operated by the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts. In a comprehensive evaluation, GraphCast outperformed ECMWF's system in 90% of 1,380 metrics". Which is great, but even DeepMind says that "our approach should not be regarded as a replacement for traditional weather forecasting methods", "which have been developed for decades, rigorously tested in many real-world contexts, and offer many features we have not yet explored".

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### Twitter hasn't paid eSafety fine, Australia needs 1.4m tech workers by 2030, remotely witness your NOIM

- X was fined $610,500 back in October by the eSafety Commissioner for non-compliance with Australia's Basic Online Safety Expectations. It had 28 days to pay the fine and unsurprisingly, has not done so. A spokesperson from eSafety said that they are "now considering further steps". I'd love to know the practicalities of who/where they sent the fine to and what happens now, considering there's no X business structure in Australia?
- Australian Computer Society's latest Digital Pulse report reckons that Australia will need 1.3 million to 1.4 million tech workers by 2030, a fair bit more than the 928,000 we have now and more than even the 1.2 million the Technology Council of Australia lobby group was hyping up last year. There's never been a better time to know how to computer!
- Old mate Josh Withers let me know that if you're wanting to get married in Australia, you can get your Notice of Intended Marriage remotely witnessed via videoconferencing, rather than having to do it in person. It was something they did during the pandemic and everyone liked it enough to change the law to keep it going. A nice little use of technology that makes life easier for everyone.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### The freshest webcam news you didn't know you cared about, Logitech Reach & Opal Tadpole

Today seems to be webcam news day, with Logitech announcing a crowdfunding campaign (???) for the Reach - a 1080p/60fps webcam on a stand that's similar to a solid desk lamp, designed for broadcasting stuff on a table, kinda like an overhead projector. It's selling for $398 if you're one of the first 500, going up to $614 once those are sold and will ship in mid-2024. The other interesting webcam is Opal's Tadpole, featuring a pixel-binned 48MP Sony IMX582 sensor. The Verge's side-by-side pics with a MacBook Air webcam and the Tadpole are pretty dramatic. It's kinda expensive too at A$297 shipped, but it's cheaper and easier than a full mirrorless camera setup.

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## Bargains

- 15% off JB Hi-Fi & The Good Guys gift cards at Coles next week
- Xbox Series X 1TB Console - $645 at JB Hi-Fi next week
- Moza Mini-S Essential Smartphone Gimbal - $59 from CR Kennedy
- GL.iNet Flint 2 AX6000 wi-fi 6 router - $181 from GL.iNet
- 10% off Nintendo eShop Gift Cards at Big W next week
- Sonos Arc Black Soundbar - $1,188 at The Good Guys & JB Hi-Fi
- TCL C845 75" 4K TV - $1,800 delivered from The Good Guys eBay store
- EA Sports FC24 for PS5 - $54 from Amazon & Big W
- 6 months free Apple Music for PS5 owners
- LG OLED42C3PSA 42" or OLED65C3PSA 65" OLED 4K TV - $1,425/$2,888 at JB Hi-Fi
- Sennheiser IE200/IE600/IE900 earbuds - $143.10/$629.10/$1079.10 from Sennheiser
- Weller 70W Digital WE 1010 Soldering Station - $224.10 from Tools.com (could also get Bunnings to price beat)
- Apple Pencil 2nd Gen - $157 from Officeworks
- Zoom H4n Pro (All Black Edition 2020) - $198.75 from Amazon Japan
- Xbox Series X with Diablo IV & Modern Warfare 3 - $719 from Amazon
- Samsung 990 Pro 4TB PCIe 4.0 SSD - $428.85 from Amazon USA

## Image Of The Day

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - National Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS) and IBM have celebrated the first anniversary of the creation of the "Supercomputing Technology Center", whose main aim is the execution of research projects related to hardware and software technologies in high-performance computing. In this photo, the Marenostum supercomputer. (IBM Research / Flickr)

## The End

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