### Issue 1924 - Monday 4th September, 2023

I'm back! Huge thanks to Josh & Raj for filling in while I was away last week. I'll probably take off another week or two in October, but you can worry about that when October rolls around.

## In Today's Issue

- Silicon Valley billionaires are creating their own city in Northern California
- Tesla gives the Model 3 a mid-life refresh
- Xgimi Horizon Ultra projector, Sony a7C II & a7CR cameras, Lenogo Legion Go handheld gaming PC
- I want to buy TCL's 115" X11G Max Mini LED TV but they only sell it in China
- Cheap Dell & LG monitors, Rode wireless mic, Marshall Bluetooth speaker, Panasonic Blu-Ray player, TCL 65" TV, WD 4TB SSD, Google Pixel 6, refurb SteelSeries wireless headset

## The News

### Silicon Valley billionaires are creating their own city in Northern California

A group of "Silicon Valley billionaires" have purchased around US$800m and 50,000 acres of land in Northern California between San Francisco and Sacramento to build "California Forever". Those investing in the project include "philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen". The group's website says "we have the opportunity to build a new community that attracts new employers, creates good paying local jobs, builds homes in walkable neighborhoods, leads in environment stewardship, and fuels a growing tax base to serve the county at large". Hands up who wants to live and work in a Silicon Valley billionaire's brain fart? Yeah, me neither.

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### Tesla gives the Model 3 a mid-life refresh

Tesla announced the long rumoured major update to the Model 3. It's not an all new car, but "Project Highland" features a new front-end design, new wheel covers, an 8" touchscreen for rear passengers, ventilated front seats, RGB ambient lighting, improved sound deadening, improved sound system, better wi-fi & Bluetooth antennas, larger rear trunk and new wheelcovers. Oh and they got rid of the indicator and transmission stalks on the steering wheel! You gotta push a button on the wheel to indicate and you change gears using the touch screen. Sounds pretty shit IMHO. The drive-train and battery are the same, but due to aerodynamic and other improvements range goes up a little to 512km on the base version and 629km on the Long Range version.

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### Xgimi Horizon Ultra projector, Sony a7C II & a7CR cameras, Lenogo Legion Go handheld gaming PC

Some cool and/or interesting gadgets got released the last week:

- Xgimi's Horizon Ultra is the first Dolby Vision compatible long-throw projector. It uses a laser light source so doesn't need an annoying lamp upgrade every few thousand hours, sports optical zoom with autofocus and pumps out 2,300 ISO lumens of brightness for only A$3,499. Here's a YouTube review. If I was buying a projector today, this would be near the top of my list.
- Sony updated their compact full-frame camera range. There's now an a7C II and an a7CR. The a7C II ($3499) gets a sensor upgrade (33MP) and adds the latest generation image processor like the bigger Sony cameras. The a7CR (A$4999) is a new model and sports the same 61MP sensor as in the bigger a7R V. Quite impressive stuff for such a small camera.
- Lenovo's got a nifty looking held gaming PC in the style of the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally. The Lenovo Legion Go has a large 8.8" 2560x1600 16:10 144Hz screen and packs an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC. It's also got 2x USB 4.0 ports, 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of internal SSD storage. Its party trick is that the side controllers slide off, just like a Nintendo Switch and has a optional pair of AR glasses for a virtual 86-inch screen. Goes on sale in November.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### I want to buy TCL's 115" X11G Max Mini LED TV but they only sell it in China

A large chunk of my time off was spent pondering about upgrades to my beloved home cinema. That will be a whole new post up on my blog, but whilst researching what I can do to exchange money for dopamine, TCL announced a new range of Mini LED TVs that seriously has me considering selling the projector and getting a big TV instead. OLED is the benchmark for image quality but a 98" OLED is $40,000. TCL's new X955 98" TV has over 5,000 dimming zones and can achieve up to 5000 nits peak brightness - brightness an OLED isn't capable of and perfect for Dolby Vision HDR. What's also interesting is that TCL is hoarding the biggest screen size for China only. The X955 tops out at 98" in Europe and the USA (Australia hasn't even got the current gen Mini LEDs from TCL, lol) but China gets a 115" version for A$17,000.

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## Bargains

- Dell S3423DWC USB-C 34" 3440x1440 monitor - $548.67 from Dell
- Rode Wireless ME microphone kit - $191.20 from digiDirect
- LG 28MQ780 DualUp 27.6" 16:18 monitor 2560x2880 - $909 at Harvey Norman
- Marshall Woburn II Bluetooth speaker - $577.99 from Amazon
- Panasonic DP-UB820 4K Blu-Ray player - $576 at JB Hi-Fi
- TCL 65" C845 4K TV - $1690 at Appliance Central
- Western Digital Black SN850X 4TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 2280 SSD - $379.28 from Amazon Germany
- Google Pixel 6 5G 128GB - $423.20 from MobileCiti's eBay store
- Refurb SteelSeries Arctis 1 Wireless Gaming Headset - $62.65 + delivery from JW Computers

## Image Of The Day

Herwart Holland-Moritz, known as Wau Holland, (20 December 1951 – 29 July 2001) was a German computer security activist and journalist who in 1981 cofounded the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), one of the world's oldest hacking clubs. (Volksfreund)

## The End

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