### Issue 2193 - Friday 11th October, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Tesla's announces Robotaxi, Robovan & Tesla Bot, unsupervised FSD for current cars "next year"
- Lawyer busted using AI to make up case citations VIC referred for further investigation
- Valve to sell Steam Deck in AU, Microsoft to sell Xbox games via Android app, Nintendo selling an alarm clock
- Good info about EV chargers from Standards Australia
- Friday Forum Update
- Cheap Sony headphones, Apple Pencil, TerraMaster NAS, Cricut cutting machine, Bose soundbar

## The News

### Tesla's announces Robotaxi, Robovan & Tesla Bot, unsupervised FSD for current cars "next year"

I just sat through Tesla's "We, Robot" live event and Musk's terrible presentation skills. In the 30 minute show, Musk talked about how current Teslas will offer full unsupervised self driving in California and Texas next year, showed off the Robotaxi (a Model Y without rear doors or a steering wheel, drives itself, sub-US$30,000, you can be a car landlord & them out, goes on sale "before 2027"), the Robovan (same thing but a van) and Tesla Bot, a robot that does chores for you. Fuck all detail on Tesla's website, just this single page with more photos than words. The Verge's liveblog has all the "highlights". This is Musk in full charlatan mode. Bewilders me who is still eating this up in 2024 given Musk's history and the quality of Tesla's FSD in current vehicles.

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### Lawyer busted using AI to make up case citations VIC referred for further investigation

Remember the Victorian lawyer who used "artificial intelligence software in a family court case that generated false case citations and caused a hearing to be adjourned"? He's been referred to the Legal Services Board and Commissioner for investigation. The judge that referred the case for investigation said that despite the lawyer apologising and that "the stress it caused meant it was unlikely to be repeated", it needed to be investigated because "it was in the public interest for the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner to examine professional conduct issues, given the increasing use of AI tools in law".

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### Valve to sell Steam Deck in AU, Microsoft to sell Xbox games via Android app, Nintendo selling an alarm clock

Australia's getting the Steam Deck! You could buy them pretty easily via grey importers, but now Valve is gonna sell them officially. 256GB LCD - $649, 512GB OLED - $899, 1TB OLED - $1,049 and they'll ship in November. Raj let me borrow his Steam Deck for a few days and I quite enjoyed it. Very tempted to pick one up. Also in gaming news, Microsoft's gonna start letting you buy games for your Xbox account via the Xbox Android app thanks to the US court ruling saying Google has to let them do that now without demanding they use Google's billing services. Would be nice if I could do the same on iOS! And finally, Nintendo is selling a $160 alarm clock that monitors your sleeping.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Good info about EV chargers from Standards Australia

Standards Australia released two technical specifications this week about EVs - SA TS 5396:2024 & SA TS 5397:2024. They're relatively short documents covering the basics and some best practices for installing EV chargers in residential and commercial settings. Free to read, but you have to "buy" them through Standard Australia's store and they're DRM encumbered PDFs. I can't think of a worse way to distribute this information. By the way, if this kinda thing interests you, I have a very long blog post about my experience trying to start a public EV charger network.

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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.

- Tung is after recommendations for a 100W+ multi-port USB charger for travel
- itgrrl's got a heap DVDs and Blu-rays to rip and has a few questions about automating the process
- 0plus1 needs a phone number to display in public listings but doesn't wanna spend much
- andyb exposed that ME Bank doesn't take customer data privacy seriously
- Did you know there's a thread containing all 468 Images of the Day in chronological order? I like scrolling through it every now and then

## Bargains

- Refurb Sony WH-1000XM5, WH-1000XM4 or WF1000XM5B headphones - $330.65/$254.15/$211.65 from Sony's eBay store
- Apple Pencil 2nd Gen - $130 from Amazon
- TerraMaster F4-423 NAS (4x 3.5", 2x NVMe SSD, 2x 2.5GbE, 4GB RAM, Intel N5095 CPU) - $558.99 from Amazon
- Cricut Maker 3 Cutting Machine - $494 at Officeworks
- Bose Solo Soundbar 2 - $146 from Amazon

## Image Of The Day

Kodacolor HR Disc film cartridge. The disc has 15 colour exposures and was manufactured Eastman Kodak Company, USA, from the mid-1980s. This product is part of the Kodak collection of products, promotional materials, photographs and working life artefacts collected from Kodak Australasia in 2005, when the Melbourne manufacturing plant at Coburg closed down. (Museums Victoria)

## 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.