### Issue 2036 - Tuesday 27th February, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- Microsoft invests 2b euro in Mistral, Europe's OpenAI
- US Supreme Court hearing a juicy case regarding social media moderation
- Superloop thinks Aussie has undervalued it, Lenovo makes new T14 laptop easier to repair, Elon has a sook about Windows
- Music floppy disks are on trend
- Cheap Stardew Valley, LG 4K monitor, Lenovo IdeaPad, refurb Dell micro PC, TCN & Xbox gift cards, AudioTechnica Sound Burger

## The News

### Microsoft invests 2b euro in Mistral, Europe's OpenAI

There's no doubt that Microsoft reckons AI is the future of computing, as they've invested 2 billion euro into Mistral, the European equivalent of OpenAI. In return for their 2 billion euros, "Mistral's open and commercial language models available on Microsoft's Azure AI platform" and gives Microsoft a minor stake in the company. Mistral also released Mistral Large, their "flagship" text generation model that competes with GPT-4 and is available not only as an API, but as a chatbot called Le Chat (because they're French) that's currently available as a beta to show off the API.

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### US Supreme Court hearing a juicy case regarding social media moderation

The US Supreme Court is hearing a case right now to decide if "social platforms akin to newspapers, which have First Amendment protections that give them editorial control over content—or are they common carriers, like phone providers or telegraph companies, that are required to transmit protected speech without interference". This is in response to laws in Texas and Florida that make it a crime to moderate online platforms, which happened because of the perception that "conservative" voices are being "unfairly" censored. Tech companies argue those state's laws infringe on the First Amendment and hamper their "ability to decide for themselves what speech they will publish and how they will present it to users".

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### Superloop thinks Aussie has undervalued it, Lenovo makes new T14 laptop easier to repair, Elon has a sook about Windows

- Superloop said that Aussie Broadband's proposed takeover is "opportunistic and fundamentally undervalues Superloop" and "does not intend to engage with ABB [Aussie Broadband] on the indicative proposal". So there ya go, nothing's happening unless Aussie stump up more cash.
- Lenovo's partnered with iFixit to provide repair instructions for their new T14 Gen 5 laptops and achieve a 9/10 repairability score. They've returned RAM and SSD to be in sockets so you can upgrade later, made the battery user replaceable and it's easy to open with normal tools. See Apple, it isn't so difficult!
- Elon Musk had a whinge on X about setting up his new Windows laptop, aghast that it won't let him use it unless he creates a Microsoft account which "also means giving their AI access to my computer!". He then sent a message on X to Satya Nadella asking him to change this. Satya didn't reply (smart).

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Music floppy disks are on trend

The Verge has a story about people distributing music on floppy disks in the year of our lord 2024. It's basically a of a song compressed down enough to fit in 1.44MB and sold on the retro medium for shits and giggles, but I like it. According to Discogs there's over 2,000 floppy disk music releases, many of them from the 90s, before MP3s were really a thing, containing MIDI files. I remember avidly collecting MIDIs back in the day! Used to turn them into ringtones and give em to kids at school. There's a label in Hungary called Floppy Kick that sells disks containg music on Bandcamp for a couple of euro. A album is just a bunch of floppies, a song per track!

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## Bargains

- Stardew Valley for PC - $8.49 on Steam
- LG 27UP550N-W 4K IPS USB-C monitor - $518 + delivery from Bing Lee (or get Officeworks to price beat)
- Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 (R7-8845HS CPU, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 16" 1920x1200 IPS) - $1259 from Lenovo
- Refurb Dell OptiPlex 7060 Micro PC (i7-8700, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) - $331.17 from Max Direct
- 10% off TCN Him (can use at JB & Good Guys) and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate gift cards at Woolworths
- Audio Technica Sound Burger Bluetooth Turntable - $299 at JB Hi-Fi

## Image Of The Day

Macworld December 1984 (gui-dos / The Internet Archive)

## The End

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