### Issue 1937 - Thursday 21st September, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- New Amazon hardware devices like Echo Show 8, Eero 7, Fire TVs and more
- DALL-E image generator gets big update, more authors sue OpenAI & GitHub's Copilot Chat now in VS Code
- WhatsApp for iPad, FineWoven cases suck, iPhone 15 can charge other iPhones, 80% charge limit option for iPhone 15, Orion Video System
- 1Password adds passkey support so now you can pay attention to passkeys
- Cheap 42" LG OLED TV, UniFi doorbell, Samsung phones & Telstra plans, 9th-gen iPad, portable 13" OLED USB-C monitor, ABC Reading Eggs, iPhone trade-in bonus credit at Telstra, HP i5-8500 SFF PC

## The News

### New Amazon hardware devices like Echo Show 8, Eero 7, Fire TVs and more

Amazon's got a bunch of new hardware devices to sell ya. Go read the article to see everything, but there's now an Echo Hub - "a wall-mounted control panel for your smart home devices that's reminiscent of custom automation systems like Control4". The 4K Fire TV Sticks got updates, with the 4K Max getting support for Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision and HDR10+, as well as Wi-Fi 6E. There's now a Wi-Fi 7 version of Amazon's Eero range of mesh wi-fi access points that also includes four high speed Ethernet ports (2x 10Gbit & 2x 2.5Gbit). Probably the most useful and popular of the Echo Show devices, the 8, got a large upgrade that brings a better quality camera, spatial audio, improved background noise filtering, a built-in "smart home hub" that supports Zigbee, Sidewalk, Thread, Bluetooth, and Matter and a feature called "Adaptive Content" that changes what's on the screen based on how close you are to it.

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### DALL-E image generator gets big update, more authors sue OpenAI & GitHub's Copilot Chat now in VS Code

OpenAI has announced DALL-E 3, a big update to its image generator service. Going by the examples, it's probably a serious competitor to Midjourney, which is regarded as the current industry leader for turning text into images as a service. The killer feature for it would be integration with ChatGPT so you can tweak the image as you go, rather than having to come up with a new prompt each time. DALL-E 3 is still a "research preview", but will be available for ChatGPT Plus customers in October. Meanwhile, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, George RR Martin and 17 other authors are suing OpenAI for ripping off their work with ChatGPT. The lawsuit has specific ChatGPT queries that generates texts that use the same characters developed by the authors, which infringe on their copyrights. Oh and finally in AI-land, GitHub Copilot Chat is now available directly in VS Code for all users, for GitHub Copilot subscribers.

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### WhatsApp for iPad, FineWoven cases suck, iPhone 15 can charge other iPhones, 80% charge limit option for iPhone 15, Orion Video System

Some Apple related news:

- WhatsApp is finally getting an iPad app. This could be very good or very bad depending how much you like the boomers in your life.
- Apple's replacement for leather iPhone cases, FineWoven, is not very good. The Verge has been using the new case for a week and they think it sucks.
- The USB-C port on the iPhone 15 can be used to charge another device. Marques Brownlee charged an older iPhone from an iPhone 15 using the USB-C to Lightning cable.
- You can also set the iPhone 15 (but only the 15, not older phones) to charge to 80%, a handy feature if you want to prolong battery life by reducing charge cycles.
- Orion Video System is a new app from the makers of Halide that takes advantage of iOS 17's support for USB Video Class and allows you to use an iPad as an external monitor.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### 1Password adds passkey support so now you can pay attention to passkeys

If you've ignored passkeys until now, it's time to pay attention because 1Password now has passkey support, finally providing a non-platform specific way to store and sync your passkeys. This is important because up until now, if you did decide to use passkeys to log into something it was stored on that device, or on the cloud service of that device - iCloud for Apple gear, Google for Android/ChromeOS and Microsoft 365 for Windows. There are half-arsed attempts at syncing passkeys between platforms and devices (see Apple's iCloud Passwords Chrome extension - too bad if you use Firefox or some other browser), but if you store your passkey in 1Password instead, you can use it anywhere 1Password is supported - which is practically everywhere these days.

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## Bargains

- DJI Mini 3 Pro Drone with DJI RC Controller - $1069.99 from Mobileciti's eBay store
- LG OLED42C3PSA 42" 4K OLED TV - $1750 at Appliance Central (get JB or GG to price match and use the 15% off gift cards to pay)
- Ubiquiti UniFi Protect G4 Doorbell Pro - $584.39 from Amazon Germany
- Get $1500 off a Samsung Galaxy S23, S23+ or S23 Ultra when you go on a $99/m 24m Telstra plan at JB Hi-Fi
- Apple iPad 10.2" 9th Gen 64GB Wi-Fi - $447 at Officeworks (use the 15% off gift cards to pay and the price domes down $379.95)
- VCHANCE 13.3" 4K OLED portable USB-C monitor with 100% DCI-P3 & AdobeRGB gamut coverage - $280 from Aliexpress
- ABC Reading Eggs 12 Month Subscription - $109.99 from Reading Eggs
- Trade-in an iPhone 12 or newer and get a bonus $350 credit on top of the traded in phone's value to your account when you get an iPhone 15 from Telstra
- HP EliteDesk 800 G4 SFF PC (i5-8500, 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD) - $260 from Computer & Laptop Sales

## Image Of The Day

Meta Data Center in Odense, Denmark (Meta)

## The End

📻 Camp Orchestra - Show Me the Body

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