### Issue 1546 - Monday 14th February, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- SA goes big with state-wide EV charger network & residential bi-directional charging finally approved
- An update on Elon Musk's big shiny rocket
- Two private memeber's bills, one unhinged, one full of common sense
- LG Chem is a battery powerhouse, a totally portless laptop, LowEndBox's best provider award
- Cheap Dell laptop bag, Spotify & Kayo gift cards, SanDisk USB drive, DarkFlash mini-ITX case, AirPods, Galaxy Buds Pro, IT Masters graduate certificates, CatchConnect SIM

## The News

### SA goes big with state-wide EV charger network & residential bi-directional charging finally approved

The SA government has given the Royal Automobile Association and Chargefox a $12.35m grant to build 536 fast EV charging stations across 140 locations (26 metro, the rest in regional/rural SA). Here's a map of locations, with the rollout to be completed within 2 years. Meanwhile, the first bi-directional EV charger has been approved for sale in Australia. The Wallbox Quasar has a CHAdeMO plug that goes into your EV and can power your home, turning your Nissan LEAF (pretty much the only car with a CHAdeMO plug and a decent sized battery) into a residential battery on wheels - for $10,000 plus install.

### An update on Elon Musk's big shiny rocket

Elon Musk gave a 75-minute presentation about what's going on with SpaceX's Starship late Friday afternoon. There doesn't seem to be much news around it as unlike a typical Musk dog and pony show, there was nothing weird to talk about. It was primarily Musk giving a rehash of his 2016 "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species" speech, saying we should be colonising other planets and how space exploration will bring people together and so on. However, he did say "I feel highly confident we'll get to orbit this year" regarding Starship and that the Raptor 2 engine has 230t of thrust (i.e: almost 5x the J-2 rockets used in Saturn V). Here's the full presentation if you want to get up to speed on Elon's big shiny rocket.

### Two private memeber's bills, one unhinged, one full of common sense

Federal MP George Christensen crawled out from under his rock and introduced a private member's bill titled "Social Media (Protecting Australians from Censorship)". It would create types of "prohibited censorship" (aka deleting disinformation, banning an account) against "protected persons" (aka politicians). It'll go nowhere. A private member's bill that might go somewhere (but still relatively unlikely) is the "Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Faster Internet for Regional Australia) Bill", introduced by Helen Haines. It wants to force NBN and other telcos into speeding up service levels for non-metro users. Site faults and new connections must be actioned within one business day and mandating a minimum 25mbit/s NBN speed on average, not "twice a day".

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### LG Chem is a battery powerhouse, a totally portless laptop, LowEndBox's best provider award

- The Asianometry newsletter has a great intro article about battery manufacturer LG Energy Solution, which recently went public via South Korea's largest ever IPO. There's lots of competition (China's CATL being the main one) but LG Chem has a massive R&D department and the battery market is so big there's still more demand than manufacturing capacity.
- Want a totally portless laptop? Not even a power socket? Check out the Craob X. It handles all charging and I/O wirelessly, enabling it to weigh in at just 860g and be only 7mm thick. Still a concept, so might never happen, but interesting none the less.
- LowEndBox published the results of their community voted best server hosting provider award, with RackNerd a clear winner. I've used RackNerd for all my non-Australian VPS needs the past year or so and have had no problems (I host a couple of Discourse forums on their Los Angeles servers). Their pricing is often ridiculously cheap too.

## Bargains

- Dell Essential Backpack 15 - $12.88 from Dell
- 10% off Spotify and Kayo gift cards at Australia Post
- SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.1 USB drive 32GB or 64GB - $8.99/$13.99 from Amazon
- DarkFlash DLH21 mini-ITX PC case - $99 from EZPC Technology's eBay store (affiliate link)
- Apple AirPods Pro - $296 from MobileCiti
- Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro - $149.95 from AZAU
- Various IT related graduate certificates from IT Masters are now eligible for government funded placements, reducing costs by 71%
- CatchConnect (Optus MVNO) 365-day SIM with 120GB data, unlimited calls & SMS - $109 from CatchConnect

## The End

📻 Call Me Home - Sasami

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## Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

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