### Issue 1704 - Monday 3rd October, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- Tesla AI Day 2022 - average robots, very fast supercomputer
- Elon's text messages and emails with fellow rich people about buying Twitter are now public
- Study finds Bitcoin as damaging to environment as beef and petroleum but with none of the benefits
- The best (and only) review of smartphone sized Faraday bags I've ever read
- Cheap Google Pixel 6a, Coles Mobile, Kogan Mobile, Boost Mobile, SanDisk Endurance microSD cards, Microsoft365, Yubico security keys, AirPods Pro 2nd-gen

## The News

### Tesla AI Day 2022 - average robots, very fast supercomputer

Tesla held an "AI Day" presentation on Friday night with the aim of showing off its technological prowess. What we saw were two humanoid robot prototypes Tesla calls "Optimus" that "probably costs less than $20,000" and made for "mass production in the millions of units" according to Elon Musk. One did a little walk and a dance, the other was wheeled out on a pedestal and waved. It will be used in Tesla's factories "within the next few months... or years". IEEE Spectrum reckons "there's very little to suggest that it disrupts robotics the way that SpaceX did for rockets or Tesla did for electric cars". Tesla also gave an update on their far more impressive "Dojo" supercomputer. It's probably one of the top 10 fastest computers in the world and its used to " auto-label train videos from its fleet and train its neural nets to build its self-driving system".

### Elon's text messages and emails with fellow rich people about buying Twitter are now public

Text messages between Elon Musk and a cavalcade of billionaires entered as evidence in Twitter's lawsuit against him have been made public for us plebs to enjoy. There's discussions with people like Joe Rogan (asking Elon to "liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob"), Marc Andreessen (chucks in a cheeky $400m instantly), Larry Ellison (who is "in for $2 billion"), Jason Calacanis (begging to be CEO of Twitter because its his "dream job"), his brother Kimbal Musk (floats the idea of a "blockchain-based payment-and-message system" that Elon was into at first, but then changed his mind 10 days later) and Jack Dorsey (rants about all the mistakes he made), just to name a few. Reading the messages, I had the same thought as The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel - "what is so illuminating about the Musk messages is just how unimpressive, unimaginative, and sycophantic the powerful men in Musk’s contacts appear to be".

### Study finds Bitcoin as damaging to environment as beef and petroleum but with none of the benefits

A study published in Scientific Reports has found that "every $1 in Bitcoin market value generated an average of 35 cents in global climate damages between 2016 and 2021". They did this by coming up with a cost per ton of carbon of US$100 - a rough middle ground between various estimates of US$51 to US$185 per ton devised by other studies and enacted by some governments. To put that 35c per dollar in context, "gasoline" generates 41 cents and beef production 33 cents. Undeniably, we get much more value out of gasoline and beef than we do out of Bitcoin, for a similar amount of damage to the environment. If a group of people decided to go around blowing up Bitcoin mining facilities I wouldn't be against it.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### The best (and only) review of smartphone sized Faraday bags I've ever read

Matt Blaze has a rather comprehensive review of phone-sized Faraday bags. Bags you chuck a phone into to make sure no signal gets in or out, even when turned off. He's got fancy measuring devices and everything. His tests reveal that biscuit tins and aluminum foil do make life difficult for radio signals, but aren't as good as a proper bag designed for radio signal prevention. Something to keep in mind should you ever come across the need for such a thing.

## Bargains

- Google Pixel 6a - $549 from Telstra
- Coles Mobile (Optus MVNO) 365-day SIMs 60GB, 120GB & 200GB - $95, $119, $169 from Coles
- Kogan Mobile (Vodafone MVNO) 365-day SIM 300GB or 500GB - $162/$180 from Kogan
- Boost Mobile (Telstra) 365-day SIM with 260GB of data - $208 after cashback from Cashrewards
- SanDisk High Endurance 64GB, 128GB or 256GB microSD card - $14.95/$24.95/$47.95 from Shopping Square
- Microsoft 365 Family/Personal 1 year subscription - $68/$98 from SaveOnIT
- Yubico Security Key NFC or Yubico Security Key C NFC - USD$10/USD$11.60 via Cloudflare (might need to pay postage?)
- Apple AirPods Pro 2nd Gen - $369 from Catch + delivery (or get Officeworks to price match down to $350.55)

## The End

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