Elon let loose in a Tesla earnings call yesterday that they are "in discussions" with another automaker to licence Autopilot to them. He added that "we're not trying to keep this to ourselves", "we're more than happy to license it to others". Telsa has also started building its Dojo supercomputer, using its own Tesla designed and TSMC manufactured SoCs that as a whole will be capable of an exaflop, making it one of the fastest computers in the world. That's good news. On the same day, the NHTSA opened yet another investigation into Autopilot's role in a fatal Model 3 crash and Tesla's board of executives have to pay back US$735m to the company after a court found that they "grossly overpaid themselves" between 2017 and 2020.
Microsoft is copping some heat from the European Commission over its Teams videoconferencing/business chat app. Slack formally complained in 2020 to the European Commission, alleging that forcing Office customers to automatically have Teams installed is illegal under EU law. The EC and Microsoft have been negotiating a deal since, but apparently a sticking point is whether the un-bundling would apply only in the EU or worldwide, so the EC is gonna open a formal investigation. Considering how forcefully Microsoft pushes Teams on not just Office users, but Windows users too, plus the fact it's practically given away with an Office subscription, it's no wonder any competitor is upset about it and the EU reckons its anti-competitive.
Framework's new 16" laptop with the latest AMD Ryzen 7040-series CPUs is now available to pre-order from their website. The starting price (without an operating system, SSD, RAM or USB-C charger) of the Ryzen 7 7840HS unit is $2,379, so it's not cheap and to rub salt in the wound, if you order now you won't get it until early 2024. The Verge has a hands-on preview of the Framework Laptop 16 if you wanna learn more. Despite the cost and wait time, if I was in the market for a brand-new non-Mac laptop, this is what I'd get. Love that it's easy to fiddle with myself, I can choose my own SSD & RAM, plus the community they've built around the product is great.
Plex has made its music streaming app, Plexamp, free. It used to be part of Plex Pass, but now basic functionality is free for all users and a range of fancy features are for Plex Pass subscribers only. You stash your music on a Plex server and it'll stream over the internet or locally to the Plexamp app, which on a smartphone, is top notch. There's even a Raspberry Pi app that'll let you run Plexamp in a web browser. On the Mac though, Plexamp is a bit of a piece of shit as it's clearly just the iOS app ported to Mac and made for tapping, not clicking. The real magic of Plexamp is being able to view all your friend libraries in the one spot.
Kevin David Mitnick (August 6, 1963 – July 16, 2023) was an American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker. He is best known for his high-profile 1995 arrest and five years in prison for various computer and communications-related crimes. Mitnick's pursuit, arrest, trial, and sentence along with the associated journalism, books, and films were all controversial. (Juergen Frank/Corbis via Getty Images)
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