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The News

Amazon’s Aussie $20b pledge sounds like a lot, but we have NFI what it entails

Silicon Valley’s global data centre splurge has come to Australia with Amazon pledging to spend $20 billion on local data centres by 2029 (Reuters). Anthony Albanese was in Seattle for the announcement with scant details beyond “big number, good”. As IT News’ Ry Crozier wrote, it isn’t “clear if any of the spending was on new data centre campuses, regions or local zones” (IT News). For context, AWS pledged $13b for the next five years of Aussie cloud computing in 2023 (Guardian). I asked around to get a sense for why Amazon might do this here, and what I heard was 1. They’re doing it everywhere and 2. Australia is one of the nations that hasn’t been slapped with the US chip ban so that means they can get those yummy GPUs to power the compute hungry generative AI boom.

PS: “[Deals like Australia’s AWS pledge] won't solely make or break Australia's climate commitments, but it definitely adds another ankle weight on a runner who's already struggling.” (Sizzler Ketan Joshi on LinkedIn)

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Do you fear or respect the $5,500 keyboard?

The Verge has a review and a long-read on the production of the AU$5,500 Seneca mechanical keyboard which are both worth checking out. Why spend a 2011 i30-amount of money on something that does the same thing as an (also 2011) $6 Logitech G105? The Seneca is understated but apparently gorgeous to type with, with luxuries like a custom-designed stabiliser mechanism that is “hideously expensive to produce and both time consuming and fiddly to assemble.” I’m a Magic Keyboard guy but I’m thinking about making the plunge. I would love to hear from you if you’re a mechanical keyboard person!

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Charging your EV at Bunnings while you pick up tools you’ll use once

Bunnings has installed EV chargers at 14 of its stores and will roll out a couple more over the next few weeks (The Driven). It’s putting in 22kW, 50kW and 12kW chargers, available on the various apps. This is one of those small signs that are bullish about the increasing uptake of EVs: away from the culture war bullshit, major retailers are seeing the demand and also making it easier (and normal) to ditch the ICE. Another thing I had missed is that a tax break for some hybrid electric vehicles had expired earlier this year, with sales plummeting after the fringe benefit tax exemption finished at the end of March (SMH, $).

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

It’s not quite YouTube premium but it’s a lot cheaper

After I wrote about YouTube premium’s price spike last week, I thought this was a nifty little tool: SkipCut is a YouTube video viewer that runs in browser. It’s got no ads, recommendations or autoplay, but does support things like playlists and can run in the background. I’ve had a quick look and seems like there’s nothing too sus about it! You can either drop YouTube links into the website or just replace “youtube” in the URL with “skipcut”. Enjoy!

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Sorry for long list from over the weekend! I’ve cut out bad/expired/sketchy deals but there’s a lot of good stuff in there.

Electrical & electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.

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The Sizzle is created on Gadigal land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.