Copied straight from CarExpert: "Speaking at the Sydney International EV AutoShow, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, announced Standards Australia has given V2G the seal of approval, with a rollout of the technology due within just over a month". The minister said that "the process from now is that those [EV] manufacturers that enable vehicle-to-grid charging and those charging companies that enable it can register their products with the Clean Energy Council and get approval for each particular product. They'll have to meet the standard that's been ticked off by Standards Australia, but where we've got manufacturers and OEMs who are on board for that and it all happens smoothly, we'll be able to have bidirectional charging a reality by Christmas this year". Good to see this all being sorted out, I hope by the time I'm ready for my next EV the cost of a bi-directional charger is reasonable ($4k-ish max) and whatever car I get supports it properly.
Microsoft couldn't help themselves and have blessed Notepad with AI-capabilities. Rewrite can "adjust the length, tone, and phrasing of highlighted sentences or paragraphs using generative AI" and requires a Microsoft account sign-in to work. Even if you aren't logged in, Notepad "launch times improve by more than 35%, with some users seeing improvements of 55% or more". What the fuck is Microsoft on about? Notepad has launched instantly on every dog shit PC since 1995. Paint, little old MS Paint, is also getting AI features like generative fill, generative erase and "image creator". The generative fill and erase features are actually kinda cool, but again, you gotta be logged in to a Microsoft account to do it and you'll need a Copilot+ PC (i.e: a computer with an NPU capable of more than 40 TOPS).
Bit of a follow-up from Friday's story about Myki being shit - Daniel Bowen did a bit of digging and found that "there was a configuration issue affecting some of them, such that they defaulted to requiring a 3G signal. Apparently it was the newer Vix devices, found on most buses and about half the tram fleet. The older slower devices were okay". I had no idea there are LTE modems that were setup to require 3G to initalise or something like that. Meanwhile, the Victorian government and Conduent are arguing over the cost of upgrades to Myki so that it'll support smartphones as tickets. Conduent reckons there's way more work required than what the government let on when they were bidding for the upgrade contract. Nothing has happened for months due to this stalemate and Conduent may end up walking away from the deal.
Apollo 11 Hasselblad image from film magazine 40/S - EVA (Project Apollo Archive)
📻 Superchunk - Slack Motherfucker
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