My week of Monday 3 to Sunday 9 June 2024 saw the production of three podcasts, two of which have already been posted, with the third appearing tomorrow morning. My need to nap most afternoons also declined, which I imagine is a Good Thing.
Podcasts
- The 9pm Arty Greek Melbourne Chat with Esther Anatolitis, recorded back on 20 May and finally posted this Tuesday.
- The 9pm Devilish Deepfakes of Democracy with Zoe Hawkins, recorded on Thursday and posted on Saturday morning.
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Articles
- The Weekly Cybers #21. It’s another week of eSafety! The commissioner’s case against X is dumped, but there’s new Basic Online Safety Expectations, and legislation to ban sexually explicit deepfakes. Plus a big FOI win against robodebt, and much more.
You can read my previous writing at Authory, where you can also subscribe to an email compilation of any new stories each Sunday morning.
Media Appearances, Photos, Videos, Corporate Largesse
None of these. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel to be notified when new videos appear and when livestreams are scheduled.
Recommendations
The big news is that the lawsuit that Elon Musk’s X was facing from Australia’s eSafety commission has been dropped. I’ve already written about that in this week’s The Weekly Cybers. But there was much more.
- Elon Musk ordered Nvidia to ship thousands of AI chips reserved for Tesla to X and xAI.
- Elon Musk may ‘step back’ if shareholders reject $56bn pay package, Tesla chair warns. Apparently Robyn Denholm thinks that would be a bad thing. Apparently shareholders are split on this issue.
- If the Cybertruck wasn’t stupid enough, a California company is advertising “tactical response” Tesla Cybertruck upgrades as police cruisers, including shotgun racks and sirens.
- Unsold Teslas piling up in parking lots can be seen from space, which is a silly headline because you can any kind of car in a car park from space.
- SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket records first successful test flight. Or as The Economist phrased it, Elon Musk’s Starship makes a test flight without exploding.
- Butts, breasts, and genitals now explicitly allowed on Elon Musk’s X.
In other news:
- Released this week, the 20th Lowy Institute Poll on Australians’ attitudes to the world. Always fascinating. And it was launched this week with an excellent panel discussion.
- From Bloomberg’s MapLab, The Hand-Drawn History of Tracking Sunspots.
- An interesting read via *The Age*: From the Archives, 1925: A woman drinking in an open bar? Outrageous!.
- From Adam Something, MS Satoshi – The Floating Crypto Bro Catastrophe.
- In this week’s AlienSideBoob, John Birmingham continues his recent run of thoughtful pieces. It’s titled Failure is the point and it’s free to read.
The Week Ahead
Monday is the public holiday for the King’s Birthday, at least here in NSW. I’ll be posting my podcast with David F Porteous first thing in the morning, however, before starting to do some actual nothing.
The rest of the week is the usual plod of pretending to work, as well as starting to plan the winter series of The 9pm Edict.
Further Ahead
- NEW: UK General Election, 4 July 2024. I’m not sure what I’ll do to celebrate this, but it’s certainly a significant date to be aware of.
- TechLeaders 2024, Hunter Valley, 11–12 August 2024.
- The Sydney Dialogue, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Sydney and online, 2–3 September 2024 (TBC).
[Photo: An 8-car NSW TrainLink V-Set stands at Wentworth Falls station on 1 June 2024. Yes it’s from last week when it was wet, rather than this week when it was mostly sunny.]