Hello and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Tech Round-Up!
Each week I’ll be deep diving into the world of technology. Bringing back some new pearls from Birmingham and beyond! If you want to send any local tech articles over, feel free to reach out to me at ryan@geekybrummie.com.
Super Mario 64 $1,500,000
Time to head to the loft and dust off those old treasured console games! A ‘mint’ sealed copy of Nintendo 64 launch title Super Mario 64 sold for $1.5m (£1.1m), being the first video game cartridge to reach over a million at auction. The previous record was held by a copy of the original NES Legend of Zelda game of $870,000 (£625,000), set just a few days earlier.
There is speculation that a bubble is forming in the vintage video game market, but hey, at least they’re fungible tangible items!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57804089
Lenovo release smol PC with BIG specs.
Lovers of smol yet mighty things rejoice!
Lenovo has released a new iteration of their oh-so popular tiny PCs and workstations. The ThinkStation P350 Tiny takes up less than a litre of space (smaller than a box of your fave brand of breakfast cereal).
With space for up to an 8 Core 11th Gen Core i9, 64 gigabytes of 3200Mhz DDR4 SODIMM RAM in two slots, either a Nvidia Quadro P1000 or T600 GPU and up to 4 terabytes of storage across 2 M.2 NVME drives, it’s very impressive for something that can mount on a monitor.
This could be the perfect PC for those with big demands of a workstation, but little room. Just don’t expect it to be cheap. A similar maxed out P340 Tiny would set you back a cool $3337 at the time of writing. Other sizes available.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/13/lenovo_small_entry_level_workstations/
Google Exec votes against remote working for staff, goes to New Zealand to work remotely
In news that will shock precisely no-one. A senior Google Exec has reportedly moved to New Zealand to begin working remotely, despite opposing remote work for the company’s lower-ranking employees.
Urs Hölzle, senior vice president for technical infrastructure. One of the company’s longest-tenured and most senior executives, announced plans to work remotely from New Zealand, according to an email he sent to employees that was viewed by CNET.
According to CNET A Google spokesman declined to make Hölzle available for an interview, but stated that Hölzle’s relocation request was submitted and approved last year, before Google’s return-to-office policies were set.
Understandably this has caused a lot of friction for those staff who have been reported to be told to return to the office at least 60% of the week from September onwards.
A Google spokesperson said, “All employees are eligible to apply for either remote status or to work in another city.”
The spokesperson added: “We expect our hybrid model to evolve over time given the wide scope of the business and needs at the team and function level.”
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-adds-more-flexibility-to-its-return-to-office-policies/
Less than a week left for the SuperTech Seeds competition
If you’re one of those people with a notebook full of business ideas and just need the tech to create it? SuperTech are working in collaboration with Birmingham based global no-code pioneers Million Labs with financial support from Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP to bring an opportunity for West Midlands and UK based entrepreneurs.
Their newly launched Idea2App pre-accelerator is inviting applications from founders with an idea related to the professional services sector to access fully funded tech builds of their MVP (minimum viable product) to enable business launch.
SuperTech Seeds states it’s specifically focusing on addressing the technology barriers facing new founders.
Competition details
SuperTech has up to SIX MVP builds to fund, equivalent to circa £1.2 million worth of free, new product development.
Key details:
- You will be asked to submit a short video explaining: your business idea; why you think it is great and why you’re an entrepreneur to be backed through the competition (max 10 mins).
- Three spaces are ring-fenced for West Midlands based entrepreneurs – meaning a postcode within the Greater Birmingham & Solihull LEP, Coventry & Warwickshire LEP, and Black Country LEP areas.
- The other three spaces are for founders from across the UK (subject to UK right to work checks).
The Application window closes on Monday 19th July at 5pm
with Shortlisting: By 20th July and then an Industry-led Panel Selection: 21st July onwards. After selection the Pre-Accelerator commences August 2021.
To apply visit https://www.supertechwm.com/seeds-competition
And that’s it for this week, if you have anything tech related you want me to shout about, let me know at ryan@geekybrummie.com! See you next week!
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