Issue 2282 - Monday 3 March, 2025

Hello! Thanks to Sizzler Adam who emailed after Friday to say that the recent big company’s AI model releases haven’t been frontier models. If you have anything to add about an edition, send me an email or Signal message.

In Today’s Issue

The News

Mozilla’s Firefox update suggests a bad direction for one of the only good browsers for privacy

Mozilla is trying to clean up its mess after updating terms that seemed to clear the way for selling user data (TechCrunch). Last week, Firefox’s maker updated its Terms of Use (Mozilla) and Privacy Notice (Mozilla) which included giving Mozilla a limitless license to do whatever it wanted with user inputs and removing a promise to not sell data. After users spotted this and speculated it was something to do with training AI, Mozilla dispelled the AI rumours (Mozilla blog) but blamed the data selling clause removal on a new California law’s broader definition of the “sale of data”.

Between the corporate wording and online speculation, I’m not sure anyone’s gotten to the bottom of what Mozilla is doing with user data so I expect there’ll be more to come. But it’s worth mentioning just how dire the browser market is now: on desktop, there’s only three browser engines and Firefox is the only one that still lets you run third-party privacy plug-ins like ad blockers (so I use it). Things are looking grim for Mozilla. If they can’t keep going what other choice is there?

Trump juices crypto

Crypto prices are pumping again as the Trump administration pulls all the levers to juice the market. On Friday, the US financial regulator said memecoins are not securities (The Verge) which means that creators of coins like $TRUMP — whose investors lost $19 billion in value in the month since it launched (Telegraph) — are largely unregulated. Then today, Trump announced the first-ever “Crypto Summit” (Axios) and named the currencies he’d like to see in the promised US strategic crypto reserve (BBC).

I mean, just look at the state of this:

Do you think Trump really posted this? Can you even imagine him saying Ethereum? Note the gap between the first “Trump” post and the second post adding that the reserve would include Bitcoin and Ethereum. A very convenient oversight to leave out the two most popular cryptocurrencies and to only mention smaller coins that pumped in the meantime. Trump’s crypto tzar David Sacks has an indirect but considerable holding of these currencies (X) but that’s not super surprising given they’re the biggest coins. It’s things like this that make it so hard to take crypto seriously: all its biggest boosters have significant conflicts of interest. And now these bulls control the White House.

New Australian rules for social media, search and device makers for porn and violent content

Social media platforms like X, BlueSky and Mastodon are probably going to start taking more significant steps to figure out users’ ages to restrict pornography and hectic violence from children using their services (The Guardian Australia). Big tech’s Australian lobby group, DIGI, has handed in its proposed self-regulation for dealing with “restrict harmful content like including fetish pornography, violence, suicide and self-harm instruction” which can be found here (DIGI). I haven’t had a full chance to go through ‘em but it’s very detailed. Some of the rules highlighted include:

These rules are part of a longer process, following the industry’s rules for dealing with CSAM and terrorism. The codes have to be given the tick by the eSafety Commissioner before they’re put into place, but we can assume whatever will eventually be approved will be at least as expansive as this, if not more.

Oh, Also

RIP Skype

It was only a matter of time until Microsoft folded Skype in under Teams as it announced this week (CNBC). Started in the early 2000s, it became a household name that was bought by eBay, then planned and aborted an aborted IPO, then bought by Microsoft who let it wither and die. It even managed to fumble a historic era when COVID-19 forced everyone to work remote, squandering about a decade first-mover advantage? San Francisco tech writer Om Malik has a good obituary (om.co): “Microsoft didn’t know how to nurture Skype, and its bureaucracy killed one of the most iconic brands of the new century,” he wrote.

To get sentimental, Skype was one of those companies that embodied the early disruptive nature of the internet on everyday life. Not to get all “kids these days”, but kids these days don’t appreciate just how expensive it was to call internationally and everything that meant. Hearing your aunt’s voice crackle down the phone was a big deal! Now, she tries to FaceTime you five times a week and you don’t answer most of the time. It’s very easy to imagine a world where my aunt was Skyping instead.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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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.