 | Edition 2471 |
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Hello! Happy Friday. Thank you all for bearing with me during the most hectic professional week of my life! I never would have guessed that I would do an interview on FOX(‘s streaming channel) NEWS and a German news talk show appearance in the same day. |
 | I’m sure you already caught this interview |
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I will be back to normal delivery times next week for the last Sizzle week of the year. Have a great weekend — I know I will! |
The News |
Why is Disney paying OpenAI to let the company make AI slop with its characters? |
Disney is investing $1.5 billion into OpenAI in a deal that lets the AI company use its characters for AI videos (Guardian). OpenAI announced the three-year deal which will let OpenAI AI video generator make videos of “more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters” (OpenAI). And, in return, OpenAI will pay Disn— wait, I’m sorry, Disney will buy a chunk of OpenAI and give its staff access to ChatGPT and other tech. In completely coincidental timing, Disney has sent a cease-and-desist to Google for infringing on its intellectual property with its AI models (Variety). |
The Sizzle: I’m scratching my head a little bit about this deal because, well, surely OpenAI would need to pay Disney to license its characters and not the other way around… right? |
But, without knowing if they got some weird discount on equity or whatever, here’s why Disney may have wanted this: |
The story of YouTube’s early days was trampling intellectual property owners by not really doing anything about people uploading copyrighted material. Music labels and TV/film studios eventually does deals with YouTube and put a lot of their content on there, rather than suing YouTube out of existence, because it became so big and popular. Disney, seeing something similar with AI, has decided they’d rather get ahead of this by coming to an agreement early and a slice of the action ($1.5b of OpenAI) and… Disney has gotten some concessions from OpenAI that leaves them with control, like limiting the number of characters, no voices and having “robust controls”. The alternative, they fear, is that this all gets declared fair use and Disney will have no control. Disney believes that there will be a commercial benefit from letting users churn out AI slop using their IP under their terms, and so that means it’s actually more mutually beneficial than you might suspect.
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Still, very weird. What do you think? Does it make sense to you? LMK. |
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum. |
Pebble’s dumb smart ring is perfect |
Smartwatch maker Pebble has released a very cool little “smart ring” that I want (Engadget). After reviving the Pebble watches, Eric Migicovsky has announced the Index 01. It’s a stupidly simple device that is essentially a microphone in a ring with a button and a battery life that lasts for “years” (Verge). It connects to your phone by Bluetooth, where it collects your recordings and transcribes them locally. |
 | It says a lot that I’m so pleasantly surprised it’s not ugly |
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Here’s the banger bit: it’s open source and designed to be hacked so it interact with other apps: whether it’s to immediately send your notes to Notion or to send requests to ChatGPT. I fucking love this: simple, open, and built to make you spend less time distracted, not more. It FEELS like a gizmo. You can pre-order it now for $110 or buy it later for $150. |
The Sizzle: |
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum. |
The Sizzler Say: sleep apnea, Paramount’s hostile bid and what’s a good budget printer? |
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As always, if you wanna get involved (or even be able to read what’s on Slack) you can join the Slack server and forum via these links. |
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum. |
Leftovers |
Australia: |
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Rest of the world: |
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Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum. |
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Oh, Also |
Bringing a Nokia 900 back to life |
I have such a soft spot for Nokia’s phones from its 1990-2000 glory years, and I love seeing people re-use devices. That’s why this project about resuscitating a N900 and turning it into a music player really tickles my fancy. Worth checking out to see everything the author had to step through — very clever! |
 | WE WILL REBUILD YOU |
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Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum. |
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Bargains |
Electrical & Electronics |
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Computing |
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Mobile |
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The End |
😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius. |
🤖 We love robots at the Sizzle but this newsletter has always been and will always be written by humans for humans. Also by Aussies for Aussies — so all prices are in dollarydoos, of course. |
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Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land |
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. |
