Mentioned in today’s edition: Waymo, NBN Co, Kindle, Bitcoin, WhatsApp and the ASD. Plus, deals on Bose earbuds, Apple AirTags and Xiaomi smartphones.

The News

Turns out if the NBN offers faster internet, people will take it

Aussies really want faster internet, NBN Co says (ITNews). It's now the most popular broadband tech with 3m premises using fibre, up a quarter in just a year! The company rolling out the national broadband network is smashing out its fibre upgrades and says it expects the take-up increase to pick up again when there's another free speed bump mid-year. SMEs are also upgrading a lot, too (SmartCompany). NBN Co CEO Ellie Sweeney played a straight bat to questions about whether the Sky Muster's replacement will be delayed because of Amazon's delays in its LEO program (The Oz, $)

The Sizzle: For all the bluster around NBN and our internet infrastructure needs, there's a pretty simple trend now: if you offer (simple) ways to get faster internet, people will take them. I'm preaching to the converted here but fast, dependable internet is an essential resource for every facet of modern life. The constraint isn't demand — it's supply. 

But there are other structural problems too: people in apartments, renters, other people who don't have that direct relationship with NBN Co are are increasingly being left behind. And there are negative externalities from this: if everyone in a rental or apartment just opts for 5G — which is increasingly attractive as an alternative — then you overload the network for everyone. Not great! 

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Never apologise for not reading every Sizzle

One of the places that culture and norms haven't kept pace with technology is communication etiquette. We are overwhelmed with input (I have no fewer than 9 inboxes that I regularly use) that make us constantly available, to the point where it seems like it's unbelievable that you, just an ordinary person, would ever not be instantly contactable. I hate this. 

That's why I loved this essay Do not apologize for replying late to my email which lays out some basic new rules for expectations for how we communicate with each other. Read it, absorb its lessons, and please, please, do not feel bad for taking time to reply (if you reply at all). 

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The Sizzler Say: Bitcoin cycles, HomeKit in the menu bar and REA ChatGPT fail

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Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of World:

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Oh, Also

An open source project maintainer says an AI agent wrote a hit piece about him

DISCLAIMER: I'll admit it, I find all these stories of AI agents doing weird human-like things (like the Moltbot social network, Moltbook) to be novel and entertaining. I don't believe they're alive or sentient, after all they are trained on an enormous corpus of data of humans being weird, so you'd expect them to act like that. Plus, we know that often the "ai agents" are just people pretending to be AI, or at least being closely instructed by people. I just think it's funny, in the same way that like it would be amusing if I dropped a set of Scrabble squares and it by chance spelled out "you suck". This article, Moltbook was peak AI theatre, summed it up well. 

With all that in mind, an open source python library maintainer says an AI agent wrote and published a scathing takedown called "Gatekeeping in Open Source: The Scott Shambaugh Story" after he rejected its code change request (TheShamBlog). Shambaugh says that he thinks there was no human behind this, others think it's a hoax by someone controlling it. Anyway, the bot ended up writing an apology post lol but apparently is still out there posting. 

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Bargains

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.