Issue 2303 - Tuesday 1 April 2024… jokes! It’s 2025, happy April Fools’ (this marks the end of this edition’s tomfoolery).

The News

Apple pinged for preferential privacy treatment to its own apps and makes satellite plans

Apple has been fined AU$260 million by France for having “excessively complex” privacy options that hurt other developers (Bloomberg, archived). The crux of the complaint is that Apple’s app tracking transparency (ATT) option — the thing that pops up and asks you if you want to let an app track you — involves two pop-ups for third-party apps, but only one for first party apps. Just in case you thought it was an accident, opting out of third-party location tracking only takes one tap (The Verge). Some, like professional Apple fanboy John Gruber (Daring Fireball), have criticised it because ATT has been a great Apple decision but, really, this is a microcosm of Apple’s favourable self-dealing. Apple is also apparently getting into the satellite game and is competing for spectrum rights with SpaceX (WSJ, $). Elon Musk, in the midst of a “government efficiency” campaign, is naturally doing everything he can to stall their plans.

Australia’s stock market platform is rickety. If only its blockchain replacement worked

Australian financial regulators are pissed off with the Australian stock exchange for not doing enough to failproof its platform (Information Age). The Reserve Bank and ASIC have gone public with their concerns about the Australian Stock Exchange and CHESS, the platform where stock exchanges happen. They think the ASX is “risking the stability of the financial system” because the company — which is a monopoly because of its position — doesn’t have good enough plans in case something goes wrong … like it did in December when some trades failed because of insufficient “CHESS memory allocation”. Here’s the kicker: the ASX knows CHESS isn’t good enough, which is why it spent 7 years and $250 million developing a blockchain-based CHESS successor that just didn’t work (InformationAge), so now they’re developing a non-blockchain replacement. While we’re on crypto, fun fact: PumpSwamp, the crypto exchange made by the people who created a tool to make shitcoins in 2 minutes, has done $2.5 billion in trading volume in 10 days (The Block). Seems normal, healthy and good!

AI companies lied about web traffic as they strangle the open web

Remember when Google was telling people not to trust logic or basic intuition that their AI search summaries (or “AIOs”) would reduce the number of people who would visit the websites (AFR, $)? Surprising absolutely no one, that was absolute bullshit:

I didn’t write about last week’s Studio Ghibli meme trend that spawned from OpenAI’s improved image generation features (AP), but I wanted to flag that it’s another example of how behemoth AI companies are are trampling all over the open web. They aren’t little startups anymore: we’re talking Google, Meta, now OpenAI is worth $300B (TechCrunch). Not only are they plundering everything they can, but the people who supply this data are paying the price. I mean that literally — TechPay founder Gergely Orosz wrote on LinkedIn about how his hosting expenses have skyrocketed because of AI crawlers.

Leftovers

Oh, Also

An unexpected benefit of going cash-less

Since we got digital wallets, I don’t carry cash. (I don’t even have a physical wallet anymore). I know there’s plenty of pro-cash people, but it suits me just fine not to have to lug around cards and coins everywhere. Another point in the ‘pro’ column for going cashless? It’s probably reducing the number of kids who are swallowing coins, according to researchers (Royal College of Surgeons of England). A new, delightfully named study 'Coin-cidence? Have cashless payments reduced the incidence of upper aerodigestive foreign body insertion? A study of UK Hospital Episode Statistics’ found a significant yearly drop in ‘foreign body retrieval procedures’ from the digestive system (about 28 fewer each year), throat and nose since contactless payments were introduced. Not only has this likely saved lives — suffocation from swallowing stuff they shouldn’t is the leading cause of 0-3 mortality in the UK — but also saves bucketloads of money on medical procedures.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

The End

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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.