### Issue 1793 - Friday 24th February, 2023

## In Today's Issue

- eSafety Commissioner sends legal notices & their feedback on industry codes made public
- US Copyright Office declares that AI-generated art cannot claim copyright
- Dynamic Crowd Measurement CCTV software to be used for first time at Sydney Mardi Gras
- Atomic Semi is Sam Zeloof and Jim Keller's semiconductor fab startup
- Friday Forum Update
- Cheap Sonos Roam, 8TB Samsung SSD, Amazon smarthome pack, refurb HP Probook 640 G5, AOC 34" monitor, IKEA Symfonisk speaker

## The News

### eSafety Commissioner sends legal notices & their feedback on industry codes made public

The eSafety Commissioner has "served legal notices" on TikTok, Twitch, Discord, Twitter and Google, asking them to explain "how they are tackling online child sexual abuse", "dealing with the growing issue of online sexual extortion as well as the role their algorithms might play in amplifying seriously harmful content". If the companies do not respond to the notices within 35 days, they could face financial penalties of almost $687,500 a day. Meanwhile, the Digital Industry Group Inc (aka DIGI) has published eSafety's responses to their draft Industry Codes of Practice for the Online Industry. In a nutshell, eSafety wants every single piece of the internet to be filtered through unnamed software (that they swear exists) that checks for terrorist content, porn and child sex abuse material.

### US Copyright Office declares that AI-generated art cannot claim copyright

Kris Kashtanova made a comic book, Zarya of the Dawn, entirely using AI-generated art via Midjourney. They managed to register the work with the United States Copyright Office, but after some some posts on social media, the Copyright Office declared that Kris "is the author of the Work's text as well as the selection, coordination, and arrangement of the Work's written and visual elements" - but not of the AI-generated art, saying that "the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author". Kris doesn't plan to take it any further, but they could technically take this to court. Perhaps the phrase "creative input" could be twisted by a smart lawyer to mean the prompt given to the AI that generates the image?

### Dynamic Crowd Measurement CCTV software to be used for first time at Sydney Mardi Gras

A big gay party is going on in Sydney this weekend and the organisers are slapping CCTV cameras around Oxford Street and using software from a company called Dynamic Crowd Measurement to measure things like "compliance" and "mood", along with the amount of people in the area. On the surface it seems innocent enough, they promise Dynamic Crowd Measurement is "not used for surveillance and does not track or collect any personal information", but couldn't they just like, pay a bunch of people to hang around the potentially busy areas and use radios for everyone to talk to each other and monitor the situation? That feels like a much less creepy way of doing what this software does and potentially less error prone and risky.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Atomic Semi is Sam Zeloof and Jim Keller's semiconductor fab startup

Not long ago in the Sizzle I mentioned a bloke by the name of Sam Zeloof. He's the overachiever making semiconductors in his garage. Well today he announced Atomic Semi, "a small, fast semiconductor fab. We'll build the tools ourselves then quickly push them to more advanced geometries. We're building a small team of exceptional, hands-on engineers to make this happen". One of those exceptional engineers is Jim fucken Keller. You might recognise that name from such microprocessors as Apple's A4/A5, AMD K8 (aka Athlon 64) and AMD's Zen (aka Ryzen). I have no idea what they've got planned, but I look forward to seeing it.

## Friday Forum Update

Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.

- zootman is after opinions on the music server software "Roon"
- LiamJM wonders if there's any other way to digitally sign PDFs on Windows without installing Adobe Acrobat
- wolfjay discovered Cloudflare's speed test page, which has lots more info than Ookla's or Netflix's
- davo67 wants to know how their Facebook account was taken over and used to post spam
- fuzzygel is after a reliable freight forwarder to get gear from Hong Kong to Australia

## Bargains

- Sonos Roam - $225 from The Good Guys
- Samsung 870 QVO 8TB 2.5" SATA SSD - $728 from gg.tech365's eBay store
- Ring Video Doorbell 3, Echo Dot (3rd Gen) and Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen) smart home pack - $237 from Amazon
- Refrub HP Probook 640 G5 (i5-8265U, 8GB RAM, 256B SSD, 14" 1080p) - $299 from UN Tech
- AOC CU34G2X 34" 3440x1440 curved 144Hz monitor - $494 from digiDirect
- IKEA SYMFONISK 2nd-gen Sonos speaker - $159 from IKEA

## Image Of The Day

The IMAX Camera Family (IMAX Camera / Flickr)

## The End

📻 Purr - Sonic Youth

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## Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong 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.