Mentioned in today’s edition: Anthropic, LinkedIn, Sam Altman, Donald Trump, Netflix, ePassports, Meta and Claude. Plus, deals on JBL speakers, Apple AirPods and Boost prepaid eSIMs.

The News

How much of the $$$ promised by AI companies would stay in Australia?

With eye-watering dollar figures about the economic benefits of AI data centres being thrown around, how much of this actually stays in Australia? (SMH, $). Friend of the Sizzle SMH/Age's David Swan has a nice piece critically crunching the numbers. He notes that a lot of the capex value goes overseas because the biggest expense is the graphics cards (of which, all the profit is going elsewhere); that the data centres have relatively few ongoing staff and that many AI companies don't pay much tax in Australia. On the other hand, AI companies and data centre operators say that there's a lot of diffuse economic benefits for having these big boxes filled with GPUs housed in Australia.

The Sizzle: Even putting to the side that all economic modelling is (at best) educated guesswork, these astronomical AI data centre figures being spruiked are still very alluring to politicians et al. when considering changing laws to pave the way for AI companies to set up shop in Australia. For all the gripes about our regulations, the fact that companies like Anthropic or OpenAI keep wanting to set up shop here should tell us that, clearly, Australia has some appeal due to things like our political stability, infrastructure and talented workforce. Given that enthusiasm, I think it's reasonable to believe that Australia should get real concessions from these companies and not just vague promises of big numbers. 

One idea raised with me? Well, if AI companies want to build here, then maybe they should offer up equity so Australia can be part-owners in these operations — both for the benefits, but also so we have a say in how they work. 

Related reading: NEXTDC lands 1b for data centre build-out with 100-year bond (Australian Financial Review, $) Aussie AI firm pleases Wall Street with 1.8bn data centre deal (Cyber Daily)

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LinkedIn is scanning browsers for extensions and collecting device data

LinkedIn checks your browser for more than 6,000 different extensions and records other device data points when you visit their platform (BleepingComputer). A new group which claims to represent commercial LinkedIn users, Fairlinked e.V., says that LinkedIn is scanning users' browsers for extensions so it can use the info to assemble lists of customers for various companies (Browsergate). LinkedIn doesn't deny the browser extension checks but says it's an anti-scraping measure. Either way, it's pretty common for platforms to check for extensions but also we know that this kind of fingerprinting can tell a lot about a person. 

On a slightly different but similar note: auDA has had a (minor) privacy breach

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AISlopdate: pro-Iranian Lego videos calling Donald Trump a child abuser

Move over sexy fruit, the latest hot AI video trend is Iranian Lego-style videos that humiliate the US (New Yorker)! YouTube and Instagram have taken down accounts belonging to Explosive Media, a group that claims to be student-run whose videos have been going viral since the US first struck Iran. Its juvenile AI-produced videos show Trump and Netanyahu figurines, reference Epstein, and have been backed with AI rap music tracks. What a time to be alive.

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Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of World:

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Oh, Also

People make AI do caveman speak save tokens

I first saw this pop up on Reddit over the weekend, but it's taken on a life of its own: people are instructing Claude and other AI models to talk like a caveman to drastically reduce the amount of tokens it takes to do tasks. 

The conceit is simple: removing unimportant things like "conjunctions" and "articles" reduces the resources required to run tasks. Users claim they're saving between 20-80(!)% of tokens on certain tasks (GitHub). It's not just limited to output either, apparently it also includes compressing things like memory files without any performance loss. 

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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.