Issue 2312 - Monday 14 April 2025

Hi all, I hope you had a spectacular weekend. Just a little note that during election, things are a bit more hectic for me so some editions might come out a bit later — but only for a few more weeks! CW

The News

Does the US really still want to split up Meta? We’ll see soon!

A trial to decide whether to split up Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp will kick off tomorrow in the US (Washington Post, archived). The US government’s FTC is arguing that Mark Zuckerberg’s acquisition of IG in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 was an anti-competitive attempt to protect its monopoly. The government faces a bit of an uphill battle: it has to convince a judge — which initially dismissed the case for being flimssy before it was refiled — that Meta isn’t competing with other social media apps like TikTok, X, iMessage, and that consumers have been hurt by this behaviour, a complicated task considering the apps are free. Here’s a good podcast on it if you’re interested in diving into the real nitty-gritty (Tech Policy Press). This trial and the outcome of the FTC’s successful illegal monopoly claim against Google will be big tests of just how keen Trump is to break up big tech (The Hill).

While those eggheads argue it out in court, in the real world experts are speculating that Trump’s tariffs will lead to even MORE subscriptions (The Verge) and Facebook has largely become TikTok with Craigslist/Gumtree attached (The Atlantic).

AI coders have created a new security risk: slopsquatters

We all know that AI loves to make up shit and that programmers — from the vibecoding amateurs to the fully cracked pros — are using it bigly in their work. Researchers reckon this has created the potential for a pretty serious security issue with an incredible name: “slopsquatting” (Socket.dev). It’s where an AI hallucinates a software package, and a bad actor takes advantage by registering this non-existent package to insert malicious code. The researchers generated 500k+ code samples and found 205k hallucinated package names (Arxiv)! And, while many of the made up packages were totally unique, plenty of others were often repeated, meaning that people could just squat on hallucinated packages because they know that AI coders will often spit out the same made-up packages for other users.

Liberals’ war on EVs, plus more online election shenanigans

Late last week, the Liberals launched it’s policy to “Abolish Labor’s Unfair Car Tax” (Liberal) which is a plan to cut something that’s not a tax. Their plan is to cut the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard which gives incentives for fuel efficient cars (or EVs), and penalises gas guzzlers which comes into effect in the middle of the year (SBS). The Driven’s Chris Johnson is blistering about it, making the point that it’s hard to pitch a policy as money saving idea if you’re encouraging vehicle makers to make fuel inefficient cars. Elsewhere on the election front: the shadowy third party political campaign groups are getting under the microscope with Advance supplying other anti-Greens groups (The Guardian), the once-mighty GetUp! having a lot of problems (Crikey, $) and neo-Nazis secretly running a news website that’s being shared by politicians (ABC News).

Leftovers

Oh, Also

Tech helps with 516 day sausage dog search

516 days ago, a Dachshund called Valerie escaped from her pen and wandered into the rough bushland on Kangaroo Island. Since then, local police officer Jared Karran has led a hunt to find the lost dog (The Times). The island is quite large so, naturally, the Karran, the owners, and others who have joined the search effort have leaned on technology to help them: using 4G and Starlink to power cameras and building smartphone activated traps.

Despite the odds of a creature like that surviving in the wild, Valerie has been spotted as recently as March in seemingly good health. As a fellow owner of a helpless dog breed — meet Donny the Pug — I wish the searchers all the best and I hope Valerie returns safely.

Bargains

Electrical & 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.