Good afternoon, Sizzlers! I hope you all have a GREAT weekend. I know I've already got my reading material sorted...

Mentioned in today’s edition: Anthropic, Tony Robbins, eSafety, Waymo, mule accounts, The Tea App, Palantir, Thinking Machines Lab and Trump Mobile. Plus, deals on Samsung earbuds, MacBook Pros and Optus prepaid plans.

The News

Wikipedia celebrates a quarter century with AI companies that threaten its existence

Wikipedia is celebrating its 25th birthday by signing deals with AI companies that threaten its very existence (AP). The Wikimedia Foundation is doing some fun stuff to mark its quarter-century of operation, including releasing some videos featuring its editors, opening a time capsule, even launching a virtual birthday card (Wikimedia). At the same time, it's announcing deals with pretty much every AI company — except OpenAI, notably — to pay for the content that they've used as training data.

The Sizzle: It's funny to see the Wikimedia Foundation do, at an organisational level, what I do on my birthday: consider your own mortality. AI companies and their dream of being the platform between you and everything on the internet could ruin Wikipedia, which I believe should be the first digital Wonder of the World. Sure, money is good, but Wikipedia depends on volunteers and I doubt there's a high conversion rate of "ChatGPT user who sees a Wikipedia citation in an answer --> Wikipedia editor". 

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We got the first teen social media ban data and it tells us... not much

4.7 million social media accounts have been removed by tech companies complying with the teen social media ban (Guardian). The Albanese government said this shows the ban is "working" but everyone, including the government itself, knows that circumvention of the ban is widespread. I wrote a full piece on this at Crikey but, most generously, we don't know if the ban is actually helping kids yet. That hasn't stopped the UK from looking like they're going to follow suit (BBC).

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The Sizzler Say: missing Markdown history, foldable iPhone mock-up and best 2025 apps

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Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of World:

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Oh, Also

Antidepressants or Tolkien?

Here's a fun game that will test your fantasy/pharmaceutical knowledge this Friday: Antidepressant or Tolkien? 

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Bargains

Electronics

Computing

Mobile

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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.