Hello! 

I’m writing this from Town Hall in Sydney listening to a panel at Australia’s tech industry group’s annual summit, while simultaneously watching a captioned livestream of the government announcing its final details for the teen social media ban. 

There’s never been a better time to write an Australian daily tech newsletter. Enjoy! CW

The News

Australia’s tech sector has a bit of swagger at the moment

“There’s been a significant shift in tone the last six months,” a grinning Tech Council of Australia (TCA) CEO Damian Kassabgi told me and a buzzy crowd at the opening night drinks of their annual conference. 

TCA represents Australian tech companies like Atlassian, Canva, Airtree, Afterpay, and a few Australian arms of tech giants. Kassabgi reckons he’s hearing a lot of optimism about how the local tech industry is making new jobs and “efficiencies here” (whatever that means). Of course he would say that — but what I found noteworthy is just how much TCA is acting like they know everyone wants a piece of them at the moment.

The fact a handful of federal, state ministers and a premier are slated to appear at the summit shows just how keen governments are to be seen to be a friend of the Australian tech industry. When federal assistant Minister Andrew Charlton spoke on stage this morning, he credited TCA for how much influence they’ve had in public debate. 

Of course, AI was the hot topic that was brought up in every panel. There was plenty of lionising of Canva and Atlassian and talk about finding the next “Canvas” and “Atlassian”.

One of the big messages they’re really trying to sell: the next tech boom, be it AI, quantum computing, whatever — it can happen in Australia.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

The final teen social media ban rules leave a lot of questions to still be answered

If you were hoping for the answers to many of your questions about the teen social media ban, the final set of rules probably won’t scratch that itch. This morning, Communications Minister Anika Wells and the eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant announced the drop of the “reasonable steps regulatory guidance” which lay out the vibes, not the rules, of what social media companies need to do to stop 16 year olds from having accounts on their platforms (PDF).

The Sizzle: I haven’t had a chance to go through the full regulations yet but the biggest news from watching the announcement was a requirement for an appeals process in case your account is wrongly deemed to be underage — a sensible idea. 

Zooming out, there is a lot that is unanswered about the teen social media ban. We don’t know how confident social media platforms need to be with their methods. We don’t know what methods will be acceptable. We don’t know how much circumvention (i.e. kids getting around the ban) is acceptable. We don’t know how the government will measure whether the policy is a success or failure. It’s really just vibes all the way down.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

There might be a US TikTok sale… maybe?

A deal has been struck to bring TikTok under US ownership, according to American and Chinese negotiators (Guardian). You might have forgotten this because so much has happened since then, but Joe Biden passed a law last year requiring TikTok to be banned in January unless it was majority owned by US interests. Now, there’s a “framework” with “commercial terms agreed upon”. 

The Sizzle: When details come out, I will be very interested to find out the identity of the American owners. I’m also curious to see if this will be like Trump’s last TikTok deal which ended up with the video platform just signing a random contract with Oracle to have American servers but fundamentally not changing anything else (The Verge). Somehow, I don’t think this will be a simple sale. With Trump, it’s never simple.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

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Oh, Also

A website on a vape

Just the other day, I was looking at someone’s disposable vape with amusement. The $40 device had a colour, pretty detailed LED screen to show animations with clouds and other gimmicks to indicate how much juice it had left. Pretty crazy how advanced it was (not to mention wasteful). 

Anyway, Bogdan the Geek decided to do something with this and has shared on Github how they’ve turned their vape into a web server.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

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.