Issue 2275 - Thursday 20 February 2025

In Today’s Issue

The News

the iPhone 16e: boring phone with big implications for Apple

Apple has dropped a new “budget” iPhone, the 16e (Apple), which starts at $999. It’s about the same size as the 16 and has the same chipset (so it can run Apple Intelligence, great, thanks). The differences are that the 16e has a single 48-megapixel rear camera, no MagSafe, slow wireless charging, and does not have the new Camera Control button (The Verge) which, tbh, are pretty minor drawbacks except maybe the camera.

What this does mean is that Apple currently has no smaller phone offering, a gap that will presumably be filled by the rumoured iPhone 17 Air (9to5mac) The sunsetting of the previous iPhone SE also officially means that Apple’s home button is officially gone (AppleInsider). And one other thing to keep an eye on: the iPhone 16e is the first phone to use Apple’s own custom-designed modem rather than the Qualcomm industry standard. The company says the new chip is better for battery life and lets the “phone's processor signal to the modem which traffic is the most time sensitive and put it ahead of other data transfers” (Reuters). I’m not really sure if there’ll be an appreciable impact but the modem is a big gamble for the company to see if it’s ready to be rolled out to all its phones.

Australia’s biggest terror threat is teens radicalised online

Australia’s spy boss Mike Burgess gave his annual “threat assessment” last night (ASIO). On the tech front: There was a brief mention of artificial intelligence, the usual frustration with encryption and it was interesting to hear that another nation has “almost certainly” mapped Australia’s critical infrastructure network (IT News). But perhaps the most significant thing to me was what kind of person ASIO found trying to commit terrorist attacks last year.

According to Burgess, “almost all” were radicalised minors who are “overwhelmingly” male and Australian-born, and the “majority” were lone wolf-type individuals following “nationalist and racist ideologies”. That seems quite bad. Tech clearly isn’t the only thing to blame, and Burgess doesn’t suggest that it is, but you’d have to imagine that online radicalisation is playing a significant role in this development. Also relevant, a new report (eSafety) says that 80% of kids aged 8-12 are using social media despite the existing minimum ages — although, as friend of the newsletter Josh Taylor noted (The Guardian Australia): “this figure is largely skewed by children accessing YouTube, either by watching while logged out, or using a parent or carer’s account. When YouTube is excluded, the figure is closer to 44%.”

IVF and charity donation leaks

Big IVF provider Genea is investigating a “cyber incident” involving an “unauthorised third party” (ABC News). The company says it’s secured its systems now and hasn’t figured out the extent of the breach yet. But it only got around to saying anything publicly five days after it found out about the hack and — I’m sure coincidentally — after the ABC got in touch. Aside from normal corporate shitty behaviour, patients say that their care has been disrupted and at least one person’s fertility testing couldn’t be completed this month (ABC News). Oxfam has also agreed to some “enforceable undertakings” with the Information Commissioner over its 2021 breach of 1.7 million records (OAIC). There are some details in there about what the investigation turned up — having shared credentials using customer data in the test database 👍👍👍 — but the thing I take away: it took four (4!) years to get to a pretty anodyne agreement by Oxfam.

Oh, Also

Wingdings is back, baby

I know it’s not the deals section yet but OzBargainer Lynn1991 has very helpfully shared (OzBargain) this crucial resource: a Wingdings Convert that “offers real-time conversion between text and Wingdings symbols” for uses like “branding materials, social media content, or digital presentations” (Wingdings Translator).

Seeing Wingdings took me back to when I would change the default font in Microsoft Word to Wingdings as a kid — much to the chagrin of my parents who didn’t grasp what was happening. It also led me to the Wikipedia page for Wingdings (Wikipedia), which cites this article ‘MS Denies Wingding Thing, Again’ (WIRED, archived link) in which the company put out a statement denying that the glyph-based text had “disturbing symbolic messages” that predicted 9/11.

Anyway, apparently the developer of Wingdings Translator says there are “more features planned”. Can’t wait.

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.