Issue 2283 - Tuesday 4 March, 2025

One correction from yesterday’s edition: I said that Firefox was the only browser engine that will let you run third-party privacy plugins. My apologies to Tim Cook and everyone in the WebKit team for not including them (and thanks to Sizzler Dylan for pointing this out on Slack). While we’re on this topic: here’s the case for sticking with Firefox despite everything (alexn.org) while Chrome cracks down again on ad blockers (GitHub).

The News

Amazon set to be NBN Co’s satellite provider

Amazon is set to be NBN Co’s satellite provider of choice (AFR, $), with the broadband company working towards inking a deal to use the ecommerce giant’s low Earth satellite provider Project Kuiper to replace its Sky Muster program. There was a lot of talk about whether Elon Musk’s Starlink, as Australia’s only current LEO commercial operator according to the Guardian Australia, was a lock for this project. But as Leanne O’Donnell presciently pointed out last month, there are plenty of other options (Bluesky). It’s good to have competition — not least for Elon-specific reasons (The Daily Beast) — especially as Musk-owned companies find new ways to latch onto government, like recently revealed discussions about supplying military-grade satellite communications to the Defence Department (InnovationAus, $). On Amazon, its operations are going gangbusters in Australia with 20% sales growth and 40% growth in Amazon Prime subscription revenue (AFR, $). Oh, and Amazon also announced its own quantum computing chip too (ABC News) but it doesn’t appear to be available for same-day delivery yet.

P.S. If you like low-earth satellites, you’re going to love very low-Earth orbit satellites like those being launched by new satellite imagery company Albedo next week (Ars Technica)

2025 might be the year of self-driving cars, for real this time

A Maserati MC20 Coupe set a new land speed record for autonomous vehicles by reaching 318km/h last week (The Verge). It’s a cool feat, but I’m personally more excited by the fact that self-driving cars feel like they’re almost — finally — here. It’s no longer novel to see people posting videos of themselves in Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving taxis, which are actually operational in LA, SF, Phoenix and, soon, Atlanta and Austin (Mashable). In Australia? The latest thing I can see is 13cabs CEO saying they’ll be here… in the next decade (Courier-Mail, $). Meanwhile “autonomous driving” a.k.a. assisted driving technology also seems to have come a long way too — like this review of someone driving a new Escalade’s “super cruise” feature (Semafor). For those of us who can’t afford the priciest cars, BYD has just announced it’s releasing self-driving features in cars as cheap as its AUD$15,000 Seagull (Business Insider). And if that’s not exciting enough, BYD is also offering a “vehicle-mounted drone launching” system 👀 (The Verge).

Chip warfare between US and China

Just quickly, the world of chips continues to be a fascinating space — even if it might not seem that way from the outside — as it acts as a proxy battlefield between superpowers. Despite the export ban, Chinese buyers are getting their hands on the latest Nvidia chips (WSJ, gift link) and so the US is looking into how they’re getting around export controls (Reuters). But Trump’s proposed tariffs are throwing a spanner into the works, as well as causing people to be down on Nvidia (CNBC). One way to get around tariffs is by moving operations to the US, which explains TSMC’s promise to spend an additional US$100 billion on its US operations (Axios). And Intel — despite completely falling behind with their own chips, changing their strategy to focus on producing chips for third-parties, and recently firing the CEO who was overseeing the transition — is being kept alive by this desire for US chip building capability and is now trialling making them for Nvidia and Broadcom (Reuters).

Oh, Also

Vale the “man with the golden arm”

I’m stretching a bit to put this in but tech —> science —> medicine is close enough to include this including legendary story: last month, an Australian dubbed the “man with the golden arm” died after saving the lives of 2.4 million babies (SMH). Every Australian vial of anti-D treatment — a serum treating rhesus D haemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn which used to affect one in six babies — from 1967 until 2018 contained the blood of James Harrison, a Sydney man whose blood had high levels of anti-D.

Invented by a Bendigo doctor and his American colleagues, the anti-D serum derived from the blood of people like James was called an “anti-vaccine” because it suppressed the mother’s immune system response to the babies’ blood cells that would cause the life-threatening reaction. Since the breakthrough discovery in 1966, Australia has found fewer than 200 anti-D donors. Harrison gave 1173 donations over more than 50 years until he had to retire a few years back, sometimes breaking the rules by donating earlier than he was supposed to. Vale to a legend who reminds us how so much of our advanced world still depends on something as retro as blood donations and personal sacrifice.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

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.