The News

Aussies aren’t buying the AI hype, but still want someone to reel the nerds in

Australians expect AI won’t take their jobs but they still expect firm regulation to protect them, according to two surveys released today. Polling from the Tech Council of Australia found that most people expect that AI will help with their work, with equal numbers excited and concerned about the tech (AAP). Meanwhile, some other polling from billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s charity, the Minderoo Foundation, suggested that nearly two-thirds want “strict regulation” even at the cost of innovation and productivity (The Australian, $)

The Sizzle: If you only pay attention to tech leaders and critics, you’d either think the technology was God or the Devil. The average Aussie seems to believe that AI is like any other new technology: useful if used correctly. Why is there such a drastic difference in opinion? I think this New York Times article ($) about CEOs and their use of AI gave the story away. The people who are talking most about replacing workers and a new tech era don’t actually use AI that much. By now, many of us have had a fiddle with AI and realise that we won’t be replaced by a technology that can’t correctly count the number of Rs in strawberry (OpenAI) any time soon.

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Ad-blocking under threat from German copyright lawsuit

A German lawsuit between a news publisher and an ad-blocking tech company risks making the technology illegal (Bleeping Computer). Axel Springer, which owns publications like Business Insider and Politico, sued Adblock Plus browser extension creator Eyeo over claims that the extension interferes with a website’s HTML/CSS which is an “unlawful reproduction and modification”. The claim was initially dismissed, but an appeal has opened it back up for ruling.

The Sizzle: The idea that you can’t fiddle around with a webpage’s HTML code on your own device is a crazy finding. You know what else alters a web-page? Right-clicking, inspecting, and typing a few characters in.

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More kids see p*rn on X than they do on p*rn sites

More UK kids are seeing explicit adult material online now than before its Online Safety Act passed in 2023, research has found (The Guardian). Social media platforms were the most common source for p*rn for underage kids (80%), with more children seeing it on Elon Musk’s X (45%) than dedicated adult sites (35%) — up from two years before. Nearly two-thirds said they’d seen p*rn online by accident, more than the 35% who’d sought it out.

The Sizzle: It’s a bad thing that trends are leading people towards less moderated, dodgier websites. This research shows that more kids are being exposed to explicit material in places other than dedicated adult websites because Elon Musk laid off most of X’s employees (including its trust and safety team). It’s easy to point the finger at P*rnhub or whatever, but maybe we should be more worried about alternatives run by people who don’t give a fuck at all.

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Leftovers

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Oh, Also

A leaderboard for under-quoting real estate agents

Sizzler Dan surfaced this website that cleverly uses real estate sales data to point out the systematic underquoting of house prices: RealEstats’ leaderboard ranks NSW real estate agents by how much their listing prices vary from the eventual sales.

And what do you know — not one agent in their system seems to overquote prices. Curious 🤔.

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Bargains

Electronics & electrical

Computing

Mobile

The End

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