Issue 2267 - Monday 10 February, 2025

Hello and happy Monday! I was defeated by my remote controlled garage roller door this weekend. Hope your weekend was more victorious than mine - CW

In Today’s Issue

The News

UK demands Apple encryption backdoor

This was passed around everywhere over the weekend, including the Sizzle Slack, but the UK government is reportedly making Apple put a backdoor into its encrypted cloud user data service (Washington Post, $). Last month, the Brits issued a notice under a law — similar to Australia’s 2018 anti-encryption law (Home Affairs) — that forces a company to help them access data from its new Advanced Data Protection (Apple) in a way that’s not tied to a single case. Apple can’t say anything by law but naturally other groups have pointed out that if you make a backdoor for a good guy, it’s there for a bad guy, too (BBC). There’s speculation based on previous Apple comments that it might withdraw from the market but apparently the law requires Apple to start working on a backdoor even as it appeals the matter. As far as we know, Australia’s never asked Apple to do the same. Those powers were used 66 times in the last reported year — but never for terrorism, despite being ostensibly the raison d'être for the law (InnovationAus, $).

AI goes to Paris

Bigwigs from around the world are going to Paris this week for an international AI summit (AP News). JD Vance, Narendra Modi, Justin Trudeau will be at the “Paris AI Action Summit” however Australia’s science minister Ed Husic will not be in attendance (SMH, $). There will be panel talks and speeches about “key common actions to take on artificial intelligence” over the two day summit (website here), but all the action really happens on the sidelines as CEOs schmooze with top bureaucrats. If you’re not expecting much, the apparently leaked statement set to be signed by the attendees will not change your mind (Substack). Back home, Services Australia CEO says they’re all-in on AI (Canberra Times) while 20+ federal government agencies still have no policies governing the use of AI (InnovationAus, $)

Also Super Bowl Bonus AI story: A preview of Google’s Super Bowl ad promoting its AI product Gemini featured a hallucination claiming that gouda is the world’s most popular cheese, and was subsequently changed before the game (The Verge).

Australia’s age tech check

Shall we check in on how Australia’s march towards its national age verification and estimation policy is going? As many of you would know, I wrote a lot about the teen social media ban last year (Crikey) which will come into effect in less than 10 months. At the moment, the government has commissioned a trial of technologies to tell users’ ages which will report back to inform the legal requirements for steps that the social media companies will have to take to stop <16s from logging on, as well as forthcoming requirements for adult websites to stop minors.

Apparently 44 companies have put their hand up to have their tech trialled — which was listed to start today — and details of the testing regime can be found on their website (Age Assurance). I had a chance to speak to one of them, a French company Needemand, which claims it can determine whether someone is an adult with 99% accuracy using only hand movements (Crikey, $). It would be a very impressive technology if it works — but no one outside of the company has used it yet. We will soon see if it and all these other products can really be adequate solutions when this report is handed to government by the middle of the year.

Oh, Also

A jihad on reCAPTCHA

I’ll be honest, I’ve never thought much about the humble but ubiquitous reCAPTCHA. Its original purpose to test if someone’s a human while also digitising old documents was a noble goal with a clever execution. I’ve wasted too much of my life trying to decipher inscrutable print, but I always had accepted it as part of the bargain of using the internet.

Now I’ve learned that not only is it useless — bots can read now — but also that it’s really a data collection device for Google that is wasting all of our time, according to a write-up (BoingBoing) of a new study (arXiv)?

Bargains

Electric & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday afternoon. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.

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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.