 | Edition 2360 |
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Hey Sizzlers, great reply to yesterday’s edition from a Sizzler who’s seen the Tesla robotaxis first hand: |
“The zone they’re testing in isn’t particularly challenging to navigate around - mostly quiet inner urban residential with only a few major roads running through the area. Most notably it doesn’t include the slightly more complex CBD area, nor the heavily trafficked University of Texas area just north of the CBD. When Waymo launched earlier this year, they immediately started servicing those areas - while much more complex to navigate, they likely represent some of the busiest parts of town. So Tesla definitely picked something on the easier side of things, and it cracks me up that they can’t operate while it’s raining. That said, I did hear about a couple of them crawling up the main drag of the CBD over the weekend so maybe they’re planning to expand into that area quickly.” | | | | Anonymous Sizzler who lives in Austin |
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Always love hearing if you’ve got a experience or thoughts on anything in the edition! |
The News |
AI training on books is fair use, US court finds |
A US court has found that AI company Anthropic did not violate copyright when it trained AI on millions of books because it was a “transformative” use (Ars Technica). The judgment (Document Cloud) is a big win for AI companies who are defending claims from publishers that taking their shit without permission isn’t fair use. But there’s at least a silver lining for non-tech billionaires: the decision also reaffirmed that digitising a book that you’ve bought is fair use. Anthropic and other AI companies like Meta aren’t completely out of the woods because the court also found that pirating books isn’t fair use and will face court again over this. |
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum. |
Cracking the door open to reversing the teen social media ban |
A somewhat anti-climatic follow-up to yesterday’s trip down to see eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant speak about her plans for online safety, especially the teen social media ban: I did not get to ask a question because the event ran out of time 😞 . Here’s the two questions I was hoping to ask: |
1. The eSafety Commissioner is an independent regulator role, separate from government. When the social media ban comes into effect, what specific things are you going to track to know whether the ban is helping or hurting and, considering that you are independent, will you advocate to change the policy if it does not help children as promised?
2. Your office has done research showing the harms and benefits of social media for teens, particularly marginalised groups like queer youth who find “connection and community” online. What would you say to a queer teen right now who is about to have that connection and community cut off? |
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Still, a few interesting developments since then. Firstly, YouTube/Google put out a statement 15 minutes before the speech declaring war on what it called “inconsistent and contradictory advice” (Bluesky). What I found most interesting from the speech itself? No one seemed to notice but, in one answer, Inman Grant very much left the door open to the idea that the ban might not work — and that she might have to do something about it. |
 | It was a really nice Canberra day! |
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Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum. |
How long should you support an OS? |
Microsoft is set to end support, including security updates, for its most popular product Windows 10 by mid-October (Microsoft). Engineer Tim Allen — not that one, I don’t think — writes in Technical.ly that Windows 11’s requirements exclude most PCs made before 2018, even though many devices made before then can still do the basic tasks most people want like browse the web, do video calls and run office apps. What do you think? I know every time something like this happens people complain, but have the demands on desktop devices appreciably changed in a decade? I’m not sure!
P.S. There’s no other good place in this edition so I’m going to shoehorn in two Apple tidbits: Apple is toning down its Liquid Glass transparency a bit (Verge) and look at this leaked iPhone 17 Pro’s camera bar 🤢. |
 | Majin Bu @MajinBuOfficial |  |
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IPhone 17 Pro Black, Absolutely beautiful | |   | | | 1:30 PM • Jun 24, 2025 | | | | | | 1.62K Likes 101 Retweets | 111 Replies |
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Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum. |
Leftovers |
Your AI note taker might be breaking the law (SmartCompany) Statement on .au domain name licence wholesale price increase (auDA) US safety regulators contact Tesla over erratic robotaxis (BBC) Facebook Group admins complain of mass bans — Meta says it’s fixing the problem (TechCrunch) ChatGPT Wows Office Workers. That's a Problem for Microsoft (Bloomberg, $) OpenAI’s first AI device with Jony Ive won’t be a wearable (The Verge) Cato CTRL™ Threat Research: WormGPT Variants Powered by Grok and Mixtral (Cato Networks) Google finally lets Android users put Chrome’s address bar on the bottom (The Verge) Mozilla rolls out Firefox 140 with ESR status and fresh features (The Register) The Titan 2 is a modernized BlackBerry with 5G, Android, and a second screen (The Verge) Microsoft surprises MS-DOS fans with remake of ancient text editor that works on Linux (Ars Technica) Nintendo’s wheelchair basketball game Drag X Drive rolls onto the Switch 2 eShop on August 14th (Vooks) ‘Big Balls’ No Longer Works for the US Government (WIRED, $) Man 'refused entry into US' as border control catch him with bald JD Vance meme (DublinLive) My "Are you presuming most people are stupid?" test (Andy Masley)
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Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum. |
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Oh, Also |
Time travelling with Google Earth |
Google Earth has turned 20! Feels like only yesterday that I was in school, dragging the (trackball) mouse around a pad to explore the planet. To mark the occasion, Google has now brought its “historical street view” — a.k.a overlays of different satellites images over time — to the Earth product. Have fun exploring 🙂 |
 | Celebrating 20 years of Google Earth |
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Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum. |
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Bargains |
Cashback offers |
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Electrical & electronics |
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Computing |
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Mobile |
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The End |
😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius. |
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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. |
