Issue 2280 - Thursday 27 February, 2025

A little shout-out to Sizzlers Joan, Jamie, Alan, Paora, Nathan and Alex who’ve sent me emails this week. I love to hear from my Sizzlers 🥰 

In Today’s Issue

The News

Amazon playing catch up with AI Alexa

Amazon is finally catching up with the generative AI hype with its Alexa Plus, an update primarily for its voice assistants (Amazon). The company showed it doing all the things that you would assume AI that was plugged into Amazon’s product family could do (The Verge). It’s free for existing Amazon Prime subscribers works with most existing Alexa devices, and will use other LLM models if it thinks they’re more appropriate than Amazon’s own in-house model Nova which sounds clever. It’s set to roll out for Australians later this year (The Australian, $).

The context is that Amazon massively dropped the ball when it came to AI voice assistants. It already has 600 million Alexa devices in homes, which is an incredible head start, but the business unit has never turned a profit despite spending $10s of billions over the years mostly because people use Alexa devices for things that don’t make money like checking the weather (Ars Technica). Then, Amazon was caught completely flat-footed by the generative AI boom and has only now released this product after a notoriously tortured development process (Washington Post, $). Will Alexa Plus change its fortunes? I’m not sure but the first hurdle is whether Alexa Plus products actually work, so stay tuned. Bonus, non-tech tidbit from today: Amazon owner Jeff Bezos has now decided that his Washington Post will only publish opinion supporting “personal liberties” and “free markets” (CNN). Glad to see things are going well in the US!

Apple’s government run-ins

Apple’s having a funny week. It pledged to spend US$500 billion in the US over the next four years (Apple). For those playing at home, that’s equal to one Project Stargate (Sizzle throwback) which I’m sure is totally coincidental amount and nothing to do with the Trump’s affection sweepstakes. But its shareholders also voted down a proposal to rubbish its DEI initiatives (The Guardian). And Apple says it’s fixing a featur— I mean, glitch that caused its voice-to-text to transcribe racist as “Trump” (NBC) which, as pointed out by Sizzler Kathy, doesn’t seem like a normal accident. Oh and Trump’s new head of intelligence and legit whacko Tulsi Gabbard said she had no idea about the UK’s attempt to break Apple’s encryption but opposed it anyway (Apple Insider). Outside the US, the tech giant finally reached an agreement with Indonesia to be able to sell its phones there after being banned for failing to meet a local requirement to use 40% local parts when making its phones (ABC News). For a company as global as Apple, the trend of countries getting more willing to enforce their own rules must be a huge headache.

Podcasts are big on YouTube and in this year’s election

More than a billion people have watched podcast content on YouTube, the company says (YouTube). I know that Joe Rogan et al. are big and that most people treat it like just popping on the TV in the background, but I still don’t personally use YouTube to watch the many podcasts I subscribe to, nor do I understand why. Is it the discovery? Is it the fact that YouTube has such a familiar and easy to use UI that people just revert to it rather than going to Podbean or BuzzSprout or whatever? If you watch podcasts on YouTube, I want to hear from you! (Also as a teaser: is there any interest in a Sizzle podcast? 👀 )

One place where podcasting is really taking off is the Australian federal election media circuit. As noted by my Crikey colleague Crystal Andrews (Crikey, $) , Albo’s turned up on podcasts of Abbie Chatfield, the Betoota Advocate, the Grade Cricketer and Mark Bouris — if you don’t know their names, just know they’re all relatively big, generally non-political podcasts — and Dutton has been doing similar rounds. The takeaway is that, like in the US, the erosion of mainstream media and growth of independent media means that politicians no longer have to face the gauntlet of critical journalistic interviews to reach big audiences. They’re probably more likely to be served up to Aussie voters by the YouTube algorithm.

Oh, Also

How to easily scrub personal information from Google

The update to Google’s Results About You is a good reminder to tell you to use it (Engadget). Released in 2022 but only made available in Australia last year, Google offers this tool that will search its services for personal information about you and request its removal. It doesn’t work for everything but it can.

I doubt I have to tell any of you considering how switched on Sizzlers are, but let me use this opportunity to remind you: there are very few good reasons for your personal details to be available on the internet, and a lot of ways it could be used by the wrong person to make your life hell. Take a minute, log into Results About You (Google) and save yourself a future headache. It’s very easy.

Bargains

Electrical & 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.