Hi all! I mentioned I went to a funeral yesterday. It was a truly beautiful event in Sydney’s east. For those who couldn’t make it in person, there was a livestream of the proceedings. Earlier today, I texted with some of my friends who logged on to watch. We shared about how moving the speeches were, and how devastating it was to lose a friend. I am grateful for this common, unremarkable technology that let us grieve together.

The News

Australia should let AI rip, productivity commission says

Australia will gain untold riches from AI for the small price of layoffs, abandoning copyright, eschewing big law reforms and accepting that companies will be able to collect data on you no matter what, the Productivity Commission says (SmartCompany). It released a report that attempts to quantify the benefits of AI to the Australian economy — supposedly likely to be $116 billion and 2.3% productivity gains but they’re all made up numbers — and how we get the most out of it (PDF). These include:

The Sizzle: Telling AI companies to “let it rip” is just about the least surprising thing ever. It’s not all bad: I think that technology-agnostic laws are often better and lots can be done without having to throw every existing regulation out. The problem is that we’re in no man’s land at the moment: the government has flagged regulation but is slow-walking it while there’s a land grab on our ideas and attention. The thing I will say: our rights have always evolved in response to our context. The introduction of a technology that makes new things possible (new forms of surveillance etc.) means that it’s not radical to suggest big changes to our protections. It’s also radical to do nothing and cede power to people who are only looking out for themselves.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

A bit more on NBN going with Amazon for satellite internet

This came in late yesterday so I only put it in links, but we’re getting more details on the NBN Co’s deal with Amazon to use its low Earth orbit satellites to replace Sky Muster (ITNews). It will be offered to about 300,000 premises starting in mid-2025, of which roughly 80,000 already subscribe to NBN’s existing satellite option. Interestingly, it’s not an exclusive deal and Sky Muster will be phased out in the early 2030s.

The Sizzle: When the news of this leaked back before the election, there was a big sigh of relief that it wasn’t Starlink for Elon Musk-shaped reasons. That being said, Starlink actually works right now. Project Kuiper essentially doesn’t exist yet. I wrote about the project’s struggles earlier this year. If you’re going to bet on someone for anything, Amazon’s not a bad bet — but, make no mistake, NBN Co is making a big gamble

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

What kind of USB-C cables do you buy?

I had a private event for the launch of my book last night. In all the excitement, I left one of my few remaining Apple USB-C chargers somewhere and I realised I needed to buy one. In the past, I’d bought the cheapest cables possible but I’m pretty sure the 5M “Fasgear” cords from Amazon that I plugged into my MacBook Pro’s charger fried my iPhone 16’s charging port not once, but twice. I honestly thought that the Apple cords and chargers were indistinguishable from the budget stuff until I saw this really interesting 2023 x-ray comparison (Lumafield).

So, what USB-C cables do you buy? Do you go el cheapo? Do you get slugged by Apple for the good stuff?

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

Say good-bye to the macOS hard drive icon

Sorry to make you feel old but, Apple’s latest macOS update beta does away with the traditional hard drive logo in favour of an SSD (Ars Technica). Storage devices are surprisingly often represented in UIs despite not really looking like anything. Think of the floppy disk icon representing saving a file or the CD as a symbol for music. As we move away from devices and increasingly towards the cloud, we’ve got fewer options for visual representations for the things that we do on computers.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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