Just when we thought it was safe to ignore cryptocurrency and pretend it doesn't exist, it's come roaring back into mainstream attention as the value of one Bitcoin has surpassed US$100,000 for the first time. There's no doubt this incredible rise in price has been given a boost by the fact Trump will sit in the White House again soon. Trump picked Paul Atkins to lead the SEC - a bloke who "leads Patomak Global Partners, a financial services advisory group that works with crypto industry clients. He also serves as an adviser to the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a crypto advocacy group". A stark difference from the current SEC boss who has been cracking down on cryptocurrency scams and adding more checks and balances to the industry. He also assigned hedge fund manager Scott Bessent and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnik to head the Secretary of Treasury and Commerce departments, another big cryptoguy.
OpenAI announced "12 days of ship-mas", a series of "new features, products, and demos during all 12 days starting December 5th". The first of these announcements is a US$200/m ChatGPT Pro subscription that includes "unlimited access to OpenAI o1, GPT-4o, and Advanced Voice mode. It also includes a version of o1, exclusive to Pro users, that uses more compute to provide the best possible answer to the hardest problems (called o1 pro mode)". Compared to the o-1 preview model ChatGPT Plus subscribers have had for a few months, subscribers to ChatGPT Plus can expect a faster, more powerful, and more accurate model that is better at coding and math. It can also provide “reasoning” responses to images. And OpenAI promises it’s been trained to be more concise, which should result in faster response times than o1-preview". OpenAI also mentioned that they've struck a deal with Future (who I used to write for!) to suck up content from Tom's Guide, PC Gamer, TechRader and more.
Sarah Joseph, a Professor of Law at Griffith University specialising in human rights law and Australian constitutional law, wrote an article explaining how they reckon the government's law banning kids under 16 from social media is likely a breach of the constitution. Sarah argues that kids have "implied freedom of political communication" under the constitution since 1992 when the High Court interpreted it as such and confirmed again in 1997. By blocking kids from social media, it could be implied that the government is placing a "burden" these citizens from political communication. I look forward to someone (maybe one of the various lobby groups the big tech companies fund??) testing this in court.
Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.
Listening Post 2SER FM 107.5 Radio Guide November 1982 (National Library of Australia)
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