Plus: Say good-bye to the macOS hard drive icon ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

August 06, 2025 | Read online
# Australia urged to let AI rip, NBN-Amazon satellites and USB-C cables Plus: Say good-bye to the macOS hard drive icon
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Edition 2390
"Field Artillery Digital Automatic Computer Had a 4096 word hard drive. YEEHAW!" (Flickr: FtSillOCS Photo Project)
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:
Giving up on a dedicated law setting out AI protections and proposed mandatory guardrails until we can prove that existing legislation doesn’t work. Making it easier to give people access to their data held by others — so it can be used for things like AI — but not giving Australians the “right to be forgotten”. Exempting AI from copyright restrictions if its owner legally buys a copy of the book or work, or find other ways of compensation.
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?
Sorry I should have put a graphic image warning on this
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
#### Leftovers
Tech giants are still making minimal efforts to tackle the growing scourge of online child sexual abuse (eSafety Commissioner) Queensland pilot writing program shows promise of AI in schools (The Australian, $) Forget a social media ban. If tech companies won’t stop targeting teens like me, block them (The Sydney Morning Herald, $) Job seekers had payments cancelled unlawfully by gov IT system (iTnews) Australian network engineer tests V2G with his Geely X5, offers glimpse of the future (The Driven) Intel struggles with key manufacturing process for next PC chip, sources say (Reuters) Introducing GPT-oss (OpenAI) & GPT-oss (Simon Willison's Weblog) Illinois bans use of AI in providing mental health services (StateScoop) Florida is suing several porn companies over age verification (Engadget) Microsoft teases the future of Windows: 'The computer will be able to see what we see, hear what we hear, and we can talk to it' (TechRadar) Wikipedia Editors Adopt 'Speedy Deletion' Policy For AI Slop Articles (404 Media, $) Taylor Swift AI deepfake nudes show up on X's Grok chatbot (The Verge) Claude Fans Threw a Funeral for Anthropic’s Retired AI Model (WIRED, $) Murena’s Pixel Tablet is helping to wean me off Google (Ars Technica) Substack rival Ghost connects to the open social web with its latest public release (TechCrunch) Apple iPhone 17 & September 7 event rumored (The Shortcut, $)
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.
SSDs just don’t have the same character, do they?
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
# Bargains
Electrical & electronics
Waterpik Cordless Waterflosser - $54.99 at ALDI eufy E340 Video Doorbell - $209 at Bunnings or The Good Guys Samsung Galaxy Watch7 Bluetooth 44mm Green - $348 at Amazon AU Bauhn 50" 4K UHD Tizen Smart TV - $379 at ALDI Casio CDP-S110 Digital Piano Black + Bonus $50 Casio Cashback - $459 at Belfield Music eBay Anycubic Kobra S1 Combo + 24 Rolls of Filament - $959 at Anycubic TCL 75" C7K 4K UHD Premium QD-Mini LED Google TV (2025) - $2018 at Appliance Central TCL 85" C7K 4K Premium QD-Mini LED Google TV (2025) - $2666 at Appliances Online TCL 98" C7K Premium QD-Mini LED Google TV 98C7K (Greater Sydney Only) - $4389 at Powerland
Computing
UGREEN Mac Mini M4 Dock, 11-in-1 USB C Hub with NVMe Enclosure 10Gbps - $76.79 at UGREEN Group via Amazon AU Seagate 8TB IronWolf 3.5in SATA III NAS Hard Drive (ST8000VN002) - $269 at Umart Samsung 990 PRO PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe 4TB SSD - $426 at Samsung Education Store Seagate 24TB BarraCuda 3.5" SATA3 Hard Drive (ST24000DM001) - $531 at Mwave Gaming PC: R5 7500F, MSI RTX 5060 GPU, B650M WiFi Mobo, 16GB RAM, 1TB M.2 SSD, Bonus US$20 SteamCard - $998 at Nebula PC Apple MacBook Air M3 13" at Officeworks 8GB/256GB for $1094 8GB/512GB for $1294 Apple iMac (24-Inch, Apple M4 Chip with 10‑Core CPU and 10‑Core GPU, 16GB / 256GB) - $1707 at Amazon AU
Mobile
Vodafone 220GB 1 year prepaid mobile SIM + 30% ShopBack Cashback + Westpac 20% Bonus - $179 at Vodafone
# The End
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