Plus: Come on an internet road trip with some strangers ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

August 08, 2025 | Read online
# GPT-5, wellness tech getting close to pseudoscience & what Sizzlers say Plus: Come on an internet road trip with some strangers
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Edition 2392
"Computer lab" (Flickr: ofthebonis)
Hey all! What a week. Just as I was finishing this up, the Information Commissioner announced it’s suing Optus over the 2022 hack (OAIC). The news never stops. Have a great weekend!
# The News
### OpenAI’s big new model is evolution, not revolution
OpenAI has released its long-awaited new model GPT-5 (OpenAI). It’s supposedly “smarter, faster, more useful, and more accurate, with a lower hallucination rate than previous models” (WIRED, $). In terms of actual feature changes: ChatGPT will now decide which of its various weirdly named models variants to use based on the task given, has different “personalities” and can connect to Google Calendar and Gmail (The Verge)
Hard to argue with this kind of statistical analysis
The Sizzle: As the AI company, there’s a lot of people watching to see what OpenAI has come up with after hundreds of billions of dollars of investment and two years since GPT-4 — practically a millennium in hype cycles. The reception? Blogger Simon Willison summed it up best: “It doesn’t feel like a dramatic leap ahead from other LLMs but it exudes competence—it rarely messes up, and frequently impresses me”. Or, as AI skeptic Gary Marcus said, it’s no whale. That being said: I think even iterative, moderate improvements to the GPT-5 and, more importantly, better UI/product features might go a long way. Remember, the brilliance of the iPod wasn’t that it invented new technology, but that it pieced it all together. I’m not saying that this is that kind of leap — but shrinking AI model gains isn’t a death sentence for the technology.
Introducing GPT-5
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
### Fitness and health tech ‘wellness’ features skate dangerously close to pseudoscience
Whoop is arguing with America’s medical device regulator that it shouldn’t have oversight over its fitness tracker devices because they’re just for “wellness” (The Verge). The FDA says Whoop’s “blood pressure insights” feature is not a low-risk, medical application because it’s about diagnosing/measuring potential health issues. Whoop, like many other device makers, says their features are “diagnostic adjacent”: i.e. how Apple Watch measures “breathing disturbances” and not sleep apnea detection.
The Sizzle: I think it’s probably understated how often legit fitness/health tech devices and the data they produce skate dangerously close to bullshit or pseudoscience. Like with AI, we assume that consumer tech is accurate and good at what they say they do. This ranges from heart rate monitoring to antioxidant measuring (The Verge). But frequently, these devices are either not accurate enough or overly confident about giving insight into our bodies that just isn’t right or trustworthy.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
### What Sizzlers are saying
There were a lot of good recommendations for finding the right USB-C cord on the forum. M0les agreed that dead people AI avatars are “digital bong-rip thoughts that are just going to have downstream costs and tarnish what good [possible uses of the technology] there is.” On Slack, rossb responded to Microsoft’s support for mass Palestinian surveillance: “The Microsoft story is very reminiscent of IBM’s work with the Nazi Party in the 1930s.” Forum user mkeating said they had their own version of the Rolling Laptop That Screams back when laptops used to have 56k modems. James shared on Slack a delightful pair of Microsoft Windows XP Crocs.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
#### Leftovers
Jim Chalmers flags AI as key focus of economic reform roundtable (ABC News) ‘Unfair and absurd’: AI boss says tech giants should pay to train (Australian Financial Review, $) Review: CarlinKit Mini Ultra Wireless CarPlay (James Cridland's blog) Nearly 90% of Iranians now use a VPN to bypass internet censorship - here's everything we know (TechRadar) Fake WhatsApp developer libraries hide destructive data-wiping code (BleepingComputer) Didn’t Take Long To Reveal The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About (Techdirt) Google sales data breached in the same scam it discovered (Ars Technica) Google is fixing a bug that caused its Gemini chatbot to express self-loathing and say 'I am a failure' (Business Insider, $) Are Watermarks the Answer to AI-Generated Content? Maybe Not (IEEE Spectrum) After using ChatGPT, man swaps his salt for sodium bromide and suffers psychosis (Ars Technica) X plans to show ads in Grok chatbot's answers (Engadget) Swedish prime minister admits to using AI chatbots for insight (TechSpot) Encryption Made for Police and Military Radios May Be Easily Cracked, Researchers Find (WIRED, $) VibeChart (VibeChart)
Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
# Oh, Also
### Come on an internet road trip with some strangers
I found this super cute website Internet Road Trip that combines Google Street View with a voting feature, radio player and a chat box. The result is a Twitch Plays Pokemon-style traversing through the world which is pretty fun just to leave on in the background. When I was watching, we were somehow inside a Canadian car showroom? Anyway, enjoy!
That Kia does look pretty nifty.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
# Bargains
Electronics & electrical
$50 off Anker Prime Thunderbolt 5 Dock for $10 Xiaomi Power Strip 3xUSB (2A1C) 20W USB-C Fast Charging at Mostly Melbourne 2 or More for $19.99 each 1 unit for $24.99 SooPii USB-C Cable 6.6ft 240w 2-Pack & More - $24.74 at SooPii AU Direct Amazon AU Edifier X5 Pro True Wireless Earbuds with Active Noise Cancellation - Black - $39 at Centre Com Huawei Products at JKTEAM AliExpress Band 10 for $45 Watch Fit 4 Pro for $309 Watch GT5 Pro for $368 Sony WF-C510 True Wireless In-Ear Headphones - $78 at Telstra (Telstra ID Required) Shark FlexBreeze Fan with Misting Attachment - $199 at Amazon AU Reolink 16MP 36ch NVR (No HDD) - $234 at Reolink Official eBay LUNYEE 3018 PRO MAX CNC Router 500W All-Metal - $437 at Lunyee Industries Sony WH-1000XM6 Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones (Black) - $509 at Sony eBay (Refurbished, eBay Plus) DJI Osmo 360 Adventure Combo - $919 at digiDirect Store (eBay) (eBay Plus)
Computing
Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 14" FHD Touch Laptop i7-1185G7 32GB 256GB Win11P LTE (used) - $577 at Max Direct PowerColor Radeon RX 9070 XT Reaper 16GB Graphics Card - $1149 at PC Case Gear Lenovo 14 Inch Yoga 7 2 In 1 Laptop Intel Core Ultra 5 - $1199 at Costco (Membership Required) Alienware 34in 240Hz QD-OLED Ultrawide Gaming Monitor AW3425DW - $1199 at JB / Amazon AU Apple MacBook Air 13" M4 10C CPU, 8C GPU, 256GB SSD, 16GB RAM - $1455 at Sydney Mobiles eBay Galax GeForce RTX 5080 1-Click 16GB OC Edition GDDR7 Graphics Card - $1799 at Centre Com
Mobile
moto g75 5G 256GB with Moto Buds - $399 at BIg W Samsung Galaxy S24 FE at Samsung EDU (Requires SAMSUNG EDU) 8/128GB for $692 8/256GB for $791
# The End
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