Issue 2362 - Wednesday 23 April 2025

The News

Elon Musk leaving DOGE to spend more time with his familie— err Tesla

Good news for Tesla shareholders! Elon Musk will soon be using his Midas touch primarily on Tesla again as the company reported a 71% drop in profits (The Guardian). The world’s richest man’s schedule has been freed up presumably because Musk eliminated all US government waste — I assume DOGE’s cut tracker is delayed and the $155 billion in cuts it shows will soon reflect the $2 trillion that was promised (The Register). In a letter to shareholders, Tesla acknowledged “changing political sentiment” and tariffs for the carmaker’s problems (The Verge). Incredibly, Tesla’s stock is… up 5% (MarketWatch) mostly on the news that Musk will be out of government and on his promise that there will be “millions of autonomous Teslas on the road” by mid-next year. How seriously should we take this prediction? Check out this tracker to see how his other promises have fared (ElonMusk.Today).

Google walks back plan to kill cookies in Chrome

Google will no longer kill off cookies in Chrome because it’s so impressed by how seriously the digital advertising industry is taking privacy (Google)… 🧐 After initially promising to end its support for cookies — which are blocked by Firefox and Safari — Google has cycled through a few different alternative proposals like FLoC and Topics API which would both make it a little bit harder for websites to track your specific movements across the internet (Ars Technica). Now, after a few delays, Google says it has abandoned a plan to prompt Chrome users to turn off cookies but will continue developing Incognito mode, adding a feature that will block IP cross-site tracking to its existing cookies blocking.

Many are calling this the most boring tech election ever

The most high-profile tech moment of the Australian election so far has been both men who want to be prime minister furiously agreeing on the flawed teen social media ban (ITNews). At last night’s debate, it was just about the only thing Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton agreed on. This comes as there’s a growing consensus in the Australian tech press that YouTube’s exemption from the teen social media ban makes no sense and undermines the policy’s point (AFR, $). One place there isn’t consensus is with experts (SBS) and teens (Pew Research) who both have nuanced views on the benefits and downsides of social media. It’s crazy to me that tech policy has never been more interesting, important or contested — but you wouldn’t know that if you listened to our political contest.

Leftovers

Oh, Also

How to uncover realestate.com.au’s hidden prices

I’m not sure if there are any real estate website sicko Sizzlers, but browsing realestate.com.au for her dream house is one of my wife’s favourite pastimes. Someone got frustrated with the fact that it sometimes hides a house’s asking price — even though the listings only show up in certain price ranges searches (OzBargain)! So they built a Chrome extension that extracts this data and shows it to you (Chrome Web Store). An OzBargain commenter also found a handful of other extensions that do similar things. Warning: the extension also has some bullshit AI stuff but you can ignore them. Also the listed prices aren’t necessarily that accurate, but, hey, at least there’s something to go off.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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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.