Issue 2289 - Wednesday 12 March 2025

In Today’s Issue

The News

We’re in a gizmo slump

Global smartwatch sales fell for the first time ever last year (Counterpoint Research). Analysts blamed the majority of the 7% decrease on an Apple sales slump that they reckon was due to a lack of compelling new Apple Watch features. Meanwhile, the consumer hardware divisions of big tech companies have become a victim of Silicon Valley’s enormous big AI bet, leading to layoffs and a lack of an appetite for new, audacious products (Bloomberg, archived). With the first wave of AI devices like the Humane pin flopping, and the fact that most AI is using existing tech (microphones, cameras, even the good ole’ fashioned keyboard) there’s little interest in trying to create crazy new gizmos!

As mentioned many times before, the Sizzle is a pro-gadget newsletter and our official position is that there should be more fun little gadgets to play with. We’ve been sorely disappointed lately, and we’re not the only ones feeling it.

A new Chinese AI thing, Manus, is getting hype because it can click on stuff for you

The latest AI thingo getting hype is Chinese startup Butterfly Effect’s Manus. It’s a agentic AI product, which means it’s supposed to navigate and interact with (i.e. click around) other websites for you so it can do more things. The company has opened up Manus for testing which means it’s out there in the wild, but on an invite-only basis. I’ve put their hype video below to give a sense of what it looks like.

As usual, these AI demos use insane examples — who in their goddamn right mind is going to ask an AI to rank job candidates? Actually, now that I’ve said it I know exactly that some people will — but I will admit the idea of sending AI to go away and do some task for me in the “real world” (as in, outside of its sandbox and on someone else’s website) is intriguing. Other companies have agentic AI products coming too. Are we there yet? Reviews of it suggest no (TechCrunch). Will we ever get there? I’m not going to say never, but geez, doesn’t it feel a bit insane that we’re training robots to be like humans instead of just building APIs so robots can just be robots.

Police ignore previous surveillance safeguard warnings, keep breaking the law

State police forces have ignored previous warnings and are continuing to use surveillance powers illegally to access Australians’ communications (InnovationAus, $). This was the finding of the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s look into how various government agencies were using covert electronic surveillance (APH). They found police forces keep ignoring safeguards like thresholds, mandatory privacy considerations and record-keeping when accessing data, and some agencies hadn’t even improved after previous adverse findings! I mean, come on! Also on government transparency, a review of the government agencies’ AI transparency statements — at least those that bothered to publish them — found that these statements were, erm, not very transparent (Information Age).

Leftovers

Oh, Also

In defence of running a government department on a single Excel spreadsheet

There was quite a few “lols” and “omgs” to the news that NZ Health had managed NZD$28 billion finances on a single Excel spreadsheet, according to a review of the agency (New Zealand Herald). On top of a few other problems, Deloitte had “significant concerns” that NZ Health’s solo spreadsheet was making it harder to find data problems. Not great.

But I’m going to zag here and say it’s not as bad as some people are making it out to be. If you look at the report, it shows that the Health NZ spreadsheet was pulling from other sources of data about different districts, meaning it was just doing a bit of aggregation — it’s not like every line-item was jammed together on Sheet1! Although, you’d have to think that health ITV workers would be more careful after England Health lost 16,000 COVID-19 tests in 2020, meaning that “50,000 potentially infectious people may have been missed by contact tracers and not told to self-isolate”, because of an Excel row limit (The Guardian).

Bargains

Electrical & electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday afternoon. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.

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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.