Plus: What the pdfs tell us about the Epstein Files ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

February 05, 2026 | Read online
# Facial recognition retail ban appealed, feds can't crack iPhone and an uncomfortable Bill Gates interview Plus: What the pdfs tell us about the Epstein Files
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Edition 2495
"Computer keyboard with QWERTZ layout" by Maksym Kozlenko is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Good morning! An early Sizzle from me today because I am busy filming [redacted] today. Will let you know more on that when I can.
Mentioned in today’s edition: The FBI, Lockdown Mode, Signal, Bill Gates, Intel, Nvidia, Roblox, Ron DeSantis and facial recognition technology. Plus, deals on Bose headphones, Philips monitors and AMD CPUs.
# The News
### Facial recognition tech for retail doesn't breach privacy, a tribunal finds
Using facial recognition technology (FRT) on customers in stores to combat the "real and serious problem of violence and theft" is OK under Australian privacy law, a tribunal has found (The Oz, $). This came from Bunnings’ appeal to the Privacy Commissioner's finding that the retailer had violated Australians' privacy with its use of FRT in stores (Austlii). The Administrative Review Tribunal ruled that Bunnings' FRT was OK because its tech "minimised the intrusion on privacy", but it still fucked up by not having adequate signage or properly disclosing it via its privacy policy.
I'm told the Office of the Australian Information Commission (OAIC) hasn’t decided whether to appeal it.
The Sizzle: This is a pretty significant decision that undermines the fundamental thrust of OAIC's decision that the use of FRT did not justify how it intrudes on Australians' privacy. Yes, Bunnings still got pinged but mostly for paperwork reasons (sorry, of course doing a proper disclosure is important, but let's be honest, no one is reading these). Retailers will be cheering that they can mass surveil everyone who comes into their stores. Which, as I mentioned in the Sizzle earlier this year, is happening regardless of the rules.
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
### Even the feds can't get into iPhones in lockdown mode
The FBI was unable to get into the iPhone of a Washington Post reporter because of its lockdown mode feature (404Media, $). Court filings show that, despite getting a very unorthodox warrant to get a journalist's phone to find out about their source, the Trump Administration could not actually break into the phone because of a feature launched in 2022 to stop intrusion using remote access spyware. It's very cool that Apple made a feature available to the average punter that defeats even the world's best equipped governments. However, cops were still able to get into the reporter's laptop — and thus her Signal, and therefore contacts with her sources — because she had left on either FaceID or fingerprint scanning (The Intercept)
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
### Well this was a weird interview with Bill Gates
The Australian Financial Review landed a rare opportunity to have an interview with Bill Gates, who is currently visiting Australia (AFR, $). It was a fairly wide-ranging chat. But there was one topic that was ruled out:
[Gates'] brief trip to Australia over the past week with his new partner, Paula Hurd, widow of the former Oracle chief executive Mark Hurd, happily coincided with the Australian Open. Less happily, it also coincided with the release of more documents from the Epstein files that include the convicted paedophile referring to Gates amid the many important men he cultivated for money and influence. It wasn’t the first time the association had become public. But Epstein’s latest salacious assertions, written in 2013, instantly ricocheted around the world – an inevitable aspect of the ubiquitous digital era pioneered by Gates. They claimed Gates had caught sexually transmitted diseases from Russian girls and sought antibiotics from Epstein. Gates’ support team politely tells me before the Financial Review’s interview that he won’t be commenting beyond the official statement through a spokesman last weekend. “These claims are absolutely absurd and completely false,” the statement said. “The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame.”
AFR
The article then returns to being a fairly normal interview. I'm very sympathetic to its author/editors who prominently addressed the Epstein stuff but still had a chance to interview him otherwise... But what a bizarre, jarring experience to have to take a hard-right turn into addressing whether the founder of Microsoft sought to secretly dose his wife to allegedly cure an STI he gave her, and then to have to go back to talking about, uhh, AI.
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Leftovers
Australia:
Condemnation of Elon Musk’s AI chatbot reached ‘tipping point’ after French raid, Australia’s eSafety chief says (The Guardian) Pro-China online influence campaign targeting Australians taken down by X (Crikey, $) Fortescue to take delivery of first massive battery electric trucks from China supplier (The Driven) auDA awards $750,000 to community projects (auDA)
Rest of World:
Something to watch: Trump rival Ron DeSantis comes out harder against the White House's AI push (Financial Times, $) Intel will start making GPUs, a market dominated by Nvidia (TechCrunch) Apple Beats Tech Stocks by Most in a Year as It Avoids AI Panic (Bloomberg, $) Roblox’s 4D creation feature is now available in open beta (TechCrunch) HHS Is Making an AI Tool to Create Hypotheses About Vaccine Injury Claims (Wired, $) What are services NOT worth self hosting? (Reddit)
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Oh, Also
### What the pdfs tell us about the Epstein Files
While we're on Epstein, I'm sure you've been reading through all of the coverage of the latest tranche of Department of Justice files and thinking to yourself "gee, I'd love to know more about the PDFs". Well, here's a fascinating article from the PDF Association (who knew that was a thing!) doing some forensic analysis on the Epstein PDFs themselves. Here's one particularly interesting bit:
"There are also other documents that appear to simulate a scanned document but completely lack the “real-world noise” expected with physical paper-based workflows. The much crisper images appear almost perfect without random artifacts or background noise, and with the exact same amount of image skew across multiple pages [...] It is highly likely these PDFs were created by rendering original content (from a digital document) to an image (e.g., via print to image or save to image functionality) and then applying image processing such as skew, downscaling, and color reduction." Hmm?
Also, another mini-mystery solved from the documents: What's up with all those equal signs anyway?
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Bargains
Electronics
NOVOO Thin Wallet Tracker Card 1-Pack - $19.99 at Amazon Bose Quietcomfort SC ANC over-Ear Headphones - $249 at Costco (Down from $499)
Computing
27" QHD IPS 75Hz Monitors at Centre Com Philips 27E2N1500L for $131 (Down from $189) AOC Q27B30E for $135 (Down from $199) Keychron K10 HE Wireless Keyboard - $226 at Amazon (Down from $249) AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU - $661 at Centre Com (Down from $849)
# The End
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