Issue 2321 - Wednesday 30 April 2025

A very special hello to Sizzler Justin who has been experiencing the Europe blackouts firsthand in Madrid. He told me that “things are VERY wonky here - iMessage/iCloud offline. Cell towers have been off since the boom at 12:30 yesterday.” — so sounds like everything is more disrupted than reported! Love to hear from him (and always love to hear from my Sizzlers ❤️ ).

The News

Aussies don’t trust AI and can you blame them?

Australians are the least optimistic people in the world about AI despite being early adopters, according to a new survey (News.com.au). As part of a global survey University of Melbourne and KPMG found that Australians are less trusting of AI, have less knowledge about it and less interest in finding out more about it than almost any nation’s people (KPMG). Why are Australians less trusting? Well, we don’t have a great track record of our institutions using tech well or ethically.

Look at the way political parties are given privacy exemptions to spam people. I just reported on how the Liberal Party has been spamming a child’s email address that was only ever given to the Cancer Council (Crikey, $). What’s interesting — and buried in the reporting of the survey — is that Australians are still very trusting of tech regulation, with the three-quarters of people saying they want regulation. Turns out, we might not trust government to use tech well but that doesn’t mean we don’t want them to crack the whip on big tech.

Tech is scared off displaying Trump’s tariff costs

Earlier this week, it seemed like ecommerce giants were going to make it clear just how much Trump’s tariffs were costing Americans. China’s Temu started displaying 145% “import charges” to US-based customers as they checked out which predictably startled their shoppers (CNBC). Amazon was set to follow suit (Punchbowl News) but then backflipped and rejected the idea (Reuters). Why the change of heart? Well, the White House publicly called displaying the tariff cost a “hostile and political act” and Trump called Bezos to express his “displeasure” (CNBC). So now the President of the US is personally intervening in private companies merely showing how much their new taxes cost. Anyway, here’s a good piece about how Trump’s tariffs are going to make access to technology harder for the poorest of us (WIRED, $).

You can build Nothing’s new modular phone but probably not the iPhone

It’s so rare these days that we get a moment to talk about phones but how cool is Nothing’s second go at a modular phone (The Verge)? Their most recent go at it is faster, has a longer battery life, supports NFC and has an improved camera (Android Authority). Also, it just looks cool and I love being able to add accessories like camera lenses or a kickstand. And, most of all, it’s relatively cheap in Australia with entry level at $449 (WhistleOut). Speaking of building phones: here’s a cool interactive piece about just how hard it would be to build an iPhone in the US (FT, $).

Leftovers

Oh, Also

How cool is this DIY offline music player?

I have a 20 month old kid who loves dancing to music. Her favourite song? APT (YouTube). One frustration I do have is that using YouTube on the TV or playing from my phone introduces a big distraction for both me and 👶. So when I saw this project I fell in love: this dad built his three year old a beautiful, offline music player (Mario Zechner). Not only is it cute as a button and very cool, but he painstakingly documented how he built it. It is soooo far beyond my capabilities — although I could imagine commercialising this in a way that would allow people to program their own cartridges — but I’ll be damned if it isn’t tempting to give it a go.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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

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Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

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.