Mentioned in today’s edition: Australia's Space Agency, OpenAI, Amazon Leo, social media ban, JavaScript and PlayStation Portal. Plus, deals on Monster entertainment systems, FIIO audio and Lian Li cases.

The News

Tech companies say AI will help the environment. It's just not the type of AI that they're building.

Tech companies are touting the future environmental benefits of AI but that's not the kind of AI that these companies are pouring money into, a new report by (Sizzler) Ketan Joshi revealed. Joshi looked into the vague claims of companies like Google about how AI will one day help the climate (WIRED, $). He found these claims, often based on pretty flimsy evidence, were typically about "traditional" AI, and not the recent generative AI boom that 1) consumes significantly more energy and 2) is the focus of the $100s of billions of dollars of spend by the big tech companies.

The Sizzle: Joshi nails the sleight-of-hand that's trotted out to defuse questions about the clearly significant environmental impact of this massive AI infrastructure buildout. Zooming out, I think this also speaks to this broader sickness that's afflicted tech over the past 15 years.

All the incentives push you to build bullshit. Realistically speaking, you're more likely to make money creating another useless platform to clip the ticket on commerce than trying to create something new, real and transformative like a vaccine or a new gadget. Some of the greatest technical minds are putting all their energy into the problem of "how do we increase time on platform by 0.7%" because, well, that's actually worth guaranteed billions of dollars to tech companies. As I've said before, generative AI clearly has productive uses. But we should be skeptical about how productive it is overall, especially when companies are completely opaque about one of the major costs: the environmental impact.

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NBN's new satellite internet will start as the same price as Sky Muster

NBN Co will offer Amazon's satellite internet at the same price as its existing Sky Muster program — at least for the early customers (IT News). NBN is consulting with telcos over its plans to withdraw Sky Muster by the end of 2028 and replace it with faster Amazon Leo internet (née Project Kuiper). It's planning on charging the same wholesale rates as it does now and to provide equipment free of charge — but only if customers sign up within 90 days of it launching. Meanwhile, Amazon had a good week: it launched 32 of its satellites and got US government sign off to send up another 4,500 satellites into orbit (Bloomberg, $) 

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How OpenAI lobbied Australia to water down our proposed AI laws

While OpenAI was promising $115 billion of economic benefit for Australia over the next 5 years, federal bureaucrats were quietly warning that AI's wider benefits had "yet to emerge" (Crikey, $). I got my hands on some internal government briefings and emails between public servants showing how they prepared for OpenAI's lobbying efforts to give them money, to water down Australia's copyright laws and to avoid strict AI regulation. Interestingly, it seems like OpenAI has had some success gaining access to parts of the government's national security apparatus (and they have some deep pockets...)

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Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of World:

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Oh, Also

This website will either put you to sleep or frustrate you so much you never sleep again

I've been having some trouble sleeping lately. When I was looking for some solutions, I stumbled across this GitHub project, Bedtime, that promises to lull you into slumber using a Javascript spinner. Here's the premise: it tells you a bedtime story, piece by piece, and every time you want to read the next section, it loads showing a spinner that takes just a little longer each time. 

It's a cute concept and I will give it a go (but imma be real with you... I think spending time waiting for loading is more likely to spike my blood pressure than my melatonin).

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Bargains

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.