Issue 2259 - Wednesday 29 January, 2025.

In Today’s Issue

The News

Apple: ignore our chip exploit, get excited for a HomePod with screen

Researchers say that new Apple chips can be exploited by hackers to steal sensitive data like credit card info and encrypted emails (Ars Technica). What’s cool — in a sense — is that one of these attacks works by exploiting the secret sauce that makes affected Apple A- and M- series chips so speedy, specifically the way that chips “predict” data flow and those predictions contain normally protected data (here’s the researcher’s website if you wanna get stuck in). Another thing that Apple has on its plate is shipping its new HomePod that might have a seven-inch screen, according to Apple oracle Mark Gurman (Bloomberg, $). He calls it the “most significant release of the year because it’s the first step towards a bigger role in the smart home” but, if that’s the case, then Apple needs to get those boffins to work because it ain’t lighting the world on fire.

Australia sus on DeepSeek

Our science minister Ed Husic is reportedly the first Western government minister to raise privacy concerns about Chinese AI company DeepSeek (BBC), soon joined by Housing Minister Clare O’Neil who says our security agencies are looking into it (SBS). Naturally, this follows the US which is doing the same (IT News). As mentioned yesterday, the immediate reaction to a popular Chinese tech thing was to float a ban on national security grounds. What I don’t get is why it’s a national security threat? Sure, the app sends data to China (WIRED) so you can get all excited about that data collection, but the model can be run locally without an internet connection so that nullifies that concern. And, if the argument is that DeepSeek produces propaganda (see the Guardian’s tests), so what? Propaganda ain’t illegal. Even if it was, the cat’s already out of the bag. Good luck banning something that’s already been run on boxes around the world.

Fuelling AI power suck is now an election issue

Proving that tech news is consuming everything else, I missed that the prime minister is using rising AI energy demands to take a shot at Peter Dutton (InnovationAus, $). At a press club speech last week, Anthony Albanese said the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan “means no capacity to deal with things like data centres and new technologies that will require significant energy resources” because of the party’s (exceedingly optimistic) modelling about electricity demand. He also cited PsiQuantum, the US-based quantum computing company that the federal government invested $470 million in last year which is now subject to an independent review (InformationAge). And another federal government body, the National Reconstruction Fund, has announced a $32 million dollar stake in harrison.ai (AFR, $), an Australian AI company that I reported obtained hundreds of thousands of Australians’ chest x-rays without the patients’ knowledge or informed consent (Crikey, $). Hmm.

Oh, Also

Why is Facebook banning posting about Linux? (And what took so long)

In well-overdue news, Facebook is reportedly banning people posting about Linux. Outlet DistroWatch noticed that users were having difficulties posting links to their sites, and that even some of their accounts were being locked and limited for doing so (Tom’s Hardware). The site claims “Facebook's internal policy makers decided that Linux is malware and labeled groups associated with Linux as being “cybersecurity threats”, which seems a bit hyperbolic particularly because a lot of Facebook has been built on and with Linux. But also it seems as though groups with non-DistroWatch Linux discussions have been banned, too.

Perhaps I was too early to declare that 2025 would be the year of Linux on the desktop.

Bargains

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.