What a week for tech related legislation in Australia! Banning kids from social media, a misinformation and disinformation law, a lukewarm Privacy Act, mandatory AI guardrails and today a scams framework.
Digital Rights Watch and Electronic Frontiers Australia will be working overtime to dissect these new laws, inform us of what's going on and represent us, the nerds of Australia, when governments ask for feedback. I gave $50 to each of them this arvo.
If you can do the same, visit https://efa.org.au/civicrm/contribute/transact and https://donate.digitalrightswatch.org.au/ to give these legends not only financial support, but also a little morale boost to let them know that we see them and appreciate their efforts.
Treasury took the covers off a Scams Prevention Framework that'll create Codes with mandatory obligations for "banks, telecommunication service providers, and a range of digital platform services related to social media, paid search engine advertising and direct messaging services". What those obligations will be are still up for discussion as part of developing the Codes, but an update to the Competition and Consumer Act will include penalties of up to $50m if companies breach their Code obligations. Also in the framework are internal and external dispute resolution schemes for scam complaints and a "coordinated intelligence sharing ecosystem". I hope it means social media platforms are forced to take more responsibility for the bullshit ads they profit from that are clearly scams. That would be a good start.
OpenAI has made public a new model, o1-preview (previously code-named "Strawberry"). According to the blog post, "these models to spend more time thinking through problems before they respond, much like a person would" and OpenAI reckons this new model "excels in math and coding" and is "particularly useful if you're tackling complex problems in science, coding, math, and similar fields". o1 is slower than GPT-4o and can't browse the web or interpret files and images, but if you're using ChatGPT for code (which is 95% of what I use it for), o1-preview looks to be the new hot stuff. Right now it's limited to only 30 messages a week and just for GPT Plus subscribers or select API developers, a sign of how computationally expensive it is compared to GPT-4o.
Plex reminded us they exist with a blog post announcing a new app - Plex Photos for iOS and Android - "a focused experience to engage with your photo libraries stored on Plex Media Servers", inspired by the success of Plexamp (which I love). The other big announcement is an all new set of "Open APIs" for Plex Media Server so developers can get all weird with Plex and build things for nerds that want to do unconventional stuff. Plex also recently held a "fireside" chat on their forums. Some interesting bits - NFO support (iykyk) and a total rebuild of the "server management experience" for 2025 that'll "replace the bundled web client, and provide a much more extensible platform for giving server owners a bespoke experience for managing, curating, and understanding their server that will not only be available through your browser, but also on your mobile devices". Cool, nice to see Plex getting some love.
Some stuff about the new iPhones and AirPods (which are available for pre-order tonight if you're keen) that you may have missed earlier in the week:
Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.
A double-exposed photograph showing Tesla in his Colorado Springs laboratory, ca. 1899. Tesla forced his “magnifying transmitter” to produce inefficient arcs by turning the machine rapidly on and off during the photoshoot for The Century Magazine (Public Domain Review)
📻 The Beatles - Yer Blues - Remastered 2009
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