Less than 24 hours since I shit on Google for investing in another AI company instead of leveraging the piles of AI crap they've got in the warehouse, they announced Bard - "an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA" - or in layperson's terms, "our alternative to ChatGPT that runs on Google Cloud". They even have screenshots of Bard integrated right into Google Search. Bard will is available to "trusted testers" now and will be made "more widely available to the public in the coming weeks". The AI-wars have begun, and while it is a little scary, it's also way more interesting than NFTs and cryptocurrency.
Aside from the slow speeds and unreliability the main thing that shits me about the NBN is the cost. You're looking at close to $70/m for a 50mbit internet connection and for many households that's straight up unaffordable, so people go without. It's good to hear that the ALP has semi-followed through on one of their election promises to make the NBN more affordable with the School Student Broadband Initiative. This scheme will provide up to 30,000 families with no internet at home free 50mbit NBN for 12 months. It would be better if there was a concession plan for all Health Care Card holders, but the School Student Broadband Initiative is better than nothing.
Despite spending almost a billion dollars on My Health Record since 2017, the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce's latest report reckons it isn't getting enough traction, leading to inefficiencies in Australian health care. Their recommendation, which the Health Minister agrees with, is "modernise My Health Record to significantly increase the health information available to individuals and their health care professionals, including by requiring 'sharing by default' for private and public practitioners and services, and make it easier for people and their health care teams to use at the point of care". Dunno the full details of what modernisation means, but the Minister reckons "it's going to take a significant period of time to rebuild the My Health Record".
Nothing, Forever, is an "endless AI-generated Seinfeld episode that features pixelated cartoon versions of characters from the TV show" that has been streaming on Twitch since December 14. It uses GPT-3 to generate scripts based off existing Seinfeld scripts and is connected to "custom Python code" that "renders the script into a video sequence, automatically animating human-created video game-style characters that read AI-generated lines fed to them". It was all shits and giggles until "the AI-generated clone of Jerry Seinfeld" went on a "brief transphobic rant" that got the show banned from Twitch. Apparently OpenAI's Davinci model shit itself, so the developers fell back to the older and less good Curie model. Yeah, transphobia tends tends to happen with older intelligence, yep.
Swatch Internet Time (or .beat time) is a decimal time concept introduced in 1998 by the Swatch corporation as part of their marketing campaign for their line of Beat watches. Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided into 1,000 parts called .beats. Each .beat is equal to one decimal minute in the French Revolutionary decimal time system and lasts 1 minute and 26.4 seconds (86.4 seconds) in standard time. Times are notated as a 3-digit number out of 1,000 after midnight. So, for example, @248 would indicate a time 248 .beats after midnight, representing 248⁄1000 of a day, just over 5 hours and 57 minutes. (Tradera)
📻 I Like Your Old Remix Better Than Your New Remix - Regurgitator
😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.
💬 Checked out the paid subscriber only forum? It's a tidy little place to discuss tech with like minded Aussies.
👋 Forums not your thing? The Sizzle has a Slack group you can procrastinate in and chat with other nerds bored at work.
💳 Paid subscriber looking to manage your billing info, change email address or cancel your subscription? Visit the customer portal.
📚 Browse The Sizzle Archive. A few issues are missing and it's not searchable, but it's better than nothing.
🫂 Friends of The Sizzle is a small group of businesses or organisations operated by Sizzle subscribers. Support your fellow Sizzler!
💔 Tired of my bullshit? Unsubscribe and I'll never speak to you again.
The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong 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.