The eSafety Commissioner has "served legal notices" on TikTok, Twitch, Discord, Twitter and Google, asking them to explain "how they are tackling online child sexual abuse", "dealing with the growing issue of online sexual extortion as well as the role their algorithms might play in amplifying seriously harmful content". If the companies do not respond to the notices within 35 days, they could face financial penalties of almost $687,500 a day. Meanwhile, the Digital Industry Group Inc (aka DIGI) has published eSafety's responses to their draft Industry Codes of Practice for the Online Industry. In a nutshell, eSafety wants every single piece of the internet to be filtered through unnamed software (that they swear exists) that checks for terrorist content, porn and child sex abuse material.
Kris Kashtanova made a comic book, Zarya of the Dawn, entirely using AI-generated art via Midjourney. They managed to register the work with the United States Copyright Office, but after some some posts on social media, the Copyright Office declared that Kris "is the author of the Work's text as well as the selection, coordination, and arrangement of the Work's written and visual elements" - but not of the AI-generated art, saying that "the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author". Kris doesn't plan to take it any further, but they could technically take this to court. Perhaps the phrase "creative input" could be twisted by a smart lawyer to mean the prompt given to the AI that generates the image?
A big gay party is going on in Sydney this weekend and the organisers are slapping CCTV cameras around Oxford Street and using software from a company called Dynamic Crowd Measurement to measure things like "compliance" and "mood", along with the amount of people in the area. On the surface it seems innocent enough, they promise Dynamic Crowd Measurement is "not used for surveillance and does not track or collect any personal information", but couldn't they just like, pay a bunch of people to hang around the potentially busy areas and use radios for everyone to talk to each other and monitor the situation? That feels like a much less creepy way of doing what this software does and potentially less error prone and risky.
Not long ago in the Sizzle I mentioned a bloke by the name of Sam Zeloof. He's the overachiever making semiconductors in his garage. Well today he announced Atomic Semi, "a small, fast semiconductor fab. We'll build the tools ourselves then quickly push them to more advanced geometries. We're building a small team of exceptional, hands-on engineers to make this happen". One of those exceptional engineers is Jim fucken Keller. You might recognise that name from such microprocessors as Apple's A4/A5, AMD K8 (aka Athlon 64) and AMD's Zen (aka Ryzen). I have no idea what they've got planned, but I look forward to seeing it.
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.
The IMAX Camera Family (IMAX Camera / Flickr)
📻 Purr - Sonic Youth
😎 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.