Google has unleashed an AI fueled answer bot in its search results (possibly US only? not showing up on Google for me in Chrome) and it's as bad as you can expect for a system trained on random shit on the internet. It reckons you can add non-toxic glue to pizza to make the cheese stick and when asked how many rocks people should eat per day, it says you should eat at least one small rock a day. These answers aren't the AI hallucinating or making shit up, it's directly quoting Reddit posts and The Onion, presenting them as legitimate sources of information. Is Google not embarrassed by this? Do they legitimately think this is a good thing to place in their flagship product on users that didn't ask for it? These are rhetorical questions, we all know Google has no standards.
Samsung and iFixit have parted ways on their program to make the Korean company's smartphones easier to repair. According to a blog post from iFixit's boss, "we consistently faced obstacles that made us doubt Samsung's commitment to making repair more accessible". They "couldn't get parts to local repair shops at prices and quantities that made business sense" and "Samsung's Galaxy devices remained frustratingly glued together". Meanwhile, owners of Spotify's little Car Thing dedicated hardware device are being told to "do a factory reset on the product and find some way of responsibly recycling the hardware". They only stopped selling it late-2022 and it's already e-waste! Samsung and Spotify - pathetic.
Heads up for the e-ink tablet nerds - the Daylight DC-1 will tickle your fancy. The pitch is essentially a reMarkable, but with 60-120fps support. That's right, the legibility and full daylight capability of e-ink, but the response time of an LCD. It's unclear what the display technology is exactly (some form of LCD?), but it's not e-ink and Daylight Computer claims to have come up with it themselves. Here's a demo. I haven't seen any impartial review videos yet, so it could be a dog, but first impressions are good I reckon and I'd like to se more. Over on Hacker News the founder of the company said "we also gonna come out with a bootloader unlock tool so you can customize it to your hearts content, goal is to be hacker/DIY friendly". The first batch will start shipping July 4th, so we should get some real user reviews not long after. They aren't shipping to Australia, but if you're super keen you can part with US$729 and get a mate in the US or EU to forward it to ya.
Sam Floreani (hi Sam!) points out in a Guardian opinion piece that Australian governments are happy to let you work, pay taxes and be criminally responsible to the point you can go to jail if you're under 16, but using Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or TikTok? Absolutely not, can't be trusted, will ruin the fabric of society. In a separate Guardian story, Josh Taylor & Tamsin Rose remind us that the federal government's own investigation from August 2023 found that, quote "no countries have implemented an age verification mandate without issue" and even the eSafety Commissioner was told by their own staffers that "no country in the world has solved this problem".
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.
Department of Employment and Industrial Affairs, 1985 (National Library of Australia)
📻 Without Msg I Am Nothing - Mclusky
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