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Amazon stops book downloads, allows sleep surveillance, Estimates wrap-up and Microsoft's shitty free Office

Plus: How snake venom and crab blood prove why we need weird research

Author

Cam Wilson
February 26, 2025

Issue 2279 - Wednesday, 26 February 2025

If you’re seeing this, I hope you enjoy this free edition of the Sizzle. If you like what you see, you can subscribe for the daily updates here.

In Today’s Issue

  • Amazon: you can’t download your books but we can see when you sleep

  • Satellites, AI election attacks and Mark Zuckerberg says everything’s chill: the highlights from Estimates

  • Microsoft now offers a free, shitty Office or an expensive Office with shitty AI

  • How snake venom and crab blood prove why we need weird research

  • Deals on Google Nest cameras, Sonos soundbars, Logitech’s creative console, Gaming PCs, Apple iPhone 13 and Google Pixel 8As. Plus, a bunch of free apps.

The News

Amazon: you can’t download your books but we can see when you sleep

If you have bought books on Kindle, stop reading this right now and go and download those titles onto your computer because that feature will be removed after today (ArsTechnica). Amazon is pulling the feature which was designed for early Kindles without Wi-Fi and was beloved by people who hate the annoying DRM restrictions that are way too common when buying something digital. If you are someone with a lot of Kindle books, there’s a bulk downloader (GitHub) that will save you time. On the topic of Amazon, security researcher Dylan Ayrey found that his subscription “smart” mattress from hot Silicon Valley company Eight Sleep had a live AWS key — a backdoor! — for developers that meant that any engineer could see data from the mattress, including when you are sleeping and how many people are in the bed (Truffle Security). I swear to god, is it impossible for people who come up with these expensive devices to spend an afternoon just thinking how can we design our products so that we couldn’t do sketchy shit even if we tried?

Satellites, AI election attacks and Mark Zuckerberg says everything’s chill: the highlights from Estimates

It’s Estimates week in Federal Parliament, which means there’s plenty of little tidbits emerging from questions to the Canberra boffins:

  • Department of Communications public servants have dismissed fears from senators that the government’s proposed universal outdoor mobile coverage obligation could create a de facto monopoly by Elon Musk’s Starlink, arguing that there will likely be a number of low Earth orbit satellite providers by 2027 when the planned policy is supposed to kick in (Crikey, $).

  • NBN Co says it’s “advanced” in selecting a LEO satellite provider (The Guardian Australia).

  • AEC is asking AI companies what they’re doing to stop AI from fucking up our elections (Capital Brief, $).

  • Similarly, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has written to AI providers whose products have been used for non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes (Guardian Australia). Grant also said she’s asked Meta if anything will change after Zuckerberg went full MAGA/anti-content moderation and was told it should be business as usual (Canberra Times).

Microsoft now offers a free, shitty Office or an expensive Office with shitty AI

Microsoft is testing an ad-supported, free version of Office which honestly sounds super annoying (The Verge). The ad-tier versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint all have permanent banner advertisements down the side and run a 15-second video advertisement every few hours. Plus, it has limited features and restricts users from saving locally. I also learned through this that Microsoft offers free in-browser Office apps, à la Google Drive, with similar restrictions. Funny timing for this considering Microsoft’s recent enormous price hike for Office 365 (ABC News) which the company justified by its inclusion of Copilot, which for many people was a net negative. Shout-out to Sizzler Lachlan and the few other people who tipped me off to the price increase. On the topic of popular software suites, Adobe is releasing a proper iPhone version of Photoshop which looks… interesting (Engadget) I guess? It is a cursed task trying to do something like this on the phone so I feel like this is a doomed venture but best of luck.

Oh, Also

How snake venom and crab blood prove why we need weird research

We’re in perilous times for science. That’s the context of this article ‘A Defense of Weird Research’ (Asterisk Mag) which makes the case for investigating and examining obscure things even though we might not know exactly where this inquiry leads. Rather than focusing on how stupid everything is, let me take this moment to relish in the randomness of the way knowledge works and how ingenious humans are about finding ways to use it. I mean, how can you read this and not smile?

We didn’t know that studying Gila monster venom would lead to the invention of GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic, or that horseshoe crab blood would prove crucial to vaccine development, or that studying bacteria in geysers would lead to the development of PCR, the technology which allows scientists to detect DNA in small samples, and on which much of modern molecular biology — from genetic testing and COVID diagnostics — rests.

Deena Mousa and Lauren Gilbert

The serendipitous nature of scientific discovery is just a delightful part of our lives. That’s why the “efficiency” war is so annoying, not to mention counter-productive. God forbid any of us live a life that involves doing things without a direct value that can be slotted into a spreadsheet.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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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.

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