Folks, have a bloody ripper long weekend. Drive safe if you're hitting the road, enjoy some quality time with friends and family, and treat yourself to a couple of choccy eggs!!!!!!!!

Mentioned in today’s edition: Gabe Newell, Copilot, Baidu, Atlassian, Sora, Optus, Artemis II and Telstra. Plus, deals on Bose headphones, Lenovo Legion laptops and Apple Watches.

The first moon-bound crewed space rocket in more than fifty years has launched this morning, with the Artemis II successfully entering into orbit (BBC). The four astronauts will spend 24 hours going around the Earth twice as they do tests and decide whether to continue on. If all goes to plan — well, other than the toilet problem that's emerged — the Artemis II will take about four days to get to the moon and then trundle back without actually landing. 

The Sizzle: USA! USA! USA! I love being able to learn about a tech story that fills me with the feeling of stretching what's possible. Maybe it's just coming of age in the late 2000s, but it feels like the last 15+ years of tech has involved funnelling all the money and attention towards "making app that traps you inside, shows you ads and takes a cut of every transaction". It's funny to think we, as a species, figured out how to get to the moon and then just, well, stopped for a half century. Who knows what broader benefit there will be to this, I just think it's neat. Let people enjoy things.

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Not coincidentally, Elon Musk's megacorp SpaceX has reportedly filed papers to go public at the predicted but still whopping valuation AU$2.5 trillion (Guardian). As soon as June, the company will seek to raise up to AU$110 billion by selling a small portion of the overall company, which now includes the rockets, the AI company and the Nazi social media app (WSJ, gift). Notably, none of the company — not even the successful space part of it — is really worth that much. But companies led by Musk get an aura buff and, as a result, the world's richest man may become our first trillionaire.  

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Local councils have begun to oppose data centre construction in Australia, as they call for building freezes and restrictions for this digital infrastructure (Crikey, $). Three NSW councils have told a state inquiry into data centres that they already have concerns about the impact of unco-ordinated data centre growth in places like Western Sydney, which already struggles with heat, and Ryde, the state's data centre capital. Industry group Data Centres Australia says that many of the fears about resources are overblown. 

A counter view: Data centres are Australia’s chance to shape AI’s future (ASPI)

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Australia:

Rest of World:

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I've been very mean to M̶i̶c̶r̶o̶s̶l̶o̶p̶ Microsoft lately, but it's not my fault. They're giving me so much material. Like yesterday, when I saw screenshots circulating showing that Microsoft's T&Cs for its god-awful-even-by-AI-standards Copilot declares that it is for "entertainment purposes only". But when I looked it up, it was real. And it's not even an April Fool's joke. 

So if the position of one of the biggest companies in the world is that legally we shouldn't take their flagship AI product seriously, I think we should take their advice. 

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Electronics

Computing

Mobile

😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.

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