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YouTube winning streaming wars, ban employers from automating HR with AI and some interesting AI reports

Plus: What does “Honda’s Spicy Rodent-Repelling Tape” taste like?

Author

Cam Wilson
February 12, 2025

Issue 2269 - Wednesday 12 February, 2025

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In Today’s Issue

  • YouTube is winning the streaming wars

  • Ban employers from using AI for HR without human input, report says

  • While politicians talk AI, it’s a bit different on the ground

  • What does “Honda’s Spicy Rodent-Repelling Tape” taste like?

  • Deals including Apple cashback, Pokemon wireless headphones, Reolink smart doorbell, Razer Roblox gear, Nebula gaming PCs, used Dell, HP and Lenovo laptops; and Kogan’s 49’’ curved display.

The News

YouTube is winning the streaming wars

More people are watching YouTube on TV than on their mobile phones, according to the streaming platform’s CEO (Hollywood Reporter). There are even sickos watching Shorts on their TV — “yes, people watch them on TVs” — according to Neal Mohan’s annual letter (YouTube blog). He announced a bunch of new features, mostly powered by AI, including auto-dubbed videos, deepfake detection and even age estimation to age-limit content (TechCrunch) — now, doesn’t that sound familiar?

We tend to think of streaming services like Netflix competing with traditional broadcast TV stations but really, YouTube is probably their biggest competitor. The “streaming revolution” continues to shake out with the announcement that Disney+ will start getting ESPN live and recorded content (EFTM). Essentially, all these companies other than Netflix are still trying to figure out how to make money. And what do you know, they’re stumbling towards reassembling the pay TV bundles that they once tore apart. This is why YouTube has a massive advantage: it doesn’t pay to create content… and yet here I am still paying for five streaming services AND YouTube premium.

Ban employers from using AI for HR without human input, report says

Aussie employers using AI to help with HR or recruitment should have “mandatory guardrails” and be forbidden from making decisions without human input, according to a new parliamentary report (IT News). This inquiry into the future of work (APH) has a few interesting recommendation, including:

  • classifying AI used for employment matters as high-risk — which would trigger restrictions under the government’s proposed guard-rails for AI (Department of Industry, Science and Resources).

  • making sure that employers are liable for employment decisions made by AI and require them to disclose its use.

  • ban high-risk uses of worker data and prohibit selling it, too.

Some cool stuff, but for now, it’s only a report’s recommendations and exceedingly unlikely to inspire any action before the election. In other government tech news, Defence has signed a $16 million deal with Amazon to host a “new mystery platform” (InnovationAus, $). That’s in addition to the $2 billion Top Secret Cloud set to be used by Defence and Australian intelligence agencies (InnovationAus, $). But don’t worry, Australian companies will supposedly be able to get in on this “eventually”. Also just FYI: the Coalition continues to promise Trump-inspired crypto regulation as part of its election pitch to scamm— er, I mean crypto folk (Capital Brief, $).

While politicians talk AI, it’s a bit different on the ground

While the Paris AI summit is happening — with a few hiccups, like the US and UK refusing to sign the fairly anodyne attendee declaration (The Guardian) — a bunch of interesting research and news has emerged about how AI works in reality. Using AI can lead to people getting worse at making decisions because they lose practice, according to Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University researchers (TechCrunch article, Microsoft paper). More than half the answers given by AI chatbots to questions about news have “significant issues” like errors, distortions or misleading content, BBC research found (BBC article, BBC research). A US AI company lost a copyright case in a blow to other generative AI companies’ legal claims that stealing everyone’s data is fine because it’s fair use (WIRED, $) A coalition of tech companies and researchers released an AI energy score regime, complete with leaderboard, so you can see just how many swimming pools of water you evaporated to create an “anthropomorphic muscly friendly submarine holding glasses of beer and a cork hat in front of the Sydney Opera House” (Hugging Face).

Oh, Also

What does “Honda’s Spicy Rodent-Repelling Tape” taste like?

Let me preface this by saying: I get it. I see the thing that says “do not eat” and a sick, little voice inside of me starts whispering, what if we… ate that.

Still, I’m impressed by the lengths to which writer Liz Cook went in 2021 to prepare herself to partake in a tasting of “Honda’s Spicy Rodent-Repelling Tape” (Substack).

I won’t spoil it to say how it went but I did enjoy imaging Honda’s PR person writing this email:

Liz Cook’s email to Honda

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Optus

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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