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Been down a rabbit hole this week reading through discussions about a US bill called the Surveillance Accountability Act (H.R. 8470), which would require government agencies to obtain a warrant before accessing people’s digital data. And honestly, even though this is American legislation, it’s got me thinking hard about where we all stand on digital privacy — including here in Australia. Let’s start …

There’s a comment that’s been rattling around in my head since I stumbled across a discussion thread about tech companies and their slow-motion moral collapse. Someone wrote: “We wanted the Gene Roddenberry and we got the Ridley Scott.” It’s such a perfect summary that it almost physically hurt to read. I’ve been in the IT industry long enough to remember when working in tech felt …

There’s something deeply satisfying about watching a piece of “dead” hardware get a second life. I’ve been following a thread online this week about someone who turned their broken Steam Deck — the LCD screen had given up the ghost — into a fully functional NAS running Debian 12, and honestly, it’s the kind of project that makes me grin like an idiot. The setup is genuinely clever. …

There’s a question floating around AI discussion circles lately that’s been rattling around in my head. It goes something like: “Should I walk or drive to the car wash?” — where the obvious catch is that your car needs to be at the car wash for it to be washed. Simple, right? Lateral thinking 101. And yet, for a while, many of the big frontier models kept confidently telling people to walk.

There’s a meme floating around that basically captures the existential dread of dragging yourself into the office on a Monday morning, and the comments underneath it turned into something far more interesting than the joke itself. Hundreds of people sharing their workplace grievances, their small victories, their nostalgia for cubicles — yes, cubicles — and the occasional moment of genuine philosophical …

A Reddit post caught my eye this week that I think deserves a lot more attention than it’s probably getting. Someone has spent the last 18 months meticulously tracking Woolworths catalogue pricing data — actual receipts, actual numbers — and has now made it all publicly available in a Google Sheet. Given that the ACCC is currently sniffing around supermarket pricing practices, the timing couldn’t be more …

There’s a screenshot doing the rounds on social media lately — someone flexing a $500-a-day Claude API bill as proof that building your own SaaS with AI is smarter than paying $49 a month for an existing product. The original post frames it as some kind of revolutionary insight. “The End of Software,” they declared. I’ll admit, when I first saw it, my reaction was somewhere between genuine …

There’s a cartoon doing the rounds online that stopped me mid-scroll the other day. It depicts what looks like a military tank, but decked out with solar panels and wind turbines — a kind of renewable-powered war machine. The comment sections are predictably chaotic, with people arguing about whether it’s satire, a serious policy proposal, or just someone having a laugh. Honestly, the ambiguity is kind of …

Right, so I’ve been going down a rabbit hole this week that started with someone online asking a very simple question: how do you get the smell out of those old pressed wood salad bowls? You know the ones — dark brown, slightly shiny, vaguely basket-weave textured. Every grandmother on the planet seemed to own a set. What followed in the comments was genuinely one of the most entertaining and unexpectedly …

Something genuinely interesting has been happening on Melbourne’s trains and trams lately, and I’ve been watching it with a mix of pleasant surprise and the usual cynical “yeah but how long will this last?” that comes with being middle-aged and politically aware in this country. If you haven’t heard, Victoria’s public transport has been free through April and May, and the Jacinta …