The news that broke over the weekend about TikTok being tweaked to become “100% MAGA” has been rattling around in my head like a loose screw in an old MacBook. It’s one of those stories that makes you pause mid-sip of your morning latte and wonder if we’ve finally crossed some invisible line into full dystopian territory.

What strikes me most about this whole situation isn’t just the brazen nature of it – though that’s certainly something. It’s how perfectly it illustrates a pattern we’ve been watching unfold across the digital landscape for years now. The systematic capture of information infrastructure by those who understand that controlling the narrative is far more effective than winning hearts and minds through actual policy.

I’ve been following a fascinating discussion about a new open-source project called Home Information, and it’s got me thinking about something that’s been bothering me for years: why do we keep handing over control of our personal data to companies that don’t really have our best interests at heart?

The project itself is pretty clever - it’s essentially a visual home management system where you can click on different parts of your house and access all the relevant information: manuals, service records, warranty details, you name it. But what really caught my attention wasn’t the functionality (though that’s genuinely useful), it’s the philosophy behind it. The creator has built something that runs entirely on your own hardware, stores your data locally, and doesn’t require you to sign up for yet another monthly subscription service.

I’ve been following an interesting thread online where someone shared their journey of training a large language model from scratch - not at Google or OpenAI, but from their own setup, using just $500 in AWS credits. What struck me wasn’t just the technical achievement, but what it represents: we’re witnessing the democratization of AI development in real time.

The person behind this project trained a 960M parameter model using public domain data, releasing it under a Creative Commons license for anyone to use. They’re calling it the LibreModel Project, and while they admit the base model isn’t particularly useful yet (most 1B models “kind of suck” before post-training, as they put it), the fact that an individual can now do this at all feels significant.

I’ve been mulling over a discussion I stumbled across recently about workplace flexibility and whether certain groups get preferential treatment. It’s one of those topics that really gets under my skin because it touches on something fundamental about fairness in the workplace – and frankly, it’s a conversation that’s long overdue.

The situation described was painfully familiar: a company with a rigid five-day office mandate that offers “exemptions” for flexible work arrangements. But here’s the kicker – those exemptions seem to follow an unwritten hierarchy. Parents? Approved without question. Pet owners? Not a chance. Someone wanting flexible hours to pursue a master’s degree? “Can you postpone your plans?”

I stumbled across an interesting workplace dilemma online recently that really got me thinking. Someone had been offered a choice between 10 extra days of annual leave (that doesn’t expire and can be cashed out) or an ongoing 0.5% superannuation increase. They were earning around $180k and genuinely torn about which option to take.

The responses were fascinating and really highlighted how differently people value time versus money. The mathematical minds quickly jumped in with calculations - the leave being worth about $6,920 if cashed out versus the super contribution of $900 annually. On paper, it seems like a no-brainer, right? Take the leave, cash it out if needed, and you’re significantly ahead financially in the short term.

Been scrolling through some tech discussions lately, and there’s one topic that keeps popping up that’s got me both fascinated and a bit concerned. The latest AI power grab - literally. We’re talking about companies racing to build data centers that consume more electricity than entire countries. One terawatt of power. That’s roughly a third of global energy usage, just for training AI models.

The comparison that really stuck with me was someone pointing out that the smartest human brain on the planet runs on about 100 watts. Meanwhile, we’re building these massive computational behemoths that could power small nations, all in the pursuit of artificial intelligence that might - might - be as clever as that 100-watt human brain.

Well, here’s something I never thought I’d write: I find myself nodding along with the Pope. Pope Leo’s recent declaration that AI technology is “an empty, cold shell that will do great damage to what humanity is about” has been doing the rounds online, and frankly, it’s got me thinking about the uncomfortable parallels between tech evangelism and religious fervor.

The irony isn’t lost on me. Here I am, someone who’s spent decades in IT and DevOps, someone who generally leans towards science over religion, finding common ground with the Vatican. But when you strip away the religious context, what Pope Leo is essentially saying is that we’re creating false idols – and in the tech world, that hits uncomfortably close to home.

Been scrolling through some discussions about Microsoft’s CEO expressing concerns that AI might destroy the entire company, and honestly, it’s got me thinking about the bizarre state of corporate anxiety we’re living through right now. Here’s a bloke running one of the world’s largest tech companies, worth hundreds of billions, and he’s kept awake at night worrying about being made obsolete by the very technology his company is aggressively pushing.

There’s something oddly satisfying about finding the perfect intersection of quality and value when grocery shopping. Recently, I stumbled across a fascinating analysis someone had done comparing basil pesto across the major supermarkets, and it got me thinking about our relationship with convenience foods and the art of budget shopping.

The breakdown was impressive in its thoroughness - they’d calculated not just the price per 100g, but the actual basil content per dollar spent. Aldi’s Remano brand came out on top at 36 grams of basil per dollar, while Coles’ Cucina Matese offered the best texture despite being pricier. It reminded me of the kind of meticulous comparison shopping my mum used to do, armed with a calculator and a notebook, back when every dollar mattered even more than it does now.

Well, this is it then. The moment we’ve all been dreading has finally arrived. Discord users across Australia are waking up to those lovely age verification screens, complete with the cheerful promise that your personal information will be “used for verification and then deleted.”

Right. And I’m the Queen of England.

The whole thing has me absolutely ropeable, to be honest. Here we have a law that was supposedly designed to “protect the children” but in practice is creating a surveillance state that would make George Orwell blush. The government has essentially outsourced identity verification to private companies – many of them foreign-owned – and we’re expected to just trust that they’ll do the right thing with our most sensitive data.