Just caught wind of an interesting development that’s got me thinking about the intersection of automation and renewable energy. There’s news about AI robots being deployed to help install 500,000 solar panels across Australia, and honestly, it’s sparked quite the debate online about what this means for workers, efficiency, and our renewable energy future.

The discussion I stumbled upon was fascinating in its simplicity. Someone made the observation that it looked like “one guy running an expensive robot that can do the work of one man” - which, on the surface, seems like a fair criticism. Why bother with all the complexity and cost if you’re not gaining efficiency?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what we’ve lost when it comes to Australian pub culture. Maybe it’s because I passed by my old local the other day and saw they’d expanded their gaming room again, or perhaps it’s just the creeping realisation that a simple night out now costs more than my first car payment back in the ’90s. Either way, it’s got me properly wound up.

The complaints are familiar enough: eye-watering drink prices, pokies dominating every available square metre, and bartenders who seem to have learned their trade from YouTube tutorials rather than years of actually connecting with punters. But there’s something deeper going on here – we’re witnessing the systematic dismantling of what used to be genuine community spaces.

There’s been a discussion doing the rounds online that’s got me thinking about something I never imagined I’d be writing about – toilet hygiene and the apparent inability of some males to pee without creating a biohazard zone. The original question was simple enough: how do you deal with boys who consistently miss the toilet and create a lingering smell that makes using the bathroom an unpleasant experience?

What struck me most about the responses wasn’t just the practical cleaning advice (though enzyme cleaners seem to be the unanimous winner), but the sheer volume of people sharing similar frustrations. Women breaking up with partners over it, mothers at their wit’s end, and even some blokes admitting they’ve switched to sitting down just to avoid the hassle. It’s become clear this isn’t just about a few careless kids – it’s a widespread issue that speaks to deeper problems with how we teach responsibility and basic consideration for others.

The tech world’s been buzzing lately about Google’s latest move to charge developers for app verification outside the Play Store ecosystem. What started as a promise of openness and choice in the Android world is rapidly becoming another corporate cash grab, and frankly, it’s getting under my skin.

Google’s decision to implement a tiered verification system for Android developers feels like a betrayal of everything the platform once stood for. Sure, they’re keeping a “free” tier for hobbyists and students, but with undefined installation limits and heavy encouragement to upgrade to the paid tier. The paid verification will cost developers $25 - the same as Play Store registration - just for the privilege of distributing apps outside Google’s walled garden.

The news about Apple pulling the ICEBlock app from their store has been doing the rounds this week, and frankly, it’s got me thinking about how easily our digital tools can become political weapons. For those who missed it, ICEBlock was an app designed to alert users about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in their area. The new Attorney General, Pam Bondi, claimed it put ICE agents at risk, the developer pushed back, and now it’s gone from the App Store.

Someone on Reddit recently announced Wizarr 2025.10.0, and buried in their feature list was this absolutely perfect line: “Overengineering solutions is in the essence of selfhosting and homelabbing!” The comments that followed were gold - people practically queuing up to admit they felt personally attacked by this statement. One user mentioned implementing single sign-on through Authentik for just two users. Another wrote their own log processor because they were fed up with their existing setup not working perfectly.

I’ve been following an interesting discussion online about what constitutes the most important AI paper of the decade, and it’s got me thinking about how we measure scientific breakthroughs and give credit where it’s due. The paper in question? “Attention Is All You Need” by Vaswani et al., published in 2017 - the one that introduced the transformer architecture that’s now powering everything from ChatGPT to the latest Google search improvements.

So Commonwealth Bank has finally admitted what many of us suspected all along - those 283 “redundancies” weren’t really redundancies at all. They’ve just shuffled the work offshore to India, where they now have a staggering 6,800 employees. The audacity of it all really gets under my skin.

Let me be clear about what’s happened here. CBA told 283 Australian workers their jobs were no longer needed, paid them redundancy packages (hopefully), and then quietly moved those exact same roles to cheaper overseas workers. This isn’t restructuring or efficiency - it’s corporate sleight of hand, and frankly, it should be illegal.

I’ve been mulling over this idea that’s been doing the rounds lately - reducing the pension age for people in physically demanding jobs. On the surface, it sounds reasonable enough. After all, we’ve all seen the tradie whose back is absolutely shot by 60, or the labourer who can barely walk without wincing. But the more I dig into it, the more I realise this isn’t just about fairness - it’s about the messy intersection of work, dignity, and how we value different types of labour in this country.

The internet has been buzzing about OpenAI’s Sora 2, and frankly, I’ve been staring at these videos for longer than I care to admit. There’s something deeply unsettling about watching a horse standing on another horse with such photorealistic detail that your brain starts doing mental gymnastics to reconcile what you’re seeing.

The technical achievement is undeniable. The muscle definition on the horses, the way light plays across surfaces, the subtle physics of movement – it’s the kind of thing that makes you do a double-take. But what’s really getting to me isn’t just the visual fidelity; it’s how this represents a fundamental shift in what we can trust with our eyes.