I’ve been chuckling about this story that’s been doing the rounds on social media - someone managed to get a MarryBrown ordering kiosk at Melbourne Central to display feet pics instead of the usual menu. While the whole thing is admittedly pretty amusing, it’s also got me thinking about just how shocking the state of retail technology security really is.

The incident itself seems relatively harmless - no property damage, nothing explicitly inappropriate, and easily fixed. But what struck me most was reading through the comments from people who clearly know their way around these systems. Apparently, it wasn’t even a proper “hack” in the traditional sense. These kiosks are running ancient versions of Android, so old they’re probably still named after snacks. The ordering app crashes regularly, dumping users back to the home screen where they can essentially do whatever they want.

I’ve been reading about the latest expansion of digital surveillance programs in the US, and frankly, it’s keeping me up at night. The reports coming out about ICE and other agencies quietly expanding their contracts with private firms to monitor social media activity aren’t just troubling—they’re a glimpse into a future that feels uncomfortably familiar to anyone who’s read their history books.

The scope of what’s happening is staggering. We’re not talking about monitoring specific threats or criminal activity. These systems are designed to flag “negative opinions” about government operations, map out dissent, and link online activity to real-world identities. Your face, your phone, your location, your contacts, even your relatives—all fair game in this digital dragnet.

David Suzuki’s recent comments about the climate fight being “lost” have been doing the rounds online, and frankly, they’ve got me thinking about something that’s been nagging at me for a while now. The 89-year-old environmental icon’s frustration is completely understandable – watching decades of advocacy seemingly fall on deaf ears while the world continues to hurtle toward disaster would break anyone’s spirit. But here’s the thing that really gets under my skin: giving up now is exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants us to do.

I’ve been scrolling through some tech discussions lately, and there’s one that’s been sitting with me for a while. It’s about a developer who’s been running game servers without downtime since 2016 - that’s over eight years of continuous uptime. The post sparked quite the debate, and honestly, it’s got me thinking about our relationship with uptime and what it says about our industry culture.

The original poster was clearly proud of their achievement, using the flexing muscle emoji and everything. But the responses were… well, let’s just say they were mixed. Some folks were impressed, others were horrified, and a few were just plain confused about how someone managed to pull this off without regular reboots.

There’s something deeply satisfying about watching a small team of developers take on tech giants. This week, I’ve been following the progress of ZLUDA, a project that’s attempting to bring CUDA compatibility to non-Nvidia GPUs, and it’s got me thinking about the stranglehold that monopolies have on innovation—and how sometimes, the most important breakthroughs come from the most unlikely places.

For those not familiar with the technical details, CUDA is Nvidia’s proprietary platform for GPU computing. It’s everywhere in AI, scientific computing, and high-performance applications. The problem is, if you want to run CUDA code, you need Nvidia hardware. Period. This has created a situation where Nvidia doesn’t just dominate the GPU market—they’ve effectively locked it down.

I’ve been scratching my head over something that came up in an online discussion recently. Someone mentioned they’d started inviting colleagues for coffee runs at work – you know, the classic “anyone want to grab a coffee?” moment that breaks up the afternoon slump. Simple enough, right? Well, apparently not. It turns out some of their colleagues, particularly those of the opposite gender, were hesitant because they thought it might be perceived as… a date.

There’s something profoundly odd happening in our online finance communities, and it’s been grinding my gears lately. I’ve been lurking in various Australian finance forums, and there’s this persistent trend that’s driving me up the wall: the endless parade of “here’s my super balance” posts that contribute absolutely nothing to the conversation.

Someone recently suggested creating a separate subreddit called “ausfingonewild” for people to show off their financial numbers, and honestly, I think they’re onto something. The analogy is crudely perfect – it’s essentially financial exhibitionism, isn’t it? People getting their kicks from displaying their numbers while others voyeuristically consume the content, often responding with variations of “nice” or “you’re cooked, mate.”

Sometimes the internet serves up content that’s equal parts hilarious and deeply unsettling. Recently, I came across a video that had me laughing one minute and questioning the future of human-AI relationships the next. It featured someone confessing their love to what appeared to be a robot, only to be firmly rejected with a “I don’t know you, get out of my house.” The poor soul’s admission that he was “tired of hiding” took on a whole new meaning when you realized he meant literally hiding in someone’s house.

Been seeing a lot of chatter online about this AI-generated band that’s somehow managed to rack up half a million plays on Spotify, and honestly, it’s got me thinking about where we’re heading with all this artificial intelligence stuff. The whole thing feels like we’re living through one of those moments where technology just quietly shifts the ground beneath our feet while we’re all busy scrolling through our phones.

What really gets me is how the discussion around this has split into these distinct camps. You’ve got people who are genuinely outraged that listeners might be “unknowingly grooving” to fake music, while others are basically shrugging and saying “if it sounds good, who cares?” Then there’s this whole subset convinced it’s just elaborate marketing, which, let’s be honest, wouldn’t surprise me one bit in today’s attention economy.

I’ve been mulling over this quote from Ilya Sutskever that’s been doing the rounds online, where he talks about wanting future superintelligent data centers to have “warm and positive feelings towards people, towards humanity.” It’s both fascinating and slightly terrifying at the same time, isn’t it? Here we have one of the most brilliant minds in AI essentially saying we need to teach our future robot overlords to like us.