The latest news about YouTube collecting selfies for AI-powered age verification has me genuinely concerned, and frankly, it should worry all of us. We’re witnessing another step in what feels like an inevitable march toward a surveillance state, wrapped up in the familiar packaging of “protecting the children.”

Don’t get me wrong - I understand the impulse to protect kids online. I’ve got a teenage daughter myself, and the internet can be a minefield for young people. But there’s something deeply unsettling about a mega-corporation like Google (YouTube’s parent company) building vast databases of our biometric data under the guise of age verification. It’s the classic privacy erosion playbook: identify a legitimate concern, propose a solution that massively overreaches, then act like anyone who objects doesn’t care about children’s safety.

Been scrolling through some discussions about the incoming administration’s plan to axe the IRS Direct File program, and honestly, it’s got me pretty wound up. Here we have a rare example of government actually making life easier for ordinary people, and what happens? It gets killed off faster than you can say “corporate lobbying.”

For those who missed it, Direct File was this brilliant little program that let people with simple tax situations file their returns directly through the IRS website - completely free. No third-party software, no hidden fees, no upselling to premium versions. Just a straightforward government service that worked exactly as advertised. Revolutionary stuff, apparently.

The world of self-hosting has been quietly revolutionising how we manage our digital lives, from music streaming with Jellyfin to photo storage with PhotoPrism. Now, it seems gaming is getting its turn with projects like Drop, a FOSS alternative to Steam that lets you host your own game library.

When I first came across the announcement for Drop v0.3.0, my DevOps brain immediately perked up. Here’s a project that’s tackling something I’ve been frustrated with for years – the complete dependence on corporate gaming platforms and their ever-changing terms of service. The idea of self-hosting your own game distribution platform feels both ambitious and necessary.

The tech world never sleeps, and this week’s release of Qwen3-Coder-Flash has me sitting here with my morning latte, genuinely impressed by the breakneck pace of AI development. We’re witnessing something quite remarkable – a Chinese AI model that’s not just competitive, but potentially leading the pack in coding assistance, all while being completely open source.

What strikes me most about this release isn’t just the technical specs, though they’re impressive enough. We’re talking about a 30B parameter model with native 256K context that can stretch to 1M tokens, optimized for lightning-fast code generation. The fact that it’s available immediately, with multiple quantized versions and comprehensive documentation, speaks to a level of operational excellence that frankly puts many Western tech companies to shame.

The internet delivered something brilliant this week - a tradie wandering into a corporate discussion forum asking for translations of business jargon. What followed was comedy gold that had me laughing harder than I have in months. Someone managed to decode our entire corporate vocabulary with the precision of a surgeon and the wit of a stand-up comedian.

“What is a Big 4? Caravan park.” “What is a stakeholder? Complains, does nothing.” “What is a Gantt chart? Lies in rainbow.”

The 20% HECS reduction bill has passed, and boy, has it stirred up a hornets’ nest of emotions across the country. Scrolling through the discussions online, I’ve been struck by the sheer intensity of feeling on both sides – from genuine relief and gratitude to bitter resentment and accusations of unfairness.

What fascinates me most isn’t the policy itself, but the visceral reactions it’s provoked. There’s something deeply revealing about how we respond when we see others receive help that we didn’t get ourselves.

The tech world has always been a bit mad, but the latest story doing the rounds has me wondering if we’ve completely lost the plot. Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg has been throwing around billion-dollar offers to poach talent from Mira Murati’s new AI startup, and not a single person has taken the bait. A billion dollars. With a B. And they’re all saying “thanks, but no thanks.”

Now, I’ve been in tech long enough to see some wild recruitment stories. Back in the dot-com days, companies were offering BMWs and elaborate signing bonuses to junior developers. But we’re talking about sums of money that could fund entire countries’ education budgets. The fact that these offers are being turned down en masse suggests something fascinating is happening in the AI space that goes well beyond normal market dynamics.

Well, this is awkward. OpenAI’s ChatGPT just casually breezed through one of those “I am not a robot” CAPTCHA tests, complete with the cheeky commentary: “This step is necessary to prove I’m not a bot.” The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife, and frankly, it’s got me questioning everything we thought we knew about online security.

I’ve been following the discussion around this development, and the reactions are fascinating. Some folks are making jokes about welcoming our robot overlords, others are genuinely concerned about what this means for internet security, and quite a few are just relieved that maybe someone (or something) can finally solve these bloody things consistently.

The news that Doge is reportedly using AI to create a ‘delete list’ of federal regulations has been rattling around in my head for days now. It’s one of those stories that perfectly captures the bizarre intersection of cutting-edge technology and political ideology that seems to define our current moment.

On the surface, there’s something seductive about the idea. Anyone who’s worked in tech knows the frustration of bureaucratic bloat - those endless forms, redundant processes, and regulations that seem to exist purely to justify someone’s job. The promise of AI cutting through decades of accumulated red tape sounds almost utopian. Just feed the machine learning algorithm thousands of regulations, let it identify the redundant ones, and voilà - streamlined government.

There’s something oddly satisfying about watching a good discussion unfold online about the nitty-gritty details of everyday life. Recently, I stumbled across a conversation where someone was about to drop $4,500 on domestic flights and wondered if there were any clever strategies they were missing. The responses were a goldmine of practical advice that got me thinking about how complex something as seemingly simple as booking a flight has become.