There’s something deeply unsettling about being pestered by technology that’s supposed to make our lives easier. I’ve been following a discussion online about AI fatigue, and it’s struck a nerve that goes well beyond the usual tech complaints. We’re witnessing something unprecedented: a backlash not against technology that doesn’t work, but against technology that won’t leave us alone.

The frustration is palpable across every platform we use daily. Google’s search results now come with AI summaries nobody asked for. Gmail wants to help write emails we’re perfectly capable of composing ourselves. Even Adobe Acrobat, for crying out loud, keeps suggesting AI assistance to summarise three-page PDFs. One person mentioned their knitting patterns being flagged for AI summarisation – if that’s not a sign we’ve lost the plot, I don’t know what is.

There’s something wonderfully refreshing about a project that openly embraces being “delightfully stupid.” While the tech world obsesses over making AI more accurate, more reliable, and more useful, someone decided to flip the script entirely and create Endless Wiki – a self-hosted encyclopedia that’s purposefully driven by AI hallucinations.

The concept is brilliantly simple: feed any topic to a small language model and watch it confidently generate completely fabricated encyclopedia entries. Want to read about “Lawnmower Humbuckers”? The AI will cheerfully explain how they’re “specialized loudspeakers designed to deliver a uniquely resonant and amplified tone within the range of lawnmower operation.” It’s absolute nonsense, but it’s presented with the same authoritative tone you’d expect from a legitimate reference work.

I’ve been following the discussions around Google’s Gemma 3 270M model, and frankly, the reactions have been all over the map. Some folks are dismissing it because it can’t compete with the big boys like GPT-4, while others are getting excited about what this tiny model can actually do. The truth, like most things in tech, sits somewhere in the middle and is far more nuanced than either camp wants to admit.

The Commonwealth Bank’s recent backtrack on AI-driven job cuts has got me thinking about the messy reality of technological transformation in corporate Australia. After announcing they’d be leveraging artificial intelligence to streamline operations, CBA has now apologised for what they’re calling an “error” as call volumes surge and customer satisfaction plummets. It’s a fascinating case study in the gap between boardroom promises and real-world implementation.

What strikes me most about this whole saga is how it perfectly encapsulates the current AI hype cycle we’re living through. Companies are so eager to jump on the AI bandwagon that they’re making sweeping decisions without properly understanding the technology’s limitations or considering the human element that often makes the difference between success and failure. The fact that CBA hired 2,000 additional staff members after their AI experiment suggests they significantly underestimated the complexity of customer service interactions.

The phone rang yesterday afternoon while I was debugging some deployment issues. Another unknown number, but this time something felt different about the interaction that followed. What started as a routine scam call turned into a masterclass in how sophisticated these operations have become, and frankly, it’s got me worried about how many people are falling for these increasingly clever cons.

The caller claimed to be from Optus, offering a 50% discount on services. Now, given Optus’s recent data breach debacle, I immediately went on the offensive, telling them I wasn’t a customer and questioning their legitimacy after their company’s appalling handling of customer data. This seemed to throw the caller off script entirely.

Well, that’s one way to completely redefine what we think rotation means in design software. Adobe’s latest feature for Illustrator has got everyone doing double-takes, and frankly, I’m right there with them.

When I first heard “you can now rotate images in Adobe Illustrator,” my immediate thought was the same as everyone else’s - surely that’s been a thing since forever? We’ve all been rotating vectors and images with that little curved arrow tool since the dawn of digital design. But no, Adobe had something entirely different in mind, and it’s simultaneously impressive and slightly unsettling.

The news that T-Mobile has been hit with a $92 million fine for selling customer location data without consent should be cause for celebration. After all, it’s a rare moment when big tech companies face any real consequences for their privacy violations. But when you dig into the numbers, the victory feels pretty hollow.

Here’s the thing that’s got me particularly frustrated: T-Mobile reported $11.3 billion in net income for 2024. That $92 million fine? It represents less than one percent of their profits. To put this in perspective, if you earned $100,000 last year, this would be equivalent to a fine of about $800. Annoying? Sure. Life-changing? Hardly.

Been scrolling through AI discussions lately and stumbled across this fascinating chart showing the emotional rollercoaster we’ve all been on with AI development over the past few years. The graph perfectly captures what someone described as the “it’s so over” to “we’re so back” vibes that seem to define our relationship with artificial intelligence progress.

Looking at those peaks and valleys, it really does feel like we’re all passengers on some sort of collective emotional pendulum. One minute everyone’s convinced we’ve hit the dreaded “AI wall” and progress has stagnated, the next minute there’s a breakthrough that has us all believing the singularity is just around the corner.

The grocery duopoly in this country has been driving me up the wall lately. Coles and Woolworths have such a stranglehold on the market that they can essentially charge whatever they want, and we’re left with little choice but to cop it sweet. So when someone recently shared a tool they’d built to help us fight back against this system, I was genuinely excited.

The tool is called CW Scanner, and it does something brilliantly simple: it compares prices between Coles and Woolworths in real time. You can scan a barcode or search for items, and it shows you which store has the better deal. What really impressed me is that it’s completely free – no ads, no paywalls, no sign-ups required unless you want to save shopping lists.

The discussion around tax reform has been heating up lately, and frankly, it’s about bloody time. When you hear that 91 people earning over a million dollars paid absolutely zero income tax last financial year, something’s clearly broken in the system. Not bent - broken.

What really gets my goat isn’t necessarily that these ultra-wealthy individuals are breaking the law. Most aren’t. They’re just playing a game where the rules are so skewed in their favour that the rest of us are left wondering how we ended up with such a wonky system in the first place. It’s like watching someone win at Monopoly because they convinced everyone else that collecting $200 for passing Go only applies to properties they don’t own.