I’ve been following the discussion around Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses with growing unease, and frankly, I’m baffled by how casually we’re all accepting what amounts to a massive expansion of surveillance technology into our daily lives. While tech reviewers gush about the convenience and cool factor, we’re sleepwalking into a world where privacy becomes even more of a distant memory.

The fundamental issue here isn’t about the person wearing these glasses - it’s about everyone else around them. This represents a complete shift from the usual “don’t like it, don’t buy it” consumer choice argument. When someone walks into a café on Collins Street wearing these things, everyone in that space becomes a potential data point for Meta’s algorithms, whether they consented to it or not.

There’s something deeply unsettling about watching a multinational corporation fold like a cheap suit the moment a government official so much as raises an eyebrow. This whole Jimmy Kimmel situation has me absolutely steaming, and judging by the response online, I’m clearly not alone.

The facts are pretty straightforward. Kimmel made what amounts to a fairly mild observation about the MAGA crowd’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s death, followed by a joke about Trump’s response to his “friend’s” murder. Nothing groundbreaking, certainly nothing that would have raised eyebrows a decade ago. But apparently, in 2025 America, that’s enough to get you cancelled by government pressure.

I’ve been watching this fascinating discussion unfold online about someone’s journey to escape Google’s digital ecosystem, and it’s got me thinking about my own relationship with Big Tech. The original poster started what they thought would be a simple project - moving away from Google services - only to discover they’d bitten off far more than they could chew.

The whole thing started innocently enough with email. “I started small with email,” they wrote, which had me chuckling into my morning latte. There’s nothing small about ditching Gmail when you’ve been using it for years. The sheer number of services, accounts, and contacts tied to that one email address is staggering. But they pushed through, set up their own mail server with their own domain, and actually got it working. Fair dinkum effort there.

Sips latte while scrolling through yet another discussion about academic publishing costs

Well, this one really got my blood boiling today. Stumbled across a discussion about how DeepSeek - you know, the AI company that’s been making waves lately - had to fork out a whopping $12,690 just to make their Nature article open access. Twelve grand! Just so the rest of us mortals can read their research without hitting a paywall.

There’s something oddly fascinating about the psychological warfare that plays out in those few minutes before a scheduled Teams meeting. You know the scenario: it’s 9:25am, you’re wrapping up something else, and suddenly that little notification pops up telling you someone has already started the 9:30am meeting. What do you do?

I’ve been thinking about this lately after stumbling across a discussion online where people were sharing their meeting joining strategies. The responses revealed something quite telling about how we’ve all adapted to this brave new world of remote work and endless video calls.

The job market is absolutely cooked right now, and I’ve been watching this play out in real time through various online discussions where people are sharing their employment horror stories. What started as one person’s cautionary tale about quitting their finance job due to burnout has turned into a sobering collection of experiences that really highlights just how tough things are out there.

The original poster’s story is unfortunately becoming all too familiar - nine months of rejections after leaving a finance role, being told they’re “overqualified” for positions they desperately want, or “too expensive” for roles they’d happily take at reduced pay. It’s a catch-22 situation that would drive anyone to distraction. You’re damned if you’re overqualified, and you’re certainly damned if you’re underqualified.

I’ve been watching this video of the AGIBOT X2 robot pulling off Webster flips, and honestly, I’m not sure whether to be impressed or slightly unnerved. There’s something both fascinating and unsettling about watching a machine execute moves that would challenge most humans, doing it with mechanical precision while maintaining perfect balance on its wheeled feet.

The progression we’re seeing in robotics right now is genuinely remarkable. Someone mentioned they’re noticing improvements in robots every week, and that rings true. It feels like we’ve crossed some invisible threshold where these advances aren’t just incremental tweaks anymore – they’re tangible leaps in capability that you can actually see and appreciate, even if you’re not an engineer.

Sometimes the news throws you a curveball that’s so absurd you have to read the headline three times before it sinks in. This week, it was the story of a Palestinian man who escaped Gaza to Italy on a jetski—with ChatGPT’s help. Well, sort of.

The internet had a field day with this one, and honestly, I can see why. It reads like someone played Mad Libs with current events: “Palestinian man uses [AI chatbot] to calculate fuel for [watercraft] escape to [European country].” The punchline? ChatGPT got the math wrong, and they ran out of fuel 20 kilometres short of their destination.

I stumbled across a video the other day that’s been rattling around in my head ever since. It showed someone using an AI voice interface to give personality to a hammer – and not just any personality, but one that desperately wanted to fulfill its purpose. “Let’s hit something. Now. Right now,” it pleaded with genuine enthusiasm. What should have been a quirky tech demo instead left me feeling deeply unsettled about where we’re heading.

I’ve been thinking about something that popped up in one of the frugal communities I follow online recently. The moderators were asking for feedback about how to manage their referral code threads better, and it got me reflecting on the peculiar nature of online bargain-hunting communities and how they evolve.

The issue they’re facing is quite fascinating from a community management perspective. Their subreddit has grown to the point where their monthly and fortnightly megathreads for sharing referral codes are becoming unwieldy. Too many people posting the same handful of referral links, creating digital noise rather than useful signal. One user pointed out something that really resonated with me: once you’ve signed up for the major cashback sites and banks, you’re done. The fifteenth person posting their ShopBack referral code isn’t adding any value.