Optus has been fighting the Federal Court to stop the forensic report it paid Deloitte to create about its 2022 "cyberattack" becoming evidence in a class action lawsuit. Common sense prevailed and Optus lost that battle, largely due to the fact Optus said in its own press release when the report was complete that the report "may also help others in the private and public sector where sensitive data is held and risk of cyber attack exists". Unfortunately the full report will not be made public, but parts of it will as the lawsuit progresses.
Also in Federal Court, eSafety copped a kick in the arse again, with the judge deciding that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) can participate in X's lawsuit against eSafety. They argued that "if an Australian court makes a global takedown order, it might signal to other countries that they can impose similar orders under their own laws" and impacts users globally. The judge agreed so now they can give their points of view in this case. Good, because eSafety needs to hear them.
A bunch of idiots gave Elon Musk US$6b to further fund xAI - X/Twitter's AI offshoot that's developed the "Grok" LLM. It's a piece of shit compared to GPT-4, Mistral, Claude, Gemini or LLaMA, but Musk's involved so he did what he does best - bullshit - and got some funding for it. Musk does have a track record of making other people rich (Tesla & SpaceX), but we all know xAI won't achieve shit, will leverage Tesla's huge cluster of Nvidia GPUs for free anyways, so is really just US$6b to delay the collapse of the failing social media network.
I've been lucky enough to visit CERN over in Switzerland and while I didn't get to see the Large Hadron Collider (tours booked out for months in advance!) I did get to visit the museum and gift shop. It was one of the highlights of my time in that beautiful country and I recommend you pay CERN a visit, not only because it is cool and interesting, but also because you can buy used LTO tapes that held LHC data for CERN. If you do visit, get one for me too please, as when I went back in 2018 they were still using those tapes! CERN moved to a newer LTO standard in 2019 and decided to sell the old tapes for 10CHF each (~A$17) at the gift shop.
The IBM Selectric on display in a shop window in Paris in the 1960s. (IBM Heritage)
📻 Black Coffee - Black Flag
😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.
💬 Checked out the paid subscriber only forum? It's a tidy little place to discuss tech with like minded Aussies.
👋 Forums not your thing? The Sizzle has a Slack group you can procrastinate in and chat with other nerds bored at work.
💳 Paid subscriber looking to manage your billing info, change email address or cancel your subscription? Visit the customer portal.
🎁 Make someone's day and buy them a 12 month gift subscription to The Sizzle.
📚 Browse The Sizzle Archive. A few issues are missing and it's not searchable, but it's better than nothing.
🫂 Friends of The Sizzle is a small group of businesses or organisations operated by Sizzle subscribers. Support your fellow Sizzler!
💔 Tired of my bullshit? Unsubscribe and I'll never speak to you again.
The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.