Plus: A fun moon vehicle game to kill time on a Friday afternoon ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

April 10, 2026 | Read online
# Mac's 49-day bug, don't put your email in Counter-Strike documentation and the Sizzler Say Plus: A fun moon vehicle game to kill time on a Friday afternoon
Edition 2539
"Taipei Bade Store, Kun Chi Computer closed 20251005" by Solomon203 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Good afternoon! It's been a dark and serious few weeks, so it’s a light Sizzle today. Have a fantastic weekend.
Mentioned in today’s edition: iMessage, the XNU kernel, Microsoft, Barnaby Joyce, Tesla, OpenAI, Meta and Netflix. Plus, deals on LG OLED TVs, Google Pixels and Motorola smartphones.
# The News
### Someone just discovered a bug that forces Macs offline after 49.7 days
An AI company noticed that their fleet of Mac computers, used to monitor iMessage's uptime, would stop making new network connections and refuse to make any new ones until they were restarted (Photon Blog). After digging into it, the team noticed it happened after exactly 49.7 days of uptime. Or 2^32 milliseconds.
This immediately alerted them to the fact that it probably had something to do with an internal clock reaching its max number and then resetting to 0 (or a "32-bit unsigned integer wraparound" as it's known in the biz). It turns out that this bug in the XNU kernel had been around for the better part of a decade but no one realised because most people just reset their computers when there's a problem, and assume it's a random network error.
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
### Never put your email in a Counter-Strike map documentation if you can avoid it
Dave Johnston had it good (Johnsto). Not only was he working on iconic Counter-Strike maps like de_dust2, he also had snagged an elite, sought-after, short email address from his ISP: dv@btinternet.com.
just an excuse to put an image of Dust2 in the email, really
Then came along the devastating trend of email worms like ILOVEYOU that initially spread by sending themselves to every email address in a victim's address book, but were later upgraded to attack every email in a user's system... like the email addresses in an installed video game's documentation. Soon, he was receiving thousands of spam emails a day that filled up his 15MB inbox space and made it unusable, so he had to ask for the ISP to blackhole the address. RIP dv@btinternet.com!
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
### The Sizzler Say:
As always, if you wanna get involved (or even be able to read what's on Slack) you can join the Slack server and forum via these links.
mvyrmnd shared a tantalising rumour in the Slack about a telco being popped. Know more? Let us know. On the question of whether it's ok to pay a bit more for NBN, BernieTB makes a good point about access on the forum. mnarkbr posted an incredible piece of old school Microsoft swag on Slack, kicking off a chain reaction of Sizzlers sharing their best computer merch In the latest edition of "Quilgy does something cool", the man himself posted on the forum about 3D printing a badass old school TV for a student movie. I forgot to share this before but Clifford sent me an email on the topic of my ongoing coverage of the teen social media ban that laid out some interesting anecdotal information he heard from someone who works with kids about how introducing strict internet filtering had changed their behaviours: "Kids that would not leave their rooms, spent their evenings on their phones are now going out, meeting their friends. Abuse of staff has reduced dramatically. Overall, they were stunned by how effective it’s been." Definitely food for thought!
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Leftovers
Australia:
Major Australian crypto company CEO out, jobs cut as Bitcoin rout bites (Sydney Morning Herald, $) Official government advice is to use a fake name to sign up for social media accounts (Cyber.gov.au) How a date with Barnaby Joyce’s nephew inspired a pro-climate tool that helped 600,000 people decide how to vote (Crikey, $)
Rest of World:
Tesla is developing new, smaller, cheaper EV, sources say (Reuters, $) OpenAI says "me too" and is now staggering the rollout of new model over cybersecurity risk (Axios) Amazon LEO launch has officially been delayed (CNET) A hacker has allegedly breached one of China’s supercomputers and is attempting to sell a trove of stolen data (CNN) Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation against it (Axios) lmao this is so petty and an incredibly bad look FBI extracts suspect's deleted Signal messages saved in iPhone notification database (404 Media, $) MacBook Neo storage can be upgraded to 1TB with the right soldering skills (AppleInsider) hell yeah Netflix prices went up again, I bought a DVD player instead (Aywren) The AI Great Leap Forward (Han, Not Solo) I've seen a lot of people hyping this one! ZeffMax on X (X)
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Oh, Also
### A fun moon game to kill time on a Friday afternoon
Since space travel is in the air at the moment — literally — and it's almost the weekend, I wanted to share this cute, older JavaScript game that puts you in a lunar vehicle moving cargo across the moon. Mooncraft2000 is retro and fun and really doesn't need any further explanation. Just go play! (For extra points, it's all open source).
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Bargains
Electronics
Zemismart Zigbee Neutral Push Switch SAA Certification, 1 Gang - $34.40 at Zemismart (Down from $50) SONOFF TRVZB Zigbee Thermostatic Radiator Valve - $37.30 at Banggood (Down from $57) Reolink RLC-823S2, Smart 4K/8MP UHD PTZ Dome Security Camera with 16X Optical Zoom - $355 at Reolink AU (Down from $499) Garmin Forerunner 965 - $699 at Garmin (Down from $999) LG OLED EVO C5 TV 2025 at Harvey Norman 65" for $2331 (Down from $3299) 77" for $3291 (Down from $5299)
Computing
MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk WiFi AM5 Motherboard + Kohl Eyeliner - $315 at Amazon (Down from $499) SER9 Pro+ AMD Ryzen 7 H255, 32GB LPDDR5X, 1TB PCIe4.0 SSD, AMD Radeon 780M - $663 at Amazon (Down from $999) Kogan First Kogan Infinity 40" Curved WUHD (5120x2160) 180Hz VA USB-C Monitor - $989 at Kogan (Down from $1499) Gaming PC: 7800X3D, 32GB 6000/C36 DDR5, B850M WiFi, 1TB SSD, 750W at Evatech BYO GPU for $1694 (Down from $2000) RTX 5070 Ti for $2999 (Down from $3500) MacBook Air 15" M4 10-Core CPU 10-Core GPU 16/512GB Midnight - $1747 at Officeworks (Down from $2199)
Mobile
Motorola Edge 70 8GB RAM/256GB Storage - $599 at JB Hi-Fi (Down from $1048) Google Pixel 10 Pro at Telstra 128GB for $1199 (Down from $1699) 256GB for $1349 (Down from $1849) 512GB for $1549 (Down from $2049) Motorola Signature 5G 512GB (Carbon / Martini Olive) - $1199 at JB Hi-Fi (Down from $2098) iPhone 17 Pro - Deep Blue, Excellent Condition - 256GB (Refurbished) - $1547 at Green Gadgets at eBay (Down from $2147)
# The End
😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.
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