Plus: Calling all citizen scientists! We need your help finding numbers ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

March 04, 2026 | Read online
# Are you 'monitoring the situation' or information-gooning? Apple's zoomy new laptops and DownDetector sold Plus: Calling all citizen scientists! We need your help finding numbers
Edition 2514
"2018 Tuner Akai AT-2200 2" by Jacek Halicki is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Mentioned in today’s edition: Sam Altman, Apple M5 MacBook Pros, Meta, DownDetector, Life360, Twiggy Forrest, Bitcoin and Ubuntu. Plus, deals on LG OLED TVs, AMD CPUs and Audio Technica speakers.
# The News
### Is 'monitoring the situation' just information-gooning?
"Monitoring the situation" is the latest trend of how people online are engaging with the Iran conflict. In the first 24 hours of strikes, $750 million was bet on ""prediction markets"" about whether Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be removed from office and when it would happen (Reuters). One guy nearly won $800k (NPR). Now people are creating dashboards for so-called open source intelligence so they can firehose as much data as they can into their faces (SitDeck). Taking this a step further, some people are integrating betting and, you guessed it, AI agents (X)
The Sizzle: This whole "monitoring the situation" meme feels like an acceleration of our ravenous cultural hunger, maybe even an addiction, for more information. Whether it's our own biometric data via wearables, running Tweetdeck with a million feeds (RIP) to sourcing satellite data of Tehran, it's increasingly normalised to always be looking to know more and faster (Garbage Day's Ryan Broderick linked it to the COVID days of infection counts). But what's the point of all of this? "Monitoring the situation" doesn't mean anything if you can't make sense of it. If anything, more data = more noise, less meaning. I don't know if you've noticed this desire — I've definitely noticed it in myself — but it doesn't seem like there's ever enough data to make people happy. It feels a lot like information gooning; a constant chase of a pay-off that never comes.
it’s all under control, fellas
I’m reluctant to be like "no one wants to dang work these days", but there's a through line between drop-shipping, crypto, gambling, AI agents, all of this — it's the idea that there's some hack, some new thing, some edge that's going to liberate us from the darkening reality of modern life. Naturally, none of these trends are actually about making something, it's just about finding an edge in the madness. So, we keep telling ourselves that the way to free ourselves is to keep logged in, keep scrolling, keep collecting data, keep monitoring the situation...
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
### ZoooOOOOOooooOOOOOooooooooooom (that's the sound of the new Apple M5 MacBook Pros)
As part of its upgrade week, Apple's revved up its MacBook Pros with its latest silicon chips, faster storage and a price bump (Engadget). Its refreshed 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros have the new M5 Pro and M5 Max (Apple). For those whose eyes glaze over when you see someone mention core numbers or "Fusion Architecture" (you can geek out at Ars Technica if that's you), the TL;DR is: these will be workhorses for locally running LLMs. Or anything else. Which is funny considering Apple is so far behind on generative AI. Also, Apple appears to have leaked the name of its forthcoming budget MacBook, the Neo (MacRumours).
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
### DownDetector and Speedtest sold in $1.7 billion deal???
Downdetector and Ookla's Speedtest have been sold to consulting company Accenture in a deal worth $1.7 billion (Reuters). Ziff Davis, which is mostly an online publisher that runs websites like Mashable, is selling off its "Connectivity division" which includes the outage checker and internet speed testing services. This division also includes some other properties like a crowdsourced mobile network tracker called RootMetrics — heh — and Wi-Fi heat mapping tool Ekahau. This seems like a lot of money but, with Facebook going down today, maybe it's worth every penny.
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Leftovers
Australia:
The fight brewing over Australia's new AI safety institute (Crikey, $) Life360 turns sensitive user location data into a booming advertising profit engine (The Australian, $) Meta destroyed key evidence in Twiggy Forrest’s scam ad fight (The Sydney Morning Herald, $) Jim’s Group AI bot goes rogue (Mediaweek) Scandal-linked NDIS Salesforce software now costs $5m a month (InnovationAus) Tesla sales rebound in Australia in February, led by Model Y (The Driven)
Rest of World:
OpenAI CEO Altman defends Pentagon work to staff, calls backlash ‘really painful’ (The Wall Street Journal, $) Damn, Sam, my heart goes out to you! News Corp, Meta in AI content licensing deal worth up to $50 million a year (The Wall Street Journal, $) AI data centers may not need constant peak power, study finds (Bloomberg, $) Google Home’s latest feature is Gemini-powered live search for cameras (Engadget) hmmmmm Ubuntu is planning to comply with age verification law "without it being a privacy disaster" (Reddit) LibreOffice hits back at its critics, says its UI is better than Microsoft Office's (Neowin) Bitcoin supply approaching 20 million; the final million will take another 114 years to mine (CoinDesk) Anyone know what this mystery device is? (Wired, $) Don't make me talk to your chatbot (Ray Myers)
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Oh, Also
### Calling all citizen scientists! We need your help finding numbers
Looking for meaning in your life? Wanting to contribute to total sum of all human knowledge? Well, Number Research is calling on you to help with its mission to find ALL the numbers. All you have to do is go to their website, type in a number, and it will tell you if it’s new or how many it has been entered already.
BTW this is just phase one. Once the project maps all the positive integers, the project's coordinators say, we'll move on to the negative ones.
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Bargains
Electronics
Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 3 Portable Bluetooth Speaker (Hyper Pink) - $49.95 at Amazon (Down from $180) UGREEN Studio Pro ANC Wireless Headphones - $50.38 at UGREEN Direct Store AliExpress (Down from $114.90) Audio Technica Powered Bluetooth Bookshelf Speakers - $252 at The Good Guys Commercial (Down from $299) LG 42" OLED EVO C5 AI UHD 4K Smart TV (2025) - $1341 at Domayne (Down from $2195) TCL 75" C7K 4K UHD QD-Mini LED TV (2025) - $1355 at Bing Lee (Down from $1761) Sony Bravia 65 Inch X90l XR Full Array LED 4K Google TV XR65X90L - $1499 at Costco
Computing
HORACO 8-Port 2.5GbE Network Switch w/ 10G SFP+ Port - $42.67 at HORACO Direct Store AliExpress Fritz!Box 4060 Tri-Band Wi-Fi 6 Router - $271 at Amazon (Down from $367) AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D CPU - $259 at AMD-Ryzen Store AliExpress ASUS VP327Q 31.5" 4K VA Monitor - $279 at Scorptec Computers (Down from $409) AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D 6-Core 12-Thread CPU Processor - $294 at SZCPU Store AliExpress Apple M5 MacBooks at Apple Education MacBook Air M5 (from 512GB SSD) for $1639 MacBook Pro M5 (Starting at 1TB) for $2649 Gaming PC: R7 7800X3D, RX 9070 XT, 1TB SSD, TUF B650EM-E, 32GB 6000MHz RAM, 240mm AIO, Free Game - $2398 at Nebula PC Centre Com Helios AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, RX 9070 XT Gaming PC with Windows 11 - $2799 at Centre Com
Mobile
Boost Mobile 5GB 7-Day Prepaid eSIM - $1 at Boost App (Down from $13)
# The End
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