Plus: Won’t someone please think of the Cybertruck owners ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

October 17, 2025 | Read online
# Crypto company briefly cured poverty, f***ed FOIs and the Sizzler Say Plus: Won’t someone please think of the Cybertruck owners
Edition 2441
"Wish survey via computer." (Flickr: waltarrrr)
Not a paid advertisement but a Sizzler is organising a Melbourne screening of a documentary about banned books in the US, the Librarians. Sounds fun!
# The News
### A crypto company briefly made enough money to pay off all world debt… but in a bad way
A PayPal-linked crypto currency minted $426 trillion in a supposedly asset-backed cryptocurrency this week, before deleting it all and apologising for their mistake (Decrypt). Crypto issuer Paxos created 300 trillion PYUSD tokens on Wednesday, which is a PayPal-branded stablecoin by mistake. 20 minutes later, the company burned them, which means to send the tokens to a non-existent recipient so they cannot be used. Paxos soon apologised and said that it was an accident, not a hack.
| Paxos @Paxos |
At 3:12 PM EST, Paxos mistakenly minted excess PYUSD as part of an internal transfer. Paxos immediately identified the error and burned the excess PYUSD. This was an internal technical error. There is no security breach. Customer funds are safe. We have addressed the root
8:53 PM • Oct 15, 2025
2.49K Likes 331 Retweets
725 Replies
The Sizzle: You might ask why you should give a shit about some crypto bro making up more fake money because that is essentially the modus operandi of the entire crypto industry. But this is a bit different — and a big ❌ against the claim that crypto has professionalised as it’s been integrated into the mainstream financial system.
A stablecoin like PYUSD is supposed to be pegged to another asset. In the case of PYUSD, every token is supposed to have a corresponding US dollar held by the issuer. You don’t need to understand all the reasons behind that, but the point of a stablecoin is that you can trade it like a cryptocurrency (i.e. essentially no rules) while also knowing that it has the stability of a real asset (i.e. something protected by actual rules and actually, y’know, exists) whenever you want to trade it in. It’s kinda like the best of both worlds.
Why does it matter that Paxos had a finger slip and fixed it less than half an hour later? Well, if a company that says it only hands out enough tokens to match the amount of dollars it holds and then issues more tokens than the entire world’s GDP, then you might start to wonder “even if this was a little whoopsie, maybe their system doesn’t have safeguards to prevent creating tokens without those actual underlying assets.”
And then that makes you wonder whether any of those PYUSD tokens have underlying assets.
And then you sell all your PYUSD, just in case they’ll run out of actual money to give PYUSD holders. And everyone else does that, too.
And then you go and withdraw all your money from the banks, and everyone else follows too.
And then the banks run out of money — which isn’t real anyway, as everyone knows — and the global financial system crashes and we all go back to caves.
Well, that didn’t quite happen, but you can see why it’s a problem if people aren’t confident that a company like PayPal’s stablecoin isn’t a big fat phoneycoin.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
### Turns out the FOI system can handle receiving one email every five minutes
IT staff reassured public servants that receiving an email with an FOI request every five minutes “isn’t a concern at all from an IT perspective”, according to emails obtained about the government’s case study for its FOI weakening-reforms (Guardian). A parliamentary committee is reviewing the Albanese government’s plans to restrict FOI requests because of fears that “foreign adversaries” and “AI” are abusing the system. One of the examples cited by the Attorney-General Michelle Rowland as why the reform is needed was when the eSafety Commissioner’s office received 600 requests in a short amount of time. But this case study didn’t include AI — it was essentially an automated mail template — and internal emails show that the office didn’t have any technical issues handling the requests.
The Sizzle: It’s one thing to try and make government more secretive. It’s another thing to come up with the most dog-shit, hare-brained excuses that you can’t even cherry-pick an example to prove. For example, the eSafety case study wouldn’t even be avoided under the new rules which exempt personal requests (like those made using the template) from further restrictions. Dumb dumb dumb.
Also if you’re interested, from 1PM today I’m live-streaming myself filing as many FOI requests as I can for Crikey.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
### The Sizzler Say: Fuckqantas.com, M1 and don’t blame Deloitte grads!
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.
A Sizzler bought the domain fuckqantas.com and has asked on the forum for your suggestions on how best to use it. (He also owns fucktelstra.com) Not everyone on the forum hates Apple’s move to sell MBPs without chargers. Speaking of Apple and its new M5 chip, the Sizzler Slack is popping off about the M1 and how it’s… still pretty good? An important corrective to something I said about Deloitte’s AI report in the Sizzle last week from Todd: “This statement is a bit rough "Don’t let some dumbass grad’s AI slip-up "This would have gone through multiple drafts and been vetted by Managers, Directors and signed off by at least one Senior Partner before being handed over to the client. The Grad is just doing what they are told and I can tell would have no say in it. Don't blame the little guy. “ I completely agree and I want everyone to know: I blame the big guys.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
#### Leftovers
Australia:
Labor holds briefings with tech companies, unions on national AI plan (Capital Brief, $) TikTok, Meta and Snap to face social media ban inquiry after no-show legal threats (Crikey, $) Electoral watchdog seeks new powers to curb platform disinformation (InnovationAus, $) Police investigating reports explicit deepfakes made of Sydney schoolgirls (ABC News) Blocked bays and failed handshakes: Many public EV chargers are unusable – despite being 'online' (The Driven) New resources to prepare kids, carers and teachers for the teen social media ban (eSafety Commissioner)
Rest of the world:
Uber is turning its app into an AI training ground (The Verge) Pinterest adds controls to let you limit the amount of AI-slop in your feed (TechCrunch) Microsoft wants you to talk to your PC and let AI control it (The Verge) Mysterious Intrigue Around An x86 "Corporate Entity Other Than Intel/AMD" (Phoronix) Video game union workers rally against $55bn Saudi-backed private acquisition of EA, with formal petition to regulators (Eurogamer) Unproven Vape Detection Tech Expands Surveillance in Schools, Threatening Privacy (Tech Policy Press) AI-generated influencer scandals are here (Spitfire News) Open source GZDoom community splinters after creator inserts AI-generated code (Ars Technica) I Bypassed Amazon's Kindle Web DRM Because Their App Sucked (blog.pixelmelt.dev)
Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
# Oh, Also
### Won’t someone please think of the Cybertruck owners
I’m just going to present this without comment: Spit On, Sworn At, and Undeterred: What It’s Like to Own a Cybertruck from WIRED.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
# Bargains
Electrical & Electronics
Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation - $259 at The Good Guys Teenage Engineering OP-XY High Performance Sequencer, Synthesizer & Sampler - $2599 at Belfield music
Computing
HyperDrive USB-C Hubs for iMac 24" & MacBook at Phonebot 3-in-1 / 5-in-1 / 6-in-1 for $19 Akko MonsGeek M1 V5 via Multi-Mode 75% Mechanical Keyboard - Recycling - $129 at Centre Com Fanxiang S910 Pro 1TB Gen5 NVMe SSD (14GB/s Read, 8.5GB/s Write DRAM Cache) - $164 at Fanxiang AliExpress Microsoft Surface Laptop (7th Gen) 13.8" Snapdragon X+ 16GB/512GB - $1749 at JB Hi-Fi Asus PRIME GeForce RTX 5080 16GB Graphics Card + Bonus $100 eGift Card - $1849 at Umart Gaming PC: R7-9800X3D, RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB 6000Mhz RAM, 1TB NVME + Arc Raiders redemption - $2348 at TechFast
# The End
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