Plus: This Redditor is not having a good day ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

August 27, 2025 | Read online
# Trump's global tech bullying, Vic 'sov cit' and AI use disclosure Plus: This Redditor is not having a good day
Edition 2505
"Acorn Atom with Econet" (Flickr: Andy Taylor)
Hi all, sorry in advance for a more serious newsletter today. Thankfully, today’s “Oh, Also” might make you do a deep belly laugh. CW
# The News
### Trump is getting ready to bully the world for big tech
The Trump administration has stepped up its threats against countries like Australia that are taxing and regulating American tech companies. Trump posted on Truth Social that he was putting “all Countries with Digital Taxes, Legislation, Rules, or Regulations, on notice”, reportedly considering sanctioning the EU over its Digital Services Act (Reuters). Meanwhile, his Federal Trade Commission is also telling US companies not to “impose censorship” based on foreign laws or face legal consequences (Bleeping Computer).
The Sizzle: Given the success he’s had squeezing companies, universities and other domestic institutions, why wouldn’t Trump bully other countries? To be clear, Trump doesn’t know what the DSA is. But he intuitively hates that idea that boffins from other countries are trying to leverage US companies — that’s his domain! Australian politicians are saying they’ll continue to do things like the news media bargaining code (AFR, $), but pretty clearly they’re dragging their feet on doing anything.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
### Victoria’s ‘sovereign citizen’ shooter was very online
A Victorian self-described “sovereign citizen” who allegedly killed two police and injured another was an active member of online conspiracy theory communities. The accused, Dezi Freeman, had multiple online accounts which he used to take part in Australian doomsday prepper online communities and old-school conspiracy theory blogs. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called anti-government conspiracy ideology a “real concern” (PM dot gov dot au)
The Sizzle: I’ve immediately seen people clutch for ideas about how to respond to the threat of conspiracy theorist violence, floating proscribing sovereign citizens as a terrorist group or arresting more of them for contempt. The reason I’ve included this in a tech newsletter is because after Wieambilla, politicians like Peter Dutton immediately called for more anti-encryption police powers — even though the shooters didn’t use encrypted messaging apps (Guardian). There’s a lot of things we could do to address this problem, but we need to be careful about knee-jerk reactions that boil down to either more punitive measures or curtailing freedoms without proof it would help.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
### If you use AI, you need to disclose it
People across industries want those who are using AI to disclose its use when making, well, anything to disclose it. Developer Mitchell Hashimoto wrote on GitHub that he believes that any pull requests — proposed changes to a project’s code — written using AI assistance should be disclosed because of “inexperienced human drivers of AI that aren't able to adequately review their generated code”. Recently, Utah passed a law saying that police need to say when AI software has been used to help write their reports (Fast Democracy). There’s even a proposed standard for website HTML headers, AI-Disclosure, being floated (IETF).
The Sizzle: The AI cat is out of the bag. I think the only way to deal with it is norms, rules and laws about how people use it. Firstly, there always needs to be someone responsible for what AI produces, no matter how “autonomous” it is. Secondly, people should make it clear when AI’s been used in the production of something. It’s simply not possible for everyone to spend every waking minute analysing whether everything was made by a person or an “almost sounds human” machine.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
#### Leftovers
Australia expecting massive VPN spike over youth social ban (Australian Financial Review, $) Popular free VPN caught spying on users (Information Age) Epic Games' Australian victory casts doubt on Apple's global defense model (MLex, $) Coles eyes AI to keep shelves stocked in next viral recipe trend (iTnews) Employees of Aussie small businesses now have ‘right to disconnect’ (Cyber Daily) A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in (NYTimes, gift link). France to sue Australian platform Kick for negligence after livestream death (France 24) Melania Trump to lead new AI task force (BBC News) Doge uploaded live copy of Social Security database to vulnerable cloud server, says whistleblower (TechCrunch) Image editing in Gemini just got a major upgrade (Google Blog) Anthropic Settles Copyright Lawsuit With Authors, Promises to Help Build AI Guardrails (WIRED, $) Why We Still Use a Couple's Email Domain (mtlynch.io) Silk Typhoon hackers hijack network captive portals in diplomat attacks (BleepingComputer) Illegal Sites Took 71% of Europe’s Betting, Casino Sales in 2024 (Bloomberg, $) If you already think Liquid Glass looks bad on macOS… (Mastodon) Today Taylor Swift accomplished something no AI researcher ever could… (Threads)
Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
# Oh, Also
### This Redditor is not having a good day
Cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs found an incredible Reddit post from a guy who said he’d been paid “$250 a month by a residential IP network provider … to host devices in my own home) (KrebsonSecurity).
Why was someone paying him to host “two laptops hardwired into a modem… [running] some sort of custom application that runs and spawns several CMD prompts”? As it turns out, it appears the company, DSLRoot, is essentially a legal botnet service that has been used to fraudulently create fake traffic and generally cause headaches.
The best bit? The Redditor, who soon deleted their account after people replied by saying that choosing to run this out of your house is a very bad idea, appears to be a US Air National Guard member with top secret security clearance who works in cybersecurity. L M A O.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
# Bargains
Electrical and electronics
Nokia Portable Wireless Speaker 2 - $17.50 at Mobileciti eBay Cygnett PowerPlus 45W Single Port GaN USB-C Wall Charger - White - $17.50 at Sydney Mobiles eBay VTech Pan & Tilt Video & Audio Baby Monitor at Amazon AU Single Camera Unit for $81.99 BM5550-OWLN 5" 2-Camera Full Colour for $108 Samsung Galaxy SmartTag2 4-Pack (2 Black + 2 White) - $89.99 at Costco JBL Charge 6 Portable Bluetooth Speaker - $183 at JBL Australia (Down from $229.95) Polk Signa S4 Sound Bar with Dolby Atmos - $399 at Masimo Consumer via Kogan (Down from $799) Apple AirPods Max (USB-C) Orange - $739 at Officeworks Roborock Q Revo Maxv - $899 at Sydney Mobiles eBay Roborock Qrevo C Robotic Vacuum Cleaner - $997 at Bing Lee
Computing
Amazon Basics Single Computer Monitor Stand - $34.89 at Amazon AU (Down from $49.90) Tenda Wi-Fi Router at Tenda-AU via Amazon AU AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 Router (RX12L Pro) for $87.99 BE3600 Wi-Fi 7 Router (RE3L) for $127 Google Nest Wi-Fi Home Mesh Router 2-Pack GA00822 - $111 at Mobileciti eBay Dahua 305m Ethernet Cable at CCTV Masters CAT5e for $129 CAT6 for $175 Intel i5-14400F - $178 at Amazon Germany (Down from $225) ASUS PRIME B650EM-A Wi-Fi Motherboard - $209 at JW Computers Gaming PCs at TechFast R5-7500F, 5060 Ti 16G, 32G RAM for $1248 9800X3D, 5070 Ti for $2548 9800X3D, 5090 for $4960 Apple iMac 2023 - M3 8C CPU/10C GPU/24GB RAM/1TB SSD/Yellow - $1699 at eBay
Mobile
Telstra pre-paid mobile plan 7-Day 3GB (+ 2GB Activation Bonus) - $1 at Telstra (Down from $13) 5G Starter Packs - $14.50 at Aldi Mobile (Down from $29)
# The End
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