Good afternoon Sizzlers (and welcome to those who’ve just come on board)! I saw my first movie in the cinemas since my kid was born two years ago. We went to a Sunday midday screening of F1. There’s a lot of tech involved in the movie — it was produced by Apple and captured with some truly incredible cameras — but the thing I came away most impressed with was Hoyts’ "D-BOX MOTION RECLINERS” which transformed every engine growl and snap of the camera into a low grade whiplash for me. AAA+++ highly recommend.

The News

Australia is at the cutting edge of dodgy crypto gambling tech

Did you know that one of Australia’s emerging major exports is online cryptocurrency gambling, with three of the world’s biggest five “““““completely legal”””” operating from down under. There’s Stake (Crikey, $), Sportsbet.io/Bitcasino.io — whose founder Tim Heath was almost kidnapped last year (SMH, $) — and new competitor, Shuffle. All are licensed in the small Caribbean island nation of Curacao and are supposed to be blocked from Australian use. But, as friend of the Sizzle Julian Fell reported , Shuffle’s Australian staff have been live-streaming themselves playing on the site (ABC News). Australia has always been on the forefront of gambling (The Conversation) and, fittingly, remains the world-leader in gambling losses (ABC News).

(Also on the topic: The Guardian reports social media influencers like “DegenerateAngelss” are illegally promoting online gambling from casinos in Belize )

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Cartels hacking telcos and CCTVs to catch rats

One of the world’s most dangerous drug cartels was able to sniff out and then kill informants using phone records and city surveillance footage obtained by a hacker (The Guardian). Last week, the FBI disclosed that the Sinaloa Cartel tracked one of their staff through Mexico City using call and geo-location data from “obtained” from their phone, and accessing the city’s CCTV cameras. Unsurprisingly, things did not go well for the informants who met with the FBI staff member.

Bonus: Earlier this month, I linked to this article about how tech is making spycraft a lot harder (The Strategist).

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Introducing ‘USB for AI’ to take power back against big tech

There’s a lot of reasons that AI companies are experiencing a “backlash” (WIRED, $). One that’s been on my mind recently is how AI is putting so much power in the hands of a few companies because they have become the interface to the whole world for some users. (I.E. Like Google, ChatGPT decides how to answer your questions. Unlike Google — at least the Google of yore — it gets you the answer without ever leaving the app. That’s power).

That’s why I’ve been interested in the so-called “USB for AI”, MCP (Anthropic) which is a protocol for letting AI speak to other services. Instead of the free-for-all scraping that we’ve been subjected to, MCP set terms for how an AI bot will interact with your website. In fact, this Substack explains how MCP makes various things more interoperable without AI. TLDR: The trend towards doing everything through AI is worrying — but there’s stuff being built that can give us some power back.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

Changing your computer’s language to Russian to defeat ransomware

Sick of the normal cyber-security advice like “keep your software up-to-date” and “be careful about what links you click on”? Try this one on for size: add the Cyrillic keyboard in your keyboard settings to stop many forms of ransomware. Seriously

According to a 2021 post from US cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs (KrebsOnSecurity), many Russian hacking groups behind ransomware attacks design their software so that it can’t be used domestically to avoid local heat from the authorities. “Countless malware strains will check for the presence of one of these languages on the system, and if they’re detected the malware will exit and fail to install,” Krebs wrote. So, here’s a Windows script to make it look like you’ve done that (Github) or just click here.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.

🤖 We love robots at the Sizzle but this newsletter has always been and will always be written by humans for humans.

🗣️ Have any feedback, a tip or just want to chat? Send me an email or Signal message. I promise to reply!

💬 Want to hang out with other Sizzlers? There’s a subscriber-only Slack server and forum if you want to procrastinate and chat about tech-related news.

🌐 The Sizzle is on Bluesky, Mastodon and LinkedIn if you’re feeling social.

💳 Paid subscriber looking to manage your billing info, change email address or cancel your subscription? Visit the Beehiiv customer portal.

🎁 Make someone's day and gift them a 12 month gift subscription to The Sizzle.

💔 Don’t want this any more? I won’t take it personally. There’s a unsubscribe button at the bottom of this email or here’s a guide.

🦺 The Sizzle has been tested to meet and exceed ISO 3533 standards.

Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

The Sizzle is created on Gadigal 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.