The News

Qantas hack turns ‘days since cyberattack affecting millions of Aussies’ counter back to 0

6 million Qantas customers’ personal information have been exposed by a cyber-attack through the airline’s customer service platform (ABC News). The company said it first detected the attack on Monday, and believes that intruders stole a “significant” portion of data, including names, phone numbers, frequent flyer numbers etc (Qantas). One Sizzler drew my attention to a LinkedIn post about someone’s frequent flyer account being broken into. The AFR seems to be suggesting the hack is the work of a group called Scattered Spider, which the FBI warned this week was targeting airlines (X dot com) but I haven’t seen this reported anywhere else so take this with a grain of salt. Another day, another massive hack due to a third party platform being the cybersecurity weak link!

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

One of the internet’s biggest players has declared war on AI crawlers

One of the internet’s most widely used web providers Cloudflare is going to start blocking AI crawlers by default (The Verge). Cloudflare, which powers about 20% of the web, put out some super interesting blogposts to go along with this announcement, including info on all of the AI crawlers (Cloudflare) and how these crawlers are affecting publishers (Cloudflare). I’ve mentioned how AI bots are strangling web publishers a lot but I didn’t expect a big player to do something like this — and this will seriously worry AI companies. Another interesting wrinkle: Cloudflare will also let people charge AI bots to crawl their data (Yahoo), which I think is an interesting step towards one version of the future internet where microtransactions are common. But that’s a topic for another edition…

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Denmark wants to give people copyright to their body to beat deepfakes

Denmark looks set to give its citizens copyright over their own appearance and voice as a way of fighting back against non-consensual deepfakes (The Guardian). Its government has secured cross-party support for the policy and will develop a law that is intended to stop people deepfaking people’s bodies and voices. There will be carve-outs for copyright and satire, but the law would give people the right to get platforms to take down content and potentially sue anyone who infringes on it.

It’s often said that copyright is the only functional law on the internet (The Verge) because platforms are pretty good at removing bootleg copies of Frozen; while hate speech and violence remains rampant. That being said — I’m not super familiar with Danish law, but I wonder if there will be any weird consequences of tying up our right to our own likeness with copyright, a system built to protect IP for its economic value.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

How would you count $1 million in bills?

If you go to the Federal Reserve Bank’s museum in Chicago, there’s a big cube on display filled with $1 million in dollar bills. “Have you ever wondered what one million dollars looks like? You don’t have to wonder anymore because you can see it right in front of you!” the sculpture’s plaque claims.

One guy wanted to double-check by counting (Calvin Ling). To assist, he made a simple “dot counter” tool that helped him keep track of how many bills were in each column so he could estimate how many there were in total. He concluded that the money cube in fact held more than $1.5 million in notes.

Another way to check that’s a bit quicker? Asking. A 2014 Reddit post says that a tour guide told them that the $1 million figure is wrong.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electronic & electrical

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.