Hello! Just a note to follow yesterday's Canva employee call-out. Thanks to everyone who responded despite me not actually linking my Signal. I'm still hoping to hear from a few more, so if that's you — now you know where to find me. 

Mentioned in today’s newsletter: Starlink, Moxie Marlinspike, Canva, Pixelmator Pro, Bandcamp, Sendle, Eric Adams and Grok. Plus, deals on MicroSDs, iPads and Insta360’s 360 Action cameras.

The News

My co-author and I got slopped

This morning, I received a WhatsApp from my CONSPIRACY NATION co-author Ariel Bogle with the note: "Something you're not telling me?" The message included an Amazon link for this book.

"Conspiracy Nation Exercises: Redefine Living through Cam Wilson Teachings" is a 89- or 90-page book by Leni McAllister, who appears to be a first time author (or at least has no other books for sale or any digital footprint). For just $25.29, the book offers a deep dive into the "psychology of belief and deception, guided by Cam Wilson’s fearless analysis and Leni McAllister’s reflective voice." 

The Sizzle: I don't usually start the Sizzle off with a personal story but this is prime Sizzle material. Sites like Amazon have long been filled with dodgy imitation book titles, and generative AI boom has supercharged this problem. I'm pretty sure it's AI-generated — the listing even uses the tell-tale LLM language tic "This is not a call to paranoia — it’s a call to clarity" — and the crazy thing is that I can't really see any other details about it other than that it's actually being sold directly by Amazon, suggesting it's first-party stock? It's so crazy that one of the richest companies in the world just stocks this slop. 

Naturally, I've ordered a copy and I will report back (maybe even do a public reading).

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

Iran protestors are finding ways to get around the state's blackout

Iran has blown past 100 hours without internet nationwide as the state violently cracks down on civilian protests. Cloudflare has a cool blog showing how "traffic anomalies" first started showing up on January 8 and appeared to progress from strict filtering to a complete internet blackout. There's a cat-and-mouse game between the government and people trying to get around the shutdown: people started using the 50,000-100,000 Starlink terminals estimated to be in the country. Then the government started using "military-grade" GPS jammers to thwart them (Rest of). Now, the regime is trying to hunt down Starlink users (WSJ, $) as Musk makes the service free in the country while the repression continues (CNN).

Related reading: some interesting reporting from the Guardian about messaging and other online tools that are supposed to get around censorship being used in Iran. 

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

Apple wants to reclaim its creative design roots by taking on Adobe and Canva

Apple is challenging Adobe's dominance of the creative suite with a new bundle of alternative apps to Photoshop, Premiere Pro and other popular design software for much cheaper (Verge). Apple Creator Suite bundles together apps like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro and Pixelmator Pro, a graphic design app it acquired in 2024, in a package that you can either buy outright or take up as a subscription. It's priced at $20 a month or $200 annually, which is cheaper than Canva's pro subscription and significantly less than Adobe's creative suite (Gadget Guy).  

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of the world:

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

Hacker used malware to open port, but not the one you'd assume

In 2021, a Dutch man was arrested for hacking into a port's IT systems by convincing an employee to infect it with malware via a USB stick. He used this access to facilitate a 210kg cocaine shipment hidden in wine. Nice. After being convicted, he recently appealed his sentence. Sadly for him, he was unsuccessful. But on the upside, it gave the good people at the Register to write about this story with a truly magnificent pun headline: "Court tosses appeal by hacker who opened port to coke smugglers with malware".

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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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.