The News

1.2GW data centre in Sydney facing community push back & Western Melbourne power grid operator predicts 113% demand growth

ACS Information Age is reporting on community push back on an enormous 1.2GW datacentre (biggest in Australia) proposed by Airtrunk for the Sydney suburb of Kemps Creek. The six building campus will use 22.4 million litres of water each year and contain 728 cooling units, 846 disel generators and 18,000 kilolitres of diesel. This DC isn't out in the sticks - there's multiple schools, a retirement village, and some healthcare facilities less than a kilometer away. Meanwhile in Victoria, Jemena, the DNSP for Melbourne's north-west suburbs where some absolutely massive DCs are being built, is forecasting a 113% increase in electricity demand over the next 4 years. They're going to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure to support that demand, but the regulator reckons residential electricity supply charges will actually reduce because the DNSPs can spread those costs over a much larger volume of energy.

Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta & Apple are still making shitloads of money

Microsoft announced an 18% increase in revenue compared to the same quarter last year (US$82.9b in 3 months), with Azure revenue growing 40%. Alphabet's revenue is up 22% this quarter compared to last year (US$109.9b in 3 months), Google Cloud's revenue up 63%, Search revenue up 19% and YouTube revenue up 11%. Meta's revenue is up 33% for Q1 (US$56.3b in 3 months). Apple's revenue is up 16% (US$144b in 3 months), with iPhone revenue going up 23% and services revenue at an all time high. How the fuck are these companies still generating double digit growth? They aren't new startups, they're entrenched mega-corps with product saturation. It's impressive and scary at the same time. The colossal amount of money they suck up from the world - over US$373b in 3 months, just from 4 companies - is staggering and after 10 years following them, I'm still amazed and appalled at how they do it.

Multiple US states ban cryptocurrency ATMs due to their role in scams & fraud

The USA state of Tennessee’s governor has signed a bill banning cryptocurrency ATMs and will start enforcing it as of the 1st of July 2026. Indiana also banned them recently and Minnesota is gearing up to do the same. These ATMs might be useful for folks doing legitimate cryptocurrency transactions, but they're also very useful for scammers to loot their targets. Locally, AUSTRAC reckons $275m flowed through Australian Bitcoin ATMs in 2024 and while only $3m of scam losses were recorded, the AFP and AUSTRAC reckon that number is much higher as people often don't report their loss out of shame and embarrassment. I don't like seeing a useful service taken away because of abuse by a minority, but it's so devastating to lose large sums of money, so what should society do? Education isn't working and scammers are getting more sophisticated. We can at least make it a bit more difficult for the scammers to get paid.

Oh, Also

What now for the Apple Vision Pro?

Lots of think-pieces about the Apple Vision Pro at the moment after MacRumours posted a story about how they believe Apple has "all but given up on the Vision Pro after the M5 model failed to revitalize interest in the device". I didn't even know Apple added the M5 SoC to the Apple Vision Pro (totally slipped past me and I tend to pay attention to this shit) and I haven't even used an AVP - not out of any particular hate for it, but just due to how cumbersome it is to test one. Michael Tsai rounded up a bunch of those those think-pieces and I don't disagree with any of them. In the current computer hardware environment, I can't see a way Apple makes it cheaper without making it crappier, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if in a year or two we see the AVP quietly discontinued and never spoken about again.

Bargains

The End

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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong 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 past and present.