Plus: Using the ‘Boob Check’ to test if you’re digitally in Iran ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

December 01, 2025 | Read online
# ChatGPT turns 3, tech ruins a weekend of air travel and Sizzle Gift Guide Plus: Using the ‘Boob Check’ to test if you’re digitally in Iran
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Edition 2461
"CD-ROM" (Flickr: Nickeisha Cole)
# The News
### ChatGPT is turning three. Are things going well?
It’s exactly three years since OpenAI launched on ChatGPT on November 30 — or December 1 for the readers of this newsletter — in 2022 and it immediately changed everything (Rest Of).
It’s hard to get your head around how well ChatGPT is going. It’s probably the fastest growing product in human history. 1 million people used it in the first week. Now 800 million people use it every week. ChatGPT has become a verb like Google. Companies are falling over themselves to sign deals to give it to their staff or roll it out to their users. It launched an industry of competing AI companies with their own, mostly same-same products, each jostling for dominance. This race to be the best is transforming the earth (and maybe space) to power it, while intertwining the entire world economy in complex deals and debts (FT, $).
And yet, I can never really remember a popular tech consumer product that so many people actively hate. People have coined words like “slop” and “clankers” to describe things that they hate about what ChatGPT et al. are putting out. Every person and company now has to contend with being inundated with AI-produced bullshit. OpenAI and other AI makers face regulations and lawsuits. Corporate AI might be flatlining (The Economist). OpenAI’s competitors, who have the benefit of printing money in their other successful businesses, are keeping pace and may even be overtaking ChatGPT (FT, $).
There’s definitely a sense that OpenAI is too big to fail. I’m not sure that’s true. Generative AI is clearly here to stay but OpenAI doesn’t have a monopoly on it. It’s a long way from breaking even, let alone making back the hundreds of billions of dollars it is taking from investors. There’s a world in which OpenAI just becomes a brand inside Microsoft like Skype or Xbox. So, there’s no question that we’re living in the world that ChatGPT created. I’m not certain that OpenAI will be the one that reaps the spoils.
Further reading: The World Still Hasn’t Made Sense of ChatGP T (The Atlantic)
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
### System outages and solar flare bugs ruined the weekend of Australian air travellers
A nationwide passport system outage added to the technical delays facing airports over the last few days (ABC News). Inbound travellers queued up for hours in Sydney and Melbourne airports as Australian Border Force had to manually check passports. This was on top of the “global recall” of Airbus A320s that grounded some Australian flights (ABC News). The reason? Turns out their software had a “vulnerability to solar flares” (Reuters). Oops. Anyway, have a geez at the tablet that Airbus uses to patch the fix:
looks like a big version of those kid-friendly tablets I see in the hands of 3-year-olds at restaurants
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
### The Sizzle wants YOUR tech gift ideas
Here is a public service announcement: there are just three Mondays after today until Christmas. I figured we could all help each other out by coming up with some great tech gift ideas for each other.
So, have you bought something tech-related that’s been great this year?
Is there something that you now buy for others, or can’t imagine life without?
Have you done a painstaking amount of research on a topic that you don’t want to go to waste?
Here’s your chance: Press the button below to go to a form asking for your suggestion (preferred) or send me an email.
Recommend something for the Sizzle Xmas gift guide!
I will take submissions all this week and try to put something out early next week!
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
#### Leftovers
Australia:
Incoming Australian social media ban leaves children vulnerable to phishing scams, experts say (ABC News) Facing a ban, teens are sick of adults ignoring what they think about social media (Crikey, $) Psychologists warn teens face withdrawal from under-16 social media ban (The Courier-Mail, $) TikTok's big Australian data centre dream hits Chalmers stonewall (Australian Financial Review, $) How Microsoft's 'little alliance' morphed into Australia's new data centre lobby (Capital Brief, $) WA man jailed for at least five years for evil twin attack (iTnews) From smart cars to tracking devices: Technology's increasing role in coercive control and family and domestic violence (eSafety Commissioner) UK stands up International Defence Esports Games with Australian interest for 2027 hosting (Cyber Daily) Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation coverage another step closer (Dirt Report on YouTube)
Rest of the world:
Epic boss Tim Sweeney thinks stores like Steam should stop labelling games as being made with AI: 'It makes no sense,' he says, because 'AI will be involved in nearly all future production' (PC Gamer) Revisiting Jill of the Jungle, the last game Tim Sweeney designed (Ars Technica) TPUv7: Google Takes a Swing at the King (SemiAnalysis, $) this is very nerdy but I enjoyed it Why people keep flocking to Linux in 2025 (and it's not just to escape Windows) (ZDNet) Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written fully by AI (Nature, $) AI chatbots can be tricked with poetry to ignore their safety guardrails (Engadget) The indie web is here to make the internet weird again (The Verge) Windows drive letters are not limited to A-Z (Ryan Liptak) NixOS 25.11 released (NixOS)
Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
# Oh, Also
### Using the ‘Boob Check’ to test if you’re digitally in Iran
Here’s a question: how would you test if your web traffic was being routed through Iran, perhaps by a CDN? There’s a few ways, I’m sure, but here’s a fun one: X user @hkashfi’s “BOOB CHECK”.
He simply tries to access a URL containing the word boob. In many parts of the world, there would be no issue (in fact I’m told that many people use the internet for a purpose like this). In Iran? The country’s national internet filtering system picks up the “boob” request and says nuh-uh.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
# Bargains
Electrical & Electronics
$40 off with $250-$399.99 Order, $60 off with $400+ Order at the Good Guys WiZ 20M LED Fairy Light Type-I AU - $41.70 at Amazon AU Google Nest Cam 2K 3rd Gen Indoor Wired - $99 at Officeworks (Down from $187) Google Nest Doorbell (Battery) - $99 at Office Works Lubluelu Robot Vacuum and Mop SL60D White/Black - $119 at Lubluelu Robot AU via Amazon AU Sony Wireless Noise Cancellation Headphones WHCH720NB - $139 at Telstra (Down from $259) Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition 32GB 2024 eReader - $219 at The Good Guys JBL Spinner BT - Bluetooth Turntable - $398 at Audio Influence (Down from $649.95) 2x Sonos Era 100 - $414 at The Good Guys Garmin Forerunner 265/265s Watch - $599 at Rebel JBL PartyBox 720 Portable Speaker - $989 at The Good Guys Commercial (Down from $1295) LG 55 Inch OLED B5 AI UHD 4K Smart TV OLED55B5PSA - $1399 at Costco TCL 85C7K 85" Premium QD-MiniLED 4K Google TV (2025) - $2022 at Appliance Central
Computing
Lexar Play Pro 512GB microSDXC Express Card - $99 at Centre Com Crucial P3 4TB NVMe M.2 2280 SSD Acronis Edition - $376 at Amazon UK via AU Apple iPad 11" A16 at Costco 128GB for $459 256GB for $659 Ubiquiti Unifi Cloud Gateway Fiber (UCG-Fiber) - $466 at Device Deal MSI GeForce RTX 5070 12GB Shadow 2X OC Graphics Card - $757 at Amazon UK via AU
Mobile
Vodafone 100GB 28-Day Prepaid SIM with 50% cashback and bonus $5 cashback - $12 at ShopBack (comes down to one dollar) Motorola Moto G86 Power 5G 8GB RAM/128GB - $210 at The Good Guys Nothing Phone (3a) at The Good Guys 8GB RAM/128GB Storage for $384 12GB/256GB for $459 Apple iPhone 16 at Costco 16 128GB for $999 16 256GB for $1,199
# The End
😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.
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