The News

The horrors of the Bondi terrorist attack and how being traumatised online is now a condition of entry

There was no avoiding the graphic nature of last night’s Bondi terrorist attack online. 15 people were killed, 40+ injured when two men opened fire on a Jewish celebration marking the first day of Hanukkah at Australia’s iconic Bondi Beach. It was declared a terrorist attack that intentionally targeted people because of their faith. It is so gut-wrenching to see this violence happen here.

It’s also another atrocity that we’re all collectively being exposed to through our screens. First came posts about a suspected shooting in Bondi. Then came footage circulating: of terrified crowds running, of blood-soaked pavement, of men dressed in black, shooting from a familiar location with long rifles. This was immediately followed by firehoses of widespread speculation, lies and hate. Long before anyone knew anything, we’re all inundated with loudest voices who aren’t waiting to find out what happened to start trying to force their reality onto the rest of us. The craziest part of all of this? It seems like everyone has grimly accepted this.

Scrolling online last night and this morning, I couldn’t escape it. Not just the awful news — which we need to bear witness to — but violent, gory content that was being served to me. Platforms are supposed to at least put interstitials on this stuff to blur it and stop it from autoplaying, but I don’t seem to be getting them.

It’s worse on some platforms. It cannot be expressed how uniformly fucked it is on X: Grok falsely telling people it was a white guy who tackled one of the shooters, as blue checkmarks are making money off posting viral videos falsely claiming that Muslims were setting off fireworks in celebration. But this happened to me on just about every major social platform for me. Going online in 2025 just means being blasted with the most horrific content you can imagine. Being traumatised is just the cost of entry.

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They’re putting malware in subtitles now

A torrented version of the hit movie One Battle After Another’s subtitles is the clever vector for a malware loader that’s pwning movie-lovers who’ve been sailing the seas (Bleeping Computer). BitDefender researchers investigated after noticing a spike in detection of malware relating to the recent Leonardo DiCaprio movie, and found that bad guy had managed to hide a PowerShell script in a subtitle file that was being activated when a user used the movie launcher. It’s not the first time pirated material has been used to seed malware, but researchers credited this method for being particularly sneaky.

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One bad gift card = Apple vaporises you

Aussie Paris Buttfield-Addison had his 30-year-old Apple ID zapped because he tried to use a compromised gift card, he claims (Hey Paris). He said that he bought a $500 Apple Gift Card from a “Woolworths scale” seller that locked his account when he tried to redeem it. He can’t seem to even download his account data because of errors.

Apple support’s response has been comical. They told him to start a new account (which would violate Apple T&Cs) or to physically go to the Apple HQ to plead his case???????

(Anyway, if you know Tim Cook or someone who can deal with this: help a brother out and email paris@paris.id.au)

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Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of the world:

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Oh, Also

I am so happy to tell you that rats play doom

Do I really need to say anything else? What about this picture (see below). Go here.

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Bargains

Electrical & Electronic

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.