Plus: The (maybe true) story of the long-lost one-man Aussie OS ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

April 24, 2026 | Read online
# AI's bill has come due, prediction market cheating and email under attack Plus: The (maybe true) story of the long-lost one-man Aussie OS
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Edition 2549
"Kranz on Console - GPN-2000-001406" by NASA is licensed under Public domain
Mentioned in today’s edition: Cam's last edition, Microsoft, Maduro, Palantir, SpaceX, Chrome and Aussie. Plus, deals on Ecovacs robotic vacuums, LG OLED TVs and Apple Watches.
# The News
### The bill has come due for the AI industry
AI companies are tightening their belts. OpenAI shut down Sora, Anthropic has launched a new model with "adaptive" thinking that automatically routes your requests to smaller models. It's also "testing" limiting Claude Code and third party harnesses (like OpenClaw) to higher subscriptions or pay-as-you-go models. Microsoft is shifting enterprise to token-based billing. xAI is being slurped up into SpaceX. Companies using these models now say they're burning through their AI budgets. Meanwhile, it's getting more expensive and fraught to build data centres that AI companies need to pay off the money they've already raised. Frontier labs are spending enormous amounts of money training more powerful models so they have an advantage over the free AI models released by labs which, the US government claims, are mooching off the improvements of the frontier labs by distilling their models.
The Sizzle: It's fucking nut crunch time. For the past three-ish years, big tech has promised that LLMs were going to change everything, be part of everyone's lives, and that meant these companies were going to be paid by everyone. The state of play now is that there's still no killer consumer AI app — like the LLM version of the iPhone or Facebook — but clearly some businesses are finding value using it, mostly in coding. The AU$10 trillion question (a number based on analysts' prediction of revenue needed to cover its buildout for the rest of the decade) is about the survival of the AI industry. These companies are unprofitable, enormously leveraged, their expenditure is going up and not down, there's near-zero switching cost between companies and their products are getting commoditised within months of launching. The unknown is whether people and companies will accept them increasing their prices or squeezing users onto more expensive plans.
AI (as in generative LLM AI) is clearly here to stay, but the people and companies who built it might not be. For all the talk of SkyNet and AI bioweapons killing everyone, it's the AI makers who are facing existential risk. And if they go down, a lot of other people — probably you and me — could be dragged down with them.
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
### People keep finding ways to cheat on prediction markets
There are a few different ways to cheat get an edge in gambling prediction markets. You could, for example, allegedly use your inside knowledge as a soldier involved in capturing Maduro to win more than half a million AUD on bets that the Venezuelan president would be removed from office by the end of the month. This does come with the downside that you will probably get caught (US Department of Justice). Or, you can think smart, not hard, and win a bet about Paris' top temperature by locating the temperature sensor whose readings are used to adjudicate the claim and, maybe, just blast it with a hairdryer so it records a higher temperature? (Engadget). Good to see the "truth machines" working as intended!
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
### Email is under attack
The bad newsletter company, Substack, said on the bad site, X, that Google has fiddled with its tracking pixels which means that people's open rates on emails have just plummeted (X). It's just one of the latest changes to the way popular email clients are treating emails. Increasingly companies like Google and Apple are sorting emails, prioritising some, hiding others, bringing that same black box algorithmic decision making into one of the few sources of information that people still control.
If there's one thing we should do, I think it's to try use the internet like it's still 1999.
Related reading: here's a retrospective of how the email format was developed, and how it could've had more features built in from the start
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Leftovers
Australia:
Australian government has joined with the UK to warn about the "China-nexus" hackers who are using botnets built from hacked routers and other devices to launch cyber attacks (Cyber dot gov dot au) Australia's biggest bank to cut 120 more jobs amid AI push (SMH, $) ASIC targeting online finfluencers over financial advice (9News) Meta is not removing rule-breaking ads when Ad Standards ask them to (Mumbrella) New suppliers frozen out of government's data sovereignty scheme (InnovationAus) Guzman y Gomez cooks up plan for agentic kitchens (iTnews) sure! This game looks great: OCEANEERS early access lets you play out your own version of Lost (Sifter)
Rest of World:
Xbox's new boss looks like she wants to bring exclusive games back to its consoles (The Verge) Surveillance vendors caught abusing access to telcos to track people's phone locations, researchers say (TechCrunch) Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys (Wired, $) Apple and Amazon push back on stricter emissions reporting rules (Bloomberg, $) GitHub opts all CLI users into new telemetry changes (The Register) New Chrome plugin adds perfect typos to AI-written emails (Business Insider, $)
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Oh, Also
### The (maybe true) story of the long-lost one-man Aussie OS
There was a deleted post on Imgur (of all places) in 2014 from a guy that claims he coded his own DOS clone operating system, called Aussie, and a video game engine. The story goes that he was isolated in rural NSW and, armed with little but a 486 computer and a few 1980s BASIC books he got from the school library, built his own filing software, text-based adventure games and a CLI for his local TAFE. This does seem a little too good to be true but, if it's not, what I would give to have a go on the Aussie system.
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Bargains
Electronics
Edifier R1700BT Speakers (White/Silver) - $99 at Centre Com (Down from $209) Ecovacs Deebot X5 Pro Omni Robotic Vacuum - $678 at Mobileciti (Down from $949) LG OLED Evo AI C5 4K UHD Smart TV 2025 at JB Hi-Fi 42" C5 for $1039 48" C5 for $1281 65" C5 for $2081 TCL 65" C7k Premium QD Mini LED Google TV - $1061 at The Good Guys (Down from $1395) TCL C8k 85" Mini LED TV - $2295 at JB Hi-Fi (Down from $2843) Hisense 100" Q7QAU 4K QLED Smart TV [2025] - $2331 at JB Hi-Fi (Down from $2888) TCL 98" C8K Premium QD Mini LED Google TV 2025 98C8K - $3946 at JB Hi-Fi (Down from $4888)
Computing
Logitech C922 Pro Stream Webcam - $69 at Amazon (Down from $186) Used Acer TravelMate Spin P414 i5 i5 1135g7 2.40GHz 8GB 256GB SSD 14" Touch Win 11 - $220 at Australian Computer Trader Samsung 32" Smart Monitor M7 M70F (White) 4K Samsung Vision AI - $349 at Samsung Education Store LG UltraGear 39GX90SA-W 39-inch OLED 240Hz WQHD Curved Smart Gaming Monitor - $1519 at LG Partner Store Gaming PC: R5 7500F, RTX 5070, 16GB DDR5 + Free Gift + $30 Cashback - $1999 at Radium PCs
Mobile
Apple Watch Ultra 3 49mm Natural Titanium Case GPS + Cellular Ocean Band - $1199 at Ozonlinebuys eBay (Down from $1549)
# The End
😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson every weekday. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.
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