Plus: Mozilla is now giving away its free 50GB/month VPN plan with Firefox ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

March 25, 2026 | Read online
# Telstra hikes prices again, Uber price discrimination and OpenAI ditches video Plus: Mozilla is now giving away its free 50GB/month VPN plan with Firefox
{{OPEN_TRACKING_PIXEL}}
Edition 2529
"Brain-computer interface experiment" by Laurens R. Krol is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Mentioned in today’s edition: Anthropic, Sora, Firefox, Canva, Android Automotive, Jimmy Fallon, Disney and Uber. Plus, deals on TP-Link Tapo cameras, Dell Latitude laptops and Xiaomi smartphones.
# The News
### Even Telstra is telling punters to try cheaper services after its latest mobile price hike
Telstra is hiking its mobile plans for the second time in a year (EFTM). The company says the need to improve its network has prompted it to raise post- and pre-paid mobile plans by around $4-$5 a month. The company has even taken the unusual step of promoting its "alternative Telstra offerings" including Boost, Belong and JB Hi-Fi branded plans. But don't worry! Belong and Boost will be seeing a price hike too (AFR).
via EFTM
The Sizzle: Dear God, please grant me the wisdom and the strength to move off Telstra. I have no idea why I'm still on their post-paid plans. I moved to Telstra about ten years ago, before I was planning on moving to regional WA, and I wanted the security of the extra coverage*. Now that I'm back in central Sydney, typically working from home so I'm always on WiFi, bringing my own phone, what possible reason do I have to stay with them? Just inertia. Which is clearly what Telstra is hoping for. I wonder if Telstra is essentially becoming the Foxtel of telcos: happy to suckle on the stream of subscriptions from price-insensitive businesses and oldies who've got plans offering them 150GB of data for their dumb phones, coasting largely on reputation and lack of competition.
* Now, as we know, not as much as was promised!
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
### Uber is going to do price discrimination based on your location
People in Melbourne will be charged different amounts for Uber rides based on where they're being picked up, in a break from the rideshare company's previous pricing models (SMH, $). While drivers have traditionally been paid based on distance, time and demand, Uber has told its drivers that some suburbs will now have higher fares, peak period times have been expanded and shorter trips will be given a price premium. While the company has linked it to the spike in fuel prices, the change is permanent.
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
### Bubblewatch: OpenAI suddenly shuts down its AI video app and API
OpenAI is planning to kill Sora, its AI slop-generating video app, as part of its complete backdown from AI video (WSJ, gift link). It's been reported that OpenAI will shutter Sora, its video generating models for developers and won't have any video capability in ChatGPT either. Disney, too, is walking away from its $1B deal with OpenAI to license its characters to the app. Sora had a wildly popular launch but has since completely fallen off the map. By some accounts, each Sora video cost OpenAI between $1-$5 (Forbes) and the company does not appear to have found a way to make money off it other than bamboozling old media companies into thinking their slop is the future.
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Leftovers
Australia:
ASD has put out a cybersecurity briefing on LEO satellite comms called Securing Space, which is a sick title (Cyber.gov.au) Fair Work Commission unveils strict new requirements for using AI in claims (The Australian, $) Is this the world's first quantum battery? Australian scientists say so (The Guardian) Canva splashes $30m on Melbourne advertising start-up (AFR, $) ‘Too high a bar’: Overhauling $4.6b R&D tax incentive panned as too complex (Capital Brief, $)
Rest of World:
Meta ordered to pay $375m after being found liable in child exploitation case (Guardian) Pentagon's 'attempt to cripple' Anthropic is troublesome, judge says (Wired, $) Introducing Apple Business — a new all-in-one platform for businesses of all sizes (Apple) Popular LiteLLM PyPI package compromised in TeamPCP supply chain attack (BleepingComputer) Epic Games said Tuesday that it will lay off more than 1,000 employees (Reuters, $) Apple's new AI Siri will get a standalone app (The Verge) Google wants Android Automotive to control more of your car (Ars Technica) Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at the kernel level, and the speed gains are massive (XDA Developers) working on WINE is a pretty thankless task but this slaps I really think "give AI total control of my computer and therefore my entire life" is going to look so foolish in retrospect that everyone who went for this is going to look as dumb as Jimmy Fallon holding up a picture of his Bored Ape (Bluesky)
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Oh, Also
### Mozilla is now bundling its free 50GB/month VPN plan with Firefox
This isn't a crazy fun thing but I think it's quite cool: Mozilla is now offering a free VPN with 50GB of monthly data with its latest version of Firefox (Bleeping Computer). It only covers browser traffic but it's pretty generous and, unlike the vast majority of free VPN providers, I have some faith that Mozilla isn't just selling my data to the CCP or FBI (Mozilla)
(And yes I know VPNs inherently come with security issues but it's pretty handy to have this just for when you wanna hide your traffic location for something non-crucial).
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Bargains
Electronics
TP-Link Tapo Cameras at Amazon C100 Camera for $24.65 C200 for $29 C200x2 for $55.10 C200x3 for $73.95 Blitzwolf BW-V11 Projector - $365 at Banggood Samsung 77" OLED S85F 4K Vision AI Smart TV - $2715 at Appliance Online (Down from $3474)
Computing
Drop Lord of The Rings & ENTR Mechanical Keyboards ENTR Keyboard for $42 Lord of The Rings Mechanical Keyboard for $113 XPG PYLON 750W Power Supply 80+ Bronze - $65 at Scorptec Sapphire B650M-E AM5 Micro-ATX Motherboard - $99 at Mwave Adata XPG Core Reactor II 850w Gold ATX Modular PSU - $129 at Umart (Down from $139) Amazon eero 6+ Mesh Wi-Fi 6 Router 3-Pack - $297 at Officeworks (Down from $449) AIWA 49" 144Hz Ultrawide Gaming Monitor - $424 at BIG W Dell Latitude 7430 2-in-1 14" Intel EVO i7 1265u 16GB RAM 512GB SSD LTE - $649 at UN Tech (Used) MacBook Pro 14" M5 10/10 Core CPU/GPU 16/512GB - $1997 at Officeworks
Mobile
Travel eSIMs 1GB-20GB at eSim4u AU or NZ 1GB for $3.20 AU or NZ 10GB for $10.24 AU or NZ 20GB for $16.64 Xiaomi 15T Pro 512GB 12GB RAM (Global Version) - $824 at XtremePlus via BIG W Marketplace
# The End
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