Plus: Your own personal e-ink public transport display ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

October 28, 2025 | Read online
# Seafood chowder data leak, Waymo coming to Australia and Grokipedia Plus: Your own personal e-ink public transport display
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Edition 2448
"computer_bomb.jpg" (Flickr: coloradoluke)
Banger edition today so I thought I would free it up. If you want more like this, sign up for as little as $5 per month for a whole year here.
# The News
### Looks like we got another ‘seafood chowder’ data leak
Media outlets are breathlessly reporting on a data dump of 183 million old email credentials as if it’s the next Y2K (NYPost). This story traces back to research done by firm Synthient, which scraped the “stealer ecosystem” on Telegram, forums and social media platforms for dumps of stolen usernames and passwords for platforms like Gmail (Synthient). This trove was given to Australian gem Troy Hunt, who found that the vast majority of these credentials were already in his database on HaveIBeenPwned … so not really news. And yet!
The Sizzle: Have you heard why you should never order the seafood chowder? A whispered restaurant industry “secret” is that that all chefs will take all the unused, almost expired seafood produce that they can’t sell, whack it in a pot and — hey, presto! It’s reborn as the seafood chowder. This is the same thing, except with email credentials. In fairness, I don’t think this was the fault of Synthient or Hunt, but of sensationalist outlets who just want to drive clicks. Other outlets have been more responsible but really it’s a waste of time drawing attention to it at all, IMO.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
### Looks like we’re about to get self-driving taxis in Australia
Self-driving taxi company Waymo is starting the process of getting approvals to drive its autonomous vehicles in NSW (Crikey, $). I found out that the Alphabet-owned company, which started off as a Google project, has reached out to Transport NSW to get the permits necessary to run a trial. It’s also picked up lobbyists to represent it in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne. Notably, Australia’s road rules for autonomous vehicles remain undecided with the federal government now pushing the deadline to sort it out back to 2027 (Information Age).
The Sizzle: After Waymo announced it would expand to London and Tokyo, there was a lot of gossip around Australian tech circles that Sydney would be one of its next stops. It seems like there’s quite a bit of paperwork that needs to be done before the trial gets underway, assuming it gets approved, but one thing that Waymo seems to have going for it is that its cars seem pretty safe. Much safer than Tesla, which is facing inquiries from US traffic investigators over its “Mad Max Mode” for being — you guessed it — insanely unsafe (Engadget).
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
### Elon Musk’s non-woke Wikipedia is mostly Wikipedia
Speaking of bad Elon ideas, Musk has launched “v.01” of his far-right version of Wikipedia, Grokipedia (WIRED, $). The encyclopedia website is filled with 900,000 articles written by the world’s richest man’s very racist AI chatbot, Grok. It appears much of the content is lifted almost directly from Wikipedia. When it deviates, it’s usually to either gas up Elon Musk (Bluesky) or to cite weirdo right-wing propaganda (Bluesky)
| Elon Musk @elonmusk |
We are building Grokipedia @xai. Will be a massive improvement over Wikipedia. Frankly, it is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.
David Sacks @DavidSacks Wikipedia is hopelessly biased. An army of left-wing activists maintain the bios and fight reasonable corrections. Magnifying the problem, Wikipedia often appears first in Google search results, and now it’s a trusted source for AI model training. This is a huge problem. x.com/TuckerCarlson/…
11:49 AM • Sep 30, 2025
198K Likes 29.1K Retweets
12.7K Replies
The Sizzle: I had a look at Grokipedia’s coverage of hot button Australian topics like Anthony Albanese, COVID-19 in Australia and the Voice to Parliament referendum. None of it seemed too insane. My guess is because whatever reference point Musk et al. have are using to guide Grok and Grokipedia (like checking if he’s tweeted on the topic) don’t have any information on Australian topics.
Anyway! It’s telling that all of these AI companies with their gazillions of dollars and their complaints about Wikipedia being “woke” still depend on the good, hard work of unpaid Wikipedia volunteers.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
#### Leftovers
Australia:
Reluctant but compliant: Snapchat, TikTok and Meta yield to social media ban (The Age, $) How the teen social media ban will impact teens with a disability (ABC News) Australia’s Kmart appeals regulator’s finding that its FRT use violated privacy laws (MLex, $) Nice spot - Kmart is appealing Privacy Commissioner’s finding that its facial recognition use was illegal eSafety secures removal of video chat service used for child grooming (eSafety Commissioner) Face biometrics cameras from Cognitec arriving soon at Australian airports (Biometric Update) Billionaire Ed Craven pours $30m into AI factory plan (The Australian Financial Review, $) AFP to merge legacy police checks system into single platform (iTnews) The data miners take an L (Mumbrella, $)
Rest of the world:
WIRED has put out an edition on AI and, as usual, just about every article is excellent. Just read it all Amazon targets as many as 30,000 corporate job cuts, sources say (Reuters, $) Apple Says US Passport Digital IDs Are Coming To Wallet 'Soon' (TechCrunch) OpenAI Says Hundreds of Thousands of ChatGPT Users May Show Signs of Manic or Psychotic Crisis Every Week (BBC, $) The reason that I’m not highlighting this is because I just don’t trust OpenAI’s metrics. 10M people watched a YouTuber shim a lock; the lock company sued him. Bad idea. (Ars Technica) You have one week to opt out or become fodder for LinkedIn AI training (The Register) Let the little guys in: A context sharing runtime for the personalised web (arjud dot md )
Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
# Oh, Also
### Your own personal e-ink public transport display
A few weeks back, I wrote about the wonders of e-ink public transport screens around Sydney. Well, one Redditor dared to ask, what if you brought that into your own home?
u/WasteLocksmith5011 shared to r/Sydney a picture of a set-up that uses a Raspberry Pi and a 7.3’’ e-ink display to run their own “public transport dashboard”. Pretty neat!
I have to admit I did chuckle at the top comment: “All that effort with the tech, then used a butter knife to cut the frame border to size”.
Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.
# Bargains
Electrical & Electronics
Kids Camcorder 1080p - Blue or Pink - $17 at Kmart Motorola Motobuds Plus ANC True Wireless Earphones - $120 at Officeworks Aqara U100 Smart Door Lock with E1 Kit - $279 at JB Hi-Fi (Down from $499.99) Dyson Products Supersonic Hair Dryer (w Stand & Attach.) for $359 Airstrait Straightener for $404 WashG1 for $404 V15 Detect Vac for $764 DJI Mini 4K Fly More Combo - $594 at digiDirect
Computing
Rapoo MT750 Multi-Device Wireless Mouse - $38.49 at LH-RAPOO-US-DirectStore Amazon AU HP Omen 27" QHD IPS Gaming Monitor at HP Official Store eBay 27q 165Hz for $239 27q G2 180Hz for $279 Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7 14" FHD i7-8565u 8GB 256GB SSD W11p LTE (used) - $364 at Max Direct eBay
Mobile
Motorola Moto G86 Power 5G 8GB RAM/128GB Storage - $297 at Mobileciti via Everyday Market
# The End
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