CBA has been naughty, and too reliant on their AI boyfriend. Here’s what happened: A CBA customer contacted bank requesting contact details for Secretlab (a company that is not us, and makes chairs) CBA staff member queried ChatGPT (possibly via their own personal, unauthenticated access to ChatGPT) to obtain phone number for Secretlab (chairs) CBA staff disclosed the retrieved phone number to the requesting customer The retrieved phone number is a number belonging to one of the directors o...| hey.paris
These are my notes and expanded thoughts from this month’s Space News segment on ABC Radio Hobart and ABC Northern Tasmania. Every month I join Lucie Cutting on Sunday mornings to chat about what’s happening above and beyond. Here’s what we discussed, plus some of my notes, from this edition of the programme: The most valuable 14 seconds in Australian aerospace history happened last month, while the most expensive corporate rivalry ever fought in orbit just turned 40.| hey.paris
These are my notes and expanded thoughts from this month’s Space News segment on ABC Radio Hobart and ABC Northern Tasmania. Every month I join Lucie Cutting on Sunday mornings to chat about what’s happening above and beyond. Here’s what we discussed, plus some of my notes, from this edition of the programme: The $88 Million Satellite That Just Stopped Talking MethaneSAT, backed by Jeff Bezos and designed to track methane emissions from oil and gas operations, has gone silent after just...| hey.paris
The recent delisting of over 17,000 games from the independent platform Itch.io wasn’t a content moderation decision made by the platform itself. It was an act of financial coercion. Instigated by an Australian activist group and carried out by payment processors like Mastercard, it sets a dangerous precedent for all creative fields online. The stated goal of the campaign was to combat media that glorifies sexual violence. An aim that sounds laudable, making it difficult to argue against in...| hey.paris
While the rest of the world loses its collective mind over artificial intelligence, Tasmania is sitting on an amazing competitive advantage… and might be about to throw it away by jumping on the AI bandwagon. Everything that makes Tasmania economically successful is the exact opposite of what AI represents. And if Tasmanian businesses start chasing AI “efficiency” instead of leveraging their authentic advantages, they’ll transform from premium producers into generic commodity suppliers.| hey.paris
CFP open now! I’m thrilled to, once again, be helping run two of my favourite conferences in the world: /dev/world and X World! Both are returning to Melbourne, hosted at the fantastic Seek HQ, and the CFP is open now. X World runs 2-3 September 2025 and /dev/world runs 4-5 September 2025. X World is for those who champion Apple platform users. It covers essential areas like user education, system administration, effective platform deployments, smart device management, and more.| hey.paris
Wise has stolen more than $60,000 AUD from us, and refuses to let us access it. We’ve had a Wise account for around 5 years (since they were called TransferWise). It’s been a really useful way to transact in foreign currencies, and pay for things when we’re travelling for work. In early-April 2025, Wise asked us to provide some additional information on our Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs) by uploading a statement of shareholders, and the ID of the owners.| hey.paris
You’ve been begging for it, and here it is! Announcing an exciting new product from Yarn Spinner… 🪐 Mass Effect 2 Save Importer for Yarn Spinner 🚀 Access everything about everything that players have done in the most important game of all time, straight from Yarn. Visit yarnspinner.dev/mesaves to get started. You can find this on Bluesky to reshare it.| Posts on hey.paris
Eleanor arranged her storybooks on the small wooden table, her arthritic fingers tracing the worn covers she’d carried to the local library every Wednesday for twenty-three years. The familiar room felt much colder today. “We’re starting with ‘The Cloud Sailor’ since it’s Amy’s birthday,” she announced to the gathered children. Some weren’t listening, which was normal, but many were also staring at the gleaming white booth being installed in her corner.| hey.paris
I get it. I disagree with it, but I get it. The tech industry is throwing obscene amounts of money at LLMs. VCs are salivating over AI startups. The big important executives are regularly bleating about how “we should integrate ChatGPT into our game” because they read some Medium article about the future of interactive entertainment. But as narrative designers, we need to call this what it is: a massive distraction from what makes game characters work.| hey.paris
The Deeper Problems with AI in Creative Work “But AI will get better at writing stories, won’t it?” This response to my rant about AI-generated content misses the point entirely. Even if AI writing improved dramatically tomorrow, fundamental problems would remain that no algorithm refinement can fix. The environmental cost alone should give us pause. Training even a small LLM produces carbon emissions equivalent to the output of several cars, over their entire lifetimes, and each query ...| hey.paris
Some new links! Huzzah! “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” - A “Study” Blogging in the age of ‘AI’ SQL Injection Court (also worth reading this vaguely similar story about 32 million emails) More soon!| hey.paris
So it didn’t end up being weekly. Here’s some links! Duh: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees Torment nexus is going well: “A significant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities” Who would have guessed? AI code generation leads to more code, more duplicated code, less cohesive systems, more defects Residential networking over telephone More next ‘week’!| hey.paris
Another set of links I found interesting: So cool: Voyager 1 Team Accomplishes Tricky Thruster Swap Great Barrier Reef already been dealt its death blow The benefits of special interests in autism How I Built an NFC Movie Library for my Kids PIXHELL Attack: Leaking Sensitive Information from Air-Gap Computers via ‘Singing Pixels’ Thanks for reading!| hey.paris
It’s been a busy week! Here are some interesting links: How the Oldest Company in the World Has Survived Nearly 1,500 Years How does banking work? Air Con: $1697 for an on/off switch Tabbed out on the Oregon Trail An unverified source, but it all sounds like it makes sense. How horrible: Buy, Borrow, Die - Explained See you next time!| hey.paris
Here are this week’s interesting links: Dishwashers are critical: At the heart of every restaurant Hahahah, oh ho ho ho, hahahaha: Microsoft’s Copilot falsely accuses court reporter of crimes he covered Astronomers back call for review of bonkers rule that means satellite swarms fly without environment checks Enjoy!| hey.paris
Here’s the latest links. I was travelling the last two weeks, so I missed a week, and this one is late, but here we are: The staggering death toll of scientific lies Finally, yes please: Artificial intelligence is losing hype From the ‘absolute crap’ department: Peloton announces $95 “used equipment activation fee” Magic moment: Sydney aquarium filled with song after sea birds mourn death of gay penguin Sphen You don’t know how bad most things are nor precisely how they’re bad.| hey.paris
And so it continues! Here’s my interesting links for this week: Airlines Are Running Out Of Flight Numbers, And They Don’t Know What To Do About It New Euripides just dropped: Uncovered Euripides fragments are ‘kind of a big deal’ Should’ve just used that Brother printer everyone has: Reverse engineering the 59-pound printer onboard the Space Shuttle From the “they quoted my clever wife” department: Space is becoming an ‘unsustainable environment in the long term,’ ESA says ...| hey.paris
With the death of Twitter, and the fracturing of social media, I’m going to try an experiment! To that end, I’m going post some of the more interesting things I’ve read online each Thursday. I hope you find them interesting too. Or not, I don’t mind. I’m just going to keep doing it anyway. I’ll post links in no particular order, and they might not be recent. Just things I’ve found interesting in the previous week or so.| hey.paris
Our latest book, written together with my partner Mars, plus friends Tim and Jon, is out! It covers everything you need to know to do practical AI with Swift (hence its title: Practical Artificial Intelligence with Swift, clever right?). You can buy it from all sorts of book shops, as well as read it on O’Reilly’s Online Learning platform.| hey.paris