Paris Buttfield-Addison

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 of Secret Lab (a company that does not make chairs, and is us), a customer of CBA, and is used for our CBA account and our Director’s CBA account Therefore, CBA disclosed customer personal information to another, unrelated customer, and trusted a third-party LLM (ChatGPT), accessed seemingly unauthenticated on the consumer ChatGPT platform, as a source for data to provide to another customer During investigation, CBA staff replicated the same ChatGPT query process, seemingly on a personal phone, again unauthenticated, and on the consumer ChatGPT platform: Signs indicate this might be routine practice amongst CBA staff Oh, and they gave out the phone number for us, Secret Lab (not chairs), to someone looking for Secretlab’s (chairs) phone number....

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....

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 public....

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....

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 over a year in orbit....

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....

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....

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.

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....

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....