^{CHITTER CHATTER}

A Bargain for Shareholders. Full Price for the Planet.

Good news for aspiring billionaire tech CEOs: a private jet represents value for money. The atmosphere will be relieved. The Australian has returned to Mike Cannon-Brookes’ flying arrangements, this time examining Atlassian’s payments and the language making them sound positively thrifty. The company invokes “safety, security, efficiency, privacy, confidentiality, flexibility, and productivity”. Quite the boarding pass. It says chartering his aircraft costs less than comparable alternatives and that he doesn’t profit from the arrangement. Oh goodie. That answers the accounting question. The environmental one remains airborne. Cannon-Brookes has acknowledged his internal conflict over owning a private jet while campaigning on climate change. Acknowledgment of his own hypocrisy is widely admired.

Coffee is a Perk. Drinking it is Misconduct.

Some workplaces offer free coffee. Apparently, the trick is not to drink it. Fast Company reports that a new employee, posting on Reddit, was reprimanded by a floor manager for using the office coffee supplies every morning. Their consumption? One cup a day. Not five. One cup. The manager reportedly explained that daily coffee drinking wasn’t typical. Not sure where they got that idea. The employee’s solution was to bring their own pods and creamers, document future interactions and keep quiet because they desperately needed the job. There’s the bitter aftertaste. Someone with power turned a trivial expense into an anxiety for someone without it. Imagine offering a workplace benefit, then making a new starter afraid to use it. Maybe the next recruitment ad should clarify: complimentary coffee is provided for decorative purposes only.

Elon Musk Launches a Flying Car. Sounds Useful.

Elon Musk has given the world a car that performs aerial gymnastics. Finally, a solution to the problem of roads being insufficiently theatrical. Tesla’s Roadster prototype used SpaceX-developed thrusters to leap and rotate in mid-air. Reuters reports production is scheduled for 2028. Business Insider captured the predictable tech-world swooning, alongside scepticism about safety and whether the thing will be street legal. Credit where it’s due: Musk knows how to make innovation look like he’s always ahead of the curve. The engineering deserves applause. The practical purpose remains harder to locate. For now, Musk has successfully launched something that defies gravity: expectations. See this article for people’s reactions to the invention.

Tech Fails

The Spy Who Prompted Me

James Bond had Q. An OpenAI engineer allegedly consulted a chatbot. According to US prosecutors, Abdulrahman Alfozan concealed a recording device in toilet paper behind a television in an executive conference room. Nothing says elite espionage quite like bathroom stationery. Investigators linked him to chatbot queries about configuring recording equipment. CCTV captured suspicious activity, while security found another device in an unattended bag containing his wallet and ID. WIRED reports the first bug was discovered during a countersurveillance sweep. Apparently, a company developing valuable technology had considered the possibility that someone might want to listen. The allegations are serious: that the room hosted confidential technical and commercial discussions. OpenAI says it has no indication that model weights, source code or customer data were stolen. Alfozan faces an interception charge. While his motive remains unclear, his spying skills, clearly, are rubbish.

Weird Tech

Thing Has Found Work in Tech

The Addams Family’s Thing has apparently secured a position at ETH Zurich. No body required. References available from Morticia. Researchers have taught a robotic hand to walk on its fingers, carrying its own power and computing. It can crawl, steer, recover after falls and press keyboard keys. Finally, an employee who can attend a meeting without bringing their whole self to work. Unlike its charismatic counterpart from the television series and films, this hand learned its moves through reinforcement learning. Researchers trained it in simulation before letting it loose in the physical world. The clever part is that the same fingers handle both movement and tasks. No wheels, legs or separate arm needed. The unsettling part is imagining it scuttling across your desk to finish a spreadsheet. Thing always conveyed remarkable personality without saying a word. Whether his technological cousin achieves that humanlike persona is to be seen especially as it’s called, a “compact mobile manipulator”. That’s such a wordy, weird moniker, yet so tech. Just call it Thing!

^SUBTEXT

Tech Waffle Torture

“This means my flights actually have a net negative carbon footprint.” — Mike Cannon-Brookes, explaining his private jet arrangements, March 2025.

Translation: “I’ve got places to be, things to do. Every time I fly, my carbon footprint gets smaller. Frankly, it would be irresponsible to fly commercial.”

A compulsion to invent ever flashier technology until your demo gets a standing ovation, investors reach for their wallets, and nobody remembers what problem needed solving.

Cold-Gas Thrusters: Devices that create thrust by releasing compressed gas through a nozzle, without burning fuel. Used to manoeuvre spacecraft. Now helping a Tesla perform aerial gymnastics. Finally, a car that propels itself with something other than its CEO’s hot air.

^{THE SHALLOW END}

Mark Wahlberg Happy to Be Cloned

Love Mark Wahlberg? Great news. Don’t? The future may test you. The actor is open to an AI likeness continuing his screen career. Apparently, even mortality needn’t interrupt a reliable franchise. There’s something touching about wanting your legacy to live on. There’s something less touching about potentially occupying the casting shortlist indefinitely. What happened to discovering fresh talent? New faces, different performances, someone whose breakthrough role wasn’t several generations ago? We already watch reruns of old shows. Now we could get new shows that are reruns of the actors. Hollywood loves a familiar name. AI could make familiarity permanent: established stars keep appearing while newcomers compete for whatever screen time the digitally preserved haven’t booked. Fans might welcome an endless supply of Wahlberg. Everyone else may discover that cancelling a subscription is much easier than retiring a celebrity.

Dear Dr Comms

I’ve been promised $5 million to spy on a huge tech company. Then I read about the OpenAI engineer allegedly caught with recording devices and some remarkably helpful evidence. I’d prefer my debut in intelligence didn’t end with my name in a criminal complaint. Any professional advice? Yours, Secretly Available

Dear Available
Let’s consult three professionals who can help you stealthily manoeuvre from point a to point b, pair a wine with your predicament and dress for the consequences:

🚚 Removalist
“You said you wanted the company’s secrets. Are they all packed, or are we doing that too?”

🍷 Sommelier
“For industrial espionage, I’d suggest something full-bodied with notes of treachery and a long custodial finish.”

👗 Personal Stylist
“Corporate espionage? Smart casual. Treason? Something that photographs well.”

Life at the top. Not enough hours to conquer the world, the universe and everything.

^{BIN THIS…}

“Unmatched human ingenuity meets the limitless scale of agentic AI.”

Apparently, the humans have no equal, the AI has no limits, and the sentence has no obligation to explain itself.

We’d ask for specifics, but presumably those are unrivalled too.

Know someone who lives for this kind of nonsense? Forward this email to them and help me spread the dysfunction.

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