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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, and expanded thoughts from this edition of the programme : SETI@Home’s Final 100 Signals This month’s show had a theme — letters from strangers — and we started with the biggest crowdsourced sear...

We recently released a brand new Try Yarn Spinner , which I wrote (more details in the Yarn Spinner January update ), and I wrote a new demo story too! Check it out below: Technical post on the new Try Yarn Spinner coming soon.

We just had the AGM for Tasmanian Game Makers, Inc. (TasGM) in Launceston on Friday, and I was thrilled to (once again, somehow) be elected as President! For the fourth year in a row, I’m really grateful for the trust of our members, and I’m excited to work with the new board to keep pushing the video game industry in Tasmania forward. The new board is: President: Paris B-A Vice-Presidents: Michael Hinz, Leo Febey Secretary: Tim Nugent Treasurer: Jon Manning General Committee: Jason ...

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, and expanded thoughts from this edition of the programme : Katherine Bennell-Pegg: 2026 Australian of the Year Katherine Bennell-Pegg was named 2026 Australian of the Year on Sunday 26 January at the Nationa...

I’m so proud of this. Hint Line ‘93 , a game we made at Yarn Spinner , is now on display at ACMI’s Game Worlds exhibition. We put up a big behind-the-scenes post on the Yarn Spinner blog , so go read that… For those who don’t know, early last year ACMI (the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, a museum of screen culture in Melbourne) put out a call for commissioned microgames. They wanted playable experiences for a museum context: 5-10 minutes, compelling world-...

Related: This article examines state-level AI governance in Australia. For analysis of the Commonwealth’s AI governance failures, see Slop for the People . For context on the newly announced federal AI Safety Institute, see Australia’s AI Safety Institute: Lessons from the UK and US . The Commonwealth government attracts most attention for its AI policies. State and territory governments are also deploying AI systems in education, health, policing, transport, and social services. Eac...

My company Yarn Spinner published a post today explaining why we don’t use AI and won’t be adding it to our products. The TL;DR: AI companies make tools for hurting people and we don’t want to support that. From the post: If you look at what AI companies promote now, it’s not what we wanted. When you boil down everything they say and strip it right back, what they make are tools to either fire people or demand more work without hiring anyone new to help. That’s the ...

Related: This article examines what Australia can learn from international AI safety institutes. For analysis of the Commonwealth’s AI governance failures, see Slop for the People . For state-level AI governance, see State of Play: How Australian States Are (Not) Governing AI . On 25 November 2025, Minister for Industry and Innovation Tim Ayres announced the establishment of the Australian AI Safety Institute (AISI) . With a $29.9 million commitment and operations commencing “early 2...

We released Yarn Spinner 3.1 on December 3, 2025, introducing several significant improvements to our dialogue system framework. This update emphasises asynchronous operations, graceful error handling, and enhanced customisation options. Key Features Async Dialogue Runner Methods — The dialogue runner’s core methods now support asynchronous operations. The StartDialogue and Stop methods are now async and return a task. This ensures that dialogue presenters complete their initialisation bef...

Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and I have no recourse. Can you help? Email paris AT paris.id.au (and read on for the details). ❤️ Update 14 December 2025: Someone from Executive Relations at Apple says they’re looking into it. I hope this is true. They say they’ll call me...

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, and expanded thoughts from this edition of the programme : Moss Survived Nine Months in Space, and Scientists Are Stunned Japanese researchers strapped moss spores to the outside of the International Space S...

Related: This article examines the Commonwealth’s AI governance failures in practice. For context on the newly announced federal AI Safety Institute, see Australia’s AI Safety Institute: Lessons from the UK and US . For state-level AI governance, see State of Play: How Australian States Are (Not) Governing AI . The Australian Public Service’s (APS) official culture of AI adoption is not found in the glossy press releases of its ministers . But we’ll get to that shortly.

Australia’s world-first ban on social media for children under 16 takes effect in just over a month on December 10, 2025, yet nobody knows exactly how it will work . The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 passed parliament in a rushed process in November last year, imposing potential fines of up to $50 million on platforms that fail to keep out underage users. While 77% of Australians support the ban , only 25% believe it will actually work , and with weeks until l...

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, and expanded thoughts from this edition of the programme : Water on the moon? China just made space history, and it’s not the headline you’d expect. Back in June 2024, their Chang’e-6 missi...

Australia has a new plan to keep kids safe online. On the surface, it sounds simple, maybe even sensible. The government is banning anyone under sixteen from having a social media account. From December, platforms like Instagram and TikTok will have to kick the kids off in an effort to stop social harm. It’s a nice idea. But when you pull back the curtain, you find a privacy disaster waiting to happen. It’s a plan that won’t work, and it will end up hurting the very people it’s supposed to prote...

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, and expanded thoughts from this edition of the programme : The World’s Space Community Came to Sydney The 76th International Astronautical Congress wrapped up in Sydney this month, bringing thousands a...

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 : Space Command: Politics Over Strategy President Trump announced he’s moving US Space Command from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama —reversing the Biden admin...

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...

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 i...