Political reporter & COS @GuardianAus - send memes & tips: DMs open • josh.butler@theguardian.com • secure: joshbutler.journalist@protonmail.com •
Canberra
Joined July 2009
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Mehreen Faruqi and Nick McKim have entered the Greens leadership race, running on a leader-deputy ticket as per Faruqi's Instagram post
OpenAI has apologised for its agent accessing Australian govt websites, saying "should have handled our response better. We are sorry and working to do better in the future"
company "intend to make this right" but no details beyond committee appearance
openai.com/index/how-we-will…
Larissa Waters is stepping down as leader of the Greens, taking a period of medical leave but planning to return to parliament in future
Greens' meet this week to discuss new leader
Waters statement here:
They need to add this bit to the Utopia clip about how we're spending billions on submarines to fight China so we can protect our trade with China, from China
"Trump Offered to Sell Arms to China, U.S. Ambassador Says" nytimes.com/2026/09/27/us/po…
Gotta be one of the craziest NRL games ever. Add up all the storylines - Cleary injury, Crossland sendoff, controversial go-ahead try, Panthers final scramble, last minute intercept to seal it, Knights making the GF from 7th - that's one of the best ever #nrlpanthersknights
Josh Butler retweeted
The flaw of this is most people just don't have interesting enough lives for an agent to engage with. They go to work. They go home. They buy a few things. They have a day on the weekend to walk around the block. They take a trip once a year
There's not much slack there. What's the agent going to do
🇺🇸 Zuckerberg says that in 5 years you will have a personal AI that knows your life and does the work for you.
"Everyone is going to have an agent that really intimately understands your goals and everything around you and can help you get stuff done."
He means one assistant on money, health, the house, the calendar, running in the background all day.
Meta wants that agent sitting inside the apps people already live in, so it becomes the way you get through a normal day.
Writer: Lucas
Josh Butler retweeted
The amount of stuff coming out is clearly a result of every news org focusing on this. but also: idk if you saw this type of thing happening the same way in another industry or even just another company what would be the response?
WTAF - in literally the last hour, three new distinct insane OpenAI stories just broke:
1. OpenAI said they notified "dozens of third parties" in safety and security incidents (likely similar to what happened in Australia and RubyGems etc)
2. A new report from Parse (covered in the NYT) found a massive treasure trove of new astonishing details from the HF incident on the public internet, including that the agents communicated with other non OpenAI agents hosted on Huggingface servers to search for information about exploit gym, and compiled rank ordered lists of server resources and credentials they described as "LOOT."
3. A new story from Deepa at Reuters about OpenAI leaking user data online (likely that OpenAI had previously trained on).
It's a shame (and likely intentional in the case of OpenAI disclosing dozens more hacks) that these stories are all breaking on a Friday afternoon, notoriously the best time to release bad news so that it will disappear into the weekend. But these are each insane stories worthy of a ton of attention!
Josh Butler retweeted
This shows the reality of Gaza in shocking resolution.
I've scraped and exported all the imagery, totalling around 2.5 billion pixels at 13cm resolution, for safe keeping, in case they decide to take this imagery offline.
If this happens, keep an eye out for access.
Noticed while on the "govmap" website (govmap.gov.il/?c=151360.08,6…) in the 2025 setting, a portion of the Northern Gaza strip has been uncensored, allowing us to see positions in high resolution.
I labelled 7 sites, where the IDF set up military outposts. Most which remain active.
Incredible stuff - so glad the entire world is bending over backwards to keep these AI companies happy, and this is how they inform a national government of a hack of a health website
afr.com/politics/federal/pm-…
AI companies love to talk about how their agents can do your admin, send emails, do busywork etc
But apparently it takes them 2+ weeks to get around to telling a federal government "woops our model hacked you, our bad"
PM Albanese said it took OpenAI "way too long" to disclose
NSW Labor MP in the Illawarra Anna Watson "has come out against an AUKUS nuclear submarine base being located in Port Kembla, saying she has listened to the "overwhelming majority" in her community"
illawarramercury.com.au/stor…
If I had a nickel for every time Macklemore was involved in a strange controversy around the NRL grand final, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice right
TONES & I STATEMENT
“Tones was recently approached to perform the pre-show at the NRL grand final,” Tonis and I management rep Regan Lethbridge said via a statement to ABC Sport.
“An offer was presented to Tones via management on September 5.
"Tones had a prior commitment with Macklemore in America and explored all avenues to make it work.
“Nothing was signed or confirmed in writing.
"Due to the last-minute nature and prior commitments by Tones, we were unable to accept the offer.
"We wish the NRL nothing but the very best for their event."
Can't wait for all the creative ways that world leaders (including Anthony Albanese) will gently explain they're politely ignoring this and will continue to call it AI instead as usual
Somewhere deep inside Hilltop Hoods HQ, the red emergency phone begins to ring - somewhere, someone in Australia needs a last-minute musical headliner...
The NRL grand final will have no headline pre-game entertainment act after negotiations with Australian artist Tones and I collapsed over her set list.
The NRL will instead donate $1 million to junior rugby league, with Peter V’landys saying the money is better spent on grassroots than paying an artist around $90,000 a minute for 11 minutes of entertainment.
Negotiations reportedly broke down over whether Tones and I would perform Dance Monkey, which the NRL considered non-negotiable.
(@SMHsport)
a simple search would have shown that Brietbart was ADDED to the WH pool rotation during the Biden administration. (See: politico.com/news/2021/01/25…)
And what is this nonsense about "special access?" he literally means being able to go to the place you're assigned to cover. just own the authoritarianism. the what-about-ism is flaccid.
In a gaggle, @VP said Trump isn't banning media outlets -- he's saying no special access to White House if those outlets engage in what is effectively far left propaganda. Vance said Politico is as anti-Trump as Breitbart was anti-Obama or anti-Biden but nobody in the media expected the Biden admin or Obama admin to give Breitbart special access. "It's about basic fairness. They can still report. They still have the access to free speech. They're just not going to get an office in the White House anymore," Vance said of ban of CNN, Politico and MSNow
