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tau

@ Tau @aussie.zone

Posts

80
Comments

159
Joined

3 yr. ago

Moderating

Canberra aussie.zone

1w ago

Am I allowed to keep or spend (non-A$) cash in Australia?
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tau @aussie.zone 1w ago
You're allowed to keep it and you're allowed to try and use it to buy stuff but you won't have much luck doing so.
Turning up with foreign cash would be effectively the same as trying to buy stuff with precious metals, jewellery, or rare Pokemon cards - while there's value in the item it's not immediately verifiable, it doesn't fit with the usual workflow of the shop, and they're under no obligation to even consider this as a payment option.
You'd have more luck using foreign cash for person to person sales where bartering and swaps are more of an accepted payment option. Even then expect dubiousness and to lose a lot of the nominal value when it comes to purchasing power.

2w ago

Large fire reported at oil refinery in Geelong

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tau @aussie.zone 2w ago

Hopefully it's fixed up quickly, we don't need any more things impeding our fuel supply at the moment.

2w ago

A wave of low-cost electric trucks is heading for Australia

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tau @aussie.zone 2w ago

44 trucks in a month is not a particularly big wave, though I'll grant it's a sizeable step from previous sales.

Electric trucks do make sense for a lot of the last mile delivery sort of stuff (lowish and predictable max km per day, lots of stop/start, return to same base each day) so I expect this use case at least will become popular in the near future. As the article says though charging is a bit of a killer and will likely be more of a problem than the actual purchase price of the trucks. It'll be interesting to see if it leads to a shift towards the big companies buying rather than leasing more of their depots due to the capital input required for charging infrastructure (small companies are probably just out of luck).

3w ago

Is Jury Duty mandatory towards Australian citizens?

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tau @aussie.zone 3w ago

I received two or three summons letters during a few months period when my name was on the shortlist (close on ten years ago). Each time I checked online close to the date to see if the trial was still going ahead and they all ended up having been called off for whatever reason so I never got to see further along the process.

3w ago

Volvo Diesel Engine on Pallet

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tau @aussie.zone 3w ago

Someone's being optimistic putting that on a pine pallet (and not even across the stringers...).

The scale of heavy machinery can be a real step up from the usual cars etc - trying to work on an old tracked loader at Grandad's place required a lot more mechanical aid than I'm used to with light machinery.

1mo ago

Woolworths may close 'one of its most remote' stores. Locals fear their town won't survive

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tau @aussie.zone 1mo ago

It's not like the mine closing is happening overnight, what have they done to build alternative employment in the meantime? I believe the mine has been a point of contention for decades, those who wanted it gone should have been also working on a plan for what happens afterwards to keep the town alive.

2mo ago

Earth’s Orbit Is Now Full of Satellites

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tau @aussie.zone 2mo ago

If they become a problem you just tow it outside the environment, easy fix.

2mo ago

The REAL reason Aussies don't use route numbers | Building Beautifully

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tau @aussie.zone 2mo ago

I find it amusing that he opened with the A28 because that's about the only proper route number I can remember paying attention to - it's useful for running the non-toll route north/south through Sydney. Even then though I would refer to that particular road as the Cumberland highway, the route number is just for keeping track when changing to a differently named road (which you do a few times going through that way).

Generally speaking the only roads I remember by number are a few Sydney motorways that don't have prominent names - what comes to mind is the M5/7/8 and I guess the M4 (though that's partly the F4 in my memory due to spending some early childhood in the Blue Mountains before moving elsewhere).

2mo ago

Three-quarters of Australia’s new cars use more fuel than advertised lab rating, testing shows

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tau @aussie.zone 2mo ago

I get the claimed figures on both my car and van so it's not like hitting them is impossible, but it is highly dependent on how and where you drive. Many people drive with the smoothness and ability to look ahead of a myopic orangutan (e.g. accelerate hard, immediately jump to brakes, back to acceleration, repeat) but even with a bit of care there's only so much you can do if your driving involves a lot of short trips and stop start traffic.

2mo ago

Want to boost uptake of battery EVs? Subsidise chargers at home and work – not the vehicles

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tau @aussie.zone 2mo ago

It is a fair point that subsidies for the cars have often been benefiting those who could afford the expensive car anyway, but surely their idea of subsidising home and work chargers is also benefiting those with more money. The subsidies would after all be primarily going to those who own a house with enough space to put the charger (i.e. not much luck for renters or apartment owners) and those who have allocated parking at work.

What is really needed to drive uptake is both cheaper EVs (to the point where they reach price parity with regular cars) and a charging network widespread and obvious enough to give prospective buyers confidence that they can charge even on their less common routes. Significant progress has been made with this, we've come a long way from the early days where cashed up people would smugly advise buying a 90+k vehicle to save a few grand on petrol.

I think promoting electric motorcycles and scooters would be worthwhile too, they're more affordable, take up noticeably less space and resources, and still provide much of the personal transport requirements of our current road network.

2mo ago

Communities for each state and territory

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tau @aussie.zone 2mo ago

I think just go with either Australia, whichever capital city is appropriate for the state, or even both.

We don't get that many posts that further separation is worthwhile IMO, that's a pathway to ending up with a bunch of communities that appear dead from lack of activity (which can be a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy - people only tend to post in places that seem alive). I think we've already fragmented discussion more than is ideal between splitting off news/politics/questions/environment/memes from the general Australia community, regional interests are more understandable but the existing city/state comms are already quiet enough with our current userbase.

3mo ago

Old Bureau of Meteorology website still getting thousands of clicks

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tau @aussie.zone 3mo ago

Doesn't surprise me, the old website is a much better user experience for me.

The new one is noticeably slower, hides the info I want to see behind extra clicks/scrolling, made the radar view worse, and doesn't improve the only thing I'd want to improve from the old site (making it easier to find less commonly used information such as river heights or past observations). In fact they made that part worse because now it bounces between the new design and remnants of the old one for anything bar the most commonly visited sections - even for basic stuff like a synoptic chart.

3mo ago

‘We never would have bought’: Australian mortgage holders feel the pain as interest rates rise again

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tau @aussie.zone 3mo ago

I just exchanged contracts on an apartment so I'm not surprised they chose now to start cranking the rates back up again - I was waiting for something annoying to come along once I committed. Luckily I'm not a complete goose so I didn't borrow right to my max, should be able to handle a few rises without being overly stretched.

3mo ago

Is Australia a Good Place To Be Transgender? | FairyPrincessLucy

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tau @aussie.zone 3mo ago

It's what you'd expect - we're not perfect but overall we do pretty well.

I just read the transcript though because I'm not going to spend 10 minutes watching a video when I can read the salient info much faster (i.e. like many things this should have been an article rather than a video).

3mo ago

Not A Date To Celebrate

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tau @aussie.zone 3mo ago

Yes, I only ever see you here to stir up drama and your flood of posts agitating against a day you would never celebrate anyway regardless of the date are no exception. You're doing it again with this comment, post stuff that's not attempting to stir up shit if you want upvotes.

3mo ago

Australia’s strongest gun reform since the Port Arthur massacre has become law. Here’s what you need to know

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tau @aussie.zone 3mo ago

It's a feeling based idea to assuage the public rather than a logic based one. If someone has four guns already there is little difference between what damage they are likely to be able to cause with those four vs what they could do with five, six, or seven (and the difference is less significant again if they already have ten). The limits seem rather arbitrary instead of evidence based and would not stop a repetition of the Bondi massacre, they appear instead to just be a quick decision made to show the government is doing something in reaction to a tragedy (something must be done, this is something therefore we must do it...).

3mo ago

Australia’s strongest gun reform since the Port Arthur massacre has become law. Here’s what you need to know

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tau @aussie.zone 3mo ago

Probably, I did find a copy of that as a kid but it's been long enough that I can't recall specifics.

That is something that could fall under the new rule though, as could watching youtube videos of people modding guns, or gun owners downloading a maintenance manual for the guns they own, or if particularly misapplied even things like getting an ebook that happens to mention an aside about weapons/explosive manufacture (pretty sure Jules Verne describes a way to make explosives in The Mysterious Island for example).

3mo ago

Australia’s strongest gun reform since the Port Arthur massacre has become law. Here’s what you need to know

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tau @aussie.zone 3mo ago

It's a way of saying a method of transmitting information. Replace 'a carriage service' with 'the internet' and you'd cover much (albeit not all) of the intention there.

3mo ago

Australia’s strongest gun reform since the Port Arthur massacre has become law. Here’s what you need to know

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tau @aussie.zone 3mo ago

It will be an offence to use a carriage service to access material on the manufacture or modification of guns and accessories, as well as other explosives or lethal devices.

This has such broad potential for misapplication, but apparently everyone throws critical thinking out the window because guns are scary...

I think the gun number limit is also a kneejerk reaction playing more on people's fears rather than actually being logical, but at least it's affecting less people than the above.

4mo ago

How Adelaide Writers' Week imploded after axing Palestinian author

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tau @aussie.zone 4mo ago

Bit rich for her to be going on about censorship and silencing authors if she demanded someone else be excluded previously from the same festival over provocative comments.