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shirro

@ shirro @aussie.zone

Posts
2
Comments
541
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • A 'wake-up call': How can Australia realistically reduce its reliance on oil?

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  • I agree with building near use. It's better use of land as well to put them on the roof of buildings.

    There are a lot of small scale solar installations on rural properties. I would guess it is often a question of supporting infrastructure and economics not political opposition.

    Example of rural small scale solar on SA https://www.redmud.net.au/our-farms

  • Australia will be left with no submarines if it abandons Aukus, senior defence official warns

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  • From memory, suggest fact check, the French nuclear subs use less enriched uranium so require more frequent refueling. If the French agreed to give us access we would basically be acquiring nuclear technology to be able to maintain them ourselves. I think the US/UK lawyered their way around things. They provide more highly enriched fuel which is closer to weapons grade, and so more of a proliferation risk. However it goes back to the US for servicing very infrequently (10 yrs or something) and we claim we just operate the reactors and there is no technical proliferation? Or something like that. Like everything from the US I would guess the reactor tech is more like a rental with extensive T&C.

    Converting the French subs to diesel seems to have been a source of problems. If we had been up front with France about the US/UK promising nuclear subs they might have been open to negotiation. We took the first offer like suckers.

  • RBA to remove surcharges on debit, credit cards, card networks including eftpos, Mastercard and Visa

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  • Why can't we make card payments without Visa in Australia? We need to ditch these foreign companies and develop our own or co-operate with peer countries. I ditched Paypal and Amazon but I still have to donate to Visa every time I buy a pie.

  • Government halves fuel excise to cut price on petrol and diesel

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  • They have been getting fuel into the country and trying to support critical industries and combat price increases. There is a limit. We aren't about to sanction the USA or start a war with them. Global oil prices aren't something our government can control.

    Whatever they do it's going to end with fuel rationing I think. Odd and even plate days etc. Seen it all before. People forget quickly how vulnerable we are to disruptions in the global supply chain.

    Cutting fuel excise is likely a poor decision conomically but there is a constant theme I see online, don't know where it comes from, that this government does nothing. They are obviously doing a hell of a lot and perhaps more than they should. It isn't being reported or understood for some reason.

  • Government halves fuel excise to cut price on petrol and diesel

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  • Long term it would be bad. High prices help hasten energy transition and energy independence but the collapse of the Libs has left a very dangerous power vacuum.

    Hopefully Trump dies of natural causes or gets the 25th soon and the disruptions in the gulf ends.

    Meanwhile Labor needs to be seen to be doing popular things to keep the fossil fuel and billionaire funded populists to 20%

    Government is always about finding a balance, not being perfect.

  • Fuel shortages set to drive up food prices across Australia

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  • What are your citizens going to do with that info which they could not have done already?

  • Why are public schools asking parents to pay fees?

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  • Oh, I wish public education in SA was funded properly. The costs to parents are good but schools often get shafted. Particlarly capital works like new buildings. The difference between a rural public school and one of the favoured city schools or a private school are still huge. They probably do what they can with the revenues they have but there is a lot of federal money going to private schools that could be redirected to state public schools where it would make a huge difference.

  • Fuel shortages set to drive up food prices across Australia

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  • Cut every US subscription you have. Netflix, Disney, Prime, Adobe, Microsoft. Don't use their ad supported service either. Meta, Google.

    Don't go to the cinemas and watch their movies. Don't buy their books. Don't vote for the people they tell you to vote for (PHON).

    Don't use their financial services. Paypal, VISA etc.

    Send them a message and keep your money in your pocket at the same time.

  • Why are public schools asking parents to pay fees?

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  • Our public school fees have been reduced to almost nothing under South Australian Labor. And we get a sports voucher for the kids sports. None of it means tested. And low income families have school cards.

    Unfortunately private schools are clearly still over funded and very influential in politics. I am sure they lobby heavily to keep public schooling slightly underfunded to push kids into their schools. Our premier is a Labor Right SDA Catholic bro so they aren't getting their public funding cut.

    I don't mind making moderate voluntary contributions if they are being used for desirable but non-essential things. They are a trap if they are being used to fill a hole in state funding. Schools in poorer areas end up becoming highly disadvantaged.

  • Cheaper EVs, easier job access: What's in the EU-Australia free trade deal for you?

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  • Many older ICE vehicles can be modified to use LNG which we practically give away. We also have plenty of oil but we mothballed or closed most of our refineries as they were too small in scale to compete internationally. We had a vehicle and parts industry here and we still have some people who can make parts for ICE vehicles even if we don't have the equipment to do it at scale anymore.

    Based on that I think if it went Max Max here it is more likely someone would be driving a 100 year old guzzoline powered Ford Falcon than trying to keep an EV running past 10 years.

    All the value of the vehicle is created overseas so I don't see the sovereignty argument. We are a net energy exporter. Energy independence is only one aspect. How are people going to get parts for their BYD when the US starts a war with China?

    EVs have their advantages and disadvantages. They are all effectively disposable and don't have a good recycling story so I think there is a huge amount of green washing. We need to adopt EVs to reduce emissions but they are terrible for the environment in other ways. Better to focus on public transport, urban planning, e-bikes IMO.

  • Ying and Yang

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  • I think I can be both in the same day.

  • Cheaper EVs, easier job access: What's in the EU-Australia free trade deal for you?

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  • The EV parts and supply chain is all foreign and there aren't enough options for "dumb" vehicles which aren't dependent on software services and updates. A home grown ev running on open source software would be brilliant. As it is I would prefer to drive my decades old ICE vehicle smaller distances and less often and use other forms of transport to fill the gaps.

  • PETITION: Power our schools and childcare with solar and batteries

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  • Local community run childcare has its north facing roof absolutely covered in pv. Has been like that for many years. Every homeowner and business that can afford it does the same around here. Small scale PV installs on non-productive bits of farmland as well.

    We don't get many power outages. I am not sure if batteries make economic sense everywhere currently. Their time will come I am sure.

    I guess a lot of childcare around the country is dodgy commercial operations where they are pocketing all the government grants while their buildings fall apart. Perhaps we should get rid of those and have more community run operations they would put profits back into improving the care and facilities including capital investments like solar.

  • The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux

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  • Yeah, Its is sickening and goes against the spirit of open source. We work around restrictions in creative way to give people the freedom to control their software and have access to the source. We don't deny people trapped in shitholes with bad laws access to open computing. Force them onto Windows and Apple. I don't get what is wrong with people these days. They have lost all reason.

    Yes, many people can work around the laws in various ways. And some of them can't. Its not for us to judge. We offer possibilities. Everyone knows many distros will patch this field out. Many will just ignore it like we do the GECOS fields. And where it is unfortunately required it is still going to be better than running Windows. Its completely orthogonal to political participation and fighting these laws.

  • Google Search referrals to the web have plummeted, AI links are 'less than 1%' of traffic

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  • I am in Australia. Searches on local content and niche tech subjects don't do very well compared with other engines. It might be lack of tuning more than index and I am sure it will improve. Latency might be due to lack of local servers or resources or my choice of browsers but Qwant breaks all the time. It runs a lot better if I keep ad blocking on. Noticeably faster and more reliable though still high latency on the first result showing. If you turn ads on to support smaller companies you immediately get punished. Ad supported businesses aren't compatible with good quality service unfortunately, no matter where they are based.

    It is amazing that Google was so usable for so long really. Their search people must have fought hard to balance out product quality against the demands of the money people for a long time. I think every service that follows in Google's footsteps will inevitably repeat all their mistakes.

    I recommend trying Qwant, Ecosia and others though. It is my default browser search at the moment, mostly because it isn't US based. It might be all you need.

  • Google Search referrals to the web have plummeted, AI links are 'less than 1%' of traffic

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  • There are a few probs with qwant unfortunately and I assume ecosia might be the same. It isn't available in all countries so it's sometimes blocked when I am on a VPN. The performance is shocking on the other side of the world. Terrible latency. Often fails completely to return results. Then the search results aren't really good enough either. Tends to return a lot of links from similar sources like it doesn't have much of an index. Its ok for really simple mainstream searches but I regularly need to fall back to no AI ddg or udm14 google.

    Unless I want a clanker response. Actually I never want a clanker response but web indexing has become so poor in the pursuit of ad revenue then AI that sometimes it's hard to get anything useful out of search queries these days. It's very frustrating.

  • Systemd preparing to comply with age verification laws

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  • A lot of open source software is kind of ridiculous to many people. Why would you want to reverse engineer some proprietary device? Just choose one that is more open. It isn't just about the challenge. It is also about extending freedom to do stuff as many places as possible. I might not want age verification in my operating system as its just another way to fingerprint me by big tech. And I probably won't have it enabled or exposed. But having the option allows people to participate in the shitty, spying. predatory, manipulative, commercial hellscape version of the Internet which is increasingly facing regulation around the world. That is a freedom. Not a freedom I want but a freedom someone wants. It means they are not legally forced to use Microsoft or Apple to give all their data to the NSA and big predatory businesses.

  • Americans on vacation

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  • Shit started to go wrong as far back as the 50s most places, perhaps earlier in the US. Light rail, tram networks were ripped up all over the world in favour of private motor vehicles and US style real estate development with their car centric dead burbs and no local life.

    Once you go all in on car centric planning it is difficult to go back. Housing development is a long way from quality entertainment, shopping, food, culture, work so people need to travel long distances but everything is so distributed and low density that its hostile to public transport networks.

    Americans are correct. You can't simply swap to bikes and public transport on top of 70+ years of insane urban planning. Some older inner cities and very small towns can be fixed. The rest is a problem.

  • An 18-year-old woman in Queensland faces two years in jail for wearing a shirt that says "from the river to the sea."

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  • I am literally traveling from the river (Murray) to the sea tomorrow. Very Aussie and quite legal down south.