I’m not about to defend Google, but I think Apple are worse. Google are upfront about what they collect and let you download (takeout) or delete everything they have on you at any time you want.

Apple don’t tell you what they are collecting, don’t let you opt-out of data collection and it’s a manual process to access/delete what they have on you.

Neither company is good on their privacy fronts and to champion one over the other is silly.

Some nerd like me will be affected by this one day and then script up something that emails them from 10,000 different email addresses that all bounce. Pollute their database.

Ha! A day later, I see the thing! It’s real all right:

Adobe Haven’t these dickheads been charging Australians more for their products than anyone else for decades?

I think it’s more aligned these days. But it used to be cheaper to fly to the USA, buy a copy of Adobe creative suite, go to Disneyland for the day and then fly home than it was to buy Creative Suite in Australia. It’s all subscription-based, now.

Ha! It’d make a great pursuit car, but I expect maintenance costs and risk of repair after rough treatment excludes it from that role.

We may have actually exported it to the rest of the world! In 1970, we had the Hutt River Province secede from the nation of Australia. To be fair to old Prince Leonard - he had valid grievances and was not just a nutter. The Australian Government was imposing wheat quotas on him when he was just about to harvest, and frankly didn’t exactly offer him much in the way of services.

According to my 2-minutes of Wikipedia research (which makes me an expert on this topic, don’t you know?), the Soverign Citizen Movement appeared in the USA in the “early 1970’s”. Which sounds to me like it may have drawn inspiration from the waves that Prince Leonard was making in Western Australia.

So I had a brief look at the Labor policies, and to be frank, it all looks reasonable. I didn’t see anything there where I thought “that’s an awful position”.

So I re-visited the Liberal version. Maybe they all sound fine at first. Oh wow the Liberal one is awful. It’s all ‘Labor bad’ and ‘Under Labor…’ and ‘fix the mess of Labor’. Why are they the only party of the three to trash talk their opponents?

Anecdotal, I realise - but this is the first time I’ve ever heard of any school in Australia school dropping swimming lessons. To hear that it is one-in-four is not just surprising, it’s downright difficult to believe. From looking on the Royal Lifesaving website, I haven’t found this report. I have found something that appears to refute the news article however.

I think I’m going to need a source on this one.

I was discussing this just a couple of days ago. Greens have terrible marketing and are in desperate need of a rebrand. I’m curious though: Which of their policies are you opposed to? Because honestly: if breaking up bank cartels, restoring Internet privacy laws, promoting local manufacturing, science and research as well as improving the calibre of education are bad, then I guess I’m bad.

For me, my criticism of Greens comes mainly from putting stuff in policies that would be better suited to “dreams and aspirations”. They have a tendency to put stuff in there that are unspecific or at least out of the realms of what government does. But for all of that, I struggle to point to anything on their policy stuff and say “that’s an awful position”. At least, even if I’m not totally on-board, I see where they’re coming from. And that’s another point. Their policies page overwhelms you with too much to actually go through in one sitting. But, look at the Liberal/Labor equivalent pages? Greens are super open about what they stand for and what they would like to achieve. Labor have a few bullet points and Libs have a marketing brochure.

Oh yeah!! Who called it in November 2024, baby?!

It’s not clear from the video, but that billboard is a digital screen. It rotates between ads, so it never stays on any one ad for more than 10 seconds or so. It isn’t staring at Woodside employees all day. I drove past that spot yesterday (that freeway in the video is the main artery to get around Perth), and saw three ads on that billboard in the time I was in front of it. I did not see his ad. I don’t know if it is still in the rotation, of if he just had it on for the day he was filming. Also: It’s either really neatly edited so that it’s in the background most of the time he’s in front of the billboard, or he’s digitally altering it in the video to keep it in shot.

That said: West Australians are well aware that the state government works for the mining industry. As he said in the video, it’s glaringly obvious everywhere you look in Perth. I think he may be missing something from his claims that mining doesn’t contribute to state coffers though: it obviously does in some way. WA is rolling in money, posting big surpluses even through the pandemic years where every other government was broke. I don’t know anywhere near enough on the how of that to refute anything he’s saying though. Just that Teachers are not the reason WA posts a $5 Billion surplus.

Step one: Submit a bunch of bullshit answers to the classifications request form.
Step two: Trigger some algorithm that initially refuses classification.
Step three: Press release saying your game was banned in Australia.
Step four: Free Press!!
Step five: Get your classification when a human gets around to your title and have far higher interest in your game because of the press.

This whole episode fails the sniff test. I think Konami did this on purpose to intentionally rustle your jimmies.

It’s wild that a disease I got in the 90’s was completely eradicated from the country 20 years later.

Measles sucks if you get it as an adult. Two miserable weeks of going from the bed to the bath and back again. I had spots everywhere on my body except my palms and eyeballs. And I mean everywhere. I still have scars all these later.

If your parents didn’t vaccinate you or if (like in my case) the vaccine didn’t exist when you were a kid, go get the MMR shot.

I meant customers, but Dave has already answered.

Home delivery services are a recent offering. What did these people do before about 5 years ago?

I swear there’s a hole in the market here. A third option that was online-only with collection points/delivery services similar to Colesworth that undercut on price.

Startup costs would be massive, though not as much as trying to enter the market as a third retailer with physical stores in all the suburbs.

It could start with a few distribution nodes (warehouses) and grow out. Order online, go to warehouse to collect. The next step where you can distribute in more suburbs or deliver to homes is where it gets most difficult.

13 Minutes to the Moon

Season 1 is essential listening. It’s not very long, and takes you through the journey of putting astronauts on the moon with tech far less advanced that what you’re reading this on. It came sooooo close to failure on more than one occasion. When that lander touched down, it had something like 8 seconds of fuel left.

Season 2 is the story in detail of the Apollo 13 mission. If you loved Season 1 and want more, then go right ahead. I liked season 2, but nowhere near as much.

Odd examples. WA is 23/45 - it’s the state most likely to vote Yes, I think.

Results have come down to 3:3 among the states a few times, but I think WA was Yes each time.

Yes, that check on power. John Kerr acted because he knew that Whitlam was going to sack him and he dismissed the PM in a preemptive strike. He did not involve the Queen in his decision and he completely overstepped his (implied) authority. I don’t deny the one time the Governor General used their power to dissolve a government was an utter shitshow, but corrections were made in the wake of that act and I am confident there won’t be a repeat on just the whim of a future Governor General.

I was too young at the time to understand anything about the Pine Gap angle, but while I can see Whitlam losing power was good for US interests, I don’t believe they were directly involved in events as they played out. Kerr denied CIA involvement (of course he would) and Whitlam agreed that Kerr had more than enough incentive to act without the CIA being party to proceedings.

All I want is to abolish the governor general keep everything else exactly the same.

And I want to keep the government answerable to someone who can veto bills and force a new election in an emergency like we are seeing in the USA. Even if those powers were never used again.

Australians rarely vote “yes” in a referendum. Our rate is 8 positive results in 45 (source).