Nath
@Nath@aussie.zone
- Comment on More than 300,000 Australians had Centrelink payments cancelled illegally, new analysis shows 3 weeks ago:
I hate how the Guardian routinely does this.
Payment cancellations have been paused since July last year
…
“The system is being applied unlawfully at worst, and it’s defective administration at best. It’s thousands and thousands of people who are having really serious consequences because there are errors in the automated processes.”
The system is not being applied unlawfully. They recognised that it is buggy and turned it off over a year ago. There is enough true stuff in this matter to make a story that is worth discussing, particularly since it affected people who are most in need of support. But because the truth isn’t scandalous enough for someone a the Guardian, they need to make it sound worse than it actually was.
- Comment on Australian kindergarten asks parents to pay thousands for their children's art 3 weeks ago:
Our primary school did this last year. The kids did some art project and the school submitted them to a website where you could buy it as a calendar, diary, tea towel etc. I thought it was a great idea. We bought a few tea towels that went down well as Christmas presents.
- Comment on The Only Raygun Video You Will Ever Need To Watch [from an Australian breaker inside the competitive scene] 3 weeks ago:
He discounted the preliminary dance, I assumed because it was not a battle. But I’m not going to go back and check. It wasn’t that interesting. 😀
- Comment on The Only Raygun Video You Will Ever Need To Watch [from an Australian breaker inside the competitive scene] 3 weeks ago:
It was mildly interesting to watch (listen) to this perspective. He’s right: I don’t care much about Breaking as a sport. It turns out the scene in Australia is tiny and the people who do it are amateur. For Raygun, she had to do three dance battles in a field of eight women to qualify as Australia’s entry into the Olympics. Which globally is a very low bar.
To sum up the video:
Yes, she sucked. But it isn’t like Australia was ever going to do well in this event no matter who we sent.
Dancers in the Australian breaking scene can’t afford to travel to global events and get good. - Comment on The Only Raygun Video You Will Ever Need To Watch [from an Australian breaker inside the competitive scene] 3 weeks ago:
That is the title of the actual video with the bit in braces added.
The description reads:
Welcome to the Raygun retrospective.My name is Jafri, I’ve been dancing for 10 years and been going to events in Australia for the past 7. I’ve been observing all that’s been happening over the last year since the Olympics and wanted to provide my perspective on Raygun and Australian breaking.
Why now you ask?
I felt this was important for me to share as someone who has experienced breaking in Australia. You all know by now that breakers are a rare breed in this corner of the world and I feel like a lot of detail was missed in other videos, so I wanted to provide something for the scene that was actually substantial.
Now that the smoke and mirrors around Raygun has dissipated, I’m hoping you can watch my video from a different place.
Thanks for your time and enjoy.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
0:00 - Chapter 0
2:44 - Chapter 1: Australia’s Disadvantages
11:11 - Chapter 2: That Fateful Weekend
16:32 - Chapter 3: Complacency
20:15 - Chapter 4: Incidents
23:51 - Chapter 5: Picking Up The Pieces - Comment on I feel like there's been a sudden influx on new active aussie.zone users. Coincidence, or did something happen? 3 weeks ago:
Costs aren’t actually that high when the nerd labour is free. Hosting costs were around $200/mo last time I looked. It’s really a @lodion@aussie.zone question, though.
- Comment on 'America is not happy': ABC under fire for pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live! 3 weeks ago:
If your kid is into trains, go with Chuggington over Thomas. Dinosaur Train is also pretty great. Time-travel, Trains and Dinosaurs!
- Comment on Australians are in more pain – and our new data shows it’s not just due to ageing 3 weeks ago:
It feels like weight and pain would be connected, but the article doesn’t mention weight at all. It lists income, occupation, health (diabetes, arthritis and any type of cancer), smoking all as factors.
I expect weight plays its part, also. It makes sense that carrying an extra load around all day will contribute to muscle and joint soreness. Curious that it isn’t listed.
- Comment on I feel like there's been a sudden influx on new active aussie.zone users. Coincidence, or did something happen? 3 weeks ago:
We’re pretty protective of our ~500ish regulars. We are not a large instance, but our users are very engaged. We don’t want them to be drowned out by a massive influx of new accounts utterly shifting the vibe of the site overnight.
It’s already a problem of us both being Perth-based: we’re weak on admin coverage first thing Eastern Time as that tends to be 3am-7am here. An explosion of users and an early morning incident is something it’s just easier to avoid.
At the end of the day, we’re a pair of nerdy full-time family guys doing this as a hobby. We aren’t interested in monetising this site or making it our jobs.
- Comment on I feel like there's been a sudden influx on new active aussie.zone users. Coincidence, or did something happen? 3 weeks ago:
It’s a steady two or so new accounts per day. Occasionally Reddit does something silly and we get a wave of them, but that hasn’t happened for a few months.
- Comment on 'America is not happy': ABC under fire for pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live! 3 weeks ago:
Free advice: Watch Baby Race now, before your baby is born. This episode is for the parents.
The episodes are only about 7 minutes long. It’s well worth the investment.
- Comment on Trump accuses ABC journalist of ‘hurting Australia’ and says he’ll report him to Albanese 4 weeks ago:
I ban spam bots almost daily, but I could probably count on my fingers the times I’ve banned human accounts. Unless people start flinging personal abuse or break site rules, we’re usually happy to let the vote buttons do their thing.
- Comment on Three people died after Optus network failure impacted triple-0 calls 4 weeks ago:
Telstra is a different matter. The government still has hooks into them. They’re under contractual obligations and service level agreements and if they breach those, there are financial penalties.
I suppose Optus must have signed something with the government also? Though I don’t recall reading anything about it. I can’t think under what other pretext the government can just issue a huge fine for not providing a product.
- Comment on Three people died after Optus network failure impacted triple-0 calls 4 weeks ago:
I’m not defending or particularly interested in the outage. If their service is unsatisfactory, leave them. That’s business and they probably deserve it.
What I find amazing is that they’re being held to a standard that no other private business is held to. I see no fundamental difference between this company offering a service and any other.
Forget tech, compare them to Macca’s. Imagine a service outage that meant Macca’s couldn’t sell you burgers today. You’d shrug and take your business elsewhere.
Optus is getting brought before the government for a “Please explain” and a $12 Million fine. Yes, they own infrastructure. That’s my point. It’s theirs. They can in theory decide to just stop offering their product tomorrow.
Somehow we have reached a point where enough people totally rely on their service that they face this level of scrutiny when they stuff up.
- Comment on Three people died after Optus network failure impacted triple-0 calls 4 weeks ago:
It’s fascinating how when you step back, this is a regular business that sells a service. Little different to any subscription service.
And the service is reliable almost 100% of the time. But because we the customers take that reliability for granted, the business is blamed if something bad happens in that 0.0001 of the time.
This is a regular company. In theory, they could close up shop and just leave. But they’re being treated as though the very thought of not being able to use the service is a massive deal.
This same company makes you sign an agreement when you join up saying you understand their service is not 100% reliable and should not be used if you require perfect access to emergency services.
Imagine your ISP getting a 12 million dollar fine when they have an outage.
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to australia@aussie.zone | 10 comments
- Comment on Trump accuses ABC journalist of ‘hurting Australia’ and says he’ll report him to Albanese 4 weeks ago:
The Conversation is a reputable source and the article is relevant to the sub.
I can’t speak to the motives of the OP, but I have no issues with the content. I also only really hang out in “Local” these days. Given that this article is about the US president, I can believe it is widely posted across Lemmy. But this is the only one I’ve come across (so far 😃).
This is what the voting buttons are for.
- Comment on SBS resists calls to join EU boycott of Eurovision 2026 if Israel allowed to compete | SBS | The Guardian 4 weeks ago:
The SBS knows that it’s connection to Eurovision is tentative. We’re sorta a novelty, like a guest who is cool so everyone is happy we extend our visit. We are in because SBS is a member of the European Broadcasting Union - which is a bit of a technicality. But everyone likes us so they let it slide. If we start rocking the boat or making a fuss, the rules of membership will likely become more strict to exclude us. It would likely also exclude other non European nations like Israel.
Something that I see as already a bit of a risk. If they make the rules more strict to exclude Israel, that ruling would also likely exclude Australia.
- Comment on Hit-run driver Jake Danby spared jail time by NT Supreme Court after describing victim as an 'oxygen thief' 4 weeks ago:
You aren’t wrong, but they didn’t think like that at the time. The racism was off the charts by today’s standards. It’s ghastly to look back on and the psychological damage this policy did is immeasurable and ongoing. But beyond all that, they truly were attempting to improve the lives of “the savages” as they saw it.
“The Board may assume full control and custody of the child of any aborigine, if after due inquiry it is satisfied that such a course is in the interest of the moral and physical welfare of such child. The Board may thereupon remove such child to such control and care as it thinks best.”
- Comment on ‘Betrayed the trust of Australians’: ANZ bank pays record $240m fine for widespread misconduct 4 weeks ago:
I’m in this class action. I’ve been paid $236.81. Yay, I guess?
I was truly hurt when this happened to me 20 years ago, but now $236.81 goes nowhere near as hard. The most egregious thing ANZ did would be to take my account(s) into negative balance with fees, and then charge me $36 overdraft fee per account on going negative - then charge me daily compound interest on each negative balance until I realised that my account was in the red through actions that weren’t my own and costing me heavily.
While I recognise that I’m in a far better place financially to when this happened, this payment feels token at best. I don’t even remember what this number represents in terms of what damage was done to me as a percentage. But I’m moderately certain I lost more money than this to ANZ fees at the time than I’ve been compensated for.
- Comment on Hit-run driver Jake Danby spared jail time by NT Supreme Court after describing victim as an 'oxygen thief' 4 weeks ago:
Does Mastodon give you the context of the thread or just that one comment? Because in context, I was saying in the past century. I absolutely agree that this was going on before that.
- Comment on Hit-run driver Jake Danby spared jail time by NT Supreme Court after describing victim as an 'oxygen thief' 4 weeks ago:
I have absolutely no idea how you can read the words “scandalous” and “cultural genocide” and think I was defending anything. I was saying that comparing the worst of government policies to literally rounding up every man, woman and child and outright murdering them is damaging to your argument. They are terrible failures in policy, but they are not comparable to Nazi policies.
the state banning racist hand gestures, and nazi flags is going to solve anything.
What exactly do you propose the government do instead? We can’t lock people away for what they think. We can only prosecute them when they do something like hate speech, waving Nazi flags or doing Nazi salutes.
- Comment on Hit-run driver Jake Danby spared jail time by NT Supreme Court after describing victim as an 'oxygen thief' 4 weeks ago:
Australia still treats its native population horribly.
Fair. Though this has been steadily improving and continues to improve.
Nazi style horribly.
No. While this was once true, it has not been true for about a century. Even the scandalous Stolen Generations, which was effectively an attempt at cultural genocide, was approached with the intent of improving the lives of Aboriginal peoples. The worst Australian policies of 50 years ago were not about rounding up and mass-murdering aboriginal people. If you throw Nazism around everywhere, you dilute the word. There is plenty of room for criticism of Australia’s treatment of Aboriginal people but don’t go overboard or you weaken your argument.
Nazism is illegal here:
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-15/…/105773522
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-04/…/105732982
www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/pm/…/105727024But it is also present and we are fighting a war against it:
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-01/…/105722068Every single piece of news about the aborigines has been bad for decades,
You probably only see the stuff that makes your feed globally and yes, there is plenty of news that is bad. But there’s lots that isn’t as well. The last piece of news I read before this article was about Cathy Freeman being inducted into Stadium Australia’s inaugural Hall of Fame list. Here: have some news that is nicer:
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-16/…/105777908
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-04/…/104653506
www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-28/…/103896464
www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-13/…/103458314
www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-04/…/102810296with little or no social assistance in any way.
Again, let me correct you here:
…gov.au/payments-and-support-for-indigenous-austr…
www.niaa.gov.au/our-work/grants-and-funding
…gov.au/…/indigenous-australians-health-programme
www.indigenous.gov.au/grantsLook, I’m not saying we’re perfect on this front. Hell, I don’t even think I’d go so far as to say we’re good on this front. But we’re trying, ok?
- Comment on Australians soon facing age checks when viewing adult websites 4 weeks ago:
The irony for is I’m not entirely unsympathetic to the cause they’re pushing for this legislation. I don’t think Social Media access to kids is healthy. Hell, I don’t think Social Media access to adults is healthy. I remember when the web was read-only for morons. I’d love to go back to those days. Once any idiot could put their drivel online, they did.
I think some sort of online test/license would be a better solution. Show people the sorts of lights and shiny they’ll experience online. Teach them about misinformation. Teach them about verifying sources and checking websites for whether they are trustworthy. Give them an exam and if they pass, they can have a license to go online. Make everyone go through that and if you can pass it at 15, good luck to you. If you fail it at 50, sorry - the web stays read-only to you until you can get it through your thick skull that there are people out there who lie. Not everything you read is true.
Of course, this would probably be just as unpopular as the approach the government is taking. Eh. I don’t have all the answers.
- Comment on Australians soon facing age checks when viewing adult websites 5 weeks ago:
I haven’t seen email mentioned in the legislation. I suppose you could interpret Gmail/Hotmail etc as web sites you make accounts on in order to interact with something public. But that’s a stretch and it wouldn’t cover all email.
Email would suffer the same issue as Lemmy. Even if you have a perfect way of verifying users that is accurate, you couldn’t stop a kid setting up a mail service on their homelab.
- Comment on New NAPLAN results demand better deal for public schools 5 weeks ago:
To an extent, this is true. It is certainly possible for a kid with drive and intelligence to excel at any school. The issues more arise from the other variables - if your kid is attending a school in a low socioeconomic area, there is a decent chance that the cohort do not prioritise doing well in class. Suddenly kids not only find themselves among peers where studying is not a priority, they find themselves disincentivised to do well so they don’t stand out.
If instead your child attends a school where it is socially acceptable to study and do well in class among their peers, they do.
- Comment on New NAPLAN results demand better deal for public schools 5 weeks ago:
For Primary school it is less of an issue. What you do at home is more important than which particular school they attend. Read to them every night, have them read to you every night. Do spelling exercises each week. Be careful about what TV you put them in front of (Numberblocks good, Youtube bad) etc.
For High School, we went with the “move to good school catchment” method. It has worked out well for us, but damn is it expensive.
- Comment on The age assurance technologies under-16s could face amid social media bans 1 month ago:
If I’m being truthful, I did sit down one day and make Steam accounts for my kids when they were little. I love the idea of their mates asking about their Steam accounts with 10+ badges. They were 5 and 2 at the time. They’ve also had their Google accounts (family Google Workspace email) since infancy. Yep, Daddy is a nerd.
I didn’t however make them Facebook, Reddit, or Tumblr etc. Daddy isn’t crazy.
- Comment on The age assurance technologies under-16s could face amid social media bans 1 month ago:
I wonder how that will work in reality to older people?
Google/Steam/Microsoft: “We need you to verify you are over 16.”
Me: “Seriously? I’ve been buying stuff from you on credit card nearly that long, and my account was created over 16 years ago.” - Comment on Thousands of Australians call for neo-Nazi leader to be deported to New Zealand 1 month ago:
Agreed. It’s lazy and doesn’t address the actual problem. He’s getting followers - and it’s not like he’s going to their houses and recruiting them in person. They’ll follow him online from New Zealand as readily as they follow him in Australia.
He’s a home-grown matter now, we grew him, we should be dealing with him. Besides, I like New Zealand. I see no need to inflict him on them.