Nath
@Nath@aussie.zone
- Comment on Video Ezy cards, 'decimated' money in 30yo wallet fished from river 2 days ago:
Nah, the 1988 $10 note was an experimental thing. We went back to paper for a few years after that. It’s funny: A quick Google didn’t tell me when exactly we made the move to plastic, and paper notes were still common well beyond 1996. I’m sure the information is to be had - but I’m at work and can’t devote any time to actually researching this.
- Comment on Video Ezy cards, 'decimated' money in 30yo wallet fished from river 2 days ago:
Oops, I meant to reply to this comment but missed and made a top level reply instead.
- Comment on Video Ezy cards, 'decimated' money in 30yo wallet fished from river 2 days ago:
Plastic notes phased in through the 90’s over about 5-10 years starting with $5 and $10, going up. I’m not sure the exact year we started going plastic, but it was around then. I don’t think we were up to the plastic $20 yet in 1993.
Paper notes were still pretty common in 1997. I remember finding them annoying because I had to separate them when doing the cash taking for work and the bank didn’t like getting paper and plastic notes bundled together.
- Comment on Are you a Coles patriot. Or are you a Woolies nationalist? 4 days ago:
www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-26/…/104470674
This article was fascinating. It really shows how blatant the Colesworth “Sale” cycle is. Particularly when it looks like a DNA double helix.
So hard not to believe it’s coordinated. But price collusion is illegal - they can’t be doing that! - Comment on Are you a Coles patriot. Or are you a Woolies nationalist? 4 days ago:
Safeway! There’s a name I haven’t heard in about 10 years. Are there still any Safeways that haven’t turned into Woolies out there?
- Comment on Fucking Optus doesn't provide ipv6 over cell. And starlink has cgnat. 6 days ago:
While I don’t have an official static IP with iiNet NBN, I don’t remember the last time it changed. It’s been at least 18 months on the same IP.
- Comment on Fucking Optus doesn't provide ipv6 over cell. And starlink has cgnat. 6 days ago:
Having been on the other end of this situation before, I’m going to disagree with this take. On a normal network, yes - you have a firewall to block traffic except to specific IPs/ports. Once you are in the Millions of nodes realm though (and I only ever got into the hundreds of thousands), a firewall is too unwieldy. You can never keep it up to date with all your customers comings and goings. Imagine you have 10 million customer devices and 0.01% of them come or go on any given day. That’s 10,000 firewall updates per day. You’re spending a lot of tech time maintaining and updating that firewall, and you introduce a small risk of an incident with every firewall update. And for what? For the most annoying of your customers.
Sorry to be blunt, but it’s true. The tiny proportion of customers who want to be able to remotely connect to their home networks are the first to complain about any sort of network congestion (particularly uploads, which regular users don’t even notice). They make a lot of noise about every $5/month price increase. They are the most likely to be doing sketchy stuff on the network. And six months down the line when there’s some new exploit, they’re the most likely vector into the network of the latest worm as they didn’t maintain their security updates diligently. It is far easier to simply not cater to them and let them be someone else’s problem. As customers, they aren’t profitable.
You handle this by putting your static IP customers on a special VLAN and charge them for the service. And then yes: you have a manageable firewall sample.
- Comment on Fucking Optus doesn't provide ipv6 over cell. And starlink has cgnat. 6 days ago:
All the noise that happened recently with the 3G shutdown tells us just how many old phones there out there on the cell networks. Running old iOS/Android versions with a gazillion exploits. I think it’s a good thing that telcos NAT their customers. The last thing we want is for the Internet to be able to easily connect to those devices.
ipv6 does also reduce network congestion and improve routing efficiency.
Unless you are moving gigabits of data, you won’t notice the difference the smaller header payload of ipv6 offers. That’s some serious ePenis bragging bullshit I see all the time among nerds who want to say they’re on the latest and fastest technology without understanding that while they are correct (uploading/downloading a gigabyte over ipv6 will probably complete a few seconds faster over ipv6 instead of ipv4), they’re also making a big deal about nothing.
Your issue is you want to be able to access your home network over mobile infrastructure, while you are paying for a basic phone plan. Optus does offer what you want, but to business customers. Telstra will also permit you to apply a static IP to some of their plans, I managed to do this for a client about 10 years ago. It was just an add-on that Telstra offered. They were on a business plan, but I don’t remember whether a business plan was a requirement.
- Comment on Fucking Optus doesn't provide ipv6 over cell. And starlink has cgnat. 6 days ago:
Genuine question:
What does ipv6 give you that ipv4 does not? I genuinely can’t tell the difference as an Internet browser. Particularly on the phone. - Comment on Hundreds complain about failing mobile phone service since 3G switched off 2 weeks ago:
Well, sort of but not really. Telecom had no 3G infrastructure - it didn’t exist yet when the carrier was privatised.
But, I agree with you in essence that Telecom would not have disabled 3G like this. I also do not think they’d have decommissioned the analogue phone network when they did. Which also affected rural customers at the time.
- Comment on Gina Rinehart screwing with our allies politics. 3 weeks ago:
A peek into her mind:
The globe is sadly groaning with debt, poverty and strife And billions now are pleading to enjoy a better life Their hope lies with resources buried deep within the earth And the enterprise and capital which give each project worth
Is our future threatened with massive debts run up by political hacks Who dig themselves out by unleashing rampant tax The end result is sending Australian investment, growth and jobs offshore This type of direction is harmful to our core
Some envious unthinking people have been conned To think prosperity is created by waving a magic wand Through such unfortunate ignorance, too much abuse is hurled Against miners, workers and related industries who strive to build the world
Develop North Australia, embrace multiculturalism and welcome short term foreign workers to our shores To benefit from the export of our minerals and ores The world’s poor need our resources: do not leave them to their fate Our nation needs special economic zones and wiser government, before it is too late
- Gina, 2012
She wrote this “poem”, had it imprented onto a plaque. Then, she placed a massive rock in front of a cheap market/shopping centre in Perth.
theworstofperth.com/2012/02/13/la-gina/ - Comment on Just found out I wasn't registered as an organ donor 3 weeks ago:
You may have been registered in your state. Health department and driver’s licenses are both state based records. Medicare is national and there are rules about government agencies using data from different departments without consent.
It is better to register your organ donor status with Medicare, as that can be accessed by any hospital in the nation.
- Comment on Bathroom Reno Question 3 weeks ago:
There genuinely are visa restrictions on working for some people. They’re usually students who can have a maximum amount of paid hours or tourists who aren’t allowed to work unless they have a 417 working holiday visa. If they’re here on a regular tourist visa, they aren’t permitted to work.
How did you find them? Most scams work by approaching you. It’s a bit hard to run a scam if you are waiting for people to google you. Not impossible, but less likely.
I think the approach of contacting the UK version and clarifying is good. Just make sure they’re legit before you do. 😃
I’d be cautious, for sure.
- Comment on Annual General Thread 4 weeks ago:
I’ll pay the imgur thing. It happened during school holidays and we went away for the (WA) long weekend in there as well.
I did have a shot at looking into it, but didn’t try very hard. I didn’t really prioritise it, because it only seemed to affect thumbnails and even then, it wasn’t consistent. I didn’t see it as that big of an issue.
The lemmy.world lag drama was more nuanced. It’s not a time issue, rather the precedent that one would require. We would have needed to spin up a new server somewhere close to lemmy.world in Finland, batch their feed and send it home. All for an issue with one remote instance that the Lemmy devs said was about to be fixed.
We didn’t want to eat into the finances for a temporary problem. Had we known in May that it would take until November to resolve, we may have made a different call. But the point is that one wasn’t a time problem.
- Comment on Annual General Thread 4 weeks ago:
I think the much larger immediate/medium term issue is the lack of time Nath and Lodion have had in recent months
Has this actually been an issue?
I like to think we’re pretty quick on the moderation stuff, our main problem is time zone related. People making reports or signing up early in the morning don’t usually get seen until after 7am WA time (9am for half the country).
- Comment on Do you reckon a choice subscription is worth it before making more expensive purchases? 5 weeks ago:
Only if you’re drinking espresso. And only ever offering espresso to prospective guests. As a flat white drinker, I’d still need a kettle.
This is a great week to pick them up for free/almost free as people got upgrades for Christmas and offload their old ones.
- Comment on Do you reckon a choice subscription is worth it before making more expensive purchases? 5 weeks ago:
I know this doesn’t answer the “best instant coffee” question, but an $8 Ikea plunger and real ground coffee from Colesworth/Aldi negates the need to ever settle for instant. It actually works out a little cheaper, too.
- Comment on Do you reckon a choice subscription is worth it before making more expensive purchases? 5 weeks ago:
Does it work for Australian purchases? I’m sure lots of the brands will be here also, but I doubt a US site would be testing Australian/New Zealand brands like Westinghouse or Fisher & Paykel (however that’s spelled).
- Comment on Australian bosses on notice as 'deliberate' wage theft becomes a crime 5 weeks ago:
The article doesn’t mention superannuation, I wonder whether that’s also covered?
I’m fairly sure that a former employer underpaid my super to the tune of about $5k, but I was young and lazy and stupidly didn’t follow that up.
It’s a bit hard to go back 15 years later and ask. I don’t really even know what he should have paid vs. what he actually paid. My suspicion comes from other employees complaining that super was not being paid.
- Comment on Do you reckon a choice subscription is worth it before making more expensive purchases? 5 weeks ago:
I find value in it, but probably don’t use it enough to justify the $70 or whatever it is per year. I might use it for one or two purchases a year.
Tell us what you’re interested in and I’ll tell you the Choice recommendation. 😉
- Comment on McDonald's Australia and Netflix launch Squid Game Meal 5 weeks ago:
4,000 kj?! That’s something like half an adult daily intake. Plus it’s awful for you, has little nutrition. You’ll just feel hungry again after a short time.
- Comment on Upgrade to lemmy 0.19.8 5 weeks ago:
He gets double time (2x $0/hr) on public holidays.
- Comment on Woolworths says it has more than 40 competitors in Australia – we went looking for them 1 month ago:
Spud Shed is a legitimate competitor in WA. At least as good as Aldi in terms of range. They’re also the only stores open 24x7, here. Colesworth close at 9pm on weekdays and 5pm on weekends.
They don’t play on the same level as Colesworth though. Maybe a few percent market share even here?
Woolies could argue that every dollar spent at Spud Shed isn’t being spent in their stores. That seems to be what they say that about literally any store selling a product found on their shelves.
- Comment on The loyalty tax shoppers willingly pay despite push for supermarket competition 1 month ago:
If Joe’s Emporium of Essentials opened tomorrow with the same range as Colesworth, but cheaper prices, watch that “loyalty” disappear overnight. The duopoly have reached a comfortable equilibrium and know that so long as they remain cheaper than IGA, they’re good to extort us.
- Comment on Double demerits begin now within NSW/ACT/WA (for 11+ days) 1 month ago:
I have spent a lot of time on Victorian roads, both as a cyclist and as a driver. I’m with the Victorian police: Victorian drivers be crazy.
Best evidence I have to back this up is that my car insurance premiums dropped by $800 when I moved from Victoria to WA. The insurance companies think you are far more likely to claim in Victoria than you are in WA.
- Comment on Users from Other Instances 1 month ago:
We’re a relatively small community, so it wouldn’t take much for us to be overwhelmed.
You are correct, we are small. But I do have a contingency for brigading. I’ve not had to put it to the test, yet - but I think we can handle a brigade descending on us. For a start, I have a “Nuke Post” button that will kill a post outright. That will likely suffice in most cases.
Worst case: I can go thermonuclear and flip federation. Instead of a list of blocked “naughty” instances, I can move us to a list of “nice” instances and block everyone else aside from the site for a time. I should review that list, I haven’t updated it since about March.
The Admin tools are a bit rudimentary. Like the Internet in the 70’s and 80’s, Lemmy was set up on the assumption that people are cool and not out to ruin everyone’s day. But there are some tools there to provide us with some shelter from a storm of bad faith actors if we need them. I’m hoping they’ll continue to mature as Lemmy itself does. And by the time we need stuff like this, there are better options than effectively going dark to much of the Fediverse in case of emergency.
- Comment on Users from Other Instances 1 month ago:
Huh. I was busy yesterday and wasn’t on the site much. I saw that post but some unconscious factor made me skip it. Probably a history of every post on the topic for the past 20 years all regurgitating the same talking points over and over.
Looking at it now, I doubt I’d have stepped in if I had seen it. I think the downvotes did their job and the person wasn’t being abusive or anything.
That said, the report button is right there if someone is breaking site rules - don’t hesitate to use it.
- Comment on So what are we going to do with all this social media age-gate stuff? 1 month ago:
Nobody, not even the government, knows how any of this will work. We don’t even know whether the same party will still be in power in six months/whether this thing will actually go ahead.
Assuming it does and there are guidelines on how to comply, we will attempt to implement them. I just hope there’s a way to comply without modifying/customizing the Lemmy codebase. I don’t want to be trapped in a place with a custom build that can’t easily be updated.
Sorry for not having a better answer, but we simply don’t know if it will actually be signed into law and what will be required to comply with the law.
Anything that drastically affects the user experience will be communicated, of course.
- Submitted 1 month ago to australia@aussie.zone | 4 comments
- Comment on What do you want for Christmas? 1 month ago:
I’m sad that you’d call this a gift. My family would come out for free to help - this wouldn’t be considered a gift for us. 😔