Nath
@Nath@aussie.zone
- Comment on Why are WA Police driving around in a Maserati? 5 days ago:
Ha! A day later, I see the thing! It’s real all right:
Image - Comment on US tech companies joins winemakers, film studios and drug companies in urging Donald Trump to target Australia 6 days ago:
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.
- Comment on Why are WA Police driving around in a Maserati? 6 days ago:
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.
- Comment on Sovereign citizen who kidnapped her child sentenced to two years' jail 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on IT'S ON: Albanese to call May 3 federal election tomorrow morning 1 week ago:
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?
- Comment on The swimming carnival is nearly over and will cost lives 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on IT'S ON: Albanese to call May 3 federal election tomorrow morning 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on IT'S ON: Albanese to call May 3 federal election tomorrow morning 1 week ago:
Oh yeah!! Who called it in November 2024, baby?!
- Comment on This bloke is doing good work. 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on Silent Hill f has been banned in Australia, and no one knows why 2 weeks ago:
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.
- Comment on Issues 23/3/25 2 weeks ago:
It’s probably Nicole. She’s mad that she can’t spam us any longer.
- Comment on 'Limited incentive' for Coles and Woolworths to compete vigorously on price, and margins have risen, ACCC finds 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Liberals Plan To Blow Current Educator-to-Child Ratios To 1:50 4 weeks ago:
I think this is like admitting defeat. It’s saying ‘there is no way we can make the public system as good as the private system so we’re just going to take over the private schools’. Private education is stupidly expensive. I had a client who used to pay more than my annual salary to send her kids to a private school. Parents are selecting private education because they see value in the calibre of education there.
If you can improve the public education quality to the point where it is on-par with private, parents will cease to see the value in paying up to half a Million dollars sending their kids to private school. Our family has done the equivalent of this. We moved to the catchment of a top-tier public school to give our kids the best public education options available. There is as much disparity between public schools as there is between public/private. I believe there’s a good middle-ground to be had where more academic-focused public schools are created. The few that exist now are so difficult to get into that loads of parents who want their kids to get a great education (we applied but our kid didn’t make the grade) aren’t qualifying.
There will always be a percentage who want some of the things private education offers (like religion), but enough will start sending their kids public that the remaining private students become a rounding error.
I’m also not comfortable with the idea of the government effectively saying either of the following:
- [To parents] If you decide to send your child to private school, they stop being entitled to the education funding you are paying taxes for.
- [To schools] You no longer own this school, we are taking over your private property.
- Comment on Liberals Plan To Blow Current Educator-to-Child Ratios To 1:50 4 weeks ago:
If wealthy parents want to pay for an education that’s fine but when more taxpayer money goes to private schools than public it feels a bit off.
This is a really frequently misunderstood topic and there are plenty of people who intentionally cherry-pick the numbers to make the government look bad over it. So, I genuinely understand where you are coming from.
The first bit of confusion is that public schools get most of their funding from their state government. A comparatively small percentage comes from the federal government, usually for major works. Private school government funding comes from the federal government.
The second bit that confuses people is that funding isn’t just that ‘every school gets $x’. The. Amount of funding is mostly dictated by the student cohort. Rather than thinking of it as every school gets $x, think of it as the default amount per student is $x.
So yes, you get situations where a big private school with 2,500 students seems to get more money than any public school. But average it per student and account for what the state government is providing to the public school and the numbers come out far more evenly.
I sure agree that this should be far more apparent and easy to follow. Maybe the federal government should give the funds to the state education departments and have the states fund the private schools? I’d be on board with that.
I get why private exists and wouldn’t want it to go away overnight but why not properly fund public instead.
Ignoring my personal distaste for private schools for a sec, I find irony in the fact that we’re discussing this topic on a post about early child care - where it is almost all private. We managed to get into the local government childcare centre, but it was not easy. And not much different in price.
- Comment on Liberals Plan To Blow Current Educator-to-Child Ratios To 1:50 4 weeks ago:
we stop subsidising private schools and only give public money to public schools?
I’ve always disliked this idea. I’m the product of public education and my kids are in public schools as well. I believe every kid has a right to government funding toward their education. If a rich family wants to spend fees above and beyond the government allotment so their kid goes to school with a swimming pool or rowing team, I am ok with it. Those kids shouldn’t lose their government education funds because they come from wealth. They are still citizens and have the same entitlement.Besides, if the million kids currently in private education suddenly turned up at their local schools tomorrow to enroll in the public system, they would totally break it.
- Comment on Is there an Australian equivalent for boycotting american products ? 4 weeks ago:
Sure. I promise not to buy anything from the USA today. 😆
Looking around me, about the only things in my vicinity that came from the USA are my phone and iPad. And they were both purchased 2+ years ago. I don’t think there is that much in my bubble that comes from the USA. Maybe some oranges or avocados at the shops sometimes? Whatever is on offer from the USA is going to be such a teeny portion of their export market that they aren’t going to notice any action we might take.
- Comment on Star Entertainment close to collapse with casino group set to run out of cash before the weekend 4 weeks ago:
I’m flipping between this response, and @a1studmuffin’s response - how the hell do you go broke running a casino? A state monopoly casino with no competition?
- Comment on Footage of first Sydney Mardi Gras parade unearthed after almost 50 years 5 weeks ago:
He said the crowd grew as it moved through Darlinghurst, in Sydney’s inner east, with many spilling out of clubs and bars into the procession.
“A lot of people were just hanging around and joined the parade. [They] didn’t know about it, but just on the basis that it was a celebration.”
I love this so much. A tiny start with a few people, a banner and a truck turns into a spontaneous party as they meander past the clubs. And look how big it is today!
- Comment on Farmers reduce plastic waste in supermarkets with cardboard berry punnets 1 month ago:
Can confirm that I bought blueberries in Denmark (WA town) last month in a cardboard punnet. I thought it was just what the local farm that sold to the IGA did. I’m glad to hear it’s more widespread and potentially rolling out to everyone.
- Comment on Here’s why some people still evade public transport fares – even when they’re 50 cents 1 month ago:
This sounds like a misunderstanding of economics.
I’d give this more weight if other commenters hadn’t already helpfully cited studies in this very thread on the topic at hand. The story from Miami in particular was very telling. I also liked the European method where they made fares themselves free, but still enforced people using their smart tickets to record journeys.
Making people pay a token amount isn’t about preventing unnecessary travel. It’s about keeping everyone with a little ‘skin in the game’, where they feel they are paying for a service. Even if the amount itself is negligible. It also provides data where journey projections and trends are revealed.
- Comment on Here’s why some people still evade public transport fares – even when they’re 50 cents 1 month ago:
I’m no expert on this topic, but I’ve previously read that when a thing is made free people stop valuing it. I don’t know how much weight to put on this, I certainly valued my hospital visits for my children and I and those were free.
I think the simple fact is people evade fares because they believe they will face no consequences for it. If transit authorities put Coles style cameras on the entrances and flagged evaders who were then picked up every single time, evasion would drastically drop. And we’d hate having Big Brother watching us.
I think a token amount is reasonable. It costs me more than 50c to ride my bicycle or walk/run 50km. When a train fare is cheaper than wear on your shoes for walking that distance, I can’t see how you can complain about it.
- Comment on Video Ezy cards, 'decimated' money in 30yo wallet fished from river 2 months 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 months 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 months 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? 2 months 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? 2 months 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. 2 months 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. 2 months 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. 2 months 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. 2 months 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.
