Nath

@Nath@aussie.zone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Commonwealth Bank investigates ‘issue’ that has locked thousands out of account⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Does CBA not add a virtual card to the phone’s wallet? I don’t need to actually open my bank’s app to make a purchase swiping my phone. I only need to unlock the phone (and you can configure it to make small purchases with the phone locked if you like).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Copied the MAGA model’: The ‘grassroots’ lobby group funded by some of Australia’s richest⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I loved this teeny bit: “best of Howard”

  Mr Howard is remembered for three things:

  1. Getting rid of guns.
  2. Introducing the GST.
  3. Tampa/children overboard.

  And I nearly said “two things”, as 1 & 2 are far bigger points; though you could argue that 3 had a lasting impact on Australian politics and outright lying to the faces of Australians being permitted.

  I am curious as to what this MAGA-Lite group thinks is “the best of Howard”, because I don’t think that means what they think it means.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Let me guess: it did fine for a few years until everyone had tried it once?

  Now I’m torn between wanting to get it once before it closes to see what it is like and just not because apparently it is crap.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo confirms $90 price for full Breath of the Wild experience on Switch 2⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree with your first statement, but disagree with the rest. I am not their target market. I enjoy playing their games, but primarily because I am spending time with the kids as I do. Not many of their games are targeted to my demographic.

  I disagree that they focus only on digital. Every single Nintendo game comes out on a physical chip. And sales on digital copies are rare and minor (30% off maybe). It is often cheaper to get a physical copy on sale cheaper than digital. And you can then sell it / buy it second-hand. I’ve read that with Switch 2, even the digital codes can be transferred to a new owner. Nintendo for all their faults have never forced you to lock in a digital library you can never resell.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo confirms $90 price for full Breath of the Wild experience on Switch 2⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I bought it second hand. Nintendo got $0 from the sale. In fact, two thirds of our physical games have been purchased second hand.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Record enrolment [98.2%] ahead of 2025 federal election | AEC⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You don’t have to vote. You only need to get your name crossed off. You are then able to just leave if you really want.

  And while those ‘how to vote cards’ (and their pushers) are annoying if you don’t need or want them, they do help people get something close to their wishes down on the ballot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The 24-year-old rule that lets politicians use your data however they want⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  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.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are WA Police driving around in a Maserati?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

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

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This bloke is doing good work.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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:

  1. [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.
  2. [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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.