Salvo
@Salvo@aussie.zone
- Comment on Power Games: Who’s driving high power bills? 12 hours ago:
We don’t even need to pay tax for it. If you take the capitalism out of it and create a government monopoly; we still pay for the service, and it gets put towards funding the service.
Take out the Executive Salaries and other unnecessary overheads and it is much more cost effective.
- Comment on Blaring sirens on smartphones to warn Australians of major disasters under emergency alerts overhaul 13 hours ago:
- except Optus Cuatomers. Their warning that a natural disaster is happening is that they will loose reception. /s
- Comment on Three-quarters of Australia’s new cars use more fuel than advertised lab rating, testing shows 1 day ago:
Regulators are creating a Rat Race of fraudulent testing and claims of compliance.
This is going to be DieselGate all over again.
- Comment on ‘Stuff of nightmares’: calls for help surge by 50% after Australia launches aged-assistance tool 1 day ago:
Of course it is uses GenerativeBS.
General Purpose LLMs need to be banned.
- Comment on Australian health insurance premiums just had their biggest hike in a decade. Is it time to scrap private health cover? 2 days ago:
The only redeeming aspect of Private Health insurance is that it is a big employer.
Australia does not have any more primary or secondary industry any more. Closing down the Private Health Insurance Companies will make a helluva lot of people unemployed.
That said; these roles are just a leech on the community, without actually generating anything that benefits our society.
- Comment on Australia faces drenching as storm system set to bring heavy rain and flash floods 3 days ago:
The retarding basin near work is getting a bit manky; same as the wetlands near our housing estate.
They could do with a flush.
The low-socio-economic housing estates down the hill from us in the reclaimed swampland are getting a bit manky too.
- Comment on The star rating on food is now mandatory – but some experts think we should scrap it altogether 1 week ago:
Star references are always gross oversimplifications of a review.
Is that car really unsafe to drive or use too much fuel?
Does that washing machine really use too much energy or water?
Did that retail store really provide Karen with the “Worse Experience Ever!”
Is that food really bad for you personally?
Some manufacturers are part of the industry compliance bodies and will game the system so that that their product gets 5 stars even if it is objectively terrible. Look at Diesel-gate. Look at the amount of Permeate in “milk”. Look at the amount of sugar in “fat-free” products. Look at the mind-altering chemicals in artificial sweeteners.
Different people and different applications have different needs, expectations and dietary requirements. When making a decision about a purchase, consumers need to make their own informed choices.
- Comment on Not delivering any Aukus nuclear submarines to Australia explored as option in US congressional report 3 weeks ago:
Not kowtowing to Trump is not the same as ending our relationship with the US.
Albo can tell the walking dumpster fire to bugger off and trump would come out of worse than Australia.
- Comment on Two months into the social media ban, a teenager says it's 'useless' 3 weeks ago:
Existing institutions are still controlling the narrative, just that people aren’t believing it.
One good think about the GenBS bubble is that those people that aren’t complete drones improve their BS detectors.
The problem are that there are still plenty of complete drones who still believe everything that is fed to them.
- Comment on Two months into the social media ban, a teenager says it's 'useless' 3 weeks ago:
It was never about protecting children. It was always about spying on citizens.
And now the Albo is giving all our personal data to the Seppos, we are pretty much screwed.
- Comment on Telstra warns older iPhones may be unable to connect to Triple Zero [or any number, after recent update from Apple] 4 weeks ago:
iOS26 is just a shitshow in a dumpster fire.
Apple needs to rollback all devices running iOS26 to iOS18 and admit that they screwed up.
It (and MacOS Tahoe) are almost as bad as Windows 11, and that is a big statement.
- Comment on Why most Australians won't get a weekday off for Anzac Day in 2026 [but Western Australia and ACT do] 4 weeks ago:
20 business day month. (For the sake of the Accountants)
If we had 25th of 28th off, in addition to Good Friday and Easter Monday, April would only have 19 workdays which would confuse the Bean Counters.
Meanwhile, March is going to have 21 workdays. (Same with May and June)
- Comment on Queensland PhD candidate accused of plotting to firebomb Australia Day 5 weeks ago:
So is everyone’s fascination with LLMs.
If I want someone to tell me bullshit, I would prefer real creative, human generated bullshit.
- Comment on Australia Post rival shuts operations without warning 1 month ago:
“company merged with two US firms” Bloody Seppos.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
The old adage “Take only Photos, Leave only footprints” has not been drummed into kids these days.
If the tent came back missing a single peg, we would get a hiding.
If our campsite has anything but leaves and twigs after we left, we would be sent back the next weekend to do an Emu bob.
We also cleaned up after each other because of the story about Everybody, Somebody, Nobody and Anybody.
I feel really old!
- Comment on 1 month ago:
The equivalent tent nowadays would be $600-$1200
The bottom end is taken over by crap that I wouldn’t let my dog sleep in and the top end are for prosumer/competitive cross country hikers.
Mid range pricing is either cheap crap (rebranded by scammers) or last years model or expensive product.
This relates to camping equipment and also hardware and electronics.
- Comment on France targets Australia-style social media ban for children next year 1 month ago:
The worse thing* is that now they will all be known as “Australian-style”.
We used to be known for our electoral system and a variation of the butterfly swimming stroke. Now we will be known for a lame-arse attempt to restrict people’s access to content “for the children”*
*this is not actually the worse thing about this legislation; it actually puts at-risk children at more risk.
- Comment on oi mates wtf is going on over there 1 month ago:
Sorry mate, your Astroturf is not going to grow, no matter how much bullshit you fertilise it with.
- Comment on oi mates wtf is going on over there 1 month ago:
Who knows the second verse of the national anthem?
(I do) “with boundless plains to share”.
- Comment on Six charged after police allegedly find man and teen travelling with loaded guns in Sydney taxi 1 month ago:
What is a “Encrypted Communication Device”?
It’s great to see these people caught, but are normal plebs going to be arrested for having Signal on their phone or with a Meshtastic/Meshiliscious device?
What about a Cyberdeck running Linux?
- Comment on Australia’s roads are full of giant cars, and everyone pays the price. What can be done? 2 months ago:
It was a meme that the majority of incidents in DCAU were Rangers; to the point that when the Range Danger special was released, I know a few people who through it was just another episode.
DCAU is a great resource for learner drivers, to discuss and debate who is primarily at fault and who else contributed to the incident be being an arsehole.
- Comment on Australia’s roads are full of giant cars, and everyone pays the price. What can be done? 2 months ago:
Yeah, I find it hilarious when I see a RAM that is actually being used by a tradie, with two Rhino Boxes and a short stack of Milwaukee PACK-OUTs taking up all the space in the tray, while a Triton parked next to it has an entire workshop of tools.
- Comment on Australia’s roads are full of giant cars, and everyone pays the price. What can be done? 2 months ago:
I would rather see more trains on railway tracks and buses with rational routes that service everyone than a single Tesla.
- Comment on Australians Overwhelmingly In Support Of Gun Law Reform 2 months ago:
This is the most rational path forward.
Unfortunately, the LNP will use the excuse to crack down on immigration, the ALP will use the excuse to crack down on protesters and the Greens will use the excuse to crack down on legitimate gun owners.
- Comment on Australia’s roads are full of giant cars, and everyone pays the price. What can be done? 2 months ago:
Time for an anecdote. When Holden were designing the HQ, there was a design paradigm called “Passive Safety”.
The reasoning was that if the driver did not feel safe driving at speed, they would drive more slowly, and therefore be safer.
That is why the HQ had narrow A-Pillars that were unfortunately in the wrong position to observe cross traffic and a suspension geometry that caused terminal understeer.
As terrible as this paradigm was (they reworked the geometry for the HZ) it was vindicated in the 1990s when inexperienced and unskilled Subaru WRX drivers felt so confident in their handling that they would push beyond the capabilities of their vehicles.
I still believe that deliberately engineered flaws are a terrible idea, but I can tell you that I am ultra careful and ultra aware of the traffic in my tiny little Jimny with bad driver crash ratings and live axles front and rear.
- Comment on Australia’s roads are full of giant cars, and everyone pays the price. What can be done? 2 months ago:
Odometer reading is a relatively unobtrusive metadatum.
It is recorded when the vehicle is serviced so it is already in someone’s database.
If kms travelled had to be reported annually at the time of registration, no-one will complain (except sov-shit cookers, and they don’t pay rego anyway).
- Comment on Australia’s roads are full of giant cars, and everyone pays the price. What can be done? 2 months ago:
ANCAP guidelines are pushing for larger and larger vehicles.
Crumple Zones, and pedestrian protection add significantly to the size and weight of a vehicles, and negatively impact driver awareness.
Driver Assistance is OK to provide an extra level of protection, but result in complacency.
A compact vehicle with good visibility and visceral road awareness will be less destructive on the roads than an oversized SUV with a driver ignoring all the ADAS technology blithely unaware of their surroundings.
That said, a compact vehicle with unobtrusive ADAS would be even safer.
- Comment on Australia’s roads are full of giant cars, and everyone pays the price. What can be done? 2 months ago:
They need to break it down to a Road Levy and a Fuel Levy.
A 2.5T Tesla Model X should pay more for road maintenance than a 900kg Suzuki Swift.
- Comment on It took years to come up with a plan to cut road deaths, and just 11 days to kill it 2 months ago:
The reason is that there is profit to be made by inefficiency.
When rail is used, the people who profit are;
- the sender
- the recipient
- the railway company
- the train drivers
- the community.
When Trucks are used, the people who profit are;
- the petrochemical companies
- politicians who receive contributions from Petrochemical companies
- vehicle manufacturers
- vehicle maintenance providers
- vehicle parts providers
- the trucking company
- politicians who receive contributions from trucking magnates.
- road maintenance and construction companies.
- politicians who receive contributions from the construction industry.
These are all at the expense of;
- the sender
- the recipient
- the community
- other road users
- emergency services
- the poor truck driver who is high-as-kite on amphetamine in order to meet his outrageous deadline.
- Comment on Proposal to allow use of Australian copyrighted material to train AI abandoned after backlash 2 months ago:
This is excellent news.
The bubble will burst within the next 3 years and our creative heritage would not have been subsumed and given away.