shirro
@shirro@aussie.zone
- Comment on Australians soon facing age checks when viewing adult websites 3 days ago:
I guess I am going to have to replace our kids linux desktops with an estazi kommisar approved one with inbuilt spyware and advertising controlled by her American ex-employer.
- Comment on REMINDER: Check your NBN speeds after the weekend upgrade 3 days ago:
Still stuck on PMG copper with no relief in sight.
- Comment on Australians soon facing age checks when viewing adult websites 4 days ago:
If they want to block normies from porn and social media I don’t really give a shit. My fear is they are going to come after the fundamantal technology next: encryption, open source, open computing. eKaren used to work for very Big Tech. Everything about recent moves looks like a huge power grab for big tech and big media to data mine and control us more than ever with the force of government behind them.
They won’t be happy with people like me not buying and using their products, blocking their ads etc. The ultimate enshitification approaches. Total corporate control of our lives. Our votes and opinions are theirs to influence for their benefit and not ours.
- Comment on Australians soon facing age checks when viewing adult websites 4 days ago:
Which established media? Nine or Murdoch? I think we can assume by their silence that they have a seat at the table and are getting what they want.
- Comment on Australia’s government trial of age‑assurance tech to keep under‑16s off social media says social media age checks can be done, despite errors and privacy risks 2 weeks ago:
I’m still totally stuck on how you’d stop a 14 year old from installing an off-the-shelf Lemmy container into his/her homelab and started using it.
Things rarely proceed to the extremes as they get harder and more pushback the further you go. But the logical extension of wanting access to all public communications and verification of everyone’s online identity is that access to general computation has to be outlawed. Access to a programmable general purpose computer trivially defeats any restrictions you place on commercial services.
We do need to think about how for profit companies forgo their social responsibility and mess with people’s heads in pursuit of profits and if that should be regulated and how. But there are clearly some creepy people online, who might be funded, but aren’t necessarily motivated solely by profit but by ideology who will find ways to target people whatever the government does. Kids need to be prepared to live in that world and be very skeptical and it just isn’t happening. Today’s kids are just as fucking stupid as we were and they can’t afford to be.
The government have leapt straight to regulation, in my opinion likely pushed by some players in the tech industry and possibly five eyes without fully educating themselves. Potentially they are going to do more harm than good. I suspect a lot of kids are going to drift to less regulated and more extreme alternatives and we save a few kids from Tik Tok memes at the expense of more neo-nazi Christchurch shooters.
- Comment on France to sue Australian platform Kick for 'negligence' after livestream death 2 weeks ago:
Meanwhile the “think of the children” Australian government is hands off on any enterprise run by the gambling industry. So much for the wishes of the Labor rank and file to kick gambling influence out of the party. The parliamentary parties allegiances are clear. Do whatever US intelligence and the tech companies say about age verification. Do whatever the mining industry says. Do whatever the surveillance industry says. Do whatever the gambling industry says. Piss weak for a government with a huge majority.
- Comment on Cigarette prices to jump by almost 7% amid growing concern about Australia’s booming black market 2 weeks ago:
The government could really fuck up the black market if they were smart about it. How much margin do you have to make in a black market to offset the risk of prosecution? Just do the maths. When you control investigation, enforcement, prosecution and excises have to be really stupid to fuck it up like this.
- Comment on Anti-immigration rallies held across Australia as clashes break out in Adelaide and Melbourne 2 weeks ago:
This is a huge deflection from real issues. Rich cunts got richer, monopolizing our countries abundance of natural wealth and stacking the system in their favour through decades of government lobbying and corruption. Then they pay some fuckwit influencers to push the line that its the immigrant’s fault. They have been doing this shit for at least a century and its so fucking obvious if you spend 5 minutes researching shit.
BTW Immigration rates are high, not because of bleeding heart lefties, but because rich people have a pyramid scheme based on population growth pushing up property prices and want us to keep fighting for jobs so we aren’t in a position to demand better wages.
Immigration levels are too high because it benefits rich cunts. Join a union or environmental groups and vote on your own self interest.
- Comment on Australian ban on fish-shaped plastic soy sauce dispensers a world first 2 weeks ago:
Only if they ban those shit single serve sauce packets first and go back to free sauce in your pie from a manky old plastic squeeze bottle.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Nobody ask Albo why an Australian gambling industry billionaire operates a youth streaming platform while his government is going through the pretense of acting to protect vulnerable youth from online harm. Kick is for handwave over 18s only so nothing to see.
Can’t get away with accusing politicians of being corrupt here but they never seem to act effectively against the interests of wealthy people do they?
- Comment on Road safety data shows pedestrian deaths have increased by almost 50 per cent since 2021 4 weeks ago:
As usual follow the money. The automotive lobby keeps killing people to make profits. They control the flow of information and public policy. People die for profits. That is all there is to it. If we wanted to cut pedestrian deaths all it takes is for people to shake off the influence and care about their families and community instead of swallow the mindless shit fed to them by paid influencers and media and then hold politicians accountable.
To many huge trucks on the road and I don’t just mean the taxpayer subsidized yank tanks. Hugely profitable private logistics companies got public rail defunded over decades to the point it is unusable. Can’t walk to schools or shops without having to cross unsignalled intersections crossed by huge road trains all day and night. Successive governments have pushed heavy vehicle traffic onto B roads through small town centers and roads never designed for it and off the major highways with their bypasses and safety upgrades. All because they are too cheap to fund the necessary infrastructure upgrades at a small number of choke points. One day a double tanker of dangerous chemicals isn’t going to make a turn with the shops on one side and kindy and childcare on the other. It will make the headlines for a couple of days and then it will be back to heads in the sand.
This country has some excellent institutions and people but fundamentally the media and politics is controlled by a small corrupt elite regardless of which party governs.
- Comment on Age verification fun 4 weeks ago:
Jellyfin doesn’t know shit about my kids’ age, gender or political beliefs and that is the way we like it.
- Comment on Age verification fun 4 weeks ago:
What pissed me off with the Disney one was them putting it on my kid’s profiles instead of sending me an email. From memory they did give a non-binary/intersex/prefer not to say sort of option but there is no winning choice because no matter what you supply it has the potential to be used as an algorithmic input in future and deliver overly narrow content. I don’t think they should requesting that information. When the yearly subscription runs out they are gone along with the rest.
- Comment on Age verification fun 4 weeks ago:
Perhaps some companies are trying to get ahead of the game. It they can demonstrate they are ahead of things it might be a bargaining point.
The google one was kind of weird because I wouldn’t consider the app in question an adult only app, the account had aged to 18 from probably 5 or so years ago. And it is my first time seeing the option to verify age with a picture or government id like they have in the UK now.
Disney wasn’t an age verification in the sense of the Australia/UK laws and I am fairly sure it was a demographics update to gather more marketing information for the option of a future advertising rollout. Just general enshitification.
- Comment on Age verification fun 4 weeks ago:
I gave a fake age years ago, only by a year to get around some bullshit.
He is a good kid. He doesn’t give a shit about social media. I just wanted to install an open source email client for our self hosted family email and I had to get it via f-droid because its apparently for 18+ on google play. Like he is old enough to download and compile it from source. What is this bullshit?
- Comment on Age verification fun 4 weeks ago:
So first one was having to tell some yank company all my kids ages and gender (wtf?) to access their Disney+ profiles despite me being the adult who runs the account and having set appropriate limits like G and PG for them. Why the fuck does disney have to know a kid or a dog or a cat is watching if I pay the money.
Now my 17 year old (practically 18) needed to install an app in google play on his phone. Google play insisted on age verification. It wouldn’t accept his visa card. It wouldn’t accept his drivers licence and it shat itself and won’t allow rescan and now he can’t install an app he needs for school. And I can’t add him into Family Link to approve it as I assume he is too old for that. What a shitshow.
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to australia@aussie.zone | 17 comments
- Comment on Going to waste: two years after REDcycle’s collapse, Australia’s soft plastics are hitting the environment hard 1 month ago:
Saw a bit of another plastic recycling company once a long time ago. It looked very dodgy to me. I probably can’t say much more since the fraud case ended with a not guilty verdict and I don’t want to risk defaming anyone but the actual processing part looked like a pilot plant to me and couldn’t have been doing much volume while the offices were in a high rent location. It didn’t add up. I think it is in the interests of a lot of companies to green wash plastic packaging and some government funding of recycling operations has possibly been fraudulent.
- Comment on Signal boss warns app will exit Australia if forced to hand over users’ encrypted messages 1 month ago:
Opening up private company communications to the government makes that data a huge target for foreign intelligence and criminal organisations. Even our allies will happily pass on valuable company secrets to their own companies. Everyone is out for themselves. The software our government uses to analyse data will generally be closed source and supplied by a foreign power and not sufficiently audited.
Unfortunately our politicians are dangerously ignorant about the techological risks to national sovereignty and our economy. So they rely on often dubious advice from parties with a vested interest that is opposed to the public interest.
- Comment on Signal boss warns app will exit Australia if forced to hand over users’ encrypted messages 1 month ago:
There are a number of good alternatives. Signal wins because it’s well known, easy to use and install. They are targetting private communications, not a specific app.
It’s all very short sighted. If you really want to stop private communications you have to outlaw all people with technical knowledge and access to general purpose computers. I can cobble something together that is secure enough for a criminal or terrorist to communicate with freely available software but it won’t be full featured of nice to use.
Taken to the extreme this thinking ends with sending all the people with glasses to “work” some fields in the country because intellectuals challenge the security of the regime. That makes no fucking sense in a liberal democracy. So why even start down this path. Get a warrant and surveill people at the end points. It’s the only acceptable solution.
- Comment on YouTube makes last-ditch attempt to lobby government against inclusion in under-16s social media ban 1 month ago:
I think YT Kids is shit as a babysitter for little kids particularly when we have the ABC. But my kids are older and have individual accounts with age based limits it is working really well along with parental guidance.
I do not give a fuck about foreign multinationals in general, particularly not tech ones, and I’ll back a democratically elected Aussie government and our sovereignty against them on principle. But Youtube’s account system is working out well for our family and I don’t want to lose it otherwise I am going to have to spend effort on circumvention which is just a waste of everyone’s time.
- Comment on Misogyny is thriving in our schools. Why aren’t we doing more? 2 months ago:
It’s just an extension of extremist Christian white nationalism/neonazi shit. They realized terminally online young men were very vulnerable to this sort of grooming way back before gamergate even. It was definately weaponized in the US against Clinton and Harris. It’s 90% political in origin.
It is arguably true that many young men are someone shat on by the world we have created for them compared with the past. Stupid fucking gig economy, home ownership, cost of living, transition from manufacturing to service economy. But the people enslaving their brains are the same people with a foot on their necks keeping them down economically and socially. Pull back the curtains and its a handful of mega rich cunts protecting their fortunes by raising a compliant army of cucks to distort the democratic process.
Young men need to open their eyes and tell the sketchy old pedo dudes trying to manipulate them to fuckoff, NYPA!
- Comment on Human Rights Cannot Be Sidelined in Australia-China Meetings: "Xi Jinping’s Repression Renders Him an Unreliable Counterpart", Groups Says 2 months ago:
There is that other country as well. The one you can get in serious shit for questioning.
- Comment on Powerful US lobby groups urge tariff retaliation against Australia’s ‘socialised medicine’ 2 months ago:
Being a sovereign nation should mean we can tell the yanks they can fuck off.
Unfortunately they have their corporate and defence hooks into us really badly.
If the current US administration has any global impact it is this: We all need to wake the fuck up, diversify our strategic relationships, and reduce our dependence on the US.
- Comment on Australia’s had two more years of gambling ad harm since the Murphy report. It’s time for Labor to show some courage 2 months ago:
But ripping off vulnerable people is for winners who can pay off politicians.
- Comment on Trial finds age assurance can be done, as social media ban deadline looms 2 months ago:
The for profit social media companies profile users and know their demographics in great detail. Kids are obviously watching different content to adults. They are in an equivalent position to a bottleshop employee letting a 12 year old walk out with a carton of premixes and claiming they didn’t know. The industry only cares about money and has proven they can’t self regulate.
The only question is how to react. Not whether to react.
The social media companies are obviously scare mongering and spreading misinformation to protect their financial interests. We need to balance peoples very reasonable demands for privacy with holding predatory corporate behaviour to account. The most likely outcome will be a requirement to use a third party age verification service subject to Australian privacy laws to verify a new user to a service so that there is no need to provide that informtion to the social media companies. I might ad that people willingly give their entire life history to Meta along with all their friends, colleagues and family along with photos that allow biometric fingerprinting of their children for life. Yet giving them a simple yes/no to the question of if you are legal age based on a trusted third party is considered intolerable. Seems like a very odd attitude that would only be defended by the social media companies and their shills.
- Comment on Trial finds age assurance can be done, as social media ban deadline looms 2 months ago:
The policy is predicated on protecting children for their mental health and development when they are at a very vulnerable age. Not all kids have responsible and capable parents. Lots of kids live in abusive circumstances, with absent/negligent parents and some kids are forced by circumstances to effectively be the the care givers/providers in their household as their parents guardians may be incapable. The world is really fucking sad sometimes.
When you go into a pub or supermarket and ask for a beer or pack of smokes they don’t give them to anyone who doesn’t have a child lock on them. They ask for proof of age. You can defeat that in various ways but they too are illegal and create risks for those involved. It isn’t perfect but it works well enough to reduce harms.
You want something available only to adults, then the convention is you provide proof you are an adult. That is a privacy nightmare if poorly implemented but then so is the entire digital realm right now.
I think we are missing the big opportunity as a society. The social media platforms are making shitloads of money through predatory manipulation of user habits because they get shitloads from advertising. Just ban the fucking advertising. Most of the bad shit goes away overnight because without the advertising the incentives to keep people trapped in a dopamine loop is mostly gone. The platforms either produce viable paid services or people move to community run alternatives like this one.
- Comment on Trial finds age assurance can be done, as social media ban deadline looms 2 months ago:
My kids run Arch linux on their desktops. I won’t let them use a closed source foreign adware/spyware operating system that doesn’t give full control of hardware on principle. So operating system restrictions are out of the question for me.
My kids have zero curiosity or interest in social media outside of youtube where they mostly watch really cool stuff which I support or if I think content is low quality it is something we discuss.
I am very content not to engage in social media if age verification proves too intrusive. Its a time waster for me and increasingly I feel like I am responding to prompts to train corporate AIs to replace employees, creatives etc. The human aspect of it all is getting lost. I think we need to learn how to live offline more.
- Comment on News Corp boss earns $42m as highest-paid CEO of Australian-listed company 2 months ago:
How much tax did they pay? There is the real crime.
- Comment on Australia overtakes China in the Pacific as the U.S vacates the lane: Public perceptions of influence see Australia surge ahead as the “permanent contest” unfolds | Lowy Institute poll 2 months ago:
Criticism of the Chinese government is sometimes warranted but the volume of posts from Hotznplotzn on the topic across the lemmyverse is massive and on a small instance with very low traffic the posts tend to overwhelm the discourse. I think it gives a very unbalanced view of Australian-Chinese relations and I wish it could be rate limited to fit the community as this sort of in your face proselytizing is a large part of the reason I don’t use other social media.