AJ Sadauskas

Australian urban planning, public transport, politics, retrocomputing, and tech nerd. Recovering journo. Cat parent. Part-time miserable grump.

Cities for people, not cars! Tech for people, not investors!

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Last Notes

2026-10-10 10:21:37 UTC

This is farked.
Voice actors now have to compete against AI reproductions of their own voices.
And because they often don't hold the copyright to the ads of TV shows they work on, there's basically no recourse:
"Jacqui Duncan has voiced more than 5000 commercials for Australian radio and television. And, as she told [a NSW stare government committee on AI], she owns none of them.
"Last financial year, Duncan earned about 30 per cent of what she had consistently made in the three years before. She now works a second job.
"'AI voices and performances have definitely played a big part,' she told this masthead. Clients have also used them to push down the rates the union spent years fighting for, she said. 'It’s faster and cheaper, so therefore we should be as well.'
"Duncan, the NSW president of Equity, the performers’ division of the media union, gave evidence to the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence. 'I never gave consent for my work to be taken,' she said. 'Our members are already 62 per cent down on their work in the last 12 months,' Simon Kennedy, president of the Australian Association of Voice Actors, told the same hearing.
...
"OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Google all put Canberra on notice – Australia’s copyright rules will dictate whether they train their flagship models on local soil. But copyright usually belongs to a studio, label, publisher or advertiser, not to the performer or writer who made the work. Under the deals and funds on the table, the alliance warned, the money flows to whoever holds the copyright.
"Duncan has never held the copyright to her own commercials. 'But if it’s my biometric data and 20 years of industry skills that go into those performances, I should have a say,' she said. Clients, she said, should not get a performance at all if it 'only exists because mine and thousands of others’ training, performance skills, experience and creative consciousness have all been whittled down to ones and zeros, fed into an LLM (for free) and then exported'.
...
"She knows voice artists and actors who have been replaced by AI copies of themselves, their voices or faces used in new campaigns without consent or payment.
"When one colleague asked a producer why he had not even been consulted, Duncan said, the producer replied that he 'assumed consent was given'."
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/i-never-gave-consent-the-australians-being-replaced-with-copies-of-themselves-20261010-p613x1.html
#AI #VoiceActor #VoiceActing #ArtificialIntelligence #ChatGPT #auspol #NSWpol #Gemini #Claude #Anthropic #OpenAI #ChatGPT #Google #AIBubble #capitalism #business #politics #nsw #nswpol

2026-10-09 07:15:25 UTC

David Swan has written an article about the people behind Firmus, an Australian bitcoin mining turned AI data centre start-up that withdrew its $43.7 billion sharemarket float this week.
It's really quite something:
"Oliver Curtis, Firmus’ 40-year-old co-chief executive and the husband of public relations entrepreneur Roxy Jacenko, is a former investment banker who served a year in jail for insider trading a decade ago. He has since called his actions “incredibly, gravely stupid”.
"He co-founded Firmus in 2019 as a bitcoin mining business with his cousin Tim Rosenfield, who ran a luxury lingerie brand, and Jonathan Levee, who handles the engineering. Neither co-chief executive came from the technology industry.
"They signed up big names all the same. Nvidia, the world’s most valuable chipmaker, is a shareholder and James Packer and former treasurer Joe Hockey hold stakes. “As a father, I’m incredibly proud of what Oli’s done,” Curtis’ father Nick, a mining entrepreneur and major shareholder, told The Australian last week.
"Firmus earned about $US50 million ($73 million) in revenue last financial year. It asked to be valued at about 600 times that.
...
"The price had climbed quickly. Firmus sought a $1.2 billion valuation in late 2024 and raised money at $15 billion in August. Then it asked public investors for almost three times that.
"The road to Friday was rocky, to put it lightly. This week Firmus confirmed that a $73 billion partnership with CDC, an established Australian data centre operator, was over. The Financial Review reported that a test of Firmus’ prized cooling system had flooded part of CDC’s Melbourne data centre earlier this year.
...
"The banks running the float, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Morgans, told investors on Monday that demand at $11 a share was “well in excess” of what was on offer. One Morgans adviser emailed clients that demand had been “enormous”.
"By Wednesday, the banks were discussing cutting the price to about $9. On Thursday morning, they told fund managers that bids made that morning were “not held”, then went quiet. “Bankers gone to ground,” read one message doing the rounds of brokers and investors. By midday the offer documents had been pulled from view."
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/two-tech-outsiders-tried-to-sell-a-44bn-tech-company-it-didn-t-work-20261009-p6145h.html
#business #AI #LLM #DataCenter #DataCentre #Firmus #capitalism #AIBubble

2026-08-10 04:12:36 UTC

Mark Zuckerberg's $300 million yacht repeatedly refused to assist a small boat in distress, despite multiple requests from the coastguard. Instead, he reportedly left it to a cruise ship that was further away to perform the rescue:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/09/zuckerberg-superyacht-boat-alaska
And this story perfectly encapsulates who Zuckerberg and the other Silicon Valley billionaire tech bros are on a very fundamental level.
This is the very core of who Zuckerberg is.
A man who is often best placed to help. Who has the means to help.
Who chooses not to, because where's the benefit to him?

2026-07-19 21:11:26 UTC

Here's one for anyone curious about the technical ins and outs of why Telstra's network went down. Andrew Colley and Juha Saarinen provide as detailed an explanation as you're likely to find in any Australian media outlet:
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/telstra-broke-its-network-with-undocumented-time-fix-627442
#auspol #Telstra #infosec #telcos #telco

2026-06-25 12:16:05 UTC

In a previous job, the head of our department wanted to impress on the C-level executive he reported to that he was a fantastic manager.
(My reporting line went CEO, the C-level executive, this department head, team manager, me.)
He decided the best way to do this was to produce a monthly report for his boss.
So one day the department head held a meeting with all the team managers who reported into him (including my boss).
Data-driven decision-making was the future, he announced.
He tasked all of them with producing a monthly highlights report for their teams. He would select the top highlights from those reports for his report to the C-level executive.
Naturally, my boss, and everyone at that same team manager level, wanted to show the department head that they were a great manager.
So all the team managers tasked all their reports (at my level) with producing a monthly report of their own. All the key highlights and stats from everyone's month had to be documented.
Reporting became a critical task. For at least a couple of days each month, all nonessential tasks had to be paused for reporting.
So imagine: A few dozen staff at my level each producing a personal report over a couple of days each month.
Those personal reports were compiled into team reports by the team managers over a couple days each month.
This was followed by countless meetings with the department head, where each team manager pled their case for their team's achievements being included in the report to the C-level executive.
Eventually, the best highlights from those team reports were culled into the department head's monthly report to the C-level executive.
Anyway, one day the C-level executive called everyone into a Teams meeting. He announced he was leaving the organisation.
At the very end, there was a Q&A.
Someone asked him about the reports.
He said he never read any of them.
#corporations #corporate #business #management #leadership #capitalism

2026-06-11 08:31:31 UTC

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@nprofile…zvpa All up, Amazon borrowed ***US$31.5 billion*** in 48 hours, including both bonds and loans, from some of the world's biggest banks.
So what happens if Amazon can't pay the money back?
From the article:
"Companies are burning through exorbitant sums of money to keep pace in the AI arms race. Debt is climbing. Amidst this flurry of activity, Amazon has signed a deal to borrow some $17.5 billion from a number of financial lenders, according to Bloomberg.
"The banks behind the loan reportedly include Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, HSBC, and BofA Securities. The deal has been characterized as a delayed draw term loan, meaning Amazon can draw down the funds on its own timeline rather than taking the full sum upfront, giving it flexibility in how and when the money gets deployed.
"The loan comes just two days after it was reported that Amazon would also raise $14 billion in a Canadian bond sale, bringing its total new financing to roughly $31.5 billion in the span of roughly 48 hours."
https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/10/fresh-off-bond-sale-amazon-borrows-17-5-billion-from-banks-as-ai-spending-continues/
#AIbubble #Amazon #ChatGPT #LLM #OpenAI #Anthropic #Gemini #Copilot #AI

2026-06-06 00:46:04 UTC

Are we about to see more enshittification with our smartphones?
From right back in the days of Nokia, every 12 months or so, mobile phone makers have tended to upgrade the specs on their phones.
Thanks to Apple, they've learnt how to slowly degrade the performance of their older models. But the tradeoff has been that you get a slightly better camera, or bigger screen, or more battery life.
Android Authority has noticed something curious about the latest phones from a number of major brands, like Motorola and Google.
Their smartphones for 2026 are basically the same specs as the ones from last year, or even slightly worse. In some cases, they have processors from as far back as 2021.
The main thing you get by upgrading is access to new AI features.
There's no reason last year's phones couldn't provide these features. They're powerful enough, have enough memory, etc. The companies are seemingly choosing to not make them available.
In essence, the mobile phone makers are saying that your perfectly capable phone won't get the software upgrades, and to use them, you'll need to buy a new phone with almost identical hardware.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-oBr2yxOAg
The joys of late capitalism, huh?
#smartphone #Android #Google #Enshittification #phone #phones #Motorola #pixel #GooglePixel #Gemini

2026-06-03 04:10:47 UTC

How ironic. A uni academic has just been busted for using AI to write a newspaper column defending AI universities:
"A senior academic from Western Sydney University has admitted to using artificial intelligence to write an opinion piece for The Sydney Morning Herald that defended the use of AI in universities.
"Professor Cath Ellis, a pro vice-chancellor in quality and integrity, argued in her article that aspiring students should hold faith with the higher education system despite concerns that the system is being downgraded by the reliance on AI.
"She submitted it in response to an earlier piece by Macquarie University’s Kylie Moore-Gilbert that claimed universities were committing “widespread, industrial fraud” by accepting money from students and giving them degrees that they did not earn because they were outsourcing their thinking to AI.
"But WSU acknowledged in response to enquiries that Ellis’ reply published on Sunday was itself generated by AI, and drew upon her previous research in the field."
https://www.smh.com.au/national/uni-academic-admits-she-used-ai-to-write-opinion-piece-in-defence-of-ai-20260602-p6038j.html
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #enshittification #AIslop #education #NSW #Australia

2026-06-02 13:13:53 UTC

So Google's massive revenues are no longer sufficient to fund its AI spending spree.
The Guardian is reporting it's going to issue US$80 billion in new shares, including the US$10 billion it's selling to Berkshire Hathaway.
Let's put that number into context.
Imagine a person who earns a good wage, say $100,000 a year on average throughout their working life.
If they work full time for 40 years, that's $4 million in lifetime wages.
If you add together the lifetime earnings of 1000 such people, you get to $4 billion.
At $80 billion, Google is asking for the lifetime wages of 20,000 workers on a good income.
That's an obscene amount of money!
If we're in a bubble right now, then it's inflating a ridiculous amount.
"The move, the largest equity fundraising ever according to analysts, includes a $10bn share sale to the US investment group Berkshire Hathaway, which was led until last year by the investment guru Warren Buffett.
"Alphabet, which is behind the Gemini system that has been increasing its share of the AI chatbot market, said it would use the money to expand its “world-class AI compute infrastructure to meet its unprecedented customer demand”.
...
"Nicholas Hyett, the lead alternatives analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the planned stock sale was much larger than previous secondary share sales, and would also raise more money than the largest stock market flotations, known as initial public offering (IPOs).
"'Alphabet’s $80bn fundraise dwarfs the world’s largest IPOs, often the moment of maximum excitement when companies seek to fill their financial war chests,' he said. 'In fact, if successful, it would raise more than the world’s three largest initial public offerings put together – Saudi Aramco raised $25.6bn when it debuted on the Saudi exchange in 2019; Alibaba raised $21.8bn on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014; and SoftBank raised $21.3bn when it listed in Tokyo in 2018.
"'We can’t think of a secondary issue that would even come close to matching the ambition of this fundraise … and there just aren’t many companies in the world that have the ability to spend that amount of money productively.'
...
"However, such a huge fundraising is also a warning to the markets that for all the many billions of dollars thrown at AI infrastructure, meaningful returns to investors have so far been limited."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/02/google-alphabet-sell-stock-ai-share-sale-berkshire-hathaway
#AI #capitalism #socialism #FreeMarkets #business #news #Google #Gemini #Alphabet #LLM #enshittification

2026-06-01 08:05:20 UTC

Has the amount of discussion on Mastodon died down over the past few months? Is it just the people I follow are less active? Or am I seeing fewer posts because I'm on a self-hosted instance?
Keen to hear other's experiences on this?

2026-06-01 02:06:22 UTC

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@nprofile…963m Great line by @nprofile…ugpy on page 228, to describe the rollback of antitrust laws and increased monopolisation of the economy:
"It's as though we used to put down rat poison, and we didn't have a rat problem. Then the millionaire economists convinced us to stop putting down the poison, and the rats are gnawing our faces off and the economists are all saying: 'Now, now, don't get hysterical, dears. There's no way to know if these rats have anything to do with our pro-rat policy prescriptions. Perhaps the great forces of history bore down on this moment to produce a surge in rat fecundity. Maybe this is just the Time of the Rat.'"
#enshittification #business #capitalism #socialism #neoliberalism #politics #economics #auspol #uspol

2026-05-23 07:48:21 UTC

With Google choosing ensloppification, here's a recommendation for an independent search engine to try.
Mojeek (on the Fedi at @nprofile…54dw ) is an independent search engine based out if the UK. Unlike the various front ends to Bing, it runs its own web crawler.
The most impressive feature is you enter the thing you want to search for, and it returns a list of website links.
https://www.mojeek.com/
#deGoogled #degoogle #enshittification #google #mojeek

2026-05-19 21:39:11 UTC

Looks like Google is killing off its search engine, in favour of just providing AI summaries: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/
It won't be an option anymore to get 10 blue links. Your query will be answered by Google on Google, without visiting a third-party publisher's website.
#google #enshittificationofsearch #enshittification #deGoogle

2026-05-10 06:42:09 UTC

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@nprofile…l2f6 Glenn has the best view from his cat tree! Luck boy 😸

2026-05-03 13:00:32 UTC

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@nprofile…w0mx No worries, and now I'm curious to know what the story will be about?

2026-05-03 12:14:20 UTC

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@nprofile…w0mx Easy. It's Parramatta.
It's the corner of Harris/McCarthur and George St, near Robin Thomas Reserve. The pub across the street is the Albion Hotel.
The tall buildings on the horizon is the Parra CBD. The vacant lot behind the Alby has been cleared for apartments. The river on the left is the Parramatta River. And the tram is heading from the Parra CBD towards Carlingford.

2026-04-23 13:12:28 UTC

I have a theory that bad data from autoplay is creating a perception that people are more interested in super-short videos than they actually are.
How many times have you been on a website where a video autoplays, or you've finished watching a video and another one autoplays.
How many times, when that happens, have you either automatically hit the stop button (if one exists) or left the website?
Think about the number of people who do the exact same as you.
Each time that happens, the average watch time gets shorter.
For example, imagine there's a 10 minute video. One person watches it right to the end. Then three people who never wanted to see the video are shown it as an autoplay.
The average view time across those four people is now around 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Except in reality, only one person actually watched it, for the full 10 minutes. The other three stopped a video they didn't want to see because it autoplayed as quickly as possible.
Yet what the person who saw the video sees is the average watch time in 2 minutes 30 seconds. So they try to make the next video 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
My suspicion is, on some social media platforms, this is far more common than people realise.
Over time, the received wisdom becomes that people only have short attention spans and will only watch a 3 minute video.
In reality, the people who are actually interested will watch the full 10 minutes if it's compelling, and the actual number of people watching is far lower than the stats suggest.
#webdev #videoproduction #socialmedia #video #TV

2026-04-21 13:06:52 UTC

The workers at Australia's only manganese smelter, Liberty Bell Bay in Tasmania, could be laid off as soon as *this Friday* unless a buyer steps up.
They've been told to take leave without pay or lose their jobs.
The federal and state government need to take action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMhC-hPxLfg
Here's some background about what happened. It involves a private equity firm and Sanjeev Gupta, who also sank the Whyalla steel mill: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-23/liberty-bell-bay-liquidation/106485590
Show your solidarity by signing the petition here: https://www.megaphone.org.au/petitions/save-liberty-bell-bay
#auspol #workers #unions #solidarity #business #capitalism #politics #news #taspol #Tasmania #australia

2026-04-10 05:23:34 UTC

Columnist: I'm standing up for what I believe in! Protecting women's sport! And I'll keep standing up for it, no matter how much those snowflakes try to silence me and my right to free speech!
Citizen: That's fantastic! You know, female athletes have to put up with so much vicious misogyny and abuse, especially on social media. Some men really can be snowflakes when it comes to women's sport.
Columnist: No! I'm raising the big issue in women's sport, and I'm being /attacked/ for it!
Citizen: Really?! People are attacking you for saying female athletes deserve equal pay for equal work?
Columnist: Not that one! I'm talking about something far more serious, affecting the health and wellbeing of female athletes. And even the very integrity of women's sport itself!
Citizen: Do you mean how sports science focuses almost exclusively on male athletes, leading to women suffering anterior cruciate ligament injuries at six times the rate of men (citation: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/magazine/acl-tear-women-girl-sports.html )?
Citizen: Or do you mean how elite women's sport is routinely relegated to worse venues and TV coverage, with less sponsorship and promotion?
Columnist: No! I'm talking about protecting women's sport from the spate of men transitioning for the sole purpose of winning at women's sport!
Citizen: Why would a professional male athlete want to transition for less pay, less TV coverage, fewer sponsorships, smaller crowds, less promotion, higher injury risk, worse venue, online abuse, and rampant misogyny?
Columnist: Because *winning*!
Citizen: Can you give an example of where this has actually happened?
Columnist: ...
Citizen: And what do you propose to do about it?
Columnist: Totally dismantle democracy, install a totalitarian dictatorship, arrest or kill anyone who disagrees with said despot, and deport ethnic minorities an masse. Also we'll use it to justify rolling back all civil rights to trans people, establishing that human rights exist at the arbitrary will of our overload, which the despot will use arbitrarily against all women and any other individuals or groups he disagrees with.
Citizen: That seems a bit... extreme.
Columnist: It's all to protect women's sport.
Citizen: And what will you do about the other issues I raised?
Columnist: Well, if any of them, such as research into sports medicine for women or facilities for women's sport, require public funding, then we'll cut the funding and give the money back to rich supporters of our despot as a tax cut.
Citizen: I see. Say, just out of curiosity, who do you think will win the grand final in the AFLW this year?
Columnist: I honestly don't care. I'm not into women's sport, sorry.
#AFLW #womenssport #transrights #auspol #ukpol #uspol #politics #feminism #terf #terfs #trans

2026-04-08 22:30:34 UTC

The enshittification for revenue is beginning in earnest at ChatGPT, I see:
"Our ads pilot is focused on supporting broader access to ChatGPT while preserving consumer trust, usefulness, and user control. Guided by our ads principles⁠, the early results are encouraging. We’re seeing no impact on consumer trust metrics, low dismissal rates of ads, and ongoing improvements in the relevance of ads as we learn from feedback. These positive signals support moving into the next phase of our pilot.
"In the coming weeks, we’ll begin expanding beyond the U.S., starting with pilots in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. We’ll roll this out thoughtfully in each market, learn from real-world usage, and adjust as we go. Our hope is to continue to expand to many more markets this year."
https://openai.com/index/testing-ads-in-chatgpt/
#ChatGPT #AI #OpenAI #LargeLanguageModel #LargeLanguageModels #enshittification #VibeCoding #ArtificialIntelligence

2026-04-01 01:02:01 UTC

April Fools' Day is the one day of the year when corporate marketing departments use AI to generate sloppy copy and images that are not true, in an attempt to fool you.
This is distinct from the rest of the year, when corporate marketing departments use AI to generate sloppy copy and images that are not true, in an attempt to fool you.
#AprilFoolsDay #AprilFools #AprilFool

2026-04-01 00:56:26 UTC

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@nprofile…l2f6 Just astounding. We really are in the Idiocracy timeline, aren't we?
Hesgeth didn't just leave all the war planning to a Palantir AI system based on Claude.
He insisted that all the guardrails were "woke" and must be switched off.
And he listened to Claude's analysis over the advice of experienced intelligence officers, who warned that removing the dictator was unlikely to bring down the regime, or that Iran could restrict oil supply.
From the article:
"Hegseth made his philosophy explicit at SpaceX in mid-January: “We will judge AI models on this standard alone: factually accurate, mission-relevant, without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications. Department of War AI will not be woke.”
"The phrase “ideological constraints” performed significant rhetorical work. Safety filters designed to prevent AI hallucinations, sycophantic validation of flawed premises, and overconfident probability estimates were recast as political obstacles — “woke” limitations imposed by Silicon Valley liberals on America’s warfighters. The distinction between a guardrail that prevents an AI from endorsing a genocide and a guardrail that prevents an AI from inflating a strike’s predicted success rate was erased in a single speech.
...
"AI planning models assumed decapitating the senior leadership would trigger cascading institutional failure — IRGC fracture, Assembly of Experts deadlock, pro-reform street protests. Instead, the regime’s mosaic defence architecture — designed to survive exactly this scenario — activated as intended. By March 9, Mojtaba Khamenei had been installed as the new supreme leader, having reportedly survived the airstrike that killed his father by minutes.
"The National Intelligence Council had assessed beforehand that “even a large-scale assault would probably not collapse Iran’s clerical-military order.” This assessment had little impact. The polished, high-confidence outputs of AI simulation models proved more compelling to decision-makers than the hedged, probabilistic language of traditional intelligence analysis. As Foreign Policy noted, the succession “signals regime exhaustion” but not regime death — the IRGC backed continuity precisely because it was preferable to the chaos American planners expected to exploit."
https://houseofsaud.com/iran-war-ai-psychosis-sycophancy-rlhf/

2026-03-20 08:29:14 UTC

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@nprofile…cy5p NULL is also a good answer for when you don't want to give out a particular personal detail.
Aside from phone, date of birth, and email, most of the time the front end form fields will accept NULL as an answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_(SQL)

2026-03-19 02:52:48 UTC

So let me get this straight.
Inflation is bad, because it means higher prices and less affordable goods.
Inflation is currently going up.
The immediate reason is because America has started a new oil war in the Middle East.
That's provided the big oil corporations a pretext to put up the prices for oil and gas.
We're in a climate crisis, *20 years* after the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth came out.
Despite this, we're still largely dependent on oil and gas for (commuter and freight) transport, heating, and energy. Not to mention plastics.
So the price of anything using oil or gas in its production is going up.
At the same time, the mass rollout of chatbots is raising the price of electronic chips and components. Also energy, including gas.
At the same time, house prices are going up because of an ongoing property speculation bubble. A housing shortage is a contributing factor.
Australia's comfortable oligopolies (Colesworths, the big four banks, Qantas & Virgin, etc.) are likely to use this as a pretext to put up prices and make bigger profits.
So the Reserve Bank's solution to prices going up, and things becoming less affordable, is…
To raise interest rates.
This will make it more expensive to buy solar panels and EVs in an oil crisis.
It will make it more expensive to build housing in a housing crisis.
It will likely lead to higher unemployment.
And it will push up the costs of rents and mortgages, increasing the cost of living.
So to improve the cost of living, we need to increase the cost of living.
Because rich people are making things less affordable, so our system kicks working people.
Am I alone in thinking this just doesn't make sense?
#auspol #uspol #Iran #politics #news #war #capitalism

2026-03-02 01:22:39 UTC

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@nprofile…3qha One note of caution, if you're comparing the public mood about Iraq from the US to the mood about Iran from Australia around Iran.
Across the political spectrum, the general public in Australia is usually a lot more sceptical of US foreign policy and military intervention than our political class.
Australia's political leaders, in both major parties, have never seen a US-led regime change they didn't immediately sign up for. Even when the public isn't fully on board (which is often).
I remember in the US there was a lot of jingoism in the lead up to the Iraq invasion about "supporting our troops" and hanging a flag in your window.
The public mood in Australia in the lead up to Iraq, meanwhile, was more cynical about Dubya and his claims of weapons of mass destruction.
So if you're comparing the general public mood and your colleagues reacted or the small talk in the local café in the US about war, to the general mood in Melbourne, there's likely to be a difference on that front.

2026-03-01 00:40:26 UTC

Does anyone here in Australia still use IRC? If so, which server/s do you use?
I noticed AustNet seems to still be around, or at least have a website up (https://www.austnet.org/index.php), but it doesn't seem particularly active?
#IRC #MIRC #Australia

2026-02-14 00:05:54 UTC

Recently, there was a question by @nprofile…ugp2 about how you explain the Fediverse to someone who doesn't use it.
And usually, what we tend to do is we talk about servers and decentralisation and federation and ActivityPub and all these highly technical concepts.
I've been thinking about it, and all that technical stuff is really impressive work by people far more clever than I'll ever be.
But for me, that technology is a facilitating thing. It's like trying to describe how a bicycle works, rather than why you ride it.
Instead, what the Fediverse is, is a place to have conversations online without algorithms, AI, and ads getting in the way.
Which is increasingly a rare thing online.
Almost the entirety of the internet, from SEO on the web to YouTube to TikTok to Spotify to Instagram and X and Facebook, has been turned into a race to game an algorithm designed to sell ads.
What makes the Fedi unique is that it's not that.
And I suspect if you're trying to persuade someone to try Mastodon (or Lemmy, or Pixelfed, or GtS, etc), you'll get a lot further explaining it as algorithm-free, ad-free, AI-free conversations, rather than trying to describe a decentralised protocol.
#Fediverse #Mastodon #ActivityPub

2026-02-11 06:05:16 UTC

NSW's dodgy apartment crisis continues.
For a long time, Australia has accepted shoddy construction in housing.
In detatched single-family housing, the costs and risks are limited to a single household.
But applying the same free market approach to apartment construction leads to dangerous death traps that could lead to mass casualties.
And they can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to remediate.
"A sprawling apartment complex with more than 1200 units at Carlingford is riddled with fire safety hazards that demand urgent attention from “desperate” residents who want Parramatta Council to ramp up action urgently while their lives are “endangered”.
"Defects including potentially combustible cladding, faulty or no smoke alarms and “lightweight construction” made up 269 critical defects, 81 non-critical defects and 46 nonconformances for the Somerset apartments at James St, Jenkins Rd and Thallon St.
"The defects were discussed at the council meeting on Monday night.
"The collapsed Dyldam group constructed the complex.
"Fire and Rescue NSW and contractors reported the defects to the council, which is the regulatory authority, and must take the next steps to remediate the problems.
"In an urgent letter of complaint in September from a Somerset resident to Fire and Rescue NSW, the council and Epping electorate office, the man said he was “writing in desperation” and demanded “immediate intervention” about the 269 critical defects
"The letter continued in a “beg and demand” urgent action to fix repairs while their lives were endangered.
...
"Compass Strata now manages the building management committee after the original strata firm, Result Strata Management, was permanently banned from working in the industry last year.
"Compass’ licensee in charge Mark Cowell started managing the building committee in May when fire experts were employed to identify issues.
...
"FRNSW and fire contractors Celtic Fire reported potentially combustible cladding was found in aluminium composite panels in the facade but it was unclear whether the panels comprised polythene, which enabled fire to spread rapidly.
"FRNSW records indicate the owners’ corporation had previously registered with a state government project to remove and replace combustible cladding but had since withdrawn.
...
"FRNSW also received updates from the strata that stated serious concerns over fire dampers.
"Fire dampers are passive fire protection products installed in walls and floors to prevent the spread of fire and smoke through a building.
...
"“What was discovered points to a significant failure of the builder,’’ the report stated.
"“Every fire damper was either non-compliant or in some cases missing entirely. We have received a quote for just over $300,000 to install 74 new fire dampers in the building.’’
"The litany of defects continued including at least nine faulty fire alarm systems and diesel fuel tanks for pumps on the roof in the western building at half or three-quarter capacity.
"Fire and Rescue NSW received correspondence from the strata manager and Celtic Fire in October which stated the smoke detection equipment installed on the carpark failed to automatically reset after the clearance of smoke, the carpark exhaust fan was faulty and the smoke detection equipment failed to automatically reset after the clearance of smoke.
...
"Parramatta Council’s planning and design executive director Jennifer Concato said the council did action reports immediately after receiving them from Fire and Rescue NSW.
"She said the council had been formally notified about the defects.
...
"Independent councillor Kellie Darley urged a swifter response, noting FRNSW had raised problems in October 2024 but the council had still not taken action."
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/parramatta/carlingford-critical-fire-defects-at-unit-complex-on-james-st-thallon-st-jenkins-rd/news-story/e54b2431d1d008573ae80c9aebd7b96a
#building #buildings #auspol #nswpol #Urbanism #UrbanPlanning #nsw #australia #cities

2026-01-30 13:04:57 UTC

@nprofile…8d0p @nprofile…q45s @nprofile…qz20 @nprofile…0fz2 @nprofile…0y5u @nprofile…gr5s @nprofile…cywg @nprofile…yl6j Hey Graphene OS folks.
First, it's really great that you guys have created a security focused deGoogled Android operating system.
Given the problems of American big tech, I applaud you for creating an alternative.
So full credit where credit is due.
That being said, constantly badmouthing every other non-Apple and non-Google smartphone maker and operating system is not a good look.
And jumping into any thread on Mastodon where there's a mention of another alternative smartphone maker or OS to badmouth them is not a good look.
You say Jolla is no good. SailfishOS is no good. Fairphone is no good. Murena is no good. CalyxOS is no good. Dumbphones are no good.
I'd imagine you'd probably win more people over if you talked more about why people should choose Graphene instead why they shouldn't choose one of the others.
Because right now, there are tradeoffs with every mobile OS.
That includes Graphene.
For example, there are people for whom limiting their exposure to Google and Apple is more important than choosing the most locked down option available.
For such people, needing to buy a Google Pixel phone to run Graphene is a massive negative.
That's even if the Google Pixel is the best hardware from a security perspective.
And in that case, yeah there are other options that may be a better fit for those people.
There's another issue.
There seems to be many Reddit threads and YouTube videos and blogs out there from people who were enthusiastic about Graphene, but have soured on it.
And the funny thing is there's a pattern to it. "Cult-like" and "toxic" seems to be phrases that tend to be used a lot.
I've also noticed a recurring pattern you put for why the other alternatives are bad is because people connected with those businesses or companies badmouth Graphene.
It seems to me like Graphene constantly bags those other projects. When anyone connected with those projects responds, that response is presented by you guys as evidence of bullying and harassment, without that context.
And the recurring line about how people should just stick with iOS or Google Android if they don't choose Graphene? Just shameful. And completely misses the point of why some people are looking for alternative platforms in the first place.
And the more people who choose an alternative OS, the more normal it becomes to do it, which ultimately leads to more people looking at alternatives like Graphene.
#Android #Jolla #SailfishOS #AOSP #Graphene #GrapheneOS #Murena #Calyx #CalyxOS #Linux #infosec #opensource

2026-01-28 12:11:05 UTC

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@nprofile…pfuj @nprofile…exrp @nprofile…klcd I genuinely wonder as well whether Mastodon is necessarily always the best gateway for newbies joining the Fediverse?
For some people, it might be better to point them to Pixelfed.social to get them started. Or if they're moving off TikTok, perhaps even loops.video once it becomes a bit more mature? ( @nprofile…p6sd has done a great job with them IMHO, btw!)
Perhaps Piefed or Lemmy if they want to discuss a particular topic?

2026-01-17 23:59:11 UTC

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@nprofile…l2f6 Current local flood warning for the Parramatta CBD area, especially around the river:
Local area conditions
- Riverside areas will see deep and fast flowing water which will make Barry Wilde Bridge, Charles Street Weir, Marsden Weir and local footpaths unusable
- George Khattar Lane will experience flooding, cars parked here should be moved
- The Ferry wharf will be flooded
- Potential for localised road flooding on; Macquarie Street, O'Connell Street, Smith Street, Church Street, George Street which may affect travel routes
General conditions
- Risk to life from fast-flowing or deep water near the river or creek
- Flooding of land near rivers, creeks, low spots and recreational areas
- Footbridges and low lying bridges across creeks should be avoided
- Areas behind levees may experience localised ponding of water
- Water levels may be high for many hours
Recommended actions
- Remain aware of the changing situation and flooding near you
- Never drive, ride or walk in floodwater
- In a life threatening emergency call 000 (triple zero)
Stay safe everyone!

2025-12-28 09:32:24 UTC

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@nprofile…n2xw "They jokingly mention how the British are responsible for most of the modern conflicts due to people who didn’t understand or care about the regions drawing random lines on maps."
A lot of truth is said in jest.
Just think about the British Empire's involvement in the following, and its long-term consequences:
White colonisation of Canada.
Residential Schools and discrimination against First Nations in Canada.
Colonisation of the US.
Discrimination against First Nations in the US.
The transatlantic slave trade and slavery in the US.
The colonisation of Australia.
Discrimination against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia.
The White Australia policy.
The colonisation of New Zealand.
Discrimination against Maori.
The colonisation of Zimbabwe.
The colonisation of South Africa.
The establishment of the Apartheid system.
Pitting ethnic and religious groups against each other in Nigeria to support British colonial rule.
Pitting ethnic and religious groups against each other in Sierra Leone to support British colonial rule.
Pitting ethnic and religious groups against each other in Kenya to support British colonial rule.
Pitting ethnic and religious groups against each other in Somalia to support British colonial rule.
Pitting ethnic and religious groups against each other in Sudan to support British colonial rule.
Pitting ethnic and religious groups against each other in Iraq to support British colonial rule.
Pitting ethnic and religious groups against each other in India to support British colonial rule.
Pitting ethnic and religious groups against each other in Pakistan to support British colonial rule.
Pitting ethnic and religious groups against each other in Bangladesh to support British colonial rule.
Pitting ethnic and religious groups against each other in Malaysia to support British colonial rule.
Pitting ethnic and religious groups against each other in Myanmar to support British colonial rule.
Pitting Jews and Arabs against each other in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank to support British colonial rule.
This is far from an exhaustive list...

2025-12-26 07:57:42 UTC

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@nprofile…n2xw @nprofile…w995 Here's what I'm looking at for my next phone: https://murena.com/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena-cmf-phone-1/
It comes with the E Foundation's privacy-focused /e/OS pre-installed: https://e.foundation/e-os/
/e/OS is a deGoogled Android that ships with replacement apps for all of Google's apps: https://peer.tube/videos/watch/ba3c848a-0ddd-4dca-bbbe-6a6f9ebed43c
Murena, who makes the phone, offers a hosted version of Nextcloud plus email hosting, which replaces Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, and Google Docs: https://murena.com/workspace/
(I already have my own Nextcloud account and email, so I'll use that instead.)
Murena also operates a SearXNG ( https://searx.space/ ) instance called Spot ( https://spot.murena.io/ ).
(SearXNG is an ad-free meta search engine that anonymously displays results from multiple search engines.)
The pros is that it appears to be a good option for deGoogled Android and Google replacement that "just works".
It's less locked down than a security-focused non-Google Android like GrapheneOS.
Downsides are that it's a big upfront cost to get an unlocked phone shipped from overseas.
Unfortunately, no Australian carriers offers it on a plan.
The upshot is that you're not locked into a particular carrier.
Murena is active on the Fediverse here: @nprofile…5rjr
And the e-Foundation here: @nprofile…m3as

2025-12-20 04:04:44 UTC

Cory Doctorow ( @nprofile…998y ) on The Daily Show with Ronnie Chieng, discussing tech company enshittification and potential solutions (including tech worker unionisation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2e-c9SF5nE
#enshittification #TheDailyShow

2025-12-18 12:09:30 UTC

So let me get this straight.
Mozilla can't seem to find a business model that doesn't involve taking bags of money from big tech. Still.
Yet its user base is more concerned about open source software and privacy than the typical web user.
Here's an idea: Why not complement the web browser with a suite of open source, privacy-focused online services?
Think web hosting, email, cloud storage, etc.
Think a Mozilla-branded Nextcloud plus WordPress plus email.
The server software is all open source. You can set up your own if you like.
Or you can get the hosted version from Mozilla.
There's a limited version that's free. If you want more storage space, your own domain names, etc, you pay a monthly fee for premium.
And if you're about to type "that sounds like what Brave, Proton, and others are doing", that's right! It is!
And the reason those other firms are doing it is because it makes sense!
#Mozilla #Firefox

2025-12-06 03:55:57 UTC

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@nprofile…h4mc I've mentioned this before, but China's playing a long game to be the world's dominant superpower by 2049.
As in, they've openly said that's what they want to do: https://www.dw.com/en/xi-jinping-china-model-putin-united-states-trump/a-73866651
Right now, China's building its alliances across Latin America, Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East with that goal.
It's building parallel institutions like SCO ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation ) and the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Infrastructure_Investment_Bank ).
Its pitch to formerly colonised country is that it's the superpower of the global south, counterbalancing the imperialist Western powers.
Join China, and China will help make your country rich like China.
And with Belt & Road, it's building freight infrastructure that will make it easier for countries to trade with China than the US.
While China is methodically and patiently building its global influence over the next decades, America is doing the opposite.
Short-term thinking. Walking away from institutions like NATO. Tariff taxes. Doubling down on white supremacy.
I'm sure Americans will wake up one morning in 2049 and wonder how China came to be the world's dominant superpower.

2025-11-29 05:29:57 UTC

Here's the story of an ancient 2000-year-old site in Ohio. It was a major ceremonial gathering site for First Nations people across what's now the United States.
The site consists of a large multi-kilometre wide circular mound, connected to a perfectly symmetrical octagonal series of mounds, which perfectly tracted the movements of the moon.
It's an amazing feat of geotechnical engineering and astronomy.
After the original inhabitants were forcibly moved to Oklahoma in the 19th Century, the site was repurposed as an exclusive members-only gold club for wealthy white men.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0BX1ZSFyVI
#FirstNations #colonisation #colonialism #history

2025-11-28 13:37:30 UTC

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@nprofile…nwpg 2020: The dead internet theory that most of the stuff online is just cranked out by chatbots is a bizzare conspiracy theory.
Sure, there's a lot of chatbots on Twitter and Facebook, but the idea that it's all just chatbots is really taking it a step too far.
2025: Hey cool! I found a blog that I'm pretty sure was written by a human!

2025-11-17 12:17:38 UTC

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@nprofile…u25l @nprofile…cjng
Here's another project to add to the list for anyone who cares about the Fediverse.
Almost a year ago, Mozilla shut down its Mastodon instance: https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/17/mozilla-exits-the-fediverse-and-will-shutter-its-mastodon-server-in-december/
Mozilla /could/ have chosen to redirect its AI resources towards Fediverse projects.
That could have come in the form of development support for Fedi projects.
Just imagine what a project like Friendica or GtS or Lemmy could accomplish with even one or two full-time paid staff funded by Mozilla.
Mozilla /could/ have built user friendly client apps for Fediverse platforms.
Mozilla /could/ have built Fediverse-integrated features (bookmark sharing?) or plugins for Firefox.
Mozilla /could/ have offered managed Fediverse server hosting.
It chose not to.

2025-11-07 07:12:24 UTC

Remember kids: "Passive income" is a term used to describe wealth handed out to people by society, through our economic system, without doing any work.
Many people receiving a "passive income" are intergenerationally wealthy, as opposed to the working class and long-term unemployed people who receive social welfare payments.
Because of this, they're referred to as passive income /earners/ not passive income /recipients/. Conversely, we have social welfare /recipients/ not social welfare /earners/.
As a society, we've decided that Joe Heir and Jane Heiress deserve their wealth, even if they've never done a full day's work in their lives. And there are no income tests for this wealth, so they get these handouts even if they don't need them.
Conversely, we've collectively decided that welfare recipients are bludgers. Welfare payments are also vigorously means tested. The burden of proof is entirely on you to claim and prove you deserve these payments.
The one exception to this social welfare rule is when handouts go to the rich, whether that's in the form of subsidies or tax breaks.
Because there's one law for the rich, and another for the poor.
#capitalism #economy #economics #business

2025-10-31 12:53:06 UTC

Recently, I've been trying to find ways to avoid the Colesworths supermarket duopoly as much as possible.
I'm pulling together a cheat sheet of alternatives. If you have any suggestions you can recommend, please leave them as a comment.
Some will be more expensive (IGA and Foodworks), but others (like grocery clearance stores and Aldi) less so. Hopefully it balances out.
It's also important to note there's likely to be far more alternatives if you're in Melbourne or Sydney than a remote or rural area.
The starting point is to stop thinking in terms of a one-stop shop.
Even if you're in a very Colesworth dependent town, even shifting some of your grocery shopping to a local bakery or green grocer is a win.
The starting point: Shopping local. If there's a local bakery, green grocer, deli, butcher, etc., then support them.
A good tip on this front is discount chemists often stock toiletries and household cleaning products at prices comparable to Colesworths.
If it's available: Grocery clearance stores (even if it's just once a week).
* Beyond Best Before in Sydney: https://beyondbestbefore.com.au/
*NQR in Melbourne and Adelaide: https://nqr.com.au/
* Factory Food Sales Melbourne and Geelong: https://foodfactorysales.com.au/
* Savemore Melbourne: https://www.savemore.net.au/
* Discount Grocery Store Albury–Wodonga: https://discountgrocerywarehouse.com.au/
* Cheaper Buy Miles Melbourne:
https://www.cheaperbuymiles.com/
Next: Is there a farmers market in your area?
* https://farmersmarkets.org.au/find-a-market/
If not, there's some services offering direct produce from farmers:
* https://farmerspick.com.au/
* Happy to hear more recommendations
The obvious one is Aldi, although it doesn't stock everything.
And then IGA or Foodworks. It is more expensive, but it's more of a backfill for things you can't get elsewhere.
Even if there's no local IGA in your area, many stores offer free delivery for orders over $100: https://www.igashop.com.au/delivery
For our babies, we're tending to bulk order from Pet Circle. It works out cheaper often, even with delivery fees: https://www.petcircle.com.au/
If you're vegan in Sydney, The Cruelty Free Shop (formerly in Glebe, now moving to the CBD) is great but pricey, and there's a few others around the country: https://australia.veganonthemap.com/vegan/shops
Any other suggestions or things I've missed?
#auspol #australia #Colesworths #Coles #Woolworths #Melbourne #Sydney #Adelaide #food

2025-10-31 11:08:05 UTC

Marques Brownlee has put up a video about a US$20,000 robot. The company behind it claims it can do a whole range of household tasks 'through the power of AI', and will be delivered next year.
They even demonstrated a prototype to a journalist.
And the entire demonstration was being remotely controlled by a human operator.
And the company admits that, other than one or two simple tasks like opening a door, all tasks will be completed by a remote human operator. Those tasks will need to be scheduled in advance.
So.
Assuming this thing can be put into mass production, a huge if, it's basically a mechanical Turk.
Mark my words.
If this thing makes it to market, and that's a big if, the operators will be in a low-wage country.
It will almost exclusively be a way for rich white Americans to have human servants do their chores, without them being in their house.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j31dmodZ-5c
#robot #robotics #Marques #MarquesBrownlee #ArtificialIntelligence #VultureCapital #AI #tech #technology

2025-10-25 03:07:03 UTC

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@nprofile…ppe2 Here's an interesting detail that reveals a lot about how the new Trumpian state will work:
"Donors of the proposed ballroom include a slew of major tech companies. Among those are Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Google. Defense contractors and communications companies have also pitched in, including Lockheed Martin, Palantir, T-Mobile and Comcast."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/24/white-house-demolition-east-wing-trump-ballroom
So ordinary Jane Doe will pay her taxes, including the excessive tariff taxes.
She won't get much back from those taxes, with even subsidised healthcare or food deemed wasteful. Hope she enjoys the spectacle of non-white people and enemies of the regime being detained indefinitely without trial, because that's all she's getting.
Meanwhile, billionaires and big corporations, especially in big tech, basically won't pay taxes in any meaningful sense of the word.
Instead, they'll pay tributes.
Sometimes in the form of direct bribes, other times "donations" to favoured projects.
A new Whitehouse ballroom, for example.
In exchange, they'll get favourable treatment from the regime.
This is your country now, Americans. The old United States of America as you knew it is dead.
That last presidential election wasn't a vote about whether Trump or Harris should lead a flawed liberal democracy.
It was a referendum on whether that old state continues to exist, or is replaced.
And the overwhelming majority of white Americans, with the support of the nation's billionaires, voted to end the old USA.
You now live in an authoritarian oligarchical autocracy.
You may have "elections", but from now on they'll be a propaganda tool to justify the new regime rather than free and fair elections.
A bit like the "elections" in China and Russia.
In the end, America's experiment in democracy ended because a majority of white Americans don't like people with brown skin.

2025-10-20 11:33:04 UTC

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@nprofile…e4ry After reading this post, I've decided to flesh out the ideas a little. And I think I may have conceptualised the future of vibe coding!
First, the problem of inconsistencies about how AIs respond to prompts.
We need better predictability!
So let's create a standard syntax for prompts, so when you enter a given prompt in a particular way, the machine will always respond in a standard way.
We'll call these next-gen prompts "commands".
As long as you know this simple "language" of commands, the machine will always do what you want!
Now, on to the problem of complex prompts.
Let's take away the guesswork.
Instead of trying to precisely enter one complicated long prompt, let's instead have a series of simpler commands that get executed one after the other.
A "program" if you will.
So you don't have to re-enter your program on prompts, let's invent a physical media for storing and loading these programs.
Now, the next big elephant in the AI room is resource use.
Let's solve this issue so that the command interpreter "AI" software runs with very few resources. I know this is a stretch goal, but perhaps even an 8-bit microcomputer with just 64K of RAM?
And to really make this catch on, let's make this AI vibe command programming language so simple, even an 8-year-old can understand it.
A "basic" programming language, if you will.
Now I know this "Basic" programming language AI vibe coding system sounds extraordinary.
But I promise you that for just $10 billion in VC funding and total indemnity against copyright infringement, I will happily deliver a 64K 8-bit microcomputer with the BASIC programming language preinstalled!
This is the future of AI folks! Feel the singularity approaching!

2025-10-14 11:47:09 UTC

One of the wild things about America is that it has worse trains than many of the countries it bombed the crap out of.
Take Vietnam, where Hanoi is getting a 15-line metro: https://m.vovworld.vn/en-US/news/hanoi-breaks-ground-on-metro-line-2-worth-13-billion-usd-1430439.vov
Or, increasingly, Afghanistan: https://www.railwaygazette.com/infrastructure/afghanistan-begins-construction-of-final-phase-of-the-herat-railway/69607.article
#train #trains #rail #railway #railways

2025-10-11 04:01:29 UTC

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@nprofile…rqac Really insightful, thanks for sharing!
It's really wild thinking of a world where China successfully positions itself between America's "anti-woke" tech accelerationism and the EU's strong regulation policies.

2025-10-06 03:33:54 UTC

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@nprofile…rqac Have you ever read a history book about World War 2, and wondered why the mainstream parties didn't put up more of a fight in the final days of the Weimar Republic?
Well, you're seeing it replay itself right now.
Many mainstream pro-business conservatives, and the corporate interests that back them, will gladly side with the fascists. Even where they don't totally agree with their agenda.
And then the more moderate or centrist small-l liberal politicians fail to acknowledge or comprehend that the rules have changed.
They think that they're still in an environment where both major parties (or coalitions) fundamentally accept the democratic process, the constitution, and the rule of law.
But it's no longer two sides of the same liberal-democratic coin. The far right are a totally different coin.
So you have one side that still believes in liberal democracy, or a form of it.
And you have the other side that weaponises the language of liberal democracy ("freedom" "free speech") against its opponents when it's expedient, but bears no allegiances to the principles themselves.
What the Democrats should be doing now is working under the assumption that there will not be free and fair national elections in America in the future.
They should be organising grassroots face-to-face movements and building coalitions.
They need to be building or strengthening alternative channels of communication and centres of power. (Think independent media, trade unions, the NAACP, etc.)
They should be organising regular mass demonstrations. We're talking a million people sprawling out from Times Square or in Central Park. Two million blocking Wilshire and Santa Monica Blvds in LA. A mass occupation of Facebook or Google headquarters. A nationwide general strike.
Everything the regime does should be delayed or blocked in Congress, then challenged through the courts.
They should be planning how to stop this regime's worst acts, remove it from power, and then how to rebuild the American Federal Government from the ground up.
Because in the unlikely event that a free and fair election is held in 2028, AND their candidate gets a fair hearing in the media and online, AND they manage to win control of the Whitehouse and both houses of Congress, AND there's a peaceful handover of power, AND there's no "hanging chad" ruling from the Supreme Court...
(Nothing in that previous paragraph should be taken for granted right now.)
Even if all those things happen.
They're basically going to have to do a full reboot of the US Federal Government, replacing every senior position in the US Federal Public Service with competent and qualified people.
And then the work begins.
Frankly, from the outside, there appears to be a canyon right now between where the Democrats are right now, and where they should be if they want liberal democracy in America to survive.
</rant>

2025-10-05 03:17:03 UTC

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@nprofile…rqac Is this your cooking? It looks delicious 😋

2025-10-03 12:34:35 UTC

Manager: "And just a reminder to download Megahappyfunproductivityapp if you haven't already done so. It's really important in helping us to stay on top of our deadlines and work together more effectively as a team."
Me: :Downloads the stupid app:
Notification: "Here's your one-time login code."
Notification: "You have a message!"
Notification: "You have a task due later today."
Notification: "Here are some random files from the intranet that might be relevant to your meeting."
Notification: "Rate us on the app store!"
Notification at 8am on Sunday morning because Sharon from accounts wants to let everyone know she's a workaholic with no life: "You have a message!"
Notification: "Here's an AI summary of your upcoming tasks!"
Notification: "Love using Megahappyfunproductivityapp at work? Check out Megahappyfunproductivityapp Personal Edition!"
Notification: "Join our upcoming user conference in Melbourne to hear tips, tricks, case studies, thought leadership, and best practices"
Notification: "Don't miss out! Upgrade to Megahappyfunproductivityapp Premium Edition today and SAVE 15%!* T&Cs apply."
Me: :Deselects everything except critical notifications and message notifications:
Notification: "We've updated our terms of service" (We won't mention it was because our lawyers weren't 100% certain "share your data with third party vendors" would prevent us getting sued for selling your data to ChatGPT. So we're making it explicit, and burying it on page 327 of our terms of service.)
Notification: "Someone is trying to message you on our app!"
Notification: "Here's your one-time login code."
Notification: "Here's your one-time login code."
Notification: "Here's your one-time login code."
Notification: "Rate our customer service."
Notification: "Check out our new AI features!"
Notification: "DON'T FORGET! You still haven't rated our customer service!"
Notification: "We miss you 🥹"
Notification: "Here's your AI task report"
Notification: "Here's some people you might know!"
Me: :Disables notification:
Colleague: "Did you get my urgent message on Megahappyfunproductivityapp?"
Me: "Nope, I turned off notifications."
Colleague: "Okay, can you turn on notifications so you don't miss another important message like that?"
#tech #enshittification #iOS #Android #capitalism #latecapitalism #business

2025-10-02 04:15:06 UTC

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A few additional thoughts that flow on from the above.
I think misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories might not be the best way of understanding what the far right is doing.
Instead, they're propagating urban myths, superstitions, stereotypes, and emotional reactions in a post-literate culture.
Likewise, if you're interested in reason and facts, glorified text prediction machines are no good for you.
But if you want to know the urban myths and stereotypes in a post-literate world?
They're perfect.
#politics #auspol #uspol #ukpol #trump #musk #Elon #ArtificialIntelligence #LargeLanguageModels #ChatGPT #Gemini #copilot #AI #LLM

2025-10-02 01:32:24 UTC

This article by James Marriott does a great job of articulating something I've noticed recently.
We seem to be backsliding from a culture of mass literacy and reason.
Increasingly taking its place is a culture of urban myths, stereotypes, and superstition.
"Numerous studies show that reading is in free-fall. Even the most pessimistic twentieth-century critics of the screen-age would have struggled to predict the scale of the present crisis.
"In America, reading for pleasure has fallen by forty per cent in the last twenty years. In the UK, more than a third of adults say they have given up reading. The National Literacy Trust reports “shocking and dispiriting” falls in children’s reading, which is now at its lowest level on record. The publishing industry is in crisis: as the author Alexander Larman writes, “books that once would have sold in the tens, even hundreds, of thousands are now lucky to sell in the mid-four figures.”
...
"As Walter Ong writes in his book Orality and Literacy, certain kinds of complex and logical thinking simply cannot be achieved without reading and writing. It is virtually impossible to develop a detailed and logical argument in spontaneous speech — you would get lost, lose your thread, contradict yourself, and confuse your audience trying to re-phrase ineptly expressed points."
...
"Walter Ong emphasised that writing cools and rationalises thought. If you want to make your case in person or in a TikTok video you have innumerable means for bypassing logical argument. You can shout and weep and charm your audience into submission. You can play emotive music or show harrowing images. Such appeals are not rational but human beings are not perfectly rational animals and are inclined to be persuaded by them.
"A book can’t yell at you (thank God!) and it can’t cry. Without the array of logic-defeating appeals available to podcasters and YouTubers, authors are much more reliant on reason alone, condemned to painfully piece their arguments together sentence by sentence (I feel that agony now). Books are far from perfect but they are much more closely bound to the imperatives of logical argument than any other means of human communication ever devised."
...
"Ignorance was a foundation stone of feudal Europe. The vast inequalities of the aristocratic order were partly able to be sustained because the population had no way to find out about the scale of the corruption, abuses and inefficiencies of their governments.
"And the old feudal hierarchy was justified not so much by logical argument as by what Walter Ong might have recognised as very pre-literate appeals to mystical and emotional thinking.
"This was what historians of the seventeenth century know as the “representational” culture of power, the highly visual system of monarchical propaganda which forced the fearsome and awe-inspiring image of the king onto his subjects. The regime displayed its power in parades, paintings, fire-work displays, statues and grandiose buildings."
...
"In Britain only 6,000 books were published in the first decade of the eighteenth century; in the last decade of the same century the number of new titles was in excess of 56,000. More than half a million new publications appeared in German over the course of the 1700s. The historian Simon Schama has gone so far as to write that “literacy rates in eighteenth century France were much higher than in the late twentieth century United States”.
"Where readers had once read “intensively”, spending their lives reading and re-reading two or three books, the reading revolution popularised a new kind of “extensive” reading. People read everything they could get their hands on: newspapers, journals, history, philosophy, science, theology and literature. Books, pamphlets and periodicals poured off the presses.
...
"The system worked in an age before mass literacy. But as knowledge spread through society and the analytic, critical modes of thinking fostered by print took hold, the whole mental and cultural atmosphere which sustained the old order was burned away. People began to know too much. And to think too much.
"The feudal order seems to be fundamentally incompatible with literacy. The historian Orlando Figes has noted that the English, French and Russian revolutions all occurred in societies in which literacy was approaching fifty per cent."
...
"The big tech companies like to see themselves as invested in spreading knowledge and curiosity. In fact in order to survive they must promote stupidity. The tech oligarchs have just as much of a stake in the ignorance of the population as the most reactionary feudal autocrat. Dumb rage and partisan thinking keep us glued to our phones."
https://jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-of-the-post-literate-society-aa1 #writing #books #reason #capitalism #socialism #literacy #bookstodon #novels #politics

2025-10-01 12:18:16 UTC

Over 40 years, we were collectively told to give tax cuts to rich people.
And we were told that if we did that, wealth would trickle down and everyone would be better off.
Over 40 years, pretty much everything got cut to fund these tax cuts.
Schools. Hospitals. Public housing. Public transport. Universities. Roads projects. Mental health services. Welfare payments.
People literally went homeless or starved, so rich people could get tax cuts.
Because the wealth would trickle down.
Eventually the eroding of public goods caused social dislocation.
So governments further cut those public goods to fund more police and prisons. To continue giving tax cuts to rich people.
But they said the wealth would trickle down.
Eventually the climate started changing because of the amount of toxic fossil fuel pollution in the atmosphere.
So governments chose to keep the tax cuts rather than fund infrastructure to reduce emissions.
(Many of those billionaires getting tax cuts made their money selling toxic fossil fuels.)
And as the oceans and atmosphere warmed, the bushfires, droughts, hurricanes, cyclones, floods, and droughts got worse.
But they said the wealth would trickle down.
Eventually people were getting pissed off at the dire state of the world.
The rich misdirected that anger at immigrants!
And First Nations!
And trans people!
And neurodivergent people!
Anyone but the billionaires who got the tax cuts.
So governments chose to keep the tax cuts. (For the rich. Everyone else got new tariff taxes.)
But they said the wealth would trickle down.
So did the wealth trickle down?
Well...
A group of billionaires saw this kinda cool tech demo.
It predicted the next pixel of an image, based on the colour patterns of every image on the internet.
It also predicted the next word in a sentence, based on an analysis of every piece of writing on the internet.
The rich decided that this clearly showed that a sentient computer was just around the corner.
The problem was these tech demos needed servers with a lot of GPUs to work.
So the rich took all the money they got from those tax cuts.
And they bought GPUs.
Millions and millions and millions and millions of GPUs.
All the tax cuts? All the underfunded schools? All the draconian welfare cuts? All the public housing shortages? The delays in funding clean energy.
In the end, it didn't trickle down.
And instead of all the public goods it could have bought...
...We'll be left with millions and millions and millions of GPUs in a landfill.
#ChatGPT #Claude #AI #LLM #capitalism #socialism #business #politics #Nvidia

2025-09-30 07:50:54 UTC

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@nprofile…4lh8 @nprofile…es9e What's on the other side of the river is a fruit bat colony ( https://pixelfed.social/p/ajsadauskas/876752214572652401 ) and the stadium for the Parramatta Eels in the National Rugby League.
The bats mostly sleep during the day, and will generally leave you alone if you leave them alone. (But I'd avoid getting too close, unless being patient zero in a global pandemic is your thing.)
The NRL players, on the other hand?
Definitely more dangerous than a blackberry bush.

2025-09-30 01:47:45 UTC

Australia is still a deeply racist country when it comes to Aboriginal people.
This is some of the oldest written communications on Earth.
This rock art was already ~40,000 years old when the Giza pyramids were an ongoing capital works project by the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt.
But because Aboriginal and created it, we treat it as worthless.
I can't stress this enough.
This should be a source of deep and profound shame for every non-Aboriginal Australian.
We, collectively, see irreplaceable 50,000 year old cultural artifacts as having less value than a tank full of petrol.
Because we view Aboriginal history as essentially worthless.
"The oldest petroglyphs in the world are deemed to be those at Murujuga in Western Australia, which are 40,000–50,000 years old. Some petroglyphs are classified as protected monuments and some have been added to the list of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites, or such status has been applied for."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroglyph
"The Albanese government agreed to weaken conditions it had proposed to protect world heritage-listed Indigenous rock art from Woodside’s giant North West Shelf gas development after the fossil fuel company argued it could be forced to shut the plant.
"The change is explained in a “statement of reasons” document setting out why the environment minister, Murray Watt, approved an application to extend the operating life of one of the world’s biggest and most polluting gas export developments until 2070.
"The statement shows Watt accepted environment department advice that “multiple lines of scientific and other evidence” suggested industrial emissions were having a “significant adverse impact” on rocks in Murujuga, a cultural landscape in northern Western Australia that is home to more than 1m pieces of rock art, known as petroglyphs.
"The minister also accepted advice that future pollution from the North West Shelf liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing facility could cause “degradation, damage, notable alteration, modification, obscuring or diminishing” of the area’s natural heritage."
...
"Watt provisionally ruled in May that Woodside could continue operating the LNG plant beyond 2030 only if it cut acidic pollution – particularly nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide – so that there were no air emissions “above the detectable limit” that affect rock art.
"But Woodside responded this was “not technically feasible”. It said the conditions were an “effective refusal” of the development that would lead to the “cessation of business as usual operations” at the end of 2030.
#auspol #wapol #ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #Australia #Perth #WesternAustralia #capitalism #business #ausbiz

2025-06-11 06:30:24 UTC

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@nprofile…96xp I had to look this one up to confirm it's legit.
Sure enough, several news outlets have coveted this one.
An Atari 2600 from 1977 repeatedly beat ChatGPT 4o at chess.
This is a system powered by a 1.19 MHz MOS Technology 6507 processor, and 128 bytes (not a typo) of RAM.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-got-absolutely-wrecked-by-atari-2600-in-beginners-chess-match-openais-newest-model-bamboozled-by-1970s-logic

2025-06-09 10:04:15 UTC

And so the enshittification of ChatGPT begins.
CMOs are now looking for ways to game those large language model algorithms.
After all, millions of people are now turning to ChatGPT for advice and uncritically accepting what it says as true.
So if ChatGPT says "product xyz is the best", they'll take that as gospel.
So a cottage industry of AI optimisation specialists is popping up on LinkedIn to take the CMOs money, and spam the sites the LLMs are trawling for training data.
That means spamming Reddit and Wikipedia, two human-edited sites that were among the best places to find information from an actual human on the web.
Which is why they're weighted so heavily in the ChatGPT and Google Gemini training data.
And now with a cottage industry of AI optimisation experts trying to game AI responses, they're sbout to be spammed to kingdom come.
See the LinkedIn post below for an example.
So now not only are you going to be increasingly likely to see AI queries return responses about how you need a Coke.
But legit information sources will be spammed to make it happen.
#LLM #AI #artificialintelligience #ChatGPT
https://gts.sadauskas.id.au/fileserver/01F7Z9N32BK120W7P9PERCP98E/attachment/original/01JXA206JWSFY38P6HE6FP53MC.png

2025-06-07 14:40:15 UTC

Question for people outside Australia:
Have you ever watched an AFL football game, either in person when you've visited Australia, on TV, or in clips online?
If so, what's your impression of it?
If you've never seen it, take a look at this short clip from the last 2 minutes of a game and share your immediate first impression:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHRbkYi6U0
#AFL #sport #sports #football #australia

2025-06-04 05:17:15 UTC

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@nprofile…3w02 Those Russia "experts" should realise that Russia threatening to nuke other countries is a standard part of its diplomacy.
It has been since the Soviet Union gained nuclear weapons.
And not just against the West.
For example, in 1969 during the Sino–Soviet split, Brezhnev threatened to nuke China over a disputed border on Zhenbao Island.
When Putin threatens to use nuclear weapons, he's not saying the Russian state has imminent plans to begin global thermonuclear war.
He's saying is this is an issue the Kremlin feels strongly about.
Here's the thing.
The most important priority for the Russian state right now, above all else, is the continuation of the Putin regime.
An all-out global thermonuclear war would almost certainly mean the end of the Putin regime, and would pose a serious risk to Putin's life.
It would end Putin's grand project of recreating the Russian Empire, and reestablishing Russia as the preeminent hegemonic superpower in Eurasia.
It would also destroy much of the wealth of the inner-circle of Russian oligarchs.
In short, Russia doesn't *actually* want a global thermonuclear war.
But it knows it can get its way, or at least gain concessions, by threatening to be planning it.
And the supposed Russia experts fall for it every time.

2025-06-01 13:37:09 UTC

If you have the time, please watch the clip below.
It's a detailed explanation of how Elon Musk is causing lung disease and death in a mostly black, working class community in Memphis, from pollution from the 35 methane gas turbines powering his AI data centre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJT2JeDCyw
#ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ElonMusk #ChatGPT #Tesla #Grok #largelanguagemodels #artificialintelligience #Trump #GlobalWarming #tech #environment

2025-05-31 14:59:04 UTC

Increasingly frequent floods, as well as droughts and bushfires, are leaving large parts of New South Wales uninsurable: https://theconversation.com/nsw-is-again-cleaning-up-after-major-floods-are-we-veering-towards-the-collapse-of-insurability-257715?utm_source=Mastodon
#nswpol #GlobalWarming #auspol #ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange

2025-05-30 05:44:30 UTC

First it was SEO (deliberately trying to game Google search results).
Now a whole cottage industry is popping up around AIO (AI Optimisation). Basically, content where the dole purpose is to game ChatGPT into either recommend your business, or to skew its training data.
So in the space of a few short years, the web goes from an imperfect but very useful tool for billions of people, to a dumping ground for AIO spam, SEO spam, and vibe marketing spam. With tools created using vibe coding.
Thanks Silicon Valley.

2025-05-27 04:11:18 UTC

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@nprofile…fnk0 @nprofile…qz4x Link to the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/business/amazon-ai-coders.html?unlocked_article_code=1.J08.yBBx.Wq3XItVQyY9B&smid=nytcore-android-share
I get the distinct impression we're headed towards a major global AWS/Microsoft/Google outage. And noone will be able to fix it, because noone will know how the code actually works.

2025-05-24 12:57:10 UTC

Why you should support open source platforms run by nonprofits over small tech start-ups: A story in four acts.
Act 1: I'm so sick of the evil monopolists Big Tech Co has become. That's why I'm moving to this innovative start-up. I mean sure it's not open source per se, but they support open standards! And they're far more ethical! And actually treat their staff well!
Act 2: Really love the new features in innovative start-up's latest release! They really listen to customers! I even spoke to the CEO on social media the other day. It's great they're getting more investment, and they've got over 10 million users now! I've told all my friends and family to switch! I even set up an account for my elderly dad. Finally, someone is sticking it to Big Tech Co.
Act 3: Everyone seems to be using innovative start-up now. I guess it makes sense that they're introducing some ads. They're really unobtrusive. And there's a lot of features people have been asking for, albeit in the new paid plan. The new on-by-default data collection feature is a bit bad, but you can turn it off in the settings. It's a little concerning that the CEO accidentally invested in that chemical weapons plant in Syria, but he backed down after the exposé in Wired. And he's explained how it's a huge misunderstanding and he'll never do it again. Is it really a big deal?
Act 4: Innovative start-up's the worst! As soon as they achieved a monopoly, they began screwing everyone over! Customers and suppliers! The app is now an unusable adware-ridden piece of crap. The recent layoffs and African sweatshops are just awful! And as for the CEO's politics—we should have known he was an evil prick and left the app the first time he invested in chemical weapons facilities. In hindsight, that was a huge red flag! Now my poor old dad is obsessed with aliens! I keep telling my friends and family to leave, but they're resistant!
Anyone know of any alternatives?
#tech #enshittification #fediverse #Mastodon #BkueSky #X #Twitter #Google #Facebook #ActivityPub #Linux #OpenSource #capitalism #business

2025-05-11 06:45:56 UTC

Some important perspective from Victorian Greens Leader Ellen Sandell about the recent federal election result:
https://greenagenda.org.au/2025/05/were-not-done-yet/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social #auspol #vicpol #TheGreens
"The other lesson to be clear about is that lower house seats are incredibly hard to win for minor parties, even at the best of times. In places like Melbourne and Wills, we have to outpoll both major parties combined. That’s always been a huge ask. Remarkably, we’ve done it before, not just in Federal Melbourne but also in state seats like Melbourne, Richmond, Brunswick, and Newtown. But it’s no small task.
"In order to be successful, MPs need to build broad coalitions in their electorates to appeal to 50% of voters across different generations, cultures, and backgrounds. Labor MPs often do this by standing for as little as possible, and some commentators will now tell us that we need to do the same. But Adam [Bandt] showed us a different way. He built those coalitions without compromising our values.
"His team paired smart and genuine grassroots ground work with values-based work in Canberra and the media. Adam stood up for young people and renters, and for our poor and multicultural communities in public housing, while also building trust with older voters who care about the future, the environment and their local neighbourhood. It wasn’t either or.
"Political pundits right now are full of advice about how the Greens should change our ways to appeal to this broad coalition — that we should talk less about Gaza, renters, or coal. Curiously, these are often the same people who used to tell us to talk more about the economy and less about climate change!
"What they don’t understand is something fundamental to who we are as Greens: unlike the major parties we’re not here to win for winning’s sake."

2025-05-01 14:09:50 UTC

There's a really simple thing you can do to encourage more organisations to set up accounts on Mastodon.
The next time you post a link to Mastodon, just put this UTM code at the end of the URL:
?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
So for example:
https://that90ssite.neocities.org/
Becomes:
https://that90ssite.neocities.org/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
Why?
Well, because the website owners are almost certainly using an analytics platform to track where their traffic comes from.
And if the organisation is big enough to have a social media manager, they're almost certainly looking at how much traffic social media posts are generating.
And this stuff gets reported up the organisational hierarchy.
If you add ?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social to the end of your URLs, suddenly Mastodon begins appearing in those reports.
Now, let's suppose on a given day they post their Facebook and X/Twitter links and a couple of hundred people click on it, because it's obvious spam.
Meanwhile, you post a link on Mastodon with the UTM code, and it's shared, and a couple of thousand people click on it.
Perhaps they should look into investing more resources into Mastodon?
#WebDev #WebOps #WordPress #SEO #SEM #Fediverse #Mastodon

2025-04-30 22:33:48 UTC

Looks like more new skyscrapers are on the way for the Parramatta CBD:
"Top international hotels are flooding the city ahead of the opening of the new Western Sydney Airport, hoping to cash in on lucrative cabin-crew contracts and a new batch of global travellers.
"On Thursday, Marriott Hotels will announce plans to open a 279-bed five-star hotel in Parramatta’s CBD by 2027, joining the InterContinental and QT hotels in developing high-end accommodation in the area.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/the-unlikely-location-of-sydney-s-newest-five-star-hotel-20250429-p5lv59.html
#urbanism #UrbanPlanning #Parramatta #Sydney #NSW #Australia

2025-04-26 11:12:15 UTC

Quick question: Please let me know if you can see this post?
Basically, I did an upgrade of GtS this morning, and I've noticed none of my posts since then have either pulled across to BlueSky, or are visible on a secondary test account I run at Mastodon.Social.

2025-04-20 06:59:39 UTC

I've got a quick favour to ask. If you're reading this post on Mastodon (or the Fediverse), please click share.
How come?
I recently moved across to my own self-hosted single-user server (using GoToSocial.org). For a bunch of reasons, including visibility across the Fedi, it would really help out.

2025-04-17 13:53:05 UTC

Some questions for all the #GoToSocial users out there.
How many gigabytes of disk space (roughly) does your instance use?
How long has it been online?
And does the growth in storage slow down after the first seven days (on the default configuration), when cached images start clearing out?
#FediHelp #SelfHost #SelfHosted #Fediverse

2025-04-16 15:59:36 UTC

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@nprofile…zwgs Hi Christine,
I did some digging through some back issues of CU Amiga, and I think I've figured out the answer!
It turns out, this BlueSky thing is indeed part of a decentralised network, and it's called the Internet!
Now, I know what you're thinking: What is this internet thing, and how is it different to the BBSes that I've been dialling into, using my home microcomputer?
Well, it turns out that the files on your local computer user group's BBS are typically all stored on the one computer.
But the internet is like a worldwide network of BBSes!
People are calling it an information superhighway!
You can start "surfing" from one BBS to another.
You can be in Canada and connect over the Internet to a BBS in West Germany!
Is your mind blown yet?
It's compatible with all the popular microcomputers, including IBM Compatibles, Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, Acorn Archimedes, and Atari ST.
Beyond viewing overseas BBSes, there's a range of fun things you can find on the internet, including newsgroups, gophers, MUDs, MOOs, and electronic mail!
And now... BlueSky!
Some people say the internet won't catch on. But I saw it running on one of the Solaris workstations at a local university, and I have to say it looked pretty spiffy!