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

2026-05-19 21:39:11 GMT

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

2026-05-03 12:14:20 GMT

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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 GMT

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

2026-04-08 22:30:34 GMT

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 GMT

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 GMT

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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 GMT

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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)

2026-03-02 01:22:39 GMT

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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 GMT

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 GMT

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

2025-12-28 09:32:24 GMT

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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 GMT

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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 GMT

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 GMT

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 GMT

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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 GMT

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 GMT

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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 GMT

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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 GMT

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 GMT

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 GMT

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 04:57:21 GMT

So I went to F-Droid and attempted to download the public transport plugin for Kvaesitso.
And I got a Google Play Protect popup message warning "harmful app detected".
It gave no further details about why this app is harmful.
Does anyone know if this app is harmful? If so how?
Or is this Google being a monopolist and blocking competing open source apps?
#Google #Android #AskFedi #FDroid #GooglePlay #degooglization #degoogleyourlife #Kvaesitso #infosec

2025-10-25 03:07:03 GMT

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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 GMT

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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 GMT

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 GMT

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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 GMT

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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 GMT

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

2025-10-03 12:34:35 GMT

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 GMT

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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 GMT

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 GMT

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 GMT

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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 GMT

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

2025-08-21 03:02:37 GMT

Whoopsies! The Commonwealth Bank was forced to hire back laid off workers, after its AI chatbot led to an *increase* in customer service calls 🤣
"Commonwealth Bank has reversed its decision to cut dozens of jobs replaced by artificial intelligence after conceding at the Fair Work Commission it still needs humans to meet its growing workloads.
"CBA chief executive Matt Comyn... said the bank had engaged with staff affected by AI and was now inviting them to stay in their roles or accept voluntary redundancy.
...
"The bank was the first in the sector to directly link redundancies to AI when it announced last month it would cut 45 call centre roles because of a new voicebot system it had introduced to answer customer queries.
...
"Despite claiming the voicebot had reduced call volumes by 2000 a week, CBA was forced to admit calls had actually increased as managers scrambled to offer overtime and even pull team leaders onto the phones.
"CBA apologised and admitted it did not properly consider the workloads on its teams."
Source: https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/cba-u-turns-on-ai-job-cuts-calls-back-humans-20250820-p5moif
No paywall: https://archive.is/uArfF
#capitalism #AI #LLM #ChatGPT #ChatBots #ArtificialIntelligence #LargeLanguageModels #business #auspol #ausbiz

2025-08-21 00:19:34 GMT

Chris Minns is incompetent at budget managent and out of touch with the public.
A pipeline of rail projects is the cheapest way to build rail.
It means construction workers and engineers can take their experience from one project to another.
Meanwhile, decade-long gaps between projects means that experience is lost, so you have to retrain staff, and you need to bring in expensive international consultants.
And you need to dip into the labour pool for housing and construction to fill those roles, slowing down the construction of housing!
"As the city’s newest infrastructure offspring celebrated its first birthday this week, complete with cupcakes, balloons and trainspotters recreating its very first trip, adoration for the underground train system cannot be underestimated. The passenger numbers tell the story.
"Take the new Martin Place station. In 2024, forecasts predicted an average 15,600 passenger movements through its gates during each morning peak. By June this year, less than 12 months since it opened, that figure had already hit 17,200.
"Gadigal station, near Town Hall, boasts similar popularity. Daily passenger movements in the AM commuter rush have hit 9400, up from the forecast 7500. Other stations lag their expected numbers, including Crows Nest and Barangaroo, but there is no doubt that Sydney has fallen for the metro.
"Sydney Metro chief executive Peter Regan says the reason for higher-than-anticipated numbers is obvious. Metro trains offer faster trips than the heavy rail system from the north shore to the CBD.
"It is often standing room only, but that is the point. The metro is designed to move more people more quickly and more reliably than its older counterpart. Crowding is par for the course, as it is in every other major metro system around the world."
A large part of the catchment for Barangaroo is currently a vacant plot of land. As that urban development project continues, the numbers will definitely go up.
But this gets to the broader point: The people of Sydney have experienced what a modern metro is like, and they want more of them.
Chris Minns, an out-of-touch fool who thinks he'll win votes from talkback radio listeners by cosplaying as a fiscal conservative, is out of touch with the people.
The metro also opens up the possibility for more dense housing, which is something the state needs.
What's not mentioned in this article is that car-brained Chris wants to build another motorway tunnel under Sydney Harbour that will carry far fewer people than the metro, and also motorways up to the Northern Beaches.
"The answer depends on which political party you ask. The NSW Labor government, which has been able to bask in the glory of opening the biggest transport project in a generation, has ruled out building new metros beyond those under construction. Premier Chris Minns is unapologetic."
Chris Minns is to the right of the NSW Liberal Party. When you're a Labor Party premier and the Young Liberals have more abitious and progressive urban planning policies, it's time to really think about what you're doing in politics.
"Minns has also dashed any hopes of new stations for the under-construction Metro West [to Parramatta] having the same artistic flair that has given Sydney its first Instagrammable public transport project."
So he's not a social progressive, and he's a philistine.
Seriously, the progressive side of politics would be better off if this guy resigned.
"Similarly, the opposition has seized on Sydney’s love affair with the metro which was, after all, a Coalition project. On the day Sydney was wishing the metro a happy birthday, Opposition Leader Mark Speakman was declaring that the Coalition had “metro ambitions”, creating its most notable point of difference with the government to date."
Minns and his government should be deeply and existentially ashamed of their performance.
"The government could increase the frequency of the peak services to every three minutes, down from the current four, or it could add extra carriages. But those changes also come with considerable operating costs and this is a Labor government determined not to be a spendthrift."
The biggest op-ex for new trains is usually the driver and guard's salary. But these are driverless trains!
Most of the costs of additional services are upfront capital costs, rather than operational expernses.
And here's the thing: Capex and Opex becomes *cheaper* per passenger to operate as the number of passengers increases, which you accomplish through more frequent services.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/sydney-has-reached-peak-metro-is-it-all-downhill-from-here-20250820-p5moco.html
No paywall: https://archive.is/YrCPX
#auspol #train #trains #rail #rwailway #railways #metro #sydney #parramatta #nswpol

2025-08-19 22:38:32 GMT

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@nprofile…cnv8 Really great points!
The one thing I'd add: Remember when you were that age.
Think back to your very first job, when you first started. How nervous and uncertain you felt.
And I'm sure you made some honest mistakes in that job too.
I know I did! Like one time I overbalanced a drink tray and managed to spill half a glass of Solo on a customer's head.
Remember how you were a young adult and drank too much on occasion?
Remember the times you engaged in risky behaviour at that age? Think about some of the times you're lucky you didn't get seriously hurt or injured doing something stupid.
I'm sure there are plenty of things from that age you'd do differently in hindsight.
You learnt, and you grew up.
They're still learning, but they'll get there.

2025-08-15 05:19:42 GMT

For a recent job interview, I pulled together a strategy document that outlined how and why the organisation should do x, y, z.
Well, they didn't give me the job, but they gladly took my idea, and are now doing x, y, and z.
Pricks.
#jobs #employment #job #capitalism

2025-07-30 09:58:52 GMT

Australian government: We want to ban anyone under the age of 16 accessing social media.
Google, Meta, etc: You can't do this to us... Errr... Our customers! This is big government interfering in the free market! We believe in freedom! Government does best when it does least!
Australian government: Unfortunately, it seems there's no other way around this, except to require /every/ Australian to provide ID to prove their identity before using social media services.
Google, Meta, etc: No way! There's no chance in... Hang on a sec, you're making people provide us with what?
Australian government: Unfortunately, yes. Every single Australian will basically have to provide uploads of their identity documents to Google, Meta, and the other Silicon Valley surveillance mongers.
How else will they prove they're over 16?
Google, Meta, etc: What sorts of documents?
Australian government: Oh, passports, drivers licences, identity cards...
Google, Meta, etc: Well, we will still blatantly disregard and circumvent your no social media for 16-year-olds policy.
But we do like the idea of everyone giving us even more information about themselves. The law's the law, right?
Australian government: I mean, it will be done through neutral 3rd parties...
Google, Meta, etc: Oh we totally understand. Google Play Secure Identity Verification and Meta for Business Age Verification will totally be organised into separate holding companies.
We uphold the law in every jurisdiction we work in after all...
#auspol #satire

2025-07-06 06:29:38 GMT

Seriously. How are Tesla cars even allowed on the roads? And why isn't Elon Musk in prison?!
"Autonomous driving is the core promise around which Elon Musk has built his company. Tesla has never delivered a truly self-driving vehicle, yet the richest person in the world keeps repeating the claim that his cars will soon drive entirely without human help. Is Tesla’s autopilot really as advanced as he says?
"The Tesla Files suggest otherwise. They contain more than 2,400 customer complaints about unintended acceleration and more than 1,500 braking issues – 139 involving emergency braking without cause, and 383 phantom braking events triggered by false collision warnings. More than 1,000 crashes are documented. A separate spreadsheet on driver-assistance incidents where customers raised safety concerns lists more than 3,000 entries. The oldest date from 2015, the most recent from March 2022."
...
"At 3.18pm on 10 May 2018, Stefan Meier lost control of his Model S on the A2 highway near the Monte Ceneri tunnel. Travelling at about 100kmh (62mph), he ploughed through several warning markers and traffic signs before crashing into a slanted guardrail. “The collision with the guardrail launches the vehicle into the air, where it flips several times before landing,” investigators would write later.
"The car came to rest more than 70 metres away, on the opposite side of the road, leaving a trail of wreckage. According to witnesses, the Model S burst into flames while still airborne. Several passersby tried to open the doors and rescue the driver, but they couldn’t unlock the car. When they heard explosions and saw flames through the windows, they retreated. Even the firefighters, who arrived 20 minutes later, could do nothing but watch the Tesla burn.
...
"Oliver Schuster was returning from a business meeting on 13 April 2021 when his black Model X veered off highway B194 between Loitz and Schönbeck in north-east Germany. It was 12.50pm when the car left the road and crashed into a tree... That evening, the police broke the news: after the crash [his] car had burst into flames. He had burned to death – with the fire brigade watching helplessly.
"We examined accident reports, eyewitness accounts, crash-site photos and correspondence with Tesla. In both cases, investigators had requested vehicle data from Tesla, and the company hadn’t provided it. In Meier’s case, Tesla staff claimed no data was available. In Schuster’s, they said there was no relevant data."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/05/the-vehicle-suddenly-accelerated-with-our-baby-in-it-the-terrifying-truth-about-why-teslas-cars-keep-crashing
#Tesla #Elon #ElonMusk #car #cars #auto #tesla #auspol #uspol #urbanism #capitalism

2025-07-04 12:55:25 GMT

There's a very big difference between what "government efficiency" means to you, and what it means to a neoliberal.
To you, "efficiency" means something like when you show up in a hospital emergency room, you are seen by a doctor promptly, and they are properly equipped to treat you.
To a neoliberal, "efficiency" means the hospital has as few staff and resources as possible.
As a result, you are likely to be seen by a doctor less promptly, and they will be less well equipped to treat you.
But rich people will pay less tax.
#auspol #politics #economics #economy #government #neoliberalism

2025-07-04 07:59:57 GMT

The enshittification of the large language models continues.
On top of its already extortionately expensive cloud plans, Adobe is now charging users for credits each time they use generative AI features:
"Generative credits allow the use of generative AI features powered by Firefly in the applications to which you are entitled. There is only one type of generative credit which can be used for Standard and Premium generative AI features. However, to use premium features, you must be on a plan with access to those features."
https://helpx.adobe.com/au/firefly/get-set-up/learn-the-basics/generative-credits-overview.html
Imagine laying off actual human artists, designers, and photographers for this crap to save money.
Then having to pay an economic rent on top of your monthly subscription to big tech.
#GenAI #ChatGPT #AI #Adobe #enshittaification

2025-07-04 07:46:25 GMT

Coles, one of the two supermarket chains that controls ~80% of the Australian grocery market by some estimates, has just struck a deal with Palantir for staff surveillance tech.
As in Trump-backing techbro Peter Thiel's surveillance tech company Palantir. The same company that sells surveillance tech to the CIA is now selling surveillance tech to Coles.
From the ABC:
"For an intelligence agency, Palantir's tools might help identify a terror cell through phone calls and financial transactions; in a healthcare organisation, they might find ways to save money by shortening emergency department stays.
"For Coles, the goal is to "optimise its workforce" by analysing "over 10 billion rows of data, comprising each store, team member, shift and allocation across all intervals in a day, every day".
"The announcement is linked to Coles' plan to save a billion dollars over the next four years, and follows a 2019 big data deal with Microsoft, an effort to build robotic delivery centres, and the introduction of customer-tracking cameras and other high-tech security measures.
...
""Rather than paying workers more or passing savings onto customers, Coles has chosen to invest millions in technology that will "address workforce-related spend" as part of a larger effort to cut costs by a billion dollars over the next four years. Food (and the labour needed to grow, pack and ship it) is transformed from a human need to an optimisation problem."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-09/coles-just-hired-us-defence-contractor-palantir/103443504
Antitrust legislation to break up the Australian supermarket duopoly is well overdue.
#auspol

2025-07-04 02:02:52 GMT

A great example of how people power can overturn bad political decisions.
The Melbourne City Council has abandoned proposed cuts to its cycling budget, following public outcry: https://bicyclenetwork.com.au/newsroom/2025/07/03/town-hall-abandons-bike-budget-cuts/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=Mastodon
"In a dramatic change of tune, the City of Melbourne last week abandoned proposals in its draft 2025 budget to cut funding from its bike infrastructure program.
"The council restored much, but not all, of the funding that as recently as last year had been officially earmarked for expanding and upgrading the city's bike lanes over the next four years.
"The 2025 budget and council plan formally adopted by councillors this week folded $6 million back into the program, up to a total of $15 million over the next four years.
"The change of course followed a powerful community outcry over the breach of the council's former commitments on bike infrastructure delivery.
"Almost 1500 people made submissions to the council on the proposed bike underspend, an unprecedented number."
#auspol #vicpol #cycling #infrastructure #planning #Urbanism

2025-07-01 09:43:42 GMT

"I don't get it.
"After the latest update, all ChatGPT can say is: 'Gravy gravy llama gravy tablet brick potato gravy!'"
— A perplexed developer sometime early next week
#gravy

2025-06-30 09:39:34 GMT

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@nprofile…hw9f And it's exactly what trans people were warning about five or six years ago as the TERFs suddenly got a lot of funding. And mainstream media attention.
Trans women in sports and healthcare for trans teenagers was always the pointy end of a far larger blade.
It was always going to be followed by a more generalised attack on trans people's rights, including passports.
And that was always going to be followed up by puritanical attacks on the rights of cisgendered women and cis queer folks.
If you're a cis woman, then the best way to defend your rights right now is to stand with trans people.
If you're a gay or bi guy, then the best way to defend your rights right now is to stand with trans people.
And if you're a cishet white guy who's not a billionaire or a CEO?
Well, the billionaires who are funding all this are not your friends. They're doing it to distract you from the fact they're picking your pockets.
Do you really want to pay 150% tariff taxes on the stuff you buy while the billionaires pay no tax? Or lose your access to healthcare? Or do more work for less money?
If the answer is no, then the best way to defend your rights right now is to stand with trans people.

2025-06-24 14:42:30 GMT

Are you in your 40s?
Based on life expectancy, climate impacts in the 2060s are in your lifetime.
It's your problem.
In your 20s?
Climate impacts in the 2080s are in your lifetime.
It's your problem.
Have kids under 10?
Climate impacts in 2100 are in their lifetime.
It's your problem.

2025-06-21 15:21:38 GMT

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@nprofile…hujc @nprofile…np6j Here's some more inspiration for storm names:
Exxon CEO: Darren Woods
Shell CEO: Wael Sawan
BP CEO: Murray Auchincloss
Gazprom CEO: Alexey Miller
Woodside CEO: Meg O'Neill
Chevron CEO: Michael Wirth
Santos CEO: Kevin Gallagher
TotalEnergies CEO: Patrick Pouyanné

2025-06-11 06:30:24 GMT

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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 GMT

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 GMT

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 GMT

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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 GMT

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 GMT

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 GMT

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 GMT

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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 GMT

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

2025-04-26 11:12:15 GMT

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 GMT

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 GMT

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 GMT

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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!