You won’t often catch me defending Telstra, but here goes: they didn’t let the copper network fall into disrepair. They did genuinely maintain it at a standard that was pretty close to if not as good as what Telstra did. Those copper cables though were designed for telephony and never designed for the Internet. Some of that copper is over 100 years old. If all the lines needed to handle were plain old telephone, Telstra was doing ok.

We’ll never know whether Telecom would have gone to the Internet at all, as they were a telephone company. I can see Telecom in that alternate universe being all-in on mobile Internet though. It’s an interesting thought discussion.

Apologies, I’ve been doing Friday night things. Um, at a glance, you’ll need lemmy.world admins to help with a lemmy.world account. I’ll take a better look tomorrow, I’m not really in a position to drive cars or admin access just at the moment.

Ha! I was going to say it’s against the rules, but there’s no actual rule in the sub about editorializing news headlines.

I mean, we mostly already have. What I think they should be doing is looking at this simple fact and asking themselves what they can do to make themselves more attractive to the electorate. I don’t think they’re doing that, and that’s a pity. I happen to want multiple viable choices for government. By taking themselves so far off the table as a choice they’re limiting everyone’s options.

Rage at who? Kerr? Fraser? Whitlam? Everyone’s long gone.

The 1975 dismissal is a wonderful case study in both the importance of Government checks and balances as well as the requirement to ensure they are used correctly, so that past mistakes won’t be repeated. It’s also why Australians even today get a little nervous when one party controls the senate alone.

But rage? No. I have nobody to rage at.

Melbourne cabs used to do this routinely (not just from the airport), which lead to them being hated and why Uber was an instant success when it rolled out in Melbourne. You flag them in the city, and they’d roll down the window and ask where you wanted to go. If they didn’t like the response, they’d drive on.

Did this not happen in Sydney?

https://aussie.zone/comment/15915298

Seven months later and these 200g packets are New Low Price. 😀

They used to be $2.59 for the old size and now they’re $2.29 for the new. I’m pretty sure they’ve still gone up, but I’m not going to figure it out on the phone in the aisle.

I’m not against this being a method people can employ for verification. But it won’t be the only method. I’m not going to ask a recovering alcoholic or a Muslim to walk into a pub and buy a beer.

Also: it’s users under 16. Not under 18. While I’m not aware of any users under 18, we did have a 17 year old last year.

This method has been considered, but it wouldn’t catch everyone.

Tbh I would be amazed if anyone in the government knows that Lemmy exists.

It would be unwise to base any sort of response on this assumption. Section 13 of the legislation is pretty clear:

(1) For the purposes of this Act, age‑restricted social media platform means:

(a) an electronic service that satisfies the following conditions:

(i) the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end‑users;
(ii) the service allows end‑users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end‑users;
(iii) the service allows end‑users to post material on the service;
(iv) such other conditions (if any) as are set out in the legislative rules; or

(b) an electronic service specified in the legislative rules;

I’ll cover these “legislative rules” in a sec.

Most of the lists of affected sites you see flying all around the place are misleading, because they’re being used by the media to get engagement rather than helping people to understand the actual law. In short: every site that meets section 13(1a) above is bound by the law. Which includes aussie.zone.

Services that eSafety considers will not be age-restricted social media platforms

These exception lists are important. For reasons, the government has included a provision in the legislation to exclude sites from section 13(1a). There are a whole bunch of provisions in the overall legislation that hang on the magic words “legislative rules”. There are in fact 24 references to legislative rules in the legislation. If you read the thing all the way to section 240 (yes that’s not a typo), you’ll get to this bit:

240 Legislative rules

(1) The Minister may, by legislative instrument, make rules (legislative rules) prescribing matters:

(a) required or permitted by this Act to be prescribed by the legislative rules; or (b) necessary or convenient to be prescribed for carrying out or giving effect to this Act.

In other words, the communications minister can ad-hoc declare that any site/service that meets the criteria in section 13 is exempt from this law whenever she likes.

We have had zero guidance from the government on what “reasonable steps” to ensure users are over 16 looks like. Frankly, I don’t think the government is ready for this law to come in. I won’t be at all surprised if we are given a new date.

All I know is what we won’t be doing:

1. We won’t be pulling a 4chan and totally ignoring the law.
2. We won’t be asking for people’s ID. We are not equipped to deal with that.
3. We won’t be introducing IP blocks from Australian IPs like some sites have done to the UK.
4. We won’t be closing down.

I know this isn’t really answering the question. But our stance hasn’t really changed from ‘wait and see what everyone else does to comply’. I have something of a game in mind, I’ll go that way if our hand is forced on the original date.

It may seem like everyone has solar panels, but alas we don’t. For two-thirds of us, this would not be free anyway.

This doesn’t sound like much, but with very minimal effort, it could save over 10% on your power bill.

Do the washing.
Cook a meal.
Run the dishwasher.
Fill a thermos.
Crank the aircon to cool/heat the house.

If your power bill is $400/month, that’s $40 for doing stuff you were already going to do - just in that 3 hour window each day.

It’s a regular work day for everyone outside Melbourne. So I’ll be doing that.

Isn’t it always?

Did Kerry Greenwood get a book in the works before passing?

Shhhhh! Nobody tell my wife. That’s Christmas pressie fodder, that is!

This is the game I remember from primary school in the 80’s on the Gold Coast. Then the family moved to WA and I don’t think the game existed here. I haven’t thought about this game in over 40 years!

Because the rest of us don’t have houses and aren’t set to lose half our net worth by such policy changes. So, we have a variety of election policies that we prioritise.

When Labor propose making changes to the status quo, even with mild changes, they have historically lost the election.

It might be different next time, but it’d be a huge political risk to propose changes again after previous rejections.

Yes and no. There are a lot of owner-occupiers in Australia now who on paper are Millionaires, and they like being Millionaires. They are not going to like it if/when that status is stripped from them.

If houses nationally suddenly dropped in value by 50%, even if people’s mortgages were halved at the same time, I expect the change would still be met with hostility. It’s the unspoken truth of housing affordability: far too many Australians are happy with the present housing prices. They’re outnumbered by the rest of us, but they are a large enough voting block to decide any election.

I’ll buy the Aldi Tim Tam knockoffs when Tim Tams have been full-price for too long. I refuse to pay $6-$7 for 11 biscuits, but will pick up a few packets when I find them half-price and use them up over the subsequent weeks.

The Aldi “Divines” are like most Aldi knock-off products: Not as good as the real deal, but close enough that you don’t really miss the real product. And they’re even a little cheaper than half-price Tim Tams.

Until this article, I’d never heard of Penguins. But I know the brand McVities and I like their Digestives, I’d probably have been willing to give Penguins a chance.

On a biological level, dogs are all the same species. There’s obviously something beyond biology in terms of classification. And humans have whatever it is: you only need to watch an NBA game or a 100m Olympic final to see this in action.

I agree that most categories we put people into are artificial, but it’d be an error to say it’s all social.

I also think our species superpower is not our physical makeup. Our ability to work together and use our brains is what sets us apart from the other species on the planet, and on that front the playing field is level.