shirro

@shirro@aussie.zone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why isn't the Albanese government boasting about falling inflation?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think the ALP or RBA have done a bad job at all and I think the ALP deserve another term. But it is sensible not to make a big deal about the economy or they risk looking arrogant and out of touch.

  While inflation may have slowed to a stop, many incomes are a long way from catching up. Cost of living pressures are still a huge deal for many people. There are certainly some people who have bounced back well and are taking their holidays and spending but they probably aren’t the ones who are going to punish the ALP in the burbs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China’s ambassador criticises Australia’s move to limit DeepSeek⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  The model, which to most people is the far more important part, is not open source according to the criteria set by the Open Source Initiative. They own the trademark and police the Open Source® definition. It is fairly clear.

  DeepSeek’s list of restrictions on use of their model puts them in a similar position to Meta’s LLama License is still not Open Source. I don’t think it makes sense to say a binary blob is either auditable or is source code but you can say the same of any LLM. There is no way to check the provenance or replicate it or re-build it.

  The code they released is under an approved Open Source licence. The MIT licence is very permissive and is compatible with and can be incorporated into closed source and free software while being neither itself. No argument there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China’s ambassador criticises Australia’s move to limit DeepSeek⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  The code they have released is under the MIT licence which is most definitely an OSI approved Open Source licence.

  The model’s licence grants rights in perpetuity to use and redistribute but imposes a number of conditions on usage. I would concede that it does not satisfy the conditions to be considered an open source license do to those conditions which exclude military use, harming minors, defamatory content, generating misinformation etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Albanese in trouble as polling shows Dutton most likely to be next PM⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You are free to vote for the Socialist Alliance if you want but they aren’t winning any seats. You can vote for the Greens but they won’t do much better. Whether you like it or not the ALP were founded by Australian workers to give them a political voice and they have done that for over 120 years and delivered some huge wins. They are the reason we have a public health system, pensions, super, minimum wage, somewhat decent working conditions etc.

  I have no idea why someone who wants politics to move to the left would shit on the ALP who are hanging in there as best as they can while the world is turning to shit. The people deserting the ALP aren’t going to the left. Those that are they can get back on preferences. Nobody is being blocked. You can’t sell your message to the Australian people and that isn’t Labor’s fault. They clearly have the same problems.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Albanese in trouble as polling shows Dutton most likely to be next PM⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wouldn’t assume that. There is too much us vs them divisiveness going around. A lot of people, even those who have some really twisted beliefs are salvageable with a bit of outreach.

  I think some of the shift is just the economy. People are impatient for change and the global economy and coalition legacy haven’t allowed the ALP deliver the sort of miracles they pulled during the global financial crisis. People are frustrated and don’t know how to direct it.

  The nastier side is that some ordinary working people have got sucked up into a bunch of far right politics without really understanding what is motivating it or who it serves and Dutton stands to gain those votes from Labor. It isn’t the whole country. Traditional party voters and traditional values still exist. Dutton stands to benefit, basically for free, from the divisive, extremist politics flooding in from overseas. But its potentially also his vulnerability to be associated with a brand that might quickly turn toxic in Australia depending on overseas developments.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Albanese in trouble as polling shows Dutton most likely to be next PM⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They act the way they do because they get attacked if they don’t. They don’t want to upset the mining lobby, property developers, Murdoch press who will fund huge campaigns against them. Musk runs twitter which has influence and can slip people like Joe Rogan money to tell his listeners that Labor is attacking their rights or some bullshit. Pissing of Trump isnt smart as his executive power is unchecked and he can impose petty revenge tariffs that hurt our economy and workers.

  Don’t think the ALP are timid because they are weak or unimaginative. They tread a fine line between being tolerated by powerful elites who can toss them out and implementing an agenda that benefits all Australians.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Temu recalls flammable glow-in-the-dark jumper after 8yo girl suffers burns⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Who the fuck buys shit off temu? Those sites are a dumping ground for products that don’t meet the already lax quality and regulatory requirements of our retailers. China can make very high quality products to equally high standards but where is the incentive when consumers are brain dead and buy mountains of crap instead of save to buy quality then look after it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Labor looks likely to win 2025 Election⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There were probably extenuating circumstances after 2019 but I have no idea what was going on under the Hockey and Morrison treasuries. Hockey might have been disinterested but Morrison was a disaster. They kept on taking on more debt and where was it going? Not increased services for taxpayers. Mates? Waste? Corruption? Who knows?

  Our percentage of government debt to GDP still isn’t too bad in global terms. Even under the coalition while it was lax management and dodgy deals it wasn’t going to break the nation.

  It was certainly going up under Gillard but very notable the massive outrage in the press ceased as that continued and considerably worsened under successive coalition governments. Extremely biased press coverage and complete dumbarsery from the Australian public to accept the media spin when the debt figures are public record.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Labor looks likely to win 2025 Election⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They inherited a bit of a mess thanks to covid, the global economy and the previous government. Inflation seems under control but I think they could still be punished by the many people who are struggling. Also they have created divisions with unions and other traditional supporters that are going to be an ongoing issue. The ALP are on some dangerous ground blessing some unions over others depending on factional support and politics instead of the interests of workers. They shouldn’t take anything for granted.

  A huge amount of power resides with the ultra wealthy who own the media platforms. Musk could go on the attack as he thinks he is God-Emporer of the world now. Murdoch will be hostile. Industry groups will be funding campaigns. Foreign governments and corporations will be funding anti-democratic, divisive politics to weaken us. They will need to work very hard and be very creative to get their message across in this environment.

  I think we could very easily wake up to a Dutton government with the labor machine shaking their heads in disbelief. A huge proportion of the population get a completely different algorithmic feed of what is going on in the world and then they all form their echo chambers and it takes over the work place and community. The ALP will need to get out in the community and see how broken the information environment has become.

  And for the people who think Albo has been piss-weak on some issues, the reality is the ALP can’t piss off the wrong people because of the above. They are going to have to sit in the middle, placate big business and fossil fuels and nibble away at stuff and be content with being the coalition-lite. Put a minor party or independent above them if you don’t like it but this isn’t the time to walk away.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Labor looks likely to win 2025 Election⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Donkey votes are crazy in Australia with a preferential system. Just rank your preferences. All the bad parties are not equally bad. You owe it to yourself, your family and your country to put them in order. Your competition is some ignorant fuck who is going to put the worst team first because they hate everything and everyone. No point whinging when they win. You can at least counter their vote.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Users from Other Instances⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It the tragedy of the commons. It is inevitable. Anything good is always ruined by the bad behavior of a few.

  It isn’t too bad currently compared to other platforms due to the low traffic. There are many richer targets for manipulators and crazies where they can reach a wider audience.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hundreds of elective surgeries cancelled as 50,000 nurses and midwives walk off job in NSW⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Massive difference in education/qualification between average police and nurses. You need a high school certificate to become a cop and at minimum a diploma for enrolled nurse or an undergraduate degree to start on a career as an RN and with specialization the skies the limit. All that time and expense studying while a police officer can be earning good money.

  Pay for nurses and to some extent teachers has a basis in historical sexism. Even as these occupations became increasingly professional and demanded much higher levels of education they retained the stigma of being womens jobs. Its a joke.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Private health insurance is a dud. That’s why a majority of Australians don’t have it⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  We keep it out of habit and because the Government bribes us.

  Some people probably get good value out of it. There is a lot of faith healing stuff on their policies and those practitioners rely a lot on over-servicing for their income so the people into that shit likely make claims. There is nothing in it for us. Partner went into hospital once and I said why didn’t you use the card to get a room upgrade with nicer wallpaper and its basically not worth the effort. I’m not complaining because if they were offering value it would be at the expense of the public system and peoples health. But hey hugely overcharge for policies that are basically useless and never get claims.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nacc to reconsider whether to investigate robodebt after ‘apprehended bias’ finding against commissioner⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In a country where a 10yo indigenous kid can be held fully responsible for their crimes we still can’t prosecute rich and powerful people who have full comprehension of their actions and know they will never face consequences. We can lower the age of criminal responsibility to sweep inconvenient social issues created by bad economic and social policy under the carpet. So why can’t we lower the bar for criminal responsibility in cases of maladministration, fraud and favoritism by public officials. Surely they should be held to higher standards than some ignorant kid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'You're not my king': [Senator] Lidia Thorpe escorted away after outburst [at Charles III in Parliament House]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it is more about framing than values. The leading media frame the discussion in biased and emotive terms that then carries over unquestioning into other media, the pub, workplace and social media. Lidia isn’t the only person speaking up for indigenous rights or questioning the monarchy but the others rarely get coverage. Lidia seeks attention and the media uses it for their own purposes and they both get what they want.

  There is nothing more Australian than disrespect for authority the media tells us when mythogolizing the Anzacs. What could be more Aussie than a digger not saluting British officers. The media tells us implicitly who can protest and who can’t, who is deserving of a voice and who isn’t and which authorities can be questioned and which can not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Chicken Salt Australia's MSG?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I suspect this shit originates with social media influencers representing companies selling flavoured salt. Many countries have seasoned salt since long before us. We mostly only put it on chips and people are split on whether they like it or not. I would prefer gravy and cheese or better still put the chips in an AB/HSP. I think it is hugely overrated. In actual cooking and other snacks we still have MSG and other sources of umami like fish sauce, soy, bouillon etc.

  Nobody is putting chicken salt on their sushi, kebab or banh mi or the hundreds of other takeaway foods we eat that aren’t chips.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'You're not my king': [Senator] Lidia Thorpe escorted away after outburst [at Charles III in Parliament House]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It is historical. We have a reasonably stable political system as does the UK and so our government has evolved through consensus since the restoration of the British monarchy.

  Australia slowing but steadily made all the necessary laws to become a fully sovereign independent nation but we retained an Australian monarch who follows the same rules of succession as the British monarch. I expect the people who worked to obtain our sovereign independence thought the monarchy would be dealt with next and there was an attempt and it got sunk by a nasty scaremongering campaign. Some of the misinformation still circulates today and it has become part of many people’s beliefs.

  We need a massive campaign to educate the population so we can achieve the sort of constructive and sensible consensus that are the hallmark of our successful and stable democracy. Unfortunately both social and mainstream media will promote increasingly partisan and divisive misinformation for their own purposes. I am sure many advocates for reform don’t want to deal with the hyper-partisan negativity and army of cookers that will arise flying monarchist flags. Perhaps if the monarchy is left alone they will disappear up their own arses and make it easier.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'You're not my king': [Senator] Lidia Thorpe escorted away after outburst [at Charles III in Parliament House]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lidia is losing here attention seeking edginess. She needs to smear herself in shit while yelling sexist and racist comments or something. We still don’t care.

  I don’t know why she gets attention for saying the least controversial thing that which is mainstream popular opinion in Australia. Except ofcourse the media is controlled by out of touch regressive monarchist elites who want to lump the rest of us in the crazy bin for wanting a modern independent Australia.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Netflix raises prices as password boost fades⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They cancelled one too many shows we liked a long time ago and we swore off Netflix for life. Never going back. If they ever make another good show I will wait awhile to see if they cancel it or ruin it before I go get it from somewhere else. Their burned a lot of their old loyal customers that made them a success and now they have to acquire new customers faster than they lose them which isn’t sustainable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CrowdStrike impact on aussie.zone?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Pretty much the entire Internet runs on Linux or BSD. The systems are cheaper, more reliable and more flexible than Windows. Also you put only what you need in a container or virtual machine and it runs with such limited privileges there is really no need to have intrusive one-size-fits-all malware detection systems as it would only increase the attack surface and make the system more fragile.

  Microsoft spent a lot of money increasing mind share in education and creating developer tools in the past that led to a massive ecosystem developing business logic with their tools. It created a huge software legacy that isn’t going to be replaced any time soon. That leaves enterprise IT in a very different position to orgs running Internet services as they need to secure this legacy from modern threats while facing budget and staffing pressures.

  Most Internet facing services were created more recently with tools popular at the time (Rails and PHP at the time of Twitter/Facebook), then Golang, Python, and more recently lemmy uses Rust which has only been in stable release for a decade. While of these languages and associated tools run cross platform, Linux is generally preferred for deployment and often has the most mature support though I believe Netflix is a heavy user of FreeBSD.

  The only notable Windows backed “Internet scale” website that isn’t a frontend to some internal business system that I can think of was Stack Overflow though there are probably others.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Joe Biden mistakenly calls Ukraine leader 'President Putin', then Trump as vice president⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I am not in the US and struggle to understand why things work the way they do but it seems large parts of the country are impossibly conservative in ways that outsiders simply can’t comprehend. Things that seem like common sense to everyone else can’t happen there for very deep cultural reasons that aren’t in the normal experience of people in other western democracies. They depend on their Supreme Court to decide law on things that elsewhere are determined by legislation because any politician taking a political stance is painting a target on themselves. It doesn’t seem like an environment favorable to young leaders who want to make a difference.

  The country was broken by electing a man with brown skin and the thought of electing a woman after sent them firmly down the path to Christian nationalist fascism. Not sure I would want to see how they react to a young candidate. I think the age of the president is by far a lesser concern than their executive team and policies and given both are extremely old and with very obvious health issues they cancel out so people should focus on more important differences.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are US states, school districts banning smartphones in schools?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A camera in every pocket isn’t so good for the ASD kid being mainstreamed into high school with a severe phobia of having his picture taken.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are US states, school districts banning smartphones in schools?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Got several kids at regular public schools (not in US) and their policy never allowed phones during school hours from the start. It is pragmatic and doesn’t cause any drama. The kids get messages home if needed and can collect phones when they leave. It is a relatively normal society where kids walk and ride to school by themselves and parents aren’t obsessed with stalking kids or bubble wrapping them.

  Schools have a duty of care and sadly are as much baby sitters for working parents as they are places of learning and phones create more problems than they introduce opportunities.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨South Australia proposes a ban on political donations⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Electoral donations are kind of arms length influence. I think we are well beyond that in SA where politician’s families and future careers are deeply intertwined with the businesses and organizations seeking influence.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon's sister is a NEET shut-in⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lindt is positioned as a premium supermarket brand in some places where it is usually a little better and more expensive than the default brand eg Cadbury. For many people it would be seen as a bit of a treat over their regular supermarket brand.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Enshittification Continues: Discord to begin showing advertisements on it's free platform⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Most of these platforms make no money but have taken huge amounts of VC funding which they have burned through. For the VCs to unload it and cash out they need to show the product can be monetised and them try and shift it before the users leave the platform. Idiot users want all the features of a product developed by lots of talented full time paid staff but don’t want to pay for it themselves so they leap from startup to startup then complain when the inevitable happens while dismissing open source alternatives as inadequate for their needs. Why should we care? I don’t.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon buys an air fryer⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It is a small fan forced oven. Good for heating up frozen snacks but usually too small to cope with large families and probably not worth bothering if you have a good oven. Since I have a completely shit oven that cooks unevenly, never the right temp, takes ages to heat and heats the whole house up in summer just to make some chicken nuggets for the kids I think they are awesome. If I actually gave a shit about cooking I probably wouldn’t bother. If was single I would probably still rate the toaster oven as the most versatile benchtop appliance (though the biggest fire risk) followed by sandwich press but if you have to heat up manufactured rendered chicken waste shaped like dinosaurs for kids they are fucking brilliant.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The fall of Firefox: Mozilla's once-popular web browser slides into irrelevance⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I made an effort to only use Firefox because browser diversity is important for.the web. It can be rough sometimes when things like.chromecast only work.via unstable extensions.

  I suspect the Mozilla corporate structure and leadership needs to be reviewed. They don’t seem to know where they are going and get sidetracked a lot.

  Things like lack of good cross.platform.support for passkeys (fido2/ctap stuff) is going to hurt them even more as people won’t be able to use Firefox to login to many sites on Linux where there is currently no blessed platform libraries for this. Unfortunately stuff like that is going to drag me back to Chrome for some stuff which handles this fine on Linux.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Producers Talk Janeway/Chakotay, Season 2 Legacy Connections, And Season 3 Hopes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Prodigy is excellent. A lot of people who would have enjoyed it never got the chance to watch it.

  We had the first few episodes on one of our streaming services and the whole family enjoyed them but they must have lost the rights and we never got any more. I signed up to Paramount which wasn’t always available in our part of the world mainly to watch SNW. It was very disappointing to see Prodigy episodes listed but showing video unavailable. They had a fantastic entry point into the franchise for younger viewers that still managed to keep adults engaged.

  My junior high school kid said nobody his age even knows what Star Trek is. This seemed crazy to me but then I realized most people have Netflix and or Disney and Paramount+ is practically unheard of here. The movie reboots stopped ages ago. The franchise really is dead for young viewers in large parts of the world. Which makes it even more amazing how badly Paramount has handled the licensing and promotion of Prodigy,

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨SNW: Subspace Rhapsody | "Status Report" Lyric Video⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  If I didn’t have yt premium I would be ad blocking or give up and go elsewhere so I don’t know what youtube ads look like. I don’t tolerate advertising well. Do they really monetise their channel promotions? I guess that is because Paramount is going broke, and also perhaps part of why they are going broke.