Nath

@Nath@aussie.zone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Man Opts Out Of The Algorithm By Throwing His Fucking Phone Off A Bridge And Going To The Pub⁩ ⁨⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Lemmy is not the Fediverse, and I happen to think it’s pretty easy to figure out. But I’ve come from USENET > Forums > Reddit to get here. Someone who hasn’t had that background sees a bunch of random links that are probably not of interest to them. Reddit has it’s default “Popular” feed, and before that had a bunch of curated default subscriptions to get people started. Lemmy doesn’t. There’s Subscribed, Local and All.

  “All” is a mess. It’s super US-centric and all about their politics.
  “Local” is of course dependant on the Instance. I live on ours, so I happen to like it. But, I can see how someone (particularly a non-Australian) wouldn’t find it to their taste. Most instances will have little (or maybe one busy Community) in Local.
  And finally you have “Subscribed”. Which is empty by default. How is a new person who has never been on Reddit supposed to know what to do with that link? It literally has nothing.

  Now, take that new person to something like Mastodon. Your default feed there is just the equivalent of All. And odds are someone’s first taste of Mastodon is going to be all about US politics and people yelling about something. Again, not a great first impression.

  “The Algorithm” as we loosely define it is supposed to fix this. It is supposed to bring you content you like, learn what you like and bring you more content that you like.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Man Opts Out Of The Algorithm By Throwing His Fucking Phone Off A Bridge And Going To The Pub⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s funny to me that everyone agrees the algorithm is bad; yet one of the common criticisms of Lemmy/Fediverse is its lack of an algorithm - making it less user-friendly to new users.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Blanche d'Alpuget, acclaimed writer and wife of Bob Hawke, dies at 82⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I was surprised by the coverage this death received yesterday. When you need to remind people who your spouse was and why you were famous for 15 minutes in the 90’s, I don’t know that you are exactly famous enough for several news articles about your death.

  Nothing against her, just if you only provided her name I wouldn’t have had a clue who she was.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Real Capitalism Hasn't Been Attempted (tm)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  So, this is the back aisle of some old Coles somewhere in rural Queensland?
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  (That’s a Coles sign describing whatever is in the next aisle)

  I’m guessing they’re out of toilet paper? What’s the context of the photo?

  Leaving aside the “socialism/capitalism” thing for a moment, is there something going on in Queensland leading to shortages of something? Or is this guy using a photo from 2020?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Labor plans crackdown on social media algorithms as Taylor says he’s ‘deeply sceptical’⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This was your original Facebook feed. Chronological updates from your friends. Like a stream of shower thoughts, kid updates, silly shit someone’s family member said etc. I deleted Facebook when it was still like this, so it’s kept that vibe in my mind.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Crossbenchers push for an import ban on 'pervert' smart glasses⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  People drastically under-estimate how often they are observed by camera already.

  If you’re in public in a place with 50 people within 100m of you, you are very likely already under the gaze of more than one camera. If you are in a place open to the public, you are likely already under the case of more than one camera. If you are on a main road, you are likely being watched. I’m even starting to see cameras watching cycle paths.

  We aren’t at USA/England/China levels of surveillance, yet - but it’s pretty ubiquitous. About the only place that’s free for your privacy now is your home, maybe your friends’/family homes and places where nobody else is around. Want privacy? Head out of town. Don’t take your phone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Crossbenchers push for an import ban on 'pervert' smart glasses⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The Facebook ones do have a light, but there are guides online to show you how to cut the cable to disable it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Australia wants more data centres. A disagreement over power sources stands in the way⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This article raises so many questions. Who is “Australia” in this context? Nobody wants data centres anywhere near them.
  What is wrong with the proposed limitation that they provide their own renewable power? That seems like a very reasonable limitation to me. Economics 101: Increase demand and not supply, and prices increase. We’ll all be paying more for power for these data centres we don’t want.
  What the hell are they proposing to do about water consumption? A data centre devoted to LLM (AI) infrastructure uses twice as much water as a regular data centre. Something like 15-20 megalitres per day. That’s equivalent to something like 30,000 - 40,000 homes.

  Are they trying to get these things built before everyone realises how much they are going to affect us all? It sure seems like it. This is exactly like a mining company proposing to build a mine in your neighbourhood. And should be subject to just as much scrutiny and planning that scenario would be.

  Zero LLM data centres might be a little optimistic. We will likely need a couple. But careful planning is required to make them as sustainable and non-impactful to the environment as possible. They use the power of ~100,000 homes and the water of ~40,000. I do not want to be carrying that extra burden in my community.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discussion Thread 🐝 Tuesday 25 August 2026⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m reminded of the Sarah J. Maas Throne of Glass series. I got to the end of the series, and really enjoyed it. I get to the online reader reviews and it was a real eye-opener! It was all women, and all they were talking about was who was shacking up with whom. Nothing about the plot. I don’t know whether this series spawned the “Romantacy” genre that is now totally a thing, but yeah - I sort of missed most of that, being caught up in the actual story.

  It was as though the Wyrdkeys, the Valg, the war and all the kingdoms coming together to fight for a better world were just a backdrop for everyone to hook up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A 'huge' trade-off: One Nation's pitch for cheaper cigarettes⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  To save anyone else the search: Chretien was the Canadian Prime Minister from 1993-2003.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discussion Thread 📚 Sunday 16 August 2026⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder whether you could get away with making a paper called ‘Old Age’? If it was a proper broadsheet with all the good stuff, I reckon it’d go well. 😀

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discussion Thread 📚 Sunday 16 August 2026⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I really, really miss the donut van at Preston Markets.
  (He’s still there, I’m not).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One of Australia's most senior Catholic figures convicted of sexual abuse crimes⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Most of them got away with it (died before facing justice).
  Tragically, an awful lot of their victims have also died from things like suicide and overdoses etc.

  Before we get too complacent that this is a blight only within one flavour of Christianity, it’s important to remember we had a whole royal commission into institutional child abuse that found this happening everywhere where adults had access to children. Parents are better today at being wary around who they leave their kids alone with.
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  And these are just institutionalised instances. It is/was more prevalent that abuse would be from a family member/friend.

• Deliberately misleading party name approved for Victorian electionwww.abc.net.au ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨australianpolitics@aussie.zone⁩ | ⁨5⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gina Rinehart funded flights and fashion show for Pauline Hanson⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Despite my differences with senator Hanson (and boy howdy, there are many), I will respect that what you see is what you get with her. She has one trick, and she does it openly and honestly. She hasn’t tried hiding expenses, she stomps on people in her own party when they are caught out and doesn’t try to defend them. I even think she was treated a bit harshly in 2003 when she was imprisoned for electoral fraud. I have never begrudged her existence, nor the rights of the whackos who have repeatedly voted for her. I see value in her as a litmus test of that end of the scale in the electorate. Yes she is racist. She, she is frankly awful. But on the other hand, those things are not against the law.

  These two have been associated with one another in the public mind for about 18 months now. There has been intense scrutiny on them since they went to the US President’s Halloween party last year. They’ve both spoken publicly about their friendship when asked about it. As to keeping it low-key, how much do we know about the friends of any politician? They didn’t raise it, but didn’t shy away from it either.

  I actually worked with the Minister of Veteran Affairs 25 years ago when he was a uni student. While we not exactly close, I’d have called him a mate at that time (I haven’t heard from him since I left there in 2004). So there’s a little low-key disclosure for you. 🙂

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gina Rinehart funded flights and fashion show for Pauline Hanson⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Controversial take, but I don’t have as huge an issue with this. Senator Hanson is upfront about the gifts, it’s all in the open. She’s clear that Ms Rinehart is a friend and speaks to her about government policy. Gina is also pretty straight-up about her agenda and a desire to turn Australia MAGA. This influence is crystal clear. We (the public) are aware that this is happening and have the ability and opportunity to decide whether we will accept this relationship in our public figures (and vote accordingly). A straight-up transfer of money in return for senatorial votes would be corruption and a step too far. Yes, this friendship skirts that line pretty damn closely.

  I have far more issues with billionaires influencing politics inside a veil of secrecy. We all know it is happening, but we don’t know for certain who those billionaires and politicians are, nor what policies they’re talking about.

  I do have obvious concerns with the Gina/Pauline BFF thing, but I think the “secret mates” are a bigger problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AusAlert emergency warning test: What you need to know and how to prepare⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh it’s WiFi, I wasn’t expecting it to receive the alert. It’s just that my test iOS device for all the other stuff I do (like 6+ Lemmy apps) isn’t much use for testing this thing as it didn’t get the alert.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AusAlert emergency warning test: What you need to know and how to prepare⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Neat! I’ve never seen/used this setting before. Confirmed it is in there. My iPad didn’t get the alert, does iOS have a similar feature? Until just now, I don’t think I would have ever thought of a use for it.
  “You’ve dismissed this notification, but if you want to re-live it for some reason - here it is!”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AusAlert emergency warning test: What you need to know and how to prepare⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Every month? I think Isn’t that super annoying?
  What if there were a genuine emergency on the first Monday of the month? A lot of people would dismiss the alert assuming it’s routine and not even read it. That’s if they hadn’t outright disabled the alert in the first place because of spam.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AusAlert emergency warning test: What you need to know and how to prepare⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  And it stopped far sooner than I expected. If I were upstairs wearing headphones and the phone were downstairs, it is very plausible that I’d miss the alert entirely.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Leggo's, Coles and Aldi selling Chinese tomatoes as 'Australian' and 'Italian' in products, forensic testing finds⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Affecting so many brands, many of whom pride themselves on sourcing from Australian growers. I suspect it’s a subset of the growers themselves (or a single supplier) behind this, rather than the brands. It is too much to believe that 30 brands all sourced from some Chinese supplier independently. I would love to find out how far this rabbit hole goes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AusAlert emergency warning test: What you need to know and how to prepare⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  In the slim chance that someone from whatever department is responsible for this reads about the user experience of Australians:

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  You better keep these emergency alert messages to be super simple sentences like “Danger Will Robinson!! Evacuate now!!”.

  Because once you hit “ok”, the message is gone. No retrieving whatever it said.
  If there had been emergency phone number or radio frequency in there and I missed it, I can’t get whatever the alert said back. That seems stupid to me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Thanks For ~~all the the fish~~ Hosting, Let’s Get an Update⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Our secret is two-fold:

  1. The site is run by a couple of tech nerds with full-time jobs. This is not done for financial gain. We both think the other does all the work on the site. 😃
  2. The biggest cost of these sorts of services is usually labour. And we get that for free.

  You already replied/donated in the last nerd update post.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hanson says domestic violence comments taken 'out of context' as criticism mounts⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Okay then, Senator Hanson: Give us the context. Please explain to us how in context we are supposed to take what you said regarding Domestic Violence. Because when I read things like “If these women are getting abused by men out there, then don’t put up with it”, I struggle to find any context that could be anything except abhorrent.

  How can you defend/explain these quotes to mean something the electorate is meant to get behind? Because honestly, the only quote of yours I’m in agreement with is “I’m growing less tolerant of many journalists within the [mainstream media] and so too are the public,” - but my growing mistrust is more to do with the fact that we have been suddenly talking about you in the past three months after decades of you screaming into the wind.

  I don’t know why you are relevant outside your fringe circles all of a sudden, and I have growing suspicions that there is intent behind this change bringing you to the wider political discourse.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[META] Overseas News - Proposal for increased enforcement of Rule 1⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If we move to a new community and the intent is not to get spammed by non-Australians, then my advice would be to do something similar to the Rage community.

  Keep the word ‘news’ out of the community name so it doesn’t turn up when someone searches for all the news communities to spam to.

  I’m not much fussed either way, I’m happy to set up a new community and archive this one if that’s what everyone wants. I’m happy to leave it with the status quo.

  Personally, I’d probably go with leaving it and urge everyone to be stricter and report stuff that doesn’t belong. I only check the site a couple of times a day, but I gets reports on my phone and usually respond quickly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dave Hughes Urged To Start Negatively Gearing The Rental Property That Albo Is Occupying In His Head⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I haven’t heard his whinging, but I can imagine what he sounds like. He’s got a cushy gig on the telly, has invested in some property and now these changes to help make houses more affordable are reducing the value of his property portfolio.

  Yeah Dave, that’s the point. You’ve done really well for yourself - how about you share some of that with the rest of us. You aren’t a little Aussie battler any more, maybe you’ve forgotten what that feels like?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[META] Overseas News - Proposal for increased enforcement of Rule 1⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I saw the report this morning, saw that you had already permitted the post to stay up and so I stayed out of it. 🙂

  I probably would have removed the post otherwise, but I’m not going to overrule a community mod unless there is a bloody good reason for it. This is what you get when your community is called “worldnews”. Though I believe @arbilp3 is actually Australian. So, I’m not sure it would have made a big difference in this case.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Barnaby Joyce claims Australia is a ‘Christian nation’ and says many First Nations people would agree⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Mr ‘FlipFlop’ Joyce believes whatever will get the most noise this week. He doesn’t give a shit about religion.
  Lived with his wife for years, they had two kids when suddenly it was a political priority to get the kids baptised and for the two of them to get married in a church.

  I’d love for him to back this up: Find 100 first nations Australians who would agree that Australia is a Christian Nation.
  Not because I don’t believe there are 100 First Nations people out there who would say this, there probably are. But because it would do him a galaxy of good to actually go out and meet with 100 First Australians.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Unlike Count Binface, joke parties can’t run in Australian elections — and that’s serious⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If you register a party and get people to vote for you, you’re a part of the democratic process. There are several parties who have what I think of as extreme views.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Greenland stands up to bullying by Australian mining company⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A mining company that nobody has ever heard of with a <5c ASX share price. Are these guys seriously in a position to actually bully anyone?

  They’re mad that they can’t keep digging up Greenland.
  … k.