Nath
@Nath@aussie.zone
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🍩 Friday 26 September 2025 1 day ago:
Ooh! That’s new (and awesome). It wasn’t when I left Melbourne. In fairness, it wasn’t $5 to Mandurah (where Spud’s train is going) when I left Melbourne, either.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🍩 Friday 26 September 2025 1 day ago:
Hahaha it’s funny how I see this view almost every day and take it for granted. Welcome to Perth. 😃
Don’t get too used to our weather, it might make you cross when you get back to Melbourne.
Try also not to think about how that train is doing the equivalent of Southern Cross to Geelong in a similar time for $5. - Comment on I feel like there's been a sudden influx on new active aussie.zone users. Coincidence, or did something happen? 4 days ago:
Costs aren’t actually that high when the nerd labour is free. Hosting costs were around $200/mo last time I looked. It’s really a @lodion@aussie.zone question, though.
- Comment on How important is an Albanese-Trump meeting? 4 days ago:
It’d be funny if he just didn’t bother meeting with the US president. Even better if he was in town doing stuff at the UN and then just not even trying to meet.
- Comment on I feel like there's been a sudden influx on new active aussie.zone users. Coincidence, or did something happen? 6 days ago:
We’re pretty protective of our ~500ish regulars. We are not a large instance, but our users are very engaged. We don’t want them to be drowned out by a massive influx of new accounts utterly shifting the vibe of the site overnight.
It’s already a problem of us both being Perth-based: we’re weak on admin coverage first thing Eastern Time as that tends to be 3am-7am here. An explosion of users and an early morning incident is something it’s just easier to avoid.
At the end of the day, we’re a pair of nerdy full-time family guys doing this as a hobby. We aren’t interested in monetising this site or making it our jobs.
- Comment on I feel like there's been a sudden influx on new active aussie.zone users. Coincidence, or did something happen? 6 days ago:
It’s a steady two or so new accounts per day. Occasionally Reddit does something silly and we get a wave of them, but that hasn’t happened for a few months.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🧢 Thursday 18 September 2025 1 week ago:
Heh. I think I must gloss over that community. Like, I see the posts and never tap on them. I don’t think I’ve ever commented in there.
I am not at all useful in such a community, I fear. 😞
- Comment on Kmart broke privacy laws by using facial recognition technology, commissioner finds 1 week ago:
I have never understood what the logic of that was. Put the checkouts in the middle of the store so you might see something you like on the way out and go back through the checkout again?
It’d need to be some amazing deal for me to do that. And if it’s near the exit, that in theory means it’s near the entrance and I have probably already seen this deal.
- Comment on Kmart broke privacy laws by using facial recognition technology, commissioner finds 1 week ago:
I spent a few years as a trainer and one of the induction training sessions I took every new starter through was the Australian Privacy Principals. Every single new starter regardless of their role in the business went through these.
I struggle to believe that anyone a management level in any medium-to-large organisation dealing with customers is not fully aware of these principals.
The data collected about you needs to be necessary for the business to provide services to you. You have the right to not provide any information if it isn’t required to provide their primary service. You have a right at any time to all the information a business has on you. These have all been breached. Potentially other principals.
- Comment on Australians too dependent on government, says Sussan Ley 1 week ago:
“It has become almost taboo in politics to suggest that not everyone is entitled to every government benefit,” she said, declaring “a time of dependency” has eroded “our national character”.
Still on about that whole “age of entitlement” thing?
While not naming specifics, she vowed to be “unrelenting” in cutting “low-value” government programs and promised to “help people off welfare and into self-reliance”.
Didn’t Mr Dutton make this same mistake? Promise to cut stuff but not name what he’d cut because he knew it’d be unpopular? It appears that Mr Dutton’s deputy thought this was a good plan. It isn’t. Tell us specifically what you want to cut. Particularly if you want more money to go to Defence. Tell us explicitly what you’d sacrifice to make that happen.
The overall vibe of her speech is that government subsidies are meant to be targeted and not applicable to all Australians. Which is a weird take for me. If you want us all to pay taxes, then we should all be entitled to the benefits we qualify for. Otherwise, what am I paying taxes for? I particularly liked the quote that “We are essentially running a peacetime economy on emergency fiscal settings. That is obviously not sustainable.” I can’t think of a better way to tell the electorate that you are out of touch with this cost of living crisis than this quote. You may not be feeling this fiscal emergency, but most Australians certainly are.
- Submitted 1 week ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 6 comments
- Comment on Hastie flags demotion or resignation should Liberals not abandon net zero 1 week ago:
I don’t think dropping this bloke would make them less electable.
- Submitted 1 week ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 6 comments
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🍰 Wednesday 10 September 2025 2 weeks ago:
There are some essential criteria for a place to live:
- 3+ bedrooms
- 2+ bathrooms (there are four of us including a teenager)
- Inside the catchment of the high school.
With those points, there are presently two places in our suburb for $750/week. Moving is a lot of effort to save $2,600 in a year - assuming either place is comparable to our present (fairly nice) townhouse.
It honestly does appear to be the going rate for houses in Perth. Even going out of the school catchment doesn’t save much. The “cheap” suburbs with crime being a variable are still $550-$600/week. Which is what we were paying for a decent 4 bedroom home in the next suburb over only three years ago. Housing prices in Perth have gone bananas.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🍰 Wednesday 10 September 2025 2 weeks ago:
“Dear Nath & wifey,
In lines with 'jus coz policies, we’re increasing your rent to $800/week starting somedate soon.
lots of love,
Real estate agent on behalf of boomer landlord who has at least three other properties with us.”So much for the raise my wife just earned through her awesomeness. 😞
$41,600 per year in just rent. - Comment on Financial fallout of Woolworths, Coles underpayments could climb past $1 billion 2 weeks ago:
Good. They already pay a low wage for what their staff put up with, and apparently society have deemed these people are “essential”.
Well, bloody pay them their money, then.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🥸 Wednesday 3 September 2025 3 weeks ago:
Seven whole hours? In a single night?
Image - Comment on Never ask... 3 weeks ago:
I don’t understand, Bob. Your grandfather was an immigrant from Lebanon. My Grandma was an immigrant from England. I see no difference. I have no idea why you’d be sensitive on this topic.
Even if your platform is ‘Stop immigrants coming here’, you can be proud of your Middle Eastern heritage and maintain that the present cultural mix of Australians is a part of our new local culture now, while saying we lack the infrastructure to take more immigration at this time. You’d even have something of a case worth discussing, if that were your platform.
But by being all huffy about your middle eastern heritage and combining it with talking points about integration, you’re just being racist.
Accept that you aren’t 100% white. Accept that Australia is not 100% white. Accept that our white Aussie kids are going to marry non-white Aussie kids - this is already happening and is already “normal” (if there is such a word). Australia is not and has never been a “white” country.
- Comment on ABS decision to reuse biased, coercive Census religion question puts human rights in the spotlight 3 weeks ago:
Of all the things going on in the country, the specific wording of a census question is right up there on my list. 😃
- Comment on Ignorance is bliss 4 weeks ago:
I usually compare Fediverse to email, as that’s familiar to everyone online. You can email people on the same domain, you can email people on other domains.
You can even send emails that become sms messages, which is sorta like interacting with Mastodon folk.
- Comment on Vikurfjara (& Reynisfjara in comments) 4 weeks ago:
I love the volcanic black sand. I experienced it in Vanuatu. It is super rough on hot days if your feet are bare however. 🔥
- Comment on Caught lemmy in the "wild" 4 weeks ago:
I love you for sharing it with is on the opposite end of the globe! It’s 17,000km from Reykjavik to Melbourne - about 85% to antipode distance!
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🧀 Thursday 28 August 2025 4 weeks ago:
From the way he was talking it sounded like it was a routine delivery until it wasn’t there.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🧀 Thursday 28 August 2025 4 weeks ago:
Dad called me upset that someone had stolen his delivery. Congrats arseholes, you have yourselves a month’s supply of doggie insulin. It’s totally useless to you.
Except that it cost dad $530, and it needs to be chilled. So even if you return it tomorrow, it’s no good for the dog.(It’ll probably be covered by contents insurance because the delivery driver left a photo of it on the doorstep, but even $200 excess is not a trivial amount for a pensioner in his 80s)
- Comment on Officers shot dead in Porepunkah while serving warrant 4 weeks ago:
The ABC can confirm police were executing a warrant for historical sex offences at a property near Porepunkah when the shooting began.
Police believe the shooter identifies as a “sovereign citizen”,
Sovereign citizens believe the government is illegitimate and use pseudo-law — a collection of legal-sounding concepts that have no basis in actual law — to target government institutions.
The shooter remains on the run.
I have a suspicion they will struggle to take this one alive. Which is a pity, he deserves to chill in a cage.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🎨 Monday 25 August 2025 4 weeks ago:
I’ve never seen the value in it personally, but I work in a field where you can usually get a job.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🎨 Monday 25 August 2025 4 weeks ago:
Woolies would like to remind you that Christmas is only 4 months away and it’s time to start thinking about spending season.
- Comment on Discussion Thread 🎨 Monday 25 August 2025 4 weeks ago:
You can buy insurance from being made redundant, but it’s bloody expensive.
- Comment on ‘Long may she reign’: How powerful is Gina Rinehart? 4 weeks ago:
Conjuring a future in which Australian Defence Force vehicles, ships and planes could be stranded without fuel
As farcical as this image is, I’d actually love to live in a world where two nations at odds with one another have to call a ceasefire because they’ve exhausted their emissions budgets.
- Comment on More AZ issues 19/8/25 5 weeks ago:
Possibly. It’d be a terrible way to get that data if so. You could just spin up a Lemmy instance and federate with all of Lemmy far easier than trying to scrape all the web front-ends. Also, we try to fly under the radar from the Internet a bit. We opt out of Google searches, Amazon, Apple and GPTBot for example.
While our data is all human-generated (attractive), we’re a pretty small userbase. There are shinier web sites to scrape than us.
