Judging from stage one and Sydney’s light rail efforts I’m sure we can make 2km of track take at least a few more years, then after that we can spend a few more years thinking about plans for stage 2B instead of doing that while building 2A…

The idea of like having to put on a comedicly overwrought accent to make a machine understand you is 👌

I’ve tried this to good effect before when I got my current motorbike helmet headset - the voice commands on default settings worked much better when hamming it up with an American accent like one was trying to audition for a part in a Western. Luckily though I ended up finding out that Cardo also trained a British accent option in the settings, and that works a lot better if you want to talk like a normal person.

There are a few actual streets like that in that suburb - I had a look to see if I could find the location of the photo and I think it’s Ganges St.

Thanks :)

I’ve clicked around a bit this morning and so far so good, so all might be well again after your changes.

I looked it up and their normal charge for dogs is $395 while the normal charge for cats is $195 (rabbits normally $80). Pretty steep prices but I guess vaccinations (plus desexing if necessary) and housing/looking after the animals adds up quickly so they need to get enough back to keep operating.

Edit: Also still a lot less than what you see many dog breeders selling dogs for - I’ve looked occasionally and you see people wanting thousands of dollars for a puppy.

The same argument that won the gay marriage plebiscite - people should be equal under the law and, by extension, our constitution.

Last year, Australia showed how unengaged and racist this country remains by refusing to insert an Indigenous advisory voice

Convenient that the author forgot to mention that the very person they’re writing about was a vocal No voter. You can say many things about Lydia Thorpe but politically unengaged is not one of them, and while she might be a little bit racist it’s definitely not against Indigenous people.

I’ll also note that the Tent Embassy had a giant banner hung up urging people to vote No, guess they’re all politically unengaged and racist…

Yes, it makes sense that they’d be the first to lose seats to another non-major candidate. Another possible factor is that the Greens lost protest vote value due to being known as part of the incumbent government - that’s going to attract less of the votes from people who want something different (but aren’t going to vote for the Libs).

That’s pretty much what I was expecting; the Liberals getting enough seats for a majority would have been quite surprising so it was really a matter of how close Lab/Lib would get and who Labor has to negotiate with. I am not surprised that Labour’s primary vote is middling considering it’s been two decades in power, the fact that they still hold power is a real testament to how badly the Libs are received in this town.

The rise of independents is interesting, and I can’t say I dislike a shift away from party based politics. How it turns out is obviously going to be more variable though - I will be curious to see if they retain their seats after a term.

The smartest thing in any of my vehicles is an aftermarket Android Auto unit so I can’t speak from personal experience, but there are various things such cars can do where the connectivity could be useful. Three I can think of are notifications/video of things happening around the vehicle at the time of occurrence (a la Tesla Sentry mode), being able to remotely start the vehicle to give the air con a head start on a hot day, and over the air updates for bug fixes or possible new software features without having to go near a mechanic.

Part of the problem here is that the things that can invade privacy do have genuine use cases, it’s just that you can coopt them to also gain information. For example even the seemingly hard to justify internal cameras could have a genuine safety use by watching the driver for fatigue symptoms. If effective this would save lives over a car model lifespan, so you’re balancing obvious privacy issues against the idea that such inconvenience is worthwhile if it saves a life (a sentiment more typically seen in speed limit debates, but applicable here too).

They tried other designs first but it was found you can’t roller skate in a buffalo herd…

I do think there is something to be said about being wary of modern cars in regards to security. I wouldn’t trust manufacturers as far as I could throw them when it comes to actually making secure systems - particularly when you’re dealing with remote connection capabilities. The focus on China is convenient for the US but I wouldn’t trust their systems either. Ford in particular has been concerning recently by patenting a way of ad serving based on user data a normal person would consider private (such as conversations within their cars). It doesn’t even take the OEM being malicious to be a problem, they only need to miss a security hole…

According to a news article I just read this morning gets the record for coldest spring morning ever recorded in Canberra, so you could say it was pretty chilly.

While you will get the fine notice you shouldn’t have to pay it - there is an option to reply with a reason why you shouldn’t be fined and being overseas at the time would count as a legit excuse.

Yep, like in other elections we do have pre poll and postal voting (with a valid reason and you need to apply for postal) but the standard method is turning up on the day. I’m not sure if that has any effect on turnout compared to other states.

Probably less likely than a federal election but I’d still give it decent odds of finding one (particularly if the school is trying to raise funds for something). I can’t remember exactly whether this was during council or state elections but I have turned up to vote before and not found a sausage sizzle.

Public transport in this area is indeed less attractive if you have any other form of transport, particularly if you live on one side of the ACT/NSW border and commute to the other. Google reckons for example that it’d take me a bit over an hour to get to either of my usual work sites on a bus compared to the 15-20 minutes it takes me normally.

Not mentioned (like usual) is motorbikes as an alternative to cars. The space advantages when it comes to both on road and parking are obvious compared to the usual one person per car (and they use less resources to make, particularly when it comes to EVs) so you’d think anyone actually worried about congestion would do more to encourage their use.

I was wondering if this would happen after seeing Brisbane cancelled their contract, they’ve followed suit pretty quickly.

Yep, they ended up deciding it was sparked by various batteries that had ended up in one of the compactors. Whatever they had for fire protection mustn’t have been enough to stop it once the fire was noticed - I assume the source was within a big pile of recycling so would have required a serious amount of water to put out. It ended up being a rather large fire (one of the local accident chasers has some decent photos) and took out the recycling capability for the whole area. The rubbish piles within ended up smouldering away for a few days after the main fire was put out.

For over a year and a half now I believe most if not all the ACTs recycling has had to be sent to Sydney due to this fire, so I can understand the new centre getting priority when it comes to the waste management budget.

I think the QLD and NSW options are actually decent, which is surprising for a modern flag redesign. Not sure about the Victorian one, could do with either making the symbol more regular (i.e. less finger paint style) or deleting the crown (too hard to keep details on) and making the stars loosely drawn too. WA seems a decent idea but could do with a cleaner swan rather than the ruffled feathers on the back. The SA idea looks pretty good but does have hints of invading Poland due to the imperial eagle magpie. Tasmania however is another one I could get behind.

Not a real fan of the current ACT/NT flags and I don’t think changing to a wavy line helps them, and the idea for the Jervis Bay territory seems a bit too committee style bland for my liking (like most new flag designs I see mentioned).