tau @ Tau @aussie.zone

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27

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91

Joined

2 yr. ago

I looked into volunteering for the local SES once (when I was looking for stuff to do with my life after uni) and they turned me down, so actually accepting people who are interested is something that might help with their numbers.

The gender pay gap is not about “equal pay for equal work”

Indeed, it seems to be primarily about making rage bait headlines.

Women work less hours on average, with considerably more working part time and those who work full time working less hours than men overall (so less overtime pay). What are you going to do to fix that gap, force women to work more? Between that and less women choosing to work in various higher paid and more physical/dangerous jobs (e.g. trades, mining) it's no wonder there's a difference.

Indeed, so now both the roads and cars are a lot safer I would be very happy to increase speed limits - particularly on highways and country roads. The idea that speed is the root of all evil however has been pushed enough that an unfortunate amount of people believe it, as can be seen by how this post has been dogpiled with downvotes despite the article presenting a quite sensible view. I even got several downvotes elsewhere in the thead for pointing out that cars are actually safer now than in the 70s, as if that was somehow a contentious point of view.

I could live with that tradeoff, but I'd have to see the regional speeds raised first because I don't believe that would actually happen given how risk-averse our governments are. Instead regional roads keep getting their speed limits lowered and any suggestion of raising them raises cries of outrage - typically from people who aren't even in the area and who get scared driving on roads without streetlights.

That is unfortunately true, for example I find it sadly impressive that one has a good chance of getting classified info simply by starting an argument on the War Thunder forums...

I'm not familiar with them, though I did just have a quick browse of wikipedia and their privacy page. From that minimal impression I'd rate their online service as better than DeepSeek (they do claim your data is not used for training, stored in Sweden, encrypted, and deleted after 30 days) but ultimately it's still got the same problem as other providers in that you have to just believe they'll actually follow what they say they do. For use with your own personal info this might be an acceptable risk if the company seems reputable otherwise, on the other end of the scale for anything security classified it'd be way too much risk.

You'd have to be mad to put important information into any AI model unless you're hosting it locally and know it isn't sending info anywhere (the latter being the hard part to verify). All of the online AI services really should be blocked if departments/companies are taking security seriously.

We don't do them anywhere near as much as America apparently does but since I believe you're around Brisbane I can pretty much guarantee you've driven on concrete roads (it'd be a lot less likely if you lived in Woop Woop). Look for it on primary routes that get a lot of heavy vehicle traffic - for example head south on the Pacific Highway and you'll find large sections of concrete.

My point was that if you're writing an article talking about how much Australians spend on cycling/walking infrastructure you should at least mention that federal numbers are not the whole picture and that federal is not the level of government that is going to cover most of said infrastructure. Omitting this smacks of the author just looking for a low number to draw attention/outrage.

Why are they focussing on federal funding only? I would expect federal funding to go largely to the sorts of roads which are important on a broad scale but less desirable for cycling or walking - freeways, highways, major arterial roads, and so forth. State and local government are the levels I would expect to find the majority of cycling and walking investment, it seems odd that these are omitted.

It really shouldn't be, but there has been a lot of money and effort expended over the years here to make people believe speed is the root of all evil. Combine that with the fediverse attracting a larger proportion of who are ideologically against any form of personal motorised transport and anything involving cars or bikes can become surprisingly contentious even before you bring speed into the mix.

I mean I won't disagree with this, I am definitely of the opinion that people should be taught more driving skills.

I do doubt though that we'd end up with a useful course even if further training was mandated, so I am dubious as to the outcome of such a scheme. I say this as someone who's been through a few licencing courses with a motorbike licence, MR licence, and forklift licence (and various other high risk or work related training courses). The truck licence didn't really teach me anything new and was just a case of driving around making it look like you're checking blind spots etc, the forklift licence practical was incredibly basic, and the theory part of stuff like the forklift and goods hoist license was basically served up to us on a silver platter rather than requiring learning. The motorbike courses at least tried to explain a bunch of basic concepts and handling but was stymied in practice by only being allowed to go 20km/h max in a carpark (after which feel free to head out out and do 90km/h on busy roads...).

About the only thing on that front that’s changed since the 70s have been improved breaks

Actually the biggest difference there is modern tyres. These are considerably better than those in the 70s - for an easy visualisation compare MotoGP lean angles and cornering speed from that era to what even consumer sport touring motorcycle tyres can handle these days (they weren't cornering so comparatively slow for no reason, the tyres were the main limiting factor).

You also have modern suspension making a marked improvement on road handling, ABS making it so a chimpanzee can get the best braking without skidding, and in the last decade or so ESC has been making a notable difference to stability under braking and swerving. All together the average modern car will outbrake and outhandle an average 70s car by a long shot, particularly when not driven by an expert.

The claim that vehicles are newer and safer because they have new technologies is also pretty shaky

A significant proportion of cars do have the mentioned features though, blind spot monitoring is a nice easy one to notice and you'll see a lot of cars do have it when you're driving around.

Even without these specific features though modern cars are much safer than cars were when our speed limits were set. This even applies to cars now considered old - my own car for example now qualifies for historic rego and can drive quite safely at 130km/h (and is both less likely to get into a crash and much more survivable in the event of one than any 70s car).

Back when the 100km/h limit was set this was actually a fast speed for the cars and roads of the era. Now it is not - speed limits have become a recommended speed rather than anywhere near the limits of safety (assuming average car and normal conditions). Highway/freeway limits in particular are well due for an increase rather than the decreases (literally and effectively) they keep receiving.

do you even know about your own history, and the history of this so-called country? Invasion Day celebrates the anniversary of Cook’s invasion of these lands.

My irony meter just overloaded...

but also knocking off Rudds head? That doesn’t make much sense.

We are talking about the sort of people who both think vandalism like this will reflect well upon their cause and continue to attack a statue of Cook around Australia Day when there's a much more relevant statue of Arthur Phillip just a bit further down the road. I think you're giving them too much credit to expect they'd differentiate Rudd for doing the National Apology.

They were becoming a pest up on the mid north coast 20 years ago when I was a kid, used to sneak up and nibble at stuff in the house paddock at night time (as an aside they make a weird noise when disturbed). Hate to think how many must be in the bush up there now.

More recently I've seen a few bouncing across the road heading through the forestry areas on the way to Bega. Hope they don't become too common as hitting one would be even worse damage/safety wise than collecting a large kangaroo and I do go up and down that way reasonably often.

The Starks do look nice - it's good to see more ADR compliant bikes come out. I've actually been tossing around the idea of getting a Surron Ultra Bee for a while as I think it'd be good for single track and more technical fire trails (light weight and reasonable power/range, though would ultimately want a 21/18" wheel setup instead of 19/19"). Range is something that would have to be planned around for fire trail exploration (definitely still more limiting than petrol bikes) but for single track within an area the Ultra Bee would work well for me (I take my bike back and forth in the van already, and generally clock up <50km).

The more powerful e-MTBs seem a good idea for exploring behind gates, I do keep a bit of an eye out for these on the secondhand market as if I found a cheap good one I'd consider it. It'd have to have both decent power and range though as 250w doesn't really do that much going up steep hills and I wouldn't want to be pedalling the added weight back without charge for the motor.

It does sound like it could be fun. I do prefer my bikes to have motors though - I took the mountain bike out the other day and a comparatively very small ~9km climb up a bit over 800m elevation to my destination peak had me severely disliking whoever decided to put a locked gate across a perfectly good fire trail. At least the way back was more fun, downhill almost the whole way made for a much more reasonable pace. I think it'd definitely take me more than a week to cover 1000km relying on pedals only...

Living on top of a shopping centre wouldn't bother me in itself, though it'd lose points in my book if the operator had a controlling interest in the strata.

What would really cause me to avoid such apartments is the same thing that goes for apartments in general - I need somewhere secure to store my motorbikes and tools, and somewhere to work on things. An underground car space and a small chook wire storage cage simply does not work for this - I wouldn't be able to work on my vehicles or use many of my tools, and they'd all get five finger discounted by the end of the first week. I don't care as much about my actual living space (I can get by with small or old places) but being able to easily do stuff like pull my van into the driveway, weld up a copy of VW's special engine support tool, and change the timing belt is pretty important to me and a big reason why I would prefer to avoid apartment living.