@ajsadauskas@aus.social
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

ajsadauskas

@ajsadauskas@aus.social

Australian urban planning, public transport, politics, retrocomputing, and tech nerd. Recovering journo. Cat parent. Part-time miserable grump.

Cities for people, not cars! Tech for people, not investors!

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ajsadauskas, to random
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Want to see the National Library of Australia on Mastodon?

Let them know by filling out this survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeU0qddTjTS_j7TG6t9MtuKWk7yWNYtRZZW-z6Ax2x6V7jOfA/viewform

And make sure you share this post so as many people as possible on here have the chance to fill in this survey.

Keeping pet cats indoors would save millions of native animals and billions of dollars. So what's stopping us? (www.abc.net.au)

Broader adoption of keeping cats safe at home would have large benefits for cat welfare, human health, local wildlife and even the economy. So, should cat owners be required to keep their pets contained to their property?...

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@trk @TassieTosser Knox City Council in outer-eastern Melbourne did exactly this: https://www.knox.vic.gov.au/whats-happening/news/keeping-your-cats-safe-and-secured .

The council did it because some of its suburbs (The Basin, Ferntree Gully, Upper Ferntree Gully, parts of Boronia, Lysterfield) border national parks and the Dandenong Ranges.

Younger cats can adapt to living indoors.

But the challenge was with older cats, who are used to roaming around.

The happy medium would be to phase it in over five to 10 years, where any new cats registered or adopted after a particular date have to stay indoors, but older cats can continue to roam.

ajsadauskas, to random
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

When people talk about the need for investment in country railways in Australia, they often have passenger services in mind.

But one of the most important benefits is being able to more efficiently and sustainably moving freight.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2024-05-27/transporting-freight-by-rail-not-road-reducing-emissions/103764752

ajsadauskas, to random
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

I've argued before that it's better to aim to get gross emissions as low as possible, instead of lauding net zero claims that have been achieved through (potentially fraudulent) carbon offsets.

Here's a great illustration of why carbon derivatives are a poor substitute for real emissions cuts:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/article/2024/jun/04/the-warring-conmen-at-the-heart-of-a-5bn-carbon-credit-scam

ajsadauskas, to random
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

There's a hidden economic benefit to great urban planning in cities: Tourism.

People want to visit good public spaces, with walkable (ideally pedestrianised) main streets, quality public transport, and vibrant local communities.

And good quality urbanism is not just for big cities either:

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/6/3/how-to-build-strong-towns-that-are-irresistible-to-tourists?apcid=0062267bab2d55e67ed09101&utm_source=safestreets

codepo8, to random
@codepo8@toot.cafe avatar

The BASIC programming language is now 60 years old.
Did you also start with it?

?OUT OF MEMORY ERROR.
READY
_

https://www.zdnet.com/article/basic-turns-60-why-simplicity-was-this-programming-languages-blessing-and-its-curse/

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@codepo8 In honour of this momentous occasion, I think we need to celebrate the most popular program ever written in BASIC:

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!"
20 GOTO 10

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@melbourne_wanderer @Seagoon_ That's awful 😞

Hope you have a full and speedy recovery.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Seagoon_ I just stopped by the shops quickly, and while I was there, picked up a freshly-made cinnamon donut.

Nom Nom Nom.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Seagoon_ @StudChud UGH! Of course that's when they'd come!

And then instead of one long relaxing shower, you end up with two half showers 😔

Seriously, it's the kind of thing that would make me a grump all day.

I hope it was at least someone or something important at the door.

(If it's just some salesman who's promising to cut your power bills, in the circumstances you're completely justified in chasing him off with a cricket bat.)

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Duenan @Taleya "A mother says a man armed with a knife told her to 'just stop crying' as he forced her to drive and buy laptops in Melbourne's south-east while her six-month-old daughter sat in the back seat.

...

"Police say the victim was getting out of her car at the Stud Park Shopping Centre [in Rowville] last Friday night when she was confronted by a man who threatened her with a knife and forced her back into the driver's seat of her Suzuki S Cross."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-17/woman-child-abducted-melbourne-shopping-centre-laptops-police/103859562

There was a thread on here about someone considering moving to Rowville?

Yeah, here's a good example of why that's a bad idea...

ajsadauskas, to art
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

A vital step forward for Parramatta as Sydney's second CBD.

The old Riverside Theatre is frankly starting to show its age.

Having a modern venue for theatre, concerts, and live music in Western Sydney is an important investment for the arts.

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/theatre/broadway-comes-to-parramatta-new-188-million-theatre-for-western-sydney-20240522-p5jfoh.html

@sydney

ajsadauskas, (edited )
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@tombruzzo @Gibsonisafluffybutt I'm in the process of switching over — I downloaded Firefox quite literally this morning.

I'm also playing around with NextCloud as a possible substitute for a number of Google's other services.

Unfortunately, it looks like Google jumped the shark at this point.

The accountants and managerialists are well and truly in charge. The people who actually cared about building a great search engine, or a great open mobile operating system, have been cast aside.

Panicked decision-making about LLMs and enshittification for profit seems to be the new norm.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@makeasnek On a broader note, I think possibly the best approach for decentralised, open-sourced web search might be an evolution on the SearXNG model.

At the top of the funnel, you have meta search engines that query and aggregate results from a number of smaller niche search engines.

The metasearch engines are open source, anyone with a spare server or a web hosting account can spin one up.

For some larger sites that are trustworthy, such as Wikipedia, the site's own search engine might be what's queried.

For the Fediverse and other similar federated networks, the query is fed through a trusted node on the network.

And then there's a host of smaller niche search engines, which only crawl and index pages on a small number of websites vetted and curated by a human.

(Perhaps on a particular topic? Or a local library or university might curate a list of notable local websites?)

(Alternatively, it might be that a crawler for a web index like Curlie.org only crawls websites chosen by its topic moderators.)

In this manner, you could build a decent web search engine without needing the scale of Google or Microsoft.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@makeasnek @schizoidman YaCy is still around.

And https://searx.space/ is an open source metasearch search engine with many instances. (Try https://searx.be/ if you want to test it out.)

SearX/SearXNG allows you to aggregate results from a number of different search engines. You choose which ones, and they're stored in your browser without setting up an account.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@StudChud @Pilk He may now have softer, more supple and youthful skin, but he'll always be awful on the inside.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Seagoon_ @Alamutjones Stephen King or RL Stine?

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Pilk @melbourne_wanderer Wifey had COVID about a month ago. It was really bad for a week, including intense migraines, but then cleared up.

About a week after most of her symptoms cleared, she began regaining her sense of taste.

A couple of weeks after that, we were in a queue outdoors and she complained: "Ugh I can't stand the smell of cigarettes. Wait — I can smell the smokers! This is amazing! I CAN SMELL THE SMOKERS!"

Your mileage may vary, but for her it was mostly back within a month.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Seagoon_ Maybe Paul Jennings?

Some supernatural event happens to a kid, that causes the grown ups around them to be covered in snot is the most Paul Jennings plot he's never written.

You could even call it something like Unblocked...

timrichards, to random
@timrichards@aus.social avatar

People are weird

Free the fridges! Make dishwashers great again! US conservatives have odd priorities - Emma Beddington https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/19/free-fridges-make-dishwashers-great-again-us-conservatives-odd-priorities

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@timrichards Look at these easily offended snowflakes wanting to intervene in the free market when it doesn't support their 'correct' political position.

They hate freedom — in this case, the freedom to buy an energy efficient appliance — and so are using the might of big government to force their ideological agenda on businesses and ordinary freedom-loving Americans.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@timrichards I think the bigger story is the GFC, and the Iraq/Afghan Wars, put an end to Bush/Reagan neoconservatism as a governing ideology.

That mix of Friedman/Hayek neoliberal economics and American interventionism wasn't ever a great governing ideology. But at least it was at least something.

Now, a lot of the American right's ideology is just anti-leftism.

It's advocating for anything American progressives oppose, and opposing anything the left supports — no matter how inane.

Which leads to legislation to mandate less energy efficient home appliances. For freedom.

mpesce, to random
@mpesce@arvr.social avatar

This is nothing short of a full-stack AI-ification of search. Google is using its Gemini AI to figure out what you’re asking about, whether you’re typing, speaking, taking a picture, or shooting a video.

http://windowscopilot.news/2024/05/16/google-is-redesigning-its-search-engine-and-its-ai-all-the-way-down/

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@mpesce Huge opportunity here for someone to build a search engine that searches web sites.

ajsadauskas, to random
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Australia is not a racist country.

Unless you're a high school student who's wearing traditional Palestinian clothing while studying in the State Library of NSW.

In which case, you'll be escorted out by security: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/03/state-library-of-nsw-guard-asked-student-wearing-keffiyeh-to-leave

ajsadauskas, to afl
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Want to be an AFL media personality? It's easy — just follow the four-step Kane Cornes plan.

  1. Look up which teams that lost on the weekend.

  2. For each of the teams, come up with a reason why either:

a) It's the players' fault. They're too lazy. Don't train hard enough. Don't put in enough effort!
b) It's the players' fault. They're not skilled enough!
c) It's the coach's fault. Bad tactics. Bad strategy. He's allowing those players to be lazy!
d) It's the recruiter's fault. They picked/traded for the wrong players!

  1. Get your producers to find a passage of play, interview, or press conference you can say backs up your claim.

  2. Go on TV or radio and say what you think confidently, as if you're really pissed off about it.

Yeah, the older Richmond players didn't show enough effort. You really don't care — you used to play for Port Adelaide after all.

But you pretend you do on TV and the radio, because it makes great content.

That's really all it takes, folks!

#AFL #footy @afl #Nine #KaneCornes #Adelaide #Melbourne #SouthAustralia #Victoria

ajsadauskas, to llm
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

So Microsoft is shipping a new feature in Windows 11 called Recall, which takes screenshots of what the user is doing every few seconds, and then feeds it into OCR.

And I've read a number of people describe it as useless.

But I disagree.

I'm sure plenty of people will find it very handy.

For example, your friendly local law enforcement agents and prosecutors are likely to find a feature like this very useful.

As will the NSA, the other three-letter agencies in the US, and intelligence agencies around the world.

Including the ones in authoritarian states. A couple of back doors, and it will be so much easier keeping track of who's been typing naughty words like "Prigozhin", "Navalny", or "free Hong Kong".

Not in the state surveillance business? No worries!

Assuming this data isn't locked down properly — and we are talking about Microsoft here — it's sure to find plenty of more mundane uses.

Perhaps for bosses who will no longer need to install keyloggers to snoop on their staff.

Or jealous current and former partners.

Mark my words, this poorly-thought-through attempt to shove LLMs in another place they don't belong to temporarily spike Microsoft's share price will find its uses.

And the next computer I get definitely won't be running Windows.

ajsadauskas, to fediverse
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Time for an ICQ for the Fediverse?

Looks like ICQ is finally shutting down, just as interest in retro internet tools is growing.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/25/24164579/icq-shut-down-june

@fediverse

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