@bignose@theblower.au
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

bignose

@bignose@theblower.au

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bignose, to auspol
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

Yes, it'd be much clearer to expand the question to a simple “Does the person have a religion?” before asking which one.

“[Michael Dove, chair of the Census21 Group, told Crikey that] the current question on the [, “What is the person's religion?”] leads many people to talk about their cultural background rather than what religion they align with.

“It was in the interests of bishops and the church that the “cultural Catholics get counted so the Catholic Church can overstate its relevance, and continue to enjoy the privileged funding, policy, and media access benefits”, he said.

““There’s an awful lot of religious privilege that flows from the census stage and that needs to be changed.””

https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/05/27/2026-census-religion-question-showdown/

bignose, to australia
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

The government is not a household or a business, they are the monopoly issuer of our .

Any they achieve is necessarily money they could have spent on things we need, but chose not to. That's bad.

Do we want a government that taxes more money than they spend?

I don't. I want a government that identifies what needs doing, and spends whatever money required to achieve that.

And taxes based on which parties or activities should not have as much money as they extracted from the economy. Not a fiction of taxation "to spend on" something else.

The federal government should not have a "balanced ", they don't have any need to "find the money" anywhere, they issue as much as they choose to at any time.

That's what a federal spending bill does: The money now exists. It didn't "come from" anywhere. Stop waiting for taxation!

Stop the and pay for things we need!

https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/surplus-vs-deficit-doesnt-matter-its-all-about-the-choices-made/

carnage4life, to random
@carnage4life@mas.to avatar

Has there been a bigger mirage in tech than self driving cars?

Hundreds of billions spent chasing a dream based on compelling demos from over a decade ago with nothing to show for it besides slightly better cruise control and Waymo rides that are more curiosity than utility.

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

@kellogh
> AI prior to deep learning was like that. i think we’ve hit ignition, but things are still out of balance

If by "we've hit ignition" you mean, we're vastly accelerating the consumption of electricity and fresh water in order to power the ever-increasing data centres for this stuff: then yes.

> It’s estimated that a search driven by generative AI uses four to five times the energy of a conventional web search. Within years, large AI systems are likely to need as much energy as entire nations.

> And it’s not just energy. Generative AI systems need enormous amounts of fresh water to cool their processors and generate electricity.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x

@carnage4life

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

@kellogh
> AI does currently use a lot of electricity, but that can change quickly.

Great, so let's force all those corporations to turn them off entirely until then. So that we can preserve what carbon budget and water table remains, instead of pissing them away in pursuit of investor dreams.

@carnage4life

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

@kellogh

My plan for what? You're implying I have personal responsibility to regulate the consumption of finite state-level natural resources by multi-billion-dollar corporations?

No. We do this by applying pressure where we can: collectively, through our government representatives.

They must work in our interests, immediately curb these destructive looters, and prevent anyone else from doing it.

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

@kellogh

Why ask that?

Yes, I did. What follows from that?

No. What follows from that?

Have you called yours? Why would I ask you that?

KathyReid, to random
@KathyReid@aus.social avatar

Last week:

Colleagues using Teams to videoconference from a laptop with only built-in camera and uadio in a fully equipped Zoom Room, because the Zoom Room is harder to use... and there's no training on how to use it.

Great experiences rest on people at both the remote and at the on-site location knowing how to get the best out of technology ...

I also wonder if this is part of the pushback on hybrid - hybrid is harder, and there's an unwillingness to learn how to make it work?

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

@KathyReid

The pressures of getting such systems working, are not neutral. They are going to be distorted to the needs of the decision-makers, the people who approve paying for the work to set it all up.

And those decision-makers tend to be ones who flit in and out of shared office spaces, and tend to not have a dedicated workspace optimised for long-term use by specific people.

So the long-term use case is de-emphasised, to emphasise the needs of the fly-in fly-out manager types.

People whose dedicated workspaces are well set up for themselves, will then find the shared central office to be crap compared to what they could be using.

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

@KathyReid
> So what I'm hearing here is that the shared videoconf rooms are set up for people who don't have a dedicated workspace, like managers.

Kiiiind of; but I'm saying something different, I think.

Rather, there's an unstated, perhaps unexamined, requirement of "the decision maker needs to approve the set-up before we call this meeting room setup done".

And there isn't sufficient consideration of "Who else will be using this space, maybe even more often; And what are their needs?"

The assumption often is that the decision maker already knows all the relevant requirements. And that's just far too often untrue.

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

@KathyReid

The "doesn't have a dedicated workspace" aspect, I raised because that's often a requirement the fly-in fly-out manager is insufficiently aware of. They typically don't have one, they don't have experience with one, so the shared meeting room doesn't get examined for whether it's good for long-term use.

And doesn't get examined for whether it's at least as good as what the workers could have without coming into the shared meeting room at all.

petergleick, (edited ) to random

The stupid, it burns.

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

@petergleick

Makes about as much sense as "we would have at any given time a thousand Genghis Khans"

KathyReid, to random
@KathyReid@aus.social avatar

Sure, it costs businesses money to deal with cash, but it always has. Isn't making customers pay extra for a cost that should already be priced into product or service delivery double dipping?

What we really should be talking about is how companies like banks are mining transaction and usin g it to profile people

is still less traceable than card, and I am tired of being tracked and surveilled digitally.

I am appalled this is the thinking of the - it's clear whose interests they are serving.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-12/asx-markets-business-live-tuesday-december-12-rba-interest-rates/103216764#

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

@KathyReid
> Sure, it costs businesses money to deal with cash, but it always has.

This (that it costs a business more to deal with cash than to deal with online payment platforms) is a premise in their argument, but I think even this isn't supported by the facts.

If cash were more expensive, we'd expect businesses that can offer a discount would choose to charge more for a cash payment than for online-platform payment. They're not stupid about the relative sizes of their expenses.

Most businesses I deal with that have the option, will give a steep discount if you pay with cash. I would bet the discount is around the size of the transaction fee they are required to pay when a customer pays with card etc.

So, no I think eliminating cash will be an immediate increase in expenses for most customer-facing businesses.

petergleick, to random

Look, the Biden administration has done, and will do, things I absolutely disagree with.

But there is nothing I can imagine them doing that would get me to either not vote or vote for the fascist, corrupt, traitorous party.

The stakes are too high.

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

@petergleick Best make known to Biden's party, that they need to move him aside and instead front someone who people will actually vote for, then.

timrichards, to twitter
@timrichards@aus.social avatar

Following Musk's latest hateful antics, I've messaged the ABC (Australia) to urge then to leave X entirely on the basis that it's clearly turned into a platform supporting far-right hate speech. Also urged them to follow the BBC's example in setting up a presence here.

If you'd like to do the same, here's the ABC's feedback form: https://help.abc.net.au/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360000036795

#X

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

@timrichards I selected "Complaint"

and the page immediately said
> To lodge a complaint, we are redirecting you to ABC’s Complaints page

so I assume you didn't make a complaint about remaining on Twitter?

kcarruthers, (edited ) to random
@kcarruthers@mastodon.social avatar

CEOs are hugely expensive. Why not automate them?
If a single role is as expensive as thousands of workers, it is surely the prime candidate for robot-induced redundancy.

https://www.newstatesman.com/business/companies/2023/05/ceos-salaries-expensive-automate-robots

https://archive.is/FDPly

bignose, (edited )
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

Seriously, I want every journalist to ask this question from the New Statesman:
> CEOs are hugely expensive. Why not automate them?

To CEOs, to corporate boards, to government lawmakers. To anyone who advocates bringing bullshit "AI" automation into an existing business.

I predict that any justification that works for "oh we can't automate CEOs", will work even better for the actual workers. Press them until that is crystal clear to your audience.

And any remaining "justifications", I further predict will be flawed nonsense that justify nothing.

hat tip: @kcarruthers

oscarjiminy, to auspol
@oscarjiminy@aus.social avatar

This has a lot more nuance than most folks are comfortable taking onboard and people’s motivations, one way or another, are often little to do with material improvement or empowerment.

Vote however you see fit but look a little deeper than Farnham feels, network floundering and cashed up campaign agendas.

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

I plan to because that aligns me with the overwhelming majority of Indigenous people.

The people who were consulted, for many years; who designed this process; the people who designed this constitutional amendment now.

They want an , there's been plenty of investigation of the risks and the benefits, and the case is clear.

I'm not going to tell the overwhelming majority of Indigenous people consulted, that I know better than them on what they need. I will .

KathyReid, to random
@KathyReid@aus.social avatar

Today in "my brain is too full of different languages": I was writing a Python function using function nameOfFunc(arguments) and wondering why it wasn't working 🙃

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

clearly because you used cursed camelCaseName when snake_case_name is what's required @KathyReid

KathyReid, to random
@KathyReid@aus.social avatar

I have had enough of pandas today

bignose,
@bignose@theblower.au avatar

@KathyReid moving on to a different charismatic megafauna

that hopefully does not make you think of data frame matrix multiplication

phire, to random
@phire@phire.place avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    bignose,
    @bignose@theblower.au avatar

    @phire In his book Intuition Pumps, Daniel Dennett calls this "the "Surely" Klaxon":

    > Dennett asks us to treat the word “surely” as a rhetorical warning sign that an author of an argumentative essay has stated an “ill-examined ‘truism’” without offering sufficient reason or evidence, hoping the reader will quickly agree and move on.

    In your example, it's our own brain presenting an easy excuse for not thinking through the implications, hoping we will move on to the fun part of hacking something up.

    https://www.openculture.com/2013/05/philosopher_daniel_dennett_presents_seven_tools_for_critical_thinking.html

    dgar, to random
    @dgar@aus.social avatar

    Some photos I took while on Earth.

    Lighting illuminates the sky revealing silhouettes of trees being blown in the wind.
    They say it’s the pollution that gives us our wonderful sunsets.
    A eucalyptus tree is silhouetted by the light in the sky just before dawn.

    bignose,
    @bignose@theblower.au avatar

    Depends how many, @kierkegaank.

    What am I supposed to do about these 30–50 feral venemous lorikeets when they come for my horses

    @dgar

    yakkoj, to random
    @yakkoj@fosstodon.org avatar

    So apparently I'm a personal affront to the creators of South Park just for giving a shit about something.

    Fine with me

    bignose,
    @bignose@theblower.au avatar

    I'm with Lindy West when she says:

    > Obviously irreverence has its place, but some things do deserve reverence. [South Park's] sort of untethered omnidirectional irreverence is not particularly helpful when you’re trying to salvage a wildly unjust, oppressive, and unequal society. The alt-right feels like a full generation of boys who think that Cartman is aspirational. Good luck with that.

    https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a29686446/lindy-west-the-witches-are-coming-interview-south-park/

    @yakkoj

    bignose, to random
    @bignose@theblower.au avatar

    @KathyReid
    https://aus.social/@KathyReid/110856572534085835

    > OMG EVERYTHING [in the Windows OS] IS GEARED TOWARD COLLECTING AND TRACKING YOUR DATA.
    > The OS wants to track my browsing, my geo-location, my telemetry data. Everything.

    It infuriates me that MS Windows probably for this very reason, is beloved by "enterprise" organisations, that want to impose detailed surveillance over all workers.

    In the span of one job (since last year) MS Windows has blithely expanded this to also say "oh and also we're feeding everything you do on this machine into our AI engine, good thing we never had to ask permission for that hahaha"

    No option at all for the user to reject this and still do their job. When do we make that illegal?

    Brendanjones, to australia
    @Brendanjones@fosstodon.org avatar

    Can somebody help me understand this please: why would we ever give out carbon credits for not chopping down a forest? “Here’s a forest we shouldn’t cut down anyway. Because we’re not cutting it down, now you can burn more fossil fuels!”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/20/nsw-liberal-plan-to-generate-carbon-credits-by-ending-logging-in-state-forests-snubbed-by-federal-labor

    bignose,
    @bignose@theblower.au avatar

    @Brendanjones
    > why would we ever give out carbon credits for not chopping down a forest?

    The "owner" of the forest would say,: Because it's my forest and I can get money for chopping it down and selling its bits. I'll stop if you pay me enough.

    I would say: Because that's a threat of extortion, yet somehow we don't have the courage to make it illegal to chop down forests that would be useful carbon sinks.

    KathyReid, to random
    @KathyReid@aus.social avatar

    Hot take: Space Karen doesn't have any women on the leadership of his new company, because he has completed his family and doesn't want any more children.

    bignose,
    @bignose@theblower.au avatar

    @KathyReid Quite the opposite. Like his father before him, Elno holds to the fiction that we have an "underpopulation crisis" and considers he should personally father more children. To help.

    > A day after Insider reported that Musk had twins with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, the billionaire tweeted, "doing my best to help the under population crisis," and that "a collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far."

    https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-says-may-have-more-children-500-too-many-2022-10

    KathyReid, to fediverse
    @KathyReid@aus.social avatar

    Good morning, :fediverse: It's time for me to do another post, where I hand-select interesting people on you may wish to follow - using my reach to more closely connect us together.

    @digitisethedawn is a which posts content from The Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women 1888-1905, digitised in by the National Library of Australia (@nlagovau on Twitter) as the result of a campaign spear-headed by @kattekrab. A delight for and history scholars 🎓 📚 🇦🇺

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/title/252

    @tiny_m is new to , please make them welcome (not assuming pronouns). They enjoy , , , and ✨

    @divinetechygirl is Christina and they are into and 🔒

    @hamub is Humphrey Butau, who blogs about , and 🐍. Humprey is a and and you can read their blog at https://hbutau.github.io/ 🇿🇼

    @ssharwood is the APAC editor of tech news site, The Register (don't know if they're on Mastodon, the results for them don't look legit). Into enterprise , , , and 🇦🇺

    @DanielleVossebeld is a candidate on of in and researches design and 🇳🇱

    @ErikUden is the for mastodon.de and is an enthusiast (too!) 🐧 🇩🇪

    @antonwasson is a in interested in , and 🇦🇺

    @LR is Luca Rossi, who is a in at the of 🇩🇰

    That's all for today, don't forget to share your own lists ❤️

    bignose,
    @bignose@theblower.au avatar

    @KathyReid

    > It's time for me to do another

    I mis-read this as "do another "

    where I hand-pick a selection of posts that are Wrong and Need Correction.

    Then I remembered, we don't have to do that here, we can just relate and talk like regular people.

    nosherwan, to australia
    @nosherwan@fosstodon.org avatar

    🦘🏦
    While Australian banks refuse most scam victims refunds, the UK is making them mandatory; Australia could follow the UK

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-11/uk-laws-force-to-banks-reimburse-scam-victims-unless-negligent/102563000



    bignose,
    @bignose@theblower.au avatar

    I agree that it's a good idea for privately-held banks to be liable to pay the victim a refund (incentive to design the system better)

    and simultaneously predict that they'd respond by simply making the customer experience vastly more painful for the average customer, with little real increase in security.

    @nosherwan

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