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shirro

@ shirro @aussie.zone

Posts
1
Comments
292
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Australians will have to verify their age to watch pornography from Monday. Here’s what you need to know

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  • Two observations here. One on the legislation itself and one on the impacts.

    Firstly, not everything that claims to be protecting the children is being pushed for that purpose and our politicians may not even know the real reasons. Reportedly (I have not verified) in the USA some age verification legislation is being pushed by groups funded largely by Meta (Facebook). One reason suggested is that they have a massive exposure to fines in the US via COPPA and age verification could offer them protection. Ofcourse another reason might be that the tech industry is substantially funded by harvesting people's information, habits and connections for various nefarious and profitable purposes and age verification can be a new source of information about people. There are companies like Palantir especially that will be attempting to mine as much of that information as possible. The eSafety commissioner's previous employment and associations make her appear less independent that I would like. I also don't believe most politicians really know who has been pushing for these changes.

    Secondly, not all adult sexual content online is the same. The "free" sites are funded by promoting paid sites and advertising. They had no age barriers. The assumption always was that these well known sites would be blocked by responsible adults using simple filtering software. They will now require verification for visitors from locations where that is mandated. The paid sites already have a form of verification via payments and likely nothing will change substantially. All the kids today, as they did decades ago, likely have a sad friend with a massive porn stash who happily shares it for social credit. So essentially the Internet is getting a partial reset to the late 90s before everything good got commercialized and a bunch of psychos got stinking rich and started fucking with democracy. Bring on the P2P.

    Don't age verify. Find another hobby.

  • 'We've reached a breaking point': Is it time to tax older Australians more?

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  • Ageist bullshit is exactly the same as all other bigotry. Fuck that bullshit.

    The people who should be taxed more are the rich and their huge companies. They own the media and set the agenda. They own some of the politicians and they threaten other politicians with opposition from ad campaigns and media opposition if they don't get their way. They fund massive misinformation campaigns and populist right wing politicians who claim they are there for the little people. Their are trying their hardest to kill democracy.

    Our tax system should be fair. It isn't. Those who can afford to pay the most often pay very little. The party created to represent working Australians is terrified into inaction despite having a massive mandate and no effective opposition. What does that say? This is not a time for complacency. All the gains made by ordinary working Australians are at stake.

  • Australia and the "Epstein Coalition". Invasion of Iran a disaster - Michael West

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  • We stand ready to come to the assistance of Canada, Greenland or the American people when they request assistance to overthrow their oppressor.

  • Three months into Australia’s world-first social media ban for under-16s, has it been a success?

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  • Nah. I disagree. There were good intentions from many of our politicians even when some don't know good from bad.

    There are still people who go into politics in Australia because they want to make the world better. They aren't all crooks. Of course once you get into politics you want to be successful and when you have a populist policy that will win votes sometimes you don't want to look too closely at the cons.

    It's all open to manipulation. There is a very real threat to our privacy, freedom, democracy, sovereignty and more when we supply personal data to these companies. I agree this shit is very dangerous. I don't believe that was the intention. It's just a consequence. Either way we should be concerned.

  • Three months into Australia’s world-first social media ban for under-16s, has it been a success?

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  • Nah, it was the point I think. The people who wanted it were genuinely concerned with the welfare of kids and there was evidence to support that the big tech companies are predatory and doing immense harm.

    The problem is that having good intentions is never enough. Someone is going to take the opportunity to further their own aims. There is a huge mass surveillance industry backed by people like Peter Thiel that will take full advantage of ID requirements to increase their grip on power

    Not only is our political class not smart enough to see the dangers and legislate to protect us, but many have already been lobbied by the surveillance industry.

    I wouldn't be at all surprised if the orgs that have been pushing the message to protect kids from social media were either part funded or infiltrated by the mass surveillance industry. But I do believe there are people genuine in their concern about social media harms. Many parents put their foot down on this long ago, but unfortunately most did not.

  • Pauline Hanson censured over remarks there are no 'good Muslims'

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  • This nation is a federation of states used for convict transport and one colonized by free settlers. And although it is a blind spot for the Poms, then and now, there were lots of people here before they arrived.

    The convict states are mostly proud of their heritage. Highly recommend a visit to Port Arthur. A lot of the convicts were victims of prejudice and poverty. The people who come off worst in Australia's history by far are the English who sent their poor and the Irish here to use as forced labour, committed genocide on the native people, nuked service people and traditional owners, and sent our young to die in futile battles.

    Everything this country has done and continues to do to redress the shit legacy of the british empire, including their insane white supremacist, born to rule bullshit, reflects well on us.

  • RSA urges Albanese govt against further privileging religion through a faith advisory body | Rationalist Society of Australia

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  • Non-religious is growing and is going to be the majority but herding cats is an unsolved problem in politics. It is hard to work out how to appeal to them as a block. It is easier to talk to religious lobby groups, make mega church appearances, fund faith based schools, dog whistle stuff that appeals to faith based prejudice.

    If Labor doesn't go after the faith vote then other parties will. And Labor isn't just putting on the faith stuff to win votes. It is a long standing part of the party. There is pipeline from Catholic school through Catholic dominated unions to the Labor Right faction that goes back decades.

    A group of Libs tried very hard to be the Christian party with branch stacking and factionalism and likely hoped to ride a wave of Christian nationalism to Trump-like victory. They couldn't get the numbers and that is in part because Labor's very strong Christian (predominantly Catholic) Right faction with people like Minns and Malinauskas are more authentically mainstream Christian than some hack playing Christian to get votes. In the US there isn't an expectation that a person's lifestyle and their politics should align. So many of the biggest proponents of the White Christian Nationalist stuff clearly don't live Christian lives. Their politics is more like professional wrestling. The character you play is more important than who you are.

    Most people of faith aren't all that extreme in their politics. This is not the US. We have the mega churches and hate preachers but we also have a lot of thoughtful moderate mainstream religious voters and we want them to have options in the center supporting moderate policies that benefit everyone.

    The only thing I respect about One Nation is they wave the flag and the white nationalist bullshit and muslim hate but not so much the cross so far. Though they have recruited people like Bernardi now so things could change.

    .

  • Guardian Essential poll: more than half of Australians open to voting for One Nation despite Hanson’s Muslim comments

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  • I think it’s more a symptom of where right wing politics has gotten us.

    What gets me is right wingers had their chance to turn out and vote for Dutton a year ago. He is a far more effective politician than Hanson and could have actually formed government instead of just stoke social division and annoy people. He had the nod from Gina and News Corp. Instead everyone seemed to vote for Labor or Teals. What am I missing?

    In several states the Liberal party can barely win a seat let alone government. For a country marching to the right doesn't it seem really odd? Our historically dominant, long governing, conservative party which drew most of the talent on that side of politics struggles. But supposedly we are going to jump right past them to our reject shop version of AfD. How does that work exactly?

    Like I feel someone is fucking with us here. I haven't see skin heads marching down the main street in rural Australia which is as conservative as it gets. No pogroms. No racist graffiti. I would expect ON to do better here than anywhere in my state and in the 2025 federal election they were level with the Greens. Some stuff has changed in a year but not that much. Most shit is basically the same. Cost of living didn't reverse but it definately stabilized. Have there been riots and the streets burning somewhere else?

  • Guardian Essential poll: more than half of Australians open to voting for One Nation despite Hanson’s Muslim comments

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  • Are they though? Like organically pissed off and not doom scrolling cooker pissed off?

    SA Labor are very much a populist centrist party and pretty much the natural party of government in SA and I will be shocked if they don't win by a huge margin. Unless the Libs can bring Playford back from the dead to re-nationalise our electricity. Take my vote. Antic and the like have been pushing the Libs to the right and out of contention for years and are doing the same to the federal party.

    Not sure about NSW but I get the impression Minns is a populist Labor Right centrist along the lines of Malinauskas. These guys are holding the center of the chess board. They don't really look threatened.

    The only thing controversial about Albo is his ability to avoid controversy. He won by a landslide accompanied by almost the complete destruction of the LNP. What changed?

    And if I was pissed off why would I vote for Hanson. She has been a joke for her entire political career. What changed apart from Gina's money? Something is suss about all these polls and the spin. I guess we will find out on election night.

  • Guardian Essential poll: more than half of Australians open to voting for One Nation despite Hanson’s Muslim comments

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  • Australians are humans and do human shit. We aren't actually blessed or geniuses. Just kind of lucky and generally chill. Both can easily change.

    Unfortunately reverse our good fortune by increasing wealth inequality and undoing the progress of working Australians pushes people to the angry camp. And the angry camp can spread like a bushfire with influencers, social media companies and old media pouring fuel on it.

    It's not that a peoples party is a bad idea. We had one once called the Australian Labor Party. Born under a tree in Queensland by and for the benefit of hard working Australians. Thanks Queensland. Now they give us Pauline and she is something else entirely. It makes me sad.

    I think we should be better. But we are the same as everyone else aren't we. Muslims, Americans, Chinese. We are all capable of doing bad shit to each other for insane reasons. It has just been our luck that unless you had the misfortune to be born indigenous most of us had it so good we thought we were above a lot of that shit or at least getting better. Hopefully One Nation will self sabotage as they do tend to attract incompetent people. But I thought the same about both Trump administrations and they are still fucking things up.

  • Power Games: Who’s driving high power bills?

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  • It's mostly privatisation. The regulators are supposed to regulate but they don't do it effectively and competition isn't working, least of all in distribution which is a natural monopoly.

    There is a huge amount of money spent to blame it on renewables despite the evidence showing clearly that they aren't the problem.

    Unfortunately this takes the publics attention away from the real problem. This is becoming very common in today's social media driven populist politics. People incited to anger against scapegoats while the real perpetrators sit behind the scenes pulling the strings.

    Unfortunately not much for reasonable people to do but let the mob fuck things up and then let them pass into the history books and be a lesson for a few generations before they once again forget it all.

    The government can't win. If they move to fix the real problem they will be out on their ears in a week. If they sit on their hands the same people are organising against them anyway.

  • Pauline Hanson issues partial apology for suggesting there are no 'good' Muslims

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  • They say the outrageous shit, walk it back a little, say even more outrageous shit. They know what they are doing. We know it. It isn't something new. I don't know why we pretend and give this piece of shit airtime.

  • Australian PM says former prince Andrew has suffered ‘extraordinary fall’ but that won’t prompt another republic referendum

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  • Albo is a small target PM. He is never going to go down in history as a great reformer or a great leader, but he seems destined to be well up the leader board for time in office. If people want reform, look elsewhere. If something gains traction with the majority he will be on it like a fly on shit.

    I am thoroughly sold on the idea of an apolitical, non-executive Australian head of state modeled on the powers and respobsibilities of the GG. But its a complicated discussion, there are a poweful minority that poison it with massive FUD and worst of all it is a distraction from more urgent issues. Cost of living needs urgent attention. The government inherited a turd but has no choice but to own it and demonstrate progress to the electorate.

    I think we should have public discussion about the royals and their role in future Australia but it needs to be seperate from the political parties and mainstream politics and the media which poison it. There is nothing in it for them. We need to discuss it like the Cricket or Rugby. Are we happy with a Brit captaining our national team because his parents were captains. That doesn't sit well with me.

  • switched back to KDE and don't regret

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  • Never liked the look of KDE. It is nothing to do with the tech or features. I think qt is a very solid foundation and my current desktop is built on Qt/QML. KDE just feels Windows-ish somehow and that's probably part of what makes it great for a lot of people. That is a huge win for Linux adoption. Just not for me.

    I always liked Gnome. It was simple and felt fresh even though I hate gtk/gobject etc. And I still keep Gnome as a backup but it think development is being held back by being built on layers of shit.

    After a long time going back and forth I think I am all in on Niri now. Regular tilers never worked for me but somehow scrollers do. It is weird how much of a difference it makes for me. It is possible to build a complete desktop now with Quickshell and a bit of a backend for some services which makes the Gnome desktop and Plasma look crazy over engineered and I don't know why the Cosmic people even bothered. I don't see how Gnome can keep up as its is such a horrible system to program. DankMaterialShell is reasonably usable for starters but I might even start working on something. It looks like fun.

  • Talents leave AI companies: "They are putting profits over sanity and safety"

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  • Every company does that. The difference is the AI companies will be broke soon and laying off all their staff so people are getting out before the collapse.

  • Firefox is ending support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1; Mozilla recommend switching to Linux, for people who can't run Windows 10 or 11

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  • I think we have been taught from birth that we can and should have it all. The most expensive car, the biggest house, the most powerful phone. It is a lie and its becoming increasingly unattainable for more people. It is pure consumerism and doesn't make anyone happier. In truth people are lucky to have any sort of home which is a fucking travesty and an indictment on our society and politics. A 3 year old phone is still a phone. In a city you often don't need a car at all, certainly you don't need a lease for a massive truck that consumes all your income.

    Windows has more and better software available than Linux (most free and open source software also runs on Windows). Most people don't need it. Downscale your life and be happy.

  • Australia’s Social Media Ban Is Isolating Kids With Disabilities—Just Like Critics Warned

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  • Nah, they didn't. The legislation is bad but it was driven by research into mobile phone/social media addiction and harms to teenagers. There is more than a bit of a satanic panic angle but there is enough substance that I think we have to take the concerns seriously. The target is algorithmic addiction machines run by huge predatory companies. Any impact on sites like aussie.zone is unintended and nobody cares about a self hosted forum or list for neurodivergent kids.

    All such laws create unintended opportunities for companies that want to capture identity data like Palantir which must be resisted to protect our democratic freedoms and national sovereignty but that shit has been happening with the massive concentration of power in big companies like Facebook anyway. We have to decentralise and get back to doing stuff locally.

    The problem is people are fucking stupid and they all jumped to evil shit like Facebook and everything else died. I have to go out of my way to find out anything in my local community with sports, school etc because people are moronic sheep. Apparently I am the weird one for not giving all my family and communities data to evil foreign companies that are complicit in all sorts of shit up to and including genocide. The government is targeting the right bunch of unethical cunts even if they are not doing it well.

  • Australia’s Social Media Ban Is Isolating Kids With Disabilities—Just Like Critics Warned

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  • Back in the old days we used to run forums and mailing lists for people of various interests. People used to make their own little idiosyncratic places full of creativity. I miss it so much.

    Then the big US social media companies came in and took everyone away and the old Internet became a ghost town. Lots of online communities died to be replaced by highly predatory foreign companies.

    I don't know why we should listen to people defending predatory social media but everyone ignored us old people telling them that these walled gardens were going to kill the Internet with massive corporate influence. Everyone is so fucking stupid now. Technical people can't even do technical shit anymore. I hate it.

  • Google criticizes Europe's plan to adopt free software

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  • All these craptastic US tech companies originally started on internationally developed free and open source software. They hoover up capital and talent then abuse their market power. Fuck them all.

    They all run on Linux - Torvalds is a Swedish speaking Finn. Greg KH who maintains stable is German. So many libraries and core system contributions by Germans like Drepper and Poettering. Youtube ran on mysql for years from Finnish Widenius. Google built a lot of stuff with Python - from Dutch Guido van Rossum and c++ from Danish Stroustrup. All of the video and audio sites rely heavily on ffmpeg, orginally from French Fabrice Bellard. Lots of them also using virtualisation stuff which includes qemu, also from Bellard. So much comp sci research from Europe and UK. Chrome and Safari originated with KDE (German) code. Europe did all the heavy lifting while the US took all the profits. I'm not even European but every country has the same experience. They have no idea how they are viewed.

  • Australia @aussie.zone
    shirro @aussie.zone

    Age verification fun