jbarham

What other services have you used to track stats?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41234180

Condo means an apartment that you own (vs rent).

I pushed for anonymous temporary age verification tokens generated through a government app.

Cute. Let's see the reviews for an existing Australian government auth app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.gov.mygov.m...

And the kicker is that the above app doesn't even need to exist since myGov could just use industry standard TOTP two-factor auth like the dozens of other services I use.

Aussie politicians once again conforming to their lucky country stereotype:

"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise."

According to https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/iphone-ma... iPhone also has > 50% market share in Canada, Norway, Sweden, Australia and Japan. FWIW I live in Australia and most group chats are via WhatsApp vs SMS/iMessage.

This reminds me of Rob Pike's article "Systems Software Research is Irrelevant," written about 15 years ago.

25 years ago: http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf (Time flies.)

Tesla has cut prices very aggressively here in Australia [1] such that the "driveaway" prices for the Model 3 and Y are now ~AU$60k (or $US40k). There aren't a lot of government subsidies to buy EVs in Australia so that's what most Telsa buyers will pay, but those prices are very competitive given that many popular ICE SUVs now cost AU$50k+.

[1] https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/tesla-model-y-model-3-...

I think that should be https://datasette.io/

Ironically despite Australia being a major producer of uranium, its current Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, constantly denigrates nuclear power [1]. But that's par for the course in Australian politics ("Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck").

1: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Ftwit...

Prompt: draw a picture of a fish and chips shop owner from queensland who is also a politician

Results: https://twitter.com/jbarham74/status/1760587123844124894

There's a short cut & cover freight railway "tunnel" near me in Footscray, Victoria, Australia (just west of central Melbourne). Here's the Google street view: https://www.google.com/maps/@-37.8035409,144.9065655,3a,75y,...

I used to walk over it almost every day when I worked at a coworking space in the old Lonely Planet HQ building. I think a lot of locals drive over it without ever realizing it's there.

> will do nothing for emissions How can that be?

Because a reduction of domestic gas usage will just be diverted to less efficient LNG exports.

Given that by far the largest source of Victoria's electricity generation capacity is from dirty brown coal [1] if anything banning domestic gas usage might even make emissions worse since it will force people to use only electricity for cooking and heating.

Direct consumption emissions are eliminated.

Ah, so burning Aussie natural gas in Asia (after it's been liquified and then turned back into gas) is somehow better for the environment than just burning it in Australia?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Victoria#Electricity...

The only reason that natural gas prices in Australia have gone up in the past 10 years is that gas producers in the eastern states were able to start exporting gas as LNG.

As of 2023, Australia is the world's second largest LNG exporter (source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1262074/global-lng-expor...) after the US (take that Russia!) and ahead of Qatar. Great for the gas exporting cartel but not so great for ordinary Australians in eastern states who now pay the same for gas as people in Tokyo. (And Aussies wonder why manufacturers keep leaving...)

Banning domestic gas usage for new homes (which the fools running Victoria, the state I live in, have done) will do nothing for emissions but will mean that the gas cartel can make even more money exporting LNG to Asia. Bravo!

The exception is Western Australia which is also a massive LNG exporter but has stricter domestic reservation requirements than the eastern states.

All of the above has been extensively documented at https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/ (source: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww....).

Re: architecture in Japan the typical lifespan of a house is less than 30 years: https://robbreport.com/shelter/home-design/japanese-homes-ar...

I'd recommend the book Jutaku by Naomi Pollock to get a sense of how uniquely innovative Japanese housing architecture is. Ironically a major reason is tax depreciation rules for houses which encourage homeowners to demolish and rebuild rather than renovate.

Fujifilm also sells Instax printers (https://instax.com/printer/) that you can print to using smartphone apps. Note that the printers use the same film cartridges as the Instax instant cameras.

Ironically the #2 post on /r/canada right now is titled "'I'm done with Canada': High cost of living leads some to leave the country" (https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/1538vpj/im_done_wit...)

I have a ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 and I'm very happy with it. It's fast, quiet, absurdly light, has a 16:10 screen, a decent selection of ports and the famously good ThinkPad keyboard. I dual boot Windows and Ubuntu without any issues. For me it's the perfect laptop.

Thanks, my mistake! I did misread it as China having a surplus of EV cars instead of ICE cars. Either way Africa is a tough market. But I think my point about a stable electric grid as a prerequisite for EV take-up still stands.

Africa doesn't have the grid capacity to support a shift to electric vehicles. Right now South Africa (i.e., the richest country in Africa) has daily rolling power cuts (aka "load shedding") because they don't generate enough electricity for current demand, let alone for widespread EVs.

The major advantage of liquid fuel compared to electricity is that it's easier to transport and store, and harder to steal, which is why I don't think EVs will see significant take up in the third world.

Sure, but I only used the roof box on occasional long trips when we had lots of luggage (e.g., visiting the grandparents interstate for Christmas). So I might have paid a few tens of dollars extra in fuel, but it was certainly far cheaper than buying a bigger car when we otherwise didn't need the extra space.

The roof rack and Thule box cost maybe $1200 AUD. But the rack was also useful for attaching bicycle carriers.

A cheap and easy way to increase the size of the car you already have is to buy a roof box. Our previous car was a small hatchback and interstate trips with our three kids in the back would have been impossible without the roof box. I only bought a bigger car when my oldest kid was pushing 6 feet and running out of legroom in the back seat of the hatchback.

Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnepeg, Halifax, Saskatoon, Regina, and St Johns

Yeah, all of these cities also have long, harsh winters.

FWIW I'm a Canadian who lived in California on work visas for several years and relocated to Australia in 2011, where I'm now a citizen. I've never regretted leaving Canada.

For photos or documents like wills I think the best long term storage solution is still physical prints in a shoebox. Yes, they'll fade slowly over time, but will still be viewable for decades, or even centuries if printed using pigment inks on archival papers.

Of course there's still a chance that physical prints can be lost, stolen or destroyed in a house fire. But I think overall that's statistically much less likely to happen than digital media becoming obsolete or unreadable, or data stored online being deleted because the original uploader stopped paying the storage bill or didn't arrange for transfer of their accounts after their death.

I guess taking into account how demographics skew young

In 2022 the US median age was 38.8, which is not that young by world standards.

E.g., the median age in Afghanistan is < 19 (i.e., most people alive in Afghanistan today were born after the 9/11 attacks).

Hey.com includes a hosted blog as an extension to its core email hosting: https://www.hey.com/world/

E.g., here is DHH's blog: https://world.hey.com/dhh

Lack of access to doctors is a big issue in Canada. E.g., here's a list of posts on /r/canada about family doctors in the past year: https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/search/?q=family%20doctor&t=...

Canada is almost unique among developed countries with government healthcare in that it doesn't also have a parallel private medical system for those who can afford to pay for it. So naturally rich Canadians will often pay for private healthcare in the US.

I'm originally Canadian but have lived in Australia for the past 10+ years (in Melbourne). We've never had any issues getting medical appointments with local doctors (usually "bulk billed" so we pay nothing or a very nominal amount for the appointment). But we also have private medical insurance, which is required above a certain age (30 something), that we use occasionally for specialist appointments. But even then the out-of-pocket fee is something like $70 which is fine.

Unlike Canada, AFAIK most countries in Europe (e.g., Sweden, France, Spain, Germany) have parallel private medical care, so Canada really is unusual in that respect.

Brings back bad memories of my time as a developer in finance (big bond shop on the west coast). Walls covered in TV screens showing CNBC on mute until some bigshot was on (Fed decision imminent!) and then some intern walked around turning up the volume on all the TVs until the bigshot had finished giving his opinion. Ticker displays running non-stop causing more visual noise. Traders and quants running around. Analysts chatting with their buddies at other firms on the phone. Impossible to get in the zone, very long hours and, worst of all, having to do it all wearing a dress shirt and tie.

It was certainly a memorable experience, but one I never wish to repeat.

Case in point: https://www.switch.com/executive-team/

For anyone interested in contemporary piano reviews, Stu Harrison does fantastic reviews for both acoustic and digital pianos on the Merriam Music YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/MerriamPianos).

I run https://www.slickdns.com (DNS hosting) and https://www.youpatch.com (pixel quilt patterns).

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