AJ Sadauskas @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!
Adam Neely makes a really insightful point about the limitations of "generative AIs"/LLMs and music.
Adam Neely makes a really insightful point about the limitations of "generative AIs"/LLMs and music.
LLMs can mimic the output of music, but they can't handle the process of making music.
I think his insight applies to many other creative fields as well. LLMs mimic the output, but not the process:
https://youtu.be/N8NyEjB\_XeA?si=sUgCV6aeITBqas5E
@music #LLM #music #GenAI #generativeAI #tech #technology #chatGPT
@calhoon2005 Haha Any kind of buffet or all-you-can-eat situation doesn't count!
@Seagoon_ Wifey is trying to claim that it's really not that uncommon to mix Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes, Nutra Grain, and Weet Bix together. And to eat this particular cereal combo for dinner.
I'm not doubting her... I just haven't come across this combo before.
Anyone else here mix three different breakfast cereals?
@Seagoon_ Loud crashing sound in the bathroom, then cats come sprinting out.
Do I even want to look?
@Duenan @Thornburywitch Hawthorn is currently on 7 wins, with games still to come against West Coast, North, Adelaide, and Richmond.
On recent form, percentage aside, I could definitely see them ending up in the finals...
@Thornburywitch @Seagoon_ Hawthorn is currently on 7 wins, with games still to come against West Coast, North, Adelaide, and Richmond.
On recent form, they could definitely end up in the finals...
@DavidDoesLemmy @Zagorath Here's an article about a company named RedFlow, that has sold its fourth grid-scale long-duration zinc bromine flow battery to California:
Where's RedFlow based? Brisbane.
An alternative to bromine flow batteries is grid-scale lithium.
And where is one of the world's largest lithium minjng regions? Western Australia.
The Coalition's policy is to ban any further investment in grid-scale batteries from RedFlow or with WA lithium, along with banning further investments in wind and solar.
Instead, it wants to hand roughly half a trillion dollars to largely foreign-owned multinationals to build nuclear power plants in Australia.
Assuming the Coalition can deliver 7 large-scale first-of-its-kind infrastructure projects on time and on budget in Australia, it will take 10 to 15 years to build them. In the meantime, Australia will continue burning coal and natural gas.
And all this for an energy source that costs substantially more per megawatt hour than renewables, coal, or gas.
@Baku @Seagoon_ I'm sorry, but you really need to throw in the steak knives: https://youtu.be/iiATDMHU7gc?si=QPDgNRlgjUhUssSx
@wscholermann @Seagoon_ Mining companies, mostly...
@wscholermann @Seagoon_ And when politics is covered by most of the media, it's basically presented as a clash of personalities and a footy game.
This Labor MP says this. This Coalition MP says that. Minister refuses to confirm. Party room sources say. This shadow minister made a gaffe. The opposition leader made comments attacking this. The prime minister responded by saying that.
And according to the latest opinion polls...
It's really irrelevant to the everyday lives of most people!
Meanwhile, the thing that really matters from politics is the laws we live under. How government departments go about their job and deliver things like schools and hospitals. Which new train lines do or don't get built. What the government funds, and who pays how much tax for it.
The focus should be on what issues people in the community are facing.
What kind of society do we have right now? What kind of country, state, and city do we want to live in?
What are the laws and policies right now?
What's their impact on those issues? Are they helping or harming?
And how could they be different?
It's time to call a spade a spade. ChatGPT isn't just hallucinating. It's a bullshit machine.
It's time to call a spade a spade. ChatGPT isn't just hallucinating. It's a bullshit machine.
From TFA (thanks @mxtiffanyleigh for sharing):
"Bullshit is 'any utterance produced where a speaker has indifference towards the truth of the utterance'. That explanation, in turn, is divided into two "species": hard bullshit, which occurs when there is an agenda to mislead, or soft bullshit, which is uttered without agenda.
"ChatGPT is at minimum a soft bullshitter or a bullshit machine, because if it is not an agent then it can neither hold any attitudes towards truth nor towards deceiving hearers about its (or, perhaps more properly, its users') agenda."
https://futurism.com/the-byte/researchers-ai-chatgpt-hallucinations-terminology
@just_kitten @Thornburywitch Many of the OG hipsters have moved west to Footscray and Yarraville.
Or they decamped during the pandemic, and migrated to one of the towns around Castlemaine or Belgrave.
There's also a steady cross-border migration to Newtown and Marrickville in Sydney.
@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.
@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.
@sabreW4K3 Plume doesn't appear to be active, unfortunately 🥺
There's a notice on the official Join Plume website saying the former developers don't have the time to maintain it anymore. Most of the former public instances now throw up errors of various kinds.
WriteFreely ( @writefreely ) is alive and well. I was seriously toying with the idea of setting up a blog through its main instance, which is called Write.as Professional. The sticking point for me was that the official on-platform monetisation tool (Coil) appears to be dead, and doesn't support members-only posts (like Ghost).
Ghost, when federation goes live, looks like it will be the best option for my blog.
WordPress plus @pfefferle 's plugins is another great option, depending on what you want to use it for. (There's no shortage of WP plugins!)
As for Lemmy, I could see a blogging-focussed front end being created for it, in the same way FediBB put a traditional message board front end on it, but one doesn't appear to exist at present.
@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.
@fishos I'm honoured to still be considered part of the younger generations, given the first time I used ICQ was around 1997...
Time for an ICQ for the Fediverse?
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
A vital step forward for Parramatta as Sydney's second CBD.
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.
@sydney #Parramatta #Art #concerts #theatre #nsw #nswpol #sydney
Want to be an AFL media personality? It's easy — just follow the four-step Kane Cornes plan.
Want to be an AFL media personality? It's easy — just follow the four-step Kane Cornes plan.
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Look up which teams that lost on the weekend.
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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!
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Get your producers to find a passage of play, interview, or press conference you can say backs up your claim.
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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
@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.
@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.
@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...
I'm thinking seriously about getting Google out of my life, and trying NextCloud.
I'm thinking seriously about getting Google out of my life, and trying NextCloud.
Looking to get a personal account through a managed provider.
Does anyone have any experience with it?
How does it compare to ownCloud?
Any hosts I should look at or avoid?
Any apps I should get for it, or avoid?
Any issues I should be aware of before I switch?
A huge congratulations to @philipthalis on his well-deserved award.
A huge congratulations to @philipthalis on his well-deserved award.
Philip is undeniably both one of Australia's most respected architects and a tireless advocate for good urban design.
More importantly, he's not afraid to speak up publicly against bad state government planning decisions, as he did with Barangaroo, even when there's a personal cost.
@urbanism #Planning #UrbanPlanning #Cities #Urbanism #Buildings #Architecture #Transport #Architect #Walking #Walkability
So despite climate change, Australia's federal government has just committed an extra $3.25 billion into building a toll road and a 20-lane freeway widening.
So despite climate change, Australia's federal government has just committed an extra $3.25 billion into building a toll road and a 20-lane freeway widening.
For those who wonder why Aussies think toll roads are a scam (https://aus.social/@[email protected]/112405373613706682), here's a great example of why.
"Pouring an extra $3.25 billion worth of federal funds into Melbourne’s North East Link is a good use of taxpayer money, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has insisted, despite the project’s cost doubling just a few months ago.
...
"The North East Link – which includes 6½ kilometres of tunnels – will stretch from Bulleen to Greensborough. It will widen the Eastern Freeway by up to 20 lanes.
"Allan revealed in December that the 10-kilometre toll road had more than doubled in cost since it was first announced.
"The toll road was initially budgeted at $10 billion and reassessed in 2019 at $15 billion. But the government revealed last year that the updated cost estimate was $26 billion."
@fuck\_cars #Urbanism #Auspol #Vicpol #roads #UrbanPlanning #transport #cities #Melbourne #Naarm #Victoria #Australia
Hornsby is the fifth best place to live in Australia, apparently.
Hornsby is the fifth best place to live in Australia, apparently.
At least, according to a study SGS Economics and Planning:
"Sydney's Northern beaches ranks as the highest in the nation for wellbeing, with only one Queensland city making it to the top 10, the annual index revealed today.
"The Australian Capital Territory came in second due to its low gender wage gaps, climate change risks and the division of wealth."
The study assessed 518 local council areas on seven indicators:
\* economy \* income and wealth \* employment, knowledge and skills \* housing \* health \* equality, community and work-life balance \* environment
The top 10 local government areas are:
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Northern Beaches (Greater Sydney)
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Australian Capital Territory
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North Sydney (Greater Sydney)
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Ku-ring-gai (Greater Sydney)
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Hornsby (Greater Sydney)
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Lane Cove (Greater Sydney)
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Mosman (Greater Sydney)
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Sutherland (Greater Sydney)
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Sydney (Greater Sydney)
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Brisbane (Greater Brisbane)
The toll road scam: A government-made monopoly you pay for.
The toll road scam: A government-made monopoly you pay for.
Here's a funny-because-it's-true take on Transurban and the poor tax it imposes, from Punter's Politics:
https://youtu.be/FlKBakPAtiw?si=G39\_0GcJzSB0SSA8
\#cars #roads #fuckcars @fuck\_cars #tolls #tollroads #memes #funny #urbanism #UrbanPlanning #auspol #vicpol #nswpol
Looks like Sydney Trains is going to drop the jargon from its PA announcements.
Looks like Sydney Trains is going to drop the jargon from its PA announcements.
From the SMH:
"Commuters will soon be told to “get off” the train, rather than “alight”, after Sydney Trains resolved to overhaul its station announcements to favour colloquial language.
"The phrase “this train terminates here” is also being retired, due to concerns the word “terminates” is difficult to understand."
@sydneytrains #trains #sydney #nsw #transit #planning #train #UrbanPlanning
So the RTA's own modelling showed the Rozelle Interchange would be a traffic disaster—but generating more toll road trips for Transurban was more important.
So the RTA's own modelling showed the Rozelle Interchange would be a traffic disaster—but generating more toll road trips for Transurban was more important.
"The [NSW Roads and Traffic Authority] finalised the first business case for the WestConnex tunnel project in June 2013, with the help of road designers from around the world.
"[Paul Forward, a former CEO of the RTA] said the initial concept did not include the Rozelle Interchange.
...
"In 2014, an expert review group was formed to assess these plans.
"Mr Forward said it was at this point that TfNSW bureaucrats began to question the connectivity provided by the design.
"The RTA's former director of traffic Chris Ford told the inquiry that 15 alternative designs were modelled.
"Mr Ford said the modelling found that another motorway leading to the Anzac Bridge would cause congestion.
"'The issues that we see today were very clearly established in the modelling in 2014,' he said.
"In November 2015, after Mr Forward and Mr Ford were dismissed, TfNSW updated the WestConnex business case to include the tunnel to the Anzac Bridge, despite the congestion concerns raised by the modelling.
"In 2016, Transport for NSW updated the business case a second time ... creating a tunnel linking the Iron Cove Bridge to the Anzac Bridge."
...
"In 2018, the NSW government sold its 51 per cent stake in the Sydney Motorway Corporation, the body responsible for operating WestConnex, to Transurban for $9 billion.
"Mr Forward said the final design would generate a larger number of toll trips than previous options."
@fuck\_cars #roads #cars #urbanism #nswpol #sydney #WestConnex #UrbanPlanning #transport
"It's going to be a bloody disaster": Tell me again about how the second road tunnel under Sydney Harbour won't make congestion worse?
"It's going to be a bloody disaster": Tell me again about how the second road tunnel under Sydney Harbour won't make congestion worse?
"Civil engineer Les Wielinga, a former CEO at the now-defunct Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA), made the fiery comments at a NSW parliamentary inquiry into the bungled Rozelle Interchange.
"The Western Harbour Tunnel, which is under construction, will allow drivers travelling between the inner west and the North Shore to bypass the CBD.
"Entries and exits to the tunnel will lie at the Ernest Street interchange in Cammeray and near the Falcon Street interchange at North Sydney.
"'It's going to be a bloody disaster,' Mr Wielinga told the upper house committee on Friday.
"Paul Forward, another former CEO of the RTA, told the inquiry he was concerned about the project's design.
"'You've now got three motorways coming out into this short area, and whilst I would recognise there are some exit points, some off-ramps, those motorways are now all going into the Lane Cove Tunnel,' he said.
"'A large number of lanes are going into two lanes at the Lane Cove Tunnel. Sounds familiar?'"
Where to now for North?
Where to now for North?
Smashed by a fairly ordinary Hawthorn side, with some big injuries including Day, Lewis, Jiath, Wingard, and Breust.
The big question: Is the issue North's list? Or has the game gone past Clarko as a coach?
"Meanwhile, North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson concedes his side is still a long way off the pace after forecasting the match would be an indicator of where his rebuilding outfit sits in its development.
"He was left in no doubt and North has now lost 26 of 27 games since success in Clarkson's first two outings at the helm early last year."
How to remove a freeway...
How to remove a freeway...
The decision to build freeways instead of rail in the post-war years, along with the low-rise single-zoned suburbs it promoted, has been an absolute planning disaster.
But the mistake can be fixed, and freeways can be removed.
City Beautiful's Dave Amos @citybeautiful has an interesting look at some of America's endangered freeways, and how communities can get them removed:
Disgraceful conduct by Pandemonium Festival promoter Andrew McManus.
Disgraceful conduct by Pandemonium Festival promoter Andrew McManus.
He has apparently taken to Facebook to threaten ticketholders who have asked for a refund with violence.
This as the wheels have almost completely fallen off his Pandemonium Festival: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/music/what-s-going-on-punters-left-hanging-over-controversial-rock-festival-20240322-p5fehb.html
\#music @melbourne #concerts #rock #business #capitalism #melbourne #festival #festivals #pandemonium #business #tickets #australia
Alessia Cara is back in the studio!
Alessia Cara is back in the studio!
She just posted the following on Insta: https://www.instagram.com/p/C5Th4IMutTY/?igsh=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==
Alessia's a very talented and frankly underrated young singer-songwriter. Hopefully we see a new album from her soon!
Not again! BoM issues Flood warning for Qld and NSW.
Not again! BoM issues Flood warning for Qld and NSW.
"A major rain event will engulf most of eastern Australia during the next 48 hours, prompting the Bureau of Meteorology to issue flood watches from southern Queensland to the NSW South Coast.
"Greater Sydney could be soaked by up to 200mm from late Thursday to early Saturday, potentially leading to major flooding along the Hawkesbury-Nepean River, while Brisbane and Canberra also face the prospect of heavy rain."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-04/torrential-rain-triggers-flood-watch-for-sydney/103665240
@sydney #sydney #NSW #Australia #ClimateChange #weather #floods