axolttl88

While the stones are usually roped off from up close viewing still loom large because of their cultural impact, the area around them is beautiful. The Heritage org. has brought up huge tracts of land around them to protect it and restore it to the way it "was". You get to wander around most of those vast fields freely, among ancient mounds. On a nice summer's day, it really is one of the most peaceful and beautiful things to do.

Tab styling across the board is terrible. I'm struggling to read inactive tab labels in Terminal.

I've used and loved macs for decades. This is the first time (maybe the second, if you count early Apple Music) that I've thought they've lost their way.

Your point about not tackling the hardest challenges is well made. However the benefit of needing to appeal to the political Centre (a factor of compulsory voting) is that Australia also avoids the crazy swings and debilitating division of left and right that other nations can face.

It’s not, though.

It might be uneven in different markets, but they’ve been working very hard at improving the content and UX and in a number of markets it’s a viable and very strong competitor to Google Maps.

It will sometimes feel the lack of Google Business Listings, but the driving/walking/biking/transport/streetview experience is uniformly great where they’re released optimised versions of their maps — in my case Australia.

This and music control are the uniques cases where Siri Just Works for me. “Add toothpaste to my shopping list” no fluff no nonsense replies, just “I added that to the shopping list” - and it’s on my phone’s Reminders in that list.

I wonder how well they’ve optimised Siri for a just few specific use cases like this, because nothing else seems to reliably work on it.

‘For real’ is definitely an Australian-ism (pretty old fashioned, usually inflected up as an incredulous question ‘fa REAL?’, but I’ve not really heard ‘For real life’. Could be a kid thing.

They did not use an OS from Blackberry / RIM.

Vertu emerged from Nokia when they were at their peak - Frank Nuovo was the key designer there, and it was one of his projects.

From memory the original versions (Vertu Signature, Vertu Ascent, … ) used one of the Nokia feature-phone OSs as the base - maybe Series 30 or Series 40? - or they might have used one of the Symbian OS’es (Series 60).

They definitely used a Symbian OS in subsequent Vertu devices, before switching to Android later on.

They were incredibly well made devices, but ridiculous.

Source: I worked at Nokia for a while in a non-engineering role. I spent some time with a Vertu Ascent, and had access to the Vertu stores in Asia.

Australia has a generally highly-regarded and affordable health care system (public and private).

*Vietnam not landlocked; but in the middle of a very populous region

The ability to limit spread by controlling your border has been a factor, and that’s certainly easier for island nations.

But it’s not the only factor: well-managed healthcare systems, clear government policy and action, and public support for controls are also important.

e.g.

- Vietnam: landlocked, populous, excellent internal response: just over 1000 cases and 35 deaths; approx. 60 active cases currently

- UK + Ireland: quite frankly a bit of a mess

Australia.

After a (relatively) small second wave spike in one of the states (Victoria) which is now under control, there are very few cases of community transmission.

It’s the result of a combination of: controlled island borders, unpopular but effective internal hard borders between some states, mandatory managed hotel quarantine for inbound passengers, well-executed contact tracing by health departments, broad access to PCR testing now returning results usually within 12-24 hours, and a population that’s been surprising willing to “take one for the team” and go into lockdowns and wear masks when needed.

Australian here: It’s not a given that the other hotel residents are going to get sick.

The quarantine residents are bussed in directly from customs / border control and isolated to separate parts of the hotel.

Their rooms are locked down (they don’t get the key), they don’t get in room cleaning (they can get their laundry and fresh supplies dropped off / picked up in a controlled way from outside the room periodically), and they get room service delivered / picked up outside the room. Staff have/are being trained in performing those duties.

All paid for by the government, too. It’s not ideal for anyone, but for the community at large it’s the best possible policy given how many new infections were coming from inbound travellers.

It also works well for the hotels which have very high vacancy rates due to lack of tourists.