decryption
Joined 17 years ago
Karma
557
Submissions
89
Member since
May 24
Aussie nerd - https://decryption.net.au
View on Hacker NewsRecent submissions
Comment · 2 hours ago
Australia hasn't had a POTS for a while now, since the National Broadband Network was "complete". They literally ripped the copper out of the ground and sold it for scrap, they even made specialised machines to make the task easier: https://www.rg.com.au/2022/09/29/telstra-mirait-take-deliver...
Hasn't really been much of an issue day-to-day. My mother for example still uses her landline phone on the same phone number she's had for decades via VOIP that the ISP operates. The vast majority of people use mobile phones as their primary voice service and it all seems to work just fine. But there has been a few notable outages (e.g: Telstra and their NTP mess, Optus and their emergency-call routing issues), and of course there's fringe issues with coverage gaps, but overall I'd say the mobile voice network is as reliable as the old POTS was (which was far from perfect).
Comment · 26 days ago
The Australian state of NSW just turned on an 850MW/1.68GWh battery - it's operating in the NEM now:
https://www.nsw.gov.au/ministerial-releases/nsw-flicks-switc...
Australia has a few gigawatt hour batteries now and a 1GW/4GWh battery has been undergoing planning approval for a few months: https://reneweconomy.com.au/huge-4-gigawatt-hour-battery-aus...
There's so much domestic rooftop solar going to waste that it makes economic sense for these giant batteries to soak it up and sell it at night or during peak events. Love to see it.
Comment · 1 month ago
The bz4x is basically my canonical ideal car from an interior point of view! Thank god for consumer choice.
Comment · 1 month ago
Yes, but then they have other design flaws too. There's basically only 1 brand selling EVs in Australia that aren't a compromise (to me at least) in one way or another. Skoda and upcoming VW cars seem to be bucking the trend.
Comment · 1 month ago
That correlates with my research too (which is at the end of the blog post if you read that far - fair enough if you didn't, it's a long post!). Skoda's design philosophy is "Simply Clever" and I guess they actually believe it rather than being a marketing gimmick.
Comment · 1 month ago
This is correct (I'm the author the post). The EX30 could be a great car but the quality of the software really lets it down. Prior to this I owned a Tesla and while it was way better, it still had the occasional failure to recognise my iPhone as the key and wouldn't let me into the car. Maybe 1 in 10 occasions compared to 5 in 10 with the EX30.
Comment · 1 month ago
It does if the person driving sucks at using it. I've been driving OPD since 2018 and friends that get sick in Teslas driven by Uber drivers have told me they didn't get sick and wondered what I was doing different. The difference is I know how to use it.
Comment · 1 month ago
I would also like to find out what happened here. Here's a video with a BMW designer where they're asked point blank about some design aspects of their new iX3 (which seems like an impressive car, total clean sheet EV design) and when asked about the door handles - which are flush, but pop out, which isn't too bad IMHO - basically said they do it because it looks cool, any aero benefits are just the cherry on top.
Comment · 1 month ago
Does it really? I go between an ICE car and my EV every 2-3 weeks and switching between the two isn't much of a mental challenge. I just prefer OPD.
Comment · 1 month ago
I am the author of the blog post and yep, the Chevy Bolt is basically the perfect car (for me at least). Ticks all the boxes. Apparently the 2027 Bolt RS has driver's seat memory.
But the Bolt isn't available in Australia! GM abandoned us when they shut down Holden. Ironically, it was designed for production based on a South Korean prototype in Port Melbourne, 40km from where I live! https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/chevrolet-bolt-reveale...
Comment · 1 month ago
I run a semi-popular email newsletter with a public archive of old issues and this stupid bot has been emailing me too. Who is the target market here? Who would actually pay for whatever they're promoting?
Comment · 3 months ago
When I started TAFE (the equivalent of community college in the US I assume?) in Australia in 2003, one of the subjects in the electronic engineering course was to study and program a Z80. I was awful at it, but it was a good introduction to how a computer works. I wonder if they're still using this CPU as a way to teach the fundamentals of computers?
Comment · 3 months ago
I have an EX30 in Australia and it's been excellent in regards to its driver attention system. Never had any false alerts. If anything it's not accurate enough as when I look away it sometimes doesn't warn me! Crazy how we can have such different experiences in the same vehicle, presumably with the same software.
Comment · 5 months ago
Execs where I work seem to think we will just keep writing stuff, LLMs will scrape it and that will influence what people see in their version of Google/ChatGPT/etc. So nothing changes in their mind, just that the audience is a bot, not a human. As a writer, this sucks.