When we built 6 years ago, we advised the builder that we wanted a Zero Energy house and that it would be audited and profiled by the SECCCA and published in their magazine.

We weren’t seeking any discount or special treatment, but it would have been a great opportunity for this builder to showcase that they are progressive.

Every step of the way, the Site Supervisor and contractors snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. It is was almost as if they were trying to sabotage the build.

It came to a head when they tried to install an “electric assist” hot water service instead of a fully electric hot water service. We never had Gas to site.

The Site Supervisor and their manager called us idiots for not wanting gas and ranted and raved. They said it was not possible to have a house in Australia without Gas hot water.

Their CEO got involved and pointed out that his house did not have Gas to site, he had two Tesla PowerWalls and 20kW of solar over two inverters and was essentially off-grid in suburbia. He got a rebate from his power company every month.

The Site Supervisor was fired and their manager was given a demotion.

Building Inspectors used to be employed by local government and were audited to prevent them being able to take bribes.

Now Building Inspectors are employed by the builder. Their whole business model is one big bribe.

I see people walk out of the supermarket without paying constantly.

They just walk out with carry-baskets full of stuff, the staff call them out and they just keep walking with no consequences! They don’t even return the baskets!

Meanwhile, us honest people at the self-checkouts get treated like a criminal if we want to purchase something that is too light for the scales to register and are treated like social deviants if we don’t want to use a loyalty card.

You’re thinking of a LandCruiser

https://youtu.be/IBIRnrTItGo?si=J7lL8lJWu784TOCP

Landrovers aren’t quite as amphibious.

https://youtu.be/BDfF3UJZvaY?si=FYndfTP8CokV9jiY

Even Kei Cars are getting bigger.

A Gen1 Jimny was 3620mm by 1295mm for a LWB Stockman Ute/pickup/truck

A Gen4 Jimny is 3645mm by 1475mm for a SWB 3-door.

Im sure a Seppophile who drives a ‘Murucan truck would use “Pal”.

Holden closed down because GM was siphoning off too much and they went under. GM-SV is a specialty brand that imports US vehicles for the Australian Market. Mainly Camaros and Silverados for the cashed up boomers and Gen-Xers.

Most Holden Dealers were offered a franchise. A lot of them told GM to bugger off.

They don’t. You need to already have one to buy one though.

We drive on the Left in Australia. That is the Drivers side.

This model was advertised as a “Wide-Body Camry” because they were so much more spacious.

In the early 2000s Jeep Australia had a policy of voiding warranty’s if the vehicle had 4WD engaged at any time.

Adjustable height hitches are practical for most tow vehicles to get a safe and level load.

The ADR 62 and Australian Standard 4177 also dictate legal ball heights for towing (basically a 50mm ball has to be no more than 400mm from the road surface).

Even the factory Towbar that was supplied with my Suzuki Jimny mounted the ball at 395mm (which was barely legal).

(Articulated Hitches like pin hitches or block hitches don’t have this restriction. I use a ball for my little garden trailer and a DO35 for my lightweight off-road camper. I have different height drop-hitches for each type of trailer.)

I have seen several towing.

One was the owner of a Health Drink company and had a mobile kitchen for events.

Another was an oversized-palatial-mansion-suite-on-wheels (caravan). It was too big to fit in the caravan park.

A cab-over is much more practical 99% of the time. An Isuzu N-Series or Hino 300 has much higher GCM, more comfortable cabin and larger bed.

They just aren’t fitted with V8-powered inadequacy compensators.

I have a neighbour that is none of those things and owns a black one. He is a big fella, and nice enough bloke, but often has to reverse back up suburban streets because he can’t get past the parked cars.

His wife has a white Tesla 3 and is stereotypical “I have a self-driving car so I don’t need to look up when I am driving”.

Who hasn’t the British upset?

• The EU
• Former Colonies
• Existing Colonies

Probably Canadians, but no one can upset a Canadian.

I’ve noticed that one of the largest fleet purchaser of oversized mega-utes are the Mobile EV recovery companies. They take a Dodge RAM, stick a Diesel Generator on the back and they can drive around, rescuing the EVs that ran out of charge.

Because they are promoting EV use, they actually get carbon credits for this.

Consumer phones in regional areas are still an issue. As @baku said, 3G has better range than 4G (which has better range than 5G). If someone in the middle of the bush, or on a country road needs to use their 5G phone, they may not have coverage.

I have a friend that had to drive 10km with a cracked skull, ribs and broken arm and leg because he didn’t have coverage on his farm. He now has 3G coverage, but not 4G.

High Tech doesn’t automatically mean MLL. There is still plenty of “High Tech” that isn’t a Techbros wet dream.

The term ‘AI’ is not not turning off customers. The actual product is turning off customers.

It has already been proven that the products claiming to be AI are just advanced enshitification and that they are inferior to traditional products.

It is time for everyone to jump off the AI bandwagon and start making products that are actually smart and aren’t just called “Smart”.

The other problem is that tradies don’t know how to / can’t be bothered learning to reduce a buildings energy consumption.

We had an argument for weeks with the Site Supervisor because his subcontractor didn’t want to install the Reverse-Cycle condensers on the south side of the house because it was “too hard”.

One of the refrigerant lines insulation was nicked during installation and we started getting condensation stains through the walls.

The contractor came back and once again, he wanted to relocate the condenser on the north side. He kept blaming us for making him run the pipes to a location that was “too hard” for him.

This guy claimed to be an Air Conditioning specialist and couldn’t understand how a heat exchanger in direct sunlight will not be as efficient at cooling as a heat exchanger on the cold side of the house.

It’s not “America Bad”. It is “Capitalism Bad”. When a builder or contractor can save 5c in the dollar by half-arseing the job, and then come back to “fix” it and charge $1 extra for something that would have been 5c worth of extra work, they win and we loose.

I think it is mainly because;

• Melbourne and Sydney (and Adelaide) have historically always had mild weather. The extremes we are starting to see now had only been occasional. Now they are consistent.
• energy prices have always been deflated. There has always been plenty of cheap natural gas avalable.
• commercial builders have been reluctant to embrace new technologies like aerated concrete panels and the market does not support highly rated insulation batts.
• inflated qualified labour pricing has resulted in builders and improvement contractors taking the quickest, simplest option instead of the best option (eg. blow-in powdered insulation instead of batts).

It does “Make Sense” in the “Economic Rationalism” mindset.

They don’t want to loose money they make on Parking, Airport bus licensing and all these other little penny-pinching charges they can make in their role as the monopoly.

If they loose customers to other methods of transport like Interstate Rail/Coaches, driving and people just not travelling, that is fine because they still make obscene profits on the parking.

I like getting to Sydney overnight.

If I have to stay in a cheap hotel in Tullamarine so I don’t miss my flight, I arrive stressed, tired, hungry and usually late for my appointment.

If I catch the XPT from Southern Cross, I arrive refreshed, relaxed and satiated. I can then take advantage of Sydney’s public transport to get to my appointment on time.

As a driving enthusiast, I agree 100%.

Everyone benefits when there are multiple safe transport options available.

If you are stuck in traffic behind a Bus, or at a Level Crossing, or at a cyclist or pedestrian crossing, you need to remember that you are stuck in traffic. If the other traffic wasn’t there, and they were all taking the train, bus, bike or Shanks’ Pony, you wouldn’t be stuck in traffic.

Belarus.

The fansites and forums are the issue. The issues are the Retailers whose Content Management Systems are not respecting the embargo.

That was what I was going to say.

That said, if someone detects some sort of data-mining plagiarism bot sucking down everything on an instance, it can be defederated very quickly.

This is 100% correct.

With the lack of public transport infrastructure, and social expectations, more people who don’t have the skill level to be driving, or don’t have the maturity level to be driving, are (ab)using our roads.

Meanwhile, said individuals with low profile tyres are speeding over potholes and suing VicRoads, diverting public funds from public road repairs to private wheel repairs.

Australian ADRs need to be updated to a minimum tyre profile to get these completely impractical vehicles off the roads.

Labour is always the biggest cost. When changing spark plugs damaged coils/ electrical plugs could end up being a hidden cost, especially on older vehicles from the 2000s. Some mechanics will absorb this cost, especially if they are honouring an original quote for a little old lady. They also need to warrant their work. This makes $100/h a very reasonable price for skilled and experienced labour.

If you want to get a ballpark price for aftermarket parts, put your mums Rego into one of the online stores.

I’m not going to endorse these stores or provide links but Automotive Superstore, Repco and SuperCheap websites are very online-retail-friendly (unlike SparesBox or AutoBarn). Mechanical workshops will (of course) pay less for the parts and often trade price on genuine is cheaper than aftermarket.

Iridium plugs are much cheaper than they used to be and are a great way to get more life out of older vehicles.

The 2.0l SR20DE and the 1.6l GA16DE in Australian-delivered N14 pulsars actually required Iridium-coated plugs for efficient fuel usage. If you fit other plugs, you will be using more fuel.

That said, the N14 finished production in 1994. OP’s mum probably has a 2006 N16 which would gave the finicky VVT QG18 engine and would require Iridium Plugs at a minimum.

One thing you need to keep in mind with modern cars with electric-actuated park brakes is that the Actuators need to be disabled prior to doing rear brakes, otherwise you may need to replace the entire caliper. Even vehicles with mechanical park brakes may require special tools to wind back the park brake piston.

Is there any way I can determine how big that coat hanger is? Is there something I can compare it to for scale?

Best summary;

The whole problem with Microsoft in general is that they want to be Apple. They want their own hardware & software ecosystem that they rule over with absolute power. But culturally they're not Apple, they're a child that needs 24/7 adult supervision. They can't and won't do security, their track record of handling all types of incidents is abysmal, and they're absolutely terrified of making any changes that might mildly inconvenience enterprise customers. They want all the benefits of controlling their own ecosystem, but will take on exactly zero of the responsibilities. They literally cannot be trusted to secure their own ecosystem and the EU for sure knew this.

https://infosec.exchange/@malwaretech/112837847830156923

The unaccountable 3rd Party market that is built around MS is what caused the issue.

No OS is 100% secure, but as soon as you allow 3rd Party vendors to fuck around at the kernel level, they get much less secure.

Microsoft is to blame for allowing these fucktards kernel-level access. There were other ways they could have enabled third-party intrusion prevention software without giving away keys to the city.

There was a System component called Microsoft Defender that made all other AV obsolete.

Obviously, this caused a lot of European AntiVirus vendors and Intrusion Tool vendors to get upset so there was a court case to prevent Microsoft from bundling Defender with Windows for corporate customers.

Microsoft is arguing that if it wasn’t for the Court Case artificially opening the market to incompetent vendors, the problem wouldn’t have occurred.

Windows has had some major security flaws over the years but ever since Vista, (and before that XPSP2), they have made a concerted effort to fix them. This has caused quite a few compatibility issues for programs that (ab)used these security flaws due to lazy or malicious programming.

I’ve always insisted that Defender is the best AntiVirus and Intrusion prevention solution for any Windows Machine.

MS has a vested interest in making sure nothing bad gets publicised about their OS. As long as the threat exists, (and barring regulatory restrictions) MS will maintain the best intrusion prevention and detection features.

The AntiVirus industry has a vested interest in scaring people into continuing to pay their subscriptions. There are even some conspiracy theories going around that some AV vendors actually pushed viruses into the wild that they could intercept but their competitors couldn’t.

Apple Computers have a reputation of not having viruses (even through they do) partially due to the Security/Obscurity myth and partially because they lock down macOS and have tightly integrated in-house virus detection. The other reason is that their user base is almost exclusively End-User Retail, which is not currently a profitable target.

This was not a fine, it was a fee. Telstra make more money in a week providing VoIP relays to Scammers than this “Fine”

There isn’t much the average citizen can do about this.

You can get a permit to collect firewood, so it isn’t illegal, and without a judicial authority, you can’t call out someone you meet in a state forest and ask to see their permit.

Also, with track closures, many state parks are inaccessible to people for traditional recreation, making them only accessible to bad actors who don’t care about track closures and vehicle restrictions.

You are probably right, but how cool would it be if we are wrong.

Also, any evidence of life that may have been existed on Mars previously would be erased.

I assume you have read the Kim Stanley Robinson trilogy. When I read it, as a teenager, I was definitely a Green-Mars proponent, but as I grew up learnt more about palaeontology and geology, I became more of a Red-Mars proponent.