Simon Lyall

linux.conf.au 2022 | Online, Worldwide

Was talking to a guy and he said he went to a Linux.conf.au conference 10 years ago

But the body odor made him leave on the 2nd day and never come back 😅

Can't say I've ever noticed it being that bad but sure I've heard the story 2nd hand previously and they did push deodorant a bit in later confs

Although if you watch it closely you notice the initial walk and talk is filmed separately to the launch

Review

The Last American Hero: The Remarkable Life of John Glenn by Alice George

4/5

A fairly brief and positive biography of one of America's first Astronauts. "heroic without being perfect" . Worth a read

archive.ph/Ww5Ux

If peer reviewers are just using AI then they should be required to return their fee

Fun with long running incidents and AI:

"Please do a summary of this outage in the style of a letter from a US civil war soldier despairing that a solution will ever be found"

Got a new Ecosa mattress in a box.

Unpacked and trying it out for the first time tonight

Review

The Global Age Europe 1950-2017 by Ian Kershaw

4/5

Covers all of Cold War Europe quite well for politics and culture. A good general introduction. Part of the Penguin History of Europe

www.theguardian.com/books/2018/n...

Americans are very inclusive in what they call sandwiches.

They also called chicken burgers must be called chicken sandwiches because burgers have beef

I have no idea what they call this:

I attached another person's comment who noticed this. This *is* a common thing people complain about to the extent it is a cliche on bsky

The answer to "I don’t know if anyone else notices or cares" is "Yes, lots of people notice and care"

I saw it. Did you notice the people agreeing with her and others making similar statements recently?

Well you had a bunch of people agreeing and others who make similar statements seem to think it is widespread

I'd really like to see some actual surveys on public opinions on AI images.

Is it 5% or 50% who will "Stop buying from companies that use AI images in advertising" ?

Update from Tauranga re the people complaining their streets were being switched from Asphalt to Chipseal.

Council is telling them they will have to pay the cost difference which will be $2000-$10,000 per property

archive.ph/dCtnZ

Seems an expensive way to placate the vocal minority who dislike these images

What about people who put memes in their slides?

What about social media posts with spelling mistakes?

Like the article said it is a significantly cheaper surface for lower traffic roads.

Councils are under a lot of pressure to save money these days. So only roads that justify it get the more expensive surface.

Update from Tauranga re the people complaining their streets were being switched from Asphalt to Chipseal.

Council is telling them they will have to pay the cost difference which will be $2000-$10,000 per property

archive.ph/dCtnZ

Sorry but there was no way this would be done if they tried to do it properly

You'd get lobbyists shooting it down

Which is why it didn't happen before

s/people/large media companies/
s/private/legal/
s/leverage/payments/

Seems to be a flood of people from the Middle East raising money.

One I've seen is definitely a scammer (deletes and reposts every few hours).

Would advise only donating via recognised charities

Fun with long running incidents and AI:

"Please do a summary of this outage in the style of a letter from a US civil war soldier despairing that a solution will ever be found"

TIL that in order to naturally create bacteria that aren’t going to be labelled GMO, you can blast regular bacteria with UV, then look for the ones with the same mutations as the engineered ones (with desirable traits), and now you can legally use the
"natural" bacteria in Non-GMO labelled products

So how would you do it?

Graph of public pension costs as % of GDP for OECD countries in 2021 (latest data). NZ is lower quartile at around 5.1%. OECD average is 7.8%. Plenty of Euro countries are around 10% or above.

Looks like a good time in the news cycle to tackle three big myths 🧵
❌ NZ pension costs are an unsustainable burden ❌
Seriously, no, for lots of reasons.
1. Our current Govt spending on pensions is low compared to most other advanced economies. And... [1/n]

My evening so far

Yes. So should government be bailing out the homeowner for their loss?

Note I haven't seen what happens in a "red zone" type situation where the owner is forced to move

Alternative take:

Should renters be bailing out rich homeowners who choose to build in dodgy locations?

It's weird to watch US threaten not to support allies and then frame it as "we'll make them pay a fare share of their own defence" with the 100% assumption that those countries will stay American allies

Building a coalition for the next Afghanistan/Iraq/Vietnam is going to be harder

Well obviously the nearby people will be opposed to a dump.

So what is the point of giving them a say when their objections will be entirely predictable?

See also every suburban Nimby

It happens for rent-control or affordable housing.

Year long queues, illegal resellers, deals going to friends etc