Posts by j.p

Australia's contact-tracing app regulation avoids 'woolly' principles in comparable cyber-laws, say lawyers

Re: Does this use bluetooth?

yes. Android app requests Location service on first launch. Once launched, indicates; Bluetooth state, Location services state, Battery optimisation state, Push notification state. Presumably Bluetooth needs to be on to collect other's Bluetooth ID if the device sees them for longer than the threshold duration - 15 mins? Unclear if i don't give it the 'location services' access - which I don't see is relevant to the app's operation if it isn't storing physical phone location - whether the app will function as intended.

Telstra drops nbn™ in it as it wears compo for broadband speed ads

good reason why many subscribers would be opting for the cheap tier, cause they'll never get the speed of the expensive ones, and they don't want to have to chase refunds etc...

could be my shitty understanding of the nbn connection model, but i see 4 outcomes;

1 RSPs forced to provision more capacity per subscriber (if capacity exists)

2 carriers dodge the issue by changing plans and advertising to qualitative (high - med - low) tiers rather than quantitative (100, 50, 25mbps) tiers

3 nbn technology changes to legitimately offer subscribers >25/50/100mbps of throughput as advertised

4 nothing changes in spite of ACCC complaints because aussies are too complacent to bother chasing a solution.

got buckley's chance of no. 3, because nbn has settled on the cheaper MTM ostensibly because the 'fancy network' was voted out with the 'fancy network' government.

my money's on no. 4

Experimental satellite-slinger seeks cargo: What could go wrong?

Ssms smms smss

The acronym misses in this article! Cmon Ed!

Netflix launch brings Australia's biggest ever download deluge

maybe overlooking the presence of unlimited plans for wired broadband and the absence of any change (except downard) in data limits for mobile broadband, hence the lesser growth that i think was being quoted for mobile downloads.

a related oversight i think is the "hi, it's optus. we see you're not on an unlimited plan, so we're going to roll you on to one without you having to do anything or pay any more" factor. the curve seems steeper recently, and i'd be surprised if that kind of stuff had no bearing on the downloads.

Opticomm wants peer relationship with NBN Co

NBNCo Ridiculous Contractor arrangements dont help

A friend's company in Brisbane does work for NBNCo via ISGM and previously Theiss.

Theiss reportedly have shoddy business practices around preferential treatment for some, not caring about environmental compliance (such as dumping vac truck slag in non-designated dumps), and paying absurdly low rates for the nigh-impossible to comply with asbestos regulation. These factors make it unprofitable to do asbestos, but all of the non-asbestos work has been favouritismed off to preferred contractors...

Maybe i'm out of touch with how private industry operates, but it doesn't seem like NBNCo's main contractor has the project's best interests (getting the job done) in mind. Their profit motives have them overlooking shoddy operators, and their pricing models encourage sub contractors to further cut corners in order to be profitable, at the expense of compliant competitors, and environmental sustainability.

'How a censorious and moralistic blogger ruined my evening'

also cached by the wayback machine

also found it on the archive.org from Nov18

Facebook goes down, people dial 911

911

australia implemented 911 to supplement our local emergency number (000) due to unfortunate US influence on our chitlins.

Phone charging log helps to convict murderer

disappointed, but the reg is worth it

there are two regular stops on my net-news rounds before and after work, the register and the conversation. on both, i can seek a more balanced viewpoint than the fairfax/murdoch press available in the antipodes (i joyously noted one of the vulture south authors retweeting john birmingham the other day, a freelance - i think - columnist for fairfax, and genius author in his own right... but that's a total red herring...)

with weeks of blanket coverage on televised, radio and print news, i've gratefully dodged the bullet that is this stupid and unremarkable murder case, by seeking refuge in the simply *better* science and tech news that is old faithful here... and its less tech cousin at the conversation.

simon, i totally understand the tech angle and it is worthy of note for a tech news site, but i had to suppress a shudder when i read on the register, a headline related to this hateful distraction from the last couple of months worth of actual real news.

my tinfoil-hat-side, has been assuming that this murder trial is a deliberate overwhelming of popular media akin to a magician's misdirection - and intended to distract us from some awful legislation or horrendous activity going on elsewhere in the country...

Passwords in plaintext? NOT OK, Cupid

Re: Ha, ha.

I'm going to defer to others advice that OKCupid is not in any way related to Cupid Media.

I did want to comment however on the suggestion that OKCupid did the wrong thing (absolutely Eich would feel so) in exposing that he financially supported the repeal of equality laws.

Every place along the spectrum between hetero - bi - homo - a-sexual is a place that a human being has a right to be and it is immoral to deny the right to enjoy all human rights (and associated legal privileges) regardless of gender, race, orientation and so on...

If OKCupid had exposed Eich as having contributed to a NeoNazi political fund, and being forced to declare that (and his association with Mozilla), we would applaud OKCupid for exposing a vicious bigot, and we might enjoy him losing his high-fallutin' job as a result of his immoral convictions.

There is something nasty, narrow-minded and worthy of exposure in both as they exhibit a victimisation of fellow humans.

Sure, when a person is saying that gay marriage shouldn't be permitted, I personally might not get the same self-righteous, angry ball in my stomach that comes when I see a Swastika on a car, however, I recognise that this is a) a matter of taste that one is less acceptable than the other and b) it is just a matter of time until the social reaction is precisely the same.

While it might not be so right now we WILL in time see sexuality equal rights denial as being of the same severity as gender equality and other racial or cultural discrimination. Again, it's just a matter of time. Future generations will look at this aspect of our generation, with the same shame with which we look at our gender-discriminating forefathers.

</rant>

NBN day of action fizzles as just 20 show at Turnbull's office

Re: NBN a fizzle

"millions of us already have access to 100 megabit cable from competing telcos, but 87% of those passed by the cable choose not to access it at all"

you know what? armchair surveys of mine, show that my 20-30 something aged friends generally

- wouldn't know what overhead cable network looks like, and

- assume that the ABS boxes attached to the side of their rental house are power or something

- figure the 'telstra' or 'optus' labelled outlets in their house are for cable TV

- wouldnt know that there is any difference between an ADSL and a cable connection,

- so make their decisions around the generally more cost effective offerings from non-Telstra and non-Optus providers, which inevitably are ADSL

I'm sure one could argue that these uninformed folk make up the majority of people in the country (hence the 13% uptake of cable connection where available) but i don't think that public policy and infrastructure decisions should be made around whether private firms are doing enough to emphasise for average-Jane or Joe, that their Cable offering is going to yield more efficient home business, more effective communications, or faster cat videos. We need to make such decisions, knowing that it might be under-utilised (50% of people opting for 12Mbps) in the short term, but knowing also that it can easily be purposed to a plausible future task such as complete removal of radio-based television signals to free up more spectrum for mobile data, and purposed to streaming of 4k resolution (or greater) TV signals straight down the 'service guarantee' optic fibre to your door...

Flying 360° panoramic camera poised for lift-off

or indeed, give it a little 'chute that deploys on apogee and once accelerometers detect the 'chute taking hold, it takes the shot through all 36 cameras which are mounted only on the lower hemisphere per Gordon's suggestion.

armchair expert has all the answers over here, though weirdly, no-one ever asks...

Love the idea, but I'm not a fan of the wide-angle distortion as evident in that lookout panorama, where i presume the railing is actually straight but appears like the prow of a ship. Would you only be able to improve this effect with MORE cameras, not less?

Australia's proto-NBN now decaying in the desert

analogous

i just love how clearly articulated the analogy/contradiction between 1870 and 2009 is made. the relatively slight justification for the couple-hundred-thousand-pound spend - though i suppose we don't truly know how that expenditure was justified, the tremendous effort of laying telegraph by hand and horse and cart through amazingly remote country... really clearly constructs the contrast to today's too hard/cant afford it/no point. thank you.

the other part, the current day abandoned sites and the historical microwave construction detail and photographs adds a very cool historical context to trans continental communication tech. loved reading this.