Did everyone else get the “Energy Bill Relief” email?

I have a feeling that this is just more “corporate welfare”.

I expect everyone’s Energy providers to inflate prices over the next 4 months by about $75 a month.

I recently changed provider because the government energy website said my bill would be half of what it was; guess what; it was exactly the fucking same!

The sooner the Government de-privatise the Energy sector, the better. We will also see an end to the Fracking Industry’s astroturfing against renewables.

That would be wonderful. They would need to make the Change-Over because of the plethora of battery platforms available. I can see them being quite expensive though. Lots of labour to test and refactor that many cells by hand. Consumed cells will need to be recycled and specialist technicians trained and experienced in working with high voltages will need to do the battery swaps in and out of vehicles.

One other good benefit would be that vehicles that are no longer roadworthy will be taken off the road. If an EV battery technician notices damaged structure, they aren’t likely to want to replace the battery in the vehicle. EV battery technicians that aren’t responsible will be selected against by Darwin’s Law. ⚡️🔥💨⚡️

I would like to see your calculations. Please enlighten us.

We let us do the maths; A low end ICE vehicle (historically in Australia) would last 20-30 years if it is serviced regularly. $30k. Let us pretend it uses a tank of fuel a week ($5000),annual Servicing is $1000 a year and insurance is $1000 a year. That is $7000 per year running cost. That is $30k+30*$7k =$240k

Let’s take an EV, assuming insurance is $1000, servicing is $500, cost is $100k and lifetime is 10 years before the battery is useless. I’m not going to worry about electricity. 3*$100k+30*$1500 = $750k

“That’s not fair, you can buy a cheap EV for $50k, and batteries may last longer than 10 years!” Ok then, 2*$50k+30*$1500=$550k

You are right, but I did not forget. Walkable cities also includes decentralised workplaces. Whether that means WFH, or local satellite offices or colocated workspaces, they all decrease commute and increase worker satisfaction. The only businesses that still benefit from monolithic workplaces would be high security and vanity businesses.

What the government can do is legislate “Guaranteed BuyBack” of EVs at EOL and enforce fully recyclable vehicles. The Chinese manufacturers are providing discounted vehicles because when the battery is dead, it is not their problem. A lot of these cheaper EVs with 5 or 7 year warranties aren’t making it out of the warranty period without a new battery. When they are out-of-warranty, good luck keeping it out of landfill.

Not to mention the TCO. Battery lifetime will be interesting when vehicles are out of warranty.

A traditional ICE vehicle will last decades beyond the Warranty period.

Some of the cheaper EVs have batteries dying within months of warranty expiration; replacement remanufactured change-over batteries are more than the value of a new vehicle.

As long a manufacturers have guaranteed buyback and the vehicles are fully recyclable, that would be fine, but it isn’t something the cheaper brands aren’t offering.

The corporate revolt against MLL has started. The lawyers are starting to realise that outsourcing to an unaccountable third party is too much of a liability. The business leaders are also starting to realise that it isn’t good for their business models.

I was ecstatic to find that the Adobe AI feature is missing from Acrobat Reader when I started my work computer the other day. Our IT department is also progressively excising Microsofts Copilot and Bing Chat features from our work computers too.

More companies need to do this.

…or a bad financial quarter and unscrupulous executives who need to inflate their figures.

Considering that the Australian Automotive manufacturing industry no longer exists, we have three choices; import cars, improve public transport or improve bike/ walking paths.

Since the right-wing astroturf campaigns are not supportive of walkable communities and by extension, the gulliable voter base follows along with that, what about public transport?

This is a chicken-egg problem, the Economic ‘Rationalist’ beancounters wont allow improvements to public transport and the public won’t use public transport until it is improved.

That leaves car imports. European-manufactured brands charge luxury pricing for their vehicles, even when they are not luxury brands. They also charge luxury pricing for aftersales. US manufacturers don’t make any vehicles suitable for the Australian market. Japanese and Korean manufacturers are producing some good vehicles for the Australian market, but Japan is charging European pricing and Korean vehicles are also out the price range of most people. This leaves Chinese and Indian vehicles for the price-conscious driver and Chinese and Indian manufactured former-European “luxury” vehicles for the ignorant driver.

If the government want to stop automotive imports, they will need to be Progressive. Improve mass-transit and freight infrastructure (Octopus Act 2.0), regulate new housing developments to be more walkable and retrofit existing developments to be more walkable. In the interim, they would also need to subsidise local manufacturing again. This would also need government oversight to prevent the global outsourcing of parts from the 2000s and the corporate fraud of the parent companies from The 2010s.

Sorry, was my tasteless joke similar to those deleted comments? I will happily delete it if you don’t approve.

Saved you a click; It was Woodgrove in Melton, It wasn’t Highpoint (if it was Highpoint, it wouldn’t be News).

Maybe ThE aLgOrThMs insistence to put scantily clad women in everyone’s Shorts is just a really bad attempt at a bad Dad Joke.

Curated music services like Spotify and Apple Music can give some great recommendations.

ThE aLgOrYtHm of YouTube gives terrible recommendations. It is as if it has no musical taste whatsoever.

They are all doing these offensive bundles of crap. It is worse than the days of Cable.

We are subscribed to Apple One Family Premier. I need the large data for my family to backup their devices, but none of us want Fitness+ or News+. It is cheaper to get this extra crap we don’t want, than to just get Data.

I just need a way to disable Fitness+ without disabling the Workout features. This is the same as disabling Shorts, Music and Games in YouTube.

I have been ”Don’t Recommend”-ing the generated “SuperPanavision” videos since they started earlier this year; blocking channels, “show less like this” everything. The problem is that this stuff is being pumped out constantly on so many channels that it is impossible to block them all.

I usually get bombarded with Right-Wing content after I watch Juice Media videos. Also, if a watch a feminist video, it is usually followed by recommendations of “AnTi-WoKe” mansplaining videos. it is if they want to show “Both Sides” after I watch something about maintaining democracy and contributing to society in a positive way.

The YouTube Games are just another banner of unwanted “content” like Shorts.

The T&A shorts are usually of young women in jeggings and crop-tops doing risqué actions; if your mouse passes over the Shorts for a millisecond , YouTube autoplays them and registers as a view, creating a negative feedback loop of more and more scantily clad young women doing mundane things in a risqué way.

Jailbait is probably the wrong word, but every single short has a scantily clad young lady. It isn’t the Algorithm because all I watch are Machining Videos, DIY and Restoration Videos and the occasional Science and Natural History video.

The most risqué channel subscribe to is VanWives.

Speaking of which, the Algorithm never serves anything that I subscribe to. I would better off going straight to my Subscriptions page.

I will maintain my observation that the Algorithm is shit.

This is ridiculous.

• their algorithms are crap and keep ramming right-wing bullshit down my throat
• they keep trying to get me to play YouTube games
• they list YouTube Shorts multiple times in the Home Screen and most of the time it is just over-sexualised jailbait.
• using anonymous Google to find a video on YouTube is more effective than using YouTube search

I am seriously thinking of getting an Apple Vision Pro just so I can use Juno and bypass all the bullshit.

Time I planned an exit strategy.

And which is which?