Australia

I've been hearing a fair bit recently about alternate/private fibre providers (ie DGtek/PineappleNet or Gigacomm), and I'm very intrigued (especially pineapple as they offer symmetrical upload and download speeds as opposed to whatever tf the NBN is doing with this gigabit down, 20mbps up garbage.

Unfortunately all of them only have teeny tiny coverage maps, and exclusively in inner city/affluent suburbs. But if anyone here lives in one, or knows somebody that does and uses one of them, what's your experience been like?

I'm really hoping they start to rollout to more suburbs. The NBN rollout was mega bungled, and although they don't directly sell to consumers, and are a publicly owned corporation, I think it'll be nice to see more competition, or at the very least, more options. The NBN's FTTP upgrades have helped, but are limited in scope, at least for now. And still have the downside of only offering asymmetric upload speeds (which I realise isn't that big of an issue for most people, but would still be useful to see an improvement on)

I know this has been covered but this is good analysis from a high school student.

Archive/non-paywall link.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/20289457

World losing half a trillion to tax abuse, largely due to 8 countries blocking UN tax reform, annual report finds

Multinational corporations cheated more after getting tax cuts, largest inadvertent real-world testing of corporate tax policies reveals

LAST WEEK, News Corp’s newspapers The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, The Courier Mail and The Adelaide Advertiser caused controversy by publishing front page “exclusives” and “special reports” alleging that more gas is needed to avoid electricity blackouts in the future.

If readers turned the page and read the fine print, they would learn that this so-called “news” was actually not news. It was an advertorial (a fancy word for an advertisement), paid for by – you guessed it – the fossil fuel industry.

Liliana Goodson travelled to Australia in 2023 to attend clown school with the gold-plated pistol, worth about $3,000, in her luggage

Exclusive: Filters, including one that turns a person into a horse, include Sportsbet logos and direct 18+ users to open a gambling account

With a kid in Little Athletics, I've taken an interest in junior track and field this year. I've been following Gout's antics for about six months, now.

At 16 (almost 17), He just ran the fastest 200m time by an Australian sprinter, ever.

https://youtu.be/bjb4ku7GeLc

For the record, he also ran a 100m in 10.04 this year.

Australia has just passed a law that will ban kids from social media online. How exactly? Well, through the amazing power of… shoosh.

This is my thinly-veiled request for Christmas ideas for a bunch of people I need to buy presents for - some of whom I don't see all that often and know all that well. I thought it'd be handy to have a thread of present ideas that we can all crowd-source off each other. The best ideas are going to be neat stuff that people won't know exists and won't have already bought for themselves. I'll end up getting some people obvious stuff like alcohol and nice chocolates. Those aren't really he ideas I'm looking for.

I don't want to make rules, but I think we need a couple:

1. Let's at least cap them at $50. Telling people you want a Drone, a Steam Deck or PS5 simply isn't realistic. I'm not looking for ideas in that price range (even though I'd probably love all these, myself).
2. Avoid intimate stuff. I'm not talking sex toys (though avoid those too - I'm not buying my sister-in-law a dildo), but more things that are really personal like jewellery, watches and stuff that you need to know the person's tastes to get right.

I hope this inspires a massive migration off CBA and a rollback of the policy. Because if it doesn't, the other banks will be sure to follow.

In short:

The Eureka Rebellion was a battle fought between gold miners and government soldiers at Ballarat in 1854.

While the miners were defeated quickly, they won favour with the public and eventually earned more rights, including the right to vote.

What's next?

The 170th anniversary will take place [on the 3rd of December] and Ballarat locals are watching to see if it is again misappropriated by far-right groups.

Without a subsidy, patients could pay $750 a year to treat the condition which has no cure and can last decades