decryption

You're telling me your Dad has (or had - he got a mobile now) a home, in Australia that lets you plug a phone into the wall and make/receives phone calls, without an internet service, in 2026??

I know there's copper for FTTN internet - but not phone calls?

Australia hasn't had a POTS for a while now, since the National Broadband Network was "complete". They literally ripped the copper out of the ground and sold it for scrap, they even made specialised machines to make the task easier: https://www.rg.com.au/2022/09/29/telstra-mirait-take-deliver...

Hasn't really been much of an issue day-to-day. My mother for example still uses her landline phone on the same phone number she's had for decades via VOIP that the ISP operates. The vast majority of people use mobile phones as their primary voice service and it all seems to work just fine. But there has been a few notable outages (e.g: Telstra and their NTP mess, Optus and their emergency-call routing issues), and of course there's fringe issues with coverage gaps, but overall I'd say the mobile voice network is as reliable as the old POTS was (which was far from perfect).

The Australian state of NSW just turned on an 850MW/1.68GWh battery - it's operating in the NEM now:

https://www.nsw.gov.au/ministerial-releases/nsw-flicks-switc...

Australia has a few gigawatt hour batteries now and a 1GW/4GWh battery has been undergoing planning approval for a few months: https://reneweconomy.com.au/huge-4-gigawatt-hour-battery-aus...

There's so much domestic rooftop solar going to waste that it makes economic sense for these giant batteries to soak it up and sell it at night or during peak events. Love to see it.

The bz4x is basically my canonical ideal car from an interior point of view! Thank god for consumer choice.

Yes, but then they have other design flaws too. There's basically only 1 brand selling EVs in Australia that aren't a compromise (to me at least) in one way or another. Skoda and upcoming VW cars seem to be bucking the trend.

That correlates with my research too (which is at the end of the blog post if you read that far - fair enough if you didn't, it's a long post!). Skoda's design philosophy is "Simply Clever" and I guess they actually believe it rather than being a marketing gimmick.

https://www.skoda-auto.com/world/simply-clever

This is correct (I'm the author the post). The EX30 could be a great car but the quality of the software really lets it down. Prior to this I owned a Tesla and while it was way better, it still had the occasional failure to recognise my iPhone as the key and wouldn't let me into the car. Maybe 1 in 10 occasions compared to 5 in 10 with the EX30.

It does if the person driving sucks at using it. I've been driving OPD since 2018 and friends that get sick in Teslas driven by Uber drivers have told me they didn't get sick and wondered what I was doing different. The difference is I know how to use it.

I would also like to find out what happened here. Here's a video with a BMW designer where they're asked point blank about some design aspects of their new iX3 (which seems like an impressive car, total clean sheet EV design) and when asked about the door handles - which are flush, but pop out, which isn't too bad IMHO - basically said they do it because it looks cool, any aero benefits are just the cherry on top.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irPxEW0_dbQ

Does it really? I go between an ICE car and my EV every 2-3 weeks and switching between the two isn't much of a mental challenge. I just prefer OPD.

I am the author of the blog post and yep, the Chevy Bolt is basically the perfect car (for me at least). Ticks all the boxes. Apparently the 2027 Bolt RS has driver's seat memory.

But the Bolt isn't available in Australia! GM abandoned us when they shut down Holden. Ironically, it was designed for production based on a South Korean prototype in Port Melbourne, 40km from where I live! https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/chevrolet-bolt-reveale...

I run a semi-popular email newsletter with a public archive of old issues and this stupid bot has been emailing me too. Who is the target market here? Who would actually pay for whatever they're promoting?

When I started TAFE (the equivalent of community college in the US I assume?) in Australia in 2003, one of the subjects in the electronic engineering course was to study and program a Z80. I was awful at it, but it was a good introduction to how a computer works. I wonder if they're still using this CPU as a way to teach the fundamentals of computers?

I have an EX30 in Australia and it's been excellent in regards to its driver attention system. Never had any false alerts. If anything it's not accurate enough as when I look away it sometimes doesn't warn me! Crazy how we can have such different experiences in the same vehicle, presumably with the same software.

Execs where I work seem to think we will just keep writing stuff, LLMs will scrape it and that will influence what people see in their version of Google/ChatGPT/etc. So nothing changes in their mind, just that the audience is a bot, not a human. As a writer, this sucks.

You mentioned in the post that you "received a stack of 4 Pi marketing brochures and articles". Do you plan to scan these and place them on your website or the Internet Archive? I'd love to read them!

16GB would be plenty. I've got like a dozen services running on an 8GB i7-4970 and it's only using 5GB of RAM right now.

I'm surprised it's only 65%. There's hardly anywhere to fuel these things up and the price of hydrogen isn't exactly a bargain.

That explains the cheap DDR4 DIMMs on AliExpress. Can get 2x 16GB DDR4-3200 DIMMs for A$252 delivered to Australia. A local PC store has same spec “name brand” RAM for around $380-$400.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mssanU1

My experience is that bosses read my blog, then when they or a fellow manager need to hire someone, have reached out to me asking me to apply. So it cuts both ways - maybe your shitty boss sees you blogging and sharing your experience, but a good boss will see that and go "I want this passionate and curious person to work for me".

Volvo Cars is still publicly traded. Ticker symbol is VOLCAR B on the Swedish NASDAQ: https://au.finance.yahoo.com/quote/VOLCAR-B.ST/

Geely owns around 79% of the shares, with the rest split up between pension funds and private equity.

I have been stung by the exact same socket name bullshit from Intel and it is infuriating.

This is what I am hoping Apple does with iOS and the Mac. iOS becomes the mainstream operating sytem and Mac is the "pro" operating system.

Apple did! The Game Porting Toolkit does (I think) what you're talking about and what Steam did for Linux.

https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/

Why it hasn't taken off, I have no idea.

I have a 2024 Volvo EX30, driven it about 11,000km. It uses the same computer system platform as the EX90 and while it's not fantastic (my previous Tesla is superior), it's better than most EVs I've driven and hasn't given me any problems. I love the car, so it's a shame the more expensive and "luxury" EX90 is plagued by these issues.

That said, Volvo Canada really needs to lift its game and just give the guy a new car already. Hope the bad PR and lawsuit gets Volvo to realise their mistake, apologise and refund him.

Did not expect this post to get so popular - I added a bunch more images I found I was saving for a second post on a rainy day, so go back and reload the page for more 1-bit pixel art goodies :-)

I wish I knew what Acius was or is too!