The little Honda is a pretty attractive idea, looks nice and it’s good to see something that’s supposedly designed to be fun to drive rather than yet another sluggish poor handling SUV.

The BYD Atto 1 I think though is a more significant model simply because it’s something that’s at least approaching affordable to an average person. That 24k price is really narrowing the gap between the cheapest cars and cheapest EVs and I expect will result in a noticeable increase in uptake.

I like that another van option is appearing too, it’s sure to be well above a price I can justify but having more secondhand options in the future will be good for me when my Transporter gets beyond logical upkeep.

Pretty good so far, hopefully it’ll continue that way

That would be the best idea to reduce the issue and there is a lot that could be cut out. For example looking at recent shopping the potatoes could have come in a hessian bag instead of plastic (or loose and paper bagged in the shop for small amounts) and the lettuce really did not need to be in its own plastic bag. Soft plastic is harder to replace though for some things (e.g. cheese) so having a way to recycle what will be used is good.

Depends on the state. NSW for example is one that does vary depending on weight (based on weight ranges, not a full sliding scale) - there’s a ~$180 difference between my sedan and van due to the van’s higher tare weight placing it in the next category up. QLD on the other hand is one that doesn’t - they charge based on the cylinder count instead.

Shouldn’t have taken them years to figure out it was a poor idea but I guess that’s what you get when there’s such a vested interest in demonising speed. I’m quite happy it got kiboshed - it’s a rare case of government actually listening to the people.

Discord implemented age verification due to us and the UK moving towards such laws, a third party involved in this was breached and ~70k users had information leaked (though presumably not all of these included IDs). Approx 68k of these users turned out to be Australian.

It’s pretty depressing to see how many people in favour of this are prepared to make everyone suffer invasive demands for personal information in order to use a good portion of the internet. These laws haven’t even come into force yet and they’ve already caused harm in the form of tens of thousands of leaked IDs, to say nothing of the problems with further reducing anonymity of discussion in an increasingly authoritarian world.

The continuous output is where average people actually want more power though, one of the main points of ebikes is to reduce effort from climbing hills. Most people are not going to be at your level of fitness or investment in cycling (in both the physical and mental sense) and just want to get places without needing a shower afterwards. I can see why you want to keep a purer form of something you have an interest in (similarly I think there is limited need for automatic transmissions outside of disability) but there is a case for more power if you want more people to be riding over driving.

The 250w limit in EN15194 is overly low, NSW finally changed their laws to a more sensible 500w a few years back so this change will make it so you can’t import a whole variety of bikes you can legally ride. Even 750w isn’t a problem IMO, having ridden one (with throttle and all) I’d class it as definitely still on the bicycle end of things rather than an actual motorbike.

Looking on the bright side though import restrictions will hopefully induce more manufacturers to do ADR compliance for those of us who do actually want the motorbike end of ‘ebikes’, even for dirt bikes the ability to rego them makes them much more useful for non-track riding.

It sounds a logical start point, the central coast and Newcastle have a large population base to work with and it’s not that far apart. The sheer amount of tunnel for that route compared to what one would expect with a corridor through more open country is a downside but you might as well start somewhere rather than talk about it for a few more decades.

They’re most of the way there but fall a bit short of a real Tim Tam. I find the chocolate has a slight sourness to it compared to the original (as if they let an American pick the recipe) - not enough to stop me eating them but enough to reduce the normal Tim Tam desire to rip through a whole packet.

The Choceur chocolate blocks however tend to be a quite acceptable replacement for Cadbury and even Whittaker so not all hope is lost for more affordable chocolates.

I’ve somehow managed to never read or watch any of the versions of that, I know the general gist of the story due to cultural osmosis but not the details. Might have to get around to reading the book at least.

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and The Mysterious Island (this one is barely sci fi) both include messages in bottles but not at both start and end of the story, so at this point I think I’m out of ideas.

That just makes me think of the Count of Monte Cristo, and while that plot kicks off everything with a nautical message it wasn’t in a bottle.

Nothing comes to mind that matches that unfortunately.

I did initially think of Treasure Island for some reason and that definitely matches the latter criteria but I don’t recall any messages in a bottle actually appearing in the book.

Even with a theoretically ideal seal holding suitable humidity it depends a lot on what paper and where the bottle spent its time. I would expect a massively broad range of times - between a few years and thousands of years.

Paper with any significant acid content will last significantly less time than acid free paper, and paper made of cotton is likely to last noticeably better than paper made from wood. You also want the paper to be kept away from light and high temperatures as these will really cut into potential lifespan. If this bottle spent most of its time buried in a beach that would have at least kept it dark and relatively cool, probably why it lasted so well even with an imperfect seal.

Over the last few years I think all our states have now banned phones from being visible in school, so there’s efforts towards reducing usage at least within school. That’s a relatively recent move though and does only cut down on usage during part of the day so I don’t know if there’s been a noticeable effect on the kids.

Doesn’t that sound exactly like the “can somebody please think about the children” argument?

It is that, but the ban in question is being justified by that same poor argument so it might as well be fired right back again.

From my reading it’s going to be the same campgrounds that already exist, but now with a commercial operator being able to book a proportion of the sites before the public can. I don’t know if they will physically separate the commercially booked sites but at this point I have seen no mention of expanding or creating campgrounds for this purpose.

I am ideologically against letting commercial operators into this field - I accept the reality that camping fees in national parks are a necessary evil to help with provision of services and reduce false bookings, but I think if such fees are going to exist the money should go directly to Parks rather than have the majority go to a private company. Commercial camping operations should be operating on private land rather than public - that way public access to public land is not reduced and the public gets limited access to land they would not otherwise get to (the camping might even help fund preservation of said private land).