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Rental affordability has gone from record highs to record lows in the space of three years. What went wrong?
  • International student intake as a ratio of housing supply is the main issue. If dwellings were being built at the same rate of international student intake, then affordability or vacancy would not be a problem.

    Look up your local universities (they're all non-profit organisations with financials reported in the ACNC) and realise just how much their business model has become funded by international students. Here's a few examples:
    University of Melbourne: 69% of tuition fee revenues comes from intl students
    University of Queensland: 70% of tuition fee revenues comes from intl students

    The universities also receive government funding, pay no income tax (because they are "nonprofit"), and don't need to contribute anything to the housing problem that they are feeding. It's time for them to help carry the burden - they should either provide housing or help pay for it.

  • Tucker Carlson Could Face Sanctions Over Putin Interview
  • When Russia has repeatedly denied requests from other journalists in the past, I don't think that you can really associate Carlson with being "free press". This is a business deal, not journalism. How should we treat people who engage in business deals with sanctioned individuals?

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/tucker-carlson-vladimir-putin-interview-b2492192.html

    “Does Tucker really think we journalists haven’t been trying to interview President Putin every day since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine? It’s absurd – we’ll continue to ask for an interview, just as we have for years now,” said CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

    The BBC’s Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg, wrote on X: “Interesting to hear @TuckerCarlson claim that ‘no western journalist has bothered to interview’ Putin since the invasion of Ukraine. We’ve lodged several requests with the Kremlin in the last 18 months. Always a ‘no’ for us.”

    Yevgenia Albats, a Russian journalist and author of a book about the KGB, described Mr Carlson’s claim as “unbelievable”.

    “I am like hundreds of Russian journalists who have had to go into exile to keep reporting about the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine. The alternative was to go to jail. And now this SoB is teaching us about good journalism, shooting from the $1,000 Ritz suite in Moscow,” she wrote on X.

  • Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead
  • I think it's more about the web visitor cost. Handling traffic and API calls becomes a financial problem when there are a growing number of companies using bots to scrape data. Larger companies are moving their content behind paywalls, which acts as a bot filter, and have also identified that they can generate a revenue stream from subscriptions and API connections. Old content on the web is not deemed to have much business value, so it's a decision of either charging for it or scrapping it.

  • US officials: "We realize that efforts, implied or explicit, to shape or change the PRC over several decades did not succeed"
  • No, you need to read the remarks again. Paragraphs like this one do not support your interpretation at all.
    The US is saying that China's economic trajectory has been too optimistic in the past and that the US needs to focus on domestic improvements, force China to play by the rules, and then facilitate the US becoming the leader.

  • Neuralink implants brain chip in first human, Musk says
  • There's quite a difference between rapid prototyping on software/hardware versus the human body.
    Musk's approach to developing engineering advances has worked well in the software, aerospace, and vehicular industries. Development on inorganic things is much more predictable, we can isolate variables, and it is easier to understand cause & effect. If you screw up some software on an inorganic system, your program might crash, your rocket might explode, or your car won't start. These risks can be anticipated and costed fairly well, therefore rapid prototyping has an acceptable risk/reward ratio in that environment.

    The human body, on the other hand, is an extremely complex system that we still don't fully understand. Each person is a unique variation on the model and that changes over time depending on upbringing, diet, exercise, and life experiences. Applying the same engineering approaches from inorganic industries has a much higher risk once you cross into the medical realm. If you have errors in a medical situation, you risk sickening, injuring, or even killing a person. The risk/reward ratio is skewed towards ensuring that human life is protected at all costs.

    Using SpaceX as an example, the first three launches failed spectacularly and a fourth failure would have ended the business but fortunately the fourth test was a success. If you're suggesting that we apply the same risk-taking to Neuralink, are you suggesting that it's acceptable for the first three patients to die, as long as the fourth is a success?

  • Russia accuses Ukraine of killing 65 of its own POWs by shooting down plane
  • I wouldn't call it propaganda or even news - it's just theories at this stage.
    What we can speculate about is motive to deceive. Russia has been incurring some notable losses from Ukrainian anti-air defences recently, so there would be a motive from the Russian side to portray those anti-air defences as either ineffective or untrustworthy so as to try and sway public opinion about its use.

    Claiming that POWs were onboard the plane aligns with that motive but it also raises questions such as:

    1. The plane was reportedly shot down after taking off from Belgorod, so if it was carrying POWs away from Belgorod, what was the intended destination? It doesn't seem logical that Russia would fly from Belgorod into Ukraine (unless they were stupid or taking the risk).
    2. Why not transport POWs to Ukraine by road or rail, given that Kharkiv is only a 90 min drive away?
  • Employers push for staff to return to the office after working from home as commercial property values plunge
  • If you have management that tries to push for a return, give them this article from Microsoft and request a discussion of its many points.
    https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work-is-just-work

    WFH, particularly in 2020-2021, was the opportunity for managers to learn how to effectively manage remotely, using metrics and good planning practices. Those who failed to do so should be the ones questioned as to why they should remain as managers.

  • Brad Pitt in a chicken suit and rating friends: jobseekers believed ‘condescending’ courses required to get payments
  • I would love to see the overlap between the courses taught and the recognised skills gaps that we have in Australia (referenced as the basis for why we import so much overseas skilled labour). According to the migration reporting, chefs are the third highest skillset imported, so I would think that cooking classes would be a useful course for jobseekers...

    https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/research-and-stats/files/report-migration-program-2022-23.pdf

  • WHO asks China for more information about rise in illnesses and pneumonia clusters
  • A reasonable explanation is in this thread: https://twitter.com/BlakeMMurdoch/status/1728160700965523736

    Basically, COVID causes a similar immune deficiency to that of HIV. This deficiency weakens the body's response to other illnesses, making infections like RSV or pneumonia more severe or more frequent. We see this effect more commonly in children because children have a lower vaccination rate than adults.

  • Younger people now even cutting back on essentials, as older Australians spend up on cruises and restaurants
  • A big difference, however, is that houses in the 80s were 3-4 times the average income. Now that ratio is about 10x.
    Younger generations always need to work harder than older people, yes, but the major difference is that working hard these days doesn't provide the same rewards that it once did.

    https://www.finder.com.au/owning-a-home-in-the-80s-vs-today

  • Scratch the surface of the Voice results, and a more complicated picture emerges — ABC News
  • I've lived overseas and I disagree.
    Australia is no more racist than some other developed and developing nations, and there are countries with more racism than Australia.
    Travel to different cities in the US and notice how neighbourhoods are subtlety segregated by race.
    Talk to any European about their thoughts on gypsies.
    Ask Japanese about their thoughts on Koreans.
    Look up the usage of the word "keling" in south east asian cultures.

    What we have in Australia is perhaps a more overt style of referring to cultures or differences, but the barriers to integrate with Australian culture is much lower than other countries. For some migrants that have come from cultures where they had a racial privilege (e.g. caste systems), it could now be confronting to them that their standing in Australia is lowered and equalised.

    The way that we establish social bonds (banter, joking around, jabs, insults etc) can also be confusing to foreigners and be perceived as racist, but it's an old UK way of establishing camaraderie by proving that you can dish out an insult but also take it as well. Like stand-up comedy material, this method is being tamed as time goes on.

    One final indicator of racial division is the level of mixed marriages. If it was a serious problem, we would see low levels of marriages between different countries of origin. In the EU, the rate of mixed marriages is about 8% (1 in 12). In Australia, the rate is 3.5x larger at 29%.

  • Indigenous Voice: Australians reject historic Indigenous referendum - BBC News
  • Who stole the land, exactly? The last Census detailed that 28% of Australians were born outside Australia and 48% have a parent born overseas, so the population who could be traced back to "stealing land" is a small minority.

    From the perspective of some in the older generations, Indigenous Australians were given a voice and representation in 1962 when they were given the option to enrol and vote in federal elections, the same as every other Australian.

  • Indigenous Voice: Australians reject historic Indigenous referendum - BBC News
  • Not specifically about ATSI people, but of any race. The 'races power' part of the Constitution (section 51(xxvi)) reads as follows:

    Current text:
    The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:
    "the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws"

    Original text:
    The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:
    "the people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws"

    https://www.ausconstitution.org/home/chapter-1-the-parliament/part-v-powers-of-the-parliament/section-51/26-race-power

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    morry040 @kbin.social
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