Today, I noticed I had an extremely large number of “new” users, about 206 accounts in total created, with an odd username pattern:
www.XXXXX.blogspot.YY - Z.ZZZ BINANCE
XXXXX was a randomly chosen set of letters, YY was one of many TLDs that Blogspot uses, and Z.ZZZ was some kind of price value. Clearly, spammers have found a new way to send spam: using the registration email that WordPress uses to confirm your email address is valid.
This blog has always allowed comments in one form or another. Originally I allowed anonymous user comments and ping-backs, but when those got abused, I disabled them, requiring that a user be registered with the site to comment.
That has been fine up until today. Some “BINANCE” arsehole decided that the username field was a perfect way to spray shite from one end of the Internet to the other. In total, 230 accounts were created in the past few hours, mostly to gmail.com email addresses.
Maybe the username field can be stripped on such emails so the only thing they can supply is the email address (basically making sending mass spam this way very difficult; they’d have to “encode” it in a sub-address … not all providers support this and they can do it different ways).
We’ll see what damage that’s done to the sender score on this site. I have a second route I can use for sending outbound email that’s got a clean reputation so not all is lost.
Comments for the time being will now be exclusively through ActivityPub.
There’s been a lot of discussion about federal Labor’s plan to ban social media networks for people under the age of 16 years. This is actually been boiling for a little while now, but is getting full media attention now that the US election has finished.
It got me thinking though, what is a social media network? A website? A mobile phone application? Depending on your definition, you might be shocked to learn that the concept of a social media network has existed long before the existence of both these things.
Tom Standage published a book back in 1998 (yes, last century), “The Victorian Internet“, which discussed the development of telecommunications, from the early days of visual semaphores and banging pots and pans… through to the wired telegraph, and the parallels with the Internet we have today.
Of course this book being the late 90s, a time when the state-of-the-art feature was a mobile phone that had user-programmable ringtones and maybe could play Snake, the idea of this global network being accessible from a pocketable device seemed far fetched. This was just a year before the technology dead end called WAP.
If you consider a social network as being a place where people can exchange messages and ideas… then one might consider the “personal columns” of the local newspaper to be a very early form of social media network. It was a place where members of the public could write in, and have published (at the editors’ discretion) their letter for the readership to see. Sometimes the letters were public in nature, sometimes they were coded: providing a puzzle to challenge armchair cryptographers.
When telegraph networks started springing up, the need for telegraph operators grew, especially as these networks transitioned from being military networks to being a short message service for the general public. The operators themselves would go on to develop their own culture, parts of which survive today in the amateur radio world.
The invention of the telephone did eventually force the closure of the telegraph network, but it too, in its own way hailed the development of a social media network that over the course of the 20th century, would become a taken-for-granted fixture in most urban homes.
Many amateur radio enthusiasts are curious about electronics in general, and thus a good number of them became interested in the developing world that was the home computer. As the cost of components came down and parts became more integrated, both radio amateurs, and non-radio electronics enthusiasts alike would experiment with home computers.
Some amateur operators in the late 80s took old dial-up modems and modified them to connect to their radios, developing a protocol and standard we call “packet radio”. Others, would leave the modems as they were, write a program to answer the telephone and create a basic message board: the bulletin board system. People who were versed with both got the idea to make BBSes that faced both ways (packet radio and dial-up).
Some had access into an early cold-war era computer network system called ARPAnet (we now call this the Internet), and it too, had social network services of its own (e.g. Usenet), they would develop gateways that allowed their BBS users to interact on Usenet newsgroups. BBS software suites would also eventually develop peer-to-peer federation protocols like FIDOnet, enabling users of one BBS system to exchange messages with users of other BBSes.
The “normal” folk of the day often looked on such developments with disdain. Deriding the users as just boring “nerds”, the pioneers of this online social networking scene were often ostracised. These were people that often were socially awkward in real life. Today we might use the term “neurodivergent” to describe some of them. This online network provided an alternate reality, where your place in the world was judged on merit, what you knew … rather than physical attributes. A place where people could be themselves, and not get bullied about it.
The people that developed these systems though, would later go on to develop online communities for themselves on what was then a relatively new Internet-based service, the world wide web. MySpace, LiveJournal, Facebook, Twitter, the ActivityPub platforms (including Mastodon) and BlueSky… are all just further developments of the same ideas. Social networks thus, have a very long history.
Thus I come back to, what is a social network? Many of the things you can do on a site like Facebook or Twitter, can similarly be done lots of other ways, equally as effectively. MMS might be one of the last vestiges of the old WAP protocol, but it still lives on in modern mobile phones, and can send both text, pictures and video just as easily as posting to a web-based social media system like Facebook. In short, it is a social media network.
If the federal government wants to ban under 16s from using “social media”, they might as well create a time machine and zap our teens back to the 1700s, as it appears the only communication technology they’ll be able to legally use will all be inventions that were commonplace in that era.
So, we’ve rolled around into a new year… and being often the season for get-togethers, we often find ourselves sharing more than just food, gifts and company. For some of us, it’s also the trade of unintended gifts in the form of infectious disease.
Thus far, I’ve avoided a second bout, once was enough! The evidence at this stage suggests the risk of long-term effects from this condition compound each-time you get it. Compounding interest on a term deposit is a good thing… compounding medical conditions from a virus is anything but!
I loathe wearing masks, and back when restrictions were finally lifted, I was glad to put mine on the shelf and leave it be. However, back then we had >80% up-to-date vaccination status, Omicron COVID-19 was relatively new, we had booster shots that knew about this variant. It “felt” relatively safe to do this.
I kept my shots up since my bout. While I hate needles, I hate disease more. I was doing them on a 6-month cadence, but when I enquired in October last year whether I should get another, I was told that since I’m not “vulnerable”, I should wait it out until 12 months. That was before JN.1 knocked on Brisbane’s door.
The Christmas period the last few years have been a period where cases spiked, and the 2023 Christmas period is no different: except this time around, we had two variants vying for attention: XBB 1.5 and JN.1. JN.1 has been marked a variant of concern by the WHO. This latter one is becoming dominant here in Brisbane and has prolonged the “tail” of Christmas cases we’ve become accustomed to.
So far, I’ve dodged it. Am I merely asymptomatic? That’s hard to know. RAT tests are ineffective at detecting these without actual symptoms present, and the “gold standard” PCR tests are not readily available.
My frustration is the lack of clear information as to what’s going on.
Community monitoring
Some people I’d like to call out in particular, which have helped plug a gaping hole in reporting coverage, and are helping to make things a lot better…
“Dennis – The COVID info guy” has been doing a fantastic job monitoring the media and collating COVID-19 related articles from across the globe as well as domestically. Most media outlets have stopped reporting on this condition since it’s no longer “novel”, it’s all too easy for news on this condition to fly under the radar.
Similarly, Mike Honey has been doing a brilliant job locating the raw data sets and providing great visualisations of that data.
Both these people have been instrumental for surfacing information that otherwise might be difficult or impossible to find any other way now that we don’t have regular media updates from the respective state governments any more.
They both post to the auscovid19 group. If you’re on the Fediverse (e.g. Mastodon), follow @auscovid19@a.gup.pe and you’ll see posts from both (among others). I highly recommend this group.
That said, the work these two and others do, is somewhat hobbled by the lacklustre reporting from today’s state governments.
Status reporting
Rewind back 2 years ago, we had very clear tracking of two factors to the general public:
the number of cases, detected, hospitalised and in ICU, from week to week, for each area
the number of people vaccinated, and to what level
Admittedly, this was at a time when 3 shots was the most anyone had unless they had special consideration. These days, the better approach is to just consider whether someone is “up to date”. For most people, that is “a shot in the last 12 months”, or “a shot in the last 6 months” for “vulnerable” people.
We also had week-by-week snapshot of case numbers, and in many cases, waste-water testing data.
This has all been almost completely abandoned. Queensland Health gives monthly stats if any. I feel given how fast this virus moves, and how mobile we are now, this was a hideously naïve decision.
Admittedly case numbers require people to report cases (either through their doctor or directly), but vaccinations, that is data that could be automatically collated and produced. We don’t need to name-and-shame people who are not up-to-date… but a break-down of people who had a shot “within the last 6 months”, “within the last 12 months”, “12 or more months ago” and “never” for each local government area could be a great start!
Waste water testing also is a pretty good proxy for individual case numbers. It’d be worth seeing that published again.
It was nice to see it all broken down for us, but even just having the raw data would allow those of us in the community who have the tools and expertise to crunch the numbers, and allow us to “do our own risk assessment”.
Mask requirements
I hate the idea of going back to needing them, but it seems we dropped restrictions way too early. Dropping restrictions really needed to happen after another crucial step: retrofitting of buildings’ HVAC systems to ensure they properly “scrub” the air.
This requirement was hinted at years ago with bushfire smoke permeating through buildings and triggering smoke alarms. When COVID-19 first showed up, we thought it was “droplet” spread, hence the insistence of “social distancing” (1.5m or more), keeping surfaces sanitised, and any kind of mask you could get your hands on.
Now, we understand its aerosol spread, which spreads through buildings just like smoke does. It hangs in the air just like smoke does. It can hang in the air for hours, and a slight draft can spread it from one end of the building to the other. 1.5m separation and clean bench-tops are meaningless.
There’s also a call to move to KF-94 or better (N95/P2 or N100/P3) masks as opposed to crappy droplet masks, ideally ones that filter both ways (inhaled and exhaled). Ocular transmission has also been observed — a face shield or glasses are sufficient protection for most people, but there’s still a small risk there. Aerosol spread though, requires you have something that properly seals and filters down to PM2.5 particle levels.
Here in Queensland, it’s up to the individual business what they allow. My local doctor actually requires masks before entry, but is seemingly not fussy about what ones you choose.
A good thing in some ways, because valve-less ones really do not agree with me: I’ve tried them before many times and found I couldn’t stand wearing one for more than a few minutes… if I force myself to wear one for longer, I find the constant re-breathing of my own breath causes me to become light-headded at first, and later come down with cold-like symptoms.
That said, when I was doing demolition work for HSBNE, we had vented P2/N95 masks. Those gave me no problems, and in theory, I could use those. The catch being, these work only for stopping you breathing in COVID-19 particles while you are wearing one. They do nothing about what you breathe out. They’ll work just fine if you can keep wearing one 100% of the time — but no one truly can. You have to eat and drink at some point, you’ll need to clean your teeth, you might need to show your full face to someone for identification… you may even need someone looking in your mouth for medical care. The moment you do, you can be exposed, develop an infection, then from that point, nothing is “containing” the viral load you are shedding through exhaled breath.
I actually spotted a bargain a couple of years back: a full-face elastomeric with P3/N100 filters going cheap in a clearance. When I got it, I tried it on and was instantly amazed, this thing was easier to breath in than anything I’ve owned or used before. This though, has the same problem out-of-the-box as the N95s we were using at HSBNE: it has an unfiltered exhalation port. Unlike those masks though, which were single-use disposable types, this one could (unofficially at least) be retrofitted:
The model I bought also had another trick: it could accept an air hose from a PAPR set-up, which was my next logical move if this mask didn’t work. (That said, a PAPR kit with hood is >$2000… vs $200 for this model.) I haven’t yet needed this, but it’s a welcome feature.
That filter mod was reversible, so a good option if you use the mask for work purposes and need to keep things “stock”. I found though, I could “optimise” things a little by drilling some holes to allow better airflow through the makeshift exhalation filter.
This mod, although not reversible, did not compromise the filtering ability of the mask since it was simply adding more holes to an outlet grille that protected the exhalation valve from object ingress.
I’ve since ordered a second mask which I’ll leave unmodified, to use in cases where the mod is seen as unacceptable or to replace the first mask if it becomes damaged.
I nearly considered a half-face model, but these seem to be harder to modify with exhalation filtering. I also have a decent stash of filters that fit the existing mask — it was cheaper to buy the full-face (which is still being sold at a clearance price) than a compatible half-face mask.
What I think may happen
We’re seeing a perfect storm of three things coming together:
apparent lapsing vaccination status for a majority of the population
a lack of official monitoring data
more and more infectious strains, some of which are able to skip vaccine immunity and simultaneously cause more serious infections
What the northern hemisphere cops in their winter, we normally see in our winter period 6 month later. Not that COVID-19 is seasonal: it isn’t. However, lots of other diseases are, and these in combination with COVID-19, mean we’ll likely be in for a doozy of a winter!
The Queensland Government has not said they’d go back to lock-downs or mask mandates like the “bad old days”. In fact, they’ve so far been saying the opposite. However, if the little data they’re still collecting suggested such measures were still required, I would not at all be surprised if they back-flipped on one or both of these areas. It is a big reason why I refuse to go interstate at the moment — the fear of being locked out of home!
My feelings on this
One thing that frustrates me is the lack of official guidance coupled with the lack of data. There’s no guidance from the Queensland Government suggesting what should happen, so everyone makes their own rules. There’s no data, so those decisions all seem arbitrary.
And when you do make a decision unilaterally, it seems no matter which way you go, it’s wrong. Earlier in the pandemic, I tried to lock down and isolate as much as possible — my reasoning if masks were good, not being there was platinum standard for avoiding disease spread.
Some insist this is the right thing to keep doing. Don’t go out, stay home, work from home, and mask up everywhere.
It is not lost on me that I co-habit with someone that is in the “vulnerable” group (in this case: over the age of 60)… so I do need to be at least a little careful.
That said, I find myself pulled towards social outings where a mask would be highly awkward or unworkable, often by family members who are in this “vulnerable” group. Refusing that seems like the wrong thing to do as well.
I almost feel like I’m being unintentionally gaslit from both sides. My instinct is to try and “blend in”: that comes from decades of trying to “mask” my Asperger’s Syndrome… doing something different to everyone else flies in the face of that no matter how good a reason you have to do so.
What I wish governments would do
Resume more regular reporting of data
We don’t need weekly “front the media” discussions, but there should be a data feed that we can all access, that can be used to feed into community-driven dashboards so people can at least come up with a semi-informed decision on what we should do as individuals.
This should include both the current circulating respiratory diseases (influenza, RSV, etc as well as COVID-19), and vaccination status against each.
Instigate and enforce standards for air quality
We now know these diseases spread through aerosol transmission. We also know other environmental threats like dust storms and bush fires can wreak havoc on our urban buildings.
Masks work, but they’re not practical 100% of the time. It has been found by judicious use of air purifying devices and retrofits to HVAC systems, dramatic improvements to respiratory health can be achieved. This needs to be better studied, with minimum standards devised.
With that in hand, building owners should be first encouraged (through grants or other means) to apply this knowledge to assess how their buildings fare, and fix any problems identified. Later, enforcement can be applied to catch up with the stragglers. Clean disease-free air should be a right not a privilege!
What I intend to do
Sadly, masking is not going away any time soon.
I don’t know how I’ll manage at the dentist — COVID-19 will not avoid a potential host because they happen to be occupying the dental chair, and if it’s unsafe to sit in the waiting room unmasked, it’s equally unsafe in the dentist’s chair!
Right now, with days exceeding 30°C and 75% RH, it’s too hot to be wearing one of these masks all the time unless you absolutely have to. It’s also hard to communicate in a mask.
At work
How my workplace would react to me wearing one is a complete unknown. I previously have avoided infection by staying at home… last year I was in a hybrid arrangement, working at home 4 days a week, and one day a week in the office. This has changed to a 2:3 ratio (2 days at home, 3 in the office). It’s an open-plan office in a shared building, with the bottom floor being some medical facilities.
I can work out on the back deck, and have done so… I might be doing that more when it is fine since the risk of transmission outside is far lower. I’d rather work from home if risks are high, but there may be some days where this is unavoidable. I dodged a few bullets late last year.
If there’s a building-wide or workplace-wide mask mandate, there’s no decision to make — it’s either work from home or mask-up. If lots of people begin calling in sick, I guess I’ll have to make that assessment on the day.
Dining out
It’s common for my father and I to dine out… there are four regular places we go to (in Ashgrove):
Taj Bengal: No option to dine outside, but usually this place is quiet on Mondays/Tuesdays… dining on these days should be relatively “low risk”
Cafe Tutto: There’s an outside dining area which is often more pleasant than sitting inside, we also dine there on quieter days. Decent airflow, often quiet, low-risk.
Osaka: Indoor dine-in only, probably the riskiest place as it can get quite popular, but usually things have been quiet, so it hasn’t been a problem.
Smokey Joe’s Pizza: Outside dining only, whilst I’d like to see the overhead fans pushing a little more air, things are relatively open and I don’t feel much threat dining here. We try to get there early because it gets busy later in the evening.
Concerts
My mother and I have been resuming going to concerts… so far, they’ve all been open-air affairs. The most “enclosed” one being Sir Paul McCartney’s “Got Back” concert at Lang Park in November last year.
I’d be very surprised if someone didn’t have some viral load there, but the open-air format means there’s not much chance for diseased aerosols to hang around.
That said, there’s security to get past. They need to identify you, and how they’d react to such a mask is a complete unknown, they may consider it excessive. I think if we are spread out enough, and there’s a decent breeze keeping the air moving, we should be safe enough without.
Shopping
Not that I do a lot, but right now I “read the room”… lately I’ve seen more and more people masking however. This is one area where masking is actually more practical.
I think this year I should try to make an effort in this area, as I have little excuse to do otherwise.
Radio comms exercises
This is an area where I really do need to be able to communicate clearly. I’ll have the mask with me, but it’ll depend on what I’m doing at the time. If I’m operating a station, the mask may need to stay off in order for me to do my job properly.
Outdoors
This is where I feel there’s the least risk. We’ll see how this winter plays out. I might mask-up for the hell of it if it gets cold enough.
Exhalation valve filtering
In cases where I do decide to mask-up… exhalation valve filtering will be predicated on a couple of factors:
Is there a mask mandate in place requiring this to be filtered? If yes, I’ll put the filter in.
Am I in a medical, disability care or aged-care facility? Again, in goes the filter.
Is this otherwise a unilateral decision in a medium or low-risk situation? I might not bother, it’s only a quick moment to slip it in if required.
Vaccination
My next shot is due in May. Around late March, I’ll have to put a booking in. Doing this is probably the single most important thing I can do.
What I urge others to do
If you’re not vaccinated, or your status is lapsed, go book a shot! The risks are low, and prevention is many times better than any cure.
If you own a building that people live or work in, go check it out for airflow issues. Employers and home owners will thank you.
Wear masks in “high-risk” situations: i.e. indoors with high population densities, in places where lots of vulnerable people are (e.g. disability and aged care centres) and in places where sick people congregate (e.g. doctors, hospitals). If you can manage it, do it in low-risk situations (not everyone can).
Stay home if you’re sick unless you’re getting medical attention (and go straight home after you’re done).
Above all: do not judge those for their mask-wearing choice either way — some just can’t wear masks at all, some will wear them all the time.
As we enter 2024, one technology seems to be looming large over many facets of society. Back in the 1960s, the idea that a “machine” (“computers” were actually people who operated calculating machines) could “think” for itself and give “intelligent” answers was the stuff of science fiction.
Television shows like StarTrek and movies/books like 2001 popularised an ever-present voice-controlled assistant that could be hailed, and asked questions or given instructions. Most of these were benevolent (2001’s HAL being a notable exception).
Fast forward nearly 80 years, and we now have voice assistants from major technology vendors like Amazon (Alexa), Apple (Siri) and Google (“OK Google”). Microsoft tried to jump in on this too with Cortana in Windows 10, since removed. Alexa and Siri are allegedly bleeding their parent companies’ income as the novelty wears off… and so these technology firms are starting to look at what’s next.
The latest gold rush seems to be generative AI. This has been brewing for some time.
Many moons ago I recall mucking around with a markov chain plug-in that was embedded in Perlbot on IRC (no_body on the old Freenode network). Very crude, but it sometimes did generate somewhat coherent sentences. It was done for fun, ran on the scrap CPU cycles of an old PIII 550MHz server that also hosted this blog and acted as a web server. Nothing huge by any stretch of the imagination. No GPU in sight.
A few years ago, we started seeing articles about an AI system that could generate imagery. Fore-runners of the likes of DALL-E. Ask it to generate a beach scene, you’d get some weird psychedelic image which vaguely looked like a beach if you squinted right, but with odd things merged together, like a seagull merged into a railing or building. Faces were badly distorted, nothing looked “right”.
Unfortunately, I cannot recall where I saw the image I’m thinking of or what keywords to search that will summon it. Otherwise I’d show an actual example. (I think it was either on The Register or Ars Technica… most likely pre-pandemic.)
Fast forward to 2021, and yes, it could generate a vaguely believable image, but it still struggled with human anatomy. A good example of this is the faked Donald Trump arrest photo that was doing the rounds:
Donald Trump being arrested by police? No, this is an AI-generated image. (Source)
This was a big improvement on what came a few years before it, but it still had lots of visual defects.
This time last year, ChatGPT v3 was available to the general public, and it could passably converse with people. For a statistical model, it did a remarkable job of appearing “intelligent”, but ask it to perform some basic tasks, and it soon fell apart. Yes, it could generate code, but you’d constantly have to massage the prompt to get code that even compiled, let alone functioned the way required.
The big rub with all of this, is the extreme amount of computation required to render the result of a simple prompt. Whether the output be text, an image, audio or video… generative AI is often highly computationally expensive, requiring vast data centres crammed full with GPUs and special-purpose ASICs much like the cryptocurrency rigs of a few years ago. There are some small models that can run on your local computer. A top-of-the-line Raspberry Pi can just cram in some AI models with some trade-offs in accuracy, however you cannot train an AI model with such modest hardware.
Generating the models is the real sticking point: it requires vast compute resources, and in addition, lots of data. It’s Johnny 5 on steroids! Where is that data sourced from? More often than not, it is scraped from websites without authors’ consent. While some content is public-domain, there are examples where copyrighted material was used.
Yes, we can point and laugh when an AI hallucinates a watermark, but for the copyright holder or would-be user, this is really no laughing matter. Microsoft is already facing a lawsuit from The Times over Bing Chat (now Copilot) spitting out big chunks of copyrighted articles.
A human usually has a vague idea where they learned something, even if they can’t find it later… and based on that knowledge, they might have some idea whether such content can be legally used in some given context, or can at least ask. AIs typically do not tell you what source material was used in the construction of the output, nor is there any consideration given to whether you can legally use that material.
Some vendors try to make that your problem, MailChimp recently added an AI feature to its mailing list offering, but then made the user responsible for checking up whether the content it generated was appropriately licensed… and decided that your user-generated content was appropriate to feed the training of said AI engine.
It has been ruled in various courts that as purely AI generated content is not “human generated”, it is not eligible for copyright protection. (This ruling is why I was able to include the “Trump arrest” image above despite it not being “my work”.)
This is not the last we’ll see of this technology. AI is actually a very old term dating back to the very early days of programmable electronic computers, from ELIZA (which really was a testing ground for pattern matching, not AI at all!) and PARRY (which was the same idea expanded a little). It includes tools like expert systems. Anyone that’s dealt with open-source software will have seen one very famous expert system: make.
Having a system that can inspect a photo and then describe what is in the image along with reading out what text might be important, would be a game changer to the visually impaired. In this case, it’s simply describing what is there.
Having a text to speech tool that could be trained on recordings of the voice of someone who has lost their ability to speak (e.g. motor neuron), that the person could then use to communicate, would be a very noble use of generative AI.
The surviving members of The Beatles recently did this with the song “Now and Then“, taking old recordings of John Lennon’s demos, and basically doing some sophisticated signal processing to separate out the components so that a studio-grade recording could be produced.
The technology does have good uses. In both the latter cases, we’re not “putting words into the mouths” of these people, it’s their words, they chose them.
However, I think this year we’ll likely see its dark side, if we haven’t done already. Stephen Fry got a rude shock when he came across an audio book apparently “read” by him, except it was a book he had never actually read: it was the product of generative AI. Someone had trained a text-to-speech model on his voice, then fed this book into it.
Imagine someone using tools like that to dupe a work colleague into resetting a password and enrolling a new 2FA token over the telephone? Depending on where you work, that could have disastrous consequences.
For this reason, I flatly refuse to touch Microsoft Teams. Last time I used it (in my browser), it was for one particular meeting a couple of years ago… it picked up I had a headset, and used that for speaker audio, but when it came to the microphone, did it use the same place? Noooo… the line-in socket connected to an old Sony ST-2950F stereo tuner was more interesting!
Since then, it too has gotten the AI treatment, with little transparency on what that AI is trained on and what its functions are. It’s not clear what it is being trained on, and what the resulting data sets are used for. Furthermore, we’re to trust them to store such training data responsibly? The same mob that wrote code that accepted an expired and incorrectly signed digital certificate as an access-all-areas pass?
That said, the snake-oil salesmen are out in force, and the investors are going wild. We’re seeing ChatGPT-powered sales and service bots appear on all kinds of websites now (until they’re caught out). There are also lots of sites with AI-generated screed polluting search engine results. It’ll likely play a big part in the upcoming 2024 US Federal election. We’re in for a wild year I think.
I for one, do not use ChatGPT or its elk in my day-to-day work, and refuse to do so. My position on AI-infused tools like Microsoft Teams remains the same until such time as the AI feature is removed or its role better clarified.
I still have code up on Github as it was there prior to Microsoft’s purchase of that service: I don’t like that my code may be being used in this manner, however the worst case scenario is copyright infringement — removing my code from Github does not prevent this. I regard video and audio differently: as this can be used for impersonation, I am not going to willingly supply such a feed directly into a tool that may be training itself on it for purposes unknown to me.
Right now, LLMs (large language models) are approaching the “peak of inflated expectations” phase of the Gartner hype cycle. I figure they will die off before long before their actual utility comes to the fore. They may improve the accuracy of machine language translations, specialised ones might be able to give domain-specific advice on a topic (much like a fancy expert system), and they may be able to fill in the gaps where a human can’t be there 100% of the time.
They won’t be replacing artists, journalists, programmers, etc long-term. Some of us will possibly lose jobs temporarily, but once the limitations are realised, I have a feeling those laid off will soon be fielding enquiries from those wishing to slay the monster they just created. It’ll just be a matter of time.
So, a few weeks back, COVID-19 went through my office at Milton. I had been at work just one day a week — basically I was working in the office on a Wednesday and working from home all other days of the week unless there was a special reason for me to do otherwise.
On the 3rd of July (Sunday), one of my colleagues reported he had tested positive on a rapid antigen test (RAT) after suffering symptoms, and would begin isolation. 2 days later (on the following Tuesday), another colleague reported he too, “had a bit of a cough”. I made the decision to not come in on the Wednesday, on the advice that it was likely better I work from home.
Over the coming days, more reported symptoms, but so far I was safe. Yes, my father and I were regularly going to the local cafés for dinner Monday-Thursday nights, but I was not exposing myself to the office cluster at this point.
I figured that, with all the cases now isolating, and a few days later, it’d be safe on the 13th of this month to work in the office… and so I did so. I think that was my big mistake. Sunday afternoon (17th), a cough started, and on the following Monday, this was the result:
Yes, the “C” is a bit weak but still present, the “T” is unmistakeable!
Some might quibble and say this one is inconclusive because the “T” marker (test result) is way stronger than the “C” marker (control result), but the fact of the matter is, both lines are there, so reason enough to count this as a positive.
A later one done on Wednesday showed more even shading of the lines, so clearly I still have the blasted virus. Even today, I’m a little on the snuffly side and coughing intermittently.
Personal risk factors
It’s worth noting that I’ve had issues with Asthma since the late 80s. My body also has a nasty positive-feedback loop: if I cough, it tends to make my nose run (the vigorous coughing causes bruising of the tissues in my nose)… that has a habit of running down into my lungs, making me cough more, and possibly developing into bronchitis. On one occasion in 2005, that developed further into pneumonia.
Unvented masks for me are bad news too because they seem to trigger my lungs into a coughing fit, which then triggers the above symptoms. Yet, everyone around me insisted that I return to working in the office and generally getting out-and-about.
Vaccination status
I have had two initial shots of the AstraZenica COVID-19 vaccine as well as a shot of the Moderna as a booster. I was looking to get a second booster, but the earliest I could book was on the 27th of July: too late for that now!
So yeah, ATAGI/Australian Health Department/Queensland Health — you can end your age discrimination on COVID-19 vaccination now — #1 undocumented policy goal: “get Stuart Longland infected” can be scratched off your list, and if some of the over 50s have never gotten their first shot by now, they probably never will! Time to stop playing around and just let all the adult population make their own decisions from now on.
China Communist Party (who won’t be able to see this without a VPN but anyway): Fuck you and the horse you rode on. COVID-19 is not the first virus to have jumped from bats via some intermediate animal to humans, won’t be the last, but somehow you managed to ensure that everyone got a share of something none of us want. Donald Trump might actually have a point calling it the “China” virus, I personally would rather call it the Wuhan virus since that’s where COVID-19 was first discovered.
Anyone who’s worked with horses already knows of another member of the Orthornavirae extended family: Hendra virus. The suburb of Hendra still seems to be flourishing, so the name hasn’t been all doom-and-gloom, but we don’t try to hide it. Furthermore, we managed to contain it in the 90s when DNA testing technology wasn’t even available in this country, yet China with far more sophisticated technology in 2019 let this “horse” bolt right out the gate!
Suffice to say, I’m not doing much in the way of development work right now. Software development needs a clear head not a stuffy one, and the bed’s the best place for me to stay warm.
Contact tracing
Well, here’s where I’ve been in the time both before and after infection. This is captured via the GPS logger on my tablet, not the most accurate device for positioning… but since the Queensland Government isn’t doing contact tracing anymore, it’s the best I can offer now.
For the sake of those who I might have come into contact with, here’s where I’ve been (all times are Brisbane Local UTC+10):
Overview of all locations… widely-spaced dots indicate I was mobile (private transport)
Ashgrove Central area
2022-06-28 (20 days before positive test)
18:30 ~ 18:35: Coles Ashgrove, likely a cat food run
18:42 ~ 19:24: Café Tutto, Ashgrove
2022-07-04 (14 days before positive test)
17:47 ~ 18:36: Taj Bengal, Ashgrove
2022-07-05 (13 days before positive test)
18:00 ~ 18:03: Coles Ashgrove
18:20 ~ 18:54: Café Tutto, Ashgrove
2022-07-12 (6 days before positive test)
17:30 ~ 18:33: Taj Bengal, Ashgrove
Ashgrove West area
2022-06-29 (19 days before positive test)
19:05 ~ 19:54: Smokin’ Joe’s, Ashgrove
2022-06-30 (18 days before positive test)
17:43 ~ 18:38: Osaka, Ashgrove
2022-07-07 (11 days before positive test)
17:52 ~ 18:57: Osaka, Ashgrove
2022-07-13 (5 days before positive test)
19:03 ~ 20:04: Osaka, Ashgrove
Keperra area
2022-07-06 (12 days before positive test)
19:27 ~ 20:03: Finnigans Chin, Keperra
Redcliffe Area
2022-07-17 (the day before positive test!)
10:58 ~ 14:40: Moreton Bay Boat Club, Scarborough
Redlands Area
2022-07-17 (the day before positive test!)
16:55 ~ 17:28: Ormiston Dog Park (Small dogs area), Ormiston
Milton Area
2022-06-29 (19 days before positive test)
11:10 ~ 11:12: Makya, Milton
2022-07-13 (5 days before positive test)
11:08 ~ 11:15: Bagel Boys, Milton
The Gap area
2022-07-08 (10 days before positive test)
18:04 ~ 18:22: Siam Garden, The Gap / The Gap Friendly Grocer
2022-07-09 (9 days before positive test)
12:05 ~ 12:13: The Gap Village, The Gap
12:16 ~ 12:21: Brumby’s Bakery, The Gap
2022-07-15 (3 days before positive test)
19:53 ~ 19:59: The Gap Canteen, The Gap
I clearly walked past The Gap Friendly Grocer, but not sure if I went in or not… timestamps suggest probably not.
2022-07-16 (2 days before positive test)
16:51 ~ 16:56: The Gap Friendly Grocer, The Gap
My actions now
So… I’m considering myself in hard lock-down until at least the 26th. That is, no visitors, no deliveries (unless already pending and I’m unable to reschedule them), no leaving the property for any reason.
I’ll be staying put. My father’s left on a big trip through Central Queensland (having tested negative to COVID-19), so I’m home alone, just me and Sam. I won’t be answering the door, for the safety of anyone who knocks. I do not want to spread this to anyone. Hard lock-down for me will be retained until all symptoms have cleared up.
If my symptoms clear up by the 26th, I will remain in soft lock-down until the 1st August: still no leaving the property or any visitors, but I may have some groceries delivered — the local shopping centre delivers for a nominal fee (seriously, you’d spend more in fuel doing it yourself), and I can meet the delivery person on the drive-way (maintaining 3m distance). They can drop the groceries down near the gutter, and when they’ve gone, I’ll go pick them up. Same with dinner deliveries: deliver to the end of the driveway, I’ll pick it up from there.
I will not leave the property until after the 8th August at the very earliest (except for very special circumstances), and there will be no dine-in until at least the 15th. Maybe after the 22nd, I’ll consider whether I resume workplace visits and other activities.
Lately, I’ve been on the look-out for “new” (to my collection) music to add to the library here. This has changed somewhat in direction in the last few months as I start adding songs into the wish-list that I previously would have switched the radio on for.
One pet peeve I have is basically the attitude of the record companies for artists or songs that globally have been “less successful”. These groups are the gate-keepers for licensed copies of the works entrusted in their care, so you really don’t have any option but to try and work with them if you want to remain above-board. That said, they seem intent on making life as difficult as possible.
Sometimes, much later on someone sees the light, and a release is made. The Traveling Wilburys comes to mind here. Volume 1 was released on both CD and LP back in the late 80s. Back around 2001, I was trying to buy a copy of the CD for my mother (who had an illegally made copy)… Rockaway Records Ashgrove had both CD and LP copies. The LP was somewhat pricey but not too bad; about $10 if I recall for a used copy, and there were a few there. The used CD was behind the counter, they wanted $50. I settled for a couple of LP copies instead: at least I’d have a legal license in the form of the LP. A couple of years ago, I managed to get what I was after: Amazon had The Traveling Wilburys Collection for about AU$30, a much better deal.
On the other hand, some other titles do not seem to get the same love. Matt Moffitt was a quite successful lead singer for Matt Finish, but also managed the solo hit “Miss This Tonight” which was featured on his debut album “As Little As A Look“. I managed to find a copy of the LP through World Of Books for $22, but they only had the one copy — that copy now resides with my other records. The used CD seems to sell for anywhere between $120 and $150. Not bad considering it would have sold for $20~$30 back in 1986, sadly Matt Moffitt’s estate won’t see anything for that appreciation in value.
Other one-hit-wonders are a lot easier: Gyan was known for the hit “Wait” — you can get this as a MP3, but a better option in my opinion, is directly from her website. As is often the case with a lot of these artists, what you hear on the radio is often the tip of the iceberg, and her other work is worth a look.
Carol Lloyd’s work in particular seem neigh on impossible to get hold of. Carol Lloyd Band – Mother Was Asleep At The Time can be ordered through Sanity for $33 (20 day lead time) and will get you the two hits “All The Good Things” and “Storm In My Soul”, but if you’re after her earlier work, good luck! The same site has Railroad Gin – A Matter Of Time for the same price and lead time, which includes the title track, but lacks a lot of tracks that Railroad Gin were known for (e.g. “Do Ya Love Me”, “The Academy Rock” and “You Told The World”). Apparently they released a second album, Journey’s End… but at $150, that’s “tell ‘im he’s dreamin'” territory. I’ve not seen this on sites like ZDigital. Some of these apparently appeared on compilations, such as Keep On Rockin’, if you can find them.
Ross Ryan‘s “Blue Chevrolet Ballerina” is another track that’s difficult to get hold of. Apparently it’s on the compilation “Difficult Third”, which I have on order from Amazon, but it’s been a few weeks now and has not even begun to ship. Aztech Records apparently sell it here, so maybe that’s a better option, and I may yet go that way if the Amazon seller doesn’t ship soon.
In the coming months I’ll be compiling a bit of a shopping list, and where possible, I’ll see if I can point out where the songs on this list can be purchased, legally, either as physical media or as lossless digital download. I think we need to send a message that not all of us like being forced to stream things, and they can’t monetise something they don’t make available. I don’t think they are doing their clients any favours by “squatting” on copyrighted works, but they won’t get the message unless we generate demand for it.
So, yeah, I’m trying to convert music wish-list entries to actual recordings in my music collection (as I won’t hear many of these on the radio anymore). I must stress I do want to support the artist by buying at least one license to their work. Preferably in a lossless form like CD or FLAC, but LP will do if the other two aren’t available. Heck, I even have a cassette player if it comes to that!
I don’t want to pirate music. That was something I did in the last century because I didn’t have money — those MP3s are deleted long ago (they got thrown out around 2004 or so; for both technical and legal reasons).
Making legally-purchased copies unobtainable does not help make this happen!Making copies unobtainable encourages piracy!
In this case, someone does have a copy for sale. There’s even an “Add To Cart” button to indicate a desire to purchase. Guess what, it just tells me “Not Added” when I click it. Can I contact Amazon about it? Not that I can see!
Seems the recording industry and the retailers are their own worst enemy on this front. Too distracted by the modern “hip” stuff than the stuff the rest of us actually listen to.
So, this is quite sad news… I learned this on Friday morning that one of Brisbane’s longer-serving radio stations will be taken over by new management and will change its format from being a “classic hits” music station, to being a 24/7 sports coverage station.
It had been operated by the Australian Radio Network who had recently done a merger with a rival network, Grant Broadcasters, picking up their portfolio which included their portfolio of stations which included a number of other Greater Brisbane region stations. This tipped them over the edge and so they had to let one go, the unlucky victim was their oldest: 4KQ.
Now, you’re thinking, big deal, there are lots of radio stations out there, including Internet radio. Here’s why this matters. Back in the 90s, pretty much all of the stations here in Brisbane were locally run. They might’ve been part of a wider network, but generally, the programming about shows and music was decided on by people in this area. Lots of songs were hits only in Brisbane. There are some songs that did not make the music charts anywhere else world-wide. But, here in Brisbane, we requested those songs.
Sometimes the artists knew about this, sometimes not.
Over time, other stations have adjusted their format, and in many cases, abandoned local programming, doing everything from Sydney and Melbourne. Southern Cross Austereo tried this with Triple M years ago, and in the end they had to reverse the decision as their ratings tanked and complaints inundated the station.
4KQ represented one of the last stations to keep local programming. I’m not sure how many still do, but in particular this station was unique amongst the offerings in this area due to its wide coverage of popular music spanning 1960 ~ 1995, and in particular, its focus on the Brisbane top-40 charts.
Some of the radio programs too were great: Brent James in particular had an art for painting a picture of Brisbane at that time for both people who were there to experience it, those who missed out because they lived someplace else, and people like myself who were either too young to remember or not alive at the time in the first place. A lot of their other staff too, had a lot of music knowledge and trivia — yes you can reproduce the play lists with one’s own music collection, but the stories behind the hits are harder to replicate. Laurel Edwards is due to celebrate her 30th year with the station — that’s a long commitment, and it’s sad to think that this will be her last through no fault or decision of her own.
It’s loss as a music station is a major blow to the history of this city. To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, they’ve torn down Festival Hall to put up an apartment block!
A new normal
The question is, where to now? The real sad bit is that this was a successful station that was only culled because of a regulatory compliance issue: ARN now had too many stations in the Greater Brisbane area, and had to let one go. They reluctantly put it up for sale, and sure enough, a buyer took it, but that buyer was not interested in preserving anything other than the frequency, license and broadcast equipment.
In some ways, AM is a better fit for the yap-fest that is SEN-Q. They presently broadcast on DAB+ at 24kbps in essentially AM-radio quality. 4KQ has always been a MW station, originally transmitting at 650kHz back in 1947, moving to 690kHz a year later… then getting shuffled up 3kHz to its present-day 693kHz in 1978 when the authorities (in their wisdom at the time) decided to “make room” by moving all stations to a 9kHz spacing.
Music has never been a particularly good fit for AM radio, but back in 1947 that was the only viable option. FM did exist thanks to the work of Edwin Armstrong, but his patents were still active back then and the more complicated system was less favourable to radio manufacturers at a time when few could afford a radio (or the receiver license to operate it). So AM it was for most broadcasters of that time. “FM radio” as we know it today, wouldn’t come into existence in Brisbane until around 1980, by which time 4KQ was well-and-truly established.
The question remains though… ratings were pretty good, clearly there is demand for such a station. They had a winning formula. Could an independent station carry forward their legacy?
The options
So, in July we’ll have to get used to a new status-quo. It’s not known how long this will last. I am not advocating vigilante action against the new owners. The question will be, is there enough support for a phoenix to rise out of the ashes, and if so, how?
Existing station adopting 4KQ’s old format?
This might happen. Not sure who would be willing to throw out what they have now to try this out but this may be an option. There are a few stations that might be “close enough” to absorb such a change:
4BH (1116kHz AM) does specialise in the “older” music, but it tends to be the softer “easy listening” stuff, they don’t do the heavier stuff that 4KQ and others do. (e.g. you won’t hear AC/DC)
KIIS 97.3 (97.3MHz FM) was 4KQ’s sister station, at present they only do music from the 80s onwards.
Triple M (104.5MHz FM) would be their closest competitor. They still do some 60s-80s stuff, but they’re more focused on today’s music. There’s a sister-station, Triple M Classic Rock (202.928MHz DAB+) but they are an interstate station, with no regional focus.
Outside of Brisbane, River 94.9 (94.9MHz FM) in Ipswich would be the closest to 4KQ. They make frequent mentions of 4IP and its charts. Alas, they are likely beaming west as they are not receivable in this part of Brisbane at least. (VK4RAI on the other hand, located on the same tower can be received, and worked from here… so maybe it’s just a case of more transmit power and a new antenna to service Brisbane?)
I did a tune-around the other day and didn’t hear anything other than those which was in any way comparable.
Interesting aside, 4IP of course was the hit station of its day. These days, if you look up that call-sign, you get directed to RadioTAB… another sports radio station network. Ironic that its rival meets the same fate at the hands of a rival sports radio network.
A new station?
Could enough of us band together and start afresh? Well, this will be tough. It’d be a nice thing if we could, and maybe provide work for those who started the year thinking their job was mostly secure only to find they’ve got two more months left… but the tricky bit is we’re starting from scratch.
FM station?
A new FM station might be ideal in terms of suiting the format, and I did look into this. Alas, not going to happen unless there’s a sacrifice of some sort. I did a search on the ACMA license database; putting in Mt. Coot-tha as the location (likely position of hypothetical transmitter, I think I chose Ch 9 site, but any on that hill will do), giving a radius of 200km and a frequency range of 87-109MHz.
Broadcast FM radio stations are typically spaced out every 800kHz; so 87.7MHz, 88.5MHz, 89.3MHz, … etc. Every such frequency was either directly taken, or had a station within 400kHz of it. Even if the frequency “sounded” clear, it likely was being used by a station I could not receive. A big number of them are operated by churches and community centres, likely low-power narrowcast stations.
The FM broadcast band, as seen from a roof-top 2m “flower pot” in The Gap.
There’s only two ways a new station can spring up on FM in the Brisbane area:
an existing station closes down, relinquishing the frequency
all the existing stations reduce their deviation, allowing for new stations to be inserted in between the existing ones
The first is not likely to happen. Let’s consider the latter option though. FM bandwidth is decided by the deviation. That is, the modulating signal, as it swings from its minimum trough to its maximum peak, causes the carrier of the transmitter to deviate above or below its nominal frequency in proportion to the input signal amplitude. Sometimes the deviation is almost identical to the bandwidth of the modulating signal (narrowband FM) or sometimes it’s much greater (wideband FM).
UHF CB radios for example; deviate either 2.5kHz or 5kHz, depending on whether the radio is a newer “80-channel” device or an older “40-channel” device. This is narrowband FM. When the ACMA decided to “make room” on UHF CB, they did so by “grandfathering” the old 40-channel class license, and decreeing that new “80-channel” sets are to use a 2.5kHz deviation instead of 5kHz. This reduced the “size” of each channel by half. In between each 40-channel frequency, they inserted a new 80-channel frequency.
This is simple enough with a narrowband FM signal like UHF CB. There’s no sub-carriers to worry about, and it’s not high-fidelity, just plain old analogue voice.
Analogue television used FM for its audio, and in later years, did so in stereo. I’m not sure what the deviation is for broadcast FM radio or television, but I do know that the deviation used for television audio is narrower than that used for FM radio. So evidently, FM stereo stations could possibly have their deviation reduced, and still transmit a stereo signal. I’m not sure what the trade-off of that would be though. TV stations didn’t have to worry about mobile receivers, and most viewers were using dedicated, directional antennas which better handled multi-path propagation (which would otherwise cause ghosting).
Also, TV stations to my knowledge, while they did transmit sub-carriers for FM stereo, they didn’t transmit RDS like FM radio stations do. Reducing the deviation may have implications on signal robustness for mobile users and for over-the-air services like RDS. I don’t know.
That said, lets suppose it could be done, and say Triple M (104.5MHz) and B105 (105.3MHz) decided to drop their deviation by half: we could then maybe squeeze a new station in at 104.1MHz. The apparent “volume” of the other two stations would drop by maybe 3dB, so people will need to turn their volume knobs up higher, but might work.
I do not know however if this is technically possible though. In short, I think we can consider a new FM station a pipe dream that is unlikely to happen.
New AM station?
A new AM station might be more doable. A cursory look at the same database, putting in much the same parameters but this time, a 300km radius and a frequency range of 500kHz-1.7MHz, seems to suggest there are lots of seemingly “unallocated” 9kHz slots. I don’t know what the frequency allocation strategy is for AM stations within a geographic area. I went a wider radius because MW stations do propagate quite far at night: I can pick up 4BU in Bundaberg and ABC Radio Emerald from my home.
The tricky bit is physically setting up the transmitter. MW transmitters are big, and use lots of power. 4KQ for example transmitted 10kW during daylight hours. Given it’s a linear PA in that transmitter, that means it’s consuming 20kW, and when it hits a “peak” it will want that power now!
The antennas are necessarily large; 693kHz has a wavelength of 432m, so a ¼-wave groundplane is going to be in the order of 100m tall. You can compromise that a bit with some clever engineering (e.g. see 4QR’s transmitter site off the Bruce Highway at Bald Hills — guess what the capacitance hat on the top is for!) but nothing will shrink that antenna into something that will fit a suburban back yard.
You will need a big open area to erect the antenna, and that antenna will need an extensive groundplane installed in the ground. The stay-wires holding the mast up will also need a big clearance from the fence as they will be live! Then you’ve got to keep the transmitter fed with the power it demands.
Finding a place is going to be a challenge. It doesn’t have to be elevated for MW like it does for VHF services (FM broadcast, DAB+), but the sheer size of the area needed will make purchasing the land expensive.
And you’ve got to consider your potential neighbours too, some of whom may have valid concerns about the transmitter: not liking the appearance of a big tower “in their back yard”, concerns about interference, concerns about “health effects”… etc.
DAB+?
This could be more doable. I don’t know what costs would be, and the big downside is that DAB+ radios are more expensive, as well as the DAB+ signal being more fragile (particularly when mobile). Audio quality would be much better than AM, but not quite as good as FM (in my opinion).
It’d basically be a case of opening an account with Digital Radio Broadcasting Pty Ltd, who operate the Channel 9A (202.928MHz) and Channel 9B (204.64MHz) transmitters. Then presumably, we’d have to encode our audio stream as HE-AAC and stream it to them somehow, possibly over the Internet.
The prevalence of “pop-up” stations seems to suggest this method may be comparatively cost-effective for larger audiences compared to commissioning and running our own dedicated transmitter, since the price does not change whether we have 10 listeners or 10000: it’s one stream going to the transmitter, then from there, the same signal is radiated out to all.
Internet streaming?
Well, this really isn’t radio, it’s an audio stream on a website at this point. The listener will need an Internet connection of their own, and you, the station operator, will be paying for each listener that connects. The listener also pays too: their ISP will bill them for data usage.
A 64kbps audio stream will consume around 230MB every 8 hours. If you stream it during your typical 8-hour work day, think a CD landing on your desk every 3 days. That’s the data you’re consuming. That data needs to be paid for, because each listener will have their own stream. If there’s only a dozen or so listeners, Internet radio wins … but if things get big (and 4KQ’s listenership was big), it’ll get expensive fast.
The other downside is that some listeners may not have an Internet connection, or the technical know-how to stream a radio station. I for example, do not have Internet access when riding the bicycle, so Internet radio is a no-go in that situation. I also refuse to stream Internet radio at work as I do not believe I should be using a workplace Internet connection for personal entertainment.
Staff?
The elephant in the room is staffing… there’s a workforce that kept 4KQ going who would soon be out of work, would they still be around if such a station were to materialise in the near future? I don’t know. Some of the announcers may want a new position in the field, others may be willing to go back to other vocations, and some are of an age that they may decide hanging up the headphones sounds tempting.
I guess that will be a decision for each person involved. For the listeners though, we’ve come to know these people, and will miss not hearing from them if they do wind up not returning to the air.
In the meantime
What am I doing now? Well, not saving up for a broadcast radio license (as much as my 5-year-old self would be disgusted at me passing up such an opportunity). I am expanding my music collection… and I guess over the next two months, I’ll be taking special note of songs I listen to that aren’t in my collection so I can chase down copies: ideally CDs or FLAC recordings (legally purchased of course!)… or LPs if CDs are too difficult.
Record companies and artists could help here — there are services like ZDigital that allow people to purchase and download individual songs or full albums in FLAC format. There are also lots of albums that were released decades ago, that have not been re-released by record companies. Sometimes record companies don’t release particular songs because they seemingly “weren’t popular”, or were popular in only a few specific geographic areas (like Brisbane).
People like us do not want to pirate music. We want to support the artists. Their songs did get played on radio, and still do; but may not be for much longer. Not everything is on Spotify, and sometimes that big yellow taxi has a habit of taking those hits away that you previously purchased. They could help themselves, and the artists they represent, by releasing some of these “less popular” songs as FLAC recordings for people to purchase. (Or MP3 if they really insist… but some of us prefer FLAC for archival copies.)
The songs have been produced, the recordings already exist, it seems it’s little skin of their nose to just release them as digital-only singles on these purchase-for-download platforms. I can understand not wanting to spend money pressing discs and having to market and ship them, but a file? Some emails, a few signed agreements and one file transfer and it’s done. Not complicated or expensive.
Please, help us help you.
Anyway… I guess I have a shopping list to compile.
Yep, that’s an actual email from my bank, as it appears in my email client.
What do I think?
I think your HTML is unreadable to the lay person, text/plain ≠ text/html!
I also happen to think HTML in email should be abolished, and the number of CSS hacks I see mentioned there for all kinds of different browsers seems to only confirm that opinion
I think it’s stupid that you ask that we provide feedback, but then use no-reply@feedback.suncorp.com.au as your reply address
Plus, I’m peeved you closed the Ashgrove branch and expect me to hike over to the Michelton branch … how long before that closes and I’m forced to move accounts to another bank?
Yeah… sorry, I’m not one of these “cashless society” advocates, in fact, anything but! Closing branches breaks that teller-customer relationship and leaves both parties more susceptible to impersonation because neither party is personally acquainted with the other.
Tonight I learned something disturbing… I heard hear-say evidence that someone I know, had made the decision to obtain a fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination certificate for the purpose of bypassing the upcoming restrictions due to be applied on the 17th December, 2021.
Now, it comes as no surprise that people will want to dodge this. I won’t identify the individual who is trying to dodge the requirements in this case, nor will I reveal my source. As what I have is hear-say evidence, this is not admissible in a court of law, and it would be wrong for me to name or identify the person in any way.
No doubt though, the authorities have considered this possibility. They cracked down on one “doctor”, who was found to be issuing fraudulent documents a little over a month ago. She isn’t the first, won’t be the last either. It’s not entirely clear looking at the Queensland Government website what the penalties are for supplying fraudulent documentation. One thing I know for certain, I do not want to be on the receiving end. I do not want to have to justify my presence because someone I go to a restaurant with chooses to break the rules.
My biggest fear in this is two-fold:
Fear of prosecution from association with the individual committing fraud
Fear of knee-jerk restrictions being applied to everybody because a small number could not follow the rules
We’ve seen #2 already this pandemic. It’s why we’ve got this silly check-in program in the first place. I’ve alreadymade mythoughts clear on that.
What worries me is it’s unknown at this stage how the certificate can be verified. There are two possible ways I can think of: the Individual Healthcare Identifier and the Document number, both of which appear on the MyGov-issued certificates. Are the staff members at venues able to validate these documents somehow? How do they know they’re looking at a genuine certificate? Is it a matter of blind-faith, or can they punch these details in and come up with something that says yay or nay?
I’m guessing the police have some way of verifying this, but, as a staff member at a venue, do you really want to be calling the police on patrons just because you have a “gut feeling” that something is fishy? How is this going to be policed really?
Surprise!
Let’s play devil’s advocate and suggest that indeed, there will be surprise inspections by the constabulary. Presumably they have a way of validating these certificates, otherwise what is the point? Now, suppose for arguments sake, one or two people are found to be holding fraudulent documents.
What then? Clearly, the guilty parties will have some explaining to do. What about the rest of us at that table, are we guilty by association? How about the business owner? The staff who were working that shift?
Cough! Sneeze! I’m not feeling well!
The other prospect is even worse, suppose that a few of us come down with an illness, get tested, and it winds up being one of the many strains floating around. Maybe it’s original-recipe COVID-19, maybe it’s Alpha, or Delta… this new Omicron variant… would you like some Pi with that? (You know, the irrational one that never ends!)
You’ve had to check-in (or maybe you don’t, but others you were with did, and they say you were there too — and CCTV backs their story up). Queensland Health looks up your details, and hang on, you’re not vaccinated. They check with venue staff, “Ohh yes, that person did show me a certificate and it looked valid”.
Hmmm, dear sir/madam, could you please show us your certificate? Ohh, you haven’t got one? The staff at the restaurant say you do. BUSTED! You’d either be charged for failing to follow a health direction, or charged with fraud, possibly both.
What’s worse with this hypothetical situation is that you and the people you’re with are then exposed to a deadly virus. At least with the surprise inspection in the previous hypothetical situation no one gets sick.
The end game
Really, I hope that we can move on from this. The worst possible situation we can wind up with is that the privilege of going out and doing things is revoked from everybody because a small minority (less than 10% of the Queensland population) refuse to do the right thing by everyone else.
I don’t want to be hassled by staff at the door everywhere I go. This will not end if people keep flouting rules! It used to be just hospitality venues where you needed to sign-in, it was done on paper, and life was simple, but then Queensland Health learned that today’s adults can’t write properly. If they mandate proprietary check-in software programs, then those of us who do not have a suitable phone are needlessly excluded from participation in society through no fault of their own.
We will eventually get to the stage where we treat COVID-19 like every other coronavirus out there. The common flu is, after all, a member of that same family, and we never needed check-in programs for that. Some aged-care centres will insist on seeing vaccination certificates, but you could get a coffee without fear of being interrogated. We are not there yet though. We’ve probably got another year of this… so we’re maybe ⅔ of the way through. Please don’t blow it for all of us!
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