Impmk2

Just took the plunge and ordered a 32:9 (5,120 x 1,440) 49" OLED monitor to replace my current 34" 1440p UW (+2 1080p) setup. I do really like the 21:9 UW aspect ratio over the traditional 16:9, so interested to see how this goes. Expecting pretty bad game support out of the box! Was on sale, and as I have a university email address I was able to get a staff discount which made the price too good. Was considering the 57" (7,680 x 2,160) which is essentially 2 4k VA panels stuck together, but I can't justify the cost, doubt even the 4090 could run it, and I really want to see what OLED is like for gaming.

Unlikely to be pythons. They're not venomous. There's none in Australia that'd be a threat to a human afaik. The eastern brown snake is the more likely culprit. One of the most venomous snakes in the world, and you do occasionally see them around in urban areas. Dogs will go for them which can end very badly for the dog. I do worry about our girls. However they're generally not aggressive snakes at all. They'll go the opposite way when they hear people coming, so while there's the odd rare death they aren't a big worry. We're talking maybe a single death a year for a snake pretty commonly found around the major Australian cities. Just gotta look where you're stepping if you're off the beaten track, don't walk through long grass, and if you see one don't get ideas about trying to kill it or catch it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/apr/19/middle-east-crisis-live-updates-iran-israel-today-explosions-isfahan#top-of-blog Fuck.

Kerry Stokes is backing some real winners here.

I would caution against undue alarm (at least at present info). The infection through an intermediate animal is probably the most concerning aspect, especially as its in the food supply chain. However bird flu jumping to humans has been reported reasonably regularly in the last couple years. It's whether that infected person can continue to transmit. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/cambodia-reports-another-human-h5n1-avian-flu-case-hong-kong-notes-h9#:~:text=Cambodia has now reported 5,an older H5N1 clade (2.3.

Not sure why you guys are talking about Elon's latest dribble. It's (as usual) almost certainly undeliverable gobshite, which he'll have to walk back (if/when) they finally release it. Under 1 second 0-100kph would be near 2x as fast an acceleration as the fastest production car right now. Cars are already massively massively grip limited, which is why on drag strips they use glue to literally hold the car to the surface so it can accelerate quickly. Unless he's developed magical tyres it just isn't going to happen. This is where the electrical drive train have a huge advantage. Lucid (and they're generally pretty transparent around their tech) claims they can poll traction 1000x per second, and then make adjustments to torque output on each motor 25x per second. They can put an individual motor on each wheel and independantly do this at each corner of the car. It's way, way over and above what's possible on a traditional internal combustion engine. It's an electrical drive train. Most EVs only have 1 gear. It's all drive by wire, the accelerator pedal isn't linked to anything but a computer. You just map the pedal in the most relaxed drive mode to only give 10% power.

They do. First time I saw a possum in the US I thought it was a giant rat. Australian possums look like this. They do still hiss and bite though.

Again, it's hard to comment on an article I can't read, but re: Australia being hit by inflation uniquely hard - I just don't see it in the data I do have access to. Inflation peaked in Australia at 7.8% in December 2022 per the ABS. As far as I can find the OECD average peak inflation was 10.7%, with several of the advanced economies in western europe (Germany, Italy, UK, Spain) peaking above 10%, the US at 9.1%, and eastern europe faring much, much worse. Right now much of western europe (notable exceptions of France and Italy) looks to be still sitting in the 3.5-4.5% range at the end of 2023. I still think we need to wait to see how this all shakes out in a couple years rather than just looking at datasets mid-crisis. ETA: To be clear - not denying that Australian's have had a lot of an increase in their cost of living pressures with little relief over the past 18 months and inflation is a big part of that. But I am skeptical of the narrative that cranking rates another 1% could've done much to ease them without crashing the economy (and the pain associated with that). There's other factors at play such as very high personal debt levels, and long EBAs leading to a lag in wage increases.

I mean you're obviously far more of an expert, but if i recall inflation started spiking in the US a good 6 months before it did here, so it makes sense it would also lag the fall. Behind a paywall unfortunately, but from what I can read the first couple factors listed are mortgages and tax. Mortgages are no real surprise given Australia's absolutely insane housing market leading to one of the highest level of indebtedness in the world, leading to a massively outsized impact of rate rises. Taxes (again without being able to see the article) are down to bracket creep? To a certain extent that should be helped by the revamped stage 3. Would be interested to see the same analysis run in 12-18 months time, when we'll hopefully be at a more neutral cash rate, and stage 3 has kicked in. As is it seems like it's written mid-story. Of course none of that will help the large underlying causes of the problem - the ridiculousness of the Australian housing market and a stupid tax system no one can touch without the vested interests destroying them politically.

On good news inflation continues to drop ahead of forecasts. The RBA seems to have known what its doing. Another quarterly read like Q4 (0.6%) and we're within spitting of the 2-3% target band. Things may not go as smoothly but looks like the back has well and truely been broken at least.

Very well deserved win to the Windies. That was a much better match than I was expecting after the Adelaide test. Right down to the wire.

May have spoken too soon about Smith. Nail biting stuff

Yep. Nice to have Green for the extra bowling, but I really think they need to bring in a specialist opener (Renshaw?). Smith isn't a long term solution for an opener in any case, they'll need to solve it sooner or later.

Chicago issue looks to be a combination of: a) Chargers being out (probably local grid problems - note: this would also take a gas station out) / charging cords and ports getting frozen up and b) Newer owners not understanding that in extreme cold the cars will sit there and warm the battery for a while before starting to charge, and then charge slower. You can't really solve a). Extreme weather happens. Charging (and gas / petrol) stations will occasionally go out. And before extreme weather events it's always a good idea to charge to a high level (or get a full tank) so you don't have to screw around with the inevitable infrastructure problems. You can largely solve b) by making AC charging available everywhere people park their cars (these can be just normal power outlets with metering), so people aren't trying to charge cold-soaked batteries and clogging up the DC infrastructure - which should really be reserved for people travelling long distance anyway. This is a pipedream and simply won't happen. Much of the western world is built around cars. There is a trend towards less cars per household, but large portions of the world won't accept just stopping driving altogether. For net zero we need that transportation to be fossil fuel free, and EVs are looking like the only viable solution right now. Yes DC chargers pull a lot of power - they need to so you can get back on the road in minutes rather than hours. But as I said above that's why you really need good AC charging infrastructure so you can minimise its use. No one should be relying on it for their primary source of electrons.

Chinese EVs are going to have a difficult time in the US due to the extremely high import tariff imposed on them (25% from a quick google). But yeah here (Australia) BYDs have been on sale for about 18 months now. They're everywhere. Have driven one and it's a bit weird on the design side but ok otherwise. Not sure how the materials will hold up but time will tell. So this is where you need to be careful with the reporting. The US EV market 'crash' was EV sales growing by less than predicted. They still grew (7.6% of new car sales in 2023 vs 5.9% in 2022). A lot of that is probably to be expected in a high inflation, higher interest rate environment especially when you're looking at more expensive cars. I'm of the opinion that the promised land of solid state will never come (has been 5 years away for the last 10 years), and probably never needs to. We're getting to the point where the latest chemistries being trialled in traditional lithium ion batteries (lithium sulphur, silicone doped anodes) are close to hitting the energy densities promised by solid state, with none of the draw backs around ease of manufacturing or the fragility of the product.