For some context: there was a Government politician (Peta Murphy) who had broad support for a ban/restrictions on gambling ads, who passed away while in office in December 2023.
Since then all that talk went away and there’s been 2 years of this social media ban.
Surely a coincidence.
[edit: not a senator, a member of the House of Reps]
Not a senator, a member of the federal House of Reps (she was my local member, in fact).
I do think this is all a bit of a conspiracy theory. There was support for the ban from many quarters in politics, media, parent groups etc due to widespread mental health issues among teenagers. And state governments are still doing plenty to try and mitigate problem gambling (whilst also relying heavily on taxes from gambling).
I took that bit out. I only added it as an afterthought but without enough thought.
I like Crikey. I paid close attention to it right from its inception, I've known people who have written for it, I have subscribed to it at times. All I meant was it's not a mainstream outlet doing traditional reporting; it has always specialized in outsider, stir-things-up takes on issues. That's always been its reason for existing and it's a very important reason to exist.
Personally I think that sometimes it gets so wrapped up in hubris that it can be a bit holier than though and can be too willing to believe in conspiracies, because, hey, its business model is built in exposing things so it's kind-of inevitable. And I don't think it's "extremely reputable"; it's shamelessly provocative and appealing only to a particular segment of the market – that's by design.
But it's fine. I still like it and I didn't meant to trash it.
I'm a pragmatist and the Crikey story has a hanging shoe waiting to drop.
Who ultimately did fund the 36 months campaign?
If you're a skeptical fan of Crikey, like myself, perhaps you're also an eyebrow raised sometime watcher of Gruen and understand that the crowd Peter Carey once ran with don't do anything for nothing .. even the 'free' content is agency self promotion.
The money trail here runs cold in the vicinity of the sports betting lobby and there's form on their ability to run distraction not to mention the returns on 'grooming' gamblers via particular kinds of campaigns that work as well on young dumb adults as they do children.
There's been no follow up on gambling advertising and they're still free to run the kinds of ads they likely may have had to phase out if focus hadn't shifted to saving the children.
That seems a success worth paying for ... even if the receipts aren't out in the open.
"Using a diesel or petrol car produced nine times more carbon than going by train.
The figure was four times more polluting than a train if driving a plug-in hybrid electric car, or almost two-and-a-half times more if using a battery electric car."
Agree with most of this, but to rebut points 5 and 6:
5) I don't trust the cruise control at all. It will frequently disengage for no good reason (e.g. a car parked on the side of the road). If you don't have your foot on the accelerator (which you typically won't when in CC), the cark decelerates HARD suddenly with little time to respond.
Obvious fix: Option to disable "adaptive" part of cruise control, so it doesn't automatically disengage.
6) The app is kinda quirky. For example, if you open the "Charging" screen, the start/stop charging buttons jump up the screen slightly after it's done loading the list of superchargers. This frequently causes me to tap "Stop Charging" instead of "Start Charging".
Obvious fix: Offer Siri Shortcuts to all the car control functions in the app. That would be a killer use of shortcuts.
Cruise control is the absolute worst on my Model 3, I've had to stop using it on my most frequent highway route, Highway 1.
It will randomly stomp on the brakes as hard as possible, when there's a slight curve and a car in the other lane. It's terrifying to me and to all passengers. Completely unusable. (And still you will find me in other comments here saying it's my favorite car I've owned... there's a lot going on here I guess.)
Sorry but you misquoted me. Siri Shortcuts isn’t Siri.
It’s the iOS automation tool, and the context was controlling the car via the app in lieu of directly in their app, which isn’t something you do while driving.
This has not been my experience at all. I would say that cruise control is enabled for about 90% of my driving in the city, and nearly 100% on the highway.
I have had it brake hard when (for instance) somebody is turning into a driveway, so they come to a stop in the lane. But...I am still paying close attention, notice this before the car reacts, and lightly tap on the brake to temporarily disengage it. It has just become a part of driving the car.
Their claims change depending on the day, but they include:
* Better long tail of older device support
(meaningless if the app doesn't work, and completely debunked now that ENF supports iOS 12)
* They want to control contact tracing, rather than have the app directly notify the user
(this isn't a requirement of ENF, but the Govt falsely claims it is. In fact, ENF can still notify authorities so a contact tracing phone interview can take place. The only difference is that with ENF, you can't force a user to enter their phone number to start using the app)
* They want a better picture of the entire social graph, since ENF gives more vague / anonymous data.
This is the only partially valid claim they make, however, this is predicated on the current app actually working and providing that information, which is does not.
Since then all that talk went away and there’s been 2 years of this social media ban.
Surely a coincidence.
[edit: not a senator, a member of the House of Reps]