AJ Sadauskas
Australian urban planning, public transport, politics, retrocomputing, and tech nerd. Recovering journo. Cat parent. Part-time miserable grump.
Cities for people, not cars! Tech for people, not investors!
- 63 Posts
- 95 Comments
2·20 days ago@makeasnek On a broader note, I think possibly the best approach for decentralised, open-sourced web search might be an evolution on the SearXNG model.
At the top of the funnel, you have meta search engines that query and aggregate results from a number of smaller niche search engines.
The metasearch engines are open source, anyone with a spare server or a web hosting account can spin one up.
For some larger sites that are trustworthy, such as Wikipedia, the site’s own search engine might be what’s queried.
For the Fediverse and other similar federated networks, the query is fed through a trusted node on the network.
And then there’s a host of smaller niche search engines, which only crawl and index pages on a small number of websites vetted and curated by a human.
(Perhaps on a particular topic? Or a local library or university might curate a list of notable local websites?)
(Alternatively, it might be that a crawler for a web index like Curlie.org only crawls websites chosen by its topic moderators.)
In this manner, you could build a decent web search engine without needing the scale of Google or Microsoft.
@makeasnek @schizoidman YaCy is still around.
And https://searx.space/ is an open source metasearch search engine with many instances. (Try https://searx.be/ if you want to test it out.)
SearX/SearXNG allows you to aggregate results from a number of different search engines. You choose which ones, and they’re stored in your browser without setting up an account.
2·1 month ago@geillescas @jajabor @asklemmy That, and also making files/emails/calendar events synced across your computer and your phone.
@denshirenji @asklemmy On photos, does NextCloud Photos or Memories play nice with Digikam or any other desktop photo gallery applications? And what about Immich?
@Dymonika @MossyFeathers I’m guessing you’re overseas?
Super fund, short for superannuation fund.
Basically, in Australia 11% of wages are automatically deposited into a compulsory retirement savings account, known as a superannuation account.
A superannuation fund is a financial institution that manages these accounts.
More information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia
17·2 months ago@lemmyreader Here’s a starting point for a fediverse StackExchange: Make sure it’s interoperable with Lemmy.
Now, you may not get the full feature set on Lemmy, but you should be able to interact with it from Lemmy as if it’s a group on there.
7·2 months ago@AllNewTypeFace Of course there were.
For commuters:
* More densification around existing stations and tram lines instead of suburban sprawl.
* Upgrading buses across Melbourne to a 10-minute minimum frequency and straightening out existing bus routes.
* Rolling out high-capacity signalling and automatic train control across the Melbourne suburban rail network
* Building Metro 2 from Newport to Clifton Hill would double the number of trains that can run on the Hurstbridge and Mernda lines.
* Building the Doncaster Railway.
* Building the Heidelberg to Box Hill section of the SRL first.
* Extending the 48 tram to Doncaster and giving it dedicated lanes for more of its journey.
And then for freight, there’s a bunch of things too:
* Converting more suburban lines to dual gauge.
* Converting more regional Victorian lines to standard gauge
* Electrifying regional rail and freight services
* Building more multimodal facilities near existing rail lines.
@alcoholicorn Yeah, that’s not how it tends to work in Australia.
What happens is a state government puts up a good chunk of time construction costs (as much as half in some cases), plus public land.
In some cases, the freeway already exists, but the state government wants one more lane built, because it thinks that will ease congestion (as happened with sections of the Tullamarine and Monash Freeways in Melbourne).
It gets handed off to Transurban, who builds it under a long-term operating agreement (30 years is common).
In some cases, the agreements have clauses saying railways that compete with the toll road can’t be built.
As the end of the lease approaches, Transurban offers to build one more lane — in exchange for extending the agreement.
@alcoholicorn It is when it has been privatised to a company that pretty much pays no tax (hi Transurban!), for roads that taxpayers helped to pay for, and those toll roads connect car dependent suburbs that have next to no public transport.
@Gurre @fuck_cars The road lobby’s big answer to the mess they’ve created with the Rozelle Interchange is to build a second road tunnel under Sydney Harbour.
Engineers at the inquiry into the Rozelle Interchange fiasco have already testified that will only create traffic jams elsewhere on the road network: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112383313109173146
Just one more lane, bro!
I mean, Windows is just such a weird proprietary distro.
It doesn’t use the latest Linux kernel, or even a mainstream POSIX-compliant alternative like BSD. Instead, you have a strange CP/M-like monolithic kernel — I think they used to call it DOS — that’s been extended to behave more like VAX and MP/M.
It also doesn’t use either X11 or Wayland as a display manager. Instead, you have an incredibly unintuitive overblown WINE-like subsystem handling the display.
Because it doesn’t use Linux, Wayland, or X11, you are limited in the desktop environment that you can use. There’s really limited support for KDE, despite the best efforts of volunteers.
Instead, there’s a buggy and error-prone proprietary window manager that ships with it by default. A bit like how Canonical tried to ship Unity as it’s default desktop environment with Ubuntu.
And confusingly, they’ve named that window manager Windows as well!
That window manager lacks many of the features an everyday Gnome or KDE user would expect out of the box.
It also doesn’t ship with a standard package manager, and most of the packages ship as x86 binaries, so installing software works differently to how an everyday Linux user would expect.
There’s also only one company maintaining all of these projects. It insists on closed source, and it has a long history of abandoning its projects.
And sure, if you’re a nerd who’s into alternative operating systems, toying with Windows can be fun.
But if your grandpa is used to Linux, frankly he’ll be utterly bamboozled by the Windows experience.
I’m sorry to be glib, because Windows does have some nice ideas.
But.
Windows on the desktop just isn’t ready for your average, everyday Linux user.
@ordellrb @eugenia The other place the motherboards of old phones could be repurposed is in embedded processors.
Most home appliances feature embedded processors and motherboards these days. Many commercial and industrial buildings and structures feature a range of embedded sensors.
In many cases, a repurposed three-year-old or even six-year-old iPhone or Samsung Galaxy motherboard is overkill in terms of being capable for these kinds of applications.
Especially if they’re reflashed with an embedded device-focussed operating system, such as QNX.
Instead of making new motherboards for embedded devices, why not repurpose old consumer tech instead?
@awelder @jedsetter @nictea @philip @fuck_cars You often hear from Melburnians that it’s the world’s most livable city, and how the CBD is laid out nicely in the Hoddle Grid is laid out compared to inner-city.
And how Melbourne’s inner-suburban tram network means it has much better public transport than Sydney.
And it’s true. Colonial Melbourne, funded by its gold rush, did a much better job at planning than early Sydney.
But after the World Wars, it’s a very different story.
Sydney is at least constrained by Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park to the north, the Royal National Park to the south, and the Blue Mountains to the west.
That means the only places for new sprawl are either northwest past Rouse Hill, or southwest around Campbelltown and Camden.
As a result, there’s a lot more pressure from developers to densify.
Meanwhile, Melbourne just has the Dandenong Ranges to the east and Port Phillip Bay to the south.
As a result, even right now, you have new housing estates past Pakenham, Melton, Wyndham Vale, and Craigieburn.
As for sprawling Australian capitals, I think Perth has definitely been punching above its weight since the 2000s mining boom.
There’s now continuous McMansions sprawl right down the Coast from north of Joondalup to south of Mandurah.
And there’s new subdivisions that are closer to Bunbury than they are to the Perth or Fremantle CBDs.
@nictea @philip @fuck_cars Even the 903 SmartBus only runs a 15 minute timetable during the day, which is less than the minimum 10-minute service busses should be running.
And other services in the area, like the 737 (Croydon to Boronia to Knox to Glen Waverley to Monash Uni) is a 40-minute-plus frequency during most of the day.
And people wonder why more residents in the outer suburbs use public transport…
@nictea @philip @fuck_cars Pretty much the whole City of Knox (a large chunk of outer-eastern Melbourne) is 1970s and 1980s car-centric suburbia at its worst.
The only rail in the whole area is basically Bayswater and Boronia stations on the Belgrave line. And trains only run every 30 minutes, aside from the morning and evening peak.
Other than that, you have the SmartBus from Ringwood to Frankston, the Rowville SmartBus, and a bunch of infrequent suburban busses.
And the stroads! There’s literally a stroad called High Street Road (which is quite possibly the stroadiest name ever invented).
And all of them — Boronia Rd, Stud Rd, Wellington Rd, Burwood Hwy, Wellington Rd, Dorset Rd — are a nightmare during peak hour.
There’s whole housing estates with detached residential homes where the only practical way to get anything is to drive.
If anyone says Melbourne does planning well, take them out to Knox (you’ll need to drive) and they’ll come away with a different opinion.
#Knox #Melbourne #Urbanism #UrbanPlanning #Bayswater #Boronia #Planning
@philip @fuck_cars And a little post-script: It’s now 2024, Waverley Park is now long gone, and the long-promised Rowville railway still hasn’t been built.
Here’s some background info on it from Melbourne’s Public Transport Users Association ( @ptua and @danielbowen ).
@thegiddystitcher @helenslunch I think hashtag feeds being overrun with vertical videos is an excellent point. (One I hope @dansup considers!)
But beyond that, I think vertical videos through Loops on the Fedi are likely to be far less obtrusive than they have been on other platforms.
What’s so annoying about them on Instagram and YouTube is that the algorithm automatically drops vertical videos into my feed.
And there’s *lots* of them in my feed, often on topics I’m not interested in.
They’re not there because I’m interested, but because they serve the commercial interests of the social media app’s owners.
Hashtags aside, on the Fedi, they’ll only appear in your feed if you follow a Loops account you’re interested in, or someone you follow finds one interesting enough to share.
And if people on your Mastodon server all find them really annoying, there’s always the option to just block the Loops servers and be done with it.
@fullfathomfive @jedsetter @fuck_cars Really important point.
While it’s open for submissions, it’s worth putting in a submission pointing out where there are oversights the strategy around accessibility, and some of the ways they can be fixed.
And some of those issues (for example, more accessible public transport) will need the City of Sydney to work with external departments and agencies (such as Transport for NSW) to fix.
@alexisdyslexic @fuck_cars Thanks for sharing those, I appreciate it ☺️
It just goes to show how far off the mark Business Sydney is.
@sunzu @dvdnet62 Oh come now. If there’s one thing Mozilla doesn’t need anyone’s help with, it’s shooting itself in the foot with its own gun.
Now excuse me, I have some Pocket articles to read on my Firefox OS phone…