None of the cross-bench

None of the cross-bench in the Senate. But 4 of the independent MPs.

Games are explicitly excluded from this law.

Which is kinda fucking ridiculous, as pointed out in debate, because in-game chat is often some of the most toxic you'll encounter.

Connections
Puzzle #537
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Skill 73/99
Uniqueness 1 in a Million

Green and yellow were so easy, but then I was stuck completely guessing for blue and purple. Well, almost complete guesses. I was thinking

That got me close enough that a few permutations of guesses later got the right answer.

I swear this is like the third time I've seen an article with almost this exact (OG) title, spaced like 6 months apart. And I'm currently feeling absolutely crazy for my inability to find those articles.

Road trains are fucking massive. They take a long time to pass even if you break the speed limit by 20 km/h, and they obscure your view of the road quite substantially. It's near impossible for a driver to safely pass a road train without the truckie's assistance on some roads. The fact that drivers mostly know truckies will do this means they are less likely to attempt an unsafe overtake which could endanger both them and the truckie.

I have done only one drive (or two...there and back) on roads that both had truckies and were single lane. Brissy to St George. West of Dalby I saw truckies indicating right to communicate that it's safe to pass constantly. I had heard about it before and explained it to my co-driver because he was unfamiliar, but this was the first time I experienced it. And my experience was very strongly that yes, it is indeed a real thing.

I have never heard about the left blinker being used in the same way as you describe.

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🌎Game Summary🌎
Board #237
Score: 212.0
Rank: 842 / 1,643
https://geogridgame.com/
@geogridgame

Although to be honest I would argue my score should have been different. Not sure if better or worse, but different. I said Malaysia for flag with star on the Pacific Ocean. It probably should have scored reasonably highly (i.e. badly, because it's well-known) but I was instead told it was a wrong answer. I ended up guessing

instead, which scored a "legendary" 3%. But it did cost me a guess.

The bill was passed by the Senate after amendments. It had to go back to the House anyway. They just chose not to pass many of these quite common sense amendments raised by one of their own members (Matt Canavan), meaning they had plenty of time to consider their opinion and would have voted on it with that prior understanding in mind; they're not being blindsided by something they have yet to have a chance to fully form an opinion on. The House received the Senate's amended Bill and passed it within minutes.

I just looked up when Easter is, since I know they usually prefer to avoid public holidays during the latter part of the campaign period. It's very late next year. 20 Apr. So with Easter plus ANZAC Day I predict 12 April if WA goes well for Labor, and 17 May (the last possible day for a half Senate election) otherwise. Neither ideal because of early overlap with WA or the public holidays, but reasonably clear space for the campaign.

It's me!

And the one LNP Member.

Here are some of the things that were proposed as amendments to this Bill, that the Labor and LNP uniparty voted down.

The Minister must, by legislative instrument, formulate guidelines for the taking of reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users having accounts with age-restricted social media platforms

In other words, before the Bill actually comes into effect, there need to be some guidelines about what the fuck it actually means. But apparently Labor and most of the LNP (Canavan—who moved this amendment—and Antic aside) don't think guidelines matter.

the Minister must be satisfied that the legislative rules would not have the effect, or be likely to have the effect, of substantially lessening competition in the market for that kind of electronic service

Labor and the LNP are specifically aware that small guys...like us here on Lemmy...might be hit harder, and decided to vote not to make sure the rules prevent that from happening.

[Remove:] If an entity...uses or discloses the information otherwise than...with the consent of the individual...the use or disclosure of the information is taken to be an interference with the privacy of the individual

Ok I've summarised this one immensely because the way it's laid out is very technical. I'm referring to amendment 3215 by Canavan if anyone wants to verify it.

But basically, Canavan (and Pocock, who moved a similar amendment) wanted to say "if you collect this data, you must only use it for verifying people's age. Even if you get consent to use it for other reasons, you're not allowed to." This would have absolutely enshrined the protection against things like "oh but we put a tick box to get consent to use it for other purposes and they clicked it."

Labor and the LNP didn't want this.

an individual is not an age-restricted user if...a parent or guardian of the individual consents to the individual not being an age-restricted user

Yup. Parents are not legally allowed to declare that their children can use apps. Because Labor and the LNP voted this amendment down. Now, if a parent helps their child do it anyway, the parent and child can't get in trouble, but the platform can, because platforms cannot knowingly allow children to use the app, even with explicit parental consent and supervision.

To be extremely clear: the Government announced that this was an enormous priority that had to be rushed through. They introduced it last Thursday, closed submissions on Friday, and held the inquiry on Monday. Then it was passed by the House on Wednesday and the Senate had a grand total of 1 hour to debate amendments to it on Thursday.

All this incredible haste and lack of due process for a Bill that will not take effect for at least a year. It's optics, pure and simple.

Well done to the Greens, independents, and LNP Senators Canavan and Antic for having some fucking integrity. Regardless of whether the Bill itself may have ended up being agreed to, the process by which it was passed is inexcusable.

Yes, and rightly so. Because this bill is so immensely stupid and the process by which it has been enacted so deeply undemocratic, that even a moron like Canavan (or was it Antic?) can see that the way they've carved out exemptions is haphazard and poorly thought through.

Yes, @oahi@oahi@aussie.zone was being critical of the Bill. Because it's about as well thought-out as their satirical banning of children on public transport.

It certainly feels like we may be headed to an earlier election than I might have predicted two months ago. More like late Fed or March, rather than May?

Yeah, there's a reason I added that clarifying second sentence. To be a little more nuanced (but still overly simplistic because I don't feel like writing an enormous essay right now), I would say you don't have any expectation of privacy by default in public, but that anything that might reasonably amount to stalking because it's targeted tracking of an individual, even if it involves footage of someone in public, is certainly not ok.

Yeah I believe that some people might use it that way. It's just not in my vocabulary. In that same sentence I would substitute "wolf down".

Like I said, it's not clear yet what form it will take.

The relevant Minister will be able to give exemptions as needed, but unfortunately there is no threshold for any sort of minimum size requirement or for non-profit community groups. So we would probably, to be completely lawful, need to get chummy with some politicians who can reach out to the Minister and seek an exemption.

(But realistically, we're probably small enough that nobody would notice.)