trk

In short: Queensland has a range of roadside cameras to detect offences such as speeding, mobile phone use, and not wearing a seatbelt.
The government has significantly revised how much it expects to make from cameras with revenue in 2023-24 tipped to fall $94 million short.
What's next? The cameras are now projected to make $409 million in 2023-24, followed by $465.8 million in 2024-25.

Brace yourself for a reduction in tolerance. Government relies on that speed camera income so if there's a shortfall they'll stop dropping the percent tolerances until we hit the 1kph over fines they hand out in Victoria.

Broader adoption of keeping cats safe at home would have large benefits for cat welfare, human health, local wildlife and even the economy. So, should cat owners be required to keep their pets contained to their property?

The answer to the question is obviously "yes".

On the plus side, if anyone needs a doctor they're close by I guess.

Our workshop electricity bill is constantly insane, despite relatively low consumption.

If I plug in our residential rates against our workshop usage, it would be at least 30% lower for the same consumption.

Is there an actual need for a "business" account at a business address? My understanding of business accounts is that they offer higher levels of support and a faster resolution time, but when poo has hit the fan (such as flooding) we're not restored any faster than the houses nearby anyway.

Seems bollocks to pay quite a bit extra as a business when the usage is comparable to a residential address.

This also applies to internet which is more expensive for a business account with no difference in SLA.

I've had YouTube Music since it was Google Music, but the price has recently doubled and at the same time I've started noticing my "Radio" keeps playing the same dozen songs over and over again. Started to feel like I was listening to Triple M.

Yesterday was the final straw as every song played on repeat until you manually skipped which is just... wtf? How does that even happen?

I have jumped on to Spotify for the minute, but find it is too heavily focused on "pop" music - it seems to choose songs that are broadly more popular, but aren't really the same as what I'm choosing to play. I somehow always end up back with top 50 chart artists in the queue, even if I started on like bluegrass or hillbilly or something. Also if I select a song or artist and choose "Radio", it always the same 50 songs and then just stops which doesn't seem like what "Radio" should be at all.

What other options are there that are accessible from Australia, and preferably have a decent amount of Australian local content? I have zero interests in podcasts being jammed in, I just want music. And preferably music that I can just say "play stuff that sounds like this" and it'll go on a deep dive to focus on things I haven't heard before.

Critical:

• No ads
• Able to actually choose the music and skip and what not, so not Sirius or similar
• Good catalogue of Australian artists
• Android and Desktop clients
• "Family" plan or similar for 2 people

Budget not really an issue.

Two people have died and a woman is in a critical condition after a three-vehicle crash in the Legacy Way tunnel in Brisbane's inner-west on Wednesday afternoon.

Queensland Police said preliminary investigations indicated a black Audi S3 was travelling north in the tunnel when it crashed into a silver sedan, which subsequently crashed into a small truck.

The driver and sole occupant of the Audi, a man in his 50s, died at the scene.

A woman in 20s, who was a passenger in the silver sedan, also died at the scene.

Police said the driver of the sedan was taken to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital in a critical condition.

The driver of the truck was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

In short: A new North West town for 8,000 people will no longer be built as part of a massive renewable energy project when it re-seeks environment approvals. The federal environment law has been criticised for rejecting more renewable projects than fossil fuel ones. What's next? The proponent behind the North West energy project expects to submit an environmental application this year.

...

It would have been halfway along the lonely stretch between tourist mecca Broome and the iron ore shipping capital of Port Hedland.

A new town for 8,000 workers, their families and all the services and additional people you would need for such a population in Australia's remote North West region.

A town built using the latest in sustainability principles to service one of the world's largest renewable energy projects which covers more than 6,500 square kilometres of spinifex-dominated sand plains.

With a 26 gigawatt capacity — which is enough energy to meet a third of Australia's demand in 2020 — the Australian Renewable Energy Hub wind and solar project would have created green hydrogen and ammonia for export.

Well that was the plan.

Qantas is investigating reports of customers having access to other passengers' information on their app.

In a statement issued this morning, the airline said it would provide more information as soon as possible.

"Qantas is investigating reports of an issue impacting the Qantas app this morning," a spokesperson for their airline said.

The scale of the issue has not yet been confirmed.

Luckily I can't afford to travel anywhere so this won't affect me, but probably will others.

The report found a key cause of the outage was a problem with Optus's 3G network.

During the outage, Optus's 4G and 5G towers shut down, meaning emergency calls were diverted to other network's towers — known as camping on.

But the network's 3G base towers did not shut down, so those calls got lost along the way.

"Some devices … attempted to make emergency calls via those [3G] towers (rather than look to camp on to another network), even though no mobile service was being supplied by the Optus network," the report said.

...

The recommendations include:

• Obligate telcos to shut down their towers during outages, allowing triple-0 calls to be carried by other networks
• Establish a "Triple Zero custodian" whose sole responsible is to make sure the system is working
• Force telcos to share real-time information about outages with emergency services organisations and authorities
• Force telcos to file a timely post-mortem on major outages to the regulator and the government — including what caused it and steps being taken to resolve it, with a clear and detailed timeline
• Review the government's contract with Telstra to run the triple-0 system, with any changes to be made within a year
• Introduce an industry-wide approach to responding to consumers affected by large-scale outages
• Establish an agreement between telcos requiring them to help each to manage and resolve outages
• Review all legislation and regulation relating to triple-0

Rocklea, on the city's south side, had the most buybacks of any Brisbane suburb, with 72 properties spanning more than 50,000 square metres acquired.

Can confirm - houses around here have been disappearing like a Thanos finger click.

I actually feel a little bit sorry for some people... In the period after the flood but before the buyback was completed, there were properties hitting the market and being sold at insane prices for what was essentially floodplain. All of a few months after people were moving in to their new home, the properties either side are getting demolished and turned in to green space.

Imagine buying a house and committing to a 30 year mortgage, only for both your immediate neighbours properties to be considered useless for housing and turning into tiny parks. On the one hand - hooray! No neighbours! But on the other hand... You're kinda isolated and perched in the middle of public space on a property that council considered so bad for housing (in a housing crisis!) that it's better off as a lawn.

Feels bad man