I keep looking at maps and wondering how Ukraine haven’t been routed and cut off in enemy territory with no supply lines. What they’re doing seems borderline insane but more power to them!

The Australian health system thinks walking, being able to work and living without pain isn’t a priority, in the next week we’ll have been on the waiting list for a year.

The global opiate crisis has created a situation where normal Australians in acute or chronic pain can no longer access pain management. The crazy thing is, due to strict prescribing guidelines we never really had the kind of problems that were seen in the USA, yet we have made doctor petrified to prescribe where there is genuine pain.

2 years on a waiting list is a very long time to try and get on with life in serious pain, and I’m very sorry that you are dealing with this. I know it can be difficult to carve out the time and money, but if you can push hard to see a pain management specialist you might have more luck. There are synthetic options that can be taken long term whilst you await your specialist appointment/ surgery but you have to PUSH. Visit the ER daily until you get an outcome if you can’t afford to buy your way in.

This country is under attack and every single person that buys into the lie of private healthcare drives another nail into our coffin.

All the time. I could have typed a multi-paragraph masterpiece but then I realise I can’t be bothered offering help in a world full of people that know everything about everything and are never wrong.

You’d be surprised. Check AliExpress. There are aftermarket units built to fit perfectly into every dumb auto fascia they’ve come up with to prevent it. A simple harness adapted is usually sufficient to restore steering wheel controls etc.

I’ve heard of a couple of vehicles where you simply cannot replace the media centre because it doubles as climate control input etc but the simple answer is: refuse to buy those vehicles.

GM Single handedly keeping aftermarket stereos relevant. I wouldn’t buy a car with this solution.

Android auto upgrades with my devices. It’s the best solution.

Nobody uses dropbox because they like dropbox. They use it because it’s usually the only such service supported by the stupid fucking app they need on the stupid fucking ipad their company insists they use which has no other viable way to put files on and off of the fucking cunting thing because apple is fucking stupid and so is this god damn company.

Someone once told the IT manager that apple devices are “the most secure” and he doesn’t even fucking realise that by forcing us to use fucking stupid third party fucking services like fucking dropbox to get files on and off that they are subjecting confidential commercial fucking information to being fucking exposed to third fucking party boneless fucking cunts.

EDIT: Found it. Can be ordered with the global rom too, so you don’t have to deal with immediately flashing a rom that isn’t in Chinese. https://www.aliexpress.us/item/1005006119419693.html

I have been buying phones and various other electronics on Aliexpress for years, shipped to Australia.

For Australia, Aliexpress have implemented a system where the required import tax is handled during the transaction. I’ve never had a single issue with customs and there is no further paperwork. It couldn’t be any easier, and there is a level of buyer protection not quite as good as ebay in the medium term, but certainly protection if your goods don’t arrive or they arrive damaged or not as described.

For us, it is a standard 10% tax on all imports so it’s easy enough for them to calculate and pay at checkout. None of those things you mentioned are an issue.

The more realistic concern buying mobiles is if your device will support VoLTE and VoWifi out of the box in your country. Bands are generally OK these days because manufacturers rarely make a seperate device for each country anymore - all bands are generally included. The exception is, if you are using one of those weird US networks that are still using CDMA technology.

You nailed it. Users cannot be trusted to not re-use login credentials.

I know we all hate it, but proper 2-factor authentication via authenticator apps must be the default position for everything.

She treated herself

Seems like a fair and reasonable response to a cartoon.

The religion of peace strikes again.

Finished as in they no longer get to be installed on anything in my house. I realise that most people seem to love the taste of shit sandwiches. Not for me.

As soon as streaming services start acting like that, they’re gone. The only one I have left is Netflix, and it is on thin ice - we’ll see what they do with their pricing structure going forward and if they start trying to push ads on higher tiers.

This would involve successfully finding a wall stud to install on and the use of power tools. With the information OP has revealed about themselves, that seems like a recipe for a broken TV and half a wall ripped out or a trip to the ER. Of course it will be the fault of the drill manufacturer and they might sue.

That sounds like something that should be illegal. You bought the screen. It belongs to you.

Can you root the TV and be rid of that horrible functionality?

I disagree. I will not under any circumstances be advertised to in my own home.

I’m happy to pay for your goods and services, but if you break that agreement our relationship is immediately concluded. The penalty for breaking the original terms of our agreement is that I will take what I originally paid for in perpetuity. You had your chance.

Same rules apply for attempting to renegotiate the rules whilst the ball is in play: see Amazon’s new trend of attempting to charge an additional monthly fee of the same amount as the initial service to access documentaries etc. They’re finished.

That’s generally how it’s used in Australia. There will be an existing suburb named ‘generic suburb’, and developers will come and build a new housing development full of cookie cutter houses on 300m2 blocks with their gutters near touching eachother and call it ‘generic suburb heights’ as an attempt to give the schmucks that buy there some sort of feeling of prestige over the older neighbourhood with larger block sizes and more human compatible dwellings.

Other guy in here nailed it with the British origins but for some reason he’s been downvoted.

To be clear, is he in hot water over what he said about the ADL? Or the fact that Nazi’s are proliferating on his platform and advertisers don’t like it?

Rated by whom? The schmucks that drive them? Bought and paid for auto reviewers? Their opinion isn’t worth dick to me. Have you seen how poorly the panels match up on these things? They look like bad highschool metal shop projects on the outside and prototypes on the inside.

Nevermind the pure smug coming out of the exhaust on these cars.

Yeah, I’m super sure that the thousands of tonnes of raw earth that has to be processed by enormous mining equipment, and then refined through absolutely filthy chemical processes to extract the lithium, cobalt and magnesium required for just a handful of battery cells represents a net good for the planet. Just peachy.

All good though, because all of the raw materials are then only shipped to the other side of the world on ships powered by literal sludge to be manufactured into by batteries by China with zero environmental regulation and all waste products flowing straight into the ocean, before shipping the manufactured cells back across the world on more sludge powered ships.

Eventually, these lean, green, zero emission machines end up zipping around pumping out smug before it goes home to get charged by a power grid that is still 60% fossil fuel based. So, instead of the combustion of fossil fuels occurring under your bonnet, it occurs at the coal fired power plant down the road allowing you to recharge your battery with all the inefficiencies that entails and convince yourself you are somehow saving the planet.

University of Liege researcher Damien Ernst said in 2019 that the typical EV would have to travel nearly 700,000 km before it emitted less CO2 than a comparable gasoline vehicle.

After he accepted a bunch of dirty cash from the auto industry, he later revised his figures down to about 15,000km. That’s a fairly major revision and if it smells like bribery that’s because it was.

If you genuinely want to reduce carbon emissions, kill yourself. It’s the most effective way to save the planet.

God damn, this comment slaps.

I feel your frustration. I played New Super Mario Bros. Wii (2009) on an emulator recently and then New Super Mario Bros. 2 (2012). They’ve literally been selling the same game over and over again for full price for 15 years.

I guess I just take this in another direction. I don’t yearn for some new fangled mario with better graphics, I just accept that I’m not going to pay for the same product over and over again.