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Bait and switch... Assange was obviously being persecuted using dubious charges at the time he entered the embassy - one of Australias premier investigative teams found this (that documentary is WELL worth a watch for not only the charges themselves, but the political context at the time).

These latest charges against him are related to giving information on how to exploit a security weakness, and obfuscating chat logs and files when communicating with Manning. On this site, and in security circles, it's already known that privacy is illegal, as is sharing security vulnerabilities. His Australian legal council says he could get up to 45 years.

Even at the time one of Australias premier investigative journalism teams found just how seemingly unfounded and irregular those rape allegations were. "Sex, lies and Julian Assange" is really worth a watch, and it goes not only into the allegations, but the politics surrounding Wikileaks at the time.

Just a bit of background. There was a trial by project Wing last year (mentioned in TFA). That trial copped enormous backlash from local residents, mostly around the noise.

Despite the public outcry, they are proceeding with the next step towards commercialisation.

How did they manage this? And why Canberra?

Canberra (Australia's capital city) sits in a Territory (ACT), not a State. The jurisdiction distinction between Federal laws and Territory laws are less clear compared to between Federal laws and State laws. For example, the ACT has in the past has legalised marijuana, euthanasia, and pill testing, and each one has been struck down by Federal government. This would not have happened if the ACT was a state.

Project Wing have wedged themselves into this gray area. With the Territory government and the federal Aviation Authority (CASA) each pointing the finger at each other, arguing about who's jurisdiction it falls into. The local government doesn't really want it to proceed, but doesn't feel like it has the power to stop it.

Just a bit of background. There was a trial by project Wing last year (mentioned in TFA). That trial copped enormous backlash from local residents, mostly around the noise.

Despite the public outcry, they are proceeding with the next step towards commercialisation.

How did they manage this? And why Canberra?

Canberra (Australia's capital city) sits in a Territory (ACT), not a State. The jurisdiction distinction between Federal laws and Territory laws are less clear compared to between Federal laws and State laws. For example, the ACT has in the past has legalised marijuana, euthanasia, and pill testing, and each one has been struck down by Federal government. This would not have happened if the ACT was a state.

Project Wing have wedged themselves into this gray area. With the Territory government and the federal Aviation Authority (CASA) each pointing the finger at each other, arguing about who's jurisdiction it falls into. The local government doesn't really want it to proceed, but doesn't feel like it has the power to stop it.

Just a bit of background. There was a trial by project Wing last year (mentioned in TFA). That trial copped enormous backlash from local residents, mostly around the noise.

Despite the public outcry, they are proceeding with the next step towards commercialisation.

How did they manage this? And why Canberra?

Canberra (Australia's capital city) sits in a Territory (ACT), not a State. The jurisdiction distinction between Federal laws and Territory laws are less clear compared to between Federal laws and State laws. For example, the ACT has in the past has legalised marijuana, euthanasia, and pill testing, and each one has been struck down by Federal government. This would not have happened if the ACT was a state.

Project Wing have wedged themselves into this gray area. With the Territory government and the federal Aviation Authority (CASA) each pointing the finger at each other, arguing about who's jurisdiction it falls into. The local government doesn't really want it to proceed, but doesn't feel like it has the power to stop it.

... success of similar efforts in Australia and New Zealand ...

About the only thing these countries will fight the USA on, is trading partners. In fact there's an Australian show Pine Gap (referring to the US spy-satellite ground relay), exploring the idea of the USA declaring war on Australia's biggest partner, China.

The reason the rest of the world likes Australia: Its stable blend of Americanism and leftism, plus its British heritage.

While that makes some sense, Earth is a relatively small target in space. If it is generally following the ecliptic but just very slightly inclined or declined, it can definitely hit Earth from the top or the bottom. It's not immediately obvious to me that this random-walk effect is dominated by the near-coplanar orbits of Earth and its impactors.

So I looked it up.

* I found stackoverflow people asserting what you said without sources
* I found another site asserting that the main latitude difference was regions near the poles are always in the "morning" side of Earth and meteors impact more often at morning (since the morning side of the Earth is facing the direction Earth is going so it's kind of like the Earth is impacting the meteors rather than the meteors impacting Earth -- which makes sense to me). Which makes some sense although I think over the course of a full year, basically every location on Earth has to have roughly equal parts day and night (ignoring the impacts of elevation, mountain shadow, etc.).
* I found this article: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full.... It definitely supports your statement, although the rate is 50-60% at poles vs. equator so Russia should still be the biggest target given that it's more than twice as big as the next biggest (Canada, also not noted for its proximity to the equator).
* This one also supports you, but is not a huge sample size: http://www.abc.net.au/science/...

a) why would you want to store a weeks worth of electricity?
b) why would you have a tsunami if the concrete fails? It's already in the ocean... you wouldn't want to be on a ship nearby, sure, but tsunami when the ocean fills a hole in the ocean? Uhhh... no?
c) Germany already has some pumped hydro, and my country can do it easily should it choose: https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...

I give you this radio station, website and promoter of NEW artists:

https://www.abc.net.au/triplej...

Check out their site, including Unearthed, and their streaming sites (JJJ an JJ).

You're welcome.

Thanks to renewables, Australia ended up paying $500 a day per family for electricity [blogspot.com].

Obviously not written by someone who lives in Australia:

--- Our coal plants fail during peak demand, like our hottest-on-record January this year. Congrats coal, you fail at the definition of baseload.

--- The conservative coalition promised a saving of $500 when our experiment at a carbon price was axed. Surprising nobody, we didn't! I believe these figures more than the nonsense from that Borepatch site, a site that's keen to list externalities like the cost of food when power goes up, but not when we burn the Earth's densest carbon sinks.

--- There's a phrase in Australia: gold-plated power grid. Different states privatised their energy grids, and their new owners went on a spending spree which was passed on to us. The cost is significantly higher than the glorified rounding error in that Borepatch article.

--- Victoria has some of the dirtiest coal in the world. Hazelwood, the power station listed in that article, was the least efficient and most greenhouse-pollution generating station in Australia, and needed to go.

--- AGL, Australia's largest electricity retailer, has said they're not investing in new coal plants because its not economical. The private sector, which conservatarians always tell us works best because they have a profit motive, doesn't want more Australian coal.

It's currently technologically impossible for renewables to provide baseload power at a competitive, or even reasonable, price, and will not do so anytime in the near future no matter how much religious environmentalists claim otherwise.

I can see where you're coming from. The only way we're going to make the significant and immediate reductions to carbon we need to mitigate or limit climate issues (we're past the point of avoiding) is investment in nuclear.

Being an MD sucks. Being around all those dead people all the time, and those that aren't dead yet, won't stop complaining. Fuck that for a joke. Yes, you get paid well, but that's because it's a shit job and if they didn't then nobody would do it. And oh yes, the hours suck big time.

Here is some context.

"Blacks commit vastly disproportionate amount of crimes, especially violent ones"

All things male are considered bad. [The blatant sexism is everywhere. Making anything and everything a gendered issue (and therefore, a problem with men, of course). - Women of this generation make at least 8% more than similarly qualified males. [Looks like I remembered that 8% number from that Time Magazine article I linked]

White men systemically discriminated against in all spheres of life - from family court - to hiring [They literally had to end blind recruiting because, once the bias against men was removed, MORE men than before were found to be qualified. These talking head idiots didn't even realize that today's system already discriminates in womens' favor. Of course, the solution was to halt the study, lest we have a solid foundation to prove discrimination. But, I think this is VERY good early proof of systemic discrimination in hiring, at least in Australia.] - to welfare (men are not eligible in any way unless disabled or "disabled") [I was somewhat wrong here. If you look under "The Three-Month Time Limit", it appears that women without children cannot get SNAP long-term either. So, I had one, very minor point, which I don't have good evidence from a mainstream source for.]

Looks like it's you who got fucked. Moron.

Is it the contradiction between, on the one hand, Oz gov won't use Huawei stuff since the Chinese might be spying, but on the other, Oz gov demands the ability for itself to spy/intercept?

Or is it examples of what retaliation might look like, for example https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...

Looks like the 5 eyes said "you first" to Oz, and now UK and NZ are saying "on second thoughts..." (yeah, I know this particular story mentions Germany, not NZ)

Was reading Alistar McGrath this last week and he proclaimed the superiority of religion to science is that science can only reveal "shallow truths". I guess SPHEREx is just another attempt to discover shallow truths.

https://www.abc.net.au/religio...

Again, you seem to be reading what you want to hear, and not what people actually say. I never said it was AGW.

The point was that we having witnessed dramatic climate change, we are less prone to the irrational anti-science denialism seen in parts of the US.
As it happens, there is some evidence that this could be significantly due to GW, which would be a rare example. Or it could be more from land-clearing.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/...

You're right, it's an obscure phrase that people only used briefly on obscure websites years ago.

https://www.theverge.com/2013/...
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07...
https://mashable.com/article/f...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...
https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/...
https://arstechnica.com/inform...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/sc...
https://gizmodo.com/dark-patte...
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-...
https://www.extremetech.com/in...
https://venturebeat.com/2018/0...
https://sdtimes.com/addiction/...
https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/15...

Exactly. Stories have been around about this on the iphone for 6+ years: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-17/kids-racking-up-huge-bills-on-mobile-games/4266632

Proper article https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...

maybe, maybe not.. one year the world's corals are alive.. the next they are dead

same for fish

same for bats

all three have happened recently in Australia. I have no trouble believing ecosystem collapse can't happen with insects also.

I can't believe this has idea has reared it's head again. You're substituting one problem for a whole other set of problems. Here are some pertinent facts: There is only enough accessible Uranium ore to supply reactors for at most 80 years . It can take 40 years to completely decommission a reactor, longer than it's useful life. Nuclear waste can be unsafe for 10,000 years. This is not to mention the extraordinary build costs, which are only viable with government backing, nor the seemingly inevitable construction delays. That's not even touching on the accidents. In Japan old people are volunteering to clean up Fukashima because they know they're going to die anyway. For the price of one reactor, you could probably build a wind farm of much higher capacity. Hook it to a huge battery, and you're sorted. There are 441 reactors in the world, we don't need any more.

That's a bit tricky when the ISP quotes you six figures to upgrade from dial-up to broadband (source 1; source 2; source 3).

You can't trust women.

Check out this BS reporting from Australia: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-02/women-celebrate-100-years-of-law-practise-in-nsw/10679376

Fucking hypocrites the lot of them. I find it disgusting that this can be celebrated in the way that it is. There is no difference between this "champion" female law firm, and a "bad" male dominated {software company|engineering firm|mine site|oil rig|farm|...etc...}.

"There are no restrictions on what you can ask in an interview"

Thankfully there are plenty of restrictions on what can be asked here in Australia.

What you Yanks get away with is borderline barbaric in comparison.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-19/questions-you-cannot-be-asked-in-a-job-interview/9554954

Worked for us: https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...

Yep, that's my modus operandi as well.

The non-commercial radio stationt that I listen to (JJJ)>

I buy their best of CD every year.

It's voted on by the world.

https://www.abc.net.au/triplej...

What the hell is so challenging about automating trains? I can't believe train conductors are still a thing, and they're still crashing trains. What's simpler to automate than a train? The tracks are fixed. There are very few tracks or trains in any system. The trains can only go two directions on the tracks. Why aren't all trains automated by now?

One crashed earlier this year.

Having lived up there the challenge is in both the distance they have to travel, the sheer length and weight of the train as well as the method of loading.

The trains are travelling through the most inhospitable places on earth. Unlike most other automated trains these are not well fenced in self contained units within easy reach of a control team. The trains will travel 400+ KM though areas that can get in excess of 40 degrees in the day and can have a temperature variance of 30 degrees between night an day. That tends to have quite and effect on iron rails. Beyond this, you have the Australian wildlife. Kangaroo's are common up there, imagine a moose that stands upright, jumps and is easily spooked.

The trains in question are 200-300 ore cars pulled by up to 9 locomotives (3 is typical for the Rio Tinto trains). The cargo weighs in at 25,000 tons and they easily exceed 2 KM in length. They can also take up to 9 KM to stop from their usual speed of around 100 KPH. So you've got a train that weighs over 25,000 tons and is 9 KM long to manage and control.

Finally, the trains are loaded 1-10 cars at a time depending on how the mine is set up. The train will need to keep track of loaded and unloaded cars. Compared to the previous two, this is really the least challenging to automate but trains often make several stops at different sites.

I think the OP may have meant to refer to this incident of a train that was being controlled remotely instead
Out-of-control driverless train deliberately derailed in Devonport, two pedestrians injured

"TasRail operators were forced to deliberately derail an out-of-control driverless freight train in Devonport, sending it crashing through a fence with debris hitting two pedestrians."

Runaway, driverless train failed to respond to emergency stop attempt, interim report finds
The driver attempted to realign the wagons by selecting reverse on the remote control. However, the train was unresponsive.
The driver tried unsuccessfully to reset the remote control equipment, and was about to walk to the lead locomotive when the train began rolling away towards Devonport.

And no, I don't know why there should be two ore train derailment in two months in Australia. (which was probably why the OP got them mixed up).

I think the OP may have meant to refer to this incident of a train that was being controlled remotely instead
Out-of-control driverless train deliberately derailed in Devonport, two pedestrians injured

"TasRail operators were forced to deliberately derail an out-of-control driverless freight train in Devonport, sending it crashing through a fence with debris hitting two pedestrians."

Runaway, driverless train failed to respond to emergency stop attempt, interim report finds
The driver attempted to realign the wagons by selecting reverse on the remote control. However, the train was unresponsive.
The driver tried unsuccessfully to reset the remote control equipment, and was about to walk to the lead locomotive when the train began rolling away towards Devonport.

And no, I don't know why there should be two ore train derailment in two months in Australia. (which was probably why the OP got them mixed up).

A "semi autonomous" large ore train had to be deliberately derailed in November, because it was actually less destructive than letting it continue driving and come close to the "real" rail network or civilisation.
More info at https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...

So it's probably too early to claim success for autonomous trains, even though, as stated by earlier posters above, an autonomous train in the outback is a much easier challenge than one in the city. Far fewer level crossings, obstacles or pedestrians.

Where in that article does it even mention semi-autonomous? The article talks bout a driver getting out of the cab and the train taking off. Nothing to do with the Rio Tinto trains.

What the hell is so challenging about automating trains?

The effect of failure causes an immediate and very high risk to safety and lives. Especially an iron ore train. Rio Tinto's competitor BHP has only recently shown what needed to be done when a the automation fails: https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... After forcing the train to derail the result was 1.5km of damaged railway and a huge mess to clean up, combined with a lot of luck that in this remote part of Australia it's possible to derail a train without injuring people.

There are many automation projects for trains. They almost always represent short loop runs without any complicated network logic to manage. e.g. Paris Metro line 14.

A "semi autonomous" large ore train had to be deliberately derailed in November, because it was actually less destructive than letting it continue driving and come close to the "real" rail network or civilisation.
More info at https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...

So it's probably too early to claim success for autonomous trains, even though, as stated by earlier posters above, an autonomous train in the outback is a much easier challenge than one in the city. Far fewer level crossings, obstacles or pedestrians.

Front page news on Boxing Day here in Australia at the moment is this story about a drone interrupting waterbombing attempts of a bushfire in Tasmania. So we need this system here too.

I don't know enough about drones but I assume the ones that have any reasonable range use radio for communicating from the remote. How hard is it to use direction finding techniques to find the source of the transmitter controlling the drone?

China builds many things, and not all are needed or used. As your own link says, the central government has issued go-slow or cancellation orders on many of those sites, because they're simply not needed. Coal plant utilisation (capacity factor) in China has dropped from 79% to under 50%, so building more would only make that worse, wasting money on plants that aren't going to be used. But provincial governments need to keep their citizens employed and paid, and their construction-based economy ticking over, so building continues.

What's important isn't total plant capacity, it's coal burned. Coal plants don't emit CO2 if they're not burning coal. And coal usage has peaked years ago - it's not coming back.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...

The sledgehammer is a "technical capability notice (TCN)": The company must build a new function to help police get at a suspect's data, or face fines.

I guess they tell Apple (ios) and Google (android) to add keystroke loggers and/or the equivalent at the other end when the E2E encrypted message is displayed on the screen. Job done.

Ultimate target of this isn't "dumb terrorists" like the clowns who tried to smuggle a "bomb" onto a plane in Melbourne but forgot to check their luggage limits, or paedophiles (think of the children), but the war on drugs (message to small time dealer "can i get a couple of pills for Saturday"), and later, everyone.

Politicians are either gutless (who wants to be told by the security agencies that we would have prevented a stabbing/shooting/drug deal but you didn't pass an enabling law) or ignorant (haven't read 1984, aren't aware of what's happening in China) or not ignorant but power hungry (have read 1984 and are watching China, and love it). But the security agency submissions aren't public, so who knows what story they were told.

Roughly 10 years ago a high profile Australian scientist did a TV interview and stated that it may never rain again in the Australian outback [sic].

That's not actually the truth is it? (Though I'm liable to be convinced otherwise by a citation from a reliable source).

I'm presuming you are talking about Tim Flannery. Here is the transcript of that infamous TV interview. So here is what he actually said, that has widely been quoted as "it will never rain again":

... since 1998 particularly, we've seen just drought, drought, drought, and particularly regions like Sydney and the Warragamba catchment - if you look at the Warragamba catchment figures, since '98, the water has been in virtual freefall, and they've got about two years of supply left ...

Well, you can't predict the future; that's one of the things that you learn fairly early on, but if I could just say, the general patterns that we're seeing in the global circulation models ... are saying the same sort of thing that we're actually seeing on the ground. ...

We'll know probably within two or three years, I suppose, how this is going to play out, particularly for Sydney, because its water supply is limited to that sort of scale, but it is my fear that the new weather regime is going to be a much drier one, and while we may get the odd good rainfall event, they're going to be much less frequent than in the past, and we'll just be in a different climatic regime ... the worst-case scenario for Sydney is that the climate that's existed for the last seven years continues for another two years. In that case, Sydney will be facing extreme difficulties with water ...

So "roughly 10 years" later, how is the drought situation in Eastern Australia panning out ... this even from the Murdoch press, speaks to its seriousness.

This brought to you by the same brain that thought it would be a good idea to build a mechanised Jurassic Park called Palmersaurus. It was a curious oddity, but just so you know the park was so bad even the mechanised dinosaurs committed suicide: https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

Again with link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...

so this makes me think this article is oil company FUD.

The last gasp by the oil companies IMO
We here in Australia, are grappling with the problem of what to do with all the excess solar power https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... as so many people have put solar panels on their roofs that it is becoming a problem when they are at work and not using this energy.
Simple - use it to charge up cars.
The batteries, whilst still expensive, are getting cheaper, will fill this gap.
In the new electricity grid, all homes will have a battery and probably solar. These batteries will all be charged up during the day and the energy drawn on at night. It will take time to get there.

Here is mine... pity I sent it before Krebs wrote https://krebsonsecurity.com/20...

This is a submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) review of the Telecommunication and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018 [0].

Chinese surveillance society [1] offers a chilling vision of a society I never want to live in.

Just as Apple differentiates itself [2] clearly from Google and Facebook by saying we will never sell your data (you aren't the product), I think Western democracies ought to clearly differentiate themselves from China.

Currently we're heading towards a local optima that will look more and more like China. Because of certain problems (paedophiles, drug dealers, terrorists), government wants weak encryption. Then in large part because of weak encryption, we can't use Chinese components in our networks [3].

Well, the truth is that paedophiles/drug dealers/terrorists will all wake up to the fact that comms on common services can be intercepted, and will use their own encryption (routed over TOR or similar, so you can't tell who the endpoints are). Phantom Secure is evidence that this horse has already bolted[4]. Though I guess you might make any private encryption technology illegal? Why not?!!

The net result being that only people with "nothing to hide" will be using services that you can surveil.

Thinking more broadly, if drugs such as marijuana and MDMA were legal, then probably 95% of the so-called encryption problem goes away. And lots of other problems as well... Count on certain relatively benign recreational drugs being legalized soon after self-driving cars become common.

And then I'd argue that you catch the paedophiles and terrorists with creative policing[5]. You don't absolutely need this kind of legislation to then get into their phones [6].

In summary, a much better approach would be to support strong encryption (the global optimum), and say clearly we don't want to follow China. With strong encyption right across our telecomms networks, we'd be able to source equipment from Huwaie and ZTE ... Of course, there's the additional concern that the Chinese could stop packet transmission entirely (ie a kill switch), or make it unreliable, but that's a different problem to "they might read our stuff".

The real concern would then be any laptop server[7] or phone made in China (ie most of them) - the terminal devices where stuff must be decrypted for the user to see.

Of course, the problem is that embracing "strong encryption" is anathema to the received wisdom from the rest of the Five Eyes [8], and you need to take a broader perspective to realise it is the right choice for an open society.

[0] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliam...

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com...

[3] https://www.itnews.com.au/news... https://www.itnews.com.au/news...

[4] http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... https://www.theregister.co.uk/...

[5]

Here is mine... pity I sent it before Krebs wrote https://krebsonsecurity.com/20...

This is a submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) review of the Telecommunication and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018 [0].

Chinese surveillance society [1] offers a chilling vision of a society I never want to live in.

Just as Apple differentiates itself [2] clearly from Google and Facebook by saying we will never sell your data (you aren't the product), I think Western democracies ought to clearly differentiate themselves from China.

Currently we're heading towards a local optima that will look more and more like China. Because of certain problems (paedophiles, drug dealers, terrorists), government wants weak encryption. Then in large part because of weak encryption, we can't use Chinese components in our networks [3].

Well, the truth is that paedophiles/drug dealers/terrorists will all wake up to the fact that comms on common services can be intercepted, and will use their own encryption (routed over TOR or similar, so you can't tell who the endpoints are). Phantom Secure is evidence that this horse has already bolted[4]. Though I guess you might make any private encryption technology illegal? Why not?!!

The net result being that only people with "nothing to hide" will be using services that you can surveil.

Thinking more broadly, if drugs such as marijuana and MDMA were legal, then probably 95% of the so-called encryption problem goes away. And lots of other problems as well... Count on certain relatively benign recreational drugs being legalized soon after self-driving cars become common.

And then I'd argue that you catch the paedophiles and terrorists with creative policing[5]. You don't absolutely need this kind of legislation to then get into their phones [6].

In summary, a much better approach would be to support strong encryption (the global optimum), and say clearly we don't want to follow China. With strong encyption right across our telecomms networks, we'd be able to source equipment from Huwaie and ZTE ... Of course, there's the additional concern that the Chinese could stop packet transmission entirely (ie a kill switch), or make it unreliable, but that's a different problem to "they might read our stuff".

The real concern would then be any laptop server[7] or phone made in China (ie most of them) - the terminal devices where stuff must be decrypted for the user to see.

Of course, the problem is that embracing "strong encryption" is anathema to the received wisdom from the rest of the Five Eyes [8], and you need to take a broader perspective to realise it is the right choice for an open society.

[0] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliam...

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com...

[3] https://www.itnews.com.au/news... https://www.itnews.com.au/news...

[4] http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... https://www.theregister.co.uk/...

[5]

If she's not a hypocrite and is just very poorly informed, she could carbon offset her flights. It's not that expensive. Send her these links:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/sci...

https://co2.myclimate.org/en/f...

https://www.terrapass.com/prod...

I'm not fond of house cats, but they do keep down the population of mice and other small rodents.

But not rats :(

If technology is your true obsession in traditional Slashdot sense

Many people for whom technology is their true obsession have friends or relatives for whom technology is not their true obsession.

then you could really care less about people running Windows because it's not you.

I regularly use Xubuntu but must support friends and relatives using Windows. Some use Windows because all applications or peripherals in a particular category are incompatible with X11/Linux.

You're already running Linux and think the rest of the world should just give up, and you're paying for gigabit fiber because #fiber.

If fiber costs 6 figures where you live,[1][2][3] you're probably not going to get fiber even if you are technically inclined.

You'll not even be aware that the ISP's covering the majority of the population

Several of my friends are or were among the minority who use satellite or fixed cellular because they live in an area not covered by fiber or cable.

or you'll be thankful that in Windows you can set a connection as Metered to limit background downloads.

Does "Metered" stop these particular applications from being downloaded? Last time I used Windows 10, I seem to remember that the UI of Windows Update stated that some updates (to the effect) "necessary to keep Windows running" would still be downloaded over metered connections. In addition, the UI allows marking only Wi-Fi, not an Ethernet connection to a satellite or cellular modem, as metered. It's possible to mark Ethernet as metered but only with registry tweaks.

[1] "Want fiber Internet? That’ll be $383,500, ISP tells farm owner" by Jon Brodkin
[2] "Man builds house, then finds out cable Internet will cost $117,000" by Jon Brodkin
[3] "Victorian couple quoted up to $1.2m to connect to NBN Co's fibre service" by Jessica Longbottom and Ben Knight

Well interestingly, here is a case of a New Yorker jailed for 35 years for sex with a 16 year old Australian where it would not have been an offense in Sydney. His mistake was to fly her to him and not go visit her. (Well, one of his mistakes perhaps.)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

A solar to hydrogen plant is being planned for the desert in South Australia, to transport the Hydrogen, the plant turns it into Ammonia as H is almost impossible to transport and store efficiently. http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... Hydrogen embrittlement will destroy every container you make.

Here in Australia, a number of well-meaning public projects have been derailed because they had loopholes that allowed gaming of the scheme by beneficiaries, or were gamed or abused by insiders. I hope Bezos includes a lot of checks and balances in this scheme.

It's not easy when it's the politicians doing the gaming, on behalf of themselves - either through donations back to their party, or as jobs after they finally get booted out for their blatant corruption and/or incompetence.

To name a few:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
https://www.news.com.au/financ...
https://www.brisbanetimes.com....
https://www.brisbanetimes.com....
https://www.computerworld.com....

http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
Your country is full of assholes.

Oh, really?
Better tell the CSIRO they are imagining this then.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

We typically find the opposite; women are MORE likely to be offered a job, rather than less.

When the job is in childcare that is true (male names fare very badly). For technical and managerial jobs the opposite appears to be true, male names get the interview, female names get far LESS. Also there's some work to suggest that gender-blind job applications raise the number of women considered. Though this has been contradicted elsewhere on the basis that blind applications leave glaring lacuna in the CV, where women have taken time to have children, and thus work against such women. (Just ask my wife: mothers are far more discriminated against than women in general).

If you want to expand your knowledge here, just even to assess the enemy's armoury, I'd suggest reading Part 1 of Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender, which is as empirically rigorous as anyone with a horse in the race --all of us --can get really (it get's more wishy-washy feministy in the later parts imho).