Fare-free travel introduced for summer evenings as ACT cuts some bus services
The ACT government says the bus network will change from term 1 next year as it flags major disruption from work on Commonwealth Avenue Bridge. ⌘ Read more

Compressed air energy storage is coming, but how does it work?
Broken Hill will be the location of Australia’s first large-scale compressed air energy storage system. What is it and how does it work? ⌘ Read more

Does working from home impact mental health? Here’s what 16,000 people say
Working from home can positively impact the mental health of Australian men and women in different ways, according to a new study of more than 16,000 people. ⌘ Read more

How to respond to sexual harassment or assault at a work party
Managers can send strong signals that harassment or assault at the work party will be treated as seriously as in the workplace. ⌘ Read more

Working on day 3 of the Advent of Code 2025: https://adventofcode.com/

My solutions repo: https://git.itsericwoodward.com/eric/aoc-2025

Wong will not say if further Islamic State family members on track to return
The Coalition seizes on meeting notes from June to claim the government is working to return Australian children and partners of Islamic State fighters. ⌘ Read more

Steve Cropper, guitarist of Booker T and the MGs, dies aged 84
The musician was known for his work on hits including Green Onions and Otis Redding’s The Dock of the Bay. ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net Mate, I don’t know how you do it, but the frequency of words I haven’t come across before is actually quite high in your work. I noticed it in your twtxt messages in the past, but your notes are also full of them. I love it, always learning something new. Thank you for teaching me without knowing. In case you’re wondering, “yesternight” and “squalid” are the ones I stumbled across today. :-)

Jimmy Barnes’s American gamble didn’t pay off — but he has no regrets
Cold Chisel was over. America beckoned. And Jimmy Barnes was terrified. This is the story of the album that made him, and the song that saved him. ⌘ Read more

AES-GCM Optimizations Land In Linux 6.19 - Benefiting AMD Zen 3, AVX-512 CPUs Too
Google engineer Eric Biggers who is known for his many Linux crypto subsystem performance optimizations has seen his latest pull requests land in Linux 6.19. Notable among them are some AES-GCM optimizations benefiting AMD Zen 3 processors and separately AVX-512 processors also benefit too from this latest round of optimization work… ⌘ Read more

Coalition has ‘no confidence’ social media ban will work under Labor
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley says Australia’s social media ban will not work under Labor, as the federal government rejects YouTube’s claim it will make kids “less safe”. ⌘ Read more

Michael and Susan Dell nearly $10b to ‘Trump accounts’ for children
Tech billionaires Michael and Susan Dell have pledged $US6.25 billion ($9.5 billion) to new investment accounts for children, known as “Trump accounts”. Here’s how the donation will work. ⌘ Read more

3mdeb Ports Their Dasharo Firmware To A Recent ASRock Rack Motherboard
Open-source firmware consulting firm 3mdeb published a blog post today outlining their work on bringing their Coreboot-downstream Dasharo to the ASRock Rack SPC741D8/2L2T, a recent server motherboard for supporting Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids and Emerald Rapids processors… ⌘ Read more

Important Performance Work: Overhaul Of RSEQ & CID Management Merged For Linux 6.19
An important set of patches were just merged a few minutes ago to Linux Git for the ongoing Linux 6.19 kernel with some important performance implications… ⌘ Read more

Sabrina Carpenter and Franklin the Turtle in tiff with Trump administration over use of work
Trump administration officials used Carpenter’s song and Franklin the Turtle’s image in social media posts about deportation and killing drug traffickers. ⌘ Read more

Erlang Solutions: From Prototype to Production: Scaling Fintech for SMEs
The moment a fintech product shifts from prototype to production is often when the cracks appear. Tiny shortcuts. Half-formed assumptions. Decisions made because “we’ll fix it later.” They all return, and they return quickly.

At first, everything looks fine. The demo works. Early users onboard without trouble. In turn, confidence builds. Then real volume arrives with real expectations, and the product t … ⌘ Read more

I actually can’t progress to day two till I get home 🤣 – I haven’t pushed the code for the mu compiler yet 🤦‍♂️ So no-one can check my work even if they were so kind 🤣

ACT public servants legally required to uphold ‘Closing the Gap principle’
Senior ACT public servants will soon be required to demonstrate their work towards ending the inequality experienced by First Nations people. ⌘ Read more

Rural university campus confirmed as site of ‘open-security’ prison work camp
The Northern Territory government has signed a deal to build a new “open-security” prison work camp at Charles Darwin University’s Katherine campus, with the facility expected to house at least 130 prisoners. ⌘ Read more

Teenager dies following workplace incident on the Gold Coast
Authorities say they will prepare a report for the coroner following the “sudden and non-suspicious” death of the 15-year-old on a work site. ⌘ Read more

Btrfs In Linux 6.19 Adds Experimental Features, Continues Preparations For FSCRYPT
SUSE engineer David Sterba submitted the Btrfs pull request for Linux 6.19 on Friday, ahead of the Linux 6.18 stable kernel release that took place on Sunday. This copy-on-write file-system continues seeing some enticing feature work and other improvements for this next version of the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Airbus Says Most of Its Recalled 6,000 A320 Jets Now Modified
Airbus said Monday that the vast majority of around 6,000 A320-family jets affected by an emergency software recall have now been modified, leaving fewer than 100 aircraft still requiring work after a frantic weekend of repairs prompted by the discovery of a vulnerability to solar flares. The unprecedented recall – described as the broadest emergency a … ⌘ Read more

How does vimwiki work? ⌘ Read more

The best new science fiction books of December 2025
From a new collection of shorter fiction by Brandon Sanderson to Simon Stålenhag’s new work, via a Stranger Things novel, December’s new sci-fi features some compelling and intriguing offerings ⌘ Read more

Customers ‘angry’ as caravan manufacturer collapses into administration
Hundreds of Zone RV employees are out of work weeks before Christmas after arriving at work on Monday morning and being told the bad news. ⌘ Read more

Sudden shutdown of Australian salad grower puts 180 people out of work
Australian salad grower Dicky Bill enters administration, putting 180 people out of work before Christmas. ⌘ Read more

AI Can Already Do the Work of 12% of America’s Workforce, Researchers Find
An anonymous reader shared this report from CBS News:

Artificial intelligence can do the work currently performed by nearly 12% of America’s workforce, according to a recentstudy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The researchers, relying on a metric called the “Iceberg Index” that measures a job’s potential to be aut … ⌘ Read more

‘A lot of the shame I felt has gone’: Em Rusciano on finding balance in life
As a writer, singer, comedian, podcaster, author and single mum, Em Rusciano has become accustomed to navigating a chaotic life. The self-described “maximalist power queen” shares how she unwinds and how her approach to life has changed since going through perimenopause and being diagnosed with ADHD and autism. ⌘ Read more

Wayde Chiesa vows to get to work following LNP victory in north Qld
The LNP’s Wayde Chiesa will be the next representative for the Queensland seat of Hinchinbrook, which had been safely held by Katter’s Australian Party since 2017. ⌘ Read more

Hundreds of Free Software Supporters Tuned in For ‘FSF40’ Hackathon
The Free Software Foundation describes how “After months of preparation and excitement, we finally came together on November 21 for a global online hackathon to support free software projects and “put a spotlight on the difficult and often thankless work that free software hackers carry out…”

Based on how many of you dropped in over the wee … ⌘ Read more

How to get Vimium to work on all tabs ⌘ Read more

Young women say social media didn’t prepare them for realities of sex work
Sex workers say viral social media content, which often promotes a life of luxury, needs to be more transparent to avoid duping young followers. ⌘ Read more

Framework Computer Now Sponsoring LVFS / Fwupd Development
With the Linux Vendor Firmware Service serving more than 135 million downloads for Linux users updating their system and device firmware, LVFS has been working to get more hardware vendors to contribute either engineering resources or directly contributing annual dues as sponsors. Framework Computer is now the first one to have executed an agreement under these new sponsorship efforts… ⌘ Read more

Intel Hiring Two More Experienced Linux Kernel Engineers
While there have been a number of Intel Linux engineers laid off over roughly the past year, other Linux kernel engineers opting to pursue employment opportunities elsewhere amid the ongoing challenges and restructuring at the company, and shifts in their open-source strategy, there’s some good news as we work toward the 2025 holidays. Intel is currently hiring for two more experienced Linux kernel software engineers… ⌘ Read more

@klaxzy@klaxzy.net Worked out perfectly for me, too! :-)

Record drop for Australia’s emissions. What’s working and what isn’t?
Australia’s emissions had the biggest drop ever this year outside the artificial kink in the curve during COVID-19 shutdowns, but there’s still a lot of work to do. ⌘ Read more

Even on piss poor in-flight Wi-Fi it works pretty well 👌

New Patches Work To Optimize Code Generation For Linux Context Switching
As some additional enticing Linux kernel patches posted this week for review, an updated patch series is working to optimize code generation during context switching… ⌘ Read more

@kiwu@twtxt.net It also greatly depends on what kind of videos you plan to record. When you go, let’s say, diving, the specs need to be probably more suited to that type of environment. What about zoom, macro shots, wide landscapes, and so on? When typically mounted on a tripod, I’d say builtin image stabilization is not required, but for more action shots, this is fairly important to not get sea sick. :-)

I’ve got a Nikon Coolpix S9300. I typically only take photos, but it also works for the occasional video. Free hand moves are quite difficult, but when mounted to a tripod, this is not too shabby. There’s absolutely no way around a (makeshift) tridpod when zooming in, though. The audio is definitely not the best, especially wind destroys everything. If I recorded more video, I would certainly want to have an external microphone.

Why Can’t ChatGPT Tell Time?
ChatGPT can browse the web, write code and analyze images, but ask it what time it is and you might get the correct answer, a confident wrong answer, or a polite refusal – sometimes all three within minutes of each other.

The problem stems from how large language models work. These systems predict answers based on training data and don’t receive constant real-time updates about things like time unless they specifically se … ⌘ Read more

then again I don’t use Mastodon…

Pleroma may have worked, perhaps

Why sci-fi novelist Iain M. Banks was an ‘astounding’ world-builder
The New Scientist Book Club is currently reading the late Iain M. Banks’s Culture novel The Player of Games. Fellow science fiction author Bethany Jacobs reveals how his work inspired her ⌘ Read more

Oh my god! 🤣 It works! 🥳 My first Twt into the Fediverse (stil some improvements to be made of course), but still 😳 Wow! 🤩

Breaking: Trump says US is working to pause all migration from ‘Third World countries’
US President Donald Trump says his administration will work to permanently pause migration from all “Third World Countries” to allow the American system to fully recover. ⌘ Read more

Sooooo looking forward to my holiday, after this week of work 🤯 16 day holiday in Vietnam! Whoohoo 🤟

Victorian exhibition raises awareness about gender-based violence
A new exhibition in the Victorian city of Ballarat aims to raise awareness about gender-based violence through works contributed by victim-survivors. ⌘ Read more

Victorian free travel scheme sparks confusion as commuters report mixed messages
A promised month of free travel on the Gippsland Line in Victoria’s east prompts complaints from some passengers, with even a V/Line staff member unsure of how the system works. ⌘ Read more

Physicists have worked out a universal law for how objects shatter
Whether it is a cube of sugar or a chunk of a mineral, a mathematical analysis can identify how many fragments of each size any brittle object will break into ⌘ Read more

Better Technology, Worse Motivation: GenAI’s Mediocrity Trap

While generative AI (GenAI) promises productive efficiency, it can paradoxically lead to lower-quality work. We conducted an experiment with professional illustrators and found that AI assistance flattens the quality curve—it accelerates initial gains but sharply diminishes the returns on sustained effort. Faced with this, a significant number of professionals made a strategic choice: they sacrificed the final quality to save time.

From http://www.jin-li.org/uploads/1/1/4/5/114595093/ai_and_motivation.pdf

I haven’t read this and can’t vouch for it; seems vaguely AI-boostery. Still, the conclusions are interesting. This seems to be the picture that is emerging about generative AI generally: most people don’t like it and find that degrades the quality of work. Coders seem to like it and think that it helps them, but in fact it makes the slower, less productive, and more bug prone.

By all measures it’s a bad technology. We should just be honest about it. There is no need to make excuses for multi-trillion-dollar corporations.

@bender@twtxt.net That’s not the problem. The problem is the complex DNS setup and delegation. I’ve gotten it working once before, but it’s not that easy if you don’t intend to run it on the APEX Domain.