Only about half an hour left to vote in:
https://hottest100.abc.net.au/

I'm not about to defend Google, but I think Apple are worse. Google are upfront about what they collect and let you download (takeout) or delete everything they have on you at any time you want.

Apple don't tell you what they are collecting, don't let you opt-out of data collection and it's a manual process to access/delete what they have on you.

Neither company is good on their privacy fronts and to champion one over the other is silly.

C'mon, the "Whale of a time" quips were just there and you went with full harbour experience?

Having never navigated Australian Customs as a non-Australian, I have nothing to offer I fear.

At least they don't take mugshots and fingerprint everyone, though. "Welcome to the USA! Free FBI files for everyone!". They even fingerprinted/photographed my 18-month baby one visit. Criminal mastermind he was.

China wants Australia's dirt. Australia wants China's money.

Everything else is just theatre.

If you have an Australian passport, you'll likely be through in under an hour even during busy times.

I did probably venture outside Aussie.zone more last year in truth. These days I very rarely do that. My time is too limited to waste it doom scrolling the shit show that is US politics.

I don't think the problem is banks charging fees. In fact, I don't really have an issue with the banks taking 1% of the sale. The issue is that merchants don't realise that counting cash and taking it to the bank etc actually costs more than 1% anyway. Electronic payments are actually cheaper than all that, they already give you a total and handle the bank end.

I can think of a couple of places in Perth who have gone totally cashless. They only accept Eftpos/credit cards.

I can't comment on this case at all, but I will say that my father in law was totally scammed out of $19k and NAB blocked the transfer. NAB literally saved my in-laws from losing nearly $20k. The scammers were very convincing, they basically got remote access to his PC and from there accessed his online banking.

So, offset this story with a good one for NAB.

Perth also had one, but it closed down 20 years ago. Two businesses have since occupied the building, but both have died.

You can see how the building would have looked with the angular awnings etc. but they were made boring after the Ettamogah closed down.

Huh. Well this went from "something to look into next week" to "Oops, it's finished already".
Looks like there wasn't much interest this year.

Theoretically, "they" in this story includes us. According to the definition in the bill, aussie.zone counts as social media.
And I personally have zero interest in dealing with government IDs. So, I hope they figure out a way of doing verification before you get as far as the sites themselves. Because while we'll be bound by this legislation, I can't see any other instance out there caring in the slightest about it - why would they? So it'll do diddly-squat.