The smartest thing in any of my vehicles is an aftermarket Android Auto unit so I can't speak from personal experience, but there are various things such cars can do where the connectivity could be useful. Three I can think of are notifications/video of things happening around the vehicle at the time of occurrence (a la Tesla Sentry mode), being able to remotely start the vehicle to give the air con a head start on a hot day, and over the air updates for bug fixes or possible new software features without having to go near a mechanic.

Part of the problem here is that the things that can invade privacy do have genuine use cases, it's just that you can coopt them to also gain information. For example even the seemingly hard to justify internal cameras could have a genuine safety use by watching the driver for fatigue symptoms. If effective this would save lives over a car model lifespan, so you're balancing obvious privacy issues against the idea that such inconvenience is worthwhile if it saves a life (a sentiment more typically seen in speed limit debates, but applicable here too).

They tried other designs first but it was found you can't roller skate in a buffalo herd...

I do think there is something to be said about being wary of modern cars in regards to security. I wouldn't trust manufacturers as far as I could throw them when it comes to actually making secure systems - particularly when you're dealing with remote connection capabilities. The focus on China is convenient for the US but I wouldn't trust their systems either. Ford in particular has been concerning recently by patenting a way of ad serving based on user data a normal person would consider private (such as conversations within their cars). It doesn't even take the OEM being malicious to be a problem, they only need to miss a security hole...

According to a news article I just read this morning gets the record for coldest spring morning ever recorded in Canberra, so you could say it was pretty chilly.

While you will get the fine notice you shouldn't have to pay it - there is an option to reply with a reason why you shouldn't be fined and being overseas at the time would count as a legit excuse.

Yep, like in other elections we do have pre poll and postal voting (with a valid reason and you need to apply for postal) but the standard method is turning up on the day. I'm not sure if that has any effect on turnout compared to other states.

Probably less likely than a federal election but I'd still give it decent odds of finding one (particularly if the school is trying to raise funds for something). I can't remember exactly whether this was during council or state elections but I have turned up to vote before and not found a sausage sizzle.

Public transport in this area is indeed less attractive if you have any other form of transport, particularly if you live on one side of the ACT/NSW border and commute to the other. Google reckons for example that it'd take me a bit over an hour to get to either of my usual work sites on a bus compared to the 15-20 minutes it takes me normally.

Not mentioned (like usual) is motorbikes as an alternative to cars. The space advantages when it comes to both on road and parking are obvious compared to the usual one person per car (and they use less resources to make, particularly when it comes to EVs) so you'd think anyone actually worried about congestion would do more to encourage their use.

I was wondering if this would happen after seeing Brisbane cancelled their contract, they've followed suit pretty quickly.

Yep, they ended up deciding it was sparked by various batteries that had ended up in one of the compactors. Whatever they had for fire protection mustn't have been enough to stop it once the fire was noticed - I assume the source was within a big pile of recycling so would have required a serious amount of water to put out. It ended up being a rather large fire (one of the local accident chasers has some decent photos) and took out the recycling capability for the whole area. The rubbish piles within ended up smouldering away for a few days after the main fire was put out.

For over a year and a half now I believe most if not all the ACTs recycling has had to be sent to Sydney due to this fire, so I can understand the new centre getting priority when it comes to the waste management budget.

I think the QLD and NSW options are actually decent, which is surprising for a modern flag redesign. Not sure about the Victorian one, could do with either making the symbol more regular (i.e. less finger paint style) or deleting the crown (too hard to keep details on) and making the stars loosely drawn too. WA seems a decent idea but could do with a cleaner swan rather than the ruffled feathers on the back. The SA idea looks pretty good but does have hints of invading Poland due to the imperial eagle magpie. Tasmania however is another one I could get behind.

Not a real fan of the current ACT/NT flags and I don't think changing to a wavy line helps them, and the idea for the Jervis Bay territory seems a bit too committee style bland for my liking (like most new flag designs I see mentioned).

Tree pollen season has already kicked off, I was sitting at the traffic lights on City Hill just the other day watching the wind blow visible clouds of pollen off the pine trees.

Not keen at all on how it increases picture sizes and makes certain articles more prominent at the expense of actual information.

Also, what pelican told them that video shorts should take up such a massive section of the page (and not at the bottom either)? One of my bugbears these days is how information that can be conveyed much faster as text keeps getting pushed as video so people can spend both more time and vastly more data to find it out.

I'm sure there will be someone found who doesn't like it, but did you look at the map of the area where the limit is changing? Hardly anyone lives within that perimeter or even in the immediate surrounds.

I wouldn't have too much sympathy for anyone moving into Civic and expecting it to be quiet anyway. It's like those who buy in Braddon around Lonsdale St and complain about evening noise and Summernats as if these things popped out of nowhere...

Seems a surprisingly sensible decision, I think it's a good move towards addressing the concerns people have about the new Garema Place hotel potentially affecting nearby live music with noise complaints.

Would get a bit hard trying to keep track of whose place all the patients are supposed to be turning up to, but that's a minor issue and I'm sure one could work around it...

Highlights IMO are an amusingly ironic bit of tram signage at 7:20 and a very well timed song at 29:40.

Disappointingly I only saw two clips from Canberra but luckily both involved roundabouts (or faux-abouts) so at least the reputation of the city is intact.

I can see why they didn't think to have measures specifically against something like this given it's a pretty low probability occurrence. You'd have to be unlucky enough to have both applied hand sanitiser just before touching the globe and then get a spark off the globe to ignite it, and I don't recall ever getting a spark off plasma globes when I've touched them before.

It'll be interesting to see if this getting into the news means companies/departments will scramble to get rid of alcohol based hand sanitiser in their buildings, ignition is after all technically possible with static shocks etc so there will be people worried about liability.

Includes a video with a selection of the latest examples of people not seeing the giant red thing that can be found in predictable locations...

it seems that the smaller the town, the higher the military worship. They may not even have a public toilet, but they will have a military worship statue that seemed to have cost more than all the town to build.

That's because the vast majority of our towns pre date WW2, and basically every area lost enough people in WW1/WW2 to affect multiple families and the broader local community. For example I grew up in a country village of a couple of hundred people (with several hundred more in the locality and upriver) and it has a war memorial listing what would have been ~50 people killed in WW2 and at least that again in WW1. I think it is understandable that towns (particularly smaller or more closely knit communities) would be in general support of the families and friends wanting a memorial to their dead given that level of losses.

I haven't seen anywhere near the number of memorials for other conflicts, they definitely exist but are significantly less common. If you want to avoid war related stuff your best bet would be towns/suburbs built well after WW2, but these tend to be suburbs of existing centres (which are likely to have a war memorial) instead of completely new towns.

Edit: Also consider that many of our country towns/villages have either not grown significantly or have even shrunk in population in the last half century or so, so historical memorials are more likely to retain the prominence they were originally intended to have instead of being surrounded or crowded out by new development.