I have absolutely no idea how comprehensive it is, but Calibre has a book search that shows DRM free as a filterable column.
- 64 Posts
- 644 Comments
brisk@aussie.zoneto
People Twitter@sh.itjust.works•Making grades meaningless so that everyone advances is doing a disservice to kids' education.
3·6 days agoThree cueing peaked in the 90s.
brisk@aussie.zoneto
People Twitter@sh.itjust.works•Making grades meaningless so that everyone advances is doing a disservice to kids' education.
112·6 days agoSchool is the real world. It’s just their world, not yours. It’s where they spend a huge fraction of their day and year. School needs to be a livable place regardless of what comes after. “Preparation” if necessary at all, can come at the end or be taught explicitly instead of implicitly.
brisk@aussie.zoneto
Australia@aussie.zone•Australia to temporarily ease fuel quality standardsEnglish
71·6 days agoThat does make it sound better, but that change was already a more than a decade overdue
Here’s the part most Australians don’t know. For years, our petrol would have been illegal in almost every country we’d consider a peer. Europe hit 10ppm sulphur limits back in 2009. The United States, Japan, South Korea, Canada, China, even India all got there before us.
Global consultancy Stratas Advisors ranked Australia’s fuel quality 85th in the world. We sat between Argentina and Tanzania. A 2017 Commonwealth review put us 70th globally and dead last among the 35 OECD countries.
And what are we going back to?
Air pollution causes approximately 5,000 premature deaths in Australia each year. Vehicle emissions account for a significant chunk of that figure. Research from the University of Melbourne and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare linked dirty fuel directly to heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, and asthma. Emerging studies suggest connections to Alzheimer’s, dementia, and ADHD.
The annual health cost? Around $17.8 billion, with another $4.5 billion in welfare losses and lost productivity. That exceeds the national burden of obesity.
The International Council on Clean Transportation estimated that proper fuel standards could reduce premature deaths from vehicle emissions by up to 75 per cent. For years, Australian policymakers had that research sitting on their desks.
brisk@aussie.zoneto
Australia@aussie.zone•Australia to temporarily ease fuel quality standardsEnglish
20·6 days agoSimilar level to “improve housing availability by freezing housing standards”. Hurts the same people it purports to help.
brisk@aussie.zoneto
Technology@beehaw.org•We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI
23·10 days agoThis predates the ai bubble. There used to be a really common “plagiarism detector” (something like CheckMeIn?] that would generate a “similarity score” with a database of literature. Institutions were welcome to set their own thresholds of what they considered too similar. I hit the threshold multiple times in completely original works by using language that was simply too literary or formal in nature.
Mind I had been accused of plagiarism by teachers prior to those tools for much the same reason based only on vibes, so maybe that was a step up, since students could use it ahead of time.
There was a news story around that time of somebody getting taken through disciplinary action due to getting close to 100% similarity on the tool - eventually to discover that their own essays had Venn included in the database.
PCjs uses JavaScript to emulate a small collection of hardware and software that I grew up with in the 1970s and 1980s, allowing you to experience their slow CPUs, low-resolution displays, and primitive sound effects, all in the comfort and safety of your desktop or mobile web browser.
Over time, PCjs emulations have expanded to include selected IBM PC Compatibles and more classic machines, such as Minicomputers, Programmable Calculators, Terminals, and Arcade Games. To learn more or contribute to these very modest preservation efforts, visit the PCjs open-source project on GitHub.
If you consider your left half to be a Scylla and your right half to be a Charybdis then you get a narrow, dangerous straight to sail between your keyboard halves.
I’ve hung out with swans heaps in Australia and they’ve been almost entirely chill bros who will take food if offered but won’t harass you for it. I wonder if different species have different demeanours, like how Canada geese are known for being especially aggressive.
brisk@aussie.zoneto
Programming@programming.dev•Looking for a Q&A community that isn't as restrictive as StackOverflow
81·18 days agoThe Software Engineering Stackexchange has a broader remit than Stackovrrflow, but still has the requirement that questions are not purely opinion based
brisk@aussie.zoneto
Australia@aussie.zone•Finally fixing capital gains tax is good – but linking it to another tax cut for Australia’s rich is bollocks | Greg JerichoEnglish
1·19 days agoI’d be surprised if they did, but curious what good you see in it?
brisk@aussie.zoneto
Australia@aussie.zone•Australians roll down lawns of Parliament House to protest against fenceEnglish
9·20 days agoI’ve always thought this fence was the most symbolic “fuck you” from the government to the people of Australia. I can’t believe it’s been ten years, I’ve barely heard anyone mention it since it went up.
You got me hopeful that there was new political conversation about it.
brisk@aussie.zoneto
Australia@aussie.zone•High-speed train ticket between Newcastle and Sydney to cost $31 for one-hour journey from 2039English
4·21 days agoUtopia sure did, because of this (Wikipedia):
High-speed rail in Australia has been under investigation since the early 1980s.[1][2] Every federal government since this time has investigated the feasibility of constructing high-speed rail with speeds above 200 km/h, but to date nothing has ever gone beyond the detailed planning stage.
I’ll believe it when I see it
brisk@aussie.zoneto
Australia@aussie.zone•Ban under-16s from riding ebikes and e-scooters then require a driver’s licence, Queensland inquiry to recommendEnglish
21·21 days agoAgreed, absolute numbers are not a useful comparison
brisk@aussie.zoneto
Australia@aussie.zone•Ban under-16s from riding ebikes and e-scooters then require a driver’s licence, Queensland inquiry to recommendEnglish
101·22 days agoThe requirement to prove you can safely drive a car in order to use a much safer vehicle is bizarre. Given that it’s not listed under the AMAQ recommendations, I assume that one came from the Royal Automobile Club. It seems a bit strange that the automobile club was included at all given that the originating incident had no cars involved.
This bit at the end seems important
According to the Department of Transport and Main Roads’ annual crash report, 307 lives were lost in 284 crashes in Queensland in 2025, the highest road toll in the state in 16 years.
This included 129 car driver fatalities and 44 passenger deaths, while “personal mobility devices” – which covers e-scooters – saw the fewest fatalities, with eight deaths. There were 38 pedestrians, 50 truck driver, 75 motorcycle/moped rider and pillion and 13 bicycle or ebike rider and pillion fatalities.
In the six months to 30 June last year, 1,455 drivers were hospitalised after a crash while 105 personal mobility device users were hospitalised with injuries.
(Disregard if you already know but)
Pidgin is (primarily) an XMPP client. There are a handful of excellent ones now and they’re all intercompatible. There’s been a tonne of recent experimentation and expansion of the protocol for modern use.
brisk@aussie.zoneto
TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name@lemmy.world•The ideal ship form
15·27 days ago
Tag yourself. I’m “large, rolling rock”
brisk@aussie.zoneto
Buy it for Life@slrpnk.net•Work/commuting backpack, ideally not a US companyEnglish
1·27 days agoCan you recommend any panniers or features to look for?
brisk@aussie.zoneto
Australia@aussie.zone•Chinese warships came within 10km of Australian waters: DefenceEnglish
5·29 days agoSo the claim is they were provocatively close to Australian waters, not in Australian waters, and the waters that they were close to are the EEZ which it’s generally regarded that they are allowed to be in anyway?
All States may conduct military activities in the EEZ for peaceful purposes, including a foreign State, provided that the operating State has due regard to the rights and duties of other States.
If this is something other then fear mongering then I must be missing something.























In the basket. Plate either sat too high or more likely got pulled up by air movement. Those curves you can see in the burn pattern mirror the heating element at the top of the air fryer.
Source: I have been similarly silly