What made the good old net was the wealth of information however fragmented between a lot of different areas of the web, information could be found reasonably quickly, thought at first it relied on users for answers or for them to point to static sites that held questionable information, and later a search engine(s) that did its fucking job as best it could without being hindered by precious interests, copyright issues ... etc

I have surfed (I used to research stuff for various people) many tractor forums over the years but don't really recall too many details, but ever after a number of years, one of the things that stuck in my mind was one USoA farmer's account of the over the top gouging practices that JD was running with. Basically the newish JD was serviced by a third party mechanic, new parts installed correctly and verified ... but it would not run until they paid $$$$ for a JD tech to drive out to their location, plug in their simple special tool to unlock the system so the tractor could start and get to work.

Gallagher does have a virtual fencing system as well, [2], and for any perspective customers, clearly inform in regard to the basics or premise of their e-shepherd system. Noise to prompt ... but eventually if ignored electrical stimulation - yeah that works

Virtual fencing is an untapped market, even if one is not aiming for the whole herd, but just as a representative of the herd, or perhaps the ring leaders and trouble makers.

I'm not sure too many run of the mill cattle farmers in my parts would appreciate the cattle being monitored via AI or even systems that are probably at some point going to be subscription based or require online access to function [3]

I like real fences but I do like the idea of an adjustable virtual fence, virtual drover via a collar, but as someone (in Queensland, Aust.) who has seen the issues with a supposedly unobtrusive NLIS tag, where a small percentage get snagged and pull out, the idea having to chase up a collar which has stopped working or later found the beast has actually managed to lose it somewhere ... replacement costs would need to be low.

What I would like to see is a programmable cattle minding drone solution (flying shepherd) with their own solar power recharging stations - ideally not only mind the herd, but arseholes who've ignored the biosecurity or no entry signage

[1] https://www.halterhq.com/our-technology

[2] https://am.gallagher.com/en-AU/Solutions/eShepherd/

[3] https://4tags.com.au/shop/grazertrack-cattle-collar-kit/

Sure some under 16 Australian kids will still be using social media, but so will those who will report if the big social media companies are openly ignoring and not complying

Much like the toilet paper saga from 2020, people like myself wonder why given even if some people stockpile, a shortage regardless of an expectation the overall sale quantity should not change or vary that much over a given period - ie number of weeks. However here toilet paper prices never really came down, and still it seems that only premium toilet paper brands can be depended on to be regularly stocked in stores in my locale.

Obviously there should be an emergency plan for the fuel sector ... but some people are not happy until they see some specified numbers when at most can only be speculation based on limited scenarios - since any such plan has to account for a number of different types of emergencies.

I fear in three to four months when the real fuel crisis begins to hit home ... there'll be a shortage of bicycles new or second hand. :)

My mother may have developed this condition, in the last few weeks before passing, after being treated for a few months for blood cancer, she had habitually not drunk enough fluid so to ensure less trips where anyone would need to help her get up and go to the toilet. (Chronic dehydration can also cause lesions in the brain.) In the last month unfortunately most of doctors and nurses caring for her did not want to acknowledge or perhaps even aware she was severely dehydrated due to a normal blood pressure (before they were even aware of lesions) - oh I think a slight frame with a small amount of fat, losing 3 to 6 or more cups more than any liquid consumed on a daily basis over three weeks or more - common sense should have pointed out some of her observed conditions were due to something other than PML (lesions confirmed [but not the cause] two and half weeks before her passing) or medications.

As a recent example, I needed to quickly find the zone b tax offset for tax this year. (In Australia.) I note their search today with similar queries is behaving in a manner that most would consider passable (still no result that is going to satisfy what I was after then) - but when I searched a few weeks ago, no matter if I put 2025 or zone b in quotes, were the search results getting any more specific ... google I might mention, failed just as badly. In the end -- yandex for the win, and their first page of results, the first three I thought were hopeful, which got me confidently close enough to the simple bit of information I needed.

I feel sorry for those who haven't noticed how lacking search engines have got the last few years and I recently explained to a youngster who thought it's got just so good ... it's like being out at night looking at the stars and ... marvelling at the handful of bright stars, as well as the multitude of lights from their city's buildings and street lights ... never realising that once if they'd looked up there'd be hundreds of stars easy to see.

Once that's off the plate implement a suitable Win 7 compatible database or accounting suite for record keeping that a computer illiterate senior could use with some minor help without too much hassle - figuring simple spreadsheet for their data output they will need in the end.

If I've time after all that, I'll put thoughts how to best reach Australia's weather bom site's [1] designers who for accessibility moved their site's performance from great or excellent to total crud. Even the android phone does not display any better. If I ever needed an example of enshitification ... They need a fall back for those who's devices don't work well or just want to use less bandwidth every time they check their local radar.

[1] www.bom.gov.au

Pay fee per year or more, a small one, that allows posting a small number of posts a day, and reporting only one or two times a day - otherwise people and bots will abuse it.

Asking the public to validate what goes is one of the problems of the internet at the moment. Instead it's better to have people who naturally fact check stuff to provide links to other proper sources online they are aware of, or at least some idea why whatever might be wrong. That's the other problem the net has at the moment, people truly don't engage apart from yappers who really don't care how fluffy their content is.

Additionally no one was really closely monitoring the sleep quality of those who frequented the net, or those who were really engaged (near omni present) on the net pre 2005, but I don't recall thinking the conversations had back then were anything as borked as some ... most of the crud in some social media areas. I'm left with a sense, sensibility was much higher a couple of decades ago ... or one knew that they were going to be called out on whatever they said if it was in error.

I wish I could find more and clearer discussions in regard to when this came in and why. ( I lament the lack of a decent search engine present time - there were at least in 2007 numerous discussions in regard to the changes made in the US at the time, the follow though with software updates in regard to terms of service etc.)

Turns out it started in 2006 [1] [2 - is a bit fuzzy but] ... I though should recall the time as I was following the proceedings and when the decision was announced I was frankly appalled and ranted numerous times when the subject came up at various discussion boards lamenting Facebook seemed to have buttered up the legal areas to save them a lot of money on real live moderators to manage disagreements.

But 2007 seems stuck in my head though, as to me it was 2007 when the real fallout started when it started to roll various discussion sites that engaged in freer speech with robust discussions, occasional flames - to the point forum admins and staff of various message boards, forums using software such as phpbb had to decide the best approach to keep everyone happy and not end up dealing with legal threats.

Now getting back to noted decline in common knowledge and people more readily believing BS and why this law changed how dynamics of how fact challenges worked in Facebook. Once the anonymous common intelligence fighter might have posted factual informative links on someone's facebook wall that's ignorantly alleging total BS ... or maybe by purpose running a scam ... and factual challenges generally irritated them and blocking didn't generally work in the long run as it wouldn't be long before someone else was offended by their sheer lack of fact checking ... but after the rule change - the honestly deluded, the scammer or the bullshitter merely had to hit the report button on the anonymous users comment ... and that anonymous account was more or less gone, not a threat to challenge any BS on Facebook until they legitimised their account. Again it was 2007/8 I recall a number of former Facebook users expressing their dismay they'd lost their anonymous Facebook account, given they preferred their relative anonymity.

[1] https://forums.matrixgames.com/viewtopic.php?t=84680

[2] https://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_01_08-2006_01_14.sh...

A real name when challenging the status quo unfortunately attaches the risk of retaliation from either the intended organisation or person, or their fanboys, via direct or creative sets of problems designed to waste time and / or money. Sadly the internet is a bit more fuzzy when it comes to trouble and those dishing it out. Social media of course, had welcomed the new rules, and any anonymous account speaking out against a popular idea could be quickly reported and thus indirectly permanently banned until they complied with real life details.

Yes one persons 6 might be another's 2 - and that score can be altered by the individual's pain threshold on the day or a person's life experiences of pain (one might have once rated their worst night ever migraine as the worst and very high on the scale until they have had a few episodes of cluster headaches and meh lets call that night a 6, maybe it was closer to 5 ... )

But almost always most people haven't got past pain as just pain and there in lies the biggest problem, pain isn't just physical pain, there's a mix of how much one is agitated / bothered, anxious / worried for themselves or others if whatever their problem goes south, how alert and cognitive they are / distressed and a couple other factors.

The other issue is the slope or gradient of the pain scores [3] which more often is overlooked by doctors and other medical professionals rendering assistance to diagnose and treat those in their care. Personally, mine is fairly steep.

Some robust links for older browsers -- The origin article (6th March 2025) [1] - which includes access link to full 18 page pdf paper. For a summary [2] medicalxpress article / summary

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.05.25323444v... [1a] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.05.25323444v... [pdf]

[2] https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-price-pain.html

[3] Not everyone ends up with a purely linear scale (for example high numbers on my scale a 9 is many times more painful than a 8, 8 is around 3 times more painful than 7 ... and so forth, however lower scores on my scale follow a more linear convention until 4 or so.) But for those who are fortunate to have a linear scale, their gradient isn't necessarily exactly 1 either.

In some sense though, Wikipedia could improve the internet if they allowed third party advertising, every time some advertising GA web coder submitted their sub par schlock for their ad, it would be refused and pointed to appropriate resources on how to better form their code - till the point for whatever browser wikipedia works with, so would the ad.

It sort of sucks since it's what I use ... am I going to bow down and use some other browser - nope. Some business are losing a lot of customers ... it's their choice and cloudflare are not going to fix it since this problem has been dragging on over a year iirc.

However such articles and general media reporting in Australia that use the term gun safety - we'd generally take to mean they are talking about gun control including the wider ramifications of laws regarding weapons that are either restricted or prohibited.

The term safety has IMO gained popular usage most likely due to the fact that many people in cities where much of Australia's population resides (where reasons like self defence is viewed as not a genuine reason for a gun licence) - thus they don't (no longer) have guns, there exists a strong view where less guns is seen as safer in the way that if there were 95% less cars in a city there would be less car accidents and thus better car safety.

In cities or large towns there's limited reasons to justify a gun licence with exceptions such as if they belong to a sporting gun club or a recreational shooter visiting rural hunting areas occasionally on their time off.