Month: August 2022

Categories
Australia

Ipswich mayor hails ‘good outcome’ as government plans to close smelly Cleanaway landfill cell

A pool of stagnant water at a landfill site.

A commercial landfill company blamed for a rotten egg smell causing chronic problems for Ipswich residents since the February floods may have to permanently close and rehabilitate the affected landfill cell.

Cleanaway’s New Chum landfill site was overwhelmed with stormwater during the floods earlier this year, inundating a newly excavated landfill cell with 140 million liters of water.

The water quickly fermented into leachate, causing an unbearable smell that prompted Ipswich Mayor Teresa Harding to call for a health inquiry.

The Department of Environment and Science demurred on that point, but launched a formal investigation into the issues and recently notified Cleanaway that it intended to change the environmental regulations governing the site.

A department spokesperson said Cleanaway had until September 6 to respond to the notice of intention to amend the environmental authority.

Ms Harding said it was a “good outcome”.

“Cleanaway will have to go to the state with their plan of what they’re going to do, but the state has directed them to close that cell, to not receive any waste, and to make sure it’s fully rehabilitated,” she told ABC Radio Brisbane.

Clean-up underground

At parliamentary estimates last week, the director-general of the Department of Environment and Science, Jamie Merrick, confirmed the department planned to amend Cleanaway’s environmental authority.

“No waste would be permitted to be deposited in the cell,” Mr Merrick said.

“Cleanaway would be required to remediate it fully and see those works peer-reviewed to prevent any ground and surface water infiltration into the cell to prevent erosion and restore it, resulting in a safe, stable and non-polluting landform condition.”

Mr Merrick said the compliance response to the flooding issue in February was one of the largest in the department’s history, with more than 60 staff involved and daily reports from Cleanaway.

Cleanaway’s general manager of solid waste services for Queensland, Suzanne Wauchope, said the company had been notified of the environment department’s proposal but had not yet been directed to close the cell.

“We received the notice to say they’re proposing to change our environmental authority, but nothing has actually happened as yet and it won’t until that process is complete,” she said.

A man in safety equipment monitoring air quality at a dump
More than 60 environment department staffers have worked on the response.(Supplied: Department of Environment and Science)

Ms Wauchope said the amount of water in the affected cell was down to just 11,000 megalitres, but since then Cleanaway had been successful in reducing the smell and impact on local residents.

“Our stormwater management system was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of water that actually fell in February,” Ms Wauchope said.

“It just so happened that, at the time, we were doing some construction works, which does mean we created a big hole and we were busy lining that hole ready to take waste.”

costly exercise

In a June update to investors, Cleanaway said remediation costs for the site were estimated at $30–40 million.

The company closed the entire New Chum site in April, with investors told it was unlikely to be reopened until 2023.

Ms Wauchope said the company expected the last 11,000 megalitres to be gone from the cell by the end of August.

The contaminated water is being treated and taken to sewer points off-site, with air monitoring data reporting steadily lower discharge levels of hydrogen sulphide.

She said the company was fully committed to working with the environmental department and the community to resolve the issue.

“We want to do the right thing by the environment at the end of the day,” Ms Wauchope said.

“We deliver a really important public service to the community, which is to help the community remove their waste and deal with it appropriately, which is exactly what we seek to do in our landfill.”

Ms Harding said Ipswich City Council had been contacted by the Department of Environment and Science regarding potential breaches of Cleanaway’s operating permits.

“An initial review of the department’s request indicates there is no evidence to support council taking compliance action against Cleanaway,” she said.

“Of course, we will continue to monitor and review the situation closely.”

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Categories
US

AG’s office says woman, 2 children found shot, killed in NH home

AG's office says woman, 2 children found shot, killed in NH home

A 25-year-old woman and her two sons were found shot and killed in their Northfield home, according to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office. Officials said Kassandra Sweeney, and her two sons Benjamin Sweeney, 4, and Mason Sweeney, 1, each died of a single gunshot wound. Autopsies by the chief medical examiner revealed each of their manner of deaths was homicide. The bodies of Sweeney and her sons de ella were discovered Wednesday at their home at 56 Wethersfield Drive. The investigation continued through Thursday. Sources told News 9 that Northfield and state police were called to the address just before 11:30 am Wednesday after someone reported that several people might have been injured. When officers arrived, they found the bodies of Sweeney and her two sons. The state police Major Crimes Unit returned to their home just before 9 am Thursday. A silver Ford F-150 was taken away on a flatbed truck Thursday morning, but there was no word as to why it was removed. K-9 units were also seen going in and out of the home, and officers began searching a wooded area near the home later in the day. “Investigators believe they’ve identified all individuals involved at this point and they don’t believe there’s any danger to the public,” said Geoffrey Ward, Senior Assistant Attorney General. Ward would not comment specifically on any suspects in the case. The attorney general’s office said no arrest warrants were issued, adding the investigation remains active. This is a developing story. It will be updated as more information comes in.

NORTHFIELD, NH—

A 25-year-old woman and her two sons were found shot and killed in their Northfield home, according to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.

Officials said Kassandra Sweeney, and her two sons Benjamin Sweeney, 4, and Mason Sweeney, 1, each died of a single gunshot wound. Autopsies by the chief medical examiner revealed each of their manner of deaths was homicide.

The bodies of Sweeney and her sons were discovered Wednesday at their home at 56 Wethersfield Drive.

The investigation continued through Thursday.

Sources told News 9 that Northfield and state police were called to the address just before 11:30 am Wednesday after someone reported that several people might have been injured. When officers arrived, they found the bodies of Sweeney and her two sons of her.

The state police Major Crimes Unit returned to their home just before 9 am Thursday.

A silver Ford F-150 was taken away on a flatbed truck Thursday morning, but there was no word as to why it was removed.

K-9 units were also seen going in and out of the home, and officers began searching a wooded area near the home later in the day.

“Investigators believe they’ve identified all individuals involved at this point and they don’t believe there’s any danger to the public,” said Geoffrey Ward, Senior Assistant Attorney General.

Ward would not comment specifically on any suspects in the case. The attorney general’s office said no arrest warrants were issued, adding the investigation remains active.

The investigation is ongoing and more information will be released as it becomes available, officials said.

This is a developing story. It will be updated as more information comes in.

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Categories
Technology

Algorithms designed to ensure multiple users share a network fairly can’t prevent some users from hogging all the bandwidth. –ScienceDaily

Bioscientists use mixed-reality headset, custom software to measure vegetation in the field -- ScienceDaily

When users want to send data over the internet faster than the network can handle, congestion can occur — the same way traffic congestion snarls the morning commute into a big city.

Computers and devices that transmit data over the internet break the data down into smaller packets and use a special algorithm to decide how fast to send those packets. These congestion control algorithms seek to fully discover and utilize available network capacity while sharing it fairly with other users who may be sharing the same network. These algorithms try to minimize delay caused by data waiting in queues in the network.

Over the past decade, researchers in industry and academia have developed several algorithms that attempt to achieve high rates while controlling delays. Some of these, such as the BBR algorithm developed by Google, are now widely used by many websites and applications.

But a team of MIT researchers has discovered that these algorithms can be deeply unfair. In a new study, they show there will always be a network scenario where at least one sender receives almost no bandwidth compared to other senders; that is, a problem known as starvation cannot be avoided.

“What is really surprising about this paper and the results is that when you take into account the real-world complexity of network paths and all the things they can do to data packets, it is basically impossible for delay-controlling congestion control algorithms to avoid starvation using current methods,” says Mohammad Alizadeh, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS).

While Alizadeh and his co-authors weren’t able to find a traditional congestion control algorithm that could avoid starvation, there may be algorithms in a different class that could prevent this problem. Their analysis also suggests that changing how these algorithms work, so that they allow for larger variations in delay, could help prevent starvation in some network situations.

Alizadeh wrote the paper with first author and EECS graduate student Venkat Arun and senior author Hari Balakrishnan, the Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. The research will be presented at the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communications (SIGCOMM) conference.

congestion control

Congestion control is a fundamental problem in networking that researchers have been trying to tackle since the 1980s.

A user’s computer does not know how fast to send data packets over the network because it lacks information, such as the quality of the network connection or how many other senders are using the network. Sending packets too slowly makes poor use of the available bandwidth. But sending them too quickly can overwhelm the network, and in doing so, packets will start to get dropped. These packets must be resent, which leads to longer delays. Delays can also be caused by packets waiting in queues for a long time.

Congestion control algorithms use packet losses and delays as signals to infer congestion and decide how fast to send data. But the internet is complicated, and packets can be delayed and lost for reasons unrelated to network congestion. For instance, data could be held up in a queue along the way and then released with a burst of other packets, or the receiver’s acknowledgment might be delayed. The authors call delays that are not caused by congestion “jitter.”

Even if a congestion control algorithm measures delay perfectly, it can’t tell the difference between delay caused by congestion and delay caused by jitter. Delay caused by jitter is unpredictable and confuses the sender. Because of this ambiguity, users start estimating delay differently, which causes them to send packets at unequal rates. Eventually, this leads to a situation where starvation occurs and someone gets shut out completely, Arun explains.

“We started the project because we lacked a theoretical understanding of congestion control behavior in the presence of jitter. To place it on a firmer theoretical footing, we built a mathematical model that was simple enough to think about, yet able to capture some of the complexities of the internet. It has been very rewarding to have math tell us things we didn’t know and that have practical relevance,” he says.

Studying starvation

The researchers fed their mathematical model to a computer, gave it a series of commonly used congestion control algorithms, and asked the computer to find an algorithm that could avoid starvation, using their model.

“We couldn’t do it. We tried every algorithm that we are aware of, and some new ones we made up. Nothing worked. The computer always found a situation where some people get all the bandwidth and at least one person gets basically nothing ,” Arun says.

The researchers were surprised by this result, especially since these algorithms are widely believed to be reasonably fair. They started suspecting that it may not be possible to avoid starvation, an extreme form of unfairness. This motivated them to define a class of algorithms they call “delay-convergent algorithms” that they proved will always suffer from starvation under their network model. All existing congestion control algorithms that control delay (that the researchers are aware of) are delay-convergent.

The fact that such simple failure modes of these widely used algorithms remained unknown for so long illustrates how difficult it is to understand algorithms through empirical testing alone, Arun adds. It underscores the importance of a solid theoretical foundation.

But all hope is not lost. While all the algorithms they tested failed, there may be other algorithms which are not delay-convergent that might be able to avoid starvation This suggests that one way to fix the problem might be to design congestion control algorithms that vary the delay range more widely, so the range is larger than any delay that might occur due to jitter in the network.

“To control delays, algorithms have tried to also bound the variations in delay about a desired equilibrium, but there is nothing wrong in potentially creating greater delay variation to get better measurements of congestive delays. It is just a new design philosophy you would have to adopt,” Balakrishnan adds.

Now, the researchers want to keep pushing to see if they can find or build an algorithm that will eliminate starvation. They also want to apply this approach of mathematical modeling and computational proofs to other thorny, unsolved problems in networked systems.

“We are increasingly reliant on computer systems for very critical things, and we need to put their reliability on a firmer conceptual footing. We’ve shown the surprising things you can discover when you put in the time to come up with these formal specifications of what the problem actually is,” says Alizadeh.

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Categories
Entertainment

Disability activist Hannah Diviney trolled for calling out ableist slur in Beyonce lyrics

Disability activist Hannah Diviney trolled for calling out ableist slur in Beyonce lyrics

An Australian disability advocate has revealed she has been subject to relentless trolling after calling out Beyoncé for using an ableist slur in a newly released song.

It is not the first time Hannah Diviney has called out a star for their use of the word “sp*z” in a song.

Last month, Diviney tweeted Lizzo telling her to “do better” and she did, by changing the lyrics in her new song GRRRLS and apologizing.

Then last week, Beyonce released the track heated on her renaissance album, prompting Diviney to speak up again. The singer also changed the lyrics in her song following backlash.

After calling out the 28-time Grammy winner, Diviney said her Twitter mentions – tweets from users tagging her – became a “dumpster fire” and she wished other people would have as been as open to learning as Beyonce and Lizzo.

“I really respect Beyonce and Lizzo for apologizing,” she said, speaking on ABC’s Q&A program on Thursday night.

“I think that’s a great move because I think we have definitely seen it before when celebrities do that whole ‘I’m going to double down, that’s not what I meant, you just took it the wrong way blah blah’ and both of these women who, it has to be said, occupy incredible spaces as marginalized people themselves, have shown everyone around the world how to be an effective ally.

“And that’s basically be open to learning, go ‘OK cool, I did something wrong, now I’m going to just fix it and we’re not going to make a huge fuss about it.’

“I just wish people who are really passionate about the fact Beyonce and Lizzo had to change the lyrics in their song would get that message,” Diviney continued.

“I actually debated or not whether to bring this up because I have a lot of people that I care about watching and people who care about me and they don’t quite know the level of trolling I’ve got this week.

“But I have had I have had people basically sending me photos of, or like GIFs of, people in wheelchairs being falling over and people in wheelchairs being pushed off cliffs … which is basically telling me to ‘shut up and go away.’”

Diviney said it would not stop her, vowing to continue calling out any use of the word.

“That particular word has been used against me before as an insult and is especially being used against me now,” she said.

“It’s being used against people I care about and it presumes a lack of intelligence or emotional control, which are not at all things that I want associated with me, things I want associated with my disability. They don’t reflect on my life at all.

“Trust me, if people had actually lived with spasticity I don’t think they’d be using that as an insult because it hurts.”

While Beyonce has not publicly addressed the backlash or lyrics, representatives for the singer told media the word was “not used intentionally in a harmful way” and would be replaced.

In June, Lizzo released a statement on Twitter apologizing for using the word.

“It’s been brought to my attention that there are [sic] is a harmful word in my song ‘GRRRLS’,” she wrote.

“Let me make one thing clear: I never want to promote derogatory language. As a fat black woman in America, I’ve had many hurtful words used against me so I understand the power words can have (whether intentionally or in my case, unintentionally).

“I’m proud to say there’s a new version of girls with a lyric change. This is the result of me listening and taking action,” she continued.

“As an influential artist I’m dedicated to being part of the challenge change I’ve been waiting to see in the world.”

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Categories
Sports

Triple Eight reveals rebrand – Speedcafe

Triple Eight reveals rebrand - Speedcafe

Triple Eight Race Engineering’s new logo (left) alongside the old one (right)

Triple Eight Race Engineering has revealed a rebrand, specifically an update to its corporate identity.

The powerhouse Supercars team has unveiled a tweaked logo, featuring revised colors and a new typeface for the team name.

In addition to the more common stacked Triple Eight logo, or ‘brand mark’, the Banyo operation also has two horizontally oriented designs at its disposal, and a ‘secondary brand mark’ which omits the ‘Triple Eight Race Engineering’ text.

An 11-page brand guidelines document, distributed to media with the announcement of the rebrand which takes effect this month, specifies how its logo is to be displayed.

An alternate format for the new logo

Said guidelines also feature ‘The Triple Eight Way’, which encompasses six points:

  • We are engineering excellence
  • We are professional
  • We are ethical
  • We are committed
  • We are a family
  • We are world class

Triple Eight operates under multiple banners across competitions including the Repco Supercars Championship and Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia Powered by AWS, the latter of which it is fielding a Mercedes-AMG GT3 in this weekend at Queensland Raceway.

Triple Eight competes as Red Bull Ampol Racing in the Supercars Championship

In the Supercars Championship, the squad currently known commercially as Red Bull Ampol Racing began in 2003 with a buyout of Briggs Motor Sport, but traces its lineage back to the original Triple Eight Racing in the United Kingdom which former team principal Roland Dane co-founded in 1996.

It has competed as Team Betta Electrical, TeamVodafone, and Red Bull Racing Australia, before becoming the Lion’s official factory effort in 2017 and hence the Red Bull Holden Racing Team.

Triple Eight adopted its current commercial identity in the Supercars Championship after Holden was retired in 2020, but remains the General Motors homologation team and hence is charged with development of the Chevrolet Camaro for the impending Gen3 era.

So far, the now Jamie Whincup-led outfit has won the Bathurst 1000 eight times, on top of nine Supercars drivers’ championships and 10 teams’ titles.

A Maranello Motorsport Ferrari with significant Triple Eight support also took victory in the Bathurst 12 Hour of 2017.

Shane van Gisbergen currently leads the Supercars drivers’ championship by well over the equivalent of a full event, while Red Bull Ampol Racing has a slim advantage over Dick Johnson Racing in the teams’ standings.

Categories
Australia

BOM issues major flood warning for Gundagai as SES conducts multiple rescues

A dam photographed from above.

Gundagai in southern New South Wales is bracing for major flooding, with local SES crews expecting up to 90,000 megalitres to start being released from Burrinjuck Dam this afternoon.

The dam began spilling this morning as more than 100,000ML of water flowed in from tributaries, including the Yass and Queanbeyan rivers, following rain totals of more than 100 millimetres in the Burrinjuck catchment.

Farmers along the Murrumbidgee River at Gundagai are moving their stock to higher ground in preparation, with the possibility of the river reaching 8.5 meters this evening and 9m by Saturday morning.

The SES is also deploying extra crews to Temora, which recorded 60mm of rain overnight.

Creeks north of the town are rising.

“We had a band of rain that passed through Idaho and out past Cootamundra that brought, give or take, 20 to 30mm yesterday evening,” incident controller Barry Griffiths said.

“That’s stabilized overnight, but it produced 71 calls for assistance.”

Warning signs sit near a flooded road.
Many roads are closed across the Cootamundra-Gundagai Local Government Area, including Thompson Street.(Supplied: Gail Douglas)

Mr Griffiths said four rescues had been carried out.

“We have some low-lying water around the Temora area triggering some rescues for us — we had two overnight and two happening at the moment,” he said.

“It looks like people were driving and got cut off on the road.”

Mr Griffith said warnings were in place for drivers to avoid flooded roads.

“If the road that you drive on normally does get flooding, assume that it is and drive the long way around,” he said.

The BOM is warning that moderate flooding is also possible at Wagga Wagga tomorrow afternoon.

A car submerged in a flooded waterway.
The female driver of this car was found safe after it was submerged near Mudgee.(Supplied)

Woman found safe in Mudgee

Further north, a woman has been found safe after her vehicle was swept into flood waters in the New South Wales Central West overnight, as other parts of the state brace for major flooding.

At 6.30pm yesterday emergency services were called to Macdonalds Creek at Erudgere, about 15 kilometers north-west of Mudgee, following reports that a vehicle had been swept into a causeway by flash floodwater.

A search and rescue operation led to the discovery of a vehicle submerged in the waterway.

Police were later notified a 59-year-old woman sought assistance at a nearby property in Piambong.

She has been taken to Mudgee Hospital for assessment.

A road covered in murky floodwater.
Bathurst’s Hereford Street has been rendered impassable.(Supplied: Simon Fraser)

The rescue was one of seven local SES crews responded to across the region.

Others occurred at Wellington, Gulgong, Ballimore, Coonabarabran and Coolah.

Three people in high-vis suits work to sandbag a verge at night.
The SES helped with sandbagging overnight.(Supplied: SES)

“Unfortunately, for the most part they were people who made the pretty poor decision to drive through flooded causeways and they’ve been stranded as a result,” SES spokesperson David Rankin said.

“We have seen falls of between 50 and 60mm right across areas of the Central West,” he said.

“That’s resulted in a number of rivers around here in some degree of flood over last night and into this morning.”

tombstones Poking Out Of Floodwaters,
The BOM has numerous severe weather and flood warnings in place for much of the state, including Wellington. (ABC NewsHugh Hogan)

Mr Rankin said SES crews received more than 45 calls for assistance, many of which were related to strong winds.

Crew members spent the night removing branches and trees from roofs and tarping them.

“It’s been a really busy night, thankfully the worst of the rain in the Central West has passed,” Mr Rankin said.

“But we’ve still got flooding on the Castlereagh, Bell, upper and lower Macquarie rivers, the Bogan, the Darling, the Belubula.”

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Categories
US

What Pro-Lifers Should Learn From Kansas

What Pro-Lifers Should Learn From Kansas

Peggy Noonan is an opinion columnist at the Wall Street Journal where her column, “Declarations,” has run since 2000.

She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2017. A political analyst for NBC News, she is the author of nine books on American politics, history and culture, from her most recent, “The Time of Our Lives,” to her first, “What I Saw at the Revolution.” She is one of ten historians and writers who contributed essays on the American presidency for the book, “Character Above All.” Noonan was a special assistant and speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan. In 2010 she was given the Award for Media Excellence by the living recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor; the following year she was chosen as Columnist of the Year by The Week. She has been a fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, and has taught in the history department at Yale University.

Before entering the Reagan White House, Noonan was a producer and writer at CBS News in New York, and an adjunct professor of Journalism at New York University. She was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up there, in Massapequa Park, Long Island, and in Rutherford, New Jersey. She is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford. She lives in New York City. In November, 2016 she was named one of the city’s Literary Lions by the New York Public Library.

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Categories
Business

Qantas customer’s $10k POLi payment gets ‘lost in a void’

Qantas customer's $10k POLi payment gets 'lost in a void'

A couple who used a popular online payment service to pay for more than $10,000 worth of Qantas flights are warning others of the risks after their money ended up “lost in a void”, with no flights to show for it.

On July 10, Giacomo and Nikki Lichtner booked flights to the UK for Nikki and their two children through the Qantas website. Giacomo had booked his flights separately, as he was traveling for work.

The Wellington-based couple made the $NZ10,894 ($A9853) payment using POLi – a service which enables customers to transfer money directly from their bank account to the merchant.

While the money left their bank account, the flights were not issued. The couple contacted their bank, which advised the transfer would likely go through the next working day. But as they had used a third party – POLi – the bank was unable to use its usual tracking process.

In the meantime, the couple contacted Qantas, which said it would hold the flights.

When the Lichtners contacted POLi through an online form, they received a response confirming there had been an error with the payment, and the status of the transaction was “receipt unverified”.

POLi sent through a screenshot, and advised the couple to share it with Qantas so the airline could confirm receipt of the payment, and either process the transaction or provide a refund.

On July 14, the couple again phoned Qantas, and were this time told their flights would be cancelled, with a refund to be issued within 14 working days.

Assuming a refund was on the way, the couple went ahead and booked new flights, this time through a travel agent, at a cost of $NZ9871.

However, in a subsequent call, Qantas told the couple they had no record of a refund being actioned, and they would need to contact POLi.

But POLi insisted Qantas had the money, and said they had no involvement in the refund process.

Nikki Lichtner said they were left feeling “frustratingly helpless”, and couldn’t understand how their money could just be “lost in a void”.

Following inquiries from Stuff Travel, a Qantas spokesperson said the refund had been approved and the funds had been expedited to be returned to the Lichtners.

“We are looking into what’s happened with these payments and will work with POLi to avoid this happening again.”

But the couple believed others should be aware of the risks when using POLi to book flights.

“If an error occurs during the transaction, both parties can point the finger at each other, leaving the responsibility for finding the money with the customer,” Nikki Lichtner said.

Giacomo Lichtner added it had been next to impossible to get answers, with Qantas being particularly difficult to engage with.

“The thing that really left us stranded was the lack of acknowledgment and any responsibility.”

Other Qantas customers have reported issues with receiving refunds from the airline after paying using the POLi system.

Nelson couple Simon Rutherford and Lisa Keenan waited more than 12 weeks for a refund after the airline canceled their flights. The couple was told POLi was holding their payment, however, POLi denied this.

The couple were eventually refunded after the New Zealand sales manager for Qantas stepped in following the publication of Stuff Travel’s story.

POLi has yet to respond to requests for comment.

What is POLi?

POLi offers a way of making online payments that uses your internet banking information, instead of a credit or debit card.

The Australian company is owned by a fully-owned subsidiary of Australia Post.

Using POLi’s portal, a customer logs in to their internet banking. It is free, with no further registration needed.

However, most banks advise against customers sharing passwords and login details with any third party, and doing so may breach their terms and conditions.

Banking Ombudsman Scheme policy & systemic issues manager Erica Penney said POLi did not fall within their jurisdiction, as they only looked into the actions of the banks.

However, if funds went missing during a payment – ​​whether it be a credit card payment, an internet banking payment, or a payment initiated by a third party like POLi – their expectation would be that the bank would assist the customer to try to trace and recover the funds to the extent they were able.

“At the end of the day if there is a dispute between the person who sent the funds and the agency that received them, the resolution of that issue falls outside of the banking relationship, and the customer might want to seek some legal advice about what Options are available to them if a merchant they have paid funds to denies receiving their funds, or hasn’t provided the service they’ve paid for,” Penney said.

“The more parties you have involved, the murkier the waters get. If a third party like POLi and the merchant are pointing the finger at each other, that can be really confusing for consumers.”

Stuff.co.nz

See also: Right now, Australia hates Qantas. But it won’t last

See also: Couple ‘seething’ after Qantas cancels flight, rebooks baby on separate flight

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Categories
Technology

Nintendo Isn’t Launching A New Switch This Year – channelnews

Nintendo Isn't Launching A New Switch This Year – channelnews

Those waiting eagerly for a ‘Nintendo Switch Pro’ or any other new hardware from the Japanese gaming giant are set to wait longer, as it seems that Nintendo won’t be releasing new hardware until March 2023.

According to a Nikkei report, Nintendo won’t be focusing on the release of a new device, but rather concentrate on just making enough of the current Nintendo Switch, Switch Lite and Switch OLED.

The global chip shortage and supply chain issues have been causing issues for Nintendo, whose sales have dropped 23% this quarter compared to the same time last year. “Hardware production was impacted by factors such as the global shortage of semiconductor components, resulting in a decrease of hardware shipments,” said the company in their earnings report.

Typically, the end of the year period is a time where companies like Nintendo begin to stock up on hardware to prepare for a busy sales period at Christmas. However, as Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa told Nikkeithis isn’t possible.

“Normally, we stockpile inventory in the summer to prepare for the year-end sales season, which is at its peak. This summer, we are not able to produce as many as usual.”

The Nintendo Switch was first released in 2017 and has sold over 100 million units over its lifetime. Despite the current issues, Nintendo is set on selling 21 million units this year.

A new, more powerful, 4K compatible Switch has been on the minds of Nintendo fans for some time, however it seems we won’t be hearing about that until March next year at the earliest.

Categories
Entertainment

The secret war between ‘Bluey’ and anime fans

The secret war between 'Bluey' and anime fans

Iconic Aussie children’s cartoon Bluey has been bombarded with negative reviews in a targeted attack to bring down the beloved program’s online ratings, Reddit users have speculated.

Online sleuths have identified what they say is a secret war raging between anime fans and the children’s series on movie and TV website IMDb.

At the end of last month, bluey‘s executive director, Daley Pearson, tweeted a screenshot of an IMDb page that showed a bluey episode — titled “Sleepytime”, for all you fans — ranked second on the list of best TV shows of all time with a star rating of 10 out of 10.

I don’t even have kids and I love blueyso I find no fault here — however, a Reddit theory suggests that anime fans did.

A mere three days after Pearson sent out the tweet, the bluey episode dropped down the list to 17th place. The number of people rating the show increased by 700 during this time, and the star rating stats show that there was a sudden uptake in one-star ratings, making it the second most popular rating for the show. Seeing as the most popular rating is 10 stars, it’s looking pretty suspect.

At the same time, a popular anime series rose up from nowhere to the top spots. why? It seems the trolls got to it.

A Reddit thread of bluey fans (yes, that is a thing that exists) suggests anime fans saw the tweet and started to review the show badly, while at the same time rating their favorite shows well, for the sole purpose of getting their own favorites higher in the rankings.

Reddit was quick to point out that trolling is really the sincerest form of flattery the internet can provide.

“It’s a badge of honor really,” wrote one user. “Anything starts to get haters once it gets enough elevation. The fact that it’s getting review bombed, the silly recent attacking articles – all just testament to how good this show is that’s it’s hit that level. And that it’s a kids show makes this all more amazing.”

Others have suggested that this could be the start of an all-out war between fans of a kids’ show and of anime.

“If it HAS to come to this, then I HOPE us in the bluey fandom can make a rebellion over the anime fans,” said one bluey supporter.

“This might be one of the worse things we’ve done, but we shall bring upon war. If you want to contribute to attacking the Anime fandom than comment on this post and leave poor reviews on Attack on Titan!”

“Welcome to why so many anime fandoms are so toxic,” said another.

Yet no one summed up the situation so neatly as this Reddit user and bluey fan: “The internet is such a weird place.”

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