Month: August 2022

Categories
Business

Arnott’s new Less Sugar biscuit range released

Arnott's new Less Sugar biscuit range released

Arnott’s has released a new line of some of its favorite biscuits. But these treats come with a lot less guilt.

The company has released new packs of its Scotch Finger and Shortbread Cream biscuits with 50 per cent less sugar.

The new Less Sugar treats are now available on shelves in the biscuit aisle at all major grocery stores for $4.70 a pack.

Arnott’s said the release came after research conducted by the company revealed a third of Aussies are looking to limit their sugar intake.

But, 60 per cent said they would still buy a “better for you” version if it tasted the same as the original biscuit.

Arnott’s has been broadening its range to meet more dietary restrictions with the release of a gluten-free range in 2021 that featured Tiny Teddies, Mint Cream and Scotch Finger biscuits.

Arnott’s marketing manager Pauline Mercier said: “We’ve been listening to what consumers are asking for; one of the ongoing requests is for Arnott’s to offer more options that suit their specific dietary needs.

“Our dedicated bakers have spent more than a year perfecting the reduced-sugar versions of some of our beloved biscuits and we are confident they’ve got the same great taste as their originals!”

Just a week ago, Arnott’s announced its new Shapes Fully Loaded range.

The range includes Sizzling Meatlovers, Flame Grilled Chicken and Ultimate Cheese and sell for just $3.50 a pack.

The three flavors are currently available for Aussies to snap up at Woolworths.

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Categories
Technology

Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti may rival the 3090 Ti for half the price

Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti may rival the 3090 Ti for half the price

The rumored specifications of Nvidia’s upcoming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti just leaked, and it looks like it’ll be one beast of a graphics card.

If the specs turn out to be true, the RTX 4070 Ti might be powerful enough to match the current-gen flagship RTX 3090 Ti, but it’s also expected to cost a lot less than the $1,999 GPU.

As I have mentioned before, there is an AD104 SKU with a 400W limit.
PG141-SKU331
a full-fat AD104 with 7680FP32
21Gbps 12G GDDR6X
It can easily match RTX 3090 Ti.

— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) August 1, 2022

This tantalizing bit of news comes from a fairly trustworthy source — Kopite7kimi, a well-known leaker in the GPU space. However, it’s best not to take it for granted and assume that everything is subject to change, especially if you consider that Nvidia might only release a single GPU this year, and if that happens, it won’t be the rumored RTX 4070 Ti.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s talk about the exciting stuff — the specs of the upcoming Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, the successor to the RTX 3070 Ti. The latter had proven itself to be one of the best graphics cards this generation, and it seems that its successor might follow that same path and prove to be even better than previously expected.

Kopite7kimi talks about an AD104 GPU based on the PG141-SKU331 PCB. The card utilizes the full AD104 GPU core, which implies that it’s the RTX 4070 Ti and not the base RTX 4070 that is expected to feature a cut-down version of AD104. This would unlock a much higher power limit of 400 watts, and with that, a lot of potential performance.

The card is expected to come with 7,680 cores or 60 streaming multiprocessors (SMs). The leaker predicts a whole lot of memory for this GPU, with 12GB of GDDR6X memory clocked at 21Gbps across a 192-bit bus. Although Kopite didn’t mention that in their tweet, Wccftech notes that other rumors about the RTX 4070 Ti imply that it will also have a massive 48MB of L2 cache and 160 render output units (ROPs).

These specifications mark a huge increase from the RTX 3070 Ti, with a 25% boost in core count and a cache that’s 12 times larger. Unfortunately, Kopite7kimi didn’t talk about the clock speeds for this GPU, but something in the 2GHz-2.8GHz range seems like a safe prediction.

Now, let’s compare these specs to the current-gen flagship, the RTX 3090 Ti. The $1,999 flagship has a higher core count of 10,752, with 24GB of GDDR6X memory across a 384-bit bus. However, it has a drastically smaller L2 cache (6MB) and fewer ROPs (112). If the RTX 4070 Ti can match, or come close to, the RTX 3090 Ti in performance, it will be enough for the next-gen card to be a winner here.

We still don’t know how Nvidia will price the new graphics cards. With the current situation in the world, plus an oversupply of RTX 30-series GPUs lying around, there have been whispers of the list prices being quite high. However, if we assume that the RTX 4070 Ti will be priced in the $600-$700 range, which seems reasonable, it will still be a much better value than the RTX 3090 Ti.

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Categories
Sports

Marion Rousse hails success of ‘proper women’s Tour de France’ | Cycling

There were not one, but in fact, two historic moments in women’s sport at the weekend. The first, as you may be aware, came at Wembley on a joyous night for English football; the other was on a mountain summit in the French Vosges, where Annemiek van Vleuten won the Tour de France Femmes at Super Planche des Belles Filles.

The 39-year-old Dutchwoman overcame a stomach bug to utterly dominate the mountain stages of the eight-day race. Such was her superiority over the peloton that only six riders finished within 10 minutes of her overall winning time.

In a way, the outcome of the race mattered less than the breakthrough it represented. The various incarnations of the women’s race have endured exile, underfunding and mockery, until finally, after years of reluctance, the Tour promoters ASO were browbeaten into launching this year’s event.

There are other major women’s races – the Women’s Tour in Britain and the Giro Donne in Italy – but the Tour de France is the pinnacle of the sport, the global showcase of elite cycling. Now plans are afoot to make the Tour Femmes bigger, better and significantly more competitive.

While the men’s Tour has survived world wars, pandemics and crippling doping scandals, women’s cycling has existed in a sporting hinterland. It’s to the great credit of those athletes and campaigners who lobbied so hard, for so long, that Van Vleuten was able to stand, in a jersey jauneon the final podium.

What started in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe and finished on a gravel track was only the beginning. “I was always sure of one thing with this race,” said the Tour Femmes director, Marion Rousse. “It wasn’t a gift that we were giving to women’s cycling, to create a women’s Tour de France. They simply deserve it and you see the proof each day, with different scenarios in the race. And even though it’s the first year, it’s a proper Tour de France, with the caravan, the crowds, placards, flags – it’s great. It gives me shivers when I see it.”

The Tour Femmes has three more years on its contract with title sponsor Zwift. “It’s important in this first year to see the reception from the public, the media, the audience, the sponsors,” Rousse said. “They don’t know with a new race how things will go, but it’s already impressive on all levels. We’re making women’s cycling a part of everyday life. We’ve met the challenge and clearly it’s going to grow in the next years.”

There is talk already of increasing the number of riders in each team and of more racing days next year, including an individual time trial and visiting the Alps and Pyrenees.

“We’ve already learned a lot,” Rousse said. “There are some questions to answer – some things we can improve on for next year. But looking at the popular success, the size of the TV audience, the interest in the race, the quality of the racing, it’s going to get bigger in the coming years.”

Marion Rousse, Tour de France Femmes director, is interviewed during the Tour de France Femmes.
Marion Rousse said the Tour de France Femmes has ‘met the challenge and is clearly going to grow in the next years’. Photograph: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images

But she acknowledges there are significant issues to be resolved to enable the event to grow. It also has to establish greater depth through the women’s platoon, and generate a higher level of competition throughout. With some riders taking time off work to compete and others riding for free, there is a need for greater investment in the teams themselves.

“Although women’s cycling has evolved, the economic model remains fragile,” Rousse said. “It’s still an amateur milieu, for sure, and one hopes that, thanks to the audience, to the fact that the race is on TV in 190 countries around the world, and because it’s the Tour de France, that the sponsors will be encouraged to invest in women’s teams.”

In the immediate future, it is clear that from now on the three-week Tour de France will morph into a month-long festival of road racing, celebrating both men’s and women’s cycling. As the women’s race develops, the globalization of the men’s race continues unabated with the 2022 podium featuring a Danish winner, a Slovenian runner-up and a veteran Welshman, Geraint Thomas, placing third.

Jonas Vingegaard’s success was celebrated by thousands of fans in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, while Tadej Pogacar headed straight to the Tour Femmes to support his partner Urska Zigart, who was racing for Team BikeExchange. Next year the Grand Depart for the men will be in Bilbao for two stages looping through the Basque Country before the peloton enters France.

The Tour Femmes meanwhile will start on 23 July as the men’s race ends in Paris and, according to Rousse, will remain in its current format of a week of racing. “You can’t build a race of 10 days or three weeks on the spot,” she said. “You need to develop it progressively. For now it’s eight days.”

Categories
Australia

‘Like an alien obelisk’: space debris found in Snowy Mountains paddock believed to be from SpaceX mission | Space

The Australian Space Agency is investigating space debris found in farmland in the Snowy Mountains in southern NSW, after being notified by an astrophysicist who believes it to be from a SpaceX mission.

Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at the Australian National University, says he often gets calls from people who believe they’ve found space junk – and they are normally easy to rule out.

“This was different,” he said.

Tucker received a call last Thursday from Mick Miners and Jock Wallace, two sheep farmers in the small town of Dalgety, who reported having found a scorched object. Their report matched a SpaceX spacecraft which re-entered the earth’s atmosphere at 7am on 9 July, 20 months after its launch in November 2020.

The farmers were connected to Tucker via local ABC radio, where he is a regular guest to talk about space.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule was observed breaking apart above the area of ​​Australia where the farmers found the debris. Its re-entry was seen and heard by people from Canberra to Bendigo, with many sharing it on social media.

Tucker drove for two hours to Miners’ farm to see if the object they had found was the unpressurized trunk of the capsule – a structure that is needed to take-off but dumped prior to re-entry.

His first impression, he said, was something that “kind of just looks like a burnt tree … and then you come up to it, it’s like this alien obelisk almost”.

“I knew without a doubt this was a very real incident and a very real piece just sticking out of the ground.”

A large rectangle piece of charred metal that Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at the Australian National University believes is part of a SpaceX mission.
One of the panels of the debris appears to have a part number on it – ‘a very easy way for SpaceX to confirm it,’ Tucker says. Photographer: Brad Tucker

Tucker said he could tell it was real because it was made of composite materials designed to withstand heat, including woven carbon fire for insulation. It also showed clear signs of scorching due to re-entry.

One of the panels of the debris appeared to have had a part number. “It’s a very easy way for SpaceX to confirm it because there’s a label on it,” he says.

I have documented the discovery on YouTube.

SpaceX has not yet confirmed to Tucker that the debris belonged to SpaceX Dragon, and has not yet responded to a request from Guardian Australia.

The debris has been assessed by the Australian Space Agency (ASA).

A spokesperson from ASA told Guardian Australia their technical experts had “visited a remote part of the Snowy Mountains area of ​​southern New South Wales, after the discovery of space debris”.

“The agency is actively working to support formal identification of the objects, and is engaging with our counterparts in the US, as well as other parts of the commonwealth and local authorities as appropriate,” the spokesperson said.

Tucker says space junk is intended to land in the ocean, and it’s a “super rare” occurrence for it to land in a populated area.

“It’s only happened a handful of times,” he says. “In 1979, the US Space station Skylab crashed over Western Australia in the first instance. There was a nuclear power Russian satellite that crashed in Canada in the 80s. And then China had a rocket booster that crashed and landed in West Africa a couple of years ago. SpaceX had part of a booster crash in the US state of Washington last year. And now this.”

It’s a short list, but the incidents are becoming more frequent.

Dr Sara Webb, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University, agreed with Tucker’s assessment that the debris was consistent with a SpaceX mission.

Webb said that this event and the Chinese booster rocket, which made an uncontrolled return to Earth on Saturday, underscored the importance of tracking space debris.

The Chinese booster rocket was particularly large, she said.

“Even if 80% of it burnt up, you’re still left with basically a car coming out of the atmosphere,” she said.

The spokesperson for ASA said the organization was “committed to the long-term sustainability of outer space activities, including debris mitigation”.

“This includes the ongoing development of a Space Situational Awareness and Debris Mitigation roadmap, to guide opportunities in this important area,” the ASA said.

Categories
US

Arizona attorney general: No evidence of widespread dead voters in 2020

Arizona attorney general: No evidence of widespread dead voters in 2020

Comment

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) told state Senate President Karen Fann (R) in a letter Monday that his office had closed its criminal investigation into allegations of widespread instances of dead people voting in the 2020 election.

Brnovich and his office had been investigating numerous assertions of dead voters during the election, including some handed over to state prosecutors last September after the Florida-based firm Cyber ​​Ninjas completed its review of 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County. Fann and members of the GOP-controlled Senate launched the ballot review after President Donald Trump narrowly lost the 2020 election.

Brnovich’s office spent months examining allegations that 282 people who were dead before Oct. 5, 2020, voted in the Nov. 3 general election, his letter said. Only one was deceased, he wrote.

“After spending hundreds of hours reviewing these allegations, our investigators were able to determine that only one of the 282 individuals on the list was deceased at the time of the election,” he wrote.

The others were alive and were determined to be current voters.

“Our agents investigated all individuals that Cyber ​​Ninjas reported as dead and many were very surprised to learn they were allegedly deceased,” he wrote.

Spokespeople for Cyber ​​Ninjas and Fann did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Brnovich wrote that his election integrity unit also received reports of hundreds more dead voters from other sources. A separate report submitted to the attorney general’s office did not distinguish between dead voters and dead registrants.

“Once again, these claims were thoroughly investigated and resulted in only a handful of potential cases,” the letter said. “Some were so absurd the names and birthdates didn’t even match the deceased, and others included dates of death after the election.”

Though he supported the state Senate’s authority to conduct the ballot review, the allegations of “widespread deceased voters from the Senate Audit and other complaints … are insufficient and not corroborated.”

Brnovich’s letter comes a day before Arizona’s primary election, where he is vying for the Republican nomination for the US Senate. Trump, who did not endorse him, has blasted him for not doing enough to get to the bottom of his unfounded allegations of widespread fraud he claims led to his loss from him.

Brnovich served as a witness in certifying the 2020 election results and later blamed Trump’s loss on unpopularity. Brnovich’s GOP rivals have accused him of dragging out his inquiry in an attempt to curry favor with Trump supporters. Brnovich has maintained that he would take as much time as his office needed to investigate.

Categories
Business

Metricon sacks NSW sales staff via Microsoft Teams

Metricon sacks NSW sales staff via Microsoft Teams

Construction giant Metricon has unceremoniously sacked the majority of its NSW sales staff via Microsoft Teams in the latest sign that the struggling company is teetering on collapse.

David Shorten, Metricon’s NSW state sales manager, informed staff at the Monday morning meeting that numbers would be cut to just 18, from roughly 60 currently, with redundancy payouts offered to those unable to be redeployed.

About 15 trainee sales consultants have also been terminated with no offer of redeployment.

“To better accommodate and reflect the requirements of the current market and ensure the most appropriate deployment of resources, we have undertaken an important review of the sales team,” Mr Shorten said in a statement read out in the Teams meeting.

“This is necessary to ensure we remain competitive in both the short and long term. The review was not undertaken lightly and has resulted in proposed changes to the current structure of the team. We understand that you may feel anxious at this time and that you are likely to have a number of questions. Under the proposed structure, the number of new home advisors will be reduced to 18.”

The affected employees were given until midday on Wednesday to offer any “thoughts, insights or feedback you may have regarding the proposed structure and approach”, with employees to be told if they’re being sacked by the end of the week.

Mr Shorten said Metricon would “select the most appropriately skilled individuals to occupy the positions moving forward” but warned “options are limited” for redeployment.

“In the event that you were unable to be redeployed to a suitable alternative position within the notice period, you would receive the relevant redundancy entitlements if they were available to you,” he said.

Employees who are offered one of the remaining roles but choose not to accept may not be entitled to a redundancy payout.

One employee, who asked not to be identified, said he had been expecting the announcement after Metricon closed its HR portal last Friday.

He said there had been some staff turnover recently with “people abandoning ship to go to competitors”, and those who stayed “basically had the rug pulled out from under them” through “no fault of their own” after believing the company’s repeated public denials that it was facing difficulties.

“It has not been received well by some of them,” he told news.com.au. “I’m a little bit burned by the whole situation.”

The company’s largest home builder was plunged into crisis in May amid reports it was on the verge of financial ruin and engaging in crisis talks with the Victorian government, following the sudden death of its founder Mario Biasin.

Acting chief executive Peter Langfelder has repeatedly shot down those allegations, but a question mark still hangs over Metricon’s future despite the company’s directors injecting $30 million into its business to allay fears about its survival, and a rescue deal being struck with Commonwealth Bank.

Last month, Metricon listed nearly 60 display homes for sale across NSW, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria, worth a total of around $65 million.

The Sydney employee said “events have snowballed” since Mr Biasin’s death, adding he was skeptical the company could survive.

“We still don’t have homeowners’ warranty insurance,” he said.

“We have not been taking deposits for the last 10 weeks. It should be known. People are still waiting for builds. I’m glad we haven’t been able to take deposits – do you want to be the guy that takes someone’s $20,000, $30,000 life savings and the company goes bankrupt in three or four weeks’ time?”

Reached for comment on Tuesday, Metricon confirmed it was “process of an internal restructure of the business, with an increased focus on delivering homes to more than 6000 Australians whose houses will be constructed this year”.

“To better accommodate and reflect the requirements of the current market and ensure the most appropriate deployment of resources, Metricon is working to appropriately reduce its sales and marketing capability while it focuses on the construction and delivery of more than 6000 homes,” a spokeswoman said in a statement to news.com.au.

“We have commenced a consultation process with our people. This process is proposed to lead to a reduction of personnel and redundancies across the national business.”

The spokeswoman said 2020 and 2021 saw record demand for homebuilding and that Metricon “expects demand to settle at pre-pandemic levels”. “As a result, the business will rebalance towards construction on homes it is currently building and the thousands more in the pipeline – the biggest volume in the company’s history,” she said.

The impacted roles will be at the “front-end of the business, predominantly in sales and marketing roles, representing approximately 9 per cent of the national workforce”.

“With the headwinds buffeting the industry, specifically labor costs due to competition for skills, combined with present global material cost hikes and with our very strong existing pipeline of work, we need to carefully balance the current pipeline of new builds with the construction side of the business,” Mr Langfelder said in the statement.

“We are working to restructure our front-end of the business given the current climate and the need to move forward efficiently. We are committed to looking after any of our people who may be impacted by these proposed changes, and they will continue to have ongoing access to the company’s support and mental health services.”

Mr Langfelder said Metricon was rebalancing the business’ focus over the next 18 months on executing builds as quickly and efficiently as possible whilst maintaining equilibrium in the pipeline.

“We have previously said that our company has a proven history of success and remains profitable and viable, with the full support of our key stakeholders – this remains the case today,” he said.

Mr Langfelder said Metricon was still expected to continue to contract on average 100 homes per week, in line with pre-pandemic levels. “Our future construction pipeline shows no sign of slowing down with more than 600 site-starts scheduled for 2023,” he said.

The spokeswoman did not address the claim that Metricon was not taking deposits.

The Australian building industry has been plagued with escalating issues that have already seen Gold Coast-based Condev and industry giant Probuild enter into liquidation in recent months, while smaller operators like Hotondo Homes Hobart and Perth firms Home Innovation Builders and New Sensation Homes, as well as Sydney-based firm Next have also failed, leaving homeowners out of pocket and with unfinished houses.

The crisis is the result of a perfect storm of conditions hitting one after the other, including supply chain disruptions due largely to the pandemic and then the Russia-Ukraine conflict, followed by skilled labor shortages, skyrocketing costs of materials and logistics and extreme weather events .

The industry’s traditional reliance on fixed-price contracts has also seriously exacerbated the problem, with contracts signed months before a build gets underway, including the surging costs of essential materials such as timber and steel.

It comes after it recently emerged that Australia recorded a staggering 3917 liquidations or administration appointments across all industries during the 2021-22 financial year.

The construction sector led the charge, representing 28 per cent of all insolvencies, although firms from countless industries also failed in the face of soaring inflation and interest rate pressures, Covid chaos, labor shortages and supply chain disruptions.

There were 1536 collapses in NSW, with Victoria recording 1022, Queensland 665, WA 350, South Australia 196, 91 for the ACT, 29 for Tasmania and 28 in the Northern Territory.

According to consumer credit reporting agency Equifax, “small-scale operators in Australia’s construction industry could well be the canary in the coal mine for the difficulties that lie ahead for this sector”.

The company late last month claimed that “the significant increase in construction company failures since the start of the year shows no sign of abating”, with provisional data indicating that construction insolvencies increased 19 per cent for the month of May, sitting 43 per cent higher than May 2021.

Overall, construction insolvencies have increased 30 per cent over the last 12 months, according to Equifax.

[email protected] with Alexis Carey

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Categories
Technology

‘Stray’ Speedrunners Are Already Beating The Game In Under An Hour

'Stray' Speedrunners Are Already Beating The Game In Under An Hour

I had a great time with stray, so much so that I stuck it out long enough to earn the catinum…sorry, platinum trophy. The last trophy I snapped up was for finishing the game in under two hours on my second run. I’ll admit, I was sweating things a bit toward the end, but I finished with around 15 minutes to spare.

MORE FROM FORBES‘Stray’ Has Trophies That Could Leave You Tearing Your Fur OutBy Chris Holt

There are no such concerns for players who have been studiously plotting the best routes through stray, though. Some speedrunners are already able to complete the game in under an hour. As spotted by GamesRadara French runner named Erims now holds the record of 54:21 on PC (they have the PS5 record too at a significantly longer 1:12:18).

That zippy time includes the length of various unskippable cutscenes. However, Erims does take advantage of some glitches, including wall clips and near-instant dialogue skips. The glitchless records, according to speedrun.com, stand at 1:19:06 on PC, 1:23:21 on PS5 and 1:39:33 on PS4. With a few optimizations, I think that PS4 record is prime for the taking.

I’m both impressed by the ways players are able to break a game that hasn’t even been out for two weeks and how they’re able to find optimal routes through the entire thing. The glitchless runs are certainly putting my speedrun time to shame.

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Categories
Entertainment

‘Dragon Girl’ Amber Luke says people tell her she’s ‘ruined’ her good looks

A woman who transformed herself from a 'plain' girl-next-door into a heavily tattooed adult model has revealed how her extreme ink and body modifications have changed her life

An Australian woman who completely transformed herself from a ‘plain’ girl-next-door into a heavily tattooed adult model has revealed how her extreme ink and body modifications have changed her life.

Amber Luke, 27, also known as ‘Dragon Girl’, has spent $250,000 on tattoos, piercings and surgery to achieve her desired look – but says she faces discrimination in public and in the workplace as a result.

She told Brisbane radio show Robin, Terry & Kip last week that having 600 tattoos, which cover 99 per cent of her body, sometimes makes her daily life challenging.

A woman who transformed herself from a 'plain' girl-next-door into a heavily tattooed adult model has revealed how her extreme ink and body modifications have changed her life

A woman who transformed herself from a ‘plain’ girl-next-door into a heavily tattooed adult model has revealed how her extreme ink and body modifications have changed her life

Amber Luke, 27, is pictured here before she spent $250,000 on tattoos, piercings and surgery to become 'Dragon Girl'. She says she faces discrimination in public and in the workplace because of how she looks

Amber Luke, 27, is pictured here before she spent $250,000 on tattoos, piercings and surgery to become ‘Dragon Girl’. She says she faces discrimination in public and in the workplace because of how she looks

‘I am getting very heavily tattooed, but I’m not harming anyone in the process,’ she told radio hosts Kip Wightman, Robin Bailey and Terry Hansen.

She added that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but she finds it ‘distressing’ when people make unkind remarks in public – especially when they say she has ‘ruined’ her looks with tattoos.

‘Everyone has their own opinions of what beauty is,’ she said. ‘You see these cultures [where people] stretch their necks, their ears, their lips. But at the end of the day, we all are entitled to our opinion and that’s okay.

Amber told Brisbane radio show Robin, Terry & Kip last week that having 600 tattoos, which cover 99 per cent of her body, sometimes makes her daily life challenging

Amber told Brisbane radio show Robin, Terry & Kip last week that having 600 tattoos, which cover 99 per cent of her body, sometimes makes her daily life challenging

‘But, what gets to me is when someone expresses their opinion to me in public and comes up to me and says, “Oh, you’re ugly,” or, “You’ve ruined yourself.”‘

She continued: ‘It’s very distressing to know that people have that strong opinion and they can just voice it without any repercussions.’

Amber also revealed she struggles to find a job because of how she looks.

‘I’m not going to sugar coat it, it has limited my [employment] options but that’s okay,’ she said.

She said everyone is entitled to their opinion, but she finds it 'distressing' when people make unkind remarks in public - especially when they say she has 'ruined' her looks with tattoos

She said everyone is entitled to their opinion, but she finds it ‘distressing’ when people make unkind remarks in public – especially when they say she has ‘ruined’ her looks with tattoos

‘Because the way I see it is, I don’t want to work for a company that’s shallow-minded [and can’t] look past my image.

‘They won’t look at my work ethic, they won’t look at my morals or my values ​​or what I have to bring to the table.’

Amber previously said having so many tattoos and body modifications was ‘worth it’ because she’d learned ‘how resilient I am’ by pushing her body to the extreme.

Amber also revealed she struggles to find a job because of how she looks, saying: 'I'm not going to sugar coat it, it has limited my [employment] options but that's okay'

Amber also revealed she struggles to find a job because of how she looks, saying: ‘I’m not going to sugar coat it, it has limited my [employment] options but that’s okay’

She also said she’d gone into shock and had fits during some procedures, despite not being epileptic.

‘I was 16 when I got my first tattoo. It was a negative energy release. It was a milestone for me,’ she told Studio 10 last month.

She also admitted to getting her tongue split twice, after the procedure didn’t work the first time.

Amber previously said having so many tattoos and body modifications was 'worth it' because she'd learned 'how resilient I am' by pushing her body to the extreme

Amber previously said having so many tattoos and body modifications was ‘worth it’ because she’d learned ‘how resilient I am’ by pushing her body to the extreme

She described the pain as ‘excruciating’ when she had the procedure redone, as the modifier had to cut through scar tissue.

‘The experience I went through made me extremely resilient and so strong. I have gained so much knowledge about anatomy,’ she said.

‘I’ve gone into shock so many times. I’ve had fits – and I’m not epileptic’.

The OnlyFans model once injected blue ink into her eyeballs during an excruciating 40-minute procedure that left her blind for three weeks

The OnlyFans model once injected blue ink into her eyeballs during an excruciating 40-minute procedure that left her blind for three weeks

The OnlyFans model once injected blue ink into her eyeballs during an excruciating 40-minute procedure that left her blind for three weeks.

She has also spent $70,000 on extreme body modifications – including a tongue split, breast augmentation, cheek and lip fillers, pointed implants in her ears and a Brazilian butt lift.

She has previously spoken about her mental health battles, saying that body modifications helped her to become more comfortable in herself.

In 2020, she shared a photo on Instagram of herself at age 18, and wrote: ‘I was so catatonically depressed, suicidal and was a walking dead girl.

She has also spent $70,000 on extreme body modifications - including a tongue split, breast augmentation, cheek and lip fillers, pointed implants in her ears and a Brazilian butt lift. (Amber is pictured in early 2017 before becoming 'Dragon Girl')

She has also spent $70,000 on extreme body modifications – including a tongue split, breast augmentation, cheek and lip fillers, pointed implants in her ears and a Brazilian butt lift. (Amber is pictured in early 2017 before becoming ‘Dragon Girl’)

‘I was number. I hated myself most of the time – that hatred ran deep. It tormented me.

‘Now, I’ve totally transformed myself into someone I’m proud of being. I’m a strong woman who knows exactly what she wants and who she is.’

In May last year, the former topless waitress for an outlaw bikie gang narrowly avoided jail time despite pleading guilty to drug trafficking.

In May last year, the former topless waitress for an outlaw bikie gang narrowly avoided jail time despite pleading guilty to drug trafficking

In May last year, the former topless waitress for an outlaw bikie gang narrowly avoided jail time despite pleading guilty to drug trafficking

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Categories
Sports

Oscar Piastri and Daniel Ricciardo hold key to driver market following Fernando Alonso move

Fernando Alonso’s bombshell announcement that he’s replacing the retiring Sebastian Vettel at Aston Martin has thrown the Formula 1 driver market into turmoil, and there’s two Australians at the center of it.

The futures of both Oscar Piastri and Daniel Ricciardo would appear to hold the key to who goes where for 2023, and not only are their futures intertwined, it’s more complicated than you might imagine.

On the face of it Piastri would slot into the now-vacant Alpine seat, and Ricciardo would stay at McLaren for a third season. Simple really. Except it’s not.

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Alpine appears to have been caught out by Alonso’s decision to sign with Aston Martin, having spent the last few months giving every indication he wanted to keep the double world champion.

Even Monday night’s announcement is revealing – it took 90 minutes for Alpine to put out a Twitter post wishing Alonso all the best, a sure sign that the team was as shocked by the Spaniard’s decision as the rest of the F1 world.

A week ago Alpine held all the aces, with three drivers seemingly vying for two seats. Esteban Ocon is under contract until 2023, while the most likely scenario involved Alonso re-signing and Piastri being loaned to Williams for one or two seasons before re-joining the Enstone team.

Now Alonso is gone, and the team is under pressure to announce Piastri, lest he slip through the net as well.

It’s no secret that Piastri’s manager, Mark Webber, has been nudging his protégé in the direction of McLaren, which is where Ricciardo comes into the situation.

The 32-year-old’s future has been the subject of much speculation in recent times, as he endures a second season trailing in the wake of his highly-rated teammate Lando Norris.

Ricciardo has another season to run on his McLaren deal, and recently confirmed his intention to see out that contract. But at what point does the Australian admit that it’s just not working at McLaren, and both parties would be better off going their separate ways?

Piastri has driven the McLaren simulator this year as part of his duties as one of the team’s reserve drivers, so McLaren have some idea of ​​his potential. Webber is also close to McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl, with the two having worked together previously when Webber was part of Porsche’s WEC program.

Interestingly, Flavio Briatore was spotted in the paddock at the Austrian Grand Prix in July. The Italian, a former boss of the Alpine team when it was known as Benetton and Renault, manages Alonso, and also looked after him for Webber’s career. It’s easy to draw the conclusion the colorful 72-year-old might still be pulling the strings behind the scenes somehow.

Complicating matters even further is the fact apparently half the IndyCar paddock has been linked to a McLaren drive at some point in the future, and with Norris ensconced there for the long term it seems unlikely the team would punt on a rookie like Piastri.

One source of friction between Alonso and Alpine is likely to have been the Spaniard’s not inconsiderable salary demands. Piastri would be far cheaper, but Alpine has previously been working on the assumption the Australian would make his debut elsewhere (likely at Williams), making the mistakes that rookies inevitably make far away from the spotlight.

That’s not to say he would be out of place up against Ocon at Alpine, but the team needs both drivers scoring points on a regular basis if it’s to maintain fourth position in the championship, or ultimately challenge the top three.

Alonso was seen as the perfect solution for Alpine, a proven winner who could be pensioned off in a couple of years when Piastri was ready for promotion. Now, the team faces the choice between a rookie, albeit a very-highly rated rookie, or trying to find a big name who would be happy to accept a stop-gap position before being replaced by Piastri in either 2024 or 2025.

Only one name springs immediately to mind that might fit that bill. Daniel Ricciardo. Yes, he’s publicly committed to seeing out his McLaren deal, but Formula 1 contracts tend to be somewhat flexible when it suits both parties.

Stranger things have happened in the world of Formula 1, but the Aussie returning to the team he walked out on in 2020, to effectively act as a seat-warmer for Piastri would be an incredible twist in what’s already one of the silliest silly seasons in years.

About the only certain conclusion we can draw from the events of the last week is that Piastri’s F1 debut is now a near-inevitability.

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Alkimos death: Brittany McCulloch charged with manslaughter of her partner Jordan Chas Caine

Alkimos death: Brittany McCulloch charged with manslaughter of her partner Jordan Chas Caine

The partner of a 34-year-old Perth man found dead in the garage of his Alkimos home has been charged with his manslaughter.

Police will allege Jordan Chas Caine was killed sometime between Friday and early Saturday with his body discovered at the Minoan Way home just after 6am on Sunday.

Brittany McCulloch, who sources say was Mr Caine’s partner, was arrested at the time and has now been charged with unlawfully killing Mr Caine under such circumstances as not to constitute murder.

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Forensic officers combed the scene at the home on Minoan Way in Alkimos.
Camera IconForensic officers combed the scene at the home on Minoan Way in Alkimos. Credit: michael wilson/The West Australian

The 28-year-old woman appeared calm when she faced the Joondalup Magistrates Court on Tuesday and confirmed she understood her charge after a short pause when it was read out by the magistrate.

During the hearing, Ms McCulloch’s lawyer said she would not be making a bail application and asked to adjourn the matter for legal advice.

On Sunday, Deputy Police Commissioner Allan Adams said there was a “solid contingent” of homicide squad and local detectives working to determine the man’s cause of death.

“To those neighbors in the vicinity who have concerns, be assured that the police are taking this extremely seriously (which is) evidenced by the number of officers there and are very hopeful of coming to a resolution in the short term,” he said at the time.

Police said they were not looking for anyone else in relation to death and there was no threat to the community.

“There is a person helping police with their investigations but again, there’s still a fair bit of work to be done to determine exactly what’s occurred at that scene,” Mr Adams said.

Ms McCulloch will next appear at the Stirling Gardens Magistrates Court on September 14.

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