Honestly, this is pretty impressive IMO. Particularly since visa-free travel is not reciprocal. The below is just plain wrong; Australia is even less open than it appears:

Ranked 83rd out of 99, Australia is one of the least open nations. Citizens of just 34 countries can visit Australia without prior visa authorisation

Barring some niche cases (e.g. royal family, military/crew, transiting, Torres Strait Islanders), only one country’s citizens can travel to Australia without prior visa authorisation; New Zealand (and even they can be refused clearance at the border). Every other foreign country needs to apply for and be granted a visa before they are permitted to board the plane. Australia has somehow managed to convince 33 countries that their ETAs and eVisitor visas are not really visas. They just happen to be permission that a person needs to obtain before they are allowed to enter a country… If only we had a word for that.

I’m honestly surprised how well the Australian passport performs considering Australia effectively has a universal visa requirement. That being said, it’s also one of the most expensive passports in the world.

I went from a cheap mp3 player that I could just plug in to my computer and drag in music to an iPod which forced me to download the iTunes bloatware create an account and then took 100x longer to transfer music because of the pointless conversion each file had to undergo. This was my first and last experience with a personal Apple device. Ended up putting some old pop music onto it and giving it to my grandmother after 2 days. Uninstalled iTunes and went back to using my cheap mp3 player until I replaced it with a smartphone.

Coming in as a close second place, an all-in-one Sony Vaoi computer that cost a fortune and had shit performance. Took daily nags to Sony before they took it back and gave me a refund. I find that Sony’s hit and miss though. My favourite smartphone (Xperia Play) was Sony, and I love my Sony Bluetooth earbuds. The Sony Smartwatch was shit.

You’re talking to a bot.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/load-reddit-images-directly/

You’re welcome.

Rather than having my All feed spammed with walled gardens I’d rather mods who don’t want outside participation to be able to stop their communities from showing in All.

European migration laws forces these people to conduct this dangerous voyage because you can’t get asylum without crossing the border.

Offshore resettlement programs exist in Europe and around the world. The problem is that there exists little incentive for people to remain in a refugee camp for what could be years when the option of travelling directly to their country of choice is an available option.

A solution is for countries to relocate all asylum seekers back to these refugee camps where they have no option but to wait with everyone else for resettlement. There would be no incentive to risk your life to cross a border if you’re just going to end up back in a refugee camp along with other people who are waiting.

Currently, in my country at least, there is an onshore humanitarian program and an offshore humanitarian program. Most of the people granted refugee visas in the offshore program are from war-torn countries like Afghanistan or Syria who escaped to a third country. The top five countries of origin for those that apply for onshore protection are from tourist destinations that haven’t seen war in decades. Hosting asylum seekers in UN refugee camps also helps prioritise those most in need.

Great. More taxpayer money going towards complete and utter stupidity. Anyone with even the most basic knowledge of the Internet knows how dumb and technologically unfeasible this is, yet this nonsense still continues to gain traction.

there’s this really cool alternative to streaming, called you buy their shit directly.

Wow, mind blown! I had no idea money could be used to buy things directly! /s

Seriously though, buying music from artists you already know is easy for artists that actually provide this as an option, but it doesn’t help when trying to find new artists and songs to listen to. Spotify is brilliant for discovering new content and can’t be replaced by ‘buying shit directly’.

Spotify.

An open source music streaming service where I can financially support artists but where I’m not forced to put up with annoying advertisements (even when paying membership fees!), and which allows me to use whatever app I want to play the music I listen to. It is annoying AF that I need to switch between apps to listen to music because Spotify’s shitty native app is inferior in every possible way with the single exception of offering more content.

I learnt my lesson from Starfield; the most expensive video game I ever purchased… I pre-ordered that tripe and suffered the consequences. Never again.

I am so glad I learnt my lesson and decided to wait for the reviews for Dragon’s Dogma 2. Pretty sad that this is the outcome, but I am glad that I decided to wait and see.

How disappointing… At one time Capcom was my all time favourite video game developer, I grew up playing the Breath of Fire series and it remains one of my all time favourite video games. Such a shame that they turned into such short-sighted idiots.

I was looking forward to this game and I would have 100% purchased this if it lacked micro-transactions and the Denuvo bloatware/malware. In their attempt to make more money, they at least received less money from me.

You argue my statement to be untrue then provide your unrealistic utopian vision of cramming high density urban living as if it has any reflection in our current reality. Developers are not building your utopia, they are doing everything they can to maximise their profit. I’ve lived in enough expensive high density shitty apartments with no air conditioning and no maintenance to take everything an ‘anti-NIMBY’ has to say with a shaker of salt.

Increasing density is not necessary to resolve the housing crisis. Halting and properly managing population increase is the solution. Governments not sabotaging public transport is the solution. Social housing as opposed to housing-for-profit is the solution.

Whenever I hear the word ‘NIMBY’ thrown around I just think about how these people expect current and future generations to be worse off than their parents.

You want a garden? No, fuck you NIMBY. You want a pool? No, fuck you NIMBY. Solar panels? No, fuck you NIMBY. Now, get in your box and stay there. No complaints.

Housing supply is an issue and it’s purely because of poor infrastructure, shitty government, and out-of-control migration.

I’m looking forward to games that really do take advantage of AI effectively. Having almost infinite variations of characters and plots would make each play through a new experience. I reckon some interesting games will be coming out in the next few years.

“In effect, Yuzu turns general computing devices into tools for massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others’ copyrighted works.”

So, what’s the point of the Switch then? If all these devices can play any Switch game, yet Nintendo refuses to allow people to buy and run them on these devices, then it sounds to me like they’ve done this to themselves. I empathise for all the work developers have put into their games, but I have no sympathy for the executives who decide to make their games exclusive to an overpriced irrelevant piece of technology.

I think if someone is obtuse enough to not realise playing loud music on public transport is rude and disruptive you should consider the consequences before interacting with them. They are either 1. a bogan who thinks they’re top shit, or 2. someone with a questionable mental state. Either way, the chances of them turning the music off are low and the chances of fisticuffs higher than I’d like.

I’d rather roll my eyes and fork out the extra for noise-cancelling earphones.

‘Bankruptcy’ means an inability to pay your debts. Can he pay $1.5b? Probably not, but does he have money? Yes, he does. He is a multi-millionaire owning at least 5 properties and spends tens of thousands each month on his ‘expenses’.

Don’t confuse bankruptcy with poverty.

I support policies that grant less temporary and permanent visas and restrict student visa and temporary graduate visa holders from applying for permanent residence. I fail to see how this ‘harms immigrants’. Adding and strengthening these caps is not harmful to immigrants. At worst, this is harmful to prospective non-existent immigrants. To study in Australia each and every student visa holder must make a declaration and provide supporting evidence that their intention is only to study and be a ‘genuine temporary entrant’.

The government already has caps on migration, but they have been actively loosening and removing caps over the past few years. I want them back, and I want them strengthened for the wellbeing of everyone in Australia, including permanent residents. People here don’t give a shit about the actual logistics and just have a hard-on for migration.

FFS, does anyone read? I think there should be fewer permanent visas granted, not that permanent residents shouldn’t be able to buy a home. You people just want to call someone racist. Not sure if there’s a word for that.

Who said anything about denying them the right to a home? I said Australia should grant less permanent visas not strip rights from existing permanent visa holders.

If you got ‘I hate immigrants’ from the content of my posts then you have shit reading comprehension.

Immigration improves lives for natural citizens. Look it up.

You’re the one making this claim, it is your responsibility to back it up, not mine.