The Australian government has turned its attention to the issue of supermarket price gouging. With grocery giants recording strong profits amid growing concerns about the gap between supermarket prices and farmers’ earnings, a review of the food and grocery code of conduct has been announced. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has offered additional powers to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) to tackle this issue, suggesting that supermarkets not passing on savings to customers is “completely unacceptable.”
Ah, breakpoints. Those little digital stop signs that every front-end developer swears by. But let’s be real for a second – breakpoints are the high-maintenance divas of the debugging world. You set them up, pamper and adjust them, and what do they do? They freeze your entire application to tell you that, surprise, there’s a bug. Gee, thanks.
Now, let me introduce you to the unsung hero of the debuggers: console.log(). This little gem is the duct tape of programming. It’s not pretty, it’s not sophisticated, but damn, does it get the job done. While breakpoints are busy putting on their makeup, console.log is already out there, in the trenches, getting its hands dirty.
OpenAI, the AI alchemist who once charmed us with GPT-3’s witty prose and GPT-4’s early brilliance, has stumbled upon a potent new potion: the Elixir of Unreliability. ChatGPT, once a code-crunching, creativity-conjuring genie, has mutated into a buggy bottleneck, leaving users drowning in frustration and searching for the magic that’s gone missing.
Remember those heady days in 2023 when GPT-4 burst onto the scene, weaving code tapestries and spinning tales that glittered like spun gold? Those were the days of true AI wizardry. Fast forward, and the lustre has gone duller than a tarnished trophy. Constant model tweaks, presumably in the name of alignment, have turned the once-dazzling diamond into a chipped piece of coal. Responses stumble in like a hungover party guest, riddled with errors and devoid of the spark that made GPT-4 so special.
Australians grappling with the rising cost of living have a new target: supermarkets. Accusations of “record profits” and “price gouging” have intensified, prompting a closer look at the grocery giants and their role in the current economic landscape.
Australia’s grocery aisles have become battlegrounds. On one side, shoppers grapple with rising prices, feeling squeezed by every trip to Coles or Woolworths. On the other side, the supermarket giants stand tall, reporting record profits and touting the benefits of their own-brand products, emblazoned with generic labels and promising lower prices. But is this private label push a win for wallets, or are we being subtly exploited in a game rigged for supermarket profit?
Recently, I came across a product advertisement on Facebook called Ozzi Mozzie. The ad caught my attention because we’ve been dealing with a significant mosquito problem recently due to rain, and it seems like targeted advertising is quite effective.
On the surface, it seems like a great product. It starts off with the story of a farmer who allegedly woke up to find his young daughter’s eyes swollen shut and covered in bites from mosquitoes (17 bites, to be exact). He was inspired to find a solution to ensure it never happened again. Plausible, so I kept on watching.
As Google forges ahead with its controversial Manifest V3 changes to Chrome extensions, the tech giant’s narrative is one of enhanced user security and privacy. However, a growing chorus of critics views these updates with scepticism, seeing them as a potential threat to the efficacy of ad blockers and by proxy, to user autonomy. While Firefox hasn’t experienced a significant resurgence in user numbers yet, Google’s actions might be the tipping point for developers and power users to pivot back to the open-source browser.
Let’s talk about déjà vu. But not the cool, mysterious kind—more like the ‘Oh no, not this again’ kind. In the early hours of a Wednesday morning, specifically November 8, 2023, Optus gave us a not-so-gentle reminder that history loves to repeat itself. The entire Optus network crashed—mobile, internet, landline, you name it. If it had the Optus logo, it was about as helpful as a screendoor on a submarine.
The prospect of an AI tool that could learn from my blog and writing style and then write like me was tantalising. So, when I was being aggressively advertised reword.com – my curiosity was peaked.
Sadly, reword is a typical GPT wrapper. It’s a great idea, but it’s not anything special. It’s akin to those GPT wrapping tools that allow you to ask questions about PDF files and other forms of days with a fancy UI.
Ah, the Neural DSP Quad Cortex, the proverbial golden child of the guitar modelling world. As we approach the two-year anniversary of my ownership, I find myself in a love-hate relationship with this awesome device.
Let’s start with the good bits. The touchscreen and rotary stomps are nothing short of a revelation. Navigating through the menus is as smooth as a hot knife through butter, and the visual building process is so intuitive it’s like playing with Lego blocks. But alas, this is where the honeymoon period ends, and the reality of living with the Quad Cortex sets in.
In the cutthroat world of web development, trends come and go faster than a blink of an eye. Yet amidst this constant churn, there has been one relentless narrative: the supposed downfall of PHP and its offspring, WordPress. But here’s the twist—despite the years of criticism, proclamations of their death, and the rise of shinier, ‘cooler’ tools, PHP and WordPress are still standing. Not just standing but thriving.
Let’s face it. PHP has been the favourite whipping boy of developers for years. It’s been derided as messy, outdated, and everything in between. Yet, if PHP is as terrible as its critics claim, how has it survived and flourished in the competitive landscape of web development? The answer lies in its simplicity, flexibility, and resilience.