As an Australian, I'd love to see the actual birth of CANZUK... https://www.reddit.com/r/canzuk/. That could be a viable Union with real international influence.
I genuinely applaud the sentiment, but it's no longer possible. Maybe back in the 1990s this would've been an excellent trade block but all countries are no longer similar or internally homogeneous enough to make such a prospect functional. Much of the type of trade anyway would've been defense in nature, and that's sort of emerged as a big problem across all potential members.
Another effect - although wholesale prices are falling for the energy itself - energy providers increased their daily "power grid use" fees. As a result, having electricity at home is still more expensive compared to before.
We have inflation. Everything is going up, except electricity.
Interestingly, one of the retailers offering free power already in Victoria gives a $1 kick pack if you use no power during the (rather long) peak period. So users with large enough batteries are paying just $0.30 a day connection fee and nothing else. Limits coming in will I think restrict free power to 25kWh/day, so smaller or energy efficient households.
This. They can see their valuations slipping. They hope that in a few/several years they will start reaping profits. However, in several years local hardware will be well suited to run models locally at 80-90% efficiency - for "free". You won't need frontier models for daily tasks in a few years. I'd guess.
You get about 80-90% of the results for daily tasks like: getting summaries or explanations of complex material. Writing software tools for data analysis. Getting recipes for a given set of ingredients in the fridge.
Frontier models like Fable are mostly useful if you want to paste in one or two prompts, and receive a subtly broken application that looks impressive. That is very hard to do with local models today.
What current local models work fine for is delegating clearly-described tasks in a code base the programmer actually understands. Qwen3.6 27B and DeepSeek V4 Flash are both great little workhorses.
There's also GLM 5.2, which is kind of like "store brand Opus", and which might be considered a "near-frontier" model. I don't have as much experience with it.
FWIW Fable is insanely expensive for the task you just described, so much so that I don't think it's practical for that. Its practical use is as a dev lead / architect / project manager model, doing planning and writing detailed feature specs and code reviews while Opus/Codex/Gemini does the actual coding.
This: "I do not want my pension to automatically buy shares at $1T, but it looks like it will have no choice."
They know the game very well. They know that if they manage to pump up the valuation high enough - they will be automatic money flowing in - regardless of actual valuations.
Israel violated the 2024 ceasefire over 10,000 times [0], not counting all the ones since Feb. 28. I guess this time they're not satisfied with having only 50 "freebies" a day.
Hamas is the (originally elected by the people) government of Gaza. Hezbollah is a partner of and inside Lebanon's government.
In addition, both parties are who Israel was nominally in a ceasefire with. So extremely relevant to the discussion about Israel and ceasefires and not random whataboutism.
You seem to be implying discussion should be waived away if a counter party is both a government and a terrorist organization.
Takeover of half of Papua New Guinea, now called irian Jaya.
Transmigration, that is, moving Java people there and to Borneo (Kalimantan)in order to flood local populations with Malays.
But this did not make the news that much. Not that interesting I guess…
No…attacks do not follow as a consequence from the action of giving land back. The conclusion from this reasoning would be to forever expand your borders. If it cannot be that the positive action of giving land causes an attack, think about what the real cause may be.
They have given back territory they don’t care about (Sinai), or “given back” territory but kept it under a permanent near-total blockade and military control (Gaza), but never given back territory they do care about and which is the main sticking point of the conflict (East Jerusalem and the West Bank). And they never will unless someone forces them to, which is unlikely.
It's not israel's place as the aggressor to "assure" anything. Lebanon (and Palestine) have *at least* as much right to be safe from israel as israel has to be safe from them.
"Assuring" as used by you here should be taken in the same context as a controlling abuser "assuring" their spouse never disobeys them, or afrikaaners "assuring" that South Africans of other races have no power.
> 2. Acquire a bargaining chip ahead of a future peace agreement with Lebanon
Yes, this is territorial expansion as mentioned above.
> 3. Signal to the Iranian axis and the rest of the Middle East that it has won this war
Why would israel signal that Iran has won this war? Seems like they'd want to avoid attention on that.
Do you not read the news? Israel was bombing Lebanon DAILY and occupying parts of southern Lebanon throughout the so called ceasefire. All without Hezbollah firing a single shot in retalliation until Israel and the US attacked Iran DURING NEGOTIATIONS!
If it wasn't for Israel's dogged expansionism, Hezballah would never have been created, Hamas would never have been created and Palestine would still be a liberal democracy.
"...In an interview with Israeli journalist, Dan Margalit in December 2012, Netanyahu told Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Netanyahu also added that having two strong rivals, this would lessen pressure on him to negotiate towards a Palestinian state..."
Their brief democratic period was inconvenient to Israel, which is why when Netanyahu decided to fund Hamas, he first said that Hamas is important to keep Palestine divided.
> Without attacks from Hezballah and other Iranian backed groups Isreal would not have attacked targets in Lebanon
Israel also bombed southern Syria, to "protect the druze community". Syria has not attacked Israel, there are some random terrorist groups who did, but they attacked Israels' occupying forces in Syria.
Syria tried to genocide the druze. Out in public - and the international community just didn't give a damn. Israel was the only faction to defend minorities against the facist, islamo-supremacist hordes of the current syrian government.
israel is actually genociding Palestinians, so this excuse is pretty laughable. Especially since israel is claiming control over the land, just like they invade Lebanon "for defense", just like they invade Gaza "for defense", and now they attack Iran "for defense".
Wake up: pretty much nobody believes the fascist, judeo-supremacist hordes of the current israeli government.
It is. Actions go beyond what is minimally necessary to ensure security but without attacks from Hezbollah there would be no military actions in Lebanon. Israel doesn't attack Jordan or Egypt because they don't host Iranian backed militants who do attack. Lebanon will be in the same position if Hezbollah will be gone (which is not given).
It's clear that israel is an attacker here, and Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon are defending. Without attacks from israel and other israel backed groups, iran would not have attacked targets in israel. Even the most recent escalation started with israel (and the USA) attacking Iran a few weeks ago, not the other way around.
Your take seems to hinge on holding an unfounded bayesian prior that israel is "the good guy" and therefore everything they do must be "defending". The world does not share this unfounded bayesian prior of yours, and thus remains unconvinced of the resulting conclusions drawn by israel and yourself. You will have to do a better job of convincing others, rather than simply asserting your opinions at them.
I think you are a bit confused as to what the role of a state should be. A state is not set up to appease international bodies, or to be a convenient neighbor or to be likable by throwaway accounts on HN. Its first and only duty is towards its citizens. The same people who pay taxes, vote and serve in the armed forces. And if an Iranian militia sets up post two miles away from your towns, digs cross border attack tunnels to prepare for a raid and shoots missiles and drones at you, you better believe that country is going to respond in force.
Israel had previously turned a blind eye to that after the large big confrontation in 2006, but since October 7th - and conveniently, Hezbollah unilaterally joining the attack on Israel a day later - a switch was flipped and Israel went all out, as was its duty.
It's easy to read your statement as having been said of Ukraine by Putin. And just as oblivious to why your neighbor isn't your friend, and is setting up defenses, and is fighting back against your attacks and frequent territorial incursions.
Both russia and israel feel they should be able to unilaterally control their neighbors, and both have an equal non-right to do so. Both claim neighboring country land should be theirs, and both use military force and genocide to make that happen. Both even believe it is their religious birthright to do so.
israel and russia: two self-righteous peas in a pod.
