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Starting a new topic, similar to the "tell us about your last flight" on the sister site, but for motorbikes. (Or whatever else you've been riding. Just remember it's a family site 😜) Had a lovely ride this morning, met @nomadpete and his better half for a coffee then down to Dover. From there I took the Esperance Coast road (which I've never done before - but it was a beautiful riding road), which comes out at Surges Bay. Beautiful day, no pesky cars in the way for most of it. Pure fun!

All the talk in the news lately about artificial superintelligence and the urgent need to regulate it reminds me of a virus that's already escaped the laboratory. I get the feeling that the genie will be well and truly out of the bottle before the world's lawmakers can do anything about it.

Got my bike back yesterday... I was bracing myself for a big bill haveing burned out one regulator and potentially damaged the shop's bench regulator... The total price, including VAT (20%) was £477.. This included 4 hours of labour at £70/hr (which is a little on the high side, but dealers charge £90). They only charged me one regulator and there was a few assorted other parts. It was mainly corroded connectors throughout. The regulator company credited me the burned out regulator that my bike caused. And to boot, the regulator was cheaper through the bike shop than direct - by £50. Who said customer service is dead. The bike is due its MOT (RWC) on 18th December... They are already booked out to the end of November... Shows how a good shop makes money.

Never was a problem in the good ole days - bikes had a kick starter and a magneto to make the motor go and a carbide lamp up front to light the path. Batteries? Bah!

From the workshop --> home... Electrical gremlin fixed; sunny day, light breeze, cooling weather (about 18)... traffic reasonable. Smile back on face.

This sounds like a brilliant move.... Trump's Dallas mid-term convention site has been possibly sabotaged. The address redirects to the DOJ Epstein Library. http://gopdallas2026.com/ Try it. It really does!

Nowadays reality can be created while you wait. And history has become an evolving story, when it was once a record of the past.

Here is an analysis of Trump's $5K cheque announcement by, would you believe it?, an Australian professor of Economics living in the USA. He asks five questions whose answers shoq that this announcement is hot air. Totally impractical, and even illegal under world moentary rules. The answer to his first question is obvious - would Trump deliver? No need for me to supply the answer to you.

Anything to do with Trump is foul.

I always wondered how many folks actually read my posts. Now I know. Thanks!

Nope.. It is c. 245m adults x $5k = c. $1.33tn. On the assumption he would follow through (apparently, previously promised money including DOGE cheques for those who effectively took voluntary redundancy haven't been paid - but I have not researched it so it could just be a rumour), and assume it would take around 3 months to permeate through the economy, it would represent a c. 3.7% of GDP stimulus to the economy, with a lot of people who will spend it. What happens when you add to the M3 money supply? Inflation. And putting that much more in - in a short period - would bring back visions of people in Germany in the 30s.. Well, maybe not as bad, but inflation will hit hard, interest rates will rise to try and stem it and that $5K is not quite worth what they think it is. The US debt is at historical highs and yields are rising now (still YoY slightly down). The world economy is starting to feel the onset of a nasty flu. If Chumpo is true to his word and the Republicans win, you do not want to have or hold anyone else's debt.

Developing and implementing all risk systems for our whole European business.

I see where a bloke from Anthropic rates it a 10% chance AI will cause human extinction by 2030. That's it, I'm definitely not buying a new car, the old one should see me out.

Almost Page 103. Nev

Come the revolution.... the enablers will rule the world. We might have more to worry about than the price of diesel.

Bob Hawke’s widow Blanche D’Alpuget has died, aged 82.

When I was young and stupid (I'm no longer young) I rode from Hobart to Surfers Paradise on my Honda VFR750 for a holiday. The viffer is a fantastic bike for throwing around corners, but it got a bit uncomfortable after 2500 km. I did it in 3 days from memory. About 800km a day is enough on a bike, especially when you're cruising at 150 and still getting overtaken by semis.

Diesel is $2.70 /ltr now. Ouch. Thanks Donold! But the USAnians are almost ready to riot over fuel goung up to $5 /gallon. Sooks! At least they are hastening the EV revolution, so that's something.

The two longest trips I ever went on were both two up with a mate on his Guzzi, sharing the riding. One was from Melbourne to Adelaide and back, around 1,500 klm, and the other was from the Sunshine Coast to Cairns and back, around 3,200 klm. There's a ton of bikes I could name that would make those trips a horror story two up, but the Guzzi was a great tourer with a nice long comfortable seat and quite low from top of seat height to the ground. I could imagine it as the sort of trip where a BMW would be good as well.

Give me an old car any day. A friend had a Mercedes. The tyres were $1000 each and had to be filled with nitrogen, not air. My sons Mazda CX-6 diesel Hybrid SUV tyres cost $550 each. Tyres for my 2004 Holden Astra start at $129 each, a number of brands at $189 each. And the techno gizmos to go wrong. My son's SUV has electric tyre pressure sensors and an electric oil gauge. For people too lazy to lift the bonnet. The only dipstick is the one behind the wheel. Even has a wiper maintenance mode for changing wiper blades.

The manufacturers would be screaming poor if that happened. Making things to last and fixable is not good business under modern standards. Look at printers, it is cheaper to buy a new one with ink in it than a cartidge for most. Fridges dont last because of the alloy tubing now used corodes from condisation and blown insulation turn to a mild acid and eat the pipes. In my old workshop i had a fridge that was new in 1991 still running with steel tubing, others i know are still runing 70s fridges in their sheds. Not the most power efficent, but better than buying a new one every 5 years. I like fixing stuff because i hate wasting what was already bought.

Hmm. That's not what "nork" meant when I was growing up. It was only used in the plural and usually preceded by the words "phwoah, look at those "

I came across another photo repair website which offered a free trial. I uploaded one of the most damaged photos I had, of my wife's aunt and cousin. here are the results.

Guess what! A splayd is an eating utensil which combines the functions of a spoon, knife and fork. It was invented by William McArthur in the 1940s in Sydney. I've still got the boxed set of Splayds that Mum got back in the day.

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What staggers me is the way you can take a creased old black and white photo taken 70 odd years ago and carried around in someone's wallet, and in a few seconds change it into a full colour image that looks like it was just taken, and even animate it. https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19Zj3pXhXH/

Even if he did pay out (and he won't), most people would have lost over $5k already in price rises, loss of benefits, loss of services etc caused by the idiot's actions to date, and would lose more if they kept the Republicans in power.

Simply complying with Parkinson's Laws: Parkinson's Law is the title of a satirical essay by the naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson which was published in The Economist in 1955, following the report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service. He proposed the following Laws: 1. "The Law of Multiplication of Work" (Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion). 2. "The Law of Multiplication of Subordinates" (The number of workers within administration tends to grow, regardless of the amount of work to be done). After observing that the promotion of employees necessitated the hiring of subordinates, and that the time used to answer minutes requires more work, Parkinson stated: "In any public administrative department not actually at war the staff increase may be expected to follow this formula" : where: x – number of new employees to be hired annually k – number of employees who want to be promoted by hiring new employees m – number of working hours per person for the preparation of internal memoranda (micropolitics) P – difference: age at hiring − age at retirement n – number of administrative files actually completed. Here's a video on this:

That does not depend on AI.. that depends on those who govern us. And history shows that pollies wait until the problems are well entrenched before they deal with them. But also, even if the governments finally swallowed the need to tax the corporates to fund more and more people with nothing to do.. what is the impact on those people effectively on the scrap heap. Yep, some enterprising souls will thrive, but we are mainly conditioned to go to school, get a job, work and then retire. So, the way we educate future generations will have to change, too. A friend of mine in a more senior position at another bank is telling me they have gone all in on AI for software development and it is giving them between 15 and 20 x the productivity. So he will end up implementing a decent swathe of cuts but hold enough to significantly improve rate of output. I have been saying for a couple of years that in the next now 8 - 13 years, there won't be many software programming languages left. People will type in their prompts and the run time will be generated directly from it. Yes, some of the lower level languages will still be around, but there will come a time where they are no longer needed as well. Certainly in software development - ironically the industry that gave birth to AI - there isn't much for the common software developer - they will need to be English (or other human language) graduates

I wish.. AI agents aren't (outwardly) so temperamental.. and they get the issues.

I have grown my team from 3 to just on 100 over the last year. Well, I couldn't have done it alone and have had help. I have been in at least 100 interviews and it is gruelling. Some use AI to filter CVs; I tried, but found it was not much quicker than reading the CVs myself. But what I have found is, these days where every interview we conduct is over video conferencing, the candidates are using it real time. Initially the first interviews, which are technical in nature, were smashed by the candidates but the second interviews which are more exploratory were failed abysmally by at least 80% of the of the candidates. We worked out pretty quickly AI was being used in both interviews, but even voice recognition models were too slow to compose the answers for the candidates to read out. However, this morning, I conducted a third interview on someone. And they aced it - a little too good for my liking. So I paid closer attention and I would say the candidate used a teleprompter. So, I did a little research: https://www.lockedinai.com/ai-copilot?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21848747952&gclid=CjwKCAjwqonVBhA4EiwA9wYJ3Si5Hzj8rgagiXonKERUqArUhFkh9iprq5xbhOkNtAQJ3xNC_D6VRRoCMysQAvD_BwE And there is a plethora more, with teleprompters to boot. So, I find myself paying closer attention to their eyeballs than the actual answer now. I am sure there is one for interviewers as well.

History has a way of repeating itself. The super rich don't need all of their wealth but are addicted to it. Their downfall over time is well documented in almost all European countries & Russia. The British seemingly were the only lot that saw the writing on the wall & it began with the Magna carta in 1215 but even that didn't stop the ultra rich either and the English civil war in the 1600s.

Hopefully Albo knows that it plays far better with the voters if he stands up to the orange man-baby.

Marty, that's a big ride, a bit longer than the one we did from the Sunny Coast to Cairns. I think from memory, Brisbane to Melbourne is about the same as Brisbane to Cairns. We did that trip up in about three days as well. Slept the first night in some concrete pipes at a road construction job, second night in Townsville at a mate's place and when we got to Cairns we got talking to a bloke and his wife who both had Harleys and they invited us to camp at their place. I think it was in Rockhampton from memory, a bloke approached us in the street to have a look at the Guzzi and he invited us around to his place to check out his bikes. He had Black Shadow and Rapide Vincents and a Norton single, a long time ago so I can't remember if it was a Manx or International. Talk about envy, I would have chewed my arm off for that Black Shadow.

RACV members have received a 5% discount when we presented our membership cards at a GG Ampol servo. I received an email today from RACV saying this will cease as from 21 September. No details wht.

Spares cost, availability and Price of labour dictate when it's time to be rid of the Old vehicles. Corrosion Metal fatigue, Bad Paint and reduced safety features,also. Modern cars are More value for Money than many other items. I tend to Keep them Longer than most People I Know. but I look after them better than most People I Know... Nev

And that's why you get the big bucks. Good luck! (seriously)

Motivation I would say, How would you know they had the ready money? Maybe they borrowed it? Nev

Sorry, I self censured my post.

Compressed gases are dangerous things. I would trust a BOC agent to handle cylinders with much more care than a casual employee of Bunnings. There has been a lot of Comment about how Bunnings is applying the tactics of other corporate ogres such as ALColesWorth by lowering the quality of its products by replacing the traditional brands with homebrands, made to a price but lacking the quality.

Thanks ome, I found it and it's total BS, probably put there for a bit of dramatic effect.

Very close to the start there is an image of pottery shards and at teh bottom of the photo is a graduated straight edge (ruler).

Yeah, Nah, Maybe. I recognise the voice. It's not an AI voice. I can accept the 65,000 years for primitive tools as I think it aligns with 'out of Africa' findings. I reject the pottery images for a couple of reasons. If these dated back 65,000 years, and were the efforts of first arrivals, then since we know that trade routes existed throughout the continent later on, that tehnology would have been widespread well before European arrival. Further, the decoration and apparent quality of the pottery is too advanced in for 65,000 years ago. Has pottery of that quality been located elsewhere in Africa/Eurasia and dated back that far? There are well-know fish traps on the Darling River near Brewarrina that are accepted as being very ancient. The photo in the video is not of those traps. I think it's AI. A stone circle with apparent astronomical links has been discovered in Victoria. I don't recall if a date of construction has been assigned to it.

You could say the same for any hot rod.

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Everything else Marty said already applies to our current politicians. They have communications teams, speech writers, media experts, are heavily dependent on, and guided by, their unelected staff. In due course, once the oligarcs have dissolved democracy and implemented their corporate dictatorships, this debate will be forgotten.

This is an old photo, but this 1924 Hupmobile is still in the family; grandfather bought it new.

There is no emoticon for.... admiration of their spirit

Sometimes we don't know how lucky we are. We often have gripes about this and that, but life and nature can throw some people incredible problems, yet thet learn to cope with them and get on with life. Some are not expected to live a few days or more when born, but somehow live on into their 40's and 50's. A new series on Foxtel highlights these Extreme Humans. There have only been 2 episodes so far, each dealing with 2 persons/couples, but the show runs every Monday. Here are the people shown so far. From Turkiye, the world's tallest woman at 7ft 1in. She is 29, and studying computer science. She is so tall, she cannot sit in a car, she travels in a van, lying in the back on a matress. She has the largest ears. This couple from Brazil hold the Guinness World Record for the smallest couple in the world. They are both only 2ft 11in tall, yet live a comparatively normal life. The husband can drive, they go to the supermarket to do their shopping, they have to ask for help to reach items above the 4th shelf. They use a kiddies shopping trolley. When the husband puts the shopping in the car, his head is no higher than the rear seat. Naturally, door handles, benches and the sink in their home are lowered to their level. This girl from America is amazing. Her legs were badly deformed at birth and she gets around walking in her hands. Callipers on her legs as a child did not improve things. But she can drive an automatic car and rides horses. This chap from Brazil wasn't expected to live more than a couple of days at birth, but he is 48. The photos illustrate the contorted effects he has had to live with. It makes you wonder...and be grateful.