LuTfi /لطفي

Enjoy looking at the world from all angles & the ultimate pursuit of the truth. Born again atheist. Bombers fan. Love nutrition, health, fitness & languages.

[Ole Lehmann @itsolelehmann]

this is the most Australian AI startup i've ever seen lol

a 19-year-old just raised $1.2M to build AI drone cowboys for cattle.

and the more i read about it the cooler it gets. here's how it works:

1. the rancher maps the whole property in the app, every fenced paddock, gate and water trough

2. they tap the paddock they want the cattle moved into, whichever one still has grass in it

3. the drone flies out autonomously, finds the herd, positions itself around the animals and starts guiding them toward the right gate

4. the AI watches their position, speed and posture, moving closer to apply pressure and backing off when the cattle show stress

cattle can hear the propellers from up to 100 meters away. when one needs an extra push the drone can direct the airflow onto its back

they even tested playing a recording of each farmer's own cattle call through the drone haha

and once they're through the gate the farmer gets a fresh report on the whole property, because the drone also:

> counted the herd on the way
> estimated what they weigh
> flagged any animal moving like it's sick
> measured how much grass is left in each paddock
> checked for open gates, dry troughs or busted fences

one drone can typically control and track herds of up to 2,000 animals. the company says it cuts mustering costs roughly in half

Brumby (formerly GrazeMate) is still rolling out pilots, but already had commitments covering 1.7 million acres across Queensland and New South Wales before expanding into California

so a job that used to require riders, motorbikes, horses or helicopters is now just 3 taps on a phone and an AI drone cowboy

[Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins]

Extracts from a further Spectator article (Aug 15) by Andrew Gilligan:

An academic project hosted by Cambridge University platforms creationism, the belief that the world was created by God in seven days. It promotes an academic paper demanding that schoolchildren be taught to “actively resist” the science of evolution.

At Charles Darwin’s old university, where a college is named after him, Darwin’s discovery is now described by one Cambridge researcher as an example of “potential challenges posed by Eurocentric monoculture.”

It is the latest sign of fundamental problems at Cambridge’s education faculty, the same department which hired Jason Arday.

The project which platforms the creationist claims, the Islamic Educator Learning Community (IELC), is led by Cambridge’s assistant research professor of education, Farah Ahmed, a former activist in the since banned terror group Hizb ut-Tahrir..

IELC is “hosted by” and “partners with” a university body called the Cambridge Teacher Research Exchange, Camtree.

IELC publishes on its website, with a Camtree address, a paper on “Islamic scientific critical consciousness” . . .

The paper says that “countering colonial hegemony in science education for Muslims” could include “identifying gaps in fossil records to make the case that the evidence of humans descending from apes is inconclusive.”

On Tuesday, in the wake of the Jason Arday scandal, The Spectator revealed that Ahmed had been given the prestigious assistant professorship. We noted that in a 2002 pamphlet, republished in 2017, she attacked ‘western education’ as a ‘threat’ to Muslims, condemned democracy and integration, and criticised British schools for teaching that child marriage is wrong. Like the paper’s author, Mirza, Ahmed has also said that modern science is a problem, because in the “teaching of evolution, Muslim children will be exposed to ideas that contradict Islam.”

After that story created a storm, the education faculty took decisive action. It removed the names of all its staff from its website, presumably to stop anyone who doesn’t know about web archive tools checking to see if they’ve hired any more wrong’uns (spoiler alert: they have

Other action has been less forthcoming. The faculty clearly hopes to ride this one out, issuing a statement that it is “committed to academic freedom and freedom of speech within the law.” Well, we must reluctantly agree that Ahmed – benefiting from the democracy she condemns – should have the freedom to say that English is “one of the most damaging subjects” a school can teach, or (while teaching at Cambridge) write that Muslim students shouldn’t have to worry about “gaining literacy and numeracy and other disciplinary skills demonstrated through qualifications.”

But that’s quite different from believing that Cambridge University should fund her to promote her ideas to the future leaders of the country.

Still more indisputable is that a university subject, even one as debased as Education at Cambridge, should not promote baseless, anti-scientific twaddle in the name of academic research.

But it does.

[Matt Barrie @matt_barrie]

housing crisis
banking crisis
currency crisis
its coming, in that order

[LuTfi /لطفي @Lqkas]

@AvidCommentator This will further incentivise introduction of autonomous delivery systems to replace the labour costs.

[LuTfi /لطفي @Lqkas]

Interesting that this SMSF loan application increase concurrent with the reported bump in auction clearance rates over the weekend (Melbourne in particular). Expect results in coming weeks to return to the general downward trajectory observed since May.

[Sam 🇦🇺🇺🇦 @samstrades]

'SMSF loan applications double in weeks before borrowing ban'

'Self-managed superannuation funds rushed to beat the looming ban on borrowing to buy residential property starting on Monday, with some lenders processing five times as many loans as usual for such funds' #ausbiz #housing
https://t.co/IlSocnrakm

[Marko Matvikov @MarkoMatvikov]

Organised crime is industrious.

Poorly administer a welfare program and they’ll establish a new revenue stream.

Politicise public projects and they’ll take over the unions who control the terms.

Raise taxes too high and they’ll fill the market with affordable alternatives.

Go soft on crime and you give them more foot soldiers to commit it for them.

Money buys influence, influence buys protection and weakness enables expansion.

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

The number of people we had telling us that negative gearing and the CGT discount on existing property had a minimal effect on investor demand and by extension prices

Who are now saying their removal is tanking the housing market is astounding.

[Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien]

The Ukrainian decision to double down on drone warfare, from the battlefield, to mid range and long range strike, and not to draft all of its young men to make infantry, will be seen by historians as one of the most important decisions in 19th-21st century warfare.

[Arek Drozda @arekdrozda]

That piece by @AlanKohler really summaries the absurdity of narratives around "housing affordability":
. prices too high = crisis
. prices falling = crisis
. must do something - change taxes = crisis
. also change GST = crisis, cost of living will go up
🤪
https://t.co/Z11ERz5OLC

[The Economic LongWave @TheELongWave]

Australia’s real house prices and real wages moved together for roughly 100+ years, then violently separated after the late 1990s.

From 1870 to around 1996, the blue line and orange line broadly tracked each other. There were booms and busts, but the relationship between housing and wages remained recognizable. Housing was expensive at times, but it was still anchored to earned income.

Then the structure changed.

It is a credit bubble chart.

The major divergence begins in the era of:

🍂 financial deregulation
🍂 falling interest rates
🍂 mortgage credit expansion
🍂 tax incentives favouring property speculation
🍂 household leverage
🍂 Real estate is becoming a financial asset rather than simply shelter.

And it will end in tears, as with all credit bubbles when they burst.

[ASX Trader @JV19804]

Everyone has been ok with property surging to ridiculous highs via many inflating policies.
But one change gets made that MAY cause prices to pull back 5% or 10% and literal hell breaks loose.

The narrative around property being risk free needed to be broken regardless

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

Not gonna lie, its astounding how quickly the truth about negative gearing has come to light.

After literal decades of being told it barely effects housing prices, an absolute torrent of data and accounts from the banks and others that it makes a massive difference.

[LuTfi /لطفي @Lqkas]

I concur with this analysis. The removal of CGT discount for productive assets (manufacturing, services, agriculture, start ups etc) would be counterproductive for Australia’s economic prosperity.

[Marko Matvikov @MarkoMatvikov]

My prediction is it’ll be restricted to residential property and the 30% flat rate will revert to the individual’s marginal income tax rate.

In exchange for additional funding (for rent assistance, social housing or the like) for support from the Greens through the Senate.

Labor already anticipates this - but we’ve all got to play along with the political charade to ensure it happens.

Labor will claim they listened and adjusted - and they’ll snooker the opposition having opposed it outright, rather than outlining their conditions for support.

[David Scutt @Scutty]

A smart individual on this platform told me years ago that Treasury will never forecast anything other than desired economic outcomes to ensure the government never has to explain why things will get worse in the future #auspol

[Kyle Chan @kyleichan]

A hacker in Germany was able to remotely control a Chinese robot lawn mower in the US, taking advantage of weak device security.

Eye-opening and important experiment from The Verge: https://t.co/gJcXjE6T94

[LuTfi /لطفي @Lqkas]

This is somewhat concerning but important to understand this AI ingenuity can work both ways.

[LuTfi /لطفي @Lqkas]

Important point. While there are a vast range of influencing forces for both upward and downward pressure on property prices playing out at the moment, the ‘upwards’ forces articulated here significantly outweigh the ‘downwards’ factors in most markets over the medium term.

[Just Think Property @justthink1]

Interesting take on "reason" for price falls (collapse) & based on one metric... A U C T I O N S

Here are few more data points you should consider #RowenRaymond @da@dailytelegraph...
1) Construction is at a very low pace and delivery ATM...
2) The industry with the most insolvency matters on hand ATM is - yes you guessed it - The Building Industry...
3) Building materials & labour costs have risen by as much as 40% in the last 18 months... And still climbing...
4) We are bringing in 3400 new arrivals per day into Australia presently...
5) YES we have had 10's of 1000's of "approvals" BUT no one is building them & best case scenario - delivery of such projects will be 5-7 years at best...

WHAT WE HAVE - is a market that is spooked & the RE Industry is taking advantage of it by:
1) Pushing for more listings - (good property)
2) Making vendors accept - SHORT CAMPAIGNS & A QUICK SALE...

WHAT WE ARE SEEING ON THE GROUND: is vendor's expectations dropping NOT SO MUCH genuine prices... And where did these expectations materialise in the first place...???

* Not saying it's a bad thing to take advantage as we are for our clients - but it won't be for long...

* When the dust settles and people realise they have UNDER SOLD they will realise they were https://t.co/1pPfSyQwEz the same agents they trusted & sold them the over inflated expectation in the first instance...

AND: and if we look at the low "auction clearance rates" of the lockdowns - WHAT FOLLOWED after sellers then too realised they UNDERSOLD...???

If you want to learn more and understand what is really happening at ground level - join Martin @DFA_Analyst & I for the Monday Evening Property Rants... Would be happy to give a chance to state your case Rowen... 🤓

[PsyPost.org @PsyPost]

Artificial intelligence recently analyzed over half a million social science abstracts published since 1960. The results show a steady decline in political diversity, with academic research becoming increasingly left-leaning over the past six decades. https://t.co/xHPSCAEZes

[Daniel @VoteLewko]

A 2020 interview with @AlboMP just provided the campaign ad for every other party. The then Opposition Leader slammed the Government for not having adequate fuel reserves or domestic refining capacity in case of overseas conflict.

He identified the risk to national security and asked why the government had done nothing in 7 years.

Albanese knew about this problem 7 years ago...