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Joel Courtney ☀️ 🔌 💻

@joelmcourtney.bsky.social
1.4K followers 635 following 2.6K posts

CTO @ enosi.energy Prev: CTO @ COzero/EnergyLink, smart grid engineering and innovation Ausgrid Passionate about smarter energy future. DERs, EVs, Management, Technology.

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Reposted by Joel Courtney ☀️ 🔌 💻
Greg Jericho @grogsgamut.bsky.social · 17h
Associate Professor Sonali Walpola from the ANU pointed out, “Australians in the top quintile of wealth, where the average net worth is $3.267 million, own 94% of the value of financial assets held by private trusts. live.thepoint.com.au
live.thepoint.com.au
The Point Live: Digital duty of care legislation to be introduced, while private health changes fall. As it happens
Anika Wells will introduce the digital duty of care into the parliament, where she will have to find a path with the Greens to get it through the parliament. Meanwhile, the government has vowed to fi...
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Dan Ilic @danilic.bsky.social · 14h
I mean — this is wild! : petitions.getup.org.au/petitions/ba...
petitions.getup.org.au
Basketball Australia: stop filming kids with Israeli AI cameras
Children’s safety and consent Kids as young as six will be filmed every time they step on court.[1][4] Basketball Australia’s own Child Safeguarding Policy says children can only be filmed with a pare...
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Marc Kodack @ridden6570.bsky.social · 15h
Sounding the Alarm "As senior experts in our field [insurance], we are deeply concerned that the level of physical climate and environmental risk we are seeing is increasing at a dangerous rate."
static1.squarespace.com
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Michael West @michaelwestbiz.bsky.social · 16h
NSW unis alone dudded academics $380m but "spent $139m on consultants in 2025". Big4, McKinsey , KordaMentha Adam Lucas & James Guthrie report #auspol michaelwest.com.au/university-w...
michaelwest.com.au
University wage theft. NSW academics owed hundreds of millions - Michael West
SA's Flinders University has admitted to underpaying casual academics almost $1 million, while NSW universities owes $380 million.
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Alper Cugun @alper.nl · 13/10/2026
> the company that coined the term ‘Site Reliability Engineer’ and wrote the SRE book. That doesn't really mean that much. Many of those books record practices that may only have been true very briefly or narrowly (if even that). Also the SRE book is not very good if you're not Google.
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com
The Pulse: Firebase’s global outage & poor response
The Firebase iOS SDK crashed after a backend change, crashing all apps which used Firebase analytics for 2-6 hours. Google didn’t update the status page, but did offer a postmortem 4 days later.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 11/10/2026
If you have been wondering why so many centrist dudes have been sneering and spitting at environmentalists on X for the past few weeks: ensuring that stuff like this doesn't face regulatory hurdles is a big part of why
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🇨🇦Tadhg Dalaigh @tadhgdalaigh.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 10/10/2026
If I built an AI lab and it went rogue and deleted all student loan information, I'm betting they'd suddenly figure out how to prosecute me.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 10/10/2026
Not only should we introduce penalties and fines for the companies that break important things by designing crappy software, we should introduce regulations and penalties for the media outlets that act as accomplices by shifting responsibility away from the companies that cause these failures
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Emily Atkin @emorwee.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
This. This is the correct, science-backed, responsible framing. Wish more news outlets did it like the CBC.
cbc.ca
'Just stop burning fossil fuels.' Scientists stress that our smoky skies only have one true fix | CBC News
Smoky skies in Toronto have led to new scrutiny of government efforts to fight fires and manage forests. But scientists say the realistic way to tackle the smoke is fighting climate change itself.
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alex䷰trismegistus @technihilism.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
fuck's sake the way we pretend to be a grown up country while letting this bullshit happen #auspol
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Tim Lyons @picketer.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
At some point we need to conclude that the waste, fraud and poor / bad outcomes for people is a feature, not a bug of voucher-based delivery of social services. It flows directly from the mode of economic organisation of the programs in their current forms. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10...
abc.net.au
They built a business empire that cashes in on veterans. It's made millions
The companies in the VBA network have made millions turning veterans into valuable sales leads on an industrial scale.
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
One thing I find endlessly funny about the rise of AI is that it has revealed that there is a large number of people who believe that the reason they wrote essays at school or university is their teachers were desperately waiting for them to provide a definite answer to “Lear: what’s up with him?”
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Stefan Popenici @popenici.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
We normalised conflict of interest to the extent of finding it unremarkable to see a former head of secret services taking the role of a… “consultant”. Every single thing can be commodified, all justified to make more money; asking this class what is corruption is like asking a fish what water is.
f24.my
Germany's former spy chief detained on suspicion of trading state secrets
Former German spy chief August Hanning was detained Tuesday on suspicion of treason and espionage after prosecutors accused him of paying for secret intelligence documents and using them to prepare an...
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Matt Binder @mattbinder.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
the tech industry is about to invent books
Andrew Yeung 
@andruyeung
X.com
We created gyms because modern day work no
longer required physical activity. Without exercise,
our muscles atrophy.
I predict we'll need gyms for our brains too, once Al
starts doing our knowledge work.
10:53 PM • 10/4/26 • 1.3M Views
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Crikey @crikey.com.au · 07/10/2026
Opinion | The University of Sydney is cracking down on students’ intellectual freedom. Anthony Albanese, the once proud student protester, is encouraging it. www.crikey.com.au/2026/10/07/a...
crikey.com.au
Dear Albo of 1983, what do you make of yourself now?
The University of Sydney is cracking down on students' intellectual freedom. Anthony Albanese, the once proud student protester, is encouraging it.
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Annie Parker @annieparker.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
White guy fails upwards. Again.
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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Again, <only Republicans> ever get to talk like this. If a single municipal level Democrat ever did, it would be a national outrage &spark a wave of “civility” discourse, & op-eds about how Dems must Respect Real Folkz & talk across difference. Democracy is incompatible with this double standard.
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Colin McMillen @mcmillen.dev · 04/10/2026
[William Safire voice] "That should be: dumb sons of bitches"
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Rex Patrick @mrrexpatrick.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The Govt has appealed another of my #FOI wins to the Federal Court. Again it’s seeking costs against me if I’m unsuccessful defending my win. It turns out winning an FOI in a Tribunal is expensive - and that’s exactly the message the Govt wants to send to citizens. 1/2 #auspol
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Joel Courtney ☀️ 🔌 💻 @joelmcourtney.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is part of the goal of the RBA rate rise. Drive up the cost of capital (psst it does go somewhere), and make businesses operating at the margins go under by: 1. reducing the supply of customers if they're general population facing 2. increasing the cost of doing business through debt facility
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 30/09/2026
I for one think it’s bad that the president can just say crazy stuff all day every day and 99% of it doesn’t make the news because we’ve normalized having an insane president
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Michael Mazengarb @michaelmazengarb.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Summary of the IPC's consideration of the cost of HVO's Scope 3 emissions: 'Yeah, they might cause hundreds of millions in damage to NSW, but we're just not sure on the exact figure, so we're going to ignore it.'
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Antoinette Lattouf @antoinettelattouf.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
www.ettemedia.com/war-of-words... READ: An exclusive data analysis of 42 interviews conducted on ABC’s 7.30 on conflict zones — and what they tell us about the broadcaster's bias. (No paywall)
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Greg Jericho @grogsgamut.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A reminder that this year the unemployment rate has gone up 0.56%pts - roughly an extra 87,000 unemployed. So in 15 min when the RBA raises rates again just remember 35-44yos on Jobseeker are almost 10 times more likely to die than those not on welfare: www.theguardian.com/business/gro...
Chart showing deaths per 100,000 by age
22-34yo: 17.1 no welfare; 137.0 on Jobseeker
35-44yo: 30 no welfare; 288.1 on Jobseeker
45-55yo: 83.4 no welfare; 427.0 on Jobseeker
55-64yo: 201.6 no welfare; 615.6 on Jobseeker
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Nate Cochrane @natecochrane.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Performative politics. No foreign-owned & controlled #AI can ever be sovereign Australian even were the data centres physically located here. Digital residency ≠ digital sovereignty. #auspol
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The U.S. owes $40 trillion in debt. Everyone has an opinion about why. But there’s one question you almost never hear asked: Who’s actually getting paid?
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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
1. Arnold made billions as a hedge fund manager & natural gas trader at Enron. 2. He’s a key funder of reactionary centrists pressing Ds to make a permitting deal w/MAGA to gut environmental protex. 3. He falsely equates Trump’s agenda w/Biden’s. 4. He’s an extractive capitalist harming the 🌎.
Keystone XL pipeline was delayed by Obama, restarted by Trump, cancelled by Biden and restarted again by Trump. Offshore wind started under Biden was cancelled by Trump.
Biden paused new LNG export. Trump has paused new onshore wind.
Separately, people are mad about energy costs.
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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
yes my bull went rogue in your china shop but I think we can all agree there’s no liability here it’s an agentic being
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Rick Morton @squigglyrick.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
'Power is its own constituency. It exists to protect itself.' Authoritarianism sounds scary, but it arrives bit by bit. We're already doing the work for some grim future. Will be talking about this and more at Sydney Opera House's Curious program this Sunday. www.crikey.com.au/2026/09/28/r...
crikey.com.au
Don't think Australia is immune to authoritarianism
Nobody wakes up to sudden authoritarianism. We relinquish ourselves to it by allowing our favoured government to get away with bending norms and rules. Over time, these bends become clean breaks.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 28/09/2026
Hey everyone remember how I was saying the AI X-risk criti-hype is a targeted project designed to kill regulations and further ensure an impatient rush on data centre contsruction www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...
abc.net.au
OpenAI breach proves need for more data centres, major parties say
Labor, Coalition agree OpenAI's Medicare breach proves the need for Australia to secure "a seat at the AI table" by rolling out data centres nationally.
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Tim Lyons @picketer.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Meanwhile, the Feds and Tas are still arguing about where to park and refuel our one icebreaker. (Did you know the Australian Antarctic Territory is > 2 the size of WA?)
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Asher Wolf @asherwolf.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Uh no, no they will not. I’m curious if Quest is suggesting all clients replace their passports or only those they specifically told to replace passports
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Kon Karapanagiotidis @kkarapanagiotidis.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
On #AFL #GF day where police are expecting a spike of up to 20% of male violence against women know there is help available 24/7. Free and confidential 👇🏼
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 24/09/2026
This piece touches on an extremely important and terrible trend: AI-false-balance among polite centre-left politicians. Every critique HAS to begin with something like "AI is here to stay. With the right rules, it can be a force for good. But........." www.techpolicy.press/the-life-and...
Information integrity is one of seven critical issues in the Preliminary Report of the UN’s Independent Scientific Panel on AI released in July at the Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence. It warns that AI can erode shared reality and civic participation through “epistemic erosion,” the gradual wearing away of society’s ability to distinguish truth from falsehood. Opening the Dialogue, the UN’s secretary-general, António Guterres, tied that erosion directly to the viral and exponential nature of advanced data driven technologies: “A machine-enabled lie can now persuade as effectively as the truth, and authentic evidence can be dismissed as fake.”“A society that cannot agree on what is real cannot defend itself,” Guterres said.

And yet he did not reference the threat of AI to amplify inequality, unless governed effectively. Instead, Guterres casts AI as “the great equaliser of the 21st century ” achievable by developing countries on the technology fast-track through safe systems that honor human rights, with real transparency about labor and planetary impacts. Getting this right, he said, is “at the heart of our common future.”

Yet the Panel’s Report, subtitled as an “evidence-based assessment of the opportunities, risks and impacts of AI” provides no evidence that AI will be a ‘great equaliser’. On the contrary, despite its curious ‘balancing’ of every claim with a counter claim, the heavily referenced report actually demonstrates far more evidence of the negative consequences of AI, while doing very little to support claims that AI will help in the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Regardless, this did not stop the ‘great equaliser’ mantra from being repeated by numerous member states and heads of multilateral bodies who subsequently addressed the forum.

In fact the report highlights the lack of — and unevenness of — evidence, including on some of the big ticket items: productivity gains, labor market effects, value-chain impacts, and …
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Barbara Pocock @barbarapocock.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
We have a system that tackles inflation by suppressing the household income of workers while protecting housing wealth & corporate profits. Until the concentration of wealth in the country is confronted, working people will keep paying the price.
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Biggie @biggienotsmalls.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Should be reposted every month....
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Tom Walsh @tewalsh340.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 24/09/2026
I guess if you care about the climate benefits of China's clean energy exports, then you can't really dismiss the risks of fossil-fuelled data centres as a meaningless nothingburger :)
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Nate Cochrane @natecochrane.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
There is no justification for retaining most of this PII data. Heads should roll. #databreach #DataStewardship #cybersecurity #privacy 7news.com.au/news/quest-a...
7news.com.au
Thousands of Aussies may need new passports, licences after major breach
Personal information relating to almost two million customers was compromised.
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Asher Wolf @asherwolf.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Me: uh, pls, I just want to do responsible disclosure? Government: this is a criminal hack, give us our data back! When the end result of reporting is either prosecution or grandstanding - and never fixing protocol - why would you come forward to let agencies know?
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Asher Wolf @asherwolf.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I absolutely refuse to get caught up in hype about a “hack” of a public service that simultaneously tries to block public access to data and also doesn’t know how to set permissions in their own data management www.croakey.org/on-secrets-s...
croakey.org
On secrets, Services Australia and a call for more transparent public governance
Introduction by Charles Maskell-Knight: One of the problems in delivering government entitlement programs fairly and legally is ensuring that the
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CAMERON WILSON @cameronwilson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
An OpenAI spokesperson confirms that its models did access internal Australian government files, but say that it was only "aggregate health statistics and internal file names." They say the hack happened in June, was discovered in August, and they reported it Sept 10
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Joel Courtney ☀️ 🔌 💻 @joelmcourtney.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
That dust storm that hit Sydney was 17 years ago. It was also when @fraying.bsky.social made a magazine of it with a couple of days turnaround. Still sits on my shelf! www.magcloud.com/browse/Issue...
magcloud.com
Photos from the Great Australian Dus…
Strange light fell over Australia on 23 September 2009. An unexpected dust storm blanketed New South Wales and Queensland, turning everything an eerie shade of amber. At its peak, the storm swept up 1...
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Barbara Pocock @barbarapocock.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
KPMG holds $437 mil worth of active contracts with Labor - including 28 Defence contracts worth $303.8 mil - despite the fallout over KPMG’s integrity, ethics & leadership failures. Despite all the lessons of the Big 4 scandals Labor’s response has been woefully inadequate.
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Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The headline electrification rate undersells electricity. It's 23% of final energy but delivers almost 40% of useful energy: the heat, mobility, cooling and light people actually need.
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Asher Wolf @asherwolf.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Stop relying on AI chatbots for customer care, UK banks and energy firms told www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
Stop relying on AI chatbots for customer care, UK banks and energy firms told
Citizens Advice says providers of essential services such as energy, banking, phone and internet should guarantee the ‘right to talk to a human’
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 22/09/2026
I maintain this is fundamentally one of Albanese's worst lies thepoint.com.au/explainers/2... thepoint.com.au/explainers/2...
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•WeW gcn a serous pim up by gas md &rnng tvough baner•s•It’s worth being specific on the dynamics here. Looking at January as a single month, we can see that while gas did generate more than batteries discharged overall, for the hour of 1900 specifically (peak load), batteries generated more than in total than gas. As batteries grow and gas plummets, this will spread further out on either side. Again: this is for the entire national electricity market, not a small region like South Australia.
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Dylan McConnell @dylanjmcconnell.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
@peterhannam1.bsky.social on NSW coal mine extension following PM'/s remarks on curbing emissions, & need for 'Selflessness. Bravery. Compassion' >"Which of those categories the IPC’s looming approval of the HVO extension will fit into is anybody’s guess" 😅🥲😥 reneweconomy.com.au/biggest-coal...
reneweconomy.com.au
Biggest coal project lines up for approval as Albanese calls for "bravery" in climate action
As the PM calls for climate "bravery" at a global summit in New York, NSW regulators prepare to sign off on a major new coal mine extension described as a "carbon bomb."
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Everything the pro-Trump billionaire Ellison family will now own: Paramount+ CBS CNN Showtime HBO Warner Bros TNT TBS MTV DC Studios Nickelodeon Comedy Central And more... With this comes the power to decide which stories get told, but more importantly, which stories DON'T get told. Shameful.
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