Twitter continues to be plagued by its out-of-his-depth new owner

 

A forlorn tweet sent shortly after 2am, read & retrieved at 2:53am AEDST on 30 December 2022 in Australia.

New York Times, 28 December 2022:

Twitter users in widespread locations said they were having problems with the service on Wednesday evening, days after Elon Musk said he had shut down one of the company’s data centers in Sacramento. The issues primarily hit users of the company’s site for desktop computer users, according to Down Detector, while some complained that its mobile app also experienced trouble.

The cause of the outages was not immediately clear. Some users reported that they had been logged out of Twitter, while others said they could not view replies to their tweets but had access to other parts of the service. Other users said they had encountered error messages while scrolling through their timelines, the primary feed of tweets that people see when they log in to Twitter.

The errors began around 7 p.m. Eastern time, according to Down Detector, a service that monitors web outages. The hashtag #TwitterDown trended on the platform as users reported their experiences with the outage.

“The problems with Twitter exhibit in multiple countries and are widespread,” said Isik Mater, the director of research at NetBlocks, an internet monitoring service. “The platform API is affected, which serves the mobile app as well as many aspects of the desktop site,” she added, referring to the interface on which Twitter operates.

Mr. Musk, who bought Twitter in late October for $44 billion, said on Saturday that Twitter continued to work smoothly, “even after I disconnected one of the more sensitive server racks.” The billionaire has been focused on reducing Twitter’s costs, eliminating contracts with vendors, laying off employees and reducing the company’s real estate footprint.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index as of 30 December 2022 Elon Musk's wealth has fallen by $132 billion in 2022 and now stands at $138 billion. Yahoo! News stated on 30 December 2022: "Elon Musk has seen his net worth plummet by more than $200 billion over the last 13 months, marking the biggest loss of wealth in modern history." 

******************HAPPY NEW YEAR 2023******************

 

 

 

Whether we step into this new year boldly and eagerly or tentatively and fearfully, step into it we all must. 

Hoping the road you tread this year is easier than the last.

*********Wishing Everyone A Happy Holiday Season*********

North North Voices

wishes

all its readers

a

             HAPPY  HOLIDAY  SEASON 

The blog will return from its annual break on 1 January 2023

 

Tweet of the Year

 

Morning, Twitterati, Proles and Comrades ... and Santa.😉
One of my contributions for the year. pic.twitter.com/qj7wG9W9VA

— clancy tucker (@ClancyTucker) December 23, 2022

 

Quotes of the Week

 

“On Monday, at the final public hearing of the House Jan. 6 committee, Representative Bennie Thompson said that any attempt to overturn the legitimate results of an American election, impede the peaceful transfer of power or foment an insurrection must never be allowed to happen again. To that end, Representative Jamie Raskin firmly announced that the committee was making four criminal referrals whose center, in each, was Donald Trump, the man who hatched a scheme that would, if successful, defraud Americans of their sacred right to have their vote count.

These unprecedented referrals suggest that Mr. Trump, who as president took an oath to uphold the Constitution, not only violated that oath, but also committed a series of specifically indictable crimes. One of these referrals — for the crime of inciting an insurrection — is the most stunning, the most unpredictable and the most crucial, for its implications and its remedy include barring the former president from holding political office.”

[Author & essayist Brenda Wineapple writing in The New York Times, 23 December 2022]

'Scott Morrison has apparently always held himself in some regard, reportedly describing himself in the following ways in 2006: “Under the heading of personal attributes he listed: Positive, direct, determined, decisive, pragmatic, articulate, passionate, outcome focused, innovative, discrete (sic), personable, motivated, committed, reasoned, analytic, responds to challenges, loyal, works well under pressure”. And humility?

As the former Howard government minister Fran Bailey observed: “It was all out there for everyone to see. I think he is missing that part of his brain that controls empathy. Everything had to be his way, he would not accept advice, he would not collaborate unless it was with the cheer squad that he surrounded himself with.” Nothing much seems to have changed.” '

[Former Labor senator Steven Loosely, writing in The Weekend Australian, 24 December 2022]

Cartoons of the Week

 

Mark David

Peter Broelman

David Rowe

David Pope

Is Clarence Valley Council finally beginning to grapple with the need to limit development on the Clarence River floodplain?

 

Clarence Valley Mayor Ian Tiley         Deputy Mayor Greg Clancy

      IMAGES: Clarence Valley Independent

Clarence Valley Independent, 20 December 2022:

Clarence Valley Council (CVC) will seek legal opinion to see if compensation will be liable if vacant land that doesn’t have development application approval at West Yamba is rezoned by the NSW Planning Minister – a move that would limit further development.

Deputy Mayor Greg Clancy put forward the motion at the December 13 CVC meeting concerning land in the West Yamba Urban Release Area WYURA, which is predicted to increase the population of Yamba by 2000 people when development is complete.

Cr Clancy said planning approvals in Wyura requiring large amount of fill would appear to be exacerbating localised flooding around the Carrs Drive roundabout and the area surrounding it.

Following the impact of the 2022 floods, which saw Yamba cut off for several days, there is also concern that the large amount of fill is affecting, and will increasingly affect the drainage of the area, adversely affecting low lying residences and the environment.

Cr Karen Toms asked Cr Clancy whether he knew that the General Manager had already sought legal advice before he put the motion forward.

“I was aware that the Mayor had asked the General Manager to seek legal advice, I wasn’t aware that it had actually been done,” he said.

Cr Clancy said with all the issues going on in the Yamba area, council was now in a position to understand what we can do or can’t do in terms of development on the floodplain.

“We’ve had the Prime Minister and we’ve had the Premier both stating that there should be no more development on the floodplain, he said.

“However, to date we haven’t received any official notice that there’s legislation being prepared, or passed, or whatever, to do that.

“In the interim we need to determine councils’ position in relation to development on the floodplain and West Yamba is our largest area where we have potential development on the floodplain.

“All this motion is doing is seeing whether council or the ratepayers would be liable if we go down the path of applying for a rezoning of land which has been zoned under the Wyura as residential, back to rural, and or a mixture maybe of rural and conservation, because there’s some important conservation areas in that area.

“Once we get the legal opinion, council would be in a much better position to consider what action we want to take.

“If we put a rezoning application in, we would need to know if the council and the ratepayers would be liable to any compensation.”

Mayor Ian Tiley said he and General Manager, Laura Black had discussed the matter a number of times and council was awaiting legal advice on rezoning.

Cr Steve Pickering said he would be supporting the motion as the community wanted to see action not just in Yamba, but on the floodplain generally.

“This is a question that has been asked many times of me and I think it’s prudent for us as a council to actually seek legal advice,” he said.

Cr Karen Toms said she would not be supporting the motion as it was ‘a what if question’.

“To me it’s a speculation in itself because we’re asking a lawyer to say well if the government decides to come in and change the zoning of privately owned land will we need to pay compensation,” she said.

“I would rather see this put on hold until we actually get the information back.”

Cr Bill Day said he believed the motion endorsed the actions of the Mayor and the General Manager to seek legal advice on rezoning land at West Yamba.

In the motion put forward by Cr Greg Clancy and seconded by Cr Jeff Smith council resolved to seek a legal opinion as to:

1. Whether compensation becomes liable when and if the NSW Planning Minister was to rezone vacant lands that have not had DA approval for development on the Yamba floodplain (WYURA ) from R1 General Residential to RU2 Rural landscape and C2 Environmental Conservation zonings at Council’s request, and

2. Whether compensation becomes liable if land previously approved for the importation of fill was to be similarly rezoned;

3. Whether there are any other legal implications of such an action.

The motion was carried 7-2 and supported by all councillors except Cr Karen Toms and Cr Allison Whaites.