30+ faces at Support Local Townsville’s mid-year function - Townsville Bulletin

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30+ faces at Support Local Townsville’s mid-year function  Townsville Bulletin
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Starfield's Local Planet Map Is Horrible - Kotaku Australia

You’ve probably heard this before, but Starfield, Bethesda’s latest open-world RPG, is very, very big. The new game, out now in “early access” on Xbox and PC, spans multiple solar systems and hundreds of planets. And when exploring that vast digital galaxy, the in-game maps are fine. But once you land on a planet or land in a city, the in-game map system goes from fine to awful.

Bethesda’s Starfield launched early for deep-pocketed players on Thursday after years of hype and following some sneaky leaks. The massive space RPG lets players explore a digital galaxy filled with hundreds of planets and quests. And early on, I only used the maps in-game to fast-travel to new planets. But once I landed in the first big city, New Atlantis, I opened up the surface map and set my eyes upon the horrible blue mess that is Starfield’s local “map.”

Calling the blue-and-white grid of floating icons and featureless void a “map” feels generous. Maps, even the worst of them, are useful to some degree. The local planet map in Starfield isn’t useful at all. Not in the slightest. Look at this and try to figure out…anything!

A zoomed-in screenshot of Starfield’s in-game map does not impress.

Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku

Fans jumping into the game are complaining on Reddit about the map and also comparing it unfavorably to past Bethesda town maps, like the ones in The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. And it’s true, comparing them directly, it’s frustrating to see Bethesda take such a backward step on such an important feature. Being able to pop open a map and look around the area for a shop or quest is very handy in a massive RPG. Yet, this horrible blue nightmare gives you no real context—like hills, roads, etc—for where these places actually are, or how to get to them.

Instead of the local map, use the scanner

I’ve given up trying to use this map and have mainly relied on the scanner tool in Starfield. This feature lets you pop open an augmented reality-like HUD that lets you see where shops, quests, and other important places are in the world by just looking around. It also draws a path on the ground for you to follow to reach your objective and lets you fast-travel to locations you’ve visited simply by aiming at them and clicking a button. It’s not a replacement for a local map, but considering the awful blue void Starfield considers a map, it’s the best option at the moment.

It’s odd because I find the game’s galaxy and space maps pretty dang good, for the most part. Sure, I wish space travel was a bit more “traveling” and less just menu hopping, but when I need to look at planets and solar systems in Starfield, the maps are good. They feature textured planets and recognizable recreations of the areas you want to visit. You know, like a map!

But land on one of those planets or cities and you’ll be stuck using that horrendous floating grid of icons.

I assume that in the next few days and weeks, Starfield modders will quickly add local town and planet maps, as this is quickly becoming one of the biggest complaints I’ve seen from fans. Even people who are enjoying the game immensely, like myself, are struggling with the awful excuse of a local map that currently exists in the game.

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Local journalism: why a tiny news operation could inspire a different approach and is attracting big name support - The Conversation

It started as a one-person operation, funded by personal savings and based in a bedroom, with a mission to provide a new format for local news in Manchester, and now The Mill is attracting £350,000 of funding from some big names in journalism including the former BBC director general Sir Mark Thompson.

The sums involved aren’t huge, but the significance for local journalism in the UK should not be underestimated. The Mill is expanding as local newspapers around the UK, and the world, are closing down or shedding staff, creating news deserts where local issues go unreported. So what is the Mill doing right and could it be a model for a new type of local journalism?

As someone who has worked in local journalism, including the much-missed Liverpool Daily Post, I have watched as newspapers have shut their local offices, contracted newsrooms and in some cases stopped printing and turned to web-only operations, so the success of The Mill as part of this climate is worth noting.

The Mill was founded by journalist Joshi Herrmann in 2020, beginning as a local news newsletter for Manchester before expanding into Liverpool with The Post and The Tribune in Sheffield. It has plans to add Birmingham coverage soon.

I have been interested in The Mill from the beginning. When it first launched I invited Herrmann to talk to my journalism students about the project, then very much in its infancy. We spoke on Zoom during the height of the pandemic, my students at home and Herrmann from a motorway service station where he had stopped on his travels.

He outlined the inspiration, the plans he had, the style of journalism he wanted to revive. He was clearly driven and committed.

He also explained the beginnings of The Mill when interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours, and why he thought there was a gap in the market. He had found himself back in his hometown of Manchester during lockdown and noticed that his local newspaper, the Manchester Evening News, owned by the UK’s largest commercial news publisher Reach, had shifted away from the “traditional” news and features he remembered from when he was growing up.

He wondered if there was a market for the type of news and features that the UK’s regional press were once so famous for and which they did so well.

So he created a daily newsletter paid for by subscribers who might get only one story a day but it would be detailed, and well researched and something they weren’t reading elsewhere, and worth – he hoped – their time and money.

News media companies are looking for alternatives to delivering print newspapers. MPH Photos/Shutterstock

Latest pieces in The Post include an article on Liverpool’s litter problem approached from the perspective of a volunteer litter picker, while another article explains why the city isn’t in the middle of a knife-crime epidemic despite “nine stabbings in five days”.

What started as a one-man operation is now a team of nine and it is advertising three new staff positions at the moment. The Mill has 5,000 paying subscribers and thousands more who read the open-access stories.

The list of investors attracted to The Mill’s model of local journalism is impressive: Nicholas Johnston of Axios, which operates local news sites in the US, Turi Munthe, founder of photojournalism network Demotix, and David Rosenberg of Snap Inc.

The backer who really stands out is Thompson, former CEO of Channel 4 and CEO of the New York Times and former director general of the BBC. It is a big win for The Mill.

Change or die

In the rush to digital and to find an alternative to advertising revenues and physical sales, local newspapers had to adapt or die.

Five years ago, the UK government – with Theresa May as prime minister – commissioned an independent review into UK journalism and in 2019 published The Cairncross Review: a sustainable future for journalism, expressing concerns about the future of national and local newsgathering.

It made for difficult reading. Print sales had halved between 2007 and 2017; print advertising revenues had fallen by 69% and only one in ten people was reading a regional or local printed paper each week.

It also made a number of recommendations, including that online platforms should have a “news quality obligation” to improve trust in the news.

Recently, the Reuters Digital News Report 2023 found that trust in news has fallen, reversing gains made at the height of the pandemic, suggesting this is a continuing problem, but that increasing numbers of people, of all ages, were taking steps to actively find “reliable news”, rather than content sent to them by an algorithm.

The Reuters research also found that only a fifth of respondents said they started their “news journeys” with a website or app, down from 2018, preferring social media as a route.

So, here is the opportunity for news innovators. If apps or websites aren’t working, what can? Once it was a paper boy –- or girl –- now local news can be delivered straight into the inbox, reliably and efficiently, via a newsletter, as The Mill does. Other news operations have since decided the newsletter model is one that has an audience, and followed Herrmann down that route.

Investment into companies such as The Mill could be the start of a new financial model for wider local journalism. So far, it seems to show that there are still people who want to find out what is going on where they live, and some are prepared to pay for it.

If new players like The Mill continue to grow and thrive, demonstrating that vital online “news quality obligation”, they could help to rebuild trust in local news.

It’s good news for people like me who believe in local journalism, however it is delivered.

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Support Local Townsville’s celebrated its mid-year event at the Rockpool Pavilion - Townsville Bulletin

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Support Local Townsville’s celebrated its mid-year event at the Rockpool Pavilion  Townsville Bulletin
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Chinese Australians made to feel unwelcome by local media: study - The Australian Financial Review

Aug 30, 2023 – 5.00am

Henry Luo was walking through a park in Sydney with his elderly father and two toddlers when a stranger approached him, kicked a fence and screamed at him about Chinese people hoovering properties in Australia.

Mr Luo was part of study by the University of Technology Sydney, released on Wednesday, which found 70 per cent of the 689 Chinese Australians surveyed believe the local media portray them as objects of suspicion and a risk to national security.

Henry Luo, 40, says negative media reporting about China can have a strong effect on the lives of Chinese Australians.  Dion Georgopoulos

He says the incident occurred on the eve of last year’s federal election, when trucks emblazoned with billboards portraying Chinese President Xi Jinping at the ballot box with text saying “CCP vote Labor”, paid for by conservative lobby group Advance Australia, were spotted around the country.

The 40-year-old, who grew up in Shenzhen but now runs an electronics wholesaler in Sydney after moving to Australia in 2009, was completely taken aback as 50 per cent of people in his Sydney suburb of Burwood have Chinese ancestry, according to the 2021 Census.

“We just want a normal life without people screaming at us on the street. We belong here,” Mr Luo told The Australian Financial Review.

“I know lots of people are having a tough time, but you can’t take it out on other communities. If you throw a rock at China, it lands on the head of Chinese Australians. We can and must do better.”

The Reid Business Community president also pointed to an incident in March where one Australian media outlet alleged that three Chinese men taking pictures at an air show in Melbourne had “aroused suspicions” of a security expert.

“Bad stories about China get good clicks in Australia,” Mr Luo, a rank-and-file member of NSW Labor, said.

The UTS study found that 51 per cent of respondents believe Australia’s English-language media were distrustful of Chinese-Australian communities.

More than 60 per cent of respondents said the media was “othering” Chinese Australians, while 53 per cent believe reporting on China by English-language Australian media was too negative.

One respondent said: “Just because I feel unhappy with our mainstream media on China doesn’t mean that I side with China.

“I do so as an Australian who is concerned that our cherished values, such as a fair go, are being undermined.”

Report author Wanning Sun, who is deputy director of the
Australia-China Relations Institute at UTS, said the survey showed many Chinese Australians felt a low level of social acceptance in Australia.

“Our media should realise that most people in this community should not be considered subjects of suspicion and distrust, or merely as voters whose support needs to be wooed during election times, or as naive or unthinking individuals who are likely to be susceptible to state media propaganda from the PRC,” Professor Sun said.

“We need to remind ourselves that most of them are rights-bearing citizens and permanent residents in Australia who are negotiating complex questions of belonging while caught between the two increasingly hostile nations.”

Osmond Chiu, a research fellow at Per Capita think tank, said that while PRC-born migrants had a strong sense of commitment to Australia, they were “deeply worried by media speculation about war with China” and had a “real sense of powerlessness”.

“Simplistic assertions by the media and politicians that they differentiate between the PRC government and Chinese people will not be enough to address genuinely held fears about societal acceptance,” he said.

The top 10 electorates in NSW by Chinese ancestry all swung away from the Liberals at the state election in March, mirroring a trend at last year’s federal election.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton ramped up the Coalition’s hawkish rhetoric ahead of the federal poll when he said Australians should prepare for war, saying the Chinese government was on a “deliberate course” and condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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India, China pump up the patriotism to celebrate local hardware manufacturing wins - The Register

India and China are both celebrating hardware-related wins that are being hailed as signs the respective nations' tech industries are in rude health.

China's celebrations center on the Huawei Mate 60 Pro – a premium smartphone that Huawei quietly launched earlier this week without the usual pre-release leaks and speculation.

Huawei, we remind readers, has not released premium devices in recent years as US sanctions have meant it had difficulty acquiring the necessary components.

Huawei's spec sheet for the handset does describe its 6.82-inch, 2720 × 1260 screen, and the four cameras that each enable different degrees of zoom or wide-angle snaps. The spec sheet also lists the ability to connect wirelessly with Wi-Fi networks, satellite positioning systems, and NFC terminals.

But no processor is mentioned, and the spec sheet omits mention of how it connects to wireless telecommunications networks.

There is speculation in local reporting that the phone may have a home-brew 5G radio – which would be a sanction buster.

The phone "does not have 5G written on it. However, those who purchased it after it was launched on Wednesday, claim its download speech exceeds 500Mb per second, which is typically 5G speed," state-controlled China Daily explained in an article headlined "Domestic tech powers latest Huawei phone".

"Facing the heat of the curbs on the supply of chips for years, Huawei has become like a symbol for Chinese companies fighting injustice in the international sector," the story adds. "That's why the buzz around Huawei's new range of products is not for the company alone, but rather for Chinese companies as a whole."

The device costs around $960 and sold out within hours of debuting on Huawei's Chinese website and local e-commerce outlets.

Pump up the volume on China's national anthem, "March of the Volunteers," for this next bit as we quote China Daily's conclusion to its report: "Chinese people love Chinese brands and want Made in China to keep getting bigger and better."

Indian people, meanwhile, love overseas brands that come to India. Therefore they are loving news that Dell, HP, and Lenovo are among a group of companies that have applied for subsidies to make their kit on the subcontinent.

The three – plus Acer and ASUS – have reportedly put up their hands to participate in India's latest production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme that encourages tech manufacturers to conduct more activities in the country in exchange for rebates once their output accelerates.

Applications for the scheme closed on Wednesday. The next day, India's minister of communications and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw posted data indicating 40 applications had been received, adding "IT hardware industry captains are all set to make in India."

Local media report 38 applicants – among them the aforementioned multinational companies, plus 27 local companies that want to get into the biz.

India has had mixed success with these schemes. Foxconn backed out of a plan to make semiconductors, and Cisco signed up to make small quantities of kit – quite slowly. HPE has also announced modest plans that amount to a small percentage of its hardware output.

India's government doesn't mind that entirely, because part of its Make In India strategy is to have global companies create a local toehold and hope that growing domestic demand – and increased concerns about concentrating manufacturing in or near China – see those initial forays expand.

That plan has even worked with some of Huawei's handset-making compatriots, who have made manufacturing investments on the subcontinent. ®

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Where do Victorian councils sit on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament? - ABC News

So far, none of Victoria's local councils are endorsing a No vote in the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum and the majority are staying neutral. (ABC News: Shane Willner-Browne)

About one in five Victorian councils have endorsed a Yes vote at the referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, but the majority have taken a neutral position ahead of the national poll.

The ABC asked councils across the state their position on the upcoming referendum, the date of which is set to be announced today.

None of the Victorian councils indicated they would be backing a No vote, however some said they were still waiting for advice before deciding whether to endorse a position.

While not every council provided a reason, all 79 local governments were able to indicate their general stance on the upcoming vote, with some suggesting it might still change.

You can find out your local council's position by searching in the table below. (If you don't know what local council area you live in, find out by searching your address, suburb or postcode here.)

Victorian councils backing Yes concentrated in Greater Melbourne

Twelve of the 16 councils who have endorsed a Yes vote in the upcoming referendum are within Greater Melbourne, including a cluster of neighbouring councils in the city's south-east like Bayside, Glen Eira, Kingston, Monash and Greater Dandenong.

The City of Melbourne, as well as a handful of councils across the north and western suburbs, including Merri-bek, Hobsons Bay, Brimbank and Moonee Valley, have also endorsed a Yes position.

Greater Shepparton, Greater Bendigo, the Hepburn Shire council in central Victoria (Daylesford and Hepburn Springs) and the Surf Coast Shire (including Torquay and Lorne on Victoria's south-western coastline) are among the state's regional councils backing a Yes vote.

Meanwhile, 63 councils said they would take a neutral stance.

Some councils which had publicly expressed commitment towards the Uluru Statement from the Heart — the 2017 document containing the call for a First Nations Voice to be enshrined in the constitution — have also opted to take a neutral position.

Not all councils who support the Uluru statement are backing a 'Yes' vote in the referendum.(supplied)

That includes Greater Geelong, Strathbogie Shire and Banyule City Council.

Banyule mayor Peter Castaldo said while his council believed a "Voice is essential", the council would not take a Yes or No position on the referendum and would prioritise community engagement about the vote instead.

Merri-bek council criticised for backing Yes campaign against First Nations advice

Merri-bek City Council (formerly known as Moreland), which takes in suburbs in Melbourne's progressive inner-north, including Brunswick and Coburg, is another council with a complex position.

In July, the council voted in favour of allocating $5,000 to print materials in support of the Yes campaign.

But the move disappointed the council's own First Nations Committee, which in February advised the council not to take a Yes or No position during the referendum due to the diversity of views within the community.

"We find it hypocritical that Council failed to listen to your own First Nations Advisory Committee when you resolved to support a Voice to Parliament," co-chair of Merri-bek First Nations Advisory Committee, Kim Kruger, told a council meeting earlier this month.

In response to the criticism, the council passed an amended motion allocating a further $18,000 towards a community education campaign around the Voice to Parliament and has since adopted more neutral language about its role in the referendum.

Merri-bek council, which takes in Brunswick in Melbourne's inner-north, has softened its 'Yes' position after community criticism.(AAP: Julian Smith)

Merri-bek councillor Sue Bolton said the council still essentially has a 'Yes' position courtesy of its July decision and its pre-existing commitment to the Uluru statement.

"They've already produced the banners to go on council buildings … but they won't be doing any more of that."

She said the council will focus on moving from an "explicit" Yes position to one that promotes a diverse range of First Nations views.

There are no current Merri-bek councillors who identify as First Nations — which is the case for the vast majority of Victoria's councils, who often rely on advisory groups. 

Out of 641 local councillors statewide, ABC News was only able to to identify three (0.5 per cent) who have publicly identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

One per cent of Victoria's general population identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander in the 2021 census.

It's getting more common for councils to weigh in on national debates

Weighing in on the national conversation around the Voice falls outside the typical "roads, rates and rubbish" remit of local governments, but in recent years councils across the country have been weighing in on issues like climate change  and the date of Australia Day.

Sociologist Rachel Busbridge says some councils are wary of creating division in their communities.(Supplied: Rachel Busbridge)

Australian Catholic University sociology lecturer Rachel Busbridge said it was not surprising to see some councils divided over what position to take in the lead up to the referendum.

"The reality is that there's still a bit of a split in councils as to whether they think they should be engaging on these types of big issues, so it's not surprising that the numbers are fairly low in terms of councils who are support of the Yes vote," Dr Busbridge said.

But she said it was becoming more common overall for local governments to take stances on national issues, with state and federal governments asking local councils to take on more duties over the last few decades.

In July, federal Minister for Local Government, Kristy McBain, wrote to councils across Australia asking them to communicate with their communities about the upcoming vote.

As a comparison, while it was not a referendum – the 2017 postal survey on same-sex marriage was another national debate where some councils picked a side.

A number of Victorian councils who pushed for a Yes vote in the marriage equality postal survey are now taking a neutral stance during the Voice referendum, including the City of Stonnington, the Shire of Campaspe, City of Port Phillip and Shire of Macedon ranges.

Dr Busbridge said it was mostly progressive councils which lent their support to marriage equality during the survey, which does not necessarily translate to the Voice debate.

Local councils around Australia have been targeted for hosting events like drag story time. (ABC News: Cason Ho)

"But what we're actually seeing with the debate over the voice is that there's a split in the progressive vote, so there's a progressive Yes and a progressive No," she said.

She also said some local councils have been targeted by far-right groups on LGBTQIA+ issues like drag story time, which might be a further factor in councils choosing to remain neutral.

"With the Voice, it may be the case that they kind of choose to be neutral on issues that could cause conflict or division in their communities."

Dr Rachel Busbridge said it was unclear how often councils actually influence how residents vote – but said they were an important place for those discussions to take place.

"Local councils are places where people discuss politics and political issues … and I think that's a really good thing."

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