Greg Smith in Western Australia

Four Corners - A Tragedy in Journalism

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Smith) — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 06:31:34 +0000

The ABC's Four Corners used to be Australia's premier current affairs program. But about 10 years ago it started to off the rails. Stories were badly piut together with little or no effort at impartial reporting. The whole program became a soapbox for whatever woke style messages the producers wanted to push.

I think the downfall started with the tenure of Sally Neigbour (2015-2022). Post Neighbour recovery under Carney and Tozer has not been great.

The reporting and bias is so bad that the ACCC has taken Four Corners to task a few times. This one is the latest.

I never watch it these days. Just rubbish - more intent on changing YOUR mind on issues than honest impartial reporting. (Just listen the the background music and chosen images).

Twisted words on abortion

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Smith) — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 01:57:21 +0000

I oppose abortion for convenience.

A recent article talked about abortion in the twisted terms of "women's reproductive health".

Forget about the baby's health.

The difference between right and left societies

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Smith) — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 01:52:34 +0000

I have a very simplistic view on right and left governments and societies:

LEFT leaning : The government tells the people what to do.

RIGHT leaning : The people tell the government what to do.

I exclude "far left" and "far right" - somewhat different things

The recent comments from Jim Chalmers opposing the One Nation proposal to let people divert some of their super into their pay packets.Chalmers (in typical left leaning attitude) says no and that the proposal is against the long term interests of the workers. One Nation says that people should have a choice.

'nuff said.

Slaughterbots are closer and closer

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Smith) — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:11:31 +0000

If you haven't seen Sci-Fi Short Film “Slaughterbots” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU) you should really watch it.

The Russia - Ukraine and USA - Iran conflicts clearly show that drones (rather than people) are the big thing. No-one is going to land 2,000 troops into a hostile context any more. If China does invade Taiwan, my geuess they'll do it with 2 million drones.

An MIT Technology Review article - Data from drones in Ukraine is fueling a new Wild West marketplace (https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/04/1143452/drone-data-wild-west/amp/) claims that the UK is buying real world drone data from Ukraine to train AI. As I understand it you have to train AI using things that work and things that don't work. In the war/drone case a "good" result in the destruction of an enemy machine or soldier. A "bad" result is getting show down yourself or missing.

Slaughterbots from 2020 is a warning that we should worry about.

Labor is stuffing up the economy

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Smith) — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:59:12 +0000

Last week I read two articles about small businesses closing. Why? The increasing government regulation and reporting requirements were just too costly. One was a dress shop and had to regularly prepare report to six different federal, state and local government departments..

This week I read that Australia's GDP is stubbornly low - not even keeping pace with inflation. I'd bet the productivity per person or per worked hour is way down.

Even Labor fan Gratten was concerned, and further Reserve Bank rate rises appear to be on the horizon.

Chalmers has lots of excuses but not enough skill or imagination to change anything. I think he has little clue.

(If only the Liberals could get a good leader and get their act together. Albo's mob MUST go.)

An excellent article connecting food supply to world peace

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Smith) — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 01:06:23 +0000

My daughter has a small shareholding in Rural Funds Management (ASX : RFF). I have no idea how good an investment they are. I have no association with them.

But the lead articles in their regular newsletters are excellent. The recent newsletter featured an article ("Space, Food and the Price of Peace") that highlights the real role in rural industries in war and peace. Food is essential.

Here's an email I sent to RFF. Their website (https://www.ruralfunds.com.au/) has a link to the newsletter and article (https://www.ruralfunds.com.au/resources/news/rfm-newsletter-edition-25---2026.)

Hello,
Unfortunately I'm not in a position to invest in your organisation, however my daughter has a modest share holding and receives your Newsletter.

I DO very much like the articles. The "Space, Food and the Price of Peace" article in Edition 25 is well written, informative and (for me) opened a new view I had never before considered.

Thank you so much for these newsletter - I look forward to them.

I'd encourage others to read this article.

A Sugar Tax?

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Smith) — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 02:15:49 +0000

In another "You WILL be healthy" push from our medical "I'm better than you" medical people, a sugar tax is being pushed.

I propose a 12% price hike twice a year.

Let's see how that plays out.

Australia Is Too Timid For GDP Growth

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Smith) — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 02:05:40 +0000

Australia to way too timid in a modern world.

The media is doing it's very best to demonise data centers which have a potential to centre Australia as in dispensible engine room for future world economies. And the government is taking note of the fear and suspicions by introducing draconion rules that risk making it "too hard" for investors. Sure data centres, like any industry, needs to follow reasonable rules regarding location, resource usage and environmental impact but the positive impact they have on GDP and security should not be ignored.

All levels of government should stand ready to help, not hinder.

Manufacturing followed the same path. Dealing with increasing regulation, uncapped labour cost rises, and government laziness, manufacturering in Australia collapsed. Yes, we ship iron ore overseas and get it back as washing meachines.

Australia must be less timid, not be afraid to fail, and be prepared to adventure.

Email used to be simple.

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Smith) — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 07:39:22 +0000

It used to be easy to setup and run your own private email server. I used postfix.

If you wanted to send an email to someone@somewhere.com your server would look up somewhere.com's mail server address from it's DNS record, connect to it's port 25, somewhere.com would say "Hello", you said I have a message for someone, and somewhere.com would say great - send it over.

Now it's all encryption, domain authentication keys, permitted sender policies, spam checks, scam checks, etc, etc, etc.

I gave up and went back to my native gmail address. Let the experts try and keep up.

My Reflection on the Voice To Parliament Referendum 2023

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Smith) — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 22:43:00 +0000

The Australian referendum to recognise Australian Indigenous peoples in the constitution through the establishment of a Voice To Parliament body was quickly defeated. Current counting stands at 60% No.

I voted No. But not against Aboriginal peoples or against recognition. I voted against the Voice To Parliament which was to be given constitutional powers to consult with all levels of Government. While not having any veto power, it's influence would be significant.

My No stance developed over time. After announcement of the referendum, big business, sporting interests, unions and associations fell over each other to announce support and provide campaign funding. To my mind this could only be the result of a lot of background lobbying of company boards and various management teams.

Then when the legal implications were questioned, the Solicitor General released a carefully crafted and clearly forced statement stating the proposed amendments were legally "safe" in his opinion.

Lastly, the government flatly refused to release any information on the powers it would grant to the Voice and the processes that would be used for operation if the referendum succeeded. A number of reports were available, but these were never endorsed by the government. So we were voting on a principle loaded with implications and no idea where it would lead.

That's history.

Microsoft and Apple should really get together (Where is Steve Jobs when they need him)

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Smith) — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:18:00 +0000

It's May 2013. Apple is becoming a follower rather than leader in the innovation stakes. Microsoft is still puzzled and wandering where past glories have gone. Unless either can change the game - change the rules - they will go the way of countless other tech companies.

Where is there hope? Well, it's in the ability for someone to make 1 + 1 = 7. Steve Jobs had it. He saw a mouse driven computer and could see the possibilities. He was the most enthusiastic guy in the room. Others saw problems - he saw possibilities.

I'm not a game console type of guy - but have a look at Microsoft's Kinect technology in this Youtube video. The technology is great, and brings us closer to HAL9001 computer interactions. It's really wasted on a game console.

So what's the best way to really use Microsoft's Kinect - to build the technology into everyday devices and lifestyle? I don't know. But Steve Jobs would have.

If Apple have anyone with real innovative, risk taking, wide vision thinking, then they should get together with Microsoft to make something as remarkable as the iPhone was in 2007.

Anti-SPAM Adventures with Postfix

noreply@blogger.com (Gregory Smith) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:45:00 +0000

You may remember that 2004 and 2005 were the years of the email virus. 2007 and 2008 are definitely the years of SPAM email.

I run a small home server with Postfix. It just does email for my self and immediate family members - about 12 or so accounts. It gets about 400 SPAM emails a day. This takes some filtering. What's interesting is how SPAM is changing.

Initially we had direct SPAM - a server would send out thousands (or millions of emails. These were easily blocked by IP address. Then we had open relay SPAM - an internet search would see what mail servers were mis-configured for relaying and emails would be directed through that server. Again reasonably easy to block, even so some legitimate emails might have been blocked.

Now we have zombie SPAM - virus infected computers are transformed into mail senders. You will see today that an IP will just send SPAM once and then you'll never see it again (presumably the owner sees his PC melting down and gets it fixed). So you can't block by IP because it's different all the time.

Email programs like Outlook and others try to filter SPAM on content (what the email actually says) or the sender email address. These are becoming more ineffective because the sender email address is made up and different every time, and content is so simple it's hard to filter (e.g. how do you filter something like: "she will feel better".

Fortunately much of the current type of SPAM can be filtered by a mail server (or more correctly an MTA) such as Postfix. However you need to know a bit about the email protocol (SMTP) and how it works.

Simply put, a sending computer (a client) sends an IP request to a mail server. After the IP conversation is started, the client should introduce itself with a HELO (or EHLO) command and it's name. It then identifies who the email sender is (e.g. MAIL FROM fred@fred.com) and who is to get the email (RCPT TO sue@sue.com).

The sending computer can be any random infected PC trying to act like a mail server, but it still has an IP address. This IP address can be looked up using reverse DNS to resolve a host name. Often the name will come up something like 211-34-56-78.dhcp.domain.com. Now a proper mail server will not have a name with "dhcp" in it. Proper email servers are unlikely to have host names with "cable" or "ppp" or "cpe" or "dynamic" or "adsl" in them. So if the ISP has configured reverse DNS correctly for his clients, such fake hosts can be pretty quickly filtered out.

If the DNS is not configured directly, a reverse DNS lookup will come up "unknown". Some significant companies (e.g. Commonwealth Bank in Australia) send email from servers with incorrect reverse DNS settings. In this case you can use Postfix access to allow IPs from email senders you know are genuine, and block others that are "unknown".

You can also block on the name announced in the HELO command. If an email uses HELO fred.com, Postfix can look up to see if fred.com actually really exists. About half the SPAM uses incorrect HELO statements that are easily filtered.

My next filtering stage is a custom filter (written in bash) with a whitelist of sender names and then a list of bad words and phrases. The whitelist of senders allows the badlist of words to be quite brutal because whitelisted senders will not have their emails filtered. Only unlisted senders are subjected to this filter. For instance, a badword is "Megadick". An email containing this word will be filtered if the sender is not on the whitelist. However if auntie jones sent an email with that word in it, that email will get through because auntie.jones@mydomain.com is in my whitelist.

All in all I have 7 stages of SPAM filtering - client checks, HELO checks, sender checks, postfix header checks, postfix body checks, postfix mime header checks, and my own filter script. The occasional SPAM email will still get through. But not for long. I'm on a mission !!!!!

For those that are interested - from /etc/postfix/main.cf:


# Following works on IP and resolved host
smtpd_client_restrictions = permit_mynetworks,
 check_client_access hash:/etc/postfix/access,
 check_client_access regexp:/etc/postfix/client_helo_checks.regexp,
 reject_unknown_client,
 permit

# Following works on string received in HELO
smtpd_helo_required = yes
smtpd_helo_restrictions = permit_mynetworks,
 reject_non_fqdn_hostname,
 check_helo_access regexp:/etc/postfix/client_helo_checks.regexp,
 reject_invalid_hostname,
 reject_unknown_hostname,
 permit

# Following works on MAIL FROM
smtpd_sender_restrictions = permit_mynetworks,
 check_sender_access hash:/etc/postfix/access,
 check_sender_access regexp:/etc/postfix/sender_checks.regexp,
 reject_non_fqdn_sender,
 reject_unknown_sender_domain,
 permit


header_checks = regexp:/etc/postfix/header_checks.regexp

mime_header_checks = regexp:/etc/postfix/mime_header_checks.regexp

body_checks = regexp:/etc/postfix/body_checks.regexp

Cheers,