My current long-expiry mobile plan runs out this month, and has been discontinued. The options with the same provider (Woollies) are significantly more expensive, so I'm looking elsewhere.

My needs are minimal. An occasional phone call or text message. A few GB/month data would suffice. Any network is fine.

Because I don't need much, I don't want to spend much. Less than $200/year is preferable.

The best deal I'm seeing at the moment is OnePass $149/365 days . Do you know of anything better?

Coin for scale.

This tool thing came with new door handles. There were no instructions about what to do with it, and it was not needed for the installation of the door handles.

Any ideas?

While the region is no stranger to grassfires, Natimuk itself has never burned.

But on Friday, January 9, on the back of days of intense heat, a ferocious, fast-moving grass fire flattened 17 homes and tore through 8,000-hectares of land.

Fire crews could not match the speed of the blaze as it ran straight towards the small town.

The anatomy of this fire offers a glimpse into a new and faster kind of bushfire — and the growing vulnerability of communities as climate change fuels dangerous conditions.

It's worth opening the article for the graphics. Scary stuff, how fast this fire moved.

I'm looking for recommendations.

I have run Linux on my own computers off and on for the last 10 years. I'm not an advanced user, but I'm comfortable enough playing around with different distros and settings to find a good fit for myself and my own devices, and problem-solve as needed.

But now with the end of Windows 10 looming, I need to upgrade a family member's computer to Linux. This device is only used by people whose attitude toward computers is "if it doesn't just work, it's too hard and I can't engage". So this needs to be something that both is not going to break on its own (e.g. while doing automatic updates) and also won't be accidentally broken by the users. As well as not being too steep of a learning curve for Windows users. (Their needs are uncomplicated - mostly just LibreOffice and Firefox, both of which they already use.)

Mint is often recommended for inexperienced Windows refugees. But I've had several things break in the process of getting Mint installed and updated on this machine. That wouldn't be an issue if it were my own computer, but it's not filling me with confidence that this is going to meet the ongoing "just works" requirement for this device. There's no way I'm going to be able to handle long-distance tech support if things break more than once in a blue moon.

Which other distros would you recommend for this use case?

Thanks in advance.

A property we looked at recently has this electric hot water tank. There's no date on it, but it's obviously quite old and the realtor says to him it looks like an 80s model.

Common wisdom and information I can find online says that you're doing really well if you get 20 years out of a hot water tank (10-15 years is a more realistic lifespan).

So... How is this tank still functioning? And if we were to buy this house, should we expect that we'd have to replace this basically right away?

My 2yo nephew and his parents are moving to Latvia from overseas. I'd like to send the kid birthday and Christmas presents each year, and usually the easiest way to do this is by ordering a gift online within his country/region (I live in Australia and international shipping is expensive).

What are some European online shops that ship to Latvia? At his current age I'm mostly interested in books and toys, but may need more variety as he gets older. Bonus if the store offers gift certificates, as that may be the best option until they get settled.

Thanks!

In my region of Australia, there are active community groups on Facebook but not really (to my knowledge) any other online spaces.

I want to move away from Facebook, but unless that local stuff exists elsewhere I can't fully quit. I'm involved in my local community garden, so I've been thinking I could set them up on a second platform (in addition to Facebook). It's only one piece of the community, but it would be something, y'know?

So I'm wondering - where does your local community garden have an online presence? What other platforms might be useful for this sort of group?

(We currently have a Facebook page open to the local community, a little-used website, and email and FB Messenger chats for members.)