Comments by "Andy Dee" (@AndyViant) on "American Reacts to 10 Things Americans Don't Like About Australia" video.

  1. 1) Varies a lot by state here too. Winter in Queensland the sun can still be brutal, but it won't be in say Victoria. But summer, it's brutal everywhere and capable of melting your thongs. 2) We did experiment with Pay At The Pump but the margins on fuel are pretty low (even with the huge Aussie fuel prices), so I guess the opportunity to upsell is too critical for the business. A few places still use it, but very very rare - usually in 24 hour places. Fuel is much more expensive in all of the world bar maybe the OPEC nations. Americans have no idea how much of an outlier they are on this. 3) There are turn left on red rules, but only where marked. Australia however has lots of left turn arrows and slip lanes, which mitigates this a bit. And roundabouts instead of traffic lights in many places. Guess we're concerned about pedestrian injuries which were certainly a big thing in trials where I live, because people might look for cars but not pedestrians and cyclists. 4) No free refills? There really is no thing as a free lunch, so your meal with it's free refill basically has an averaged cost of everyone's refills whether you take one or not. Some Hungry Jack's (Burger King) and Taco Bell do still do it I believe, but not anywhere else I have seen. 5) Speed Cameras vary from well signposted in advance to plain old entrapment. Yes, you shouldn't speed, but there are levels of enforcement that you can't even imagine in the states, like point to point speed cameras. Radar detectors are heavily fined and totally illegal too although they mainly used LIDAR now. Victoria is insane on this. 6) Internet speeds ARE that bad. Seriously. We have fraudband not broadband. His uploads shouldnt be that bad, though. Maybe he's on a cheap plan, or maybe it's where Youtube hosts his videos. My phone uploads photos quicker than his computer it seems, and that often drops back to 3g, so he's gotta find a new internet provider. 7) Yes. This sucks. No question. There used to be sauce bottles at the pie shop but not anymore (although it's usually only 20 cents not 2 dollars). Sauce is still free on the Bunnings snags though so we soldier on. 8) Given the government pays your medical bills for accidents (unlike the US) there is some sensible reason why this is the case, even as a motorcycle rider. In the case of bicycles, however, the discouragement it causes for cyclists and other forms of active mobility might make the healthcare costs increase due to obesity, diabetes etc as people choose helmet free options like cars and public transport. 9) Health again. Cigarettes are definitely highly taxed to discourage them, because of the massive health costs. Alcohol less so, because it's more culturally acceptable. 10) He's gotta go to the outback. Horseflies are really painful, btw.
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  2. You can get synchronous DSL too, although that's expensive and more for business customers. As you point out we need the download more than the upload. We've been doing this since the days of 1200/75 modems so this is hardly new. I'm moving house shortly and can get 250 Mbps download and 37.5 Mbps upload. That's about 4-5 times standard broadband speed.
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