Scott Weston

About Me

I’m a Ballarat based IT professional with over 20 years industry experience, 5 of which employed at Google. The full details of my employment history is available on my LinkedIn profile.

I donate time and experience to a local non-profit (The Ballarat Hackerspace) that provides the Ballarat region with a workshop and promotes STEM fields. Most days I can be found working out of the Lab 79 co-working facility in Ballarat.

Non-profits

If you are a local^[1] non-profit or community group then I am very keen to help you out with small/medium sized projects (providing the organisation is completely nondiscriminatory towards race, gender and sexual identity/preference). Non-profits and community groups do amazing work and I hate to see them over spend on IT when that money could be better spent providing their services to the community.

[1] within approximately 30 minutes drive from Ballarat

Contact

Feel free to contact me, the best ways are:

[email protected] (PGP Key)
0448 999 690 (Signal App)
@sctwstn
@sctwstn

Marriage equality

• If Australia hasn’t passed this by 2019 I will be super angry with our government

Secularism

• Religion is not a force for good
• Religion should not receive government subsidies in form of tax free status
• Religion has no place in education
• Religion teaches people to be satisfied with not understanding the world

N.B.: I am not interested in debating or discussing the above statements for the same reason I wouldn’t enter into debates on the topics of unicorns, leprechauns or pixies.

STEM and Startups

• Improved STEM teaching especially in regional areas where kids don’t have good access and exposure to technology
• Better support for tech startups in regional areas
  • Faster NBN roll-out
  • We need a gigabit capable NBN, what kind of backwards Edwardian thinking says copper speeds are acceptable in the 21st century? FTTP, anything else is living in the past.
  • Funding for coworking and tech incubators
    • These will create the jobs of the future

Effective Altruism

• Inspired by Peter Singer and Will MacAskill I give all income above $40,000 per year away (inflation and cost of living adjusted to 2009)
  • as of 2016 this stands at anything above $46,715 (via the RBA inflation calculator)
  • I prioritise giving to local secular charities that do not discriminate towards race, gender or sexual identity/preference
  • more details:
    • How to live happy
    • TEDTalk from 2013
    • GiveWell

Renewable energy

• Australia should have large solar installations
• Australia should have more wind farms
• We need grid scale battery installations instead of gas peakers
• Fairer feed-in-tariff for residents with solar
• Tax incentives for purchase of 100% electric vehicles
  • remove LCT on 100% electric vehicles
  • lower registration costs
• Create more jobs in this sector
  • create incentives for companies like Tesla to build cars and batteries in Australia
• Australia could be the first entirely renewably powered continent!
  • This is entirely achievable with current technology
  • This would employ and train an incredibly large number of people and get us innovating again

Universal basic income

• Self driving trucks, buses, taxis and cars are coming very soon and we’re currently ignoring the impact this will have on employment
• Automation is coming faster than people can be retrained, we need to be thinking of solutions now
• We are a perfectly sized population to trial replacing existing welfare with a UBI

Space

• Where is our space program?! At the end of September 2017 the Australian government finally announced plans to create a space agency!
• Let’s use our space agency to inspire our kids to do amazing things!

I own and drive a Tesla Model S, it is primarily charged from the solar panels on my roof or the renewable energy from Tesla Superchargers. If you have questions about Tesla ownership feel free to contact me, fair warning – I will talk your ear off.

Some Tesla related hacks that I’ve done can be found on HCKR.IO

If any of the above inspires you to buy a Tesla you can use my referral link to save yourself some money ($1400 in Australia, ~$1000 USD elsewhere) and get unlimited supercharging for your Tesla: http://ts.la/scott1272 (you definitely want to use a referral code).