Xcf456

@Xcf456@lemmy.nz

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Xcf456 ,

I don't use a lot of cash, but I like to keep some on me cause it comes in handy every so often.

I am switching back more and more to eftpos over my credit card though, as so many places are either not accepting credit cards and/or contactless, or adding the extra charge that irks me (yes, I do blame the banks/payment providers for that, not the businesses).

Xcf456 ,

Oh that's a pain, yeah there's a bit of a mix of places where you have to confirm the surcharge on the machine and others that just have a sign and you get automatically charged for credit/contactless.

It's all a bit of a mess and I can see that could lead some to just go back to cash, although there'll be other reasons I'm sure

Xcf456 ,

Asshole government making life harder and costing the health system more money in the long term.

Xcf456 ,

On a related note, this is the first I'm hearing of beeper.

Is the main draw just being able to combine messaging across different apps into one, or are there other benefits too?

Xcf456 ,

Oh damn that's a shame, I use Facebook calls quite a lot. Sounds like for me it could be one app to rule them all just resulting in yet another app on top the others lol.

Xcf456 ,

Right I see, could be useful if you're constantly switching between conversations on multiple platforms I guess. Which come to think of it I am. I only have the Instagram app because typing goes nuts when I try to message on their web interface.

Way back when I was running Ubuntu (like over a decade ago) there were a chat application that would combine Facebook chat, MSN (lol) and a bunch of others and it was very handy to have it right there on the desktop.

Xcf456 ,

Yes I think so, that rings a bell. Something like that would be cool, I downloaded beeper earlier to give it a go and it immediately wants an email and privacy policy and I assume collects data on what clients you use and so on.

Something like pigdin that's just a front end that doesn't phone home anywhere or collect your data and you just log in through it would be awesome.

Xcf456 , (edited )

Oh no. Great that the government abruptly cancelled the new ferries with no plan to replace these ones that keep having massive failures. This one is the only rail ferry too

Xcf456 ,

It's not supposed to look like that

Xcf456 ,

That's not a thing at all. SOEs face investigations like any other company. Kiwibank for example is getting prosecuted at the moment by the commerce commission for fair trading act breaches

Xcf456 ,

Ah right that's fair enough, SOEs definitely are a blindspot from an OIA perspective. I thought you meant in comparison to a private company, which would be the same if not worse.

I think in this case a combination of the huge public interest and the heavily regulated environment transpower operates under the causes will come out. But I guess we'll see

Xcf456 ,

The Prime Minister is a C-word

Xcf456 ,

I'll say it. He's a real Clown

Xcf456 ,

Adjusting for population it seems to be about the same - population has gone from about 4.3 million in 2013 to 5 point whatever million is it now.

I think it's cold comfort though that every time we get a downturn like this, we do austerity that makes things even worse and let key sectors like construction just collapse and workers relocate to places where they actually try and do counter cyclical support.

Xcf456 ,

Lisa needs braces

Xcf456 ,

That's so cool, like a sailboat/yacht? I love the idea of getting a liveaboard boat and doing something wild like sailing across the Pacific in it.

I say this as someone with exactly zero sailing experience, but the idea going such a huge distance using mostly the wind would be such an adventure.

Xcf456 ,

Given businesses are effectively run like dictatorships, and the public sector orgs emulate privates wherever possible, I'd say good practice in this space is extremely rare.

Xcf456 ,

Genuine worker involvement in these decisions from the start, not just consulting on a fait accompli.

Ultimately that means proper structured worker representation through unions that can meet management at their level. Germany for example, has union representation on company boards. Worker owned cooperatives are another model.

Xcf456 ,

Thanks for all your work running this place, Dave. You do a great job

Xcf456 ,

Not all of them will, they've had no post election honeymoon and polling support has crashed to the point it's 50/50 this govt would get back in.

A fair chunk of people appeared to have voted for them to address cost of living like they said they would, not the endless stream of corruption were seeing now.

Xcf456 ,

Cuts. The Government demands cuts.

I don't know why the media buys into their framing so readily when it's obvious to everyone they're slashing services to give hand outs to the wealthy

Xcf456 ,

Look up the Māori King movement, it's the same idea.

Regardless, I think as much hate as ACT gets for this - it seems obvious that clarity on the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi is required so that every New Zealander knows where they stand (legally speaking) and we can move on as a country.

What does this even mean? You can't just 'move on as a country' if one side tries to unilaterally rewrite their obligations to an agreement. That is what ACT is trying to do, the so-called party of property rights.

Xcf456 ,

Again though, how does one side unilaterally deciding how they are going to interpret it clarify anything. That's how we've ended up where we are today - decades of breaches by the Crown.

It's not impossible to tell but it can take time and effort to determine, that's the function of bodies like the Waitangi tribunal you mention.

What Maori specific things do you think would be lost?

Xcf456 , (edited )

Edit: I didn't realise National said they'd keep these before the election. When Bishop got asked about it he said "that was then, this is now". What a bunch of fucking crooks.

I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand these types of subsidies ultimately just drive up prices further, same as when interest rates go down. People can pay more so prices move up.

On the other hand, in the absence of doing anything to drive landlords out of the market (and of course this government is doing the opposite of that), removing support like this just gives them yet another leg up to speculate on housing at the expense of people who just want a place of their own to live in.

Xcf456 ,

A Google search on it pulls up a couple of studies, one from Germany, one from Australia appearing to show opposite results lol (also some commentary from the NZ Treasury, but not backed up from a quick scroll). It'd be interesting to know if someone's evaluated our ones.

https://www.google.com/search?q=buyer%20subsidies%20house%20prices%20effect%20study

So I guess it goes to my earlier point about feeling mixed about it. I'd suspect they have a far greater equalising effect when the market isnt so constrained that the subsidies can just can be capitalised into prices, so it might depend on the broader market a bit. And so pairing them with a massive state house building programme and allowing density with good public transport should go alongside. You know, all the stuff this government has cancelled, cut or rolled back ;)

Xcf456 ,

All I know about this company is they constantly scrape my home webserver with requests for some reason.

Xcf456 ,

Fair enough. Looking into the ip addresses in my logs a lot of them seem to be doing the same thing actually.

Xcf456 ,

Not mentioned in this article - our corrupt, self interested government abruptly cancelling a bunch of much needed infrastructure projects when they came into government, leaving whole sectors in limbo and their workforces leaving for Australia.

Xcf456 ,

Unions effectively lost all legal status and recognition in 1991 with the employment contracts act and they have never fully recovered.

Since then it's come back a little with the Employment Relations Act 2000, which is in place today, but there is no sector level bargaining (the new govt immediately repealed the fair pay agreement legislation the last govt passed), it's incredibly easy for employers to pass on collective agreement conditions and sympathy strikes are unlawful (I think this might be the case now in Aus too?). In fact all strikes are unlawful except in bargaining for a collective and for health and safety.

Unions are mostly confined to public sector roles these days, although there are a few in other sectors.

Xcf456 ,

Yes, but don't let the National party be the limit of thinking about what's possible. They won't be in govt forever

Xcf456 ,

Yeah but that's not forever. Big shifts like this don't always happen over night, they often take years of groundwork so you gotta dare to dream in the meantime.

Sidenote, this govt being one term is entirely possible. It's where labour/nz first was heading before covid and they decided to actually act and materially do things.

I think we'll see an increasingly oscillating political landscape as our various crises pile up (climate change, cost of living, infrastructure deficit), and govts fail to actually do anything to address them in any meaningful way.

Xcf456 ,

I think if this becomes a reality we are entirely fucked, much as we were in the 1880s when wool prices collapsed and a decade of economic depression followed.

There were a whole bunch of incredibly large land holdings up to their eyeballs in debt that kind of just hobbled on for a while, but not able to actually adapt. Ultimately, the government implemented the land tax to break them up to make way for more productive activities on smaller farms. I see a few parallels here.

Xcf456 ,

Oh yeah for sure there is, but whether structurally, institutionally we'll actually do that in a proactive way, I'm not so sure. Dairy farms carry quite a lot of debt so their business models are pretty locked in to an extent.

I wonder when they say sugar as a feedstock, do they mean like sugarcane or is it any sort of crop given everything we eat breaks down into sugars in the end. I wish these articles would link the reports theyre reporting on..

Xcf456 ,

Yet...? 😬

Xcf456 ,

I think there's some truth to this but at the same time Labour had a horrible string of this sort of thing this time last year, as did National across 2020/2021. ACT is a rolling dumpster fire at all times. That speaks to some of the pressure not being unique to the Greens.

Of course there's a special sort of nastiness that comes out when its the Greens because they profess to hold principles, and of course when they slip, that's worse than just not trying at all. NZ hates a 'try hard' after all.

Xcf456 ,

Being an advocate for genuine transport options in this country would drive anyone mad imo, I don't know how they do it for years on end.

The most basic infrastructure to enable public and active transport is continually challenged, subject to predatory delay and actual sabotage (tacks thrown on cycle paths, including this one).

Wellington seems particularly terrible for this, a city of nimbys and vested interests that want nothing to change, ever, because they already got theirs. But it doesn't really work because every year things decay a little more, the traffic gets worse and so on.

Xcf456 OP ,

You can be found liable for defamation just by repeating what was said, so yeah RNZ removed the references and none of the other stories about it have published what he said https://defamationupdate.co.nz/legal-guide-publication/

Xcf456 OP ,

I dunno, depends what 'repeating' it means. It sounds like just reporting on it might be a defense, but I could see a big loophole if you couldn't be touched for effectively picking up and amplifying the original claim with some qualifying words around it.

But I think you're right that they won't want to find out in court in any case.

Yes. The law applies what is known as the ‘repetition rule’ (or ‘republication rule’). Under this rule, the liability of a person who repeats a rumour or allegation is no different to the person who first made the statement. This includes rumours or allegations that come from reputable sources like the Police or news sites. This aspect of the law has some wriggle room when it comes to establishing defences. But for at least the element of publication, anyone who repeats a defamatory statement is liable.

Xcf456 OP ,

Nah that's not enough apparently

What if the publisher just reporting what someone else said?

The rule is: whoever reports it is liable for it. Even if it’s from an apparently reputable and knowledgeable source, such as the police. The publisher has to prove the truth of the sting of the article, remember. That’s what the readers or viewers will take it to mean. It’s not enough for the publisher to prove that it has reported the accusation accurately. It must be able to prove that the accusation itself is true.

What if the publisher writes “alleged”?

This is just a fancy way of saying “I’m reporting what someone else has said” – so the same answer applies. Sprinkling a story with the word “alleged” or “rumoured” doesn’t insulate the publisher from a defamation lawsuit. The publisher is still passing on someone else’s allegation or gossip.

https://www.medialawjournal.co.nz/?page_id=273

Xcf456 ,

Maybe it'd be good, but this just feels like the Boris Johnson method of:

  • announce some fantastical massive project that'll never get built but will pull some headlines for a bit
  • funnel some public money to cronies for contracting services to do a business case
  • quietly shelve it until it's time to pull out something else for the same effect.

If they want to reduce traffic congestion, expand public transport and make it more reliable and cheaper.

Xcf456 ,

And the settings ever since windows 10, like the main interface is the slick new style but it doesn't provide all settings info, so it ends up back into the old layout/control panel that traces back to windows 95 (but is still better). It's all just a mess as far as ui goes.

I switched to Linux again for my home laptop last year and pretty much use it full time. The only major sticking point for me is ms office - libreoffice feels like office 2003 and you can never be confident a libreoffice docx is going to look the same when someone opens what you've sent them in ms office.

Plus when I troubleshoot in Linux I can use the terminal and feel like a real hackerman™ (even if I am mostly just copying stuff off Google).

Xcf456 ,

Ah yes I have heard of onlyoffice, it looks great. I had assumed you need a backend given how much it pitches it as an online tool thing so hadn't gotten around to it. If you can run it locally like a ms office type thing I might check it out soon.

Xcf456 ,

I like the idea of a weekly megathread type thing.

I agree that the daily threads don't seem well suited to the number of people on here. One of the good things about here is that conversations can carry on across multiple days, unlike reddit was where stuff got buried very quickly.

But having a daily thing sorta sends the message that that thread is done after that day. Sometimes I'll read something from an old daily and think of replying, but then think "nah its moved on" because of this.

Xcf456 ,

It doesnt have to be large amounts of complete non attendance. Regular attendance is defined as attending for more than 90 per cent of the term. Terms are about 10 weeks so 50 days, to be counted in the non attendance figures you have to miss five days in a term. A couple of illnesses can easily knock kids under that, not that there aren't more long term absences for other reasons as well.

On illness, term 2 2022 is the middle of our biggest covid outbreak when omicron got in and all the rules were being relaxed. Attendance has gone up again since then but is still lower than pre covid. Seems cynical that Seymour would pick this period as the end point when these stats were being collected until term 3 last year.

PM Luxon announces nine government targets for 2030 ( www.interest.co.nz )

Posting mainly for the very good first comment on this article, which queries how they might actually achieve 50,000 fewer jobseeker recipients in six years when the population will grow, many recipients are either already working and can't get more hours, or have health conditions limiting or preventing them from working....

Iwi Chairs Forum reps pull out of anti-racism plan due to 'continued racist rhetoric' ( www.rnz.co.nz )

"Our government has signalled changes to the plan, including a reduced focus on institutional racism and colonial racism against Māori, which would render the plan pointless as all instances of personal racism result from the institutional racism of our society," Ngata said....

Xcf456 ,

Why can't it be about anti-racism for other groups, and be about systemic and colonial racism? It doesn't have to be one or the other but gee this government sure loves playing the two off against each other.

It reads a lot like the kind of colonial and institutional racism theyre wanting to address in the first place.

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