shaoonb

I'd be interested to see some examples of the far left trying to influence communication platforms.

I've been on the other end of that (taking calls in NZ from Spain and the UK) and agree. From what I can tell, working hours culture is very much the same in New Zealand as it is in France. Those in Spain always seem to be working late to suit NZ schedules, but I don't know if that's a normal thing or just our company.

Tap and hold on the space bar to get something akin to a trackpad to move the caret around.

I once worked under a middle manager who had the policy that any meeting invite with no agenda should be automatically rejected. Sadly they were never able to extend this outside of their department.

Sounds like cars should be the exception rather than the norm.

Moved from Auckland (with fairly weak, unenforced jaywalking laws) to London and I've found that jaywalking is essentially required here due to how slow most pedestrian lights tend to be. Perhaps in places with stronger jaywalking laws, lights are timed in such a way that you don't have to wait too long to cross legally?

> in the UK, off-shore wind is utterly dominant.

This is for political reasons rather than economic or technical ones. Further reducing the cost of on-shore wind relative to off-shore could swing the political argument in favour of on-shore wind.

AdGuard and use the web version of YouTube.

Know anyone who ended up rich thanks to Y2K? Possibly not since chances are they went into early retirement.

macOS 11 still gets another two years of security updates though.

Australia tried, but not as hard as New Zealand.

Don't feel too bad for New Zealand, we're doing alright. We're currently in week 4 of our fourth lockdown (in one city of about 1.5 million people, the rest of the country has much lesser restrictions currently).

Before this we had a seven week nationwide lockdown from March 23 to May 13 2020, and a lockdown in one city for two weeks, August 14 to 30 2020, and a lockdown of three days and then one week in one city in February 2021. Other than this, we've spent a few weeks in alert level 2 (large gatherings banned) and most of the last year and a half in alert level 1 (no meaningful restrictions aside from border controls and masks required on public transport). Over this time, 27 people have died of COVID-19.

Yes our lockdowns have been harsh, but they worked, and thanks to that, we've spent most of our time with less restrictions than the rest of the world and relatively few deaths.

Full details can be found here, (alert levels 3 and 4 are lockdown, level 2 is gathering restrictions and level 1 is no day-to-day restrictions): https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-levels-and-updates/history-of-...

All browsers except Chrome are continuously losing market share too.

Uber and Uberlikes are doing fine here in New Zealand. As long as they can pump money into/scam drivers into being cheaper than taxis they will keep market share.

So what's the use case for this service now that there are fees? Cross border payments? Or is the banking infrastructure in the US so terrible that people would pay to send money in a way that isn't a bank transfer?

A coworker of mine got into trouble when he named a directory ~ and then tried to delete it.

I recall back in the early days (before NZ Covid Tracer was released) we had the same system where every shop had a QR code that linked to its own guestbook type website.

I don't understand this business model. How does taking podcasts (something people are used to getting for free with few or no ads) and breaking the currently open ecosystem there is around them benefit anyone, least of all Spotify themselves?

It may be end to end encrypted, but you've got to remember that the client at each of those ends is controlled by Facebook.

Given the scrutiny on this plane, do you think Boeing would be able to survive as an organisation if another one crashes? I'm surprised they're willing to risk it.

On the other hand, if the mail carrier looked at the content of the message and through some algorithm decided that everyone on your street might want to see it (or more accurately, that if everyone on your street saw it, it might boost their advertising revenue) and put it in every mailbox they could, I think they would shoulder some blame.

The WhatsApp network effect is strongly tied to borders though. Almost no one uses it in New Zealand for example, but a lot of people use Facebook Messenger but it isn't completely dominant like WhatsApp is in some places. I wonder if it ties back to countries that have good value cell phone plans? Even the very cheapest plans here come with unlimited SMS and it's been that way since smartphones were first taking off.

I personally feel that part of the benefit of the office is sometimes being able to unite against the common enemy that is your employer.

I managed to return to New Zealand recently (currently in mandatory quarantine) and it's amazing how different the job market looks after just one year in a bigger city (London).

Why does Enfield council need to use adtech tracking to optimise their ads for other services? It's not like they are competing with anyone to deliver the most efficient services by fractions of a percent. Surely basic keyword targeted or completely untargeted ads are all they need.

> would a FAANG company hire someone who doesn't actively tweet?

I have friends who work at Google who have never tweeted in their life.