I remember little about the prequels but for some reason I remember Darth Grevious dying by slipping on a banana peel. Consistant line of cool villains dying in stupid ways in star wars post 80s. Boba Fetts demise was silly I guess.

Drain the swamp. When are we getting a wall to keep non Pakeha out? We are not far from this with these populists.

Yeh people learn and it becomes normal which is fine. Ebay is as bizarre to me. Not hate, more a morbid fascination that things so maze-like to navigate can also be successful. Could be semi cultural as well. I’ve noticed this being the way in other US platforms with a similar legacy. I’ve also being (attempting to) subvert tracking for quite a while so maybe that’s working and its less useful as a result lol. I’m lucky in a sense that their corporation isn’t so strong where I live so theres more choice (ironically I may actually have less choice). Its annoying when they have the monopoly on a given product, but it’s also possible just to go without the shiny thing.

Thanks for this. I’ve only used Amazon a few times and was always baffled at the train wreck of its chaotic layout / ux. I had to buy something there once and it was such a process it was like being asked to leave the store before paying. Thought at the time it must be down to legacy and new features being showhorned around ancient web1.0 history, its success being its burden with customers having to learn how to use the thing. Price fixing scam is what I will think of it now, while continuing to avoid it.

I did also and was astounded. More EV brands and retail stores for them than for mobile phones and gadgets in the malls. I counted 14 brands in one mall. Like EVs are a fashion accessory. And I saw car designs for sale and on the steet that looked like what we usually see only as early concept art. not high tier of market either. It is an ultra-competitive race to the bottom , There must be several new factories and brands opening every week, and maybe the same or more shutting down. some of the bells and whistles being thrown in are pretty funny. Little robotic characters ala alexa for your car that sits on the dash with led face responding and moving to commands. half side doors being an LED screen for some reason (mainly to atrract potential buyers in the malls I thought) . The european, tesla and other US evs alongside were very very plain. Whether all of this is a good thing is another matter.

…and it opens its mouth , the sound of a 56k modem connecting screams forth at ear piercing volume. With this It scans the brainwaves of the helpless victims in the room , desperately looking for yet more free information to consume, with which to maintain itself in its dying weeks of this cursed hype cycle from which it emerged. “Please subscribe”, it then pleads.

And targetted ads aren’t that much more effective than context based. So the internet has been compromised, misinformation has run rife, and platforms hijacked to threaten democratic nations so some corporations can have 6% more effective advertising. What a deal. I believe thats the approx effectiveness difference.

But the old farts are growing in numbers, so to what degree were conservatives always that way, in other words are people becoming newly/more conservative about immigrants in their old age, or will the more liberal young ones of today bring this more open attitude into their old age , lessening conservatism over time?

Yep, when ive resorted to yt directly on librewolf it usually freezes/buffers and tab needs refreshing every 5-10mins or so of vid. Sometimes it’s ok. Pretty inconsistent. I use ublock and sponsor block with librewolf . Usually i use invidious or yattee, Which have their own issues also playing whackamole with the giant

This is anthropomorphic thinking. But in order to express the concept that aggressions and other interactions could increase toward species who have built their overinflated infrastructures across migration paths, territories or outright destroyed swathes of habitat of other species, yeh they probably are hella angry at these stupid hairless apes.

Yes it was good with much improvement of services and competition since. My memory of the various issues may be blurry now but their was alot of unhappiness back then with Telecom. Corporations will always trend toward monopoly unless regulated against. The telco duopoly we had for some time after the networks taxpayers paid for in the first place was privatised, were barely in competition and they had a vested interest in keeping it that way of course. Unbundling the copper network took too long, and telecom had an interest in fibre rollout being slow early on. It was a painful time and eye opening when travelling to ‘developing’ nations in the mid 2000s to experience high speed virtually open access to ‘broadband’ as it was called when we were still begging for better than adsl (or was it still dial up?) to ‘surf the net’ as a chorus technician lazily called it after finally getting my service going once when I was trying to get a small software business communicating with overseas customers.

Was another entity Kordia? Or did that break from nzbc/tvnz/rnz ? I’ve lost track.

Gladly things are pretty good with speeds and access for what I need now. I have empathy for my friends in colleagues in Aus and some other ‘developed’ nations.

The google situation is massive and they need to be broken up, their mafia styled control of the ad auction and data harvesting industries needs to be cut down. They also have alot to answer for with how they’ve damaged our access to information which hopefully this will start to address. They’ve mutated the internet to fit their image in order to profit when the actual value of their product to their customers (advertisers) is highly questionable. Probably beyond the remit for this case , but a start. High hopes for the case, but stakes are huge for them and they’re powerful.

Assuming this is sarcasm, I’m fine with being reminded of the CCP’s continuing disregard for international law, basic law of HK, and their pissing all over the joint declaration. Whether or not we saw it coming, its bad for the people of HK, China and the world. And it hasn’t been two decades since the regression got underway with this current clique of psychopaths anyway. Things were somewhat optimistic 10 years ago on both sides of the border. There were concerns, but the agreed arrangement which they’ve now torn up in order to turn HK into a dystopia, was working. Unfortunately positive human development is incompatible with insecure authoritarians. All of these developments are sad.

Thanks for that info regarding the NZ initiative. I have vague recollection of the teachers association being alarmed that they weren’t consulted or a part of the group forming or approving curriculum. I think it was bypassing the ministry all together.

Further background, and it was regarding english curriculum-

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/521737/leaked-emails-on-rewriting-curriculum-show-process-not-followed-teaching-association

Indeed. Making that initial decision even more of a forced decision toward the expensive upsell. Its evil. And wasteful as you said.

Thats been my thinking too. Degrade gov services so they struggle to provide what they’re meant to and the public blames the service itself, with the reactionary result being to defund further. ‘Drain the swamp’. No good will come from this and it will affect all parts of society including the wealthy - their wealth is built on the backs of the rest of us. Typical short term selfish thinking. But yes , the less advantaged will suffer first and these pricks will ignore with glee , or blame them for not ‘helping themselves like I did’.

Yeh I get that. Its treated as if its an upgrade - a sales upsell to a different unit I guess, rather than an upgrade to the literal unit the customer is receiving. Yep objectionable all round.

Yeh can upgrade them at purchase. From 256gb storage to 512gb will only cost you one kidney.

Good stuff Posties and union for backing them up. Social responsibility in our jobs is something we should all employ at all times. Not just when we get home. And not just doing what the boss (or customer) tells us to do , as that is never a defence to taking part in unethical (including hateful) actions. Gives me hope that we still have strong moral cohesion in our country, despite what the likes of Seymour is actively trying to do - divide.

Thanks for letting me know about Zuck’s behaviour in Hawaii . I was unaware, and should be as a person of the pacific. What a disgusting imperialist culture destroyer and pig. As with many first nation cultures, to Polynesians land is sacred and we are a part of it , maybe guardians of it , more so than any possible ownership over it which is a ridiculous nonsensical concept. Was it not enough that he has compromised international democracy with his extremely dubious contributions to humanity. These sociopathic siliconvalley billionaires really are a scourge. This isn’t exclusive to tech though.

As for your overall point, I never particularly admired any corporate characters in tech. All in all I believe the whole sector is overvalued and its importance in life is way over emphasised - the social platforms, and google particularly are overinflated advertising businesses and so of course their self importance has been trumpeted loudly…by themselves and everyone who hitched their giddy advertising budgets to the illusory service provided. Barely as effective as traditional advertising of a century ago. They’ve constructed a panopticon we have trouble looking away from - they even want us to wear goggles to shoe us banners wr cant look away from, to sell us their own useless trinkets.

I believe we should think of the so called tech industry as merely a single component in whatever sector of life it happens to provide a product or service to. Not as a single industry but as a small department of weirdos running say the plumbing (though actual plumbing is arguably more important) with a dingy office in the basement. The cEOs of these are merely the hated bloated bosses of the ones really doing the work. But we should also judge their utility objectively. Sure some aspects are useful in some specific ways. But how useful really? What has the net gain been to humanity of gadget x, or platform Y , or pseudo-sub-industry z? What real energy has it consumed in order to solve what problem(s)? What has the human cost been? They don’t think in these terms but we actual humans should.

By the way I work in a tech area, in a small way. I like to think I speak from an angle of some experience with the way I’ve seen some behave, and the irreverant way some customers treat their ‘vendors’. The aura of the tech world is a cult-like bubble which each of these corporations create for themselves , and fledgling startups clamour for, and when clustered as one concept adds up to a massive bubble of hot stinking gas begging to pop.

Unfortunately concepts of value in our economy rarely match their true usefulness. The market is always correct and self corrects, apparently. I look forward to it, but the actual steps forward can be hard to appreciate with all the noise in that hype filled graph.

Also, and this isn’t exclusive to tech, corporations behave like psychopaths due to their narrow goals , profit being the main one, so the characters who float to the top of this septic system of single minded psychopathy tend to be sociopathic due to what they have needed to do to get there. Perhaps for tech this is more a late stage thing, in contrast to our memories of the romantic early days having been more about scrappy boffins soldering things in their parents garage. Now its about whipping up misconceptions in order to raise copious amounts of (mispent) capital in order to make…a smartphone app based ‘platform’ that provides solutions to problems we don’t have. So long as the pitch had “A.I” in each sentence.

So yeh, that this environment has resulted in some psychos with a disproportionate amount of money (and therefore political clout) is not a surprise.

To varying degrees if we live in democracies, we are all responsible for creating these monsters. It’s our responsibility to do something about it. Such as raising awareness -as you have done, choosing alternatives, thinking about whether a tech option really is necessary in your life (e.g choosing Amazon over your local independent bookstore), in your workplace (if you have any power here: atleast expressing an alternative method, or solution to your colleagues or managers), and holding tech providers to some level of account at the least with your skepticism. And obviously boycotting what you can. Also remaining hyper aware of the scammy nature of much of the so called sector in its business practices.

I never trusted Tom from myspace as a default insta friend, but he now does seem quaint . But the tech industry is not really an industry and it definitely isn’t the world.

All good questions. I’m guessing RNZ may have the police association on the blower this week. See what they have to say. After last week’s exchange with the (former) gun lobbyist MP accusing the police assoc of being a lobby group (lol), I’ll be getting the popcorn out.