One argument against New Zealand moving to four year parliaments is that there is no second chamber. By all means have a longer term, but in the absence of more regular mandate refreshes, add some checks and balances.
I’ve been using Bluesky for three whole days now and no-one has given me a Mastodon-style scolding for not doing (or doing) something that is far from obvious but seems to offend.
Is it me being fussy or do other people think that news media, including specialist tech news media, doesn’t do a great job reporting AI? Specifically, there’s often not enough explaining and background information for someone coming new to a story to get a handle on it.
Hmm.
Just realised if I type BS into my browser address bar, I get Bluesky.
Bennett's hierarchy of freelancing
Poorly defined, open-ended non paying gigs* from difficult clients.
Poorly defined, open-ended non paying gigs.
Poorly defined non-paying gigs.
Non-paying gigs.
Paying gigs.
Paying gigs from regular clients.
Clearly defined paying gigs from regular clients.
Clearly defined, paying gigs from regular clients who pay quickly.
Clearly defined paying gigs from regular clients who pay quickest.
Clearly defined, high paying gigs from regular clients who pay quickest.
- In this context the job was meant to be paid and the client decides not to pay or for some other reason the money never shows up.
If you are interested in my take on the Optus outage that brought much of Australia to a grinding halt, you can catch the replay of my RNZ Nights interview here:
Feedback is welcome.
Hear me on the New Zealand Tech Podcast
I’m on the New Zealand Tech Podcast with Paul Spain.
Talking about the Christchurch Call Summit and whether you need to constantly upgrade your phone among other things.
I explore the phone upgrade story in greater depth here:
My work goes crazy about this time of year as everyone in New Zealand races to get things finished before we head into Christmas and the (Southern Hemisphere) summer break.
Then, usually about the end of November it slams to a sudden stop and hardly anything happens until February.
Optus outage: company reveals what caused last week’s failure
I’m on a gigabit fibre connection. I can download a HD movie in the time it takes to pour a glass of syrah, but it looks like it will take more than 2 hours to download a 2GB Ubuntu disc image.
Friday’s newsletter went out a little later than usual, which meant it got lfewer immediate reads than most weeks…. I see a lot of regular readers picked it up and opened it this morning.
If you missed it, you can read it online: billbennett.co.nz/rural-exp…
Sustainable Business and Finance in the NZ Herald
Over the last decade I’ve written more than 300 features for the NZ Herald’s business reports. Perhaps the most noticeable change in that time is how the idea of business sustainability has gone from being a theory to being mainstream. There are few large New Zealand companies that don’t have a strong sustainability story.
Sure, you’ll find greenwashing, and it’s not always perfect. There is still a long way to go, but the progress is real.
In this year’s Sustainable Business report I interviewed Toitū chief science and advisory officer Belinda Mathers who works to certify companies as they reduce or even eliminate emissions.
There’s a story about RDT working with Auckland Airport to build a retail centre that takes sustainability a long way beyond emissions reductions.
Waste Management is moving fast to electrify one of New Zealand’s largest commercial vehicle fleets.
Law firm MinterEllisonRuddWatts wants New Zealand to get a move on building more clean electricity generation capacity.
And I interviewed Abbie Reynolds from the Nature Conservancy about looking for a fresh approach to conservation and protecting the natural environment.
Today’s newsletter includes a short editorial suggesting that a new Provincial Growth Fund would fix many gaps in New Zealand’s rural broadband and mobile coverage.
While most of us are aware of Betteridge’s law of headlines, I think there is a subset of cases where the right answer to the news headline written as a question is DUH!
Apologies to any social media folk who think I may have paid too little attention to your online, quick-witted brilliance today. I’m trying to get some work done in a hurry and rudely turned off all distractions.
Normal admiration will resume shortly.
Jumped out of my skin at 8am when my loud ring tone blasted sound through the house. It was an incoming call from Australia. The caller rang three times. It would have been 6am in eastern Australia so I assumed the call must be urgent. Turned out to be a pocket dial from someone I’ve never met. They were spectacularly grumpy about being woken up when I returned the call.
A jolly good show:
In the populated parts of New Zealand you are never too far away from someone selling decent quality pies.
Wondered why I wasn’t getting responses to micro.blog posts from my phone. Turns out it I was sending them all to the test blog.
One of the most New Zealand things I can think of is how people say hello to a driver when they get on a bus and then thank the driver when they get off.
Was up early today. First to watch Chelsea get beaten in the English Premier League, then to watch the All Blacks narrowly miss winning the Rugby World Cup.
When my team loses, Mrs B says “well, it wouldn’t be fun if they won all the time”.
It’s not that helpful.
Twitter's decline and fool
Last week I wrote this about the state of Twitter a year after it changed hands:
I also talked about the post on RNZ’s Nine-to-Noon radio show:
I love how the best pie or best sausage roll awards are considered front page stories in New Zealand newspapers.
I subscribe to the New Zealand Herald (I also freelance for the Herald) Of course I’m OK with that. Journalists deserve to be paid for their work. But I do find it annoying when certain stories appear on the Herald site require yet another paywall subscription. My pockets aren’t that deep.
Humans in Australia and New Zealand can hear I have a British accent. After almost 40 years living here, it is not as British as it was. Weirdly, voice recognition works best for me when I use Australian settings. It is as if the computer thinks I’m Australian.
What’s that about?