Posts by Alfie
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
HNZ needs to shoulder most of the responsibility for the hysteria its pseudo-testing has created, and the lucrative cowboy testing industry which has arisen.
Today's Herald has a story about Auckland landlords seeking the right to conduct meth testing themselves and having the results recognised by the Tenancy Tribunal. I can't see that ending well. Naturally the cowboy industry is completely opposed to the idea.
-
Hard News: Obscuring the News, in reply to Martin Brown,
To be fair, I think NZME has a commercial arrangement with ODT and the ‘byline’ was not actually that – just a reporter’s email for further info. The story was also attributed to the NZ herald.
Hmmm... I see that the ODT have since cleaned up that story, attributed it to the Herald and removed their own reporter's byline. After it was online for more than 24 hours.
-
Hard News: Obscuring the News, in reply to Pete Sime,
The ODT has also overhauled its site and so far they haven’t put up the paywall that they had promised for April.
The ODT site is much cleaner since the overhaul and still provides some decent regional journalism. Long may their proposed paywall remain sealed in its box under a desk.
While news sharing arrangements are now commonplace, I’d like to point out one despicable example from Sunday’s ODT. The Herald ran this story written by my friend Phil Vine. It was picked up by the ODT verbatim, apart from the byline which became “Blair Mayston”. Here’s a tip ODT. The ability to cut & paste does NOT justify a byline. You’ve just stolen someone else’s work.
And thanks Russell… you’ve articulated a lot of the frustrations we ordinary readers experience with both major NZ news sites these days. While I take a quick peek at national news on both sites, lately I’m spending more time on the Guardian, NYT and other credible news sites.
And if I read "The internet went into meltdown" one more time… grrrrr!
-
The Herald has some details of the Police operation at Queens Wharf on August 25-27 which netted a few Uber drivers. As the breakdown includes taxis and other drivers -- 129 infringement notices, 18 drivers forbidden from driving -- it's hard to know how many Uberers were actually nabbed, although the type of offenses probably provide clues.
NZTA say they've sent out 2407 warning letters to Uber drivers.
-
Speaker: After the Apocalypse, in reply to Rich Lock,
Probably also worth pointing out that the radiation cloud from Chernobyl travelled far enough, and was toxic enough, that livestock monitoring on farms in some areas of the UK (about 1,300 miles from Chernobyl) wasn’t fully lifted until 2012.
I was in rural Scotland when Chernobyl blew. My brother and I were sitting on the top of a grassy cliff looking out to sea when the cloud passed directly overhead, but we didn’t know that at the time. That info came out a couple of days later.
We went through a little exercise and taped up the taps, bought the local supermarket out of bottled water and rubber gloves and monitored Radio 4 for a few days. We drank some good whisky.
I remember hearing a Man from the Ministry reassuring everyone that there was nothing to worry about. One guy phoned in and asked if he should be worried, having obtained a measurement of X becquerels at a distance of 150mm in his vege garden. The Ministry Man coughed and spluttered and they cut the caller off. That didn’t inspire confidence.
-
The timing of Parata’s announcement could not have been more poignant. John Oliver’s piece (linked to by Paul above) was damning and should be compulsory viewing for anyone in the education field. Then the very next morning Hekia announces her latest brain fart as if it was April 1st on Planet Key.
I can see that it fits the Nats' ideology by transfering wealth from the education budget to private (did anyone say American?) providers, and it would allow her to close more schools. At the expense of thousands of children’s education and socialisation. But only poor people’s children, obviously. So that’s O’K.
Having taught specialist subjects (to adults) online for a few years I can testify that it works really well for some people – those who are already motivated. For the rest it can be a bit of a struggle just to get work completed on time. And some choose to just blob out on Facebook and inevitably fail the course.
This is not an education policy… it’s a dumb, dumb idea. Seriously unCOOL.
-
While it's great that public opinion is shifting rapidly, Fairfax seems to have made the decision to sit on the wrong side of this debate. Apart from the nonsensical Yardley rave, they also have a self-penned “Stuff Nation” (read amateur) piece today from a self-publicising US narcotics cop, telling kiwis that in his opinion, changing the law here would be a grave mistake and the sky will immediately fall.
Mind you, the Herald published a piece from Yardely’s mentor Hosking the other day (I won’t link to anything from him) expressing similarly arrogant sentiments.
With the MSM wheeling out the usual nutters, it’s like the obvious successes of Colorado, Portugal et al never happened.
-
"Who listening"
Another classic Stuff-up – their featured homepage story at the moment. -
Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
Just read a bit more on these driverless cars, there will be two people on board to run the thing, one driver just in guide the car when required and an geek to run the computor that operates the car.
Only during the testing phase. Which is sensible.
Picking up on driverless cars refueling, it's hard to see petrol being a thing for too much longer and proximity electrical recharging would be ideal for autonomous vehicles.
-
Of course they have people in the cars during testing but you'd have to be naive to ignore Uber's end-game. You're welcome to view this as merely a bluff from Uber, however the world's media seems to be playing along with their game. How Uber plans to put its own drivers out of business provides yet another example.
