Posts by Moz
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Speaker: The economics of shit speech, in reply to Sacha,
Libraries, coffeeshops, etc.
There’s a subtle but important difference between “you can read the one copy of the newspaper we have” and “you can book a computer to read the online copy of the paywalled newspaper”.
My local library literally has one computer that can access some of the subscription-only content, and if that computer is booked you are SoL for all the restricted subscriptions. Some of them are limited because the software that prevents copy’n’paste and printing is temperatmental, others just charge a fortune per subscribed computer (in the “200 subscriptions at a dollar a month each is a lot of money” sense)
They might grant free subscriptions to all libraries around the world, but it has to be implemented in a useful way. Not least because if they have to pay it’s not going to happen (Auckland just isn’t that important to Lakemba)
-
Part of it is that in NZ (and Australia) we’re culturally accustomed to some level of media regulation and a certain number of rights wrt truth in advertising and so on. None of that applies to social media, and those companies viciously defend their refusal to permit their assets to have rights or protective regulations, From their point of view any gain by their assets necessarily comes at the expense of the owners.
For the assets it’s a whole new way of thinking about our role in society, or more accurately now, our value to their shareholders. In a sense it’s neoliberalism taken to the next level – forget selling the nations physical assets at give-away prices, now our government is giving away its very citizens. If we don't want that we need to make it very clear to the compliant nincompoop currently figureheading us into oblivion that we will not tolerate her screwing us on this as well. Climate and economics we have already given away, but democracy?
-
One thing that would help is just to flatly block any company that doesn’t comply with NZ law. I think failbook, google et al would be quite a lot more cautious if they got a reply from the AG to their “{name} granted name suppression” email saying “hey bro’s, how’s it going? Just letting you know that for 48 hours every IP your company owns is being blackholed in New Zealand. Best get a Yahoo account if you want to reply :)”
It would be really inconvenient for a lot of kiwis, but after the first few times I'm sure we'd adjust. -
Hard News: These things we must now change, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Over 99% of licenses are approved.
Part of that is because there are people who don't even bother applying (the criteria are public), but mostly because there are easy ways to scam the system. But that's because we live in a free society, the police don't already have a tidy list of who you live with, who your friends are, what you post on antisocial media and so on. Thus the applicant nominates their own referees and you'd have to be mighty socially unaware to nominate people who will say "hell no".
I'm glad to see the poll results, like an overwhelming majority of people I was shocked at how silly the system was.
-
Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to andin,
virtual jis.
damn. For a moment there I thought that could help with the drought over here :)
-
My thought before was based on a Dilbert cartoon: if we limit firearms to ones that take imperial sized ammunition, and ammunition to metric sizes, we can solve the problem quite effectively. Or limit ammunition to less than 5mm, and firearms to greater than 5mm to get the same effect.
-
Legal Beagle: A (non-)submission on the…, in reply to Craig Young,
Could refinements in 3D printer technology lead to functional firearms eventually
The real problem with 3D printing is that it's grossly inefficient. The overwhelming majority of home 3D printing is used to make rubbish. Literal "straight from the printer to the bin" rubbish. If we legislate 3D printers I think that's a much better target. Or the bigger 3D printers that print houses... or bunkers :)
Yes, but there are far more significant problems with readily available materials. At the trivial level, if you 3D print the fiddly parts then use a bit of pipe with fibre tape wrapped round it you get a much better gun with much less hassle… it’s just not headline-worthy because it’s not really new. In the same vein high school chemistry covers the essentials of making explosives so it’s quite straightforward (albeit tedious and dangerous) to bypass the restrictions on buying bulk ammonium nitrate (etc) by making your own.
But that is right back in the “dedicated DIY” micro-sliver of the small population of weird people, the same ones who make their own realistic plate armour by digging up iron ore and making charcoal… you can’t stop them. As someone once observed about me “but if he wanted to do that he would have done it”. People making ridiculously competent DIY weapons are pretty much never a deliberate threat to anyone else. It’s the half-arse “just barely works” ones from what I know.
By making firearms harder to buy, ammunition harder to hoard and organising terrorism riskier to attempt you’ve covered the other 99% of potential problems.
-
Legal Beagle: A (non-)submission on the…, in reply to Robert Singers,
Given that 3D printers and CNC metal working equipment can make fully automatic weapons
I think part of the reason the Australian came to Aotearoa is that he couldn't get the weapons he wanted into Australia. So if we set the bar that high we have likely stopped people at his level. Which I personally would count as a win.
3D printing is still at the "see I made one, once, and it worked, once" level of amazing. The skill and money required for CNC work is high and there are easier ways unless you're into mass manufacture. And the cost of a CNC machine to make a gun barrel is very high - you're drilling a 500mm+ long hole in the centre of hardened steel (that's after first fabricating the length of specially hardened steel).
Much easier to buy a convertible weapon and hand-make the requisite parts. I suspect that even setting up an existing CNC mill to make the parts takes more skill than smuggling in a working version. Youtube has ample coverage of people buying cheap CNC machines and failing to make them work, so you should probably set the bar for this at "has metal working skills and at least $20,000 to spend".
But then we're back to "let's control the availability of the weapon" at the start of the process.
-
Hard News: These things we must now change, in reply to BenWilson,
you need to bring up the enormous utility of cars to counterbalance their obvious social cost
Ah, no. I think the cost is too high for the benefit. It's *you* that needs to overstate the benefits in order to justify the costs, since you're the one pretending cars are worth the sacrifices we all make so you can drive.
-
Hard News: These things we must now change, in reply to Simon Armstrong,
Free countries don’t typically feature armed po-po do they?
By that measure there are almost no free countries. You've excluded UK, Australia, Aotearoa, Sweden. I'm struggling to think of countries where the Police rarely carry firearms.