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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • Internet in NZ used to work a bit like the US does now with one large ISP that is also the network operator and gave exactly zero shits about quality of connections or internationally competitive pricing, except they got greedy and charged their retail arm half what they charged their competitors. Anti-monopoly folks got very pissy about this and managed to get the largest fine permitted by law, forced them to split their wholesale arm off into a separate company, banned them from tendering on the government-funded fibre network (which cost them literally billions of dollars) and then changed the law so that if they did it again there wouldn’t be a cap on the penalty they could impose.

    In 20 years we went from ~35th of the 38 OECD countries in internet speed and accessibility to 9th. Markets only work long-term if you actually regulate them


  • Yeah, pretty much. The way the rest of the world deals with it is by splitting the infrastructure maintenance and retail sides to eliminate the profit incentive to not do maintenance.

    You have a company who owns a/the fibre network in an area and is obligated by anti-monopoly rules to sell access to the network at the same rate and terms to anyone who wants it. They have a profit incentive to maintain the network to a reasonable standard because having a functioning network is how they make money. In a lot of places this wholesale provider will be at least part government owned given that the government usually pays a good chunk of the cost to build out large national infrastructure projects like fibre networks.

    Separately, you have retail ISPs who buy access to the fibre network (or 4g, satellite, …) and sell it to the public along with value adds like tech support, IP addresses, peering agreement etc.

    It’s never work in the US because holding private companies accountable for how they spend public money and maintaining well regulated competitive markets is communism or something.


  • Not in the US; in NZ most houses will have a “wash tub” - essentially a sink in a metal cabinet specifically for doing “dirty” jobs like laundry. That will have water hookups for the washer, so that goes next to it where there is space, then the dryer will do next to that or on top of the washer.

    The last few places I’ve lived in have all had the tub in a corner with space on its left, so it’s been dryer, washer, tub. Annoying, my dryer door opens to the right and the washer to the left, so it’s harder than it should be to move clothes between them




  • “Doctor” is a title you become entitled to use by virtue of holding a PhD - you have the option to use it, but nothing compels you to do so if you don’t want to.

    Note that the reverse isn’t true - representing yourself as holding a doctorate when you don’t can be a fairly serious crime - if you did for the purposes of getting money from some, then it’s probably some kind of fraud






  • Nah, fuck that.

    You know what humanity has done with its chances? Eliminated polio. Developed better crops and farming techniques to almost entirely eliminate famines. Slashed maternal mortality to a fraction of what it was 2 generations ago. Developed social and economic systems to tip the incentives in favour of peace and cooperation - even with gestures broadly at Russia and the middle east the current generation is less likely to be killed in war than in any other time in history. There are dozens of medical conditions that, if you developed then 50 years ago you just died where today it’s a routine surgery to correct.

    Apathy is what kills us. If you want to die then go get help - personally there are a few billion people I give a shit about.