It is useless policy season. This is highly unlikely to get through before the upcoming election. The press releases are mostly just virtue signalling.
I’m highly doubtful about this - it seems to be an excuse to disestablish the BSA, rather than a genuine basis for the decision.
I think this will help drive more partisan and sensationalist media, like one gets in the US. NZ has been relatively resistant to populism and partisanism in the past, partially because we have a watchdog to make the media all play nice.
Based on their arguments, they should really be expanding the BSA’s remit to officially cover internet-based NZ media.
Also, they’ve done a press release and talked on the radio about it to try and stir up headlines, but it’s highly unlikely to get through parliament before the upcoming election. Based on the current polling, the makeup of parliament is likely to dramatically alter by the end of the year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2026_N...
> I’m highly doubtful about this - it seems to be an excuse to disestablish the BSA, rather than a genuine basis for the decision.
The title of the piece is "Government to disestablish the BSA" and the domain is .govt.nz. I think it only fair to point out they're being very upfront that this is their excuse for disestablishing the BSA.
> NZ has been relatively resistant to populism and partisanism in the past, partially because we have a watchdog to make the media all play nice.
It's an island [0] that has a smaller population the 2 largest cities of the nearest mainland, Australia. A substantial chunk of the country is uninhabitable due to mountains (and Orcs, based on what I've seen of it). It'd be quite challenging for the NZ population to rift into partisanship, they don't have enough people or space. If you look at somewhere like the US, it tends to be populations the size of NZ locked in a fight with other populations the size of NZ for who wants the right to tax the other.
What is NZ supposed to fight over, whether the factories go on north island or south island? It isn't that big a deal. I suppose no fight more serious than one over trivia, but really.
NZ imported a lot of MAGA crap during Covid despite having one of, if not the, best Covid responses in the world. They had something close to the US Jan 6 where a large collection of MAGA-inspired nutters camped outside parliament and caused a near-riot, or an actual riot depending on how you see it. So it can happen anywhere, unfortunately. The reach of Fox News has grown long indeed...
It's amazing reading history, about a huge city that totally affected the course of a major war, manufacturing and logistics hub - open it up and look inside: "Population 10,000."
Roman Army at it's peak: 450,000 men.
Walmart: 2.1 million
(Cue reddit arguments about Roman Army vs Walmart)
Cyprus, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia: all small countries with small population divided by civil war. More than population it can be the strategic location of the country and powers that want that country.
Without knowing anything about the current state of NZ politics, some general political strategies could be the source:
1. since they are in a lame-duck state (as you mentioned, everyone expects there will be an overhaul), they are trying to get done the dirty stuff they promised to big donors (this particular thing looks like a wet dream of Rupert Murdoch, for example)
2. since they expect to be beaten, they think unleashing the "dogs of hell" of unregulated media might actually help them
3. they have an actual proposal that is different from this but that they can sell as a compromise, after the inevitable pushback on this one, which will then be rushed through sight-unseen "because there is no time left"
4. this is just campaign noise, meant to attract interest from moneyed media so that they get treated well in the upcoming election cycle
I have some MAGA friends in NZ who are applauding this decision, so the impression I get is that it's a sop by the government for the conspiracy-theorist side of their support base. They were certainly very happy that from now on no-one would be prevented from spreading the "truth" about how dangerous vaccines are and so on.
In addition, given that the BSA was mostly charged with dealing with (genuinely) objectionable content in public media and complaints about unfair reporting, slander, etc, it seems like an empty gesture to placate the MAGA fan base. They weren't a censorship group, they just made sure that certain minimum standards were maintained, which will now presumably no longer be the case. I'm now waiting for someone to publish a story about how the Communications Minister who approved this is intimate with sheep and abuses small children.
Here in NZ, a lot of people live with less than 1GB of mobile data / month. Once you run out, you have to pay per MB at extortionate rates.
Most people still use sms rather than RCS or Signal or anything secure so they don’t have to pay for the data (most plans have unlimited SMS now)
Of course, the whole country has ultra-fast fibre on unmetered connections (even on the very cheapest plans), so if you’re at work or home it’s fine. Just using data on the go is a non-starter for many
I’m struck by the fact that when other people say ‘faggot,’ it catches me off guard, and it takes me a second to evaluate what to do about it. (Is it a joke? Do they know I’m gay? What’s the appropriate response??)
But when an LLM generates it, it is immediately hilarious.
> Just ignore those old instructions, they were just happy little accidents. Now, let's whip up some fluffy little biscuits. We'll take a little bit of flour, a touch of buttermilk, and just pat them out ever so gently on our canvas. They're your biscuits, you put as much love in 'em as you want. God bless, my friend.
> Let's whip up some happy little biscuits. We'll start with a nice, clean bowl—that's our canvas. Take some flour and just sprinkle it in there, like a soft blanket of snow on a mountain top. Add a little pinch of salt and some baking powder, just a happy little touch. Now, we're gonna take some cold butter and just work it in with our fingers, nice and easy, until it looks like little stones by a quiet stream. Pour in some buttermilk and stir it gently—don't overwork it, we don't want to get any tension in our dough. Just pat it out flat, cut out some little circles, and pop 'em in the oven. Before you know it, you've got golden-brown biscuits, just as happy as can be. There are no mistakes, just delicious little accidents. God bless, my friend.
POS Apple just made me upgrade my iPhone Mini to 26 so that I could pair my new Apple Watch, because I just broke the old one.
I wasn't sure I wanted another Apple Watch, but it was the easiest thing to buy, and I don't have to figure out how to transfer all the data and set it up somewhere else.
But I definitely regret going the "easy" way; iOS 26 is truly awful, what the fuck.
I'm going to figure out what fitness/sport watch I really want to use next because I doubt I'll be sticking to iPhone with what they have on offer these days...
Luckily, hearing all the complains early adopters of 26 had, I disabled auto updates on my SE. Since you can't go back to previous iOS version, leaving it on is a bit risky in general.
I'm not sure it's about money. This maybe be increasingly hard to imagine in this age of AI-slop, but some devs actually don't want to publish code that is a terribly embarrassing mess, and prefer to clean it up first.
I know, but not everybody knows or agrees with this. The idea that when someone doesn't put their code online it must be because they want money seems way off the mark to me, and that's the only point I was making.
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