Ben Hocking (he/him)
@bmwhocking
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Happiest Outdoors, Whitewater, Climbing, Gliding • Occasionally political, dislike accepting inequality as part of life • he/him
New Zealand
Joined February 2010
#Laniakea our home #supercluster. Alwayse good to know the name of the place you live #space #astronomy #science
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NZ can be very thankful Michael Cullen pushed Kiwisaver onto NZ & mostly removed unfunded workplace pensions. Leaves NZ in a far more nimble position to tackle problems that come with an aging population.
Just a reminder that an individual's national insurance payments do not fund their State pension. The average person's national insurance payments cover about half the cost of their state pension:
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The most fun image & video creation tool in the world is here. Try it for free in the Grok App.
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I somehow don’t think AI companies based in one or two data-centres will be about to outsmart the arguably 1st or 2nd largest interconnected network provider on the planet. Fun times ahead.
Perplexity is repeatedly modifying their user agent and changing IPs and ASNs to hide their crawling activity, in direct conflict with explicit no-crawl preferences expressed by websites.
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RT @ponekeben: The second Tsunami alert is a conspiracy by Big Coffee™️ to increase one-off sales across cafes in New Zealand today and you….
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To add.ACT got 246,409 party votes.NZF got 173,425 party votes. Same day enrolments dwarfed the combined NZF & Act vote (419,834) to 560,000. Same day enrolments tend to vote left. The statically this looks like voter suppression. I can’t believe the govt is this desperate.
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Going off 2023 numbers, scraping same day enrolment will affect 19.4% of voters. 110,000 enrolled on election day & 450,000 enrolled during early voting in 2023. 560,000 used same day rego. & total turnout was.2,884,111. Pure Gerrymandering. Source:.
elections.nz
The Electoral Commission is pleased to present its statutory report on the 2023 General Election, held on 14 October.
Same day enrolment hugely benefits renting young people who often move a for work / study / new flats. Older people can’t comprehend moving twice a year or more & don’t realise how awesome same day enrolment is. Shows many Govt MPs had it easy when they were young.
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Same day enrolment hugely benefits renting young people who often move a for work / study / new flats. Older people can’t comprehend moving twice a year or more & don’t realise how awesome same day enrolment is. Shows many Govt MPs had it easy when they were young.
Free democracy sausages are proposed to be axed, alongside on-the-day enrolment and prisoner voting:
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Find it wild how many people, especially older people, have 0 idea that State Pensions are benefits & are paid by current taxpayers. It isn't like Kiwi Saver, which you have contributed to & directly own.
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I’m so glad NZ has interest free student loans. NZ avoid the complete shit show that came from charging students interest on loans & the interest essentially rising faster than the repayments.
Student loans are so fake lmao, was chatting with a bunch of other people, all fairly average UK income, none of them have made a dent and never expect to. They will never be repaid, they are simply a phenomenally unjust tax.
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Best thing about LLM generated Rust code; If the code complies correctly, memory safety is assured. It’s a solid safeguard against LLM hallucination. Rust executes using less memory than Go. Rust is often 5-10X faster than Python. Doesn’t have the memory issues of C & C++.
Rust seems poised to be the dominant language in the post-LLM world. Compiler and static typing for deterministic checks against hallucination; native compilation; cross-platform targeting baked in and a package manager that’s a first-class-citizen.
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I can’t imagine not being able to feed my baby. The kind of monsters that stop shipments of baby formula should not lead any nation.
theguardian.com
Doctors say Israel is blocking deliveries of formula urgently needed as mothers are either dead or too malnourished to feed their babies
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The issue with raising the retirement age, it isn’t equitable: manual labourer Vs office work. It just kicks the retirement costs down the road, doesn’t reduce super costs for govt’s in 10-20 years time. Aggressive means testing does & is equitable for younger generations.
Heartening to see people in New Zealand starting to talk more about the fiscal and economic implications of people ageing. Some thoughts:.1/ raising the age threshold is efficient (especially if it is well-signalled), but can be inequitable, especially if the threshold . .
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The unintended consequences of @dbseymour’s Regulatory Standards Bill keep popping up. Almost like the Bill is a bad idea.
Transpower makes submission on Regulatory Standards bill,finds that it will require changes to the Electricity Act,with significant costs to consumers.This will also affect transit of existing gas and fuel lines across properties.
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Yet more reason to mean test NZ Superannuation. IMO Millionaire pensioners should not get a state pension when they are more than wealthy enough to support themselves.
nzherald.co.nz
Treasury has been forced to release a paper showing cuts required to hit spending goals.
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It’s never really about heritage, it’s almost always about driving up property prices from scarcity. &/or it’s about older people disliking any change. This should be knocked down and become a 5-8 story apartment complex with a commercial ground floor.
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NZ should Means Test the NZ State Pension (NZ Super) as Australia means test their Old Age Pension. Would be of huge benefit to younger & unborn kiwis, while ensuring no older Kiwi suffers hardship.
What is a controversial opinion that you have that you’ll defend like this?
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The NZ Economy being hitched to the price of oil is our biggest weakness. Electricying the economy removes most of that weekness & lets NZ produce compettive exports regardless of the oil price & significantly reduces NZ's cost of living.
Anyone know a little country in the pacific that is particularly vulnerable to spikes in the price of oil? At least we can increase mortgage costs if we start seeing inflation coming back. That'll sort it.
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Keep the retirement age at 65 and means test NZ Super. If people have enough in their kiwisaver they retire at 65, if they want to keep working, they keep working. If their body is broken & they don't have much in their kiwisaver, they get the full state pension.
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So the govt project a 2029 surplus by ignoring ACC's deficit & assume NZ has no Earthquakes, Cyclones or flooding over the next 4 years. While screwing younger kiwis (kiwisaver tax credit & beststart cuts) & leaving the state pension unchanged. Unideal for any kiwis under 50.
If you want to see the state of the government's books on the more traditional OBEGAL measure, rather than the one that excludes substantial ongoing ACC deficits, you have to go to the "Additional materials" in the online appendix. Here 'tis. No return to surplus.
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Question for parenting twitter;.Has anyone found baby sleeping bags that are actually designed to be used for actual tramping (hiking). All I've found so far is this.
nz.philandteds.com
The phil&teds snuggle & snooze sleeping bag provides comfort & warmth for your baby in their stroller
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RT @paulg: I don't have to tell you what happened to these three boys. You already know. How awful is that?
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