I woke up at 8:30 am this morning and I found that getting up 30 minutes earlier was easier than expected. I got out of bed and was ready to leave home at 9:30 am and rather than doing the three laps, I decided just to do 2 1/2 laps which works out to be 14.54 km. It was blowing a bit of a gale but the weather was nice nonetheless and the benefit of starting the walk earlier in the morning is avoiding the midday sun along with the heat as well. When I arrived home my legs were pretty sore but that is to be expected given that I’ve only just started getting back into walking longer distances than the 6 km I was doing earlier.
The elections are heating up at the moment and although I’m hopeful for a change in the government I am also realistic about the fact that it is very rare for there to be a one term government. It reminds me of an Australian commentator making an observation, which could be applied to New Zealand as well, that the voters tend to give a government two terms minimum unless they really make a pigs breakfast. I think part of the reason why there is a tendency towards two terms is because you really do need two terms to see what the outcome of a given policy is given the length of time from writing a bill, passing it, implementing it and then seeing the downstream consequences of that bill.
What is interesting is the growth of the minor parties at the expense of the two traditional major parties and I think part of that has to do with more people voting strategically – that if they want to get meaningful change they’re better off supporting a smaller party as leverage over the traditional major parties. The big question is how willing the traditional major parties are to accommodating the demands of the minor party or parties they enter into a coalition with. At the moment the government is a coalition of three parties but there are already fractures showing such as National being open to increasing the retirement age whereas NZ First has made it a non-negotiable (as far as I know). Then there is the ACT Party that want to do a ‘slash and burn’ austerity – as much as National may wish to do cuts they’re also smart enough to realise that a reckless ‘slash and burn’ will cause an economic collapse as aggrigate demand falls off the edge of a cliff so they’re doing incremental changes.
On the left wing we have Labour with the small target strategy which contrasts with the Greens, Te Pati Maori and The Opportunities Party that are putting out bold plans to shake things up. The Opportunity Party has a massive overhaul of our tax system and the way in which social services are managed, Greens are interested in a wealth tax, Te Parti Maori is interested in having a $30,000 tax free threshold and higher brackets for those earning higher income. If the left do end up winning it’ll be interesting to see how they will reoncile the various policies so that those who voted for said parties feel as though they at least won some concessions. Then there is the tax plan from The Opportunity Party that only really work if you implement the whole plan all at once because every part of the plan relies on each component being in place.
I was watching some YouTube videos recently and I really have to wonder whether the people in Silicon Valley have ever touched grass – you know, go out and talk to normal regular folk to find out what service or product might actually be useful. I say that because kep hearing this nonsense about how agents can do stuff for you and then they come up with some of the most contrived scenarios that completely ignore how normal people live. Take shopping for example, when you go shopping it is an experience, it is about going out maybe with a group, looking around at the stores, stopping off at a local cafe for a coffee and a muffin then look around a little bit more. Then there was the contrived example of an agent reading an email saying that the baker who was going to bake the wedding cake couldn’t bake it so the agent organised a replacement – do these people know anything about how as a couple the wedding cake is chosen given it is a personal decision that is unique to the couple?
That is the problem with Silicon Valley types and their inability to understand that the process is as important as getting to the end result. Part of the process of finding information are all the dead ends you go down looking and from those experiences you learn something new – the process of research it as important as finding the answer. When it comes to creativity there is the process of not only your life experience but also the time you spend mastering your craft and in turn you have an appreciation of not only the end result but the process of getting there.
Just to finish up, Google released an update for Chrome that bumped the version number from version 154.0.8037.93 to version 154.0.8037.98 (link). As at the time of writing this blog the details regarding the security fixes haven’t been made available which probably indicates some pretty nasty bugs have been fixed and they want time for as many people to update to the latest version. I’ve switched over to Edge at work and the performance is really good so I’m going to stick to using it. Part of me wish that Microsoft still made the Surface Duo because it ha so much potential but it isn’t surprising that it failed given that it was only sold in one country.
