It’s worth clicking through to the graph in the article, it’s difficult to screen shot as it’s interactive and you have to hover over it to see numbers. But it shows unemployment was lowest in 2022, counteracting the minister’s claims it had been rising since 2021.

I like how it’s election year and the government is still blaming the previous government for not being able to meet their election promises. Since at the last election all the actions of Labour had already happened, surely they were taken into account in their election promises. Or maybe National don’t understand the economy?

Just wait until you find out what the Climate Change Minister is doing!

So the idea of rolling this out firstly in medical contexts is insane, but I agree there is big potential here.

Is “AI” (as in agentic LLM) really necessary here thought?

Imagine exactly your setup, but instead of some LLM you instead have locations of jobs in your system before you start, press a button on your headset or whatever while on site and say things to be logged against the job. Speech to text can generate the text, GPS can apply it to the right job, and key words can be used if you need to do something that isn’t just logging notes.

Surely we can go a long way to what you describe before trying to plug an LLM in?

They will need an actual breach, and it depends on what the uptake is as it’s specifically worded as being available not actually being used. And unfortunately the privacy commissioner doesn’t seem to investigate unless there is actual harm (which I found when one NZ website gave/sold me email to another - it was a unique relay email hence why I knew what happened, but also that means I didn’t suffer any harm).

Still, if it becomes widespread we will surely at least have a big media shitshow if not an actual court case within the year.

They refer to it as “Heidi” in the article, which I’m guessing is Heidi Health.

Great, an AI that records what it thinks it hears and puts it on the file of the patient it thinks the doctor is talking to. No chance for a privacy breach here.

Seems like if they keep it up, all our problems will be solved!

Which was the government that fixed our poluted rivers problem by changing the acceptable thresholds?

I find it really interesting that the rate stayed the same, but they actually changed the criteria to make it harder to be counted as in poverty (this year you had to meet 7 of 18 criteria, last year it was 6).

So I feel like they might be hiding that it actually got worse?

David Seymour calls for government to sell it’s stake in Air NZ to his friends while share prices are lower. Blames paper cups in Koru lounge for lower profits. Says they charge too much while also saying they aren’t returning enough profit.

Ah right you’ve got it. Light vehicles are allowed to be up to 3500kg including load.

But a light trailer can also be up to 3500kg,

So you could drive a light vehicle and light trailer and get 7500kg, but would need a class 2 license. But the light vehicle + light trailer combo could be driven up to 6000kg on a class 1 license.

This was actually a concern I had when I read this. e-scooters potentially travel much slower than bikes.

Let’s pretend we live in a good society where we have bike lanes everywhere. So we have three speeds of traffic. Pedestrian speed, bike speed, car speed.

Now we’re trying to add a new one, e-scooter speed. Do you put them on the footpath where they are too fast and could flatten or kill someone, on the road where they are too slow and might get killed by a car, or in the bike lane where they might be traveling 10-20kph slower than the bikes.

It feels like the bike lane is the right place. Yes, bikes will occasionally come up against slower e-scooter traffic, but that happens to cars behind trucks and pedestrians behind 3-across groups with no respect for other pedestrians.

The alternative seems to be to create scooter lanes. But perhaps a better idea is that when the volume becomes a problem in certain areas, we create two-lane bike lanes to allow faster traffic to pass slower traffic.

People get killed being hit by bikes occasionally so you can understand some hesitation, but I’m sure there could have been a reasonable compromise (e.g. a footpath speed limit).

Well, I think I need more info, as apparently currently a class 1 licence can drive up to 6 tonne, as per the table here.

I was shocked by that number too, but going from 6 to 7.5 tonne seems reasonable. Also as per the table, there seems to already be a class exemption for electric trucks where the diesel equivalent is under 6000kg (in the same table linked above).

I am curious why we don’t have 6 tonne utes, I was under the impression there was a 3 tonne limit but maybe that’s unladen or something?

Although it mentions residential supply, the core intent seems to be that it’s for power plants in dry years (when we can’t rely on hydro).

Weird to use the weather as an excuse for not using the money for solar or wind power. Like, it’s too sunny this year so we need gas, because if it was too wet then surely it wouldn’t be a dry year…

I think their propsal has missed the most important thing: that experience is what matters. I don’t see why they needed to drop the restricted period to 12 months, they could have dropped the second test and left the 18 month restricted period.

Basically, government ignores advice, buys up huge amounts of LPG, this could cut the price on your power bill by up to $10/MWh which is 1 cent per KWh - paid for with a levy on your power bill.

That paper introduction is super interesting.

The introduction of the graduated licence system led to an ongoing crash rate reduction of (only) 8%!

A study in Canada found that education programmes to reduce time on learner licence led to an increase in crashes among those that took the extra course.

Crash rates in new drivers reduce by 2/3 after 500 miles of driving.

If the test isn’t as important (especially after the full test got made easier and the restricted much harder) then perhaps our system should require a longer restricted licence period, not to give everyone the discount from doing a course without them needing to do the course.

I guess that author is mostly in favour because the test isn’t the important thing, but having people drive for longer (getting more experience) is important and this change will have the average restricted driver get less experience.

I think this has been discussed before, but they say NZ has two tests where most countries have one so we should drop one of them.

You know what else most of those countries have? A requirement to spend time with a driving instructor, which we don’t have.

After cancelling road to zero, now this, it kind of feels like they want people to die in preventable accidents.

I’ve posted it here in NZ Politics as it’s a government announcement and has the potential to be controversial, but I’m interested to hear if people think this would be better suited in c/NZ.

I’m thinking it’s politics until it’s about to come into effect (next year) then it’s informational.

Flying in on helicopters and expressing sympathy for stricken families and communities is pointless if your policies are failing to address climate change, and making matters worse.

Very true. Rolling back climate change targets really make any sympathy pointless, but flying in on a helicopter really is just salt in the wound.