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6:00 am, August 14th, 2026 - 54 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361019970/stolen-rifle-police-pursuit-fatal-shooting-what-happened-near-sylvia-park
Cops new he had an unloaded air rifle!!!
Lack of coms, lack of training or murderous intent from the police?
you can google additional context for David Tipple and the police, and why the police might be wary of trusting him in this situation.
No, the police knew that he had stolen an air rifle, which was not loaded when he took it.
They did *not* know that he didn't have ammunition either with him or in his vehicle – and whether or not the rifle was now loaded when he attempted to enter a mall with thousands of people.
His actions in choosing to carry the stolen gun when he fled the vehicle, and especially running towards a crowded shopping mall, would not give anyone confidence that he did not plan to use it.
Remaining in the car when it was spiked, or exiting the vehicle and standing beside it *without* the gun, would both have been choices he could have made.
Hardly murderous intent from the police.
yep.
How did the police know it was the EXACT same gun that was stolen? They didn't. I assume 'hope for the best' is not part of the training module on 'gunman running to mall with rifle'
yep. Things moving too fast to fact check. I have no problem with police facing someone with a gun protecting their own lives. There are probably some caveats to that around how police and someone with a gun end up in a dangerous situaiton, but front line police still shouldn’t have to risk their own lives. At this stage we don’t know enough to know anything other than general principles.
One of the subs I read on Reddit is the "antiai" sub & this quote I thought was pretty funny especially in regards to the politicians being all hyped & eager to use it to run Govt,
"I've long insisted the impressiveness of AI in a domain as perceived by someone is inversely proportional to that person's competence in that domain."
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/08/13/datacom-we-need-to-be-more-transparent-about-data-centre-plans/
Even our local NZ industry leaders in data centres is admitting that they are fucking up with the public.
Latest Honest Government clip on AI Centres for your enjoyment.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kON2ZI2BNj8
"New Zealand has 63 data centres, five of which are owned by Datacom."\
Yes but as I said the other day those 63 DC's use 140 MW.
The two new ones proposed in Southland (this consented already) and Taranaki will use 530 MW and that may be expanded later; who knows. That is the power for over half a million homes. Inevitably the price of electricity for consumers will rise.
National will happily support all and sundry DC's and will power them using very climate dirty and very expensive imported LNG if necessary.
The Greens have put a stake in the ground with their moratorium so that some rules are put in place to protect residential power users; Labour should join them.
….and I've just heard that Luxon has said at the big South Island Election Conference in CHCH today that DC's must come to NZ with plans for new energy.
Labour needs to get its policy out-Hipkins is speaking later today at the same place.
One has to love Dr Eric Crampton’s [Chief Economist at the NZ Initiative] comment (https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/08/13/datacom-we-need-to-be-more-transparent-about-data-centre-plans/#comment-668925) that the Southlands DC’s water consent is no more no less than that of a golf course.
Let me put that in a different perspective:
https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/361046929/massive-southland-data-centres-water-consent-concerns-engineer
That's probably an iron law of AI. A machine without a 'mind' of it's own that works by the synthesis and re-presentation of work produced by human experts (and non-experts), can never exceed the competence of the best of the people whose work it relies on.
It might get close of course, and do a mountain of damage to human social and economic life along the way – that's the real concern.
I’ve been impressed by others who’ve been impressed by AI. Of course, they’re all dummies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaFold
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinking_Game
@ wags @ 1
Concerning cop killings.
Here's a concerning article from 2022 that shows a worrying tendency. It would seem that nothing has changed.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/in-depth-special-projects/story/2018834464/licence-to-kill-the-startling-truth-about-new-zealand-s-fatal-police-shootings
Witness the motorcycle cop that ignored the rules and unlawfully and illegally pursued another motorcyclist to his death.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/08/13/motorcycle-officers-high-speed-pursuit-before-fatal-crash-unjustified/
It's hardly a crime wave.
The high rates of gun ownership in NZ as compared to the UK – have a very significant effect, here. When someone is armed, and threatening to the police or members of the public – what would you like the police to do?
Especially when it's clear that criminals are perfectly willing to shoot police, as well as members of the public.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/live-auckland-police-officer-dies-after-two-shot-and-bystander-hit-by-car/5FJVWQQENASG3CUY2WFSWAH55M/
definitely need to look at the number of police shot while on duty to understand what is going on. Doesn't mean the police are above criticism, but in the absence of details, police acting to protect public or defend themselves from someone carrying a stolen firearm and behaving erratically is normal
Oh, I think that the police are far from 'above criticism'. They are a fallible organization staffed with humans who can sometimes make wrong choices.
But, Bwaghorn and Gsays choosing this incident as a platform to attack them appears to be a poor call.
I thought the murderous intent comment was way over the top.
Why shouldn't bwaghorn and gsays choose anything to write about and comment on that concerns them, without your okay. I find you dictatorial and controlling and not reasonably analytical Belladonna. Perhaps we should only rarely comment on others' comments, eg yours may trigger mine and that is not an efficacious effect.
one of the most shocking things in that first piece is how many people were shot when they had no weapon at all. That's a long standing issue in NZ.
Training and experience I'm sure comes into all the shootings. Police culture probably does too.
As Belladonna says above, if someone with a firearm is heading towards a crowded mall, police are going to do what they can to stop that. We don't know the details, but this seems reasonable in this day and age. It's also possible the man was committing suicide by police.
Speaking of details, the cops have been very fulsome.
Not surprisingly, over several news cycles, the victim of the police shooting has had their criminal history
paradedcompiled and broadcast, talking heads from justice speaking of his status from their point of view and all sorts of shade thrown.https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/1000916/sylvia-park-shooting-man-fatally-shot-by-police-was-on-community-detention
He had a gun and was heading to the entrance of a mall.
Feel for his kids and family.
Further to my postulating a loss of Chinese expat vote support for National after Luxon's refusal to remove Peters as FA Minister re his flatfish comment:
"This is the top story (an RNZ feature on SIS assessment of security threats. including China) on the RNZ Chinese English-language homepage, but somehow absent on the RNZ Chinese 中文 homepage where it's a story about the National Party candidates & the only China content is about former PRC premier Zhu Rongji dying…, bless"
https://bsky.app/profile/tzemingdynasty.bsky.social/post/3msyifylsks2k
RNZ, under its new tagline "News You Can Trust" (to do what, exactly? one wonders) here seems to be pitching desperate Party political bumph for the worried Nats. Government capture of our ‘independent’ broadcaster?
They would have got breakdown by key ethnicity in their latest internal polling that led to Penk’s challenge.
@ weka @ 3.2
We can all isolate details to suit our narrative as Belladonna did with the RNZ article. Highlighting gun ownership compared with the UK but ignoring Norway where it is higher but half the rate of 'death by police shooting'. Police culture is far stronger driver of these events than gun ownership IMO.
In the house I grew up in, the Crewe murders were followed fairly closely, basically a stitch up by the police, where Arthur Thomas was convicted twice. No police officer was faced consequences for planting evidence.
This, being above the law look, prevails.
Fish rot from the head and the recent antics of very senior police, covered over by their 'mates' speaks to the this. Mark Mitchell's and Commissioner Chambers comments on Naidoo will pass without consequence too.
Being ex military, I understand the culture of having yr mates back, come hell or high water. But this can become toxic when unlawful behaviour isn't called out.
Police behaviour is driven by indiscipline in the context of a sense of invulnerability in a febrile right wing media environment dominated by tough on crime rhetoric and politicans who fear of being seen as soft on crime. This has meant the minister of police has effectively been replaced by the minister for police.
Combined with an IPCA that is completely toothless and dominated by establishment figures sympathetic to the police then you have no real civil checks on police operational practices.
Yup. The RW rhetoric was always strong, with National particularly, and in 2023 they got their chance to change things their way and they did.
https://theconversation.com/policing-by-consent-is-not-woke-it-is-fundamental-to-a-democratic-society-155866
Articles about ram-raids and street-racing acted as lucrative click-bait for the media (not to mention feeding the outrage monsters on social media). Sunny Kaushal was highly instrumental.
I wasn't attacking, if you come at a cop with a golf club a knife or a firearm I'm ok with leathal force, and I'm aware that slug guns these days can pack serious power, I was just asking the question ?
ok but asking if the police shot someone yesterday with murderous intent was alwasy going to get some push back.
If you come at a cop with a golf club, you're okay with lethal force????
WTF????
if the police officer's life is in immediate danger.
You're aware that a golf club itself enables lethal force, right?
Just to say that ACT, via David Seymour, have pulled out of the BHN debates, despite Todd from ACT being a good sort and standing up for his position in the Health debate.
Like the Nats, ACT will be strategising after the last few polls. OP have upset the whole rw henhouse.
As ACT have a $1.7mi campaign warchest, looks like they've decided to play out this election on the socials alone.
Not a sausage from Winston. OP have knocked his cockiness off his perch. Until now, he smuggly imagined himself as kingmaker again.
Not so certain now, and what a mess a 4-way coalition would be, assuming the Nats renege on Luxon’s position. Neither Seymour nor Peters want to be in charge, merely to make hay off the others.
Could people who know how the previous search worked – please try it out before 1500 hours today. Or just try clicking on the the user names for comments etc.
I have it running in test mode, and it is only updated to about 1100 today.
But it is the same engine, just running through a ssh remote tunnel. I just want to see how well it works, how stable it is or isn't, and from a number of machines.
I still have to finish setting up the services on the VPS that is running it, Looks good so far.
BTW: I see that someone looking up gsays has found it.
The front-end filter for Posts/comments etc isn't working. But that is just front-end code (and I think I already coded that last year).
Still have work to do on the config…
$ sudo -u sphinxsearch indexer –config /etc/sphinxsearch/sphinx.conf –all –rotate
[sudo: authenticate] Password:
Sphinx 2.2.11-id64-release (95ae9a6)
Copyright (c) 2001-2016, Andrew Aksyonoff
Copyright (c) 2008-2016, Sphinx Technologies Inc (http://sphinxsearch.com)
using config file '/etc/sphinxsearch/sphinx.conf'…
indexing index 'tsmain'…
collected 1956841 docs, 855.1 MB
sorted 149.0 Mhits, 100.0% done
total 1956841 docs, 855112689 bytes
total 56.704 sec, 15080254 bytes/sec, 34509.67 docs/sec
indexing index 'tsdelta'…
collected 0 docs, 0.0 MB
total 0 docs, 0 bytes
total 0.105 sec, 0 bytes/sec, 0.00 docs/sec
skipping non-plain index 'ts'…
indexing index 'tsstats'…
collected 56225 docs, 0.5 MB
sorted 0.1 Mhits, 100.0% done
total 56225 docs, 506713 bytes
total 0.129 sec, 3902715 bytes/sec, 433046.30 docs/sec
total 252 reads, 0.524 sec, 3069.6 kb/call avg, 2.0 msec/call avg
total 1405 writes, 0.624 sec, 1041.1 kb/call avg, 0.4 msec/call avg
WARNING: failed to open pid_file '/var/run/sphinxsearch/searchd.pid'.
WARNING: indices NOT rotated.
lprent@lpservices:/run$
Comments search is working well. Posts search returns comments not posts, even if posts is the only thing ticked. That's a long standing problem
name search is good too
Yeah, someone tried
is spoofing illegal
Got 3 results. But this isn't a AI. Just word matching.
Can't fit one of those in 450Mb of RAM that this vps has.
I
Did a name search on someone I mentioned. Two results and it seems I've mentioned them twice, 2008, and again in 2016, so yeah, works a treat.
I thought there was some good testing going on before. Then I think that the search engines found it and started walking down comment authors pages. Even on a under-powered VPS (1 cpu, very limited memory, but a superb network link to the website), getting no significiant traffic.
Been asked to explain that.
I'm not allowed to leave running processes on the web server that services The Standard. It is a shared website segmented by containers. Not a container that allows arbitrary services and software to be added. It is cheap and with my favourite CDN (BunnyNet) was quite capable of handling the multi-gigabyte site. The full backups are chunky. The database compresses to 1.8GB, and the Full file backups are 14.3GB compressed.
I moved the site there before I picked up my servers and drove from Auckland to Invercargill last September/October (just in time to catch those storms). It was going to take a week with a heavy trailer carrying our Rose&Heather bed, computers, documents, hard drives, etc.
So there were 3 processes that got discarded on the transfer and not immediately replaced.
I put the backups on after I got down south. Used rsync over ssh, instead of rsync locally. That was just a script change.
I tried using various tools that did ssh tunnels for the search support to jump from my machine and later from the vps.
I tested a lot of tools (ssh command, socat, netcat variants, chisel, stunnel and a few others) and scripting to make and hold open the remote tunnel from the vps side. They were all unreliable. The best was autossh because it had reasonable support for connection dropouts. But didn't have a robust backoff and retry handling. Some like the python based, go based, and java based effectively leaked memory with garbage collection.
I wanted something that I could rely on to stay running for months on end. Not grow memory in a constrained vps, and run at very low CPU under load. I also wanted it to run multiple channels over a single ssh connection – multiple numbers of shell, exec, forward tunnels, reverse tunnels, ftp, etc.. Because then it gets really fast and light and doesn't worry sys admins and their code minions with repeated ssh connections every few minute or seconds..
Eventually I wrote it (and other needed utilities) as a toolkit with apps in c++/23 on top of good open source libraries. Used it to bounce up to c++/23, and to learn how to use AI for coding more efficently.
Problem was that my part-time workload was heavier than I expected, even in National's induced recession. It took Trump and his stupid war with expectable and predictable consequences to slow down the work long enough to let me work on my tools for long enough to get traction.
The search should be up permanently on the weekend.
I still have to finish torturing AI and possibly a AI agentic as code and edge testers on the feeder, and write an acceptable front-end interface for it. I took it out to a gRPC and REST API, but I needed the ssh tunnel to make it clean and secure. They just become two more channels on a connection from the vps to the web host.
Let this be a lesson to those who emailed me – doesn't pay to ask a programmer why they had to build something. They might answer you….
Even I can see this – it’s still going on – in Analytics Insights.
Calmed down a bit now.
Found a bug in the service, wasn't creating one of the directories on system restart
I'd better do some paid work. The joys of being part-time and able to select your own hours.
I encourage all TS readers to check out the EDS webinar on the 2 bills that will replace the Resource Management Act: https://eds.org.nz/our-work/eds-events/webinar-better-late-than-never-or-is-it/
The bills as introduced were bad enough, but the select committee has ignored submissions opposing them and actually made things worse. A Henry VIII clause remains allowing ministers to alter primary legislation outside the Parliamentary process.
Ministers will also have discretionary power to set environmental limits. No doubt those limits will be fixed at levels prescribed by, and acceptable to, the business sector.
And regulatory relief means councils will have to compensate landowners for the existence of rules, eg biodiversity protection, that significantly affect the reasonable use of private land. In effect the environment will suffer if councils don't want to pay compensation for imposing environmental controls over land in their regions.
In brief, the bills prioritise economic development over environmental protection.
NZ First’s gloss is wearing off, it seems.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/08/14/racism-and-coalition-belligerence-are-double-edged-swords-for-nz-first/
Who’d vote for a sack of little shits is beyond me.
National, under Luxon or somebody else, will raise taxes because that’s what they’ve always done. Good to know.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics/950118/christopher-luxon-suggests-fuel-excise-tax-rise-accommodation-levy-if-national-re-elected [2 days before Penk got pushed off the plank]
Canterbury mayors want fast-tracking dumped. At last it is dawning on people that slamming subdivisions in with no public input and ignoring District Plans and Spatial Plans is a disaster.
Who would have thought it?
"Gordon said the Fast-Track Approvals Act is being used to ignore local people’s voices and force through unsuitable development in places, when there is more than enough land already zoned and ready to be connected."
Led by donkeys.
/
4 June 2024, 6:56am
[…]
New housing developments in Auckland's Warkworth will be unable to be built or lived in until a new wastewater treatment facility is built.
The wastewater treatment plant on the Mahurangi River, which services the area, is nearing capacity.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/regions/518580/warkworth-s-new-housing-developments-stalled-by-wastewater-upgrades
10 Aug, 2026 12:36 PM
[…]
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown says the decision to green-light a 1217 home development on the outskirts of Ōrewa makes a “mockery” of the fast-track law and should be abandoned.
“The fast-track is just another disaster from the Government – they’ve got eight years to do something with it. What’s fast about that?” Brown told the Herald.
“If they build it within six months, it’s fast-track, I’ve got no problem with it. But [to] fast-track to these [developments] eight years away is just taking away [the] council’s job.”
Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop has confirmed the fast-track panel has approved plans for the 1200-home Delmore development near Ōrewa, which has attracted heavy criticism from Brown and councillors, as well as residents.
The fast-track panel clarified plans for water and wastewater at the development after concerns were raised about effluent being trucked off-site, potentially to Whangārei.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-mayor-wayne-brown-blasts-fast-track-approval-for-orewa-development/MH3KACHQQFH2HOTYVCAHGYOB7M/?
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/08/14/can-luxon-get-his-government-back-on-track/
Best-case scenario: Luxon limps on like a lame llama spitting in people’s faces who doubt or challenge him (aka stress him out).
Worst-case scenario: Luxon leads the next Government and keeps spitting in the faces of the many who bear the burden of the cost-of-living crisis.
Good lord, Count Binface got 9,455 votes to Nigel Farage's 22,239! 9,455 people preferred a chap wearing a bin on his head to Farage, who made up a cock and bull story about a security threat to snub the traditional appearance of all the candidates to hear the results,the first to do so since IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. What a pompous ass and a coward to boot.
Farage is surely finished, he'll never live down this result, not in the UK. The jokes will be relentless.
Farage resigned to wiggle out of a Parliamentary review of a non-declared $5mi donation in election year. He thought to reinforce his mandate truimphantly against the other main parties. They’ve sat it out.
Bad, bad call. His puppetmasters, the UK media barons et al., decided they're happy enough reviving the Conservative rump, and have dropped him, where before he was lovingly coddled by them.
His meeting with the Parliamentary Committee is now on again, and he probably will be kicked out for misconduct, forcing a second by-election. This time the other parties will throw their hats in too.
80% chance Farage is toast, I agree. He’s pretty slithery, though.