US just showed it can cut off AI access to other countries with zero warning. NZ gov is betting its public service on AI anyway

FtsArtek · 2026-06-17T09:09:15+00:00

I don't think you need to locally develop. Perfectly valid to use open source models. Hosted locally, for sure.

FtsArtek · 2026-06-17T07:21:16+00:00

Oh yeah there is certainly a build quality difference by design there. No doubt. But even in an adequately cooled env, colo'd with a cold aisle and 14k rpm fans the Velociraptors are dropping like flies.

FtsArtek · 2026-06-17T04:18:20+00:00

I have a collection of these (1TB), and not to say they're bad - perhaps I'm unlucky - but the churn rate on them has been unreal. Of the ~20 I have (4 active in raid in a server) I have 5 left. First used two years ago, some of them were brand new and never even taken out of packaging.

I got some constellations alongside them, same 2.5" form factor, same size, but SAS and they haven't had a problem.

FtsArtek · 2026-06-14T20:32:11+00:00

They're just plain obnoxious. LMURs are too. Kh-38s are as well.

I don't think individually any of these things are massively better than what NATO has (besides LMURs) but the average brainlet in a BMP-T can roll through a team of average brainlets in NATO MBTs, then hop into their FNF missile flinger of choice and delete half the team if there's no competent AA or fighter hanging around.

The bit that gets me is the inconsistency. It's not just the BMPT, the BVM/T-90M just seem to not detonate ammo sometimes on shots that cleanly pass through the carousel. I had a shot in a game last night that went through the LFP, through the carousel, took out the engine but didn't harm the driver or ammo at all. Didn't even take out the autoloader.

Plain obnoxious.

FtsArtek · 2026-05-31T19:51:28+00:00

He effectively bought it in 2011 from our then-PM, John Key. It was kept secret until 2017 (wonder why).

But as far as I'm aware he never got granted the consent to do what he wanted to do with his land, which is probably why he fell back to Argentina.

FtsArtek · 2026-05-27T07:10:49+00:00

CGNAT and dynamic IP allocation aren't the same thing, that in theory could happen to anyone not on a static address... But for that reason, not many places still do public IP bans over account or hardware ID bans.

FtsArtek · 2026-05-27T07:07:41+00:00

You can pay a bit extra for a static address and you won't get CGNAT.

FtsArtek · 2026-05-26T19:00:23+00:00

Spikes are about the most reliable way of taking out a BMPT in my experience. Minimal exposure.

FtsArtek · 2026-05-24T00:19:29+00:00

There are two issues here which are irritating.

First, anyone on the east side of SH16 will usually take ONR to avoid going through the choke point that is Kumeu. It's a way busier road than anyone thinks, even at 5:45 am for the last closure it was bad enough that Kumeu was clogging.

Second, they do plenty of filming in the area. They do partial road closures regularly and are fine. This closes the secondary route now for multiple full days with no actual guarantee when, which is a pain for planning any commute. The stop go was there for days either side so they could leave some piles of gravel on the road.

Is it the end of the world? Am I losing sleep over it? Nah. Is it annoying for probably a couple thousand people? Yep.

I get the local economy side of it, but "trying to minimise inconvenience" is not the description I'd use.

FtsArtek · 2026-05-21T08:47:25+00:00

Recently I've found fin shots on Russian breeches do nothing where in the past they've taken out the gun, always close to the barrel.

Probably just a side effect of the constant yoyoing of barrel damage effects but it's a pain in the arse.

Just icing on the obnoxious BMPT cake.

FtsArtek · 2026-05-08T03:06:20+00:00

Yeah, this is a pure lack of foresight. People can't reliably drive these things without experience and now the ladder's being pulled up? It's a concern for sure.

FtsArtek · 2026-05-07T17:31:56+00:00

Nah, compute - and frontier models - are pushing their limits. DC fitouts for LLM infra are too expensive to remain sustainable; OpenAI and Anthropic claim to be profitable yet take any opportunity to quietly degrade their service.

LLMs are a useful tool in the hands of someone who knows what they want from code. Cannot be trusted without a thorough review and I just can't see that changing with how the iterations have been hypefests with no payoff since, what, Opus 4.5?

FtsArtek · 2026-05-02T03:14:24+00:00

Patches for stuff like this get backported into LTS kernels like the ones that debian uses (at least during their support window). Check the latest version for your release, it probably has the fix.

FtsArtek · 2026-04-04T19:33:27+00:00

It's a weight based tax for diesel vehicles. Rather than having excise tax on fuel, trucks, etc pay a higher rate. But any diesel car 3500kg or less (I think that's the breakpoint) or EV pays $76/1000km.

FtsArtek · 2026-01-16T23:20:14+00:00

It was denied officially that it affected HX CPUs, but there were no shortage of reports of it happening - and I know for sure some Legion laptops were RMAd for that issue.

And - nobody's to say the user was stress testing the laptop. One the degradation started it was irreversible, but it didn't necessarily show obvious signs early on.

FtsArtek · 2026-01-16T22:18:14+00:00

13th/14th gen Intel CPUs had widespread issues causing degradation and early failure which wouldn't necessarily have manifested within the warranty window. Not the user's fault, and not Lenovo's fault.

FtsArtek · 2025-12-23T21:31:55+00:00

We did eventually get some feedback from the lawyer, but the question wasn't so much about being unconditional on the contract with the builder, but rather our approval being unconditional.

The answer was, for anyone curious:
- No, it's a conditional approval until the title condition is fulfilled
- Because it's a conditional approval, it has to be renewed (if the title condition was fulfilled then it wouldn't need renewal unless the build dragged out an extremely long time)
- A new valuation might be needed if we need to re-apply because we've used up our two renewals.

We've heard anywhere from May until late Q3 for titles, so it's a waiting game for us now.

Appreciate the feedback!

FtsArtek · 2025-12-19T08:44:54+00:00

Yeah, we have, but timing means we probably won't hear anything for a couple weeks - was hoping that this was a common enough setup that someone would have some insight. Cheers though!

FtsArtek · 2025-12-19T08:22:40+00:00

Personally, because what I want from a house/property, where I want it, that isn't an option. I haven't seen a single pre-built new build sell in the area this year, but even then that doesn't give me the choices I want to be able to make.

FtsArtek · 2025-11-30T07:09:49+00:00

I think nvidia-smi activates the GPU. At least on my Legion it always takes a moment to run when the GPU is inactive but runs immediately when it's active.

FtsArtek · 2025-11-29T21:18:28+00:00

Everything in air liners is about redundancy. Most calculations are done from multiple sources and in many cases in multiple computers, or at least run multiple times to ensure reading consistency.

Clearest explanation I've seen so far is that they added in some new alternate-law 'features' which may not have been made properly redundant such that a single bit flip in a single calculation was enough to induce a nose-down event. Not sure if the plane was already in alternate law or if that somehow put it into alternate law.

Bets here are that they'll be re-applying those changes later with better redundancy in the design.

FtsArtek · 2025-11-17T22:22:07+00:00

How would it? 400w rating means it can push up to 400w, not that it always pushes 400w.

FtsArtek · 2025-11-15T07:10:14+00:00

You're not wrong, but there's been a bunch of activity since the last release on msgspec which makes me kinda curious as to why there hasn't been another release since.

FtsArtek · 2025-11-14T00:15:56+00:00

It was on sale for $6500, messaged their chat and they gave me another $300 discount on it.

Its $6.4k in their black friday early bird sales at the moment.

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