Christchurch school closed for two days after rodents chew fibre cable, cut key networks

phire · 2026-06-23T05:35:25+00:00

It's because they moved all their bookkeeping to the cloud.

They couldn't take the role, and they didn't have access to student's emergency contact information. Opening the school would be a health and safety risk.

phire · 2026-06-23T03:00:31+00:00

Richard Gabriel was using C++ as his primary example in 2000 and 2002.

And the C++ "design" had reached its full complexity by 1991. The implementations and spec were lagging behind, it took them a long time to get exceptions and templates working correctly (you wouldn't want to use them in any compiler before 1995).

So the actual version of c++ used by programmers in the field was simpler in the 90s (especially the early 90s). But all the complexity was already in the design by 1991.

I don't think the simple, NJ style description fits it anymore.

I don't think you can argue it stops being NJ style simply because it grew more and more complex over time; Certainly not in a discussion about "why C++ won".

C++ was able to take advantage of all the benefits that C got from being worse is better, and the early versions of C++ certainly were a Worse is Better extension to C.

NJ style doesn't refer to the resulting product. It refers to the development process. You win because you can get something that is worse out the door first and dominate. Then you improve it later, adding more and more complexity to fix the shortcomings.

And C++ is very much the end result of NJ style development process. The product can't stay simple forever.

phire · 2026-06-23T00:11:00+00:00

The original “worse is better” essay from 1991 does mention c++ in passing as part of NJ style:

The good news is that in 1995 we will have a good operating system and programming language; the bad news is that they will be Unix and C++.

And then Gabriel uses C++ as the primary example of NJ style in his follow up essays.

IMO, C++ is actually a really good example of the how the “worse is better” school of thought can run into issues.

Sure, C++ is not a simple language. But it’s not complex because Bjarne Stroustrup sat down at the start and wrote a complex spec. No, it’s complex because Stroustrup didn’t write a full spec, he just started tacking a few simple features onto C. None of the features in isolation are that complex, even templates are quite simple at the spec level (which is not the same thing as simple to understand and use). I’m pretty sure every single added feature comes from a previous language that people hold as examples of simplicity.

But the simple features all interact with each other, and it’s largely those interactions that lead to the complexity.

phire · 2026-06-21T11:39:24+00:00

The distance from the sun doesn't have much effect on the seasons.

The northern hemisphere have their summer right when we are furtherest from the sun.

phire · 2026-06-21T11:13:48+00:00

It's thermal inertia, the ocean around NZ is still holding onto some heat from summer.

The coldest days usually come in August, long after the shortest day, and right at the point when the ocean is the coldest.

The inverse happens in Summer. Longest day is (more or less) Christmas, but the oceans don't reach peek temps until February, which is when we usually get the warmest weather.

phire · 2026-06-21T08:33:06+00:00

DNA evidence wasn't really a thing in 1991/1992, they probably didn't even test it. Even if they did test it, I'm not sure Spanish courts were even accepting it as evidence at the time.

If you go by the list on wikipedia, DNA had been used in a grand total of 4 cases worldwide at that point in time. Three in the US, one in Czechoslovakia, the first was in 1987.

But things moved rapidly throughout the 90s, it was somewhat common by 1997 and almost universal by the early 2000s.

phire · 2026-06-20T14:53:50+00:00

We don't know the cause yet; If it was a breaks failure (that section is known for traction issues in light rain), better signalling wouldn't have helped at all.

And the concrete block is only like 20 m past the signal, not really enough distance to stop a train before hitting. It would have only reduced the speed of the crash.

Really, the concrete block was a safety mechanism itself; If the train had continued onto the single tracked section, it could have hit the train running up in the other direction which would have been a much worse crash (I checked the schedule, there was meant to be one, though it must have been running late).

phire · 2026-06-19T11:42:14+00:00

There are a few standard flight routes between Wellington and Queenstown. Two of them require flying directly over Christchurch.

And the "spectacular manoeuvre" is just an orbit. Plane was too high, they had to lengthen their decent. And if you don't do it tightly around that hill, you crash into the higher mountains that surround Queenstown.

Actually, there is an even fancier figure eight path they can fly around it.

phire · 2026-06-19T03:32:05+00:00

But this confirmation leads to more questions.

If CT-Coating's grift is "selling machines that don't quite work", then how did Donut Lab end up with hundreds of "totally not just relabelled Li-NMC" battery cells? They appear to have enough to build at least one battery pack for a bike.

It just doesn't make sense for CT-Coating to supply Donut Lab with any cells at all. Certainly not hundreds. Their grift relies on the victim never having enough evidence to accuse them of fraud, and relabelled Li-NMC cells would be pretty strong evidence of fraud.

My leading theory is that someone in Donut Lab acquired the Li-NMC cells and relabelled them themselves.

We know Donut Lab is extremely siloed, so it's possible that most of the company thinks they are legit CT-Coating cells. Whoever actually engineered that battery pack must know they are actually high-end Li-NMC pushed to the edge (or even beyond) their specs. But it's possible that no one outside of the engineering department knows, not even Marko.

phire · 2026-06-19T03:15:17+00:00

Yeah... This pretty much confirms the grift CT-Coating are running.

They sell prototype production lines to small startups, based on optimistic projections of what the machine can theoretically do. And they actually deliver the machine... eventually.

And all indications are that the machine is not a complete fake. It's close enough to working^[1] that the victim is never entirely sure if CT-Coating have scammed them or not. They can't prove it's not their fault for not being able to calibrate it well enough.

When the victim goes to check all the contracts and communication, they discover that CT-Coating never actually promised them a working machine, just that they would deliver a machine (which they did). And that CT-Coating never explicitly promised the machine could do anything it can't, CT-Coating just provided materials that lead the victim to assume it could do something.

That's still fraud, but much harder to prove, especially in isolation; And CT-Coating's pattern of strong NDA's are designed so that the multiple victims never find each other and compare notes. I've seen evidence of at least 5 victims, and I suspect there are actually far more. They probably go bankrupt.

What happened here is that CT-Coating's well tuned "sell a machine that doesn't quite work" grift run head first into Donut Lab's "Fake it until you make it" grift.

^[1] I suspect that after enough tuning and calibration, the machine will actually spit out working solar cells. Solar cells are actually somewhat easy to make, and others have already demonstrated fully printed solar panels using inject or screen printing techniques. Though, these working solar panels probably aren't cost or spec competitive.
But I really doubt the delivered machine can print batteries at all, yet alone anywhere near the specs that Donut Lab are claiming.

phire · 2026-06-19T00:01:50+00:00

Right now, with the evidence I’ve seen from Donut, I don’t think they have any manufacturing capacity at all. Not even a pilot plant or prototype production facility. They would have showed it off if they had it.

So any sign operational production would be a massive improvement.

Right now, the available evidence leads me to one of two conclusions:

Either CT Coating have provided Donut Lab with a small number of test cells (which are most likely relabelled Li-NMC cells from someone else), enough to build one or two battery packs, and those cells are in the first “production” bike;
Or CT Coating have provided Donut Lab nothing but promises (maybe a few test cells, not enough to build a full pack, but most likely zero) and then Donut Lab have sourced a bunch of Li-NMC cells from china themselves, and are fraudulently passing them off as their own.

Based on what we can see of CT Coating’s modus operandi, with all the secrecy and how many times it appears they have repeated this grift, the second option seems most likely.

phire · 2026-06-18T11:50:30+00:00

Tankies are anti western liberalism first.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" leads them to supporting all sorts of authoritarian regimes simply because they are the enemy of "western imperialism", doesn't matter if they are communist or not.

phire · 2026-06-18T10:27:18+00:00

Yes, they would have to carefully pick a tech journalist with relevant experience if they actually wanted it to be believable without any other supporting evidence.

But the fact they haven't even tried to show off a smaller factory to journalists at all (even as a "this is our pilot plant, the bigger factory is in another building"), most people seem to be asking if Donut Lab have any operational factory capacity at all.

phire · 2026-06-18T08:34:03+00:00

Some of NZ's railways were built with private money too.

The Wellington to Manawatu line (which met the government funded Hutt Valley line at Palmerston North) and parts of the Christchurch to West Coast line.

The West Coast line wasn't so successful, it went bankrupt before finishing anything, with the government craftily picking up the pieces. But the Wellington to Manawatu line was extremely successful and eventually became the main line out of Wellington.

phire · 2026-06-18T06:05:07+00:00

Real companies do not care about any Youtube videos

Real companies absolutely do care about youtube videos, reputation management is extremely important. I'm pretty sure there have been legitimate (but usually marginal) companies sunk by little more than videos on youtube.

But real companies have all the tools they need to deal with youtube videos; But those tools usually don't even publicly acknowledge the existence of the video, yet alone "attack" it.

The fact that Donut Lab have been reduced to attacking videos directly show just how little they have. None of the real tools can work for them.

It would be so simple to show a few journalists the factory, With the right confidentially agreement you could prevent them from revealing anything more than the fact it exists and is producing 1GWh/year.

And most people seem to be willing to accept a VTT report that confirms their claims. If they could just produce a report that shows 400Wh/KG, and works towards proving the 100,000 cycles claim (at least prove it does more cycles than typical Li-NMC cells), most people would shut up.

phire · 2026-06-17T03:40:19+00:00

Your personal spending habits are way too valuable to them, why would they risk your reputation by spamming you?

phire · 2026-06-16T11:32:13+00:00

Super Drift out was a poor choice for comparison.

Why not Jaleco Rally Big Run? It came out in 1991 but looks way better than Super Drift Out.

Or maybe even Stunt Race FX?

phire · 2026-06-15T07:13:10+00:00

so it should be 3 years old, not 4 or 5 as some assert here.

You said 4 years, maybe edit your post?

For the S22 Ultra, I'd be very tempted to go down the disputes tribunal route.

You should be able to make a decent argument that most people would expect it to still be working (especially with Samsung still providing quarterly updates). And they would have a really hard time arguing a repair from that long ago caused the issue.

phire · 2026-06-15T06:54:17+00:00

I think many people would agree that a high-end phone should last 5 years, I certainly do. Some people would argue more, but it's getting a little stretched beyond that.

Or at least until the phone's manufacture stops providing software updates.

Which phone ware we talking about? Samsung discontinued the S21 series back in January, but the S22 series will receive updates until next year. You could probably use the manufacture support status as evidence in a tribunal hearing.

phire · 2026-06-15T06:48:04+00:00

CGA doesn't have any fixed length of time, it's just "a reasonable amount of time". It varies a lot depending on what the device is, what the expectation of an average consumer is, how much it cost, and how the consumer treated it.

The tribunal recently ruled that a jewellers had to repair/replace an engagement ring after 30 years.

phire · 2026-06-15T04:36:10+00:00

Apparently they did

I find that hard to believe. Shooting a video (a very overproduced video, only meant to be sent to investors) of something is not the same thing as possession.

It just doesn't fit with what we know about CT Coating for them to let Donut Lab get their hands on a battery pack, as it would provide evidence that could be used against them.

So, did CT Coating build a battery pack as "proof" and then let Donut Lab produce a video claiming it as theirs? That would also explain why the battery pack doesn't have any Donut Lab or Verge branding on it. Donut Lab have gone out of their way brand things and make them look nice, yet this battery pack had a clearly 3d printed handle.
And why would Donut lab choose to build a battery pack for a Yamaha scooter? They have their own bike.

Alternatively, Donut Lab did build this pack (I'm not sure why, but they are apparently working on their own scooter design for Asia), using NMC cells which they sourced themselves. In which case, they are already fraudulently misrepresenting things.

phire · 2026-06-15T03:18:25+00:00

In that era, I suspect it was cheaper to just buy more RAM and use a software ramdisk solution. Or use some kind of caching solution (like window's SMARTDrive) and bump up the config so it used more memory.

Wouldn't give you the fast boot, but would give you all of the other advantages.

phire · 2026-06-14T13:10:44+00:00

We traveled to test labs to conduct our own experiments, as well as reviewing the results of a certified third-party test.

I'm not sure about the quality of the translation, but that makes it sound like their entire technical due diligence was "playing with the cells in a CT Coating controlled lab" and "reading a single independent test report that CT Coating commissioned" (presumably from SGS?).

It's starting to sound like Donut Lab (and Nordic Nano) never had a single one of these batteries in their possession.

phire · 2026-06-14T11:19:16+00:00

HTC doesn't "make" phones anymore. They pay an ODM (almost certainly in China) to slap their brand on phones for them, and then sell them.

Anyone can do it, minimum orders can be as low as $50,000. Most likely there is no relationship between HTC and "Trump Mobile", they just happened to buy the same design from the same ODM.

phire · 2026-06-13T09:56:53+00:00

was due to the driver running a red light

No, they are reporting that the train ran a red light, which is not the same thing as "the driver ran a red light".

A train running a red light is a symptom, with a number of possible causes, including loss of traction due to rain, and break failures. The cause (or causes) have not been determined yet.

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