• 105 Posts
  • 416 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 2nd, 2023

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  • Yeah, based on the link in your first comment the answer is that there is basically no way to test impairment without just giving people impairment tests. So even though we may have moved to this because saliva tests are a bit dodgy, it’s probably not much better.

    Honestly, I think we should just throw loads more money into getting self-driving cars sorted. Well, I guess there is already loads of money being thrown at it so we should wait it out. Then we can just ban driving and solve the whole problem.




  • It can be cheaper, but it’s well known how hard it is to attract skilled workers to the regions.

    There is a certain lifestyle that comes with it, but that lifestyle doesn’t always appeal. There are far more people moving to cities than there are people moving out of cities, generally. Many employers in the regions find they have to hire from overseas, it can be quite a problem finding skilled staff at prices businesses can afford.



  • They only ship to specific countries. When they started it was US and some EU countries. Eventually they expanded, they ship to Aus now but not NZ yet. And it doesn’t seem likely it will happen any time soon. They are also oddly protective, actively preventing people outside supported countries from buying their stuff.

    I know it’s a risk I took when ordering from them, even at the time they were not shipping to NZ and were saying you weren’t allowed to freight forward. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.

    I have actually done an order with some upgrades, I replaced the screen panel and hinges at one point, but that was probably a couple of years ago now. At that time I still managed to order with my NZ credit card, but it doesn’t seem to work anymore.









  • If you have an original Framework (from memory, 11th gen intel 13 inch), there were hardware issues that I don’t thing could be resolved via software updates. I believe they worked in them for the intel 12th gen and later.

    I run a fedora derivative on an original framework, and I used a command to disable sleep and go to a deeper state (hibernate maybe?) so it doesn’t lose battery while asleep. And if you take out your HDMI, display port, etc cards and just use USB (or none) that resolves another power drain issue.

    But basically, it’s usable but not perfect. I’m waiting to see if there’s another gen of AMD card coming then might update my mainboard.

    I dunno, I like it as a laptop but I’m also seldom far from a charger.





  • Personally i’d go back to the future a bit and look at reverting the 2014 changes to reduce weight and thus damage.

    There’s a really key point here. Heavier trucks cause more damage, but the exponential increase is based on axle weight. If you spread the load out over more axles (keeping the axle weights the same as a smaller truck), then you no longer get the exponential increase in damage and are now in additive damage. Now obviously these trucks cause more damage than one truck (the same per axle, but more axles), but they also move the freight with a smaller number of trucks since each is carrying more.

    There are other factors at play too (like the heavier trucks do need roads (bridges) capable of carrying all that weight), but I don’t think allowing the larger freight trucks is generally as big of a cause of massive damage as it gets blamed for. I think it’s reduced freight costs (one driver can carry more) which increases demand, and there are also other reasons I suspect freight has increased a lot, causing more road damage.

    I also want to add that an under 3,500kg vehicle with two axles pays $76 per 1000km. Two axles up to 6,000kg pays $80, so you can already see something isn’t right (shouldn’t they be paying almost twice as much at a minimum, but as it’s double the weight across the same number of axles then 4 times as much). When you get up to larger vehicles things get super complicated and I’m out of my league 😆

    Another thing here is weather. Weather causes a lot of road damage, more in some parts of the country than others. I’d guess it’s probably possible to estimate what proportion of road damage is caused by weather, if you had access to the right stats. Is it fair to spread this out across RUC bands by weight (heavier vehicles pay for more of the weather damage) or should it be per vehicle? I’m just rambling now, but my point is it’s probably not easy to put an exact number on how much of a subsidy trucks get, since a lot of the spread (like who pays for weather damage) is arbitrary. I think it’s probably fair to say heavier vehicles are getting more use of the road and so perhaps it’s ok for them to pay a larger share of the weather, etc, costs. Which leads me to your next point.

    I would also start providing a similar amount of subsidy to coastal shipping as road freight gets and build the coastal network back up. I’m a huge fan of rail freight, and would like to see it used more as well but most of the existing infrastructure around that is ok for now.

    A large amount of freight is between main centres. Imagine if you could throw a rail hub near Auckland and one near Wellington and then use container trucks to get things where they need to go. Easy loading and unloading of trains, no traffic, no dealing with driver rest breaks etc making stuff late because all the trips would be short and easy to schedule a different driver for. If you put some thought into it you could have it working really well. You could work you way to putting heavy electric capability into the line.

    Coastal shipping is a great option too, and we already have all the infrastructure for it.

    If we can reduce the speed & weight of trucks, plus the amount of them and the distance travelled then in theory (to a pleb) our roads aren’t as expensive to build, and don’t suffer as much pot-hole damage so the maintenance costs are reduced.

    I think reducing the amount of freight going by road is the important bit here. It does cost more to build roads that can take the heavier trucks, but I don’t think we will stop building such roads even if we reduced the weights allowed.

    All in all, this is a long rambly comment to say, other than some nit picky bits, I agree with you and it would be great if you could get this going for us thanks 😋



  • Yeah, I also see in the comments some disapproval at the freight industry not wanting to pay, claiming they get the benefits.

    I disagree with that assessment. The freight companies don’t get the benefit of shorter routes, what they get is competition forcing prices down on those routes because costs have dropped. The economic benefits aren’t to the freight companies, it is a wider economic benefit of cheaper freight and more efficient transfer of freight that is spread across many companies and individuals. Hence why it doesn’t make sense for freight companies to pay for, but does make sense for a government to invest in.