iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 2h

On my way back, leaving blue skies & sun in Blenheim. Pilot tells us we may not be able to land in Wellington due to low cloud.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 11h

Other end considerably nicer.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 11h

Not the most beautiful day to be flying out of Wellington.

View of the runway through the windscreen of a small plane. It's raining.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 22h

Self-censoring hard on the other Blue site. I need to cross a border at the end of the month and anything I post absolutely will be used against me. 🇺🇸

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Our neighbours are having trouble with the strength of their weed and I just don't know what I'm supposed to do here. Would be nice to have less coughing. Should I get them a vapouriser?

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Replacing with a refurb T14S from PBTech ordered this morning. My daily driver is an M5 Macbook but it doesn't go out on the water or up towers with me. 😅

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I've got a little Thinkpad X270 I use as a field laptop & I love it. Sadly it doesn't support Win11 and Win10 is now out of security support. Are there orgs out there who put Linux on these & give them good homes?

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

9-3 may be classroom hours, but lesson planning, grading, and admin push this schedule well past 40 hours a week. I spent one year teaching, it was enough to help me understand.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Duolingo has some strange ideas. Going by the rest of what we talk about, I reckon what's moving is kucing hitam dan putih itu. (that black and white cat)

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

There's like $2bn on that entire chart. Does Huawei even know they work with ICBC?

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I think it's a privatisation thing. When an airport is sold off it goes from being public good infrastructure to being a cash machine for its owners.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Because this is New Zealand, some of us are very likely to run into Auckland Airport Directors once in a while. Tell them the experience is shit. It is. It's like having to pay at a gas station that doesn't have pay-at-pump, you have run an actual gauntlet of shit you don't need.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Outside of Auckland, most airports I visit aren't like this. Once you pass through immigration & security you're in the concourse, not duty-free hell. That Auckland is so completely shit is due to these fossils: corporate.aucklandairport.co.nz/about/board-...

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Yes but the interest is nothing like what you pay on a credit card. And the flexibility to pay it all off quickly is there too.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Over here we have TMNZ to help - a far better option than using a credit card. It was a lifesaver when I changed tax residency back to NZ then had a double tax year to cope with.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Has anyone every found a way of banishing these messages from Slack? I have a very short list (one hand of fingers) of people who I just don't need to hear from, but I'd rather my conversations not be filled with this.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

When you're travelling and you don't have the correct plug, something in your hotel room is bound to have this style plug. Usually the TV. Charging the laptop always wins over watching tv.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

💀 Alas poor 4o, I knew him well.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

There's an entire Facebook group for this very opinion. 😁 I think the more exposed you are to regional routes the more unhappy you're likely to be.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

7+ hours in and I don't think I've heard anything less than 30 years old yet. That's not a bad thing.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I've got a trip to San Francisco at the end of the month and I reckon my Thursday is going to be long enough to get the whole thing.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Stereolab has a 27+ hour "complete" streaming set. How far through can I get today?

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

That analysis makes the unrealistic assumption (noted of course) that all locations have suitable unshaded rooftops. Many of them do. But in hilly NZ locations? No way.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Looking at 600k locations in a single overseas market, I found a variability in cost of 3.5x between the least and most expensive system required to support the same load. That's based on geography, climate, and solar irradiation.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I checked Xero for five year running costs on my company's Toyota Yaris. $7k including rego, WOFs, petrol, oil changes, insurance, parking, a new windscreen, and even a few cleanings. On a _great_ vehicle I bought for $13k cash in Dec 2021. Buying an EV would be a bad call for me.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

If you're adding an EV into the mix for your -investment- you now need to consider how much you drive, how often you have to refresh the EV, and how that compares to just driving a more efficient petrol vehicle. Be generous & say fuel will triple in cost over the next 30 years. But do the math.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

As an -investment-, solar depends on your location, roof area and orientation, cost of supply, cost of capital, and use pattern. For many homes, double glazing and heat pumps are still a better -investment-.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

And guess what, other people here have anecdotal data too! It doesn't change the fact that we don't have the conditions in NZ for making it an economic investment at scale in NZ yet. We could, but we don't.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Anecdotal evidence from early adopters doesn't change the economics, which I work on at scale.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I've been building small scale utility solar for twenty years. I'm working on a project now where I modeled tens of thousands of systems at cell towers and municipal buildings in an overseas market. I know the economics beyond single homes.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Introducing subsidies would kickstart the market to the point they wouldn't be needed long.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

There's a point at which solar on homes makes sense in NZ and we're not there yet. That's a function of the small market & high markups on batteries & electrical work. If you can DIY, have zero fear of electricity, and your roof is big enough, the $$$ almost works.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I think 360's more of a pirouette.

Chris Luxon doing a pirouette on top of a black BMW i7 limo with Parliament in the background.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The crazy thing is that on first read I didn't have a clue it was fake. Then I looked up the author - first paper. Then I started chasing up key points the paper made - and couldn't find the references. Last action was to run it through GPTZero. 100% AI.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Last night work had me read a published, "peer reviewed" academic paper that turned out to be fake. It's going to be in my head for ages. - almost all the DOI links were broken - most references had errors in titles, years, or authors - importantly, references didn't back up key points

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Like coordinated inauthentic behaviour. Ten years ago we caught on to the emerging threat of rooms with ten kids and 200 phones building fake social media personas for hire. Nothing changed. The problem has grown at scale. The interactions benefit the social media companies so they don't stop.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I think the answer depends on how much trust people have in their govt, and whether they want or need to travel to more repressive places. Freedom of expression has been a recurring theme in Internet Governance Forums since the first one twenty years ago. But we didn't know what was coming.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Outside of forums where anonymity is the goal and all access is via Tor, it's very hard to hide your identity from a determined adversary. Like a government that searches devices at border crossings. techpolicy.press/circuit-cour...

techpolicy.press

Circuit Court Ruling on Border Searches Deals Serious Blow to Privacy Rights

The ruling ensures international travel to the US will continue to come with significant costs to privacy, writes Tech Policy Press fellow Jake Laperruque.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

But it's more than just C2C right? Not much margin for error when there are already faults on AAG, SJC2, & TGN IA.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

In Asia-Pacific, none in a meaningful way like peering subscriber network routes.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Just like in telecoms sending is cheaper than delivering. Almost all the cost is in the last mile routes. This is why international Internet capacity in most markets is cheaper than domestic, and why incumbent telcos almost never peer in their home markets.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

9/9 made, 7/9 hung. Came up six carabiners short of finishing the job.

Ceiling with lamps and hanging beige acoustic panels.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Will we finish today? Sure hope so!

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Cutie Pie in Hataitai has _the best_ pizza in town, bar none.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I don't get the argument for restoration. All I can say for the Chateau is that it used to have a nice bar. It was never a beautiful building or a nice place to stay. If the local iwi don't want it, why keep it?

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Picked up our first asparagus of the season yesterday at MW. Couldn't wait for lunch so had it for breakfast.

Scrambled eggs with chorizo and asparagus in a pan on a stove.

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Jonathan Brewer @kiwibrew.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Any sufficiently advanced bash script called by a cron job is indistinguishable from magic.

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