iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Rented a Toyota Yaris hybrid and while it was nice enough it now won't start. Appears likely that the 12V battery is low. Had it happen last night and it eventually started but not much luck this morning (after partner drove it on a trip) A known problem judge by search. Trying the magic fixes

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Well I'm a bit rusty as to the dividing line between the Petty Bourgeoisie and the Bourgeoisie But I'm pretty sure Marx didn't have a specific figure in mind

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I work for a company that is owned by a couple of billionaries As far as I am aware the are not especially evil But they fire people, porobably do sharp business deals and probably support the causes I disagree with But I'm not sure it makes them uniquely more evil than the average business owner

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Well it is certainly a concern what influence you can buy for often relatively small percentages of their wealth. Or even relatively small sums in the case of NZ Although there are plenty of wealthy people who don't use it for political influence

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

How about this: "It is not morally acceptable to be a dairy owner since every dairy owner is exploiting workers and overcharging customers" If the argument applies to everyone it is meaningless as a way of singling out billionaires as especially evil

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

JK is a good example I would never argue she is a good person for her political views But writing books and selling lots of copies seems a pretty moral way to become a billionaire

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Beck supplying the military market is a fairly normal thing. It's a legal part of the economy. Is everybody who works for Rocketlab also tainted for the same reason? The statement seems to be that you must to especially evil things to become a billionare. I'm saying this isn't true

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

The "problem" is that you have companies that are worth billions of dollars and some of them were started by a small group of people who own a significant percentage of the company So those people are now worth billions What is the solution for that?

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Yeah but they argument that everybody should have just been paid 10% or 50% more to spread all the wealth (until Jackson was worth $5m or similar) feels wrong when you take it the other way & ask how it applies to to companies that lose money Singling out billionaires also implies poorer are moral

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Sure but then you could say the same about everyone worth $10m or $100m. Arguing that billionaires are immoral since everything business should basically return some more than a middle-class wage to the owner is just silly If people don't like capitalism say so

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Yes, that is what other people say and I'm saying they are wrong The question is: Did he become a billionaire in a moral way? not: Is this guy perfect and has never done anything wrong?

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Looking at a discussion on if it is morally acceptable for people to be billionaires I'd argue Taylor Swift, Stephen King, JK, Peter Beck or Peter Jackson became billionaires in moral ways and any failings they have are separate from them achieving that status

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I've rented the same place for 20+ years I'm perfectly happy not to worry about maintenance etc Simplicity Living have waiting lists on their places because they offer 10 year options and a few other nice bits. Rental isn't even very cheap

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Audiobooks - May 2026 For the Love of Trains: Celebrating 200 Years of British Railways by Paul Routledge 3/5 The Bigger Picture: My Blockbuster Life & Lessons Learned Along the Way by Jan Landau 4/5 blog.darkmere.gen.nz/2026/10/audi...

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Irony is replying to an email and it bouncing with the following error: 554 5.7.1 We do NOT accept from your country nor send to it

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The non-economic reasons for NZers to own their own house main come down to "NZ Landlords are awful"

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The Morons at the New Zealand Commerce Commission want ISPs and the Domain Name Commission to start blocking two dodgy websites Note the websites are hosted by Cloudflare so could block millions of sites www.comcom.govt.nz/news-and-med...

comcom.govt.nz

Commission takes court action to stop misleading paid online rankings | Commerce Commission

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

At home I'm off for a few days so going to try and wrap up a couple of projects Next plan is to maybe try OpenCode at home (I'm using vscode right now). Don't need a crazy setup for amount of work I have planned (and no local agents, so limited budget)

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Work just rolled out OpenAI and Claude to everyone (and bumped up our individual budgets) I've been using cursor for the last few months since that was the main supported solution but now have to think which way to go I'll probably give Claude Code a try first Everything still evolving so fast

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Tim Carmody @tcarmody.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This is the funniest thing I've seen today, possibly ever

A tweet by SarahStarberry that says "oh god read the vertical axis" on top of a chart measuring AI models' release dates and model numbers rather than any real capabilities

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

And there are treaty claims already covering the various confiscations. Some settled

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Well very few involve private entities or businesses paying out

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I know this is one of your things but how would it actually work since the ownership of the Herald has changed hands about 5 times since then

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Australia is making credit card surcharges on purchases illegal So one Sydney cafe had this idea: Customers without change can buy a 50-cent coin at the counter for $1

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I had an hour left in the month and $50 worth of token credits left at work so I cranked up the models a bit and reviewed a couple of my repos Managed to burn through just $10 of tokens but got some improvements. Total for the month was $28

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I remember years ago I got told off my NZ's number one online worker advocate for suggesting that coffee shops shouldn't let the loud back-house music leak into the customer area and clash with the quiet stuff there were playing there

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my ordinary life @calne.ca · 27/09/2026

im very busy

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I'd note that people who seem concerned about traffic accidents caused by daylight savings rarely care about it in other context Eg NZ just abolished various low speed limits. Society seems happy to wear those extra deaths

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

It is not just a "retail" thing. It means that people going to work or school in winter also are in sunlight as much as possible The whole is more complex by relative position of where you live inside a timezones ( eg what time is noon )

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

You forgot because Daylight savings isn't the problem. Just a few people get confused during the changeover and blow it out of proportion Then forget about it a week later

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Would encourage people to put in complaints to rnz. I did one a few weeks ago and while the reply was dismissive at least they know the public is watching them

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

If it's as good as say "a junior" at any skill then it's going to be better than what 99% of the population can do themselves So for many it is gone from "do yourself or pay somebody" to "use AI or pay somebody"

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I feel that using this comparison is kinda endorsement of the prosecution of Aaron Imagine if someone posted a old article about a person being convicted of homosexual acts alongside a picture of a pride parade. Meaning clear Personally I don't think either Aaron or AI scrapers should be charged

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Shane Phillips @shanedphillips.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

So many problems, in so many states, are downstream of our unwillingness to tax real estate at its market value, and more generally of our unwillingness to acknowledge that housing wealth is, in fact, wealth.

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I think I need to move my AI programming up a level. I'm still mostly reviewing each change. Means I'm not spending much but should be able to do a lot more with a modest spend. Worker higher level with smarter models Especially at work where I'm about 20% through my monthly budget

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Pretty sure my Aunty is a regular reader of those notices in the OTD. She posts a picture of one from somebody she knew every few weeks

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

My own desk got a slightly better review

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Partner's desk is a bit messy. She denied it so I asked a neutral party 😂 In related news I am sleeping on the couch

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Partner's desk is a bit messy. She denied it so I asked a neutral party 😂 In related news I am sleeping on the couch

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Thinking hope IT operations completely changed in the last 20 years while programming was a bit more static Deployment of code changed but the programming itself has been IDE plus version control for a while Now programming has got that huge change. Except they got it in 2-3 years instead of 15-20

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

knowyourmeme.com/memes/why-no...

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

This article is basically about the food scene near where I live and mentions a bunch of places I go to regularly thespinoff.co.nz/kai/19-09-20...

thespinoff.co.nz

Where to eat in Sandringham, Auckland – an insider’s guide

From congee breakfasts, to midnight chaat, to tamarind-laced fried chicken.

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

A lot of the raw numbers are driven by OpenAI Luna. It's 1/5 of the price of Claude Haiku and good enough for a lot of people Personally I use it of my (rather simple) programming needs This site shows estimated spend per week on various models via openrouter tokenscost.com/spend-leader...

tokenscost.com

AI Model Spend Leaderboard — Estimated $ Spent Per Model | Tokenscost

See estimated dollars spent on Claude, GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, MiniMax and more — real token usage × live pricing, updated daily.

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

A collection of prompts so if you generate your event poster with AI at least it doesn't look like every other AI-generated poster john.hartnup.uk/2026/06/07/a... Link to templates at bottom or article Followup article with tips on how to actually use them: john.hartnup.uk/poster-promp...

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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

It’s very simple. A reality TV host became dictator because he turned down a role for Sharknado 4 and that’s why the king of outer space, who cheats at Diablo, got to kill Africa. Now the economy is controlled by a sex cult that has something to do with Harry Potter fanfic because of robots.

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Interesting write-up of Linus Torvalds progression with using AI, especially in the Linux kernel

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I was thinking keep the buses on Onewa Rd. At least for a long time. The connection to the busway is pretty good and it has bus lanes. All depends how the population growth of cource but I was assuming most of the density in the Northcote and Takapuna areas

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I'm a light metro fan. It's more flexible but the shore is all low density, hills, valleys and dead end streets. This is my plan. The Green Line is the start line with the others potential extensions

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The bus way works well enough. No point spending billions upgrading it when you can expand coverage. Rail could go to Takapuna. Take some of the pressure off the busway and go to places with density

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Simon Lyall @slyall.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

That's the trick with building motorways. Each project is a few hundred million and you push the bottleneck a few km down the road So you need a followup project to expand the new bottleneck

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