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Marcus

@utf9k.net
325 followers 195 following 2K posts

I use computers for work during the day and to write letters to the government at night utf9k.net

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Marcus @utf9k.net · 13h
Nick Mowbray posted on LinkedIn a few days ago about "the criticism we receive for donating to National and ACT" I'd be curious to know what source of criticism he's referring to that apparently struck enough of a nerve that he compelled to write a whole post
A screenshot of a LinkedIn post from Nick Mowbray that says:

I'm aware of the criticism we receive for donating to National and ACT. I'm also aware of the false narrative that we lobby the government and expect something in return.
So let me be clear: we have never lobbied the government.
Less than 1% of ZURU's revenue is in New Zealand.
We donate because we care about this country's future and believe National and ACT have the right talent and strategy to move it forward.
We grew up with that Kiwi number 8 wire mentality. Work hard figure things out and believe you can build something from nothing.
These photos show our second small factory on my parents' dairy farm in Tokoroa, my brother winning the NZ science fair and our first factory in China. We used fibreglass matting from the Kinleith paper mill as flooring because we had no money. We sprayed weeds and milked cows on weekends to help pay the rent.
Then we moved to China and lived on US$1 a day for many years. No exaggeration. My brother spent close to a decade living in a tiny room inside our first factory. For a decade we worked almost every day from morning until late at night sacrificing pretty much every comfort to keep building.Today, we compete globally with some of the biggest companies in the world. We employ thousands of people globally including hundreds of Kiwis, and aim to employ thousands more in New Zealand over the next five years.
We will surpass NZ$10 billion in revenue next year and are investing heavily back into New Zealand.
That's the future we want more Kiwis to have the opportunity to build. A New Zealand that rewards hard work and sacrifice backs people willing to take a chance and encourages them to compete globally and bring that success home. A country ambitious about becoming better and more prosperous.
New Zealand gave us a lot. We care deeply about its future. We expect nothing personally in return from any party. We simply want the next generation to have the opportunities we had and the chance to take them even further.
We want NZ to WIN! build a country of makers not takers
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 27/09/2026
Labour sent out an email about 10 minutes with this handwritten letter from Chris Hipkins saying he has "just come off the stage" The image metadata (which wasn't removed) shows a Sony ILCE-7CM2 took that photo at 1:45pm so a bit before the 3pm campaign launch actually kicked off 😄
A screenshot of an email with the subject line "A personal request - and a note to say thank you"

The letter says "Kia Ora I've just come off the stage at our campaign launch and wanted to thank you. Your support could be the difference between winning and losing. If you can I'd really appreciate it if you can click the buttons below and contribute"
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 25/09/2026
As someone who has worked for a Canadian company, I can confirm that Engineer is a protected term in Canada and so usually the title (for software roles) is replaced with an equivalent like "Expert" Most countries don't have a legal protection of the title and only a small handful do
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 24/09/2026
Speaking of, MMH and Te Whatu Ora were both officially issued some compliance notices yesterday by the Privacy Commissioner. Both notices contain specific actions that they have to undertake and report back to the Privacy Commissioner when they've been done www.privacy.org.nz/tuhono-conne...
privacy.org.nz
Office of the Privacy Commissioner | Privacy Commissioner issues Compliance Notices to Manage My Health and Health NZ
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 23/09/2026
The NCSC's 2026 Cyber Report has a small factoid about the ManageMyHealth hack that I don't think was public before: > These [valid user] credentials had been stolen through a malware infection known as Lumma Stealer. www.ncsc.govt.nz/assets/insig...
ncsc.govt.nz
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 22/09/2026
I was browsing the Taxpayers' Union website and I couldn't help but notice that the Stop Three Waters website features in a number of images on their frontpage. Thankfully I came into possession of that domain earlier this year so I set it back up for them with a few tweaks :) stopthreewaters.nz
stopthreewaters.nz
Taxpayers' Union? Dirty Work.
Investigative journalist Nicky Hager's new book Dirty Work promises to pull back the curtain on a decade of Taxpayers' Union involvement in politics
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 22/09/2026
Unity Books on High Street, Auckland has plenty of copies! In fact, the bookstore was quite empty so a very different scene compared to Wellington last night
A photo of the book Dirty Work by Nicky Hager. Visible in the background is a window insert of Detective Beans.
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 22/09/2026
I was browsing the Taxpayers' Union website and I couldn't help but notice that the Stop Three Waters website features in a number of images on their frontpage. Thankfully I came into possession of that domain earlier this year so I set it back up for them with a few tweaks :) stopthreewaters.nz
stopthreewaters.nz
Taxpayers' Union? Dirty Work.
Investigative journalist Nicky Hager's new book Dirty Work promises to pull back the curtain on a decade of Taxpayers' Union involvement in politics
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 22/09/2026
I stopped by Unity Books Auckland to ask if they could add me to the wait list for Nicky Hager's book. Apparently they don't know anything so I might have to postpone my leave until they actually know when copies will be available 😄
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 19/09/2026
I happened to be near Whenuapai today so I crossed glancing at the all-of-government data centre off my todo list. It's visible from a small cul-de-sac outside the airbase. I waved at someone to try signal that I wasn't a cooker and just found it interesting but I'm not sure they were convinced 😄
A photo showing the top of a grey tin roof mostly obscured by flaxes, trees and other vegetation
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 15/09/2026
> Education Minister Erica Stanford today released the final two learning areas – Health and Physical Education and the Arts This is really confusing to read since it looks like three areas at a glance
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 14/09/2026
MBIE released their consultation report and a couple other documents a few days ago: www.mbie.govt.nz/document-lib...
mbie.govt.nz
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 11/09/2026
I'm not particularly across it myself but for those interested, DPMC have put out a bunch of documents related to the Smith v Fonterra case: www.dpmc.govt.nz/publications...
dpmc.govt.nz
Proactive Release: Documents held by the Prime Minister’s office relating to the Smith v Fonterra litigation and related matters
Accessible versionIf you require an accessible version please contact information@dpmc.govt.nz and cite "Proactive Release: Doc
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 10/09/2026
I got a new doorstop the other day
A photo of Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand Fifth Edition by David Wilson. Part of an LED keyboard is visible on the right of the screen. A Japanese AWS book is visible in the background.
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 05/09/2026
TIL NZ Herald have a Sponsored Stories section where they just run straight advertorials They also loosened their robots.txt file a few days ago which now signals to LLM providers that sponsored stories can be crawled Not that robots blocks anything but it's an explicit open invite now
A screenshot of an NZ Herald sponsored story titled "The new shape of your next smartphone". Highlighted text states "This content was prepared by Samsung and is being published by The New Zealand Herald as Advertorial"A screenshot of a ChangeDetection diff for the NZ Herald's robots.txt page. An Allow claude is added to a bunch of blocks allowing "/sponsored-stories/*" for a number of LLM providers (Anthropic and OpenAI are visible)
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 05/09/2026
We need to ensure that laundered money can not make its way into the hands of *checks notes* tourists
A screenshot of two browser windows side by side. On the left is the justice.govt.nz Advice on Bill consistency with BORA table showing a bill titled Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Tourism (Omnibus) Amendment Bill. On the right is the bill which clarifies that this should be "Terrorism" and not "Tourism". A red double-headed arrow points this out.
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 03/09/2026
The Parliament gift shop finally has copies of Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand (5th Edition) available after being out of stock for quite some time shop.parliament.govt.nz/products/par...
shop.parliament.govt.nz
Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand (fifth edition)
Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand is the definitive guide to practice and procedure in the New Zealand House of Representatives. The fifth edition incorporates developments since 2017 and provides...
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 26/08/2026
It looks like the legislation website's WAF has blocked my home IP 😔 It's probably something dumb but the precedent that you can get blocked from being able to read laws is pretty wack
A screenshot of Safari open to legislation.govt.nz. A 403 Permissions Error page is visible.
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 25/08/2026
They got government websites with anime now? We really are living in the future www.ldc.govt.nz/learning-mod...
A screenshot of an AI LDC course. An image of an anime-style woman in a nurse outfit is visible on the left. On the right, text says "Deep Learning. An advanced machine learning technique which can process and learn complex patterns from large amounts of data"
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 24/08/2026
Does the Online Safety Bill actually mean anything for imageboards like 4chan for example? It seems like they'd meet the platform provider designation but they don't have accounts (all posts are anonymous) so they'd just have to fill out the child safety risk assessment and that's about it?
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 24/08/2026
@andrewtychen.bsky.social More importantly, how are you going to prove that Professor Nori is old enough to have an Instagram account?
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NZ Council for Civil Liberties @nzccl.org.nz · 24/08/2026
Media Release: NZCCL opposes National's planned social media ban for the under 16s: nzccl.org.nz/media-releas...
nzccl.org.nz
Media Release: NZCCL opposes social media ban for the under 16s
The New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties opposes the National Party’s bill to ban social media sites for people under the age of 16.
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Andrew Chen @andrewtychen.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Helpful diagram from their fact sheet:
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 21/08/2026
When access to Claude Mythos was suspended by the US govt months back, I asked the GCSB for information about dependency on foreign LLM providers They just got back saying that doing so would "provide an untenable degree of insight" into their methods and capabilities fyi.org.nz/request/3495...
fyi.org.nz
Mythos/Fable Revocation Response - a Official Information Act request to Government Communications Security Bureau
I am interested in requesting the following information regarding the recent export control directive issued by the US government in regards to Anthropic's Mythos/Fable 5 models: 1. Any type of risk ...
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 19/08/2026
Apparently Chris Penk set up a process where small businesses who are suspended by Meta can contact MBIE to get their appeals escalated
Account Suspensions: Over the past year, Meta has strengthened its approach to suspending accounts that host objectionable material. This has resulted in some small businesses having their accounts inadvertently suspended. A process established by your predecessor, Hon Penk, enables affected businesses who have not had any success though the normal Meta channels to contact MBIE, with cases passed on to Meta for review where appropriate. You have agreed to continue this approach.
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 18/08/2026
Yesterday I experienced my first "This person is acting as a human proxy for an LLM" type interviews yesterday. Not even anything malicious like one of those North Korean laptop farm type deals. I'd say it was easily one of the more bizarre experiences of my career to date.
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 13/08/2026
I dunno if this will mean anything to anyone but the Ageless NMN guy who was blasting ads on Instagram earlier this year is now an NZ First candidate for Northcote which was not on my bingo card
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 13/08/2026
A coworker of mine was showing me the "Stop Data Centres NZ" Facebook page which he had been following out of morbid curiosity and we were quite confused. At least one of the admin posts was clearly outlined with an LLM which seemed a bit paradoxical
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 13/08/2026
It looks like there's a page for viewing the incoming vote tallies that should be fun to watch for Part 2. Nothing secret since they display the results on the stream anyway www.mi-vote.com/secure/inter...
mi-vote.com
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 13/08/2026
I emailed support who said that while descriptions exist, they generally make the voting portal "very lengthy so many clients opt to have just the motion number visible"
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 13/08/2026
Kinda lame that there are descriptions for each of the motions but they're hidden behind a client side feature flag that's turned off by default
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 13/08/2026
Nice to know that there's the fallback webpage because Zoom for Linux seemingly doesn't support these voting popups...
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Li Chen @exocomics.com · 12/08/2026
Hey kiwis! Come and get your books signed this Saturday in Auckland! (preferably your Detective Beans books but hey I'm not picky)
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 11/08/2026
@nzpom.com It's interesting that even if you account for the anonymous donation batches (which heavily favour National), ACT still has the most donations for large + anonymous combined: elections.nz/democracy-in...
elections.nz
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Bellingcat @bellingcat.com · 10/08/2026
On Thursday, @koltai.bsky.social and Michael Wright of @thepress.co.nz will be in our Discord server to walk us through their methodology for finding a key admin of the site and answer your research questions. Join us live, 8:15pm CEST / 2:15pm EDT / 11:15am PDT: discord.gg/bellingcat?e...
Exposing Leaked Intimate Imagery Forums with Bellingcat and The Press 
Bellingcat Stage Talk, Thursday 8/13, 8:15pm CEST/2:15pm EDT/11:15am PDT Discord.com/invite/bellingcat
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 10/08/2026
This... isn't really a cyberattack. There were no safeguards on the gym side in the first place so it was just pulling a lever that technically anyone could pull if they knew where to look. My own gym had something similar that I reported a few years back. It's just no one is really looking is all.
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 09/08/2026
I was reminded of this because I have Jack Tame's Sunday interview with Simeon Brown on in the background and they're debating how much nursing FTEs have increased. Jack Tame said "in the last 2 years, nursing FTEs have increased by just 54" while Simeon says nursing jobs increased by "about 2100"
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 09/08/2026
@exocomics.com Every Detective Beans release, I think to myself I need to go to the bookstore and then I forget so I have finally atoned for my sins The cashier at Little Unity asked if I wanted a loyalty card and I said despite appearances, I don't find myself shopping for kids books *that* often
A photo of three Detective Beans books by Li Chen spread out on a table
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 08/08/2026
In other news, I missed that the Public Service Commission had put out a review into the Government Digital Delivery Agency after they were moved into PSC from DIA www.publicservice.govt.nz/news/rapid-r...
publicservice.govt.nz
Rapid review proposes reset for digital delivery | Public Service Commission Te Kawa Mataaho
Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche has today released the findings of a rapid review into digital delivery across government.
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 08/08/2026
I noticed that the Natural Hazards Commission reworked their Privacy Policy recently and as part of it, they added a disclaimer about their use of LLMs www.naturalhazards.govt.nz/privacy-stat...
naturalhazards.govt.nz
Privacy Statement » Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake
Our privacy statement applies to all personal information collected by or on behalf of NHC
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 08/08/2026
It only just occurred to me that with (Google) Android 16's release last year and now Android 17 this year, it's only going to get harder to search the Androids from DBZ (Androids 16 through 20) I just went to search Android 17 and got results for the OS instead of DBZ like I wanted
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 07/08/2026
Dang, I got scooped a little. Well, there was a guy in Europe who published a thesis(?) earlier in the year on this and an NZ retailer sells these watches www.wired.com/story/hacker...
wired.com
Hackers Stalked Me by Hijacking a Smartwatch for Kids
Security researchers tracked and eavesdropped on a WIRED reporter using vulnerabilities in a pink plastic smartwatch. It’s just one piece of a deeply insecure supply chain of GPS-enabled gadgets.
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 07/08/2026
@apenwarr.ca Between the cookie banner and the conference banners, my reaction was surprise at first but actually I guess it means you successfully crossed the chasm and been forced into needing the marketing signals that the slow adopters require so it's actually secretly a good thing (?)🕴️
A screenshot of the Tailscale homepage. There is a cookie banner at the bottom.
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 05/08/2026
Almost 10 years ago, I did a side project where I got parking ticket data from Auckland Council and made a Mapbox visualisation. Over the weekend, I received a $500 USD invoice from Mapbox because apparently some automated crawler was using the embedded default token to load 100K+ raster map tiles
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 01/08/2026
@apenwarr.ca I think there should be an email address where customers can share their cursed, not fit for publishing online use cases/stories
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 01/08/2026
I found a cool bug today at work where we have some HP EliteDesk machines that haven't been receiving security upgrades for a couple years. It turns out that they have USB-C PD ports. Those ports are empty so on_ac_power reports that the device is on battery which stops unattended-upgrades running.
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 31/07/2026
DIA's tagline, and it was news to me they even had one, seemed to update today from "Building a safe, prosperous and respected nation" to "We strengthen connections and reduce harm for New Zealanders" I dunno, reduce harm (implying there is still some) sounds weaker than "safe [and] prosperous"
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 31/07/2026
I realise this sounds like a poorly written cartoon villain story but as I was crossing the road on Shortland Street about 5 minutes ago, I happened to trudge past Simon Bridges. He was taking a call on his phone and I audibly heard him say "Give me some bad shit about Labour that I can think about"
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 30/07/2026
@apenwarr.ca Would it pain you to learn that I just PXE booted a VM over Tailscale
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Marcus @utf9k.net · 30/07/2026
Now that agencies aren't required to do 3-yearly long-term insights briefings anymore, the SFO nuked theirs off of their publications area sometime yesterday www.sfo.govt.nz/publications...
sfo.govt.nz
Proactive Information Releases
Periodically we proactively release information that is considered to be of public interest and which will inform the public about how the SFO undertakes its functions.
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