Archive for the ‘New Zealand’ Category
Friday, December 30th, 2022
I used to read a lot of the technical web and social media for O'Reilly Media, where I wrote the daily "Four Short Links" digest. I still read a lot of online content, but now for my own purposes. I've been CEO and now CTO of a company that makes ...
Posted in New Zealand | No Comments »
Sunday, May 1st, 2022
Last updated: 2022-04-10
Bandcamp is a great place to buy music, because most of the money you pays goes straight to the artist. If you buy on a special Bandcamp Friday, then Bandcamp don’t even take their usual commission on the sale -- all the money goes straight to the artist.
I ...
Posted in New Zealand | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 12th, 2020
I've seen a few people propose a big government project around 5G mobile technology. I couldn't find more detail to any proposals, so I did my own research to inform my own opinions on what's needed and what's not. I wrote up where I landed so I won't forget it, ...
Posted in New Zealand | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 28th, 2018
Looks like NZ will get a CTO real soon now. It's hard to avoid the word "debacle" in describing how it came about: a false start at making an appointment, a whiff of impropriety in the appointments process that resulted in a Ministerial demotion ....
This is a shame because ...
Posted in Gov 2.0, New Zealand, politics | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 29th, 2018
There's an open consultation about to end, on the changes MBIE would like to make to NZ's R&D incentives. In particular, they'll phase out the Callaghan Growth Grants and replace them with R&D tax credits. As the FAQ says, There are differences in the definition of eligible expenditure between the ...
Posted in Business, New Zealand, politics, Rant, Technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 9th, 2016
Hello, American friends! President-Elect Trump has given his speech and begun to redact his campaign website of the obviously illegal and impossible campaign promises, and you look up from your keyboard through an election-defeat hangover and want to move to New Zealand.
First of all, consider staying. America’s problems won’t be solved if ...
Posted in New Zealand, politics | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 25th, 2016
(Wynyard Group, an NZ tech high-growth company [or, perhaps, not-so-high growth] just entered voluntary administration. On Twitter, a friend was adamant bad luck had nothing to do with it. Instead of a tweetstorm, here's my response in a vintage retro format known as "a blog post")
You can always look back at every ...
Posted in Business, New Zealand, Technology | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 4th, 2016
Job titles don't matter, because it's the work that counts. But job titles matter because they get you meetings with partners, interviews for next jobs, etc. They send signals that can be useful so, conversely, life can be harder if you're sending the wrong signal.
There's an implicit hierarchy in American ...
Posted in New Zealand | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 12th, 2016
tl;dr: Today's NZ Herald drove me to this analysis/rant. I'm giving the damn thing up and will get my news from other sites, Radio New Zealand and NewsHub. You should too.
I can't imagine how disheartening it is to work as a journalist in New Zealand. Almost as disheartening as it is to ...
Posted in New Zealand, Rant | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 4th, 2016
I was asked for comment by Bill Bennet from the NZ Herald, for a piece on Kiwi startups moving to Silicon Valley. He built a nice little article, in which "Torkington says" features heavily. My policy is that if I email journalists, I'll blog my side of the conversation for transparency's sake.
I ...
Posted in Business, New Zealand, Technology | No Comments »