Just reading though the Wikipedia page, he ruled by decree for a while, then ran elections that had results very different from the results of polls prior to the election.

You are right that elections were watched internationally but the conclusion was that the 2024 result was almost certainly won by the opposition. Manduro’s government announced he had won without even providing any tallys.

Academics, news outlets and the opposition provided strong evidence showing that González won the election by a wide margin[391][392][393] with the opposition releasing copies of official tally sheets collected by poll watchers from a majority of polling centers showing a landslide victory for González.[387][394][395] The government-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) announced[396] possibly falsified[397][398] results claiming a narrow Maduro victory on 29 July; vote tallies were not provided.[399] The Carter Center was unable to verify the CNE’s results, asserting the election failed to meet international democratic election standards.[400] The CNE’s results were rejected by the OAS,[387] and the United Nations declared that there was “no precedent in contemporary democratic elections” for announcing a winner without providing tabulated results.[401] Analyses by media sources found the CNE results statistically improbable and lacking in credibility.[402][403][397] Parallel vote tabulation confirmed the win by González.[404][405][406] Political scientist Steven Levitsky called the official results “one of the most egregious electoral frauds in modern Latin American history”.[407]

Congratulations, new year new job!

I tend to get new jobs in the winter for some reason.

Happy New Year everyone! (if a few days late)

From memory I think it was 8.1 that introduced the right click menu. Everything you ever want to do with the start menu in one right click menu. No apps, just shortcuts to the terminal, shutdown/sleep, settings, etc. I never used the start menu again except by accident (or when hitting the windows key to search).

I think a good way to test this is to look at minimum wage.

Since 1997, when minimum wage was $7, it has grown to $23.15 in 2024 (sorry, the data I used only went to 2024 and I didn’t think to grab the 2025 number).

The “average” here is 4.9% per year. I use “average” in quotes as it’s the value needed each year to reach the end number (the Compound Annual Growth Rate), not actually an average. I used this calculator: https://cagrcalculator.net/

Wage growth historically is higher than inflation! It’s why National (or was it Act?) promised to index NZ Super to inflation - because inflation is generally lower than wage growth and Super was already indexed to wages. People vote for it because it sounds good even though it’s actually worse.

From what I can find, inflation long term sits a little under 2% with wage growth sitting a little over 2% per year. The last few years are bad measuring sticks though.

Free Hat!

Hat was attacked maliciously and unprovoked by a gang of babies in Westown Park. When that many babies get together, they can be like piranha!

Even easier, they don’t have to change the threshold, worse case scenario they just wait, a larger and larger proportion will be above $200k each year due to inflation and wage growth.

It’s only for employees earning over $200k right? I’m assuming they are making it easier to ditch upper management and CEOs as needed, without needed a full redundancy process.

Loophole though, can’t you just do a pay review, bump them up over $200k, then fire them? I haven’t read the Act, but if you are on $190k and your employer doesn’t like you, I’d still be worried for your job.

Ah ok, so what kinds of things would be no longer possible to contest vs what could still be fought?

Is it like if you get fired for catching your colleague committing fraud then you can fight it (but only for cash not to be reinstated if I understand correctly) but if you get fired for poor performance you can’t fight it (not even to say you didn’t have poor performance)?

allow employers to fire at will workers who are unjustifiably dismissed and earn more than $200,000 - they cannot access a personal grievance process for unjustified dismissal.

I don’t understand what is being said here, especially “allow employers to fire at will workers who are unjustifiably dismissed”.

Isn’t someone “unjustifiably dismissed” someone who is fired without cause? Are they saying currently you can fire at will with cause and this will allow without cause as well?

Yeah exactly, we aren’t aiming for perfect, just trying to make sure things are getting better not worse, and most of all understanding our sphere of influence and our what is outside our control.

Yeah sorry I misunderstood, yeah it’s a bit grim. With micro targeting it’s hard to imagine it getting better soon 🙁

Its a ranking of countries by perceived corruption. We used to be higher and we are slipping down, so people are noticing the corruption.

But also, every country likely has this sort of corruption, being #1 doesn’t mean you have no corruption, just seen as having less corruption than others.

Too many already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Plymouth_(disambiguation)

I came from a Pixel 7 Pro on GrapheneOS and I never saw it there either.

I have noticed it only shows when the phone is unfolded, so maybe it only shows on larger screens?

Well it’s a Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold (what a dumb name) but I’m running GrapheneOS, so I’m assuming it’s a stock android feature.

I have found it’s getting easier and easier to not enter a title. Probably 80% of online forms I fill in these days have title as an optional field.

I got a 34" ultrawide monitor and it is working great for 4 player split screen! The monitor is almost as big as our TV 😅

Yeah perhaps, as long as we don’t have to mortgage the house to get one 😅