If all goes to plan will launch in about 4 hours.

Witness the third launch of the largest rocket and the most powerful machine man has created, more than twice the power of a Saturn V!

Oh woe is me, & others too no doubt...


https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/511678/...ed-to-rise

 Maytaal Angel and Maxwell Akalaare Adombila, Reuters
Major African cocoa plants in Ivory Coast and Ghana have stopped or cut processing because they cannot afford to buy beans, four trading sources said, meaning chocolate prices around the world are likely to soar.
Chocolate-makers have already increased prices to consumers, after three years of poor cocoa harvests, with a fourth expected, in the two countries that produce nearly 60 percent of the world's cocoa.
Cocoa prices have more than doubled over the last year, scaling numerous all-time highs.
"We need massive demand destruction to catch up with the supply destruction," Tropical Research Services' Steve Wateridge, a world expert on cocoa, said.
Chocolate-makers cannot produce chocolate using raw cocoa and rely on processors to turn beans into butter and liquor that can be made into chocolate.

But the processors say they cannot afford to buy the beans.

In normal times, the market is heavily regulated - traders and processors purchase beans from local dealers up to a year in advance at pre-agreed prices. Local regulators then set lower farmgate prices that farmers can charge for beans.
However, in times of shortage like this year, the system breaks down - local dealers often pay farmers a premium to the farmgate price to secure beans.
The dealers then sell the beans on the spot market at higher prices instead of delivering them at pre-agreed prices."

I came across an interesting new term thos morning - 'religitards', which seems to fit Brian Tamaki to a T.



The McBishop's post:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brian-tam...96960-xaNh


"Parents, where is your outrage at the Transgender agenda trying to recruit your kids, right under your nose, in our schools? If you’re a parent with children or youth in a state school, I’d strongly encourage you to keep your kids home this week and boycott the Schools’ Pride Week that is being forced on our children through state schools."
Brian Tamaki



https://www.tiktok.com/@silkyshaneel/vid...5744585985


The ignorance on this issue is astounding.

https://www.reddit.com/r/chch/comments/1...s_morning/

"So many times people like this are projecting their own values when they protest. Like the guy in the US recently doing a similar protest, gets arrested and they find child porn on his computer."

"There were definitely more rainbow supporters than the Kyle Chapman cheer squad. The kids all got in and enjoyed the show peacefully. A group of the protestors tried to get in just as the event was emptying out but were barricaded and the guests left through another entrance. The security and staff team at the library were genuinely phenomenal and dealt with it like champions."

Hard to believe its five years already.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/35020965...ommunities


"Almost five years on from the March 15 terror attacks in Christchurch, Aliya Danzeisen, a Muslim woman, says she feels more unsafe each year.
Danzeisen, who is national co-ordinator for the Islamic Women's Council, is not alone.
As discussed on Tuesday’s Newsable, a Christchurch terror attacks fifth anniversary special, briefings given to new Government ministers said Muslim, Arab and Jewish communities all reported a rapidly declining sense of security.

Danzeisen told Newsable: “It’s a big jump each year and that’s quite dangerous... Muslim women are less than 1% of the population, but we’re able, based on police data, to show that 36% of daily incidents of hate are targeted towards Muslim women.”
As reported on Monday’s episode, in the last month, University of Auckland researchers have pointed to failings within the security services in New Zealand and Australia to track the March 15 terrorist’s online activities.

Danzeisen told Newsable police training for how to identify and deal with hate crimes had improved in New Zealand since the attacks.
But she said current security measures weren't enough stifle future threats.

“Security and intelligence, their duty is to protect us and their duty is to get in front and make sure that this nation is secure and the indicators are they probably aren’t - not even probably aren’t - I say the numbers show that they aren’t,” Danzeisen said.
Newsable requested an interview with the security agencies, but they were not available."

Extremely bad in America at present, & likely to worsen if the idiot Trump becomes President again, despite his  own not so Christian views.

And sadly for us, we have our own brand of whacko fruitloop religious nutters.


https://buckscountybeacon.com/2024/03/sh...A9yHb_t4EM

"Approximately 100 right-wing organizations have signed onto Project 2025, an expansive plan for controlling (and in some cases dismantling) federal agencies in the event that Trump or another Republican wins the presidential election this year. Many of these organizations are led by Christian fundamentalist political operatives, suggesting that they may use the plan to force all Americans to submit to their extreme religious beliefs. 
The [i]Bucks County[/i] [i]Beacon[/i] has just found explosive new evidence that seems to validate this concern. 


The Beacon’s discovery follows an earlier report by [i]Politico[/i] journalist Heidi Przybyla, which tied the Center for Renewing America (CFRA), an official Project 2025 partner, to an internal memo expressly listing “Christian Nationalism” as a priority for a second Trump term. 

Przybyla further reported that CFRA founder Russ Vought, a Project 2025 co-author, had stated last year on X (formerly Twitter) that he’s “proud” to work with William Wolfe, a former Trump official and Visiting Fellow with CFRA, “on scoping out a sound Christian Nationalism.” In a social media post, Wolfe had called for an end to no-fault divorce and abortion and for reduced access to contraception. (Link to archived tweet.) Wolfe, who has attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has also called himself a “Christian Nationalist.”



Soon after [i]Politico’s[/i] report, Wolfe changed his social media profile to remove the reference to his work with CFRA, thus burying his connection to Project 2025 leader Russ Vought. Wolfe is also an alumnus of Heritage, the lead organizer of Project 2025.

 After Przybyla correctly stated in a TV interview that Christian Nationalists believe their rights come from God, they accused her of attacking mainstream Christianity and launched a blizzard of targeted media hit pieces, as well as a petition to demand that Politico publish a formal apology. They have also parked mobile billboards outside Politico’s DC headquarters, again demanding a formal apology. 

Despite this hurricane of attempted deflection, the Christian Nationalism promoted by Wolfe is extreme, not mainstream, as evidenced not only by Przybyla’s excellent article, but also by a shocking online manifesto found by the Beacon, which identifies Wolfe as an editor. We have included screenshots of the complete manifesto in the Appendix to this article. We have also archived the manifesto (which calls itself a “draft”) here. 


The manifesto’s authors include Oklahoma Senator Dusty Deevers (a Southern Baptist who supports charging women who get abortions with murder). In addition to Wolfe, its editors include Joel Webbon who has tweeted that the the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, was a “bad idea.” 
The manifesto, titled “The Statement on Christian Nationalism”, begins with a definition of “Christian Nationalism” that strives to implement a Scripture-based system of government whereby Christ-ordained “[b]civil magistrates[/b]” exercise authority over the American public. 
Specifically, it states that “Christian Nationalism is a set of governing principles rooted in Scripture’s teaching that Christ rules as supreme Lord and King of all creation, who has ordained civil magistrates with delegated authority to be under Him, over the people, to order their ordained jurisdiction by punishing evil and promoting good for His own glory and the common good of the nation.” 

And it promotes a literal interpretation of the Bible: “We affirm that the Bible is clear in all essential matters.” (Public stoning anyone?) 
The manifesto denies that “civil authorities have the right to coerce or command obedience to the dictates of men apart from God’s Word.” (Emphasis added.)"


https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3008031...extremists


'Like Action Zealandia, Manawatū-based Wargus Christi emerged as a far-right group a few months after the demise of the Dominion Movement. On their (now removed) Facebook page, the group described itself as ‘a martial-monastic Christian brotherhood of swole saints, meat monks and beef bishops’, and wrote: ‘Our work is to achieve and maintain authentic manhood in defiance of the degenerate and effeminate carcass of the West.’



The page promoted a mediaeval-style Christianity, with a heavy emphasis on Crusade imagery, and a particularly fascistic idea of health and well-being. They encouraged their members to regularly work out at the gym, frequently described as ‘the temple of iron’ (a phrase popularised by Marcus Follin, better known as ‘The Golden One’, a Swedish white nationalist YouTuber, bodybuilder and online fitness coach).



The group forbade masturbation, a surprisingly common ideology among far-right groups, including, notably, the Proud Boys in the United States, self-described ‘Western chauvinists’. The ideology is based on a thoroughly debunked theory that semen retention is linked to an increase in testosterone and male virility."

Heard a review on this series earlier on RNZ and having now listened to the first couple of episodes it's shaping up well

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/series/blackbox

Thought I might share my experiences setting up a Seafile server, a reasonably complete, self hosted, dropbox clone... 
https://www.seafile.com/en/home/

I was looking for an alternative to avoid subscriptions, somewhere to store  100GB of photos and to manage the camera uploads from two or three phones.

The Basics:

• It is self hosted, you run it on your own hardware or VPS...
  
• It has a feature rich open source community edition
  
• GUIs are very similar to dropbox, there a file sync client that can sync some or all libraries, there is also a drive client that sets up in file explorer which uses a 10GB cache but doesn't sync the actual files
  
• Allows external link sharing, passwords, timelimits etc
  
• There is a docker version ready to go but that was incompatible with my existing virtualbox VMs
  
• Server only runs on linux (I set it up a virtualbox VM Ubuntu client from scratch for it) - client apps for Windows, Mac, Android, IOS
  

• Mysql DB vs MariaDB, chose MYSQL initially but had issues, Maria worked fine...
  
• folder permissions
  
• Prerequisite versions 
  
• Symlink/mount for a windows network share for the Data Folder on the host PC via FSTAB
  
• Some config issues setting up the reverse proxy and security certificates
  
• Ubuntu logging out and closing the network share mount caused me a few headaches until I figured out what is was up to...
  
• Getting the Seafile services to startup on boot with systemd
  
• planning for backups 
  

I really do not like David Seymour & have zero respect for both him & his policies, but this was appalling. You just do not treat anyone like this, even someone you disagree strongly with.



https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/03/11/bysta...is-e-bike/


ACT Party Leader has David Seymour has spoken about a "weird" interaction with a bystander after he crashed his e-bike in Parnell last night.
Seymour told 1News he "didn't see the car coming" while he was riding home through Parnell on Sunday evening.
"[I] hit the brakes a bit too hard, and cartwheeled over the handlebars. Luckily, there was no damage done, and I was stunned by how many people came over to offer their support," he said.
Seymour said one person began filming him as he sat on a traffic island following the incident, and then hurled comments at the ACT Party leader.
"I thought 'that's a bit weird' and then he says in a British accent 'you know what, sometimes you get exactly what you deserve'.
"He then said 'look what you're doing to Māori, you're just a trust fund baby who's out of touch with reality'," Seymour said.
"I thought 'I am Māori, and I don't have a trust fund'."

I have someone who has a fairly new computer and about 6 months ago i had to reinstall libreoffice after it stopped working, literally nothing happens when you go to open it.
I reinstalled it and away it went, now 6 months later its doing the same thing.
Reading some threads suggest that it could be due to a windows update breaking it, but interested to know if anyone else has experienced this, Ive never seen this before and it usually works quite flawlessly for most people.

PC in office, TV also. Is there a way to cast stuff off PC to the TV? Seems a bit silly to Chromecast (haven't got one anyway) when they are both in the same room.  Some wired arrangement perhaps?

TV is not smart, just an old 32". It does have HDMI.

Or is Chromecast the easy less hassle way? This is a Linux PC.