Last weeks thread here

Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!

This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.

It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:

• Something interesting that happened to you
• Something humourous that happened to you
• Something frustrating that happened to you
• A quick question
• A request for recommendations
• Pictures of your pet
• A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
• Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)

So how’s it going?

Thanks to everyone who took the time to complete the 2024 Lemmy.nz Census survey!

I asked for volunteers to proof read but got no offers so let me know if anything needs fixing. Especially let me know if terminology I have used is incorrect, I know some words hold a lot of weight to some people.

All fully completed surveys are included in this summary, if someone didn't submit, their partial responses are not included. No questions were mandatory so if someone didn't answer the question, it's not included in the results unless specified.

Overall, we got 69 responses, which is pretty good I think. On average (mean), it took 5 minutes 40 seconds to complete. The median was 4 minutes 39 seconds. The longest was just over 30 minutes, and the shortest was a little under 2 minutes.

You can see here the number of submissions each day in blue, and the running total in red. There was a spike when first posted, and a further spike when I posted a reminder post. The final submission was when I reopened the survey for a day on request as someone hadn't managed to complete the survey and wanted to.

!line graph showing number of submissions over time

Let's get into the actual responses. I've been told I should stick to bar charts because "pie charts are for marketing and pizza", but I think it's nice to represent some of these as proportions. However, where I've used a pie chart I've also included a bar chart in spoiler tags. I know in the past some apps have had trouble with spoiler tags, so if you have issues maybe read this on desktop. It's a lengthy read anyway!

Where are we?

Where do you live?

In a result that will shock no one, the vast majority of responses came from people living in NZ.

!pie graph showing country of respondents

Bar graph

!bar graph showing country of respondents

Within NZ, Wellington is over represented but otherwise we seem to be spread out rather evenly by the population of each area. To my knowledge, /r/wellington is the only subreddit that had a post about Lemmy with any traction, so I presume this is the reason for the higher proportion of Wellingtonians.

!graph of region of NZ of NZ respondents

How big is your community?

Most of us live in urban or suburban areas, with some write in options. Nationally, around 15% of us live rurally, but for survey respondents this was around 7%.

!Pie graph of community (urban,suburban, rural)

Bar graph

!Bar graph of community (urban,suburban, rural)

In your opinion, what is the quality of your internet connection?

Most of us think our internet quality is great, with almost 81% stating the quality of their internet connection is Excellent.

!Pie graph of quality of internet connection

Bar graph

!Bar graph of quality of internet connection

This makes sense, since most of us have fibre.

!Pie graph of type of internet

Bar graph

!Bar graph of type of internet

Within those with fibre, we are pretty evenly split on being under 300Mbps and over 1000Mbps. I foolishly forgot to add an option in the middle, but one person responded 600Mbps in their "Other" option.

!Pie graph of type of fibre

Bar graph

!Bar graph of type of fibre

Who are we?

What is your ethnicity?

We are a pretty white bunch. Way less ethnic diversity than I was expecting. The 2023 NZ census showed around 44% of people identify with Māori, Asian, or Pacific enthnicities, so we are remarkably different from the general population. Three people indicated they preferred the term "Pākehā" to "NZ European", though these are grouped together.

!Pie graph of ethnicity

Bar graph

!Bar graph of ethnicity

What age range do you fall into?

We have a reasonably older age than perhaps reddit does, but this is largely in line with Lemmy.ca and probably Lemmy as a whole.

!Bar graph of age

What is your gender identity?

We are mostly men here, with this spread being broadly in line with Lemmy.ca's results, so this may be representative of Lemmy. We do have a higher proportion of women and a lower proportion of people who are non-binary, but this is probably due to normal variance with the low sample size.

!Pie graph of gender

Bar graph

!Bar graph of gender

Are you someone with trans experience (meaning your gender identity does not align with your sex assigned at birth)?

Two users identified as trans, and these users both identified as non-binary in the previous question. One user selected Other and indicated they have a gender identity for society, not for themselves.

!Pie graph of those with trans experience

Bar graph

!Bar graph of those with trans experience

How do you identify?

Almost 85% of us identified as straight, or 91% if you include those identifying as "straightish". This value is much lower than the general population. StatsNZ reports (based on a survey, not a census) that 4.1% of NZ belong to what StatsNZ referred to as the "sexual minorities population", compared to 9-15% of respondents (depending on how you categorise "straightish").

!Sexual identity pie graph

Bar graph

!Sexual identity bar graph

What is your disability status?

To start, here is a graph of all respondents vs those that indicate a disability. Note that we did not have a way to differentiate between someone without a disability and someone who didn't want to answer the question. 8 people specifically said they don't have a condition or disability.

!Pie graph of those with disability vs those with no answer

Bar graph

!Bar graph of those with disability vs those with no answer

For those that indicated a condition, we see quite a range. For this question, there was a free text field and answers don't nicely group, so in the interest of having a graph I have tried to nudge them into categories. Mostly, this means if someone wrote "Probably" or "Maybe", I've assumed they have this condition. Hopefully I haven't miscategorised anyone, but remember to take this with a grain of salt.

Also, conditions are listed separately. If someone listed three conditions, they will show as three items in this graph.

!Pie graph of the type of condition

Bar graph

!Bar graph of the type of condition

Are you currently studying?

Around 10% of us are studying at the moment.

!Pie graph of if currently studying

Bar graph

!Bar graph of if currently studying

What is your highest level of education achieved?

Almost 75% of us have a post-secondary school qualification! I thought I might find some cool relationship between the people who indicated ADHD and the people who had completed "Some university". Despite 10 of the 13 who completed "Some university" indicating they were not currently studying, only one of these people indicated ADHD (and in fact, this was the only person in the group indicating any disability or condition).

!Pie graph of education level achieved

Bar graph

!Bar graph of education level achieved

What's your employment status?

89% of us are in paid work, which is higher than Lemmy.ca's results, but this could be due to having a lot fewer respondents so a single person's answer can change the outcome by a fair bit.

!Pie chart of employment status

Bar graph

!Bar chart of employment status

If employed, what field of work do you work in?

This question was a free text field. I have tried to group them into similar categories. This was hard, especially since there's not a detailed job description for each, so take this with a grain of salt. Without these groups, there were many different answers with just one respondent with that answer. But rest assured we have everything from mechanics and plumbers, tourism operators and hospitality workers, researchers, archivists, engineers, manufacturers and those that do film visual effects. And this is all on top of the 57% of us that work in Information and Communication Technology (IT and communication). 23% of respondents listed just "IT", and a further 23% stated "Software Developer", "Software Engineer", or "Web developer".

!Bar chart of employment field

Bar graph

!Pie chart of employment field

Lemmy and us

Which instances do you have an account on?

Unsurprisingly, the largest group was lemmy.nz, followed by the larger Lemmy instances. Note that this was multiselect, so a user may be listed in more than one place.

!Bar graph of which instances people have accounts on

What other Fediverse services do you use?

Lots of Mastodon users. Many use Matrix as well, which is unsurprising since Matrix chats are quite common with Lemmy, and Lemmy even allows a Matrix account to be linked to a Lemmy account to add a button to message a user on Matrix. And on top of that, we have a Matrix chat which would also encourage people to use Matrix.

!Bar graph of other Fediverse services people use

On average, how much time do you spend on Lemmy each day (whether on Lemmy.nz or other instances)

Most people are here less than 2 hours a day, which is similar to Lemmy.ca's results.

!Bar graph of how much time people spend on Lemmy

How do you access Lemmy most often?

Most of us use mobile more often than desktop to access Lemmy. There was one "Other" selection stating "iPad".

!Pie graph of device type used to access Lemmy

Bar graph

!Bar graph of device type used to access Lemmy

On mobile, which OS do you use?

Over 80% of mobile users are using Android. We had users state GrapheneOS and CalyxOS (one each), I have included these in Android. We also had one user write "Both", which I have added.

!Pie graph of mobile OS used

Bar graph

!Bar graph of mobile OS used

On mobile, which app(s) do you use?

The most popular app was Voyager, followed by just using the website in a mobile browser. This was actually quite different from Lemmy.ca, who had Sync as their most popular, followed by Jerboa and then Voyager.

!Bar graph of the apps people use on mobile

On desktop, which interfaces do you use?

On desktop, people tended to only use the default Lemmy UI. This may partly be because it's not particularly obvious that our other frontends exist.

!Pie graph of most common ways to access Lemmy on desktop

Bar graph

!Bar graph of most common ways to access Lemmy on desktop

If you primarily access lemmy.nz through a different Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon/etc instance, please list it below

For those not directly accessing through Lemmy.nz, Lemmy.world was the only instance with multiple people using it as their primary way of accessing Lemmy.nz.

!Graph of primary instance

Final questions

What's your favourite desert?

I'm an idiot and, after reading the Lemmy.ca answer about The Sahara, accidentally wrote Desert instead of Dessert.

For favourite Desert, we have three votes for the Antarctic/Antarctica, two for Sahara, and one each for Gobi, Central North Island, and Arrakis.

!Graph of favourite desert

For favourite Dessert, I have grouped and graphed the results, though I am sure to have offended someone with my groupings. The top answer was ice cream, followed by cheese cake, which mirrors Lemmy.ca's results. One person decided "Ice-cream cheescake mix" was their favourite, which is not counted in either category and is instead listed separately.

!Graph of favourite dessert

Of those that answered with a dessert, here is the full list:

• Apple crumble x 2
• Blackberry and apple crumble
• Cheesecake x 2
• Cheesecake!
• Cheesecake, Strawberry
• Chocolate
• Chocolate chip cookies
• Cookies and cream ice cream
• Creme brulee
• Custard
• Don't eat sugar
• Halo halo
• Home made pav with fresh strawberries
• Ice cream x 3
• Ice-cream cheescake mix
• Kapiti Ice Cream
• Much Moore's Double Choc Fudge Ice-cream
• Peacan pie
• Revenge
• Strawberry rhubarb pie
• Tarta de queso
• Tiramisu
• Tub of jelly tip ice cream
• Vegan Cheese Cake

Do you use the Matrix chat?

Almost half of people didn't know we have a Lemmy.nz Matrix chat room. Now you do! You can find instructions for joining here. If you're having trouble, reply in the post and we can offer help.

!Pie graph of those what use matrix chat room

Bar graph

!Bar graph of those what use matrix chat room

Are there any communities you would like to see created on Lemmy.nz?

There were a handful of suggestions here, but no two people suggested the same thing. Firstly, we have a post here that outlines some NZ communities across Lemmy. It hasn't been updated in some time, so feel free to reply with any that you know of to be added.

Some people replied with things they don't want, but I have filtered this out as people can block communities they don't want to see.

• /r/diynz
• A dedicated outdoors community
• Hurdy gurdy discourse
• More regional NZ content
• NZ mechanics, stained glass, or growing weed.
• Something cheesy/cringe where we mock ourselves, kuhy-wee accent and maybe even small town monuments, etc. Almost nostalgia bit with shit posting and rivalry... Still got a way to go, but I reckon the ideas got legs. Bring back top town!
• thetron - Hamilton

In my view, I'd think most of these would be better posted to the !newzealand community, which has the bigger userbase. Some exceptions:

• Growing weed - there's !trees@no.lastname.nz
• Outdoors - there's !outdoors@no.lastname.nz
• Mocking outselves - this might be better in !offtopic@lemmy.nz

I'm also not sure we have the population to support a Hamilton community. Originally the idea was anyone in the top half of the North Island could use !auckland@lemmy.nz, anyone in the bottom half could use !wellington@lemmy.nz, and then we had !southisland@lemmy.nz. We intended to split communities as they got too big, which I don't think has happened, especially since we have a comment about wanting more regional content.

I also think people should feel comfortable posting things to the !newzealand@lemmy.nz community if they don't fit in another community, even if it's not relevant to all of NZ. Others may have a different view, but I would be wary of fragmenting the users across too many communities.

What are your thoughts on the Lemmy.nz post and comment language options?

The options here were:

• I don't use this feature and don't have an opinion.
• We should stick to these three languages, as it makes it easier to find the language I want
• We shouldn't limit the languages, all should be available.
• We should use a small list of languages, but I would like us to add ___.

I have shortened them in the graphs so they fit.

!Pie graph of language preferences

Bar graph

!Bar graph of language preferences

We had some comments as well.

One user mentioned Māori would never be used, I'd counter argue that it's weirder for an NZ instance to actively not allow it than it is to have it as an option.

Someone mentioned they didn't know it was an option. On the website, there is a dropdown box under the box where you write your post or comment. If you use an app this could be in a different place. There are plans to have Lemmy auto-fill this in future.

One comment saying NZ Sign Language isn't an option, and we should support it as it's an official national language. Unfortunately Lemmy doesn't support sign languages at this time, so we will have to try to think of another way users can communicate non-audibly. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

One comment asking for Cantonese, and another saying we should add pacific languages. I don't have any reason not to do this so will look at adding these.

One person said voting should help decide as people would upvote content they can read - unfortunately you can't see content for languages you haven't selected, and currently Lemmy.nz doesn't let you select languages outside the two current options. We would have to open up to all languages to allow this, which makes it harder to select one you are looking for as the list is huge. This was one reason for asking this question, to see if there were any other languages people wanted to read but couldn't.

Do you have any other feedback about lemmy.nz, this survey, or anything else?

I've grouped the feedback into generic answers. "I don't know what's happening" encompasses answers from (paraphrased) "I'm new and not sure what to think of Lemmy" through to "I've been here a year and still don't understand how it all works".

!Graph of feedback groups. A bit over a half "Thanks Dave", a bit over a quarter "Lemmy.nz is awesome" and a fifth "I don't know what's happening

Bar graph

!Graph of feedback groups. A bit over a half "Thanks Dave", a bit over a quarter "Lemmy.nz is awesome" and a fifth "I don't know what's happening"

Are you happy for your responses to be released in a public data set?

We had 52 respondents happy to have their responses released publicly, and a further user marked as "Other" that was happy to have their data included with some parts redacted.

Please let me know if you are interested in doing some analysis on these results. I wanted to preemptively collect consent but I'll only release the data if someone is actually interested in doing some analysis.

!Pie graph of those happy for data to be released publically

Bar graph

!Bar graph of those happy for data to be released publically

Final comments

Thanks to everyone for filling in the survey, and bearing with me as I wrote up the results. I had thought I'd get to do more analysis on subgroups, but you get quite small groups when you do that and so it's hard to draw conclusions from. If anyone has ideas for further analysis, leave a comment!

What arsehole teachers.

I empathize with the mum, worrying about the government cutting the program.... They will be looking for any excuse

I think I posted the story about the original break in, but what an operation. It sounds like they were importing the tobacco in bulk, then manufacturing the cigarettes, as well as forging the packaging.

For those reading this that aren't in NZ, cigarettes are very expensive here, over $2 a cigarette for some brands, and it's mostly tax.

Archived link

Next week a New Zealand woman will sit before a committee at The Hague and try to convince them to help her brother, locked up in a Chinese prison for the past seven years. Rizwangul NurMuhammad talks to Paula Penfold about her fight, her guilt — and her hope.

Rizawangul (Riz) NurMuhammad returns to the theme of guilt at least half a dozen times during our hour-long conversation.

She’s a New Zealand citizen granted asylum in 2011. She’s Uyghur, a member of the Muslim minority in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province.

And she feels guilty because she’s watched cases internationally where imprisoned Uyghurs have been freed, and she feels she’s failed her brother Mewlan.

[...]

Mewlan was a fibre network engineer for China Telecom in Bole City. One lunch break in January 2017, he was taken by plain clothes police. “They didn’t provide an explanation for why they were arresting him. He was taken for questioning and then we expected he would be freed soon because he has done nothing wrong.”

[...]

China’s Embassy in Wellington told Stuff he was sentenced in August 2017 to nine years in prison for “separatist activities”. It did not specify what those activities were.

What the actual fuck!

I was curious to hear what people think of the telecom breakup into chorus (and wasn't there a third party as well?) after all these years?

I was working there at the time, so some of the staff training was entertaining. I felt like they seemed to be on board with the general thrust of the changes, which I was a little surprised about (I expected a little more lip-service, I guess?)

Has it been a good change? I feel like the national fibre has been great but that's not actually related (but may have relied on the breakup as a precursor?)

> "Is this one motorway really worth one-tenth of our entire country's spending on schools, hospitals, houses and public transport infrastructure?"

I've bought a bunch of stuff from Cactus Outdoors over the years, but I'm finding that their cuts don't really fit me very well and are also a bit on the higher end price-wise. Love their bags though. Do you have any NZ-made brands that you can recommend?

The Commerce Commission has given carriers a year to lift their mobile coverage map game and wants simpler plan exits within six months. Customers are more satisfied with mobile than broadband. Amazon's New Zealand LEO plan emerges from stealth mode.

This is a blatant self promotion of the latest newsletter from my site. If that's not allowed, I'll stop, but I wanted to see if there is any interest in discussing the main topic in today's newsletter.

> We're paying higher prices, specials are confusing and loyalty schemes aren't delivering overly significant rewards. > > Those aren't just the musings of a frustrated supermarket shopper - but are some of the findings in the Commerce Commission's first annual grocery report, issued on Wednesday.

> Rewards schemes were only giving a return of between 0.71 percent for Flybuys and 0.75 percent for Everyday Rewards.

>Between 2007 and 2019, the average weekly spend on grocery food increased 7.3 percent every three years but the latest data showed a leap of 28.9 percent.

> The commission's report said supermarkets would point to their own rising costs as the reason for price rises. > > But it said margins had continued to grow - all of the major supermarkets had experienced an increase in price-cost margins, which meant that retail prices were increasing faster than the cost of the goods.

> The report said supermarkets "continue to achieve higher levels of profitability than we would expect in a workably competitive market".

> It was not likely that Costco would be able to expand to the point where it could become a serious third supermarket contender, it said. > > The report said the Warehouse could be an option - its network of shops meant it was in a good position to encourage shoppers to split their shopping in many cases - but it had said it had no intention of raising the capital needed to compete.

The "five things" don't work that well as a list, but they are:

• High prices aren't in your head
• Competition is not bringing down margins, or prices
• Other competitors aren't finding it easy
• Innovation, but is it what we want?
• Would fines make a difference?

Police don't even know whose money it is, or where it came from. I think they should be able to keep it.

I've got a laptop and a PC. I've connected my monitors, keyboard, camera, etc to this docking station

This works like a charm from both my laptop as well as my PC. However, switching between the two is annoying as it involves unplugging & plugging in.

Is there a USB switch I can connect the docking station to, and then a cable each to my PC and Desktop? The docking station has host charging, so it charges my laptop, so I guess the USB switch needs to be powered, or not?

I saw this one which has good reviews.

> Just after 4pm this afternoon NZ5366 travelling from Christchurch to Wellington landed safely after smoke was seen coming from the engine," Air New Zealand Head of Flight Operations, Hugh Pearce said in a statement. > > "The aircraft was met by emergency services and all passengers have disembarked safely. > > Pearce later added that the cause remains under investigation.

I'm quite surprised a vessel like this isn't NZ flagged, given it's operating exclusively in NZ waters.

très bien

EDIT: This article was originally from 2015, my mistake in posting it now.

Yes. That's the point.

> I don’t agree with throwing money away on a service I am not receiving.

Ah, yes. That argument. She's fine with other people paying for her superannuation though.

Alternative headline: Pensioner Benefits Whole Life from Unsustainably Low Rates

A special fuck you to these kinds of people.

> A suspected boat burglar has been arrested after jumping into the tide and leading police on a slow-motion chase in the Bay of Islands.

> He refused to come ashore, instead rowing towards the ferry ramp then abandoning his dinghy and swimming towards Russell. > > Officers, including a police dog, followed him in an inflatable boat.

> The police spokesperson said the man had missed his calling: "He should have been a marathon swimmer."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/21173586

> > Government’s push to fast-track projects in NZ stirs fears deep-sea mining off Taranaki, long opposed by the community, could go ahead > > Archived version: https://archive.ph/ovTcB > > SpinScore: https://spinscore.io/?url=&url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/19/deep-sea-mining-new-zealand-south-taranaki-bight-ocean-seabed-patea-beach-ntwnfb

> Home loan borrowers can expect rates to fall throughout the rest of this year and next, commentators say. > > The Reserve Bank cut the official cash rate by 25bps to 5.25 percent on Wednesday. > > While it was a move that was forecast by several economists, it was a u-turn from the bank's position in May. Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen described it as a "WTH moment" and "the biggest flip-flop ever".

A major update about the meth lollies, something got lost in translation with the police I think, they seem way too relaxed about class A drugs being out there in the community.

> A leading scientist is welcoming the end to a gene technology ban, saying New Zealand has missed opportunities because of outdated rules.

Not long ago, I posted a story about someone's dog eating meth on a walk through Auckland, and now this?

Was this a smuggling operation gone wrong perhaps?

Honestly, the fact they even asked is pretty bad, voluntary or not.

Last weeks thread here

Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!

This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.

It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:

• Something interesting that happened to you
• Something humourous that happened to you
• Something frustrating that happened to you
• A quick question
• A request for recommendations
• Pictures of your pet
• A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
• Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)

So how’s it going?

> New Zealand athletes have bagged more gold medals at Paris 2024 than at any other Olympic Games in history. > > The 10 golds claimed across the two weeks of competition have smashed the previous record of eight won at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. > > The Kiwis also bagged seven silver and three bronze medals to take the total number to 20 and finish 11th on the medal table, between Germany and Canada. > > That is the same number of medals won at Tokyo 2020, which was previously New Zealand's most successful Olympics in terms of numbers. Athletes took seven golds, six silvers and seven bronzes at that competition.

Remember when we were told that privatisation of power generation would lower prices?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18517996

cross-posted from: https://no.lastname.nz/post/739915

> WHAKAARI / WHITE ISLAND > The Volcanic Alert Level has been raised to Level 3 at White Island and the Aviation Colour Code raised to orange. > > Aviation Colour Code Orange indicates that a volcanic eruption is underway but with little or no ash being produced. > > On Geonet's website, duty volcanologist Geoff Kilgour said the volcano had produced "a more vigorous plume" on Friday afternoon, moving volcanic ash to the east of the island. > > Today, 10th August, Whakaari exhibited vigorous activity at the vent, which maintained a constant plume that was visibly depositing ash into the sea. > The latest official information is available from GeoNet at https://www.geonet.org.nz/mbl/news/6C... > > Just to clarify, a drone has no sound, from the brief times we could hear the sound it was identical to Dukono in Indonesia. This was the sound used in this video.

3m is chump change

God damn it, not again.