Author: simon

NetHui 2015 – Thursday Afternoon

Domains: growth, change, transition

  • Transition of .nz to second level domains
  • Some stuff re moving root zone control away from the US
  • Problem with non-ascii domains (IDNs). They work okay, but not 3rd party apps or apps in Organisations. Eg can’t register on Facebook or other websites.
  • 60% of Government Depts don’t accept IDNs as email addresses, lots of other orgs
  • 1/3 of all new .nz domains created at second level
  • Around 95k or 600k .nz domains now at second level (about 2/3s of these from rights are 3LD holder)
  • Some people when you give them your address.nz change it into address.co.nz
  • 1st principles of .nz whois public policy.
  • People are in danger if they address is published
  • But what the ability to contact the real owner of a domain
  • 4 people in room with signed domains
  • 300 signed .nz domains. 150 with DS record
  • Around 3 people in room with new TLDs. See ntldstats.com for current stats

Internet of Things

  • Where does the data from your house appliances go?
  • Forwarded to other companies
  • Issues need to be understandable by ordinary citizens especially terms and conditions
  • Choose the data that you choose to share with the company rather than company choosing what it shares with you (and others)
  • In health care area people worried about sharing data if it will affect their insurance premiums or coverage
  • Many people don’t understand what their data is, they don’t understand that if every time they do something (on a device) it is stored and can be used later. How to educate people without sounding paranoid?
  • “IoT is connecting things whose primary purpose is not connecting to the Internet”
  • “The cost of sharing is bearable, because the sharing is valuable.”
  • More granularities of trust. No current standards or experience or feeling for this since such a new area and rapidly evolving
  • NZ law should override overly aggressive agreements (by overseas companies)
  • Some discussion about standards, lots of them, full stack, piecemeal, rapidly changing
  • Will the IoT make everything useless after the zombie apocalypse?
  • “Denial of Service attack on your IoT pill bottle would be bad!”
  • Concern that something like a pill bottle failing can put life in danger. Very high level of reliability needed which is rare and hard in software

Panel: Parliamentary Internet Forum

  •  With Gareth Hughes (Green Party), Clare Curran (Labour Party), Brett Hudson (National Party), Ria Bond (NZ First), Karen Melhuish Spencer (Core Education), Nigel Robertson (University of Waikato)
  • What roles does the Education system play in the Internet
    • National guy mostly talked about UFB and RBI programmes, computers in homes
    • Gareth Hughes adopts the “I went out to XYZ School” story. Pushes Teachers not trained and 1 in 4 homes don’t have Internet access.
    • Claire – Got distracted about discussion re her pants. But she said 40% of jobs at risk over next 10-15 years due to impact of technology
    • Karen – I got distracted about another clothing related discussion on twitter
    • Nigel – 1. Use the Internet to do what we already do better. Help people to use the Internet better (digital literacy)
  • Lots of discussion about retraining older people to handle jobs in the future as their present jobs go away
  • How much should government be leading vs getting out of the way and just funding it?
    • Nigel – Government should provide direction. Different in tertiary and other sectors
    • Karen – Collaborative and connected but not mandating
  • “We need to prepare people not just for the jobs of the future, but also to create the companies of the future” – Martin Danner
  • Lots of other stuff but I got distracted.
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NetHui 2015 – Thursday Morning

Ministerial address: Hon. Amy Adams, Minister for Communications

  • Mentions she was at community group meeting where people were “shocked” when it was suggested that minutes be sent via email
  • Talk up of the UFB rollout. Various stats about how it is going
  • Also mentioned that Mobile build is part of UFB, better cellular connectivity in rural regions
  • Notes that this will never be 100% complete. The bar keeps moving
  • Very different takeup in different regions. 2% in some 19% in others. Local organisations pushing
  • Good Internet is especially important for remote countries like New Zealand
  • Talk about getting better access in common areas (eg shared driveways) for network builds
  • Notes how Broadcasting and Communications as well as other areas are converging. Previously they were separate silos. Similar for other areas.
  • Harmful Digital Communications Act.
    • Says new framework, adjustment may be needed and bedding down the courts.
    • Says that majority of cases will go to mediation
    • Similar Act in Australia very few things going to courts
    • Gave similar silly literal readings of others acts ( RMA requires a permit to sneeze )
  • 5 “Questions” to minister. 2 on TPP, 1 on Captions, 1 pushing some project and one actual question that she got to answer.
  • Maybe they should look at this idea for the Questions

Keynote: Kathy Brown, ISOC CEO

  • GDP of a National is highly correlated with the growth of the Internet
  • 75% of the benefit of the Internet goes to existing businesses
  • ISOC Global Internet Report 2015
  • Huge growth in Mobile Internet
  • “94% of the global population is covered by mobile networks. Mobile broadband covers 48% of global population”
  • Huge gap between developed and developing counties
  • Report is Online and “Interactional”
  • Challenges
    • Openness of the Internet means information is out there, exposed and gettable by the wrong people sometimes
    • Generational divide in attitude to privacy
  • Privacy is a matter of personal choice. The tools should be available should you wish to use them

Govt 2.0: Digital by default

  • Rachel Prosser and David Farrar facilitating.
  • Room full
  • Result 10 programme background
  • NZ Government Web toolkit
  • 50,000 registered with NZ Realme site
  • Shared rules between local governments, problems with same rules everywhere. Some limitations,. Perhaps at least similar technical standards
  • People don’t care about governments structure, they just want a service, don’t care how depts are arranged.
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NetHui 2015 – InTac afternoon

Building an access network for demand and scale – new challenges – Kurt Rogers, Chorus

  • Over 1 million broadband connections on access network
  • 70-80% of BB connections
  • Average connection sped now near 20Mb/s due to VDSL and Fibre
  • Busiest 15 minute period (around 9pm Thursday) of week averaging 0.5Mb/s per user ( up from 100kb/s just 3 years ago )
  • Jump in mid-2013 when Netflix and Lightbox launched
  • Average bandwidth per user growing 50%/year. Grown that much in 1st half of 2015
  • Quite a few people still on ADSL1 modems when ADSL2 would work
  • Same a lot of people can get VDSL that don’t realize
  • Lots of people on 30Meg fibre plan at the start, now most going for 100Mb/s
  • Rural broadband (RBI)
    • 85k lines upgraded to FTTN
    • Average speed jumped 5.6Mb/s to 15Mb/s after a single rural cabinet upgraded cause everybody could now use ADSL2 and faster uplink. One fibre guy got 48Mb/s on VDSL, other 37Mb/s
    • More speed out there than some people realize
  • VDSL bandplan moving from 997 to 998. Trail average speed increases were from 32 to 46Mb/s for downstream. Minimal change on upstream speed.
  • Capacity
    • Aggregation link bandwidth. Alert threshold at 70%, Max threshold at 90%
  • Technology down the road to speed up aggregation links with Next Generation PON technology

The new smart ISP – Colin Brown, GM of Networks at Spark

  • Working on caching infrastructure, bigger and closer to their edge
  • Big traffic growth this year
  • Big growth in mobile traffic especially upload
  • 60% of phones in stores are 4G capable
  • Providers investing a lot of money , profits lower. Less like banks, more like airlines
  • Technology refresh every 5 years rather than every 10
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NetHui 2015 – InTac morning

Introduction – Dean Pemberton, InternetNZ

Dean was going to do an intro but got cock-blocked by some guy in a High-Vis vest.

The People Factor: what users want – Paul Brislen, ex-CEO of TUANZ

  • Working from home since 1999, 30kb/s at first. Made it work
  • Currently has 10Mb/s shared with busy family, often congested, not using much TV yet
  • Television driving demand.
  • Some infrastructure showing the strain
  • Southern cross replacement will be via Sydney. A couple of thousand km in the wrong direction when going to the US
  • Rural broadband still to deliver on the promise, no uptake stats, not great service level
  • Internet access critical path for economic development. lack of political will
  • Dean got to do his intro talk now.
  • Will Internet be priced on peak usage? A: Already offpeak discounts, some ISPs manage home/biz customer ratio to keep traffic balanced
  • Average usage per customer is 5Mb/s for ISP with streaming orientated ISP (acct sold with device).
  • 60% of International traffic going to Aus (to CDNS)
  • Consumers don’t accept buffering, high quality video (bitrate and production quality). Want TV to just-work.
  • NZ doesn’t want to be a “rural” level of internet access, equiv to a farm in more connected countries
  • Could multicast work for live events like sport?
  • Hard to get overage to work to work when people leave TV on all day
  • Plenty of people in Auckland not getting UFB till 2017 (or later)

The connected home and the Internet of Things – Amber Craig, ANZ

  • At top of Hype cycle
  • Has home Switches on Wemo (have to get upgraded)
  • Lots of devices generating a lot of data
  • Video Blogging – 10GB of raw data, 1GB of finished for just 5 minutes. Uploading to shared drives, sending back and forth through multiple edits
  • Network capacity if probably not much for IoT compared to video, but home will be a source of a lot more uploads
  • With IPv6 maybe less NAT, harder to manage (since people are not used to it).
  • Whose responsibility is it to ensure that Internet works in every room
  • Building standards, what are customers, government, ISP each prepared to pay for?
  • What about medical dependency people who need Internet. A lot of this goes over GSM since that is more “reliable”

Lightbox – content delivery in New Zealand – Kym Nyblock, Chief Executive of Lightbox

  • Lightbox is part of Spark ventures, morepork, skinny, bigpipe
  • Lighbox – On line TV service, $12.99/month thousands of hours of online content
  • 40% of US household have SVOD, but pay-TV only down 25%
  • Many providers around the world, multiple providers in many countries. Youtube also bit player in the corner
  • SVOD have some impact on piracy, especially those who only pirate cause they want content same day as programme airs in the US
  • Lots of screens now in the house, TV not only viewed on TVs
  • Lightbox challenges
    • Rights issues, lots of competition with other providers, some with fuzzy launch dates
    • NZ Internet not too bad
    • Had to work within an existing company
  • Existing providers
    • Sky – 850k homes, announced own product, has most sports
    • Netflix – approx 30k homes, coming to NZ soon
  • From Biz plan to launch in 12 months
  • Marketing job to be very simple – “Grandma Rule” ( can be explained to Grandma, used by her)
  • Express service delivers content right after views in the US. Lots of views for the episodes that are brand new. One new episode can be 10% of days total views
  • Very agile company, plans changed a lot.
  • Future
    • Customers will have several providers and change often
    • Multiple providers in the market, more to come
    • Premium and exclusive content will drive, simple interface will keep it
    • Rights issues are a problem but locked into the studio system
    • Try to “grow the category”, majority on consumers still using linear, scheduled TV
    • Try to address local rights ownership. This is the bit where they dug at US based providers and people using them.
    • Working on a Sports offering
    • and then she showed a Lightbox ad 🙁
    • Question costs of other ISPs of getting good lightbox due to charges from Spark-Wholesale for bandwidth exchanged. Not really answered

Quickflix – another view of content delivery in New Zealand – Paddy Buckley, MD of Quickflix NZ

  • 1st service to launch in March 2012
  • Subscription service for movies and TV shows and Standalone pay-per-view service for new-release movies and some TV shows
  • Across lots of devices, Smart TVs, phones, computers, games consoles, tablets, tivo, chromecast. No Linux Client 🙁
  • Just 15% of views via the website now
  • Content: New release movies, subscriptions content movies, TV shows
  • Uses Akamai for delivery. Hosting Centers in Sydney and Perth. AWS/Azure
  • Unwritten 5 second rule. Content should play within 5 seconds of pressing play
  • The future
    • Multiple Models, Not just SVOD, eg TVOD, AVOD, EVOD, EST
    • More fibre, fast home wifi and better hardware
    • VOD content getting nearer to the viewer. HbbTV combines broadcast and on-demand being done by freeview
    • Android TV
    • Viewing levels to increase (volume and frequency), people will pick and mix between providers
    • Aiming at 50% of households, 1 million is quite a lots for any scale.
  • Coming soon
    • 1080p/4K , 5.1 surround sound
    • Fewer device limits. All services and all devices
    • More streams
    • Changing release windows
    • Live streaming
    • PPV options to compliment
    • Download now, view later
  • What we need from ISPs
    • Significant bandwidth
    • Mooorrreee bandwidth
    • People will change ISPs if the ISP can’t provide the level of service
    • Netflix is naming and shaming. Netflix best/worst list
  • Prediction that NZ could hit 50% SVOD within a couple of years
  • Asked if they will be going broke in next few months. Says he’s done deal with Presto in Aus and will ease funding problems but business as normal in the NZ
  • SVOD has evolved from back-catalog TV shows a few years ago to first-run now. Will probably keep going forward with individual shows being provider-exclusive for now, especially since services are fairly low cost per month
  • A few questions about subtitles. Usually available (although can cost extra) but not good support with end devices to turn on/off .
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Feeds I follow: Citylab, Commitstrip, MKBHD, Offsetting Bahaviour

I thought I’d list of the feeds/blogs/sites I currently follow. Mostly I do this via RSS using Newsblur.

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Reading the Lord of the Rings aloud

The reading project that I am working on is a re-read of the Lord of the Rings. I’ve read the book/trilogy around a The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Trilogydozen times over the years but the two main differences this time are that I am reading it aloud and that I am consulting a couple of commentaries as I go. The references works I am using are The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion and the The Lord of the Rings Reread series by Kate Nepveu. The Companion is a fairly large book (860 pages) that follows the text page by page and gives explanations for words, characters and the history/development of the text. These can range from a simple definition to a couple of pages on a specific topic or character. The reread has a quick synopsis at the start of the article for each chapter and then some commentary by Kate followed by some comments from her readers (which I usually only quickly skim).

I started my read-aloud on February 15th 2015 and I am now ( April 7th ) just past the half-way point ( I completed The Fellowship of the Ring on March 27th) . My process is to read the text for 30-60 minutes ( I’m reading the three-book 1979 3rd edition paperback edition, which amusingly has various errors that the Reader’s Companion points out as I go) which gets me though 5-10 pages. I read aloud everything on the page including chapter titles, songs, non-English words and footnotes. A few times I have checked the correct pronunciation of words ( Eomer is one ) but otherwise I try not to get distracted. Once I finish for the session I open the Reader’s Companion and check the entries for the pages I have just read and at the end of each chapter ( chapters are usually around 20-30 pages) I have a look at Kate’s blog entry. I try an read most days and sometimes do extras on weekends.

One thing I really need to say is that I really am enjoying the whole thing. I love the book (like I said I’ve read it over a dozen times) and reading it aloud makes the experience even better. The main difference is that I do not skip over words/sentences/paragraphs which tends to happen when I read normally. So I don’t miss phrases like the description of Lake Hithoel:

The sun, already long fallen from the noon, was shining in a windy sky. The pent waters spread out into a long oval lake, pale Nen Hithoel, fenced by steep grey hills whose sides were clad with trees. At the far southern end rose three peaks. The midmost stood somewhat forward from the others and sundered from them, an island in the waters, about which the flowing River flung pale shimmering arms. Distant but deep there came up on the wind a roaring sound like the roll of thunder heard far away.

LOTR_Readers_Companion
Nor do I skip the other little details that are easy to miss, like Grishnakh and his Mordor Orcs leaving the rest of the group for a couple of days on the plains of Rohan or the description of country leading up to the west gate of Moria. Although I do wish I’d seen the link to the map of Helm’s Deep halfway down this page before I’d read the chapter as it would have made things clearer. The Companion is also good at pointing out how things fit in the chronology, so when somebody gazes at the horizon and sees a cloud of smoke it will say what event elsewhere in the book (or other writing) that is from. You also get a great feel for Tolkien’s language and words and his vivid descriptions of scenes and landscape (often up to a page long) such the example above. Although I do find he uses “suddenly” an awful lot when he has new events/people break into the narrative.

The readers companion is a great resource, written by two serious Tolkien scholars but intended for general readers rather than academics. Kate Nepveu’s articles are also very useful in giving a more opinionated and subjective commentary. I would definitely recommend the experience to others who are fans of the Lord of the Rings. I’m not sure how well it would work with other books but certainly it enhances a work I already know well and love.

At the current rate I am expecting to finish some time in June or July. The next project I’m planning is Shakespeare’s plays. I am planning on reading each one (multiple times including possibly at least once aloud) and watching the BBC Television Shakespeare and other adaptations and commentaries. My plan is that I’ll cover the majority of them  but I’ll see how I go, However I’d like to at least get though the major ones.

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Parallel Importing vs The Economist

Simpson-economistFor the last few years I have subscribed to the online edition of  The Economist magazine. Previously I read it via their website but for the last year or two I have used their mobile app. Both feature the full-text of each week’s magazine. Since I subscribed near 15 years ago I have paid:

Launched Jun 1997   US$ 48
Jun 1999            US$ 48
Oct 2002            US$ 69
Oct 2003            US$ 69
Dec 2006            US$ 79
Oct 2009            US$ 79
Oct 2010            US$ 95
Oct 2011            US$ 95
Mar 2014            NZ$ 400 (approx US$ 300)

You will note the steady creep for a few years followed by the huge jump in 2014.

Note: I reviewed by credit card bill for 2012 and 2013 and I didn’t see any payments, it is possible I was getting it for free for two years 🙂 . Possibly this was due to the transition between using an outside card processor (Worldpay) and doing the subscriptions in-house.

Last year I paid the bill in a bit of a rush and while I was surprised at the amount I didn’t think to hard. This year however I had a closer look. What seems to have happened is that The Economist has changed their online pricing model from “cheap online product” to “discount from the printed price”. This means that instead of online subscribers paying the same everywhere they now pay slightly less than it would cost to get the printed magazine delivered to the home.

Unfortunately the New Zealand price is very high to (I assume) cover the cost of shipping a relatively small number of magazines via air all the way from the nearest printing location.

econ_nzecon_us

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So readers in New Zealand are now charged NZ$ 736 for a two-year digital subscription while readers in the US are now charged US$ 223 ( NZ$ 293) for the same product. Thus New Zealanders pay 2.5 times as much as Americans.

Fortunately since I am a globe-trotting member of the world elite® I was able to change my subscription address to my US office and save a bunch of cash. However for a magazine that publishes the Big Mac Index comparing prices of products around the world the huge different in prices for the same digital product seems a little weird.

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LInks: WW1 Maps, Shawshank, Microservices, Dev Interviewing

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Books for Sale – Part 2

I’m doing a book clean-out. The following are all for sale. Remainders will be given away to charity or something. Pickup is from either my house (Dominion Rd/Balmoral, Auckland) or my I can meet during the week near my work in Wyndham Street in the Auckland CBD.

Prices as mark, discount if you want to by more than 5 or so. Links may not match the exact edition I am selling.

If you are interested in any please contact me via email ( simon@darkmere.gen.nz ) or over twitter ( @slyall ). Sale will run to end of April or so.

See Part 1 for more books

Business

Commentary / Opinion / Speculation / Politics

Technical

Travel / Misc

 

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Books for sale – Part 1

I’m doing a book clean-out. The following are all for sale. Remainders will be given away to charity or something. Pickup is from either my house (Dominion Rd/Balmoral, Auckland) or my I can meet during the week near my work in Wyndham Street in the Auckland CBD.

Prices as mark, discount if you want to by more than 5 or so. Links may not match the exact edition I am selling.

If you are interested in any please contact me via email ( simon@darkmere.gen.nz ) or over twitter ( @slyall ) Sale will run to end of April or so.

See Part 2 for more books

Science Fiction / Fantasy

Deryni Books by Katherine Kurtz, all paperbacks of used quality unless otherwise named.

  • Deryni Rising – $4
  • Deryni Checkmate – $4
  • High Deryni – $4
  • Camber of Culdi (2 copies) -$4 each
  • The Bishops Heir (Hardback, ripped jacket) – $4
  • The Quest for Saint Camber – $4
  • The Deryni Archives – $4

Science Fiction Short Story Collections

Sci-Fi Novels

Other Fiction

History

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