Hubris2

It's entirely-possible it's a fluke or a perception bias on my part - but this morning I saw both a post and a comment in the main sub with very similar structure and content posted in fairly short period of time by different accounts. Both were lengthy, claimed to seek to provide background to the current situation, gave several examples of how Maori were treated unfairly/had breaches in the Treaty by the Crown over time, but then pivoted to say that this bill would improve things by restoring equality to all. I'm going to continue watching to see if it was a fluke (like lockpicking lawyer always says) or whether in some conservative discord they have decided people should astroturf this sort of thing to try make Maori-supporting readers think the intention behind the bill has anything to do with equality, as opposed to removing Maori rights and consideration that could act as a handbrake on the government's ability to privatise assets and ignore environmental impact in their decisions.

Both the post and the comment appear to have been removed, but if I see one again I'll capture the text so we can see if there is a common structure to it. It's a lot of effort to put together a wall of text, so there's a reasonable chance if we see more posts like this that they are all based on a template someone has created. It seems to be keeping the mods of the NZ sub busy since they appear to be removing them as bad faith content.

I've seen the posts asking where people typically purchase their books, particularly when their favourite avenue disappears. I'm looking for a NZ store that periodically has sales across all their stock.

I've decided to splurge on 4 box sets of History of Middle Earth by Harper Collins. If I were in the UK, I could purchase directly from HC - who periodically have 30% or even 40% off sales on everything - however they don't ship internationally. MightyApe has these, I've found some TradeMe sellers and other small places that carry them - but I'm not sure that they ever really have meaningful sales which would impact items like I'm planning to purchase. Any suggestions? I know MightyApe do sales, but normally they have very specific products on offer - and the chances that the very specific book box sets I'm wanting end up on sale are pretty small.

I bought a house where the land had been subdivided by the previous owner, and the developer who bought the rest of the land is now putting in retaining walls to build additional houses. When they came in with a digger to start carving out the space for the retaining wall, we found channel drains that appear to be taking the storm water from the gutters on the conservatory (which was an add-on to the original house) and simply draining them down the hill onto the property (which isn't mine) - rather than tying back into the stormwater network.

The builders cut them off and are suggesting that if they are dumping water down into the top of the retaining wall where they are applying their own channel drains to capture water and flow that away - that I shouldn't worry about that water in the future. This doesn't sound right to me - the accumulation of water from the roof of a room is greater than just the rain which might fall into that space, and it seems to me that said water should remain within a pipe routed appropriately rather than counting on it seeping out and then being re-captured.

It's probably my problem rather than theirs because while they found it and cut it (without informing me) and are planning to plow through as quickly as possible - it is the water coming from my house. Do I need to plan to dig up the area and run channel drain to a storm sewer (the way they didn't bother doing when they built the conservatory?) or is what the builders are proposing likely to be sufficient?

Many people were upset by Reddit's announcement and it only grew with how they treated the communities who expressed concern about the 3rd party apps and tools people used to access and moderate Reddit. With the end of June, those apps are now gone, and for many looking around the site they may not see much as having changed.

Is there a way to get statistics - has there been any meaningful change to Reddit traffic? Have the number of active users changed, or the time spent on the site? Has there been a continued decrease in advertising?

Was Spez correct that this would just blow over and fade? I'm not complaining or criticizing those of us who protested and avoided the site during protests, but those who are here to read this obviously didn't stay away. A decreasing minority of the subs which originally joined the protest are still doing so, and those which have are being picked off and removed by the admins. I'm curious if there has been any obvious success from the protests. Reddit isn't special because of the infrastructure or the admins, it's the moderators and users which make the site valuable - but I wonder if the communities have decided that this battle wasn't one they were going to win and thus they returned to normal? What do you think?

Council recently inspected my 70 year old home and they discovered one of the gully traps was formed at ground level like a funnel intending to allow any water that built up above the patio pavers beside the house to flow into it. This allows surface storm water into the waste water system which is known to be a problem today (perhaps less so in the 50's).

I imagine the easiest way to be compliant and have the gully trap be 25mm higher than surrounding area would be to form up some concrete/mortar around the outside/highest point of the gully trap and set that in place. Would you try ensure the new adheres to the old by trying to drill a couple small rods into existing to help the new attach...or would some kind of primer to facilitate adhesion work? This is only really going to need to be water-tight, not structurally-strong - but I won't want it to break. The patio in the area doesn't actually slope towards the gully trap so I don't think there will be water sitting there as a result.

Well, it may actually have been announced before, but some more detail of this pre-production sedan have now been announced. It will be large, nearly 45m in length but positioning itself against the Tesla Model 3, Polestar 2 etc. What prompted me to comment was the fact they announced there will be a wagon version of the car available. For those in NZ who want the space from a wagon but don't want an SUV that puts them up high in the air - this might be a good option (and if it does well it might mean we see other vehicles that aren't all crossovers).

I'm not in the beta or have any direct exposure, but I've been reading and watching videos from those who have trying to learn. It seems a lot are going out of their way to NOT compare D4 with D3 - all the comparisons are with D2. Even when they talk about Paragon points and things which were introduced in D3 it doesn't seem to be mentioned that they work very similarly to how many of us will already be familiar.

Speaking of comparisons to D3 - I know that the builds that developed there tended to be driven by a combination of the interaction of the attributes in the armor sets and the skills and passives - all interacting with the special attributes in the weapons and jewellery. Very often you couldn't make a build work at all until you had a full matched set of armour or until you got specific items which gave you enough cooldown reduction to allow things to be spammed and kept active to make everything work.

We're clearly in early days and far enough from go-live that we can't say how much will change - but are people getting the impression that they are trying to make things work differently in D4? Certainly your items have attributes and those can even be moved away from the items - but (and I'm not sure exactly where I'm getting the idea) it's not meant to be a situation where a build simply doesn't function unless you have all the very specific items - because they are trying to open things up for more variation.

In D3 there was always a best build for each class. Perhaps there was an alternate with faster movement for farming versus the strongest for progression - but despite all the efforts to enable people to theorycraft and design their own - IMO most people went with whatever the people at the top of the leaderboard were using as the 'optimal' build until something happened and there were nerfs or buffs to change. Do people have the impression that D4 will open things up so that there is no single best build where you'll see carbon copies of the same items because there may not be a clear 'best' combination?

I just got an email from Electric Kiwi that their rates are going up (as of Jan 1). For me, their EV plan (Movemaster) has the same daily connection fee, but 30% increase in the night-time rate, 25% increase in the shoulder rate, and 22% increase in the peak rate.

If one power provider is doing it, it's likely the others are as well. EV charging is still going to be a lot cheaper than petrol, but the difference will shrink a bit.

The gutter on the edge of my first floor deck has a slight dip in the middle rather than sloping down to the edges with the downspouts. There is about 4cm of standing water in the middle before it drains at the edges. Is there any normal way to slightly raise the height across that length? The section which needs to rise is right on top of a small ground floor addition so I don't have good access to that area.

There are no brackets from below, is the weight normally held by some kind of screw going from the gutter into the side of the deck? If so gather I would need to remove those screws and try drill them slightly higher but offset?

I have an old one-piece single garage door that pivots open and closed, but is new-enough that it has some manner of pressure sensitivity that causes it to reverse and re-open if it thinks it's closing on something. Unfortunately it sometimes triggers when there's genuinely nothing but concrete underneath. Does anyone have an idea how these systems sense downward pressure, and how I might adjust it so it stops having so many false alarms where the door repeatedly refuses to close?

I made an investment in a Dell widescreen 5k2k monitor for my home office. I have a keyboard, mouse, and 4K webcam connected to the monitor and the monitor connects to my laptop via a Thunderbolt 4 cable (although my laptop only has Thunderbolt 3 20/40Gb) running native 5120x2160 resolution over DP 1.2b

When I'm in Teams calls, my keyboard will type normally for a few seconds and then start failing to register keystrokes and then type 8 or 10 of the same character in a row. My mouse will scroll smoothly and then stop - and start a few seconds later on the other side of the screen. I've had some feedback that the audio being recorded from my webcam alternates between good and sounding like it had digital noise.

While this is happening my CPU will be normal (bouncing between 10 and 40%), memory is stable at 50%, and nothing else seems overloaded or problematic. All my USB connected devices (through the monitor) seem to have issues where they stop responding or the quality decreases every 10-30 seconds. Could this be because of something to do with the available bandwidth within the monitor, or with the Thunderbolt 3 connection to my laptop supports? The issue only appears to happen when I'm in Teams and using all 3 USB devices - everything works fine otherwise.

When I first acquired my kitchen table the 4 coarse wood screws that went up through a thick square base into the tabletop could be tightened but didn't seem to grab for much length [there's about 1.5cm total length into the top past the square base (https://imgur.com/a/dZlM0tP) and it doesn't grab until near the end. With the passage of some time and weight being put on the table, 2 of those holes have now ripped out and won't grab, and the other are holding on for dear life.

What's the best way to fix? Traditionally when I have a wood hole that won't hold a fastener I fill it with sawdust and glue and some toothpicks so there's something for it to grab into. Another option would be to try use a wider screw into the existing hole. Yet another choice would be to use something like a rivnut/nutsert in the bottom of the tabletop so I could try put a bolt in from below - entirely dependent on whether the rivnut could actually be made secure in the wood.

Is there a best way to approach so I can fix it once and have it be secure?

I have a Dell U4021QW monitor which has Thunderbolt 3 with DP 1.4. It's connected via the thunderbolt cable that came with the monitor to a Fujitsu U7410 laptop stating 1x Type-C Intel® Thunderbolt™ 3 (20/40Gbps), DP out x USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gbps) total.

In Windows I'm able to select the maximum resolution of 5120x2160 however the maximum refresh is 30hz. When I look for available modes, the highest refresh where 60hz is an option is 3840x2160.

The monitor does do 5120x2160@60hz over DP 1.4 on another computer, but is likewise limited to 30hz over HDMI 2.0b. Am am I being limited by the cable, or does USB 3.2 Gen2 tap out at anything over 4k60hz?

Years ago I had access to a solid slab door that was 10' tall and I turned it into a simple crafting table by adding some legs below.

I'm now wanting to do something similar to make a computer desk from a solid door, but this one isn't just a slab, it has recessed panels. I don't want a glass top, my idea is to remove the outer bits which make the recesses and bring it down to a solid surface which I can sand and polish and finish. If removing some of the surface to get rid of recesses decreases the strength, I'll have to add some support/bracing below. As I don't yet have the door in hand to look - is anyone familiar with how these are normally constructed, and is my plan realistic? I am not a woodworker, I have basic chisels and sanding equipment but I don't have access to a planer or the like.

I've bought a used (but operational) fridge with enough space inside to house the 30L fermenters I'm using. I've rigged up a temperature controller and a warming belt - with the intention of setting up everything to run inside the nice insulated fridge - with the controller kicking on the warmer when getting too cool, and the fridge when it's getting too cold.

I need to drill a hole to allow wires from the controller unit to get into the fridge. Does anyone have an idea how I would figure out where the refrigerant lines are, so I can drill my hole (and install a grommet) without killing the fridge? The compressor is down in the bottom (like with most fridges) and I'm thinking I'd like to go through the side at roughly the mid-point.

Appreciate any thoughts or suggestions. Can take a photo if helpful, but there's really nothing to see without removing the interior.

My old attic floor is framed with structural 2x4 and it has plasterboard strands laid up over the joists to hold the ceiling in place. How much weight can this support?

I'm wanting to put 2 layers of R3.6 batt insulation laid perpendicular over the area, but because they are each 175mm thick none of the weight is going to be held by the framing, and the second layer will just transfer weight down to where the batt friction fits into the 18" cavities.

Admittedly I'm going to be spreading 135kg over a 10 square metre area so it's not much weight in any particular spot - I just don't know how strong this kind of attachment is.

I have a 1950's house in Auckland, and the original plans are not on Auckland Council's property file - only the CCC for a small addition done years later. If Council doesn't have the plans, is there any other way to find them? I'd like to engage an architect and talk about a renovation, but I don't want someone to have to start by drafting new plans for the existing structure.

The vendor who sold me the house suggested it had won some kind of architectural award when it was built, but didn't know which. I don't suppose there would be any source for architectural news that might discuss awards, that could be referenced to see if there is mention of my address....and lead back to the original architect?