There is a vast market for efficient, fast, and affordable methods of transferring money/wealth across political boundaries. Blockchain/crypto seems to be filling that niche for many people, myself included, without "speculation and crime" being a factor. There is no "remittance app" for it because you can do it with your pick of various widely available crypto coins and exchanges.
Yes, many of my family and friends are in Auckland.
I don't mean it hasn't caused any disruption - only that the disruption prior to this outbreak was minimal compared to much of the world over the last 18 months.
> Covid zero is an ideological pipe dream unless NZ wants to permanently ban international travel
The goal of eliminating COVID there is to reduce the burden on the healthcare system during an active global pandemic. Until recently NZ had very low vaccination rates - zero COVID as a policy was closely tied to this and few (none?) of their mitigation measures will be permanent.
I'm a dual US/NZ citizen with family on both sides of the Pacific. It's almost comical how much negativity there is outside of NZ towards their COVID strategy, especially when you consider how minimal the disruption had been until this most recent outbreak.
You may already be aware of this but if you want real-time ADS-B, check out PiAware (https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/) as a low cost option to run your own ADS-B ground station via a raspberry pi.
There are comments further down explaining how the containers likely weigh substantially more than the lift capacity of heavy lift helicopters. They'd have to partially unload the contents of each individual container first.
And if you're unloading, the human labor cost to unload the whole container is probably cheaper than the cost of running a fleet of helicopters for weeks to months.
The airline matters too - some have larger seats with more amenities and more space between rows. Those extra inches really matter on long haul flights for those of us who are tall!
> long thought there was room for a private network
MyFamily.com was essentially this in the pre Facebook era. IIRC there was a modest annual fee for a private site/feed that let you share posts, photos, and recipes with family members.
> better yet, they could have bombed Germany too but thats another story.
The atomic bombs were dropped in August 1945. Germany surrendered in May of 1945, before the Trinity test (first test of a nuclear device) in July!
> I'd like to point out the two bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as retaliation for Pearl Habour.
This is far too simple - it's widely accepted that there were multiple reasons for using the bombs that do not include simple revenge. Most notable were the estimates of allied casualties to invade mainland Japan after the experience of clearing islands during the Pacific campaign.
It's also worth noting that consent to use the bombs was required and given by the British per the Quebec Agreement of 1943.
Not to discredit the potentially valid concerns of these articles but it's not quite accurate to say these aren't an improvement.
I'm a few weeks out from a robotic assisted surgery related to kidney cancer and the recovery time is significantly shorter in duration (6 weeks instead of 3-6 months) than the non robotic surgery. My understanding is that the DaVinci surgical robot also allowed them to be more precise with how much tissue they removed as well.
Hopefully the medical community can get a better sense of when it's appropriate to use such technology but it would be a mistake to dismiss the benefits because of misuse by some surgeons.