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.
I believe the 4473 form for transferring a firearm asks residency status and requires an alien number if you are not a citizen. I'm 99% sure PR status is required...