Astral Codex Ten

New Zealand

27 min read

New Zealand

Article

New Zealand is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 21 times across 21 issues between April 14, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “list of Best Practice Peer Countries including: New Zealand”; “Studwell gives Denmark and New Zealand as examples”; “Australia and New Zealand managed to do very well by combining well-targeted border closures with very strict early lockdowns”. It most often appears alongside Australia, Denmark, India.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 21
  • Issue count: 21
  • First seen: April 14, 2021
  • Last seen: April 01, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Prospectus On Próspera
April 14, 2021 · Original source
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Dubai, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Singapore, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States of America
Book Review: How Asia Works
June 28, 2021 · Original source
Second, "high-value agricultural producers". Studwell gives Denmark and New Zealand as examples. Again, these countries are very nice. But they also tend to be small and sparsely populated, and they also don't scale. New Zealand's biggest export category is "dairy, eggs, and honey". Imagine how much honey you would have to eat to lift China out of poverty that way. It would be absolutely delicious for a few years, and then we would all die of diabetes.
Inline links: biggest export category
Lockdown Effectiveness: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
July 07, 2021 · Original source
Australia and New Zealand managed to do very well by combining well-targeted border closures with very strict early lockdowns. This helped them get cases low enough to the point where their test-and-trace program could manage them, and helped them get through the pandemic relatively gently (so far). This was a great strategy for the countries that were quick-thinking, clear-thinking, and lucky enough to pull it off, ie very few of them.
Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
August 23, 2021 · Original source
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND (RSVP) Contact: Mako Yass, marcus[dot]yass[at]gmail[dot]com Time: 4:00 PM, Sunday, September 12 Location: If the current COVID alert level allows indoor meetings, and the temperature listed here is at or below 18°C at 4pm, we will gather in Lim Chhour food court and asian supermarket on Karangahape Road. Otherwise (if either of those conditions are false), if the lockdown level permits small outdoor gatherings, we will try to meet in Albert Park, in the Gazebo here; or if someone else is using the gazebo we will meet beside it somewhere around here. You will be able to recognise us by the reflective silvery orb about the size of a rockmelon positioned in the center of the gathering. Coordinates: https://w3w.co/jump.trial.films Notes: Date is September 12th OR whichever Sunday first comes after the alert level once again permits gatherings
Inline links: RSVP, here, here, here, https://w3w.co/jump.trial.films
WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND (RSVP) Contact: Ben W, benwve[at]gmail[dot]com Time: 1:00 PM, Sunday, September 26 (NOTE: postponed from the 5th due to Level 3 lockdown) Location: Waitangi Park. Main grassy area, west-most corner. Coordinates: https://w3w.co/jets.drank.fits
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/jets.drank.fits
Long COVID: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
September 02, 2021 · Original source
In this context, I find the 1/150 risk pretty scary and the 1/25,000 risk not scary at all, so, darn, I guess there’s not yet enough data to have a strong sense of how concerned I should be. 9. This is hard to compare to other postviral syndromes Going into this, I wondered if we might be able to ignore Long COVID. The argument would go like this: all viral diseases have a risk of postviral syndromes. Colds, flus, mono, lots of stuff that’s going around all the time. Lots of people get those postviral syndromes, and either recover or don’t, but either way we don’t make a big deal out of it. Since COVID’s considered “newsworthy” in a way flu isn’t, we obsess over its postviral syndrome even though it’s no worse than anything else’s. This wouldn’t make Long COVID any less bad, and maybe we would be wrong to not panic more about colds and the flu, but it would at least give us some context and make things feel less scary. Unfortunately, I can’t find anything supporting or opposing this picture. The only relevant study is a meta-analysis by Poole-Wright et al, who (contra nominative determinism) don’t pool the studies by condition, which makes it hard to draw conclusions. I think all of their examples of postviral syndrome after flu are from severe hospitalized cases, so any comparison with COVID would be unfair. Although there do seem to be scattered reports of post-flu problems, they’ve never been formally studied or quantified. Mononucleosis is an infectious disease caused by the Epstein-Barr virus, affecting about 1/2000 people per year in developed countries. It has a famously nasty postviral syndrome, which this paper describes as “almost one-half of the group had substantial ongoing symptoms 2 months after onset and… ∼10% had disabling symptoms marked by fatigue lasting ≥ 6 months”. Flu is as common as COVID, but nobody really talks about it having a significant postviral syndrome so probably it’s not that bad. Mono has a worse postviral syndrome than COVID, but it’s rare enough that it doesn’t cause massive society-wide effects. COVID is right in the middle: more common than mono, and (probably) worse postviral syndrome than flu. I think it’s fair to say that we may not have encountered a condition with this exact combination of risk factors and can’t dismiss it as similar to conditions we currently ignore. One potential analogue might be the Spanish Flu of 1918. It was an equally widespread pandemic, and seemed to have some kind of postviral syndrome. From TIME: In what is now Tanzania, to the north, post-viral syndrome has been blamed for triggering the worst famine in a century—the so-called “famine of corms”—after debilitating lethargy prevented flu survivors from planting when the rains came at the end of 1918. “Agriculture suffered particular disruption because, not only did the epidemic coincide with the planting season in some parts of the country, but in others it came at the time for harvesting and sheep-shearing.” Kathleen Brant, who lived on a farm in Taranaki, New Zealand, told Rice, the historian, about the “legion” problems farmers in her district encountered following the pandemic, even though all patients survived: “The effects of loss of production were felt for a long time.” The 1918 flu seemed to have lots of psychiatric effects: “Norwegian demographer Svenn-Erik Mamelund provided such evidence when he combed the records of psychiatric institutions in his country to show that the average number of admissions showed a seven-fold increase in each of the six years following the pandemic, compared to earlier, non-pandemic years.” Coronavirus doesn’t - the excellent Amin-Chowdhury study above finds nothing. Still, this is the scale of thing I’m worried about. The worst case scenario here is really really bad. If a few percent of COVID patients get long-term unremitting genuine CFS/ME, that has the potential to overwhelm government welfare budgets and long-term depress the economy. I think there’s a 90% chance the real situation isn’t that bad, but it’s scary that we can’t entirely rule it out. Aside from the somewhat different 1918 case, I don’t think we have any historical experience of dealing with postviral syndromes at this scale. The medium case scenario is something more like “a few percent of infected people get moderate fatigue, which doesn’t really prevent them from working, and goes away after a few years”. I don’t know whether the level of media attention paid to this would converge on “boring and nobody notices” or “giant disaster”, and I think it would be compatible with either. 10. Conclusions 1. Long COVID is many different issues without a common mechanism. 2. Some of these are straightforward and not surprising, eg lung scarring and post-ICU syndrome from severe infection, and would happen in any disease of this severity. Others seem to be more like the poorly-understood postviral syndromes associated with several other diseases. While some symptoms may be psychosomatic, most are probably organic. 3 The three major categories of symptoms are straightforward cardiovascular-pulmonary issues, straightforward smell and taste issues, and more mysterious neurological issues. 4 Although these get better with time in some people, in a significant number (maybe ~50% of people who had them at six weeks) they persist for as long as anyone has been able to measure them (a few months in the case of COVID, a year or two in the case of comparable syndromes). 5. Post-COVID fatigue is particularly concerning. This would be very bad if we analogized it to CFS/ME, and still pretty bad if we analogized it to other known postviral syndromes. There is no proof that this always gets better over the long term, although no study has looked at them for more than a few years. Facing postviral fatigue on this scale is a new problem. 6 . Children probably get Long COVID less than adults, probably at a rate of less than 5% of symptomatic cases. But we don’t know how much less, and we can’t rule out that some children get pretty severe symptoms. 7. Although vaccination decreases the risk of symptomatic COVID, it probably doesn’t decrease the risk of Long COVID per symptomatic COVID case by very much, though it might decrease it by a factor of 2-3. 8. Your chance of really bad debilitating lifelong Long COVID, conditional on getting COVID, is probably somewhere between a few tenths of a percent, and a few percent. Your chance per year of getting it by living a normal lifestyle depends on what you consider a normal lifestyle and on the future course of the pandemic. For me, under reasonable assumptions, it’s probably well below one percent. EDIT: Here are some other people who tried to do this same analysis. I learned about all of these after I wrote the first draft of this, so you can consider the basic thought process here to be independent of them - but I edited some things to account for what I learned from them before writing the final version. AcesoUnderGlass: Long COVID Is Not Necessarily Your Biggest Problem
Inline links: a meta-analysis by Poole-Wright et al, scattered reports, this paper, postviral syndrome, Long COVID Is Not Necessarily Your Biggest Problem
Does Georgism Work? Part 1: Is Land Really A Big Deal?
December 09, 2021 · Original source
Is there anywhere else we can check easily? New Zealand (which isn't covered in The Great Mortgaging) has this really cool dashboard that breaks down all the bank loans in their country. As you can see, the majority of loans are for housing.
Inline links: really cool dashboard
I could dig further, but I think I've seen enough to convince me of this general point. The majority of bank loans in a lot of major developed countries (including the US, UK, and New Zealand) are for real estate, and, as we've already shown, the majority of real estate's value is concentrated in land. Whether or not land represents a clear majority of bank loans, it's undeniably a big chunk.
Does Georgism Work? Part 2: Can Landlords Pass Land Value Tax on to Tenants?
December 10, 2021 · Original source
The Valuer General of New Zealand said, "There was no evidence that the tax would (1) control urban sprawl and speculation in land; (2) encourage the construction of 'better' buildings; (3) encourage growth; or (4) cause slums to disappear"
The source he cites is Donald Hagman's 1965 book The Single Tax and Land Use Planning: Henry George Updated, which I can find cited in a bunch of places but can't actually seem to locate. The closest I can get is this 1978 article, also by Hagman, posted to Cooperative-Individualism.org, an old school Georgist site. There, Hagman says that when the income tax was first introduced in New Zealand in the 1890's, Land Value Tax was responsible for 75.7% of the combined tax yield of land + income taxes, but over the course of the next century that figure dropped all the way to 0.5% in 1965 and 0.3% in 1970 (note the placement of the decimal point).
Inline links: this 1978 article, Cooperative-Individualism.org
Hagman isn't clear on why this is. Did land become less important, were assessments depressed, did the land tax rate just go down? What he does say is that various exemptions were put into effect and that New Zealand made some moves away from market-based valuations. So did LVT simply not work as of 1978, or was this particular implementation hobbled?
Lewis Carroll Invented Retroactive Public Goods Funding In 1894
January 04, 2022 · Original source
I know of at least five independent inventions under five different names: “social impact bonds” by a New Zealand economist in 1988, “certificates of impact” by Paul Christiano in 2014, “retroactive public goods funding” by Vitalik Buterin a few years ago, “EA loans” by a blogger who prefers to remain anonymous, and “venture grants” by Mako Yass. These aren’t all exactly the same idea. Some are slightly better framed than others and probably I’m being terribly disrespectful to the better ones by saying they’re the same as the worse ones. But I think they all share a basic core: some structure that lets profit-seeking venture capitalist types invest in altruistic causes, in the hopes that altruists will pay them back later once they’ve been shown to work.
Inline links: “social impact bonds”, “certificates of impact”, “retroactive public goods funding”, “venture grants”
Highlights From The Comments On Self-Determination
April 06, 2022 · Original source
Tokelau is a remote southern Pacific Ocean Island currently owned by New Zealand with a population of ~1500 and currently on the UN list of non-self-governing territories. The UN has pushed for referendums towards statehood, two of which have failed. In this case, it seems that by virtue of being an Island rather than just a small town off the interstate, Tokelau may deserve self determination. It's not clear what a 1500-member nation would look like.
22
August 16, 2022 · Original source
In 2014, Victoria University in New Zealand struck a deal with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency that regulates some markets in the US. CFTC would let Victoria set up a prediction market - at the time a relatively new idea - for research purposes only. Their no-action letter placed strict limits on Victoria’s project:
Inline links: Their no-action letter
Book Review: What We Owe The Future
August 23, 2022 · Original source
But it is hard to drive humans extinct. MacAskill goes over many different scenarios and shows how they will not kill all humans. Global warming could be very bad, but climate models show that even under the worst plausible scenarios, Greenland will still be fine. Nuclear war could be very bad, but nobody wants to nuke New Zealand, and climate patterns mostly protect it from nuclear winter. Superplagues could be bad, but countries will lock down and a few (eg New Zealand) might hold on long enough for everyone else to die out and the immediate threat of contagion to disappear. MacAskill admits he is kind of playing down bioweapons for pragmatic reasons; apparently al-Qaeda started a bioweapons program after reading scaremongering articles in the Western press about how dangerous bioweapons could be.
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023
April 10, 2023 · Original source
CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND Contact: Gavin Contact Info: bisga673[at]student[dot]otago[dot]ac[dot]nz Time: May 5th, 05:00 PM Location:University of Canterbury Rātā (Engineering) 119 Meeting Room reserved. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/4V8JFHHM+CG Event Link:https://www.facebook.com/events/609894044396249/ Notes: I will have someone with a sign saying ACX inside Engineering core by the main entrance. Everyone is very welcome! You should come along!
Inline links: https://plus.codes/4V8JFHHM+CG, https://www.facebook.com/events/609894044396249/
Links For July 2023
July 06, 2023 · Original source
The CSS General Price 17: Several people have said nice things about the Rose Garden Inn, a rationalist events space where we hold Berkeley ACX meetups. Mingyuan, who helped decorate it, now has a Rationalist Interior Decorating Guide with what she’s learned about light color temperature, chairs, rugs, and more. 18: Elo Everything is simple: it gives you two random people/objects/concepts, for example “soap” and “Nelson Mandela”, and you pick which one you prefer. Then they have a leaderboard with everything’s Elo (a way of ranking things based on victory in binary contests). The current #1 entity is oxygen; the bottom (#2260) entity is the KKK. 19: Erik Hoel tries to deflate UFO rumors. Although most of the post is the standard “here’s a time someone thought they saw a UFO but it had a reasonable explanation”, the highlight is the dissection of the credulous 2017 NYT article on UFOs, which based on his story sounds totally inexcusable (yes, the government funded a lot of money into UFO research, but only in the sense that Nevada Senator Harry Reid threw lots of money and government-sponsored prestige at random crazy people in his state, because he was either gullible or corrupt). Nothing here directly addresses the current spate of UFO rumors, but the silliness of the previous batch is indirect evidence of a sort. One thing he didn’t highlight: the Robert Bigelow who owned Skinwalker Ranch is the same guy who founded Bigelow Aerospace, an exciting-sounding private spaceflight company about which I suddenly have many more doubts. 20: Related: the most practical demand I’ve heard from people who take the current UFO rumors seriously is that AARO (the government’s new UFO investigation group) should get Title 50 authority (the right to demand classified information from intelligence services). Read their campaign (maybe sort of supported by some members of Congress) here. Suspicious detail: the colonel saying UFOs are real is named “Karl Nell”. 21: This month in social justice: New Zealand health system implements affirmative action for surgery wait lists; “diverse” patients can jump ahead in the queue compared to other patients who may have waited longer or be sicker. The government says this just “corrects” institutional biases which exist at other stages; I don’t know the New Zealand situation but have found previous claims of this sort flimsy. Here are various articles talking about how anyone who is against this system lacks context on how it won’t work that way, plus also it already works this way so nothing will change, plus it will revolutionize health equity so you’d have to be a monster to object, plus it will make no difference so anyone who protests is just manufacturing fake outrage. I can’t find the algorithm they say they’re using anywhere; here is a FOIA-equivalent request for it which hasn’t been answered yet. This file seems related and suggests Maori should get the highest priority and Asians the lowest priority, but I’m not sure they’re exactly following the science here. I think of this in the context of the US COVID vaccine prioritization effort; not only did it cause hundreds or thousands of unnecessary deaths by giving vaccines to young healthy low-risk members of favored groups before old sick high-risk members of disfavored ones, it also caused scarce vaccine doses to be wasted rather than spent on members of disfavored groups because of implementation details. We should be fighting for less of this, not more. 22: Related: affirmative action Supreme Court ruling links roundup: Will the ruling really change admissions policies, or will universities find a way around it? Humphrey on DSL works in the field and says he thinks it will produce real change.
Inline links: General Price, Rationalist Interior Decorating Guide, Elo Everything, leaderboard, tries to deflate UFO rumors, Bigelow Aerospace, maybe sort of supported by, here, is named, New Zealand health system implements affirmative action for surgery wait lists, various, articles, here, This file, scarce vaccine doses to be wasted rather than spent on members of disfavored groups, says he thinks it will produce real change
Your Book Review: The Educated Mind
July 14, 2023 · Original source
But this isn’t unique to the Potawatomi, or to Native Americans — you can find these “cognitive strengths” showing up in the Maori of New Zealand, the !Kung San of Botswana, the Yanomami of Brazil… in fact, anthropologists have found these “cognitive strengths” in every society they’ve researched: all but one of them show up in Donald Brown’s list of human universals. Like clothing and fire, these ways of encoding information were part of humanity’s original toolkit, equipping each person with the collected knowledge of their tribe so they could survive in environments that found them tasty.
Inline links: Donald Brown’s list of human universals
23: Room Temperature Superforecaster
August 01, 2023 · Original source
“The end of natural pregnancies . . . all babies will be grown in laboratories, with states and medical experts deciding who gets one.” Again, big if true. PredictIt Gets Another Stay Of Execution In 2014, researchers at a New Zealand university created PredictIt, a real-money prediction market focusing on US politics. Real-money prediction markets are somewhere between unregulated futures exchanges and gambling. The US restricts both these things, so it restricts prediction markets too. PredictIt asked the CFTC, the relevant regulatory body, to let them operate anyway, arguing that they were academically valuable and would limit bets to relatively small amounts of money. The CFTC agreed and granted them a “no action letter”, a not-really-binding commitment agreeing not to bother them as long as they followed certain rules. In 2022, Kalshi, a more savvy prediction market with more friends in government, applied to be a fully-regulated futures exchange. Either because of direct action from Kalshi to crush competitors, or just to tie up loose ends, the CFTC revoked their no-action letter against PredictIt and told them to shut down. PredictIt sued the CFTC, saying their decision was “arbitrary and capricious” and violated federal regulations saying agencies had to explain their actions and give people a chance to respond. The original court that was hearing the lawsuit dragged its feet, so PredictIt appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, who issued a preliminary injunction allowing them to keep operating. Now the Appeals Court rules in their favor (article, court opinion), accepting most of the legal philosophy behind their challenge, like: That no-action letters are real federal regulations, and agency actions overturning them must meet the normal standards for agency actions
Inline links: article, court opinion
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA Contact: Yi-Yang Contact Info: yi[dot]yang[dot]chua[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 3rd, 2:00 PM Location: We'll meet at Kings Hall Cafe (https://goo.gl/maps/cWNjqdaHUeLphGNd9). We'll have a make-shift ACX sign on the table, so you might have to walk around and look closely. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/6PM34J7R+R4 Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I'm more prepared New Zealand AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND Contact: Jonathan Contact Info: jonpdw[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 16th, 10:30 AM Location: Brunch at the cafe "Sugar at Chelsea Bay" Coordinates: https://plus.codes/4VMP5PHG+H2 Notes: Please RSVP through email so I can book a table beforehand
Inline links: https://plus.codes/6PM34J7R+R4, https://plus.codes/4VMP5PHG+H2
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND Contact: Jonathan Contact Info: jonpdw[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 16th, 10:30 AM Location: Brunch at the cafe "Sugar at Chelsea Bay" Coordinates: https://plus.codes/4VMP5PHG+H2 Notes: Please RSVP through email so I can book a table beforehand
Inline links: https://plus.codes/4VMP5PHG+H2
CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND Contact: Pat Contact Info: MyAutoForm1[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 09th, 02:30 PM Location: Ilex Cafe, Christchurch Botanic Gardens. I'll have an ACX sign Coordinates: https://plus.codes/4V8JFJCF+22 Notes: Likely a small group so open to change if we want to co-ordinate that. Please RSVP so I'm not waiting for no-one :)
Inline links: https://plus.codes/4V8JFJCF+22
24
March 12, 2024 · Original source
I found this really interesting because the skeptics’ case for doubt is so different from my own. The main reason I’m 20% and not 100% p(doom) is that I think AIs might become power-seeking only very gradually, in a way that gives us plenty of chances to figure out alignment along the way (or at least pick up some AI allies against the first dangerous ones). If you asked me for my probability that humans are still collectively more powerful/important than all AIs in 2450, I’d get confused and say “You mean, like, there was WWIII and we’re all living in caves and the only AI is a Mistral instance on the smartphone of some billionaire in a bomb shelter in New Zealand?”
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
名前/Contact: Emi 連絡先/Contact Info: gouritekinakai[at]proton[dot]me 時/Time: Monday, September 16, 07:00 PM 場所/Location: エースイン新宿/Ace Inn Shinjuku 座標/ Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q7XMPVF+2P 追加メモ/Additional Notes: (こちらは日本語の東京ミートアップです)/ This is a Tokyo Meetup in Japanese. 初めての企画なので多分こじんまりとしたミートとなりますがちょっとでも興味のある方は是非ご参加してください。日本語全レベルok 着きましたら「ACX」とフロントの人にささやいて通してもらってください：） New Zealand AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND Contact: Mark Contact Info: markgilmour[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 21st, 10:00 AM Location: Cornwall Park Band Rotunda Coordinates: https://plus.codes/4VMP4Q3Q+RR Notes: Bring kids if relevant, feel free to bring some nibbles.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8Q7XMPVF+2P, https://plus.codes/4VMP4Q3Q+RR
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
This year we have meetups planned in over a hundred and eighty cities, from Alberta, Canada to Wellington, New Zealand. Thanks to all the organizers who responded to my request for details, and to Meetups Czar Skyler and the Less Wrong team for making this happen.
Contact: Yi-Yang Contact Info: yi[period]yang[period]chua[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Sunday, September 7th, 2:00 PM Location: We'll be in the biggest room in Kings Hall Cafe @ Sec 13 (https://maps.app.goo.gl/naDhCJzNUAi1mFu38). Please ask the staff for directions. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/6PM34J7Q+RX Group Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/events/PeTRNigqY2vSzdzcB/acx-fall-meetup-2025-klang-valley-malaysia Notes: Please RSVP by messaging on LessWrong or emailing me so I know who'll be joining us! New Zealand AUCKLAND Contact: CZ Contact Info: czlee11[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, October 18th, 1:00 PM Location: Cornwall Park, at the Band Rotunda. There'll be a sign saying "ACX MEETUP" somewhere, but probably not a very large one, so please look around for a bit to find us, including near the Band Rotunda if the area's very busy. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/4VMP4Q3Q+VR Notes: We have a small existing meetup group, if you're reading this you should definitely come check it out. RSVP optional but you should RSVP so you feel obligated to follow through :P If the weather's very bad (not just slight rain), the organiser will reach out to those who RSVPed with the new plan. Feel free to bring kids and/or snacks.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/6PM34J7Q+RX, https://www.lesswrong.com/events/PeTRNigqY2vSzdzcB/acx-fall-meetup-2025-klang-valley-malaysia, https://plus.codes/4VMP4Q3Q+VR
Contact: Benji Cresswell Contact Info: notevil101[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, September 27th, 3:00 PM Location: 29 Brandon St, Wellington Central, Wellington 6011, New Zealand. In the Tūī room Coordinates: https://plus.codes/4VCPPQ8G+GF Notes: Please RSVP on Lesswrong, as the meeting room is quite small.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/4VCPPQ8G+GF
"All Lawful Use": Much More Than You Wanted To Know
March 01, 2026 · Original source
Mass domestic surveillance of Americans, American companies, and US permanent residents (or for that matter generally their counterparts in other Five Eyes partners – UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) is more complicated. The current law is (roughly) that it’s illegal to seek this kind of data, but legal to “incidentally obtain” it. So for example, if the US was looking for al-Qaeda communications, it might tap a major undersea cable, and if tapping that cable happened to incidentally give it data on millions of Americans, it could keep that data. But after “incidentally obtaining” the data, it may only query the resulting database in a targeted way. So the government might take its trove of citizen data that it “incidentally” collected looking for al-Qaeda, and search for a specific citizen’s history if it thinks (for example) that this citizen might be a spy.
Inline links: generally their counterparts in other Five Eyes partners, may only query the resulting database in a targeted way
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Yi-Yang Contact Info: yi[.]yang[.]chua[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 18th, 2:00 PM Location: We’ll be in the back room in Kings Hall Cafe @ Sec 13 (https://maps.app.goo.gl/naDhCJzNUAi1mFu38). Please ask the staff for directions. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/6PM34J7Q+RX Notes: Please RSVP by messaging me on LessWrong or emailing me so I know who’ll be joining us! New Zealand AUCKLAND Contact: CZ Contact Info: czlee11[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 18th, 11:00 AM Location: Cornwall Park, at the Band Rotunda. We’ll have an A4 “ACX MEETUP” sign. Please look around to find us, including nearby if the area’s busy. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/4VMP4Q3Q+RR Notes: We have a small existing meetup group, if you’re reading this you should definitely come join us. RSVP optional but you should RSVP so you feel obligated to follow through :P and so that the organiser can contact you if the weather forces a change of plans. Feel free to bring kids, dogs and/or snacks.
Inline links: https://maps.app.goo.gl/naDhCJzNUAi1mFu38)., https://plus.codes/6PM34J7Q+RX, https://plus.codes/4VMP4Q3Q+RR