Dave @ Dave @lemmy.nz

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439

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2 yr. ago

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I think it's clear at this point he is trying to create the unstable market. A stable market isn't a good place to make a lot of money. The ups and downs are where money is made (and lost) in large amounts.

My guess is someone needed it at some point, and jumped through the hoops to get it approved. It has no ongoing cost, so even if it takes staff time to review and set it up in the repository, it would easily pay for itself from not having a subscription. But it would rely on having staff with previous experience to not lose your gains through lost time learning.

They described it as "locally themed replacements", so I'd guess not, though I guess you can't rule it out 🙂

Can you imagine how hard it must be to hire someone with the skills those Wētā Workshop folk have? I expect there's a really good reason to tide over a downturn with some work to keep the team busy if you have hope over the horizon.

I use GIMP at work. It's officially approved in a very tightly restrained environment, literally in a repository of software people can install from. At an enterprise with thousands of employees.

I'm pretty sure only people who know what it is install it, never heard anyone so much as mention it.

At this point there's got to be a less than 20% chance this plan will see the end of the month, or even the end of the week, right?

And there aren't any details, right? A movie isn't a car, it can be made in 10 places at once. How do you tariff a movie that was shot in Europe with scale models from NZ that was financed and produced by a US company?

How do you do it when it's an animated movie created by remote workers all over the world?

Do it!

And ask them why they don't have an official Lemmy account 😆

Hmm maybe. I was thinking maybe the council might see this as a tourism draw, and have some tourism boosting money they could put into it.

Honestly I'd love to know what it costs to get a bit Gwaihir with a Gandalf on its back.

It would easily be worth hundreds of thousands as part of a tourism push, but I guess it would cost millions. But really I have no idea, it might be less costly than I'm assuming (or perhaps the replacement ones will be a lot cheaper, since they don't have a Hobbit movie to help finance it).

I didn't, but they are from Northland, think you can let them know next time you pop around for a cuppa?

Their lyricist is this guy.

Wow, ok now I want to listen!

Wait, Te Ra came third in Lemmyvision?!

Mau Moko did, yeah! Here's the Lemmy.nz post, which links the original announcement.

Yeah I wonder. NZ only got a 10% flat rate as I understand it.

But if there is a lot of uncertainty in the market (say a US president that could do anything crazy at any time), then companies are likely to hold back their spending to keep cash in reserve in case something happens. That might mean movies and TV shows go for cheaper special effects than they otherwise might have, so perhaps they get CGI instead of Wētā Workshop hand crafted models.

It also often means less advertising, which maybe Wētā might rely on for business as well.

Government decisions have wider effects than the immediate impact, one thing our own government is finding out after making 8k public servants (or whatever the current count is) redundant.

Unfortunately the next one isn't until August, but I did manage to grab some stuff. I picked up Te Rā by Alien Weaponry, I couldn't resist after they came third in the global Lemmyvision competition 😆

I don't know that really mellow alt is my thing in general, though I'd listen in the right context. I'm more into 90s rock or adjacent, though enjoy specific songs from a wide range of genres.

Sure they could claim the labour, but they also have to pay for that labour. If they were going to make a 100k profit, they might have to pay 30k in tax, pocket 70k. But if they spent 100k on labour, they then make a $0 profit and pay no tax. But they pocket nothing.

For a company that can't manipulate governments, paying tax is a good thing. It means you made a profit.

For work coming in, imagine they have 50 salaried staff. Costs them X per year. US economy tanks and now they have no work. They could make these staff redundant, pay them a bunch of redundancy money. Or they could keep them on the books and pay them to do nothing. Or a third option, take on work even though they are only covering say 80% of what it costs, under the assumption that doing this for a year is cheaper than paying redundancy.

Hard to say what the actual argument was for spending the money without knowing the discussion around the decision.

Just like that, we've been waiting 6 months for summer to come and instead we get winter. Maybe you were lucky up your way but we didn't get a summer down here aside from some isolated days.

My assumption is the original one done for a Hobbit promo was probably done at a big discount since it's basically advertising.

Not sure about this one. Tax writeoffs don't let you deduct any more than actual expenses, so you unlikely they gain financially from tax reasons. Might be the replacements are more overt about advertising for Wētā workshops, or are smaller. Or perhaps Wētā are struggling for work at the moment and have done a deal to keep staff busy.

I presume council spending is public or gets made public at some point?

These are really cool, first I was a bit sad they were going but it sounds like they are working with Wētā Workshop to replace them with something else so now I'm excited to see what.

This says it's the US pronunciation of Thames: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xKDzKYcKTO4

Do you pronounce names and brains that way, or do you pronounce Thames differently in Connecticut than the rest of the US?

Do you pronounce Thames like names and brains, or names and brains like Thames?

Personally if someone was described as "good", I'd take it to mean they could do it at an expected level (not going to hold the team back). If someone was above average at the task then I'd expect a different adjective, e.g. great or excellent.

I guess my position is that I am not worried about someone confirming content exists on my server. But I don't live in the US, if I did I might be more worried. I also geofence to my country to limit exposure.