HOW MUCH???

Not being into phones myself I had no idea that people were flinging this sort of money at the stupid things, but when I did some looking into phones yesterday, it boggled my mind that there are phones apparently selling in New Zealand for NZ$3799.
 

Are people really paying that much for phones? Are they stark raving mad?

A person who was able to make good second hand selections on Trade Me could buy an entire collection of technologies for that amount of money.

 To see how this might play out, I went imaginary shopping online. What did I buy?:

Firstly a laptop - I like 17" Dell Laptops - here is a fairly good one for $599. And this comes with a good hard drive so it wouldn't need upgrading like my next purchase, the PC, would.

 

 

Next a PC - I like old HP Z240 PC's - this one is just $200 - yes I would do some hard drive upgrades to it, but I'm sure there will be plenty of $ remaining from my imaginary $3799 budget to cover those as well.

 

 

The PC would also need a screen to go with it - I like 32" screens - OK, for this item I'll splash out and go with a brand new LG monitor because they are good, and that would cost $445. So far I'm up to $599 + $200 + $445 = $1244.

 I'd like a new tablet as well - my pick is a 12" Samsung - $699 brand new

 And I might as well buy a phone even though I seldom use them - If I was buying one for real I'd prefer a Brax 3 privacy phone, but for the purposes of this blog I'll just go with the first half decent refurbished phone I see - $169

So now I've spent $599 + $200 + $445 + $699 + $169 = $2112.

 I'm doing an imaginary tech spending spree here, and still have $1687 to spend. Those purchases will cost about an extra $100 in freight, so I'll need to keep at least that much in reserve, and next I'd like to buy some better drives for the PC.

 First a new 500Gb Samsung SSD drive for doing a fresh install of a Linux Mint operating system on the PC - $96

 

Then a big 4TB Samsung SSD slave drive for storing all my data - $689 - those drives are fairly expensive and I could easily find something cheaper, but even after buying one, I'd still be rolling in cash at this point, and wouldn't really need to look for drive bargains.

 I'd also get a stylish keyboard and mouse for the PC, along with a WD 4TB external drive ($229) for doing my backups. That lot will cost about $400 all up, leaving me with $300 to spend on extras like a foot massager.

 

As well as using the external drive to backup the slave drive on the PC, I'd also use it to share my big collections of movies and stuff with the laptop.

  

So for the price of that one total rip off phone I could have a nice laptop, PC, monitor, tablet, phone, and a backup drive with some leftover change.

Yeah, that is pretty much what I already actually do have, and honestly, I think if anyone spends $3800 on a phone they are a complete tool.

Speaking of tools, if you are still looking for something to spend some leftover money on, I recommend a Stanley Fatmax 20oz hammer because I think they have a nicer grip than any other hammers. 

 

RANDOMS 2025 #49

 

 

DOES MONERO EVEN STILL WORK?

With all things relating to computer privacy we are in an awkward position that if something is widely used it won't be private, and if something is really private it will be prevented from becoming widely used. 

The crypto Monero is a good example - it was the only properly private cryptocurrency, but this year it has been made near to unusable - no exchanges will trade it, and no wallets will store it - it is still spoken of like it is the best privacy crypto, which it would be if it was usable, but it isn't.

I still have US$45 of Monero that I missed when I was selling my Monero at the start of the year. If I wanted to use it, that would not be easy, so I've written it off - It would require setting up an old wallet to even be able to see it, and any person I might send it to would need to do the same. 

No exchanges will accept Monero now so it can't easily be sold or traded. So the coin is essentially unusable, but nobody is talking about that, and it's still currently trading at US$400 seemingly unaffected by the fact that it's now a completely useless privacy coin. 

The fact that this coin is still supposedly happily trading like it's still usable and nobody is talking about this situation was the final straw that made me lose any remaining faith I had in cryptos. 

The elephant in the room is, who is trading it? and how are they trading it? If I can't trade my $45 of Monero, how are people trading millions of $ of it? Are all these trades of Monero even really happening? Why would anyone pay $400 for a privacy coin that is nearly unusable?

And that is why privacy is a really complex subject - nothing is what it seems! 

USE CASH

  I've been using cash as much as possible for the past 30 years, so it boggles my mind to see how many people are willingly lining up for digital slavery by using electronic payment systems as their main method of payment. 

 WAKE UP!!!!!

 The Threat of Financial Transaction Control by Catherine Austin Fitts

EXISTENTIAL CRISIS

It probably sounds a bit fruit-loops to even seriously be considering the optimum number of blog posts to do each day, but after doing a couple of posts mentioning my 27 year history of blogging, I started contemplating that life defining question again.

For most of the past 27 years I have simply done a blog post whenever I had an urge to say something, and over time on www.frot.co.nz, that generally worked out to an average of around 10 posts each month.

But with this new www.sift.co.nz blog, I set out at the start of 2024 with a definite aim of doing one post every day, even if those posts were only shorties. I liked the idea of forcing myself to post something daily, and wondered how I’d cope with that sort of intense pressure!

 

It has actually worked out fine, because on days when I couldn't be arsed writing much, I have just re-posted something from my old www.frot.co.nz blog, or shared a meme or something else fairly quick and basic. 

 

For the first year (2024) the hits on my new SIFT blog were fairly disappointing, generally numbering only around 100-200 total hits each day, and I thought my 1000+ hits a day times (2017-2019) were well and truly over. But throughout 2025 the hits have actually been slowly increasing, they are now averaging 500+ a day, and are continuing to gradually climb.

 

The only promotion I do these days are a few odd links on my Facebook account, apart from that I can't be bothered striving to get hits, but I must admit to having a look at the hit counter from time to time out of curiosity.

 

In the grand scheme of things I realise 1000 hits a day is bugger all, but it does add up to over a third of a million hits a year (365,000), and I used to manage to convince myself that I was a big-time influencer back in my 1000+ hits glory days.

 

If I'm honest about it, one way or another, I'd like to get back up over half a million hits a year. That was my peak hit-count on www.frot.co.nz back in 2018. Then I'd be a mover and shaker again. 

 

 

Presently the hits vary quite a bit each day, from lows of around 300, to highs of over 1500, and I have no idea why that is. Those quite big daily variations don't seem to be caused by my new posts of the day, there just seem to be inexplicable ebbs and flows in the overall traffic to the entire site.

In 27 years of blogging, the most posts I’ve ever done in one day is four (SIFT yesterday), and the longest I’ve gone without doing a post is 30 days (SIFT July 2025, but I've since filled that month back in). Clearly those are both maniacal and possibly unhealthy extremes which I'm not planning to attempt again.

My current plan, starting December 2025, is to continue aiming to do a post every day, but at the same time to randomly add any extra posts that I feel inclined to. So I might end up doing more than one post each day, or then again I might not, but either way I’m going to be taking an unconstrained walk on the wild side...