Jack Yan: the Persuader Blog

Do not give up on your dreams

Jack Yan & Associates — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 01:59:44 +0000

I came across a post that’s not worth linking at all, where the writer notes that it’s not worth chasing your goals. The odds of succeeding are so slim you should focus on bettering what’s nearest to you, such as your community. It’s defeatist nonsense, because there is nothing stopping anyone from doing both: chase [...]

New Zealand political satire is alive, but on social media

Jack Yan & Associates — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 11:53:57 +0000

Attributed to the Labour candidate for Wellington Bays MP, Craig Renney, via the notable blues man Darren Watson. We’re not a poor country, but we absolutely make poor choices when it comes to spending. Let me give you a very brief example. Boot camps. The first round of boot camps cost $4·1 million for ten [...]

Upset at Google now? Why not before?

Jack Yan & Associates — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 23:28:35 +0000

Interesting there are people finding themselves upset over Google’s capitulation to another Trumpian demand that Lake Ontario be called Lake America. They weren’t upset over the Gulf of México being renamed Gulf of America, which Google jumped to change last year? Or they weren’t upset when Project Nimbus became public and it was revealed that [...]

The John Yan you are looking for is not at jyanet.com

Jack Yan & Associates — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 22:27:08 +0000

For many years, Dad’s old account was getting emails from people purporting to be Chinese women. I had everything from his old account come to me, for obvious reasons. These emails followed a similar formula. They tell a story of a Chinese woman who has moved to the US, wanting to connect with a Chinese [...]

New Zealand GDP 2024–5: the worst of the OECD 38 and going backwards

Jack Yan & Associates — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 22:00:13 +0000

You can only pull the ‘But the rest of the world has it tough’ argument for only so long but objective, international stats do not lie. To those friends in the US, the UK and the Continent who didn’t believe me when I said things were bad, who said, ‘It’s just as bad here,’ I [...]

Libriz attacked; now back online

Jack Yan & Associates — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 10:35:35 +0000

Libriz was offline earlier today, thanks to hackers who upped their attacks on the site last week. No user data were compromised. It’s back for now though there is still some fine-tuning to be done. We had no choice but to put it on Cloudflare. I know a lot of you have a [...]

The “AIs” are contained

Jack Yan & Associates — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 07:08:11 +0000

From people far smarter than me on computing, countering those stories about “AIs” being so powerful they escaped their computers and went on to other ones. The thread began with a CEO who had run his web server as root. Mathias Hasselmann wrote (I’d embed but the system won’t let me): That’s actually the point [...]

Keep it on the low-down

Jack Yan & Associates — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 05:23:24 +0000

I had an interesting chat to one of the crew, regarding Lucire’s low social media metrics. This has come up once before—that the enquirer couldn’t see that an operation that began on the web before Google, extended its brand into print (one of the first to do so—and by some definitions the first), then into [...]

“AI” companies do the modern form of book burning

Jack Yan & Associates — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 06:53:02 +0000

Local bookshop Book Haven in Newtown, among others around the world, has seen an uptick in orders—and it’s clear that it’s “AI” companies buying up obscure texts. The tragedy is, after scanning the texts, they’re potentially destroying the books, removing an original source for someone else to enjoy. Book Haven has rightly refused to sell [...]

Don’t mess with an INFJ

Jack Yan & Associates — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 12:13:08 +0000

My first real Myers–Briggs test was at university. Our lecturer in human resources, his first time teaching, kindly arranged for a firm to process our tests. We were then divided into groups in the class based on our Myers–Briggs types, and we had to see if we had commonalities, reporting back to the class. He [...]