The dumbest Stuff or Herald headlines (& other news media)

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#3487459 4-May-2026 18:57

Behodar:
It's still there and still has the incorrect figures.
https://www.tickaroo.com/e/GE26MVKK6h4coPoE is the direct link, but be aware that it takes a moment to load.

Yep. That is an odd one. Stuff and NZH usually fix typos and the like not long after they appear in this topic. Not necessarily that they are actually reading this topic ; ).

I wonder if Stuff has lost a sub recently or just reorganized a bit. The Stuff AI policy does not mention using AI for currency conversion although that is the kind of error an earlier generation service might make in some circumstances.

kiwifidget

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#3487908 5-May-2026 22:43

Not dumb, best headline ever!

OneRoof May 5, 2026

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#3488013 6-May-2026 10:45

kiwifidget:

Not dumb, best headline ever!

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#3490029 12-May-2026 08:38

Well, probably not in this case, since you're holding it upside down!

pdh

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#3490592 13-May-2026 15:23

Not a headline - but Stuff doing its usual worst at selecting artful propaganda as source material...

From a predictably scornful article borrowed from the British Telegraph - you'd think anyone in Britain would be embarrassed to open their mouths on the subject of 'navy' - given that they've just demonstrated a state of Naval ineptitude that must have made Nelson spin !

"The expensive operational costs and impracticality of nuclear-powered engines have meant they have not been used in surface American warships since the 1990s."

Except for every US Aircraft Carrier built in the last 58 years - all 13 of them - including the Kennedy, finished last year.
These are just the most significant naval vessels ever built - so hardly worth remembering.

They are also a shining example of why nuclear power has been a game-changer for a global navy.
But that would rather torpedo the author's narrative - so just deny it exists...
Modern 'journalism' at its best !

wellygary

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#3490610 13-May-2026 16:24

pdh:

Not a headline - but Stuff doing its usual worst at selecting artful propaganda as source material...

From a predictably scornful article borrowed from the British Telegraph - you'd think anyone in Britain would be embarrassed to open their mouths on the subject of 'navy' - given that they've just demonstrated a state of Naval ineptitude that must have made Nelson spin !

"The expensive operational costs and impracticality of nuclear-powered engines have meant they have not been used in surface American warships since the 1990s."

Except for every US Aircraft Carrier built in the last 58 years - all 13 of them - including the Kennedy, finished last year.
These are just the most significant naval vessels ever built - so hardly worth remembering.

They are also a shining example of why nuclear power has been a game-changer for a global navy.
But that would rather torpedo the author's narrative - so just deny it exists...
Modern 'journalism' at its best !

The quote relies on the pinhead that they believe there is a difference between regular "warships" [Frigates/Destroyers/et al) and Aircraft carriers... The US nuclear Cruiser program was halted in the 80s because as the article notes it was too expensive..

The Pentagon know that the procurement runway for a new class of vessel is so long that Trump will be long dead and buried before they come anywhere near cutting steel for these things, so they are simply flattering his ego...

The current US destroyer fleet (Arleigh-Burke) are the screens that protect their capital ships like carriers etc,

A 30,000 Tonne battleship is simply not something that you would use for this task.. it's a major capital ship requiring its own protection...

Despite the claim Trump's vision will replace the DDG(X) programme, there still needs to be a smaller vessel to fill the role that is described by pretty much everyone as "the Backbone of the Navy"

The navy have already been down the Zumwalt dead end.... if they every built a Trump ship, its would be another one..

pdh

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#3490670 13-May-2026 21:23

Well - of course there's a difference, but since WW2 Aircraft carriers have _been_ the navy.
The smaller vessels are now also there to deliver 'air-assets'.
An Arleigh-Burke is most important for its missile capacity - not its torpedoes and guns.
Future destroyers will have to launch a mix of UAVs.
What they can't do is generate the KW to drive railguns and lasers - necessary anti-swarm defences.
You can't generate that much power on Diesel (not without an umbilical pipeline).
So we may yet see nuclear back in smaller ships.

The author explicitly excluded the sub-surface navy (also 100% nuclear) to avoid confounding his 'expensive & impractical' narrative.
So he could easily have made a similar exclusion for carriers.
But it then would have been pretty obvious how spurious his argument was.

The weak point of all these Arleigh-Burkes is the need to have (and protect) a fleet of oilers and munitions vessels converging on a task group on the other side of the world.

I'm not sold on a Battleship being timely (however long it takes to make one - or several).
Sometimes though, militarily, bluff is important.
As are strategy and tactics.
None of us are used to having a political leader smart enough to use these tools.
I'm not accepting any of this at face value - more as the opening move in a game of chess.
Think "National Missile Defense (aka Starwars).
All the armed forces need to have a serious look at where they've been - and where they might need to go.

It may be that Ukraine signals the end of offensive warfare (at least for a while).
A smaller, poorer nation has held out against a force that used to scare all of Europe.
And I'm not convinced it's because they're righteous - nor possessing Israeli levels of cunning & tech.

There are lots and lots of interesting journalistic avenues that could be explored.
Sad that the best Stuff can do is parrot something so transparently wrong - just to pursue the Orange Man Bad narrative.

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#3490765 14-May-2026 08:45

Isn't there some saying along the lines of Military preparation being always focused on "fighting" previous wars and not the potential future wars?

In Trump's case (both orange thing and the battleship class) that is most definitely the case.

But I also was confused about the "Nuclear Power = bad idea" narrative vs both submarine and carrier power supplies.

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#3491171 15-May-2026 10:13

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/chinese/595215/sim-swapping-fraud-warning-after-mobile-number-hijacked-in-minutes-20k-lost

This article seems to put all of the blame onto Kogan for allowing a SIM swap despite that, as a prepaid, online-only carrier, they really have very little to go off of and, as far as we know, verified everything as they were required to, i.e. card number, etc. This account appears to be different from other SIM swap scams in that the scammer has supplied every reasonable detail that could have been obtained in order to pass off that they are entitled to the account. While previous SIM swap attacks have, at least in some part, been on the backs of lax telco security, that doesn't appear to have been the case here. From a telco side, a worst case scenario in a SIM Swap is that you lose mobile service, maybe get billed prematurely some IFPs or someone receives a call/txt on your behalf. On the face of it, none of these should be catastrophic and the usual reply with "yes" SMS to allow porting should prevent almost all of these.

The bank, however, seemingly gets off scott-free in the reporting for allowing a scammer into an account with just a customer number (oftentimes on the back of a card) and a single SMS 2FA code (oftentimes readable just by picking up someones phone). I am dumb-founded at how that is still possible in 2026 - a bank has countless AML/CFT obligations when creating a brand new account. You'd never be able to open a brand-new account just by handing over a phone number. Yet they treat resetting a password as if it's nothing, when the impact is very similar.

Banks:

Know who you are - they could ask for your name, DOB, home address, phone numbers (not in this case, sure)
Have your ID on file - they could ask you to present a Passport or NZ Drivers License and perform a digital verification (you even need to do this to get an IFP these days)
Know a significant amount about you - your spending history, mortgages, cards you have with them, who your employer is, how much you get paid
Have enormous datasets and systems at the ready to detect fraud - yet allow you to send tens of thousands of dollars multiple times over to a person you've never sent money to before just moments after resetting your password
Already use digital verification methods for opening new accounts because of AML/CFT rules - yet perform literally not even one AML/CFT check when resetting a password

Banks perform none of these checks when you - or someone claiming to be your - wants to reset your password. Why not? It's just not good enough. Banks are literally enabling money laundering and the funding of criminal activity. Banks are required by law to detect and prevent those occurrences from happening. Banks know that this is a risk and have known so for years now. Why are they not being prosecuted under AML/CFT laws for their failings?

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#3494732 22-May-2026 15:18

Teens accused of using gay dating app to target Invercargill victim appear in court - NZ Herald

Threw, not "through". FFS that's bad. Almost as bad using "troll" instead of "trawl" (yes, it happens, a lot).

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#3494823 22-May-2026 18:49

Except that anything the case had to do with AI was incidental. This imbecile used photos of women he knew to create nudes and post them on social media.

He could've done it with good old Photoshop, he could've done it with some face-swap app, but in this case - he used some AI tool. Calling it "AI porn case" is just lazy.

Hello, Ground!

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#3494826 22-May-2026 19:47

People doing that kind of crap probably do think it is AI porn. Like you say, no talent needed for that compared to traditional manual image editors. There is more - the convicted at age 19 or 20 at the time of the offense created a fake account claiming to be the actual person and sent images out to contacts who added the account. Images created included fake images of the person fake naked with her father.

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#3494837 22-May-2026 21:50

I will link to the article to make clear the information I posted above is my paraphrase of the excellent reporting in the stuff article and not from any other source:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360982591/i-got-cold-sweats-victim-speaks-out-after-man-sentenced-first-ai-porn-prosecution-nz

Additional note: Fake pictures were posted to porn sites.

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#3495503 26-May-2026 14:10

NZ Herald: The average KiwiSaver balance for your age - NZ Herald

No such information in the article.

Average balances range from $3512 for those under 17 to $194,276 for those aged 86-plus, although the latter is skewed by a smaller number of investors in that age bracket.

The average balance across all members is now $41,286, up 11.3% from 2024. Men’s average is $47,452 and women’s $38,212.

I was expecting a table. Nothing like that.

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#3495505 26-May-2026 14:19

freitasm:

NZ Herald: The average KiwiSaver balance for your age - NZ Herald

No such information in the article.

Average balances range from $3512 for those under 17 to $194,276 for those aged 86-plus, although the latter is skewed by a smaller number of investors in that age bracket.

The average balance across all members is now $41,286, up 11.3% from 2024. Men’s average is $47,452 and women’s $38,212.

I was expecting a table. Nothing like that.

The equivalent article on Stuff seems to have such a table.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/money/360983658/average-kiwi-retires-77k-kiwisaver-many-women-its-far-less

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