Dan McKenzie

Building AI agents and bots with AWS Bedrock and Pydantic AI Like many Product Managers, I’ve been diving deep into AI agents and bots to understand how they shape new products. However, my role requires more than just understanding what they are, I al…

The post where I make it seem easy to write an AI agent in AWS Bedrock

dan.mckenzie.kiwi/2025/11/02/b...

So it turned out Microsoft Edge had all these AI browsing features all along... never catching a break...

How I moved to Product Management Becoming a Group Product Manager wasn’t something I had been considering for my career. I had been an Engineering Team Lead in multiple companies for a while, and despite never chasing after …

I started a new blog a couple of weeks ago, and have my first "proper" post - how the heck did I become a product manager after all?

It's been fun writing again.

dan.mckenzie.kiwi/2025/10/05/h...

NZ BACK ON THE FRONT PAGE OF STEAM M8

store.steampowered.com/sale/NZGames...

Where did the internet go?

A long time ago I had a personal blog that I kept up to date, also called Dan's Blog. I started it in High School, and continued it through University. I got a little known through the blogging community in New Zealand, but shortly after starting work became less…

The iOS Podcasts app with the Speed options displayed where each corner in the bubble is nice and round except for the l

Probably the strangest element of the iOS UI I’ve found. What is up with that corner? Did they just… forget to round it?

It’s incredible that in today’s Apple event for their biggest devices, not once was someone USING or at least holding the device. It’s all pre-renders.

“Kirby and the Forgotten Land: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition plus Star-Crossed Worlds” is certainly a game title…

Mario Kart World’s Knockout Tour mode online is just pure chaos it’s incredible.

When you’re going to place at the checkpoint then get whomped by a shell, then flattened, then blown up for good measure, and you’re out. But how fun that was.

Free Roam mode though… snore.

So going back through some YouTube videos, it turns out Poppy has been around for a while too.

Here she is as Captain Poppy in Space Babies, the second episode of Disney-Who.

How am I supposed to remember that. #DoctorWho

For Doctor Who, RTD needs a “reality check” specialist who’s completely oblivious to Doctor Who and can veto his plot arcs. Even as someone who followed the previous couple of series, what the fuck was that.

Ahah! I found it - just ask Gemini to “remember” something, and it’ll save it as “Saved Info”. Don’t know why it took me this long to find it, especially since Google loves to shove pop ups reminding me of features all the time.

One thing my colleagues and I discussed was the homogenisation of English thanks to AI. Which spurred me to tell ChatGPT to respond in New Zealand English, and even slang. Friends have been amazed that it responds with friendly “Kia ora!” and “Sweet as”.

At this point I’m still surprised Gemini doesn’t have even basic customisation, yet is introducing “personalisation” based on search history.

Or how about, I just have a box that lets me enter how I want Gemini to respond like every other AI chat?

A Eurovision-inspired episode of Doctor Who followed by the Eurovision final. OK weekend sorted.

YouTube video by How To Cook That Is an AIR FRYER worth the money? | How To Cook That Ann Reardon

This video convinced me to get one. She tests different cooking methods for chips and some baking recipes. She frequently does debunking videos so I was fully expecting her to say “don’t bother”.

Saving money on power, time by not needing to preheat a big box.

youtu.be/sYnMng8LLyU

"WE BAD AT NAMING AHAHAHAHAHA"

Oh god OpenAI that isn't a good thing. Stop it.

PS5 price to rise in Europe, Australia and New Zealand Disc Drive for PS5 price will also be reduced in these regions.

The price of a PS5 with disk drive in NZ after today’s price rise will be NZ$130 more than at launch.

blog.playstation.com/2025/04/13/p...

I use the Subscriptions tab a lot, but the YouTube home page very often just has the most recent video from my subs right there. Not sure how that would come up in Analytics.

I’ve been thinking about this topic a bit regarding my internet use and it’s given me the boot to do something.

I cut out Reddit during the blackout and I visited so many more websites.

Inoreader set up, putting together curated BlueSky lists, and how to reduce Reddit again.

Having a "THAT'S IT!?" moment in running a GenAI model on my computer.

I know, training them is something else, but the fact I can run and chat to my own personal bot seemed like it'd take extra steps.

NZ embassy in US involved in clarifying Israeli article ‘unfairly affecting NZ’s reputation’ While the X post may be gone, the article remains live on the publisher's website.

Actual fake news turning into threats from US to NZ. That didn't take long.

www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/...

That season brought me right in to The Traitors (we first had an NZ season and it wasn’t good). The twists and turns, the accidental Boys Club, lol.

Just started S3.

The discourse around optional AI features is crazy.

Just don’t click the button?

The "First AI Software Engineer" Is Bungling the Vast Majority of Tasks It's Asked to Do Researchers have found that AI tech company Cognition's Devin, the "first AI software engineer," is astonishingly bad at its job.

I am shocked that a system designed to replace software engineers is failing at its job.

Oh I meant “not shocked”

futurism.com/first-ai-sof...

@caseynewton.bsky.social all this talk about Operator made me wonder – what ever happened to Rabbit and their agents? Or even Rabbit Inc itself? They were (along with Humane) trying to go “beyond apps” but the obvious has happened so what are they up to now?

Remember when the internet was made up of special interest forums, powered by phpBB or vBulletin, run by the groups actually involved in that interest.

We should go back to those roots. It's a shame so many communities have tied themselves to Facebook or Reddit.

Linux Foundation Announces the Launch of Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers New initiative to support open development and enhance projects within the Chromium ecosystem

“This project will provide much-needed funding and development support for open development of projects within the Chromium ecosystem."

The heck is the Linux Foundation on. Chromium is from… checks notes… Google.

www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-...

More Speech and Fewer Mistakes | Meta We're ending our third party fact checking program and moving to a Community Notes model.

Very interesting that Zuck’s video has an entire section about working with Trump to “protect free expression globally” and calling out Europe specifically for its policies.

But there’s no mention of it in the press release.

about.fb.com/news/2025/01...

Me: “ahh that was so much work, I think I’ve ticked off half my todo items now”

My todo list: “You completed one task”