I’m at the halfway point of my shift and things are going well and I’m looking forward to going for a walk tonight. At the moment the weather is lovely, I’ve got all the windows in my home open to get some fresh air through the home before the sun goes down and it starts to get a bit cold. I’m looking forward to the summer warmth over Christmas and I’m hoping to get a day off on Christmas day to spend with the family.
Google has released an update for Chrome which bumps the version from 156.0.8078.74 to 156.0.8078.80 – there are a whole lot of security fixes (link). 21 security fixes in total which makes the combined number of security fixes sitting at 73 for the week. Chrome 157 will be getting released next week on Tuesday US Time (Wednesday NZ Time) with quite a few under the hood changes so I’m looking forward to see how that translates to how well it performs for every day use.
There are two purposes that cryptocurrency has been marketed as – the first being a store of value and the second being an intermediary currency (think of it as a ‘bancorp’ as envisaged by John Maynard Keynes). I was and skill sceptical of it being a store of value in the same way of gold, silver and other precious metals or commodities but I could imagine it being an intermediary currency used for currency transfers which would challenge the current banking and SWIFT based model. A lot of the early promises around cryptocurrency was the idea of making it cheaper for migrant workers to send money home but these days it is a speculative asset akin to ‘digital gold’ without the usefulness of being gold.
I think the interesting question is where central bank digital currencies will fit in the future because it’ll also challenge the role of banks now that people could have an account directly with the central bank rather than the traditional banking system we have today. As for where I stand regarding crypto – it is too early to tell but I like to keep an eye on it to see whether something interesting happens with it in a meaningful way for the average person.
I had a wonderful walk tonight – the temperature isn’t too cold and not too many people were out on the road so the air was refreshing after being stuck all day with work. For dinner tonight I was a bit lazy and had some crumpets with butter and honey and a protein shake. When you’ve only got 30 minutes to eat dinner then every minute spent preparing is one less minute one can spent relaxing before having to get back to work. There was an interesting video I watched on my break regarding the lack of economic benefit AI is having on businesses outside of the tech sector – I’m writing in a blog post but it may not be up until Monday next week.
I’ve been having lots of fun with the upgraded Tizen 10 – the YouTube app is definitely a lot more responsive and at this stage I’d be pretty hard pressed to justify upgrading to the bew Apple TV 4K given that my television already does everything that the new Apple TV 4K does such as AV1 playback support amongst many other features. Oh, and as for Bixby, it does a pretty good job such as when I’m in the YouTube app and want to search for a channel because my subscription list is so long it takes a while to scroll through them all.
I find the online discussion regarding the new MacBook Pro with touchscreen rather funny given the number of people who are adamantly against it – reacting as if someone had just punched their mother. I’ve had a Microsoft Surface Laptop which came with a touchscreen and I never used it but the fact that it existed didn’t take away from an otherwise great piece of hardware. There appears to be a subculture online who get worked up because they weren’t personally asked what they would like in a product – the idea that maybe not every product is made specifically for them appears to be a concept that they’re not familar with.
Unfortunately with whole AI bubble the cost of everything has gone up. I just had a look at the cost of the new MacBook Pro and it makes me happy I bought my two Macs when I had the opportunity because if I bought then at this time the price would be unaffordable. The other interesting thing are the number of outlets who have low stock of many devices with many of them probably wanting to get through the stock the have before ordering in new stock which will have a higher price tag. As for the price of memory, don’t expect any rest from higher prices any time soon because even if the memory manufacturers start building extra capacity that capacity won’t be online for many more years. The fact that there are hundreds of billions of dollars floating around so freely tells me that the top end of town aren’t being tax enough.
I woke up this morning and there was a fair amount of wind blowing around outside and according to the Metservice forecast it appears that we maybe seeing some rain later on today but then again the Metservice earlier in the week had forecasted something else. I had a great night sleep after going for a walk after work – around 12km, it allows me to dump the contents of my brain after dealing with society’s more annoying people all day resulting in a quiet brain when I go to sleep. I grabbed myself a cup of tea for breakfast and checked through the cupboards to get a good overview of what I’ve got in stock. My goal before heading off overseas in the second week of November is to reduce the amount of food I’ve got in the cupboards and fridge. I’ve built up a bit of a surplus but I also need to do some ‘stock rotation’ to ensure that I use them up before they expire as to avoid food waste.
I checked the Ubiquiti release community to see whether 5.1.34 had been released and then promptly updated it and in the early release channel UniFi OS 6.0.16 was released. A modest list of fixes were announced – I used to run the early releases many years ago when I wanted to be on the latest and greatest but now that I work from home I really don’t have the luxury of taking the risk of having an unreliable setup. On the matter of updates, with the iOS 27.2 update the modem firmware was updated from 2.10.04 to 2.20.04 I’ve noticed a slight improvement with power management and signal strength.
Just before I head off to work, I have to admit that I have to eat some humble pie because I was pretty adamant that Apple would release a touch screen Mac but it turns out I was wrong (link). I had forecast years ago that Apple would never do it, that it isn’t part of the Apple way of doing things, if they were going to do touch based improvements then it’ll be using the touchpad rather than a touchscreen. I’ve used touchscreens myself such as on the Surface laptop but I never really made full use of it but it’ll be interesting to see how wide spread the adoption will be given that I would hardly call myself ‘the typical user’. It’ll be interesting to see whether the adoption of a touchscreen will result in those raised on touchscreens will use these new laptops with touch being the primary input or will it being a situation of using ‘the best tool for the job’.
My first day back and work with the new setup in the office – the laptop is raised up on a stand and it has remained quiet the whole day where as normally it sounds like a jet taking off. The new monitor is working wonderfully – it is great that I can attach all my peripherals (keyboard, mouse, webcam) can be hooked up to the monitor then a USB-C cable from my monitor to the laptop that provides power as well as a connection to the monitor. I’ve gotten used to having now one wide monitor so I’m making use of Windows built in ability to automatically manage windows by having two windows side by side. I wonder whether I’ll end up saving power with the new setup – I guess I’ll keep an eye on my power bill for the next few months.
I was watching television and the suddenly a message appeared that informed me Samsung had released Tizen 10.0 (the previous version I had running was Tizen 9.0) I installed the update and upon reboot I noticed the improved user interface. I also noticed how it is a lot more responsive which is probably due to Wayland being updated and optimisations being done under the hood – the Samsung browser now has Samsung Pass integration included with it although I do wish that Samsung would do a better job providing Samsung Pass support on non-Samsung devices. The web browser, which is Chromium based, has been updated as well and I find it more responsive – I use it to watch content that is only available via the website such as Democracy Now! although I guess I could setup Pocket Casts and stream it via there because I find that interface a whole lot easier to navigate when using the remote.
Google released an update for Chrome 156 (link) and like last week there is an avalanche of security related fixes – a grand total of 52 security fixes with four of them classified as critical. On the Ubiquiti release candidate channel there is the UniFi OS 5.1.34 to address the compromised eMudhra CA certificates. It’ll be interesting to see how far away UniFI OS 6.0.15 is from being released because it was released 5 days ago so maybe next week we’ll see it graduate to the release candidate channel. The release of UniFI OS 6.x series will allow the upgrade to the UniFi Network Application 11.x series which has quite a few user visible features along with under the hood changes.
I’m back to work today but at the moment I’m relaxing in bed watching some news on YouTube and catching up with the latst political news on Radio NZ. The polls are bouncing around a bit but I’m always sceptical of polls particularly polls around popularity because there is a tendency by some to extrapolate “party x is unpopular therefore party y is gaining voters” when it is possible for someone to be unhappy with party x but still vote for them because they’re the least worst option. I’m pretty realistic about the prospects of the government changing because it is incredibly rare to have a one term government but I am hopeful that maybe the election outcome may result in positive change.
Google has released an updated for Chrome which bumped the version number from 156.0.8078.48 to 156.0.8078.74. I also just remembered that I forgot to mention that Apple released the 27.2 update for all their platforms – no regressions yet but then again I have a fairly simple setup. Regarding the next update, 27.3 beta series hasn’t been made available yet so it maybe a week or so till the first beta release makes its way to developers. uBlock Origin Lite 2026.1026.1812 has finally appeared in the Apple App Store after an extended delay – I’m unsure what the logic is for Apple taking so long to approve it.
Today was a good day – cleaning up around the house then went for a walk down the road to pick up a monitor for my work setup. At the moment I had two 24″ screens and they were on two arms that hung off a pole that is held in place with a vice but the problem is that the visual quality was horrible and the two screns were different models so you end up having two different appearances. I went down and purchased a Samsung ViewFinity S65UC 34″ Ultrawide QHD 1000R Curved Business Monitor which has the benefit of having a USB-C connector and three USB-A connections on the back along with an ethernet port. The benefit of it means I can get rid the USB-C hub along with the two monitors in favour of the one screen which can power my laptop, have all my other equipment hooked into the back of the monitor.
While I was down there I bought a laptop stand so it raises it off the desk resulting in better ventilation and avoiding having he laptop sucking up a whole lot of dust in the process. I did some work on the laptop after setting it up and I noticed that it has kept itelf a wholt lot cooler now that there is more space under the vent meaning when it was under a load it could cool itself a lot quicker. It will be interesting to see whether the vent on the bottom of the laptop will remain dust free for a lot longer but the one thing to keep in mind is that I have the laptop lid closed when using – I find having another screen a bit distracting so closing it means I just have the one screen visible.
On the software update front Ubiquit released to the early access channel UniFi Access Point & Wireless Bridge 8.8.13 – quite a few bug fixes along with a few improvements. UniFi Network Application 11.0.97 has been released however it is still waiting for the UniFi OS 6.x to be released. At the moment UniFi OS 6.0.15 for Dream Routers has been released however so far there hasn’t been any feedback of regressions in this release so that maybe a good sign that it may graduate to the release canidate channel then eventually to the main release channel. uBlock Origin Lite 2026.1026.1812 has been released and available on Chrome but I don’t know what on earth is happening with the Apple App Store give that 2026.1021.1354 and 2026.1026.1812 are still not available. Chrome 157 will be released on 3 November US time which translates to 4 November NZ time – the list of changes are pretty modest so hopefully it should resulting in a uneventful but stable release.
It is always interesting how politics always provide plenty of fresh fodder that I can feast on for my blog – just when you think that a politician has ceased saying something silly I am reminded that they have the capacity of saying something even sillier. The most recent one has been about ACT complaining about The Opportunities Party (TOP) blocking first home buyers from using their Kiwisaver. Maybe my expectations are too high but at the very least I would have expected David Seymour to understand how we ended up in the mess of unaffordable housing in New Zealand and the recent slow correction. Here is the press conference the ACT Party leader just gave.
We’re in this situation because of over 30 years of bad policies compounded by further bad policies because politicians engage in populist responses to complex issues then with the responses they make resulting in the situation being made even worse. It reminds me of what an advisor said about Nixon after Nixon said “today I am a Keynesian” – “politicians want to appear to be doing something even if the right thing to do is nothing”.
If we go back 30 years we can chat the ‘beginning of the end’ when the Reserve Bank Act changed the inflation target rate from 0-2% to 0-3% which was based off two flawed arguments. The first argument is that looser monetary policy would result in lower interest rates, businesses able to borrow, expand their business, employ more people and kick start a virtuous cycle – the reality? money takes the path of least resistance which is to speculative assets such as property (any economic benefit from the lower interest rates came as a result of an artificial feeling of being wealthier off the back of inflated asset prices rather than actual wealth being created). The second argument was the theory that economies needed to be a healthy amount of inflation or there was a risk of falling into a Japan style deflationary spiral which would difficult to get out of – the problem with that? it completely ignores the cultural element (economics after all is about studying the psychology of money) where the Japanese will keep saving even when the interest rates got down to 0% – taking an experience in one country and using it as a general rule is a foolish position to take.
Anyway, back to the mistake 30 years ago – loosening up the monetary policy allowed lowered interests which then expanded borrowing but without a corresponding increase in supply of houses due to local zoning rules not changing. When houses started to pick up in price – what was the response? money being invested into more social housing so Housing New Zealand became the primary provider of rental accomodation so that housing could be decommodified? nope, the response was to lower the deposit amount required, then loosen the lending standards then to add more fuel to the fire you could dip into your Kiwisaver and the icing on the cake being a first home owners grant – every policy making the situation worse by having more money chasing higher prices aka the textbook definition of asset inflation. The response by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand? nothing because they don’t count asset inflation as part of their figures directly (they do indirectly through rents but it is an imprecise way of capturing inflation).
Now, there has been an attempt to address the issue particularly around the zoning regulation, unitary planning, a focus on transit oriented developments and allowing great competition in building supplies such as allowing building supplies to be imported overseas that conform to comparable regulations thus not require retesting. That has had an impact on house prices of new builds to some extent but we’re still suffering from the same lack of productivity improvements in the building sector as we’ve seen in other parts of the economy (Australian has seem similar productivity issues). I think part of the solution has to do with the fact that we really need to adopt the sort of mass production techniques with standardised components so you gain economies of scale.
The obstacle faced isn’t technical but rather a large number of New Zealanders who want to feel that their houses is special and unique but the problem is with a house being special and unique is that it comes to additional costs because everything has to be created bespoke for that particular build. You can either have affordable houses based on maybe 6-12 standardised designs or you have expensive houses where each house is unique but more costly to build. I would also argue that standardisation has the benefits of being able to build it, test it, find design defects, fix them and then retest them again – accelerated wear and tear can find a problem before it becomes a problem so then when people eventually have the house built it is based on a thoroughly tested design which should save the owner money in the long run.
Work went well today although I kind of wish that people would be doing something other than ringing up on a Sunday. I don’t know whether it is me but I’ve been banking with my bank for 18-19 years and in the whole time I have banked with them I’ve rung them up a grand total of three times – yes, three times. Call me a old fashioned but I tend not to ring up companies because I’m lonely or I’m incapable of living my life without having a team on constant standby to solve my problems. I sometimes wonder whether people use contact centres as a real life replacement for AI because god help people actually doing something for themselves. Sorry, I had to get that vent out of the way because it is kind of frustrating particularly when I’ve got Salesforce cases piling up that need to be seen to.
Once that day was out of the way I went for my walk tonight – 16.70 km which is three laps (from the top of my road to the end of the road then back is one lap which is around 5.8 km) and after arriving home I had a rest then jumped into the shower. As much as I moan about having to do some exercise each day I also know that afterwards I feel so much better knowing I got it out of the way. As much as people are feeling crappy about the economy in New Zealand I still see houses being built in my area and I do hope it continues because when there is an eventual turn around it’ll hopefully mean that we won’t see the return to crazy house price growth. On a side note of houses, I have to admit my pet peeve of mine is when people refer to their house as a nest egg – no, it isn’t a nest egg, it is a house to live in, it isn’t some magical pinata that you crack open at retirement.
As you’ve probably no doubt heard there is the whole PHP fiasco that has unfolded but what I think is a bigger problem are the number of websites that are running old and unsupported versions. When you write code the process of maintaining is a long term project that goes beyond just fixing up bugs – it also involves refactoring it, moving the code forward as the underlying technology changes. An example of this would be PHP and how over time the technology develops – old ways of doing things make way for new more efficient ways, customer demands change and thus the project has to meet those new demands. As part of that process of refactoring, depreciation and removal of legacy features, and refinement of what exists there is going to be a need to break compatibility at some point.
This is where the problem starts – the underlying technology is moving forward but for far too many organisations there aren’t the resources being allocated to ensuring that the website sitting on top of that technology stack is also moving forward. All too often we see Microsoft push Windows forward and even their own programmers within Microsoft aren’t moving their code forward. A good example of this is the Windows App SDK over on GitHub which shows a lot of promise but I don’t see a long term plan to transition the Windows shell and bundled applications that come standard with Windows over to the new platform. I can understand the need to keep legacy dlls so that third party legacy apps can keep working but it is difficult to make the case for third parties to adopt the Windows App SDK when you’re doing the bare minimum when it comes to adopting it.
I decided not to have a walk tonight, just not in the mood and I think a day or two off from having some exercise is perfectly fine. As the old saying goes, “everything in moderation including moderation” and tonight for dinner I had some tacos from my favorite Mexican outlet. The tacos came with plenty of salad which made the meal filling but not overwhelming and I decided to order some corn chips and guacamole for tomorrow that I’ll finish off with the last two bananas that I’ve allowed getting ripe over the week (I had a couple of bananas today along with a protein bar for my dinner).
UniFi Network Application 10.6.109 has been updated today as part of addressing the the ‘Revoked compromised eMudhra CA certificates.’ that many other software and service vendors are having to deal with. UniFi Network Application 11.0.97 has addressed that issue plus a few other bug fixes but it is still in the release candidate channel as it relies on 6.0.x series being released and in a recent reply it appears that UniFi 6.1.x is already in development because in reply to an question in the early release preview channel one of the Ubiquiti mentions an issue that is going to get addressed in the UniFi 6.1.x release.
I’m heading off to sleep now, there is a post I’m working on regarding how politicians identity a problem and then the policy proposal makes the situation worse because they fail to understand the cause of the problem. There is some extra bits and pieces I want to add to it because I really want to flesh out the ideas before posting – I’m wanting to start making longer form essays along side my usual daily update blog posts.
Had a great sleep last night and I have to admit that resetting back to my old routine of walking after work has really helped the situation a lot vs getting up early in the morning. I guess it was a situation of me trying to impose a routine that may work for other people but really doesn’t vibe when me and how I live my life. I guess it is one of those things where if you do make a change that the change has to fit you as a person rather than going “oh, this what other people do so maybe I should adopt the same routine” – the old story of every person is different and thus should be treated as individuals.
I logged into my computer at work, loaded up Chrome (after getting it fixed) and it asked me to restart only for me to find out that it had rolled back to chrome 152. I’m now back using Microsoft Edge 156 and reported it to the tech team. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the rationale for having central management of software but at the same time if you’re hiring people to work in your organisation without the minimum of technical proficiency then maybe at that point you should review your hiring practices. Having technical proficiency should be an expected skill right up there with the ability to function in an office environment in a respectable way.
I quickly visited Mimestream website and they’ve launched a beta of their app on the iPhone and iPad – it is kind of disappointing that so much resources have been spent on bring it to the platform but I understand it from a business perspective. The reason why I am kind of disappointed is that I would have liked to see Calendar, Contacts, Keep and other Google services supported so that it can be almost like a Google orientated version of Outlook where everything is in one single app and it avoids having it spread over different apps.
On the matter of annoying things, it took Apple three days to approve the update for uBlock Origin Lite (released on 18 October, approved on 21 October) and now it has been three days since the latest release of uBlock Origin Lite and it still hasn’t been approved. I know I’ve voiced my concern regarding Google but it appears that Google has really picked up steam where as Apple has fallen to the wayside. The issue wouldn’t be so bad if MV3 allowed filters to be updated outside of the release schedule but now if you want to update filters the whole extension needs to be bundled and approved instead. Filters need constant updating as new tricks websites use to get around content blockers meaning any delay in getting them approved causes more problems for the end user.
