Matisyahu's Blog

Today was pretty busy for some unknown reason given that it is midweek and most of the time when we are busy it tends to be on the weekend. Oh well, I got through the day and to be honest I was really looking forward to the walk at the end of the day – a way of resetting my brain so then it is easier to get to sleep. I had a shower tonight but I’m now using this new body wash with Pistachio & Caramel scent from Essano – it the smell of it when washing myself really helps me unwind plus it makes me feel a bit pampered after a day of working.

I’ve been avoding the news for the past few days because everytime I see an article I get frustrated because firstly there is little that I can do and secondly because once again the voting public is being led around by the nose to get worked up over things that don’t matter (when compared to the numerous things that need addressing with climate change sitting pretty high on the list). It is good to keep up with the news but so much of it is sensationalist crap by media outlets trying to exaggerate the latest thing a politician said then attempting to make it out to be bigger than it really is. It shouldn’t be surprising that many people treat voting like supporting their favourite sports team when the media treat politics in such a way.

It is interesting to see the reviews of the iPhone Duo and I have to admit I am not the intended audience of the iPhone Duo or in fact any foldable phone. I can see the benefits of it if you don’t have a computer and your only device is a phone but personally I couldn’t imagine not having a computer because the idea of typing a long message on my blog let alone an email would do my head in. For me, I just stick to a standard phone because the main reason I use it for is texting, phoning, listening to music and reading news – something to keep me occupied when I’m catching a train or a bus somewhere.

The reviews of the Googlebook have been coming hard and fast – there were plenty of criticisms because of the x.0 nature of the release. I think a lot of these criticisms could have been resolved had Google put out some sort of roadmap after the Googlebook went on sale. If Google put out a roadmap it would at least acknowledge the current limitations and when those issues were going to be resolved – a bit of a ‘hang in there, an update will be out soon’. It always amazes me how bad companies are when it comes to communication – they have a whole department setup for public relations and marketing, and yet they do such a lousy job at controlling the narrative.

That walk last night took a lot out of me but I was able to have a really good night sleep – as soon as my head hit the pillow I was asleep instantly. I had one of those sleeps where it was deep and long, no interruptions the whole night and when I woke up this morning I woke up at slightly before 11:00 am without my alarm going off – my body telling me “you’re all recharged and ready for the day”. Tonight I’ll be going for a walk after work but I’ll probably just do two laps which will be around 11.6 km which is sufficient on the days I’m working but what I’d like to do is have four days of walking 11.6 km each of those days and for three days I’ll walk 17.6 km for each of those days.

I logged into my laptop and checked for updates and Google has released an update for Chrome which updates it from 155.0.8059.85 to 156.0.8078.48 and so far things have been very reliable. What I do when I upgrade between versions is do a complete ‘clear cookies and cache’ for all time and all the options are ticked in the dialogue. After updating I haven’t noticed any regressions however I am interested in diving the new IndexedDB SQLite backend a try given that the SQLite backend promises to address many complains that web developers have had over the years. I would also suggest you upgrade as soon as possible as there have been 353 security bugs fixed in this release (link).

On the matter of local city councils spending huge amounts of money on things that aren’t the core essential services we have the ‘Wellington Town Hall’ (link) where, by the end of the construction, over NZ$300 million having been spent on it. For those outside of Wellington there has been many people shocked at the amount Tiaki Wai (the new organisation taking care of three waters in the Wellington region) have increased their water charges which is made worse when you consider what the NZ$300 million spent on the ‘Wellington Town Hall’ could have funded.

The amount spent on this project amounts to 20% of Wellington’s total borrowings and I’d hazard to guess that if one were to lift up the mat that there are plenty of other creepy crawlies that’ll come out. When people are seeing gross mismanagement resulting in money being wasted on vanity projects while the core essential services aren’t being taken care of then it isn’t surprising that these reports provide fertile ground for the right wing to come out and declare “the government is the root of all evil and needs to be burnt to the ground” and voters having seen their council rates go through the roof end up sympanthising with such a world view.

Last night after coming back from my work out, I turned off my alarm so that I could sleep in today and just wake up at whatever time my body thought was appropriate. I woke up around 10:00 am, did some cleaning around the house along with putting the washing machine on but then found that on a pair of trousers that some stuff from the washing machine had gotten smeared over it. After putting it off for a long time I finally got around to cleaning the washing machine by filling it up with hot water and soap then scrubbing all the built up gunk and I also found that there is a way to remove the agitator out so I was able to give that a good cleaning which should hopefully result in a better washing experience, then after it was all clean I then washed the trousers again and hung them out on the line.

Labour has made an announcement today regarding their social media policy with one of the goals being to keep kids under 16 off social media. The interesting part is around 3:28 minutes into the video where Reuben Davidson addresses the privacy concerns regarding the age verification process to ensure that it doesn’t turn into a drag net where every user is having to go through age verification. It’ll be interesting to see whether RealMe will be used as a method of verification which would avoid having to give social media companies more information than absolutely necessary when verifying the age of the person setting up the account (or the existing account).

What is interesting is the term ‘duty of care’ and how they’re going to embed it in the social media legislation. The term ‘duty of care’ is also used when regulating two other industries – alcohol and the gambling industry. Is this a signalling to not just to social media companies but also the wider community that the focus is going to be on harm reduction – that social media is too embedded into society so the best course of action is to minimise the downsides as much as possible. I guess we’ll need to wait until the select committee is formed to see what happens regarding the specifics of the legislation because there will be public submissions that may raise concerns that may not have been considered when the legislation was written in the first reading. For me, I’m going to wait for the details before passing any judgement.

Apple has released a release candidate build for version 27.2 and assuming there aren’t any show stopper bugs then I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it being released next week. With the release of uBlock Origin Lite 2026.1018.2229 there is a workaround that was removed because a bug in Webkit was corrected in Safari 18.6 – it’ll be interesting to see whether that translates to any change in the reliability of content blocking. At the moment uBlock Origin Lite 2026.1018.2229 has appeared in the web store for both Chrome and Edge however it is waiting for approval on the Apple AppStore so I guess we’ll need to wait and find out then once it arrives I’ll install it then test it out.