Matisyahu's Blog

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick'"

recent posts

  • Back to work on Wednesday.

    I had a good walk tonight of 11.6km and the weather was good – warm but not hot when compared to the walk down to the bakery when I picked up a late lunch. I’ve got my laptop bag and swipe card all organised as well as lunch too because last week I forgot all about it resulting in me buying something at work when ideally I should have bought something from home which I made sure of this time. I think if I get myself in a better routine by getting ready what I need before I go then I’ll always have what I need for work. Yes, in the back of my mind I hear my mum’s voice saying, “that’s what I’ve been telling you!”.

    I finally got it sorted and ordered the t-shirt and 2 hoodies from Impulse/Verge records, I had been contemplating but I decided to go for it. It is one of those things that you can spend too much time pondering and never actually getting to the point of making that definitive decision regarding whether or not to do something. It’ll be shipping on 3 March because it sounds like what happens is that they do them in batches rather than having a stock then sending them out. One of the hoodies is Irish green, the other is black, both of them having the Impulse logo and the t-shirt is John Coltrane Love Supreme t-shirt.

    UniFi OS 5.0.12 for Cloud Keys has been released – you can force it to install by changing to the release candidate channel, install it then switch it back to the release channel. I haven’t noticed any issues but I have to admit I’m mainly focused on when UniFi OS 5.0.12 for UniFi Gateways to be released because it’ll be a big jump from the current stable version of UniFi OS 4.3.1. It has been only 4 days and normally if all is well it’ll graduate to the release channel in the next 3-4 days but that is assuming there are no show stoppers. I guess they have to be extra sure of it because it relies on the cloud or a cloud key meaning that many organisations they remotely manage them so I guess they want to avoid a situation that the device is left in a state where a remote recovery cannot take place or a feature is broken which stops one from doing remote management.

    Oh, and it isn’t surprising to see how immature MAGA behaved regarding the whole NFL half time show – their inability to understand that a) Puerto Rico is part of the United States thus making ‘Bad Bunny’ an United States citizen and b) nothing is forcing them to watch it – go for a walk, iron some clothes, go for a bike ride around the block. I swear the right wing in the United States have a raging hard-on to be always perpetually the victim of some elaborate conspiracy theory, that the world is conspiring against them personally.

  • Off to sleep.

    Off to sleep and hopefully tomorrow 26.3 will be released but that may not happen until Wednesday (NZ Time) due to Apple normally releasing it on Wednesday but that all depends on whether there were any show stopper bugs found in the release candidate. I don’t expect it to be a big update but we may even see a beta release of 26.4 either later on this week or early next week. I’ll be keeping an eye on Safari and what changes have made their way from the Technology Preview builds into the mainstream release.

    uBlock Origin Lite has had a flurry of activity with the release of 2026.209.1522 – it has been released less than 1 hour ago so it hasn’t made it’s way to the appropriate stores but I’m sure when I wake up that I’ll find it available in one of them. Chrome 145 will be released this week and I’m tempted to give it a try to see how it performs when compared to Safari 26.3 (assuming it is released this week).

  • A strange night sleep.

    I had a bit of a late night because I got stuck into a binge watch of Fallout season 2 and had a small sleep then I woke up early but couldn’t get to sleep so I then went for a walk at around 6am. It is surprising the number of people out at that time going for a walk – many good mornings were said. The weather is nice, the temperature not too hot and by the time I came back I was in I was ready to get back to sleep. I tend to find that if I cannot get to sleep what I need is a good walk to empty my brain of all the stuff running around that keeps me from falling asleep. As soon as my head hit the pillow I was off like a light witch and had a solid 8-9 hours sleep uninterrupted.

    uBlock Origin Lite has been updated to 2026.208.2004 – it is currently available on the Mac and iOS App Store along with the Microsoft Edge Store however it is waiting for approval on the Chrome Store. I can’t work out why it takes the Chrome Store so long to approve uBlock Lite updates given that other platforms can do it quicker not to mention the fact that the developer has had a stellar reputation for years which should result in the extension getting fast tracked when compared to a new extension from an unknown developer with little or no reputation built up.

    There have been a few updates to DBpoweramp Music Converter, CD Ripper and PerfectTunes in the last month or so. I decided to buy the family version since I have the software on multiple computers with the benefit of the new licensing being that you have access to both the Mac and Windows version for the same price. The only downside is that the Windows version isn’t ARM native – I’m unsure whether the decision not to support it is because the market is too small and add an undue burden in terms of maintenance or whether it is just simply the case that the developer doesn’t have an interest in supporting the platform but then again that could change if ARM based devices running Windows gains moment with the X2 release.

    Rumours regarding the Galaxy Unpacked are swirling but no firm date has been announced but one website (Sammy Fans) has noted it could be anywhere from the end of February through to April but I guess it comes down to issues such as the memory and NAND shortage (rumours had it that there was a bit of a struggle to get the components from the division of Samsung that manufactures memory and storage). The bigger question is in regards to Android 17, the release date and how the release will line up with the update being made available for the Pixel phone. One thing to keep in mind is the fact that Android like iOS is at the point of maturity where the focus isn’t about big under the hood changes but rather improvements regarding the quality of life, integration with Gemini, improving the Android ecosystem integration.

  • Start of the weekend.

    Finished tonight at 10pm, went for a small walk round the block to clear my head and then came back to heat up some ciabatta bread I had in the freezer – something basic like some fresh bread with butter and honey or butter and marmite is always nice. It is funny how the simpler things turn out to be the most satisfying. Reminds me of when I worked at a pizza outlet where I could have a pizza every night for dinner (which didn’t help my waist line) and there is a temptation to have a whole lot of toppings but then you quickly realised that less is more – that there is actually. whole lot of work that goes into developing a new pizza by having toppings to compliment each other rather it just being a incoherent mess on top of a base.

    There is a push by some to cancel subscriptions from organisations that align with the Trump regime but it is interesting to see whether in the long term there is any fall out. If there is a fall out in a post Trump presidency will there be a differentiation between those who were complicit with the regime vs those who enabled the regime vs those who kept their distance and kept silent. It reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg talking about a ‘cultural change’ and need for more ‘masculine energy’ – I wonder how that is going to look in a post Trump presidency, will it look pathetic? will society collectively forget such a nonsensical pronouncement?

    On a side note it is rather pathetic to see how the right have embraced this new age language of ‘masculine energy’ and ‘feminine energy’, it’s almost as though they’re trying to rebrand patriarchal values in the language of new age language to make it sound as though it is the ‘natural order’ of things. This shouldn’t be surprising given the wellness guru to alt right pipe line given how many will start off saying something reasonable such as “grow a vegetable garden…” which then eventually leads to pseudoscience.

  • Almost the end of the shift.

    I’m enjoying my lunch break and catching up on some politics on YouTube – Donald Trump has become so toxic that there are now Republicans are saying to Trump “woah, woah, hang on, maybe you should sit this one out…” when it comes to Trump trying to involve them in senate and congressional races. The most recent example of that would be Trump throwing his support behind John Sununu from the New Hampshire federal senate election – Trump is deluded enough to convince himself that his endorsement is something people want but given how his popularity has nose dived the endorsement is closer to being a kiss of death.

    With all that being said, I wouldn’t get too optimistic in terms of the bigger picture given that I can remember back when George W Bush’s run for the second term there was a lot of unhappiness with George W Bush and optimism that maybe John Kerry would make him a one term president but the reality is that it never turned out to be the case. There is a lot of optimism regarding Texas and the idea that maybe someone can over turn 30 years of Republican dominance – would I love that to happen? sure but is it realistic? probably not given that Ted Cruz has been unpopular for years and yet he keeps being voted back in – unpopular doesn’t necessarily translates to “so therefore I’m going to vote for the Democratic candidate”.

    This is the one reason why I am sceptical about the idea of Labour winning this year because it is very rare that you have a one term government – you’d have to make a major balls-up of the economy. Election day is still another 9 months away and a lot can occur in 9 months and if the ‘green shoots’ of recovery are not only showing but voters experiencing things improve then you may find the public willing to give them another team. The big question is what will happen regarding the minor parties – what is NZ First and ACT going to do to differentiate themselves from each other given that we’re 5-6 years on from COVID and the unhappiness they took advantage of in the election in 2023 no longer has the same pulling power that it once had.

  • Back into a routine.

    My routine got thrown out this week when I headed into the office then had an early start the next day where I had to get up at 7:45am but I’m used to getting to sleep at around 2am so I only ended up getting around 5 hours sleep. The net result was after that early day I was exhausted by the end and needed to have an early night in bed rather than going for a walk – getting a decent night sleep is more important than going for a walk.

    Tonight I got back into the swing of things with a 11.6km walk which was much needed although during the day I did some free weights when I went on my 2 x 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute break. Tomorrow I’ll go for another walk and on my day off I’ll aim to squeeze in a couple of walks – 5.8km during the day then 11.6km at night with my long term goal to be below 100kg by the middle of the year.

    Rumour has it that 26.3 will be released next week and Patch Tuesday maybe getting released next week as well, I think the interesting release will be Windows 11 26H2 and whether FRED will be supported given that there are reports of Zen 6 supporting FRED which should provide a performance and reliability boost but that is assuming that Microsoft adds support to Windows 11 26H2 given that support has already been added to Linux. Nova Lake will receive it and Zen is scheduled to be released towards the end of 2026 or early 2027.

  • It makes you wonder.

    Just thinking of all the things that have occurred over the last few weeks – the speech given by Mark Carney, the free trade agreement between the EU and India, murmurs regarding China wanting to position itself as the reserve currency and all the discussion regarding the latest tranche of Epstein related documents that were made available. That doesn’t even touch on the United States budget negotiations, the behaviour of ICE and Border Patrol agents not to mention the real economy is cratering while the share market booms as day traders are getting on their own supply.

    The reason I bring this up is because we maybe living in the dying days of American hegemony and I think for many the expectation was that it would eventually happen but the question was how the decline would take place. Would it be a slow decline where the United States gracefully exits the stage, will it be where the United States makes a series of dumb decisions to ‘restore the former glory’ resulting in the decline being sped up or will it be an spontaneous collapse off the back problems that have built up of decades that have been left unaddressed or one last attempt to reclaim the United States role in the world.

    As I’ve noted on a post I made over on BlueSky – in my life time we’ve had 8 years of George W Bush and by 2028 there would have been 8 hears of Trump. I can’t speak for everyone but I think the world has really had it with the United States. The world is tired of the chaos, tired of the craziness, tired of a country inhabited by people who don’t understand the role that the United States plays in the world and the historical events that led to the United States being in that position. When you have a largely ignorant population then it isn’t surprising that someone like Trump eventually gets voted in resulting in the whole global order unravelling.

    I have noticed over the last decade or so that the petty squabbles between many nations are being put to one side recently, alliances are being built and are now being taken seriously rather than just a get to gather once a year. BRICS was set up a while ago but the recent discussion of an alternative to the American dollar has finally turned from something talked about into something that actually has been fleshed out into something serious. There is also a discussion regarding an alternative to SWIFT, work is being done regarding an alternative to the Visa and MasterCard payment network by using UnionPay as a platform on which to build an interoperable alternative.

  • At the half way point.

    Ah, I love working from home, being able to enjoy a quiet place to work, being able to grab a coffee within arm reach. I’m reading through ‘WECG Meetings 2026, Public Notes—Jan 29, 2026’ and there is a good amount of stuff that is happening in terms of harmonising implementations, addressing the short comings of MV3 when compared to MV2. It’ll be interesting to see whether in the long term Firefox will keep supporting MV2 particularly if the limitations of MV3 are addressed (which appears to be the case) and the benefits of MV3 outweigh the technical debt associated with maintaining MV2.

    Next week will be the launch of Chrome 145 (link) and there are rumours regarding Android on the desktop and laptop is delayed until 2027-28 with Chrome OS still receiving updates well into the early 2030s but that being said it has all been unconfirmed rumours. Given all the work that needs to be done I wouldn’t be surprised if Google take their time and maybe even offer a path to upgrade from ChromeOS to this new Android based operating system so then those with existing hardware can migrate to the new platform.

    There is also a lot of stuff that needs to be done such as adding extension support to Chrome not to mention issues that may appear when conducting internal testing as well as working with OEMs who raise issues that need addressing – hardware support, functionality missing when compared to ChromeOS, the opportunity for OEM customisation such as One UI – we may see Samsung embrace Android on the desktop and laptop, making use of their own ARM chips then using One UI to create a unified brand that spans from televisions to phones to tablets and now desktops and laptops.

  • A bit of a shock to the system.

    I had an early start today – up and out of the bed at 7:45am and off to catch the train to work by 8:30am. I was making great time until I ended up at the train station to then find that the train was 15 minutes late with no explanation given. It was kind of strange there was the delay given that the express train that comes before the one I was going to take arrived on time (well, it didn’t arrive per se as so much as it went past the train station without stopping). I don’t see any news other than the alert that went out this morning so I’m unsure what the issue could have caused it but I still got to work in the end.

    I finished work at 6:00pm then went to hang out with work mates for ten pin bowling with the business shouting us some pizza and I bought a pint of Monteith’s Apple Cider (or what the Americans call ‘hard cider’) which is nice on a hot day. We played a few matches and then we all went out separate ways home – in the case of me I stopped by New World to pick up a few bits and pieces and then caught the train home – quite a few people were using it tonight which is a bit unusual for a Thursday so maybe this is an indicator that there is some sort of recovery under way.

    Oh, and I opened up the App Store once I got home to find that uBlock Origin Lite 2026.202.1612 has been released – I updated it, waited for a few minutes for the filters to finish converting, and I then checked it with a few websites and it appears everything is working well. The release candidate for Apple’s platforms, version 26.3, has been released and assuming there are no show stopper bugs then it’ll probably arrive next week some time. With all that being said, 26.3 is a small update given that the development occurred over the Christmas and New Years holiday period where as 26.4 will be when Gemini integration will appear plus plenty of other improvements.

  • Early night in bed.

    Got an early start on Thursday because we’ve got a work function afterwards – up at 7:45am to catch the 8:30am train to work then finishing off at 6:00pm to meet up after work with my work mates. I was going to go for a walk tonight bu unfortunately if I did then I wouldn’t get back until very late meaning I’d only get around 5 hours sleep which leave me pretty much a zombie for the next day.

    Another good news came through this morning, I received email confirmation that the CD I purchased on Discogs has shipped. It truly is a wonderful resource if you’re looking for those hard to find CDs particularly if they’re out of print such as the one I purchased. Yes, I could purchase it through iTunes however I prefer having the physical copy where I rip two copies, one to FLAC for a cloud based backup and one to AAC so I can listen to it on my iPhone or computer.

    I’m still waiting for uBlock Origin Lite to appear – it appears that the fix that is coming is related to a but in Webkit/Safari that needs addressing however it appears that at the moment fixing up extension related issues in Safari doesn’t appear to be a priority. I guess it is a situation of allocating resources where the greatest demand is – it would be interesting to know what percentage of Safari uses make use of extensions or more specifically content blocking extensions and how that percentage compares to users on Firefox and Chrome.