Woke up at 9:00 am and it felt easier than previous days – my body getting used to the new routine? appears to be so. I went for a walk and the weather was overcast but no rain, arrived back home then got ready for work then watched some news before logging into my work laptop. I’m keep tracking of my meals and I think the biggest mistake was not keeping a journal on those days off – something I’m going to do this week so I avoid making great progress and then undo all that progress on my day off.
I was watching a video by Taylor Lorenz regarding the push for social media bans around the world – the satanic panic has been resuscitated with a new moral panic. Rather than empower parents to monitor what their kids are doing online and giving young people the tools to navigate the internet safely. As a society we’re smart enough to realise that if we want people drinking responsibly we expect that parents set a good example of how to drink alcohol responsibly. We’re also smart enough as a society that when people want to get a drivers licence there is a process – you start off with a learners licence then graduate to a restricted licence and then eventually, once you demonstrated you’re ready, you gradually to a full licence.
This is what happens when you have politicians being voted in who believe it is their job to implement some social engineer grand plan where is their job to fix all society’s ills. I’m sorry but society’s ills are not going to be fixed by passing legislation that make people feel good believing that is the end of the discussion. I am also cautious when Is start hearing politicians who use moral panics and culture wars as a distracting from fixing actual social issues – where they’ll talk about everything but the most obvious explanation. A good example of that is the drop in the fertility rate – politicians and talking heads who worship at the altar of neoliberalism and twist themselves into all manner of contortions to avoid the obvious that the cost of living is too high and people aren’t earning enough. Reminds of the quote from Upton Sinclair, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”.
Last night I went to bed expecting it to start raining but I heard nothing so I drifted off to sleep expecting it to maybe the case when I woke up in the morning but when I woke up it was overcast but and some drizzle but no rain. I’m wondering with climate change and el nino has made it more difficult to model weather as it becomes more unpredictable because according to the Metservice there will be rain overnight and in the morning but as of 10:33 pm the weather is still fine, the temperature hasn’t dropped and there isn’t any increase in the wind speed – all rather quiet.
I checked out Webkit.org and the Safari Technology Preview 251 was released today (link) and it works ok but the issue that I have with the NZ Post YouShop still hasn’t been fixed up. I also checked it out with the uBlock Origin Extension and I noticed a few bugs with Safari when trying to access the settings page – I cleared the extension cache, exited it and then went back in and found it started working. The impression I keep getting from Apple regarding Safari is that it is something they’re reluctantly developing rather than enthusiastically putting their time and resources into.
UniFi Network Application 10.6.101 was released today so it’ll be interesting to see when it’ll be released – maybe next week sometime? I guess it’ll be a waiting game especially if there is feedback from the community forum regarding things that need working on before it can be released. Personally I would sooner take their time and make sure that the software is as robust as possible before releasing it. My sister has my old UniFi Dream Machine and the AP AC HD at their place and things are going well – a rather drama free experience when compared to the limited coverage her old router had that the internet provider included as part of signing up with them.
There was an interesting press release regarding One NZ and 2 Degrees posiing that they share infrastructure (link). Reading through the idea if makes me wonder whether the three networks should be all merged into something like a ‘Chorus for wireless’ that would own the spectrum and the network infrastructure and operate purely as a wholesaler so then the three companies will have equal coverage and also would allow other players to enter into the market. For a country like New Zealand which has a small population of around 5 million people – consolidating it might also mean a reduction in the amount of infrastructure required or the ability to redeploy infrastructure where more of it is needed such as in rural areas where the coverage is limited.
The week is going well with the schedule of getting up at 9:00 am and the low carb ‘treats’ I’ve bought myself really hit the sweet tooth and with the bonus of having 6-10 grams of fibre while being low in sugar. The walk this morning was refreshing with not too many people out but saying hello to the occasional person who passed by. One of the big benefits is the bike and walking track that was installed a couple of years ago which makes walking a whole lot easier given it is on the side of the road without any houses so you’re not dodging cars coming in and out of drive ways.
Daily writing prompt
What’s a book you never finished but still think about?
It is the non-fiction book ‘Chomsky on Anarchism’ which is a collection of essays that I bought many years ago when I was at university. It is one of those books that are kind of heavy in the content – read a few pages, then thinking about it for a while then maybe read a little bit more. It is the thing I enjoy about finally being out of university because I can now read books at my own pace and enjoy them – writing down notes, updating my blog when I’m inspired by something I read rather than having to worry about some sort of schedule I have to stick to.
Had a great day at work today – was able to clear out all the emails in the Salesforce queue exception one which was kind of hairy so I thought it would be best to chat with my boss regarding how to handle it in a sensitive way. I have to admit, I tend to over analyse what I write – always thinking about how it could be interpreted or misinterpreted because the sentences I use maybe to abrupt thus giving an incorrect impression.
Apple has released a refresh for their Mac mini and Mac Studio to the M5 bring it inline with their other M5 products plus the availability of a M6. I think the exciting part is the ability for consumer computers to run AI workloads locally, for developers to choose an open weight model that works best for them and them strap a harness to it then start using it without worrying about how many tokens they are burning through. As I’ve said in the past – the future is local for most people with some limited use cases for AI in the cloud.
There was a great video on Youtube by ‘The Tech Report’ addressing just that, most people don’t need frontier models, specialised models are better in many cases (as I’ve mentioned in the past) and consumer hardware is going to eventually undercut the advantages that cloud based AI has. The one thing to always remember is that the world runs of GET – good enough technology and unfortunately far too many tech dude bros in silicon valley obsess over the best rather than what the end users actually need which is something good enough to do the job. It reminds me of Itanium, promised to be this futuristic CPU only for it to crash and burn the moment that you could get a good enough solution based around x86-64 running Linux.
I’ve been watching the bond situation in the United States regarding interest rates rising on long dated bonds and the attempt by the Trump administration to bend the curve. Everytime I see this sort of thing take place I am reminded of the saying that you maybe able to buy some time in the short term but in the long term the market ends up winning in the end. Time and time again we see governments insist that they have more control over the situation. It reminds me of what an advisor to Nixon (the same Nixon who proudly proclaimed “I am a keynesian”) that politicians want to appear to be doing something, anything, even if the right thing is to do nothing.
New Zealand back in early 1980s had Prime Minister Muldoon that borrowed to prop up the New Zealand dollar but eventually in 1984 he had to devalue the dollar and when the new Labour government came in they floated the currency so its value was decided by the market. It was a painful process but a necessary one because just like the British Pound it become increasingly more expensive to defend the currency. I have the same feeling with what is happening in the United States – there will be a breaking point and all the maneuvering at the moment is putting off the inevitable or possibly the maneuvering making the situation worse versus if they just allowed to happen whatever was going to happen.
Woke up at 9:00 am this morning and got out of the house at 10:00 am for a 9km walk – the weather is overcast with some drizzle which makes sense since the Metservice are forecasting rain from tonight and for the next few days. After arriving back at home I had a shower and rather than being lazy and staying in my pyjamas I’ve gotten changed into what I would normally wear if I went into the office. Long story short I want to see whether in improves my metal health by having that clear line drawn in the sand between working vs when I’m not working.
I’ve checked Chrome for updates and Google has released an update which updates ir from version 151.0.7922.174 to 152.0.7977.65 (link) there are a huge number of security bug fixes included – 327 security bug fixes in total. I also noticed that on YouTube the bug relating to the ‘don’t recommend this channel’ where the dialogue in the left corner of the page that confirmed the action wouldn’t appear. I haven’t checked to see whether any other bugs have been fixed up in other areas but so far on macOS it is going well.
uBlock Origin Lite 2026.825.1619 has been released and I haven’t noticed any regressions. I’m looking forward to Chrome eventually getting the ability to filter response and request headers which should hopefully close the functionality gap between the old MV2 framework vs the new MV3. Although uBlock Origin Lite is available on Safari as well, I find that it works best on Chrome because in Safari the declarative net request (DNR) isn’t implemented natively but rather it sits on top of the native content blocking API which has its own set of issues (as I’ve outlined in the past).
Well, that weekend always goes quicker than I would have liked but here we are on Tuesday night getting ready for Wednesday. I’ve finally moved from a 9:30 am alarm to a 9:00 am alarm and with that my goal is to have lights out before 11am so that I am relaxing, listening to maybe a podcast or two before heading off to sleep. Long story short I want to get myself into a good headspace so that it is easier for me to fall to sleep so then I can have a long and restful sleep good night. I had a 9km walk today and tomorrow I’ll be doing the same – I might squeeze maybe some extra few km because later on the week the weather is going to be a bit lousy so I’d like to squeeze in a bit of exercise.
There was another release candidate for 26.7 which may result in being released maybe next week or possibly when or if they make some new product announcements in September. The impression I get regarding 26.7 is that this is their last update so they want to really nail things down – fix any outstanding issues. I’ve been checking Ubiquiti regarding UniFi Network Application 10.6.97 and I don’t see a newer release in the ‘Early Access’ channel so I guess we’ll find out soon enough whether there needs to be more testing taking place. Version 27 beta 7 from Apple has been released to developers (link) and is now available as a public beta as well (link) and quite a few things have been fixed. I would say that we’re getting pretty close to maybe seeing a release candidate soon given that they’re release a beta every week – version 26 had 9 betas but given that the scope of version 27 is narrowed to getting AI sorted and the basics nailed down it is possible that we may not end up seeing 9 betas but then again we’re two weeks away from beta 9 not to mention that this is the time when Apple announces the next iPhone along with product refreshes.
Tonight I did some shopping at Woolworths to pick up a few groceries. I saw some protein bars that looked good so I bought that along with some Pepsi Max on special. I bought the two packets I bought a week or so ago that I used for the chilli because next week I’ll be cooking it up for tacos. I generally like to cool my chilli on ‘low and slow’ to really bring out the flavour so I’ll get it all cooked up on Monday and then put it in the fridge for Tuesday so then it is just a matter of heating it up. The one thing I didn’t get was a salad because I don’t trust it to last a week before I get to use it so I’ll wait until Monday and buy it fresh along with a couple tomatoes or maybe some cherry tomatoes.
Daily writing prompt
If the salary was the same, what job would you be doing right now and why?
I would like to work in a think tank that specialises in researching difficult societal problems and coming up with policies to address them. The reason for this interest is two fold – the first is that I want to feel as though I am doing something that is meaningful and the second is the intellectual curiosity of tackling big societal problems by diving deeply into why things are the way they are then coming up with a solution.
I woke up this morning just before 9:00 am after having a good night sleep – it feels like my body is getting into the routine of getting up earlier and I didn’t feel groggy when getting at 30 minutes earlier than I normally would. I made a post earlier on today in a hope that I would move onto a second post I was going to make regarding the ‘myth of the nation’ that was born out of the documentary ‘The Power of Nightmares’ – the ‘myth of the nation’ originating from Leo Strauss. Long story short, I was making no progress and the more time I spent the more disjointed and incoherent it became to the point that I had to ask myself whether I really wanted to write it in the first place – at that point I decided to throw in the towel. I haven’t completely discarded wanting to explore some of the ideas that I had planned but I think they would best bought up when addressing future topics.
Ubiquiti has released UniFi OS 5.1.31 and I’ve installed it on my Dream Router 7 – it took around 8-10 minutes to install but upon reboot I haven’t noticed any regressions. With the updated firmware I have noticed some improvements in terms of the speed to resolve hostnames and downloading websites but I’m unsure whether that is related to the update or whether that is the byproduct of a reboot. The memory usage has decreased slightly and it is is using 1.41 GB out of 2.94 GB. I am still tempted to make a move to either One NZ, 2 Degrees of Quic because the three of them have an interconnect which is also shared with Cloudflare which I use as my DNS provider which should resolve in even lower latency.
There are two YouTubers that watch on a regular basis, ParkrosePermaculture and KnittingCultLady, because they provide a grounded commentary in a world where influencers and commentators are peddling the latest clickbait. I find that these two commentators provide a sober analysis on what is actually going on the real world. There is a tendency by some commentators to peddle clickbait videos either because they’re either charismatic presenter but light on details but decide to ‘fake it till you make it’ (so then they can make some money) or decide that hating the Trump administration is more important than facts so the net result is the decision not look into something further and go with assumptions built on assumptions.
At one end of the spectrum there are those who keep peddling copium/hopium because it tells the audience what they want to hear – audience capture if you will. The net result of this peddling of copium/hopium has been this peddling of nonsense by both commentators/influencers as well as established media outlets. Does anyone remember the constant drum beat of “the walls are closing in on Trump” and “Trump is going to end up in prison” in the mainstream media? I remember seeing that on MSNBC (now known as MS NOW) and the copium/hopium put out into the world with people being convinced that they didn’t need to do anything because something magical would happen and then everything would turn out for the best.
At the other of the spectrum there are those who pedal doomerism that thrive on doomerism because for some it is a business model where it is easier to spread doom than it is give a sober assessment on what is happening in the world. Then there are those who pedal doomerism because, to quote Mark Fisher “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.” It is the defeatist mindset that doesn’t require effort on the part of the listener or a creator to accept that pushing back against the right is a Sisyphean task – it is a never ending up hill struggle and it is up to those of us on the left to find meaning in that never ending struggle rather than just giving up because we believe the world ought to work a certain way then get angry when it doesn’t.
Getting back to being grounded in reality, KnittingCultLady did a great video pushing back at the idea of ‘Pete Hegesth fired all the top military lawyers’:
Once you listen to the video then you quickly realise that what was being spread around the internet does not match up with reality but unfortunately the correction made by KnittingCultLady has limited reach because it isn’t powered by sensationalism but by facts. Again, it is easier for doomerism to spread faster than a sober assessment and to be honest the power structure actually like the doomerism narrative because it attributes more power to them than they actually have in reality.
Another good video to watch is by ParkrosePermaculture where she talks about the idea of ‘future faking’:
Much like how the doomerism narrative benefits the power structure the idea of ‘future faking’ is about spreading the narrative that future is predetermined and there is nothing you can do about it so you may as well give up. The problem is that if you start believing that the future is predetermined then what happens? people give up, the momentum for change dissipates as people feel as though any effort to make meaningful change is doomed to failure. This is the same sort of narrative being put out by the AI industry (not too sure whether you can call it an industry given it is losing money hand over fist) that the future is AI, that future is set in stone, either get on the bandwagon or get left behind – once you realise how LLMs actually work you quickly realise this is the biggest ‘fake it til you make it’ gamble in modern history that puts the dot-com bubble to shame.
Just to round off the post, there is a good video by Ryan McBeth regarding the WSJ article which had drummed up the hysteria by claimed the the US Army would phase out the drone unit – small problem there, that wasn’t the case.
One thing to keep in mind is that he is a consultant for the government so he has to be fairly careful about wading into politically sensitive topics hence the reason why he avoids talking about such topics. Long story short, the video goes through the claim that was being made and by the end of the video you’ll quickly realise that at best the WSJ did a bad job understanding where drones fit in the larger Army structure or that the narrative was more important than consulting an expert to ensure that they understand what was happening.
The week appeared to drag on longer than necessary but i made it to the end of the week and I’m looking forward to my couple of days off. I’ve changed my alarm to 9:00 am which will become the new time that I get up in the morning which will become the time I’ll be getting up every day – I don’t see any reason to push it back any further given that 9:00 am gives me enough time to wake up without too much of a rush and then get ready to go for a walk. I’m tempted to go for a walk down to Petone and then along the waterfront again because although I was tired at the end of it I did feel as though I had acccomplished something for the day. Oh, and I’ve also did my grocery order online tonight and they’ll be delivered just after midday – I’d prefer avoiding having go down to the supermarket because the experience is rather chaotic particularly on my day off where I’d sooner be as stress free as possible.
I’ve got a couple of blog posts I’m working at the moment, there is one about doomerism and how there is a tendency in online discourse to catastrophise what is happening then descend into a downward spiral of dommerism. It reminds me very much of what Mark Fisher said, “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.” It is easier to dream up the most doomer scenario than it is to think that there is a world beyong Trump and his fellow travellers. That doesn’t mean you should be complacent but equally you shouldn’t give the powers that be the satisfaction of knowing that they’ve achieved their most important goal – for you to give up and hide in the corner believing everything is lost.
I set up and extra profile on my Chrome installation to give AdGuard a try and just recently AdGuard Browser extension version 5.5.1.5 was released. The one thing have noticed is that websites no longer have strange pauses or freezes when AdGuard is being applied to them. There are still a few website that get through particularly for video sharing websites that have dishonest embedded links where if you click on the play button a window opens up – even uBlock Origin Lite can find it difficult to block those. I wonder whether this is something that can be addressed with the future work being done by WECG adding more filtering functionality Declarative Net Request that used to exist in the old MV2 used to allow.
Today was a good day, I got up at 9:30 am, then went for a walk at 10:30 am – just a short walk because I didn’t feel in the mood for something longer. I came back home and had the chilli mince that I had frozen from last week but I got out last night to defrost over night so it was ready to heat up in the morning. I sprinkled some cheese on top after heating it up and it still had a good kick thanks to the generous helping of chilli flakes I had sprinkled into it when cooking it last week. If I do cook it again I am tempted to purchase some fresh chilli to see whether whether there is a difference in tasty – a hot taste but more spicy than just straight hot? I guess I’ll find out on my day off.
As I got closer to finishing work tonight I ordered some Mexican from a local restaurant which does a really good job using fresh ingredients, the experience is always consistent and the price is reasonable. The meal I ordered is mostly protein and vegetables with very few carbs so the benefit is that you don’t feel bloated and uncomfortably full at the end – you feel satisfied which is the nice happy medium. Last night I had some chicken burgers and I have to admit that the chicken burger patties are a step down from what I am used to – the old chicken fillets were like actual pieces of chickens where you saw the fibres like a real chicken breast but the ones I bought recently are more like a processed chicken patty. The experience reminds me of a post on Reddit from someone pointing out how the quality of pies have gone down hill recently – a brand they used to buy are using cheaper ingredients, more fillers etc. and you could really tell the difference which is rather disappointing. I remember not too long ago I used to be able to buy a venison pie but they’ve now stopped selling them.
I was watching a video regarding the whole AI bubble and although I tend towards occam’s razor I can’t help but have this theory to explain all the hype regarding AI. The hype regarding AI is about getting as much capacity built as possible so that once it is built and the AI companies are pressured to make a profit that those AI companies will cut their free consumer versions along with their monthly flat rate subscription plans in favour of their ‘pay as you go’ API pricing. The net result? the amount of computer demand disappears as those who weren’t paying the full cost disappear, the remaining customers are a fraction of the demand as before which then creates a surplus of computing capacity which then enables the AI companies leverage to demand lower the amount they pay for compute.
As for the hyperscalers – the debt they have will probably turned into equity when it comes time to pay the huge amounts of debt. Long story short, the hype is to create a compute surplus which then allows leverage when the demand shrinks and puts AI businesses in a stronger position to negotiate. I have nothing to back up my speculation other than some random thoughts runing through my head at work that I wanted to write down. Regarding Google, Amazon and Microsoft – they’ve got more than enough cash to cover the cost of any over building and worse case scenario they can rip it out and replace the server racks at a later date if they don’t need the capacity straight away although I think that Oracle is probably best described as ‘the sick man of Silicon Valley’ (a reference to the Ottoman Empire being the sick man of Europe) – their share of cloud revenue is next to non-existent at this point when you take AI out of the equation.
Daily writing prompt
If you had to get a tattoo right now, what would it be and why?
If I was going to get a tattoo I would get an arm band with a motify that is a combination of Maori and Celtic motifs. I’ve been interested in getting a tattoo for quite some time but I’ve always said that if I was going to get one I wanted to make sure that later on in life when looking at it that I would still be happy that I got it rather than looking back with regret.
I was reading an article today with the title ‘Why is NZ spending far more on responding to climate disasters than on reducing future risk?’ (link) and it reminds me of a blog post I made a while ago talking about how voters will claim they want honest politicians but when they’re confronted with one they don’t vote for them. The premise of why people don’t vote for honest politicians is because for far too many voters when they say they want an honest politician what they really want is someone who says the things they agree with rather than what they need to hear which can be uncomfortable sometimes.
Regarding the aticle itself, to answer the question ‘Why is NZ spending far more on responding to climate disasters than on reducing future risk?’, the reason why there is more spent on responding rather than reducing future risk is because the steps to reduce future risk aren’t popular with the public and they won’t get politicians name up in lights – much the same way that politicians would sooner spend money on something new and shiny than fixing up what already exists.
This is the reason why Wellington water infrastructure is in the sorry state that it is in – counsellors were more interested in keeping rates low and what rates were collected were spent on economically unviable things like a convention centre which cost more money to the council than it brings in. The net result? water pipes bursting, water infrastructure falling to pieces and the rate payer wondering where on earth did all the money go to over the years. Was their an alternative? Labour proposed three waters but New Zealanders convinced themselves that co-governance is the worst thing that had befallen humanity resulting in Labour losing the election and the alterntive is the half baked solution from National aka ‘Local Water Done Well’ has resulted in the mess that exist today.
The reality is that some parts of the country are going to become uneconomically viable to keep rebuilding every time there is a climate related disaster resulting in many if not most insurance companies just saying that they’re not going to offer insurance coverage in particular areas. I also don’t believe that setting up some sort of government owned backstop insurance is going to help either because even if you were to nationalise the housing insurance market with a single insurer you’ll still have the same issue of far too many uninsurable properties driving up everyone else’s premiums.
What is the solution? it may require some towns being completely mothballed and the inhabitants relocated to places where the risk of climate related disasters are a lot lower. There is also the matter of curbing green house gas emissions which will require lifestyle changes such as greater housing density, walkable neighbourhoods, mass transit and less dependence on private vehicles etc. major lifestyle changes that I don’t think people are willing to make (not to mention big investments in rail infrastructure for freight and passenger transportation). Whenever there are attempts to do just that there is push back by NIMBYs resulting in the necessary progress forward consistently undermined and we all end up paying the price when it comes to dealing with the long term consequences of climate change.
It is very much the same problem faced in the United States – towns that have been dying for at least 70 years with congressmen who keep selling false hope that anytime soon there will be a rejuvenation of the area. If congressmen and senators were honest with the area they would tell them that the only reason why their town or area existed is because of an industry that no longer exists and that the future should be able moving forward rather than living in the past. The problem is that the pull of nostalgia blinds people to what what needs to be done – to move on to greener pastures and leave the past behind.
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