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 from dinner.

    So, I finished work at 10pm tonight and one of the things I”m working on is making sure I have food in my freezer and I avoid buying any take aways because I want to get better discipline with my budgeting. On Monday this week I went shopping at Woolworths and picked up a good variety of food so that I always have something in the freezer. Tonight I had some Korean style chicken coleslaw and wedges with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce.

    For lunch today I tried the ‘only organic’ mushroom soup and it was really good – incredibly creamy but lots of flavour and the number of calories were pretty good. I’m gradually working through the food I have in my cupboard because I bought some extra food a while ago but I think I need to work through it all before doing an another big shop. The reason why I want to work through it is to avoid having stuff going off that I’ve forgotten about while also finding out whether something was a good purchase and whether I should buy it again.

    The Safari Technology Preview 248 was released today (link) and I thought that the issue I was having with Teams was fixed up but then I checked it with the stable version of Safari and although I could log in once and it work I then found that when I quit Safari, then loaded it again, visited the website then the same error message would appear. The same issue also occurred with the Safari Technology Preview 248 as well so I’m unsure what is going on with Microsoft given that I never had that issue up until recently.

    At the moment I am using Chrome on my laptop and I’m just finding that as the internet becomes more feature rich and developers are making greater use of the latest in web technologies, I am finding that Safari is falling further and further behind. It has been over a year and the sub_frame DNR bug still hasn’t been merged (link). I asked for an update over 6 months ago on the GitHub repository but still no response. Normally I wouldn’t care one way or another if it was any other piece of software but given that the first thing I load on my computer when I open it up is my web browser, I have skin in the game in terms of whether Apple get their act together.

    I was watching some news regarding ‘Thinking Machines Lab’ model called Inkling that they’ve just released and it reminds me of what I posted on the Arstechnica forum not too long ago when I talked about the idea that maybe having massive models aren’t the future. The future of AI would be models that have a specific focus that they excel at (aka specialised models) and then being able to create a front end to break down the requests then dispatch them to the model best suited to complete that task. Basically the UNIX principle of doing one thing and doing it well – the model Inkling doing something similar.

    Front the ouside it appears to be a model that can scale more efficeintly without having a data centre filled with so many GPUs that it requires a cooling solution that can keep a neighbood awake all night. I personally think that there is probably a future for cloud computing when it comes to LLMs and AI in general but I don’t think it’ll be the trillion dollar industry that far too many tech bros are making it out to be.

    Oh, as for the order I made on 22/7 from a store up in Auckland, it looks like the courier has been delayed. Normally it is an over night delivery from Auckland to Wellington but for some unknown reason it may have missed the Auckland to Wellington truck with the estimated delivery date being 24/7 but I’m not so sure about that

    I checked Ubiquit regarding the latest software and there has been quite a few updates being pushed out that are in the release candidate channel. The one that stands out at the moment is ‘UniFi Network Application 10.5.66’ and there are quie a few people reporting issues but the one thing to keep in mind is that some problems are caused by the end user fiddling with things they should fiddle with. Version 26.6 release candidate has been made available however I would say that it probably won’t make an apperance until maybe Tuesday or Wednesday next week (NZ Time) unless there is a set of really important security fixes that need to be made available because they’re being exploited in the real world.

    Daily writing prompt
    What is the best purchase you have ever made?
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    The two cast iron dutch ovens that have replaced my pots – being able to slowly simmer food without having hot spots because the cast iron conducts the heat better, the fact that it is robusty made and the handles won’t losen over time. I was lucky to purchase it on special from Farmers but the benefit is that they will probably end up outliving me – one of those things you buy once and don’t have to worry about it.

    Fediverse reactions

  • End of the day.

    Finally finished the day and cooking a dinner – I’ll write up a longer blog post after dinner – chicken, wedges and coleslaw.

  • First day back at work.

    I woke up this morning at around 10:30am and I really didn’t feel like going for a walk but I know that once I went for that walk and got it out of the way for the day I would feel a whole lot better. I went for an 8km walk and said hello to quite a few people not only going for walks but there appears to be a cycling club of retired people who go for bike rides together – it’s good that people are getting out and keeping fit even in their retirement. I’ve got my alarm set to an hour earlier – 9:30am which will allow me to take my time getting up, doing some stretches and have a more relaxed start along with the possibility of going for a longer walk it I feel like it.

    It has been a while since I last went for a walk and a lot of activity is occuring when it comes to building in the empty lots and up in Auckland the council has just agreed to a plan for greater intensification around transportation hubs which will avoid unsustainable sprawl. Once the central rail link all comes online and then combine that with the intensification around transportation hubs, we’ll see the city transform and hopefully it should also result in more people taking public transport vs taking private vehicles especially if things in the middle east don’t get sorted in a timely manner resulting in petrol prices going up further.

    Where I am I can see some greater intensification around transportation hubs but there is also development occuring at the old MAF facility which is within walking distance of the Wallaceville Station. That station received a major upgrade a few years ago when they double tracked from Trentham all the way down to Upper Hutt. There is also a lot of chatter regarding the Wellington Racing Club redevelopment (link) which will provide the sort of transit oriented development around the Trentham translation which has the added benefit of shops being around the station as well.

    I’ve checked the webkit website to see whether the Technology Preview 248 had been released but it hadn’t – maybe the developers were too busy preparing the Beta 4 of macOS 27 along with the release candidate of macOS 26.6? oh well, I guess we’ll find out in the next day or so what changes are in store. As for Chrome, there was the update from version 150.0.7871.129 to 150.0.7871.182 with quite a few security fixes being made available (link). Getting back to the Safari Technology Preview, given that Webkit and Blink probably share quite a lot of code I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some big security fixes coming with 26.6 which is why they’re holding back Technology Preview 248.

    It is interesting to see the number of puff pieces that have come out regarding JD Vance and Usha Vance having another child on CNN. Then there was the soft interview done by Joe Rogan to try and humanise him – try to get the manosphere onboard with the idea of JD Vance running in 2028. I’m not one for conspiracy theories but I can’t help but get the feeling that we’re in the midst of a ‘manufacturing consent’ moment those with money and power have decided that JD Vance will be their guy that they want to get into the Whitehouse next.

    I think that part of the plan is trying to market JD Vance as a ‘return to normal’ after having 4 years of Trump by some how separating JD Vance from the Trump administration. I’m skeptical regarding whether it could work but that being said one does have to remember that 2 years after the Republicans got the US stuck in two wars and collapse the economy that they were given control of both houses in the 2010 midterms. Voters have a very short memory

    Regarding the situation in Iran, the one thing I think people need to be reminded is the the United States walked away from The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) under the first Trump administration. I would say the calculatio by the Trump administration was that Iran would do something that would violate the agreement and then the United States would use that as a pretense to strike Iran. The simple fact of the matter is the the United States never had any intention of negotiating in good faith the Iranians because if they did they would have kept the JCPOA intact then negotiate a better deal so then at least if the negotiations failed there would be a treaty to fall back on. The war in Iran was always their plan but what they failed to do was preparing the ground work aka ‘making the case to the Americans’ for the war which is why backlash to the war has been been so swift (and made worse by the deteriorating economic situation domestically).

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s the funniest misunderstanding you’ve ever been part of?
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    In Auckland there is a road know as K Road and I had spent my whole life in Wellington so when I heard ‘K Road’ I thought it was ‘K Road’ as in ‘Kay Road’. Well, lo and behold I later find out that K Road is shortened version of the official name which is Karangahape Road – I felt quite the fool when I found out what the proper name is.

    Fediverse reactions

  • Back to work on Wednesday.

    I had a great weekend and I’m back to work on Wednesday. I’ve got my alarm set to 9:30 am and I’ve jumped into bed early so I’m all well rested. I’ve done some cleaning around the house to get everything in order although I have to admit I was lazy and left the washing on the line that I put out last night and by the time I realised it was too cold meaning that it is probably a bit damp – I’ll take it off the line tomorrow when I get back from morning walk. Tonight I used the remaining two wraps I had left over from Monday night dinner to have some fish wraps – coleslaw, cheese, pickled red onion etc. very fulling and left be completely satisfied.

    I had a look at some clothes online and I finally jumped all in to purchase the two pairs of pants I had been contemplating – they’re from a New Zealand based company that makes them in New Zealand with good reviews. I also have had a look at a few other things online that I’ve ben putting off because I’d sooner get it out of the way rather than having it humming in the background with the constant promise of “i’ll get around to it soon” but never getting around to it. Not too sure what my issue is as I tend to have periods of hyper focus and hyper productivity – when i experience that I try to take advantage of it so then I can get as much things done in that space of time.

    Getting back into walking tomorrow will probably be a bit hard but I think once I get back into the swing of things it’ll be good. I’ll be heading over to Australia on 17 November so I want to be good shape. I’ll be walking around down in Tasmania as well as being able to catch up with my brother, see my nieces and also the fact that I’ll be able to handle the heat a whole lot better if I am slimmer than if I am carrying the extra weight. On a side note, I prefer wearing trousers all year around including during summer so a loose pair will be comfortable during the summer.

  • Another chilly night.

    It’s a chilly night in the Hutt Valley – at the moment as I write this blog post the temperature is all the way down at 2°C and it may drop even lower but I’m lucky that I did the airing my house out during the day so when I came back after shopping I closed all the windows and put the heater back on to warm up the house. I have a feeling that the weather will probably be pretty cold for the next month or two and then as we get into October and November we’ll be moving into Spring and then when Christmas comes we’ll be enjoying summer – knowing my luck I’ll be complaining on my blog about how hot and uncomfortable it is.

    I mentioned how I had an extra duvet from Ikea that I didn’t need so I gave it to mum who has a king single at her place. She loved the flowers on it – it’ll look nice on the bed in the spare room as occasionally my niece stays over at mum’s place when my sister and her partner have got work or need to travel. The current order I made around a week ago will arrive on 1 August – I’ll wash the duvets before using them – I think it’ll really lift my room. I’m still having a look at some carpets for my bedroom along with the spare room and the hallway so that some colour can brighten the place up a bit.

    I’ve been having a look at some pants recently because I have some in my closet but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fit them because my thighs are too thick and the trousers are really made for someone like me. I think what I’ll end up doing is donating them along with the old duvet and sheets to the Salvation Army – I may not find them useful but I’m sure someone who is going through a tough time will find it useful. One thing I am happy about is the return of bagging trousers because I was unlucky enough to have lived through the whole skinny jeans trend and god knows it was a horrible so for someone like me whose body shape isn’t compatible with the whole idea of skinny jeans.

    Daily writing prompt
    What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?
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    The two main applications that come in around even is my web browser and the second being Reddit however if it is application sue over all then it is the music app since when I have my phone I’m mainly listening to music on it (via my headphones). I don’t feel bad about it because even though they’re the main two apps I still read through Reddit on my phone I prefer replying or making posts when I’m on my laptop or desktop because I find the touch screen keyboard prone to mistakes (I’m hoping that maybe iOS 27 will fix that up) I’m not a bg user. Most of the time when I’m bring my phone with me I am using it primarily as a music player.

    Fediverse reactions

  • A good day off.

    I woke up this morning after having a sleep in until 11am and I finally got myself motivated to do my washing and hang it out on the line. Most of the time when I do my washing I tend to leave it to the last minute then suddenly realise “oh, I better do my washing” resulting in a maze of clothes horses in my lounge room and the dehumidifier running to remove any dampness as the clothes dry inside. At the moment I’m airing out the room with all my windows open although I have the bedroom closed because it is pretty cold outside however once that is all aired out I’ll put my new sheets on the bed however hopefully next week the duvets from Ikea for my bed will arrive along with the new duvet inner.

    I had a quiet time at home today although tomorrow I’ll head out for a walk down the road but tonight I headed out after having dinner with mum to pick up some groceries. I have plenty of food in the pantry and the fridge however what I needed was some for the freezer because I always like to have some additional food in the freezer so if I get a bit peckish I can grab something out for dinner. When I was down at Woolworths I noticed that Waitoa had released some chicken nibbles – normally I would have to do a additional visit by stopping off at the local Pak ‘n Save to pick up the buffalo wings from Turks but it is good that I can now get everything at the same store.

  • End of the week.

    End of the week and the start of a new one. I have to admit, I am looking forward to going on a holiday in 4 months time and then over Christmas I’ll take off the week but I’ll return before New Years as I’d prefer keeping some annual leave up my sleeve in case I need to use it later. Next year will mark my 9 years working at the same company and I’ll be looking forward to my 10th anniversary. Hopefully next year things will get better economically but unfortunately as so long as the mad king is running the United States it won’t matter who is running New Zealand because the outcome is very much dictated by forces outside of the government’s control.

    Once again the ‘anti-woke’ whining on Twitter/X is shown up for the idiocy that it is – the right wing reactionary knuckle dragging grifters whining about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has being smacked with a clue by four when the global box office sales came in at USD$257.8 million. Who would have thunk it, their incessant whining about ‘wokeness’ is confronted with the reality that normal people don’t care about their chronically online whinging and instead normal people just to the movies to enjoy a couple of hours worth of escapism from everyday life.

    The American technology world is once again getting all worked up over the latest LLM coming out of China and I personally find the whole situation rather entertaining to watch as the drama unfolds. One thing to keep in mind, as I’ve said in the past, China is decommodifying LLMs because ultimate the value isn’t the model itself but what is build upon it – AI models only have value because of what is built on top. I was watching a video from ‘Eli the Computer Guy’ and the best comparison he gave regarding the AI bubble would be if people got excited over the SMTP protocol. People don’t go out to buy the SMTP protocol, they buy mail server software that makes use of that protocol because the mail server software provides a solution to a real world problem.

    Unfortunately what we’re going through now was entirely predictable – almost 30 years of historically low interest rates has created a situation where wreckless investment is made because there is very little cost associated with taking on more and more debt. When there isn’t cost associated with debt then you end up creating an environment that incentivises decisions that otherwise wouldn’t have been made had there been a cost associated with taking on debt. This is the situation we’re in when it comes to New Zealand – the decision to loosen monetary policy 30 years ago by changing the inflation band from 0-2% to 0-3% was based on this idea that a loser monetary policy will allow lower interest rates so business could borrow and then expand their operations thus creating a virtuous cycle.

    The problem is that loosening the monetary policy is that money takes the path of least resistance which is to property and other forms of asset speculation. What it allowed is a the ability for some to borrow large amount of money and thus creating artificial demand to drive up the cost of housing then combine that with onerous zoning and regulation the net consequence is what we see today with houses costing 15-20 times the median wage. Cheap debt and restrictive supply has gotten us in the mess we see today but unfortunately I don’t see any politician willing to undo some of the bad policies of the past because to do that would require them to admit, either implicitly or explicitly, that they screwed up.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s a movie or book that inspired you to travel?
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    There was a BBC television series called ‘Pole to Pole with Michael Palin’ which opened up my eyes to the world – at the time I was 11 years old and I had visited Australia, United States and Canada but I was too young to remember many of the specifics of the travel. I’m hoping that in the next few years I might do a bit more travel but at the moment the world is a bit chaotic so I’m deciding to stay closer to home – travel around New Zealand because there are plenty of parts of the country I’ve never visited and it would be nice if for no other reason than to say “yes, I’ve been there”.

    Fediverse reactions

  • One more day to go.

    One more day to go and I’m finished for the week. Today was pretty busy but because we’ve been able to keep up with the work over the past few days. Finished tonight at 10pm and I walked down to the service station to pick up a couple of sandwiches for a snack. There is going to be a McDonalds opening within walking distance but to be honest I’d sooner have a decent sandwich because I know after eating it I won’t feel horrible afterwards – I just find that greasy and oily foods don’t sit right with me so I’d sooner have a sandwich instead.

    Chrome 151 looks like it’ll be released in the next couple of weeks and it includes quite a few platform improvements (link). There has been much talk about software companies like Google and Microsoft replacing parts of their code base with code written in Rust and with Chrome 151 Google is intrpducing ‘XML parsing in Rust for non XSLT scenarios’ and based on the notes it appears that the long term product is to eventually have parser written in Rust to handle XSLT some time in the future. I’m assuming that what Google is doing is similar to what Microsoft has done which is to analyse their code base and deciding the components that will gain the most from being moved to Rust and in the case of Microsoft they started off by rewriting GDI regions using Rust but I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up seeing further work being done in the future.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s a promise you made to yourself that you’ve actually kept?
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    That when I get older I wouldn’t become conservative, close minded and only focused on things that that directly impact me. All too often I see people that as they get older they’re either concerned only with what impacts them or become bitter and twisted because they’re unable to accept the fact that the world is changing and that maybe they should try to understand the world rather than getting angry about it.

    Fediverse reactions

  • The house is starting to come together.

    The duvet cover that I washed was dry by night time tonight so I put it all together with the duvet and made the bed in the spare room:

    The duvet adds some colour to the room which goes well with the pillows and cushions that I’ve put behind the pillows. I’m currently having a look at getting an art print off All Posters however they no longer deliver to New Zealand so I’ll need to see whether the dimensions of the tube the poster comes in will be ok for YouShop to repost it to New Zealand. The print I am looking at is a Henri Rousseau “Surprised!” given that I can get it in a size similar to the Rene Magritte print that I have in my lounge room on the way.

    Google has pushed out another update for Chrome which upped the version from 150.0.7871.125 to 150.0.7871.129 – I haven’t noticed any difference but over the last two releases there have been 22 security bugs that have been fixed. I’ve also given the beta version of AdGuard a try but it still lags behind uBlock Origin Lite when it comes to properly blocking ads, annoyances and deceptive popups. On Safari however uBlock Origin lite still lags behind the experience that is provided on Chrome and I think that has partly to do with the fact that Chrome provides functionality that isn’t universally adopted by all browsers.

    Tonight I watched Silo Season 3, Episode 3, A Dark Web – it was a good episode although it did finish the episode on a cliffhanger. I do like how there are flashes abck to the past and I think that as the season developers that we’ll see a greater insight into the rules, protocols and the reasoning behind the design of the silos. Although it would be nice if the whole season was dumped in one go so then it would be possible to binge watch, I like the idea of the episodes being released each week so there is the excitement of waiting for the next release.

    Daily writing prompt
    What is the best purchase you have ever made?
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    The recent purchase of the two Baccarat Le Connoisseur Round French Ovens (a big one and a small one) which replaces my mess of pots and pans. The great thing with the cast iron Baccarat Le Connoisseur Round French Ovens is how consistent it conducts the heat where as the pots I had before would have hot spots, things could easily stick to the pot even on the lowest temperatures. For me when I cook bolognese I prefer to cook it low and slow – cook the onions and mushrooms in garlic and chilli butter, par-cook the meat and then add the bolognese sauce (wash the jar out with water), canned cherry tomatoes and some extra tomato paste. When you look at it you’ll wonder whether you’ve put too much liquid but this is an example of ‘trust the process’ because when you cook it low and slow the water will slowly evaporate, the meat will take on the taste of the ingredients so then by the time it is ready the bolognese will be thick and rich.

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  • Productive day, cold evening.

    It was a busy day today but productive – it is good when you have had a busy day but at the end of it you can look back and see it was productive rather mindless monotony. I had dinner tonight – homemade tacos with plenty of salad and I’ve been watching the final episode of Fallout of season 2. While watching I checked to see what the weather is like and at the moment where I am the temperature outside is 4°C however when I went out there around 1/2 hour ago it felt a lot colder than that which is probably due to the fact that where I live is in a valley.

    The productive day isn’t just limited to work but also includes finally cleaning out the shed of all the old rubbish – a fibreboard bookshelf I broke down and threw out with the recent rubbish pick up, the rusty mental trolly mum picked up tonight and she’ll throw it on her trailer so I can be taken to the dump. Then there was the rubbish in the white white container with wheels and I threw that out then put all the tins of pant in white container with wheels which has finally got the shed organised. I’ve got one more thing to do which is to sort out the shed door so then I can close it up. I think maybe long term I’ll need to buy a better quality one because then I can use it for additional storage but if I do it’ll at the point i have enough money where I can get one with a proper floor and is weatherproof.

    The order from Ikea arrived today and I’ve washed the queen sized duvet cover and once that has dried I’ll put the duvet inside it and then setup my spare bed. The second duvet cover is a king single and I’ll wash that but I may end up giving that to mum since she has a king single at her home where my niece stays when my sister or her partner is having to travel and mum baby sits. The second delivery is due at the beginning of August and when I receive it I’ll give those duvet covers a wash as well then fold them up and put them away. I guess it is a bit of a habit of mine that I wash things before using them – shirts, jumpers, sheets, duvet covers etc. they all get washed.

    Daily writing prompt
    If you could erase one trend from history, what would it be?
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    The one trend I could erase from history would be online influencers. When I got onto the internet there wasn’t the influencer culture like we see today. Were there people who uploaded videos to YouTube so they could share a hobby, a point of view or a tutorial on how to do something? sure but there wasn’t that influencer culture that leads to the development a parasocial relationship between the influencer and their audience. Influencer culture has created a culture online of incinerity and inauthenticity as content creators turne dinto influencers who are more interested in riding the algorithm rather than creating content because it is a genuine interest of theirs.

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