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

  • One more day to go.

    Finished work tonight and then went for a 11.6km walk – having been lazy for the last couple of days it was good to get back into some exercise, enjoying fresh air and do a bit of looking around to see if anything had changed in the couple of empty plots of land that are currently being readied for houses to be built. For dinner tonight I had Naked kitchen soup Mexican black bean chilli with some warm ciabatta rolls that I heated up in the oven. it was a nice dinner and plenty of flavour although I did sprinkle some chilli flakes to give it an extra kick.

    The United States and Israel have conducted strikes against Iran with the goal of regime change (something that Republicans have been talking about since the first George W Bush presidency) – get ready for the chorus of ‘but this isn’t what I voted for’ from the Trump supporters who convinced themselves that Trump was the peace president even though in his first term he ripped up the ‘Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’ which made it clear Trump and the Republican Party weren’t interested in peace. It is amazing how Trump supporters have convinced themselves that chanting ‘this isn’t what I voted for’ some how is a form of general absolution where they’re absolved from the responsibility that comes as a consequence of their voting decision.

    I shouldn’t have to say this but given how the internet is inhabited by many, many special individuals, I am no supporter of the current Iranian regime. If the current Iranian regime disappeared tomorrow an replaced with a secular democratic liberal democracy then the world would be a better place for all concerned. With that being said, I don’t support countries conducting regime change, if there is going to be a change it should be done by the Iranian people and what ever comes after the current regime is toppled should be left up to the Iranian people to decide not for the country to become vassal state for western interests.

  • Two more days to go.

    I had an enjoyable dinner tonight – a nice balance of fresh vegetables and meat made the meal satisfying but not to the point of feeling too full. It is the one thing that I do these days when I have a dinner delivered is making sure that the meal is balanced rather than refined carbs as the main with refined carbs on the side then a few more refined carbs for good measure with little in the way of dietary fibre or lean protein. I also got some extra beans and corn for some extra fibre because that is something that I’ve been lacking in my diet – it is all good to focus on protein but fibre is also good at ensuring that when carbs are eaten that the energy is released slowly in a sustainable way rather than a rapid release followed by a energy crash.

    Chrome 146 is going to be released hopefully next week (the early release was released this week with the public release being a week after) so when that happens I’m tempted to get it a try. I’m still waiting for Apple to fix a bug related to NZ Post/YouShop website where on Firefox and Chrome it renders correctly but on Safari the page is around 3/4 of the way down the page so you have to scroll down before you get to see it. I reported the issue over a year ago and it still hasn’t been fixed. If it works on both Firefox and Chrome then it is a clear indication that you need to do something about it rather than ignoring it and hoping that it’ll eventually disappear.

    Daily writing prompt
    Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
    View all responses

    Moving out of home and saying goodbye to a carefree lifestyle where I didn’t have to plan for anything other than earning enough money to pay for a train into university and some spending money to pay for any hobbies. Once I moved out of home then I had to come to terms that the freedom from responsibility disappeared and how I had to take on responsibility of paying rent, electricity, budgeting when it came to groceries etc. After making that big change almost 20 years ago I look back at home much progress I have made and have matured although I have to admit I do occasionally make some foolish choices I have come a long way since I moved out.

  • Work went as well as to be expected.

    A rather uneventful day so far – I love working from home, being able to have a cup of coffee within arms reach or being able to sit in front of television when having dinner/lunch. I was reading through the Chrome platform status for the next version of Chrome (link) and there is some interesting things being added behind the preview flag. The interesting part is the Web MCP and how that’ll fit into things like voice assistance being able to traverse the internet and buy things that people request. The other feature is WebNN to allow models to run locally on the local NPU rather than having it sitting in the cloud. I could imagine that is something that Microsoft and Google wish to do which will push off non-premium models to end users that can be run locally and the premium users can take advantage of the larger models running in the cloud.

    Safari Technology Preview 238 has been released (link) and I’m a bit disappointed that I haven’t seen any progress made in the area of Web Extensions. I hope that the reason for the lack of progress when it comes to Web Extensions is due to the developers wanting to get a Web Platform Test tool setup so that bugs and compatibility can be routinely checked against rather than implementing something and then wondering whether it is compatible with what else is out there.

    Anyway, I ordered dinner tonight because it is Friday so why the hell not, from the local Mexican outlet that is fairly good value and their food is always top notch. At the moment I’m waiting for it to be delivered but once arrived I’ll have that while watching two episodes of Paradise then once that is done I’ll finish off where I left off regarding Fallout.

  • Get ready for a whinge and a whine.

    Before I start, I’ll give an update on how things are going. Work was great today, went into the office, the weather was nice and there was a nice vibe to the office although I have to admit I’ve been a bit lazy recently so I need to get myself back into working a bit harder than I have. I was able to catch the train home tonight and I then went for a small walk around the block so I could get some fresh air which I am happy about given that at the moment it sounds like there is some drizzle. I had a check of the Metservice and it is highly likely there will be some rain overnight but how much I guess I’ll need to find out.

    I was using my Surface Laptop today and I updated all the software – lots of updates have been released along with a preview of next month’s patch Tuesday update. I have Chrome installed on it along with uBlock Origin Lite. From what I have read it appears that the next version of Windows 11 will be build off 26300 and the 28000 series which forms the basis of 26H1 will become the basis of the update in 27H2 which makes me wonder whether we’ll be seeing a lot more under the hood changes which will bring the aged ISA changes that both AMD and Intel agreed to. I guess we’ll soon find out when 26H2 is released but it appears based on those rumours that Microsoft is addressing many of the long held complaints people have of Windows – maybe the whole AI industry will crash and things will finally get back to normal.

    Samsung released the Galaxy S26 and the usual suspects in the online tech community have their incessant whinging and whining about how they wanted a revolutionary change but instead got an evolutionary spec bump. I really do have to wonder whether some of these people who upload videos are doing so simply to create rage bait to ride the algorithm or whether they’re that genuinely stupid. We’re at a point in the smart phone cycle that it is a mature technology and that the sort of ground breaking, earth shaking, bong shaking and bone shattering changes are in the past with the focus being refinement – taking what’s works and refine, making an incremental improvement and making the integration of software and hardware a whole lot better.

    The release of the S26 will come with Android 16 with One UI 8.5 and it’ll be interesting to see what happens with Android 17 in terms of the release date and whether that’ll resulting in One UI jumping to version 9. Even the software version bump should be a clear indication that the massive changes are in the past – some AI enhancements but most of the focus is about improving the over all experience. Reminds me very much of what Apple is doing now and with the version 27 of their platforms later this year – refinement, refinement and more refinement.

  • Back at work.

    First day back at work, had a one on one to track how things are progressing – I’d sooner get told amount something that needs improving rather than never getting the opportunity to fix something. The day wasn’t too busy so during the slow periods I focused on getting some house keeping out of the way that needed catching up on from Monday and Tuesday which tend to have a skeleton crew on since they’re the quietest days of the week. I caught the train into work but I got the bus replacement back – I got off at a couple of stops before my normal stop so then I can squeeze in at lease 3km worth of walking which isn’t much but it is better nothing.

    One of the interesting things that has been reported on iOS 26.4 (I’m sure something similar has occurred on the other platforms) is the improvement in multithreading performance along with a modest improvement in single threaded performance. It appears that there has been some under the hood improvements recently along with dealing with the feedback around the Liquid Glass – although Apple doesn’t publicly acknowledge when it’s user base is unhappy it does eventually address issues even if they do release those improvements without much fanfare. There are rumours of maybe a 26.3.1 release that is around the corner but then again there have been rumours of that ever since 26.3 release so I guess I’ll believe when I see it.

  • Back to work on Wednesday.

    Well, that was a weekend over pretty quickly – I wish that the weekend dragged on as long as the week day but alas here I am getting ready for work on Wednesday. I helped mum cleaning the drive way outside – unfortunately it hadn’t been done in a while so it was a matter of hosing it down and then using the yard broom to scrub the drive way. After giving the drive way a good scrubbing I then hosed it down and found there was a lot of loose dirt that come off along with the culmination of dirt, dead plant material etc. Once that was all cleaned down I went back to mum’s for dinner and I provided a dessert, lemon icing cake that I picked up on Monday, then after all that I was dropped off home. Mum is off on a holiday with her camper van for the next 6 weeks – it is good to keep physically and mentally active as you get older because god knows it is easy to fall into a sedentary lifestyle only to then find that your health goes down hill shortly after.

    I’ve started watching season 2 of Paradise where as season 1 was filmed in the bunker with flash backs giving glimpses as to how it came into being, the focus on season 2’s first episode is another flash back to when the catastrophic event occurred. I think what we’ll probably see is maybe more time in season 2 being spent on the events leading up to the catastrophic event – something that I noticed other tv series tend to go where the story is jumped straight into it and then in season 2 there is a focus on how the world got to that point. The first three episodes have been released but tonight I’ll watch one episode and pace myself out for the other two episodes – savour the story line because this is one of the few interesting tv series that’ll be available until Silo drops along with Severance which are at least a year away.

    I spent some time today going through my t-shirt drawer and I have found some of the clothes I didn’t fit I can now fit – I now able to fit into a Mr Vintage t-shirt I bought many years ago which now can fit me. It really is serving a good incentive to keep on tracking when you see the progress in a practical way such as clothes fitting better. Having a good routine has helped particularly going into the office each day gets me out of the house, improves my mental health by meeting people, a change of scenery etc. On Wednesday I’ll be in the office but there is a train replacement when I come home – it is a bit annoying but the benefit is that the train replacement is free so it ends up saving a bit of money, I think the idea is that the local city council understands the inconvenience of having to use a train replacement so I guess by making it free it makes up for that inconvenience.

    Regarding the release of version 26.4, there is much chatter online regarding whether Gemini will be integrated in 26.4 or whether it’ll be pushed off until 26.5. One thing to keep in mind is that Apple has only said that it’ll be released in 2026 so there is a possibility that we may not see it until the version 27 is released. Personally for me I’ve never used voice control and what Apple Intelligence services I do use without consciously thinking about it I haven’t had any issues but then again my computing needs are pretty basic.

  • Tuesday, a day to relax.

    I woke up this morning to a chime that my package was going to be delivered today and it was delivered in the afternoon. I love the colour of the hoodie and the t-shirt. The t-shirt has kind of a orange-brown kind of colour which goes well with the print – a bit of a 1970s like vibe to the style and the icing on the cake being that the t-shirt is 100% cotton and the fabric isn’t thin like a lot of t-shirts are these days. The hoodie has a nice green colour, the fabric is great (it is a blend but majority cotton) and the fit is great as well. I’ve washed them both and they’re now hung up on the clothes drying rack and hopefully they’ll be all dried so I can wear them tomorrow when I go into the office.

    In terms of software update, uBlock Origin Lite 2026.222.1657 was released today – no major changes other than the usual filter refresh and I haven’t noticed any regressions. I’ve checked out a few websites and they’re all running smoothly and blocking all the ads required. It would be nice if uBlock Origin Lite could synchronise the settings such as ‘allowed websites’ to iCloud but I guess if you’re aiming your extension at multiple browsers that it would add extra overhead. As for what I do, I copy and paste the ‘allowed websites’ to ‘Notes’ and then copy and paste it from there to the settings on each of the devices I have it installed on.

    Things are progressing well with 26.4 and it appears that as reported by other media outlets they are working on addressing the complaints regarding Liquid Glass specifically when it comes to legibility of text (link). I wouldn’t expect major changes to the UI any time soon because such major changes would be disruptive and potentially undermine the stability of the system although Mark Gurman has reported that bigger UI changes will appear in 27 along with Apple Intelligence being built upon the latest Gemini model. I wouldn’t be surprised if, when 27 is released, it is based on a Gemini model that is currently being developed with Google using Apple as a show piece for their latest model.

  • A productive Monday.

    Monday was a productive day, I went for brunch and then helped mum clean up the rental property. My sister and partner had come over to do some deep cleaning and repairs at the flat and I came over to clean the outside of the house down, trim back the vine that had grown all over the fence and then cleaning the inside of the windows down. It took a while to get it all done because the inside of the window were pretty horrendous and it looks like they had sellotaped something onto the windows thus leaving a stick residue. On a good side I did eventually get it cleaned and I guess I had the luck that it wasn’t as heavy going as what my sister and her partner had to do. On Tuesday I’ll be heading in there again to clean down the driveway.

  • A good night sleep.

    I had a good night sleep last night, woke up, freshen myself up and then walked down to my local cafe for eggs bene with a side of wilted spinach and mushrooms. The walk to the bakery is around 2km so a total of 4km which is a good bit of walking during the day – I’ll go for a walk tonight after 8pm when the weather is a bit cooler but other than that I am feeling good.

    I checked the tracking of the parcel from the United States and it has arrived in Auckland so there is a good chance it’ll probably come down on the overnight truck to Wellington and delivery on Tuesday. I’ll wash them before I wear them – I always like to clean them before wearing so that if there is going to be any dye that’ll run that it’ll get washed out in the first wash. The black Impulse hoodie that arrived fits perfectly so if the other two articles of clothing are anything like that then I’m all good.

    The big question is whether I need to get a tallboy for my extra pieces of clothing that I’ve been hanging up in the closet but I’ve been slowly running out of space. It isn’t really a matter of purchasing too many items of clothing but more the fact that clothes I had put away in clothes chest because I couldn’t fit them I can now fit them so I want to take them out and start wearing them again.

  • Another week is over.

    Another week is over and I’m feeling good going into a new week. Mum has asked me to help out cleaning out the rental property after the tenant left a complete mess but I guess that’ll keep me out of trouble for the day. The one thing I am going to make sure of is that when I am doing yard work that I’ll wear sunscreen because I made a huge mistake last time I did some work outside by not wearing it. Something to remember about the sun in New Zealand – you can easily get burnt on an overcast day and I was really burnt on my back resulting in blisters, peeling skin etc. it was not enjoyable dealing with a sore back.

    It is interesting to see how the players in the AI space are slowly walking back their robust commitments they made publicly only to then spend an extraordinary amount of time parsing what they said when asked follow up questions by the media. As I’ve said in the past, this round of AI hype is the modern day equivalent of radium water – a lot of pseudo science around radium but eventually an actual useful use of radium is eventually found. Apple is siding with Gemini along with Salesforce any many others, Microsoft working on their own specialised models with some of the players probably gearing themselves up not to go public but to be eventually bought out by a larger company.

    For those wondering, I’ve still got my Surface Laptop ARM based laptop – keeping it up to date so that I can keep abreast of the latest Windows 11 developments. As I’ve said in the past, I’m pragmatic about the platform I use because at the end of the day it is amount using the right tool for the job. I think the interesting part will be when Nova Lake is released and when Windows 11 will support the new architectural changes that both AMD and Intel agreed to. As Jim Keller pointed out, the ISA itself plays a very small role when it comes to energy efficiency so it is possible that we may see Intel and AMD close that gap between themselves and Apple’s ARM CPUs to the point that the gap is so small that it becomes a none issue for 99% of laptop purchasers.

    On my Windows laptop I have Chrome for ARM64 installed and it is buttery smooth however I did try the latest version of AdGuard and it keeps hanging when it is being applied to websites. The strange thing is that when I do delete the AdGuard extension and install the uBlock Origin Lite extension then visit the same website the website hanging doesn’t occur. The other thing I noticed, which is quite odd is how Chrome is more responsive than Safari but I wonder how much of that will be addressed in Safari 26.4 when the 26.4 platform update is released.