I’m back to work today but at the moment I’m relaxing in bed watching some news on YouTube and catching up with the latst political news on Radio NZ. The polls are bouncing around a bit but I’m always sceptical of polls particularly polls around popularity because there is a tendency by some to extrapolate “party x is unpopular therefore party y is gaining voters” when it is possible for someone to be unhappy with party x but still vote for them because they’re the least worst option. I’m pretty realistic about the prospects of the government changing because it is incredibly rare to have a one term government but I am hopeful that maybe the election outcome may result in positive change.
Google has released an updated for Chrome which bumped the version number from 156.0.8078.48 to 156.0.8078.74. I also just remembered that I forgot to mention that Apple released the 27.2 update for all their platforms – no regressions yet but then again I have a fairly simple setup. Regarding the next update, 27.3 beta series hasn’t been made available yet so it maybe a week or so till the first beta release makes its way to developers. uBlock Origin Lite 2026.1026.1812 has finally appeared in the Apple App Store after an extended delay – I’m unsure what the logic is for Apple taking so long to approve it.
Today was a good day – cleaning up around the house then went for a walk down the road to pick up a monitor for my work setup. At the moment I had two 24″ screens and they were on two arms that hung off a pole that is held in place with a vice but the problem is that the visual quality was horrible and the two screns were different models so you end up having two different appearances. I went down and purchased a Samsung ViewFinity S65UC 34″ Ultrawide QHD 1000R Curved Business Monitor which has the benefit of having a USB-C connector and three USB-A connections on the back along with an ethernet port. The benefit of it means I can get rid the USB-C hub along with the two monitors in favour of the one screen which can power my laptop, have all my other equipment hooked into the back of the monitor.
While I was down there I bought a laptop stand so it raises it off the desk resulting in better ventilation and avoiding having he laptop sucking up a whole lot of dust in the process. I did some work on the laptop after setting it up and I noticed that it has kept itelf a wholt lot cooler now that there is more space under the vent meaning when it was under a load it could cool itself a lot quicker. It will be interesting to see whether the vent on the bottom of the laptop will remain dust free for a lot longer but the one thing to keep in mind is that I have the laptop lid closed when using – I find having another screen a bit distracting so closing it means I just have the one screen visible.
On the software update front Ubiquit released to the early access channel UniFi Access Point & Wireless Bridge 8.8.13 – quite a few bug fixes along with a few improvements. UniFi Network Application 11.0.97 has been released however it is still waiting for the UniFi OS 6.x to be released. At the moment UniFi OS 6.0.15 for Dream Routers has been released however so far there hasn’t been any feedback of regressions in this release so that maybe a good sign that it may graduate to the release canidate channel then eventually to the main release channel. uBlock Origin Lite 2026.1026.1812 has been released and available on Chrome but I don’t know what on earth is happening with the Apple App Store give that 2026.1021.1354 and 2026.1026.1812 are still not available. Chrome 157 will be released on 3 November US time which translates to 4 November NZ time – the list of changes are pretty modest so hopefully it should resulting in a uneventful but stable release.
It is always interesting how politics always provide plenty of fresh fodder that I can feast on for my blog – just when you think that a politician has ceased saying something silly I am reminded that they have the capacity of saying something even sillier. The most recent one has been about ACT complaining about The Opportunities Party (TOP) blocking first home buyers from using their Kiwisaver. Maybe my expectations are too high but at the very least I would have expected David Seymour to understand how we ended up in the mess of unaffordable housing in New Zealand and the recent slow correction. Here is the press conference the ACT Party leader just gave.
We’re in this situation because of over 30 years of bad policies compounded by further bad policies because politicians engage in populist responses to complex issues then with the responses they make resulting in the situation being made even worse. It reminds me of what an advisor said about Nixon after Nixon said “today I am a Keynesian” – “politicians want to appear to be doing something even if the right thing to do is nothing”.
If we go back 30 years we can chat the ‘beginning of the end’ when the Reserve Bank Act changed the inflation target rate from 0-2% to 0-3% which was based off two flawed arguments. The first argument is that looser monetary policy would result in lower interest rates, businesses able to borrow, expand their business, employ more people and kick start a virtuous cycle – the reality? money takes the path of least resistance which is to speculative assets such as property (any economic benefit from the lower interest rates came as a result of an artificial feeling of being wealthier off the back of inflated asset prices rather than actual wealth being created). The second argument was the theory that economies needed to be a healthy amount of inflation or there was a risk of falling into a Japan style deflationary spiral which would difficult to get out of – the problem with that? it completely ignores the cultural element (economics after all is about studying the psychology of money) where the Japanese will keep saving even when the interest rates got down to 0% – taking an experience in one country and using it as a general rule is a foolish position to take.
Anyway, back to the mistake 30 years ago – loosening up the monetary policy allowed lowered interests which then expanded borrowing but without a corresponding increase in supply of houses due to local zoning rules not changing. When houses started to pick up in price – what was the response? money being invested into more social housing so Housing New Zealand became the primary provider of rental accomodation so that housing could be decommodified? nope, the response was to lower the deposit amount required, then loosen the lending standards then to add more fuel to the fire you could dip into your Kiwisaver and the icing on the cake being a first home owners grant – every policy making the situation worse by having more money chasing higher prices aka the textbook definition of asset inflation. The response by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand? nothing because they don’t count asset inflation as part of their figures directly (they do indirectly through rents but it is an imprecise way of capturing inflation).
Now, there has been an attempt to address the issue particularly around the zoning regulation, unitary planning, a focus on transit oriented developments and allowing great competition in building supplies such as allowing building supplies to be imported overseas that conform to comparable regulations thus not require retesting. That has had an impact on house prices of new builds to some extent but we’re still suffering from the same lack of productivity improvements in the building sector as we’ve seen in other parts of the economy (Australian has seem similar productivity issues). I think part of the solution has to do with the fact that we really need to adopt the sort of mass production techniques with standardised components so you gain economies of scale.
The obstacle faced isn’t technical but rather a large number of New Zealanders who want to feel that their houses is special and unique but the problem is with a house being special and unique is that it comes to additional costs because everything has to be created bespoke for that particular build. You can either have affordable houses based on maybe 6-12 standardised designs or you have expensive houses where each house is unique but more costly to build. I would also argue that standardisation has the benefits of being able to build it, test it, find design defects, fix them and then retest them again – accelerated wear and tear can find a problem before it becomes a problem so then when people eventually have the house built it is based on a thoroughly tested design which should save the owner money in the long run.
Work went well today although I kind of wish that people would be doing something other than ringing up on a Sunday. I don’t know whether it is me but I’ve been banking with my bank for 18-19 years and in the whole time I have banked with them I’ve rung them up a grand total of three times – yes, three times. Call me a old fashioned but I tend not to ring up companies because I’m lonely or I’m incapable of living my life without having a team on constant standby to solve my problems. I sometimes wonder whether people use contact centres as a real life replacement for AI because god help people actually doing something for themselves. Sorry, I had to get that vent out of the way because it is kind of frustrating particularly when I’ve got Salesforce cases piling up that need to be seen to.
Once that day was out of the way I went for my walk tonight – 16.70 km which is three laps (from the top of my road to the end of the road then back is one lap which is around 5.8 km) and after arriving home I had a rest then jumped into the shower. As much as I moan about having to do some exercise each day I also know that afterwards I feel so much better knowing I got it out of the way. As much as people are feeling crappy about the economy in New Zealand I still see houses being built in my area and I do hope it continues because when there is an eventual turn around it’ll hopefully mean that we won’t see the return to crazy house price growth. On a side note of houses, I have to admit my pet peeve of mine is when people refer to their house as a nest egg – no, it isn’t a nest egg, it is a house to live in, it isn’t some magical pinata that you crack open at retirement.
As you’ve probably no doubt heard there is the whole PHP fiasco that has unfolded but what I think is a bigger problem are the number of websites that are running old and unsupported versions. When you write code the process of maintaining is a long term project that goes beyond just fixing up bugs – it also involves refactoring it, moving the code forward as the underlying technology changes. An example of this would be PHP and how over time the technology develops – old ways of doing things make way for new more efficient ways, customer demands change and thus the project has to meet those new demands. As part of that process of refactoring, depreciation and removal of legacy features, and refinement of what exists there is going to be a need to break compatibility at some point.
This is where the problem starts – the underlying technology is moving forward but for far too many organisations there aren’t the resources being allocated to ensuring that the website sitting on top of that technology stack is also moving forward. All too often we see Microsoft push Windows forward and even their own programmers within Microsoft aren’t moving their code forward. A good example of this is the Windows App SDK over on GitHub which shows a lot of promise but I don’t see a long term plan to transition the Windows shell and bundled applications that come standard with Windows over to the new platform. I can understand the need to keep legacy dlls so that third party legacy apps can keep working but it is difficult to make the case for third parties to adopt the Windows App SDK when you’re doing the bare minimum when it comes to adopting it.
I decided not to have a walk tonight, just not in the mood and I think a day or two off from having some exercise is perfectly fine. As the old saying goes, “everything in moderation including moderation” and tonight for dinner I had some tacos from my favorite Mexican outlet. The tacos came with plenty of salad which made the meal filling but not overwhelming and I decided to order some corn chips and guacamole for tomorrow that I’ll finish off with the last two bananas that I’ve allowed getting ripe over the week (I had a couple of bananas today along with a protein bar for my dinner).
UniFi Network Application 10.6.109 has been updated today as part of addressing the the ‘Revoked compromised eMudhra CA certificates.’ that many other software and service vendors are having to deal with. UniFi Network Application 11.0.97 has addressed that issue plus a few other bug fixes but it is still in the release candidate channel as it relies on 6.0.x series being released and in a recent reply it appears that UniFi 6.1.x is already in development because in reply to an question in the early release preview channel one of the Ubiquiti mentions an issue that is going to get addressed in the UniFi 6.1.x release.
I’m heading off to sleep now, there is a post I’m working on regarding how politicians identity a problem and then the policy proposal makes the situation worse because they fail to understand the cause of the problem. There is some extra bits and pieces I want to add to it because I really want to flesh out the ideas before posting – I’m wanting to start making longer form essays along side my usual daily update blog posts.
Had a great sleep last night and I have to admit that resetting back to my old routine of walking after work has really helped the situation a lot vs getting up early in the morning. I guess it was a situation of me trying to impose a routine that may work for other people but really doesn’t vibe when me and how I live my life. I guess it is one of those things where if you do make a change that the change has to fit you as a person rather than going “oh, this what other people do so maybe I should adopt the same routine” – the old story of every person is different and thus should be treated as individuals.
I logged into my computer at work, loaded up Chrome (after getting it fixed) and it asked me to restart only for me to find out that it had rolled back to chrome 152. I’m now back using Microsoft Edge 156 and reported it to the tech team. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the rationale for having central management of software but at the same time if you’re hiring people to work in your organisation without the minimum of technical proficiency then maybe at that point you should review your hiring practices. Having technical proficiency should be an expected skill right up there with the ability to function in an office environment in a respectable way.
I quickly visited Mimestream website and they’ve launched a beta of their app on the iPhone and iPad – it is kind of disappointing that so much resources have been spent on bring it to the platform but I understand it from a business perspective. The reason why I am kind of disappointed is that I would have liked to see Calendar, Contacts, Keep and other Google services supported so that it can be almost like a Google orientated version of Outlook where everything is in one single app and it avoids having it spread over different apps.
On the matter of annoying things, it took Apple three days to approve the update for uBlock Origin Lite (released on 18 October, approved on 21 October) and now it has been three days since the latest release of uBlock Origin Lite and it still hasn’t been approved. I know I’ve voiced my concern regarding Google but it appears that Google has really picked up steam where as Apple has fallen to the wayside. The issue wouldn’t be so bad if MV3 allowed filters to be updated outside of the release schedule but now if you want to update filters the whole extension needs to be bundled and approved instead. Filters need constant updating as new tricks websites use to get around content blockers meaning any delay in getting them approved causes more problems for the end user.
Another busy day working through a mountain of cases not to mention dealing with customers ringing up – some needing genuine help while others can’t seem to function in life without someone continuously holding their hand every step of the way doing the basic of tasks. With all that being said I guess if it weren’t for society’s more ‘interesting’ and ‘unique’ characters, I would probably be out of a job. Reminds me of when people complain about people living beyond their means or the lack of savings but the problem is that our economy depends on people spending even if you or I may consider what they’re spending their money on is frivelous.
On the software update front Ubiquiti has released to the early access channel UniFi OS 6.0.15 for Dream Routers – I’m looking forward to the release. I’m still working my way through the changes introduced in Safari Technology Preview 255 (link) and although there are a few regressions I’m wondering what the big plan is long term. I say that because Apple is making a push to convince users to use Safari and I wonder if part of that is to address many long standing issues that both developers and end users face. When it comes to developers it is dealing with buggy implementations and for end users it is the lack of drive to really properly support MV3 and bring Safari into compatibility with Chrome for web extensions.
On the issue of local AI, it is interesting to read about the rumoured details regarding ARMv10 that is scheduled to be released in 2028-29 and on the x86-64 front there is Intel and AMD working on various extensions that’ll make local AI models run efficiently. I think we may actually get to the point that the whole AI data centre investment is going to start looking a bit foolish when users are faced with either paying for AI in the cloud or just running it on their own machine with the benefit of no on going costs other than the electricity to power the computer.
What I also noticed is how the copilot branding is slowly disappearing from Windows – I noted not too long ago that Microsoft is going to focus less on AI being a brand but rather a technology that improves the user experience. The new search is a good example of making use of a technology and for the average user they don’t care whether or not it uses AI but instead they enjoy the fact that they can type in what they want eg “change to dark mode” and a dialogue will appear in the search result which allows them to make the change from from the search result.
It reminds me of what Eli the Computer Guy said, people buy solutions not technology – no one goes out and buys the IMAP protocol or the SMTP protocol but what they buy is a solution such as Domino, Groupwise, Exchange or they’ll pay a cloud provider such as Google or Microsoft to provide that service. The problem is that far too many Silicon Valley bros are more concerned about the technology than turning the technology into a useful product for the end user.
I’d also say that the AI slop generation is the least interesting – the future should be able robotics and machine learning so that the most dangerous jobs and the jobs that have the greatest toil on the body can be done by robots – mining, agricultural work such as picking fruit etc. What the technology should ultimately allow is that the worse jobs can be automated away in favour of freeing up time for people to engage in creative outlets such as music, writing, philosophy etc. so as a reuslt I really don’t see the purpose of these AI slop machines.
I came back from my walk last night, jumped into the shower then jumped into bed – I really needed a good night sleep and the moment my head hit the pillow I was fast sleep for a solid 9 hours before being woke by my alarm. I checked the news and what has happened overnight – Apple has released Safari Technology Preview 255 (link) and just like the previous build it includes a huge amount of bug fixes, new standards being implemented as well as some attention given to web extensions. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly these changes make their way into the main release although I have to admit I’m focusing on the web extension offscreen implementation which will bring improved compatibility with extensions that target Chromium based browsers.
UniFi Network Application 11.0.94 has been made available on the release candidate channel however it requires UniFi OS 6.x to be installed however there isn’t any mention of what is happening to UniFi OS 6.x series for their variety of hardware. There is currently UniFi OS 6.0.13 currently in the early release channel however it has been over a week and there haven’t been any updated testing releases nor has it graduated to the release candidate channel so I guess we’ll wait and see what is happening.
The WECG meetings minutes have been refreshed with the latest updates on what is happening in the world of web extensions. There is still work being done behind the scenes on a web platform tests like infrastructure so that web extension implementations can be tested against the agreed upon standard so that any deviations from that standard can be fixed up and correctly. Hopefully once we see something like that is implemented then hopefully that should translate to the developers for the various web browsers are able to locate and fix implementation bugs in a timely manner. The interesting part will be around how service workers will be tackled because it appears that some web extension developers are having both a combination of implementation bugs as well as API limitations that need addressing.
Well, that was another busy day – finally finished off all the emails that were sitting in the queue which should make life a whole lot easier for the morning crew that comes in. I went for another 14.5 km walk and at the end of it my leg were sore but my feet were even more sore. Truth be known if I didn’t have sore feet I probably could have walked another 3 km or so without any problems. At the moment the nights are cool where the temperature drops to 12°C – I think I need to start wearing a sweatshirt to keep warm because I found my arms getting a bit cold.
I’m looking forward to the trip over to Australia although there has been some recent changes with the airline which has resulted in coming back later to New Zealand. I’m looking forward to catching up with my brother and the family and then being able to spend some time relaxing down in Tasmania. The one thing I didn’t realise was how far Tasmania is from the mainland because I was under the impression it was as close as going across the Cook Strait but the distance is roughly that of going from Wellington to Lyttelton (Christchurch) which was an overnight trip back when it used to run.
I woke up today just before 11:00 am, opened up the curtains and let the sun light flood into the room. I then opened up my laptop and checked my usual news sources such as RNZ (Radio New Zealand), NPR, PBS, plus some sources on YouTube such as DW, France 24 etc. There are protests and riots in the street, what frustrates me is how little the current governments are doing to firstly empathise with the protesters but also use this as a moment to show “this is the end result of Trump style politics”.
Here is an opportunity for the political establishment to link the higher fuel prices and the broader the cost of living crisis to the policies that Trump champions. What we see today regarding higher fuel prices and the broader the cost of living crisis are the downstream consequences of populist knee jerk reactionary policies that tap into people’s desire for simplistic solutions but actually end up causing even worse problems in the long run. There is a reason why ‘populism’ is a pejorative because rathe than having evidence based policy the policy is derived from a reaction to a genuine problem with a solution that is based on vibes and invocations of ‘it’s just common sense’.
Regarding the whole AI bubble, I saw a comment in the YouTube section of a video where the video went into detail regarding people wanting to get their money out of investment funds. The title of the video alludes to the people demand their money back from these funds as akin to a bank run however this commenter took exception to that analogy:
“Calling redemption caps at Blackstone or Blue Owl an AI bank run is pure click-farming. Private credit gates exist specifically because unlisted loans to data centers and private software shops can’t be liquidated in an afternoon, it’s duration matching 101, not a systemic banking collapse.”
The person who made the video wasn’t creating a one to one analogy but demonstrating that people are losing confidence in these institutions and want to get their money back. It is the same reason why there are bank runs because people lose confidence in the banking system and believe that the money would be safer in their own hands rather than in the bank – this is the same reason for why people want their money back from those large investment funds. Investers are looking at the numbers, the promises that were made in justification of the build out and realising that “the math isn’t mathing”.
In the end investing is all a confidence game of “can you keep the confidence high enough to buy enough time to deliver on your promises” which why there are so many cons out there being pulled with the only ones being caught are the ones that collapse before they could deliver on the promise – the old story of ‘faking it till you make it”.
