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

  • Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the online moderates.

    It is always interesting to hear the Democratic establishment whining Democratic Socialists winning in primaries – rather than seeing this as a sign of enthusiasm and engagement by young people they see it as a challenge to their entrenched interests. What is even worse is the chorus online, particularly on BlueSky, by so-called ‘enlightened centrists’ by claiming that ‘moderates get things done’ even though all evidence points to the contrary.

    Why do I say that? because it is the moderates, not the left wing who have undermined both Obama and Biden when they were in power. It was the moderates who took the ACA who undermined the most progressive parts, there was the Connecticut Independent Senator Joe Lieberman (put up by such Democrats as being the embodiment of moderation) who threatened a filibuster if the public option wasn’t taken out – the public option being one of the few ways to keep the private sector in check.

    Then there was the ‘Build Back Better’ bill that was undermined by once again moderate Democrats by getting on television and spreading half baked justifications with the two most prominent people being Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin (although there were reports of another 8 senators who were unwilling to support it – as I like to call them, the treacherous ten) – talking about the enormous cost while leaving out the tax increases at the top end of town to pay for it. Then there were claims that the impact would be inflationary while ignoring that it wasn’t adding new money into the system but taxes being used to pay for it.

    What was the consequence of the undermining these two big pieces of legislation? in the 2010 midterms the Democratic Party lost control of the house because voters felt that after giving the Democratic Party a mandate to make major changes they instead did a wimpy compromised half baked solution rather than the robust response that the moment demanded. Then in 2021 there was a the Build Back Better build that was once again a vision to address systemic problems – a once in a lifetime opportunity to make real changes to impact the lives of ordinary Americans and once again it was undermined by so-called ‘moderates’.

    What was the consequence of these so-called moderates undermining progressive change? low voter turnout and some even throwing their hands up in the air and voting Republican. What was the response by moderates when they lost power? ah yes, the usual chestnut of complaining about ‘woke culture’ and ‘identity politics’ even though it was their obstruction of progressive reforms that could have won back middle and working class voters who had abandoned the Democratic Party for Trump because they felt like they had nothing to lose.

    The greatest threats to the Democratic Party don’t come from the Democratic Socialists but instead the wishy-washy moderates who, when the moment calls for bold solutions they instead find refuge in mediocre half baked solutions that have minimal impact in the lives who are really doing it tough. Democrats need to learn that when you have a majority then you use it, you act with a unified voice and you deliver – if that means getting rid of the filibuster then do it. The right wing aren’t scared of wielding power when they have it so neither should the left be scared of their own shadow when it comes to having the power in their hands to make transformational change.

    Daily writing prompt
    What do you do to improve your sleep?
    View all responses

    I avoid caffeine 3-4 hours before I go to bed because I find that if I have coffee too close to bed time results in me being able to get to sleep. I also like to go for at least an 8-10 km walk before having a shower then heading to bed – some people find it difficult to get to sleep after a work out but for me I fall asleep a a lot easier when I’m tired resulting in me being able to fall asleep quicker. Probably the last but most important one, don’t use your phone or computer 30 minutes to 1 hour before going to bed – even if you just lay there listening to a podcast or the radio, just allow your brain to relax and unwind by not having constant stimulus.

    Fediverse reactions

  • Getting back into the swing of things.

    Today was a rather uneventful day however I have finally got back into going for a walk – went for a 14km walk after work. I was making such good progress however when I went for my holiday and then there was a week and a half worth of rain then the result was met falling out of a routine. I’m going to go for a walk after work each night for the rest of the week then next week I’ll gradually transition back to going for a walk before work in the morning so then I get my daily exercise out of the way rather than leaving it to the end of the day when I’m less inclined to do it.

    A strange thing to do has been the Chrome Releases page (link) not loading – I’ve checked on my fixed line internet connection (fibre) and it only partially loads and either it eventually loads after a long time or Chrome asks me whether I want to keep waiting. If I try loading the website on Safari it doesn’t load then when I tried loading it on my phone but using mobile data but the same time occurred too. I’m unsure what is happening but apparently others are experiencing the same issue regardless of the browser or the ISP they’re on. The strange thing is that other Google websites load perfectly fine – I hope that Google get their act together and fix it.

    Regarding the Chrome update that was released, if you haven’t update then I advise you do given that there are 430 security vulnerabilities were found and fixed. A lot of the security vulnerabilities were found by Google themselves so it would be interesting to see to what degree is AI helping them when compared to the other tools that they use to pick up these security vulnerabilities. Probably the one good thing about Chrome is the fact that features such as AV1 playback aren’t disabled based your hardware – Apple seems to have this obsession of “if we don’t provide hardware support for it on your computer that we won’t support it at all in your browser even though your computer could easily decode it without hardware acceleration”.

  • There is a price to convenience.

    I was watching a video regarding the rise in subscription based software and the bigger theory of everything becoming a subscription. I remember when the first subscription software appeared in New Zealand over 25 years ago, I saw it being sold in Dick Smith back when it was in business as a physical store – you paid for a one year subscription and on the piece of cardboard you received there was a serial number that you would enter in when launching for the first time and you’d be good for a year. The way it was marketed was that it was cheaper to pay per year (assuming you upgraded every time a new version was released) rather than having to pay for a copy of office upfront (keeping in mind that Microsoft also had ‘Microsoft Select’ which allowed employees to install Office on their own computer for a nominal amount (normally just the price of the CD or DVD)).

    When I saw it the first time I thought ‘no one is going to buy that’ but what it did allow was for Microsoft to get a vibe check on what end users were willing to pay – test something on a small scale, get feedback and then make any changes as necessary. It would be interesting to see how the small scale experiment informed their future product roadmap. I also remember when Apple launched the iTunes Music Store and how you could purchase individual tracks for a couple of NZ dollars or a buy a whole album then download it so you could have it instantly with the icing on the cake being when they started to sell DRM free music which allowed you to backup your music collection you bought online.

    Then what we started seeing (as broadband became more widely available) was the rise of Netflix and Spotify with Netflix more of a competitor to pay television but Spotify promoted the idea of paying an amount each mouth and have unlimited music collection available at your finger tips – why pay NZ$20-30 per CD when you can have it all on your device of choice. Such an offer is tempting when you’re thinking that you’re paying around half the price of a CD per month and having a massive library to select from. It is interesting though how there has been a rebound in sales for physical media – with money being tight I think people are realising the benefit of having physical media which avoids having an ongoing amount being taken out each month. Moving over to physical media puts you in the drivers seat on terms of your monthly bills. When you have left over money you buy a CD, when you don’t have left over money then you’re happy knowing you haven’t got money going out of your account regardless of how often you use that service.

    Coming back to the original reason why I wrote this blog post, when someone sells you convenience then more often than not there are strings attached – on going to bills that need to be paid, one more additional bill because you’d prefer not having to do it yourself so instead you outsource that to someone else to take care of. This is what the whole Windows model is based around these days – get the operating system for free and Microsoft makes the money up on selling cloud services or taking a cut when software companies sell their software through the Windows store. This is the reason why they make you create an online account – it is their way to get you into their ecosystem and then eventually you become dependent on it because now your whole life is now dependent on the services you pay Microsoft for.

    This is part of the reason why alternatives to Windows struggle to gain ground because it demands that the end user put in some minimum effort in terms of learning how to use the system which is why the established players bet on most people unwilling to put in the bare minimum in favour of paying a subscription so then they don’t have to deal with it all. This is part of the reason why AI is being pushed so hard because the AI companies hope that once they get you hooked that you’ll keep paying through the nose and thanks to the cognitive decline it causes (link) I guess like a drug addict you’ll keep paying for that AI fix.

    Now, with that being said, I’m not saying that you should pull up sticks and build your own server, host your own email server etc. but I think it is important to recognise the hidden cost when you offload responsibility onto someone else. In some cases it makes a whole lot of sense – could I setup a NextCloud server, organise a static IP address and run a server myself? sure but am I interested in dealing with the ongoing maintenance associated with keeping my server secure? probably not. The question that one should ask is whether buying convenience is worth the price of dependency – paying someone to take care of what is sitting in the cloud? sure but does it make sense to keep renting the same music over and over again when your music collection has only increased by maybe a couple of CDs every year.

  • Back to work on Wednesday.

    I had a great day today which started by getting up at around 11am, washed some clothes and hung them up on the clothes rack to dry inside, I then cleaned the bathroom and the logged into my computer to see if there were any updates. Apple had released a 26.5.2 update which fixes some pretty serious security vulnerabilities (link) with most of the fixes relating to fixing vulnerabilities in WebKit along the kernel too.

    I looked online to find out why my Ikea order is taking so long and it appears that one of the duvet covers I ordered has run out so they’re having to order in more stock. Oh well, there isn’t any rush but it would have been nice to know when I placed the bet by making sure that the stock level on the website is being updated in real time to avoid the situation of buying something only to find that there are going to be delays.

    Over the next few days there will be the release of Safari Technology Preview 247 along with an update to Chrome which will push up to 150. There is also patch Tuesday on 14 July with reports that it’ll be a big bug and feature update (link) so that will be interesting when it is enabled on my work computer.

    Daily writing prompt
    What do you love now, that you hated when you were younger?
    View all responses

    I’ve got a few things that I love now but I hated when I was younger. When I was young I hated the idea of getting practical gifts such as socks or underwear but now that I am older when someone gives me them for Christmas or my birthday it really does make me a whole lot happier than something that doesn’t serve a practical purpose. I think to a lesser extent these days I am less excited about going down the road to the shops than I was when I was young because I guess when I was young there was the sense of adventure associated with getting out of the house. Now that I am older I’d sooner not have to go down the road and deal with the chaos, the noise, the constant pressure which is why I tend to prefer shopping late at night where I can take my time rather than feeling of being hurried.

    Fediverse reactions

  • Thoughts on compulsory KiwiSaver.

    There has been plenty of discussion regarding National introducing compulsory KiwiSaver as part of the larger discourse around the future of government funded superannuation – changes to the retirement age, whether there should be an element of means testing or any other ways to get the cost of superannuation under control. What has entered the narrative is the argument that compulsory KiwiSaver is going to lead to government funded superannuation will be phased out in favour of KIwiSaver.

    What do I think of the claim? I don’t think it’ll happen because it would result in them becoming unelectable the moment any change like that takes place not to mention if there are going to be changes then it’ll require a general consensus by most if not all the major parties to ensure that you don’t have wild swings in policy. What do I think will happen? if Working For Families (WFF) and the Independent Earners Tax Credit (IETC) are anything to go by then what you could see is a change in the way the superannuation payment is calculated based on such as a percentage of the minimum wage working full time or some other method.

    The change in how they calculate it could include maybe basing it on the minimum wage or change the inflation adjusting calculation such as in the United States there is the idea of ‘chained CPI’ which is an inflation measure produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that accounts for consumer substitution. The end consequence of moving to such a system would still result in the superannuation going up but it would be below the traditional CPI amount so that, for example, if you had someone being paid $400 a week and based on a standard CPI then in 5 years the amount the they would be getting paid is $500 but using chained CPI the amount maybe only $450 so if there are a million people receiving superannuation then that would translate to $2.5billion being saved by the fifth year.

    Why is that my prediction? because that is how governments have traditional raised taxes without actually raising taxes or decrease spending without making it appear as though they’re cutting spending. You raise taxes without actually raising tax rates by not changing the tax brackets so as nominal income goes up the brackets don’t charge so your effective tax rate is higher even though in real terms (inflated adjusted) you’re pretty earning the same amount you were earning before the pay rise. The other way is decreasing spending by not carrying out spending cuts but by making sure that your spending still goes up so that the nominal spending receives the media headlines (the usual ‘record spending on healthcare’) but the reality is that the spending increase is below inflation so in real terms there has actually been a cut up in spending.

    Could there potentially be a future where it is means tested? if they do bring it in then it’ll have to be high enough not to capture large numbers of New Zealanders who ‘did the right thing’ only to get punished. This is the problem with means testing policies because it creates a system where you have those in the middle who are ‘too rich to be poor, too poor to be rich’ so they’re stuck in this half way house. The same sort of situation we have in New Zealand when it comes to the student allowance – reminds me of a friend from high school where both parents worked, he had a brother and a sister, middle class but apparently the family was too rich to receive the student allowance so the daughter missed out on qualifying for it (keeping in mind back then the student loans accrued interest while studying as well as after studying).

    I think the big mistake is failing to address the economic performance of New Zealand because the focus on the spending is like trying to cut your way to prosperity. The problem is that successive governments have avoided trying to make the necessary changes in taxes and capital expenditure to rebalance the economy away from unproductive property speculation and the false economy of convincing people that inflated house prices equal wealth. The problem is that any sort of transition from a property centric economy is going to result in some winners and some losers but I guess we’ll be a bit like the Americans – will do everything then eventually as a last resort doing what should have been done right from the outset.

  • A productive first day of the weekend.

    I finally got down to Kmart today to pickup the microwave shelf that I saw online. I couldn’t find it on the shelf but lucky enough the guy at the local Kmart was able to locate it because it wasn’t on the shelf where it should be. I got home, assembled it and then organised it all:

    It looks a whole lot less chaotic now that I’ve got it all organised which leaves more space for my kettle and toaster. While was was down there I picked up some food from Woolworths for dinner with mum on Tuesday – mum is bringing over the home made pumpkin soup and I’ve got the fresh bread bought today for tomorrow where I’ll add some garlic butter.

    The artificial plant is on its way along with the woven planter that it’ll sit onside of – it’ll add some greenery to the space without me having to worry about taking care of it. The Ikea order is probably going to arrive in the next couple of weeks but I’m unsure whether the deliver date is the latest that it’ll arrive or whether it’ll arrive on that day. I’ve put a note on the order itself to leave the delivery on my back door so worse case scenario if I am working during the day I don’t end up missing the deliver then having to pick it up from the courier post depot.

    I’ve finally folded up the fitted sheets and they’re in the linen closet along with the new sheets for the king single in the office. Once the Ikea deliver arrives I’m going to wash all the duvets separately along with airing out the new duvet inner that I bought. Although I have a queens sized bed I’d prefer to have a king size duvet on it which makes it all the more cosy especially during winter. The duvet inner is a king size but I opted for a woollen filling because the one I currently have now is also has a woollen filling.

    Just before I go, I’ve noticed some really weird behaviour recently with Microsoft Teams and Safari where I keep getting the following error message:

    And the issue has only just started recently and another thing that occurred recently is when uploading images to WordPress that it’ll just keep saying it is uploading event though the image has already been uploaded. I’m unsure what has happened because I haven’t changed any setting on Safari and I’ve got both WordPress and Microsoft Teams on my allowed websites in uBlock Origin Lite – the issue has only just started appearing within the last week or so. The only other thing I had changed was I installed the Safari Technology Preview 246 but I doubt that would have impacted it given that both websites were working perfectly fine when I had it installed. I have been experiencing bugginess with YouTube with pages not loading when pressing the back button but I’ve come to terms with my disappointment regarding Google and how broken YouTube and YouTube Music is.

    With the rumours regarding a MacBook Pro Ultra, Microsoft announcing the NVIDIA RTX Spark – I’m wondering whether we’re seeing two big players hedging their bets that the future of LLMs won’t be in the cloud but being run locally. I say that because we’re already seeing companies after promoting ‘tokenmaxxing’ are now pumping the breaks. Uber pulling back on AI has given social permission to other b businesses to come out and admit that the promises made by the big LLM providers like OpenAI and Anthropic haven’t materialised. As Ed Zitron has noted in numerous interviews, the numbers for OpenAI are a pigs breakfast and I’d hazard to guess that Anthropic isn’t looking much better either.

    As I keep reminding people about what a Sun Microsystems executive said over 20 years ago – the world runs on GET, good enough technology, which was in reference to the rise of x86-64 challenging traditional RISC based UNIX vendors and Sun Microsystems return to supporting Solaris for x86-64. This reality can be applied to LLMs – does it make sense to pay a premium to an LLM cloud provider or are you better off getting a machine with some good specs and run a local mode which is good enough to do the job without having the on going worry about how many tokens you’re spending? I think long term Google will win because there is a place where LLMs in the cloud makes sense but they also understand that developers will probably prefer not having to constant worry about billing that they cannot forecast based on the work they’re going to do. The big question is, does OpenAI and Anthropic have a plan B or are they ride or die with LLMs in the cloud.

  • The start of a weekend.

    Today was good and I finally made the progress I wanted to finish up detail cleaning my house – all the skirting boards have been wiped down, corners of the ceilings removing any cobwebs, pulled out the furniture and vacuum cleaned behind it all. I was quite surprised at just how but dust and random things I found under the sofa. After all that work the house is looking really nice, it feels like I’ve finally gotten around to doing something I’ve kept kicking the can down the road for ages. I’m not too sure whether it is my age but I’m deciding that rather than putting things off that I should do them when I have the opportunity rather than pushing it onto the next day which turns into the day after next day which then translates into next week then eventfully it turns into some time in the future.

    With all the talk about banning children under 16 from using social media I am reminded of George Carlin when he commented about how politicians hide behind two things – the flag and children. Politicians playing on the sense of helplessness that many parents have but rather than providing parents with the tools they instead sell a false sense of security by saying, “just give us more power and we’ll take care of everything”. I’m always cautious when I hear politicians make claims that they can solve a problem but all you need to do is give them more power and everything will be taken care of.

    As I remind people, power is consolidated through promises of security but power once consolidated is never given up freely. Anyone who has studied history and the rise of dictatorships in the early 20th century made use of emergency powers by claiming the consolidation of power was necessary to protect democracy – “protecting democratic institutions by undermining them”. Need people be reminded by the 1980s ‘Satanic Panic’ followed by claims of subliminal messages in music, claims of violent video games leading to violence not to mentioned the discredited idea of ‘Repressed memory’ – this latest hysteria about social media is in a long list of panics that have been manufactured so don’t fall for the unsubstantiated hysteria.

  • Brrrr it has been a cold day today.

    The rain has stopped but it still is very cold outside but it looks like things will clear up by Tuesday so I’m going to hunker down until the cold weather passes. I worked from home and kept the heater running to keep warm – my power bill this month is probably going to be a bit of a shocker but I’d sooner have a higher power bill than getting sick because I didn’t keep warm.

    After work I finally got the office organised by pulling all the furniture away from the wall and then vacuum behind it, cleaned the skirting boards, dusted and got rid of the cobwebs. I have to admit I’ve been a bit lazy and hadn’t done it in a long time because the only time I really use the room is when I’m working. The ethernet cables I’ve organised so that they’re now pinned to wall just above the skirting board which looks a lot more organised along with rolling up the excess ethernet cable in an orderly way. Once all done I put everything back and the room is looking better organised.

    I got a reply back from Kmart stating that one of the things I ordered isn’t in stock and have been refunded (the microwave shelf) but on a good side there is a wooden version which is available from the local Kmart so what I’ll do is go and pick it up on Monday or Tuesday. I’d like to replace my two monitor setup with a single widescreen monitor – I saw one down the road and I think it would make life a whole lot easier with everything on the same screen plus it would replace my current USBC with one that is built into the monitor. I was going to order it online but then I thought I may as well just go down the road and buy it so then I don’t have go through the whole drama of waiting and then hoping that I don’t miss the courier when they try to drop it off.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2026.625.2148 has been released and the update is now available on the macOS and iOS App Store – it is strange that it was on the iOS store before the macOS store because I would have assumed if it was approved for one that it would automatically be approved for the other. It is interesting to compare uBlock Origin Lite 2026.625.2148 running on Chrome based browsers vs Safari where the same website will have better content blocking on the Chrome based browser vs the same exact website on Safari. I really do wish that as part of their whole ‘Snow Leopard’ release of macOS 27 that would actually fix their extension framework to bring it inline with what Chrome provides to avoid the inconsistent experience one has – it shouldn’t be a situation that the same content blocking extension does a better job of blocking content on one browser over another.

    On more optimistic news, Ubiquiti has released UniFi Network Application 10.5.54 release candidate which includes many new features (link) however there is a feature that depends on a component upgrade that is only present in UniFi OS 5.1.20 or greater. At the moment UniFi OS 5.1.21 is currently sitting in the early access channel however it was released 5 days ago – generally they wait 7 days before graduating it to a release candidate although I’ve seen quite a few people in the comment section reporting issues so it may not graduate and instead we’ll see a 5.1.22 early access build made available in the next couple of days.

  • A wild and rainy day today.

    Woke up after sleeping in a bit and I was surprised at how wild the weather was and Radio NZ was keeping a live story as events unfolded (link). My driveway is has a blocked storm water drain so unfortunately it is flooding a bit but nothing major happened although I haven’t gone for a walk due to the bad weather so I’m unsure whether there are any trees down. I’m going to assume because I didn’t experience any power outages today that all the trees stayed upright as they should.

    For dinner I’m having a late meal of making use of the potatoes I had left over which I sliced up into wedges, tossed in some rice brain oil, coated in cajun seasoning and then cooked in the oven at 180°C for around 35 minutes. They’re the low carb variety so I’d assume they have a lower amount of starch which should make it easier for them to get crispy in the oven. What I think I need to do is make use of my air fryer because I’ve only used it a few times but I think I need to get some more practice because it’ll mean I can cook up this meal in probably 15 minutes rather than having to wait 35 minutes but that being said it does have a limited amount that can be cooked so I guess I’ll need give it a go anyway.

    I’ve had a look on YouTube at different overnight oats recipes and I’m tempted to maybe adding it to my meal rotation because my goal is to boost my fibre intake per day and having overnight oats with chia seeds is a quick way to do that. I’ll probably first maybe get some ingredients and try some recipe out to find out which ones work but the one that does look good is the Tiramisu one I saw on YouTube which looked tasty and wasn’t sweet given the lack of sweetener being added. For me, I’m not a fan of sweet things in the morning for breakfast. As for the current routine I have now, I’ve been mixing a container of Up and Go, 25g of chia seeds and two teaspoons of psyllium husk which has made the chia seed pudding as thick as dairy food or a really thick chocolate moose. I’ve given the coffee flavoured Up and Go a try and it is very tasty – the benefit of the additional fibre has meant that I feel full for longer.

    I’m still in the process of decorating my place and I’ve finally order the microwave shelf:

    Which will free up more space on the counter top and I ordered that along with an artificial plant which will look nice sitting in the corner of the lounge room. The artificial plant is around 180cm high which is around 8cm shorter than I am but where it’ll be placed it will look nice in contrast with the other colours and the vibe I’ve got going in the lounge room. Regarding the bed sheeting I ordered from Farmers, it arrives today but before using it I put it through the wash with the king single being washed first and it is now hanging up in the lounge room on the clothes rack to dry over night while the dehumidifier is running.

    I’m working through a blog entitled ‘The myths we tell ourselves.’ regarding the myths that nations tell themselves about their own history and how it shapes their identity. I’m not too sure who said it (I doubt I was the first to say it) but if you want to understand the psychology of a nation then you need to under their history. Tomorrow I’ll wash the rest of the sheets – I’m doing them two sheets at a time because I only have enough room to dry two sheets inside the house at a time. The order from Ikea will be arriving in around 2 1/2 weeks time – I’m unsure as to why there is such a long lead time, maybe they have to order it in from Australia? oh well, I guess I”ll find out soon enough.

  • A long cold day.

    I’m happy that I worked at home today because the weather has been atrocious where at the time of writing my blog the temperature is 6°C and there is plenty of rain along with wind and warnings by the Metservice. I’m at home with my heater running and I’m thankful that I made the investment in insulation and double glazing resulting in a place that can retain the heat really well during the winter. Tonight for dinner I had chicken and corn soup along with toast and some relish with slices of cheese on top. It was a tasty meal to warm me but before jumping into bed. The weather is till pretty horrible so I’ve decided to have a bit of a sleep in on Friday – I may as well make use of this weather to catch up on some sleep.

    I was having a look through the release notes of macOS 27 Beta 2 (link) and I notice that there is quite a lot of changes that haven’t been give much attention. The first thing that popped out at me was the removal of DVD Playback support – VideoLan does the job nicely but I guess with people moving to digital media that is downloadable that Apple has decided that it is better to remove it and have one less having to be maintained. I’ve had a look at the Web Platform Test website and the Safari Technology Preview is still sitting at 86% but I’d say that with the focus mainly being around fixing implementation but then again I wouldn’t be surprised if things are fairly quiet until the release of version 27 of the platform with maybe 27.x series being where they pick backup in terms of adding functionality into the mainstream release to close that functionality gap as part of Interop 2026.