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'"

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  • The start of my weekend and holiday.

    Feels so good finishing up for the week knowing I’ve got not only Monday and Tuesday off for the weekend but also Wednesday and Thursday off as well. Today felt as if it dragged on and on as I thought about finally finishing for the week, trying to remind myself that every phone call pushes me a little bit closer to the end of the work day. I’ve jumped into bed but I’m not going to set my alarm – I’ll get up at what ever time and then go for that walk I’ve been talking about and I might even grab some lunch while I’m down there. I’ve checked the Metservice forecast and it is sayign there will be rain but it is currently midnight at the moment and nothing happened – not even a small drizzle yet so maybe the forecast is wrong?

    I opened up Chrome and checked to see whether an update for uBlock Origin Lite had been released and I’m happy to say that uBlock Origin Lite 2026.529.1448 has been released. I’ve been using it on my break and I’ve noticed that the filtering speed has improved and does a great job blocking popups particularly on websites that do dodgy things such as when you click play it opens pu another window, then you click on play and the same thing happens. With uBlock Origin Lite it does a good job blocking that sort of deceptive web design so you shouldn’t face the issue as so long as you keep your extension up to date.

    The UniFi U7 Pro Max firmware update to version 8.6.11 was released – I’ve been running it for almost a week and the experience has been rock solid. The UniFi Access Point (all U7 and E7 models) 8.7.3 has been made available on the early access channel and there is a mixture of feedback but it is one of those situations where you only find out issues once you get a variety of different hardware trying to connect to the access point – what may work for one operating system and one type of hardware may not work for a different set of hardware running the same operating system.

    On a bit of a tangent, I find it interesting when petrol prices go up that the same people who complain about it also complain about there being no alternatives are also the same people who keep voting for politicians who create car centric suburbs and underfund public transport. It is always telling when the people who complain the loudest cannot seem to see the link between who they vote for and the outcomes they experience. The same sort of people who claim they’re not political’ but they sure will tell you about their litany of woes that certainly do sound political since it would be politics that would actually address those issues. As I’ve said in the politis, everything is political – from whether your bus is subsidised, trains and rail infrastructure are invested, whether the local library is upgraded and more facilities are offered etc.

  • Almost there.

    Woke up this morning at 9:30am however I wasn’t in much of a hurry so I pottered around the house and then I went for my 8km walk. I arrived back home, had a shower then enjoyed a cup of coffee before work while catching up on some news. The weather was nice and I on my walk I can see that the rail upgrades are taking place and I think the eventual goal is to replace all the old wooden infrastructure with steel long with the gradual repalce of the wooden sleepers with concrete. It has been a bit of a piecemeal process because the funding is done from year to year so the focus is mainly around upgrading those that need upgrading first and then working from that down to the non-critical upgrades that need taking place.

    There is talk about upgrading the current Waterloo interchange in Lower Hutt however unfortunately the NZTA have decided not to fund its replacement (link). You’d think that in an election year that this would have been an easy win for the National-Act-NZ First government to fundm but once again they’re showing that when it comes to National one can set ones watch their political philosophy of a) tax cuts b) deregulation c) privatisation d) build a road and I guess if it weren’t for NZ First (I’m certainly no fan of NZ First) in the government advocating for rail then I wouldn’t be surprised if National just ignored rail completely like they’ve done every time they’ve gotten into government.

  • Two more days to go.

    Woke up this moring at 9:30am but I decided to muck around watching a few videos and then left home at around 10:15am to go for my walk. Wonderful weather in the morning and it felt great when I came back all refreshed ready for a day at work. I jumped into the shower, got some fresh clothes on and had a cup of tea and watched a few news items on YouTube from France 24 and DW to see what has happened in the world.

    Work today was pretty ‘meh’ but I guess is because I would sooner be going for a walk along the new Petone to Ngauranga than having to answer phones. I am looking forward to Monday next week where I’ll be getting up at 9:30am, throwing on my headphones and going for a long walk along the waterfront.

    Out of a fit of optimism I opened up Chrome to check to see whether uBlock Origin Lite had updated and yes, it had update to uBlock Origin Lite 2026.516.1652. Unsure as to why there was that long delay but I’ve found it does a better job blocking content on some of the websites I visit.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s something you’d love to see in the future, but know you probably won’t live to witness?
    View all responses

    Interplanetary space flight that is accessible to the general public – being able to travel to the Moon, Mars etc. I’m sure some time in the future there will develop some technology that’ll make the rockets of today look primitive in comparison. I hope that by the time it does happen that humanity put aside its petty differences and focus on things that benefit humanity collectively rather than pointless rivalries.

  • Three days to go.

    Three days to go and I’m turning the ripe old age of 45 years old and the strange thing is that I don’t ‘feel’ older just as I don’t ‘feel’ like an adult. It is funny that as I get older I don’t feel like I’m getting older – not too sure whether that is a good or bad thing but I can’t complain because I’m having a whole lot of fun in the process. I got up this morning and went for an 8km walk then arrived back home and decided to work from home for today because why the heck not. I had my shower, got some fresh clothes on and I felt all refreshed ready for work.

    I checked Chrome on my work laptop as well as on my personal computers (Mac Studio and MacBook Pro) and I found that an update had been released – version 148.0.7778.216. Google made an announcement (link) however it will be a few days before the specifics of the update will be disclosed – as I’ve noted in the past, Google prefers to wait for a certain percentage of users have updated before releasing the security fixes but I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few nasty security bugs were fixed like last weeks update – I wouldn’t be surprised if Google is making good use of their own AI model and using their experience to improve the quality of their model at picking up security flaws and locating bugs. Oh, and if you’re wondering, yes I am still waiting for uBlock Origin Lite 2026.516.1652 to be released on the Chrome Webstore.

    I’ve been having a look through my electricity bill to find out what is causing it go up each month even though I’m more or less using the same amount of electricity. Within a year the daily charge has gone from 172.50 cents per day to 207.00 cents per day which is a jump of around 30 cents per day which roughly translates to an extra $10 per month in just the daily charge. The price of electricity has gone from 25.32 cents per kWh to now 26.19 cents per kWh. I’m pretty lucky in that I’m single and I don’t have major commitments but I’d fear that there are plenty of Kiwis who are really doing it tough particularly during winter and unfortunately I don’t see any plan by the opposition party to drive down the cost of electricity by bringing generation back into 100% public ownership with a long term policy of the power generators not providing the government with a dividend but for the profit to be fully invested back into more power generation to get the price per kWh down to somewhere reasonable (4 years ago the daily charge used to be 69.00 cents per day – from 69.00 cents per day to 207.00 cents per day in 4 years is rediculous).

    Oh, and to round it up, I have my daily catnip of videos about AI crashing and burning – not that I am anti-AI because I’m sure there are use cases where it makes sense but I do find it funny when far too many tech dude bros convince themselves that everything is now a nail because they have a hammer.

    I find it confusing when i hear businesses talking about efficiency and yet they cannot even implement basic technology that has existed for years. I worked at a bank that had a call centre located in Wellington but served the Australian market so it was quite common to get calls around tax time to request bank statements covering the whole financial year. Something like that should be as simple as logging into internet banking, specifying the start and finish dates and then requesting the statement with the server itself generating one and either providing it as a download or emailed to the customer. Did the bank I work at do that? no they didn’t, what I needed to do was put through a request to a human who then had to manually create a statement and then send it through to the customer – we had the technology to automate that process over 20+ years ago.

    Another example is Spark – I bought a phone on an interest free plan (this can be applied to any mobile phone carrier by the way so it isn’t just Spark who does this) and I wanted to pay off the remaining balance. Now, you’d think that it should be just a matter of logging into the Spark customer portal, navigating to the interest free payment area and then choose to make final payment but nope that would make far too much sense. What does one have to do? get in contact with Spark, talk to an operator, ask the operator to create a request for final payment who will then get it put on the next bill. What did Spark do instead of making it so one can make the final payment online oneself? implement an AI chat bot instead and cannot even do basic functions such as what I wanted to do – why fix an actual problem when ‘more AI’ appears to be the latest buzzword MBA wizkids in the corporate world like flies being attracted to a freshly paid pile of cow dung but I’m sure the consultants will make plenty of money in the process of selling an entirely useless system that’ll get canned after a year of annoying customers.

  • Busy but productive day.

    Woke up this morning, had a brisk walk before work and afterwards I had a cooling down before showering up and getting ready for the day. Today was fairly busy with events taking place that impact the industry i work in so there were plenty of things that needed to be done particularly when dealing with returning customers. Tonight I worked an extra hour just to clear some stuff out of the queue – this is one of the benefits of working from home is being able to do some extra work and not having to time it up with when the next bus or train will be leaving town.

    On one of my breaks I finally got the last two shelves of my pantry sorted out – all of the cups (glasses, coffee mugs etc) are on one shelf and the plates, bowls etc, are on the other shelf and now it is looking a whole lot less chaotic than before. The kitchen is now looking really well organised and I’m looking forward to some cooking on Tuesday next week – I’ll buy some mince, onions, mushrooms, pasta sauce etc. although I am tempted to make some chilli but whatever the case maybe it’ll be a more enjoyable experience now that I have the right tools for the job.

    I checked for Chrome updates today however it appears that it has been pushed off for release on Thursday (Wednesday US Time) and hopefully with that will come the update for ublock Origin Lite. I really do wish that US based businesses would have more than one office where these extensions, apps etc. can be approved because while the US has a holiday the rest of the world continues on with the expectation that things keeps progressing. Apple released a beta of their 26.6 update which makes me wonder whether we’ll see a 26.7 or whether 26.6 will be the last major update before version 27 is released (there will be future updated for 26.x I’m sure but they won’t include new features but instead solely focusing on bug and security fixes).

    I was watching a video on AI – it is a good feeling knowing you’re not the only person who refuses to be sucked into the BS vortex that the tech dude bros are insisting on imposing it upon others.

    As I’ve said in the past, the technology industry has a habit of reinventing the wheel and the replacement they create ends up being worse than what they replaced. One of the examples given in the video is creating a todo list based on reading through Slack – sounds like a great idea in theory until you realise that there is a benefit of actually reading through it yourself. Yes, reading through Slack may take you longer but the benefit is that it jogs your memory as you read through the messages, it maybe pick up something that the LLM doesn’t pick up on, you may see a reference to another source that you follow up on to provide context and thus make sense of what was posted. There is a benefit to reading an email, you can pick up on the tone of the email, how the other party is reacting to a particular idea where as with an LLM summarising you miss the nuance in the email itself.

    Language is more than just words, there is a whole lot of baggage that comes with how people write, the words being used, the order in which something is discussed etc. all of this gives you an insight and the suitable questions you may need to ask in follow up to seek further clarification. This is also the problem when you start using AI in academia where the the journey is replaced with an instant answer that lacks nuance. When you’re finding information it is the journey of getting there, of going down paths that turn out to be dead ends but you gain the experience and pick up some extra knowledge you wouldn’t have otherwise gained. I think in the long term the other downside is the loss of curiosity leading to a damping of creativity – an unwillingness to experiment with an uncertain outcome in favour of wanting to have instant gratification (assuming that what the LLM provides isn’t a load of nonsense). Just to finish this post off, I am reminded of what George Carlin said – when viewed in context to how the humanities have been devalued within education, the push for AI to replace teaching children how to be curious and seek out knowledge, it isn’t surprising how the far right thrives in a such a society.

  • Back to work on Wednesday.

    Another productive day at home where I’ve done a whole lot of tidying up in the kitchen because the pantry was become chaotic and difficult to find things, I had a whole lot of old plasticware that I never use which were old, brittle and falling to pieces. Long story short, what I need to do was throw a whole lot of junk out that was never going to use, put aside the old pots and pants I’m going to donate to the local charity store next week, and reorganise the cupboards, pantry and draws so that there is some sort of order to the chaos. By having that all sorted out it’ll allow me to better organise my grocery shopping each week so then I know where I stand when it comes to what food I have on hand, planning meals on my day off and what I need to buy.

    The first thing I did was to move the cutlery draw over to draw on the left hand side (just as you walk into the kitchen from outside) and then in the draw formly for cutlery I used it as a place to put all my sauces, spices and herbs for cooking so that they’re all in one place rather than in the pantry. In the pantry I ordered the shelves so that on one self there is the ready meals, the shelf below that has canned goods and the shelf below that are the packet goods such as coups, coffee etc. then on the final shelf at the bottom is where I put my bottles of Pepsi Max. The top two shelves I’m going to tidy up next week so then I have my cups on one shelf and on the other shelf I have my plates, bowls etc. rather than the jumbled mess it is now. The benefit of cleaning it also gives me the opportunity to stocktake what I have and whether I need to throw out old stuff or buy new plates etc.

    By Monday next week I would have sorted out all the lose ends that I’ve kind of ignored over the years so now I’ve got my home into some sort of order. There are two more things that I want to get sorted out though which is organising a tallboy for my extra clothes as well as a more comfortable chair for my computer in the living room. At the moment the chair is functional but it isn’t comfortable when sitting on it for long periods of time – there is a chair I’m having a look at on the Target Furniture website but I’m still thinking about what the alternatives are given that I’m not a fan of a traditional office chair. One of the other things I’m having a look at is getting a carpt for my bedroom because at the moment I’ve just got the standard grey colour on the floor so I’d like to add some more colour to it and make it a lot more cosy.

  • A good first day of the weekend.

    Woke up this morning to be greeted with a wonderful surprise of the order from Farmers having arrived along with an chilly bin mum left for me with the ingredients for dinner tonight. I unpacked the delivery box and inside is the cast iron frying pan along with the dutch oven. I’m looking forward to giving both of them a try out with the dutch oven I want to cook up bolognese – I like to cook the mince low and slow so it takes on as much flavour as possible. The frying pan I’m going to use to cook some lamb burger patties – although I have a sandwich press the problem is that it is a real pain cleaning afterwards because the amount of fat that comes out of it so I’ve decided just to keep it for when I do toasted sandwiches or a panini.

    After getting that all sorted I went for a walk down to my local bakery for brunch and then walked to the mall where from there I went I went into Farmers to pick up a few more items – the two lasagna baking dishes (for the enchiladas), a collender because the one I had was an old plastic one falling to pieces, a wooden spoon, a coffee mug and some dish washing clothes (I’ll keep the disposable ones for jobs that are nasty and need to be thrown away afterwards). When I got back home I assembled the enchiladas for dinner in the lasagna baking dishes:

    After getting that all sorted out I put that in the fridge so then I was all ready for dinner when mum arrived. I headed out from home at 4:30pm to catch the bus to the supermarket to pick up a few odd bits and pieces such as some containers for my tea and coffee, a wooden spatula along with Japanese coleslaw and a desert for dinner. Mum picked me up from the supermarket on her way from work and we had dinner together along with catching up with what has happened during the last week.

  • The weekend has finally arrived.

    Had a pretty uneventful day, getting up at the usual time and doing my usual thing, then at around lunch time (dinner time for everyone else) I had a couple of sandwiches, did some more work then finished work tonight at 10pm. The last few hours were pretty quiet so I spent the time catching up on office work that becomes overwhelming if ignored for an extended period of time. When I finished work tonight the queue was empty which should allow the team coming in on Monday to have a fairly easy start to the week – something that I liked to do when I worked as a manager at a fast food restaurant so that the opening manager on Monday could focus on getting the the week ready for new product launches, specials, ordering stuff from the distribution centre etc.

    On Monday I’ve got the order from Farmers arriving and once that arrives I’m going to head down the road to donate my old pots and pans to the Salvation Army charity store – I would sooner someone else have it and make use of it rather it them going to waste. I’m looking forward to giving the cookware a try – the cast iron frying pan should be big enough that I can cook four burger patties at the same time with the benefit of cast iron being the retention of heat and consistent distribution of heat. At the moment I am looking at a ‘Baccarat Le Connoisseur Lasagne’ (link) which will be great for things like Lasagne, enchiladas, apple and rhubarb crumble etc.

    I’ve been watching plenty of AI sceptic content on YouTube primarily because it is a form of catnip for me these days because it brings me joy in knowing that I’m not the only person wondering why we’re seeing a repeat of another hype cycle and how so many people in positions of power get sucked to the BS vortex (it also simultaneously puts to rest the whole notion of ‘rational self interest’ given how irrational markets are). Billionaires spending money on space rockets wasting huge amounts of money that could be better spent on things to help humanity but god knows at least space is actually fun where as AI is just painfully boring with AI bros online being best example of why so many people hate AI. Give me a dream of spacecrafts, establishing colonies on remote outposts and living on other planets over the AI bros convincing themselves that telling a LLM to generate something some how makes them an artist or that what it produces in the form of code isn’t a giant buggy technical debt laden mess that will be impossible to maintain over the long term.

    Regarding politics, as I’ve said many times on BlueSky, the choice is between bad policy and disappointment – there are only two choices and my choice every time is for disappointment rather than bad policy because at least I know with disappointment that things will improve modestly but not to the extent that I would like it vs. things getting worse. If you want to improve the situation then the solution isn’t to throw a temper tantrum followed by sitting in the corner having a sulk but instead joining up to the major political part on the left along with getting friends and family to do the same so then you have the ability to improve policy and get better candidates. Politicians do the bare minimum when you’re not holding them accountable – that means turning up to meetings, talking specifics when asking questions regarding why they voted for a particular bill or if you can quote verbatim what they’ve said in a speech or in an interview. The moment you start being specific is the moment the politician realise that the days of mediocrity and taking a captured audience for granted has ended – if they want to keep their seat then they have to do more than the bare minimum.

  • One more day, getting closer to the holiday.

    Woke up this morning and had a cup of tea, relaxing before work. I’m really looking forward to the time over June with the first lot being the extra two days off over my birthday so I’ll have 1st-4th June off from work, then I come back to work for 3 days then the following week I’m off for a whole week. I’m going to be relaxing at home although I’d like to head into town a few times, get some fresh air, being able to just wonder around without having to worry about sickign to some sort of schedule or routine but instead just enjoying the vibe of it all.

    I checked out Webkit and there has been the release of the Safari Technology Preview 244 and there has also been updated web platform test results but unfortunately there hasn’t been a big improvement in the test result but that could be due to Apple holding back for whatever is announced at WWDC this year. I also checked a few days ago and Samsung had released an update for my S26 Ultra:

    The update installed fairly quickly with the Android patch version beiing bumped up to May 2026. I haven’t noticed any regressions and the kernel has been updated along with many other components. The Google Play system update is still at April 2026 release although they tend to roll out gradually but one thing I have tried is using AirDrop between my Mac and my Android phone – the only downside is that it isn’t possible to drag and drop directories. It is a bit of a let down because it would be the ideal way to copy music from ones computer to ones phone but again with high speed internet connections I find that downloading my library to my phone from my Google Drive is just as fast as it woudl be if I hooked up the phone and copied it over using OpenMTP using a USB cable (on Samsung Files you can copy whole directories from Google Drive to ones device but for some unknown reason Google doesn’t allow the same thing on their own file manager (or at least the last time I had used a Pixel 10 Pro XL which was a while ago)).

    In the world of politics it appears that once again we’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes of the past when it comes to social housing because once again we have the government insist that the private sector, not the public sector, should be the primary provide of rental accomodation. I’m not surprised though given that the right is ideologically opposed to the very idea of social housing being a form of long term accommodation but rather the current government seeing it as a ‘half way house’ to permanent accommodation being provided by the private sector with assistance being provided through the accommodation supplement. Long story short, the biggest benefactors out of the return of National to power have been the landlords and real estate industry – expect house prices to take off, poverty to get worse and an entrenched landed aristocracy take hold in New Zealand.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s a show that had the perfect series finale?
    View all responses

    I have to admit, I am a sucker for a happy ending and the television series ’12 Monkeys’ is just that – in the movie it is never really said but to save humanity it required James Cole sit on this chair/throne that would result in him being eliminated from existence and correct everything. In the final episode we find out that Katarina Jones was able to change time just enough that it allowed James Cole to continue existing. The follow video does a good job explaining it:

  • Two more days to go.

    Went for my morning walk, came home, had a shower and then started work. I had a great day at work today and I finished up with some mexican food for dinner – Friday is the night I have something easy to prepare I watched a few YouTube videos and I’m now in bed getting ready for a work on Saturday although I’m going to have a bit of a sleep in on Saturday because I feel like having some extra rest.

    Ubiquiti released UniFi OS version 5.1.12 for the cloud key plus a few other devices however UniFi Network Application 10.4.57 is still as a release candidate although I could see it being released next week. With the releases it goes from an early release to a release candidate then a week after that if it is stable they’ll gradually roll it out to users.

    It’s a bit of a short blog post tonight, I’ll probably write up a longer one tomorrow night.