Woke up this morning, grabbed a quick breakfast and then checked for updates on my various devices. Samsung released another updated for April – I was hoping it would be their May monthly release but that is apparently still in the works but then again we may not see it until closed to the late half of this month. The update was 756.98MB – it looks like it is a general bug fix and security fixes, it is probably the the same one mentioned previously how Samsung release two updates in a month with some countries receiving it before New Zealand but then again they do a progressive roll out to avoid going all in then finding something breaks somewhere in the world.
Apple released the 26.5 update this morning and there were a tonne of security fixes with two of them being picked up with the help of Claude (link). On my two Macs the firmware has been updated from 18000.101.7 to 18000.120.36, on the iPhone the modem was updated from 1.55.04 to 1.60.02. I have noticed that on both devices it is a lot more responsive – the user interface is fast and fluide particularly when minimising and restoring, user interface elements appear rather than stutter or delay, even the unlock screen on my iPhone is responsive from the moment the screen displays is turned on where as in the past I would find that there is a delay between the screen turning on and the phone ready to allow me to type in my PIN.
On macOS I have found that even third apps are working smoother – I prefer using Chrome because, for better or worse, it has pretty much become the defacto standard that developers test their website against. Interesting enough I notice under ‘Autofill and passwords’ they’ve modified the layout of it so that more details are given on the page rather than having to navigate into various options to find the right one. The one thing I cannot work out is why ASB Bank uses the incorrect credit card image for their Google Pay given that Westpac and BNZ appear to be able to use the correct one. The image on Google Pay comes up with an image of an ASB Rewards card when it is actually an ASB Lite card. It doesn’t effect the ability to make purchases but I guess it could cause a problem if a person has multiple credit cards – for example, a personal one which is their ASB Lite and a business one which is a ASB Rewards based card, and the person making the purchasing wanting to ensure that a business purchase goes on the business card and personal purchases go on the personal card.
Woke up this morning, had some breakfast then I walked down to the Petone mail centre to pick up my passport. I had organised a replacement because it expired at the beginning of this year so I was surprised when on Friday last week there was a ‘card to collect’ left by the courier because most of the time I expect a passport replacement to take a few weeks. I headed down to the mail centre with my drivers licence for identity verification and picked it up . On a good side the day was wonderful, lots of fresh air walking along the Petone waterfront with the total clocking in at 10km.
While I was down at Peton I picked up some drink coasters and placemats – I have these glass drink coasters but they’re not very robust, slippery and one of them broke. The new ones I picked up from Briscoes are made from bamboo and come in some bright colours which standout which brings a bit of colour to where I have them (my office, computer in the lounge room and on the coffee table in the lounge room). While I was down there I picked up some lunch at the local bakery then jumped on a bus home . Once home I got in contact with mum to find out what time we were meeting up for dinner and then had a shower.
For dinner we ordered a meal from ‘Noodle Canteen’ and this time I got some extra vegetables in my stir fry because, to quote what the kids are saying these days, I’m ‘vegemaxxing’ – with any luck the fact that an older millennial using such a term will instantly make it cringe and it’ll disappear from the modern lexicon. I also picked up some groceries – Woolworths has a special on at the moment which resulted me being able to pick up $30 worth of vouchers that I’ll use next time I do some grocery shopping.
On Tuesday I’m going to head down to the mall to check out a few things and I’m also going to have a look at some clothes storage as well – I’ve kind of procrastinated about it so I think I am going to take the plunge. At the moment I don’t have enough space in my current tall boy so I’ve got to put the hoodies in the wardrobe but the problem with that is now that is being used up to the point i have to use the wardrobe in my office rather than having everything together (although the second tallboy will be in the second room it will free up space to move everything to a single wardrobe).
It felt good being able to finish work tonight at 8pm where I was able to pack up, throw on a coat then head down to the supermarket to pick up a few things for dinner – pumpkin soup with fresh bread and some garlic butter. I finished that off with a fresh fruit salad – although the fresh fruit is a bit on the expensive side given that we’re heading into winter I do like to have a bit of a sweet treat once and a while with the be bonus of it being healthy .
Regarding the whole AI hype (yes, another rant by me) I don’t understand this fixation about ‘agents’ and ‘agentic AI’ given that we’ve had the ability to write macros and if you don’t want to wrote cote you could record macros where each step done with the mouse creates code (and if need be you can edit the code to make tweaks). I keep hearing the same AI fanboys hyping something we had over 20 years ago while ignoring that at least in the case of macros there is the benefit that we know exactly what the outcome is where as LLMs are based on a probabilistic model where every time it is run it is going to produce a different result or may not work at all.
I keep hearing the same nonsense regarding how AI is going to some how many people even more productive while ignoring that we already have tools right now that could achieve their promises with none of the problems that many AI researchers have pointed out regarding probabilistic models. This is once again silicon valley doing what they always do – reinventing the wheel with an even worse solution then claiming that they’ve created something new when in reality it is a worse version of what came before it. As I’ve said in the past, we are currently in a productivity slump but we already have technological solutions right now that, if they were were executed properly, would boost productivity rather than the current situation of executives believing the latest snake oil being sold by silicon valley.
Daily writing prompt
What are the biggest benefits of minimalist living?
It encourages you to triage what is actually important based on what your needs are as well as reflecting on what you want to purchase something – are you purchasing it because you genuinely want it or is it a situation of manufactured consent where external influences claim there is a problem that needs solving or a need that has to bet met then having that decision then justified after going ahead to purchase it. With that being said, I think it is important not to equate minimalism with being asceticism but rather it is about making sure that when you make decisions that deliberate rather than just simply going through the motions, questioning why suddenly out of nowhere you want something – is it a need or is it the endorphin rush of having something new that you crave and if so is there a more healthier way of boosting your endorphins.
Second day back at work and I am feeling good – worked two extra hours tonight so on Sunday I can finish two hours early. I was able to get a whole lot of work out of the way in the last couple of hours – processing a whole lot of paperwork so when I clocked off tonight that we’re almost up to date in most areas. When I used to work in the service/hospitality industry we always had a rule to never carry over things to the next week – always make sure you tied up all the lose ends, complete anything that needed completing before the start of a new week. The reason for that is that if you don’t clear the deck for the new week then what happens is that it the things not completed gradually builds up until it becomes overwhelming. It is the the reason why when working in a kitchen there is a rule of ‘clean as you go’ rather than waiting until the end of the shift – if you clean as you go then you won’t end up with a big job at the end of the shift where you’d sooner be at home rather than finishing off the dishes.
There has been a second release candidate for iOS and iPadOS but I don’t think that it’ll delay the release of it. There are still rumours of an Apple TV 4K refresh occurring but I’d say it probably won’t happen until tvOS 27 is released which will include a beefier SoC so that a small AI model can be run locally along with supporting hardware accelerated AV1 playback and improved Siri (Siri isn’t a feature I used all that much). It is interesting to see how Matter and Thread are developing which makes me wonder whether long term HomeKit will become a legacy technology as the industry work towards open standards (they’ve only just recently standardised Matter to support security cameras and a few other types of hardware). The Tizen based One UI on my Samsung Television is still going really well – YouTube is responsive, I got Kanopy working as well so then I can watch movies online as part of having a library membership – the television also serves as a Matter hub as well in much the same way the Apple TV 4K was a HomeKit hub.
The government has announced that they’re scrapping the one year free at university and although it isn’t a popular position to take the reality is that every review into the programme demonstrated poor value for money. For me, I think the money would be better spent on having a cadetship programme for high demand occupations such as nurses, doctors, surgeons, teachers etc. in much the same way that the defence force pay for your education but you do a set number of years ‘return of service’ – normally it is something like 5 years return of service for a bachelors degree. I think that would probably be a better use of $500 or so million that was being spent on the programme – maybe some of the savings can be used to wipe of the student loans for those working in the public health system and those without student loans they can receive some sort of cash bonus. We can’t always match the pay of some other countries but it would go a long way to ensuring we keep people with skills in high demand in New Zealand rather than watching many going overseas for greener pastures.
End of the day when the government has a budget there are always going to be priorities because money isn’t infinite and as a result you have to make tough decisions regarding which policies go ahead of other policies that are also important. It is the reason why, when I talk about policy, i bring up the need to rebuild the Ministry of Works with a long term plan of nation building – turning Housing New Zealand into the primary provider of rental accomodation to decommodify the housing market so then money the money that would go into property speculation is instead directed into productive enterprises that actually grow the economy over the long term through real wealth creation. The old story of fixing one problem and a whole lot of othe problems are fixed as a consequence of one policy or a small number of policies being enacted.
I had a good first day back at work – I got up earlier than expected but because it was raining I stayed inside, watched some YouTube videos and did some free weights. It looks like things will fine up on Sunday but I’ll see how things work out. I’ve been working around the house catching up on chores I should have done but they kind of get pushed off until I really cannot avoid them.
I’ve been following the Iran-Israel/United States war and as much fun as it is to talk about TACO and NACHO (the newest acronym on Wall Street at the moment) the problem is that this isn’t something you can cut and run from. When you go down this path that Israel/United States started you don’t have the luxury of just walking away from the mess you created – a destabilised regime, potentially a failed state, could be a greater threat to the region and wider world like what occurred with Afghanistan where the US supported the Mujahideen in their way against the Soviets only to find that the country later became a launching pad for terrorist activity, organised crime such as drug smuggling etc.
As the old saying goes, “you break it, you bought it” but unfortunately I don’t see the United States cleaning up the mess anytime soon. We’re already seeing the rest of the world for the last year and a half work on plans to decouple from the United States, for middle and small countries to work together with bilateral agreements such as the recent one between New Zealand and Singapore. Saudi Arabia and and China are already looking at buying and selling oil in Chinese Yuan, there is work being done to side step institutions that the United States controls either directly or indirectly – we’re already seeing work being done on a VISA/Mastercard alternative in the European Union as one example of that.
Small and medium countries are already looking for alternatives – China for all its faults is predictable, the European Union appears to be getting its act together and working towards a single capital market to challenge the United States dominance, the United Kingdom is slowly coming to the realisation that Brexit was a giant mistake and sucking up to the Trump administration yields little in the way of results. I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point we see India and/or China join the CPTPP and possibly more countries joining as relations between the United and the rest of the world deteriorate. I don’t think the discoupling of the United States will occur with an announcement but rather it’ll just happen then one day the United States will wake up and realise they’re no longer the centre of the universe.
UniFi Access Point (all U7 and E7 models) 8.6.9 has been made available on the release candidate channel – plenty of fixes have been made to it along with a lot of work on MLO support (only my smartphone supports WiFi 7 – the rest of my devices are WiFi 6E or WiFi 5 in the case of my television). uBlock Origin Lite 2026.507.2008 has been released (link) and is available through the Chrome webstore with quite a few fixes included with the release. Just to round things off, Safari Technology Preview 243 has been released (link) which has a sizeable number of bug fixes and features being added which make me wonder how many will appear in the 26.6 release vs how many will be held back to appear in version 27 of Apple’s platforms. The test results from the Web Platform Test (link) have been made available with the score for Safari Technology Preview to go from 85.9% (build 242) to 87.6% (building 243).
I’ve had a couple of days to recover and I’m feeling a whole lot better – I was able to keep myself occupied by vacuum cleaning the house, cleaned the kitchen, went for a walk while the weather was fine so I could get some fresh air and then finished it all up with having a shower, changing the sheets on the bed and completing the washing. Long story short I wanted to reset the week, start with a clean start with everything organised so that the rest of the week feels a lot more orderly. Tonight has been raining so I’ve stayed inside although I’m going to get up at 10:00am tomorrow so then at least if it is raining I get back into a good routine of getting up at a reasonable time, I’ll do that for three days and then on Monday I’ll start getting up at 9:00am which will hopefully mean a good start for the rest of the week.
Ubiquiti has released two updates to their early access channel, UniFi Access Point (all U7 and E7 models) 8.6.9 and UniFi Gateways 5.1.9. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly they graduate from the early access release channel to the release candidate channel but so far all the feedback I’ve read has been positive. At the moment I’m in no hurry although I am tempted to maybe upgrade my current gateway and cloudkey setup to an UDR 7 then setup my old equipment with mum where I move the router down stairs, keep the gateway upstairs then have a power line network connection from the gateway to the router which wll give better coverage given that mum uses her laptop downstairs and the desktop computer upstairs is directly hooked up to the router at the moment.
There has been a bit of cotroversy recently regarding Google Chrome and a local model that appears to have been downloaded without end users aware of it happening. I have my security set to enhanced which makes use of AI but I assumed it was AI in the cloud but it appears that it uses local models along with. Looking through the Chrome flags it appears there are quite a few features that probably rely on the local model – for me I kind don’t care one way or another because I had already opted in for a few features but I can understand how some may find it concerning particularly if you suddenly see 4GB space disappear then you wonder whether you’ve been infected with malware. It is one of those things that tech companies need to do a better job in terms of transparency just like Steve Jobs talked about ensuring that the end user has informed consent.
I had a splitting headache so I decided to take the day off from work to recover and I’m taking it easy today and I’ve given my boss a heads up that I’ll take Thursday off. I updated Chrome to version 148.0.7778.97 and it looks like there are some big security fixes that have been made their way into the release given that at the time of this blog post they haven’t put up the details regarding what has been fixed (link). It makes sense to wait because in the end you don’t want a situation that exploits are created for the security vulnerabilities before a sizeable number of end users have updated their installation of Chrome.
I’ve been writing down some random notes in Google Keep so when I get a suddenly inspiration to talk about a topic but it is rather incoherent until I have the time to write a coherent post on my blog. I’ve been thinking about AI and the rise of consumer products like iPhones, iPads etc resulting in a generation that is less tech savvy than many of the Gen X and Boomers who came before. It is amazing the number of people who are younger than I am who don’t know how to send an email, who understand the internet other than through apps on their phone with no idea on how to use a web browser and that doesn’t even touch on how to navigate a file system, how to manage files or in the case of emails – how to manage your emails through the use of folders. Maybe I’m getting old and grumpy but are kids actually being taught those skills at school because I remember spending years at high school learning how to touch type and as much as I found the experience boring at the time I look back happy knowing that I can now properly touch type.
Then to compound the rise in tech illiteracy has been the growth of AI and the impact it has on critical thinking, how it flattens history, philosophy, politics etc by removing the nuance not to mention the fact that getting the answer is as important as the journey on search of answer – the twists and turns culminating in the understanding that history isn’t a matter of black or white but a whole lot of grey area. We’ve now got a generation who cannot effectively use Google to find an answer then complain that ‘Google is getting worse’ whey fail to understand the use of keywords and how to narrow down the scope of a search when looking for something. It never ceases to amaze me the number of people who get locked out of their Google or Microsoft account which makes me wonder whether things are getting so bad that I’m starting to look like I have my life together.
Oh, and I did something silly today, I cleared the cookies and cache for both my computers and phone but on my phone I ticked all the boxes including the password box and accidentally cleared them off resulting in all my passwords disappearing. I was lucky in that I had backed up my passwords but I need to remember that for next time – on Chrome for macOS the option of clearing the passwords isn’t present so I guess I wasn’t thinking when I ticked all the boxes because I assumed it was like what happens on macOS.
uBlock Origin Lite 2026.503.1521 has finally appeared on the Chrome website although there is still 2026.504.2301 waiting for approval but the update is primarily to fix up a regression on Safari with some filter updates for everyone else. The release candidate for version 26.5 has been made available but I’d say that unless there is a serious security fix they need to push out then I’d say it won’t be released until early next week which will given testers enough time to report and fix up any regressions that appear. Oh, and you’ve probably noticed, I’ve changed the background from white to grey, I find the whiteness too harsh on my eyes although I am looking at maybe moving to a theme of a black background with white text but I’m still doing some experimentation with themes.
I woke up with a horrible splitting headache this morning, I drank a good amount of water and went for a walk hoping that maybe some fresh air and some water will sort it out but all it did was make it a little less crappy. I’m back at home after getting some fresh air during the day, organise a passport photo, had dinner with mum (from the local Noodle Canteen). I was able to get my passport updated online by uploading the photo – the photo of the passport is pretty horrible but I think that has to do with the way I was sitting on the seat. I’ve organised it all online so hopefully in a few weeks I’ll get it delivered and I’ll be all ready for a trip to Australia.
I was able to recover my Emirates air points account that I setup a couple of years ago when I went to Europe and found that I could use the points to pay for part of the cost of travelling to Australia. I’ve also standardised the email address I’m using for both Air New Zealand as well as Emirates which will make managing the online accounts a whole lot easier. I have multiple aliases for my email so that I can keep track of the various organisations I have provided my email to so then I can keep track of where emails are coming from and whether a particular business has been compromised at some point.
On a good side, I was able to get a free coffee when I was down the road which is always nice so I got a muffin as well then had a look around. I saw a few items of clothing I quite liked the store I frequent – I’d like to get an extra pair of brown pants and I’m also looking at getting a tallboy for my office so that I can put my exta clothes in. At the moment I’m currently hanging up my hoodies however if I put it in a tallboy then that’ll free up more space on my wardrobe that at the moment is a bit crowded. I’m looking at also a album I’ve seen online – Isaac Hayes ‘Black Moses’ but I’ll need to see where I can get it on Discogs or whether I should just buy the album through the Stax records online store which has it available in FLAC format. The benefit of the FLAC version is that the quality is the same as getting the physical copy with the added benefit of not having to pay postage and packaging down to New Zealand.
I woke up this morning and spent my day just relaxing around the home watching some YouTube videos on the television and then I decided to head down the road to do some grocery shopping. While I was down there I needed to pick up some ointment because I have dry cracking heels (I’ve applied it to them and I think that as long as I keep applying to them then they’ll eventually heal). While I was also down there I bought some dinner (lamb rumps and some Japanese coleslaw for dinner) along with some fresh fruit and vegetables – something I’m aiming to each more of along with avoiding bread because in a lot of cases it is empty calories that leave me feeling hungry within an hour of eating it. The coleslaw is always nice – the great thing with the Japanese coleslaw (I’m unsure how Japanese it actually is) is how the dressing isn’t overpowering and there isn’t a huge amount of dressing to the point that the whole coleslaw is drenched in it.
uBlock Origin Lite 2026.503.1521 has been released (link) – it is currently available on the Microsoft Edge and Apple stores but not available on the Chrome store as it is waiting approval. More improvements are on their way and I’ve tested it out on Safari with plenty of success. I was having a look online at the availability of Apple TV 4K given that there are rumours of there being a refresh being launched soon. All the major retailers in New Zealand either have run out or have very limited stock which indicates to me that maybe the inability for them to get more supplies into New Zealand is an indication that Apple wish to flush out their stock before any sort of upgrades are announced as to avoid having to give the older version steep discounts. One of the big rumours with the next Apple TV is the SoC upgrade to A17 Pro which will mean AV1 hardware accelerated support out of the box. There are no announcements but apparently it is waiting for an improved Siri and Gemini integration to be made available so that the experience for end users can be a lot better.
I’ve been watching more videos on YouTube regarding how the economics of AI simply don’t make sense and it is always interesting to hear the same refrain from supporters about expotential growth. There is a problem making such a claim, these AI companies are burning huge amounts of money and on every subscription tier they’re losing money. When you’re not charging the actual cost of delivering your service then it shouldn’t be surprising that there is a huge amount of demand but the big question is what happens when you start charging the actual cost of delivering the service, when that service isn’t getting a massage subsidy, is that demand going to be sustained or will those customers reevaluate whether paying for your service makes sense. I say that because there was a company recently who reported that they had gone through their year’s token budget within a space of 3 months. When you’re paying for tokens used rather than a flat rate then every time you get an answer back that is entirely useless and you have to do the operation again then that is more tokens burned and more money spent – at some point companies are now admitting that AI costs more than humans (link) but then again anyone who hadn’t been sucked down into the cult of AI could have told you that. That being said, I’m not anti-AI but I think that there has far too much hype and the technology simply isn’t there yet – the error rate is still high, the cost of computation is too high and many businesses are simply unable to use it in a way that is actually producing useful output.
Things are pretty rough out there, the economy is struggling, retailers are barely holding on with many now finding they’re now getting few hours of work each week. There is an election in November and I don’t envy whoever ends up winning the election because there very little in the way that the government can do to meet the immediate challenges being faced. I say that because there are plenty of solutions for the long term such as a national rail strategy of electrifying the whole network and standardising the voltage to 25kV, standardising platform height and signaling system as well as investing into double and triple tracking where extra capacity is required. That doesn’t even touch on the bigger goal which should be to bring logistics companies closer to rail depots so that long distance trucking can be replaced with rail with trucks being used for the final mile delivery. They’re all great ideas but they take years to implement (and should be implemented) but there are also needs that need to be met today but the big question is what the solution is and whether it’ll be enough given the fiscal constraints the government is currently under.
I’ve been watching the following video and although I’d like to be optimistic about the future I am regularly reminded when I hear people talk about how they regret their vote for Donald Trump but when asked “would you vote for Kamala Harris” very few of them said yes with most saying they would either not turn out, leave the selection blank or vote for Donald Trump again with the asinine justification of him being the lesser of two evils.
I think the damage that has been done by the Donald Trump administration give that when you view it within historical context where in the space of 28 years the world had to deal with 8 years of George W Bush, then some of the damage was undone by Barack Obama only for all that work to be undone with the first Donald Trump presidency. Then after Donald Trump had lost in his attempt to go for a second term where Joe Biden won the rest of the world thought it was just a blip on the radar and things would get back to normal only to find that Donald Trump once again tried to go for another term and won. After dealing with both George W Bush and Donald Trump then it shouldn’t be surprised that the rest of the world has had enough.
Governments are currently working with friendly countries such as the recent agreement signed between New Zealand and Singapore regarding energy supplies and food security. I think we’re going to find many more agreements like this being signed and many of them being setup to work around the United States. Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, already has a long term plan in terms of how to deal with United States, closer relations with the European Union regarding defense production, intelligence sharing, and supporting Ukraine. When it comes to trade, Canada is in a good position along side Mexico when it comes to the CPTPP and it’ll be interesting to see whether China and Indian end up joining the CPTPP. Slowly the globe is working around the United States then sooner or later the United States will wake up and realise that the world has moved on without them.
Woke up this morning and went for a 8km walk a little later than my normal time but the main thing is that I got out of the house for that walk I need in the morning. I know it isn’t setting the bar very high but what I’m aspiring to is to get up at 9:30am every morning and going for at least an 8km walk every day and on days off because of wet weather I’ll keep getting up at 9:30am to ensure that I keep in a good routine because once you fall out of a routine it can be sometimes difficult to get back into it again.
There is an interesting article regarding Microsoft recommending 32GB of memory (link) which make sme wonder, as part of Windows K2 and moving more of the system over to the Windows App SDK/WinUI 3 that they’ve realised that maybe for a lot of what customer’s wish to do they can actually get it done using a scaled down local model. The reason why I say that is because if you push up the recommended memory up to 32GB then it would provide the amount of memory required to run these models locally which is particularly important for businesses who may wish to use LLM but for security and privacy reasons want to run them locally – the benefits of AI without the security and privacy headaches.
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