Matisyahu's Blog

  • Getting ready for work tomorrow.

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    I’ve just finished watching the latest episode of ‘The Bradbury Group’ on YouTube and there were some interesting guests on the show with each making some great contributions but Professor Wayne Hope giving some context regarding the rise of the far right in New Zealand politics:

    And I think one of the most points made was made by Professor Wayne Hope was around 39 minutes into the video – to really understand the book ‘Dirty Work’ by Nicky Hager you really have to read the two previous books he wrote which are ‘The Hollow Men’ and ‘Dirty Politics’. It gives a good insight into the origins of the far right politics in New Zealand – rather than it being a recent phenomenon the reality is that such politics have deep roots in New Zealand. For example, Oscar Kightly reminds the audience of the sorts of anti-immigration ads that National ran on television during the 1970s. The sort of far right politics we see in New Zealand are very much reminiscent of Lee Atwater – rather than out right racism what we see in New Zealand is seemingly innocuous phrases being used ti hide what the actual intention is for example the ‘Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill’.

    Getting back to voting – for goodness sake, check that you’re registered and actually turn up on election day to vote. Nothing frustrates me when I hear the same people who opine that they’re ‘not political’ right up to the moment when they’re negatively impacted by something – university fees go up, subsidies for bus and trains are reduced so they have to pay more to use public transport etc. Then there is the usual complaining about how they’re not going to vote because their very specific niche issue isn’t being addressed so they ignore all the other issues that need addressing. It is one of the reason I push for civics to be taught in school because as the old saying goes: “you might not be interested in politics but politics is interested in you” with the other old saying being “Democracy is a participation sport and if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu”.

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  • A productive Tuesday.

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    I woke up today at 9:00 am this morning and got ready for the day – met up with mum for brunch down at a local cafe and I had my typical eggs bene with a bowl of mochaccino. After having brunch we headed down to the mall to pick up a new pair of shoes along with a sports coat for myself when I go to Australia for a holiday. After getting that all sorted out we headed back to my flat and did some gardening since mum has the whipper-snipper and I wanted to get the gardens all weeded along with getting some river rocks to make the stone garden a little interesting.

    There is a drain at the end of the driveway that is blocked up but I’m unsure where it is blocked because I can see two pipes that look like they go to the storm water drain but they maybe blocked up. I got out a shovel to remove as much of the build up silt, rubbish and leaves however it was horrendously stinky because of how long it had accumulated and rotted. The drain is filled with water so I think what I’ll need to do is net week grab an old jug and remove all the excess water from the drain remove the build up of sludge then try to work out where the blockage is. The reason why I want to get it sorted is because every time there is rain the driveway gets flooded.

    I also checked for updates today for my software and Apple has released 27.0.1 for all their platforms except for tvOS which is on 27. There was a version bump of the modem firmware on my iPhone 17 Pro Max which went from 2.10.01 to 2.10.04 – I haven’t noticed any difference when it comes to my phone in terms of signal quality (which has already been top notch from day one). It is interesting to see that Safari has also been bumped to 27.0.1 so it appears that although the change list was pretty short, it is important to note that not every single fix is listed but instead only the most high profile issues that have been fixed. My experience so far has been pretty good – I’m using Safari at the moment but I like to keep up to date with what is happening in the world of Chrome and Firefox.

    I’m still working through the massive release noes of Safari Technology Preview 253 (link). It looks like 27.1 will probably be a minor release with the focus about supporting new hardware, 27.2 release notes have been pretty modest which leads me to wonder whether 27.3 will be a bigger update. There are quite a few fixes for web extensions I the technology preview although there is only one fix included with Safari 27.2 beta so maybe this is a situation of getting a much needed update out there asap which has minimal stability impact and leave those bigger changes for another release.

    Skinny Mobile is now linked up with Everyday Rewards and by linking them up I ended up getting 250 points and the plan I am on means that every three months I’ll automatically get 500 points. I was being tempted by options available with other carriers but this link up with Woolworths has made staying with Skinny worthwhile. On the topic of internet connections, I’ve moved my DNS setting back to using the one my ISP provides and so far things have been pretty reliable. I had originally moved to Cloudflare because there was a period of time that the ISP DNS went belly up but so far things have been going well. DNS over HTTPS (DoH) is still working with Safari – I have a feeling it is picking up the settings on my router that I setup – the provider I have setup is Cloudflare.

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  • How Apple AirTag recovered my lost keys.

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    I woke up today and went for a walk but silly me I put my keys in the pouch at the front of my hoodie along with my mobile phone but at some point when walking I took out my mobile phone the keys also fell out. I only just found out around 3/4 of the way home because I wanted to check my phone and found that my keys were missing. Well, thank goodness I had an AirTag linked to my keys because I traced it using the AirTag software on my phone and I eventually found that it was dropped off at a local store by a member of the public. I popped into the store, asked whether some keys had been handed it and I thanked the shop keeper for keeping it safe – thank goodness I found the keys because there was more than just the house keys and would have been a nighmare trying to replace them.

    My mum has had a heck of a time trying to organise someone to build a veranda with the organisation she was going through which operates a franchise based system – you contact the head office and then the head office contacts the local builder who then gets in contact with the customer. Well, after getting the wheels in motion she received no reply three weeks later so mum then contacted the head office again and advised them not to bother because three weeks had passed with no answer. I keep hearing stories about small businesses struggling with the current economic climate in New Zealand and here is my mum with money at the ready to pay for it to be installed yet a New Zealand small business can’t do the absolute minimum.

    I ordered my groceries on Sunday night before heading off to bed for the evening – I was going to flag it and leave it for tomorrow but luckily I didn’t because Woolworths had an outage which stopped people from logging in which would have thrown a spanner in the works. I got it delivered and for dinner I had tandoori chicken and coleslaw – I think in future I’m going to stick to either the Japanese coleslaw or the Mexican salad because the creamy winter salad was pretty, as the kids say these days, ‘mid’ when it came to the taste or there lack of. On the other hand, the chicken was very tasty – it is a guaranteed winner every time from Ingham with their tandoori chicken and can be picked up at a reasonable price at the local Pak ‘n Save (I tend to prefer shopping at Woolworths because it has a better selection in some areas).

    On the topic of AI, the greatest threat to humanity isn’t the AI ‘gaining sentience’ or ‘agency’ but an individual or an organisation doing something stupid which ends up setting off a chain of events. We saw with recent AI assisted hacking that occured where individuals didn’t properly sandbox, air gap and monitor the experiment they ran but rather than admitting they screwed up they instead decided to use anthropomorphic language to firstly absolve themselves of responsibility and secondly to attribute sentience and agency in a vain attempt of claiming that AGI is ‘just around the corner’ so they get the dopey AI pilled types on Wall Street to clap like train seals – the sort of people who do zero investigation into how LLMs actually work. Want to know the greatest threat? the AI assisted hack is done on a country like China then the United States doesn’t handle the fall out diplomatically then China responds resulting in something bad happening all because someone couldn’t be bothered doing their job when running an experiment. As the old saying goes, never attribute to malice that can be explained as incompetence, or in the case of AI the greater threat is stupidity of those involved rather than a LLM somehow becoming sentient and have agency.

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  • At the half way point.

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    I woke up today at 9:00 am and it has been raining all day – part of me likes being inside on a rainy day, hearing the sound of rain on the roof, it feels so peaceful. It is probably one of the reasons why I like having it play on my phone when I have difficulty getting to sleep at night – play an audio clip of rain and I drift off to sleep. Thet Metservice says the weather will get better later on tonight but given how topsey-turvery things have been when it comes to forecasting, I’ll play it by ear and see how things turn out.

    For dinner tonight after work I’ve got some chilli I froze a couple of weeks ago and I want to eat that up before it can get a bit nasty – even when frozen I have found that the quality reduces the longer it is in the frezer. I’ve also got out some Buffalo Chicken pies to defroast on the counter – I’ll be logging off in around 5 hours which should be more than enough time to let them defrost and worse case scenario if the pies aren’t defrosted by the time I log off I can always put them in the microwave to complete the defrosting.

  • One more day to go.

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    Today was a good day at work although I had some rude customers I have found that as I have gotten older that ending the call is a whole lot more satisfying than dealing with someone who cannot seem to control their ‘big feelings’. I remember when I first started dealing with customers I just took the abuse believing it was ‘part of the job’ but these days I value my mental health over being used as a soundboard for customers to yell at. Unfortunately they tend to be of a certain age where they believe that their position as a customer some how gives them the right to treat the customer service person poorly. It kind of goes back to an idea I had many years ago – everyone must work at least 5 years in customer service full time before moving to the job they’ve trained for. My rationale behind that line of thing was that first hand experience on the front line might hopefully make people behave in a polite manner when dealing with customer service staff.

    I was watching a video regarding regarding how certain ‘tech writers’ have been hanging around in the milieu of Silicon Valley to the point that they’ve started ‘huffing their own farts’ for the lack of a better phrasing. I’d like to believe that rather than it being a conscious decision on the part of these ‘tech writers’ but instead a consequence of inculturation and the normalisation of behaviours and opinions that would be viewed as abhorrent outside of Silicon Valley. There is a book entitled ‘The Nerd Reich’ by Gil Duran and I’m wondering whether the individuals mentioned in the book are slowly building relationships with these ‘tech writers’ to the point that we end up having them saying things like the following: “I think X is better now than ever” followed by “twitter was falling apart so I’m glad Elon Musk took over but I was like elon has never ran a social media product”. When you start sucking up to Silicon Valley oligarchs then it is difficult to take such people seriously – you’ve decided that the relationship with the powerful is more important than reporting the truth.

    Tonight I broke my fast with some tuna fillets along with a protein bar and protein shake – the benefit of having that refill of protein means I feel full without over eating. I’m still getting up at 9:00 am each day and going for a walk – the calories burnt when going for a walk is only around 600-700 but I do it primarily to get out of the house, get my body moving and waking my body up for the day. The walk today was enjoyable because it is the first time in a while where I could walk without having to wear my hoodie – enjoying the sun and the fresh air before having to say inside all day as I work from home. I’m looking forward to tomorrow so that I can finish the week off and start the weekend on Monday and Tuesday.

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  • It’s Saturday.

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    I’ve just come back from my walk this morning and the weather is looking great. I was checking out some videos and once again we have the ‘why I left the let’ grift is still going. It is amazing the number of people who pull this stunt of “I used to be on the left but now I am [insert new branding opportunity]” while never explaining what made the consider themselves left wing in the first place. I can’t help but get the feeling that many of these people who call themselves left-wing are like those sort of people who are raised in a religion, going through the motions because “that is what is expected” while never asking themselves “why do I believe what I believe?” or even the more important question “do I actually believe what I was raised to believe?”.

    It reminds me of the saying “the unexamined life is not worth living” – to hear someone saying they left the left but they never go into detail regarding what made them identity with the left in the first place. For example, Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton were both Republicans – were they Republican because that is what they actually politically believed or was it a matter of being born into an environment where that was the default political worldview for that in that particular community. It reminds me of the old saying that a fish doesn’t recognise water because that is all that it has ever known. I would say for many people they’re born into a community and accept that things happen a certain way without questioning why they happen that way.

    Just to round up the post there was an interesting discussion regarding the Jacinda Ardern government and the failures of the Labour led government. As I’ve said in the past, when millions are spent on a project but there is nothing to show for it then it shouldn’t be surprised that people get jaded and vote for a National led government with a leader who was seen as a continuation of the John Key era. It is all very well to diagnose a problem such as “capitalism as failed” and “neoliberalism has failed” but when it isn’t followed up with substantive policy then it shouldn’t be surprising that many New Zealanders see you as “yet another politician who talks a big game but doesn’t deliver”.

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  • Heading into the the final two days.

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    I woke up this morning at 9:00 am and went for my walk – once again the weather is fine although the temperature overnight has been getting down to the low single digits. I’ve got my heater going at the moment which has kept inside a comfortable temperature but I long for a time where I don’t need to turn on the heater and just enjoy the wonderful warmth of summer.

    When it comes to news, once again we have the government having to slow down their plan of amalgamating city councils together (link). The government had laid down a three month deadline for coming up with a plan – maybe the government have realised that merging together city councils (something I support btw – personally we should merged all the councils together in each region so then we have provincial councils with a premier and assembly (kind of like a state) rather than city councils) is actually a little more complex than barking orders from Wellington then things magically happening.

    When you merge together city councils you have to deal with the various contracts that have been signed between the private sector and the council, how do you merge the various computer systems together such a library all the way through to back office functions. Then there are the things like the cloud based systems – one council may have a server room themselves, another may use Microsoft 365 etc. how do you bring all that information together into a single system while maintaining the legal requirements regarding transparency when OIA requests are made.

    That doesn’t even touch on the various bylaws – there are going to be overlaps between the various laws so how do you decide which to keep, which to modify? Then there are funding issues – how to do you ensure that rural areas receive adequate funding for infrastructure such as roads and the three waters (drinking water, storm water and sewage)? then there are council offices, what functions do you consolidate while ensuring that there is still an office for residents to get assistance with council related matters?

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  • An enjoyable walk today.

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    I woke up at 9:00 am, caught up some news and then headed out for a walk – the weather is wonderful, the sun was out but it wasn’t too hot but rather a nice cool breeze. One of those days when everything is just right and hopefully tomorrow (Friday) the good weather will continue. I enjoy going for a walk each morning as it wakes me up and puts me in a good mood for the day. Getting some fresh air in the morning always make the day go a whole lot better which is the reason why on my day off I choose to walk down to the local bakery to get some fresh air before enjoyng brunch and then walking from the bakery to the supermarket to pick up some groceries.

    Apple has released Safari Technology Preview 253 (link) and I did a quick scroll through believing it’ll be the same rather boring incrementalism which doesn’t deliver much in any sort of meaningful way but I was proven wrong. Under Web Extensions they have added ‘Added support for the offscreen API. (318833@main) (184269255)’ – it may not sound like much but many extensions make use of it on Chrome – For example uBlock Origin Lite makes use of the API for Compiling and Parsing Filter Lists and Executing Advanced Content Scriptlets. It isn’t an actual implementation of the functionality but rather it lays down the foundations so that it can be built do hopefully we may see it that functionality implemented soon. There are quite a few content blockers that make use of it so hopefully with its inclusion the result will be greater feature parity with Chrome which will make extension developers lives a whole lot easier.

    Ubiquit has released UniFi OS 6.0.10 the early access channel – since they’ve moved to a new Debian base I would expect that it’ll be in testing for quite some time. Part upgrade of the distribution probably includes updating the kernel the LTS branch of the 6.x series so it’ll be interesting to see how that translates to better performance, lower CPU and memory utilisation etc. There is also a WiFi access point firmware update for the U7 series currently in the early access as well so that will also be interesting to see when it’ll be released.

    Something I noticed on YouTube are two things – the first being fake interviews to give the appearance that the person being interviewed has something so important to say that they were able to get someone to interview them. The second thing I noticed are the number of ‘influencers’ (or should I more accurately call them ‘salesperson’) pushing AI by creating contrived ‘real life’ examples of how AI can integrate into your life by using their own life as an example. The AI industry must be pretty blood desperate to start funding randos on the internet to talk about how they decided to pay $20 per month for some AI service that is in desperate need to be a solution to a problem that doesn’t actually exist. If you need to go to such lengths to get people interested in your product or service then maybe that product or service shouldn’t exist in the first place.

    Daily writing prompt
    How do you write what people actually want to read?
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    I don’t consider what my audience would like to read but instead just write what I am interested in and if they’re interested in it then great, if they’re not then that is great too. For me my blog isn’t about ‘engagement’ or making money, it is an open diary that allows me to put my opinions out into the ether of the internet and see what happens.

  • A chilly day at home.

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    Toady has been a productive day although the temperature was cold and there are forecasts of the temperature will be pretty cold for the next week or two. I’ve got my heater on at the moment and set it to 20°C so that it keeps my place at a constant temperature during the day. I was expecting a whole lot of work after coming back from my weekend but apart from email everything else was ok which made the day go pretty quickly. The current tough economic climate is impacting all businesses including the one I’m working at but luckily in the Asia-Pacific region we went through the efficiency drive so we’re not going to need to do anything extra. I really do hope that the local New Zealand economy picks up soon because there are plenty of New Zealanders doing it tough at the moment.

    I’ve finally installed Chrome 154 and things are going well so far (my work laptop is on Chrome 152 but I think that is because after the fiasco with Chrome 153 it is understandable that they want to extensively test it before allowing the update to go ahead). The one thing I have noticed with Chrome when compared to Safari is how aggressively Safari puts to sleep inactive tabs asleep which can cause problems if you click on a tab only to find that you have to refresh it to get the website visible (when I click on tab after being inactive the page will be white) where as at least in the case of Chrome there is the ability to disable that. The reality is that I’ve got 24GB of memory so it isn’t as though I’m running it on a system with limited specifications which is why I really don’t need those extra memory optimisations that Safari is employing.

    There is some good news recently – 2 Degrees turned a profit after spending the last few years consolidating all their acquired brands into a single brand. I’d say that as they move customers over to the new brand you’ll eventually see the old brands disappear off the internet in much the same way that One NZ is doing the same thing by moving their customers gradually over to their new modernised billing system that brings all their services to a single billing platform. The other good news the National Ticketing Solution has rolled out in Canterbury – it has been a long time coming but it is a ‘world first’ to have a national ticketing solution which will mean if you live in Auckland but travel somewhere else in New Zealand you can use the same NFC card. The timetable for it coming to Wellington is 2027 but one thing to keep in mind it is a gradual roll out and that schedule is very much dependent on whether there are any unforeseen hiccups that appear.

    There is also more good news in terms of bringing rail back to Christchurch (link) which will really help with the huge amount of growth that the region has been experiencing – could Christchurch eventually become an Auckland sized city? it would make a lot of sense for that to happen particularly when you consider that most of New Zealand’s energy generation is in the South Island so it makes sense that is where most of the development should be taking place particularly when it comes to manufacturing. It appears that things are gradually happening, slowly but surely, so maybe in a few years time we move beyond building a business case and start seeing new rail lines, electrification and rolling stock being ordered.

    Daily writing prompt
    What are your best healthy eating habits?
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    Take your time and eat slowly – enjoy the meal and the added bonus is that it gives your stomach time to feel full rather than eating in a hurry and still feeling hungry afterwards. Ensure that you’re getting enough protein and fibre – fibre slows down the release of energy from your food so then you don’t have a massive sugar spike followed by a crash and protein allows you to keep feeling fuller for longer.

  • Another rainy day.

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    I woke up this morning and saw it was another rainy day – I love the sound of rain on the roof as I am laying in bed typing on my laptop. I was hoping that the weather and temperature would improve but I’ve had to put my heater back on because the temperature has dropped back down to the single digits. I’m fortunate enough that I can work from home which makes the experience a whole lot more tolerable and I’ve checked my work laptop for a Chrome update however it appears that the tech team have kept it on Chrome 152 for now until they’re confident that Chrome 154 hasn’t broken Salesforce again. When your whole organisation is run on a single piece of technology then you cannot afford to have the sort of problems we experienced with Chrome 153.

    Chrome 154 has been released and there are a whopping 108 security fixes (link) and 11 of the security fixes are for critical bugs. I’m going to install it on my personal laptop and desktop after work then give it a try but in the meantime I’m going to have a read through of the platform changes that were introduced with version 154 (link). The interesting change will be in Chrome 156 with the ‘IndexedDB: SQLite backend’ change which should hopefully make a whole lot of the web apps and websites work more reliably with move SQLite backend for IndexedDB. When I originally saw the note about the change I didn’t realise how many websites actually use it but a quick bit of research uncovered just how many websites actually rely on it. YouTube also makes use of it so I wonder whether the bugginess I experience when using it something to do with it – maybe I’ll get lucky with Chrome 156 and the issues will disappear.

    There is a great interview on a channel I’ve just recently subscribed to on YouTube because I’ve been following the whole Canada-United States conflict. I’ve been following it because the conflict serves as a microcosm of what is happening more broadly between the United States and the rest of the world.

    Unfortunately there are too many within the business and political world who don’t seem to be able to understand the general rule of thumb that the moment you capitulate to the demands of the United States then you’ve signalled weakness. The moment you signal weakness then it is open season – you’ve already capitulated once so why wouldn’t you do it again then again then again to the point that the United States make it clear that as a country you don’t actually have a backbone. Sure, you can get angry and get pulled down into the mud and fight with the United States or you can accept that the relationship has ended and simply walk away thus leaving your clothes free of being covered in mud and the rest of the world look on the United States lashing out at other countries while furiously rolling around in the mud.

    Just to round it up, there is an interesting video regarding the increase in interest rates and how the interest rates serve as a benchmark for all other interests to be set (in much the same way that the minimum wage serves as a benchmark on which all wages are set relative to it).

    Which makes me think that the reason why Kevin Warsh isn’t giving the sort of long term guidance that previous Chair of the Federal Reserve of the United States have given is because his goal is a controlled deflation of the AI bubble rather than a pop (coming out and just straight out saying “the AI bubble is too big and we need to do something about it” may cause a panic resulting in an crash). With that being said, there is a comment regarding what China did do their property bubble – the ideal situation would have been not to allow it to happen in the first place but the second best would be to pop it when you have the opportunity to do so. Yes, it has involved some pain in China but as a consequence we now see money being invested into productive sector rather than asset speculation. Such investment includes investments in robotics, chip fabrication, moving up the value chain to move beyond just providing a cheaper version of what already exists.

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Hello,

I’m Matisyahu

An open diary of my life as I navigate the world – the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles.

“When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called ‘the People’s Stick’” – Mikhail Bakunin

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