Matisyahu's Blog

Well, I see that AdGuard Safari Extension was updated in the last couple of days from 1.11.18 to 1.11.19 – the update includes updating the scriptlets library to 1.11.16 which adds new features and fixes existing bugs (link). I’ve still kept my custom user filters that I use rather than relying on the allow list which doesn’t always work reliably (websites broken such as YouTube even though the allow list should disable content blocking) – everything is working as it should although I am looking forward to the much rumoured move away from it being an electron application to it being native – maybe they’re going to make use of catalyst and make their iOS one available on macOS.

Just watching a clip from Jack Tame’s Q+A show:

I find it interesting how there is so much talk about the ‘nice to haves’ but never go into detail what they mean – for example during the council budget process in Auckland there was a debate about whether the council should continue funding the local Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB), are libraries considered nice to have? I guess this is going to be one of those situations where people proclaim “they need to stop wasting money” only to end up getting a copy of the council budget and realise that the ‘waste’ that can be found is close to a rounding error when one considers the size of the budget. Once again we have the National Party led government believing that engaging in bellicose rhetoric is an example of leadership in much the same way that the former health minister believed that yelling at the healthcare system “be more efficient’ will magically result in more being done with less.

There was a recent transportation announcement and they used the same ‘back to basics’ rhetoric when it came to roading – cutting spending for biking, walking and public transport while implying that such investments are liberal indulgences rather than ‘serious transportation infrastructure’. The petrol tax isn’t just about paying for the infrastructure it is also there (along with carbon tax) to pay the cost of offsetting the negative externalities of vehicles on the road – the planning around public transport, biking and walking is the attempt to offset negative externalities including meeting our climate change goals that we agreed to at the last global submit New Zealand attended.