Matisyahu's Blog

Today was a pretty quiet day – I went to bed last night at around 2am and then woke up at around 1pm on Tuesday – a solid whole night of sleep and felt pretty good when I woke up. I then headed to mum’s for dinner and picked up a few items from the supermarket and with that I’m covered for this week as well as next week. The one itemI was able to find was the ‘Up and Go’ with extra protein and coffee flavoured which I couldn’t get for a while but it is now back in stock – for some strange reason they don’t sell it in a 12 pack so I need to buy it in a 6 pack.

uBlock Origin Lite 2025.1110.1551 has been released – and it has appeared in the Apple App Store before the Chrome and Edge Stores which is kind of funny because I would have thought Chrome or Edge would have gotten it first. It hasn’t made its way to Edge and Chrome but I would have thought given how it is an a) open source project and b) a massively high profile project, that these stores would be approving updates in a timely manner because after all it was Google who pushed MV3 and required filters to be included with the extension and couldn’t be updated remotely. If Google cannot keep up with the demand placed on them because their changes have resulted in a greater number of extensions being submitted then maybe they need to revisit their decision to that forbids extensions from being remotely updated eg content blockers downloading the latest filters.

Spark has put up the cost of the email and it is getting to the point that I think mum should just go all in on her outlook.co.nz email address. I kind of wonder whether the Spark as pumping up the price to eventually get to the point that so few people use the service that they eventually get rid of it in the long run – one less thing they have to take care of in terms of providing technical support. When it comes to where ISPs are in New Zealand – the new ISPs don’t even offer it and those that used to offer it are gradually winding down the service then at some point there will be a ‘we no longer provide email any longer’. Given how many free and paid for email services exist there really isn’t an excuse for using an ISP provided email service any more other than having a legacy email that you setup way before the free email services arrived and you’ve kept it going because telling all of your contacts your new email address would be a giant pain in the backside.

Regarding how politics are going in New Zealand – I think that the economy isn’t going to be kind to anyone who has lost their job or anyone employed who is looking for a decent wage increase to make up for the last few years of high inflation. There are rumours that unemployment has peaked and that we’ll see it come down next year but I am sceptical given that the international situation hasn’t changed – Trump throwing around tariffs, rumours that the supreme court will strike down the tariffs but with those rumours also comes speculation that the Trump administration will have another go at imposing tariffs but using a different law. The problem is that this uncertainty and how long it takes to weave through the court system the damage is already done – the big question is whether the members of the CPTPP grow a spine, remove the suspended parts of the treaty that the US demanded (and will be ‘activated’ if they sign up to the CPTPP at a later date), ask China and India to join then link the CPTPP zone with the European Union along with central and south American countries then once that is done to call it a day – ignore the United States and let them isolate themselves into oblivion. There was an election, Americans chose isolationism and disengaging from the world – now the American people will have to live with the consequences of their political choice.