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'"

recent posts

  • A relaxing day at home.

    After getting through Sunday night and all of Monday, I thought there was a meeting but then I realised the meeting wasn’t until 2 March but I guess it wasn’t all bad because I double checked before heading to the venue. For lunch I had some pumpkin soup along with some fresh garlic bread and for a small desert I had some boysenberries. The weather has improved and looking out for the 7 day forecast on the Metservice website it appears things are getting back to normal but given how things can change at a moments notice I wouldn’t get too comfortable.

    Around where I live we didn’t have a massive amount of flooding other than around 4 inches of flooding in the drive way but apart from that the road I live on and the road my road connects to wasn’t flooded. Regarding other areas, there are a few streets close to where I live where the outcome has been pretty bad due to a stream overflowing and the water getting up to the height of the door handle on a sedan car. I haven’t gone exploring out there because I think the last think those doing recovery work want is someone rubbernecking and causing more problems. Hopefully things will get back normal by around Wednesday when I head back into the office for a couple of days.

    The electricity went off just after midnight so I checked out Wellington Electricity to see what the repair schedule is – at the time I saw the repair time being 17 February at 6:00 but I had incorrectly read it as 6pm when it was 6am. The whole of the Hutt Valley had gone offline so I wasn’t expecting it to be fixed that soon especially one considers how bad the weather was and if the outage was caused by trees falling etc it doesn’t make much sense to do any repairs until after the the weather had improved.

    I was watching a video debunking the idea that young people are going back to the church:

    It reminds me of the book ‘The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics’ that we’re going through a process of not only secularisation but also desecularisation. What do I mean by that? as a society we’re secularising in terms of becoming less religious or at least affiliated with religious institutions while those who are remaining religious are being more intense in their religiosity. The other part of the equation is the rate of retention over the medium and long term – it is one thing to get converts, the honeymoon period of doing something new but the question is whether it can be sustained over the long term or does it end up being like the list of other things they got a sudden interest in and years later have moved on from.

    Regarding the secularisation process, the liberal main line denominations have been hit particularly well over the years and the usual refrain I see on YouTube from the more conservative wing of their denomination is the claim that it is liberalism that has caused it. Like a lot of things in life I would say that there is an element of truth but you’re just as likely to lose members if your church simply becomes a force of reactionary religiosity. The problem with liberalism isn’t liberalism per se but if you aren’t willing to have clearly defined borders of where the limits are then the problem is that with no clearly defined borders then what do you actually believe in? I’m certainly not a fan of the slippery slop argument but your denomination gets to the point that you’re saying that you’re still part of the domination even when your beliefs clearly contradict the core elements of the religion then what do you actually stand for?

    If at the end of the day you make the tent so broad that almost anyone and anything fits underneath it then eventually the whole thing will collapse in on itself and you’ll no longer be able to clearly define what makes your particular domination unique from other dominations or the non-religious. When I am talking about the the ability to define oneself I am referring to the core fundamental theological beliefs – sure, around the edges you may have differences regarding whether something is a sin or how to understand the organisation of a church by learning the lessons the past, but that the centre there has to something there or otherwise you run the risk that there is nothing at the core of your denomination’s beliefs, that the core is hollowed out then at which point you may as well call yourself a social club that meets up every Sunday to sing some songs and randomly recite random passages out of new favourite book that parishioners choose every week.

  • Things are getting back to normal.

    Last night was absolutely chaotic with the wind, the rain and as things got more chaotic I heard one of my chairs had been blown off the patio so I went out, bought them inside along with the table. The garden shed door has broken open with all the wind with the latch bring broken in the process so what I did instead of trying to fix it during a storm I simply put a pot plant in front of the door so that it would stop opening and closing. At the moment there is still some frequent showers and warning of heavy showers still so we may see more showers later on this evening but given how crazy the weather has been I guess it is a matter of anything could happen.

    There are reports that Cuba is closed to collapse due to the blockade and now there is talk about regime change in Iran which makes me wonder where North Korea is in the grand scheme of things. One thing to keep in mind is that there have been discussions regarding the neoconservative grand plan that go all the way back to the George W Bush years. Is this the last hurrah of neoconservatives who see this as their last opportunity to carry out their grand vision before the next generation comes through to replace them who are less interested in the sort of grand geopolitical engineering that the neoconservatives are interested in conducting?

    Oh, and while I’m rounding out this blog post, could people on line please stop saying “we were wrong…” – who is this ‘we’ that you’re referring to? Stop trying to either disassociate yourself from past things you have said or try to spread the blame around as thinly and widely as possible to avoid taking responsibility. If you’ve made a dumb prediction then own it because I’m more than happy to own the dopey predictions I make than turn out to be wrong.

  • Starting the weekend.

    The wind and rain are going crazy outside so I decided to do a few things – the first was to put the chairs and table away because the wind had already blown one of my chairs over so I worried what en even bigger gust of wind may cause. The second was to order a couple of sandwiches and a slice of carrot cake from the local store for delivery – I’d normally walk down but the weather is just foul so I decided to swallow the cost of delivery. The third thing I did was making an order from Woolworths for delivery tomorrow – I would have preferred to get those sandwiches and what I need for tomorrow to be delivered today but unfortunately the local Woolworths were run off their feet today so their same day delivery was closed off early.

    I’ve been following the continued development of AdGuard for both Safari and Chrome to see how well they’ve been advancing when compared to uBlock Origin Lite. AdGuard 2.1.0 for Mac has ben pretty much as expected since it is still very much dependent on the native content blocking API. In my experience the blocking isn’t as smooth as uBlock Origin Lite is on Safari along with the fact that when using AdGuard with Safari there are strange pauses and hangs particularly when it comes to dealing with pages that make extensive use of JavaScript. With that being said, AdGuard 5.3,x series (link) on Chrome has been pretty rock solid.

    Rumour has it that the first beta of the 26.4 series will be out on the week starting 23 February US time – I’d say it’ll probably be either a Tuesday or a Wednesday which is when they make it available. Around that same time hopefully we’ll see a Safari 26.4 beta released so then we can see what changes have made their way from the Technology Preview into the mainstream release of Safari thais included with the 26.4 platform release.

    The order I made from the Verge/Impulse store are on their way, one of the hoodies is coming from Australia while the Irish green hoodie and John Coltrane t-shirt are coming from the United States. Oh, and while writing this blog post the power has gone out through the Wellington and the Hutt Valley so I’m sitting here making use of the battery power on my laptop an my mobile phone connection.

  • Yes you did vote for it.

    Nothing quite annoys me more than the refrain from far to many Americans of “I didn’t vote for that” given that it is exactly what they voted for – signs saying ‘mass deportations now’ didn’t give you a hint on what the Trump platform was all about? when I hear this nonsense of “this is not what I voted for” what it actually sounds like is “I want to be given a free pass because the policies I voted for makes me look like a bad person and I don’t want people to see me as a bad person”. So no, they should be given a free pass – people who voted for this Trump regime and trying to back out of their decision should not be given a free pass, they need to take responsibility for the vote that they made.

    When I talk about ‘taking responsibility’ I am talking about them taking on the work of deconstructing their underlying world view that led them to vote for it in the first place. If they’re not willing to do that work then it is highly likely that in the future if another Trump like figure comes along you’re going to be swept up in the vibes only to get voters remorse. Need I remind people these are the same people who voted for Nixon then years later claim they never voted for him, voted for Reagan then years later claimed they never voted for him, the voted for George W Bush then years later claim they never voted for him.

    Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, when you make your political decisions based on vibes and how you feel rather than hearing the claims made by politicians then investigating those claims using empirical data, logic and reason, then don’t be surprised that a Donald Trump or a George W Bush becomes president. Btw, this isn’t unique to the United States – just look at Brexit from the United Kingdom or in the most recent elections where culture war nonsense blinded the average New Zealander to the fact that 3 Waters was the only viable long term solution for dealing with the infrastructure deficit.

  • Almost there.

    Had a good day at work, finished off some work and then went for my nightly walk and during the day I did some free weights on my break. As for my meal schedule, once again I stuck to it with a continual reminder to myself about the goal I’m trying to reach by the middle of this year. What I’m really focused on is making sure I stick to the meal schedule for a month – normally the first month of any change is difficult but once you get over that first month it does become easier.

    On technology front, Ubiquiti released UniFi Gateways 5.1.1 to the early access channel and thee are a a lot of changes listed and many fixes as well with positive feedback in the forum from people who have more complex setups that I do noting that their issues have been resolved. At the moment I haven’t had any issues with 5.0.12 but then again I only have the gateway, cloud key, switch and an access point with nothing special like using a VPN or VLAN tagging.

    Safari Technology Preview 237 has been released (link) with quite a few fixes and features being added along with the announcement of the Interop 2026 (link). It is good that the various vendors are focusing on ensuring that regardless of what browser you use that things just work as they should. For far too long one was forced to use a particular browser because a particular website only tested with one browser and ignored the others. I think one of the benefits of where we are today is the fact that we don’t see the sort of proprietary extensions that some vendors would use to lock in users. The current status regarding how the various browsers perform when compared to the Interopt 2026 goals can be found here (link).

  • Two more days to go.

    Finished work tonight, watched a few shows and then went for an 11.6km walk. I saw on news reports that there is going to be some wild weather over the next couple of days so I wanted to get in a walk before hell breaks loose. There was some light drizzle when I was walking home and it has been an hour since I came home and still no rain – maybe I’ll be lucky enough and avoid it because I really want to get back into some sort of momentum. As the old saying goes, it is easier to keep something moving than trying to get something to move from a standing start – I’m hoping that once I get some momentum then it’ll become second nature so I’m hoping that the weather stays good and I can stay on track.

  • At the half way point again.

    Ubiquiti has released UniFi Network Application 10.1.85 – I’ve updated to it and everything is going smoothly. Regarding the update to my UXG Max Gateway, although I have seen some reports regarding issues with other models, everything is working well with mine but then again there are so many variables that could cause issues (not to mention that in the comment section people are running out of date software so I don’t think probably helps the situation either).

    In the early release channel UniFi Access Point (all U7 and E7 models) 8.5.8 has been made available and it appears that they’re putting a lot of effort into getting MLO ready. On a side note, I couldn’t work out why Apple didn’t jump on the WIFi 7 bandwagon when they did their M5 refresh but I think it is probably in part due to wanting to make use of what ever Broadcom chips they have from their contract before moving to their own WiFi and Bluetooth chip and the second reason is probably due to the fact that MLO support is pretty half baked on many routers resulting in a less than stellar experience. For me, I have a 1GBps connection to the internet, the backhaul from the access point to my router is 2.5GBps and generally I’m connected to the access point on the 6GHz spectrum at 2.5GBps so I wouldn’t exactly get must benefit from MLO even if I had WiFi 7 on my Apple devices.

  • Apple releases an avalanche of updates.

    I woke up this morning and found that Apple had released an avalanche of updates. I’ve updated all of my devices and here are a few things I noticed:

    1. On my iPhone 17 Pro Max the carrier settings has been updated from 67.0 to 68.0 – I’m unsure what it could be related to other than a guess that it is related to the shutting down of the 3G network in favour of a pure 4G and 5G network (I’m with Skinny which is a sub brand of Spark and thus uses the Spark mobile network – they’re at the moment moving their infrastructure from Huawei to Nokia for 4G and 5G along with using Ericsson, Cisco and a few others).
    2. The WiFi firmware has been updated from Oct  3 2025 00:48:50 version 23.41.7.0.41.51.200 FWID 01-8b09c4e0 to Dec  6 2025 00:30:14 version 23.41.8.0.41.51.201 FWID 01-990604ea and the Driver Kit version has been updated from IO80211_driverkit-1533.5 to IO80211_driverkit-1540.16. The Menu Extra has been updated from 1.0 (19133.6) to 1.0 (19140.10). I haven’t noticed any regressions but if I do come across any improvements or regressions I’ll post an update.
    3.  System Firmware Version and OS Loader Version has been updated from 13822.61.10 to 13822.81.10..
    4. I/O Kit drivers have updated and the number have expanded. It kind of fits into probably their long term plan of not just getting third parties out of the kernel but also push as much of their own kernel code out of the kernel so then only but the absolute bare essentials remain in it.

    Regarding Safari, I cleared all the cookies and cache, then visited some websites to see how it performs and I found that a few websites were more responsive and loaded quicker. There were a few CSS fixes and other improvements (link) but nothing major. I would hazard to guess if there is going to be some big changes that it’ll probably come in 26.4 and assuming it is the same 3 month gap between the release of 26.3 and the release of 26.4 then we may end up seeing it appear in around May. There are rumours that 26.4 will include Gemini based AI but the really big changes will appear in the 27 release – I assume they’ve done that because the changes they wish to introduce are too disruptive for a 26.x release which makes sense.

    There are rumours regarding changes to the Liquid Glass design however Mark Gurman has noted there won’t be any major changes which makes sense. When I look at the whole Liquid Glass it looks to me like a rebooted Aqua so I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up seeing maybe a move in that direction – rather than a radical change we’ll see it mature. This isn’t the first time a refresh has had negative reviews initially and then becomes something that people really latch onto – iOS 7 when it was initially launched had its critics but then over time as the new design language matured it gained many fans. I think we’ll probably see the same thing with the Liquid Glass where the rough edge will be smoothed out, we’ll probably see some more colour which will symbolise the departure from the flat minimalism that has kind of become kind of a vibe to represent the 2010s through to the 2020s.

    Like a lot of fashions, they eventually run their course and there is a push back in the opposite direction – the uptightness of the 1950s paved the way for the psychedelic 1960s which then lead to the toned down autumn colours of the 1970s with the reaction to that being the fluro colours of the 1980s and the Memphis style, big shoulder pads etc. then the excesses of the 1980s lead to the ‘great moderation’ of the 1990s etc. Each style being a response to the previous style so it inevitable that the reaction to flat minimalism was something like Liquid Glass, a reinterpretation of Aqua that came with Mac OS X when it was first launched back in the 2000s.

  • The litmus test for politicians and political party.

    The simple litmus test I have for whether a politician and their party is worth considering is whether their entire campaign is centred around culture wars rather than real policies that actually address the material conditions of the working class. With the election in New Zealand scheduled for November this year the usual culture war nonsense is trotted out by the usual suspects with the media pearl clutching and behaving as if this was the first time said politicians and their party have ever engaged in it even though it has been their modus operandi ever since they were founded over 30 years ago.

    When it comes to those culture wars the big question is whether firstly there is enough of a constituent that can be split across the two parties that engage in it and whether the current economic situation will trump culture war issues. There will always be a group of people who are completely detached from reality but I’m hoping that if National is the largest party that they’ve learnt from the first term to push back against the sort of nonsense pushed by minor parties. National have experienced the backlash in the first term to the ‘Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill’ and there is already push back against NZ First who ar pushing for a referendum regarding the Maori seats. The big question is whether Luxon has the testicular fortitude to put his foot down during negotiations or will he roll over like he did in at the start of his first term.

    On Monday there is the local Labour Party meeting so I’ll turn up because it is on a day I can actually attend. I’m very much excited about what will be announced by Labour because there are another 9 months to go before the election and a lot of water un the bridge has yet to flow not to mention the scale of policy will be dictated by the economic recovery. The economic recovery is as much to do with government policy as it has to do with events outside of the control of government. The problem I have with the current government isn’t the fact that things aren’t the best but more the fact that things would have been tough but due to incompetent management the situation has been made a whole lot more difficult that needed to be. The three headed monstrosity decided that giving unaffordable tax cuts to landlords then engaging in a massive slash ‘n burn to the infrastructure pipeline was somehow going to get things back in order.

    The net result of this slash ‘n burn by the government has resulted in what has occurred today – the construction industry collapsed which then had a flow on effect to the rest of the economy. The day labourers who would visit the local bakery for a pie and a bottle of V? well, they’re no longer employed and no longer spending their money at the local stores resulting in small businesses cutting back on hours because the foot traffic that would result in a shop buzzing with activity is now but a slow trickle. That reduction in hours that spread through to those employees being paid less and them having to cut back on their own spending – a downward spiral has started.

    Regarding external factors, there was a vote in the United States congress to over turn the tariffs imposed by Trump on Canada and it passed with the narrowest of margins – 6 Republican crossed the floor to vote for it meaning that almost 90% of Republicans in congress have fallen in line with Trump and are unwilling to break with him. It’ll either die in the senate or get through but it’ll be vetoed by Trump but either way the whole episode is nothing less than a giant empty virtue signal. As I’ve said, anything less than a veto overriding majority in both chambers for the Democratic Party in the midterms is an indication that the average American is happy with the status quo and the rest of the world should heed the message that the future is one where the United States is no longer a major player in it.

    I think the United Stats are going to be learning a very tough lesson over the next few years – 8 years of George W Bush and 8 years of Trump have taught the world that the United States cannot be trusted. When you have a population who are wholly ignorant about the role the United States play in the world and whose view is myopic and provincial then it shouldn’t be surprising that someone like Trump ends up being voted in. As much as large sections of Americans online don’t want to admit it – Trump represents middle America just as George Carlin noted, the politicians in the United States are a reflection of American society.

  • A pleasant surprise in the morning.

    I woke up this morning and there was a pleasant surprise of seeing that Apple had released 26.3 and Ubiquiti had also made available UniFi OS 5.0.12 for the UniFi Gateway and the Cloud Key. The changes in Safari can be found here (link) and the security fixes for macOS (link), iOS (link) and tvOS (link). It has been a rather small feature update but as noted in previous posts, given that the development occurred towards the end of the year and over the festive season it make sense to keep a narrow focus on the core essentials (Microsoft did very much the same thing with their own updates over the festive season as well along with many other software vendors).

    I’m getting ready to go to work so when I come back I’ll give a more in-depth evaluation of the update and the changes I’ve seen and maybe if I’m lucky in the next couple of days (maybe next week) we’ll see the first beta of 26.4 be released.