Matisyahu's Blog

Finished work and then went for a walk only to find that the weather was lousy. I was going to tough it out but by the time I got back after 5.8km it was getting close to raining then when I did get home the heavens opened. It makes me happy that I didn’t get caught in a downpour because the last time all my shoes and clothes were drenched it took age to dry. When I got home I heated up some minestrone soup to warm be back up again which was nice. Next week I’ve got some supermarket shopping where I’m going to pick up some more soup – we’re apparently in spring but it feels closer to the beginning of winter.

Intel has announced their Panther Lake processor and there are quite a few great videos on the Intel YouTube channel (link) where they go into detail regarding some of the changes. It’ll be interesting to see what the finalised details are given that next year it’ll be launched and I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up seeing Windows 11 26H2 being optimised for it.

Keeping in mind that Panther Lake is the mobile process (although you may find it mini-pcs as well) although Nova Lake will be the desktop variant which will also launch a refreshed version for the laptop being based on the 14A process. Regarding how it will perform when compared to ARM, as Jim Keller has pointed out, the ISA and backwards compatibility play a minor role regarding power efficiency and there is also the fact that once you reach a certain level for most people the fact that x86-64 might last 24 hours and the ARM lasts 26 hours doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. There is also the benefit of backwards compatibility and for some it is very important particularly if they use native applications or games on a regular basis. I love my ARM based laptop but I’m also realistic that backwards compatibility plays a big role in which the x86-64 has hung around for as long as it has.

I’ve been following politics in New Zealand and things keep going from bad to worse but I’m hopeful that Labour have realised that the current government failing isn’t an automatic win for the centre left – the votes have to be won by putting out a positive vision rather than just a chant of ‘the centre right sucks’. What I do hope that if they do win that they do a better job communicating their policy this time around, giving regular updates and explaining what they’re trying to do as well as having ministers who are willing to push back against BS when journalists and talking heads try the usual nonsense they engage in of declaring a centre left government a failure the moment that a utopia isn’t delivered within 3 months of taking office. The last time they were in office they allowed the right wing allies in the media shape the narrative so that by the time something could be done the damage had already accumulated to the point that it would be next to impossible to undo it before election day.

Oh, and from the archives of FAFO it appears that another group of vibes based Trump voters are realising that maybe a person on Tiktok with purple hair, septum ring and they/them pronouns with a handful of followers isn’t the downfall of the gaming industry. The group now finding out after fluffing around are the gamers who threw their weight behind Trump are finding out that no only has the cost of their hardware hobby gone up but thanks to the Trump administration FTC appointees they’re now finding that their games subscriptions are now going up in price. Something tells me that they won’t learn a single thing just as the American voter gave Republicans a majority in both houses back in 2010 after Obama rescued the global economy from certain collapse. I want to be hopeful but there are truly so many idiots out there.