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

  • Start of the weekend.

    Work was good today, felt a lot better after a few days of rest and I was fairly productive getting through quite a few emails as well as answering phone calls and following up with past enquiries. After work I decided to have tonight off since there is rain that is on and off so while I had something to eat I checked the shopping I had ordered online to see whether I left anything out – I added a few more items to the order to cover myself for another week. Next week on Friday I have a work Christmas party that I’ll catch the train to – I decided to take the whole day off so then I could sleep in rather than having a early start after a late finish on Thursday then the week after on 15 December starts two weeks off over Christmas to spend time with the family. I think it’ll just be mum, my sister and her partner, along with the two nieces but I don’t see my brother, his partner and kids coming over given the chaos of having to deal with kids who aren’t used to travelling and staying in unfamiliar surroundings.

    I was hoping that maybe on Saturday NZ time (Friday US time) that maybe there would be an upgrade to Chrome 143 would be released but it appears that’ll probably happen next week (Microsoft Edge will probably be released around the same time). I’ve also been keeping an eye on Webkit to see whether Safari Technology Preview 233 had been released but that’ll probably be released next week as well. I’m going to head down the road on Monday to have a look around at the store, see what specials are on, maybe get myself a coffee and also have a look at the new iPhone along with having some hands on experience with the new iOS 26.1. I’ve been kind of negative about the whole ‘liquid glass’ but I think it is about time that I have some experience using it hands on rather than relying on screenshots and what other people have posted about because it doesn’t exactly give a fair representation if you’re not using it first hand to make the judgement call.

    In terms of my diet, I’ve been focusing on getting a good amount of fibre in my diet along with protein because I spent a good amount of time making sure I got a decent amount of protein to keep my feeling full but I’ve found that increasing my fibre has also helped not only feeling fuller for longer but ensuring I don’t even up having an energy crash. I’ve been eating the John West tuna meals that come with brown rice etc. and I’ll pair that up with a unsweetened yoghurt that I add some psyllium husk along with some low calorie sweetener. I’ve found that if I have that for brunch then for dinner along with a coffee at the first 15 minute break and the final 15 minute break that I don’t feel hungry although I do have a sweet tooth I try to keep that in moderation – a balance between a good diet with the occasional treat.

    On Monday I’ve got my grocery order being delivered – hopefully the weather get better so I can get back into going for a walk because I enjoy getting some fresh air but at the moment the wind is blowing crazy and lots of rain. According to the Metservice the weather should be find but with wind but showers later on in the evening/overnight so I guess it’ll be a matter of seeing what happens rather than planning too far in advance.

  • Relaxing at home. Taking it one day at a time.

    On the road to recovery by spending today at home and while at home I was watching a great interview over on YouTube – it is great to see an ecosystem that is building particularly when it comes to one with centre left to left wing unafraid of calling a spade a spade vs in the past with the obsession about decorum and presentation over substance.

    It is great to see that the sort of independent/non-traditional media ecosystem is building on the centre left to left wing. It is ging to be a long uphill slog given that millionaires and billionaires aren’t exactly going to give money to independent media which advocate changes to a system that they benefit from. With that in mind, it is probably for the best that slow organic growth will result in an audience that stays around for the long term because there is a tendency that fast growth can result in an audience that doesn’t hang around for the long term.

    With that being said, what is also needed is an ecosystem that moves beyond commentary to include in depth reporting – Democracy Now does a good job but ideally there needs to a single organisation that can bring together freelance journalists together so that resources can be pooled. You’d think that after Washington Post published 16 negative articles in 24 hours about Bernie Sanders that maybe the centre left and the left wing would realise that they have very few friends (if any at all) in the establishment media but I guess it is a situation of ‘better late than never’.

    When it comes to politicians, it is amazing how bad so many of them are – continuously having to be briefed about subject matter that they should be fluent in such as Kamala Harris getting frustrated about not being briefed about healthcare before an interview. With all due respects, if you’re getting into politics it is because you’re wanting to make the world a better place and I would assume if that is your goal then you should be sleeping, eating and working on policy. The idea of a politician having the distinction of being called a ‘policy wonk’ makes me wonder why the heck are all the other politicians are there to do if they’re not engaged in crafting policy. No one expects fine granular details but you should be able to talk off the cuff at a macro level regarding what you want to do for healthcare or any other area that interviewer wishes to ask you about.

  • A day off from work.

    Woke up today with stomach cramps and felt under the weather so I decided to have the day off, resting in bed, drinking plenty of water to keep hydrated. I’ll need to have a good night sleep and see how things work out tomorrow but depending on what happens I’ll make the decision when I get to it. I went for a small walk tonight just for the sake of some fresh air but nothing more than that.

    I was watching the following video and there were some interesting points being made particularly regarding the whole shut down situation that occured in the United States:

    I disagree with a few points that David Frum raised in the video – the idea of having a single payer healthcare policy isn’t ‘militant left wing’ is merely bringing the United States inline with almost every other country in the OECD. Are there issues that I disagree with regarding what Zohran Mamdani proposed? yes, but the reason why he won was because he dealt with the ‘bread and butter issues’ – didn’t get bogged down in BS culture wars so if there is something that Democrats can learn then it is the need to stay on message and no get distracted with sideshows that the Republicans put up to derail to conversation away the very topics that they’re failing to address.

    As for what should have been done – they should have held out and forced the hand of the Republican Party to get rid of the filibuster to then get them to pass the budget with a simple majority. The only reason why the Republican Party don’t want to get rid of the filibuster is because they know their ‘big beautiful bill’ is very unpopular so instead what they need to do is to spread the blame as wide as possible then play the game, when there is the obvious backlash, that the budget was passed with bipartisan support so therefore the Democrats are as guilty as the Republicans for the negative consequences of the bill. To force the Republican Party into that position where they get rid of the filibuster you need shape the narrative in the media and the only way you can do that is for every senator to go out and speak to a unified voice, go onto every media outlet and podcast, carpet bomb the airwaves with your narrative and that includes going into hostile territory such as Fox News.

    If you create the narrative, control the narrative and push that narrative then the onus falls back on the Republican Party – make it abundantly clear that the Republican Party have a majority in both chambers so therefore the responsibility of getting it passed falls on their shoulders, that it isn’t the Democratic Party’s responsibility to carry water for the Republican Party. If you truly believe that the policy you’re advancing is good for the country and popular then you would remove the filibuster, pass it with a simple majority, go off to the mid terms boasting about how you kept the government open and got the budget passed then if that is what the US public want then it should translate to a thumping victory and possibly an even larger majority in both chambers.

    Getting back to home, it is interesting how the National Party is already getting themselves prepared for election time next year with discussions regarding privatisation being back on the agenda which kind of puts them in a situation that their only coalition partner left being the Act Party. If the only party they can form a coalition with is the Act Party then either one of two things will need to happen – the both of them will need to get enough seats to form a majority or they form a minority government but find that their ability to get anything through is severely crippled by the lack of a majority.

    When it comes to New Zealand First, Winston Peter’s whole raison d’être is opposing privatisation and foreign ownership of strategic assets – New Zealand First like Jim Anderton’s New Labour came as a response to the neoliberalism of the 1980s when both Jim and Winston found themselves at odds with the neoliberal orthodoxy sweeping both parties and found that the party they joined no longer represented their philosophical world view. National have boxed themselves into a corner which makes me wonder whether they’re setting themselves up to lose the election because they don’t have the numbers rather than losing the election because the New Zealand public rejected their three years of ‘getting back on track’ only to find that after three years they’re no where near the track.

  • Raining and more rain.

    Today it was raining all day and raining at night – it really didn’t stop until around 2am which by that time was far too late to go for a walk. I decided to stay at home, have some vegetarian chilli for dinner while watching some YouTube videos (the vegetarian chilli would actually go well with mince or firm tofu that is fried and then the chilli mix added to it).

    It looks like the update to Chrome, Edge as well as Safari Technology Preview has been delayed probably either until Friday or maybe next week. It is an indication that if there are security fixes in the next version those issues are either low severity or if they are high severity that there are not active exploits out in the world. There are rumours that the next version of iOS and macOS scheduled to be version 27 will be a a ‘Snow Leopard’ release where the focus is on ‘fit and finish’ where there will be no new features other implementing the AI features talked about at this year’s WWDC. Even at version 26.1 I still see a lot of people complaining about the half finished nature of version 26 which kind of feeds into the narrative that the whole ‘liquid glass’ was something that was hurriedly slapped together at the last minute.

    For me the most disappointing part of the whole Apple M5 refresh is the fact that it didn’t include the N1 chip and still relying on the Broadcom wireless chip lacking WiFi 7 support. It is the year 2025, if you’re shipping WiFi 6 products and you’re charging a premium for your products then what you’re really doing is just ‘taking the piss’. Yeah, I have my laundry list of things I can whinge about regarding Microsoft but holy heck when both Apple and Microsoft are just half assing their product quality and adoption of the latest technologies then it is difficult not to feel negative/pessimistic about the future of technology.

    I remember in the past I used to excited about a new hardware or software release, that there was a leap forward but now I recoil in horror wondering what useless crap they’ve foisted upon the end user (see Microsoft and their ‘agentic OS’ fixation) mean while they cannot get the basics correct (see Safari and the Declarative Net Request API implementation being broken six ways from Sunday). I can deal with features that I may not be interested – plenty of them on my Samsung phone but I just ignore them but when the basics aren’t done well while all the focus is on pointless features then it does raise the blood pressure a bit.

  • Rather uneventful day.

    Finished work tonight, went for my 11.6km walk, jumped in and had a shower and now relaxing in bad watching some YouTube videos. The day so far has been rather uneventful, got up, had brunch, logged into my computer and found that Google hadn’t released an update for Chrome – maybe something happened and it had to be pushed back to Thursday NZ time (Wednesday US time)? I guess we’ll need to wait and see for what happens tomorrow when I check for updates.

    If Microsoft want to know why there is backlash against their whole ‘agentic OS’ idea then here is another article pointing out problems that have been left unaddressed with Microsoft demonstrating via the lack of progress that they actually care about fixing the problem (link). I’ve been lucky enough to not have any of the issues expressed in the article but others have – when you cannot get the basics done well then don’t be surprised there is push back online for dopey ideas such as ‘agentic OS’ – something no body asked for and no body wants other than the insufferable people you hang out with in silicon valley that are completely divorced from the real world.

    On the Microsoft 365 saga and how it has been impossible for me to close the account – it appears that if you cancel a licence that the licence isn’t officially cancelled until the end of the billing cycle. The reason why I bring this up is because when I try to cancel the account it keeps coming back saying that I have an active licence even though all the licences are cancelled on the account.

    I’ve been watching a few YouTube videos of synth music playing to a video montage of photos and videos and there is a feeling of not only nostalgia but also a feeling that there was a time where there was an optimistic vision of the future only for the future to arrive and it has been a giant disappointment. The internet was envisaged as being a way for the world to come together only to find that the optimism about social media has turned into a dystopian hellscape – providing a platform of people to show the worst side of themselves and there being no shame for behaving in such a way then algorithsm amplifying and rewarding such behaviour.

    Products that were exciting have now become boring, what is being launched is filled with crap no one asked for meanwhile said companies can’t even get the basics working. Let’s not get started on the pointless waste of resources and energy the whole AI LLM is going to turn out to be all the while we have an environmental calamity coming our way but silicon valley dude bros have got their head firmly planted up their own backside while they enjoy their yacht that has another yacht inside it along side a sports car that costs more than the average house.

    Oh well, maybe I’m becoming cynical in my old age but the optimistic future seems to be replaced with faux futurism – the illusion of progress without an real meaningful progress. I think a good part of this has to do with neoliberalism – where as in the past the government would engage in big nation building based forward looking vision of where to take the nation where as today what the government now does is little more than managed decline at best and at worst indifference to the fact that things that were taken for granted in the past, eg building public housing, is now marked in the ‘too hard’ basket as politicians come up with elaborate PPP because god forbid the government directly build something for the common good.

  • Three more weeks to go.

    I decided to go all out tonight and go for a 23.2KM walk – I really needed to go for a walk after a lazy day on Monday and after coming back it felt good having accomplished what I wanted. On my walk I like to use it as a time to consolidate my thoughts and plan what I am going to do for the coming week – I’ve decided that going forward what I’m going to do is buy all my groceries online and get it delivered because when I go shopping I buy things I don’t really need (aka ‘junk food’) because I browse where as online I have a list of things I need to purchase and just get those delivered. Three more weeks to go before I go on my two weeks off at the end of the year.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2025.1123.1640 is now in the Chrome extension store – most of the time you should find that the update is transparent and you won’t need to do anything yourself. On Wednesday NZ Time (Tuesday US Time) Chrome 143 will be released and depending on the nature of the security updates (if there are any) then we may see an update for Microsoft Edge but that is unlikely due to Microsoft tending to release the update after Chrome releases their update. Not next week but the week after Microsoft will be releasing patch Tuesday and based on the notes from November it’ll be purely a bug and security fix so don’t expect any new features.

  • Software efficiency: The programmer’s time vs additional overhead.

    A few ideas have been rolling around in my head for quite some time so I thought I may as well put them out there – I could very much be wrong (most likely) but I’ll ‘put them to paper’ then see how embarrassed I am within a few years. A topic that I see regular come up in conversionsations is in regards to software quality, performance, memory usage and general efficiency is the lamenting over how ‘inefficient’ modern software is while waxing poetically about ‘the good old days’ (while ignoring back in the ‘good old days’ the same accusations of ‘inefficiency’ was levelled at the very software that people today consider efficient) how the software was more efficient. The whole discussion reminds me years ago learning about the different generations of programming languages and how with each generation the underlying technology is abstracted which enabled portability, removed the need to manually manage memory and a lot more in the name allowing the programmer to be more efficient with their time.

    The benefit of abstracting the complexity away means that programmers can focus on functionality that end users want rather than spending large amounts of time dealing with issues that for the end user they’ll never see. It is no different than abstracting away version management to an intelligent piece of software that keeps track of source code, changes, associating changes with bug reports and who is assigned to take care of said functionality being added or bug being fixed. Abstracting complexity away and allowing the computer to take care of the details makes programmers more efficient – freeing up time so that they can focus on their work rather than having to spend that time on ‘house keeping’.

    Apple for example created Objective-C 2.0 garbage collection but it was only available on macOS but that then was replaced with Automatic Reference Counting which was available on all platforms (for Swift and Objective-C) – all the benefits of abstraction without the overhead associated with it. Another good example of abstraction is Grand Central Dispatch to make concurrency easier (the functionality has been ported to other operating systems) – the rough equivalent of that would be Thread Pools on Windows. We moved from a situation of single cores and dual cores to now we’re in a world where on my laptop I’ve got 12 cores. Most applications were single threaded or limited in the number of threads being used because of the added complexity and at the time it make much sense because there was limited benefit given most were just running dual core or maybe quad core. The problem is that if you want to deliver more performance and responsiveness thus a better experience for your end users then it will require you to make greater use of threads to make use of extra cores. The solution? hand some of that complexity off to the system to take care of.

    When it comes to AI and LLM it makes me wonder whether the direction over moving to Java and .NET with garbage collection, just in time compiling etc. is being overshadowed by new memory safe languages such as Rust and Swift along with in the future the use of AI and LLM for C/C++ code based being able to traverse large amounts of source code then establish relationships between parts of the code base to then pick up the sort of issues such as memory bugs that result in security vulnerabilities. I personally I don’t see ‘vibe coding’ replacing programmers but what I do is AI and LLM being used to make programmers more productive because they’re not having to spend their time doing ‘housing keeping’.

    I bring this up because there is a big push by many within the technology space to make data centres a lot more efficient – yes, there is the environmental benefits but there is also benefits to the bottom line with less power being used and more profit being made. The benefits of abstraction means you don’t have to deal with a whole heap of things you’d have to hand code but that abstraction sometimes comes with an overhead cost – for the end user the difference isn’t probably that noticeable but if you’re running a large data centre that overhead can be measured. There was a great comparison a few years ago comparing Perl, Python, Java, .NET and a few other frameworks/languages when compared to modern languages like Swift and Rust – the differences were staggering and that was with the using the latest techniques such as Python with Just In Time compilation which certainly improves performance but there is still the matter of the overhead of using a JIT model.

  • A really good start to the weekend.

    I went to sleep last night, slept in until around 12 noon, woke up, had something to eat for lunch then headed down the road to pick up a few essentials and then got in contact with mum regarding what was happening. Had a chat with mum and it turns out that my sister had he account hacked and money emptied but thankfully she got onto it quickly so hopefully it’ll be tracked down. It appears that the money was transferred to a one of those new fintech bank accounts which isn’t surprising because where I work in my day job customers who were hacked the money was sent through to the same fintech that operates in Australia – maybe the hacking scene is related? a coordinated scamming launched at multiple targets from different backgrounds but done by the same group of people.

    Funny enough, the chicken I was going to have for dinner I ended up taking to mum’s and we had that with some baked potatoes and salad along with a berry apple crumble with ice cream for desert. On the way hope I picked up some groceries – the sort of items that would have been difficult to carry home myself. Normally if I’m unable to get a ride with mum or my sister I’ll just order it online and get it delivered because the cost of delivery is roughly the same amount it would be if I did the grocery shopping in two trips (to spread the burden over to trips).

    I’ve decided that what I’ll be doing is 5 days of walking then followed by two days of relaxing – being able to enjoy those two day of really allows me to recover for the 5 days of walking I do after work each day. Had a great day and I guess it is a habit I need to get out of which is punishing myself because god forbid I want some time off to rest and relax – trying to get rid of a life time of bad habits and embrace moderation.

    uBlock Origin Lite version 2025.1123.1640 has been released – waiting for it to appear in the Chrome and Edge store however it ready now in the Apple App Store. It is amazing how Apple does a pretty good job at getting it approved a lot faster than Google and Microsoft. I updated y mum’s computers and my sister’s as well – I’ve decided it would be best to keep them on the previous version of macOS and iOS until version 26.2 is released which, by that time, should be pretty stable.

    A great interview of Yanis Varoufakis by Tom Nicholas – it is interesting how the feudal lords and landed gentry had their power come from the land that they owned but it appears that the feudal lords of today in this age of neo feudalism the idea of ‘land’ is virtual in terms of platforms in a virtual space where like in the past the seek rent from those who toil ‘the land’ in the virtual world where the feudal lord take a cut (in the form of data) and the ‘peasants’ pay the lord for that privilege. Then again if you’ve been following technology for the last 30+ years like I have then you’ve lived through the major leap forwards with each generation to now silicon valley mega corporations are stumbling around trying to find the next growth opportunity. The problem is that these attempts have fallen flat – the metaverse and AR/VR headsets no one cared about because such virtual worlds already existed in the form of Second Life which had a limited audience, wearable devices like glasses are rejected because they’re expensive and they make you look like a dork, AI services that are losing money even on the most expensive plan with many experts pointing to LLMs are limited by design no matter how many data centres and data you throw at the problem and that doesn’t even start on the fixation on autonomous vehicles because god forbid we tax these damn corporations to build a decent mass transit city for metro as well as intercity transportation (there is already autonomous trains).

    Daily writing prompt
    Name your top three pet peeves.
    View all responses

    Here are my three plus a bonus one because I like to rebel against the system.

    1. The mixture of ignorance and arrogance – it is one thing to be ignorance, we’re all (including myself) are ignorant of something(s) but it is made worst when it is married with arrogance. The whole ‘influencer culture’ and the ‘prodcast bro culture’ being two examples of such behaviour.
    2. If you’re stating an opinion then don’t phrase in a way that it makes it sound as though you’re making a declarative statement – if is your opinion then make it clear it is your opinion, don’t phrase it in a way that gives the impression that you’re stating a fact or otherwise you’ll come off sound arrogant.
    3. If you don’t know the answer or the topic al that well then there is nothing wrong with saying “I don’t know” or “I haven’t looked into it” – there is nothing wrong with saying you don’t have an opinion on something or are indifferent. it appears that these days apparently you’re meant to have an opinion on everything even if you’ve never glanced at the topic in your life.
    4. Boot lickers and those who defend millionaires and billionaires as if they’re going to receive a silver dollar as a reward for their sycophancy – people who convince themselves that they’re temporarily embarrassed capitalists who are just one step away from being ‘wealthy’ then spend a good portion on their life defending millionaires and billionaires online while voting for policies that harm themselves but they’re convinced that one day when they become rich they will benefit from those policies.

  • Back into the weekend.

    The weekend has finally arrived – finished work today then went for my nightly walk and picked a couple of sandwiches for dinner then came back home, watched some videos while eating dinner. It was a long week but I think this coming week will be a lot easier – getting back into the routine of going for a walk each night. After having not doing it for almost two weeks can be difficult because the temptation of doing nothing is a lot stronger than my desire to want to exercise but that being said I like the benefits that come from regular exercise.

    Qualcomm has release a control panel (you’ll need to install the latest .NET runtime because it depends on it) which also includes the ability to update the GPU driver (link) which has a slight performance improvement although WDDM 3.2 isn’t supported. It’ll be interesting to see whether with the release of the Qualcomm X2 whether there will be a GPU driver upgrade that’ll cover both the X and X2 – I guess we’ll need to see what happens when the laptops start shipping next year which is the rumoured time which falls inline with the release of Windows 11 26H2 where new hardware support is added (it’ll be interesting to see whether the release of Panther Lake will result in FRED support being added to the Windows NT Kernel/HAL).

    When it comes to politics I tend to avoid hopium (like copium but for hope) because all too often the narrative in the media tends to not be reflective of the mood out in the real world. There is a lot of stories in the media regarding the impact of Trump’s policies, the negative impact of those policies but I can’t help but get the feeling we’ve been here before when John Kerry ran for president and a lot of noise in the media about how unpopular George W Bush was but as we all know he was voted in for a second term. As cliched as it sounds, the only poll that matters is on election day (in the mid terms) because that shows not only the number of people who are unhappy (or happy) with the status quo but also how much of the population is motivated (either by anger or support for the status quo) to turn out to vote.

    On a side note, I find it funny how the liberal pundits are twisting themselves into a pretzel trying to explain away Zohran Mamdani’s win in the election – it is amazing how these people must get paid to avoid the most obvious explanation in favour of coming up with long winded excuses. The simple fact of the matter is that Zohran Mamdani won because he talked about the ‘meat and potatoes’ issues, the ‘bread and butter’ issues, the kitchen table and pocket book issues. If there is something that Democrats need to take away from Zohran Mamdani’s win that can be taken nationally it is the laser focus on the issues that matter to people regardless of their background – don’t get bogged down in boutique identity politics issues and push back when Republicans try to change the topic back to culture wars by dragging the conversation back to ‘meat and potatoes’ issues that matter to the overwhelming majority of the electorate.

  • Almost there, one day to go.

    Another day at work and then went for a my usual walk. I really do love this time of year, not too hot, not too cold, a cool breeze, things aren’t too chaotic around where I live and I’m looking forward to a few work get togethers over the next couple of weeks and then my holiday starts on 15 December where I’ll enjoy two weeks off. On my walk I was thinking about taking a week off in June next year over the WWDC – it’ll be interesting to see what the focus will be – maybe we’ll be lucky and everyone has realised that the AI hype was over the top and the industry finally gets back to dealing with the issues that end users want addressed instead of saying AI related gibberish to increase their stock price.

    I couldn’t be bothered watching Real Time with Bill Maher – when you can’t even get the facts straight when talking about a group of Democratic politicians saying to those working in defence that they don’t have to obey an illegal order (link), why should I waste my time watching your show? Btw, within the defence force you don’t need to be a legal expert but there is a chain of command, processes to fallow and outside groups that can provide free legal advise so his ridiculous scenario he gave of a 21 year old in the Overtime segment of is show is, quite frankly, a load of crap and he should feel ashamed for putting out such nonsense in the first place.

    I was watching a video regarding the iPad Pro and the video presenter was complaining how it isn’t a Mac replacement – for some reason he has convinced himself that if Apple doesn’t give him what he wants then Apple has let him down rather than it being the fact that the device was never designed for is use case in the first place. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the iPad Pro isn’t a drop in replacement for the Mac because they cater for difference audiences. First thing off I have to point out, the term ‘Pro’ lost any real meaning years ago when it pretty much became sort hand for “this has all the bells and whistles that the standard version lacks” not that it is designed for ‘professionals’ (who is considered a professional and what a professional needs is like asking how long a piece of string is).

    The iPad is designed to be an appliance, a device for the every man who simply wants a computer where they can turn it on, do what they want and then turn it off. The audience for an iPad is someone who wants a device that enables them to do a set of tasks but abstracts the details away and with that abstraction comes a lack of power and flexibility by virtue of enabling such power flexibility invariably means adding complexity – something the target audience doesn’t want to deal with. Long story short, the iPad is for your mum, your brother who wants something they can check out the football scores, your nana who likes sending emails and keeping in contact with her knitting group on Facebook.