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

  • Thank goodness the week is over.

    I swear I was losing it towards the end of my shift but thank goodness it is over and I can relax. I’ve got the roast chicken out of the freezer so when I wake up tomorrow it’ll be all defrosted so then I can put it in the oven along with some roast vegetables – I’ll have a bigger meal during the day because on Monday night I’ll be going to bed early because I’ve got a 6am start on Tuesday where I’m having to go into the office.

    There was an announcement regarding an agreement between China and the US regarding trade but personally I think it is all rather meaningless given that it isn’t a real treaty and more importantly Trump can just decide for ever reason to break what ever arrangement there is. Unfortunately we have another 3 years of this chaos and because the US is the biggest players in the world the result is that the rest of the world gets dragged into their lunacy whether we want to or not.

    There are rumours regarding the Trump administration is wanting to make the US dollar weaker to encourage an export led recovery but the problem with that is a) if you’re running a massive budget deficit then it is inevitable that the value of the dollar will go up because the US is seen as a safe haven – when you buy US debt you need to buy US dollars to do so thus pushing up the value b) they’re wanting to have more investment into the US but how can you do that without having to first buy US dollars to make the investment? c) they haven’t announced that they’re getting rid of the ‘strong dollar policy’ so how serious are they went they cannot even give a signal to the market about the administrations intentions?

    The problem is that with the New Zealand economy is just how exposed we are to the international economy because of how small our domestic economy is – sure, there are decisions that the current government are making that aren’t helping the situation but that being said I think we’d still be struggling even if a Labour led government was in power (probably less so than the current situation but still struggling). I have to admit, I do like the capital gains tax and the focus on spending it on healthcare reminds me very much of Helen Clark and the pledge card from around 25+ years ago that was used to explain what the top tax rate of 39% would pay for.

    Personally I think they need to go further and setup a Ministry of Works with a focus on turning Housing New Zealand into the primary provider of rental accomodation with income related rents. If there is a focus on decommodifying housing it should result in the demand for houses as investment properties stall as those who rent go into the public sector (the private sector cannot compete with the interest rates the government can borrow at along with the rent being income related thus putting it below the market rate) and empty houses go onto the market which will hopefully either stagnate (so it stays the same nominal price but in real terms going down in price) or going down in price. I’d love to see that but something tells me it would scare middle New Zealand who see themselves as a would-be landed gentry.

  • Preparing for the upcoming week.

    Next week will be a 6 day week so I’ll be making sure I get a good amount of sleep on Sunday and Monday so I’m all prepared for a long week. I was going to make a grocery order online on Sunday night but I decided to do it Saturday so then it guarantees that I have a delivery window on Monday where as if I left it until Sunday there is a good chance that I’ll have to go through the drama of heading down to the road myself and have to battle with the crowds etc that I’d prefer avoiding.

    After finishing work I opened up my laptop and noticed that Microsoft has made available a software update for the Surface Laptop 7 (link) – the install was pretty quick but that is probably because it was downloading in the background so then by the time I did a restart most of the work was already one. Microsoft Edge has been updated to version 142 and I haven’t noticed any regressions however there is a preview available of the next update for Windows there have been reports of regressions so I am hoping that Microsoft is working on getting that fixed before it appears on patch Tuesday (normally the second Tuesday of the month) but according to the preview notes they have acknowledged the problem (link).

    One thing I have noticed is that the desktop on Dell I’ve been eyeing up for the last couple of months has dropped by $200 which was probably the result of Intel cutting prices in preparation of the Arrow Lake refresh. It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next few months particularly as more information regarding Panther Lake is known – I could imagine some of the mini pc vendors are getting ready to release a refresh of their line up with the new processors. There is also the new Qualcomm based devices next year which will be interesting to see whether we see some mini pcs make an appearance to give Apple a bit of competition.

    There are quite a few interesting things that the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group are working on – the standardising on feature sets (link) but also I noticed there is work being done regarding firmware unification (link). A lot of what is mentioned in the link should be pretty much transparent to the operating system on top but it should hopefully produce a more reliable experience over all because engineers aren’t having to reinvent the wheel. It is funny how it has taken this long for this sort of thing to happen but I guess it is the old story of ‘better late than never’. Here is an interesting article regarding what AMD is doing (link) – it is amazing amount of interesting things happening that are given very little coverage unless one is out there looking for it.

    Ubiquiti has released some early release and release candidates over the last few days – MLO on access points appear to be getting a good amount of attention, the gateways are being bought almost up to date with the cloud based gateways (it is a bit confusing but the non-cloud ones rely on either the cloud or a cloud key where as the cloud based gateway have the software built in). For me everything has been working rock solid but then again I don’t have a complicated setup – it is just me, this laptop, my work laptop, Google Streamer and nothing else so it isn’t as though it is a massively complicate setup.

    Daily writing prompt
    What are your favorite websites?
    View all responses

    My favourite websites include Arstechnica, Reddit, YouTube, WordPress, 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, along with Radio NZ and a few news websites internationally. I like to keep up to date with the news but at the same time with all the craziness and chaos on the world I try avoid getting too fixated on the news because it is easy to get stuck in a doom spiral and having ones anxiety being raised as a result. It’s good to keep up to date to be remain informed but at the same time there is a limited to zero impact if all one does is fixate on the constant doom and gloom that the news so readily reports on.

  • Keep hanging in there.

    I keep reminding myself to keep hanging in there – I’ve been at my current job almost 8 years but I think I am getting to the point that maybe, when the economy gets a bit better, there will be more opportunities that are available. I love the workplace and my work mates but holy crap some of the customers don’t see to have the ability to engage in the most basic amount of willingness to learn new skills. It is amazing the number of people who talk themselves out of actually spending time learning how to do something – learning how to do something has little to do with actually having an interest in a given area but rather it is about having the skills so that you’re able to solve a problem when it arises rather than having to rush to find someone who can do it for you. I’m not to sure about anyone else I find it empowering when I gain the ability to fix a problem myself knowing that I am self reliant rather than always at the mercy of whether someone else is able to help me.

    It reminds me when I got into computers when I was in the Scouts and I was working towards my technology badge. For me learning how to use a computer wasn’t for the sake of an interest in technology but more the argument of “here is a tool, I’m going to learn how to use that tool” which then developed into “if I am going to use the tool then I may as well have a good understanding of how it works so when I have a problem I can fix it myself”.

    Daily writing prompt
    Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.
    View all responses

    I suggest that we change the calendar to 13 months with exactly 28 days each month and on the 365th day of the year is a public holiday (every leap year you get 2 days off) where those or 2 days aren’t counted as part of normal calendar year but just an extra day. Everything would close for the that one day, except for critical services, and everyone gets that time off with the week leading up to it where every person receives a bonus from the government that can be spent on food, presents etc to be shared with friends and family.

  • The draft folder keeps filling up.

    Work was so-so today but it felt good to get to the end of the day and then go for my nightly walk – fresh air and enjoying the warmer temperature where hopefully I’ll be able to go for a walk without having to wear a hoodie to keep warm. I logged into WordPress to see how many drafts I have got and I think I’m going to have to eventually finish off those projects I’ve put in the ‘maybe later’ pile because many of them I have started but I keep convincing myself that “maybe next week on my day off I’ll do it” only to get to that weekend and decide that some new shiny distraction is what I should focus my attention on.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2025.1028.1744 is now available in the Chrome webstore, I haven’t noticed any regressions yet but at this point I think it is pretty mature so I don’t expect regressions. Chrome 142 is working well – I like to clear all the cookies, cache etc. so then with each update and upgrade I start with a clean slate. I’ve deleted my Bitwarden account and decided Chrome and Google Workspace is the best platform for me going forward. I’m going to contact Microsoft on my day off to get the Microsoft 365 account closed because for some reason when I try to close the account it says there is a licence that needs deleting but all the licences are already cancelled.

    I was watching a video about meal prepping and I saw this really need egg muffin with capsicum, onion, tomatoes and cheese. I haven’t got any muffin trays so maybe not next week but instead the week after I’ll buy some of those nonstick silicone muffin trays, buy a whole lot of eggs then do some meal prep for the week so then I can mix things up a big with some variety for breakfast. I have to admit, I am enjoying having a savoury meal in the morning – the rice and salmon work well and keeps me full until dinner with a coffee or tea when I have my first 15 minute break for the day. The other good thing about meal prepping eggs is that once they’re cooked and frozen then I can make a big batch and they’ll last ages – get out a couple of them before I go to bed at night so then they’re defrosted in the morning thus only requiring heating up in the microwave.

    Another thing I may have a look at is prepping some scrambled egg patties so then I can have then as an egg muffin for breakfast with a slice of cheese, tomato, onion etc. something like that might also be nice – either having it on a muffin or maybe some low carb toast. Being able to mix it up a bit makes having a meal a whole lot less boring while making sure that it is easy to prepare in the morning so then I can spend my time enjoying the meal rather than rushing it before work.

  • Another week, another update.

    Woke up this morning after a good night sleep, had my breakfast and then checked for software updates for Chrome – Chrome 142 has been released and with that after the update was installed I then checked for uBlock Origin Lite updates and the release of version 2025.1028.1744 was announced but that’ll appear in the usual stores over the next couple of days (just filter updates, nothing major mention in the github changelog). Microsoft Edge will probably receive an update to Edge 142 probably at the end of this week or possibly next week depending upon the urgency of the update.

    There has been a rumour that next year Microsoft will announce a 26H1 version specifically for the X2 chip from Qualcomm and then in 26H2 the mainstream release for both x86-64 and ARM will be made available. It’ll be interesting to see whether the 26H1 will be part of the 26200 series where the support is backported from a newer build number or whether they just base 26H1 on a new build series. It’ll be interesting to see whether FRED makes it way into Patherlake and whether it’ll be supported out of the box with Windows. Given how closely Intel work with Microsoft and how FRED is dated further back than 4-5 years ago I wouldn’t be surprised if there was already support in the kernel with the Microsoft and Intel ensuring that any blind spots are addressed.

    I’m still giving Bitwarden a try and everything appears to be going ok although it would be nice if it could pick up Android apps easier like how Google’s own password manager can without having to manually point the app to the right username and password. With that being said, it does integrate well with Edge and the TOTP makes life a lot easier and doesn’t rely on a separate extension so maybe overtime it’ll grow on me. I have noticed that with Microsoft Edge that the performance is slightly better and behaves more reliably when waking up from my laptop going to sleep but then again I have noticed with recent Chrome updates that those issues I had experienced have disappeared so I’m sure it is a situation of a Chrome bug that gets fixed up or has been fixed by Microsoft but hadn’t made it’s way to the main Chrome release.

  • It’s a chilly night.

    The combination of rain and wind has dropped the temperature back to winter levels with the temperature at the moment sitting at 8°C. The weather has been crazy over the last week but unfortunately next week on Tuesday I’ll need to pop into the office but I will get a free breakfast and lunch so I guess I’ve got that going for me. I’ll get to bed really early on Monday night so then I can have a nice long sleep so then I am ready for an early start – my body is going to get a bit of a shock when I get up at 6:00am so then I can get ready and catch the train.

    I’ve been watching a few videos today (link) regarding those calling out the AI hype bubble and I have to admit it felt good seeing people a lot smarter than me confirming what I always suspected but couldn’t put my finger on. I think this is going to be one of those cycles where quite a few people are going to be wiped out once the dust is settled particularly when you look at the money-go-round taking place between the various players. It reminds me of the the fall out of the dot com bubble and how Sun Microsystems (aka ‘the dot in dot com’) suffered post collapse as they were competing not just against the emerging rise of x86 (and later x86-64) servers running Linux but also the second hand market where many of the dot com servers were sold with many of them barely being used – in ‘good as new’ condition or in some cases were never taken out of the box they came in.

    It’ll be interesting to see if the same situation occurs if the AI bubble pops thus leaving the likes of nVidia in a situation of having to not just compete against the other players (Intel and AMD) but also competing with second hand nVidia systems that’ll appear on the market (that’ll be as ‘good as new’ as they’ve been maintained in a pristine datacentre environment). I could see universities picking them up for a song so I guess the fall out will mean that in a second life the hardware will be used for something productive rather than feeding a speculative bubble.

  • Erratic weather today, climate change making the weather random?

    Today it has swung from one extreme to another, first it was fine and then it was heavy rain then the sun came out then it was heavy wind and rain. Funny enough, as all this was going along, I was watching a video on YouTube regarding el nino and how the usual cycle has become more extreme which makes me wonder whether the sort of weather I saw today will become more common in the future. I had a look over at my neighbour and it appears their fence has fallen over – truth be known I thought my own fence would fall over first since it is in a lot worse state but it appears to have survived. I think long term what I’ll need to do is replace it with a fence with colour steel which avoids the wooden fence falling to pieces long term or requiring regular painting.

    I’ve installed Bitwarden and signed up for a year’s subscription and then migrated my passwords and TOTP verification code over to it. I’ve installed the app on my phone as well as installing the extension on Edge to see how it compares to using Chrome. The one thing I do like is how TOTP is integrated into the password manager and the benefit of Bitwarden is that it is easier to setup without requiring a whole heap of additional security steps that IMHO are an absolute overkill for a single person such as myself. I’ve had to tidy up my passwords though since if you have multiple domains for a single website e.g. woolworths.co.nz, auth.woolworths.co.nz etc. then they’re put through as individual entries rather than consolidating them into a single entry. Once setup I have found the whole experience pretty reliable with only a few issues related to the Android app (the extension on Edge for Android appears to be ok) but I think that has more to do with the application itself rather than an issue with the service.

    As much as I love enjoying some FAFO content on YouTube I have to keep reminding myself of this one little fact – just because someone is unhappy with Trump doesn’t mean that they would have voted for Harris/Waltz in the election. How do I know that? because after complaining there is always the inane ramblings that follow about how things would be so much worse under Harris/Waltz or some nonsensical copium based drivel. As I’ve noted in a reply I made on Reddit, these are the same people who probably voted for Reagan twice, George W Bush twice, jumping from one vibe to the next vibe without the slightest clue about what they were voting for because for them politics is about vibes not policies, what their feels are, whether their lizard brain is excited – the sort of obnoxious people who wore a cowboy, boots, used the term ‘freedom fries’ unironically’ and accused anyone critical of the George W Bush administration of hating freedom.

  • End of the week.

    End of a long week and it couldn’t have come sooner. I clocked off from work and I decided that on my day off I’m going to have a lazy weekend with minimal effort on my part. I jumped onto Woolworths to order groceries for the coming week and then the next week so then I’m all set and not having to worry about having to go down the road then carrying a weeks worth of groceries home on the bus. When it comes to milk, I’ll pick it up from the local store which is a small walk down the road but for the big shop I go to the supermarket since it is the best value for money. The other benefit of buying it online is that it is easier to stick to a budget and a meal plan because rather than aimlessly browsing I go onto the website, add to the cart only what I need and then buy it – no temptation of picking up things ‘I might need’ but I really don’t actually need.

    Something that slipped under the radar was another build of Windows 11 26220 (link) with the ‘Proactive Memory Diagnostics’ after a crash looks particularly interesting which lines up with the announcement made a few months ago about a renewed focus on reliability, security etc. It’ll be interesting to see how providing that information to Microsoft will improve the reliability of Windows and how they will work with third parties given that I wouldn’t be surprised if a third party software is causing part of the problem then that said organisation will need to be bought into the loop to get the issue resolved. The other feature I’ve been tracking is the ‘Administrator Protection’ but at the moment there are still many things that need address such as the UI dialogue isn’t working all that great (based on a YouTube video I saw by the creator ‘Tech Based’) so I wouldn’t be surprised if it is something we may not see until 26H2 which would give Microsoft enough time to polish the feature along with getting third parties to ensure their software works as it should.

    It is funny how I’ve been using Windows 11 for 3-4 months and everything has been rock solid on my Microsoft Surface Laptop (ARM based). Although I have flirted with the idea of giving Office 365 a try what I am going to do is stay with Google Workspace since that is what I am familiar with, Android integrates with it well and the Google Drive app on Windows is actually fairly good not to mention Chrome also works well too.

  • Almost the end of the week.

    It’s almost the end of the week and I am looking to sleep in on Monday and then head down to the local dutch bakery for some egg bene and a cappuccino for brunch. I’ve been sticking to the meal routine, no snacks or eating in between meals, I’m hoping that that if I do it for a few months that eventually it becomes like muscle memory where I go through the day without having to consciously think about it. I went for a walk tonight of 11.6km and when I got home I felt good, being able to consolidate my thoughts for the day along with planing the coming week. This week I’m going to get some more of the ‘John West Salmon Bowl Soy Veges & Black Rice’ which is nice to have in the morning then followed by the chia seeds and unsweetened natural yoghurt then for dinner I’ll have a soup along with chia seeds and unsweetened natural yoghurt. They keep my pretty full and then for morning and afternoon tea I’ll have a cup of tea or flavoured cup of coffee.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s something you believe everyone should know.
    View all responses

    Buying things over and above what you need isn’t going to make you happy – there is a law diminishing returns that once you have all your needs taken care of and you have a few nice things to make life move from surviving to being comfortable. It is difficult though to get off the consumerism treadmill once you’re on there – the market, the social pressure, the feeling that you’re being left behind, that you’re not sharing the same experiences that your friends are. The whole issue with marketing in many cases isn’t just about telling you the product exists but making promises that a need you didn’t know existed needs to be addressed or promises of addressing some abstract notion of ‘peace of mind’ through the purchase of a given good or service.

    I have to admit that getting off the treadmill can be hard given that I’ve been working on that myself where I like the novelty of having something new to to play with but I’m training myself to stand back, take a deep breath and ask myself “do I really need that or is it something I’m going to later regret once I get it?”. I’m getting myself in a habit of now avoiding doom scrolling, well, I guess it is more ‘window shopping’ online because I find that it ends up being an example of induce demand for things I wouldn’t have otherwise been interested in. The other thing is to ‘sleep on it’ and the next day after having a good night sleep I realise that I may still want it but it isn’t urgent so I’ll wait until I find I actually need it.

    A good example is that I am looking at getting a desktop computer but I’m holding off because mainly I am waiting to see the M5 refresh Apple will carry out for their Mac range but also the fact that my laptop pretty does everything I want at the moment. When it comes to the desktop there is also looking at getting a new more comfortable chair and maybe a new desk as well so when I do that it’ll be probably next year. I guess this is where procrastination comes in handy, I end up procrastinating my way to not spending money on something.

  • Another day, another dollar.

    I’m happily relaxing after a busy day and the day started off well with confirmation that I’ve got 5 December off for my work Christmas party which avoids me having to finish late on Thursday, wake up early on Friday after barely having a decent night sleep and then by the time the party comes around I’m more or less a zombie. Then I think closed to a week and a bit later I’ve got two weeks off over Christmas where I can relax and hang out with the family along with enjoying my summer. Next year though I am looking at having a week off in the first couple of weeks in June where I can spend time watching WWDC and seeing what the future has in store for the Apple ecosystem.

    The product refresh in October was a bit of a let down but if history is anything to go by we might see a refresh of the Mac mini maybe in November and then maybe the MacBook Air in around March next year. I was a bit disappointed that they hadn’t adopted the WiFi 7 standard yet but then again 6E is good enough for most end users so maybe that is the reason why there isn’t the pressure to update the WiFi chip in the MacBook Pro but then again that could change with a refresh of other Mac devices.

    Ubiquiti has released an early release of UniFi Gateway software version 4.4.5 – it makes me wonder whether they’re slowly bringing UniFi Gateway software into sync with the rest of the product family. There was also an early release update available for the U7 access point which addresses a MLO issue (keeping in mind that MLO is still in early access) which makes me wonder whether we’ll see an increasing focus being made on getting MLO out of being an early access feature to something that can be considered stable enough for wide spread mainstream adoption. For me, I find that the availability of 6GHz and 5GHz already does a pretty good in terms of bandwidth available along with the connection being pretty stable.

    Microsoft Edge had an update in the morning when I got up which updated it from Version 141.0.3537.92 to Version 141.0.3537.99 – installed the update and everything is working well. It is funny how just a few years ago back in the days of WIndows 10 that Microsoft put a lot of effort into their own EdgeHTML engine but quickly realised that addressing the laundry list of compatibility issues, both what they can control and websites that would break with EdgeHTML (but funny enough the website would work if you changed the user agent to Chrome), was a losing battle so it wasn’t surprising that they embraced Chromium given that there were very few advantages spending so much resources that could be better spent on building upon Chromium the integration into Microsoft services and improving those services particularly for their paying customers.

    Daily writing prompt
    What is your favorite form of physical exercise?
    View all responses

    My favourite form of physical exercise is the 11.6km walk I go for every night. It takes around 1 hour and 50 minutes but the main focus isn’t burning calories but it is about getting out of the house after work, being able to have a look around the neighbourhood to see any changes that are taking place as well as mentally unwinding from having to deal with customers – many of whom seem to schedule a time to ring us up because they’re lonely and want someone to talk to.