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'"

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  • A productive day today.

    After doing some shopping today I came home, watched some YouTube and then cooked the chicken and had that with some fresh bread. The chicken was ok but would have much preferred having a tandoori butterflied chicken but I guess the Manuka Honey & Rosemary butterflied chicken is good enough. After enjoying the meal I then watched some more television then went for a 11.6km walk – get back into a routine and enjoy the good weather along with the fresh air.

    uBlock Origin Lite version 2025.1207.2142 has been released – it is available on the iOS App Store however it hasn’t come to the Mac App Store year. It appears there has been some under the hood changes so I’m looking forward to seeing whether there is any noticeable performance improvement. There is an update for Apple’s platforms possibly in the next couple of days which includes Safari being updated so I’ll keep an eye on any improvements.

    Regarding how things are going with iCloud – I’ve got three domains, one for this blog and two which and different suffixes (.net and .com) which allows me to have 9 email aliases in total. So far things have been working reliably although it was funny on my laptop I had to manually add the aliases within the Mail app but on my Mac Studio when I set it up the Mail app was automatically configured during the setup and installation process. The process of selecting a suffix is relatively easy although some services may get confused and see the email as invalid if it has a suffix other than a traditional .com, .net or something country specific. Keeping that in mind, the suffix chosen can result in a variety of prices such as a .org suffix being priced different than say one ending in .io.

  • Grocery shopping all done.

    Last night I got a chicken out before I went to bed, woke up this morning, had some yoghurt and iced coffee for breakfast and headed down the road to pick up some groceries. Quite a few people down at Woolworths – I assume people getting ready for Christmas along with family getting together for BBQs to celebrate the lovely weather. I’ve got the windows open around the house to get fresh air – it looks like my two weeks off which will be starting next week. I’m tempted to run down the food I have in my cupboard over this week and then do a decent grocery shopping next week and maybe I’ll be in luck with the specials they have over the silly season.

    The buy out of Warner Bros. Discovery by Netflix will be interesting given the number of relationships that Warner Bros. Discovery have with pay television operators around the world. In the case of New Zealand, Sky TV is their exclusive partner however from what I understand that exclusivity ends in 2026 which will make for interesting watch – will Sky TV pay a premium to maintain that exclusivity or will Sky TV be all ok with Netflix offering the same Warner Bros. Discovery as what they offer. When it comes to their Linear television offerings such as CNN it appears that it isn’t part of the sale but personally if I was Netflix I’d buy the whole thing because CNN has potential to be a hard news channel like their international version and raise the bar rather than the current crop of shows that are little more than ‘he who has the loudest voice wins’.

    Although I am not a big fan of the Liquid Glass interface it does appear that there were quite a few within Apple who were not overly fond of it either (link) which makes me wonder whether we’ll see further refinement in the 26.x series and then in the 27 we’ll see a revamp of Liquid Glass where the usability issues others have raised are addressed. As for the executive leaving to work for Meta – making your software and hardware pretty isn’t going to change the fact that it is still a product/service being sold by Meta and all the creepy surveillance capitalism that goes on regarding Meta. It is amazing when executives in charge of companies convince themselves that the problem is their products, services or their corporate culture but rather it is a branding issue.

    It reminds me very much of the whole Metaverse hype and the refusal by Meta to accept that what they’re offering has very limited appeal. Second Life for example has existed since 2003 with very limited appeal – a few hundred thousand people using it at any one time pales in comparison to the hundreds of millions of people who use traditional social media. People want to use a service that has minimal friction – easy to use, doesn’t require them to do anything more than the bare minimum to use the service. This is something Microsoft learned when they tried to ram down the collective throats of Xbox end users when they force bundled Kinect while ignoring that their base were people who wanted to collapse in a bean bag with a bottle of beer, a head set and play a game shooting some bad guys online while chating with mates.

  • It’s good to be back on the Mac.

    Oh, how it is good to be back using a Mac – MacBook Pro and a Mac Studio, got them both setup exactly how I wanted. I didn’t expect a big leap from the M1 Max but it there is definitely a leap in performance. I’ve got Simcity running on my laptop and it is very responsive – fast graphics, nothing strange or usual when running it on macOS 26.1 (I was expecting maybe compatibility issues but it worked without a problem). I’m looking forward to macOS 26.2 being released in the coming week assuming there are no show stopper bugs along with maybe a Safari Technology Preview being released as well.

    Tomorrow (Monday) I’ve got my Snakehive leather case arriving to replace the rather flimsy one I am using today – I needed something to my phone in until the one I wanted arrived. I like the wallet case because it allows me to have my wallet and phone all in one so then when I leave the home I have everything I need in one wallet.

    Before heading off to bed I got the chicken out of the freezer and tomorrow I’ll head down to the supermarket with the $50 voucher I got as a prize recently and pick up a few odd bits and pieces. I’m unsure what I’ll have with the chicken although I am thinking of having some roast vegetables because it has been a while since I last had them. While I’m down there I might treat myself to a cappuccino at the mall along with maybe a muffin since it has been a while since I last had a bit of a sweet treat.

    When I come home, I’ll get the chicken cooking and while that happens I’ll finally get the washing all sorted out – hopefully the weather will be fine but worst case scenario I can always dry it inside on the clothes rack and have the dehumidifier going to ensure that the house doesn’t get damp.

  • It appears that humanity never learns.

    Finished work for the week, one week to go and then I’ll be off on my break for two weeks. I was watching a video regarding the AI hype cycle (link) and the way in which mainstream media are almost as though they’re ‘in on in’ it in much the same way that in the early 2000s you’d have talking heads hyping up stocks but secretly behind closed doors the talking heads were betting against it. What amazes me is how the ‘high priests of Wall Street’ are let off Scott free over and over again when they hype something, that something crashes and burns, then the audience has collective amnesia regarding what just took place. It reminds me of 8 years of George W Bush, the economy heading down the toilet, the United States stuck in two pointless wars then 2 years ago Barrack Obama is voted in as president the American population give Republicans a majority in both houses then act surprised that the whole time they’re in power they accomplish nothing. It’s almost as though humanity has collective amnesia where is a complete lack of capacity to remember something more than 2 years ago.

    Every time I hear Greenspan excuse away financial crisis as ‘irrational exuberance’ then how the heck does that jell with the ideological underpinnings of neoliberalism that private sector is the best allocator of capital because it is propelled by the profit seeking motive that is shaped by rational self interest. If the market was rational then these sorts of idiotic hype cycles wouldn’t happen – people would see beyond the marketing hype and realise it for it is. The problem is that the alternative to neoliberalism is the government being the allocator of capital through government policy – using the government balance sheet and the ability to issue their own currency to make investments into social housing, to have institutions such as the Ministry of Works planning long term. I refuse to believe that the prophets of neoliberalism are unable to see the flaw in their own ideology but rather they keep perpetuating it because they now in a situation where they’ve invested so much into it that the only choice other than continuing would be to openly admit that they were wrong – the whole neoliberal experiment has been a colossal failure then having to admit they got caught up in a cult of market worship where they threw all rational thinking out the window.

  • Another good day at work.

    Woke up this morning, had a tuna meal bowl for brunch along with a coffee then jumped into the queue answering emails and telephone calls. Unfortunately things went a bit pear shaped at work because of Salesforce issues but they were eventually fixed. I’m not in the technology area where they do all the system integration but given how you can integrate everything into everything else the problem could be anywhere – Amazon Connect or many other systems that integrate into Salesforce with Salesforce kind of being the system that brings everything together into a single source of truth. When the issue arose I originally thought it may have been Cloudflare because apparently they had an outage today for around 1/2 an hour which was caused by a misconfigured firewall (link).

    I’ve got a couple of weeks off this year so I’m drawing up a plan on what I’m going to do. The two gardens at the side of the house has pebbles and weed matting underneath it but the problem is that the weeds are coming through. The big job will require me to pick up the weed mat with the pebbles inside it with help from a family member then work on dealing with the weeds before relaying it. I’m also having a look at sorting out the weeds in between the concrete around the back – find a more permanent way of dealing with it rather than having to waste time tediously weeding. I’m also tempted to have a look at the fence on either side of the property – they’re looking a little bit worse for wear but that is a much bigger project that I need to think about long term because it involves more than just replacing a few planks of wood.

    From the ‘and this why people don’t want an agentic OS’ (link) but I’m sure the wizkids over at Microsoft are once again convincing themselves that the problem isn’t the fact that what they’re offering no one wants but apparently we, the little people, are big brained enough to understand how awesome this technology is. This is what happens when you have a company stuck in an echo chamber where everything is thinking the same thing and then you convince yourself that what you think is the mainstream position because everyone else is thinking the same way. The best thing that can be done would be for Silicon Valley companies to leave Silicon Valley – set up offices where the unwashed masses live so that they have an easy way to ‘touch grass’ and ask themselves whether what they’re proposing is actually what people want or need. Always remember, when you may think is a great feature isn’t always a reflection of what your customer base wants – reminds me when I worked in hospo, a food item that you may love may not be the sort of product your customer base likes so even if you have the best intention it has to ultimately meet the needs of the customer.

    Just on a side note, I’m not anti-AI but I do think we need to stop conflating LLMs with AI as if they were interchangeable given that AI includes many pieces of technology that are actually useful such as frame generation used in games as one example. Like a lot of things in technology there will be a lot of hype and promises but ultimately when the darling of the industry fails to deliver the industry will move onto the next big thing. I’ve been following the technology for many years and have seen trends come and go, this too shall pass.

  • The day going well so far.

    Woke up this morning, had some protein ice coffee for breakfast and logged into my work computer – Microsoft Edge has released an update which updates Microsoft from 142 to 143 although that hasn’t updated the WebView that the new Microsoft Outlook depends on. The weather is nice outside so I’ve got the windows open to enjoy the fresh air along with curtains open to let some of the wonderful sun light to brighten up the house after dealing with ‘doom and gloom’ over the winter. Maybe I’ll be lucky this year and find that the temperature doesn’t go crazy but worse comes to worse I’ve always got the fan I bought last year that’ll keep the place cool (along with having the window open).

    uBlock Origin Lite experience with Safari is really good although after enabling all the filters and setting it up in ‘Complete’ mode – let it sit for around 5 minutes with the Safari browser window open so that the filters can be converted over to the native format that Safari uses. I’ve found that one I let Safari/uBlock Origin Lite do it’s thing the result was a content blocking experience that is as reliable as uBlock Origin Lite running on Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome.

    Daily writing prompt
    What could you do less of?
    View all responses

    Fixating over things I cannot control or when I make a decision I regret only to overthink it rather than taking it as a loss, learn from the mistake and move on with life. This is particularly important when it comes to trying to stick to a good health routine where one may indulge on a day, feel bad because I’ve let myself down, then fight to get back on track because I’m still beating myself up over what took place. If there is one thing I can add to my ‘new years resolution’ list that would be it because it really does hold be back from advancing forward and getting closer to my health goals. I guess it is one of those things that’ll take time because it is the process of undoing a life time of bad habits that can be traced back to early childhood experiences but ultimately at some point one has to move beyond one’s past.

  • Back at home now.

    Went along to the Christmas party but I found the experience rather overwhelming with all the noise and people so I made an appearance, made use of the three drink coupons then headed back to the train station to catch the 21:00 train home but before I did that I picked up some random items from the supermarket. I have to admit I am a bit of an introvert so I find loud functions with many people rather overwhelming but I try to force myself out of the house in a hope that maybe continued exposure makes the experience less overwhelming- it hasn’t worked so far but I guess I’ll keep trying.

    Things appear to be progressing with Ubiquiti with the release candidate of an update for the UniFi Gateway range which updates it from 4.3.1 to 4.4.6 and in the early access area they’ve made available 5.0.5. There is also the early release of UniFi Access Point (all U7 and E7 models) 8.3.0 – it’ll be interesting to see whether the 8.2.x series make its way out of the early access or whether 8.3.x will be the the basis of the next release. On a good side it appears that the engineers over at Ubiquiti are address many of the issues people raise in the forum which is a nice change from what usually what happens if you post a comment on an organisations forum only to find that months later the issue is left unaddressed – I’m looking at you Google and your Home app that is broken with Google Workspace accounts.

    Saturday and Sunday I have work then the weekend on Monday and Tuesday with my annual leave starting on 15 December – I’ve been looking forward to it for the whole year so I’m happy that it is only a week away. I’ve finally going to clean up around the yard and maybe make my backyard a little more inviting so then on good days I can sit out there relaxing enjoying the fresh air while using my laptop rather than being stuck inside on a nice day.

  • The Mac Studio has finally arrived.

    I got up early this morning at around 8am to ensure that I didn’t miss the courier when they came to drop off the Mac Studio (the display, keyboard and mouse came earlier in the week). It was dropped off at around 15:30 and I got it quickly setup – account all setup along with upgrading it to macOS 26.1 which was pretty smooth sailing and while that was updating I popped down to the local store to pick up a couple of sandwiches for a late lunch. When I got back, it was all setup and working then I made my usual tweaks such as enabling ‘Tinted’ in the appearance section of ‘System Settings’ which makes it not as transparent along with enabling ‘Show menu bar background’ in the ‘Menu Bar’ section of ‘System Settings’ which improves with the visibility of the menu bar.

    After all that was setup I installed uBlock Origin Lite on Safari, configured it and enabled all the filters along with adding to the list of websites that I don’t want filtered – I keep that list of websites in my Apple Notes although it would be nice if these were saved to iCloud storage but I guess it is one of those things that requires quite a bit of work and may end up making the extension overly complex to maintain.

    Anyway, heading off to the end of the year party, will update the blog when I get back later on tonight.

  • Tomorrow off from work, getting closer to annual leave.

    Today was rather uneventful, had some good calls although I had a few who wanted to talk to the supervisor – nothing I could do and the call was unrelated to me. It is funny how sometimes you can have a quiet day then suddenly a day filled with people wanting to speak to a supervisor and it isn’t worth my while trying to deal with something given that I don’t have the magic title therefore my words, no matter how correct they are, don’t carry the weight of ‘the office’ associated with being a supervisor..

    My Mac Studio was meant to be delivered today but unfortunately I didn’t hear them knock on the door so I’ve organised them to deliver it tomorrow. They normally deliver in the afternoon but I’ll get up early just in case they end up delivering it earlier because normally the deliveries work is that they’ll do business deliveries in the morning and then residential deliveries in the afternoon – I guess because businesses pay a premium for overnight delivery with the expectation it is available at the start of the day on the next business day.

    Apple has released the release candidates for their platforms with the expectation that, based on years prior, that it’ll be released next week sometime (normally Wednesday or Thursday), assuming there are no show stopper bugs. Most of the reports have noted that it addresses quite a few ‘fit and finish’ issues along with improved responsiveness etc. but for me the interesting part will be the improvements that Safari 26.2 will bring and how many of the improvements that appear in the current Technology Preview release make it into the main stream release of Safari (on the Web Platform Test website Safari is currently sitting at 99% thus inching very close to completing the goals set out at the beginning of this year).

    I have to admit, the new look and feel has really grown on me – it is the small things such as the ‘bounciness’ and ‘wobbliness’ that really takes me back to a time when technology had some whimsy and fun before it turned into the stark minimalism that we’ve been living under for the last decade and a bit (along with the whole ‘sad beige mum’ aesthetic that has made everything boring and monotone). Maybe we’re going to see a new aesthetic in response to 10 years of minimalism but I only hope that with this correction that there isn’t an over correction resulting in something that is just as bad but at the other end of the spectrum.

    On a side note, it is always funny how the term ‘liberation’ is distorted these days into the idea of rather than getting rid of the system but rather expanding who is included in the system resulting in the system being maintained and perpetuated. Bringing more women and minorities into the top echelons of the system doesn’t undermine it but rather it further legitimises it in the eyes of the very people who are being oppressed by it by convincing large numbers that since a few have made it that those opportunities are available for all. Through incorporating women and minorities into the power structure it perpetuates the illusion of a meritocracy which in turn justifies those at the top vs those at the bottom.

    This is much the same sort of justification that the capitalist class like to use in regards to the meritocratic argument because it provides them with ready to use moral justification for the status quo (a secular version of ‘the divine order of world’)- “I got to the top through hard work, the world is just and people are rewarded for how much hard work they’re willing to put into it”. True liberation is achieved not through perpetuating the the existing power structure with a few tweaks but rather tearing it down and replacing it so that all people have a say in regards to what as society are considered the priorities rather than a privileged few. A democratisation of the economy where we the people choose the direction of society rather than it being in the hands of a small number who are far removed from every day realities – insulated from the consequences of their decisions through their proximity to power and being able to leverage relationships.

  • Back into a good routine.

    Finished work today and although the weather was looking pretty lousy I was able to squeeze in an 11.6km walk even with the drizzle. After coming back home, I grabbed a warm drink, showered then jumped into bed to watch a few YouTube videos and just as I did that I noticed that it started raining a lot heavier so I’m happy I took the opportunity to go for some exercise when I could. It appears that the wet weather will be with us for today and tomorrow but hopefully over the weekend the weather will get better and progressively get better as I get closer to my two weeks off that start on 15 December.

    I’ve sold my Google Streamer and Samsung S25 Ultra so now I’ve got my Microsoft Surface Laptop – if I don’t sell it before Christmas then I might decide to give it to mum or just hold onto it for next year but there is no major sense of urgency since it isn’t a matter of needing the money. When I ordered the Mac Studio I got the base model since it has more than enough memory and storage for what I need it for:

    It is schedule to arrive on Friday however it may end up arriving on Thursday because it has already left the warehouse in Australia. I guess one of the benefits of not customising it means that it is already in stock to ship. I was going to get the Mac mini with a M4 Pro but then I realised that after the customisation that I was better off going for the base model of the Studio where I could get the M4 Max along with extra GPU cores and slightly more memory bandwidth which will be great when gaming – something I want to get back into. I’ve given AdGuard Mini another try and it appears that the slow down and freezing of the web pages has to do with one of the additional bits of functionality for advanced blocking but when disabled the issue goes away. Although uBlock Origin Lite isn’t perfect it is free and doesn’t have the draw backs of AdGuard Mini but that being said I’m always open to alternatives if a superior extension appears.

    One of the good things about moving back to the iPhone is being able to delete WhatsApp and being able to use iMessage instead along with cancelling the Pocket Casts subscription now that I’ve got Apple Podcasts which is so much better than YouTube Music which is the default podcast app on Android. It truly is amazing how Google had a perfectly good podcasting app aka Google Podcasts which was simple, straight forward and very responsive only to then replace it with the bloated behemoth that is YouTube Music. There is a reason why there are separate apps because Podcasts are different to Music which is different to the traditional YouTube yet for some reason the powers that be decided that throwing it all in one app makes a whole lot of sense.

    Oh, and before I go, it appears that once again on a day that ends in a y we have conservatives playing the persecution card when they don’t get their own way (link) – wrote a lousy essay but apparently it’s everyone else’s fault that ‘because god said so’ isn’t a coherent argument when writing an essay at a university level course. I remember reading the article and I thought, “there are so many ways you go talk about this subject matter in interest ways and that was the way you decided to write an essay?”. I really do have to ask how on earth such people get into university when their critical thinking skills are that bad. Imagine if in response to someone asking me to justify my left wing world view my only response was ‘because Marx said so’ I wouldn’t blame them for marking my essay with a big fat zero.