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

  • End of the first week back.

    End of the first week back at work after having Christmas off – finished work at 10pm, did some light weights during the day, went for a brief walk, picked up a few things from the store and headed back home. Relaxing in bed watching some tv series and seeing the whole Venezuela situation unfold. I’m held off putting my thoughts out there because I’ve been having a look at a few videos from people I respect give their point of view regarding what is goal of the Trump regime. Yeah, Trump runs his mouth and it has little to do what what the actual plan is – I can’t help but get the feeling that Trump has outsourced the foreign policy to Marco Rubio given how disinterested he was when he did the press conference at Mar-a-lago where it was pretty clear he wanted to be anywhere but there.

    Anyway, this coming week things will get back to normal in New Zealand as people return from their Christmas and New Years holidays although things don’y really get back into full swing until almost every is back before the start of the new school year. I’ll go for a walk tomorrow and get some fresh air – I really do need to get out more if for no other reason than to being some sort of shut in/recluse. The weather is great so I may even go into Wellington, a walk along the water front and make a day of it.

    On the technology front I was going to wait for Macs that came with WiFi 7 inclusion but the reality is that due to the access point I have not support MLO by default (it is still considered ‘early access’) it didn’t really make much sense and since WiFi 6E includes 6GHz there was very little benefit holding off for what amounts to a minor change. Another thing to keep in mind is even with MLO enabled and WiFi 7 available on my computer the backhaul capacity from the access point to the gateway is only 2.5Gbps so there would little to no benefit.

  • An uneventful day.

    Finished work tonight at 10pm, did some light weights and then went for my 11.6km walk. The one thing I love going for a walk late at night during summer is the temperature isn’t too hot or too cold so then it is possible to exercise without having to wear a sweatshirt while at the same time being not too warm that the experience is uncomfortable. After indulging over Christmas and the New Year the big struggle is to get back into a regular routine – health eating, regular exercise and the occasional treat but ensuring it doesn’t go from occasionally to something that is done on a daily basis. It is important not to moralise ones diet but equally having a routine does allow you to keep a handle on things.

    Tomorrow before going for my walk I’ll take a butterflied chicken out of the freezer for Monday although on Monday I’ll need to head down to the supermarket to pick up a salad. In the past I use to buy one a week in advance but I’d find that either I wouldn’t get around to using it in time thus not be very fresh or I’d find it end up going yucky before the due by date. Long story short I find it best to purchase the salad on the day I am going to use it so then I know it exactly perfect. I may get some fresh ciabatta bread while I’m there which has such a great natural taste that all you need to do is put some butter on it.

    Oh, and something I’ve been getting into a good routine is watering the plants every other day before I start work. I do that as part of my ‘getting up in the morning routine’ where I’ll do some light weights, have my breakfast and then water the pot plants. I’m hoping that I’ll get some growth in the next few months and as for the inside plants, I’m still looking at some appropriately sized artificial plants but I’m also leaning towards maybe getting some real plants to compliment them so there is a bit of a mixture.

  • Getting ready for bed.

    Went for a smaller walk tonight of only around 9km but the main objective is that I get out of the house each night for some exercise even if it isn’t the normal 11.6km. I got back home, had a shower and jumped into bed to watch some news and catch up on what has happened in the world. I’m hoping that this year will be better than last year but the thing I keep reminding myself is to focus on the things I can control rather than getting overly fixated on those things I cannot control.

    The one change I have made is making use of the 5kg dumbbells I have at home – during my breaks I’m doing a few reps then afterwards – basically when ever I have some free time I’m doing some curls and other exercises using them. It is funny because around 20 years ago I had the same sort of routine and I didn’t ripped by any stress of the imagination but I did get up getting some good lean muscle on the arms so hopefully the combination of the regular walking each night, a good diet most of the time along with some weights I’ll get closer to the goal.

    I’m looking forward to next week which is when things get back to normal, people coming back into the office, business are reopening, maybe we’ll be lucky to get some more technology news and maybe even another beta for 26.3 from Apple which would be nice although as I’ve noted in the past I think we’ll be finding that the 26.3 will be a rather small update (based on the Safari 26.3 beta release notes) with 26.4 probably being the bigger update. There are rumours regarding the M5 Mac refreshes but I’d say that given how far ahead Apple are with the M4 combined with the recent memory shortages I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple aren’t in much of a hurry to get a refresh out that quickly.

    One thing to keep in mind is that there is the big 2G and 3G shut down that is occurring in New Zealand at the moment. I’m with Skinny which is a sub brand of Spark who are closing their 3G network down at the end of March, One NZ (formally Vodafone) shut down their 2G and 3G network at the end of last year and 2 Degrees is currently in the process of doing a gradual 2G and 3G shut down as we speak. I think the interesting part will be what they will do with the spare spectrum and whether they’ll redeploy it for 4G or whether they jump straight to 5G. I have a feeling that what we’ll see is Spark probably redeploying 850MHz as 5G with 4G being used as fall back since it’ll provide a good balance between coverage and capacity. Regarding One NZ and 2 Degrees, both of them use the 900MHz so it’ll be interesting to see what they do.

    There was a document not too long ago from the ‘Radio Spectrum Management’ (RSM) regarding the lower frequencies that used to be used for broadcasting and how it can be deployed for a variety of different wireless services ranging from IoT (such as smart power metres), internet broadband in rural areas and where the established mobile carriers fit into the equation.

    A few things that’ll be worth also watching out for are some regulatory changes regarding the resource management act, the changes to local government etc. and how well it leads to things getting built in a timely manner and without the massive price tags. It reminds me of the city rail link in Auckland where some idiot claimed that he owned all the land underneath his home and held up the tunnel boring of a tunnel that is 30 meters beneath the person’s home. I really do hope that the regulatory changes because god knows there are legitimate concerns people raise but a lot of the time the chronic whining is actually code for being racist – we’ve all heard the ‘changing the character of the area’ excuse for not allowing a development to go ahead or claiming a building has some sort of historical significance when in reality it is shack with little in the way of historical value.

  • Two more days to go, God give me strength.

    It appears that some of the worst people on earth have come out of the woodworks to ring up for assistance. I really have to wonder whether more people demonstrating learned helplessness or whether it is just weaponised incompetence. I always go back to when I got interested in computers where the interest in computers wasn’t simply for the sake of it but rather I wanted to accomplish something and if I wanted to that I needed to learn how to use it – kind of like buying a tool and then learning how to use it so then you get the most out of it. I also have to wonder whether there is a complete lack of intellectual curiosity by many out there for example, there is an issue with the website did they try to log out and log back in? clear cookies and cache? do they have any extensions running – what happens if they disable them for that particular web page?

    I don’t know about you but in my whole time I’ve been with my bank I’ve rung them up a grand total of 3 times in 19 years, my power company that I’ve been with for over 10 years I’ve contact them a grand total of 2 times. I don’t know whether it is me but I’m always surprised at the number of people who ring up businesses on a near weekly basis as if they’re lonely and want something to talk to – am I strange in that I only ring up businesses because the proverbial has hit the fan rather than because of some dying need to talk to another human? oh well, I needed to vent sometimes because god knows I won’t get a good night sleep if I don’t get out of my system.

    With rant over, I’m going to head out for a walk for some much needed exercise then come back home to watch some television series. Looking forward to the end of the first week back at work and hopefully working on new years day and the day after new years day will result in a few extra dollars in my pay packet. On an unrelated note, I realised I didn’t ask for some free hats with the order I made last night from the clothing shop I bought some items from so I did a follow up email – hopefully I’ll get a reply back in the few days.

  • Apple and the future of their AI.

    I was watching the following video talking about AI, LLMs, the research occurring at the big technology names regarding their plans on going beyond LLMs to develop new ways of implementing AI that address the short comings of LLMs:

    I am reminded of Microsoft making the decision many years go to exit from markets they tried to compete in but failed with the most high profile being their purchase of Nokia and investment into Windows Phone (then later Windows Mobile) which was later unwound by the new CEO Satya Nadella. The reason? they were spending billions and getting very little in terms of marketshare as a result (the reason for that failure is a whole new blog post its own right which I may write in the future) – an acceptance of the fact that they were late to the market and the idea of throwing money at something that produced very little in the way of return on investment made little sense.

    What was done instead? Microsoft pivoted and instead focused on what they’re good at which is their cloud services, their productivity software an do so on. It made sense to go where the ball is – the platforms of Android and iOS were more or less a full gone conclusion so why not spend the time instead investing where it made sense which is in the enterprise and education then making sure that both Android and iOS got the best experience when using Microsoft software and services. Don’t focus on fighting battles that were lost long ago but instead focus on future opportunities instead.

    What this reminds me of where Apple is when it comes to AI development in context to the above video. There are rumours that Apple is going to use licence Gemini from Google and run it on their own hardware but there is much talk about it being something that they’ll pay per year for with the idea that Apple will eventually move to their own in-house LLM some time in the future. Personally I am not convinced that Apple will create their own LLM for the same reason why Microsoft walked away from Windows on the mobile – the battle was already lost so instead the focus should be on future opportunities.

    In context to the above video does it make sense for Apple to invest time and resources into their own LLM or are they better of spending the resources on developing a model that moves beyond LLMs. There are already plenty of discussions about creating models that are far better suited for what Apple want to achieve with Siri so maybe that is the long term goal – keep paying Google so then they have something that isn’t behind the competition all the while working on something better than the current LLMs out there.

    Regarding the long term view of AI, I think we’re going to find that as we hit the limitation of LLMs that the hype will subside and those that will be successful are those companies that a) have a extensive portfolio that they can integrate their AI offers into and b) have custom hardware that is tuned to the absolute maximum efficiency possible so that the cost of delivering those AI enhanced services are a rounding error in the grand scheme of things (to the point that they can bundle it with their product offerings at no extra cost and thus making their products more competitive when compared to the competition) c) are able to push beyond the existing models to something even better.

  • Create a crisis to justify the elimination of funding.

    I’ve held off writing something regarding the whole Minnesota day care manufactured scandal to see what came of it and low and behold it had all the validity of a Project Veritas/James O’Keefe ‘exposé’ along with all the misleading claims and bot accounts boosting videos on YouTube that supported the narrative. What has happened since the young toe rag by the name of Nick Shirley posted the video? well, once again resources were spent pushing back against the narrative (I find it interesting how it was released around the same time the Jack Smith hearing was released which made Trump and the Republicans look bad) by not only independent media but also mainstream outlets such as CBS:

    On the issue of independent media, I find it even more funny with the claim being made that Nick Shirley is an independent media creator then it came out that he worked hand in hand with the Minnesota Republican Party coordinating the whole thing right from the outset. Once again the CBS video comment section is filled with people replying but if you look at their channel profile you quickly see a pattern regarding these accounts being created in batches around the same time in the same year – the same time of the year during primary season before the general election. If one were inclined to seeing patterns then one could see these as part of a coordinated influencing campaign using bots to further amplify a narrative.

    None of this should be surprising because it is ultimately part of the larger goal of Project 2025 or as what Steve Bannon refers to it as being the ‘dismantling of the administrative state’. Long story short it is about slashing the size of government and if you want a good vision of what the Republicans wish to do then here is Mike Lee laying out it:

    So why do they manufacture these scandals? to discredit these programmes so then it is easier to either get rid of them or to remove funding for them without receiving any backlash. Why would they receive no backlash? because they’ve created a scandal to show how irredeemable these programmes are so then even those who are benefiting from them will support defunding them even if it ends up hurting themselves in the process.

    What we outside of the United States can learn from it is not to get sucked into the bullshit vortex of manufactured scandals. We have organisations in New Zealand who do that on the regular – exposé about a local city council and how much they spent on catering over the whole year but in reality it works out to be less than $8 per person per meeting. What they hope to do is to drum up enough anger that large swaths of local council spending is cut all for the sake of the wealthy backers of those organisations can pay lower council rates even if it comes at the expense of fewer public services such as public transport, well funded libraries and maintained public parks to name a few.

  • Happy New Year.

    Went out for my nightly 11.6km walk tonight and on my neighbours were letting off fireworks to celebrate the new year. After I came back, I did some more weights, had a shower then jumped into bed for a relaxing sleep good night. I then logged into Shukr to order some clothing – after many years of making great clothing they’re shutting down and will no longer be operating so they’ve got a 40% off sale so I’ve decided to order a few items. I’ve bought from them in the past and their clothing is high quality at a reasonable price which is a rare thing these days.

    I’m hoping that this year things get a little bit better than last year – the chaos is behind us, the economy will pickup and with that I also hope that as the world plans to work around the United States that the disruption being experienced at the moment will come to an end. I’m hoping that at least in New Zealand that we’ll see some sort of rebound in the economy because many New Zealanders are doing it pretty tough – businesses are struggling to keep their head above water, many people are being cautious about how they spend their money resulting in many spending only on the bare necessities rather than the sort of luxuries such as eating out.

    Getting back to exercise, I thin the mixture of walking each night along with regular weight training should enable me to reach my goal of being under 100kg by the middle to the end of the year. Another goal I’m looking at is the possibility of going for a trip to Australia over Christmas 2026 and drop in to see my brother and his partner along with their kids. Looking forward to the year ahead and hopefully it’ll mean some personal goals will keep me motivated even if it does feel as though the world isn’t exactly in a good place at the moment.

  • End of the first day back at work.

    Today was a good first day at work, nothing demanding, the usual customer enquiries but with customer’s probably still on holiday with the family things may not pick up until next week when people come back from their annual leave. Today mum was down at Kmart (yes, we still have them in New Zealand) and picked up 2 x 5kg barbells (I was going to go for 10kg but decided 5kg is good enough) and when I have been on a break I’ve done some reps while I’ve ben on break watching some YouTube videos in the lounge room. I think I find it easier if, when I have a spare moment, to get some exercise in rather than necessarily putting some time aside although I want to get myself into some sort of routine.

    Tonight I’ll go for a small walk just for the sake of getting some exercise in and the meals I’ve had to today have kept me within my calorie count so I am looking forward to a good start to the new year. This coming year the big focus is on consolidating those gains, embedding those lifestyle changes and hopefully by the time I have time off in June I’ll be below 100kg while ensuring that with the regular weights at home I’ll maintain muscle which will ensure that as weight is loss that muscle isn’t lost (which can cause ones metabolism to slow down). I think it’ll be one of those things that one I integrate these changes into my life it’ll become second nature.

    After a year of getting so far I don’t want to slip backwards – the benefits haven’t just been when it comes to my health but also quality of life where it is easier to get out of bed, the energy to do what I want, when I go down to the store and want to buy clothes I’m able to buy clothes off the rack without wondering whether they’ll have it in my size. Although I have lost weight I still prefer to have baggy pants – mainly because I wear pants all year around so during summer having them lose makes them a lot more comfortable.

    When I woke up this morning I was greeted with uBlock Origin Lite 2025.1229.1729 being made available on on the macOS and iOS App Store – I quickly installed it and let the filters update themselves (there is a conversion process which converts it from the native uBlock Origin Lite format into the native format that the content blocking API that the Declarative Net Request (DNR) sits on top of (the native content blocking sits underneath DNR)).

  • It makes me wonder.

    I was watching a few videos tonight regarding the changes in the mandates in the United States regarding pollution regulations and fuel economy standards regarding whether the series of steps to deregulate is setting the car industry up to a change in tariff policy between the United States and China. I say this because at the moment there is quite steep tariffs on Chinese made EVs being imported into the United States and the Trump administration are talking about allowing Kei vehicles into the United States. With those changes taking place are we going to see a change in policy along the lines of “now I’ve taken the shackles off your industry, I’m going to remove the protection for your industry”. It’ll be interesting to see what occurs in the coming year – personally I think the use of tariffs by Trump have more to do with seeing it as a tool to express power through rather than any sort of deep understanding of how tariffs actually work in reality. It would fit into his modus operandi of being attracted to ways of projecting power and he see’s it as a way of doing just that – “do what I say or you won’t get access to the United States”.

    That being said, it could be all moot because we may see the Supreme Court say the tariffs he imposed were illegal which would mean that there would be refunds from the tariffs collected which leads me to wonder whether he knows that the tariffs are going to be overturned which is why there has been a flurry of deregulation so when the tariffs do come off as a byproduct of the court making their decision that United States industry is ready for the disappearance of Trump protectionism. That being said, I am assuming that there is some sort of method to madness rather than it simply being the mad king doing mad things because of deep seated issues – the crazy driver and the rest of the world are the unwilling passenger holding onto our dear life in a hope we arrive all in one piece.

    Back closer to home there is talk about a free trade agreement with India with unfortunately doesn’t give the New Zealand agricultural sector the sort of access that the current free trade agreement that New Zealand has with China. One of the sticking points has been the part of the free trade agreement regarding being able to work in New Zealand after graduating with the question being whether we’ll have the amount of accommodation required because at the moment. At the moment due to an increase in supply of houses plus outflow of New Zealanders overseas there has been downward pressure on rents for the first time in many years – with more students staying in New Zealander after graduation are we going to see increased demand putting upward pressure on rent? what is the plan in terms of building more housing to ensure that there is some sort of balance between supply and demand for housing?

    I can’t help but get the feeling that this free trade agreement is about helping out the landlords once again by boosting demand which in turn will boost house prices so then New Zealanders can feel artificially richer who will then load up on debt and get the economy working. What would be the real solution to our economic woes? promoting investment into businesses turning commodities we export into final goods so then we’re price makers not price takers, investing into infrastructure that improves productivity and competitiveness, encouraging businesses to invest into capital to improve productivity and competitiveness. To do that would require a long term plan – something that New Zealand governments tend to do a pretty lousy job at.

  • Don’t allow time to absolve people not taking responsibility for their political decisions.

    I’ve been noticing that towards the end of the first year of the second Trump administration that there is a concerted effort by people to rebrand/reinvent themselves or if they’re not as high profile they’re purging their timeline as if their past position regarding Trump will magically disappear. We saw this in the first term of the Trump administration by those who jumped onboard the ‘Trump train’ then went to ground after the 2020 loss to Biden then came back in 2024. The difference is that this time Trump is on his second term and people are planning for a post Trump politics – some have been hurt by the policies being advanced by Trump but some also are jockeying for position when it comes to who will be the new leader of MAGA and whether MAGA is a political movement that can survive beyond Trump or whether it is a cult of personality where there is only one person can lead the movement and without that person at the helm there is no movement to speak of.

    The problem with MAGA is that it isn’t clearly defined other than it being an extension of Trump’s personality – whatever Trump says is MAGA is MAGA but even the rhetoric being used on the campaign isn’t translating into policy as we’re seeing MAGA supporters unhappy with the changes, the number of MAGA supporters dropping the label to become traditional Republican. The fact that the definition of MAGA can’t be nailed down is by design rather than by accident – when something is vague then the audience can interpret it the way they see fit, they can project their own hopes, dreams, wishes, whims and desires onto it because it is a blank canvas which is why the coalition is so broad resulting in any most anyone being able to join it.

    The problem is that when you make the coalition overly broad it does allow you to create a large voting base but it is entirely useless as a means to bind the party together to work as a cohesive unit once into power. This is why you end up having a big tent filled with factions that are at odds with each other – in opposition the only thing that holds the party together is ‘we hate the Democratic Party’ then the moment they win power they descend into infighting because there is no agreed upon agenda where politicians have put aside their individual egos for the greater good. A good example of that failure to come up with a legislative agenda would be the 10+ years they’ve had to come up with a comprehensive replacement for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) only to have vague ‘concepts of a plan’ and random ideas thrown at the wall by random backbenchers but nothing in the way of a coherent plan.

    Getting back to the people who voted for him, this is what happens when you commodify politics to nothing more than “what can I get out of this” instead of asking the bigger question of “what kind of society do I want”. It is clear that those who voted for Trump and the Republicans didn’t think about the larger question by virtue of their reaction when the Trump administration with the support of Republicans passed the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ which resulted in the very same voters finding that they lost ACA subsidies, reduced or losing medicaid coverage, their medicare coverage wasn’t as extensive, the food stamps they had been receiving for years they’re now having to go through a maze of means testing bureaucracy to apply for the assistance again. They thought that the ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ was referring to someone else – they were quite happy to see others go through the pain of missing out because in their mind they were receiving legitimate assistance where as all those people they didn’t know were welfare queens mooching off the system. What these people failed to realise is this, the billionaires view them as the waste, fraud and abuse,

    This is what happens when you fail to understand policy, when you think about politics in terms of only yourself and fail to see politics as something that extends beyond your own narrow self interest. It is like watching someone raging against welfare right to the point that they lose their job and realise that they’re now dependent on that very form of assistance they they voted to get rid of – but it now too late because it is now gone. Once again, only caring about something when they’re directly impacted.

    Another good example is what I’ve said in the past: “there is a high price to low taxes and regulation”, if there is a tax cut or a promise of a tax cut then the first thing that should be asked is “how is it going to be paid for” because you may find that you’re actually worse off. For example, you get an income tax cut but the cost of car registration goes up, the public transport receives less investment and lower reimbursement resulting in higher fares, the lower regulations result in a coal plan opening but the consequence long term is global warming being accelerated. There is price paid when promises are made for lower taxes and regulations – be careful for what you wish for.

    Getting back to the issue of vibes based voters and not allowing them believe that their behaviour will be forgotten. We’re already started to see podcast bros trying to claim that they were never big Trump fans, that ‘the mainstream media blew it out of proportion’ and that they’re an independent. Really, an independent even though you spent literally hours glazing Donald Trump with soft ball questions and giggling like a school girl around their secret crush. Now such podcast bros are trying to reposition themselves as if they’re above the fray but here is the problem, the internet never forgets, there are many, many, many clips that have been uploaded to various fan accounts and other platforms so they may wish for the world to forget but the reality is that the internet never forgets. What it demonstrates is that these podcast bros never believed in anything, it was a giant grift from the outset.

    Regarding Trump voters, these are the same people who vote based on vibes which is why when you look through their voting history it is completely incoherent, there is no through line that many any sense – they were all in on the whole ‘compassionate conservatism’ with George W Bush where anyone who questioned the wisdom of going into Iraq and Afghanistan were accuse of siding with the terrorists and wanting make the United States weak, who jumped onboard the ‘freedom fries’ train, the boycotting of the Dixie Chicks even though they never listened to a single one of their songs, and then wearing 10 gallon hats with cowboy boots.

    These same people who claimed they cared about budget deficits were silent when under George W Bush they were running deficits of between $300-$500 billion per year but they suddenly jumped onboard the ‘tea party’ bandwagon the moment the first black president was voted into office. The same people who claimed they wanted small government but wanted a constitutional amendment to band same sex marriage. The same people who spent 8 years, while Obama was president, claiming that Obama was a secret Communist who wasn’t really an American (pushed by the Birtherism curtesy of Trump) but when Trump won in 2016 they gave Trump the credit for an economic recovery that continued in spite of the idiotic policies that Donald Trump implemented in that first term.

    The reason I say that we should never allow ex-Trump supporters to forget what they did is because these are the same people who 10 years after Nixon left the Whitehouse claimed they never voted for him, the same people who claimed they never voted for Reagan etc. etc. always disavowing their voting choice because their vote was never based on a firm grasp of policies but rather vibes based politics regarding how the campaign made them feeling rather than a firm grasp on what the problems were and what was being propose as a solution. As long as a sizeable number keep voting based on vibes and never learn why voting based on vibes is a bad idea then expect history repeating itself in the future. To avoid this we also need civics lessons at school to ensure that the next generation engage in politics in a meaningful way rather than based on vibes – to make an informed voting decision based on a clear understanding of what is being proposed by what ever political party they choose to vote for.