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

  • Deprogramming takes time, be patient.

    I was watching the following video on YouTube regarding food banks and there are people who take it upon themselves to punch down on those who need help. This punching down comes with the usual blaming decisions people have made as if everything bad that happens is purely the result of the decisions made in their life and that external factors have nothing to do with where one ends up in life. You can plan everything in your life perfectly, live frugally, save and invest wisely, only have the number of kids you can afford but then suddenly one of you may lose your job, an expected medical emergency deplete the savings you had put aside leaving you vulnerable to an unexpected emergency. It reminds me of a homeless women who was interviewed and how she talked about she was married with kids and a house in the suburbs only to end it losing it all. It as stark reminder of how precarious life is and how it is impossible to plan for every possible eventuality.

    The precarious situation that people find themselves in can be traced back to the late 1970s where in response to stagflation (inflation and stagnation) the neoliberal experiment was started – the shrinking of the state, the deregulation of the market and the rolling back of the rights of unions to the point that their ability to the use leverage of withholding labour to force the hand of capital to the negotiation table is severely limited. As a consequence people’s pay and productivity decoupled. The lack of income growth was partially offset by an increase in both parents working but then that didn’t keep up so people began using their savings and saving less then to keep up their standard of living people started to rely on various form of credit – personal loans, hire purchase, revolving loans, credit cards etc. The was an interesting point made by an Thom Hartman (From ‘The Thom Hartman Show’) that noted how up until the late 1970s the credit card was something that the business people would use and very few consumers had but as the wages stagnated, savings went down and banks saw an opportunity to expand their potential customer base so that now people make use of credit cards to maintain their standard of living.

    The point I’m trying to make is that even if you’re tried to do everything ‘according to the rules’ the system is ultimately stacked against you. This idea that if you’re relying on assistance, either provided by the government, charity or a charity with assistance of the government as being an example of failure then you’re taking the blame for something you had no part in creating. I sometimes wonder whether people think before they post comments like “if you can’t feed them don’t breed them’ or is this an example of people punching down and scapegoating the poor to make themselves feel good? capitalism needs to perpetual the myth of scarcity so then the working class are easier to divide and fight with each other rather than uniting around a shared common economic interest. That doesn’t absolve people of the responsibility for posting nonsense but I really do wish that people would do a bit of self reflecting rather than posting comments without reflecting on the matter before hand.

    Below is an interesting video regarding how people deprogramming a life time of indoctrination which is kind of relevant to what we see today. Eventually Trump will complete his presidential term and leave office with the big question is what happens to those who went along with Trump the whole presidency? what happens today for those who voted for Trump and are suddenly realising that the ‘good times’ of 2016 under Trump was in spite of Trump’s policies rather than because of them.

    People are going to deprogramme at different rates but the question is whether we’re going to see a genuine deconstruction and deprogramming or whether it’ll be a situation of people publicly renouncing but still holding onto the views but hide them because they’re no longer socially acceptable.? I say that because I remember the 8 years of George W Bush as president and yet it is impossible to find someone who openly admits to voting for him twice or as someone else pointed out in the video that it was impossible to admit they voted for Richard Nixon 10 years after he stepped down as president. How many are in MAGA who were in the Tea Party who were ‘Compassionate Conservatives’ who were Regan Republicans etc. basically people who believe in nothing and go with the vibes, an empty husk of a person who is what gamers would call an NPC. Such individuals going from ideology to ideology that complete contradict each other but such individuals unable to see the contradiction other than going along with what ever happens to be the dominant zeitgeist of the moment within the Republican Party.

    This is the reason why MAGA people can be suddenly against free speech after suddenly claiming to be for it, to talk about free speech yet have no idea that the first amendment is in regards to the government limiting free speech and nothing to do with your employer deciding not to continue employing you because your behaviour bought their business into disrepute. These are the same people who don’t know the difference between a publicly traded company vs. a publicly owned/state owned enterprise by claiming the first amendment covers publicly listed companies because it has public in the description. The toxic combination of arrogance and ignorance, and something tells me that many will, after Donald Trump ends up presidency, will keep holding onto such views so then the next Trump like politician can come along and tap into the psyche of such individuals. I wish that things would change and what bought Trump to power was a flash in the pan but unfortunately I don’t see the mindset that got him into power and maintained his popularity with his base, in spite of all the bad economic news, changing any time soon.

  • An interesting day to day.

    Rather uneventful day at work followed by a brisk walk – I decided to have a shorter walk tonight because I wasn’t in the mood for a longer one but I always like to make sure that I get out of the house and get some exercise after sitting on my backside all day. Anyway, I went for my walk, came back home and then jumped into the shower and now I’m relaxing in bed watching some YouTube videos followed by catching up on the local, national and international news before I head off to sleep.

    Qualcomm have announced the Snapdragon X2 Elite which will be shipping in 2026 (link) with the interesting part being that they showed off not just laptops but also mini PCs. It appears that Qualcomm have decided to start moving up from portables to mini PCs which make me wonder how far away are we from workstations and servers given that the Oryon processor was originally designed for the server. Although nVidia is linking up with Intel given that there are many systems and workflow designed around the x86-64 architecture I wouldn’t be surprised if the long term goal is to to have their bases covered by also having their own offering in the ARM space so that whichever architecture ends up coming out on top they end up winning either way.

    I kind of wonder whether the delay with the shipping of the nVidia ARM based computer has to do with Windows given that I see Adobe working to get their own software on ARM for Window with plugins of Photoshop for example making use of CUDA so it would serve as a good incentive to provide support for nVidia’s own platform on WIndows as well. It makes me wondering whether we’ll see another big push for ARM64 and Windows when Windows 11 26H2 is released next year for the 2700/2800 series which probably includes many under the hood changes to support new ARM architecture not to mention working to bring more native applications to Windows. For me I would love to see dbpoweramp made available for ARM because at the moment it is available for macOS on ARM64 but only on WIndows 11 for x86-64 – I’m hoping that with the drop of support for 32bit Windows that we may see a version for ARM64.

    I’m still holding off getting a desktop because there is a rumoured Arrow Lake refresh but then again the next big upgrade after the Arrow Lake refresh is Nova Lake with the interesting piece I found in an article (link):

    AMD and Intel are planning several innovations to the x86 architecture. They joined forces in fall 2024 to form the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group (EAG). According to a post by AMD Vice President Robert Hormuth on LinkedIn, the x86 partners have agreed on FRED, AVX10 and APX, among other things.

    Flexible Return and Event Delivery (FRED) is an updated concept for processing interrupts. AVX10 and the Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) reorganize the AVX versions and bring, among other things, twice as many registers. Intel’s Nova Lake, which is expected to arrive at the end of 2026 as the Core Ultra 400 for LGA1954 boards, could be the first Intel CPU with APX and AVX10.2.

    It appears that it is going to require Microsoft to make changes to the Windows kernel to support APX and FRED but hopefully it should mean some of the hairy parts of the x86-64 are going to be gradually replaced overtime with maybe Nova Lake and Zen agreeing on the architectural changes. Linux has already started working on it (link) so I wouldn’t be surprised that Microsoft if Microsoft has been busily working on it behind the scenes given the close relationship they have with Intel and AMD to ensure that when Windows 11 26H2 is launched that these technologies are supported out of the box.

  • Maybe there is something more to the nVidia-Intel alliance.

    Finished work tonight and went for a walk – it felt good that the weather is finally getting warmer with the temperature at 12°C and during the day it was around 16°C. It is great that the weather isn’t too hot or too cold so I’ll enjoy the Spring weather until summer comes but then again it’s not too bad given that I go walking at 10am so it avoid the summer time heat that would still be quite prevalent at 8pm (back when I did an 11:30am to 8:00pm shift). I’m at the moment sticking to a consistent 11.6km every night rather than going to crazy and wearing myself out – I need to remind myself that life isn’t a sprint but a marathon.

    Chrome 140 had an update made available today which updated it from 140.0.7339.186 to 140.0.7339.208 with there being a few serious security holes that needed fixing so if you’re on the old version I’d suggest you get yourself updated to the latest version. On a side note, I’ve decided to stick with Google Workspace because the integration the integration with Android is a lot better and on Windows once you uninstall OneDrive and Microsoft Office (that came with Surface) then install Chrome and Google Drive then things work pretty good. I really do wish that the preinstallation of OneDrive was an option rather than something forced upon end users.

    I was reading about the Intel-nVidia announcement and it makes me wonder whether part of that has to do with potentially Intel maybe bidding to making the next generation of consoles or offering a viable alternative to the current AMD APUs that are very popular in handhelds. I also wonder whether we’ll see Microsoft maybe licence the XBox software system to third parties so that eventually Microsoft get out of the hardware business entirely to just focus on software and cloud services then leave it up to third parties to develop the hardware. Not much information is known but it appears that Intel is going to keep it’s own line for the low to medium end along with niche markets in the high end with the Intel-nVidia for gamers and those who make extensive use of the CUDA software stack.

  • Back into the groove of things on Wednesday.

    It has been raining heavily for the last couple of days so I haven’t been able to get out of the house to go for my nightly walks but I have enjoyed being able to relax. It is good to having a balance of exercise but also enjoying days when you can relax.

    Apple has released the first wave of updates for their newly released platform – plenty of people online are reporting how they’re a big update with plenty of bugs having been fixed, performance improvements, I can see a fair number of bugs and enhancements coming to Safari 26.1 although those improvements are limited. I’d say that in the first update they’re going to focus on some of the major already known bugs thus leaving the next update probably including more fixes that currently sit in the Safari Technology Preview to make their way back into the stable release.

  • Relaxing day at home enjoying the sound of rain.

    Apart from heading out around 2pm this afternoon to pick up a few odd bits and pieces from the supermarket along with some buffalo spicy wings and salad for lunch/dinner. The salad was a Mexican mix with the star of the show being the dressing which has a spicy taste to it. In the previous weeks I would head down to the local supermarket but couldn’t find any in the salad fridge section but they’ve restocked so I grabbed an extra bag to have for my day at work.

    I generally stick to the old saying of ‘never attribute to malice that can be explained as incompetence’ or the more commonly known and often quoted Ockham’s razor more commonly known as ‘the simplest answer is usually the correct one’ but I can’t help but wonder whether there is more going on behind the scenes in regards to the FCC pressuring ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel by leaning on local affiliates. Was this pressure about protecting Trump’s ego or is it about undermining the legitimacy of the FCC by setting up a pretence of being accused of regulatory overreach which then provides an opening for legislation to be written up to either curb the powers of the FCC to either be disbanded entirely. The reason I speculate is because it would fit very much in the ‘Project 2025’/MAGA idea of dismantling the ‘administrative state’ (to use Steve Bannon’s terminology).

    If one were to explore that idea further, does that explain the reason why RFK is in charge of the FDA and CDC (and other departments overseen by the ‘Health and Human Services’ secretary), to undermine its credibility so then it is easier to disband when the public loses faith in it? is this how the dismantling of the ‘administrative state’ will proceed – claim that the government is incompetent and cannot do anything right, put someone grossly incompetent in there then see it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy? I mean, it makes sense given the number of Republicans who talked about defunding the FBI and then nominate two podcast bros who couldn’t find their backside with their own two hands.

  • Something tells me that he doesn’t get it.

    Sigh, Just as a follow up to the previous post where I was talking about tactics regarding how to confront the Trump administration, I was watching Real Time Bill Maher last night and one of the guests on the show was Joe Manchin. On a side note, I have my disagreements with Joe Manchin but I have a lot more respect for him because unlike Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin will tell you exactly why he isn’t supporting a particular piece of legislation and will propose changes whereas Kyrsten Sinema will leave everyone guessing. Anyway, getting back to Joe Manchin said something in regard to section 230 protection in the ‘Overtime’ (the after the show discussion which goes on for around 15-20 minutes) talking about it should be taken away from online planforms.

    It appears he doesn’t understand what section 230 does because to get rid of the protection it will result in platforms being liable for what is being published on their platform with the consequence being that most platforms will simply either shut up shop, move overseas or have censorship regimes so severe that it’ll have a chilling effect on freedom of speech. Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly no fan of the way in which internet platforms have used algorithms to hook people into doom scrolling not to mention amplifying misinformation, disinformation and rage bait but to remove section 230 protections demonstrates a misunderstanding of what it is there for. Now, if Joe and others do wish to reign in these internet platforms then one option is to implement a rule that if they use algorithmic curation on their platform then they lose section 230 protections but if they don’t use algorithms curation (in other words only show what people subscribe to in chronological order) and people have to opt in to follow someone’s time line (rather than currently on Facebook (as one example) where if you add someone as a friend you’re automatically signed up to their time line) then you maintain your section 230 protection.

    The way in which algorithms curate timelines is that they insert content that is receiving a lot of engagement, but the problem is that the algorithm has no way to know whether it is good or bad engagement or whether it is fake engagement (see bot farms) other than people are engaging with it. They have your past behaviour and demographic information and then target what they believe is content you may find interesting. The problem with this is that bot farms make use of that to create fake engagement and therefore amplify disinformation and misinformation – content that otherwise would never have been the light of day through organic sharing between actual humans with accounts quickly get amplified an audience far larger than what would have happened through people sharing content with friends and family members. Something tells me that I don’t see something like that happening in my lifetime or ever.

  • Hasn’t been a bad week so far.

    Normally at this point I’m really looking forward to the final day of the week but apart from the usual work related stuff things have been pretty uneventful. Tonight I went for an 11.6km walk and that was completed in around 1 hour and 40 minutes which good that I am keeping up the pace. I was going to push for 17.4km but I decided not to because I would sooner consistently get that exercise every day than pushing it on one day resulting in me feeling sore the next day – so much so that I cannot work out. Consistency is my focus given that I tend to go from one extreme to another which isn’t good when it comes to developing good long term habits.

    I’ve been following the whole Jimmy Kimmel and ABC situation – I am all for freedom of speech but equally I think that many who stand in opposition to Trump need to thing strategically in terms of what is your vision for a post-Trump future. When it comes to entertainment, repeatedly talking about Trump in every monologue runs the risk of catastrophising Trump to the point that you end up creating a climate of doom and that everything is so bad that there is no chance of changing direction. Then there is just plain exhaustion where one just wants to turn on the television and not have to deal with the world for a few hours – being able to enjoy some laughs without having to think about who is in the white house.

    If people feel exhausted where they’re constantly bombarded with Trump then at some point they’re going to tune out – “I can’t deal with this” then switch off and disengage. For me it is about moderation in terms of news consumption because I know the more I doom scroll over the news the more depressed and angry I get so I limit myself to an hour or so checking out the news from my favourite sources and then I focus on something else for the day. It is about having a balance because being angry all the time isn’t healthy or beneficial in the long run because eventually it burns you out.

    It appears things are getting better when it comes to Windows 11 on ARM (link) – it kind of helps when you tell developers that you don’t have to rewrite their whole application from scratch and forced to sell it through the Microsoft Store as with the case of Windows RT. When software support is a few tweaks and a recompile away it isn’t surprising that Adobe is expanding their product offering available for Windows 11 on ARM. I think Adobe realises that being stuck on a single platform isn’t a good place to be where as at least supporting Windows 11 on ARM give the opportunity for Windows on energy efficient laptops the ability to keep Apple in check as so far as their platform and not being dependent on them.

    On a side note, funny the number of noise makers online complaining about how Windows 11 25H2 is a minor update. So let me get this straight, you complain when there are major updates with the risks associated with big changes and now you’re complaining that the updates aren’t big enough but preserve stability at the expense of functionality. Maybe I’m getting on with age but I would sooner have boring but predictable, Windows 11 and Samsung One UI vs whatever is happening over on Apple’s platforms at the moment. I wouldn’t be surprised if 26H2 ends up being the big release given how there is a big jump in build numbers every 2 years – it’ll probably include under the hood changes as well as pushing Windows App SDK forward along with replacing parts of the Windows 11 UI to bring dark mode and greater consistency and maybe seeing a long term plan where control panel becomes a component one can uninstall and remove from the system.

  • I needed that walk after work.

    I finished work and went for a walk and tonight I decided to go for a 17.4km walk but funny enough I decided to time myself to see how much my fitness had improved and what I have found is that to do 5.8km it had gone from around 1 1/2 hours when I first started to 1 hour and 10 minutes down 1 hour and now it is 50 minutes. The benefit of getter fitter has been having a lot more energy – when I want to go out and do something I have the energy to do it without having to constant sit down to rest because my back hurts or my feet or legs hurt. There is the icing on the cake of losing weight and fitting into clothes but the bigger benefit is the quality of life improvement – being able to live a fuller life without all the aches and pains.

    I was having a look on the Apple website because I’m still pondering about getting a desktop because I want to get one but I also want to make sure I am making the right decision. For me the Apple Mac Mini looks good but the question is whether I should wait for the M5 or whether the M4 is good enough because I don’t think there is going to be a major leap other than maybe the adoption of the new N1 chip for wifi and bluetooth which will be wifi 7 compatible. With that all being said, I do enjoy watching the money sit in my bank account and the security of knowing it is there and I have no debt at all. The other thing is what is going to happen with macOS 26.x – my big focus is on Safari and whether the bug that I am following will get fixed up along with the visual bugs that many have reported with the new release. I could imagine we’ll see two 26.x updates before Christmas.

    The other part is looking at the iPhone 17 Pro Max – currently there is 3-4 week wait time so even if I jumped ship now it wouldn’t appear until October which is rumoured when the next product refresh is. I’m kind of sceptical because I went on the Apple website to price up some computer gear and apart from the iPhone 17 Pro Max I don’t see there being long led times which indicate that they have plenty of stock vs if they were running down inventory for a product refresh then generally you’ll start to see the led times get longer for some product models as they reduce inventory in preparation for the product refresh. I could be wrong and the current M4 are lowered in price to become the entry level model with the M5 being where the current M4 fit. I guess I’ll need to wait and see – no hurry as things are going very well so far with my laptop.

    The problems with iCloud though still remains particularly with the limited number of aliases and should I make greater use of the ‘hide my email’ service or should I just use Exchange Online for my email but use ICloud for everything else? has the Mail app fixed up its issues when it comes to populating aliases for custom domains or do they need to be added manually? so many questions that really need to be answered because if the issues that pushed me away from the Apple ecosystem still exist then I’m better off staying where I am.

    Chrome was updated from Version 140.0.7339.128 to Version 140.0.7339.186 where as Edge was updated from 140.0.3485.66 to 140.0.3485.81. I have to admit, I do like Microsoft Edge because Microsoft makes use of their own grammar and spell checking which is so much better than what Google provides with Chrome even if you enabled ‘Enhanced spell checker’ in Chrome settings. It makes me kind of wonder what a modern Windows Mobile 11 would be like with Edge being the default browser and whether the app situation would have been different knowing that many apps make use of WebView 2 along with web technologies – my own banking app being a good example of that.

  • One UI 8 has been released in New Zealand.

    i finished work tonight and then went for a walk but had a short walk because it started spitting – last night I got stuck in the rain so I wanted to avoid that same issue. Long story short on my way home I picked up a few things from the local convenience store and while waiting I decided to check for software updates and the One UI 8 was made available – around a 4.2GB download. I walked home and started the download:

    I’ve got a pretty good internet connection at home so it downloaded pretty quickly. My phone rebooted and I checked for updates – both the Play Store and the Galaxy store had updates where I then installed those. Everything so far has been very smooth and reliable with the kernel updated to 6.6.77 (compiled on 3 September) along with the modem firmware updated and the security patch level updated to September 2025 (I’m still waiting on the Google Play system update for September 2025 to be made available).

    One thing I have noticed is that the NFC is working a lot better with my Snapper card – before it was really temperamental but I tried it just then and it scanned my card a lot faster and on the first try. I’m unsure what Samsung has done with their NFC driver or the implementation that came with Android 16 but it is working a whole lot more reliable. I haven’t tested whether there has been a change in the wifi connectivity, bluetooth or cell phone connectivity. I’ll keep an eye on things and report back my findings if I notice any issues. Battery life will be one thing I’ll keep an eye on my I haven’t heard anything negative so I expect that things will be pretty normal.

  • Another day, another example of a tech YouTuber failing to do the bare minimum.

    The saga regarding SSDs continues as one of the major instigators behind the hysteria admits that they didn’t update their SSD firmware and the firmware on their motherboard was at least 9 months out of date yet he insists on blaming Microsoft. I don’t know about you but if you want any sort of credibility then maybe updating your software and firmware, testing then reporting back what happens is going to lend you more credibility than whipping up hysteria then admitting that you couldn’t be bothered doing the absolute bare minimum. If you cannot keep your software and firmware up to date then maybe being a tech YouTuber isn’t the job for you. Here I am a month after the August release and still no problems with my SSD – life is good and computer is stable.

    On a side note, this morning I checked for updates with a system update that was released a ‘System Hardware Update’ (it appears it is being rolled out gradually) – a firmware update that required a reboot with everything working as expected when it came back up online. Everything is going well although I admit that I mucked around on Monday and Tuesday regarding deciding whether to go all in with Microsoft 365. The big question is whether I have a consumer account as my main one and then have an Microsoft Exchange online account for my domain name or whether I have a Microsoft 365 Business account as my main account with the consumer account being what I use for Microsoft Phone Link. If I have Microsoft 365 Business do I go with Standard or Premium – what is the difference etc. big decisions.

    What was rather unusual is the lack of a Chrome update being released today – normally every Tuesday there is an update for Chrome but that wasn’t the case this week. Samsung is apparently rolling out One UI 8 however it hasn’t appeared in New Zealand – part of me is excited about the update but on the other hand I’d sooner Samsung take their time to ensure that there aren’t any embarrassing bugs that pop up. It appears that the kernel version has remained the same at 6.6.77 based of the screenshots of people showing off the final release. Over the last couple of days there has been quit a few updates via the Galaxy Store which make me wonder whether they’re prepping for the release by making sure all the bundled applications area compatible for One UI 8.

    What I find funny is the speculation regarding AI businesses that aren’t make money yet their share price are going through the roof with some claiming there is a bubble. What you’re seeing in the AI world is something that has always existed – these organisations aren’t designed to make money but instead they’re ‘pick me’ businesses where the shareholders hope that at some point an established player will buy them up for a premium because of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) in much the same way that Nokia came out better off when they sold off their handset division then used that to buy out the Siemens half of the telecommunications joint venture which then allowed them to buy out Alcatel-Lucent.

    The problem with this ‘pick me’ strategy is this: Google is already got their own AI working, Microsoft is rumoured to be working on their own models to replace OpenAI, Apple and FaceBook have their own models so where does OpenAI fit into all this? they have no products of their own that can utilise their technology so any business using their technology will eventually replace it with an inhouse model, the amount they charge even at the top end of their subscription they’re still losing money on and if they increase their price at what point do businesses wake up from the AI hype to realise that maybe having a real person is cheaper and doesn’t carry risk.

    So there is an agreement with Oracle – massive number of datacentres planned to be built but who is going is going to fund it not to mention paying the bills? is the long shot being that Oracle eventually buys out OpenAI then OpenAI cannot pay the bills then utilise (assuming it goes ahead) Tiktok to train future models the integrate OpenAI into Oracle’s own cloud services? For me I don’t see any of these AI companies surviving unless they can actually turn what they have into something useful beyond being a cute novelty. There is also the other problem – the huge amount of energy required and all the evidence I’ve seen from people who study AI for a living point to the fact that things aren’t getting more efficient but actually requiring even more energy. Just when you thought bitcoin couldn’t be a bigger waste of energy out trots the new cult of AI promising the earth and delivering very limited bang for the amount of bucks that are burnt with each question it is asked.