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

  • 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.

  • Raining and crazy weather.

    It has been another horrible day today so I decided to take the night off. I had a good day at work, stuck to my meal plan for today and counting my calories and with that I have really come to enjoy a mug of Earl Grey tea to warm me up when working at home. I didn’t think I would use it as much as I have but the kettle and toaster combo that I purchased from Noel Leeming a while ago definitely has come in handy. I am however looking at maybe getting a George Foreman grill which will be grate for things such as the lamb burger patties I like – the sandwich press is a bit of a nightmare to clean afterwards but the George Foreman grill will be easier to clean due to the fact that it isn’t flat and the fat drips down into a tray while it is cooking plus the surface area is sufficient to cook a couple of patties.

    Over on the Windows Insider blog there appears to be more further refinements which will make for an interesting early Christmas present when it arrives. It makes me wonder what is happening with the whole 26220 build series whether that is just a staging area for those features to be backported to 26200 or whether 26220 will become an optional feature install while the 26200 remains as a stable point which will receive security updates and maybe new features but on a slower schedule.

    At the moment I am writing up a blog post about what is happening on the right after the fall out from the ‘Young Republican’ leaked messages and how various influencers on the right have responded to it – debates regarding how big the tent should be and what the minimum requirement should be to be considered as part of the conservative movement and what views are so beyond the pale that it puts you outside of the conservative movement. At some point you have to stand for something, have some sort of philosophical world view that binds together the party membership or otherwise the Republican Party are merely a collection of individuals who like elephants and the colour red which is certainly no basis on which to form a political party.

  • A good first day.

    A good first day to the reboot of my routine – I had my breakfast with the chia seed and unsweetened yoghurt and funny enough I didn’t miss the sweetness. I have a feeling that if I do it for a few weeks it’ll become the ‘new normal’ as it is embedded into my daily routine. I am tempted next week to pick up some eggs which can be a light meal if I am feeling hungry – throw in some vegetables along with some grated cheese which is an easy way to get protein and vegetables into ones diet.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2025.1019.1656 has finally appeared in the Chrome store and it has updated both of my profiles (Google Workspace and Gmail dot com account) – both are working great and doing a good job at blocking content. As I’ve said in the past, I was sceptical at first regarding whether the MV3/DNR work get to the level of content blocking that their MV2 extension did but I’ve been happily proven wrong. AdGuard for Safari appears to be getting a bit of an overhaul with the announcement that they’re dropping support for macOS 11 and older. It’ll be interesting to see whether they will make use of the native content blocking API as part of macOS or whether they’ll bring their AdGuard for Safari codebase inline with the MV3 version they have available for Chrome which would reduce the amount of duplication taking place but then again it would mean dropping support for versions of macOS that don’t support Safari 18.6 or greater.

    I’ve been watching some more videos regarding Panther Lake and the one thing I did find particularly interesting was in this video:

    The Part that was interesting is the Darkmont efficiency cores where the same architecture is used for the E-Cores and the LP E-Cores which makes me wonder whether the rumour of Intel going back to a single architecture based around their E-Core architecture is actually true given that it appears they’ve spent a lot of time on improving the E-Core architecture so that rather than starting at the P-Core it appears the goal is to start processes on the LP E-Core and then move up from there when required so that the E-Core is as efficient as possible so that most of the time processes stay on that and the P-Core is only fired up when there really is a task so demanding it needs to moved to the P-Core.

    For me, I’m interested in seeing the advances made by the x86 advisory group and how quick both AMD and Intel adopt the agreed upon standards so then developers aren’t stuck in this situation of “well, I’d love to support feature x but it isn’t widely adopted” resulting in improvings taking ages to be adopted and putting the x86 platform at a disadvantage when compared to the advances that ARM are making. There are four standards that both Intel and AMD have agreed upon (link) however there is no time line in terms of when they’ll be adopted but I’m guessing it may not be until maybe Nova Lake or when there is the rumoured unified architecture which would kind of make sense if the existing architecture is the ‘end of the road’ for their whole E-Core and P-Core being different architectures.

    Daily writing prompt
    What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?
    View all responses

    There were three careers I was looking at before I started working where I am. The first one was being a baking apprenticeship however I couldn’t find a business offering them. The second was to be a chef but like the baking apprenticeship there were no businesses around offering them. The third one was being a high school teacher however the requirement is that you have to have two papers (level 200 and level 300) in teachable subjects. Yeah, I know it is rather silly given that a Degree in Religious Studies and Philosophy should allow me to teach any humanities subject like history, social studies, geography etc. but alas those are the requirements. The only other option is maybe teaching at intermediate or primary school – if push came to shove I’d be ok with teaching intermediate kids but I don’t want to deal with kids younger than 12-13 years old because then I’ve gone from being a teacher to being a baby sitter.

  • Another weekend ended too quickly.

    Back to work on Wednesday – the weekend always ends up finishing too soon but on the good side I did go grocery shopping and this week I decided to get unsweetened natural yoghurt to go with the chia seed breakfast along with some easy meals for lunch. Oh, and one thing I remembered to pick up was some Earl Grey tea for morning tea and afternoon tea. For dinner tonight I had some honey soy chicken kebabs, asparagus with hollandaise sauce and a Greek inspired salad. That was a tasty dinner and I had that along with a sticky date pudding I picked up at the supermarket.

    Tomorrow I’m getting back on track with my life – meals have been prepared, going to get a good night sleep by going to bed earlier and what I might end up doing is waking up early so that when I start work I’m fully awake rather than just waking up. I also think that having a good night sleep will help not be as hungry during the day – I tend to feel hungrier when I don’t get a good night sleep so that along with a focus on foods with protein and fibre will help me curb my appetite.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2025.1019.1656 was released – it is now available on Microsoft Edge and Mac App store however as of typing this blog post it hasn’t appeared in the Chrome store yet (it can take 2-3 days for it to be approved by the powers that be over at Google). I’ve been jumping between Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome with the one thing I have noticed is that when I put my laptop to sleep that Microsoft Edge appears to recover to a usable state better than Chrome which sometimes the network connection fails to wake up resulting in a page failing to load (thus forcing one to exit the app then load it again). I’ve gotten into a habit of quitting Chrome before I close my laptop lid ideally it isn’t something I should have to worry about given that Chrome on macOS is able to handle going to sleep without a problem.

    Microsoft released an update for the October update that fixed up a few bugs that were found after the update was released. It was a quick download but took a fair amount of time to install it. I’m unsure why it took the amount of time it did but upon reboot everything continued working as expected. On Wednesday there will be an update to Chrome but it’ll be part of version 141 with 142 being released next week – assuming no delays caused by show stopper bugs. Edge received an update on Tuesday from Version 141.0.3537.85 to Version 141.0.3537.92 – I’m unsure what the update includes but I have a feeling it is the same fixes that were included with Chrome being updated to Version 141.0.7390.108.

    I keep coming back to Microsoft Edge because the spell checking and grammar checking are really good – it is something that Microsoft does a whole lot better than Google. I also noticed that the spell checking in particular is more reliable on Microsoft Edge where as on Chrome it’ll randomly stop checking the spelling for no particular reason. The other benefit is that on Android it supports extensions such as uBlock Origin Lite but given the talk about Android coming to the desktop and laptops I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up seeing extensions officially supported on Chrome for Android.

    Daily writing prompt
    What food would you say is your specialty?
    View all responses

    My specialty meal I like cooking is a roast lamb along with lots of roast vegetables and gravy – if I am feeling a little frisky I’ll buy some Yorkshire puddings from the supermarket which can be heated up in the oven in the last couple of 10 minutes of cooking (so then it all comes out at the same time). Although I do like roast potatoes I prefer kumara, New Zealand yams, pumpkin, parsnips, a whole glove of garlic and a whole onion – a good selection of roast vegetables are always nice. I especially like it during winter when the weather is lousy and it has been a long day running errands then coming home to a comforting meal. If I don’t have a lamb roast ready then the next best thing is a butterflied chicken that is marinated in tandoori seasoning.