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

  • And now for something completely different.

    I thought I may as well add do another post before I head off to bed. Today was a good day in terms of sticking to my diet – one thing I made sure of this week was making sure that I had a good variety of food at home which avoids being tempted to sneak off down the road mid week or getting groceries delivered which ends up leading to buying stuff I probably don’t need. I guess it is one of those things where you’re on a uphill battle fighting against a life time of bad habits but that being said there is the balance of ensuring that life isn’t some sort of death march where every day is miserable and there is nothing worth looking forward to.

    Things are going well with using Chrome and Google Workspace so I don’t think I’ll ever change to Microsoft 365. It’ll be interesting to see what comes of the whole bringing Android to the laptop – I have a feeling that what we’ll see is Android with desktop mode simply being the mode it automatically boots to, the same mode that you see with Samsung phones and DeX where you can use it like a desktop computer. What will also be interesting is whether we’ll see Android desktop box like how there were Chrome box because I am reminded of the Qualcomm X2 launch and some of the mini pc designs that were being shown at their demonstration booth. Could we see a Qualcomm X2 based desktop running Android? I imagine we could but it’ll be interesting to see whether Google opens up Chrome for Android to support extensions given that the business I work for relies on extensions as part of the work flow such as using 1Password to store passwords (or in my case, if I were to have a desktop I’d want to be able to utilise uBlock Origin Lite).

    On the topic of uBlock Origin Lite, there has been a release of 2025.1116.1841 and funny enough it appeared on the Apple App Store before anywhere else then followed by Edge but we’re still waiting on it to appear in the Chrome store. On the topic of Apple, I’ve updated mum’s phone to 18.7.2 but what I’ve decided to do is wait until 26.2 is released before updating because although I’ve heard a good amount of praise regarding the stability of 26.1 I’d sooner wait until 26.2 then make the switch after seeing what the final ends up turning out like (so far Zollotech on YouTube has given Apple releases a good amount of coverage – he goes into the minutia and picks up things that most reviewers will gloss over although it would be nice if he spent some time testing Safari since it is a heavily used bundled application).

    I’ve been following Webkit development and how things are going when it comes to Web Platform Tests (WPT) and based on the latest Safari Technology Preview it appears that there is a sizeable amount of progress (from what I understand there is work on creating a WPT but for extensions which should mean that getting Safari into compliance with the MV3 should be made a whole lot easier – being able to pick up compliance/compatibility bugs while building up the functionality) but it’ll be interesting to see how quickly they’ll make it available in their stable release given that if you do a comparison between stable releases, Safari still lags behind Chrome in terms of getting those features shipped to end users.

    It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the Apple M5 product refresh – rumours about it being in March next year or maybe later on but I don’t see it being launched any time soon given how close it is to Christmas (generally if they are going to do a product launch for Christmas it would already be made available). It’ll be interesting to see whether they include the new N1 chip as part of it because it has many benefits but then again I’m in no hurry – at this rate I could easily wait until maybe the iPhone 18 where it is rumoured that they’ll be move their whole product range over to their inhouse mobile chip – a C2X along with a N2 networking chip.

    Daily writing prompt
    What are your family’s top 3 favorite meals?
    View all responses
    1. Roast lamb with roast vegetables – lots of gravy then followed by a hearty desert such as a stick date pudding with custard or ice dream.
    2. Buttered chicken, rogan josh or tikka masala with garlic naan or roti along with basmati rice.
    3. Doner kebab – either lamb or chicken, with lots of salad, spicy sauce and for desert nothing beats baklava.

  • Another weekend gone too quickly.

    Back to work tomorrow – the weekend always ends up finishing too quickly but on a good side I did turn it into a productive time off. On Monday I walked down to the local bakery for some eggs bene with salmon and spinach for brunch, picked up a few sweet treats from the display cabinet then walked back home. Watched a few YouTube videos then had dinner with mum followed by some weekly grocery shopping. On Tuesday (today) I went for another walk, came back home, completed weeding of the garden – what I’m going to do on my two weeks off over Christmas is to pull up the garden and deal with the weed problem and then put down some fresh weed mats and rocks which will tidy it up. I also need to deal with the weeds on the footpath and I may even look at getting some greenery for the backyard because at the moment it is just a concrete slab, a bike shed and a clothes line so it would be nice to turn it into a place where I want to hang out during the summer rather than sitting inside all day using my laptop when I could be using my laptop outside in the fresh air.

    Google has released an update of Chrome a day earlier than usual so I checked out the release information on their blog website (link) and now it makes sense, two high severity security holes and one of them being exploited in the wild at the moment so if you haven’t updated yet then I’d check under settings then about and get that update installed. It appears that the lack of an update for Android is an indication that only the desktop version is impacted.

    Microsoft has released some insider builds for both the release preview channel (link) and the developer and beta channel (link). It’ll be interesting whether it’ll be released in January 2026 given that according to the November patch Tuesday there is the following note:

    Due to reduced operations during the Western holidays in December and New Year’s Day, Microsoft will not release a non-security preview update in December 2025. The monthly security update will still be available as scheduled. Regular monthly servicing, including both security updates and non-security preview updates, will resume in January 2026.

    So we may not see those enhancements for another month with December being a purely security and bug fix release which makes sense because I could imagine many people at Microsoft going away on holidays, spending time with family etc. etc. Btw, what it also looks like regarding the ‘Administration Protection’, Microsoft is pausing the roll out in the beta and developer channels which makes sense given that it is a pretty big change and it is almost guaranteed there will be bugs and software compatibility issues that either need to be worked around, fixed or documented so that the third party can address the compatibility issue before doing any sort of widespread rollout.

    On a side note, I find it funny how there are people on Twitter who are unhappy with the head of Windows talking about how Microsoft are turning Windows into an agentic operating system – replies being made by them about how they never asked for this AI nonsense, that Microsoft should just make a decent operating system etc. etc. THe reason I find it funny is that these people complaining are the same people who tune into tech influencers who were hyping AI up to the ceiling and beyond. These people then constantly regurgitating tech influencer rectum plucks as wisdom worthy of being shared as if they had come down from the heavens – the great tech philosopher has been generous enough to bestow upon his lowly audience some great wisdom.

    It reminds me of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the tech influencers whining about Apple ‘falling behind’ even though all the surveys point to the fact that only 7% of iPhone purchasers cared about AI features. It really goes to show the disconnect from reality that the tech influencers represent – they’re little more than people who use the parasocial relationship their viewers have with them to push the latest hype from silicon valley to their audience. I really do hope that there is a day of reckoning for these tech influencers in much the same way I would like to see a day of reckoning for the manosphere dude bros who are trying to back peddle at the moment claiming that they weren’t really that ‘hardcore MAGA’ even though there are thousands of hours of clips being just that.

    The whole reason why these tech influencers gained an audience in the first place was the sense that the person was being genuine – they weren’t bought by a particular company and thus could be as brutally honest as they wanted because it was from personal experience. Something insides me wishes that the whole influencer crashes and burns but something tells me that as long as people have short memories I don’t think people will learn – keeping in mind the US voted in GWB twice, Trump twice and Regan twice, and gave Republicans a majority in both houses 2 years after their party crashed the global economy and got the US stuck in two wars, and that hasn’t resulted in Americans learning anything.

  • A productive day today.

    I woke up this morning, had a coffee then jumped into the shower, got dressed then walked down to the local cafe for an eggs bene with smoked salmon and spinach along with a bowl of mocaccino. After the meal I then grabbed a couple of items from the display cabinet of slices then headed back home. Something I must do a lot more often on my day off is going from a nice walk around the block during the day – the feeling of the sun and the fresh air certainly wakes one up.

    Regarding the political take I had either yesteryday or the day before regarding moving further to the left. For me I started off being a social libertarian but economically centre left – the basic idea that negative externalities of capitalism could be dealt with government policy that focused on protecting workers, the environment, ensuring that the products being provide meet safety regulations, a progressive tax system to ensure that those at the top end of town pay a larger portion of their income to fund universal public services that everyone can access. Basically I was a bog standard social democrat but what I have found is that as I’ve read more history I realise that we’ve been going through this cycle of trying to reign in the excesses of capitalism only to find that is undone which is then followed by an economic crisis which then necessitates the state to intervene, rescue the economy then reinstate new regulations (with those regulations being limited in scope due to political capture by the capitalist class).

    The problem is that the we cannot keep going through these cycles resulting in the capitalist class having more power after the very economic crisis they caused resulting in a consolidation of power. As a a study reminded me not too long ago, the average person has little or no influence over policy when compared to the donors who bankroll campaigns and lobby for special treatment. If we define fascism being the marriage of state power with capitalism – the capitalist class seizes control of the state then use the state’s monopoly on violence to protect its class interest, what we see a slow moving fascist transformation of the state. Then add on top of a system that is predicated on infinite growth on a finite planet thus making dealing with climate change an impossibility without system change, an economy productive enough to meet all of humanities needs but relies on the illusion of scarcity to ensure profit maximisation and that doesn’t touch on the larger issue of the fact that we have solutions to deal with climate change but because we fixate over profits the end result is that these solutions never get built because they’re either unprofitable or not profitable enough.

    What is the solution? we need to push beyond capitalism. As Michael Moore, the American documentarian, has noted in the past regarding how as humans we can land people on the moon, find cures to diseases, create marvels of technology but some how we cannot come up with a better solution than capitalism? what is that alternative? socialism but the million dollar question is what kind of socialism – if you define socialism as in ‘workers owning and controlling the means of production’ then what is governance structure? cooperatives? worker councils based around a particular industrial sector? should the market be the mediator when it comes to the delivery of goods and services or what other model could be used in lieu of a market based model? should there be currency? labour vouchers? public housing, private housing or a combination?

    What does amaze me are the number of liberals who keep chortling about how ‘socialism has never worked’ which demonstrates the fact that capitalism didn’t get it right the first time and even today it continuously needs the bailed out. If capitalism was this fabulously perfect system then it wouldn’t need to be continuously baile dout, it wouldn’t need to use clandestine operations to undermine countries that wish to nationalise their natural resources so that the benefits of those resources are used to benefit their people (see Iran and numerous South American countries just recently). I have to wonder whether liberals are so wedded to the ideology that they’re blind to alternatives to whether they have a vested interested in the status quo.

  • Bring on the weekend.

    Another uneventful day at work that has come and gone – I’m happy that it is all over with and I finished it off with a cheese and onion sandwich along with an egg salad sandwich. I jumped into bed, completed NYT Connections and Wordle then watched a few YouTube videos about various political topics. It is funny how the conventional wisdom is the idea that as you get older you become more conservative but I find myself moving further to the left as I have gotten older. I might write a blog post regarding the background to that gradual shift to the left – I’ll put that in the ‘to be completed at a later date’ and that’ll most likely be at a time like 3am where like a cat I’ll get a sudden surface of energy.

    Daily writing prompt
    What is your favorite place to go in your city?
    View all responses

    My favourite place is Cuba Street in Wellington – lots of interesting stores including a great record store with niche music cds that are difficult to find, good quality out of print cds etc. along with trendy restaurants, clothing stores etc. that have a cosmopolitan vibe to the city. The best way to describe it would be this – if New Zealand had legal weed then Cuba Street would be the place you’d pop into the local cafe for a coffee and a few edibles.

  • I think Saturday will be night off.

    The combination of drunk people stumbling home from the local pub and people letting of fireworks I decided to have a quiet night in and then go for a walk Sunday night when things are a little bit quieter. On a good side I finally found that annoying soft drink can that was being blowing around on the road last night that was driving me mad – found that along with another tin and put them into my recycling bin. It is amazing how much noise an empty soft drink can can make.

    Second day and I’ve been sticking to my meal plan – I had a bottle of soaked chia seeds topped with unsweetened yoghurt (one at breakfast then one at morning tea), some rice and salmon meal that I can heat up in the microwave and then for a snack I had a coffee and an iced coffee (500ml of low fat milk with extra protein along with 80ml of coffee concentrate (no sugar added)). The combination of fibre and protein allows me to keep fuller for longer along with keeping the amount of added sugar to a minimum which avoids blood sugar spikes and feeling hungry shortly after eating something.

    Intel has updated their ISA documentation (link) and it is kind of strange that Nova Lake includes support for AVX and APX but for some strange reason Flexible Return and Event Delivery (FRED) is in Panther Lake (and two Xeon models) but not in Nova Lake which seems kind of strange given that I would have expected Nova Lake to build upon the Panther Lake architecture and thus inherit the feature. Unless of course I’m reading it wrong and the architecture listed on the left hand side is the first architecture that will receive it and all subsequent architectures automatically get it since it is already baked in (I assume that is the case given that the title of the table is ‘Recent Instruction Set Extensions / Features Introduction in Intel® 64 and IA-32’ which indicates when it was first introduced). It’ll be interesting to see what the performance will be like when the first crop of Panther Lake laptops are released but the Nova Lake at least for me will be the more interesting because we’ll get to see whether the work done on AVX and APX translates to a sizeable improvement in performance.

    Something I do miss is how in the past Microsoft used to have blog posts going into the technical details regarding their kernel, the changes they made and how that impacted the end user. For example, with Windows 7 there was a change in terms of the GDI system which made it more fine grained and scalable which enabled it to be more responsive along with the partial hardware acceleration they implemented as well (as part of WDDM 1.1) which improved the GUI responsiveness when compared to Windows Vista. There was also a change a change in the kernel dispatch that improved its scalability to 256 cores (keeping in mind that that time the idea of 256 cores in a single image was huge). I wish there were more articles regarding the changes being made under the hood – although it may not be popular with the general public it does allow tech enthusiasts such as myself have a greater appreciation regarding what Microsoft is doing below the surface – optimisations, adding support for architectural changes etc.

  • Second day getting back on track.

    Second day getting back on track – went for a walk tonight, set a goal of completing it in under 2 hours and I arrived back home in 1 hour and 50 minutes. I like to set a goal for myself so then I keep up a good pace and when I get home I feel as though I’ve accomplished something rather than simply going through the motion of exercising. My legs are a little bit sore but I’m surprised that I haven’t lost gone backwards in terms of fitness and stamina but then again I guess it is something that declines gradually rather than just dropping off the edge of a cliff. I think what I’ll do in future is rather than having a couple of days off in a row what I’ll do instead is still go for a walk on my day off but maybe a shorter one so then I still get out of the house and exercise while still be able to have a day where I can unwind and relax.

    Checking for updates and it there has been a sudden surge of updates for both Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome – unsure as to the reason why – regressions? an unpatched vulnerability currently being exploited? Whatever the case maybe it is good to see updates as being pushed out. As I remember saying years ago on a Usenet, software is written by humans and humans are fallible so bugs are bound to happen but the big question is how well do these organisations handle dealing with a bug when they find it and do they have procedures in place to ensure that once found that a patch is tested to ensure it fixes the bug, ensures that the fix doesn’t result in any regressions and then making it available to the public in a timely manner.

    The silly season has already started so I may as well start planning – get the presents before I’m having to deal with the rush. I’m looking at putting together a hamper for mum and a hamper for my sister and her partner then some presents for my two nieces who live in New Zealand. As for the day, I’ll probably bring desert, some apple cider and a few other goodies – it’s the one day of the year when calorie counting is thrown out the window in favour of enjoying family and lots of yummy food.

  • Back into the swing of things.

    I finally got motivated to get back into going for a walk – first day back after a week of not exercising and I was expecting the worst but actually I came back, completed the 11.6km in under 2 hours and I don’t feel sore or stiff which is a good sign. I was expecting that maybe things may have changed around the area – houses finally getting built on the few empty plots of land that have been empty for quite some time but it appears not to be the case. It’s always good to keep an eye on what is happening in the neighbourhood – hopefully once we get through this year that 2026 will be a better year but something tells me that until Trump and the Republicans are gone then the global economy is going to be experience more instability as so long as a single person can suddenly wake up and randomly throw around tariffs like they’re confetti.

    I find it funny how tech dude bro influencers online are surprised, after hyping AI to the ceiling and beyond, that the average person just wants an operating system that is stable, reliable and gets out of the way when they want to use their computer (link). I always found it funny how these tech dude bro influencers convinced themselves and the echo chamber they occupy that Apple ‘being behind’ in AI is a major issue, meanwhile in the real world all the surveys showed that end users buying phones care about AI as much as they do about thinness which is around 7%. Long story short, maybe some of these influencers should actually hang out with normal people rather than convincing themselves that their human centipede of regurgitated slop is representative of what the priorities are when it comes to where most people sit.

    Personally, I see many features in Windows that I don’t use it – it’s like many things that come bundled with WIndows, I’m sure there is someone somewhere saying that a feature I don’t need is their must have feature so in the grand scheme of things it is not a big deal. On a side note, something tells me that if Microsoft weren’t ramming AI into everything I don’t see them suddenly spending more resources fixing up the inconsistent nature of their user interface. To say that Microsoft would use the resources to fix people’s pet peeves reminds me of an episode of ‘Yes Prime Minister’ regarding a question posed to school children that if nuclear weapons were gotten rid of then how much money would be saved? as Sir Humphrey Appleby points out – there would be no money saved, it would be spend on conventional weapons instead.

    Personally, having lived through the years of Windows 10, I would sooner the the current process of taking a more conservative approach to development rather than the breakneck speed where Windows 10 it was 6 monthly big updates with people guessing what has been broken this time around. Yeah, it was not enjoyable so in the case of my experience with Windows 11 so far I haven’t experienced any major issues and the Windows 11 on ARM has been pretty robust – it’ll be interesting to see whether 26H1 makes its way to the current ARM Surface laptops given that I could imagine there being under the hood improvements that could also benefit the current Qualcomm X Elite product line up but then again they may play it say and would sooner use the extra time to ensure what is shipped is rock solid for their existing customers.

  • When you stand for nothing this is what happens.

    Yes, it is possible to have a big tent party that is so big that ultimately it stands for nothing and then collapses under it’s own weight and yes, having a degree of ideological boundaries being set is required because if there is no philosophy that binds the party together then you end up with a disorganised mess with nothing unifying the party when the party is given the opportunity to govern. This is the reason why I’ve said in the past that the whole MAGA movement is a movement based on vibes not something that has come about because of a coherent policy platform guided by some underlying philosophy but a political opportunist who mobilised people based on a grab bag of collective grievances by scapegoating minorities but offering no real solutions. Long story short, rather than those who voted Republican voting based on policies they voted based on the opportunity to punch down and feel as though they have some sense of power by virtue of being on the ‘winning side’.

    Ben Shapiro (as seen in the video below) is now just finding out the hard way what happens when you put winning ahead of actually standing for something – this is what happens when you convince yourself that bringing in the cranks, the crazies, the racists, the conspiracy theorists then act surprised when the lunatics are now wanting to take over the party. I’m sorry Ben but you thought you could control the lunatics, that you could use these voters who vote based on vibes to get into power and that they will just fall inline and stick to the party line but now you’re finding out that vibes based voters don’t actually believe anything – if they can easily convinced to vote for political opportunists then they’re just as easily convinced into going further right.

    I’ve had my own fair share of criticisms when it comes to the whole ‘cancel culture’ where what someone said 15 years ago on a twitter account is resurrected by some cyber Karen so then they can talk about how they were offended (they’re not actually offended but it is an easy vehicle for someone to make themselves the centre of attention) and use that claim of being ‘offended’ to try to acquire some sort of power. This power that such individuals crave is only possible if we as a society give it to them – when businesses capitulate to the mob then they’ve given power to the mob that they didn’t have any in the first place (other than their capacity to make noise – then again an empty can with a single rock can make a lot of noise when thrown down some concrete stairs) where as if every person and organisation stood up to the noisy mob they would quickly realise that their commotions and temper-tantrums won’t result in them getting the power they want.

    Anyway, getting back on topic again, at some point you have to to be willing to not only engage in self criticism but also willing to clearly state where the line is drawn between what is within the boundaries of the party and what resides outside it. Saying that there is a line that shall not be crossed isn’t ‘cancelling’ or ‘purity testing’ but simply setting the boundaries of where the limits of the party reside, what your party believes in and what position that are outside of the philosophy that underpins the party. Yes, you can have diversity within the conservative moment for example when it comes to same sex marriage (yes, there is a conservative argument in favour of it) or limited government, free trade or even if affirmative action is beneficial or counter productive but when you have someone praising certain dictators then it should be a pretty easy decision to clearly state that said person is outside what is considered acceptable to be a member of the party.

    Although I am using Ben Shapiro as a launching point I don’t blame him personally for what has happened to the Republican Party because the origins go back over 60 years to the ‘southern strategy’ that bought disillusioned Dixiecrats over to the Republican Party post-Civil Rights Act. Then there was the co-opting of the religious right who had similar grievances post-Civil Rights Act and then you had the anti-USSR hawks, the Wall Street, Libertarians and a few random assortments thrown in for good luck. In other words you have a coalition of different groups with conflicting interests who battle each other for supremacy in the party. That isn’t to say things are rosey in the Democratic Party but at least they’re willing to say “this is beyond the pale” and don’t invite them on to use their platform to amplify what they have to say or the various factions in the Democratic Party broadly agree that making life better for the middle class should be a goal but there are different ways of getting there with the compromise being something the different factions can live with.

    This fracturing of the party and the end result of Nick Fluentes being mainstreamed by Republican leaning or identifying hosts is the inevitable evolution of the decision that was made 60 years ago – creating a broad base but ultimately nothing that binds the party other other than ‘we hate the Democrats’ and the problem is with the ‘we hate the Democrats’ being used to hold the party together is that once you get into power nothing is achieved because everyone is infighting because no one can agree on anything other than giving tax cuts to the rich while making empty gestures about being greatly concerned regarding the public debt and deficit (aka the Susan Collins of politics – voice’s that she is very concerned but not concerned enough to do something about it).

  • End of the first day.

    Well, I was able to finish an hour early which was nice but I was hoping to be able to go for a walk tonight, getting back into a good routine, but alas it is raining outside. On a good side though I stuck to my diet plan for today so it isn’t as though I need to walk but rather I like the idea of going for a walk. I am always reminded of the saying “you can’t outrun a bad diet” so if I stick to a plan then it makes life easier and thus I’m not dependent on exercise to balance up the calories in and calories out if I’m already hitting the numbers I need to without the exercise.

    I woke up this morning and there is a decent number of updates made available, the Tuesday update for November and it appears they have fixed the Task Manager bug that was remoted last week along with fixing a few bugs and security issues as well as some optimisations where I’ve noticed that it is slightly snappier. Chrome and Edge both received updates as well – no regressions for either one of them (I always clear the cookies and cache after doing an update) along with uBlock Origin Lite 2025.1110.1551 now available in the Chrome and Edge extension store for download. I haven’t noticed anything strange or unusual after installing the monthly update but then again my life is fairly simple and I avoid making changes to my system unless I know what I am doing so I kind of avoid many of the headaches mentioned online.

    I’ve been having a look around at more information regarding 26H1 about it supporting newer silicon with the focus being around the new Qualcomm X2 SoC but I also think that part of the support will be for the Panther Lake SoC from Intel. At the moment we don’t have any details regarding what the architecture includes other than the sort of high level mentions in the recent presentations so we’ll need to wait until we get closer to the official release of it in products before we start seeing it in the Intel ARK database that’ll outline the extensions it includes, any sort of changes such as whether, if any at all, did they adopt the four agreed upon technologies mentioned in the x86 advisory group public statement made recently. The reason why I say this is because of FRED is included then it would require them to make changes on what happens below HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer abstracts away the underlying architectural differences so even if something like FRED changes how things work under the hood at the lowest levels then everything built upon HAL is oblivious to that change and just keeps working a long as it always does.

    There is a new supermarket that has opened up in Upper Hutt called ‘Plenty Foods’ that I’ll have a look at next week on my day off to see how they compare to the big players. I really do hope that Costco and Aldi come to New Zealand – more specifically to Wellington because I’d be more than happy to do a months worth of shopping even if it means going over to Porirua if the prices are good and there is a reasonable selection. Aldi would be a great competitor because I’m not really someone who buys something because of the brand but whether it is good – if the supermarket brand is equal or better than the name brand but cheaper then I’ll go with that when I can.

  • Back to work on Wednesday.

    Today was a pretty quiet day – I went to bed last night at around 2am and then woke up at around 1pm on Tuesday – a solid whole night of sleep and felt pretty good when I woke up. I then headed to mum’s for dinner and picked up a few items from the supermarket and with that I’m covered for this week as well as next week. The one itemI was able to find was the ‘Up and Go’ with extra protein and coffee flavoured which I couldn’t get for a while but it is now back in stock – for some strange reason they don’t sell it in a 12 pack so I need to buy it in a 6 pack.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2025.1110.1551 has been released – and it has appeared in the Apple App Store before the Chrome and Edge Stores which is kind of funny because I would have thought Chrome or Edge would have gotten it first. It hasn’t made its way to Edge and Chrome but I would have thought given how it is an a) open source project and b) a massively high profile project, that these stores would be approving updates in a timely manner because after all it was Google who pushed MV3 and required filters to be included with the extension and couldn’t be updated remotely. If Google cannot keep up with the demand placed on them because their changes have resulted in a greater number of extensions being submitted then maybe they need to revisit their decision to that forbids extensions from being remotely updated eg content blockers downloading the latest filters.

    Spark has put up the cost of the email and it is getting to the point that I think mum should just go all in on her outlook.co.nz email address. I kind of wonder whether the Spark as pumping up the price to eventually get to the point that so few people use the service that they eventually get rid of it in the long run – one less thing they have to take care of in terms of providing technical support. When it comes to where ISPs are in New Zealand – the new ISPs don’t even offer it and those that used to offer it are gradually winding down the service then at some point there will be a ‘we no longer provide email any longer’. Given how many free and paid for email services exist there really isn’t an excuse for using an ISP provided email service any more other than having a legacy email that you setup way before the free email services arrived and you’ve kept it going because telling all of your contacts your new email address would be a giant pain in the backside.

    Regarding how politics are going in New Zealand – I think that the economy isn’t going to be kind to anyone who has lost their job or anyone employed who is looking for a decent wage increase to make up for the last few years of high inflation. There are rumours that unemployment has peaked and that we’ll see it come down next year but I am sceptical given that the international situation hasn’t changed – Trump throwing around tariffs, rumours that the supreme court will strike down the tariffs but with those rumours also comes speculation that the Trump administration will have another go at imposing tariffs but using a different law. The problem is that this uncertainty and how long it takes to weave through the court system the damage is already done – the big question is whether the members of the CPTPP grow a spine, remove the suspended parts of the treaty that the US demanded (and will be ‘activated’ if they sign up to the CPTPP at a later date), ask China and India to join then link the CPTPP zone with the European Union along with central and south American countries then once that is done to call it a day – ignore the United States and let them isolate themselves into oblivion. There was an election, Americans chose isolationism and disengaging from the world – now the American people will have to live with the consequences of their political choice.