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

  • A very wet day in Wellington.

    It has been raining all day with a lot of wind but thank goodness at around 11pm last night there was a small period of just a little bit of drizzle which allowed me to step out of the house for an 8km walk tonight – after being stuck inside all day it is nice to get out of the house to enjoy some fresh air and change of scenery. Tonight I went for a small walk before dinner (around 2.5km) then after dinner I went for a larger walk (10km) – taking advantage of the fine weather and fresh air because according to the Metservice there is some rain coming in the next week so I may not be able to get out and get some exercise on those days (assuming the rain is all day and night without a break).

    Daily writing prompt
    What are the most important things needed to live a good life?
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    The most important thing is to accept that you’ll never be 100% satisfied – that there will never be a point where you will be content because you’ve bought everything you want, you’ve achieved a certain position in an organisation, followed the well trodden path, made others happy even af the expense of your own happiness etc. The key to happiness is making peace with the idea that contentment is an illusion – like acknowledging that your emotions are real and it is important to work through those emotions when dealing with trauma (or any other event) but not allowing them to get in the drivers seat because that is when bad decisions happen.

  • Back to work on Wednesday..a nice three day weekend.

    The wether was pretty lousy today so I still went for a walk (even after the long one I had on Monday) but only a small one, around 6km, I was tempted to go the full 8km but the drizzle was starting to get worse so I didn’t want to be in a situation like last time where I came home absolutely drenched from top to bottom along with shoes that took 2-3 days to properly dry even with them being near the dehumidifier to speed up the process.

    uBlock Origin Lite is adding custom declarative net request rules with the latest release (as of writing this blog it hasn’t appeared in the Chrome extension store but it is available in the Edge extension store) – hopefully that’ll mean that it’ll be possible to keep it up today in between the releases that are formally pushed to the extensions store. I’m hoping that element zapper will result in those elements that you zap get added to the custom declarative net request rules so then it is possible to adjust further if need be.

    Daily writing prompt
    List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
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    The first would be ‘The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society’ by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks which talks about how as a multi cultural society, a society where we have become fractured, we have become atomised with the rise of hyper individualism, the loss of institutions that would bring together people from different walks of life such as unions, religious institutions, friendly societies etc. and what can be done to recreate society without the temption we see today of looking back to a romanticised past where was a dominant culture and large numbers of people who were outside of that dominant culture which resulted in marginalisation of minority groups, people deprived of their rights etc.

    The second is the book “A Time to Kill’ by John Grisham which I wrote a book report on when I was high school – I loved the book because I tend to prefer reading non-fiction work but this (like Tom Clancy books) doesn’t require one to suspend disbelief because the narrative feels as though it could actually happen in the real life. It was a heart breaking narrative and you really empathised with the father who took revenge and the nail biting court case that followed.

    The third is the book “Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics” with contributions by multiple authors which talk about the secularisation and desecularisation occuring simultaneously – where the reversal of secularisation is occurring it isn’t a reemergence of moderate or mainstream branches but extreme fundamentalist versions of a given religion. We also see the rise of religious affiliation not necessarily being a confession of faith but rather indicating political alligence in much the same way a survey was done not too long ago where half of evangelicals in the US don’t believe Jesus is fully man and fully God (the whole idea of Jesus being fully man and fully god that was established in 451AD at the Council of Chalcedon) where evangelical isn’t a confession of faith but denoting ones political affiliation.

  • A productive day off.

    Today was a productive day, I visited my sister to hand back the laptop that I set up for her along with setting up the UniFi Dream Machine and UniFi AP AC HD resulting in a much better internet experience where (I ran a speed test and was able to hit 300mbps download and 100mbps upload). The UniFi Dream Machine is put in the lounge room/kitchen where as the UniFi AP AC HD is installed in the hall way (the ethernet cable going up through the ceiling then connecting up to the access point (the fact that it is powered via PoE makes the installation a whole lot easier). The laptop has left me with a very positive experience when it comes to Windows 11 – as most of you know I’m a pretty hard core macOS user but I always like to keep my options open. It will be interesting to see what Windows 11 25H2 brings but I’ve heard rumours that administrator protection will arrive – that will really push up the level of security in Windows 11 and protect it from some of the nasty stuff that bad guys try to do.

    I’ve had a look through my wardrobe and there are some of the old shirts I used to fit that have aged really badly so even when I get my weight down to my target range I don’t think I’ll ever actually wear them. The white shirts have have got discolouration so they’ll be the first I get rid of but there are three shirts from Oxford I bought when I was in Australia which has a double cuff that are nice but I’m unsure what I’ll pair up with them – possibly a woollen vest or maybe getting the equivalent of a ‘frock coat’ with trousers that match them. On a good side the black shirts I bought held up well – I am a horrible eater so I tend to avoid clothing where, if I spill something, it shows a nasty stain on it hence my preference for dark colours.

    I’ve had a look at switching to 2 Degrees for my internet – at the moment Skinny doesn’t offer IPv6 and one thing I noticed is that the speed and latency is better on her connection when compared to mine. I am also looking at 2 Degrees because everything is integrated together into a single bill, the gap between the price Skinny charges vs what others charge have closed not to mention the good speeds when using Cloudflare, Microsoft, Amazon and Google services along with the inter connection at points of presence meaning that if I am connecting to a service in Wellington the requst doesn’t go all the way to Auckland then back down to Wellington again but instead through the exchange in Wellington I directly connect to the server with the result being lower latency and better speed when downloading. As mentioned in a previous post, I’ll be holding back any decisions until we see what happens with the upcoming WWDC 2025 and whether it is a barrel of disappointments or the issues I’ve raised in the past actually get addressed – if it is a giant disappointment then at least I have an alternative plan for the next few years.

  • Happy birthday to me.

    I went out tonight with mum, sister, partner and two nieces for dinner to celebrate reaching the ripe old age of 44 years old. It is amazing how the years go so quickly and yet at the age of 44 I don’t feel old, I don’t feel like I’m slowing down or aging when compared to when I was in my 30s or 20s although I do prefer to hang out at home rather than going out like I did when I was young – maybe it has to do with the lack of novelty associated with going out now that I’ve seen and experienced it all not to mention that it is winter and I’d sooner be at home where it is cosy and warm.

    My sister has decided to go to teachers training college so I helped her pick out a laptop (an ASUS Zenbook 14inch) and then set it up – installed all the latest updates so that everything is up to date along with firmware etc. When at dinner mum said it would be better for my sister to get my old router and access point since the modem they have is one provided by their ISP but the coverage is horrible. I finally got the UDM sorted out by putting it in recovery mode then upgrading it to the latest firmware – when I set it up I’ll register it to my UniFi account so then I can manage it from home.

    One more week to go before the big WWDC Keynote and State of the Platform Union on Tuesday NZ Time (Monday in the US) – a lot of rumours are swirling around such as unifying the version number of all their platforms around a year for example it would make macOS 26 become the next release. For me the whole thing with AI is kind of secondary when compared to wanting to get the fundamentals nailed down or as Chris Luxon (NZ Prime Minister) loves to say “making sure the basics are done well” – not use boasting about Ai when Webkit is failing to keep up with web standards and implementing the MV3 extension framework in a timely manner or failing to fix up bugs around iCloud and macOS integration (as mentioned on a previous post about custom domain aliases not appearing in the Mail app on macOS).

    The outcome of WWDC will pretty much shape my plans for the next couple of years – the experience of setting up my sister’s computer opened my eyes to the fact that Windows 11 is actually pretty good when it is paired with hardware from an OEM vendor that doesn’t chock it full of crapware. The laptop my sister got is an ASUS and the only crapware that was installed was McAfee which was easily uninstalled while everything else was exactly what was needed to make the laptop productive. If I ever did make the move then ASUS would definitely be a contender to replace my Mac or possibly Microsoft Surface. As for the desk, I’d probably build my own and have a 100% AMD based one – AMD CPU and GPU which woud give me the flexibility of installing Windows 11 on it and if at a later date I decide I’ll know that all the hardware will be supported out of the box with Linux.

  • One day closer to my birthday and time off.

    Finished work tonight at 10pm and then went for a 10km walk – I was going to just do an 8km walk but I got to the 6km mark and decided I may as well go the ‘whole hog’. I arrived back home feeling a bit sore but feeling good as though I had just accomplished something. I’ve never been someone into exercise or as the saying goes “built for comfort not for speed” but getting back into doing some regular exercise feels really rewarding. After coming back from a long walk you feel tired but you also feel like you’ve achieved something, kind of like when you climb a mountain and then get to the top then see how far you’ve come. At the moment the big drive is to get below 100kg by the end of this year and then once I get to my desired weight I’ll probably reduce my exercise to 4-5 times a week with a few rest days.

    Daily writing prompt
    How do you know when it’s time to unplug? What do you do to make it happen?
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    When participating stops being enjoyable and instead starts becoming a burden, when you increasingly find that you become more and more angry but nothing productive comes from engaging with people who clearly are saying and doing things to get a rise out of you. When you’ve had that experience that is the moment you need to unplug, disconnect from the internet, to go out and ‘touch grass’ and start setting boundaries to what you do online. For me it meant walking away from Twitter (before it was bought out by Elon Musk), laying clear boundaries simply to disengage from unproductive discussions or as a family member said, “say your piece, then walk away, don’t engage any further in the discussion”.

    Part of the unplugging process also involves finding replacements to being always online – set a clear limits that you not only hold yourself to but also those who you interact with, for example, not replying to text messages or answering phone calls after a certain time unless it is an emergency. I also go for a walk after work each night as a way of unwinding and empty my head of what took place that day so that when I come home I go to bed with a clear head and then start a new day the next day with a fresh mind without the baggage being carried over from the previous day(s).

  • That was a long walk.

    After work I headed down to the supermarket to pick up some random things that I ran out of along with something for dinner then came back home, had dinner then decided to go for a long power walk. How long was the walk? 16km, and when I came back I had sore legs, sore feet and really tired but when I got into bed and I feel ready to go to sleep. Going to head off to sleep now, may make a longer blog post tomorrow but it depends on how I feel.

  • Busy night at work.

    Had a late start for work but I’m happy that tomorrow things are normal – I didn’t go for my walk tonight because of the late finish but also because I wanted to do a whole lot of organising around the house. In my bedroom in the closest I have a habit of keeping all the boxes of stuff I buy ‘just in case’ but I decided that I should start getting rid of them particular for stuff that either I no longer have or really can’t justify keeping around. That was all sorted out and then I went through all my draws (bed side tables, the draws in the computer desk and once that was sorted I folded up all my washing. Oh, and the package from YouShop arrived from overseas today, I washed the two hoodies, t-shirt and socks with them now on the clothes horse and I’ve got my dehumidifier running to stop the place from getting damp from the clothes drying inside. On a side note, I went through my sock draw and threw out all the old socks that had holes or ones so thin that there was no cushioning when I go for a walk each night – 24 pairs of socks in total which should take care of my needs for a few years before I need to replace them (I’m tempted to buy some slippers to avoid wearing socks around the home and wearing them out).

    Google released the usual update on Wednesday (Tuesday US time) and uBlock Origin Lite has been updated as well. I really do want to give Safari a go but when even the native content blockers are limited when compared to the tour de force that is uBlock Origin Lite does just such a great job as a content blocker. Maybe Apple at this point should throw in the towel and embrace Webkit given how much it trails behind even when it comes to web standards when one considers the web platform tests (link) where Safari even trails behind Firefox which makes me wonder why doesn’t Apple make the investment to bring Safari up to speed (the situation is even worse when you split from experimental to the stable release, Chrome sitting at 90% while Safari sits at 50%). That doesn’t even touch on where Safari is when it comes to bring MV3 to Safari given how much of their implementation of Declarative Net Request (DNR) trails behind Firefox and Chrome in terms of the features missing that are present in Chrome and Firefox (link) not to mention the various bugs that have been reported regarding their implementation yet have sat there not being address for months or in some cases years.

    Oh, and as for iCloud, I don’t know what is going on between my Mail app and iCloud but out of nowhere it’ll stop sending mail then ask me to select mail server that I wish to send my mail through where by I manually select the iCloud one already loaded on only to find that the Mail app tells me it failed. I think it is getting to the point where I may need to investigate an alternative to iCloud for my email if this keeps up. When there was an update recently to macOS to 15.5 I prematurely celebrated that my aliases appeared in Mail app only to find out recently that after logging out of iCloud, clearing out my ~/Library folder then logging back in again that the aliases have disappeared. So let me get this straight, I open up my Mail app on my iPhone my aliases are there but on macOS they don’t exist at all and I need to manually add them – please help me make sense of that because at this point I can’t work out what would explain such a situation other than Apple not giving a toss about macOS users in favour of all their attention being on iOS or what ever happens to be the next new gizmo.

  • Late start tomorrow, great day today.

    I decided I needed to get out of the house after being stuck in day all yesterday – I went down the road and popped into the local bakery in the mall for a cheese and onion toasted sandwich, a piece of carrot cake and a mochachino. I had a look around the mall, checked out a few things and then walked home which is around 3.5km – got home then a few hours later I went for my usual 8km or so walk I do every night then had a bowel of mushroom soup to warm me up. I’m making progress but I guess I’ve hit that plateau where the ‘easy weight’ has fallen off and now it is the last few kilos that’ll take the longest but I’m in no rush and would sooner just take my time and make sure that when the weight comes off it stays off rather than yo-yo dieting of losing weight and it coming back on just as quickly (if not quicker).

    Leaks of the Pixel 10 have been making the round – it appears that Google has stuck with the existing design but the hardware specs have been updated. Personally I think that if you find something that works that you may as well stick with it rather than just changing for the sake of changing. One thing to keep in mind is that with Android 16 there will be two updates – the release of Android 16 and a bigger update towards the end of the year where there is much talk about it shipping the features that weren’t ready for the Android 16 release but not really big enough to justify a new version number along with the fact that Google probably wants to get it out to consumers. The whole ‘two releases’ may end up becoming a trend to future releases where the base is stabilised and then more features are released later on with bug fixes for the base included. I think the big one I’m looking forward to is Android TV 16 given that that are references to the use of a 64bit kernel which makes me wonder whether we’ll see the Google Streamer shipping today will be reduced in price to become the entry device then a new Google Streamer will be released when Android TV 16 is released which will be their ‘premium’ version that’ll complete with Apple TV.

  • A quiet day at home.

    I decided to have a relaxing day hanging around at home – yeah, I like to get out of the house on my day off but today the weather was wet and cold so I decided hanging around watching some videos and having a tandoori chicken for lunch/early dinner was more the pace I wanted to cruise at today. Some of the videos were political while others were technology with a few random ones about building a log cabin in the woods – it’s one of the reasons I loath algorithms so much because god help you if you’re left wing and like watching homesteading videos of people building log cabin and vegetable gardens because you’ll end up getting an avalanche of right wing content then spending a good porting telling the algorithm that you’re not interested in it. I didn’t go for a walk today but I had no carbs, just some protein (chicken) and some mushroom soup – learning to moderate my diet so that exercise is an icing on the cake rather than a necessity to keep the calories in/out are kept in balance.

    Over the last few weeks I have been binge watching a few shows – I finally got myself into watching ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and now I’m waiting for the final episode of the final season. Law & Order Organized Crime is another great television series that is worthy of binge watching, Foundation is coming back along with Twisted Metal and a few others. I might end up getting the DVD player off mum so I can watch some of the DVDs I’ve got laying around – I am tempted to rip them and back them up so then I can stream them to any device so if I am not in the lounge room on the big television I can watch it on my laptop (there is also the fact that media degrades over time even with the best storage).

    I’m looking forward to the end of the week, going out to a restaurant for dinner on Sunday (I’ve got three days off) with my family and will be enjoying a few days off. I’m excited to see what WWDC has in store and I’ll do a blog overview regarding the two big keynotes and anything interesting that pops up on any of the sessions that they have planned for the week. On a side note, I’ve backed up my 2FA codes to my Google account using Google Authenticator as a back up just in case something happens to the 2FA codes that I have entered via Authenticator (made by 2Stable and backed up to iCloud).

  • A week in review: Lots of AI hype but some gems uncovered.

    The end of another week which has been uneventful however I have been following the Google I/O conference and the Microsoft Build conference – AI obsession has reached fever pitch but at least we’ve now moved beyond the novelty of asking a chat bot the meaning of life with a focus on actually using it for something useful to those of us occupying the real world. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Apple WWDC given there have been many rumours swirling around the internet that their whole business plan around where AI fits in has been rebooted from the ground up – if it means that it is delayed to ensure that they get it done right then I don’t think too many consumers are going to care one way or another.

    The problem is that there are far too many tech YouTubers, stock bros and tech journalists who convinced themselves that their echo chamber represents where the average person actually is in terms of caring about AI – such groups make noise but to the average person that I interact with daily I don’t see them clambering nor talking about the absolute importance of AI to their life but instead whether a particular feature that is added benefits them in their every day life. Too many in the press have convinced themselves that this is an iPhone moment and Apple is playing the role of Blackberry then the stock bros are micro-dosing themselves into a new dimension while convincing themselves of their own hype – meanwhile the real of the world continues on, Apple will continue on regardless of whether they trail the AI of other tech companies simply because in the consumer space the whole AI isn’t as important as the stock bros and tech bros make it out to be. This is only the start with a lot more that needs to be done to make it useful to consumers outside of novel demonstrates on a stage – the first mover isn’t always the one that wins in the end nor does their necessarily have to be only one winner or a small group of winners.

    When it comes to Microsoft it appears that the big focus is creating revenue streams now that Windows 11 is more or less free given that most get Windows 11 with a new computer (and upgrades are free) so that means they have to get revenue from somewhere. Part of that is turning Windows into a gateway to Microsoft services – Office 365 and the bundling of AI (along with making AI more energy efficient) will add more value to the idea of getting an Office 365 subscription as Microsoft tightly integrates Windows 11 and the cloud to fill in when on the device based AI is limited in what can be accomplished. It is also interesting seeing how Windows is developing, gradually making changes, moving the platform forward while making it clear to developers that the age of ‘do nothing and your software will work for eternity’ is coming to an end. I was hoping that maybe the MAX_PATH limitation would be addressed at this point but I guess that will be something I’ll perpetually complain about in much the same way I complain about Safari/Webkit along with a few other complains I have of Apple in regards to their platforms.

    Google has had their own conference with their own focus on AI and how it integrates into their products and services. To be honest I was more excited about Google’s I/O due to the lack of Windows 11 desktop related stuff at Microsoft’s own conference – Android, Gemini, the implementation of web standards, the use of Gemini nano models within Chrome itself in a variety of areas which are being use of by AI orientated web APIs such as Rewriter API, Writer API, Translator API and Summariser API along with many more that are being developed not to mention the use of AI in areas of security.