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

  • Strange weather recently.

    We’re meant to be moving into summer and yet the weather has been strange recently. I went for a small walk around the block to get some fresh air then headed down the road to have a look around at the mall. I’m still working through the templates on WordPress – the difficult balance of finding something that is minimalist but not too minimalist – a middle ground of having something with design flair but without going overboard. Ah, the middle ground – if I could ‘dream up’ a theme it would be something that has William Morris style, a sort of art’s and craft movement vibe to it.

    I’ve been watching a few videos and it is good to see that there appears to be a growing chorus of activists online pushing back again rabid single issue voters when it comes to US politics (this is particularly important given the 2026 mid terms coming up next year) – purity testers that if they don’t get their pet project given the 100% undivided attention then they’ll throw a temper tantrum. If you have the luxury of being able to focus all your energy on a single issue at the expense of everything else then what that tells me is that you’re immensely privileged person who has the luxury of not having to care about health, education, social welfare, infrastructure, dealing with the root causes of why Trump got into power etc.

    Such individuals are the same reason I have little time for upper class liberals who use politics not as a vehicle to engage in societal transformation but merely as a way to morally posture and virtue single about how they’re morally super to others. They’re in a privileged position that, no matter who ends up winning their life doesn’t change so as a result they can play this game of pointless purity testing and vote for third parties that have no chance of winning because ultimately they’re largely insulated from the outcome of elections.

    During the primaries there is a time to yell, scream, debate, horse trade and protest but eventually once the dust settles and there is a candidate do you know what you do? you shut your trap and get behind the candidate with the realisation that the person running isn’t just representing you but also representing everyone in the area they’re running in – you not getting your pet project given all the attention of the candidate doesn’t mean that the issue is being ignored but the simple fact of the matter is that there is a limited amount of bandwidth and you have to pick your battles. Think of the bigger picture besides what interests you – there is more to the world than you and your wishes, whims and desires.

    On a side note, when getting legislation through it sometimes requires swallowing a few dead rats – that is how many bills are done, they mix in good policies with bad policy but it is up to the politician look at the bigger picture and realise that the benefits from supporting a given piece of legislation far outweighs the downsides. For example, if there is a bill that includes military aid for Israel but also there is money for relief aid to Gaza along with funding to rebuild then are you really going to vote down a bill resulting in Gaza getting no assistance at all? Another example is the combining of agricultural subsidies along with food stamps so then it is able to get broad bipartisan support, or a domestic policy with an international policy thus allowing politicians to defend the funding of international policy by pointing to the domestic policy that was passed at the same time.

    I’ve refrained (and will continue to do so) from commenting about the tragedy at Bondi Beach in Australia. The reason for refraining is because I don’t have all the information nor is it my place to comment. It is a scary time when one considers the rise of extremist political ideologies around the world and I hope that in the coming year that humanity will come to its collective senses and we get back to some normality where the serious issues facing us can be discussed in good faith and policies addressing those challenges are proposed rather than knee jerk reactionary politics that is more concerned with obtaining power for power sake.

  • What a day, what a lovely day.

    Woke up this morning and it felt so good not having the anxiety of feeling that all I had was this day to enjoy and then back to work the next day. I hung out around home, enjoyed some cherries I bought on Monday on special which were a lot more appetising than the strawberries that they had on sale. On a tangent, the strawberries down at the supermarket have been pretty lousy so far with very little flavour when compared to the trip I had through England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland with the time in Scotland the strawberries had so much flavour when compared to what is grown in New Zealand – the New Zealand strawberries appear to be big and ripe but next to no flavour. On a good side, the cherry tomatoes have been nice along with blueberries and blackberries where both of them were on special last week although I didn’t see any at the local supermarket on special (raspberries were ridiculously priced around NZ$10 per punnet – thank you but no thank you).

    I’m working through the WordPress templates to see what alternative template I’ll use going forward because at the moment the current one feels kind of dated however I’m trying to find one that is suited for a blog. WordPress has a pretty good selection to choose from and my main criteria is that I want a minimalist design that doesn’t distract from the content while also not being too minimalist that it ends up being incredibly boring to interact with. I’m also tempted to start maybe a podcast or a YouTube channel where once a week I make a 30 minute show which is a lot more free flowing than what I’d normally put on my blog, maybe reacting to new stories etc. but something like that I want to plan for rather than talking off the top of my head. Back when YouTube launched one could turn on a camera and just ramble but these days viewers expect a level of professionalism – a coherent video where topics are covered rather than 30 minutes of rambling which makes sense given the limited amount of time one has in a day one can spend on YouTube.

    I’ve installed OmniGroup Outliner which is a great piece of software I’ve been using for years right back to when I was at university. What I do is create an outline of an essay with key bullet points then indent them as I create each paragraph then once I get the outline done I then have it sitting side by side as I write my essay with the outline being a reference to ensure the I stay on topic. The reason why I need that outline is because I have a tendency to repeat myself and sometimes bring up something that I think is tangential related to the paragraph but in reality it would be best suited to be somewhere else in the essay or deserves to be a paragraph in its own right. Then there is also the conclusion where ideas will pop up but you have to keep reminding yourself that this isn’t the place introduce new ideas but to ‘bring it home’.

    It looks like there was a regression with a recent update so there was a new release of uBlock Origin Lite from 2025.1214.2112 to 2025.1215.1455. So far I haven’t noticed any issues but then again it appears that the issue mainly impacted people using ChatGPT but since I don’t use that service it was a nonissue but then again it might possibly have impacted other websites but I didn’t see any reports of that being the case. The latest WECG minutes have been interesting reading particularly the ‘topFrameMatches / excludeTopFrameMatches’ proposal which appears to have broad support by those participating in the committee so that will be interesting to see what happens in regards to the finalised standard and when the individual browsers implement the feature. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I was sceptical that MV3 would be as powerful as MV2 but I’ve ben happily surprised at how quickly the concerns are being addressed.

  • What a wonderful day.

    I had a wonderful day today, went for a walk down to the local cafe, grabbed brunch then a few treats afterwards then walked back home while taking my time to enjoy the wonderful weather. It is something I need to do more often because I have a tendency to complain about the bad weather but when there is the good weather I don’t make use of it. I then went out again and picked up some chicken for dinner because I forgot to take it out of the freezer and I had that for dinner along with some vegetables.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2025.1214.2112 was released a few hours ago – all installed and I noticed a slight performance improvement where the cosmetic filters are applied. I love that uBlock Origin Lite keeps going from strength to strength with no noticeable loss of functionality when compared to the MV2 version of uBlock Origin. I’m tempted to give AdGuard another try to see whether the issues I was having were related to bugs in Safari 26.1 that have been fixed in Safari 26.2 so I guess I’ll give the a try when I have some free time.

    I’ve just started watching ‘The Rainmaker’ (the television series) as well as working my way through Alien and a few other television series. I’m looking forward to the new seasons of Silo, The Last of Us, Severance, Foundation etc. that’ll hopefully be coming around the beginning of 2026. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the whole buy out of Warner Bros. Discovery by either Paramount or Netflix and how that’ll impact future tv series and movies they’re working on.

    Regarding Ubiquiti, UniFi Access Point (all U7 and E7 models) 8.3.2 has been made available as a release candidate however the Gateway is still as a release candidate over a week after they made it available so either they’re going to push forward to maybe the 5.x build going to be what they aim for or they’re seeing further there are any people reporting on new issues or reporting back that the issue they were experiencing has been addressed.

    It’ll be interesting to see whether 26.3 of Apple’s platform update turns out to be a quiet one due to it being developed over the new year given that Mac Rumors is reporting that the 26.4 includes quite a few new features and enhancements planned (link). I wouldn’t be surprised if Safari 26.3 turns out to be a bug and security fix with any sort of big improvements being held back for Safari 26.4.

    Daily writing prompt
    Is your life today what you pictured a year ago?
    View all responses

    It is a whole lot better than what I expected – I’ve lost a substantial amount of weight, I have no personal debt any more and I have decent amount of savings sitting in a term deposit that I’m letting roll over every 6 months. Long story short, I’m in a very good position at the end of this year – the first time in a long term that I’m going to end the year in a better position than when I started.

  • Wonderful first day off.

    Woke up this morning and headed down to the local cafe for some egg bene for brunch and picked up a few treats from the desert cabinet that I’ll enjoy later on when I have an afternoon coffee. I’m going to make use of my Snapper Card and do a bit of travelling around on my time off and hopefully the good weather will continue because Wellington is wonderful on a summer day with the fresh breeze when walking along the waterfront. I might also go for a trip up to Paraparaumu to see how it has changed and maybe having a look around at Porirua as well which has quite a big mall along with a lot of new development since the last time I had a look around.

    Something that few under the radar was the release of an updated Matter standard which now includes support for security cameras and other devices (link). It has been a long time coming but I guess it is one of those things that are akin to trying to herd cats with each of the members that make up the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) more concerned about protecting their fiefdoms rather than working towards interoperability. It isn’t surprising because HTML5 had the same mess of one particular organisation (who will rename nameless) who threatened to use their patents to hold up the standard because they had a vested interest in protecting their proprietary technology. That doesn’t even touch on organisations involved with the HTML5 standardisation process which left me wondering why the heck are they even involved – they don’t create developer tools or a web browser so why are they even having a say in the matter?

    uBlock Origin Lite version 2025.1214.2112 has been released although it make take a day or two to appear in the usual online stores. It’ll be interesting to see how the changes to the cosmetic filters will translate to improved page rendering performance on Safari although so far I haven’t had any issues. I’d still like to see some way for the end user to see the progress of the filters being converted from what is included with uBlock Origin Lite to the native format or at the least rebuilding Declarative Net Request (DNR) natively rather than sitting on top of the native content blocking API that Apple has shipped as part of Safari for quite a few years.

    Daily writing prompt
    What cities do you want to visit?
    View all responses

    I have visited Paris and London with my preference being London however cities I would like to visit would New York, Boston, Berlin and once there is a new regime in Russia then Moscow and St Petersburg. I personally lean towards older cities with greater density than the sort of sprawl one observes with the likes of Los Angeles hence my preference for Wellington over Auckland (funny enough I prefer Melbourne over Sydney). Walkability for me is also a major factor as well as a well run public transport network since I don’t have a full drivers licence and even if I did I wouldn’t want to drive overseas because I’d prefer to keep my holiday as stress free as possible.

  • Let the annual leave begin.

    Finished work tonight and it never felt so good knowing that for the next two weeks off I have no responsibilities other than to take care of myself. I put the first load of washing on then went for a relaxing walk tonight around the block, came back, put the washing out, had a shower, then put the remaining washing in the washing machine the hung it out once completed. On Monday I’m going to just relax and see where the day takes me – I might even pop down to the local cafe for eggs bene for brunch – something I like to treat myself to at least once a month.

    One thing I forgot to mention is that with the upgrade from macOS 26.1 to 26.1 the firmware was updated from 13822.41.1 to 13822.61.10 with the wifi stack, driver and firmware updated from IO80211_driverkit-1530.16 to IO80211_driverkit-1533.5. As noted in the past, I think the destination of DriverKit points to it operating in user space (the actual Broadcom driver being com.apple.DriverKit-AppleBCMWLAN). It’ll be interesting to see Apple gradually move more components out of the kernel with my guess being that with the big push to end support for x86-64 in macOS 27 I wouldn’t be surprised if we see that take place and the kernel will be fully locked down with the expectation that if you need to support hardware then you’ll need to do is all in user space.

    I was reading through a post on Reddit regarding a YouTube I follow who was talking about the USSR and it is amazing how even 30+ years after the collapse of the Soviet Union the red scare paranoia is still alive. The person in the video was basically talking about the USSR and homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender. It should be relatively uncontroversial but apparently because the video creator didn’t portray the Soviet Union as the root of all evil in the world and everything they did was utterly evil it some how made the video creator an USSR apologist. Imagine suffering from so much red scare paranoia that a balanced video regarding the USSR triggers you. I guess if you have a population insulated from knowledge then it shouldn’t be surprising that even those who are born after the collapse of the Soviet Union display this level of paranoia as if it were some sort of genetic trait inherited from their parents.

    On a side note, I always find it funny how in the United States there is the equating of capitalism with freedom and equating the market with capitalism. The propaganda that the average American is exposed to really has done a number on so many peoples brains in the United States which explains why there is this slavish devotion and worshipping of wealthy people. It isn’t helped there is the myth of meritocracy that is perpetuated by the capitalist class as a way to justify to the working class the way society is structured as well as a well for the capitalist class to morally justify to themselves why they’re at the top. When half of the people posting on Reddit are from the United States it isn’t surprising to see wealth individuals and/or corporations being defended but after a while it does make me feel sorry for them because the propaganda runs so deep in their society.

  • One more day.

    One more day to go and then I am on my two weeks off annual leave. My last day of the week I am planning to make it as stress free as possible – I am going to be as cool as a cucumber, I’m not going to let customers get under my skin and when I want to take a breather I going to do so. Today was an uneventful day, no annoying customers ringing up looking for a fight so that is always good news.

    Things are going well with the updated platforms Apple released on Saturday (Friday US time) – I have noticed that the more I have used it the more I’ve picked up on it being more responsive which makes sense given that there were a lot of new technologies that were added to macOS and I wouldn’t be surprised if part of that inclusion of new technology involves moving existing frameworks over utilising those new technologies. Metal 4 being a sizeable upgrade and given that Apple tends to make use of Metal where they can I’ve found that the UI experience is pretty good although I have changed the default Liquid Glass effect to Tint which has improved the look and feel.

    The one thing I am really blown away with is how much Safari has improved since the 18.x series in particular when it comes to extension support as well responsiveness not to mention many bugs have been fixed. One example of bugs being fixed has been my experience when using YouTube back in the Safari 18.x series where the shorts scroll through would be buggy with videos no loading, the comments being out of sync with the video that is playing (the comments are from a previous video), if you clicked on back then the previous page wouldn’t load plus many other issues. So far I haven’t had any of those issues so far.

    On WordPress.com I have found that the spell checker that comes with Safari works a whole lot better – on Chrome there is this really weird lag between typing and then the spell checking kicking in or in some cases the spell check just suddenly dies resulting in you having to quit the Chrome browser, reload it and then suddenly it comes back to life (the problem occurs on both Chrome for Windows and macOS) I cannot work out what is going on with Chrome when I experience it but on Safari I never have that issue.

    I’m looking forward to seeing what will be included with macOS 26.3 and Safari 26.3 – maybe more of the features found in the Technology Preview will make their way to the mainstream release because at the moment when it comes to the web platform test the current Technology Preview of Safari (Safari Technology Preview 233) it has achieved 99% conformance.

  • Apple releases updates for their platforms.

    Something that was rather unexpected was Apple releasing updates to their platforms – I was expecting Apple to release it maybe next week since releasing them on a Friday is a bit uncommon with the usual day being closer to the beginning of the week on around Tuesday or Wednesday NZ time. I’ve updated all my devices, Mac Studio, MacBook Pro, Apple TV 4K and iPhone, and I’ve noticed that they’re operating a lot smoother in terms of user interface responsiveness. The iPhone 17 Pro Max modem firmware was updated, on the two Macs had the wifi network stack updated but it’ll a few weeks before there are any detectable differences in terms of download and upload speeds when sending files from one device to another over the network along with internet speed.

    Safari has been up dated to version 26.2 and Apple engineers have uploaded a pretty comprehensive document over on the WebKit website outlining the changes (link). I haven’t noticed any regressions and I have noticed a slight improvement when it came to the content blocking and on the subject of content blocking it does appear that the fix for the sub_frame bug relating to the Declarative Net Request (DNR) (link) is getting closer so hopefully we may see the fix appear in a future Safari Technology Preview and then eventually appear in a mainstream release of Safari. I have noticed that the performance is a lot better than the 18.x version of Safari particularly if you’re visiting complex websites that make use of a broad set of web technologies.

  • Two days to go.

    It is so close to the end of the week, I can hardly wait for my annual leave to begin. Tonight I had a small walk then had a lite meal of some fresh ciabatta bread and a vegetarian Mexican style chilli that has lots of fibre and protein which left me satisfied but not bloated. Next week I’m going to work through what I have in the cupboard because I’d sooner start with a clean slate when I do my next grocery shop I’ll have a meal plan going forward – I guess the balance is trying to find enough variety to make meals interesting but also ensuring that there is a balance of nutrition as well as easy to prepare since when I work I only have 30 minutes for dinner.

    I’ve been following news about the RMA (Resource Management Act) reforms and it is good to see that the media is providing some balance to a pretty complicated wide reaching reform that will touch almost every part of the economy. The left really hasn’t helped itself by resorting to the hysterical claims about how it’ll allow a complete free for all when it comes to pollution but Chris Hipkins, leader of the Labour Party, took a more balanced approach pointing out that there were many similarities between what Labour proposed and passed and what National have done (link).

    Although there is a laundry list of issues I have with the government particularly around long term infrastructure planning there are some good things that are occurring such as dealing with the market dominance of a small number of players in the building supplies market. There is also dealing with the ridiculousness of a building supplies having to be retested even though they already confirm to standards that are equal or better to what we have in New Zealand which is just needless duplication and complexity that only the big players can deal with.

    When I talk about politics I try not to ‘both sides it’ but equally it is important for New Zealand not to turn into what the United States has turned into. If the National led government does something good then one shouldn’t just instinctively go “well, it sucks because…well, they’re not my team” because now you just end up with the politics like in the United States where the Republicans stand for nothing other than “do the opposite of what the Democratic Party propose even if what is being proposed is a good idea”. Will I still vote Labour/Greens? sure but I also realise that if the policies being proposed are good then I don’t see them being repealed or if there needs to be changes they’ll amend then to address any concerns that may arise.

  • Another three days to go.

    Finished wok tonight at 10pm and then went for a walk – even if I don’t do the same amount every night my goal is to at least get out of the house to get some exercise after being inside all day. The weather has been wonderful for the last couple of days and there are many people out even at that time of night enjoying the good weather, families getting together to enjoy BBQs, heading down to the local pub for a couple of pints, the local takeaways serving people who have come back from going to the clubs in Wellington.

    One thing I noticed with Safari 26.1 has been how the look and feel of the browser matches the colours of the website for example if you go to WordPress.com it changes the UI to black, Arstechnica the same thing. I guess it kind of makes sense when it comes to web applications trying to make themselves look as native as possible by having a consistent look and feel between the browser interface and the website itself so then it ends up blending into a single UI look and feel rather than there being a dissection between the browser and the web app.

    I logged into work today and Google had released an update to Chrome – no regressions with the websites I use for work, it was slightly snappier but then again that could be entirely due to a clearing of cookies and cache along with rebooting my laptop. In the world of Ubiquiti the early release channel there is ‘UniFi Access Point (all U7 and E7 models) 8.3.2′ made available’. If you’re into testing early releases then give it ago but personally I’m too paranoid to take a chance so I’ll leave it up to someone more adventurous. There is the UniFi Gateways 4.4.6 which was made available as a ‘release candidate’ and it has been 7 days so we may see that been made available in the next few days because generally, assuming no show stopper bugs, they move an update from release candidate to stable release 7 days after it has been released.

    One thing I did notice with my MacBook Pro and my Mac Studio when setting it up that when I connected to my access point it would only connect via 5GHz however when I upgraded to macOS 26 both of my computers now connect by default to 6GHz. I couldn’t make heads or tails regarding it so I checked the ‘System Information’ and it appears that a firmware upgrade has improved support for 6GHz. The other thing I noticed is ‘IO80211_driverkit’ which tells me that IO80211 operates in user space – DriverKit is the user space driver API that was released a couple of years ago (link). If you check under ‘Extensions’ in ‘System Information’ there are quite a few DriverKit extensions so I wouldn’t be surprised if long term Apple is working towards slimming down the kernel so that only the bare essentials are running in kernel space with everything working in user space. From what I understand Microsoft is also doing that with Windows – it’ll be interesting to see whether the adoption of FRED (Flexible Return and Event Delivery) deals with the performance penalty and latency that is typically associated with shifting between kernel mode and user mode on x86/x86-64.

  • On a break, looking forward to the end of work.

    On my 30 minute break at the moment while watching some political videos on YouTube – I had John West Protein+ Tuna Roasted Tomato & Onion (link) along with a tub of yoghurt (link). Tonight I’ll go for a walk after work – it allows me to clear my head and have my brain reset itself so I’m ready to jump into bed rather than having the day replay in my head. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I’ve been fasting as a reset to get my routine back on track again – I like to do that occasionally if I’ve indulged a bit and want to reset the routine which has a definitive break from what I was doing and starting afresh.

    It is funny how the YouTube tech dude bros were whinging about how Apple were ‘behind the competition’ when it came to AI but then these same are the ones jumping onboard the ‘we hate agentic OS’ (post Windows 11 presentation) bandwagon. It is almost as though the YouTube tech dude bros jump from one grift to another grift, that there is nothing at the core of their being other than to hype the latest tech du jour because it get’s clicks and sponsorships (god help me I can’t stand the AI advertisements on YouTube – thank god I’ve got YouTube Premium on my personal computer). I was watching a video on YouTube (link) and I would argue that even their enterprise customers don’t want it either – a recent report noted that half of Microsoft’s sales staff cannot meet their sales targets in regards to getting business customers to upgrade to a subscription that includes AI features. If your business customers aren’t interesting in upgrading then maybe that is a clear indication that the ‘huffing your own farts’ that occurs in Silicon Valley has warped your understanding of what your customer base actually wants.