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

  • Network upgrade installed.

    I went into Wellington to pick up a U7 Pro Max and UXG Max then ordered a Cloud Key from GoWifi which will hopefully arrive in the next couple of days. I’ve got it all setup using the UniFi cloud instance (3 day trial) but once I receive the Cloud Key then I’ll cancel the 30 day trial and use the locally hosted version. In the short period of time I’ve been testing it (I’ve updated the firmware on both devices) the performance in terms of connection strength, latency and download speed is an improvement over the previous setup (Multi-Link Operation (MLO) is available for early access but I haven’t enabled it as I’d sooner wait for it to be released as an official stable feature as to avoid connectivity issues). What I’ll be doing with the old setup is give it to mum and set it up at her home so that she is able to get decent speeds and coverage because at the moment there is just one router provided by Spark which is average at best (it is a free modem/router so I’m not surprised).

    I was tossing up either getting a WiFi 6 or WiFi 7 but decided to go WiFi 7 just to ensure I’m future proofed along with the fact that I may as well go ‘all in’ rather than compromising then later coming back months later and regretting the decision. I know in the next few years I’ll end up gradually updating my MacBook Air and Mac Studio which will mean that they will support WiFi 7 – looking forward to seeing Apple eventually make their own Bluetooth and WiFi chip which will hopefully result in greater power efficiency and standards adoption due to being able to ‘control the whole widget’. The way I’ve set it up, I have two networks, I have one network for the 2.4GHz frequency and a second network for the 5GHz and 6GHz due to preferring to use 5GHz and 6GHz due to no one using it where I live (but a tonne of people using 2.4GHz which causes poor experience due to all the interference (and houses where I live are pretty close together). If I group all three frequencies into a single network for some reason my devices default to 2.4GHz no matter how lousy the signal is so splitting the two ensures that it, at worst, defaults to 5GHz which is always rock solid.

    I had a chat with mum regarding getting a new computer for her – the one at the moment is an Intel i3 NUC I bought over 10 years ago when dad was still alive and Windows 10 support is ending soon so I’m looking at getting an ASUS NUC but they won’t become available until August this year but it is a pretty good deal and mum is happy with Windows so I’ll get one of those, put 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, a new keyboard, mouse and screen then call it a day. Regarding the old computer, I’m tempted to set it up as a server running Linux on it then hook up my external hard disk to it so then I can share music, movies etc. to my various devices on the network.

    I had a good walk around today so I’m going to have a bit of a rest. What I think I’m going to do going forward is go for a walk on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday then on Friday and Saturday I have a rest since I finish working on those days at 10pm then go for a walk on Sunday so then I have at least a couple of days of rest while keeping up a good routine. Oh, and on a good side my shoes have finally dried after putting them in front of the dehumidifier to dry them out.

  • Well, I’ve learnt something today.

    As mentioned previously I went to the App Store and saw that macOS hadn’t been updated to 15.5 but out curiosity today I clicked on ‘Get’ to see whether it would download 15.4.1 or whether it would download the latest version being 15.5 and it appears that although it says 15.4.1 on the App Store it downloads the latest version of macOS straight from Apple. I’ve updated the USB installer so I’m all good to go if I need to do a clean install without having to depend on an internet connection.

    I had a look at PB Tech for the UDR 7 and UniFi U7 Pro access point to replace my existing setup of a UDM and Unifi AP AC HD primarily because I’d like to take advantage of the greater local network bandwidth when it comes to throwing around files. I’ve put a question to the experts over in Geekzone primarily because I get kind of nervous when I see early adoption of technologies based on past behaviour of wifi vendors adopting a technology when it hasn’t been fully finalised which can cause compatibility problems down the road (people around my age will remember the draft-n adopted by some which caused problems down the track). The big question is whether I order it from a New Zealand vendor who never seems to have it in stock or do I just buy it direct from Ubiquiti then get it sent to YouShop then from YouShop to New Zealand so then at least I’m not waiting for an eternity. I am also looking at the possibility of setting up some PoE security cameras to replace the current Arlo setup which relies on batteries which require regular recharging where as the Ubiquiti security cameras use PoE and integrate into the UniFi ecosystem.

    On the issue of networking, I am looking around at providers to see what they have to offer when compared to what my provider is offering today. At the moment I am currently with Skinny but I am looking at 2 Degrees or One NZ with the benefit of 2 Degrees being their interconnections with cloud providers I use for work along with support for IPv6 along with a potential deal between power, internet and mobile phone service. I was tempted to go with 2 Degrees but their electricity charges are more than what I am paying at the moment even with the discount per month that they’re offering.

    Just having a look through the cost of building my own computer – if I were ever going to jump ship it would be a ASUS AMD based for a laptop and for the desktop I would build my own since I’d prefer to go all AMD (CPU and GPU) – the question is whether I go with Windows 11 or Fedora Linux. On one hand Windows 11 has the benefit of a large array of titles, better hardware support and integration with the Android ecosystem (if I were to move I would also change phones) but with Linux there are fewer dramas such as not having to log into a Microsoft account. That being said, I have to admit, even if I grow weary of the iPhone or Apple TV I’ll end up sticking with macOS for the long term because the alternative is so much worse. I like to keep my options open even if it means trying to get different ecosystems to work together.

    Regarding the whole AI/Apple Intelligence, I can help but feel as though the media has created a storm in a tea cup, that the only people who really care about AI/Apple Intelligence are those in the media echo chamber who have convinced themselves that AI is the most important thing that every end user wants. The reality is that when you get out in the real world and talk to ordinary people, apart from the novelty of mucking around with ChatGPT for ‘shits and giggles’ the reality is that most people haven’t got it listed in the top 10 things they must have when deciding which smart phone to buy. For me, when it comes to WWDC I’m more concerned about Apple getting the basics done right rather than flights of fancy around AI that serve little or no benefit to most people. When it comes to the basics I am referring to iCloud integration such as improving Mail app/iCloud reliability, improving web extensions support in Safari, improving the standards compliance of the Webkit core along with many other shortcomings.

  • Making the best of the bad weather.

    Final day of work on Sunday for the week, on Saturday I went for a walk but I got caught in a downpour around 3/4 way through the walk so by the time I came home I was pretty much drenched resulting in my running shoes being wet. Tonight I went for a short walk in my crocks – I would have liked to go for a longer walk if my running shoes weren’t wet but there was also the factor of the weather and I didn’t want to get stuck in another downpour. For the next few days the weather is going to be horrible but I’ll try to get in some exercise – fresh air each day and getting out of the house even if it a small walk because some exercise is better than having none at all.

    Things are going well post update to macOS 15.5, iOS and tvOS 18.5, the battery life on my phone is slightly better, everything is working smoothly, on tvOS I noticed a few bugs regarding to the YouTube app have been fixed (given the the app is the same version as before the update it appears that some bugs in Webkit have been addressed). Apple hasn’t updated the macOS full download through the App Store so maybe that is something that’ll get seen in the coming week.

    On Monday the case I ordered online will hopefully arrive – it has arrived in the Wellington depot so hopefully it’ll just be a matter of it getting delivered tomorrow which will be an improvement on what I currently have which is kind of flimsy and cheap feeling. The final part of the order going to the YouShop facility should arrive in the next couple of days at which point I’ll get them to repackage the lot into a single box then get it sent to New Zealand which will take 7-10 business days.

  • Heading into the weekend.

    uBlock Origin Lite now has an official beta available through Apple’s testflight service (link), both macOS and iOS are being targeted – it’ll be interesting to see whether the short comings in Safari will be addressed because ultimately the effectiveness will be very much dependent on Apple getting Safari issues addressed (link). There was the release of Safari Technology Preview 219 (link) and there are two fixes for Web Extensions but the question is how promptly will those fixes make their way into the mainstream release of Safari – the problem is that many of the bugs that need to be addressed have been open for over 2 years which doesn’t leave me very hopeful that they’ll get fixed given that if they haven’t been fixed in 2 years then I don’t think they’ll get fixed anytime soon. I do hope that maybe we’ll see some changes that Apple have been holding back for Safari 19 – sometimes Apple likes to keep it’s cards close to its chest so sometimes they’ll work on something internally, announce it then merge it all in one go rather than piece by piece.

    It reminds me of Skype not being 100% compatible with Firefox, I whined and complained about it but it turns out the reason why nothing was done was because Skype was being shut down so why invest money into something to make it compatible if you’re going to get rid of it anyway. So I guess there is the hint of optimism that maybe something is happening behind the scenes and when there is a big announcement it’ll be one of those situations of “ah, now it all makes sense”.

    I’ve updated my work PC to the May 2025 monthly update – everything is working perfectly which makes me wonder whether a) I’m the luckiest man on earth given the number of people who routinely complain about ‘buggy Windows 11 updates’ on Reddit or b) I don’t stuff around with my computer by downloading tweakers, optimisers and other third party crap that cause unintended problems but rather than being admit that they’re the one causing the problem they blame Windows or Microsoft instead.

  • Turns out I can have my holiday in June.

    Well, it appears that I’ve been able to have time off over June with one caveat – I’ll need to wok the late night shift on Friday and Saturday (working from home) which isn’t so bad with the remaining 3 days I took using the three days in lieu that I have built up over the last couple of months. I’m looking forward to watching the keynote on 10 June (9 June US Time) – AI will probably play a big role but hopefully we’ll see other areas getting focused on as well.

    With that being said, I bought a Snakehive leather case for my iPhone, I ordered it online because I don’t like the feel of the case I currently have since the case itself is only held on by strong magnets rather than it being glued/sewn to the leather case. I decided this time to get the vintage plum colour which will age nicely over time. The order I made from Dickies arrived today – unfortunately the online store for New Zealand has been closed so I think that if in the future I want to buy some I may need to go through the US Dickies store and then get them send to the YouShop remailer because all too often the markups by retailers in New Zealand are horribly excessive even if you take into account paying GST (not to mention the limited range of products).

    Last night I had a night off from exercise although I did have dinner with mum at a local restaurant – I treated myself to some fish ‘n chips which was a nice big of indulgence. Tonight I went for an 8.4km walk – the air is a bit chilly but I was able to unwind after work and process the days events so that they won’t run around in my head all night as I try to get to sleep. When I got home I tidied up around the house and did some browsing on the internet – unfortunately some of the clothes I have had got yellow spots on them after not being worn for a while and I notice some moths have eaten away at the woollen cheese grater hats so there are some items of clothing I’ll be looking at replacing and re-evaluating whether some of the clothes I’ll end up wearing even after getting the weight off given that the style of clothing I like has changed (some of the clothes I haven’t worn in something like 15-20 years so it make look dated). That being said, it’s interesting how once I got my blood sugar under control I am not as hungry as I used to be – the sort of rapacious appetite has disappeared which will hopefully mean that the longer I stay on this journey the easier it will become as I’ll no longer have to consciously think but rather it becomes like muscle memory.

  • Interesting thing I noticed after the update.

    Something I noticed after installing the macOS 15.5 update has been the Mail app where Apple have finally fixed up the issue regarding aliases where in the past if you added a custom domain that the email addresses wouldn’t appear in the Mail app (you had to manually add them by going into Accounts then ‘Email Addresses’ where you would manually add them) but now are pulling the information straight from the server (if you click on ‘Email Addresses’ then click on ‘Edit Email Addresses’ you are taken straight to iCloud.com rather than the old system where you were given a dialogue in the Mail app to manually add it). This bug has been a problem for quite some time and I don’t see any notes about that issue being addressed until it falls under the mysterious ‘This update includes enhancements, bug fixes, and security updates for your Mac.’ that appears to be a catch all phrase many tech companies use these days.

  • Apple releases updates.

    Well, I’ve had a late night binge watching ‘The Handmaids Tale’, I checked the news and found that Apple had released updates along with an update for Safari 18.5 (link). Safari 18.5 release doesn’t include a lot of new features like the previous but there are a few bugs that have been fixed up and I see two bugs relating to extensions have been fixed which will hopefully result in a more reliable blocking experience. Apple has also updated their security update part of their website to include information on the security fixes included with the update (link). So far I’ve updated all my devices and they’re all working very reliably, Safari is working great (I completely cleared the cookies, cache and history so I could see what the update was like with a clean slate), there have been quite a few things updated such as the wifi driver and on iOS the modem firmware has also been updated. Oh, and the system firmware has been updated from 11881.101.1 to 11881.121.1 along with there being more user space extensions which makes me wonder whether this is the long term goal of macOS which is to push as much stuff out of kernel space as possible thus leaving only the absolutely necessary running in kernel space.

  • Good news to start a new week.

    I like to keep up to date to see what is happening with AdGuard and whether a particular issue has been fixed – the one I’ve wrote about has been the issue of AdGuard and websites that use Cloudflare verification. I’ve download and installed the latest version (Version 5.1.81) and everything is now working as it should. As much as I love uBlock Origin Lite I find that AdGuard does a better job blocking those sneaky popup windows where you click on a play button and it loads another window (the content is blocked but the fact that the window still loads is annoying). With that being said, the AdGuard developers need to communicate better – if the issue is known but the fix may take a few months to appear then just say that so then at least as an end user I get a sense that the issue has been taken onboard rather than the lack of communication being an indication of indifference to the problem I’m having. This is something I think developers in general need to take onboard – better communication.

    I’ve finally caught up on ‘The Last of Us’ and Law & Order: Organized Crime while I’m slowly working through ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. There is some good content out there and these days I much prefer watching television series where ideas as developed over a whole season rather than trying to wrap everything up in a single episode. There are a few series that are coming back for another season such as Foundation and many other Apple originals.

    At the moment I’m using Chrome and things are going well, I wonder whether Apple should just throw in the towel and go with Chromium to avoid the situation of Webkit constantly lagging in the areas of standards adoption, web extensions not to mention compatibility with websites. Don’t get my wrong, I admire fighting the good fight that I see with Webkit and Firefox but god knows when you’re lagging so far behind or fight tooth and nail against implementing features that would improve the experience for end users then I have to wonder what is it all for in the end. Are you maintaining your bespoke browser for a reason outside of “because we can”? What is the reasoning because it isn’t just me, as an end user, frustrated but also developers on various blogs talking about the amount of work involved with supporting Safari because of broken implementations, bugs that are reported but aren’t being fixed, third party extension developers keen to bring their extension yet either APIs are either partially implemented or if implemented they’re done in a way that is either broken or incompatible resulting in more work needing to be done than what should be necessary.

    More theatrics in the world of politics – the Trump regime claiming to have come to a deal with China even though it was he who put the wheels in motion to cause the crisis only to then him to take credit for a 90 day temporary reprieve. Don’t expect the mainstream media to spend the next few days pointing out the fact that the ‘great deal’ they’re working on with South Korea never needed to happen because there was already a free trade agreement in the first place but that won’t stop Trump from claiming victory for something he never did himself. The average American? complete clueless as always and the Democrats – will they strip the presidency of the power to claim an emergency then upend the whole international order because of a bruised ego? I don’t put too much stock in the Democrats finding a backbone to do what is right not to mention the laziness of the American electorate to either turn out to vote and those who vote being clueless about what is happening in the real world. Sorry for that rant but I really had to get it off my chest – and those of us outside of the United States can only look helplessly on as we’re chained into our seats on the crazy train careening off the rails, taking us all down with the United States. I’d laugh if the consequences weren’t so serious.

  • Start of the weekend.

    Finished work on Sunday for the week, took the bus down to the store to pick up some groceries and then walked part of the way back (my arms got too tired to keep on carrying the grocery bags), I had a late dinner and then I went for a 10.5km walk which enabled me to unwind (making it a total of 11.5km that I have walked). Woke up today, still a bit stiff from the long walk but feeling a whole lot better knowing I got some exercise but I’ll be focusing on getting out of the house on my day off so that I can get some sun and fresh air. On a side note, I finally cleaned my fridge after ignoring it for a while – it wasn’t horrible by any stretch of the imagination but it need some freshening up.

    I’ve tried the latest uBlock Origin Lite on Safari (stable version that comes with macOS 15.4.1) and unfortunately there are still many bugs in Safari that cause problems when compared to how smoothly uBlock Origin Lite works on Chrome. I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing that maybe these issues will be addressed with Safari 19 (bundled with macOS 16) – that Apple are holding back from pushing out disruptive changes in favour of making them available in the next major release. I’m not hopeful given that Apple has allowed Safari marketshare slip over the years to the point that Chrome now has 66.94% of the browser market on macOS. I know plenty of people, both old and young, who go out of their way to install Chrome because websites that work fine on Chrome break on Safari (NZ Post’s YouShop being a good example).

    Rumour has it that Apple will be releasing update for their platforms this week – it’s Monday in New Zealand but Sunday in the US so it may not be until Tuesday New Zealand time before we see it emerge (although it may not get released until later on in the week depending on whether there have been regressions in the release candidate they made available last week).

  • One more day to go.

    Well, I’ve got Chrome installed with the latest version of uBlock Origin Lite – it appears to the shock of almost no one that Chrome developers are adding functionality that extension developers need while over in the land of Safari there appears to be a reluctance to close that functionality gap not only when it comes to implementing MV3 APIs but also standards based on what I see here (link). I kind of regret jumping ship back to the world of Apple given the lack of any serious progress. What I am hoping is that we’ll see something being announced in WWDC regarding Safari 19, that the functionality gap will close but something tells me that it’ll be the bare minimum rather than what should be happening which is for Apple to recognise the web browser is the run time engine of the 21st century and the minimum effort – even on their own platform, macOS, Chrome is the browser of choice which is a lot to say given that it requires the end user to go out of the way to download it given how defaults tend to have a way of gaining and holding onto marketshare because “well, it’s there so I may well use it”. Maybe at this point Apple should give just up and go all in with Chromium so that as an end user I don’t end up with an web browser that is continuously behind the 8th ball.

    I’ve installed ublock Origin Lite and it has gone from strength to strength where as Ad Guard still haven’t fixed up the issue where pages that use Cloudflare keep hanging (the issue doesn’t occur on Ad Guard for Safari for some reason). I couldn’t imagine myself using Windows though given the horror stories I keep hearing from Windows users not to mention the fact that I use it every day at work – a constant reminder why I am a Mac user and made that switch over 25 years ago when I was living in Australia (my first Mac being an eMac). Oh, and I wouldn’t want to touch Office 365 for Business with a 40 foot barge pole – for all the issues I have with Google the situation is a whole lot worse with Office 365 given how Microsoft appear to be hell bent on making basic tasks such as emailing from an alias more difficult than it needs to be.

    I’ll head off to bed, get some good sleep and hopefully all will be well in the world when I wake up. Oh, and I went for an 8km walk tonight – I needed some fresh air after being shut in all day.