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

  • No news is good news I guess.

    As mentioned previously I went for a blood test on Monday and the last time I had one 3 months ago it took 3 days to come back so either one of two things – it is taking longer because they’re busy or the answer I’d much rather prefer which is ‘no news is good news’, if there was something wrong they would have gotten back to me fairly quickly.

    Ubiquiti is working on an update to the Dream Machine range with 4.2.8 being worked on – currently it is in the early access phase but when the engineers are comfortable they’ll make it available as a pre-release then eventually release it. There have been a few bugs fixed up with the 4.2.x development cycle then combine that with a move by my ISP (Skinny which is owned by Spark) which will be offering DHCP along with PPPoE for connections in the next few months. From what I understand they’re rolling it out gradually, getting feedback and addressing any issues that pop up.

    I went for a 10km walk tonight – the weather is getting colder but it is one of those things that as we move into winter you take advantage of the good weather beecause there will be nights when the weather is horrible and it isn’t possible to go for a walk.

  • All done, now the waiting game.

    Well, I went to the Awanui Labs blood testing for my A1C test however I also found that there was an urine test (I saw it on the document my doctor gave me, thought it may have been a mistake) so I guess the reason was to also check my kidney function as well. Normally it takes a few days to get a response back from the lab but I’m hoping that they’re good results or at least show some progress from my original test to where I am now. Improving health overnight won’t occur but if there is at least some progress in the numbers then it is a matter of being on the right course and just keeping on that course. It is a bit like weight loss because god knows it would be nice if it were possible to lose all the undesirable weight in a matter of a few months and then end up at around 85-90kg but alas we live in the real world and progress is always an uphill slog but once you get there you look back down from where you came from and compare it to where you are – it feels pretty good having accomplished it.

    After getting all that done I dropped in at the local Dutch bakery to have some eggs bene along with a mocaccino – my treat that I have once a month mainly because I’m too lazy to make all the components and when I have tried in the past it has come off as rather half baked especially when one considers all the work that went into it. Long story short, I’d prefer to pay someone else deal with it so then I can relax and enjoy the experience. Oh, and the icing on the cake there is a good 5G connection so I can stream YouTube videos as I was having my meal. After I finished my brunch I walked back home which is around 1.6km which is a good walk after a meal. For those wondering, I had an eggs bene with smoked salmon and wilted spinach – I always like to make sure I get my greens when I can.

    I’ll be heading off tonight to have dinner with mum and then on the way home I’ll pick up some groceries, then when I come back I’ll have a walk (probably just an 8km walk), have a shower then relax in bed for an early night sleep. Last night I got to sleep at around midnight and had a long night sleep where I felt quite refreshed in the morning.

    I’ve been pretty happy with Chrome paticularly with the great work that has been done not only by Chrome developers adding functional to the declarative net request API to address developer concerns but also how well uBlock Origin Lite is working particularly with the added ‘zapper’ where you can select elements on a page to ‘zap’. As features are added to MV3 you’ll find that uBlock Origin Lite will provide support (the ‘classical’ uBlock Origin implements a lot of functionality that would need to be re-written from the ground up to make it compatible with MV3). If you’re wanting to keep up with the latest developments for Chrome it can be found at the Chrome roadmap which gives a good insight on what Google have planned for the upcoming releases for Chrome (link).

  • The big day is almost near.

    Busy week and almost Monday, the big day for my A1C blood test, hopefully I’ll get an answer back quickly to see whether all the hard work has paid off. On Thursday I went for a 14.5km walk then on Friday a 8km walk then on Saturday another 8km walk. The walk on Friday was tough because the 14.5km took a lot out of me – my feet were really sore but I kept pushing on because I’m someone who doesn’t give up so easily once I’ve set my mind to something kind of like a dog with a bone.

    Windows 11 April 2025 update was made available on my work laptop (I work from home) and I noted on on BlueSky how there was a performance boost in the user interface. I read through the change log and I didn’t see anything mentioned but I wouldn’t be surprised that Microsoft is a bit like Apple in that things are fixed but not mentioned on the change log because it isn’t something that is user visible.

    If I were to consider moving to Windows I’d probably get a Microsoft Surface laptop and a Dell desktop computer – I’d get a Dell primarily because although I could build a computer myself I am too lazy to do that not to mention the minefield of dealing with vendors who will try to blame the customer for a fault in their product. Intel is launching Panther Cove and Nova Cove towards the end of this year and beginning of next year along with the series 2 of Qualcomm’s chips for laptops and rumoured for desktops too. I love macOS but Windows 11 has really closed the gap to the point that my mind is open to Windows especially when one considers how well Android and Windows 11 integrate together (making and answering phone calls, sending and receiving text messages etc).

  • Another day, another pay.

    Finished work tonight and went for a 11km walk – decided to take the scenic route rather than the usual loop I normally take. One of the downsides of losing weight is that you feel the cold a lot more – I wore my hoodie to keep my warm and when I came back my legs and feet were sore but it was rewarding because I know that I’m feeling better knowing I did some exercise.

    Out of curiosity after getting home I tried on a black vest that I couldn’t fit before – it appears that, as I’ve mentioned in the past, weight loss is a bit like Greek dance in that it starts off slow then gradually speeds up. When rains I take a night off but when there is good weather I like to take advantage of that good weather as much as possible. The 7 day forecast from the Metservice has fine weather so I’ll make up for the few days I couldn’t get some exercise.

    The parcel didn’t arrive on Wednesday but then again there have been storms and a sudden increase in the number of parcels being sent around New Zealand – it appears it is taking around an extra day. Hopefully tomorrow the alarm on my computer will go off, I was lucky on Wednesday that I woke up and was able to clock in on time

    I’ve been looking at some clothes, I’ve got plenty of hoodies and casual clothing but I really do need some more formal/professional clothing. Thank goodness it is possible to buy clothes from overseas – sure I have to pay GST when it arrives but I’m all good given that if it were available in New Zealand I’d be paying it anyway. When I make the purchase, which will probably towards the end of this year, beginning of next, I’ll upload some photos to you can seen the ensemble I’ll create.

  • Hopefully my order will arrive tomorrow.

    I don’t know what on earth has happened with NZ Post but holy heck the quality has gone down hill within a matter of months. I remember in the past you could order something on Friday, get shipped out on Friday night, take the over night truck down to Wellington and then have it delivered on Monday. That was the norm but here I am, ordered a few items on early Friday morning (around 2am), I get confirmation of the product shipping later that day and it’ll be Wednesday (based on the estimated delivery date). Yeah, I understand there are delays down to Christchurch based on their website but I don’t live in Christchurch – if it is impacting all shipments out of Auckland then just say that. What do hope is that it arrives on my door step tomorrow before work so then I can spend time setting it up.

    On a good side I was able to sell the iPhone along with Apple TV 4K – money is in the bank and working away at paying things down. The person who bought it came around and we had a chat, the reason I was moving was because I find iCloud limiting and the ‘Hide My Email’ generated email addresses aren’t particular professional when wanting to provide them to places that request an email. Add to that the fact that I prefer using Chrome with uBlock Origin Lite not to mention I find that Google Workspace apps such as GMail as more reliable than using the built in mail app where it is a crapshoot whether the aliases I have setup on iCloud appear in Apple Mail (9/10 they never turn up or I have issues with the send server not sending because for some reason the smtp server disappears in Apple Mail even though I hadn’t touched a thing).

    I didn’t go for a walk tonight because it was raining but on a good side I kept my calories/carbs in balance today so it isn’t much of a major issue. One of the things I have worked on working on having a balanced diet because I am reminded of the old saying “you cannot outrun a bad diet” – going for a walk every night is an ‘icing on the cake’ but ultimately weight loss comes down to what you eat each day. On a good side, after doing it for around 3-4 months I look back at how much money I wasted on take aways being delivered or junk food but how I am not only healthier I also have more money in my pocket to be able to buy the things I want rather than always struggling, living from payday to payday but never having anything tangible to show for it.

    I’ll eventually work my way through some of the clothes I have – some of them are looking pretty worse for wear having been in my wardrobe for a while, some are just gone out of style and not my thing. I tend to dress pretty conservatively primarily because I prefer to buy clothing that I can keep for a long time without it going out of style.

  • Watching and waiting for the fall out of US trade and foreign policy.

    I’ve been watching the news regarding Trump’s tariff announcement and once again I ask – how the hell did the US get to the situation where so much power is concentrated in the hands of one man? both parties have allowed more and more power to consolidate in the hands of one person and then act surprised when, after having a run of responsible presidents, that the populace decide to vote for someone like Trump resulting in what we see today. It reminds me of what a conservative commentator said regarding the Patriot Act and how much power it gives one person – as the commentator says, you may get a good run of responsible presidents but you don’t write legislation on the assumption that you’ll always have a responsible person in the White House.

    The other thing that frustrates me is when someone complains about something but ultimately they’re the source of the very thing they’re complaining about. Hearing US politicians complain about ‘currency manipulation’ yet who has an official policy called ‘the strong dollar policy’? last time I checked China didn’t force the US to adopt such a policy – that is a policy that they themselves decided to adopt. No one forced the US to tie healthcare to employment and force their businesses to pay for the healthcare of their employees thus imposing a huge cost burden on the back of businesses – something businesses in countries that have single payer healthcare and drug price negotiations don’t have to deal with. No one forced the US to adopt the system of unemployment insurance (or as we call it in New Zealand – “unemployment benefit”) to adopt a state by state system that taxed businesses payroll and then when a business has to lay off workers that their payroll tax is jacked up to add insult to injury. No one forced the US to create a multilayer mess of bureaucracy rather than having one set of regulations at the federal level – it is the US citizens who have convinced themselves layers of bureaucracy is actually ‘democracy close to the people’ rather than decision that balkanised the country resulting in a race to the bottom as each region competes to attract businesses and retain them (with the working class carrying the brunt of the consequences that come from such a policy in the form of public services being cut).

    You made policy choices and now you’re dealing with the consequences that come from those policy choices – China or whatever the bogyman of the moment happens to be isn’t the cause of the ‘decline of the US’ that you’re trying to blame on someone else but yourself. Rather than looking outside of the US for the source of your problems the effort would be better spent purchasing a mirror and having a look at what is reflected back. As I’ve said in the past, decline of the US is either going to happen one of two ways: 1) A respectable exit from the world stage while acknowledging new powers are emerging and that the US is interested in not viewing those new emerging powers as enemies but potential friends and allies or 2) Will try to hold onto relevance by fighting on the way down in the belief that those glory days of the past can be revived, by talking about an ahistorical rose tinted retelling of a nation’s past that only they (as the strong man) can revive (see Trump). I was hoping that it would be the option (1) but it appears when you have a largely ignorant population it isn’t surprising that (2) was chosen by a population sucked into the promises made by one man claiming to be the only one that can fix it (but never asking the obvious follow up question that if it were so easy then why wasn’t it ‘fixed’ sooner?).

  • Recovering over the past few days.

    I’ve been sick for the past few days – making sure I get plenty of fresh air, rest, drinking lots of water to keep hydrated. I took a day off from going for a walk at night due to it raining on and off – I didn’t want to get stuck in a downpour only to find that the cold has made me even sicker. It is probably just a combination of stress regarding the upcoming blood test on 14 April where I’ll get to see whether all the work over the last 3 months have paid off with better health statistics. I guess I need to learn how to deal with stress a lot better and recognise that getting worked up doesn’t really change the outcome – do the best you can and then deal with what ever the fallout is.

    There is a love/hate relationship between Arlo and myself, specifically their website and how it says it has sent an email to my email address but nothing arrives, when I try to ring their 0800 number in New Zealand the line goes silent then I get hung up on but if I then try to use the online chat I get told to sod off because I don’t have a subscription. I then posted a reply on their forum which was about as good as a pocket on the old proverbial singlet so in the end I setup a new Arlo account, reset my security system, re-established it with my new Arlo account and called it a day. On a side note, it appears that if you have set up your Arlo devices using Homekit it can cause problems if you don’t reset the hub and set it up again for Google Home – I found that I had set it up on Google Home then suddenly it disappeared from the app with the notification saying that I had removed it, which I hadn’t. Funny enough, I tried to log into my old Arlo account and it suddenly worked – I deleted the account since I have a new one, I’ve also made sure that I’ve included an extra way to login just incase I don’t receive an email or a text message.

    Spark is gradually updating the way in which their fibre connection is dealt with – at the moment for Spark (and their sub brands such as Skinny and BigPipe) there is the use of PPPoE (on Spark it uses VLAN tagging of 10) however they’re gradually moving to DHCP. They’re first rolling it out to Spark customers then it’ll be rolled out to Skinny and BigPipe customers. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up seeing this as the start of an eventual IPv6 roll out maybe in the future but then again due to Spark having the legacy of being a former state owned enterprise that was privatised over 30 years ago they still have a lot of IPv4 addresses so the sort of urgency isn’t as great than is with the case of smaller players who are fast to adopt IPv6. I’m hoping that once it becomes available for Skinny customers it will result in an improvement in the latency spikes that I’ve seen pop up in the last few weeks – some have already notice a modest improvement with the shift on the forum that I frequent (I’ll stick to using Google Public DNS).

  • Things are looking good. A few extra thoughts at the end.

    Just a bit of context before I start, I sold off my Pixel 9 Pro XL 256GB (which was painful but necessary thing to do) along with a few other pieces to pay off in full my iPhone 15 Pro Max 256GB I had on one of those interest free purchase plans through One NZ. I’ve since fully paid that off and now cancelled my plan and now, with the bonus I received from work, decided that I love the Pixel 9 Pro XL too much so I decided to buy a Pixel 9 Pro XL 512GB version (along with a few other things). Regarding the iPhone 15 Pro Max 256GB, I’ll sell that locally and recoup some of the money so the total cost isn’t going to be very high in the grand scheme of things (I live a pretty cheap existence lol).

    Well, I’ve loaded Chrome 135 on my MacBook Air along with uBlock Origin Lite and things are looking pretty good so far and the performance has improved greatly even in a few released since I last used it – I’m unsure whether it is Chrome or the combination of the 15.4 update combined with a new release of Chrome but what ever the case maybe the experience is pretty good. I have to admit, I have flirted with the idea of moving to a Windows computer but given the horrendous nature of Windows particularly when it comes to high dpi support, something macOS got sorted out many years ago, I’d sooner stick with Apple for my computers, Android for my phone and Google Workspace for my cloud service provider (for the same price of iCloud+ 2TB I can get Google Workspace with 2TB, 30 alises and more).

    I’ve got Pocket Casts now setup with all my subscriptions all lined up – yeah, I could use YouTube Music for my podcasts but I have found the interface rather messy, slow and unintuitive when compared to Pocket Casts. It is the one thing that it is disappointing about Google was their decision to replace Google Podcasts with YouTube Music given that Google Podcasts was a pretty simple app but it did the job with minimum fuss, it wasn’t an app trying to be everything to everyone but rather making sure the basics are done well with minimum bloat.

    On a side note, not quite related to the above but technology related. I noted in a prior blog post where I talked about politicians who read the wrong conclusions from the election – the wrong conclusion read was the idea that there was a cultural shift to the right resulting in politicians and business leaders convincing themselves that the centre has moved to the right and as such they need to move to where the new centre is. This is where the whole roll back of DEI, Mark Zuckerberg making changes to the Facebook platform and so on – convinced that the cultural zeitgeist had changed and they need to change with it. Then add on top of that many of the technology companies also bid on government contracts – given the nature of the current administration it is understandable that many of the technology organisations interesting in bidding on government contracts have decided to ‘trim the sails’ and try to get in the good books of the new administration (with many probably hoping that things ‘get back to normal’ in 4 years time assuming saner heads prevail and the whole Trumpism is an aberration rather than a permanent shift in politics).

    Just another side note: There have been a lot of reports about the ‘Daily Wire’ downsizing with speculation regarding their financial position. I have no information regarding their financial position but it has been well know that they’ve been propped up by millionaires and billionaires for 10 years so it wouldn’t be surprising that after 10 years that maybe their backers are demanding a return on investment or at the very least for their business to be in a position that they don’t require regular rounds of funding to keep the lights on. There is also the other reality which is the fact that the number ‘anti-woke’ consumers are very few and far between, they make a lot of noise on the internet but don’t let the noise fool you into believing there is a large number of people behind that noise. It always reminds me of how right wing media will hype something up in a hope that the hype will translate what ever they’re covering into something bigger but all too often it is ‘fake it till you make it’ for example, on Fox News they’ll claim something has ‘gone viral’ when their pro-Trump song has something like 348K views which, IMHO, isn’t viral even by the most generous interpretation of that term. That doesn’t even touch on right wing think tanks and political action committees buying up right wing books to boost their sales numbers and raise the book’s profile – making it appear that right wing ideas are more popular than they really are by trying to draw a link between sales numbers and translating that to the number of people interested in right wing ideas.

  • A productive day.

    Working from home things were pretty good – feedback from work being positive so I’m happy with how things are progressing. We had our bonuses handed out last pay so I put that towards wiping out my overdraft that I’ve had since I was at university and if things keep going the way they are with the tight fiscal focus then I’ll be working on paying down other outstanding quickly so that eventually I want to get in a financial position where I get to enjoy all my income rather than seeing so much on bills. I’ve got some things I’d like to buy in the long term but in the immediate future the focus is on getting my finances sorted.

    Tonight I went for an 11.6km walk and I felt good afterwards although my feet are a bit sore I find that a good night sleep usually sorts that out pretty quickly. Lying in bed at the moment I feel good after having gone for a walk and ready to head off to sleep – losing weight has not only boosted my energy and I’m fitting into clothes I couldn’t fit into before, I am also having a better night sleep in terms of having a deep sleep, a quality sleep where by in the morning I wake up I feel more refreshed.

    I’m following along with the Windows 11 development and it’ll be interesting to see what 25H2 in particular the discussion regarding ‘Administrator Protection’ (link) (link) and based on what I see I don’t see a time line at the moment however given the scope of what they’re looking at trying to achieve I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up in either 25H2 as maybe a preview then releasing it in the next Windows 11. I’d assume given the scope of what they want to achieve that it may require changes under the hood so I’m going to keep an eye on the direction ahead and see how it progresses.

  • Apple updates all its platforms.

    Apple has released updates for all its platforms today (link), I’ve updated all my devices and things are working very smoothly. The updates include a very long list of security updates (link) along with some pretty major improvements to Webkit (link) that float through to big improvements to Safari. On tvOS I’ve found that the responsiveness has improved massively where as with the previous version of tvOS I would use my remote and find that it would be unresponsive then suddenly all those times I pressed the remote suddenly come through all at once. I also found that under the previous version that the YouTube would just hand and be unresponsive then either it would wake back up or would exit back to the main Home Screen. All the issues outlined have appeared to be resolved – fast and fluid experience.

    macOS 15.4 has included quite a few under the hood changes – looking through the Extensions in System Profile it appears that almost every part of the operating system has been touched, the firmware for the wifi chip has been updated along with the 802.11 DriverKit also has been updated, FS Kit (user land file system API) has been stabilised and ready for developers to use which hopefully may result in FUSE drivers being made available on macOS in user space. Safari is pretty responsive and there aren’t any issues with the browser extensions so far. iOS has updated the modem firmware on my iPhone 15 Pro Max from 2.40.x to 2.52.3. Like macOS the overall ‘feel’ in terms of responsiveness has improved – I have no empirical evidence other than just how it ‘feels’ when using the device.

    I focus a lot of attention on Webkit primarily because these days we spend so much of our time on the internet with the web browser pretty much becoming the ‘run time engine’ for the internet in much the same way that in the past .NET and Java were a period of time seen as the future of development. Even on iOS and Android you’ll find that almost every application makes use of WebView2 or Webkit to render large parts of their app or reply on web based frameworks – a good example of that would be mobile banking apps that use a mixture of native and web based technologies. Native applications are slowly dying particularly when it comes to enterprise productivity – where I work we do everything through Office 365 through the web browser, Google’s whole portfolio is all web based, companies like Microsoft and Salesforce are either providing turn key solutions (complete products provided individually or part of a ‘suite’ of applications) or frameworks that allow businesses to build bespoke applications which are all accessed through the the web browser.