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

  • 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.

  • A delicious dinner and a relaxing walk to finish off the day.

    I went down to the supermarket today to do some grocery shopping which will cover me for the next fortnight. I bought a some lamb rumps that I cooked up and created a tasty lamb sandwich for dinner, I also bought some chicken and fish from the frozen section – I like to keep some food in the freezer along with a collection of soups in my fridge so that meal preparation when I’m working from home is simple where as on my days off I like to be a little big elaborate and cook from scratch since I have the extra time available. After all that I went for a walk and came back to have a shower then jumped into bed to relax. Oh, and I finally found out that the dentist appointment is for 29 April – I thought I had missed it but it is all sorted so I’ve added it to my calendar to keep track of it.

    I’ve been watching an interesting video on the history of Windows ‘Longhorn’:

    It’s good to hear information about what took place from an insiders perspective (there is also an interview with Dave Cutler on Dave’s channel that goes into great detail). I think it is good to have a firm grasp of a products history vs being dragged into the sorts of online debates that occur which aren’t particularly all that productive.

  • End of another week.

    End of another week and enjoying my weekend off – I decided to work from home on Saturday rather than going into the office because the light in the office keeps turning off resulting in me having to jump up and down to get the sensor to turn on the light. In a normal functioning universe the building owner would put in this marvel of technology called a light switch which one would turn on when entering the area and when one leaves one turns it off – I guess it’ll be years before this marvel of technology makes its way to our office building. With all that being said, I did enjoy working from home and I had some left over coffee and combine that with the relaxed vibe I’ve got setup in my office I’m a pretty happy chap. I am looking at eventually getting myself a coffee machine of some sort so I have everything I need in my home office.

    On my usual browsing through the internet I found an interesting discussion over on Y Combinator forum regarding Windows NT lower level design and from that (like too good things) someone linked to this interesting blog post regarding low level parts of Windows (link). Quite an interesting read and does a good job undermining the whole ‘Windows sucks’ shtick that dominate the forums, predominately by people who aren’t all that informed other than having a habit of repeating what they heard because it reenforces preconceived notions they already have.

    Tonight after work I went for a 10km walk – a little longer than normal but it feels good working out after dealing with challenging customers all day particularly those who believe they’re special snowflakes and that the rules don’t apply to them. The walk allows me to clear my head and come back refreshed – rather than dealing with scenarios going through my head all night I can drift off to sleep and enjoy a restful shuteye.

  • A nice walk tonight.

    Finished work at 8pm tonight, watched a few YouTube videos and then went for an 8km walk – I went for an 11.6km one last night, I was pretty sore so I needed some time to recover but I still feel the need to get out of the house and get some exercise. It’s always good to get some exercise and fresh air. I got home, had a small rest then jumped into the shower – the hot water soothes my muscles and allows me to relax before getting into my pjs ready for bed.

    Bosch Legacy Season 3 has been released and although I’ve started watching episode one I am going to wait until my day off to enjoy it mainly because I don’t enjoy watch something if I am tired and my attention isn’t the best which results in me missing key parts of the narrative along with the fact that it is difficult to enjoy something when you’re tired. There are quite a few seasons that are coming back over the next year so I am looking forward to binge watching some good content.

    I’m still looking at the possibility of taking time off during WWDC so I can relax and enjoy the WWDC sessions – I watch both the keynote and the State of the Platform Union which my preference for the latter rather than the former primarily because although it is a macro level overview of where Apple is taking their platforms. The discussion tends to be more oriented around the technical aspects rather than the keynote which talk more about the consumer facing features – I see a lot of heavy lifting regarding Webkit based on what they’ve been doing in the technical previews so I am hoping that we’re going to see a bigger push to get MV3 out the door (check out the Mozilla developer documentation which keeps track of how much of MV3 each browser support).

    Just to end off this blog post, I’m kind of frustrated when people say “the rich need to pay their fair share” and inevitably someone will pop their head up to say “but they already do”. The problem is that they don’t – they may contribute as a percentage of the budget a large amount but what they get out of the system is a lot more than what they put into the system. That is the problem, they pay less into the system than what they get out of the system – they benefit from educated workers because it allows them to be more productive and thus create more value per hour of work or the fact that their business relies on a seamless supply chain that is kept running smoothly throughout the world thanks to the hegemonic power that the United States (and western allies) have in the world which ensures there are safe sea corridors for ships to transit through. That doesn’t even touch on the combination of soft power that is backed up by hard power that is exercised within the various post WWII institutions that were setup rules of trade. It is frustrating when you have people online display the toxic combination of ignorance and arrogance mixed together – convincing themselves that because they say something with confidence it automatically makes them correct.

  • Heading off to bed.

    A long but uneventful day – working from home in my fortress of solitude, had mushroom soup for main meal, an afternoon drink I had an iced coffee then for dinner a smoothie with boysenberries. After finishing work I decided tonight I’ll push myself a little bit further and go for a 11.6km walk – I wasn’t sweating profusely like when I first started waling (probably because my fitness has improved) but had sore legs and feet but even with that I felt good after having a decent walk.

    A side effect of these changes in my life has been more energy to get things done around the house, the lack of motivation that plagued me in the past where I would leave a pile of washing waiting to be folded and put away is getting better.

  • A good couple of days.

    On Monday I headed down to the store and picked up some necessities, came home and then later that night I started off thinking, “maybe I’ll do an 8km walk” then I felt so good I decided to push it out to a 10km walk but in the end I ended up having a 14km walk. When I got home my legs and feet were sore but on an upside I went to sleep and had the best night sleep. The next day I woke up, had some some Malaysian Laksa then jumped on the bus to pick up some milk from the supermarket plus a few other odd bits and pieces. When I got back I used my air fryer for the first time and I’ll need to remember next time to adjust the timing accordingly (it was a Chicken Kiev which had the instructions of 200°C for 35-40 minutes) but I thought making it 30 minutes should be ok but next time I’ll make it just 25 minutes. I had that with canned tomatoes, capsicum and onions over the top. To top off the day I went for a 10km walk this evening – crazy the number of people on the road even at around 9-11pm – I guess I’m the sort of person who says at home unless I’ve got a good reason to leave.

    When I went down the road I wore my jeans and black ‘Hard Yakka’ drill cotton shirt – with the weight loss has come with an improvement in self esteem, no longer avoiding my own reflection, actually feeling good from the point of view that I don’t stand out but blend into the crowd along with everyone else. Not standing out but rather fly below the radar is what I aspire towards – reminds me of what I said to my old boss about not wanting to be the best or worst store because if you’re the best or worst you get undue attention by head office but if you’re in the middle then you fly below the radar and pretty much disappear from the purview of head office.

  • End of another week..and I’m feeling good.

    End of another week and I’m feeling good with how my weight loss is progressing – I tried on a pair of pants that I didn’t think could fit me but I pulled them up, buttoned the fly and waist with a perfect fit. From the outside it may not seem much but I like when I can see small milestones being met with each passing week. I headed down to the store today wearing them and they’re very comfortable, bought a coffee and a slice of carrot cake, headed to ‘The Warehouse’ and purchased some underwear and wooden coat hangers then took the bus back home. I like heading down to the shops on a Monday because it is quiet so one can relax and look around without the pressure of other people crowding in a store resulting in pressure to get in and out as quickly as possible.

    Last night I had a good walk – took the long way around where I walk down to the town centre then loop back up on high street then home which is around 9km. I’ll go for an 8km walk or maybe longer tonight, enjoy the fresh air and calmness to clear my mind which is particularly important after taking call all days and having to deal with many less than desirable characters who see me (as an operator) as an emotional soundboard they can bounce their complains off to even if it has nothing to do with the services we provide. Oh well, on my walk I like to clear my mind, reflecting on the day, the wins that I’ve achieved – focusing on the positives which has been good for my mental health.

    The funny part about getting healthy over the last few months has been also how it has improved my financial position particularly when it comes to not using spending as a form of ‘self medication’ – be it buying stuff together that endorphin rush of having a shiny new toy to play with only quickly find that the endorphin rush is temporary and then go searching for the next endorphin rush. At the rate I am going, I’ve gotten rid of my overdraft and then I’m going to work on reducing debt that I have outstanding then gradually chip away at it where I’d like to get to the point that by the end of this year a substantial amount of that has been cleared off the deck and by my birthday next day that I’m completely debt free with some savings behind me.

    I think one of the mistakes I made in the past when it came to getting healthy was the idea that if I lost the weight then all the other problems in my life would magically solve themselves – that all the problems I was having in my life could be addressed if I addressed that one thing but the problem is that when I lost the weight I put it back on because I never addressed the underlying issues that existed. Part of that process is finding a healthy way to deal with stress, anxiety etc. and for me it is going for a walk every night that allows me to get out of the house, to work through the days events, to allow my mind to relax with the net result when I come back I feel refreshed. One thing to keep in mind, I’m not going out there and working out until I collapse or completely exhausted but rather at the end I feel refreshed.

    As a side note one of the things I have been doing is focusing on making more things I consume from scratch – for example at work I fill up my metal flask with coffee shots (it’s an automated coffee machine that uses coffee beans) so that when I come home and want some coffee milk it is a matter of putting 100ml of coffee shots plus 500ml of low flat milk – no sugar or added ingredients. We (mum and I) had tacos last week – using canned tomatoes that don’t include extra sugar but rather the mince, canned tomatoes that included onions and capsicum then add some seasoning then slow cooked it. The benefit of not relying on those prepackaged sauces is that you know exactly what is in there because when you buy something like jarred tomato pasta sauce there is sugar that is added and it shocked me just how much sugar was added vs doing it yourself you avoid those added sugars other than just the sugar that naturally occurs in the tomatoes, onions and capsicum.

    On a side note, at work I use a laptop running Windows 11 and so far I enjoy it quite a fair bit but I don’t think I’ll ever see myself moving to Windows because it lacks the sort of integration that one experiences with Apple and macOS but with that being said, never say never. The one thing I try to do is keep an open mind because at the end of the day I’m an end user not a shareholder or a member of some sort of religious cult of pledges an undying loyalty to a particular business. At the end of the day, if Microsoft and OEMs in the future produce a really good laptop and Microsoft really gives Windows the boot up the backside it needs then I’ll be open to moving, as I’ve said in the past I’m open to Android but the lack of integration into to the Apple ecosystem (relying on third parties to synchronise music, the lack of the ability to answer a phone call on macOS, the lack of Google delivering Quickshare support for macOS while making it available for Windows) but the integration with Windows is great then combine that with the work being done with Windows App SDK I think it’ll be a matter of time when we start seeing those rough edges of Win32 legacy disappear as Windows App SDK becomes the default API used by most developers once it becomes feature rich to be a drop in replacement for Win32.

  • There is a reason why that department exists.

    Well, it appears that the right wing in the United States are bending over backwards to defend getting rid of the department of educate by claiming that the functions of that functions would be divided amounts amount other departments for example the civil rights division would become part of the DOJ, student loans being taken care of by treasury etc. etc. The problem with this line of thinking is that although it sounds good in theory in practice it is another thing entirely – there is a reason why there are specialised departments (or ministries) because it avoids having a function spread over different departments resulting in a lack of a coherent policy covering all the components of that particular area.

    For example, after 9/11 there was a commission and part of the recommendations was the creation of The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and this was because the separate departments were siloed resulting in information now being shared with each other. The lack of sharing of information that may have resulted in being able to disrupt the planning of 9/11 in its early phase was undermined because each department had their silo resulting in each department only having part of the story where as if all those components were bought together a fuller picture could be developed.

    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was established because its functions were dispersed amongst other departments resulting in a lack of coordination when dealing with organisations that flouted the law. What is the right wing now proposing? well according to this individual their solution is more lawyers and more litigation (link). There is a reason why 50 years ago New Zealand established the ACC but the idea of the US learning from other countries seems to be something that is impossible to do.

    Closer to home (New Zealand) before there was the Ministry of Social Development it’s functions were split over Pensions Department, Social Security Department, the Department of Social Welfare, and the Department of Work and Income – the net result? if you were unemployed you went to one department then went across the road to another department to look for a job. The net result of this? rather than having your case worker sort out your unemployment benefit and help you look for a job you had that function split which was hugely inefficient.