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

  • Smooth sailing so far.

    I had an early start today in the office starting at 9:30am (I had to get up at 7:30am to get ready to catch the train into Wellington), it was a long day but there were lost of tasty treats for lunch so I was a happy lad all day. For lunch I had a chicken burger from Burger Fuel – the one thing I love about Burger Fuel is that they use real chicken in their burgers with real flavour rather than the over-processed patties that many fast food chains used to reduce cost at the expense of product quality.

    The rumour mill is starting up again regarding Apple having their own cellular modem along with wifi and bluetooth chips as well. Over at Macrumors they’re speculating that the iPhone SE 4 may get to see that but personally for me I think Apple will eventually move to a completely in-house bluetooth, wifi and cellular chipset but when they will do it is anyones guess. Personally, I don’t see Apple being in a great hurry because ultimately the move to an in-house solution isn’t born out of reducing costs (if there is any cost savings we’re talking about minuscule amount per unit) but more about having control over the whole SoC then being able optimise for power/performance rather than relying on a third party where you don’t have access to the modem firmware or being able to make modifications to the modem chip itself.

    I’m following the elections while also trying to keep my sanity at the same time – I’m not going to make prediction primarily because I don’t trust polling. Sure, polling, surveys etc can give you a bit of insight into what makes a person tick but I wouldn’t take it as the definitive “this is going to happen” not to mention the fact that some pretty dodgy stuff happens. For example, a recent real clear poliitics average had Trump ahead but the polls were: 33 Republican, 26 non-partisan and 1 Democratic then when you look into the Republican polls you find that their reliability are pretty shonky given how they over exaggerate the support Trump has when compared to the actual results on election night. We all know what happens when you try to create an average and there are outliers that distort the average in much the same way that the average wage is meaningless because it is dragged up by those at the top or GDP per capita assumes a fair distribution of income where as the better metric is the median wage which is the middle if one were to line up every wage from the top income earner to the bottom income earner.

  • Finally got it sorted.

    Yeah, I changed some settings for my domain which stopped people from accessing the website but I’ve now fixed that up which should translate into people being able to access my website again. Basically it occurred when I changed my DNS settings to point to Google Workspace but when I gave up on that experiment I deleted the default CNAME and A record which is where it all started. I’ve since restored those records and now everything is working as it should.

    I’ve been getting kind of antsy about where AdGuard is so I sent off a question regarding the native version of AdGuard and to my surprise I got an answer back. I was advised that they are working on a native version but they don’t have a time line on when it’ll be released. What I hope is that they make use of the native AdGuard they already have for iOS and simply make it available using catalyst – I’m happy to pay for it just as I purchased the iOS version.

    Saturday and Sunday I am working from home which will enable me to have an extra hour sleep. One of the focuses for the next few weeks isn’t just working to pay off my interest free payment plan with One NZ but to also look at a new camera. The problem is that I want to get PoE powered cameras to avoid the who fiasco with batteries but then again that would mean I would miss out on having it integrated into HomeKit – and thus the search continues.

  • Software updates, getting into good habits.

    I’ve gotten back into taking my iron tablets in the morning and it has made a big difference in terms of alertness, not feeling as fatigued etc. that combined with a breakfast (an ‘Up and Go’ liquid breakfast) I’ve found I’m performing better at work. Change is occuring gradually, it’s more like a marathon rather than a spring.

    macOS, iOS and tvOS updates were released – iOS 18.1 upgraded the modem firmware, macOS and tvOS have a huge number of features, bug fixes and under the hood improvements. There are improvements to Safari as well – the speed and responsiveness has improved. Here are a list of some of the changes that have been introduced with Safari 18.1 which came bundled with iOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1 (link).

    I’ve ended by experiencing with Chrome and Google Workspace – it’s one of those things that you either go ‘all in’ or not bother. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, YouTube Music is absolutely horrible when it comes to podcasts and I still cannot work out why they got rid of their Google Podcasts given that it was a whole lot more reliable and easy to use rather than the overly complex bloated behemoth that YouTube Music is. I guess I feel the need to keel reminding myself what the alternative is like in much the same way Bill Hicks had a stand up routine regarding the hate camel (link) – a brief interlude with the Google ecosystem reminds me that for all the limitations that iCloud may have, it is a damn sight better than the alternative.

    I’ve changed the DNS settings on my router from my ISP (my ISP is Skinny which is a sub brand of Spark) to Cloudflare. I connectivity issues Wednesday night then when I worked from home on Thursday I couldn’t get Salesforce to work but the moment I switched DNS providers from my ISP to Cloudflare then magically everything started working. I’m going to keep it with the Cloudflare DNS.

    I’m going to organise a servicing for my scooter – my back tyre has a puncher that needs repairing while getting a regular servicing. I might also get a manual pump so that when I repair a puncher I can pump it up afterwards.

    Lastly, after getting the scooter serviced I’m going to pay off the remaining balance of the interest free for my phone then move my phone back to Skinny Mobile which at the moment has a really good deal – $40 per 28 days and get up to 10GB worth of data which is a much better detail than what I’m getting now. All that is still a few more weeks away but my goal is to get things ‘back to normal’ so that there is one less thing I need to worry about not to mention the fact that I’m not having to worry about paying $110 per month (monthly plan plus the interest free repayment).

  • End of another week, start of the weekend.

    End of another week, looking forward to relaxing over the next couple of days, sleep in, got the dentist on Tuesday for deep cleaning of my teeth. Around 6 months ago they were able to finish most of it but I needed another appointment to finish it off then after I’ll schedule a yearly check up. One thing with teeth – leaving it for almost 5-6 years before having another check up isn’t a good idea. I didn’t have any major issues but it’s one of those things that if you have regular check ups it is easy to pick up a problem when it is early and can be fixed than waiting until it is a lot more difficult to sort out.

    People ask me why I keep using Chrome – for me it is ‘Google Lens’. I don’t use the feature a lot but when I do need it I wish I had it which is why I kept using Safari for so long but now that Google can do what Safari can which is selecting text in videos and images to then translate or copy/paste, I’m a happy lad. The other interesting extension I tripped over tonight is the open source extension ‘Authenticator’ where you can manually add your OTP to it so then I no longer have to go fishing for my phone when I want to log in or make a change which requires me to authenticate myself.

    I’ve been following the elections in the United States but given the possibility of Trump winning gives me horrible anxiety. As much as I feel the need that I must keep myself in the loop, to know what is happening out in the wide world. I guess it is trying to strike the right balance of being informed while ensuring one isn’t overwhelmed with the day to day ‘breaking news’ where the latest polling numbers show that candidate x is up or down 0.01 points then followed by someone talking extensively about horse race politics but nothing about policy.

    I’ve been following the round of reviews and benchmarks of the new Intel Arrow Lake CPU release which, to put it mildly, receiving a bit of a rough ride in the press. I might write something up tomorrow about it because what I see is far too many self appointed hardware experts unable to see the big picture and convince themselves that the miniscule number of CPUs sold to enthusiasts is going to make a dent in Intel’s bottom line. When Intel sell CPUs their primary customers are OEM’s, not consumers.

  • The gradual phase out of MV2, migrating to MV3.

    Just been following the discussion regarding the migration from MV2 to MV3 – at times the discussion has become rather heated as people accuse Google of deliberately crippling the extension framework to undermine content blockers. The problem is that the number of people who use content blockers are very few in number so I doubt that Google would upend the whole extension market which would disrupt so many users, both enterprise and regular end users, just simply to go after an incredibly small numnber of end users utilising content blockers.

    As for me, I have YouTube Premium so I don’t use a content blocker on YouTube but I do use it for particularly obnoxious websites. I understand that websites need to use advertisements to keep the lights on but when the ads become distracting to the point I cannot use the website when I only have one option particularly if I deem the information important and that they’re the only source for that information. If anything, if one were to really make a critique one has to wonder whether the the compromise Apple made to the advertising industry regarding the anti-tracking position they’ve decided to drag their feet and fail to fully implement the declarativeNetRequest API or enhance the native content blocking API that they introduced almost a decade ago only for it to die on the vine.

    On a much happier tone I received an email from AdGuard who got back to me regarding the issue I was having with the recent built where the number in the icon (which says how many things were blocked) were not displaying that correct information – that websites would load and on those websites I had allowed ads for the ads still loaded but the icon was saying content was being blocked. They’ve advised me that the next release of AdGuard for Chrome will include a fix that will address that issue.

    I have to admit, I was one of those who was sceptical about whether the quality of content blockers wouldn’t suffer with the move to MV3 but it appears that AdGuard are doing a pretty good job proving me wrong (in a good way). The one thing to keep in mind is that the WECG are still looking at developing the declarativeNetRequest further – adding new functionality but like anything that involves a committee it is difficult to get everyone on board as each member have their own interests and they don’t always align with other members interests.

    Adguard 5.0.161 has been released – with each release it is getting better at ad blocking with each release.

  • End of another day, looking forward to the weekend.

    Finished work and to my surprise my local Mexican restaurant is open late so I ordered some Tacos for dinner – I didn’t feel like anything but thought, “why the hell not” and I bought it anyway. They’re around 30 minutes alway so by the time it arrives I’ll submitting this blog post. I some lamb tacos and chicken tacos with all the additional toppings that make them extra tasty. Yeah, I know it probably isn’t authentic

    Final day tomorrow and then my weekend (Monday and Tuesday), busy day to day at work but I’m working through it – thank goodness I’m working from home rather than having to travel into town. On my day off I might head down the road to have a look at the Google TV Streamer at Noel Leeming – the Apple TV is still good but the Google TV Streamer integrates better into the Google ecosystem. What I might end up doing is maybe giving the Apple television to mum or my sister to see if they want it otherwise I’ll just sell it online which will offset the cost of the Google TV Streamer.

    The weather is getting better although for the last few weeks the nights have been pretty cold – at this point I thought we would be moving into Spring but it appears that Winter is hanging around longer than normal. I’ve put some time off aside so I can have a week off from work – being able to relax. My normal work week is Wednesday to Sunday so the net result of how Christmas falls I end up getting 9 days off, the two days for the weekend then followed by 5 days off then followed by the 2 days off for the weekend – no complaints from me.

    I’ve been having a look at a few videos on Android 15 and I think we’ve reached the point where the sort of radical changs has come to an end, what we’re seeing is about smoothing the rough edges, incremental quality of life improvements. I might do a mini review on my day off.

  • Interesting improvement.

    I’ve been giving AdGuard 5.0.138 a try since it’s release and it has finally addressed a long standing problem – for example, one of the sites I use there is a search box, you click on the search box to put the cursor and what happens is a new window opens. In the new window there is a message that the loading of the website has blocked however what would even be nicer would be for the window to never have been open in the first place. It appears that in AdGuard 5.0.138 they’ve been able to fix that issue which was a major complaint about moving from MV2 to MV3. So far for the week so far it has been performing wonderfully. I kind of stuck with Safari because “well, the alternative isn’t much better” but given the content blockers on Safari have been neglected for over a year (or more) combined with Apple more or less giving up on the idea of seriously putting some muscle behind extension support in Safari it makes sense to jump ship to Chrome along with moving to Google Workspace where I can use my two domain names and link it back to a single account – 30 aliases vs. the measly 3 included with iCloud (with no way to increase the number), I’m happy with the change.

    Chrome 130 was released and I was reading through the comments on a recent article over on Arstechnica regarding breaking up Google. As I was reading through the platform roadmap and I find it funny thinking of the comments over on Arstechnica about ‘Google not conforming to web standards’ given that if you look at the latest platform tests (link) it appears that Chrome is doing a pretty good job conforming to open standards when compared to the number of tests that Safari is failing (the lack of standards compliance and unfixed bugs have been a long standing complaint by many web developers). Google has its laundry list of issues but the lack of promoting standards isn’t one of them – where as I can use Firefox with all the services Google provides Microsoft on the other hand has continued its spiteful attitude towards non-Microsoft browsers based on in their lack of or half baked support for non-Chromium based browsers regarding their services. That isn’t to say Google is perfect but compared to what it was living under the complete domination by Microsoft I would sooner be in this time line with Google being the big player.

  • Proposing something is one thing, doing it is another thing entirely.

    Just reading though an Arstechnica article regarding the idea being floated around Google being broken up (link). When I hear proposals like this I can’t help but get the feeling that it is the old story of putting a proposal out there but secretly you have a lot more modest goals in place – a bit like a union negotiating where they’ll demand an increase to $20 per hour from the current $15 per hour but behind closed doors their real goal is $17. If you start at your goal of $17 then the only way to go is down from there where as if you start off at $20 then you can work down to your eventual goal.

    I can’t help but get the feeling (based on nothing but gut instinct) that the DOJ know they’ll never get a break up through other than having a long drawn out process resulting in a compromise – meanwhile the impact of doing nothing may result in the market being distorted even further so sometimes it is better to take the good solution rather than holding out for the perfect but unrealistic solution.

    The other thing to take into account is that many businesses of that size very much dependent on the size to make the business viable – that there is a certain degree of similarity with the idea of a ‘natural monopoly’. There are high barriers to entry for what Google does if one were to set up a competitor – high up front capital expenditure (data centre, bespoke software etc) long period of time losing money as you build up a user base and relationships with businesses to advertise on the platform not to mention spending money winning over high profile influencers to the platform so that their subscribers sign up to the new platform.

    I’m having the weekend off – I tripped over on my way to the train station resulting in sprained wrists, sore fingers, a finger nail that is completely ripped off along with other injuries. Long story short, I’ve been resting for the last few days because I’ve been unable to type (this being typed using voice to text).

  • Back to work on Wednesday.

    I’ve been looking for a new television series to really get into – I heard people talk about the show ‘Billions’ and saw clips on YouTube but it never crossed my mind to really get into it until I saw the pilot episode which peaked my interest. I watched the episode and thought it was interesting – I’m now 6 episodes into season one and I’m enjoying every moment. It’s one of the reasons I’ve gone off from watching movies in favour of television series particularly ones that are a slow burn – a narrative that is gradually unfolded and characters developed.

    Next year there is an avalanche of new seasons – Bosch: Legacy, Severance, Silo, Beacon 23 and many many more new releases. It is amazing just how disruptive the whole COVID pandemic was when one considers how the production of many television series were either slowed down or suspended and when the studios opened back up how long it took for things to get back up and running again.

    Heading back into the office on Wednesday – it’ll be interesting to see whether the fast track legislation (link) results in a stimulative effect on the local economy. If projects that had been delayed end up coming online a lot quicker then hopefully that will result in more people being employed resulting in more money spent into the local economy. Wellington is pretty dead with part of that being the result of the move out of winter into spring taking longer than expected but many people are also struggling to make end meets so even if they do come into the office many are avoiding the high cost of buying lunch in town.

  • Dinner and software updates.

    Went down the road today and bought a tandoori seasoned chicken for dinner along with some Japanese coleslaw – sitting in the oven cooking and will be reading in around 45 minutes. Given how easy it is to put together a half decent dinner at home these days I very rarely go to a restaurant – unless of course someone else is paying for it.

    Giving Chrome a try with the latest build of AdGuard and things are getting better – it looks like the functionality that was available in their MV2 is being recreated in their MV3 version by adding more functionality to TSWebExtension, TSUrlFilter, Scriptlets and ExtendedCss. The reason I’m also back using Chrome is because increasinly I am finding that extension developers for Safari are slowly giving up – the AdGuard for Safari has been on life support with many promises of a native version (strangely enough their iOS version does a better job blocking ads).

    The other fact is my interest in my return to Chrome is an interest in Google Workspace because of the fact that I can get up to 30 aliases, it doesn’t suffer from the weird behaviour that when I setup iCloud on my MacBook Air (the aliases I created in iCloud don’t appear as being available for me to send from not to mention that the ‘hide my email’ isn’t necessarily a good way where you want to apply for something but you want the email address to still appear to be serious to a potential employer), the Google Drive synchronisation is faster etc. But with Google Workspace it has it’s own drawbacks if you’re using an iOS device because the integration experience isn’t as good as if one were to have Android devices. Before I do anything I’m going to get my interest free iPhone paid off because part of that also going back to my old cell phone provider (Skinny Mobile) since it has better coverage than One NZ where I live (One NZ seem to have an aversion to making greater use of 700MHz).

    One thing I noticed though about Chrome was ‘Google Lens’ which provided the functionality that I missed from Safari where it was open to copy and paste text from an image to a text file (for example) – I had only just noticed that recently at work when I did a ctrl f and then noticed the option of ‘Google Lens’ where curiosity got the best of me and realised that Chrome actually did have the feature after all. It was one of the last remaining features that kept me staying with Safari since I ued it so often – particularly useful when there are subtitles in Chinese and there were no English subtitles available so I could stop the video, select the text in the video then translate that text into English.

    If am do look at getting an Android phone it’ll most likely be a Pixel 9 Pro XL with 256GB or 512GB storage but the big qustion is whether I go for a trip to Australia for a holiday and then buy it or just get it through a local parallel importer. I’m tempted to maybe got for a trip next year, visit my brother, buy my nieces some presents and spend some time chilling out. The Google TV Streamer is looking pretty good at NZ$175 – it supports AV1 playback(link) along with integration with Google Home not to mention the reviews have been positive so far it it’ll be interesting to have a nosy when I get out of the house tomorrow for a walk around at the mall.

    Ubiquiti has release an update for UDM, UnifiOS v4.0.20, installed without any problem and it appears to be slightly more snappy in terms of the internet connection so maybe the bug fixes done on PPPoE has resulted in slightly better performance and reliability. It’s funny how the reliability of my internet connection when working from home is a lot higher than when I work in the office. At work we have a Dell monitor which acts as a USBC hub which includes display, ethernet etc. which causes nothing but trouble but some how the cheap USBC hub I bought from ‘The Warehouse’ works a whole lot better long with the internet connection itself running a lot more reliably.