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

  • Grocery shopping and clean up around home.

    Went down to the supermarket to pick up some groceries for the week – one of the habits I’ve gotten myself into is ensuring that my fridge, freezer and cupboards are well stocked so then I’ve always got something to choose from which stops me from being tempted to order take away. Tomorrow I’m looking at heading into Noel Leeming to grab some USB-C Apple earbuds along with some air tags for when I go for a trip overseas – gotta keep track of ones luggage so if it does go missing one can always track where it is. Although I do have some Samsung USB-C earbuds the problem is that they really don’t fit into my hear and it is made worse when I am wearing my motorcycle helmet because when I put it on it pulls the earbuds out of my ears.

    The chest freezer is going really well so far and the cost of running it on the standard setting it was set to when I plugged it in only uses around $6 worth of electricity per month which is more than offset by the money saved by the fact that I can bulk buy food when on special. There were some good sausages on special, English muffins are always good to freeze because they defrost so quickly and can be a break quick meal at the end of a late shift (working from 1330 to 2200 on Friday and Saturday at home) because I prefer not to eat my meal during my shift (eating during my shift makes me not want to go back to work).

    Lots of complaints about macOS 14.4 update dominated the discussions over on Reddit and Macrumours but I really don’t know enough of the technical underpinnings to know whether it was a regression on the part of Apple or whether in the process of addressing a security bug (or just general run of the mill bug) that they had to break compatibility but failed to adequately communicate those changes to the developer community so that they could issue updates to their software to address issues regarding compatibility. Let’s hope that what ever the case maybe that this week (or maybe next week) Apple will release an update to address the problems being reported.

    Another week enjoying being back in the Apple ecosystem – iPhone 15 Pro Max but I’ve disabled the ‘always on display’ and with it disabled the battery life is massive, I’ve had it barely recharge it but then again I don’t run games and other software that would tax the processor and thus use massive amounts of power. Part of moving back to the iPhone meant moving to the One NZ (formally Vodafone NZ) and the consistent 5G coverage has been really good, it appears that carriers in New Zealand are not only fixing up their 4G coverage by making greater use of 700MHz but also making 5G 3500MHz available at more cell sites.

    Regarding the trip overseas, I’m still wondering whether I should open up an Instagram account to share my photos or whether I should just wait till I come home then upload them to share on my blog – I’ve got two months to make up my mind so I’m in no rush.

  • Enjoying the weekend.

    Enjoying my weekend (Monday and Tuesday) with the first I went for a walk down to my local cafe and had a eggs bene (with smoked salmon) along with a bowl of mochaccino – a nice way to start the day with a late brunch by getting me out of the home and getting in a bit of exercise. Not too sure what I’ll do tomorrow but I’m sure when I wake up tomorrow I’ll think of something.

    There is a rumour that there will be an update to iOS 17.4.x released this week (link), there is also a rumour about an update to macOS 14.4.x which fixes up the recent update breaking compatibility with Java (link) along with iLok-protected plugins (link). Keep in mind that these are rumours so it could be this week, next week or they might just roll it up with the next macOS 14.5 and iOS 17.5 update, unlike Microsoft who has a fairly predictable schedule and open communication in the case of Apple it is very much ‘wait and see’.

    Things are going great with my iPhone 15 Pro Max with the Snakehive case – the 5G coverage with One NZ is great with the signal very robust so overall the move to One NZ as my mobile carrier isn’t a decision I regret. I am looking at maybe a later date moving to One NZ for my internet but maybe reducing the speed from gigabit down to 300mbps down and 100mbps up given that I never make full use of the bandwidth available. Since I’m located in NZ, unless there is a local point of presence, it is difficult to max out a connection when downloading data from overseas – I can flood a connection downloading from a local source such as downloading a Linux ISO from a local website but most of the stuff I do involves uploading/downloading from overseas websites that never max out the connection.

    I’ve been thinking about the recent legislation that’ll speed up the process of building infrastructure and projects of national significance (link). I can understand the frustration because I routinely talk about how projects take longer than required and cost more than they should all because of the pandering to a small but noisy NIMBYs resulting in much needed housing, for example, always delayed with the usual whining about ‘the character of the neighbourhood’ in justification of blocking any sort of intensification of housing density. Although some have have voices concerns about it, I am going to take a cautious ‘wait and see’ approach for what projects are fast tracked and what safe guards are put in place to ensure that legitimate concerns are addressed.

    It reminds me very much of a video I watched on YouTube regarding the escalating costs of building infrastructure – one of the costs that were discussed was the work that was done after the initial design to take into account potential complaints by NIMBYs and preempting them by making changes as to avoid slowing down the project. For example, building a rail connection either elevated or ground based out to a low density area would make sense because it would be fast and affordable but then the project preempts the chorus of whinging so they then create an underground service which requires a tunnel boring machine along with all the expenses it entails. In otherwods, an otherwise relatively simply operation made more expensive than it needs to be.

    Let’s jump to New Zealand where there was a plan for a light rail connection out to the airport in Auckland – in a perfectly run world it would be built through to he use of elevated rail (which can be done relatively easily since we already have expertise in building elevated highways – elevated rail would just be a elevated two lane road with trains with tracks instead of roads). What was the end result of design and taking into account potential NIMBYs? NZ$17 billion, and I would argue that is on the low side given the incidentals that pop up on a project of that scale. The new government has scrapped the whole idea (link) but I am hoping that it will come back in the form of an elevated rail project with fast track approval which will basically ignore the complaints and just get it built.

  • Random thoughts.

    This week has been pretty good with it ending the week where I have found out I’ll end up getting a bonus for the work for the last 6 months of the year which will be nice for when I head overseas – paying for travel insurance along with a bit of spending money. It’ll interesting to see how much it will be but I’m going to complain regarding the size given that I hadn’t expected it in the first place so anything more than a status quo is always good.

    I did a complete clean installation of all my devices to fix up the issue of my computer not receive SMS text messages and with that I setup AdGuard again but because I put my allow list into ‘User Rules’ I disabled the ‘Allow List’ which funny enough I noticed that the performance was a bit better when it came to downloading and rendering. I like trying new things out, experimenting and seeing whether a problem can be fixed or a process made more efficient through trial and error. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the move to MV3 for Chromium based browsers whether we’ll see a harmonisation between the Safari and Chrome based extensions.

    I really do wish for those involved in the media to cease this nonsense of false equivalency because they’re petrified of being accused of having a bias – sometimes one side is demonstrably worse than the other and there is nothing biased about pointing out the patently obvious. I also wish that the media would focus on doing a deep drive on policy rather than focus on horse politics – yes, the administration’s job is to ‘sell’ their policy but it is up to you in the media to look beyond the marketing and provide the sort of sober analysis of policy so that there is an informed electorate. Oh, and one more thing, when it comes to polls – stop making pronouncements like “Biden is DOOMED! DOOMEDI TELL YOU!” when something like 20% of those being polled are undecided.

  • Apple releases updates for the remaining platforms.

    Apple released this morning (Friday NZ time) updates for macOS, tvOS, watchOS etc. which includes not only a whole lot of security fixes (link) it also includes a pretty major upgrade for Safari (link) which translates into performance improvements, improvements in web standards compliance and much more. In the past I’ve been pretty harsh on Safari but over the last year Apple has really improved the browser to the point that I enjoy using it and the experience with the content blocker (with the changes I made as noted in a previous post) has been great. It’ll be interesting to see that gap narrow more when macOS 15 air announced and hopefully that’ll result in the work being done in Safari Technology Preview making their way back into the mainstream release of Safari that comes bundled with macOS, iOS and other platforms.

  • AdGuard Safari Extension on macOS and weird rendering behaviour.

    I mentioned it on a previous post about how I was getting strange behaviour when using YouTube even though I had added it to to my allow list. I was going through the AdGuard document regarding how one can create customer filters (link) so what I tried instead was to delete all the websites in my allow list then add them as a customer filter. For example, I added the following to my ‘User Rules’:

    @@||youtube.com^$document

    I cleared all the cookies and cache, opened Safari and logged into YouTube, everything just worked as it should. What I have done after knowing it is working as it should is to move my list of allowed websites from the ‘Allowlist’ to the ‘User Rules’ with the above formatting then started visiting random websites on the list with every one of them working as they should with ads being shown with no cosmetic issues while also making sure that the websites that I want the ads blocked are actually being blocked.

    I’m unsure as to what the problem is but I have a feeling that it maybe a conflict between the browser and the extension regarding whether a content blocker is allowed nor not allowed to on a particular website then AdGuard with its own Allowlist where as by putting the websites under ‘User Rules’ it fully hands the managing of whether a filter is applied being up to the extension itself with the browser not playing a roll in it. The net result? the websites work a lot more reliably.

    Edit: I forgot to mention what I meant by ‘weird behaviour’ with YouTube – on the main page where you are suggested content on the right hand side of the screen it was ‘faded’ out, when you click on a video the video player wasn’t rendered properly so that in default mode you couldn’t see the ‘Full Screen’ and ‘Air Play’ etc options, if you clicked on ‘Theatre Mode’ you could see those options then occasionally you’d seen the YouTube page not properly render to the size of the page but instead truncate the suggested video titles on the left hand side even though there was plenty of space etc.

  • Some random thoughts.

    So there have been a parade of articles come out regarding ‘Project Titan’, an rumoured electric car from Apple, has been shut down (link). I can’t help but get a sense that the whole ‘Project Titan’ has been getting slowly wound down over the last several years with the next generation of CarPlay being announced at WWDC 2022 being an example of something that came out of a project where the focus wasn’t about building a car but instead starting with a car then investigating what can be replaced with Apple hardware and software. In other words I don’t think there was an electric vehicle project but rather the car was a means to an end – the focus was on selling solutions that car companies can integrate into their product then possible build services that the car can be integrated into.

    Why am I sceptical of Apple getting into building their own cars? there is a massive upfront capital expenditure and the margins are wafer thin – GM for example has margins sitting at 4.89%, Toyota sitting 11.28% etc. the risk reward just isn’t there when there is plenty of profit to be made by selling ready made solutions car companies whose expertise isn’t in the area of good user interface design, integration between devices, delivering services such as iCloud etc. As for the $10 billion spent, I would say that a lot of what we’re hearing today regarding AI is due in part to the work that was done and future features in Apple devices will have their origins back in ‘Project Titan’ so the investment will eventually pay off in the long run.

    My Snakehive iPhone 15 Pro Max wallet case arrived today – a few days ahead of schedule:

    I can now stop being paranoid – I’ve been carrying my phone around in the cardboard box it came in, worried that I’d end up dropping it and breaking the screen. I’ve now got it all sorted out and I also tested my Samsung USBC earphones and everything is working well – actually they work better with my iPhone than they did with my Android phone which is kind of strange but I’ll take a win when I get one. I was going to get a Twelvesouth but they’ve moved to this weird one where the phone sits in a plastic case which sticks to the leather case using a magnet – na, I’d sooner have the plastic case stuck to the leather case, either sown, glued or both.

  • Returning to the iPhone.

    Well, after a year of using a Nothing Phone 1 I have decided to move back to using an iPhone and part of that change I have switched carriers to One NZ (formally Vodafone NZ) due to receiving a discount. Long story short I am happy to go back to being 100% in the ecosystem in particular the benefits that come from using iMessage since I prefer using that over WhatsApp with my mum having both installed on her iPhone. I’ve organised an Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max in Natural Titanium colour but when it comes to the case I have to order it online direct from Snakehive (I chose the plum colour). Looking forward to that arriving in 3-5 days so in the mean time I’ll be keeping it at home until the case arrives next week. When I get it I’m going to have a few days of fun getting used to all the new features along with getting back into knowing where everything is in iOS after using Android for over a year.

    Part of this move back to the iPhone also means moving back to iCloud and using Safari – there are such a small list of websites I visit that require content blocking (because of obnoxious ads) that I have Firefox installed but even so I’m looking for alternatives. The problem with content blockers is even if you add a website to the allow list you end up getting unexpected behaviour – YouTube rendering is all mucked up which makes me wonder whether I have to add not only YouTube.com to the allow list but all those domain names where YouTube pull in resources from other servers (I assumed that if you add YouTube.com to the allow list that it allows all the connections and leaves the website rendering untouched).

  • Thinking about Firefox and other things.

    I’m reading through articles talking about how Mozilla is planning for the future in terms of generating revenue and growing Firefox market share. The thing is, if you want to grow market share then you need to win over the tech enthusiasts, the family member who is ‘good with computers’, the van guard of early adopters who then have a halo effect. What is the halo effect? when the iPod was launched and made available on on Windows the half effect was how the iPod introduced customers to an Apple product which enticed them to investigate what other products they sell.

    In the case of Firefox, if they wish to increase market share then they need to win over the group of people I mentioned earlier – part of that is the work that they’ve been doing around extensions but refusing to cripple it to the extent that Google is doing with Chrome but that will only go so far. The other area where they need to work on is closing the functionality gap (link) (link) promptly so that firstly there compliance with web standards trail by a matter of weeks rather than months and secondly that they address issues of compatibility such as with when suing the Skype web based interface – the below error appears when using Firefox 123:

    I have reported it however they’ve closed it off as a duplicate which is true but it is frustrating that something that was reported 5 years ago (link) with no work being done to address it. When someone reports a website incompatibility and the best you can do is “well, sucks to be you” then do nothing then don’t be surprised that your browser is promptly uninstalled and the user goes back to using Chrome. This is the same issue that Microsoft found when they had the EdgeHTML based Edge browser where their telemetry showed customer’s gave it a chance but when they had their first negative experience of the website not working properly they gave up and went for Chrome. If the person who would provide the halo effect has a negative experience then is that person going to suggest it to friends and family – to encourage them to move over?

    At the moment I’m running Firefox 123 with uBlock Origin 1.56.0 and things are going well – there is a slight performance boost over Firefox 122 but overall everything is fairly reliable. I’m happy that Mozilla developers are fighting the good fight because a monoculture isn’t healthy for the technology sector so I hope that the Mozilla developers take on board my two points I made regarding web standards compliance and and website compatibility.

  • A couple of days off from work.

    I’ve been powering through having a sore throat and coughing because I didn’t have any sick leave left and I’ve used my annual leave for my trip overseas at the end of May so I’ve decided to take two days off to properly recover rather than pushing through and find it hangs around for longer. It’s one of those things that you’re better off taking that time off from work to recover properly then you end up being more productive and enjoy work a lot more.

    I’ve done a clean install of macOS on my MacBook Air and Mac Studio – I’ve been putting it off for ages and because I experiment with lots of different software, tweaking, changing etc. that I want to set it back to it’s original state. So far everything is working well, slight bump in the responsiveness. This is part of a larger project I am working on – more will be revealed soon.

    I’m still following along with the work being done regarding Interop (link) (link) and things are advancing pretty good. On both my devices at the moment I’m using Safari at the moment (it’s the only browser I have installed) and so far things are going well but I always look forward to the improvements currently in the Safari Technology Preview making their way back into the mainstream release of Safari. It’ll be interesting to see whether the EU forcing Apple to open up iOS to third party web engines will result in Apple putting more resources into Safari to catch up on compliance and web extension functionality to close the gap between Safari and Chrome/Firefox.

  • Progress is being made.

    Got in contact with mechanic working on my scooter – looks like it is almost ready except the battery needs to be replaced so they were waiting on me to give it the go ahead where they will order it on an overnight courier down from Auckland. I’m not surprised that the battery needs to be replaced given that I’ve been dependent on the kick start although on occasionally the ignition will work at random times for no obvious reason. Another good piece of news is the arrival of my vehicle licence, I paid for a 6 month vehicle licence but once that is up I’ll go for a 12 month licence.

    One thing to alway remember, one may get frustrated with a piece of software and/or service then look longingly at the alternatives out there, those platforms too had their downsides, there is no perfect platform. I had a quick Google and it appears that the issue ‘Something went wrong on our end. Please try again.’ isn’t something new, there are quite a few people experiencing this issue which gives me hope that maybe it’ll put a rocket up Google’s backside. If you are wondering ‘how can I avoid this issue’, when you uninstall the app don’t delete it from the Play Store, it appears that if you delete it from your Play Store account a certain number of times then then the error ‘Something went wrong on our end. Please try again.’ will appear.

    I’ve been keeping quiet regarding the recent politics in New Zealand because having warned what would happen I am now sitting back and watching it all unfold. As much as many New Zealanders like to crow about how we’re ‘not like those Americans’ it appears that we too have short memories and will have to learn the hard way as it appears, based on recent poll numbers, that the American voter will have to learn the hard way too. Unfortunately I am not optimistic that the lessons learnt will translate to a long lasting change in how people vote so at this point it I’ve decided to sit on the sidelines.

    Just to round it up, got pay day this week so I’m looking forward to picking up some stuff at the supermarket on special – Pepsi Max 1.5L for NZ$1.99 so I’ll pick up a couple of boxes and put them aside. At the moment I’m looking at getting a bike trailer similar to this (link) which would enable me to have a big shopping trip once a fortnight rather than either balancing it on my bike or get a friend/family member to help out. I’ll have a chat with the guy at the local motorcycle repair place to see whether they are aware of something suitable for a 50cc because it would be a huge improvement over the current situation.