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

  • Almost the end of the week.

    Apple released a series of updates for all their platforms with the system firmware and wifi firmware being updated with the latest update with many security bugs being fixed in macOS (link) along with bumping the Safari version from 17 to 17.1. There have been some improvements in Webextesions support, there is still a lot of work going on in terms of standardising parts of the emerging Webextensions API MV3 (link). It’ll be interesting to see what happens next year (and the coming years) as many of these APIs are eventually agreed upon – most of the time Chrome implements them the quickest due to having most of the ground work already laid but Safari lags in terms of implementation because they’re having to be implemented from the ground up.

    Android 14/Nothing OS 2.5 is rumoured to be released at the end of this year but it is interesting to see how other OEMs are taking the release of Android 14 extra seriously based on the number of beta releases that Samsung have put out. The most recent beta is beta 9 of One UI (the brand that Samsung market their customised version of Android 14 under) with rumours that it’ll be released a week after beta 9 was released but that is all speculation at this point. There was a recent interview linked to on the Android subreddit where the developer talked about changes internally (the development process that occurs within Google) which makes me wonder whether we’re going to start seeing features being announced then pushed out through ‘Project Mainline’ where Google can add features without having to go through the OEMs to get the features on the phone.

    Qualcomm made some big announcements in the area of bringing the Oryon core to the laptop space along with announcing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 which will find their way into the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S24 series which will be released some time early next year.

    It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the new government is sworn in particularly when there are negotiations at the moment along with a minibudget that Nicola Willis that she announced on the campaign trail. It’ll be interesting to see whether the tax cuts are delivered. Personally I think they’ll deliver bracket and IETC adjustment along with the revenue enhancing measures but they could kick the can down the road when it comes to mortgage interest deductions on rental properties. The one thing to keep in mind is the fact that they never gave a time line which means they could do it incrementally or come up with a compromise – assuming that it turns into an National-ACT-NZ First coalition government.

  • End of a long week.

    The week felt a lot longer than normal but it went off without a hitch. Over the last few weeks I’ve been getting things organised for a big OE (overseas experience) to Europe and the UK. I’ve been fluffing around for years and I think this is the time I really should make use of the leave I will have by next year because otherwise I’ll get to a point where I’ll look back in regret for not taking that opportunity when I had it. I’m going to time it before the Paris olympics as I want to avoid the chaos of trying to visit landmarks then finding I cannot get in.

    I’m using my work provided laptop at home when I do work from home (WFH) however what I’m looking at is getting a new desk then move my old desk into the extra bedroom which I’ll turn into my ‘work office’. I’d prefer to use my own computer however work has required us to use the work provided laptop – for security and privacy reasons given that if people are using their own devices then the company cannot be assured that there isn’t a virus, malware etc. not to mention that the device is secured and meeting the corporate IT security standards.

    At the moment the company I work for uses Chromebook/Chromebox however they’re eventually going to move to Windows and Office 365 which will mean that my laptop will be replaced but that being said, an ideal situation is getting the office setup preferably before Christmas or maybe sometime after Christmas. Long story short I prefer to keep a separation between work and my private life in much the same way that people who work from home (either running their own company or employed by someone) may setup a ‘granny flat’ to run their office out of and when they finish work they have the psychological feeling of having ‘left’ work much like the television show ‘Severance’ where one disconnects from work when one leaves the office.

    I had a look online and I realise I can buy my favourite flavoured coffee direct from the company, $33 for 10 sachets of Irish Cream flavoured coffee. What I’ll do is order it next week when I get paid because they’re a nice treat when working either at home or in the office. There are quite a few things that I’m going to buy direct because although Pak ‘n Save is saving me money there are thngs that they don’t have such as the Swisse iron supplement and if I’m going to buy it from Chemist Warehouse I might as well buy the flaxseed oil as well.

    It is interesting to see how technology companies are adapting to the new environment of higher interest rates when comes to slimming down and prioritising the development of products and the reduction in the number of ‘moon shot projects’ that don’t lead anywhere. One thing I have noticed, at least from the outside, is how Google appears to be a lot more focused – developing their current product line ups (see recent work around Google Messages), working on Android in terms of quality of life improvements, consolidating products under core brands such as establishing YouTube as entertainment brand for music, videos, podcasts, television etc. So maybe the moderating influence of higher interest rates has forced businesses to get

  • New Zealand election post-mortem.

    Although we won’t have an official final result until 3 November, by then all the special votes would have been counted, it is clear that New Zealand voted for change. With this vote for change the internet has been over whelemed with hot takes, bad takes and a whole lot of cope with people reading into the election result messages that I don’t think represent the mood of why New Zealand voters made the collective decision they did. For the sake of being upfront, I voted for Chris Hipkins for my local MP but I gave my party vote to the Greens.

    What we saw in the election was the result of three major problems that the Labour party failed to deal with (I use Labour rather than ‘the left’ because Greens and Te Pāti Māori had great success with a larger party vote and picking up electorate seats), those two failures are: a) failure to control the narrative – if you don’t step up and develop a narrative to explain your policy then your detractors will create their own narrative and that narrative will become the dominant one in the public discourse b) the failure to deliver on promises such as the polytech reform, dismantling DHBs, Kiwibuild and the promise to buiild 100,000 homes by 2028 (100,000 in 10 years, 10,000 per year) c) the failure to have a vision beyond the narrow confines of neoliberalism.

    Those were the big issues but then there were the smaller issues that had an cumulative effect, ministers being caught out not declaring conflicts of interest regarding investments etc, there there were ministries caught ‘spending up big’ on going away parties while New Zealanders were tightening their belt. Then there was the denial that there was a cost of living crisis (link) (link) – if as the prime minister you avoid acknowledging the blatantly obvious then don’t be surprised that the voter feel as though you’re out of touch with the needs of mainstream New Zealanders.

    As for Chippy (aka Chris Hipkins), he’s a nice enough guy but the problem is that he inherited 5 years worth of unfulfilled promises and tried to get things back on track by trimming back the exhaustive wish list in favour of focusing on the ‘meat and potatoes’. The problem is that the damage had already been done, the writing was on the wall and the electorate had already made the decision long before he arrived that they wanted a change in direction.

    ‘The Working Group’ did a great post-mortem from a left wing perspective.

  • Chrome 118 released.

    Chrome 118 was released this morning (NZ Time) with quite a number of changes (link), many of the changes involve removing non compliant implementations such as webkit prefixed APIs that have been superseded by APIs that have been officially stabilised and standardised. I guess a good portion of the removals have to do with pushing web developers away from their dependency on non standards based web technologies in favour of using the ones that are now standardised which is part of the larger Interop drive (link). Safari and Firefox are also doing the same – removing the non standard implementations in favour of the standardised or closed to standardised implementations. It is going to be long uphill slog but in the end it’ll hopefully mean that web developers can write their code according to the open standards and as a consequence it’ll work regardless of which browser the end user is running.

    I finally got myself sorted out and voted yesterday down at the local voting location – same vote I make every election, Labour for my constituent vote and Greens for my party vote. For me I see the Greens play the same role that ACT plays when it comes to forming a coalition with National – the Greens provide Labour with a backbone to do the left wing policies that they secretly want to do but are too risk adverse to actually carry out. It’ll be interesting to see what the outcome of the election is given the number of undecided voters that are being picked up in the polling. I have to admit, the whole election this year has been thoroughly unappealing – no long term vision for New Zealand. If one were to explain what it is like as a flavour then ‘dust’ would be the best description. Labour throwing unworkable ideas at the wall such as no GST on fruit and vegetables (both frozen and fresh), National offering tax cuts but when examined the numbers just don’t add up, NZ First is doing it’s reactionary anti-woke shtick to get the blue haired rinse brigade enraged, ACT is doing their reheating of Rogernomics with Greens and Te Pāti Māori the only ones advocating interesting ideas that push back against the neoliberal orthodoxy.

    Regarding the whole conflict in Israel/Gaza Strip, I’m not going to touch it with a forty foot barge pole because I’m not an expert in it, I don’t have even enough knowledge as a lay person and thus my input won’t add any value to the discourse other than showing how ignorant I am regarding the situation over there.

  • Switching between platforms.

    I’ve been watching a few iPhone to Samsung switch videos for a while and the one thing I notice is that a lot of time is spent on the hardware and software but little spent on talking about migrating from one ecosystem to another ecosystem. When I mean ecosystem I am referring to moving from the ‘default’ on the iPhone being iCloud to that of Google (maybe even Microsoft) on Android or if they aren’t using iCloud exclusively what else are they using in concert with it – iCloud plus Google Workspace or Office 365 with custom domain? If they used both services what did they utilise iCloud for – bookmarks, passwords etc. or only for ‘find my’ then use Microsoft or Google for the rest?

    The reason why I bring that up is because if you’re heavily integrated with iCloud – everything from passwords through email, calendering, contacts, custom domain (through iCloud+) then what you need to do when moving to an Android phone is going to be completely different than someone who is 99% using Microsoft or Google but use iCloud solely for device tracking, buying apps on the Mac etc. which is where I am. For me, I am 99% in the Google Workspace with my iCloud being used for ‘Find my’ and buying stuff on the App Store for my Mac.

    The other part of the equation that is also left out is this, are you on a Mac, Windows or Linux desktop/laptop? If you’re a Windows device then you maybe more open to using Samsung’s own home grown bespoke applications which only have support for synchronising to Windows whereas if you’re on iCloud then there is support in Windows for CardDAV and CalDAV support along side IMAP for email but on Android there is no CardDAV and CalDAV out of the box support.

    For me, the process is relatively simple because what ever existed on iCloud exists in Google Workspace but for others it’s a bit tricker. Looping back to the start of this post, the reason for posting this is because reviewers and switchers seem to overlook these issues because in some cases a switch isn’t merely moving from one platform to another but also rethinking who is going to be their email provider, who do are they going to synchronise their bookmarks and passwords to – should they use a paid service like 1Password? Maybe sign up for Office 365 for custom domain hosting and use Microsoft Edge?

  • Made by Google Keynote 2023.

    It’s that time of the year and Google has announced a laundry list of updates – the biggest IMHO is the 7 year software support which will hopefully push other Android handset OEMs to step up along with Qualcomm and other SoC vendors to provide support long term. Although it hasn’t launched in New Zealand they have added support for Spark, Skinny, One NZ and 2 Degrees so if you hop across the ditch to Aussie and pick on up then you’ll be able to have all the functionality in New Zealand – remember to claim the GST on your way out of Australia.

  • Back to Chrome…again.

    Well, I’ve given Safari a try for a couple of weeks with one week using Safari 17 (using AdGuard with all but the filters that are labelled problematic enabled) and so far it has been good but I run into compatibility issues with some sites not to mention the limitations of Apple’s Webextensions API implementation mean that AdGuard doesn’t do as good of a job than if I ran AdGuard on Chrome or Firefox (or using uBlock Origin which is my preferred content blocker). Although the issue with Google Chat has been fixed the problem with the YouTube shorts malfunctioning still remains which has become a real nuisance along with a few other websites having quirks when using them. I’ve been following over on Interop 2023 (link) and there is still a lot more to do be done – keeping in mind that the Interop (they’re currently working on an Interop for Webextensions API) is a work in progress but hopefully harminisation combined with developers getting their house in order will result in people choosing a given browser based on security, speed, efficiency rather than it being an issue of compatibility.

    Regarding interest rates going up to hoovered up excess liquidity to deal with inflation, I wonder whether a better solution is to split the interest rates into the interest rate and the repayment rate where normally the two would be the same but in the time of higher inflation the repayment rate goes up but the interest rate stays the same. For example, lets say a person has a mortgage and they’re paying $400 per week with interest rate of 5% but the central bank need to reduce inflation so they increase the repayment amount based on the interest rate increasing to 6% while keeping the interest rate at 5% which pushes the payment per week from $400 to $500 per week (for example). The consequence of such a split would result in excess liquidity being hoovered up by the central bank while ensuring that the mortgage is being paid off at a higher rate but interest being charged at same rate. The net result, excess liquidity is hoovered up and mortgages are paid down quicker while not attracting higher interest charges.

  • macOS 14 released and reducing expenses.

    macOS 14 has been released today and I’ve done a clean install on both my MacBook Air and Mac Studio – so far things are very stable, Safari is performing well, AdGuard Safari Extension is working, over all the experience is a lot smoother than previous releases which goes back to a post I made too long ago that the work being done on Vision OS in terms of reducing the latency in regards to responsiveness of the UI probably has resulted in a lot of under the hood technology being shared between the platforms resulting in macOS becoming more responsive as a result. For a more exhaustive review Arstechnica has a great article that goes into a lot more detail than I could ever do (link).

    Well, part of my ‘getting my finances sorted out’ has been cutting back on all the nonessential spending – do I like Chrome? sure, but spending NZD$21.60 for a Google Workspace account make sense? I’ve cancelled YouTube Premium – do I enjoy having an ad free service? sure but when I can save NZD$17.99 then I’ll take the savings. Long story short, like many at the moment, the focus is on belt tightening and reducing debt but hopefully won’t be something that is permanent when things get back to normal.

  • My dependency on Google Chrome.

    I’ve talked about Safari and Webextensions API in the past but never really went into good detail as to the current situation of Safari and why it lags behind Firefox and Chrome when it comes to the functionality that web extension developers need to make their extensions work. At the moment there is the Webextensions API group which is made up of Apple, Google, Mozilla, Microsoft along with several high profile extension developers such as AdGuard, who contribute to regular meetings about standardising the MV3 Webextensions API standard. My impression of what is taking place is that much of Webextension API is being rethought from the ground up with a greater focus security and privacy in mind not to mention improving in interoperability so it is then possible to write an extension according to the standard then have it run on different browsers without any headaches.

    In the case of where Safari sits, Chrome and Firefox have the added luxury of the pre-MV3 legacy APIs that are still included as part of the browser where as it appears Safari is implementing MV3 but without any of the legacy that Chrome and Firefox have. What is the net result? many of the features that exist in Firefox and Chrome don’t exist in Safari – for example, at the moment there is a discussion about standardising how does one standardise cosmetic rules, should it be part of the declarative network request or should it be seperate API in its own right? (link) So there is a process that it’ll go through so that all the stakeholders involved can, at the end of an exhaustive process, will come up with something that they can all live with, is standardised which will then Apple engineers something stable that they can implement knowing that any work being done isn’t going be thrown out if one tried to write code while the standard is still being developed.

    But for me, I can’t use Safari because I need to be able to use uBlock Origin so the choices I have left are either Chrome or Firefox but unfortunately due to the nature of the internet some websites don’t work smoothly with Firefox. Long story short, I would love to use Safari but until MV3 is fully standardised and implemented on Safari then unfortunately the experience content blocking experience is going to continue lagging behind what can be achieved on Firefox and Chrome. For those wondering, the content blockers in Safari either fail to fully block ads or if they block popups the window is still created but a message appears in the browser that the connection was blocked which kind of undermines the whole idea of having a content blocker if the window ends opening regardless of whether it says inside the window – be it content or a message that says the connection has been blocked.

    I’m looking forward to the release of the Pixel 8 because it will now officially support carriers in New Zealand – VoLTE, 5G, VoWiFi and much more. It’ll be interesting to see whether Google expands support officially to New Zealand in terms of selling it either directly or through a reseller such as one of the three major carriers but either way I’m happy to buy it through a retailer like Mighty Ape, PB Tech or buying it off Amazon from the US then getting it delivered via YouShop (a NZ Post remailing service).

    It is interesting to see the number of articles spelling the doom and gloom regarding Google and how ‘they’re late to the game’ when it comes to AI (or any laundry list of things the tech talking heads wish to throw at the wall) while they ignore that Google is going through the same teething pains that Microsoft went through before they eventually transitioned into the form they are today. While in the case of Microsoft it was embracing the cloud and having it permeate every aspect of their product line up, Google on the other hand is pushing to expand it’s ‘paid for’ services, it’s move into Podcasts where they’ll probably start to offer a ‘paid service’ that end users can subscribe to podcasts with Google handling the payment processing etc. Advertising is quite profitable but it comes with a whole lot of headaches particularly in the regulatory space around privacy when compared to selling a good or a service.

  • macOS 13.6 update released.

    Woke up this morning before heading off to work and Apple has released macOS 13.6 just a few days before they release macOS 14.0 to the world. Installed it on my Mac Studio along with Google also releasing an update which updated Chrome from 117.0.5938.88 to 117.0.5938.92 – no noticeable difference although apparently there have been some optimisations but I guess those will be only noticeable on websites that take advantage of the web apis that were optimised. One thing I did notice is that it fixed up the issue of YouTube Shots comment fly out not working so maybe it was an intended consequence of the upgrade or YouTube realised someone broke something and fixed up but either way I’m happy.

    With the cost of living spiking across board and how difficult it is to make ends meeting (particularly if one has debt from a time when it was easy to keep up with payments) one thing to always remember, if you’re struggling to pay bills, loan/mortgage with the bank etc. remember to always talk to the business before it turns into a giant mess because most of the time the business would sooner arrangement payment than get no money at all. I had a chat with my bank and got things sorted out which has taken a whole lot of stress off my shoulders. I’m unsure of the situation overseas but in New Zealand the banks have what is known as a ‘duty of care’ – end of the day the bank just want their money and if it takes a little bit longer they would sooner that than getting nothing at all if a customer has to go through a bankruptcy process.

    My boss has given me the ok for having 27 and 28 September off from work – I get to enjoy the day of doing a clean install of macOS 14 on both of my computers. Yeah, I know, I should be able to do an upgrade but like a lot for things ‘in theory’, it should work but many times there are issues that crop up which don’t occur on a clean install so I’d rather avoid the drama straight off the bat.

    At the moment I’m still thinking about the iPhone 15 Pro Max but I want to get myself in a good financial shape before taking on any new obligations. The other benefit of waiting rather than being an early adopter is that any new product will include bugs that’ll need to get fixed with software updates so by the time one does buy one a few months later (3-4 months later) most of the annoyances have been addressed. I have to admit, I love the Apple ecosystem and look forward to getting back into it completely.