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

  • Looking forward to Nothing OS 2.0.

    I was hoping that Nothing OS 2.0 would be Android 14 based but with the launch of the Nothing Phone 2.0 the Nothing OS 2.0 is based on Android 13 which will be coming to the Nothing Phone 1 – it’ll be interesting to see whether the kernel is upgraded to a newer version but based on how things are going in the world of Android I would say it’ll remain the same version with some minor updates to fix bugs and any security issues.

    Regarding polls and elections the one thing I always remind people that two months is a long time in politics – it is very easy for a campaign to come undone just as it is possible for voters to give some of the minor parties a second look at to see what they have to offer. The key with MMP is about voting strategically because if there is one thing that can be demonstrated is the fact that when Labour are left to their own devices they don’t make the substantive changes needed but if they have a partner like the Maori Party, TOP or Greens then it forces the hand of Labour to go beyond the milk toast neoliberalism.

    Winter is still very around with a sudden cold weather snap with the temperature at the moment sitting at 6 degrees Celsius so I’ve decided to order a pizza for dinner – it’s my treat on my two late nights that I work (1330 to 2200) on Friday and Saturday where as the rest of the week I have pretty plain meals. Maybe towards the end of the year I might get motivated enough to start cooking some more interesting meals but it is one of those things you one really isn’t up for after a long day at work. Might start having a look at some of the quick meals at the supermarket – eventually wean myself off pizza in favour of something that is more fulfilling.

  • UnifiOS updates released.

    Ubiquiti has released two updates, the first being a UnifiOS update for my UDM which updates it from 3.0.20 to 3.1.15 and firmware for the Unifi AP AC HD has been updated from 6.5.28 to 6.5.62. Both the UDM and the access point have been rock solid since the update but keeping in mind I keep a pretty basic network setup so I probably avoid many of the headaches others face due to the simple network design. The great part about the recent builds of UnifiOS has been unifying UnifiOS versions so that all devices are on the same version number so when 3.1.15 was released for UDM it was also released for all the other devices that rely on UnifiOS as well such as the Unifi Router, UDM Pro, UDM SE etc. so that there is a consistent experience across the product range.

    A bit of a background regarding using Ubiquiti, I started using Ubiquiti equipment years ago because for a long time I just put up with bad performance and reliability from consumer grade routers then to make matters worse I would come home from work and want things to just work only to find I ended up wasting 15-20 minutes trying to work out why I couldn’t stream YouTube without constant pauses.

    Safari Technology Preview 175 (link) and with that I’m sure once they get to run the next Interoperability tests (link) that we’ll get to see the gap close in terms of compatibility and open standards compliance. Safari 17 will appear in macOS 14 however it’ll be interesting to see how things will develop post release in terms of new functionality. Maybe the European Union’s Digital Markets Act has put a rocket until Apple to allocate more resources to Webkit because what the European Union’s Digital Markets Act would allow is the side loading of non-Webkit based browsers to use their own ‘engine’ instead of merely being a branded front end on top of the Webkit engine.

  • Apple releases updates.

    Apple has released a bevy of updates, on macOS the firmware was updated from 8422.121.1 to 8422.141.2 and the firmware/driver for wifi from updated from 20.96.28.1.8.7.146 to 20.96.31.0.8.7.148, I haven’t noticed any difference in terms of speed but equally I haven’t noticed any regressions. Safari has also been updated to 16.6 however I am still sticking with Chrome for the time being but I’ll reevaluate that when macOS 14 is released so I can see how Safari 17 has turned out but that very much depends on where Apple is when it comes to supporting the Webextensions API.

    When it comes to Webextensions API, there has been continued discussion regarding declarativeNetRequest (link) – making filter lists more efficient where wildcards can be used for blocking domains rather than declaring them individually and thus hitting filter limitations. That being said, based on the implementation in browsers it appears that Safari is lagging behind the competition (link) which makes me cynical about whether Apple truly believes in Webextensions API or whether they’re only doing the absolute bare minimum that they can get way with. There are great content blockers such as AdGuard (which I would recommend if you must use Safari) but ultimately the quality of the blocking is very much dictated by the quality of the Webextensions API implementation.

    Chrome 115 was released – there is a long slow march towards phasing out third party cookies and other nasties in favour of having an assortment of technologies that Google believe will keep the advertisers and website owners happy. Personally they should have just say down with Apple and adopt what Apple was proposing and have continued developing rather than what is being pushed is yet another set of APIs that’ll require developers to open into using. Oh, and from the “really, you thought that was a good idea” comes this gem (link).

    For me at the moment I am using Safari after giving Chrome and Firefox a try – Firefox has come a long way but there are still corner cases where there is website incompatibility not to mention lagging behind on web standards (link). The situation reminds me very much of Microsoft Edge (the one before the Chromium based Microsoft Edge) where, according to their telemetry data, people would give the browser a chance until they hit an incompatible website at which point they download Chrome and never look back. Yes, not all compatibility issues are due to the browser itself but for the average user they don’t care whether it’s the website or the browser they just want to visit the website they’re interested in and let either side sort out any problems that may exist behind the scenes.

    Just to wrap things up, I find my self watching not as much content as I used to – part of it due to the writers strike resulting in fewer shows available to watch but equally it has kind of gotten to the point that I’ve watched so many variations of a given theme that I know who did what and where within the first 5 minutes of the show. I guess in a wordy way I am saying that the shows have become repetitive and thus no longer hold my interest as they once did. These days I’m more into watching news, documentaries and video essays these days – a lot of great content on YouTube as long as you’re willing to train the algorithm so that it doesn’t suggest garbage.

  • Giving Firefox a try.

    With Google hell bent on crippling their browsers functionality with the gradual work being done around killing off MV2 in favour of MV3 which cripples content blockers by limiting the number of filters that can be enabled, removing functionality for the sake of “but what happens if they install an extension from a non-verified source!” etc etc. The other issue that I’ve been tolerating for the last few months is the lack of extensions on Chrome for Android (which Firefox supports) – it starts to get a bit grating after a while but the big thing I noticed is how it this now possible to use Firefox Sync as the source for autofill on Android which has made it a viable option at least for me. Gradually decoupling my dependency on a single organisation can cause anxiety because of the comfort of the familiar but there are benefits – Apple for the hardware, Firefox for the browser, Google Workspace for the cloud etc. creating a heterogenous environment where everything works together.

    There are a few websites, such as Skype and Teams for the web, which insists on treating Safari and Firefox like second class browsers but I do have limited use for Skype (I only use it to chat to one person) which makes it a non-issue but it is rather concerning that Microsoft is insisting on wedding their cloud to a specific browser engine rather than creating cloud based services that confirm to open standards. This is one aspect of Google I am thankful for – Firefox is fully supported with only a few limitations that don’t impact by day to day use of Google Workspace (link). I really do hope that with the work being done in the area of implementation compatibility (link) that long term choosing a browser won’t result in the follow up question of “will the websites I depend on work with it”. I can’t help but get the feeling that Chromium has become the Internet Explorer of the 21st century.

  • This is why you always need to read the source.

    Another day and another example of the right wing misrepresenting an article. This time the noise makers are claiming that MSNBC is claiming exercising is right wing (link) but then again that is assuming that such noise makers had any intention of being honest with their audience. Long story short it is raising the same sorts of issues that have been bought up in the past regarding influencers online who are using seemingly innocuous past times such as self help, meditation etc. then using that as a cover to launder conspiracy theories, misinformation etc.

    This whole phenomenon has been analysed by the podcast ‘Conspirituality’ which dives into how conspiracy theories, right wing politics etc. are laundered through something that on the surface seems pretty innocuous – “oh, this seems nice, a podcast about meditation and healthy eating” only to find that it ends up leading people down a rabbit hole. It doesn’t always lead to right wing politics, sometimes it goes in the direction of unhinged anti-capitalist politics but where ever it ends up it is never in a good place.

    Long story short, it was a gross misrepresentation of what was actually taking place but this isn’t the first nor will be the last time it’ll happen. The most recent one before the MSNBC article was the hysteria whipped by the right was the hysteria created over the term ‘bonus hole’ and the claims that women will have to refer to their genitals in the future as a ‘bonus hole’ but the problem is that no evidence has been provided to back up such a claim. Over on Yahoo there is an article that gives an overview of what has taken place (link) but long story short a LGBTQ+ non-profit was working with Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust to develop an outreach strategy to encourage trans men to get test for cervical cancer and part of that was developing inclusive language when dealing with trans men. In other words, it had nothing to do with forcing the adoption of gender neutral language on the general public and yet some how the story acquired legs of its own and now the right wing are obsessing over something that is a non issue for the vast majority of people.

    Then there is the whole saga regarding a TYT host getting worked up over the use of ‘birthing person’ who clearly ignored the evidence that, once again, is not a word use in the mainstream or as outlined by the National Institute of Health from the United States (link):

    Both pregnant women and pregnant people are acceptable phrases. It is unnecessary to avoid the word women by substituting phrases like birthing people, or people with uteruses. Neutral terms like pregnant patients, pregnant people, or other wording as applicable (e.g., pregnant teens), present an inclusive alternative. Use judgment and context to determine whether to use pregnant women or pregnant people / pregnant patients.

    Using more limited and specific language is sometimes important. For instance, if discussing a study that only involves cisgender women, gender-specific language (pregnant women) would be most accurate to reference that study’s findings. If the word women is preferable, but transgender and nonbinary people are also referenced, phrasing like women and other pregnant patients can provide an inclusive alternative.

    I’ve put in bold and underlined the text that can summarise this whole ‘storm in a tea cup’ down to – once again there is no demand for it’s wide spread use outside specific scenarios where it may make sense. So I kept searching further and found the usual propagator of half truths making claims that the evidence doesn’t back up. A good example of that is the recent furore regarding the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust using gender include language but as outlined in the article (link):

    However, while some reports have stated that Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust is entirely replacing any language related to womanhood, this is not the case.

    “We are taking a gender-additive approach to the language used to describe our services,” a statement from the hospital explains.

    It adds that “a gender-additive approach means using gender-neutral language alongside the language of womanhood, in order to ensure that everyone is represented and included”.

    Which is no different to the situation in New Zealand where we have the name of a government department in both Maori and English or in the case of the above scenario using the gender neutral word along side the language related to womanhood. Once again we have the misrepresentation of what is happening in an area of medicine by those who wish to politicise gender-affirming care into yet another thing that the right wish to throw around in their ‘culture war’. In the right wing world it appears that anyone who isn’t white, heterosexual and cis is seen as some sort of existential threat to civilisation that all the reactionaries feel the need obsess over – see ‘woke mind virus’ as the recent manifestation of right wing nonsense.

  • Time and a half is always good.

    Well, I’m working on Matariki but on the upside there is a bonus – I get time and a half plus a day in lieu since this is my normal day of work (I work a Wednesday to Sunday schedule). One thing I’ll need to remember is completing the time sheet at the end of my shift – I’m sure I won’t forget.

    The first crop of reviews for the Nothing Phone 2 are being uploaded to YouTube:

    For me, I’m no great urgency about getting the Nothing Phone 2 but it is great to hear that for a small player in the market to get to 800,000 without the exhaustive network of resellers, a massive marketing budget, deals with carriers etc. they’ve done remarkably well. For me, I purchased my Nothing Phone 1 from PB Tech in Wellington (Nothing Phone 1, 256GB storage, 12GB RAM) and have been a happy user ever since – Google Workspace being my cloud provider of choice.

    It’ll be interesting to see what the performance difference will be like with the flagship level SoC that it now includes with the Nothing Phone 2. Personally, I think the greatest benefit isn’t the hardware necessarily but the software, the fact that it is crapware free, isn’t chock full of shovelware that third parties pay OEMs to preload or what takes place in the US where mobile phone carriers ram a whole heap of third party nonsense on the phone by default.

    Now onto the Trump trial where his legal team are attempting to delay and stall for as long as they can:

    So the Trump legal team want a delay until after the elections – we all know what would happen if it was delayed, Trump loses the election, he complains it is due to the court case looming over the election campaign even though it was his legal team who asked for it and his support base aren’t actually interested in facts if it contradicts the larger narrative of Trump being the perpetual victim of the system and in turn see themselves as victims.

    The worse part about this whole MAGA movement is the fact that people aren’t interest in facts (as Chris Christie points out all the broken promises Trump has made) or policy but instead vote based on vibes, sticking it to the libs etc. etc. By the way, this situation isn’t unique to MAGA voters, I would hazard to guess that for a significant number of people they vote based on vibes or continuing the tradition of being a ‘Labour Family’ or a ‘National family’. If people were voting based on policy then it would be possible to talk about policy and why one policy is better than another but when the basis is has no grounding in reality it isn’t surprised that the quality of the discourse heads down the toilet.

  • The universe is balancing itself out.

    Instagram Threads launched on 5 July 2023 and within a week they now have 100 million with many, many high profile people moving over from Twitter to Threads. I think long term you’ll find that it’ll come in waves as features are added then eventually once ActivityPub integration occurs you may find that Instagram will put down their ban hammer on a few of the undesirable people who have come over to Threads and based on the number of replies that said individual isn’t welcome.

    There was another beta released by Apple for both their existing platform along with the next platform release they have planned. Personally, I would sooner they take their time but that being said I would like them to closing the functionality gap particularly when it comes to extensions. I’m a simple man, if Apple get Safari MV3 support to the point that I can run uBlock Origin Lite then I would be a pretty happy lad. The web browser has become the run time engine for the online world and when Apple drag their feet regarding implementing standards then it holds back the whole IT industry due to the dominance Safari has in the smartphone and tablet space due to the fact that the core of Safari is the only one allowed on iOS and iPadOS.

    Another day another poll with journalists spinning the results into something that it is not (link). In the case of National-ACT they sit at 48%, for Labour-Greens plus other parties they sit at around the same. Basically they’re neck and neck, the majority that Labour was never sustainable long term in an MMP environment but why let facts get in the way of a doom and gloom narrative to get those clicks and raging comments in the comment section. I think it’ll a close election – at least in the case of New Zealand at least our centre right party hasn’t lost its marbles unlike the United States where their so-called centre right party is completely disconnected from reality.

    Nothing has pushed out an update, Nothing OS 1.5.6 which weighed in around 55MB and after the installation it appears that it was an update to the kernel with the build being dated 6 July 2023 but the version remaining the same at 5.4.210. In the last couple of days the June Play Services was updated to the June 2023 version and so far the combination of the two updates (plus the regular updates made available through the Play Store) the experience over all has been pretty good.

    The development of Mimestream has resulted in some regular updates coming out (link). I’m looking forward to seeing contacts and calendaring integration so that Mimestream gets to the point that it is a completely integrated productivity app like Outlook on the desktop is like. In other news, at the moment where I work they use Google Workspace but we’re going to be moving over to Office 365 which will be an interesting experience given how much stuff we have integrated into Google – from the current CRM through to documents saved in our Google Drive. All I can say, I’m happy I decided not to make working in IT my full time job – sure, I’m keenly interested in technology but I wouldn’t want to make it a fully time job because it would take away from the enjoyment of having the interest in it.

  • It takes time to turn around a tanker.

    As most of you probably already know, Meta are launching Instagram Threads and along with that launch comes the detractors (with good reason mind you) but I think it is also important to remind ourselves of a few things:

    a) Turning a large corporation takes time so even if you are sceptical that they’re going to change one also must remember that it takes time for a corporation to change directions. A good example of that would be Intel and the move from Pentium 4 to the Core based architecture which didn’t hit the mainstream until 2006 for the desktop. In the case of Meta, add the complexity of oversight by both the FTC in the United States along with various agencies in the European Union, it is understandable

    b) Taking what someone says flippantly in their teens or early 20s is hardly representative of where one is in that moment. There is the infamous quote of Mark Zuckerberg when he was 19 years old – colour me surprised that maybe in 20 years later he has changed because he has matured and realised the responsibility the he has inherited when it moved beyond just a little rinky-dink website for his classmates at university. I’d hazard to guess that many of us have made off handed remarks which, on reflection, we’d cringe that we had said it in the first place was made public.

    c) Unlike Twitter, Meta is still part of the European Union agreement to stamp out disinformation online and Christchurch Call but Twitter is only a signed up supporter of the Christchurch Call, one really has to wonder as to the sincerity of Twitter when they are in one but not the other. Will Meta or any other organisation involved in both of said organisations get it right all the time? nope, they’ll make mistakes because shocker, corporations are filled with humans and humans are fallible, they make mistakes – the question is whether there is malicious intent and how they respond when they fall short of what is required of the organisation in terms of protecting user privacy, dealing with extremist content etc.

    d) CEOs of large corporations talk to politicians of all stripes because part of running a large organisation is maintaining a good relationship with the ‘powers that be’. Just because an executive is speaking to a politician does not necessarily mean that they’re ‘in the bag’ for that politician.

    e) What is reported on what is taking place within an organisation on many occasions does not accurately give all the nuances regarding how it happened in the first place. I’ve worked in organisations where the media will report one thing and having been privy to what is going internally the report paints what took place being the result of menevelency rather than just a run of the mill cock up. Remember the old saying “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” or sometimes it is a matter of a company getting legal guidance from counsel, they believe they’ve interpreted the law correctly but then later find out that there is more to it than what they expected – see the anti-moneylaundrying laws which required on going conversations between the Department of Internal Affairs and businesses impacted by the legislation regarding whether the safeguards meet their legal obligations. Some companies didn’t confirm not because they were being menevelant but because they genuinely believed that they were in compliance with the law.

    I think it is important when reading the above points that I’m not defending Meta but rather it is important to understand the motivations and incentives in place, to understand that corporations don’t have a ‘will’ of their own but instead decisions being made ‘by the corporation’ are made by people who believe they’re trying to strike the right balance between the various stakeholders. This is where Instagram Threads is going to have leg up – the sort of amateurish way in which Elon Musk is running Twitter doesn’t cut the mustard particularly when social media is a way in which businesses develop relationships with potential customers while retaining existing customers through brand engagement. If your platform is overrun with crypto bros, alt right ‘influencers’ and the like then don’t be surprised that brands decide that the platform’s toxicity isn’t something you want being associated with your brand. Toxic people exist on every platform, the question is whether you allow them to over run the platform or whether you regularly push back so that they’re the exception rather than the rule.

    Just to round up the blog post, here is a good article over on The Verge regarding Instagram Thread (link).

    And one more thing, I always love it when financial experts making claims then those claims crash and burn such as this one (link) “According to Insider, McKinsey claimed that the Metaverse would bring businesses $5 trillion in value. Citi valued it at no less than $13 trillion.” which reminds me of of the claims regarding the Intel Itanium taking over the markets, that by this time the the market would be worth billions, that it would destroy the UNIX rivals etc. etc. and what happened many years later? none of that came to fruition. It truly is amazing that there are people out there who pay these organisations whose reliability is worse than mine – but at least when I put out my opinions I don’t charge a fortune for them, they’re free of charge.

  • Trump supporters support Trump because he is Trump.

    I know it sounds redundant to make that glaringly obvious statement but it appears that those who are pushing the narrative that ‘Ron DeSantis is Trump but without the chaos’ ignore why Trump supporters support Trump in the first place. The video below does a great analysis of what is happening on the campaign trail:

    The DeSantis campaign is making some pretty obvious mistakes right from day one, firstly they launched on Twitter in the belief that it’ll tap into younger voters in the belief that the noise making reactionaries on Twitter some how represent a large segment of the primary voter (when in reality they don’t). Secondly, they’ve pretty much set up their campaign as a reflection of the right wing culture wars that are raging on the internet but here is the problem, the internet is not the real world.

    Let’s take the Daily Wire which as of the end of 2022 they had slightly over 1 million paid subscribers so let’s assume that the total audience size is 4 times larger (keeping in mind that the number of views on YouTube is around 1/8th the number of subscribers based on the most recent video that has been out for a month), even at 4 million that is miniscule when compared to the size of not only the Republican base but the number of independents that the winner of the primary will have to win over in the general election.

    Thirdly, Ron Desantis believes that to beat Donald Trump he needs to move to the right of him but if you move to the right of him not only are you tapping into an even smaller percentage of the electorate you’re almost guaranteeing that you’re making yourself unelectable in the general election. The further right you go the less electable you are not only in the primaries but also in the general election. Sure, Trump rallies against ‘the woke’ but he sprinkles it on in moderation where as Ron DeSantis is ‘woke, woke, woke, woke’ not to mention the Churchillesque speech of fighting the woke in various locations as if it were some sort of fight for survival. At some point even the most ‘anti-woke’ Republican is going to ask the obvious question “is this all you have for us?”.

    Regarding people who invoke arguments based on low poll numbers for Joe Biden need to be reminded that low poll numbers doesn’t necessarily translate to people looking to vote for someone else – it is possible to be unhappy with Joe Biden for example the lack of progress for student loan forgiveness and yet for that same person to recognise that the alternative is so much worse that people end up voting for Joe Biden (long term it maybe a problem of Republicans stop nominating drop kicks in favour of candidates who have a broad appeal rather than the narrow single issue voters that the Republicans appear to fixate on). Low approval does not automatically mean “so therefore I’ll vote for the opposition” any more than people being unhappy with Nicolás Maduro automatically means that those people support Juan Guaidó – sometimes the ‘devil you know is better than the devil you don’t’.

    For all of Joe Biden’s flaws, I think the focus by those wanting to push for change, they should focus on senate, congress and local elections where the agenda is very much pushed. Joe Biden isn’t the obstacle to change, the obstacle to change are those who are voted in as ‘blue dog democrats’ who believe that being a corporate sell out is synonymous with being moderate when in reality the way you win is you focus on the ‘meat and potatoes’ issues in much the same way that John Fetterman did in his election campaign.

  • Tidying up my blog and back to work.

    I’ve tidied up my blog by making sure that all the posts I have made have a title. In the past I used to use a blogging client but these days the web app for WordPress is powerful enough to replace a native application. I also deleted all blog posts before 2020, nothing of any value was lost plus most of it out of date anyway.

    There is a rumour that Meta will be launching Threads (a Twitter alternative) on Thursday (link) which will make for interesting viewing as high profile users that use both Instagram and Twitter decide to delete their Twitter account because why bother with a platform with a few hundred million monthly active users when Meta has 3.74 billion active monthly users. Many of the government departments and emergency agencies also use both platforms and might also leave given that Threads is a good enough drop in replacement then add on to that the third party social media management services that’ll be upgraded to handle Threads, I wouldn’t be surprised if Threads ends up speeding up the demise of Twitter. So Twitter is falling apart and Threads is going to drop in as a replacement – I’ll make sure I have some freshly popped popcorn and a front row seat for everything to unravel.

    I’ve been looking through what Chrome 115 has in store (link) and Topics API is being enabled by default so it’ll be interesting to see how quickly it is adopted by developers. For me, I have setup Chrome to reject third party cookies so I’m already a fair way of the way there already. There are also other APIs being made available particularly regarding protecting sensitive information regarding end users which serve as a much larger tapestry of functionality being added which will try to balance up being able to protect user privacy while also also ensuring that when ads are shown they’re relevant to the end user.

    WordPress has delivered Mastodon integration:

    And based on what we know about threads, it should be possible to post to Instagram threads timeline as well by using the @username@threads.net handle. As to whether I join Instagram and start using Threads? I’ll sit back and see how things turn out.