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

  • Synchronising music from macOS to Android and finding a better music player.

    Apologies for the lack of a short and snappy title but I’ve been pulling my hair out trying to find out why ptpcamerad kept relaunching every time I killed the process – one option was to run this command in the background:

    while ; do; kill -9 $(ps aux | grep “[p]tpcamera” | awk ‘{print $2}’); done

    Now, that kind of worked but wasn’t exactly an elegant solution. I then tried disabling it from the terminal then reboot:

    sudo launchctl disable gui/501/com.apple.ptpcamerad

    The problem with that is that although it was disabled at boot time the problem is that it kept being launched by an application wanting that service to be enabled. With some more Googling I quickly found what the culprit – Google Drive app that one uses to synchronise on macOS – it did ask me whether I wanted to synchronise my photos and I said to ignore it thus I made the assumption that it shouldn’t interfere with OpenMTP or any other application that was trying to connect to my phone using MTP – how wrong I was. Once I quit out of Google Drive I then tripped over another issue which was MTP appears to have issues with files that have “, !, * and ? in the file name so then I had to do a bulk rename to remove all the “, !, * and ? out of file names which then allowed those files to be copied across (it appears to mirror the Windows file system restrictions restrictions).

    On a side note, I don’t use YouTube Music to store my music because unfortunately it re-encodes even if the file format you upload in is a streamable format. I could handle that if it was possible that I could upload my music collection that I keep as a backup in FLAC format (ripped from my CD collection) that I keep in the cloud on my Google Drive but the problem YouTube Music still has a limit of 300MB for a file and one of the tracks is 306MB. Long story short, this is the reason why I needed to get the issue sorted out with OpenMTP and my phone so that I can copy my AAC music collection directly to the device.

    I also don’t use the YouTube Music app on my phone because it doesn’t handle large library of music stored locally all that well – indexing the music, very slow to navigate etc. I guess Google probably assumed that most people don’t have large music collections like me or use music subscription service (where all the indexing etc. is stored on the server and kept track 0f) so it is rather a none issue. Instead of using the YouTube Music app I bought a copy of Poweramp Music Player (it’s NZ$7.99 so it isn’t going to break the bank) – it handles my large music library perfectly, it has a great equalizer (I like to boost the bass), the navigation is fast and fluid (there are some negative reviews but one thing to keep in mind that because Android runs on many different hardware combinations then add OEM customisation, what may impact one end user may not necessarily impact others).

    The one thing I do need to buy is a USB-C to 3.5mm headphone jack. With my workplace moving into Wellington next year and me deciding to take the train into work each day, I want the ability to listen to some music on my ride in (which can take 35-40 minutes). On the good side though, when I go into work and come home I’m travelling on the off peak times so I get those cheap fares which work out cheaper than taking my scooter.

  • The good, the bad and a whole lot of meh.

    Let’s start with the bad, I woke up this morning all ready to head off to work and found that my scooter not only has a flat front tyre but also a flat back tyre as well. I guess the saving grace being that I can work from home which meant it was a giant fiasco but still it is something I could do without given the current focus on getting my financial house in order. I guess what I’ll do is not this pay, nor the next but the one after I’ll take it in for a serving along with sorting out the tyres at the same time.

    The good, well at least as far as I am concerned, was the release of Nothing OS 1.5.5 which boosted the security patch level to June 2023 although the Play Store update for the month comes at the beginning of the next month aka June arrives at the beginning of July. The speed and responsiveness of Nothing OS has improved with each release not to mention the improved battery life. I showed my phone off to a few friends at work and they seemed interested in getting it. The case I have on it I ordered from Walmart but I had to get it delivered through YouShop because Walmart doesn’t ship to New Zealand directly.

    Another good thing that has happened has been the GIS Geek Maps (link) has been updated with the latest map information regarding cell sites and what services are offered, broadband cabinets, which cabinets have fibre backhaul, point to point links etc. It’s a good way to find out whether a mobile phone carrier has a cell site to where you live and what services they offer on it which can give an insight as to the quality of the service one may receive. A lot of the information has been updated particularly regarding 2 Degrees and One NZ which use 900 MHz for both 3G as well as 4G (Spark uses 850 MHz for 3G however with the closing down of the 3G network towards the end of 2025 (link) I wouldn’t be surprised if 850 MHz is redeployed for 5G and maybe by that time VoLTE will be standardised rather than the mess today where handset vendors have to have specialised settings and testing for each VoLTE implementation).

    From the ‘good news for the average person but bad for speculators’ it appears that the middle man grifting maybe coming to an end as cheap credit dries up and investors are now expecting businesses to turn a profit rather than expecting to get money on the cheap. In this case Airbnb revenue has collapsed 50% and expect things to get worse before they get better (link) – speculators believing they can make a quick buck are going to quickly exit the market because of demand cratering and cheap credit now making those beach houses a whole lot more expensive to pay the mortgage for. Then add to that numerous cities and countries have crack down as many who ran Airbnb were running them as a side hustle but not paying the appropriate council rates, failing to properly pay tax on the profits being generated etc. they’re quickly finding that it’s coming back to haunt them.

    Long term I wish that we would stop labelling middle man grifting operations as something nobel or branding them as a ‘tech company’ (when in reality their relationship with tech is tangentially not the core of their business) when in reality they only use technology to achieve their primary goal as an organisation (technology isn’t the end goal, it’s the means to achieving that goal). We’re seeing the consequences when you have a free for all system that drives down people’s wages and job security, when councils seen uber as some sort of substituted for public transport so they underinvest into public transport, when councils get sucked into nonsense such as the ‘hyperloop’ which turn out to be all hype no loop.

    Regarding the ‘meh’, nothing exciting so far happening in my life other than work – hopefully as things settle down and the weather gets better. Everything these days is in a state of flux, shortages, inflation, high interest rates etc. so people are pretty stressed at the moment not to mention the election that is coming up towards the end of the year.

  • One more day to go.

    One more day to go – working at the moment (Saturday) then one more day (Sunday) before the weekend. Although it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea I love working Wednesday to Sunday and having Monday/Tuesday off for my weekend because having two week days off gives me the ability to chase up errands that need to be done, shopping at a leisurely pace etc.

    I always find it interesting when Republicans come out of the woodworks declaring how a second Trump term would be horrible but when asked “ok, but will you still vote for him and support him if he is the Republican nominee” they collapse like a cheap lawn chair and fall in line. P J O’Rourke at least had the backbone, when asked whether he would vote for Trump, stated that he would vote for Hillary because at least she was wrong within the acceptable parameters of being wrong.

    If Bill Barr came out and said, “I can’t bring myself to vote for a Democrat but I’ll…” followed by a) leave it blank b) vote third party, then I might have some respect but alas it appears that Republicans don’t actually believe in anything other than power for power sake. Sure, we on the left or nominally left want power but power to achieve a set of goals that improves the lives for all people – even the so-called neoliberals at least try to strike a win-win where as Republicans in the US only ever seem to want power for power sake, for their own personal enrichment as demonstrated by the rank hypocrisy demonstrated by the so-called ‘freedom caucus’.

    Regarding how politics is going in New Zealand, the difference between the United States and New Zealand is the fact that swinging voters make up a huge part of the electorate so there is a lot more effort by the different parties to win people over because there the percentage of persuadable voters is a lot higher than in the United States. At the moment the Labour, Maori and Greens could form government but not too long ago National-Act could form government so the poles are all over the show with many (I include myself as part of that cohort) who only make a firm decision closer to the election once the announcements are made, analysis in the media is done and one has looked at the policies directly.

    For me, I’m leaning party vote Greens and constituency vote I’ll for my Labour Party candidate. Are they perfect? there is no such thing as a perfect party or a perfect politician – politicians are human and parties are made up of humans. Humans are a fallible and are thrown into an imperfect world so we have to deal with reality as it exists which means accepting the fact that those who put into power are going to make mistakes, that drama occurs within the party as different factions have divergent viewpoints regarding topics that one (or more) faction believe are of the utmost importance while other factions may disagree. End of the day, a political party has to operating as a single unit which results in friction that some times boils over in a public spectacle that the media lap up aka ‘what bleeds leads’.

  • Sigh…I hate having a crook back.

    It started on Tuesday but I went to work on Wednesday because it was a late shift and they needed extra man power but by the end of the shift I had a horribly crook back then I headed back home thinking that maybe a lay down will fix it – nope, my back still feels horrible. Long story short, I messaged my boss to inform him that I will not be in on Thursday – I’ll be spending most of the day in bed to recover. I guess it is combination of age and bad luck resulting in it. Oh well, these things happen.

    I’ve changed the setting on my Chrome to disallow third party cookies (then cleared all my cookies, cache, history etc) and so far I haven’t had any issues. Although Google is slowly rolling it out (link) I would say that the vast majority of websites are already adapted to the change when Apple made the first move with Safari with Safari on iOS being a pretty dominant force in the world of drive technology change in in the area of web technologies. Right now the improvement to privacy is very much a work in motion and the details can bd found out over on the Chrome Developer website (link).

    The Chrome Developer website (link) is a great source along side the Webextensions API (link) which give a good insight into what is happening particularly when it comes to web standards – plenty more can be found over on github which range from Webassembly through to WebGPU and everything in between.

    Apple released updates for macOS, iOS, iPadOS etc. (link) which addresses two vulnerabilities – one in webkit and the other in the kernel. It’ll be interesting to see when macOS 13.5 will be released – maybe when they release iOS 17 they’ll release the macOS 13.5 update? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I’ve installed the security update on my MacBook Air and Mac Studio – no problems with either one of them.

  • From 1 to 11 in 5 seconds..sigh.

    Well, in the last 24 hours there has been a whole lot of drama in the fediverse because a small group of admins from various Mastodon instances were invited to a meeting with Meta (home of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp etc) but each of the attendees had to sign an NDA. Well, the moment that a meeting, NDA and Meta made its way into the fediverse then every man and their dog had their strongly held opinions pushed out into the fediverse. Where do I sit regarding this? I’m going to wait and see – we don’t know what the meeting is about, what was discussed, whether anything was requested from the admins who attended by the representatives of Meta.

    Long story short what we have are people filling the void left by the NDA with the worse possible scenarios appearing to dominate the discourse. I think it is important to recognise the fact that if Meta wanted to scrape data out of the fediverse then they could easily do that without having to go through the process of setting up an instance of their own, working with high profile celebrities then launching it to the public for anyone and everyone to join. Until we know what the details of the meeting I think it is best to sit back, take a deep breath and wait to see what happens.

  • Almost finished work for the week.

    Only another half hour or so to go before I can clock off and enjoy my weekend (Monday and Tuesday). I’m going to head off down the road to pick up some items of dinner from the local supermarket but the million dollar question is what I’ll decide to have for dinner. I’m stuck in that situation where I’m hungry, I want something for dinner but I don’t know what I want although I am tempted to have chicken burgers with Tegel Take Outs Chicken Burger Patties Louisiana Style along with some salad on top. I’ve got some left over butter chicken in the freezer so I’ll probably make butter chicken pizzas next week – a quick and easy meal.

    Side note: the key to getting them extra crunchy is cooking them on a rack on a roasting pan in the oven so then the oil/fat drips through onto the baking paper thus keeping the coating dry and crispy. The next question is whether I go for coleslaw or just lettuce, tomato, red onions etc. but I guess it’ll be one of those questions that’ll be answered when I arrive at the store rather than preplanned.

    The weather in the Hutt Valley is still pretty cold, well, either that or as I age I am finding that I am feeling the weather a lot more than when I was younger. On a good side though the home is warm but the mornings can still be pretty chilly but with that being said a nice puddy is always perfect to warm oneself up after a long cold day.

    I’m gradually working through both the Google and Apple sessions – although I’m not a developer is is always interesting to see what is being talked about which give a good insight into the general direction of where Google and Apple are heading. Looking forward to Android 14 making its way to my phone in August and when it comes to the release of Apple’s next platforms they will probably do like they always do which is to announce a new series of iPhones at the end of September then ship the iOS update the week after the presentation then release the next version of macOS coming out a month later (based on when they released macOS 13).

  • I love working from home.

    One of the great things I like about my current employer is the fact that I can work from home 3 days a week and in the office 2 days a week. Sure, ones of the benefits being that I can work from home in my tracksuit pants and a tshirt but the other is working at a comfortable desk, fast computer, great reliable internet and not having to jump on my scooter and deal with the cold. There is a downside which is the fact that I have keep the home warm when working from home but most of the time that just involves setting my heater to 18 degrees celsius then combine that with good insulation and double glazed windows results in the heat being retained meaning the heater doesn’t turn on very often to maintain the temperature.

    Last night I did a small shopping (I’m getting my financial house in order so that means – debt and bills first, then everything else comes second) and I noticed some new range of soups from F. Whitlock & Sons (link)

    I’m going to give them a go – the Capscium and Corn Gumbo would sound great with some roast chicken from the previous dinner, same can be said for the Moroccan Spiced Carrot and Lentil Soup. Another quick meal is the Naked Locals Thai Green Curry, fry up some prawns in chilli and garlic butter then add it to the Thai Green Curry. Unless you’ve got a family and use the ingredients regularly it ends up costing more for a single person to have many of the ingredients hanging around in the cupboard as they’re more likely to go pass their best before date – spices deteriorate pretty quickly and lose their flavour. Tonight I’m going to have Tomato and Capsicum soup with ciabatta bread rolls heated in the oven then layer on a good helping off the garlic and chilli butter.

    Regarding Android and the Nothing Phone, it’s the six month mark and I’m pretty happy with how things are going so far – the withdrawal symptoms of not having an iPhone have subsided lol. On a good side it appears that MV3 supported version of uBlock Origin has launched to version 1 (link). I’ll keep using the MV2 ‘classic’ version of uBlocker Origin until I’m forced to move from but I hope that by the time I am forced to make the move that the Webextension API developers have taken onboard extension developers concerns by addressing the shortcomings in the various components that make it up, I also hope that Apple get their A into G so that some time in the future it’ll be possible to load the uBlock Origin MV3 version on Safari.

    Nothing has announced that Nothing OS 2.0 (Android 14) will arrive for both the Nothing Phone 1 and Nothing Phone 2 in August this year (link). What I looking forward are all the under the hood improvements such as memory management, power management, improvements in privacy with the introduction of new APIs. It appears that the sharp contraction of ad revenue has forced Google to improve the focus of their non-ad businesses. I was just thinking about the relationship between Google and Google’s Ad business has similarities to countries and the ‘Resource curse’ – during good times there is little incentive to diversify but when there are the bad times then people become risk adverse and decide that it isn’t the right time to take risks. The net result of that situation are companies that get stuck in a rut only to find out the hard way when a more nimble competitor over takes them. This isn’t unique to Google, Microsoft was in the same mindset with Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows, both products feeding off each other to maintain each others dominance but that was quickly upset with the rise of Google and Apple which forced Microsoft to evolve and move outside its comfort zone. If a competitor doesn’t arise then we can always hope that a regulator is willing to knock some heads together and shake things up (link).

  • Meta’s Twitter alternative getting closer to launch.

    Although I have moved to Mastodon there are benefits for everyone in the Fediverse with the launch of Meta’s own Twitter alternative that will make use of ActivityPub (link) – the benefit being that a large number of people on Twitter are also on Instagram which then opens up the ability for people to leave Twitter and use Meta’s own platform instead. Now, this is where the interesting part begins, because it is using ActivityPub it’ll mean that those on Mastodon will now be able to follow those Instagram users who make use of Meta’s Twitter alternative.

    With each passing day and each pronouncement put out on Twitter by Elon Musk, I would say that those who are high profile on Twitter are looking for alternatives. The most recent rumination by Elon Musk that he is interested in getting rid of the block functionality on Twitter (link) which was a reply to Andy Ngo:

    Andy Ngo claiming that it allows people who spread hoaxes and use the ‘block’ feature to shield themselves from being reported while ignoring the fact that the report feature is routinely used as a form of harassment in much the same way flagging on YouTube is routinely used by retractors to harass people on the platform. I refuse to believe that Andy Ngo doesn’t understand why the block feature behaves the way it does.

    As the platform becomes a bigger toxic cesspit it appears that advertisers, who are at the moment rationalising where they spend their money, have decided to pull back on advertising on Twitter based on the most recent reduction in spending (link). I’m sure we’ll hear Elon Musk come up with either denial or claim that it is part of a wider industry phenomenon but it ignores the fact that although Twitter was one of the smaller social networks (before he bought it) organisations were still willing to advertise on it. Since Elon bought Twitter and turned it into a toxic cesspit free for all where white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, conspiracy theory whack jobs, crypto bros selling their latest get rich quick scheme etc, it isn’t surprising that organisations are deciding that maybe that isn’t the sort of thing they want associating with their brand.

    To quote an excerpt out of the ‘The Verge’ article I linked to earlier: “We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run” – there is demand for a Twitter like micro-blogging platform but those demanding want it run by an adult not some man-child who snuggles up to some of the most undesirable people on Twitter while claiming to be a centrist (link) and a free speech absolutist (link).

  • WWDC 2023 was uneventful…which is good.

    It is always interesting hearing the ‘tech dude bro’ press lamenting the lack of a list of new features but the reality is that the we’re at a technology plateau as so far as novel and innovative features that can be added to existing products such ass the Mac and the iPhone. This year was no exception to this with the focus on the established platforms being around fine tuning and improving what already exists rather than revolutionary changes. A good example of that would be the Windows development cycle with the incremental update of the Windows shell through the piece by piece replacement of components in favour of Windows App SDK (link) (link). I think long term the goal will be to have the whole experience based on Windows App SDK which will enable Microsoft to keep backwards compatibility while moving the platform forward.

    When it comes to macOS 14 a lot of the discussion has been about the improved performance particular UI responsiveness which is probably related to improvements in AppKit (link) along with the fact that macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS and visionOS share the same underlying display technology and given the need to improve responsiveness in visionOS the benefits flow through to the other platforms. What will also be a big helper to game developer is the work being done in Metal with converter tools to take a DXIL and convert it over to a metal library (link) which will reduce the barriers for developers wanting to bring DirectX games, be they from desktop or xbox, to the various Apple platforms.

    After much contemplation I decided to install Ivory for macOS (Mastodon client for macOS (link)) and sign up for the monthly subscription along with moving to Tusky for Android (which has been recent updated to version 22 with lots of great new features (link)). I prefer using the native application because I find it works more reliably particularly when it comes to updating the time line while remaining in the place where I left it. When it comes to the cost of Ivory, the world is changing to subscription based applications and as much as I, one one hand, loath it, on the other hand there are benefits to a business model that is more sustainable and incentives quality of life improvements, bug features, new features etc. being rolled out rather than holding back features for the next big release.

  • WWDC Keynote and Platforms State of the Union.

    I decided in the end that it was so late that I would just stay up to watch the keynote, have a small nap then watch the ‘Platforms State of the Union’. If you’re wanting a live transcript then Arstechnica as always does a pretty good job (link) however what this blog post is all amount is more about collating some thoughts I had regarding the two presentations.

    The start of the keynote presentation they announced a refresh of the MacBook Air, Mac Studio and Mac Pro. A new model of the MacBook Air was announced with a 15″ screen and an M2 SoC, the Studio was refreshed with the M2 series and the Mac Pro was also updated to the M2 series. The Mac Pro comes with 7 PCIe 4.0 slots however although it doesn’t support video cards as a means of display there isn’t anything mentioned about whether nVidia may provide user space drivers for their video card so then it is possible to offload CUDA workflow onto the video card while still utilising the built in video card for everything else. It’ll be interesting to see whether nVidia does that or whether it makes more sense that if you want that extra CUDA grunt that you push the work load into the cloud and let their hardware to the heavy lifting.

    iOS 17 and iPad 17 were then announced – updates Phone, FaceTime, Airdrop and Messages being at the top of the list which focused on refinements such as a unique poster that appears when a given person rings up, improving search within messages, sharing location when in messages, being able to share contacts via Airdrop. From what it appears this year is about refinement rather than big whizbang features. When it comes to macOS once again the same situation as well, more refinement and improving what already exists rather than in the past where the marketing was all about the x number of new features being added.

    I think the absence of new features probably has a lot to do with the big announcement of the Vision Pro running visionOS. Given that all the platforms share a common core I wouldn’t be surprised if there have been a lot of under the hood improvements particularly in the area of graphics performance to hit a graphics latency of no more than 12 milliseconds. I haven’t tried the developer beta of each of the operating systems but I’d hazard to guess that there will be a noticeable improvement in performance.

    The announcement of the AR/VR headset was interesting but at the price it was announced I could imagine it being very much a niche product that may grow once a lower price non-Pro version of Vision is announced but even then I don’t see it being a big mainstream success like the iPhone or iPad. I could imagine it being used particularly in the professional field of being able to show off to a client something that is being worked on, being able to view it in the ‘real world’ then making real time updates rather than the length cycle of prototypes, tweaking then making a new prototype etc. Although US$3499 is a lot of money, if you’re a business and there is the ability to speed up the delivery of a product to the customer and giving the customer a better experience when the product is being developed then in the end it’ll pay for itself.

    Regarding software updates and what is taking place – one resource I like to read through is the difference between Xcode 14.3 and Xcode 15.0 beta 1 in the documentation area (link) which outlines the API changes – additions, subtractions, modifications. One addition that stood out to me was the MediaExtension API that has been added to macOS 14 (This framework provides a means for developers to create format readers and video decoders for media that the system doesn’t natively support) which will hopefully mean that ffmpeg could get ported to the MediaExtension API which in turn will enable various bundled applications (Safari, QuickTime etc) to take advantage of the ability to playback formats not natively supported in the OS.

    Another way to get an insight into the future direction of Apple, both hardware and software, is to check out the WWDC 2023 sessions (link). It comes as no big surprise that the visionOS and Vision Pro is at the centre but also many videos heavily pushing Swift and SwiftUI (the technology that unifies the development process for all the platforms) to heavily imply to developers that it is the technology of the future and that they need to get on the Swift train now in much the same way that XCode was pushed and pushed. Apple didn’t come out and say “move to XCode because in 2005 we’re moving to Intel” but instead Apple heavily push a particular technology for a reason, they may not give the answer but what is implied is that in the future that particular piece of technology or collection of technologies will form the basis of the products in the future.

    Metal is getting pushed in a way I didn’t think it would – in the past there was lip service being made regarding gaming but it appears that this year they’re actualy taking it seriously with the introduction of the Game Porting Toolkit which includes support to bring DirectX games over to Metal 3, the Unity game engine is optimised for Metal 3, the addition of ray tracing etc. If you want to keep up to date with how users are finding the beta versions along with the new features then you can check out these sources (link) (link).

    Regarding AI – the focus by Apple isn’t about tick boxes but rather making use of AI by integrating it into applications to improve the experience for the end users. This is the reason I was rather ‘meh’ about the whole AI launches by Microsoft and Google, it is one thing to put on a good dog and pony show for the passes but it is a different thing entirely to transform something from a cool public demonstration into something that is actually useful for the average end user.