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

  • Let the annual leave begin.

    Finished work tonight and it never felt so good knowing that for the next two weeks off I have no responsibilities other than to take care of myself. I put the first load of washing on then went for a relaxing walk tonight around the block, came back, put the washing out, had a shower, then put the remaining washing in the washing machine the hung it out once completed. On Monday I’m going to just relax and see where the day takes me – I might even pop down to the local cafe for eggs bene for brunch – something I like to treat myself to at least once a month.

    One thing I forgot to mention is that with the upgrade from macOS 26.1 to 26.1 the firmware was updated from 13822.41.1 to 13822.61.10 with the wifi stack, driver and firmware updated from IO80211_driverkit-1530.16 to IO80211_driverkit-1533.5. As noted in the past, I think the destination of DriverKit points to it operating in user space (the actual Broadcom driver being com.apple.DriverKit-AppleBCMWLAN). It’ll be interesting to see Apple gradually move more components out of the kernel with my guess being that with the big push to end support for x86-64 in macOS 27 I wouldn’t be surprised if we see that take place and the kernel will be fully locked down with the expectation that if you need to support hardware then you’ll need to do is all in user space.

    I was reading through a post on Reddit regarding a YouTube I follow who was talking about the USSR and it is amazing how even 30+ years after the collapse of the Soviet Union the red scare paranoia is still alive. The person in the video was basically talking about the USSR and homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender. It should be relatively uncontroversial but apparently because the video creator didn’t portray the Soviet Union as the root of all evil in the world and everything they did was utterly evil it some how made the video creator an USSR apologist. Imagine suffering from so much red scare paranoia that a balanced video regarding the USSR triggers you. I guess if you have a population insulated from knowledge then it shouldn’t be surprising that even those who are born after the collapse of the Soviet Union display this level of paranoia as if it were some sort of genetic trait inherited from their parents.

    On a side note, I always find it funny how in the United States there is the equating of capitalism with freedom and equating the market with capitalism. The propaganda that the average American is exposed to really has done a number on so many peoples brains in the United States which explains why there is this slavish devotion and worshipping of wealthy people. It isn’t helped there is the myth of meritocracy that is perpetuated by the capitalist class as a way to justify to the working class the way society is structured as well as a well for the capitalist class to morally justify to themselves why they’re at the top. When half of the people posting on Reddit are from the United States it isn’t surprising to see wealth individuals and/or corporations being defended but after a while it does make me feel sorry for them because the propaganda runs so deep in their society.

  • One more day.

    One more day to go and then I am on my two weeks off annual leave. My last day of the week I am planning to make it as stress free as possible – I am going to be as cool as a cucumber, I’m not going to let customers get under my skin and when I want to take a breather I going to do so. Today was an uneventful day, no annoying customers ringing up looking for a fight so that is always good news.

    Things are going well with the updated platforms Apple released on Saturday (Friday US time) – I have noticed that the more I have used it the more I’ve picked up on it being more responsive which makes sense given that there were a lot of new technologies that were added to macOS and I wouldn’t be surprised if part of that inclusion of new technology involves moving existing frameworks over utilising those new technologies. Metal 4 being a sizeable upgrade and given that Apple tends to make use of Metal where they can I’ve found that the UI experience is pretty good although I have changed the default Liquid Glass effect to Tint which has improved the look and feel.

    The one thing I am really blown away with is how much Safari has improved since the 18.x series in particular when it comes to extension support as well responsiveness not to mention many bugs have been fixed. One example of bugs being fixed has been my experience when using YouTube back in the Safari 18.x series where the shorts scroll through would be buggy with videos no loading, the comments being out of sync with the video that is playing (the comments are from a previous video), if you clicked on back then the previous page wouldn’t load plus many other issues. So far I haven’t had any of those issues so far.

    On WordPress.com I have found that the spell checker that comes with Safari works a whole lot better – on Chrome there is this really weird lag between typing and then the spell checking kicking in or in some cases the spell check just suddenly dies resulting in you having to quit the Chrome browser, reload it and then suddenly it comes back to life (the problem occurs on both Chrome for Windows and macOS) I cannot work out what is going on with Chrome when I experience it but on Safari I never have that issue.

    I’m looking forward to seeing what will be included with macOS 26.3 and Safari 26.3 – maybe more of the features found in the Technology Preview will make their way to the mainstream release because at the moment when it comes to the web platform test the current Technology Preview of Safari (Safari Technology Preview 233) it has achieved 99% conformance.

  • Apple releases updates for their platforms.

    Something that was rather unexpected was Apple releasing updates to their platforms – I was expecting Apple to release it maybe next week since releasing them on a Friday is a bit uncommon with the usual day being closer to the beginning of the week on around Tuesday or Wednesday NZ time. I’ve updated all my devices, Mac Studio, MacBook Pro, Apple TV 4K and iPhone, and I’ve noticed that they’re operating a lot smoother in terms of user interface responsiveness. The iPhone 17 Pro Max modem firmware was updated, on the two Macs had the wifi network stack updated but it’ll a few weeks before there are any detectable differences in terms of download and upload speeds when sending files from one device to another over the network along with internet speed.

    Safari has been up dated to version 26.2 and Apple engineers have uploaded a pretty comprehensive document over on the WebKit website outlining the changes (link). I haven’t noticed any regressions and I have noticed a slight improvement when it came to the content blocking and on the subject of content blocking it does appear that the fix for the sub_frame bug relating to the Declarative Net Request (DNR) (link) is getting closer so hopefully we may see the fix appear in a future Safari Technology Preview and then eventually appear in a mainstream release of Safari. I have noticed that the performance is a lot better than the 18.x version of Safari particularly if you’re visiting complex websites that make use of a broad set of web technologies.

  • Two days to go.

    It is so close to the end of the week, I can hardly wait for my annual leave to begin. Tonight I had a small walk then had a lite meal of some fresh ciabatta bread and a vegetarian Mexican style chilli that has lots of fibre and protein which left me satisfied but not bloated. Next week I’m going to work through what I have in the cupboard because I’d sooner start with a clean slate when I do my next grocery shop I’ll have a meal plan going forward – I guess the balance is trying to find enough variety to make meals interesting but also ensuring that there is a balance of nutrition as well as easy to prepare since when I work I only have 30 minutes for dinner.

    I’ve been following news about the RMA (Resource Management Act) reforms and it is good to see that the media is providing some balance to a pretty complicated wide reaching reform that will touch almost every part of the economy. The left really hasn’t helped itself by resorting to the hysterical claims about how it’ll allow a complete free for all when it comes to pollution but Chris Hipkins, leader of the Labour Party, took a more balanced approach pointing out that there were many similarities between what Labour proposed and passed and what National have done (link).

    Although there is a laundry list of issues I have with the government particularly around long term infrastructure planning there are some good things that are occurring such as dealing with the market dominance of a small number of players in the building supplies market. There is also dealing with the ridiculousness of a building supplies having to be retested even though they already confirm to standards that are equal or better to what we have in New Zealand which is just needless duplication and complexity that only the big players can deal with.

    When I talk about politics I try not to ‘both sides it’ but equally it is important for New Zealand not to turn into what the United States has turned into. If the National led government does something good then one shouldn’t just instinctively go “well, it sucks because…well, they’re not my team” because now you just end up with the politics like in the United States where the Republicans stand for nothing other than “do the opposite of what the Democratic Party propose even if what is being proposed is a good idea”. Will I still vote Labour/Greens? sure but I also realise that if the policies being proposed are good then I don’t see them being repealed or if there needs to be changes they’ll amend then to address any concerns that may arise.

  • Another three days to go.

    Finished wok tonight at 10pm and then went for a walk – even if I don’t do the same amount every night my goal is to at least get out of the house to get some exercise after being inside all day. The weather has been wonderful for the last couple of days and there are many people out even at that time of night enjoying the good weather, families getting together to enjoy BBQs, heading down to the local pub for a couple of pints, the local takeaways serving people who have come back from going to the clubs in Wellington.

    One thing I noticed with Safari 26.1 has been how the look and feel of the browser matches the colours of the website for example if you go to WordPress.com it changes the UI to black, Arstechnica the same thing. I guess it kind of makes sense when it comes to web applications trying to make themselves look as native as possible by having a consistent look and feel between the browser interface and the website itself so then it ends up blending into a single UI look and feel rather than there being a dissection between the browser and the web app.

    I logged into work today and Google had released an update to Chrome – no regressions with the websites I use for work, it was slightly snappier but then again that could be entirely due to a clearing of cookies and cache along with rebooting my laptop. In the world of Ubiquiti the early release channel there is ‘UniFi Access Point (all U7 and E7 models) 8.3.2′ made available’. If you’re into testing early releases then give it ago but personally I’m too paranoid to take a chance so I’ll leave it up to someone more adventurous. There is the UniFi Gateways 4.4.6 which was made available as a ‘release candidate’ and it has been 7 days so we may see that been made available in the next few days because generally, assuming no show stopper bugs, they move an update from release candidate to stable release 7 days after it has been released.

    One thing I did notice with my MacBook Pro and my Mac Studio when setting it up that when I connected to my access point it would only connect via 5GHz however when I upgraded to macOS 26 both of my computers now connect by default to 6GHz. I couldn’t make heads or tails regarding it so I checked the ‘System Information’ and it appears that a firmware upgrade has improved support for 6GHz. The other thing I noticed is ‘IO80211_driverkit’ which tells me that IO80211 operates in user space – DriverKit is the user space driver API that was released a couple of years ago (link). If you check under ‘Extensions’ in ‘System Information’ there are quite a few DriverKit extensions so I wouldn’t be surprised if long term Apple is working towards slimming down the kernel so that only the bare essentials are running in kernel space with everything working in user space. From what I understand Microsoft is also doing that with Windows – it’ll be interesting to see whether the adoption of FRED (Flexible Return and Event Delivery) deals with the performance penalty and latency that is typically associated with shifting between kernel mode and user mode on x86/x86-64.

  • On a break, looking forward to the end of work.

    On my 30 minute break at the moment while watching some political videos on YouTube – I had John West Protein+ Tuna Roasted Tomato & Onion (link) along with a tub of yoghurt (link). Tonight I’ll go for a walk after work – it allows me to clear my head and have my brain reset itself so I’m ready to jump into bed rather than having the day replay in my head. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I’ve been fasting as a reset to get my routine back on track again – I like to do that occasionally if I’ve indulged a bit and want to reset the routine which has a definitive break from what I was doing and starting afresh.

    It is funny how the YouTube tech dude bros were whinging about how Apple were ‘behind the competition’ when it came to AI but then these same are the ones jumping onboard the ‘we hate agentic OS’ (post Windows 11 presentation) bandwagon. It is almost as though the YouTube tech dude bros jump from one grift to another grift, that there is nothing at the core of their being other than to hype the latest tech du jour because it get’s clicks and sponsorships (god help me I can’t stand the AI advertisements on YouTube – thank god I’ve got YouTube Premium on my personal computer). I was watching a video on YouTube (link) and I would argue that even their enterprise customers don’t want it either – a recent report noted that half of Microsoft’s sales staff cannot meet their sales targets in regards to getting business customers to upgrade to a subscription that includes AI features. If your business customers aren’t interesting in upgrading then maybe that is a clear indication that the ‘huffing your own farts’ that occurs in Silicon Valley has warped your understanding of what your customer base actually wants.

  • Another 4 days to go.

    I was able to make it through the first day back at work – the end of the week is looking so close, I’m trying to keep it together until the end of the week. On Monday I’m going to pop up in for my 3 monthly HbA1c test – I’m not too sure how long they’ll keep testing but I trust that my GP is asking for it for good reason with my assumption being that he wants to ensure there aren’t any regression back to high blood sugar. Tonight I went for a walk and after being stuck inside all day it is always nice to get some fresh air and moving around after sitting at a desk all day.

    It appears that the Chrome update wasn’t released today however Microsoft release an update to Microsoft Edge which is kind of strange given that Google releases Chrome updates before Microsoft does. I’m keeping an eye out for Apple to release the platform update however it depends on whether the feedback they receive from testers gives two thumbs up. When the 26.2 update is released I’m sure, like in the past, there will be a post over on Webkit.org that’ll give in-depth overview of the changes included with Safari 26.2.

    When it comes to the Liquid Glass interface, the head of Human Interface has been announced with much rumours that there is discontent within Apple regarding the Liquid Glass design with the new head of Human Interface with many decades of experience. I don’t expect to see a major change any time soon other than further refinement particularly around text legibility with any major changes being left for the much rumoured ‘Snow Leopard’ release next year which will focus on dealing with the rough edges along with delivering in the area of AI functionality in particular when it comes to improving Siri which has received much criticism over the years. I guess it is one of those things that you sometimes need to take a break from adding features and start to do a bit of house work to tidy things up.

  • One week to go.

    Back to work on Wednesday and then in 5 days I’m finally off for 2 weeks – I’ve been looking forward to time off for the whole year and it is almost there. Tonight I went for a walk and the temperature outside was 18 degrees celsius – not too hot but warm enough to get a bit of a sweat while not being uncomfortable. I’m looking for the time off because I’m going to squeeze in a bit of extra exercise and see how close to the goal of under 100kg I can get – the last few kgs of reaching my eventual goal will take longer but once I get there I’ll be back to the same weight I was back in my 20s before I went to university.

    uBlock Origin Lite version 2025.1207.2142 was released today – you may find that once you update the extension you may need to wait a few minutes after opening Safari for those filters to be converted to the native content blocking filter format that the declarative net request on Safari is built upon. Safari Technology Preview 233 was released and funny enough another release candidate for the 26.2 was made available which may result in either it being released this week or pushed off until next week. It’ll be interesting to see what happens but I guess if there is great urgency they’ll push it out as soon as they feel like it is ready to go. Tomorrow will be the usual Chrome update but that could change – things get a little weird around this time of the year with people having time off to spend with family so I guess with tech companies like Google the release schedule may vary by a few days.

    The government is talking up ‘green shoots’ but there are also headwinds such as Westpac raising their interest rates with the expectation that there maybe interest rate rises next year. There is also the issue of inflation with the cost of everything going up with the National led government hoping that next year things will look a bit better so that people feel as though the policies are slowly delivering. When it comes to what the left is going to offer – it’ll be interesting to see whether we may see a Labour-NZ First coalition especially if National has privatisation back on the menu given that Labour and NZ First have a lot more in common when it comes to economic policy. Next year is going to be an interesting year for policy because as we get closer to the PREFU (Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update) we’ll see numbers being attached to policy along with new announcements particularly in the area of infrastructure.

  • A productive day today.

    After doing some shopping today I came home, watched some YouTube and then cooked the chicken and had that with some fresh bread. The chicken was ok but would have much preferred having a tandoori butterflied chicken but I guess the Manuka Honey & Rosemary butterflied chicken is good enough. After enjoying the meal I then watched some more television then went for a 11.6km walk – get back into a routine and enjoy the good weather along with the fresh air.

    uBlock Origin Lite version 2025.1207.2142 has been released – it is available on the iOS App Store however it hasn’t come to the Mac App Store year. It appears there has been some under the hood changes so I’m looking forward to seeing whether there is any noticeable performance improvement. There is an update for Apple’s platforms possibly in the next couple of days which includes Safari being updated so I’ll keep an eye on any improvements.

    Regarding how things are going with iCloud – I’ve got three domains, one for this blog and two which and different suffixes (.net and .com) which allows me to have 9 email aliases in total. So far things have been working reliably although it was funny on my laptop I had to manually add the aliases within the Mail app but on my Mac Studio when I set it up the Mail app was automatically configured during the setup and installation process. The process of selecting a suffix is relatively easy although some services may get confused and see the email as invalid if it has a suffix other than a traditional .com, .net or something country specific. Keeping that in mind, the suffix chosen can result in a variety of prices such as a .org suffix being priced different than say one ending in .io.

  • Grocery shopping all done.

    Last night I got a chicken out before I went to bed, woke up this morning, had some yoghurt and iced coffee for breakfast and headed down the road to pick up some groceries. Quite a few people down at Woolworths – I assume people getting ready for Christmas along with family getting together for BBQs to celebrate the lovely weather. I’ve got the windows open around the house to get fresh air – it looks like my two weeks off which will be starting next week. I’m tempted to run down the food I have in my cupboard over this week and then do a decent grocery shopping next week and maybe I’ll be in luck with the specials they have over the silly season.

    The buy out of Warner Bros. Discovery by Netflix will be interesting given the number of relationships that Warner Bros. Discovery have with pay television operators around the world. In the case of New Zealand, Sky TV is their exclusive partner however from what I understand that exclusivity ends in 2026 which will make for interesting watch – will Sky TV pay a premium to maintain that exclusivity or will Sky TV be all ok with Netflix offering the same Warner Bros. Discovery as what they offer. When it comes to their Linear television offerings such as CNN it appears that it isn’t part of the sale but personally if I was Netflix I’d buy the whole thing because CNN has potential to be a hard news channel like their international version and raise the bar rather than the current crop of shows that are little more than ‘he who has the loudest voice wins’.

    Although I am not a big fan of the Liquid Glass interface it does appear that there were quite a few within Apple who were not overly fond of it either (link) which makes me wonder whether we’ll see further refinement in the 26.x series and then in the 27 we’ll see a revamp of Liquid Glass where the usability issues others have raised are addressed. As for the executive leaving to work for Meta – making your software and hardware pretty isn’t going to change the fact that it is still a product/service being sold by Meta and all the creepy surveillance capitalism that goes on regarding Meta. It is amazing when executives in charge of companies convince themselves that the problem is their products, services or their corporate culture but rather it is a branding issue.

    It reminds me very much of the whole Metaverse hype and the refusal by Meta to accept that what they’re offering has very limited appeal. Second Life for example has existed since 2003 with very limited appeal – a few hundred thousand people using it at any one time pales in comparison to the hundreds of millions of people who use traditional social media. People want to use a service that has minimal friction – easy to use, doesn’t require them to do anything more than the bare minimum to use the service. This is something Microsoft learned when they tried to ram down the collective throats of Xbox end users when they force bundled Kinect while ignoring that their base were people who wanted to collapse in a bean bag with a bottle of beer, a head set and play a game shooting some bad guys online while chating with mates.