Matisyahu's Blog

I’m finally going to be organised and actually have a grocery list rather than popping down to the local supermarket and hoping that I remember all the things I need to purchase. I’ve also finally started making use of the bag of chia seeds that I purchased – one of those things I purchased as an impulse buy but never really got around to using it because I couldn’t think of where I could use it. Today I finally made use of the chia seeds by putting them into a small bowl (15ml spoon) then I put in 120ml of water then let it soaked for a few hours as it turned into a jelly like consistency – I’ll be buying some Greek yoghurt where I’ll stir it in. Long story short, I’m expanding my repertoire of food I can choose from by investigating things that are healthy but never tried before – the variety making things not as boring knowing that I don’t have an excuse when it comes to options when I am hungry and want something to eat.

I’ve been following what is happening and I really do feel for those who have been laid off from their job at Intel – the layoffs aren’t just a few here and there, not replacing people when they leave but rather huge reduction in their head count from 108,900 down to 75,000. It appears that after years of share buybacks rather than investing into maintaining its manufacturing and product lead it has come back to bite them in the backside (just as we’ve seen with Boeing and before that the financialisation of GE which has resulted in it being broken up). There appears to be a lot of scaling back of new fabs, focusing on working towards a unified architecture rather than three different core types which is adding complexity and cost, rationalising non-core parts of the business and whether it is worth spending money in areas where Intel has no chance of either matching or beating the market leader plus more.

I really do hope that Intel turn the ship around because the consumer benefits when there is robust competition not only between Intel and AMD but also when there is robust competition between the fabs run by TSMC, Samsung and Intel resulting in more efficient chips, greater performance etc. I mentioned in a previous post that Intel is working on creating a unified core however it’ll be interesting to see whether we see it being bought forward given that it wasn’t scheduled (based on the rumours) until around 2028-29. What will also be interesting is to see whether Intel spin off their fab to create a joint venture with either Samsung or TSMC and in return the new joint venture will have a secure customer for a set period of time in much the same way that AMD had an arrangement with Globalfoundries when they spun off their fab business.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the Microsoft Surface Laptop line have been on special more frequently so that could possibly be an indication that Microsoft are wanting to work thtough the stock they have before they do their refresh of their Surface Laptop line up when the new ARM SoCs from Qualcomm are announced. What will also be interesting would be to see what happens with the nVidia based SoC regarding Microsoft adding support to it in Windows 11 25H2 and when it comes to APX support whether Microsoft has some prerelease hardware that they’re testing on so that the release of Windows 11 25H2 has APX support.

I’ve been following the latest beta releases of Apple’s next platforms – I have to admit, the excitement that I would have in the past has pretty much evaporated where as the obsession with AI by most of silicon valley has resulted in the oxygen being sucked out of the room resulting in other priorities that need addressing being neglected (see my never ending moaning about Safari). Safari Technology Preview 224 has been released (link) with a modest list of bug fixes and improvements but appears that there is still a long way to go to getting bugs in the declarative net request implementation sorted out. I really want to be optimistic about the next release of Safari I also have to be realistic having been let down on a near constant basis.

Chrome 139 will be stable in a couple of days then a week after that it’ll be made available for mainstream availability (link). Hopefully by either Monday or Tuesday the uBlock Origin Lite release will be available – I’m not completely up with the play but it appears recent changes should result in an improved content blocking experience based on how they’ve ‘Merge all :style() filters with procedural filters’ plus a few other bug fixes. I’m also keeping an eye on AdGuard as well – competition is always good so it’ll be interesting to see whether the AdGuard team is working on AdGuard for the next version of Safari – making use of declarative net request rather than the native content blocking API.