I’m heading into the office on Tuesday to start work at 12:30 pm so I’ll grab the train at 11:41 am and will be in there by around 12:05 pm which will give me enough time to grab a coffee, set up my laptop and be ready to start work. I’ve got the day off on Wednesday and I’ll have a relaxing day without any chores to be done around the house which will leave me ready to get back to work on Thursday. Tonight I had dinner with mum – we picked up some gardening equipment from Mitre 10 then stopped by the supermarket to pick up some salmon for dinner plus my weekly shopping. While I was there I checked to see whether all her computers were up to date – for some unknown reason Chrome OS will download the update but won’t update itself while the laptop is sleeping. The Windows computer was all up to date but something I did notice that Windows Explorer was a lot more responsive – probably due to the performance boost I’ve heard people talking about online.
On Wednesday there is the scheduled release of Chrome 157 which will make for interesting testing and there is also a rumour that the 27.3 beta testing will start making their way out to developers. Rumour has it that 27.3 will be released in the first half of December but I wouldn’t put too much stock in rumours until the beta notes are made available and we get to see the scope of what will be coming in the update – will it be a modest release in the case of 27.2 or will we see some major feature additions particularly seeing improvements moving from the Safari Technology Preview to the main release. It’ll be interesting to see how close they will get to having their mainstream Safari release pass as many of the Web Platform Tests as possible.
There appears to be a good amount of work being done regarding setting up the foundations for the offscreen API support. In Safari Technology Preview 253 the skeleton had been added but they’re gradually adding functionality to it. I don’t think it’ll be something we’ll see overnight given that the implementation appears to be touching many parts of the Webkit stack but it is good to see that work is being done. As much as I whinge, whine and complain about Safari, I am also aware that the alternative is Android on the phone with Chrome which doesn’t allow web extensions at all. I also like to follow what Firefox is doing but I’m disappointed by their lack of OTP support as part of their password manager – if they enabled that then it would bring their password manager into feature parity with the password manager included with macOS, iOS, iPadOS etc.
Haley Stevens has come out to endorse the Republican candidate in the Michigan senate federal election (link). As someone who follows American politics (not because I want to but because I have to – the US does something stupid and then the rest of the world has to deal with the fallout), I never want to hear a single centrist Democrat ever again say ‘vote blue no matter who’ if you’re not willing to walk the talk. There has been a constant refrain coming from centrists that ‘in the primaries you back who you want to but when the general election you fall in line and vote blue no matter who’ which is a fair enough statement to make until you realise that Democratic centrists don’t do that. Does anyone remember ‘Clinton voters for McCain’ and ‘Party Unity My Ass’ (PUMA) because they were sore about Obama winning the 2008 primary? Either you believe the Republicans are an existential threat to democracy or what you’re really telling the world is that you agree with Republican policy but you’d prefer it if it were done with more decorum and with you preferable in charge. Centrists once again showing that it is performance not substance that shapes their politics – wanting to be in charge because of the pleasure that power gives them rather than using that power to do something useful.
Getting back to the elections in New Zealand, no matter what the outcomes of the election the next few years are going to be rough going. The reason for it being rough going is because we’ve finally had the housing correction that had been put off for almost two decades and now it is time to build a real economy rather than ‘housing market with bits tacked on’ as Bernard Hickey a noted in his many writings, media apperances and podcast. After many years of neglecting the job of building a productive economy we’re now having to face reality with the big question being how we build that economy – on the right there is the ideology of minimal intervention with a focus around settings vs on the left where the government takes a more of a ‘hands on’ role. I’ve voted back when early voting started – remember to get out there and make your voice heard because regardless of who you vote for it is important that you participate in the democratic process.
If you had a free round-trip ticket to anywhere, where would you go?
View all responses
I’m a bit of a history buff so it would be difficult to narrow it down to on specific country or a specific region. Part of me would love to travel through the countries that made up the former Roman Empire then there is the Ottoman Empire and how centuries of living under their rule shaped the various peoples lives. I’ve also would love to take the train journey that goes from Moscow to Beijing – being able to watch the scenery change while enjoying the epic journey which would last 6 days going over multiple time zones and continents. A lot of these journeys would be impossible to do at the moment due to the unstable nature of the world but maybe one day things will settle down and I’ll be able to fulfill some of my dream travel.
