Matisyahu's Blog

I mentioned earlier about adding a declarative net request filter for websites that you want to allow ads on – I’ve just realised that I made it a whole lot more complex than it is meant to be but I had a good reason. Normally when you click on the extension icon in the toolbar and then click on the slide or the ‘turn off’ button that tends to be a universal setting so if you set it to ‘no filtering’ then it would apply to all websites you visit however in uBlock Origin Lite when you select ‘no filtering’ that is only specific to that particular website and that setting is saved in the develop area under filtering mode details where the website is added under the no filtering section. So after going through all that work manually creating declarative net request filters I realised I could just add the websites – I’ve since corrected the mistakes and things are working wonderfully. The added benefit of setting up the allow list properly is that the icon displays accurate information regarding whether there is filter and what has been blocked.

I’ve been following the recent events regarding Israel, Iran and the United States – the biggest problem is the hubris of those involved convincing themselves that they have more control over the events taking place. Anyone who knows anything about history knows how quickly something can spiral out of control, where those involved have convinced themselves that they have more control over the situation than they do, that they have an understanding of the variables or as George WIlls noted regarding the neo-conservatives, convinced themselves that the power and influence of the United States is actually more powerful than it actually is in reality. Then combine that with the ego of Trump desperately looking for the approval, to either look up to a father figure or appear to be powerful so he has the illusion he has more control over the situation than he really does, then the neoconservatives probably convincing some in power that “one more war and we’ll finally be able to get out of the middle east”. Power plays and vying for influence – for all of faults that Democrats have at least they’ve never put someone like Trump in the Whitehouse and the question is whether the American people need to hit rock bottom before things change given that large parts of the world are already planning for a post-US world.

It is interesting how Nothing Phone 3a has come to New Zealand via 2 Degrees Mobile which will make the Pixel 10 launch be particularly interesting to see whether it comes to New Zealand in some official capacity or whether I’ll go through Mighty Ape (which is owned by Kogan). Now that roaming is officially supported in New Zealand (funny enough for VoLTE Spark has noted that the Pixel 9 is supported on the Spark network – indication sometime in the future they maybe the Google launch network?) meaning when 3G is turned off that VoLTE will work, it’ll be interesting to see how things go. OpenMTP does a pretty good job for synchronisation but long term if I eventually move to Linux then I’ll get the benefit of all the work the libmtp project does along with how things are improving when it comes to hardware support I could imagine myself maybe in the next couple of years running Fedora on a Dell laptop and a Dell desktop (or one I assembled myself).