Matisyahu's Blog

Today was a quiet and uneventful day at work – nothing out of the usual, just the same customer queries along with the odd laugh. It appears that things have calmed down after having an initial flurry of action that have come about due to some changes. It’ll be interesting to see everything works out long term for the businesses bottom line with an increase in customers and whether those customers are retained for the long term because we continue to improve our product offerings.

I decided to give 1Password another try and I ran in the same issue that I had before when it came to handling the login details for Android applications not to mention the overly complex and convoluted process of logging in (a username, password and 2FA via email or SMS is too difficult?). Then there is the issue regarding of the 1Password app where I set it up to open based on the pin that I’ve setup for my phone but it kept on asking for the password – long story short, I gave up and deleted the account once again. I have a basic rule of thumb – if it requires me to put more effort into getting something to work than what I was using before then I’ll stick to what I was using before.

If you’ve been following the drama on the internet for the last few weeks there has been some comotion made about a report written by Taylor Lorenz regarding an entity named Chorus. What I thought was an interesting point made by Parkrose Permaculture that was made was how the whole situation was handled by those involved. If someone writes an article then the worst possible way to respond to to it would be to lash out and attack the writer rather than the content of the article. If there are inaccuracies then say something like “..it appears that Taylor has gotten the wrong end of the stick and that is is partially our fault because we did a bad job explaining what we were trying to do…” then using it as an opportunity to explain the ins and outs of what your organisation is all about. Long story short, if the first response is to simply attack rather than seeing it as an opportunity to provide clarification or an opportunity to revisit policies that maybe correctly reported on but given the feedback it may require changes to better reflect the organisation’s goals.

I’ve finally go the whole Microsoft 365 fiasco sorted with the subscription cancelled however I am waiting on a reply to the email I sent on Wednesday to get the account deleted since I can no longer access it. Maybe in the future I may give Microsoft 365 a third chance but at the moment I think I’m going to stick with Google Workspace given that the price is reasonable and it is easy to setup without too much drama not to mention the fact that the integration between Google Workspace and Android is a lot better than Microsoft 365 and Android but that isn’t surprising given that Google developed Android (it is rather disappointing that Microsoft gave up on the idea of having a Microsoft branded Android but instead decided to team up with Samsung instead). I guess I also bear some responsibility because I put too much trust in the Microsoft Authenticator app when I should have just stuck with a text message with Google Authenticator as a backup along with my gmail account as another back up. Oh well, maybe once I get this sorted out I’ll see what my options are. If I don’t hear back by next week I’ll phone them up and get it sorted over the phone but I’d rather avoid having to go through that maze of prompts the support line gives you resulting in immense frustration.

In more positive news, I’ve setup Authenticator (link) extension on Chrome – if you export all the 2FA in the Google Authenticator as a QR code, take a screenshot then upload it to Google Photos then capture the QR code by the extension to import it. Long story short it allows you to have 2FA without having to grab your phone every time you want to login. I have to admit, I may give 1Password or maybe Bitwarden a try later on in the year but at the moment I’m still mulling over the idea of getting a desktop.

On a side note, I am really enjoying the Surface Laptop 7 with the ARM processor – very fast and responsive and although the UI consistency could be better it is a far cry from the negative experience I had with Windows 10 and previous releases. I guess I’m at a point in my life where I’m no longer nitpicking over the minutia and focusing more on ‘does it do the job’ rather than ‘does it look nice’ and it appears that Microsoft has done a good job since the launch of Windows 11 to incrementally move the platform forward rather than massive leaps forward that cause a lot of disruption and things breaking in the process. I guess we’ll see how things work out when September’s patch Tuesday is released along with the release of Windows 11 25H2 is made available in around October/November this year. As noted in a previous post, I think that 26H2 is where a lot more of the disruptive changes will occur and in the process Microsoft will support 25H2 probably until 27H2 at which point 26H2 base will be mature and adopted by the vast majority of end users given the monthly refinements that they’ll make available.