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

  • End of the week.

    End of a long week and it couldn’t have come sooner. I clocked off from work and I decided that on my day off I’m going to have a lazy weekend with minimal effort on my part. I jumped onto Woolworths to order groceries for the coming week and then the next week so then I’m all set and not having to worry about having to go down the road then carrying a weeks worth of groceries home on the bus. When it comes to milk, I’ll pick it up from the local store which is a small walk down the road but for the big shop I go to the supermarket since it is the best value for money. The other benefit of buying it online is that it is easier to stick to a budget and a meal plan because rather than aimlessly browsing I go onto the website, add to the cart only what I need and then buy it – no temptation of picking up things ‘I might need’ but I really don’t actually need.

    Something that slipped under the radar was another build of Windows 11 26220 (link) with the ‘Proactive Memory Diagnostics’ after a crash looks particularly interesting which lines up with the announcement made a few months ago about a renewed focus on reliability, security etc. It’ll be interesting to see how providing that information to Microsoft will improve the reliability of Windows and how they will work with third parties given that I wouldn’t be surprised if a third party software is causing part of the problem then that said organisation will need to be bought into the loop to get the issue resolved. The other feature I’ve been tracking is the ‘Administrator Protection’ but at the moment there are still many things that need address such as the UI dialogue isn’t working all that great (based on a YouTube video I saw by the creator ‘Tech Based’) so I wouldn’t be surprised if it is something we may not see until 26H2 which would give Microsoft enough time to polish the feature along with getting third parties to ensure their software works as it should.

    It is funny how I’ve been using Windows 11 for 3-4 months and everything has been rock solid on my Microsoft Surface Laptop (ARM based). Although I have flirted with the idea of giving Office 365 a try what I am going to do is stay with Google Workspace since that is what I am familiar with, Android integrates with it well and the Google Drive app on Windows is actually fairly good not to mention Chrome also works well too.

  • Almost the end of the week.

    It’s almost the end of the week and I am looking to sleep in on Monday and then head down to the local dutch bakery for some egg bene and a cappuccino for brunch. I’ve been sticking to the meal routine, no snacks or eating in between meals, I’m hoping that that if I do it for a few months that eventually it becomes like muscle memory where I go through the day without having to consciously think about it. I went for a walk tonight of 11.6km and when I got home I felt good, being able to consolidate my thoughts for the day along with planing the coming week. This week I’m going to get some more of the ‘John West Salmon Bowl Soy Veges & Black Rice’ which is nice to have in the morning then followed by the chia seeds and unsweetened natural yoghurt then for dinner I’ll have a soup along with chia seeds and unsweetened natural yoghurt. They keep my pretty full and then for morning and afternoon tea I’ll have a cup of tea or flavoured cup of coffee.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s something you believe everyone should know.
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    Buying things over and above what you need isn’t going to make you happy – there is a law diminishing returns that once you have all your needs taken care of and you have a few nice things to make life move from surviving to being comfortable. It is difficult though to get off the consumerism treadmill once you’re on there – the market, the social pressure, the feeling that you’re being left behind, that you’re not sharing the same experiences that your friends are. The whole issue with marketing in many cases isn’t just about telling you the product exists but making promises that a need you didn’t know existed needs to be addressed or promises of addressing some abstract notion of ‘peace of mind’ through the purchase of a given good or service.

    I have to admit that getting off the treadmill can be hard given that I’ve been working on that myself where I like the novelty of having something new to to play with but I’m training myself to stand back, take a deep breath and ask myself “do I really need that or is it something I’m going to later regret once I get it?”. I’m getting myself in a habit of now avoiding doom scrolling, well, I guess it is more ‘window shopping’ online because I find that it ends up being an example of induce demand for things I wouldn’t have otherwise been interested in. The other thing is to ‘sleep on it’ and the next day after having a good night sleep I realise that I may still want it but it isn’t urgent so I’ll wait until I find I actually need it.

    A good example is that I am looking at getting a desktop computer but I’m holding off because mainly I am waiting to see the M5 refresh Apple will carry out for their Mac range but also the fact that my laptop pretty does everything I want at the moment. When it comes to the desktop there is also looking at getting a new more comfortable chair and maybe a new desk as well so when I do that it’ll be probably next year. I guess this is where procrastination comes in handy, I end up procrastinating my way to not spending money on something.

  • Another day, another dollar.

    I’m happily relaxing after a busy day and the day started off well with confirmation that I’ve got 5 December off for my work Christmas party which avoids me having to finish late on Thursday, wake up early on Friday after barely having a decent night sleep and then by the time the party comes around I’m more or less a zombie. Then I think closed to a week and a bit later I’ve got two weeks off over Christmas where I can relax and hang out with the family along with enjoying my summer. Next year though I am looking at having a week off in the first couple of weeks in June where I can spend time watching WWDC and seeing what the future has in store for the Apple ecosystem.

    The product refresh in October was a bit of a let down but if history is anything to go by we might see a refresh of the Mac mini maybe in November and then maybe the MacBook Air in around March next year. I was a bit disappointed that they hadn’t adopted the WiFi 7 standard yet but then again 6E is good enough for most end users so maybe that is the reason why there isn’t the pressure to update the WiFi chip in the MacBook Pro but then again that could change with a refresh of other Mac devices.

    Ubiquiti has released an early release of UniFi Gateway software version 4.4.5 – it makes me wonder whether they’re slowly bringing UniFi Gateway software into sync with the rest of the product family. There was also an early release update available for the U7 access point which addresses a MLO issue (keeping in mind that MLO is still in early access) which makes me wonder whether we’ll see an increasing focus being made on getting MLO out of being an early access feature to something that can be considered stable enough for wide spread mainstream adoption. For me, I find that the availability of 6GHz and 5GHz already does a pretty good in terms of bandwidth available along with the connection being pretty stable.

    Microsoft Edge had an update in the morning when I got up which updated it from Version 141.0.3537.92 to Version 141.0.3537.99 – installed the update and everything is working well. It is funny how just a few years ago back in the days of WIndows 10 that Microsoft put a lot of effort into their own EdgeHTML engine but quickly realised that addressing the laundry list of compatibility issues, both what they can control and websites that would break with EdgeHTML (but funny enough the website would work if you changed the user agent to Chrome), was a losing battle so it wasn’t surprising that they embraced Chromium given that there were very few advantages spending so much resources that could be better spent on building upon Chromium the integration into Microsoft services and improving those services particularly for their paying customers.

    Daily writing prompt
    What is your favorite form of physical exercise?
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    My favourite form of physical exercise is the 11.6km walk I go for every night. It takes around 1 hour and 50 minutes but the main focus isn’t burning calories but it is about getting out of the house after work, being able to have a look around the neighbourhood to see any changes that are taking place as well as mentally unwinding from having to deal with customers – many of whom seem to schedule a time to ring us up because they’re lonely and want someone to talk to.

  • Raining and crazy weather.

    It has been another horrible day today so I decided to take the night off. I had a good day at work, stuck to my meal plan for today and counting my calories and with that I have really come to enjoy a mug of Earl Grey tea to warm me up when working at home. I didn’t think I would use it as much as I have but the kettle and toaster combo that I purchased from Noel Leeming a while ago definitely has come in handy. I am however looking at maybe getting a George Foreman grill which will be grate for things such as the lamb burger patties I like – the sandwich press is a bit of a nightmare to clean afterwards but the George Foreman grill will be easier to clean due to the fact that it isn’t flat and the fat drips down into a tray while it is cooking plus the surface area is sufficient to cook a couple of patties.

    Over on the Windows Insider blog there appears to be more further refinements which will make for an interesting early Christmas present when it arrives. It makes me wonder what is happening with the whole 26220 build series whether that is just a staging area for those features to be backported to 26200 or whether 26220 will become an optional feature install while the 26200 remains as a stable point which will receive security updates and maybe new features but on a slower schedule.

    At the moment I am writing up a blog post about what is happening on the right after the fall out from the ‘Young Republican’ leaked messages and how various influencers on the right have responded to it – debates regarding how big the tent should be and what the minimum requirement should be to be considered as part of the conservative movement and what views are so beyond the pale that it puts you outside of the conservative movement. At some point you have to stand for something, have some sort of philosophical world view that binds together the party membership or otherwise the Republican Party are merely a collection of individuals who like elephants and the colour red which is certainly no basis on which to form a political party.

  • A good first day.

    A good first day to the reboot of my routine – I had my breakfast with the chia seed and unsweetened yoghurt and funny enough I didn’t miss the sweetness. I have a feeling that if I do it for a few weeks it’ll become the ‘new normal’ as it is embedded into my daily routine. I am tempted next week to pick up some eggs which can be a light meal if I am feeling hungry – throw in some vegetables along with some grated cheese which is an easy way to get protein and vegetables into ones diet.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2025.1019.1656 has finally appeared in the Chrome store and it has updated both of my profiles (Google Workspace and Gmail dot com account) – both are working great and doing a good job at blocking content. As I’ve said in the past, I was sceptical at first regarding whether the MV3/DNR work get to the level of content blocking that their MV2 extension did but I’ve been happily proven wrong. AdGuard for Safari appears to be getting a bit of an overhaul with the announcement that they’re dropping support for macOS 11 and older. It’ll be interesting to see whether they will make use of the native content blocking API as part of macOS or whether they’ll bring their AdGuard for Safari codebase inline with the MV3 version they have available for Chrome which would reduce the amount of duplication taking place but then again it would mean dropping support for versions of macOS that don’t support Safari 18.6 or greater.

    I’ve been watching some more videos regarding Panther Lake and the one thing I did find particularly interesting was in this video:

    The Part that was interesting is the Darkmont efficiency cores where the same architecture is used for the E-Cores and the LP E-Cores which makes me wonder whether the rumour of Intel going back to a single architecture based around their E-Core architecture is actually true given that it appears they’ve spent a lot of time on improving the E-Core architecture so that rather than starting at the P-Core it appears the goal is to start processes on the LP E-Core and then move up from there when required so that the E-Core is as efficient as possible so that most of the time processes stay on that and the P-Core is only fired up when there really is a task so demanding it needs to moved to the P-Core.

    For me, I’m interested in seeing the advances made by the x86 advisory group and how quick both AMD and Intel adopt the agreed upon standards so then developers aren’t stuck in this situation of “well, I’d love to support feature x but it isn’t widely adopted” resulting in improvings taking ages to be adopted and putting the x86 platform at a disadvantage when compared to the advances that ARM are making. There are four standards that both Intel and AMD have agreed upon (link) however there is no time line in terms of when they’ll be adopted but I’m guessing it may not be until maybe Nova Lake or when there is the rumoured unified architecture which would kind of make sense if the existing architecture is the ‘end of the road’ for their whole E-Core and P-Core being different architectures.

    Daily writing prompt
    What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?
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    There were three careers I was looking at before I started working where I am. The first one was being a baking apprenticeship however I couldn’t find a business offering them. The second was to be a chef but like the baking apprenticeship there were no businesses around offering them. The third one was being a high school teacher however the requirement is that you have to have two papers (level 200 and level 300) in teachable subjects. Yeah, I know it is rather silly given that a Degree in Religious Studies and Philosophy should allow me to teach any humanities subject like history, social studies, geography etc. but alas those are the requirements. The only other option is maybe teaching at intermediate or primary school – if push came to shove I’d be ok with teaching intermediate kids but I don’t want to deal with kids younger than 12-13 years old because then I’ve gone from being a teacher to being a baby sitter.

  • Another weekend ended too quickly.

    Back to work on Wednesday – the weekend always ends up finishing too soon but on the good side I did go grocery shopping and this week I decided to get unsweetened natural yoghurt to go with the chia seed breakfast along with some easy meals for lunch. Oh, and one thing I remembered to pick up was some Earl Grey tea for morning tea and afternoon tea. For dinner tonight I had some honey soy chicken kebabs, asparagus with hollandaise sauce and a Greek inspired salad. That was a tasty dinner and I had that along with a sticky date pudding I picked up at the supermarket.

    Tomorrow I’m getting back on track with my life – meals have been prepared, going to get a good night sleep by going to bed earlier and what I might end up doing is waking up early so that when I start work I’m fully awake rather than just waking up. I also think that having a good night sleep will help not be as hungry during the day – I tend to feel hungrier when I don’t get a good night sleep so that along with a focus on foods with protein and fibre will help me curb my appetite.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2025.1019.1656 was released – it is now available on Microsoft Edge and Mac App store however as of typing this blog post it hasn’t appeared in the Chrome store yet (it can take 2-3 days for it to be approved by the powers that be over at Google). I’ve been jumping between Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome with the one thing I have noticed is that when I put my laptop to sleep that Microsoft Edge appears to recover to a usable state better than Chrome which sometimes the network connection fails to wake up resulting in a page failing to load (thus forcing one to exit the app then load it again). I’ve gotten into a habit of quitting Chrome before I close my laptop lid ideally it isn’t something I should have to worry about given that Chrome on macOS is able to handle going to sleep without a problem.

    Microsoft released an update for the October update that fixed up a few bugs that were found after the update was released. It was a quick download but took a fair amount of time to install it. I’m unsure why it took the amount of time it did but upon reboot everything continued working as expected. On Wednesday there will be an update to Chrome but it’ll be part of version 141 with 142 being released next week – assuming no delays caused by show stopper bugs. Edge received an update on Tuesday from Version 141.0.3537.85 to Version 141.0.3537.92 – I’m unsure what the update includes but I have a feeling it is the same fixes that were included with Chrome being updated to Version 141.0.7390.108.

    I keep coming back to Microsoft Edge because the spell checking and grammar checking are really good – it is something that Microsoft does a whole lot better than Google. I also noticed that the spell checking in particular is more reliable on Microsoft Edge where as on Chrome it’ll randomly stop checking the spelling for no particular reason. The other benefit is that on Android it supports extensions such as uBlock Origin Lite but given the talk about Android coming to the desktop and laptops I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up seeing extensions officially supported on Chrome for Android.

    Daily writing prompt
    What food would you say is your specialty?
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    My specialty meal I like cooking is a roast lamb along with lots of roast vegetables and gravy – if I am feeling a little frisky I’ll buy some Yorkshire puddings from the supermarket which can be heated up in the oven in the last couple of 10 minutes of cooking (so then it all comes out at the same time). Although I do like roast potatoes I prefer kumara, New Zealand yams, pumpkin, parsnips, a whole glove of garlic and a whole onion – a good selection of roast vegetables are always nice. I especially like it during winter when the weather is lousy and it has been a long day running errands then coming home to a comforting meal. If I don’t have a lamb roast ready then the next best thing is a butterflied chicken that is marinated in tandoori seasoning.

  • A relaxing day at home.

    I spent today at home relaxing then headed down to the supermarket to pick up a few odd bits and pieces. I arrived back home and watched some YouTube videos but I saw that Google Streamer received an update so while that was downloading and installing I meal prepped my chia seeds breakfast but what I’ve done is put 185ml of water rather than 125ml because the psyllium husk needs additional water because without the extra water it almost turns to a firm jelly. It is now sitting in the fringe ready for the next couple of days. On Tuesday I’ve got dinner with mum along with picking up some additional stuff from the supermarket – milk, maybe some yoghurt, a few bottles of Pepsi Max since it is on special.

    Daily writing prompt
    What major historical events do you remember?
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    I remember when 11 September 2001, I was laying in bed listening to talk back ZB on the radio as I was drifting off to sleep then suddenly there was a new bulletin that interrupted the show. The announcement was made regarding the terrorist attack so I went out to the lounge room to turn on the television then switch to CNN covering the events as they were unfolding. It was a very scary time and the next few years even more scary as governments around the world used it as an opportunity to infringe on peoples rights. expand the scope of surveillance that the state had, bad political players using it as a pretense to carry out geopolitical engineering that they had wanted to do for decades.

    It is something that many younger millennials and gen z don’t seem to grasp which was the importance of Obama being elected, the rise of social media with the sense that the world had become smaller because of a feeling that connections could be made across the globe. There was also a feeling of optimism that after having 8 years of George W Bush, neoconservatives and so-called compassionate conservatism, the divisiveness perpetuated by Republicans that any person who questions opposed the war in Iraq and/or Afghanistan was accused of hating freedom. I think for many liberals they saw this as a new generation of liberals coming through – the unfortunate thing is that 8 years after Obama became president it felt with the election of Trump that for the 5 steps forward that too place under Obama that under Trump it was 10 steps back and under the reelection of Trump in 2024 the very little gain that was made under Biden was wiped out and the US has gone even further back.

    Unfortunately the forces of reactionary politics have taken root and the centrists/liberal forces have convinced themselves that the solution is some sort of technocratic answer when in reality what is required is a robust left wing vision. That robust left wing vision needs to first recognise that there are large swaths of the population feeling marginalised but also politicians also need to push back at the culture war nonsense put out by the right by pointing out that these culture wars are distractions for the fact that it has been right wing policies that got them to this situation in the first place. The reality is that if the right wing had to run on their actual economic record and their actual policies rather than having culture wars as a distraction then very few people would actually vote for them except for the rich and those who convince themselves that they’re temporarily embarrassed capitalists who are waiting for their windfall to come in.

  • A reboot and a restart for a new week.

    Today I finally replaced my current bed with a new bed and bed side tables along with cleaning the whole house from top to bottom – cleaning every skirting board, hoovering all the floors, wiping down the window ledges etc. I also took my mattress outside in the fresh air and sun that was out during the day along with cleaning all the sheets, airing the duvet resulting in the whole house having a fresh smell after having been closed up all winter dealing with the lousy weather. Tomorrow I’m going to get back into the swing of things with a walk, organisation of meals for the coming week and generally feeling good that the week has wrapped up nicely.

    It is interesting hearing the speculation in the media regarding the leadership of the National Party (and in turn prime ministership) given the current economic situation New Zealand find themselves in. I think it was mentioned this week on ‘The Bradbury Group’ that if there is anyone who maybe interested in the top job they probably going to wait for the fallout of the election next year before they make their move – let Chris Luxon take the loss and then go for the top job with the benefit of of the election loss giving the new leader the power to shape the policy direction going forward.

    With all that being said, I would be careful about speculating when it comes to the media claiming that a particular party is doomed especially given that the media tend to engage in behaviour of stirring up drama where no drama exists simply to get more clicks. It is very rare for a government to be a one term government – they would have to massively screw up things to the point that even those who swing vote but aren’t strong Labour Party voters may even decide that the promises being offered to ‘complete the job’ and blaming the last government aren’t going to win them back. It reminds me of an interview with John Howard regarding Anthony Albanese being voted in for a second term that generally Australians like to give someone a fair go – I’d say that is pretty close to the same sort of logic we see in New Zealand given how similar Aussies and Kiwis are in terms of their political temperament.

    I think I may have mentioned in the past but given how they had invited George Osborne to give a speech at the National Party retreat – yes, the same George Osborne who was the architect of the UK austerity programme, the plan for National was simple: austerity at home, export lead recovery and then after 2 years of tough going the government books would be closed to fixed up and then some additional spending to win the election. Long story short it sounded like a good plan assuming that no crazies got into the Whitehouse and the rules based order regarding trade would remain intact.

    The problem is that situation had changed but rather than National going “the assumptions we built the plan around have changed, we better change to meet those new circumstances” they instead kept charging forward as if nothing had changed. The big question is where NZ First is going to land because a portion of their base are those who are socially conservative but economically centre left – do they keep their wagon hitched to the National coalition? then there is the left with the infighting with great policies being undermined by drama and family members behaving like idiots which distract from what the focus should be on which is offering an alternative vision to the current government.

    The risk that exists is if things become too uncertain then National may play to the argument of not changing horses in midstream (which is the same argument George W Bush gave when running for a second term), point to the infighting and chaos on the left and go “we’re in uncertain times, do you want these clowns running the country?”. Then add to that the legacy of 6 years where great promises were made but little of those promises delivered I can’t but get the feeling that such a legacy may very much be in the mind of voters unless some how Labour can demonstrate that when they talk a good game that they actually deliver on it.

  • The week feels a lot longer than it should.

    Ever have one of those weeks where you feel as though the week feels as though it has dragged on for a lot longer than it should. Final day of the week tomorrow and I’ll feel all the better once it is all over and I can have a good rest – customer service may not being physically exhausting but it sure as hell mentally exhausting hearing the same people lacking in self awareness using me as an emotional sound board because they decided it is my fault that they didn’t educate themselves before making a decision.

    Tonight I felt like a treat so I ordered some mexican food – I always feel good after having some mexican food with the fresh salads that you don’t feel bloated after having dinner yet feeling satisfied. I’m waiting for that to get delivered which will be nice to have while watching Real Time with Bill Maher (it’s more about the guests than Bill Maher although like a broken clock he is correct two times a day). I then went for a 11.6km walk and when I came back it felt pretty good – the feeling of accomplishing something for the day after being inside tapping away at the keyboard.

    One video I was watching on YouTube was in regards to the avalanche of ‘tech dude bros’ on YouTube engaging in the same sort of pseudoscience that you see gym bros, ‘wellness influencers’, and audiophile types engage where they convince themselves that a $3000 speaker cable has a noticeable improvement in sound output or some supplement has boosted their recovery. If you jump to 40:40 in the following video (link) regarding the whole pseudoscience regarding people tweaking but having no idea what they’re doing which is right up there with people who muck around with their installation of Windows then act surprised when the whole system becomes unstable.

    Now, don’t get me wrong, many years ago back when my parents had a Pentium 75 I overclocked the CPU to 100MHz then pulled it back to 90MHz because it was unstable – back then I was trying to get BeOS to work at a reasonable level of responsiveness (I had sufficient memory, the CPU speed held it back). The one thing to keep in mind back then that the overclocking had noticeable benefits where as these days, as noted by many in the comment section of the above video, the CPUs being shipped are already very close to their maximum performance when they leave the factory. Could one win the silicon lottery and get one that one can overclock without hitting stability issues? sure but that is the exception rather than the rule. The reality is that if there is any sort of extra headroom then that CPU would have been put in a higher category to be able to sell at a higher price. It is always funny to see when lay people convince themselves that they know something that engineers don’t know – like the almond mum who convinces themselves that they know more about health than someone who has had formal training and years of experience in that field.

    On Sunday I’m going to have another look at GMKtec – I’m looking at getting the AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ 395 –EVO-X2 AI Mini PC. The dollar is fluctuating so I may as well lockin the price when I can and then head down to my local store to pick up a monitor and keyboard.

  • Friday night off.

    Finished work tonight and then picked up a couple sandwiches from service station down the road – egg sandwich and a cheese/onion sandwich. I needed something comforting with the weather a big windy and cold outside. I also decided to have a quiet night in for the night and watch some YouTube videos, television episodes and reading some news. I then completed the Connections and Wordle puzzle for the day – I was able to complete both of them although it is annoying when outlets understand that they’re on a global platform yet make their puzzles so US centric in terms of the words being chosen for the Connections puzzle.

    Funny enough, I noticed a notification in the notification area on Windows and it appears that the Windows Update fairy paid me a visit and I was able to update to Windows 11 25H2 which updated the OS build to 26200.6899. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Windows 11 26220 and when that’ll be made available – will the make that an optional update for those who want it while everyone else can stick with 26200? The main thing I am looking for the Administrator Protection to be made available (at the moment it is available as an opt in on Windows 11 26220).

    On a side note, I installed the update and I didn’t notice anything major so I guess most of the changes must have already been enabled. The one thing I did notice however was before I installed the update Microsoft Edge said it was up to date and on reboot I checked for updates again and it updated itself to version 141.0.3537.85 so maybe there was something that was needed to be enabled in 25H2 before the update could go ahead? Unsure as to the reason but it’s all up to date now which is the main thing.

    On a side note, I have a seperate profile on Chrome to test out extensions before using them on my main profile – see whether they’re worth making the investment. I’ve been following AdGuard and it has been going pretty good with the weird freeze occuring on some website is no longer a problem and a strange slow down also not appearing these days. At the moment I use uBlock Origin Lite for for main Google Workspace profile and my Gmail profile although it would be nice if there was some way to synchronise the settings to the cloud and automatically keep things in sync but I guess the next best thing is downloading the json settings file to my Google drive and do it that way (or in the case of Microsoft Edge to back it up to the Microsoft OneDrive).