I’m feeling a lot better after having a couple of days off – I went for a walk tonight to get some fresh air and have come home, had a shower and now in bed with the heater going with the temperature outside being 3 degrees celsius (but according to the Metservice it feels closer to 0 degrees celsius). Hopefully the winter weather isn’t going to last too long but knowing my luck when Spring then Summer comes along I’ll be complaining about the hot weather while having the fan running in my bedroom overnight.
I checked out Ubiquiti release forums and they’ve released an early access of UniFi Gateways 4.3.0 (the gateways from Ubiquiti that don’t include UniFi Network Application built in but require either the Cloud Key or use of the subscription based cloud service) along with an early access build of firmware for the UniFi Access Point (all U7 and E7 models) but it appears that MLO hasn’t stabilised but then again I don’t see it as a major issue due to the fact that I have my 2.4GHz setup with its own network name and then the 5Ghz and 6Ghz are sharing the same network name thus leaving it up to the magic of technology to decide which frequency the device will connect using. When will it be released? I guess it depends on the feedback that the Ubiquiti engineers get from the early access participants and if it turns out to be stable enough to graduate to a release candidate it’ll be seen in the main part of the release forum and normally a week after that it is released as being stable with it being made available in a gradual roll out.
I woke up this morning, sore throat, headache and generally feeling lousy so I decided it would be best to take the day off and spend time recuperating. It’s probably a combination of the bad weather and having a couple of nights of broken sleep resulting in a weakened immune system because my body hasn’t rested enough. I’ll be relaxing at home, in the evening I’ll get some light exercise and I’ll focus on eating a good amount of vegetables and healthy food to get my body in good shape – I’ll need to see how it all turns out before making a decision to go back to work on Friday because I don’t want to promise then find out that I cannot turn up on the day resulting in problems for the team having planned on me turning up on the day.
The some details of the Google Pixel 10 have already been leaked but rather than trying to deny it, as other companies would, Google instead have embraced it by acknowledging some of the details (link) – the full details however will be found out on 20 August 2025 (funny enough, a month later there is the usual iPhone launch event where there will also be an announcement for the release date of macOS 26 with iOS 26 normally being released a week after the iPhone event).
It’ll be interesting to see whether the number of countries supported will be expanded – I understand that Google don’t want to step on the toes of their close partner (Samsung) but one could argue that if the people who buy the Pixel phone vs buying Samsung were a venn diagram that there would be very little overlap given that many who are go for a Samsung phone are very much invested into the broader Samsung ecosystem vs. the Pixel who are invested in the Google ecosystem (for me, I use Samsung ecosystem for the management of devices such as the Arlo security cameras (which is broken on the Google Home app when used in conjunction with a Google Workspace account), bluetooth headphones etc with Google Workspace being used for email, cloud computing etc). The longer I use the Samsung the more I see why people choose the Samsung ecosystem – it may not have the completeness of iCloud or Google Workspace but it does a good job complimenting those services without too much overlap.
There is a new beta of uBlock Origin Lite which includes a few changes (link), will be interesting to see if those changes translate to improved performance by simplifying the way in which filters are applied. The beta also includes a beta for Safari but keep in mind that you’ll need to be running either the Safari Technology Preview or the beta release of macOS due to bugs still present in the current Safari included with macOS 15.5.
Well, it was payday today – paid all the bills and then cried over what was left over but I am reminded it could be a whole lot worse. I’m having a browse through Woolworths and still deciding whether I should order a few things or just have unexciting meals for the next few days until I’m totally finished all that I have in the freezer and cupboards to then do a fresh order from Woolworths and get it delivered rather than trying to juggle multiple bags.
The update to Chrome was released which updated it from 138.0.7204.158 to 138.0.7204.169 – I ended up receiving the update for. my phone pretty quickly to along with the July Google Play Services was also updated as well. They were released pretty quickly which is a good indicator that there must have been some serious fixes they needed to get out to end users asap (link) (link) – so far everything is going well and Chrome 139 will be marked as stable and then released to the general public the following week.
Funny how yesterday I was talking about the beta 4 release and it was released today – reports have been they’re still making changings to the liquid glass, trying to fine tune the right balance between the vision they announced while also ensuring that legibility is maintained. There are also reports that debugging code has been either removed or minimalised in preparation of the public beta that’ll be released to the general public.and Safari Technology Preview 224 should be getting released in the next few days so it’ll be interesting to see what improvements have been made and whether those are going to make their way into the Safari that comes with macOS and iOS 26 or whether they’ll be tagged for the first or maybe second 26.x software updates.
I’m still folowing the Windows 11 development and it appears that the Administrator Protection maybe coming to Windows 11 25H2 but the big question is whether it’ll be enabled by default or whether it’ll be something that you’ll need to opt into. They may make it opt in because like UAC it will depend on developers updating their software so that it can operate at the lowest possible privilege rather than assuming that the user has administrator privileges. It appears that Microsoft’s focus on resilience maybe more than just a promise (anyone remember ‘secure computer’ from almost 20 years ago?) but as I’ve said on technology forum I visit, the litmus test will be when they’re confronted between either fixing a problem properly but breaking compatibility or making a half-assed fix for the sake of compatibility, it comes down to which side they’ll land on. I’d like to be optimistic and say they’ll break compatibility if it means fixing a problem and securing the operating system but past experience tells me that Microsoft values backwards compatibility even if it comes at the expense of security, stability and reliability.
On the topic of MIcrosoft, it would be nice if Microsoft didn’t create an artificial distinction between their business and consumer cloud offerings such as the inability to link the Samsung Gallery to a business OneDrive account for reasons unknown. I say this because I’d be very much open to the idea of using Office 365 for business if it worked like a consumer account. This is the same silliness when it comes to not being able to use a work account with an XBox but what happens if the business has a place where people relax and the business wishes to buy movies or games so employees can enjoy it on a break (while being able to manage it from a single administration area rather than having to create and maintain a seperate consumer account)? I’ve never understood why some software companies trying to draw an artificial line of demarcation between ‘work’ and consumer’.
Back to work on Wednesday but tonight I went for a walk – the weather was marginally warmer and I really felt the need to get some exercise after having not done it for a couple of days. On Monday I picked up some milk and a few bottles of Pepsi Max but I kept it a small shop because I’m gradually working through the stock I already have – I’ve got some tinned tuna, meals I can heat up in the microwave and in the freezer I’ve got 2 x 500g mince that’ll I’ll cook up on my day off and add the tinned seasoned tomatoes to add some flavour (the steak seasoning that masterfoods has pretty much got the same taste as the Old El Paso seasoning packets have). I might end up grabbing some sour cream and corn chips but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.
Apple has released a release candidates for the current release of macOS, iOS etc. which indicates that as long as there aren’t any showstopper bugs then we may either see it released towards the end of this year or possible next week on Tuesday NZ time at the earliest. Whether it is released sooner isn’t just based on whether a shopstopper bug appears but also the urgency of the update – Google sometimes push our Chrome updates a day early if there are some serious security bugs that cannot wait to be fixed because there are active exploits out there. The latest version of the Safari Technology Preview 223 is working well with uBlock Origin Lite which is available in TestFlight but I haven’t seen whether the declarative net request bugs present in Safari 18.5 have been fixed in in 18.6 since what appears in the Safari Technology Preview may take a few months before they appear in the stable version of Safari.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the Beta 4 build of the upcoming platforms – although I am tempted to give the public beta a try I think I’ll hold off until the stable version is released sometime either in October or November. For me the interesting part will be the feedback regarding the whole liquid glass and whether further changes will be made – will they offer the ability to have a sliding scale of how ‘glassy’ the effect is or whether they go with a choice between the eventual standard that Apple decides or reduced transparency altogether (at the moment I have reduced transparency on both my computers).
I slept in today and when I woke up…it was chilly and it is really chilly at the moment with the temperature sitting at 3°C so I’ve decided that I’ll stay at home, keep myself warm rather than risking the cold weather but end up getting sick as a result. I really was hoping that the weather would get better but it appears to another month to go before things start to warm up. During today I popped down to the local supermarket to pick up some chicken and coleslaw for dinner along with a couple of bottles of milk and some Pepsi Max. It’s funny, since I started walking most places or taking the bus I am forced to consider what I am buying since I’m going to have to carry it home – “yeah, I want it but do I really need it” is the question that runs through my mind when I scan what I have in the trolly and I’m left wondering whether I’ve forgotten anything.
uBlock Origin Lite 2025.718.1921 is now available in the Chrome extensions store – I cannot work out why it takes a little but longer for Google, maybe they can take the initiative and have an app/extensions review team in New Zealand and Australia so then app/extensions can be reviewed and approved in a timely manner. I’ve also realised that I didn’t have a feature enabled in my Workspace Administration area in regards to Search and Assistant so I’ve enabled that which should allow Google Home integration to work a bit better – or at least work a bit better once the Pixel 10 Pro XL makes its way to New Zealand. I’m tempted to also get the Pixel watch while I’m at it since it’ll allow me to keep track of exercise statistics so then I can work to meet my goals.
With each day I’m learning more about Google Workspace – understanding how things are setup by default and how that can cause problems when setting up something like a Pixel Watch. At the moment I’m using an Apple TV but I am tempted to replace the television then give mum my old one. I’ve been having a look more videos regarding the One UI on Samsung televisions and the more I see the more I like with the added benefit that it all integrates into SmartThings (which does a better job than Google Home which is still very much rough around the edges).
Oh, and a spot of good news it appears that the UK is stepping away from demanding Apple to install a backdoor into iCloud which also impact other providers as well (link). As I’ve said in the past, always be weary of politicians who either invoke claims of an emergency or claims of protecting a particular group as a justification of acquiring more power because once that power granted it is very rarely rescinded at a later date but instead becomes normalised. Just as I am concerned about the concentration of capital in the hands of a few who then use that economic power to influence politics in service of protecting their class interests I am also concerned when I see politicians seek more power in the name of ‘the greater good’ whose arguments contain holes large enough that you can fly a A380 through.
Oh god knows I needed the week to be over and the weekend couldn’t have come soon enough. I’m relaxing in bed after going for a walk – it was spitting and really cold, a lot colder than the temperature is being reported by Metservice as 6°C but feels like 5°C. I’ve got my heater going and thank goodness I have insulation in the floor, walls, floor and double glazed windows to ensure that the horrible cost of heating will at least keep me warm. I’m enjoying some sandwiches and a biscuit then I’ll see if there are some interesting tv series that I can binge watch.
Something I noticed when using my phone is Samsung Files and how you can link Google Drive then download a folder from Google Drive to ones phone. I like to keep all my music backed up to my Google Drive so I decided to download my music collection (the ones encoded in AAC) to my phone which funny enough was as fast as it would be if I used OpenMTP on my desktop. I always thought that Samsung was needlessly duplicating apps but it appears that there is a good reason for those apps – even Google’s own Files app doesn’t allow you to download directories of files from Google Drive to ones phone which is kind of strange given that I would have thought that is a pretty common thing to do unless Google expects the user to cache their the director then point their music player to the Google Drive to play back music.
I go back and forths between my Apple TV 4K (128GB) and Google Streamer but I keep coming back to the Apple TV 4K because the experience is so much more fast, fluid and responsive vs the under powered device that Google put out. Sure, the Apple TV 4K is more expensive but nothing stopped Google from putting out a decent device akin to an nVidia Shield – it isn’t as though a set top box is something you buy on a regular basis but rather something you buy and keep for years and years until it stops receiving updates and then you upgrade. I’ve never understood the complaints about the price of the Apple TV 4K given that if you buy it and keep it until it loses support then it is costing less than NZ$1 per week – most people spend more on coffee per week than a device that’ll use for hours every day.
Tomorrow is the last day of the week and it couldn’t come sooner. I was going to go for a walk tonight but it has been raining on and off and when it did rain it was a real downpour so I decided to take a night off, watch another episode of Foundation and keep warm in front of my heater. While here I cleared the cookies and cache along with clearing the stuff out of the cloud, sort my phone out etc. I’m still using Google Streamer but I’m leaning heavily towards getting a Samsung 2025 television – I’m going to head down to the local Noel Leemings to check out what they navigation is like given that the only point of reference I have is a television from 2016. To be honest the only thing I use on the television is free to air television and YouTube – something that the Samsung TV could easily do without too much hassle.
One of the other reasons is if I can get Samsung Pass to work on a generic PC (based on the specs from the Microsoft app store it says it should as long as there is a TPM 2.0 module and Windows Hello) then I’ll move from using Google Password manager to Samsung Pass ince it includes support not only for OTP built into it but also the newest televisions from Samsung include Knox built in which will make using the built in web browser a lot easier as well. Sam Mobile has a good video giving an overview of the changes that are coming with the 2025 Samsung television range:
Anyway, I’m going to head off to sleep, have a good nights rest and then get to do it all over again.
Just watching the following video – I have to admit a lot of the information that I’m seeing around the internet is rumours but it is interesting to hear just how bureaucratic Intel is relative to AMD – multiple teams working on multiple architectures ends up sounding very much like a needlessly complex organisational structure.
Seeing that the efficiency cores are going to become the basis of the unified core reminds me very much of the days back when the P4 had a pipeline to the moon and back with it’s replacement being created by the Israeli team which was based on the Pentium III which evolved into the Core, the Core 2 – if I remember correctly Core 2 had a 14 stage pipeline which balanced efficiency with scalability. While we’re on the topic of taking a basic core design and building from there, it reminds me very much of Sun Microsystems working on the T1 whose basis was the UltraSPARC II that they built up from there to create the multicore monster (link).
There is also the matter of the nVidia ARM CPU – it’ll be interesting to see whether Windows 11 25H2 brings compatibility for the nVidia ARM CPU and whether Microsoft brings about a nVidia ARM CPU based all in one computer or a mini-pc running Windows 11. There is also the Google event in August where the Pixel 10 and Pixel Watch 4 will be announced – it’ll be interesting to see whether it is made available in more markets or whether instead I’ll grab it through Mighty Ape.
It appears that there has been confirmation, be it passing a line within an interview, about the future of the coming of two operating systems into a single unified one that’ll span from watch to phone to tablet then to laptop. There is also talk about bringing extensions to Chrome along with making Chrome feature comparable to the Chrome that came with ChromeOS – it’ll be interesting to see whether Android on the laptop with extensions make their way down to the tablet and smartphone.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out for Google’s partners such as Samsung with their OneUI branding – will they allow the sort of customisation on Android on phones and tablets for laptops as well? will they also extend that to Android TV so then it would encourage Samsung to maybe bring them into the fold by allowing them to apple their OneUI magic to Android TV and Android on the laptop so then effectively Samsung, rather than being yet another Windows vendor to create a uniquely Samsung experience where there is the underlying Android operating system but a unique OneUI look and feel that makes their products stand out from the competition.
On some good news, the Samsung has released the July 2025 update, the kernel has had a minor bump in the patch level but it remains at 6.6.30, along with a baseband update, SE update etc. the size of the download was close to 600MB but because I’m at home on a decent wifi connection to the internet via fibre it downloaded pretty quickly resulting in it updating relatively fast. I haven’t noticed any regressions not noticed any changes which is a good sign that the best update is an update that fly belows the radar and life carries on as usual.
There are more rumours regarding Intel and the work being done to turn aroujd their fortunes such as this article (link) and (link) with the interesting part being around AVX-10 instruction set, and the APX extension being added which will hopefully translate to better power/performance to maybe closing the gap between x86 and ARM – it doesn’t have to necessarily beat Apple but if the gap closes then add on top the savings of going with Wintel is significant enough then for the average person it’ll be ‘good enough’ to get the job done (one of the reasons I’m looking at a post-Apple future given how i’m slowly falling in love with my Samsung phone). It appears that Intel have realised that approach they’ve taken has made it needlessly more complex and more expensive than it needed to be especially when compared to how AMD have pulled ahead while keeping very much a unified architecture. Keeping in mind that this is all rumours at the moment so it is a matter of seeing what actually ends up transpiring. As for mum, she still needs a new computer so I’m probably just going to order a Beelink SER9 Pro AMD Ryzen™ AI 9 HX 370 which has more than enough grunt for what is required with oodles of space then pair with a better router for her fibre connection I’m hoping I can setup a computer setup that’ll make life easier. As for the old Intel NUC, I’ll probably take that off her hands, load Linux on it and turn it into a server with an external SSD sharing files to the network with it located in my office so it is directly hooked up to the router via ethernet cable.
Tonight I had a lazy dinner of a couple of sandwiches a small packet of crisps then went for a small walk – didn’t feel like it but I know I feel a whole lot better once I have come back home after getting some fresh air.
One of the things I hate about working in customer services are people who use us as an emotional sound board because god forbid taking responsibility for decisions they made. After dealing with a few of those I went for my usual 11.6km walk tonight to work it out of my system so then I can have a clear head so when I got home I could have a relaxing shower then jumping into bed to relax by watching a few television episodes. The great thing about walking is not just the health benefits (which helps in the weight loss journey) but also the psychological benefits of being able to unwind and deal with stress and other emotions in a productive way rather than trying to eat ones problems away by resorting to binge eating comfort foods.
Google released a Chrome update today and I would suggest if you haven’t updated to do so pronto – plenty of security fixes for some nasty vulnerabilities (link). Along with that AdGuard 5.2.35 has been released – haven’t noticed any regressions but given the amount of big changes under the hood I have a feeling they’ll be taking their time before they make the big leap to a stable version. Looking forward to comparing the final stable version to uBlock Origin Lite once it is released.
It truly is amazing how the government, be it local or central, can get in the way of good work being done to deal with the homeless crisis (link), if they’re failing to upgrade pipes to allow greater density housing in central Wellington then they’re blocking the ability to create a stop gap measure for homeless people until a more permanent solution can be found in the form of building more social houses. Personally I liked the idea I saw in the US with the homeless veterans communal housing where they were small houses along with a facility where the tenants could hang out together – almost like a common room with a television food preparation facilities etc.
Matisyahu's Blog 