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

  • The gradual phase out of MV2, migrating to MV3.

    Just been following the discussion regarding the migration from MV2 to MV3 – at times the discussion has become rather heated as people accuse Google of deliberately crippling the extension framework to undermine content blockers. The problem is that the number of people who use content blockers are very few in number so I doubt that Google would upend the whole extension market which would disrupt so many users, both enterprise and regular end users, just simply to go after an incredibly small numnber of end users utilising content blockers.

    As for me, I have YouTube Premium so I don’t use a content blocker on YouTube but I do use it for particularly obnoxious websites. I understand that websites need to use advertisements to keep the lights on but when the ads become distracting to the point I cannot use the website when I only have one option particularly if I deem the information important and that they’re the only source for that information. If anything, if one were to really make a critique one has to wonder whether the the compromise Apple made to the advertising industry regarding the anti-tracking position they’ve decided to drag their feet and fail to fully implement the declarativeNetRequest API or enhance the native content blocking API that they introduced almost a decade ago only for it to die on the vine.

    On a much happier tone I received an email from AdGuard who got back to me regarding the issue I was having with the recent built where the number in the icon (which says how many things were blocked) were not displaying that correct information – that websites would load and on those websites I had allowed ads for the ads still loaded but the icon was saying content was being blocked. They’ve advised me that the next release of AdGuard for Chrome will include a fix that will address that issue.

    I have to admit, I was one of those who was sceptical about whether the quality of content blockers wouldn’t suffer with the move to MV3 but it appears that AdGuard are doing a pretty good job proving me wrong (in a good way). The one thing to keep in mind is that the WECG are still looking at developing the declarativeNetRequest further – adding new functionality but like anything that involves a committee it is difficult to get everyone on board as each member have their own interests and they don’t always align with other members interests.

    Adguard 5.0.161 has been released – with each release it is getting better at ad blocking with each release.

  • End of another day, looking forward to the weekend.

    Finished work and to my surprise my local Mexican restaurant is open late so I ordered some Tacos for dinner – I didn’t feel like anything but thought, “why the hell not” and I bought it anyway. They’re around 30 minutes alway so by the time it arrives I’ll submitting this blog post. I some lamb tacos and chicken tacos with all the additional toppings that make them extra tasty. Yeah, I know it probably isn’t authentic

    Final day tomorrow and then my weekend (Monday and Tuesday), busy day to day at work but I’m working through it – thank goodness I’m working from home rather than having to travel into town. On my day off I might head down the road to have a look at the Google TV Streamer at Noel Leeming – the Apple TV is still good but the Google TV Streamer integrates better into the Google ecosystem. What I might end up doing is maybe giving the Apple television to mum or my sister to see if they want it otherwise I’ll just sell it online which will offset the cost of the Google TV Streamer.

    The weather is getting better although for the last few weeks the nights have been pretty cold – at this point I thought we would be moving into Spring but it appears that Winter is hanging around longer than normal. I’ve put some time off aside so I can have a week off from work – being able to relax. My normal work week is Wednesday to Sunday so the net result of how Christmas falls I end up getting 9 days off, the two days for the weekend then followed by 5 days off then followed by the 2 days off for the weekend – no complaints from me.

    I’ve been having a look at a few videos on Android 15 and I think we’ve reached the point where the sort of radical changs has come to an end, what we’re seeing is about smoothing the rough edges, incremental quality of life improvements. I might do a mini review on my day off.

  • Interesting improvement.

    I’ve been giving AdGuard 5.0.138 a try since it’s release and it has finally addressed a long standing problem – for example, one of the sites I use there is a search box, you click on the search box to put the cursor and what happens is a new window opens. In the new window there is a message that the loading of the website has blocked however what would even be nicer would be for the window to never have been open in the first place. It appears that in AdGuard 5.0.138 they’ve been able to fix that issue which was a major complaint about moving from MV2 to MV3. So far for the week so far it has been performing wonderfully. I kind of stuck with Safari because “well, the alternative isn’t much better” but given the content blockers on Safari have been neglected for over a year (or more) combined with Apple more or less giving up on the idea of seriously putting some muscle behind extension support in Safari it makes sense to jump ship to Chrome along with moving to Google Workspace where I can use my two domain names and link it back to a single account – 30 aliases vs. the measly 3 included with iCloud (with no way to increase the number), I’m happy with the change.

    Chrome 130 was released and I was reading through the comments on a recent article over on Arstechnica regarding breaking up Google. As I was reading through the platform roadmap and I find it funny thinking of the comments over on Arstechnica about ‘Google not conforming to web standards’ given that if you look at the latest platform tests (link) it appears that Chrome is doing a pretty good job conforming to open standards when compared to the number of tests that Safari is failing (the lack of standards compliance and unfixed bugs have been a long standing complaint by many web developers). Google has its laundry list of issues but the lack of promoting standards isn’t one of them – where as I can use Firefox with all the services Google provides Microsoft on the other hand has continued its spiteful attitude towards non-Microsoft browsers based on in their lack of or half baked support for non-Chromium based browsers regarding their services. That isn’t to say Google is perfect but compared to what it was living under the complete domination by Microsoft I would sooner be in this time line with Google being the big player.

  • Proposing something is one thing, doing it is another thing entirely.

    Just reading though an Arstechnica article regarding the idea being floated around Google being broken up (link). When I hear proposals like this I can’t help but get the feeling that it is the old story of putting a proposal out there but secretly you have a lot more modest goals in place – a bit like a union negotiating where they’ll demand an increase to $20 per hour from the current $15 per hour but behind closed doors their real goal is $17. If you start at your goal of $17 then the only way to go is down from there where as if you start off at $20 then you can work down to your eventual goal.

    I can’t help but get the feeling (based on nothing but gut instinct) that the DOJ know they’ll never get a break up through other than having a long drawn out process resulting in a compromise – meanwhile the impact of doing nothing may result in the market being distorted even further so sometimes it is better to take the good solution rather than holding out for the perfect but unrealistic solution.

    The other thing to take into account is that many businesses of that size very much dependent on the size to make the business viable – that there is a certain degree of similarity with the idea of a ‘natural monopoly’. There are high barriers to entry for what Google does if one were to set up a competitor – high up front capital expenditure (data centre, bespoke software etc) long period of time losing money as you build up a user base and relationships with businesses to advertise on the platform not to mention spending money winning over high profile influencers to the platform so that their subscribers sign up to the new platform.

    I’m having the weekend off – I tripped over on my way to the train station resulting in sprained wrists, sore fingers, a finger nail that is completely ripped off along with other injuries. Long story short, I’ve been resting for the last few days because I’ve been unable to type (this being typed using voice to text).

  • Back to work on Wednesday.

    I’ve been looking for a new television series to really get into – I heard people talk about the show ‘Billions’ and saw clips on YouTube but it never crossed my mind to really get into it until I saw the pilot episode which peaked my interest. I watched the episode and thought it was interesting – I’m now 6 episodes into season one and I’m enjoying every moment. It’s one of the reasons I’ve gone off from watching movies in favour of television series particularly ones that are a slow burn – a narrative that is gradually unfolded and characters developed.

    Next year there is an avalanche of new seasons – Bosch: Legacy, Severance, Silo, Beacon 23 and many many more new releases. It is amazing just how disruptive the whole COVID pandemic was when one considers how the production of many television series were either slowed down or suspended and when the studios opened back up how long it took for things to get back up and running again.

    Heading back into the office on Wednesday – it’ll be interesting to see whether the fast track legislation (link) results in a stimulative effect on the local economy. If projects that had been delayed end up coming online a lot quicker then hopefully that will result in more people being employed resulting in more money spent into the local economy. Wellington is pretty dead with part of that being the result of the move out of winter into spring taking longer than expected but many people are also struggling to make end meets so even if they do come into the office many are avoiding the high cost of buying lunch in town.

  • Dinner and software updates.

    Went down the road today and bought a tandoori seasoned chicken for dinner along with some Japanese coleslaw – sitting in the oven cooking and will be reading in around 45 minutes. Given how easy it is to put together a half decent dinner at home these days I very rarely go to a restaurant – unless of course someone else is paying for it.

    Giving Chrome a try with the latest build of AdGuard and things are getting better – it looks like the functionality that was available in their MV2 is being recreated in their MV3 version by adding more functionality to TSWebExtension, TSUrlFilter, Scriptlets and ExtendedCss. The reason I’m also back using Chrome is because increasinly I am finding that extension developers for Safari are slowly giving up – the AdGuard for Safari has been on life support with many promises of a native version (strangely enough their iOS version does a better job blocking ads).

    The other fact is my interest in my return to Chrome is an interest in Google Workspace because of the fact that I can get up to 30 aliases, it doesn’t suffer from the weird behaviour that when I setup iCloud on my MacBook Air (the aliases I created in iCloud don’t appear as being available for me to send from not to mention that the ‘hide my email’ isn’t necessarily a good way where you want to apply for something but you want the email address to still appear to be serious to a potential employer), the Google Drive synchronisation is faster etc. But with Google Workspace it has it’s own drawbacks if you’re using an iOS device because the integration experience isn’t as good as if one were to have Android devices. Before I do anything I’m going to get my interest free iPhone paid off because part of that also going back to my old cell phone provider (Skinny Mobile) since it has better coverage than One NZ where I live (One NZ seem to have an aversion to making greater use of 700MHz).

    One thing I noticed though about Chrome was ‘Google Lens’ which provided the functionality that I missed from Safari where it was open to copy and paste text from an image to a text file (for example) – I had only just noticed that recently at work when I did a ctrl f and then noticed the option of ‘Google Lens’ where curiosity got the best of me and realised that Chrome actually did have the feature after all. It was one of the last remaining features that kept me staying with Safari since I ued it so often – particularly useful when there are subtitles in Chinese and there were no English subtitles available so I could stop the video, select the text in the video then translate that text into English.

    If am do look at getting an Android phone it’ll most likely be a Pixel 9 Pro XL with 256GB or 512GB storage but the big qustion is whether I go for a trip to Australia for a holiday and then buy it or just get it through a local parallel importer. I’m tempted to maybe got for a trip next year, visit my brother, buy my nieces some presents and spend some time chilling out. The Google TV Streamer is looking pretty good at NZ$175 – it supports AV1 playback(link) along with integration with Google Home not to mention the reviews have been positive so far it it’ll be interesting to have a nosy when I get out of the house tomorrow for a walk around at the mall.

    Ubiquiti has release an update for UDM, UnifiOS v4.0.20, installed without any problem and it appears to be slightly more snappy in terms of the internet connection so maybe the bug fixes done on PPPoE has resulted in slightly better performance and reliability. It’s funny how the reliability of my internet connection when working from home is a lot higher than when I work in the office. At work we have a Dell monitor which acts as a USBC hub which includes display, ethernet etc. which causes nothing but trouble but some how the cheap USBC hub I bought from ‘The Warehouse’ works a whole lot better long with the internet connection itself running a lot more reliably.

  • Some things I have noticed recently.

    As much as I like using Chrome it is so buggy when its to the spell checker – text boxes where it doesn’t work then suddenly a minute later on the same website the text box magically has spell checking. Don’t get my started on a misspelled word that is phonetically close to what it should be but apparently Chrome isn’t smart enough to pick up on it but Google the search engine can. It reminds me of a YouTube video – “how can they be made by the same company?” Yes, that is a question I ask every day which is why I have uninstalled it and reclaimed back a bit of space. I’m looking forward to Safari 18.1 that is bundled with macOS 15.1 because based on the beta notes for Safari 18.1 for older platforms, they’ve made quite a few fixes which is a good sign that they’re continuing the drive to close the gap between Safari and it’s competitors.

    New Zealanders who ‘felt bored’ and ‘wanted a change’ are now finding out the hard way that low taxes and low regulation have a high cost (link). Gee, who would have thunk it, when you cut services to the bone to pay for tax cuts and handouts to landlords that the wheels end up coming off. This is what happens when politicians play to your prejudices and you vote out of fear and anger rather than having a solid understanding of the policies being proposed.

    I really do wish that AdGuard would provide a native version of their software for macOS – I’d be happy even for a Catalyst paid for version (I’ve already bought AdGuard for iOS) to replace the existing Electron based app that they have for macOS.

    Wellington appears to be the queerest city in New Zealand (link) – I’m doing my part.

  • End of another week.

    End of another week, I’m gradually getting back into the groove of being in the office 3 days a week and at home 2 days a week – a change from 2 days at work and 3 days at home. I have to admit the one good thing about going into the office are the free snacks and drink as well as being able to pick up some top notch savoury scones and/or muffins before work. Reminds me when I used to work in Wellington years ago where I would pick up a large mochachino along with some savoury scones.

    I’ve updated Chrome and AdGuard to the latest version – AdGuard is improving with each new release with version 5.0.113 being released recently (for some reason it hasn’t been updated on their github page). It’ll be interesting to see how things improve as TSWebExtension v2.3.0-alpha.0 and TSUrlFilter v3.1.0-alpha.4 libraries mature over time which will translate to improve content blocking.

    Back to politics, it is interesting to see that the people who voted for the current government are now finding out that elections have consequences – public transport spending has been cut, increased spending on roads and there is greater focus on making use of PPPs and tolls for new roads (there has been a reaction in a heavily National Party area – it is almost as though people don’t see the link between who they vote for, what their policies are and the impact of those policies). That doesn’t even touch on the number of people who didn’t turn out to vote – throwing a temper tantrum because Labour squandered 6 years but some how thinking that if they sit this election out and no vote it will some how send a message even though they (the vote) are going to be more negatively impacted by a National lead government.

    Intel has launched their Lunar Lake super efficient SoC with all the videos I’ve watched so far appears to beat Apple silicon in specific benchmarks but I can’t help but get the feeling this performance may be improved in the future based on what one saw with the Zen 5 SoCs (AMD SoCs getting a boost due to Windows receiving optimisations as part of the update that’ll be made available soon). It’ll be interesting to also see is the role that ‘Envisioning a Simplified Intel Architecture for the Future’ (link) will play in the future given that the specification was recently updated in June 2024 and the recent simplification of their CPU architecture by getting rid of hyper threading (also known as SMT) which may open the door to seeing further simplification of the architecture which will allow more efficient power usage.

  • Enjoyed the weekend, back to work on Wednesday.

    AdGuard have released their final version of their AdGuard 5.x series for MV3 (latest version is 5.0.97 at the time of writing (link)). I gave it a try on Chrome (along with the ‘User Rules’ that I currently use on AdGuard for Safari) and it is performing well but I would say that as they roll out their javascript libraries that the extension make use of to provide advanced content blocking functionality. The one thing I do make use of on Chrome is blocking prefetching and other optimisations that can cause problems with content blocking but so far things have been good. As I’ve noted in previous posts, I would say that over time that any sort of loss of functionality will be addressed as developers become more familiar with the MV3 framework as well as the WECG agree on adding more functionality to fill in the functionality gaps that are missing when compared to MV2.

    I’m also giving uBlock Origin Lite ago – AdGuard has it’s strengths in terms of customer rules and other power user orientated tweaking but uBlock Origin Lite’s benefit is that it is aimed as a ‘set and forget for those who just want something that works out of the box with minimum fuss and bother. It’ll be interesting to see how the two evolve as the MV3 platform evolves. I keep track of the WECG public meeting notes over on their Google Docs

    It appears that there is trouble in paradise with the decision to scrap the new ferries is coming back to bite the coalition government in the backside – expect to see the usual PPP nonsense or as I like to call it “Greece style accounting” where politicians play jiggery-pokery with accounting so it gives the illusion that they’ve made something appear out of nothing. It is also an example of what happens when the previous government failed to push back against the nonsense the National Party were putting out but then again the National Party were able to use other failings of the Labour led government as a way to justify their opposition to the new ferries. As I’ve said in the past, if they spread the cost of $3 billion over 20 years it would work out to be $200 million per year which is still cheaper than the tax break that landlords got – not only are we seeing the government fuel the speculation housing bubble with the middle class would be landed gentry but now watch productivity fall through the floor as New Zealanders experience an unreliable link between the two islands.

    Back to work on Wednesday, I am going into the office 3 days a week (it used to be 2 days a week) – for me the decision to go to work 3 days a week in an office is due to mental health reasons, to get out of the home, to mix and mingle, socialise and have my finger on the pulse of what is happening at work. Although I am generally a person who is happy with being by myself I do like to occasionally check into to find out what is happening – being kept in the loop rather than having the experience of something appearing out of nowhere and then finding out that I missed out on being a given a heads up because I wasn’t there to get the information first hand.

  • Upgrading macOS, iOS and tvOS.

    Well, I decided not to get up early today and instead sleep in until 11am – woke up, had a relaxing brunch and then checked out to see what was happening, what the masses were thinking of the new platforms given that I avoided the public beta versions due to preferring to keep a stable computing environment. All the devices I did a clean install – I adopted the rule many years ago that when installing a major release to always do a clean install so that if there are issues then you’ve taken out the variable that could contribute to issues appearing that might not otherwise appear on a clean install.

    Safari 18 has a good number of improvements as outlined in an article on Webkit (link) shows that Apple is working hard on closing the gap between Safari/Webkit and the competition. One thing to keep in mind is their continuous benchmarking to ensure that new feature or functionality being added does not result in a decrease in performance. My experience so far with Safari 18 has been pretty good – I’ve got AdGuard extension installed there are no issues however there appears to be an incompatibility issue with the Authenticator Safari Extension which crashes the Authenticator app itself so I’ve disabled it until they get it fixed.

    One of the bugs they have fixed up is in the ‘System Information’ in the Extensions area where they’ve fixed it up so that information about extensions are shown rather than throwing an error message as with the case of macOS 14. What I also find interesting is an increase in the number of user space drivers that make use of the DriveKit framework, the use of FSKit to run exFAT and FAT support in user space rather than as a kernel extension and greater user of I/O Kit. All of that feeds into the larger goal of closing off the kernel to third parties so that only the absolute core essentials are running in kernel space while pushing everything that doesn’t need to run in kernel space to be pushed out into user space.

    I’ve noticed that it is slightly more snappy in terms of responsiveness, everything feels more optimised, lower CPU utilisation when playing back videos, booting up was a bit faster, etc. so I think that is the evolution of under the hood changes along with improvements with the Clang and LLVM compiler resulting in more optimised code that runs better on Apple’s ARM based processors. It’ll be interested to see how long Apple will be supporting Intel based Macs.

    Arstechnica has put up a lengthy review of macOS 15 (link) which goes into a lot more detail than I have – yeah, I could write something up myself but Arstechnica does a lot better job at getting into the nitty gritty details that make for an interesting ready.