I’ve been running Firefox for a while (recently updated to 128.0.3) but every time I update my version of macOS I like to give Safari another try, to see whether things have improved and what bugs have been fixed – I guess I have an optimistic outlook on life where I hope that maybe as Safari improves and AdGuard improves will reach parity with the experience I get with Firefox and uBlock Origin can be reached.
Oh, and I checked to find out why Skype web application comes up with a scary message about ‘reduced functionality’ aka partial support for calling. Given that Skype these days is pretty much irrelevant (I only keep my account around to keep in contact with a friend overseas) I don’t think much is lost given that I only use it for text chatting. I’m hoping that Teams will eventually replace it – it just feels a lot more streamlined, less UI bloat etc.
uBlock Origin 1.59 has been released and is now available through the Firefox extension store – I’ve updated to it. Every release it just keeps getting better – faster, more responsive, dealing with squashing unwanted content.
Regarding the move to MV3 by Chrome, I think what we’re going to start seeing are those who held out until the very end believing that Google wouldn’t follow through with it just as in the past where they made an announcement onto the push back moving to MV3. I think the other reason why many are holding off is the belief that maybe it won’t be so bad – that’s until they realise that filter updates for content blocking has to go through the arduous process of being submitted to the extension store rather than allowing the filters to be downloaded like they can now.
Why is that a hassle? because in the area of creating filters for content blocking it is a game of cat and mouse – always trying quickly update filters as quickly as a web developer has worked around it. The net result of the new way of doing things with MV3? days if not a week or more where users will be inundated with crap that their content blocker cannot block because the filter updates as always lagging behind the speed in which web developers move at.
I don’t think Chrome’s market share will be collapse but I do see tech enthusiasts and technically inclined people moving resulting maybe at max 20% of the desktop user space using Firefox but ultimately if that is reached then at that sized it does keep the big players honest as you cannot simply ignore 20% of users out there. I really do wish people would learn from history because Chrome is slowly turning into the Internet Explorer of today – not on the basis of the technical issues but more the inertia that has built up as Chrome’s dominance becomes more embedded, it becomes the first thing people down load the moment they buy themselves a new computer then come home to set it up.
Apple has released updates to all their platforms today and part of that involves a huge number of security fixes that came through (link) with quite a few updates for Webkit and Safari. On my iPhone 15 Pro Max the modem firmware was updated from 1.60.02 to 1.70.02 along with the firmware of both Macs being updated to 10151.140.19 (I forgot to write down the old version). With how stable things are with macOS I am wondering whether I should wait for the x.1 release of the next versions of Apple’s platforms…but knowing me I’ll want to update to the next version as soon as possible to see the improvements Apple has made to Webkit in terms of conformance to web standards along with fixing up bugs in their implementation of those standards.
There has been a slight performance boost – everything thing feels a bit snappier even tvOS feels a bit more snappy. I have been looking at getting myself two HomePod for stereo sound to replace my existing speakers hooked up to my Mac Studio directly. The benefit of the HomePod is the ability to stream from my Mac Studio or from my Apple TV so then I can have decent sound quality when watching a movie. It is NZ$529 but it isn’t as though it is something that you buy every year I’ve got a few more things I’m going to look at but we’ll see how things go.
Regarding Kamala Harris, the way in which reproductive health is being framed in terms of freedom is exactly how I’d be doing it if I was in her position – do you want to make that decision or do you believe that decision should be made by politicians? I hazard to guess when you frame it in that way that you may even get people who maybe anti-abortion (in terms of their personal moral position) but are also equally opposed to the very idea of the government coming into private lives of women and telling them what they can and cannot do with their own body.
When it comes to the economy and inflation I do hope that Kamala pushes back the narrative that the Republicans keep putting out that they’re ‘good with the economy’ (and how Biden apparently caused the information problem even though it was the Republicans who injected $7.5 trillion into the economy and ran a massive budget deficit) when for 4 years all Trump did was talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk *deep breath* and talk and talk but never delivered – he was a big talker but then again the American public were warned but they decided to ignore those warnings just as Brexit voters labelled anyone pointing out issues as ‘project fear’ are now dealing with the consequences of their devision.
I have finally uploaded all my photos – I was going to use the Google Photos but I found it easier to share it using Apple Photos since I have everything integrated into the Apple ecosystem – I’ve now got 2TB on iCloud so I might as well use it. I’ve got two albums – none of them have photos of me since I’m taking the photo or if someone else is I prefer not to be photoed.
Edit 30/10/24: I’ve taken the photos down because I’ve been having some technical issues.
Firefox 128.0.2 has been released (link) – a minor update that fixed some annoying bugs. I haven’t noticed anything major, it’s as reliable as always. The one thing I did notice which I like is how when using Google Chat the icon on the tab has a red dot when someone has replied back to you which for strange some reason it doesn’t occur on Safari. I’m also enjoying the super content blocking experience that uBlock Origin affords due to Firefox maintaining MV2 API compatibility. Although Firefox doesn’t run natively on the iPhone the truth be known is that I do most of my ‘web surfing’ on my laptop or desktop where as with my mobile I’m primarily using apps such as the Reddit app or the RNZ app etc.
There are rumours of Google launching the Pixel 9, Pixel Watch 3, Pixel buds pro 2 along with a replacement for the Chromecast with Google TV with the rumoured ‘Google TV Streamer (link) – let’s hope that they don’t do something stupid like launch the product in only one country the act surprised their sales aren’t good then convince themselves that it is the price not the lack of availability being the cause of the poor sales. It reminds me of what a former programmer who worked for Microsoft said about the rise of Microsoft Office – the competition was fragmented and made a series of bad decisions rather than Microsoft Office being the outstanding technological superior product. I can’t help but get the feeling that in the technology space the winners end up getting there because the organisations offering alternatives are so dysfunctional resulting in many companies being their own worse enemy.
Just before I start I should put my cards on the table regarding where I am coming from politically – I sit on the left economically and socially I’m a libertarian so for someone like me Bernie Sanders is closer to where I sit politically but that being said I’m realistic. I understand that there is a fine line between what you want vs what is possible politically so it isn’t always possible to get ones ideal candidate so one supports someone close enough to that. In the case of Joe Biden I expected him to be yet another Obama like centrist but what happened in reality is that he ended up being a lot more centre left than most people had expected – Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act not to mention the many executive actions such as increasing the minimum wage for federal contractors (Executive Order 14026) along with many others.
The question is with the upcoming election isn’t about disagreeing with Joe Biden’s policies because I would say the vast vast majority of Democrats and voters in general support his policies, the problem is about the ability to go out on a campaign trail and not only defend the policies but to also weave a narrative of where the democratic presidential candidate would like to take the country in the next four years. The problem is that if you have a presidential candidate who are unable to push back against the right wing BS vortex coming out of the Republicans then it won’t matter how good your record in terms of policies is if it you’re unable to articulate a robust defence when Trump and his sycophants start fire hosing their lies through the media.
I’ve been biting my tongue but I might as well put this out there – Joe Biden should have, before the Democratic primary season started, announced that he would be a one term president, that he would like to see a new generation come through (as noted by Mitt Romney when he said he would not seek re-election for the senate), said that he would endorse Kamala Harris but also say that the Democratic party process needs to be robust so that the members of the Democratic Party are united by the presidential candidate representing the Democratic Party. With that being said, when the rumours started my guess was that if he were going to step down it would be after the Republican Party convention.
Oh, and on a side note Republicans are throwing around threats of running off the court – clue to the clueless young Mikey Johnson, a political party is a private organisation, how and who the party chooses to run for which political position is an internal party matter along with what happens if the nominee steps down and as a result needs to be replaced. If in a party constitution says that to be the presidential candidate you have to participate in a punch up for 20 minutes and whoever is standing at the end is the nominee then the is the process the party has collectively decided to be the process – once again, meaning the state has no say in say in that process. Then again this goes into the large issue I have with politics in the United States – the State should not be running the primaries, the only thing the state should be doing is registering parties, candidates and running the general election.
Oh, and something even more funny was the post on ‘Truth Social’ by Donald Trump (obtained from the video where the issue was discussed over at Brian Tyler Cohen (link):
So it is the Democrats fault that you orientated all your messaging around a single person rather than policy? If you were smart you would have made your message something along the lines of “regardless of whether it is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or anyone else, they’ll be all heading in the same direction which we believe is the wrong direction for America…” but then again that would require that the Republican Party isn’t run by the local brain trust. Once again Republicans playing the victim as they feel the consequences of the decisions they have made.
Regarding her running mate, I personally think that someone like Pete Buttigieg or Katie Porter because the risk of taking a governor from a state where the Democrats have a thin majority may cause more problems long term. In the case of Pete Buttigieg, he’s moderate, middle of the road the ability to go onto Fox News and push back against the avalanche of BS that the right wing media outlet put out there. I also think that he represents a generational change with Kamala Harris representing generation X and Pete Buttigieg representing the millennials – the Republicans representing the past, the Democrats representing the future. Katie Porter has a great skill at breaking down complex issues, pointing out Republican nonsense for what it is etc. Both Pete Buttigieg and Katie Porter would be great for that position – let’s hope that Kamala learns from the mistake Hillary Clinton made when she chose a relatively unknown person for vice president.
The other part is how will be how Kamala positions herself – Republicans are running on claims of a rising crime rate and how Democrats are supposedly soft on crime (see Republican references to New York and California) so Kamala could play her card as a prosecutor, that when people broke the law the held them accountable. The question is, if Kamala does lean into her prosecutor experience does the left and progressives in the Democratic Party throw a temper tantrum and walk off in a fit, “I’m not going to vote for Kamala the Cop” as if some how threatening not to vote is going to magically change everything just to meet their unrealistic demands. What I hope is that the left and progressives aren’t short sighted and learnt from the 2016 fiasco where the same people claimed that fear about a conservative majority picked by the Federalist Society overturning Roe vs Wade was a scare campaign by the liberal elite – funny how those who claimed it was a ‘scare campaign’ suddenly disappeared off Twitter when Roe vs Wade was actually overturned.
Oh, and to add more craziness to the mix, Republicans had a melt down because Mike Pence said something very normal (link) regarding Joe Biden deciding not to run for a second term. It truly is amazing how, with the display of shear lunacy that there are ‘undecided voters’ when the Republicans have lost the plot entirely. Expect the Kamala Harris to drive the right wing crazier now that there is a young articulate candidate at the top of the ticket who push back on Republican nonsense without fumbling it.
I thought I might as well give Chrome a try with the whole move to MV3 over the next year – I’ve posted a few toots over on my Mastodon account however I thought it would be better to thrash it out on my blog so I doesn’t come across as some sort of adlib style stream of consciousness. Basically what I wanted to see is whether the functionality gap between MV2 and MV3 based content blockers is as bad as some claim (including myself) or whether it may not be as perfect as say the MV2 extensions but the benefits that come with the move to MV3 far out weight the limitations imposed on developers.
The first one I gave a try was the MV3 version of AdGuard (link) which at the time of this blog was version 5.0.2 but keeping it mind it was still in beta with two of the components it relies on, TSWebExtension and TSUrlFilter, being in alpha so there is probably a lot of work yet to be done. Even though it is in beta I thought it would best to see how well it does at this early stage. I installed it, enabled all the same filters that I have enabled on AdGuard for Safari then copied and pasted over my ‘User Filters’ where I have a list of blocked and allowed domains (I use ‘User Filters’ instead of the allow list).
I tested it with a few websites, one website which asked for ones date of birth (it’s an alcohol related website) the whole page was black and no dialogue, when I disable the content blocker I approved the t’s and c’s, enabled it but now the page wouldn’t render properly. Another website I tried is a video sharing site, you chooe the show, episode then click on a button to continue but when you click the button a new window loads but the ad that was meant to be in the window is blocked – it’s nice that the ad was blocked but what would have been even better would be for the window never to have been opened – this is something that I have noticed on block uBlock Origin Lite as well as AdGuard MV3. As noted, this is till a beta, still work in development with alpha development components so it could be just a matter of fixing that and everything works.
I then tried uBlock Origin Lite – I had tried the extension a while ago but at the stage I don’t think I could find a way to add websites to an allow list so in the end I gave up. The one I installed today was the version 2024.7.3.674 – there is a new version over on the project’s github page (link) however it hasn’t made it’s way through to Chrome extensions store. I installed it, opened it up, enabled all the filters (except for the language/regional ones), added the websites to the allow list, then visiting the same websites. As mentioned in the previous paragraph it doesn’t stop a new window from being created but it does stop the ad from being shown in it – it’s a minor inconvenience but it would be nice if it could be resolved either by the extension developer if it is something they can do or the folks over at the WECG by providing a API which would empower developers to do so.
I’ve sideloaded uBlock Origin Lite 2024.7.17.853 because it wasn’t available in the Chrome store – it appears that there is an update pushed out every 10 days so it probably makes sense in the future just to side load the extension rather than waiting the long time it takes for Google to rattle its dags and make it available. I’ve run the extension through a content blocker (link) which results in both getting 99% – the last 1% I wonder have to do with a quirk in the test rather than a failure but whatever the case maybe uBlock Origin Lite is pretty solid.
Edit: It appears that it takes 24-48 hours for the extension to appear in the store – I’ve upgraded to the store version and everything is going well.
A bit of a side note: There are rumours that at the Samsung developer conference on 3 October 2025 that One UI 7.0 will be announced which will be based on Android 15. Over on Twitter @iceuniverse notes the following:
So it’ll be interesting to see what the Samsung S25 series delivers next year in around February 2025 and how it compares to the Pixel 9 range.
I’ve been running Firefox for quite some time and part of that journey has been subscribing to the Firefox subreddit on Reddit – reading through many of the posts one of the posts bought up an interesting question regarding non-Google related reasons why you have chosen Firefox over the alternatives. Funny enough for me my preference for Firefox had less to do with Google and more to do with my experience with Safari and it’s limited extensions framework resulting in even some of the best content blockers doing a less than stellar job when compared to what can be run on Firefox. In the process of making the extensions framework more secure (claim made by Google who sparked off the whole MV3 development) the result has crippled the ability for extension developers to have low level access to the browser which enabled MV2 based content blockers to be more effective than MV3 based content blockers.
For me it isn’t an anti-Google play given that I love using Google services such as Workspace, Android, ChromeOS and many other features. For me, it comes down to Google crippling their browser and me deciding that Chrome no longer suits my needs. The great thing with Google is that unlike Microsoft I don’t have any issues using any of their services with Firefox – I’m not given a warning in the case of Microsoft Skype that by using Firefox that I’m going to be given an inferior experience because I don’t want to use a Chromium based browser or Safari. The impression I get with Google vs Microsoft is that Google doesn’t care how you access their services as long as you’re accessing them where as with Microsoft they’re still holding onto hold habits.
The recent posts on the subreddit seem to be all focused around Privacy-Preserving Attribution (PPA) (link) where people are whipping themselves into a frenzy as if it were the end of the world wile ignoring that Apple also has something similar (link) and Google’s on going attempt to walk a tight rope between providing useful information to advertisers while preserving anonymity. All of these solutions working towards a replacement for third party cookies whose support are either have been phased out or being phased out. What do I think? I think that the three major web browsers need to come together and agree on a single way of tackling this issue rather than each of them doing their own thing – it appears that the tech dude bros are doomed to repeat past mistakes by failing to learn from history.
Well, I came back from overseas, had a week off sick then went back to work but spent time replying to customer emails rather than taking phone calls – I really needed that extra week of recovery because goodness knows what I caught took a lot out of me. I don’t think it was COVID but something else – what the something else is I don’t know but it was nasty (the plane from Bisbane to Wellington was horrible, I was running a temperature, coughing, then eventually I fell asleep which allowed me to at least have a rest – when I eventually got home I slept something like 15+ hours, woke up, drank some water then went back to sleep again – so many hours of sleep making up for lost time I guess).
On Sunday I was messaged by mum that Nana has not eaten or taken a good amount of fluids and that they were doing end of life care. Today (Tuesday) my sister informed me that nana died at 2pm – if there is a saving grace at least it wasn’t a drawn out experience that occured with dad being a hospice with cancer. I’ll be taking 3 days bereavement leave – I’ll try to keep updating my blog but as you can expect there are other priorities at the moment.
A couple of days before the official release of Firefox 128 I wanted to give it a try to see how much it has improved over 127.0.2 – what surprised me was the improvement in performance in both rendering pages as well as retrieving pages (both latency/responsiveness and speed of the download). It appears that each release developers are really focusing in on addressing performance issues – yes, even those performance issues that appear on macOS are being addressed too rather than my past experience many years ago where such issues were dismissed with a hand wave and a “yeah, yeah, sure, we’ll get to it…”.
Related to the Firefox 128.0 – at the moment I have an iPhone 15 Pro Max however I am looking at what is happening in the world of Android still, particularly the Pixel 9 Pro. Although the iPhone has the edge in terms of the Apple ecosystem the downside is the lack of a truly native Firefox on iOS that includes extension support. It it is the one strength that Android has going for it – the fact that you can install software through the Play Store that that Apple doesn’t allow, for example, browsers that use their own web engine rather than being forced to use the Webkit engine that Apple provides as part of iOS.
I’ve been following the election the United Kingdom I saw people complaining about how Sir Keir Starmer is ‘boring’ and ’50 shades of beige’ because they’ve completely ignored what happened when ever there was a Labour leader who showed the smallest amount of personality – the media outlets in the UK ripped them to threads. Anyone remember the UK media attack Edward Miliband like vultures over how he ate a bacon butty sandwich? I’m not surprised that Labour didn’t make massive announcements, big promises, grand visions given how the Tory aligned press will attack them.
It appears that Sir Keir has done what I expected – one of the first things he did was dispatch the Foreign Secretary David Lammy to Europe. If Sir Keir wishes to achieve the goal of boosting British economic growth then that will require his government to repair the relationship with the United Kingdom’s largest trading partner which has been damaged by not only Brexit but the decision by the previous Tory government who decided to break from European standards which had a cascading effect in term of trade – both importing and exporting. If they bring the United Kingdom back into alignment and start building up from there then I could see things getting better – the European Union don’t want to be undermined and if it means that the United Kingdom get back into alignment with European Union standards then you may see dividends being paid in the form of increased growth which will allow them to deal with fixing up NHS, infrastructure etc. etc.
Regarding the photos, I am still working on that but on a good side I am feeling a whole lot better than I did at the beginning of the week. The big question is whether I use something like Google Photo or Apple’s iCloud to upload and share the photos or do I open up an Instagram account then link to that once I’ve uploaded all the photos. Just a heads up, none of the photos have me in them – I don’t like taking photos of myself with the focus being in the location in the photo.
Edit: I decided to change the theme of my blog back to something subdued – it was a theme I had used a while ago so I thought I might as well move back to it. A nice, simple, minimalist design.
Still recovering from travel – still got a nasty virus resulting in a lot of coughing etc. but I’m working through it, resting at home and ordering groceries online to avoid the miserable cold outside. It is the one thing I can’t stand about travelling – almost every time I eand up catching something resulting in a week of misery afterwards.
I’m working through the photos but in total I have over a thousand photos that are spread between those taken by a digital camera and those taken by the camera on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. Gradually working through it while also trying to recover – it really does it out of you trying to recover.
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