Matisyahu's Blog

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).

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.

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.

The weather has been less that ideal today but I got out of the house so I could pick up some much needed stuff from the store – what I needed were some tins of tuna. I like ensuring that I get a good amount of protein per day which helps not only in keep the metabolism firing all cylinders but also keeping me feeling full for longer which means I won’t snack between meals. I also noticed that there is milk with extra protein, I might start getting that instead of regular low fat milk because it’ll also up my protein consumption that’ll also keep me feeling satisfied during the day. With all that being said, I’m working through the food I have in the freezer and going to have a plan going forward rather than haphazardly shopping then trying to work out a plan from there.

uBlock Origin Lite 2025.711.1256 is now in the Chrome web extensions store – no regressions, the drop down menu for the extension has been tidied up and more functionality is being added to really fill in the functionality gap when it comes to custom filters along with a ‘point and click’ tool where you can choose a particular element on a page to block it – quite good when something isn’t blocked by the current filters that are made available (I’ve had that happen a few times).