Matisyahu's Blog

Today I received a text message from my doctor regarding a routine blood test – I assume as a follow up to the previous two HbA1c tests to see that everything is going well. I received the message today so I followed up with the medical centre and they advisd me that it wasn’t majorly urgent but just a routine check to ensure everything is going well. What I’ll do is next week (or maybe the week after) pop into the testing place but this week I’ll be focusing on getting my sleeping and exercise schedule back into some sort of order along with sorting out out a meal schedule each day so then I have some sort of predictability (which is something I prefer). The new work schedule is 1:30pm to 10:00pm 5 days a week but there is plenty of time after finishing to go for a walk for a couple of hours however I am tempted to maybe get up at around maybe 11:30am then go for a quick one hour walk before work then at night after work I go for another walk so then I’m squeezing in a little bit more exercise along with the fact that a walk in the fresh air before work will wake me up so then I’m wide awake and ready for a day of fun and excitement.

Patch Tuesday is coming up soon and there are a few features being made available (link) and Windows 11 25H2 is in development with a goal of providing anticheat, end point detection and antivirus vendors a way to provide their services without having access to the kernel along with the administrator protection being worked on. Given how Microsoft has taken a much more conservative approach to announcing new features I wouldn’t be surprised that a list of changes in Windows 11 25H2 won’t appear until maybe a month or two before it is stabilised and the developers are confident that what they’ve being worked on is ready for the general public to use.

Ubiquiti has released via its early release channel UniFi Gateways 4.2.3 – I haven’t given a test since I need the gateway as rock solid as possible since I work from home. There is also UniFi OS for the cloudkey which is sitting at 4.3.x which has some neat stuff in store when it comes to filtering traffic such as content blocking (aka ad blocking). Will be interesting to see how well it performs but for me I tend to prefer having an extension because it allows me greater control over which websites I allow through vs the websites I leave content blocking on for because the website is that obnoxious. At one stage I was looking at the idea of getting an NAS device but decided that even if I did get it I would still want it backed up to the cloud so in the end it wasn’t going to end up replacing it but rather add another device to my network so I’ve decided just to stick to using Google Cloud.

I’ve been reading some more documentation about upcoming changes that Intel has instore for their future CPU designs with APX being a bit one (expands the number of general purpose registers from 16 to 32) with the benefits can be found outlined in this document (link). For me the big choice is whether for my laptop I get a Microsoft Surface, ASUS or a Dell but when it comes to the desktop do I build my own or do I just get something off the shelf from Dell. Personally I’m leaning towards an AMD self build along with an ASUS laptop but then again if I do go Intel then I’ll prefer either getting and AMD GPU or Intel GPU unless nVidia is going to offer something absolutely awesome.

After a week of fun and excitement at work I finished at 10pm tonight, went for a walk down to the convenient store to pick up a sandwich but it was closed but I needed a walk anyway so it wasn’t a wasted outing. I finally got all the washing sorted out and it is now hanging on the clothes horse inside along with the dehumidifier running so that it doesn’t my house damp (the heat from my heater in my bedroom floats through the house which also helps dry the clothes a little bit faster when combined with the work the dehumidifier is doing).

On a good side uBlock Origin Lite 2025.703.1440 has been released – haven’t noticed any regressions but I’m comparing it to the beta release of AdGuard 5.2.25. uBlock Origin Lite is still being beta tested on Safari however I don’t imagine a stable version being released before macOS 26 stable version is released given that there are bugs in Safari that are fixed in the next release. Personally I’m sticking with Chrome – the Workspace integration, things are going well with my Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra which has really grown on me and I can see why people like the Samsung ecosystem with the Samsung TV acting as a SmartThings hub.

One of the things I really loath about social media and video sharing sites are the number of people who declare something or someone is “doomed! doomed! doomed I tell you! they’re doomed” – claims that China is going to collapse in x number of days, that a particular company is dying, that a given product is dying etc. Exaggerated claims propped up by people watching it because it re-enforces an existing bias for or against a given organisation, product etc. which is then made worse because the algorithm picks up that said content is popular and suddenly appears in the feeds of more people.

This is the one reason I cannot stand the ‘tech dude bros’ on YouTube who convince themselves that they’re some sort of van guard, a member of a group whose opinions are the only ones that are valid and that they have the final say even though their track record is one of getting it wrong over and over and over again. They’re right up there with a particular YouTuber who starts off their video by saying that they’re going to ignore all the drama while ignoring the fact that they are the drama – they are the ones making unsubstantiated claims, whipping up conspiracy theories and rumours while simultaneously acting as though they were the ‘adult in the room’.

On some more positive news, Microsoft appears to be giving it another go in terms of getting things out of the kernel that ideally shouldn’t be there (link). It’s funny how back in the Windows Vista days there was an attempt to achieve something similar only to find that there were threads of being sued left, right and centre (link) only for this to come back to bite businesses and end users in the backside as one can see with the Crowdstrike fiasco not to mention the on going ‘anticheat’ problems that regularly cause gamers to complain forums about frequent kernel panics (aka BSODs). Hopefully we’ll see that along with ‘Administrator protection’ which will hopefully provide greater security and reliability to Windows 11.

Fine weather so I decided to take advantage of that and go for a walk tonight – just a small 8km walk but I needed to get out of the house after being inside all day. It’s good to get out of the house even if it is a bit cold – the fresh air relaxes me so that I am ready for a good night sleep. I’ve started my new work schedule of starting at 1:30pm every day which means I have a regular schedule rather than the starting time being different depending on the day.

The AdGuard team have released the AdGuard 5.2.25 beta for Chrome (link) which include many new features, bug features and enhancements. What I particularly interested in is the User Scripts API implementation should should improve the reliability of content blocking. As I’ve noted in the past, I was sceptical that MV3 would provide the same quality of content blocking that MV2 provided but as time goes on and the WECG developers for Chrome have listened to the feedback the functionality has improved to the point that I cannot tell the difference between the experience I got back in the MV2 vs what MV3 extensions are delivering.

As for the time frame when the stable version will be released? could be anywhere from a weeks to months but I’d say that given that amount of changes that I couldn’t imagine it being rushed because there will be a lot of testing that’ll be needed. I’ve got it running on my other Chrome profile and so far things have been very robust. For me the big excitement will be the support for ‘Third Party Filters’ that you add manually which should hopefully mean that it will be easier to keep filters up to date rather than having to wait for the latest filters to be bundled and then made available as an update through the Chrome store which has a lead time of around 3 days.

I’ve decided to make peace with the idea that maybe I shouldn’t get fixed over the idea that should try to have everything with one service provider. I’ve setup SmartThings from Samsung and realised that the Arlo security camera integration is so much better than with Google Home then I added my Bluetooth earphones and my television (which is a bit ancient given that it was released in 2018) however it integrated into SmartThings without any issues. I’m looking at upgrading my television soon to a 2025 model which has a more up to date smart tv software version not to mention better hardware which should provide a smoother experience and I’ll give my old television to mum because it is still in good working order.

While looking around at SmartThings I went on a bit of a side quest regarding Samsung applications for Windows – it appears you can have a pretty good ecosystem using a combination of Microsoft Windows and Samsung devices that produce the sort of integration one observes with Apple and it’s own ecosystem. If I ever went down that road I would keep Google Workspace given that I much prefer it over what Microsoft 365 offers but I could imagine Samsung does a pretty good job sewing together Windows and Android together.

Went for a 11.6km walk tonight and although it was a little chilly it hasn’t gotten down to the single digits in a while – hopefully I haven’t tempted fate by talking about it but hopefully the temperature will stay at around the double digits until spring rolls around. There is a benefit to temperatures being where they are – when I go for my walk I’m not completely drenched in sweat when compared to going for a walk during summer where even at night there is still a decent amount of warmth in the air. I stuck to my meal plan today although tomorrow I’ll probably walk to to the store to pick up some coffee concentrate so I can have an ice coffee at home – I like to have some extra supply of stuff at home so that I’m always stock with it rather than running it down to nothing then suddenly realising that I need to buy it.

The housing situation stumbles from one crisis to another but that shouldn’t be surprising when you have a government that ideologically does not believe in teh idea of public housing or public involvement in the building and provision of housing (link). As I’ve said in the past, we need to rebuild the Ministry of Works and invest in creating an army of skilled tradespeople who can engage in nation building – turn Housing NZ into the primary provide of rental accomodation resulting in the de-commodification of housing. Unfortunately I don’t see a National government making it happen but the Greens have talked about something similar so lets hope if there is a sharp swing to the left that it is one policy that Labour definitely picks up as part of a coalition agreement.

Ubiquiti has released a firmware update for the U7 Pro Max today which updates it from 8.0.19 to 8.0.49 – so far things have been pretty stable. At the moment there the gateway firmware and UniFi OS are in beta testing at the moment but it’ll be interesting to see how things develop particularly the gateway which has been sitting on 4.2.2 which makes me wonder whether we’ll be seeing them jump straight to the 4.3.x series. I haven’t enabled MLO yet on my access point because it is still considered ‘early access’ and I have heard some people having compatibility issues but I’m sure the engineers taking care of things so when it does launch it’ll be robust enough for mainstream use.

Windows 11 25H2 is rumoured to be a smaller update when compared to the big upheaval that came with Windows 11 24H2 where the underlying operating system was upgraded as well. It’ll be interesting to see whether Microsoft adopts a ‘tick-tock’ strategy like Intel did many years ago where every 2 years the underlying operating system is upgraded then the next year is focused on refining it, tying up loose ends, implementing features that don’t require under the hood changes etc. The reason I wonder is because if Intel APX does make its way into products in 2026 it would be interesting to see whether we see Microsoft recompile Windows 11 26H2 to take advantage of APX with those extra registers – I wouldn’t be surprised if there maybe some things that need to be done under the hood.

Came back from my walk tonight around an hour ago – 20km walk in total, my legs and feet are sore but I feel good knowing that I set a goal and achieved it. I’m a bit stiff in the legs but a good night sleep will allow me to recuperate and ready to work on Wednesday and go for a walk after work.

Chrome is going well and AdGuard has been also performing well – the functionality gap that once used to exist between uBlock Origin LIte and AdGuard has pretty much disappeared so now it is just a question of personal preference. There was recently a merging of code from version 5.2 of AdGuard so it’ll be interesting to see when there will be either a beta release or a final release. There have been some fixes merged into the github source which makes me wonder whether they’re doing internal testing before having a public beta. On a side note, with the work being done regarding Safari and declarative net request I wonder whether we’ll see AdGuard just bring their Chrome/Firefox extension to Safari rather than maintaining a special codebase for Safari.

I went for a walk today down to the supermarket to pick up a few things and I walked back – squeezing in some exercise to make it part of ones normal every day routine rather than having to set aside time to do it. To be honest, the amount of time it takes to get down to the store, even on the days where I work from 11:30am to 8:00pm means that I can easily walk down to the supermarket and make it with plenty of time before the store closes. One of the benefits of not having a scooter is that it has forced me to be more active and get the exercise in during the day without even thinking about it which results in it becoming a normalised part of my life.

The next update Intel will release for it’s CPU family will be Nova Lake with rumours that the APX extension, which increases the number of registers from 16 to 32, will arrive on that platform (although other reports state that Panther Lake will be the CPU that’ll APX to market) – it’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft handles that given that Intel notes that a recompile is all that is required (link) will we see Microsoft recompile Windows and create a fresh ISO that takes advantage of the APX extension. It’ll also be interesting to see whether we’ll end up seeing Zen 6 microarchitecture from AMD will include APX and AVX 10 – I could imagine it is highly desirable for that to be the case so there is some harmonisation between the two vendors given the benefits in terms of performance and power efficiency that come from the APX extension being made available. Nova Lake is scheduled to be released in early 2026 for mobile and towards the end of 2026/early 2027 for the desktop version.

That being said, in the future I might end up having an ARM based laptop running Windows and a x86-64 desktop running Windows – I like to keep my options open. There is one thing that I am interested in setting up though which is setting up ethernet cables under the house – one for the desktop in the lounge room given that I’d sooner have a robust connection when uploading gigabytes of data to my Google Drive.