Nick
@nick@shore.me.uk
157 following, 244 followers
Selfishly, a bit relieved about the Chancellor not doing the NI-for-LLP-members thing. That would have *hurt*.
Not a fan of the per mile charge on EVs and hybrids, although it looks like my plug-in hybrid will be hit less than most. And I get why, I really do. I just think it drives the wrong behaviour.
Overall, she’s done a decent job of raising cash where she can, providing a bit of extra cash where it’s possible, and not spooking the bloody bond markets.
Shame about that OBR leak though.
@hedders Charge per mile for EVs is dumb as a bag of rocks. Meanwhile in Norway they’re actually driving EV use (excuse the pun)
As for OBR leak? That’s a fuckup of unreal proportions. I’d be chewing the furniture if I was the Chancellor.
@lordsplodge I mean, I get it - the drop in fuel duty revenue from the rise of EVs is a massive hole that needs to be plugged (no pun intended) somehow. I do wonder whether it might have been better dealt with through road tax though.
@hedders @lordsplodge yeah, the pay per mile should be replacing VED for all vehicles, with different rates based on emissions (i.e. transpose the existing VED to pay per mile).
But what was not revealed so far (I think?) is how the mileage of each EV/PHEV will be established?
@damien @hedders @lordsplodge if I am to take the existence of PAYE and utility companies insisting on "averaged" direct debit payments as an indicator of the general public's inability to budget, it seems likely we're probably all going to end up with mandatory cloud services on cars to report the data. MOTs are too far apart (and don't happen until year 3 anyway).
@interpipes @hedders @lordsplodge end up with? 🤣
@interpipes @damien @hedders @lordsplodge Though the "at MOT" way would still provide an incentive to switch away from ICE cars, centralise and simplify the data collection, breathe life into MOT centres, and be handled via tax returns.
Though I suspect they'll be sold on the telemetry route based purely on the additional data they can yoink.
I can see it eventually doing away with static speed cameras, being used for warrantless location tracking, and the like.
@jumile @damien @hedders @lordsplodge problem is that MOTs don't happen until year 3 and if people only got their tax bill every year for a full year's worth of mileage in one go I fully guarantee shocked pikachu faces all around and cries of "how am I supposed to afford this lump sum now" etc
MOT centres are not seeing any less of me because I drive an EV so I don't think they need the work
@interpipes @damien @hedders @lordsplodge I was thinking of the 0-3 gap as unchanged, and the future payments as being largely invisible via PAYE code changes.
It's not like we'll have a choice about it, whichever way it goes.
@jumile @damien @hedders @lordsplodge oh, as in they collect it in arrears the year after you drove it through PAYE? Yes, I suppose that could work
I can't see them leaving years 0-3 on the table though.
I can't get that excited about this like some are, if you ask me it should probably have replaced an annual VED entirely. It's not like people driving ICE weren't already paying-by-mile anyway.
@interpipes @damien @hedders @lordsplodge Definitely agree. Otherwise it's a bizarre ideological exercise against EV.
@jumile @damien @hedders @lordsplodge well, but that's what I'm saying: people in ICE are already paying by mile (or, rather, by litre), in fuel duty. That's why I don't get why a certain type of people are so angry about mileage based duties.
@jumile @damien @hedders @lordsplodge
While obviously new cars are more efficient, my old 2L diesel estate would get perhaps 45MPG on a motorway trip.
200 miles at 45MPG is 4.44r gal, or 20.20L. 52.95p in duty per litre means £10.70 in fuel duty for 200 miles at 45MPG.
My EV will 'only' be £6 for 200 miles @ 3p/mi.
That's before we factor in the higher %/£ in VAT on fuel + duty, if your average month of electricity use is under 33kW/day / 1000kW/mo on a domestic supply, it's only 5% VAT.
@jumile @damien @hedders @lordsplodge Maybe it is as simple as that most people simply do not realise how much they pay at the pump is tax, and there is something about actually seeing a cost per mile laid out that upsets them.
@interpipes @damien @hedders @lordsplodge Suspect that's accurate. Lack of knowledge drives a lot of motivation.
@interpipes @jumile @damien @hedders Yeah every mile you drive costs. Be that wear and tear. Fuel (both the actual fuel and the tax). Depreciation. And so on and so forth.
Taxing per mile isn’t necessarily a bad idea. It’s just odd and counter productive to add it just to EVs. We need more people ditching the internal combustion engine.
@interpipes @jumile @damien @hedders However putting my data and cyber head on (and related my privacy head) How are they going to collect the mileage data?
Because we all know it will be some cloud connected—stored in American AWS, natch—setup. A massive data breach waiting to happen and, of course, a privacy issue.
@lordsplodge @interpipes @jumile @hedders if they only collect a mileage figure, they're already doing it as part of the MOT data (for cars 3+ years of course); but the expectation is they'd have to do something a little more robust (otherwise clocking is a far bigger issue and incentive) and yeah in that case it becomes a security and privacy nightmare.
@damien @interpipes @jumile @hedders Yeah. Raw mileage at MOT time has no real data/privacy issues. But does mean EV owners could get a big bill at year three. 😅 I don’t trust a government of any colour not to use this to come up with a scheme to monitor when and where folks drive.
@lordsplodge @damien @jumile @hedders the current plan appears to be “we’ll do it at mot and have to do extra checks for y1&2 and yes maybe we need to figure out how to prevent people just clocking their cars”
They are really going to have to figure out something less dramatic than a once a year in terms of recording & collection, though, or at the very least there will need to be a mechanism for interim readings & payments at sale time.
@interpipes @damien @jumile @hedders “Plan” = classic government make it up as they go along.
@lordsplodge @damien @jumile @hedders biggest issue I have with the current proposal is it means I will still pay uk tax even when driving abroad which fuel duty does not do (I pay whatever duty wherever I buy my fuel instead)
Without improved enforcement of registration requirements this will mostly drive foreign registered cars being used in the uk
@interpipes @damien @jumile @hedders Yup. It’s almost as if every not very well thought out government scheme always results in folks finding workarounds.
The paying whilst abroad is a perfect excuse for the government to say “Oh we must use GPS and cloud reporting. Sorry”
@lordsplodge @damien @jumile @hedders realistically, every manufacturer making EVs is already is doing that anyway. The government could just require them to report geofenced mileage if they want type approval for new vehicles, but that would be harder than just charging everyone on their odometer, risk leaving existing cars uncovered, and govt are probably trying to swerve arguments about privacy given their existing digital id shenanigans.
@interpipes @damien @jumile @hedders Yeah there’s a big problem with data tracking especially in Chinese produced EVs.
I guess we see what happens. Really confusing time for folks looking to buy an EV. Well done government, pushing folks to petrol cars. Slow clap. Meanwhile in Norway…
@lordsplodge @damien @jumile @hedders I think the government needs to communicate better about the fact that most people are already paying more than 3p/mi in fuel duty and it's still cheaper.
Depreciation has been mentioned as a problem in terms of additional cost for owning an EV but if you want to be one of those people who changes their car needlessly every 1-3 years for a new one I say that's on you.
@nick @lordsplodge @damien @jumile @hedders tbh since I stopped commuting using a car I would not be surprised if 10-20% of my mileage going forward is now european
@nick @interpipes @lordsplodge @jumile @hedders I would say if you do any miles abroad it's likely to amount to "huge" in relative terms? A road trip to Spain or Germany can easily add circa 3000 miles to the odometer. That's quite substantive.
Norway's model of replacing VED with an insurance tax (different rates based on type of vehicle) and road tolls (different rates based on type of vehicle and engine type) makes sense to me.
Road tolls on all National Highways roads (for all vehicles)!
Kitchenware question:
In the old days it was Tupperware. I’m talking about “plastic boxes for food storage in the fridge, freezer, maybe a reheat in the microwave”.
We have some by Sistema but frankly they are rubbish. They get brittle in the freezer, then the lid latches break. We have tried other cheaper ones.
Are there any GOOD plastic food storage systems?
@bloor I prefer glass containers over plastic as they can be heated in the oven and are easier to clean. John Lewis have some own brand ones that are decent.
@bloor For freezer we use cheap plastic pots with plastic lids; they're thinner and lighter than anything we'd use if we wanted it on a countertop, and don't have the clever seals or anything.
One option is the plastic boxes that takeaway food is delivered in. They aren't very robust but they are basically free. Recycle them when they fail 🙂🤷♂️
@bloor I moved away from plastic to glass with a silicone lid. Home Bargains always seem to have quite a few 'Lock n Lock ones which I really like.
@ben 100mb is fast enough for anyone
@Dragon @ben for no adequately explained reason I’ve stuck 10Gb interfaces in my desktop and the Microserver running truenas. Get an actual 3Gb/s throughout using smb which isn’t bad. I was pleased to see I can get 950Mb/s to my isp (download only, up is only 100Mb/s, which is surely enough for anyone 
)
@Wifiwits @ben it looks like zen are now available on my headend exchange. (As in their own network rather than using BTW)
Depending on pricing the 1.8Gbit is semi tempting but it still has the 110 up and I'd need an ONT swap
Keeping an eye on olilo at the moment but might just wait for OR to roll out XGSpon
@nick @Dragon @ben Openreach won’t give any useful information either. On committing to our current house we were told there were “no plans” for fibre and the fttc VDSL offering was awful. Fortunately virgin media was available so I ordered that. The day we moved in some guys were digging up the pavement installing the openreach fibre 
I used to work with a guy 30 years ago who was proud of his facility with ed, when vi was not available.
vi is always available now. vi commands, particularly h,j,k,l, are frequently used elsewhere. When you have it under your fingers, it’s extremely useful & powerful. Not to be neglected imo.
@NAB No. The way to edit a text file on a Linux server is
* copy it to a Windows box
* edit it using a real editor
* copy it back.
You have to learn about line endings, but that's about the only hassle.
@NAB vi, not vim, is present on any and all *nix variants. The basic commands is enough to save yourself from bad situations. After that choose your daily driver editor.
Another tip is to t-y-p-e every command manually in the beginning, read manpages not google. That is imho the only way to learn the sysadmin skill, and in the end be able to do things effortlessly on any system.
@NAB I’ve never learned anything with vi beyond how to get into insert mode and how to quit (with or without saving).
I think that’s enough unless someone particularly likes vi as an editor (I don’t, I prefer nano or a gui editor)!
@NAB Exposure to Vim and Emacs is important for people to get used to the idea that powerful software can sometimes have a learning curve.
As someone who unexpectedly acquired a project maintaining an old but important system with no fancy tools installed, and who had to fix something immediately... YES!
[Edited to add] I got into vi ok, but couldn't work out how to exit!
@NAB I've got thirty something years of Emacs under my belt, and I still say Yes to that. I don't particularly get on with the VI Way, but dear god it beats the crap out of nano.
@NAB yes, and the core gnu toolset: grep, awk, sed... *regular expressions rule everything around me*
@NAB yes, and make him write up a cheat sheet for the editing commands to help establish best practices.
James Watson sounds a *lot* like some other people I could mention…
“His signal achievements, and the way he accomplished them, inflated his belief not only in his genius but also in how to succeed”
What’s the name of this tendency for people to succeed at one thing to then think they’re right about *everything*, and to retreat into ever-more extreme positions when questioned?
Hello! And welcome to the third and final day of Jet Lag: The Game - Hide + Seek: Netherlands edition! It’s 10:30am, @quixoticgeek and, having discounted the War Games option (the only winning move is not to play), we are so back in the delightful town of Lunteren, where it’s time for us to Go! Go! Go!
Today it’s @darkphoenix’s turn to hide, and she is somewhere with the borders of the Netherlands mainland. We’ve got all day to try and find them, and we have to beat the time of 8 hours and 7 minutes it took us to find @quixoticgeek yesterday.
For those of you who missed yesterday’s thread, it’s up at: https://cupoftea.social/@moof/115513147403818486
For Day 1 (Friday), my thread is up at https://cupoftea.social/@moof/115507383775325900
Confused as to what #JetLagTheGame is? First of all, welcome to my little corner of the fediverse, you must be new here. But you can read a little primer I wrote about here: https://moof.space/what-is-jet-lag
So, it’s time to lock in, and get going…
(CW: selfie with eye contact)
Alt...
Selfie at Lunteren station
…to nowhere in particular. A behind the scenes tip: we all started at Amersfoot Centraal this morning, which is the closest station to our hotel for the night. We agreed to *notionally* start at Lunteren, and @darkphoenix has an actual itinerary that started at Lunteren at 09:30 to wherever they’re heading that will be within the 3 hour time limit.
So don’t believe all the photos you see on fedi.
In our case, we worked out when the first train after 10:30 arrives at Amersfoort and will be at the platform to meet it at 11:00am, where we are then released to be able to move.
That’s another thing, @darkphoenix is not actually at their hiding place. Much like we did with my run on Friday, she started later, and is notionally answering questions as if she were already there. We aren’t allowed to ask photo questions before 12:30 in order to give her time to arrive.
(CW: selfie with eye contact)
Alt...
Selfie in front of a big Amersfoort centraal sign at the entrance to said station
Speaking of questions, we can’t move til 11, but we are allowed to ask questions now, and house rules state that they are counted from where we physically are (to avoid us having to simulate the current train location or whatever). So we are definitely going to see how much we can reduce the entire map of the Netherlands without going anywhere.
We’ve asked whether @darkphoenix is within 80km of us, and she is inside the radius.
Alt...
An 80km radius from Amersfoort Centraal
Next, we want to know if she is closer to the coast than us. This is effectively an East-West split from our location. And.. she is. Which basically reduces us to the Randstadt, the area of the Netherlands that basically includes Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht. Aka “everywhere you’ve ever heard of in the Netherlands”
Long time #JetLagTheGame stans will be disappointed that we have already eliminated apostrophe es hurtigruten.
Alt...
A map that’s been reduce to, basically, the Randstadt. Looks like a pac man with a very open mouth
If you want to follow the other players, @darkphoenix has a thread going at
https://not.an.evilcyberhacker.net/notes/aeuzsu2tg7o300dn
@quixoticgeek has her thread up at https://social.v.st/@quixoticgeek/115519042948605723
It seems that @darkphoenix is also closer to an aquarium than us in Amersfoort. It means she’s not in most of Amsterdam, which gives us a train to get on, towards Utrecht.
Alt...
A somewhat weird shape on the map
And we are now sat in a station bench at Utrecht Centraal, listening to a pianist playing a jazzy version of A Little Night Music, as we wait for a response to our next question. Delightful.
So we decided to ask if her nearest airport is the same as ours… and it wasn’t.
So we have effectively stopped at Utrecht, got off the train, asked the question, gone upstairs, waited, gotten the answer, headed down to the same platform, and gotten back on the same train, which is heading towards Gouda
Alt...
An even weirder shape. Still some interesting locations though
We did a thermometer from Utrecht to Papekop (we saw the station as the train sped through). This has made more interesting slicing, removing some bits that were worrying us in Alkmaar, and we are now doing another thermometer from Gouda up towards the north.
Alt...
Lots of dots on a map
That was an intense few minutes…
We did a thermometer from Gouda to a little outside Alphen am der Rhein.
This managed to eliminate a significant swathe, including Rotterdam, which means the dreaded rail replacement bus is much less likely. We then boarded a train to Leiden, and got the curse of the hidden hangman, which we successfully identified as PYLON within five minutes. Because we’d boarded the train before the card, we continued on our way to Leiden.
We managed to ask for a photo of the tallest building from the station before declaring lunch at 12:30.
Alt...
A little wedge shape including Leiden and Den Haag
Alt...
Curse of the hidden hangman
As we expected @darkphoenix took a lunch break after ours finished at 13:00.
We took the opportunity to head to Den Haag Central to start a thermometer, and then headed on Den Haag-Ypenburg on rail replacement tram. There we finished the thermometer, and then asked if her closest theme park was the same as ours.
It’s left a very small area to search…
Alt...
Small area of den Haag and delft
With the judicious use of a tentacle based on zoos, we managed to track @darkphoenix down to Delft Campus, and are currently on our way there.
We are effectively in the end game, and I’m going to go silent, as this is a very intense game today. See you the other side…
We found @darkphoenix! It was in a random thicket by a
park. It took us 6 hours and 3 minutes, plus 80 minutes in effective time bonuses, making it a total hiding time of 7 hours and 23 minutes, which places them very much in second place. I lost, and @quixoticgeek won fair and square.
Today’s game was very intense, more so than the last couple of games. There was less time to rest, due to the very short train times inherent in the Randstat. We very much struck lucky by sitting down to rest right next to where she was hidden, as we were not quite in determined end game search every bush mode.
That being said, it was a fair game. Different from the last two, but no less enjoyable.
We are now sat at a bar in Delft toasting Kitty’s excellent win, and dissecting this game every which way to make it better. I’ll be writing up our conclusions in another round of Intercity Insights some time soon. Watch this moof.space!
And with that, goedeavond!
Electric vehicle drivers are likely to be hit with a new “pay-per-mile” tax in the forthcoming budget, amounting to an extra £250 a year on average. The scheme, which would charge EV motorists 3p per mile on top of other road taxes, comes amid falling fuel duty revenue as more people switch from petrol to electric.
@kibcol1049 how will they know how many miles are people driving per year?
@Disputatore Good question. Who knows how they propose to do it. 🤔
Apparently its from estimates of individual drivers mileage (presumably obtained from MOT for older vehicles or maybe self-declaration similar to applying for insurance (the govt could get this data from insurance companies/MIB, or even from manufacturers for vehicles still in the dealer servicing network with active telemetry)
But this is only going to fuel the conspiracy theories of the paranoid, and could even stall the wider adoption of EVs (especially as the easy customers with at home charging have already been cherry picked and there seems to be little effort to make it easier for those with on street parking)
@vfrmedia @kibcol1049 @Disputatore Think it's a silly way to do it. Why not just have a vehicle tax rate like they do for other vehicles?
@UkeleleEric @kibcol1049 @Disputatore
Its *on top* of the £195 VED for normal vehicles, hence why its a daft idea which could well put folk off getting an EV - if you can't charge at home you are at the mercy of various public charger operators with higher levels of rent seeking and data harvesting and at present less reliability than just buying petrol/diesel, and at present there seem to be 0 attempts to improve this situation (which won't change if left to the market alone)
@vfrmedia @kibcol1049 @Disputatore
I understand that the idea is to pay for the roads but this idea will surely dissuade people from using an EV and consequently from buying one.
The most polluting stage of having an EV is its construction not its use so discouraging people to drive one after purchase is of negative benefit.
@Sarahw @vfrmedia @kibcol1049 roads do require maintenance
@Disputatore
Yeah, this feels like they’re sticking it to us EV drivers, but they’re not only losing all the money I used to spend on petrol, but they get very little out of me on public chargers too, since I almost exclusively charge at 7p/kwh at home.
And the roads do need to be maintained. Eventually there will be no petrol cars. So they need some way of getting money from the heavy road users rather than taxing the cyclists and pedestrians for the motorways they’ll never use.
A vaguely per-mile charge sounds fair. I don’t know how that compares with the per-litre fuel duty.
But short of actually taxing billionaires and megacorps properly (and… yeah, wouldn’t that be lovely!), this is probably ok?
@Sarahw @vfrmedia @kibcol1049
@gareth @Disputatore @Sarahw @vfrmedia @kibcol1049 after the mileage charge still just 5 or 6p per mile but look at the cost of home batteries. You can charge them at the 7p rate too. Mine have reduced my electricity bill so the car costing a negative rate per mile
@John_Loader @gareth @Sarahw @vfrmedia @kibcol1049 I was told the UK has a government scheme where if you buy solar panels and batteries together you don't pay VAT, or something. That's a great offer. But there is no incentive scheme in Portugal to buy batteries. I bought solar panels with a government incentive plan. With the savings and the first year of selling excess production, I was able to pay for the panels in less than 18 months. But I can't find a business case for batteries.
@Disputatore @gareth @Sarahw @vfrmedia @kibcol1049 batteries are complicated . I can only use the UK situation. Solar on its own will pay back quickly if you get a good rate for export and, as in your country, loads of sun. Batteries are expensive and add to the years of payback. They are more a reaction to ever increasing electricity price rises rather than quick returns
@John_Loader @Disputatore @gareth @Sarahw @kibcol1049
My relatives have solar + batteries and it seems the batteries are more useful for resillience rather than immediate payback - a couple of months ago they lost the grid supply for a whole hour (at least during daylight in good weather) and the entire house power demand was picked up by the solar + batteries without even making much of a dent in the battery charge level (rather like a giant UPS)
@John_Loader @Disputatore @gareth @Sarahw @vfrmedia @kibcol1049
LiFePO4 batteries have massively dropped in price. You could easily do a 16kWh DIY setup for well under €1,000
@davep @John_Loader @gareth @Sarahw @vfrmedia @kibcol1049 I would also have to change my inverter to a hybrid one. But 16kWh for under €1,000 has an extremely pleasant sound to it.
@Disputatore @John_Loader @gareth @Sarahw @vfrmedia @kibcol1049
Hybrid transformerless inverters aren't generally good for working off-grid by the way.
@Disputatore @John_Loader @gareth @Sarahw @vfrmedia @kibcol1049
If you're interested in DIY batteries, check out the off-grid garage on YouTube.
Here's a thread about a couple I made...
@Disputatore @vfrmedia @kibcol1049
Oh completely. And one could argue that ev drivers should pay more as the cars are heavier and therefore cause more wear and tear.
But then again that is counter productive if we want cleaner air.
I'm an EV owner myself but I might be put off if I had to pay more tax. One of the advantages is cheaper running costs but this is offset against higher purchase price.
@Disputatore @Sarahw @vfrmedia @kibcol1049 they do, but they also seerve everybody, whether they use a taxi/rideshare or a bus, or drive a 20 year old corolla, or order groceries from one of those mail order meal prep companies. so the sensible thing is probably just infrastructure grants from taxes
@kibcol1049 Surely a better idea for ICEs and EVs would be to charge road tax through fuel prices for ICEs and charging sessions for EVs and therefore abolish road tax altogether. The more you use the vehicle or the bigger/less efficient the vehicle, the more you pay.
@nick @kibcol1049 VAT on EV chargers as well as VAT on the electricity?
@jayfell @kibcol1049 And that is where my suggestion possibly breaks down. It was an easy idea before EVs came along.
@PaulNickson @kibcol1049 or just apply car tax on a carbon release/mile and multiply it by distance travelled applied retrospectively after milage recorded at MOT. EVs charged at grid carbon component averaged over previous year.
@epistatacadam @kibcol1049 Yep. That could work.
@epistatacadam @kibcol1049 However the point is (and this may be controversial for some) that all road users (besides pushbikes) should pay some sort of premium for the upkeep of the road system. The more you use your vehicle, the more wear n tear you do to the roads. What I was proposing was a ‘Road Use Tax’. Payable by the gallon or kWh.
@PaulNickson @kibcol1049 I agree, I was thinking of a similar scheme but rather than on the energy alone, keeping the link to carbon emissions, and distance travelled, of course you could add a kerb weight component too so heavier vehicles get taxed more as well.
Either would be fine by me, though I use mostly my own generated electric in summer. So would that be taxed?
@epistatacadam @kibcol1049 Bugger. Hadn’t thought of ‘home-generated power’! Hmm, that complicates it.
@PaulNickson @kibcol1049 Sorry! But it would be hard to keep tabs on everyone with rooftop solar, especially as cars become grid support batteries too.
@epistatacadam @kibcol1049 Yeah that makes it tricky. Back to a scaled annual road tax then but by mile, read off the MOT cert I suppose. That would then work for ICE vehicles as well.
@PaulNickson @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 I mean distance travelled is an option. Sure some people might try to finagle it but in a country where you regularly have to have it checked it wouldn't be too hard.
@ariaflame @PaulNickson @kibcol1049 it just requires a chancellor to have the guts to a) think of a sensible system and b) rope their colleagues in to amend other laws if required. E.g. recording milage at MOT becomes compulsory, and on ICE I think carbon emissions are calculated already. And get independent checking of fuel/mile and KwH/mile.
@epistatacadam @ariaflame @PaulNickson @kibcol1049 using the MOT recorded mileage would mean that new car owners would get 3 years free.
@frantictdrinker @epistatacadam @ariaflame @kibcol1049 Ah yes. That doesn’t work either then. DAMN! This is too hard!
@frantictdrinker @epistatacadam @ariaflame @PaulNickson @kibcol1049
In lieu of gas taxes, vehicles should be taxed based on weight. More weight, more road damage.
@PaulNickson @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 Road damage is proportional to the 4th power of the weight per axle, so maybe factor that in.
@rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 Hmm. So weight is another consideration. And power (because higher power shreds tyres more quickly). And tyre width etc. etc.. bloody hell this is complicated now!
@PaulNickson @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 And an extra 20% because the driver is a dickhead. How do we know? The Audi logo is a dead giveaway.
@rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 3 months ago I would’ve agreed with you but I’ve since bought a s/h Audi A3!
@kibcol1049 @rupert @epistatacadam (My previous 5 cars were BMWs)
@PaulNickson @rupert @kibcol1049 it's BMW and Volvo drivers locally who make my blood boil. They never bother with indicators, as a pedestrian most of the time having people approach a side road, with no indication, then drive into your path....paying no attention to highway code.... Grrrh!
@epistatacadam @rupert @kibcol1049 I had 5 BMWs before the Audi and made a point of indicating whenever necessary just to buck the trend!
@PaulNickson @rupert @kibcol1049 exception proves the rule etc.
@PaulNickson @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 Does it have a "wet belt" for valve timing etc? If so, search on YouTube for details. 😟
@NormanDunbar @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 Ooh. Don’t know. It has an S-Tronic gearbox (with, hopefully only a minor fault)!
@NormanDunbar @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 Just looked it up: it does have a timing belt (damn!)
@PaulNickson @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 They are the worst invention ever! Putting a rubber based belt, inside and engine, covered in hot oil? Not good.
You need to hope the previous owner was clinical in changing the oil at the recommended intervals and with the correct grade too. Losing the belt can be expensive. 😟
Sorry to be such a bad news bastard.
@NormanDunbar @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 I’ve heard nasty stories about timing belts failing at approx 60k miles and on high compression engines the resultant stalled valves meeting pistons and basically lifting the head. Terminal as you can imagine.
@NormanDunbar @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 Mind you the first car I ever owned (A Hillman Avenger (Yeah right)) wore its timing gears into ‘wheels’ as a result of the tensioner wearing out.
@PaulNickson @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049
How come your replies don't get a mention in my mentions/favourite/etc timeline I wonder?
Cars in the 70s and 80s were crap! Three years lifespan, if you were lucky. Nothing much got to 100k. Service every 10 minutes or 3 miles, whichever was soonest. And rust! 😉
@NormanDunbar @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 I agree. Build and paint quality were the pits back then. That Avenger eventually got eaten by rust. Sills were the favourite weak point.
Don’t know why my replies don’t appear on your t/l. Maybe they’re not interesting enough according to Mastodon.
@PaulNickson @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 They must be now, they are all in my notifications. Finally!
@PaulNickson @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 There are some that die horribly at 30k. Even if you catch them before they snap, but after they start losing bits, they take out your oil pump, water pump, and other bits inside the engine.
If they do snap, goodbye engine, as you note.
@NormanDunbar @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 A constant source of stress when the engine reaches that sort of mileage.
@NormanDunbar
When timing belts were a new thing and people were wary Ford UK used to reassure us that they would, 'last the life of the engine'.
@PaulNickson @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049
@pthane @NormanDunbar @PaulNickson @rupert @epistatacadam They didn't go into details about the time the engine would last though!
A few seconds longer than the timing belt I gather?
@kibcol1049 @pthane @NormanDunbar @PaulNickson @rupert @epistatacadam
@PaulNickson
That happened in a car I was riding in once. I heard “Piddly-pink!”
And the driver (a friend who liked restoring vintage cars {this was not one of them}) said “Oh, fuck!”, then we spent the next hour waiting for the AA.
@PaulNickson @NormanDunbar @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049
for VW/Audi timing belts, make sure they are inspected and changed if necessary (VW used to suggest as often as every 5 years, although the interval is slightly longer now).
DSG/S-Tronic gearbox is excellent when it works (all my cars have had it) but hassle when it doesn't.
DQ200 pressure accumulator can crack leading to strange behaviour (if you get "D" with no gear number when driving and not in any "eco" mode this can be a sign of it), its fixable but about £600 including labour and you usually need a specialist garage (mechatronics needs to be *fully* depressurised or it will yeet the accumulator across the workshop)
DQ250 'box needs oil change every 40 000 miles, costs about £250.
@vfrmedia @NormanDunbar @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 Thanks for this. I’ve copied it to a note if you don’t mind. Very useful. Im having the gearbox looked at on Wednesday. Clutch slip I think. Hoping it’s just low/smashed oil.
@vfrmedia @NormanDunbar @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 BTW the car has done 49,000 miles (‘14 A3 1.4)
@PaulNickson @NormanDunbar @rupert @epistatacadam @kibcol1049
lower power engines (1,2 / 1,4 L ) with a 7 speed 'box generally have DQ200, performance models have the DQ250 ( 6 speed) or DQ381 (7 speed)
I had mechatronic pressure accumulator replaced on my 2015 VW Polo (with DQ200) in 2022, thankfully DQ250 on my current car (VW Golf GTI) is behaving (they are more robust provided the gearbox oil is regularly changed).
In fact the gearbox part itself is quite solid, its the mechatronic which tends to act up.
It *is* possible to change both mechatronic and gearbox oil on a DQ200, even though VW/Audi claim that its "sealed for life" (if the accumulator has to be replaced the mechatronic oil must be changed anyway)
(there's more info at link below)
From the info you've provided I suspect you have a DQ200 gearbox. It *is* fixable but a lot of garages lack the skills/equipment to work on it so tends to be slightly more specialist work (but at least in larger towns/cities where cars with auto 'boxes are increasingly popular its getting easier to find mechanics who will be able to fix it)
@rupert @PaulNickson @kibcol1049 I suspect pointless trying to get it too accurately aligned to road damage, but I feel it's important to keep pressure on manufacturers to move away from heavy SUV style cars. So a simple distance * kerb weight* length* carbon/distance factor would encourage purchase of small light cars, with low carbon consumption.
@rupert @PaulNickson @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 I didn’t know that. Ouch.
Would that be roughly the same trend for tyre wear and consequent microplastics, I wonder? Or does it also factor in the tyre contact area?
@PaulNickson @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 Some places do this, actually. Many communities in the Chicago area (where I used to live) require drivers to buy 'stickers' for the front windshield, the lack of which can be fined. These are a road tax. (Chicago also has toll roads. And, ironically, some of the worst roads in the US.)
@lmgenealogy @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 Hmm not the perfect solution then but a step in the right direction.
@PaulNickson @epistatacadam @kibcol1049 I think the Chicago area has plenty of money for road maintenance. There are other types of problems there, including a very strong asphalt lobby in the state capital which ensures that roads are built with inferior materials (as per a friend who works in local government), and a city government that contracts with companies based partly on their connection to serving politicians and not fiscal responsibility. But the road tax idea does at least mean that the drivers are the ones paying for the roads - which might even encourage public transportation . . . if it existed outside of the city core. Sigh. (Chicago is an amazing city, but it does have its problems!)
They've already whacked up vehicle excuse duty for electric cars. There's a letter on my desk, asking me to pay £195 for the next twelve months. Now this as well? For environmental reasons, we've shifted almost all our mileage from Mrs Wife's petrol car to our #EV, so this'll cost us about £500 a year.
If you #tax something, you get less of it. Does the government want to #decarbonise transport or not?
As you know, we got shot of our faulty gas boiler and replaced it with a heat pump. Anecdotally I do think the heatpump is slightly cheaper to run at the moment, than the gas boiler used to be, even on a "any time flat rate" tariff for electricity; in my case 21.89p per kWh and a 62.22p per day standing charge.
I was paying 5.69p per kWh and 27.86p a day for gas.
So this is vaguely impressive.
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2/2
So now I only have electricity and my tariff is up for renewal. And holy wow the price has gone up.
Unit cost for electricity rises from 21.89p to 26.44p = 4.55p per unit. Ouch
Standing charge falls from 62.22 to 43.66p = 18.56p a day
Mysteriously I think had I still had gas, my gas unit price would have actually fallen too!
I'm not entirely blaming Octopus but we are told electricity pricing is based on gas pricing. So how is gas kWh pricing falling, and electricity kWh pricing rising?
Additional thought (3/2)
We have two EVs and a heat pump. And we also run stuff like a hot tub. As a consequence of this our annual usage is like 12,000 kWh of electricity. Rather a lot.
That's a bit of a guess based on former gas usage translated to electrical usage.
But because our usage kind of can be any time, I still don't think we're better to go on differing kWh by time tariffs UNTIL we get a storage battery.
Long term, storage battery + solar, and near zero bills. But just now, oof.
@bloor we don't do any load-shifting, but have a tariff that's cheap(ish) for a few hours early morning and mid afternoon - in the current weather, the biggest draw we have is for hot water, and that's scheduled for the cheap times and saves a fair bit (especially when it's a dull day!)
Depends on provider, but Good Energy make it very painless to shift tariffs on a whim, so it's easy to tinker...
@bloor Try an app like Octopus Watch or OctoAid - they can do tariff comparisons on your actual usage.
@alexlomas I am wondering if in practice it is probably safe to assume we use more energy at night, simply because it is generally colder at night. Same with hot tub heating. And therefore, could a 2 rate tariff help.
My issue is that all my numbers are kind of new-ish and not perhaps maximally representative due to our recent killing of gas.
I'll look into those apps though, thank you.
@bloor Agile tends to be spendy at this time of year at peak hours but there have been a lot of very low prices lately as well.
@alexlomas Once we have battery, I'll go onto the tariff that has a 6 hour window at like 8p a unit and just fully charge always at that price...
@nick @alexlomas Is that Octopus? If so, they seem to have reduced that to 5 hours not 6 for new customers.
Rate is 8.5p per kWh I think
@bloor @nick @alexlomas Not what I’m seeing on the website?
Alt...
Get your smart charging for just 7p/kWh including six hours every night between 11:30pm and 05:30am for your whole home.
@ninkosan @nick @alexlomas Ah hold on - is this the one that needs either the compatible car or charger? If so, I have neither.
@ninkosan @nick @alexlomas ah yes ok ... "intelligent go" versus just "go".
@nick @ninkosan @alexlomas My problem is I want to use a Victron EV charger, which will be locally smartified. And with other Victron kit; Cerbo GX, Quattro 15K and several MPPTs. So I'm kind of going to be a victron shop. And that means none of the best pricing.
@alexlomas @bloor agree about Octopus Watch. Our main storage is the hot water and I now use Havenwise to heat the hot water when cheap on Octopus Agile. Been using agile for years when when we had gas and other than a couple of months at the start of the year it's been working out the cheapest tariff with just a little load shifting of washing. Oh it's windy and prices are low, let's use it as an opportunity to make sure we get all the bed sheets washed etc
@bloor Can you time shift stuff like water heating and appliances ?
We did go battery and the works but the best single RoI on my spreadsheet once you factor in the costs and depreciation of equipment was actually simply doing shit between 00:30-05;30. The second was insulation and the battery itself was far behind (although of course it's kind of an enabler)
@bloor I've have thought charging the EVs and washing machine/dishwasher overnight would be a good win with IOG?
@ross We cannot get IOG. But we could get OG. And you are right. I am wondering if this would be a good trade. Even in the short term. Once we have a battery it's an absolute no brainer as we can continue to use "whenever" and just take from the battery.
@bloor My experience of solar plus battery so far is that I’ve managed to about halve our electricity bill.
28Kw battery, 3Kw of south facing solar, 1.5Kw of north facing solar (yeah, but better than nothing). Annual usage in the first full year including about 600Kwh of car charging, 7500Kwh. We don’t have a heat pump for the house though, we have electric radiators and a forced air system with heat reclaim.
To zero it entirely would require more storage (l double to cover max winter use in a day) and a lot more solar (which will be the limiting factor). And there are days in a row where we get low - very low - solar so actually it’ll never be zero for us. Contemplating an extra 14Kwh of battery but not sure it’s really worth the investment at the moment.
@gulfie my outline plan at the moment involves 32 kWh of battery and getting up towards 20 kW of panels. I don’t plan to feed back into the grid, but I think I will get zero usage costs for at least three quarters of the year. Roughly roughly.
@bloor Maybe Octopus Cosy would be worth a punt?
Day rate
29.07p / kWh
Cosy rate (04:00 - 07:00, 13:00 - 16:00 & 22:00 - 00:00)
14.26p / kWh
Peak rate (16:00 - 19:00)
43.61p / kWh
Peak rate is painful, might be an issue for cooking.
@bloor it's extremely hard to tell given the ridiculously warm weather, but we feel to be comfortably breaking even.
Digging through our LPG receipts, it looks like we ate around 21MWh of gas annually so as long as we hit a COP of 4 or more, we're in profit I think?
To be honest though, the monetary value of *not* trying to get gas delivered in the depths of winter is almost incalculable.
Vital piece of investigative reporting from Sky. They've uncovered the X algorithm which feeds users extremist right wing material from the moment they join the site. It is a far-right radicalisation engine, by design. news.sky.com/story/the-x-...
Many have already taken advantage of our early bird pricing for the #MikroTik Professionals Conference but it may be prudent to buy your tickets before the price goes up at the weekend! 😉 We are also very interested in hearing from anyone who wishes to present a MikroTik related topic. https://mtpc.world/ #MTPC #Conference #Prague
MS is having DNS issues. So the Dutch railways are having issues. Critical national infrastructure should not be on cloud systems owned by foreign companies. This is resiliency 101.
@quixoticgeek in finance we have DORA legislation for digital resilience (you need to have a backup plan to stay running during such an event), but where are the same requirements for other infrastructure?!
@quixoticgeek so uh. As someone trying to do this for critical infrastructure: it actually probably should otherwise it will be down a lot more. At least in the current environment.
We should probably ask ourselves how to get out and still have the uptime, but it would need a far more honest look at our tech and how we fund it.
I cannot see that happening.
@Di4na as someone who's built a career out of building resilient computer systems. It can be done. But you need to have the knowledgeable staff to make it happen. And quite frankly. Those skills have atrophied across the industry.
@quixoticgeek i think they have not atrophied. We never had them that much. Because at no point in the past did we really handle that scale for so many different systems.
This is all new and we never built it.
And I have seen the results of the people telling me it can be done. Their uptime is not better, etc.
@Di4na the reality is that most organisations are not "that scale". So so so many companies massively over complicate everything.
@quixoticgeek
The Scottish Parliament has had to suspend business.
Literal democratic process is being affected.
@quixoticgeek FWIW after working with some energy net providers (both in Germany and Netherlands), I’m fairly certain that their systems are autonomous.
So I suppose there are levels to criticality.
@quixoticgeek my train is also delayed, wondered if it was the same issue for a second but it turned out to be a much more Devon reason of livestock on the line
@quixoticgeek The Microsoft sales person probably promised it would be but it was more profitable not to keep that promise because they'd never check.
@quixoticgeek I predict it will selectively list, authoritatively, all members of a disapproved class as "not citizens", who then get deported without due process.
@quixoticgeek @cstross it has been proven over and over and over again that relying on the big cloud companies for critical infrastructure is a bad idea because it's putting all your eggs in one basket meaning it ends up not just being trains its trains, banking, taxis, supermarkets, hotel check in/front desk and your apartments shiny new smart lock that the landlord insisted on for some reason. Any one of these things going down would be a pain in the ass but all of them at once is a disaster
@quixoticgeek back in the day, the web hosting company I worked at had DNS servers set up with 3 different providers in 3 different places. In the 20 years the company existed, they never had a dns outage.
To be fair, AWS's DNS servers were up throughout the outage, they were reliably serving what they'd been told to.
It's just that automated systems had decided to remove a bunch of records from the zone...
Does anyone actually pay more for 5G services in 2025? The value argument used here by the researchers at PolicyTracker feels like it's several years too late.
About a year ago, a client I've worked with for over fifteen years informed me that some of their "less critical" servers would be migrated to $CLOUDPROVIDER. According to them, this provider would guarantee an efficient management panel, "more freedom for their devs", and lower costs. This didn't impact me financially but, on an ethical and personal level, I warned him about the potential problems. Yet they decided to move forward, aided by the arrival of $YOUNGDEV who "has worked with it, it's reliable, and everything works fine". Again, I warned them (where are the backups? A disaster recovery plan? etc.) but they insisted: $CLOUDPROVIDER is efficient and gives us everything.
I studied their plan and immediately understood that their "cost-cutting" strategy wouldn't work: I know their workloads, and the plan they chose was insufficient. Needless to say, a few days later they went down and had to make an "emergency" purchase of the next tier up. The cost? Higher than their previous server infrastructure.
I heard nothing more about these workloads for almost a year but my monitoring tools still were marking them down, from time to time. Then, I get a phone call this afternoon. $YOUNGDEV asks me for support. He doesn't explain, but I immediately understand it's one of those workloads. A serious problem, and they don't have a backup of the database. They don't have a test environment to run diagnostics. The DB is very large, and they don't know what to do. My predictions - not even my worst ones - had come true.
I was running between two appointments. I only remarked that this situation could have been avoided and that it's not something I manage or can manage, but I nonetheless suggested we sync up tomorrow morning. I'm not going to get my hands dirty, but still, $YOUNGDEV is in trouble, and I offered to take a look to suggest a strategy. I then asked for the access credentials to $CLOUDPROVIDER, considering that up until a year ago, I managed all of these workloads. He replied that he "doesn't know if he can give them to me" and that he "would have to ask his bosses". I pointed out that if he wants my help, I need something - I don't even know how $CLOUDPROVIDER grants access to data (or if it does) - how can I give him advice?
It's 18:30 and I have received nothing. Tomorrow morning, if the phone rings, I will answer, but at this point, I won't do anything. I prefer, albeit reluctantly, to completely end the relationship with this client.
If this is the price of dignity and respect, I'll gladly pay it.
@stefano It is the price of integrity. You could always give the client a price sheet for returning the services on prem at their previous level of reliability. They would probably pay for it by not having to pay for $YOUNGDEV any more.
I was always surprised when the biz types were amazed that I knew more about their business and costs than they did. I have a hard time relating to people who just learn surface details and act on those.
@ChuckMcManis What has always surprised me about some companies is that their eagerness to do something "new" or "different" drives them to destroy what made them prosper for years, in pursuit of what is clearly a utopia upon even a basic analysis. But I've gotten used to it by now.
@nick @ChuckMcManis exactly - no backup plan, no disaster recovery - and I'm not talking about data, this time.
@stefano I've found this is often driven by a manager's desire to 'have an impact' which, for them, means "improves the business" not "keep it going." Their analysis on everyone I've dug into looked entirely at the possible benefits and *always* minimized and risks or downsides. For new managers especially "do what the old manager did" is not a recipe for moving up the ladder.
1/2
@stefano this!
Also it seems that a lot of those same people have no grasp of their actual operating costs of on-prem equipment. I have reviewed the IaaS cost sheets for the workloads they want to transfer, and when remarking this is app. 4x what our on-prem cost is the only thing I got is a bewildered stare. Sometimes followed by "but we don't need the people anymore". Sure, VMs in aws or azure administer themselves and backups just happen.
Complete lala land.
@fedops @ChuckMcManis I agree. And the scariest thing is: when they go "to the cloud (TM)", they just stop caring about backups. And when I ask "where's a backup of your data", they're usually puzzled: they think that in the cloud, you don't need backups.
@stefano much like with "ai" a large part of the current crop of IT manglement absolutely does not understand what "cloud" even means. Or proper IT services outside of the ITIL BS for that matter.
To quote my favorite, Admin Zen: "Nobody wants backups, everybody wants restores. To get restores you need backups."
@ChuckMcManis
@stefano @ChuckMcManis are you sure it’s the eagerness to do something new? Cases I’ve seen it’s almost always the vague(!) idea of „it’ll be cheaper“ or „it’ll be better“, often based on claims or even promises made by a new employee, contractor or consultant. When the people responsible at the company feel, are old to be or actually are „behind“ on what’s new or en vogue in terms of technology they’re particularly vulnerable to such exploits.
@stefano wow. Whatever decision/route that you'll take, it'll be correct, even if ... seems wrong. I know the feeling though.
@stefano But... the moral higher ground, could be helpin' them out. Not for free though.
@stefano this is more or less how I lost the best job I ever had.
@jpaskaruk because of the movement to the cloud?
@stefano Attempted/Intended movement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEp910UTrnM
The large render farm I had already deployed on prem continued to be 100% used, but that thing also happened, using AWS's own "experts" to advise on setup. Said advice resulted in absurd expenses from storage, and especially egress fees from datacentre to datacentre. Meanwhile the enthusiasm for The Cloud was unfightable in the higherups. Same story.
When I got wind of this, I offered to set it up so that the cloud render nodes would get the inputs from our on prem file servers, which had plenty of bandwidth to spare, and write the resulting frame to a small, temporary bucket that would be cron'd back down to our servers and removed from the cloud asap. No fucking egress fees. Was not considered.
We also spent considerable on reserving compute capacity, whereas it would have been feasible to atomize frames into tiny chunks that could have been processed on the higher-risk pre-emptable Compute nodes, the size of the frames submitted based on current response times.
That last paragraph would have involved collaboration from people more directly experience in Animation than I, so it never even got to proof of concept, but it was 100% feasible and could have saved our ass.
A lot of hearts were broken when we went under. I miss working in cartoons.
@stefano I’m guessing $YOUNGDEV is a Full-Stack Overflow Developer and nobody told them about database backups.
You should thoroughly wash your hands clean of any involvement there and have an easier life for it.
@stefano if you sent them an email a year ago, warning about their cloud setup not being adequate: take that email, paste it with timestamps and all into the reply, and send it off as is.
@stefano It's insane how higher ups complete ignore all potential risks when the cloud is involved. Once they hear "potential savings", it's all over.
But I see the same ignorance every day, where businesses prioritize saving pennies while risking tens of thousands in losses.
@stefano In my case, I always recommend that they get a second internet connection, as the clients I work with run their workloads on-prem. However, rather than investing a few hundred euros in a 4G/5G router every ~5-10 years and paying around 10 euros per month for a SIM card, they risk losing thousands in sales every day when they're offline.
I just can't understand how a business owner could justify taking such a huge risk. It's essentially saving pennies on the dollar. Yet when their DSL or cable does go down, they demand immediate support and somehow blame us for their losses. That's basically like living without health and car insurance.
@subnetspider I agree. A decent 4G router (perfect for a backup connection) is less than 100 euros now, and a sim only is less than 10 euros per month here.
When I propose them as a backup connection solution, they often say it's not needed. Until some random road worker will cut the fiber and they'll stay dark for days.
@stefano I'm getting ready for Halloween, but don't let them do it. Everything is going to the cloud (where we lose control of our own stuff) and AI (so they can learn how our mind motivations and impulses work-for some reason). I will get more into it later, but wantedto make a place mark before I get Hallowed Eved tonight.
New version! #MikroTik RouterOS 7.20.2 is available in the Stable channel https://mikrotik.com/download
Implemented more scopes to match other ActivityPub implementations (public, unlisted, followers-only and direct message) (contributed by byte).
New icons showing instance and actor failures.
Mastodon API: Added remote accounts follow metrics and statuses when viewing profiles (contributed by Stefano Marinelli), fixed post deletion.
Fixed outbox collection (contributed by byte).
New file FEDERATION.md (contributed by andypiper).
Updated Czech, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese translations (contributed by pmjv and daltux).
Fixed manpage typos (contributed by r-ricci).
If you find #snac useful, please consider buying grunfink a coffee or contributing via LiberaPay.
And thanks to byte, @stefano@bsd.cafe, andypiper, pmjv, daltux, r-ricci and any others I may have missed for their contributions to this release as well!
I submitted a Pull Request to update MacPorts' snac to 2.84 here:
https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/29810
1 out of 3 of GitHub's Continuous Integration checks passed, which is a good sign the other two will pass as well.
It's up to someone else with commit access to merge it.
#snac #MacPorts #OpenSource #ActivityPub #Mastodon #NoDatabaseNeeded
#NoJavaScript #NoCookiesEither #NotMuchBullShit
I just discovered how good MikroTik routers (all devices in general) are.
RouterOS 7 looks amazing and the web UI is clean, powerful, and fast. Can’t believe I wasted money on cheap TP-Link and Cudy routers that broke when I tried to install OpenWRT. MikroTik gives you real control, pro-level features, and solid firmware right out of the box.
Wish I knew about them earlier. 🥹
@nick Already using it. They also have a mobile app called Mikrotik Pro. It has the same features as the winbox app!
“People are the most annoying people.”
-Kemi @shitkemisays
The grid is bursting with green power this weekend, and you know what that means…Free Electricity Session Move any heavy power activity into that hour; be it laundry, tumbledryer, extra electric-heat. The power you'd typically use costs the same. If you’re an Read the
Friday 24th October, 9pm - 10pm UK
AND
Saturday 25th October, 12 (noon) - 3pm UK
The hastily crafted (without checking with the product team first 😇) GreyNoise IP checker tool — https://check.labs.greynoise.io/ — was received pretty well at work today, so I spiffied the CSS up a bit and gave it proper opengraph tags and dark mode support.
Shld be a friendly way for anyone, including non-cyber folks, to see if their home IP or work NAT IP was found in GreyNoise.
Might be a good idea to visit it when you're doing on-site family/friend IT support during the upcoming holiday season.
@Geri 🤞
@sodslawyer I watched #BbcQuestionTime last night. Mad Nads was representing #Reform. The audience was laughing at her.
It's that time of the year again, the National Trust AGM where council members are selected, and yet again, the right leaning Restore Trust have a selection of plausible candidates entered. Be warned, they do not have the best interests of the Trust in mind, more of a culture war. So again, I appeal to all Trust members in England and Wales to make sure you vote. Just go to the site and search for AGM. Enter your membership details. Safest bet is to use the block vote. Please boost.
The client has a terrible, unreliable FTTC connection. So, this morning, I've been testing several devices and 4G carriers to find a reliable alternative when the FTTC is full/down.
The good, old LTE12 Chateau is the best for this task, giving a stable and reliable 220/50 Mbit/sec thanks to carrier aggregation.
The newer but smaller hAP ax lite LTE6 is still giving a good result, around 100/50 - expected, as it's "only" a LTE6. This will probably come to my office, while I'm waiting for the Chateau 5G (LTE20) to arrive - probably not before middle of November.
Now, I need to create proper queues and rules to manage the two connections - at the moment, I've implemented only the failover and some simple queues on the FTTC.
Lunch time.
#Mikrotik #IT #SysAdmin #MorningFun
Alt...
The MikroTik Chateau, the Mikrotik hAP ax lite LTE6, a 4G usb key and a usbc 2.5 gbit/sec ethernet adapter on a wooden table
@stefano Exactly which WWAN module does the Chateau use?
@apicultor this is the chipset of mine (but it's an old device): EG12-EA
@stefano Oh no, Quectel. Their firmware update process is trash and unreliable (if you can even get the update out of them by begging on their forum) and when their updater says success and leaves your modem bricked (exposing only a QDSS DATA device and nothing else) they tell you to buy a new one.
Go on, ask me how I know.
@apicultor Oh, that's a problem. I've had this for 5 years and upgraded it (it's been serving me at office) and it always worked but...yes, I guess it's not that nice.
@stefano Upgraded the modem firmware, or the Chateau? The Chateau probably does not ever attempt to push a firmware update to the modem.
@apicultor both of them
@stefano How did you update the Quectel?
@stefano i have 2 of those hAP ax LTE6 devices and they are surprisingly good. In my case speed isn't much of an issue, but failover configuration and flexibility were. WiFi was a bonus and it works fine. Yeah, I'm a fan. Connecting remote locations through wireguard and I feel confident I can administer these remotely anywhere.
In the process of renewing some expired network certifications and I’m struck by how much time is spent on QoS - something I have never implemented or seen implemented.
Ok I tell a small lie, I’ve done it on Wi-Fi where the controller can mark certain incoming traffic as high priority and that can help somewhat if the wlan is busy but end to end QoS? Never touched it, never needed it. I view it as incredibly niche. Am I wrong?
@nick exactly. When does the link get full? Every network I’ve touched has at least 20Gb of uplink capacity from access switches. Campus network capacity is cheap, fancy optics don’t cost anywhere near what they used to. I can see this being an issue with some WAN links but then I’d expect to manage that at the router not the switches. 90% of all traffic these days is internet bound. No end to end QoS there.
@nick I recall a saturated 1Gb ospf link in a university campus network. Various QoS configs had been played with and this had helped the terrible VoIP experience but then we just taped another interface onto it as a LAG and problem solved.
@Wifiwits My experience too. Might be a shiny feature but if the network is being asked to carry more traffic than it can handle it's time IME to upgrade the network, not to sort it into first-class and second-class.
@Wifiwits had it on a (relatively) low bandwith private network, upon which the business was implementing IP telephony. QoS needed to be bulletproof or it regularly fell to bits.
I was quite obsessed with QoS so it fell to me to ensure it was right, and it was, and worked wonderfully.
Policy was mega simple (if it's voice it goes first) but we ensured that was true at every hop in the network including e.g. a switch handing off to a bit of hardware, right down to what the hardware could understand (DSCP, CoS) and what hardware queues it had.
Also once upon a time, did a couple of offsite backup solutions that trickled the traffic upload offsite down to 10kbps if it needed to, so others could use the link. That also worked beautifully, you wouldn't know the backup was smashing the link 24/7.
What does baffle me is these policies (particularly in cisco siwtches that do mountains of policing and multiple queues. Usually so complex that they aren't implemented correctly at all, cos nobody can understand it 😂
Struggling with vibe coding? You just need to get better at prompting. Here is a six video series "course" to teach you how to write the most effective AI prompts and get the most out of vibe coding!
(Do you ever wonder what it would be like if there were some special language for giving commands to computers... a kind of prompting language so they would do *exactly* what you wanted? Maybe someone should invent that.)
@futurebird After reading this post, I've decided to flesh out the ideas a little. And I think I may have conceptualised the future of vibe coding!
First, the problem of inconsistencies in how AIs respond to prompts.
We need better predictability!
So let's create a standard syntax for prompts, so when you enter a given prompt in a particular way, the machine will always respond in a standard way.
We'll call these next-gen prompts "commands".
As long as you know this simple "language" of commands, the machine will always do what you want!
Now, on to the problem of needing complex prompts for complex vibe coding jobs.
Let's take away the guesswork.
Instead of trying to precisely enter one complicated long prompt, let's instead have a series of simpler commands that get executed one after the other.
A "program" of commands, if you will.
So you don't have to re-enter your program on prompts, let's invent a physical media for storing and loading these programs.
Now, the next big elephant in the AI room is resource use.
Let's solve this issue so that the command interpreter "AI" software runs with very few resources. I know this is a stretch goal, but perhaps even an 8-bit microcomputer with just 64K of RAM?
And to really make this catch on, let's make this AI vibe command programming language so simple, even an 8-year-old can understand it.
A "basic" programming language, if you will.
Now I know this "Basic" programming language AI vibe coding system sounds extraordinary.
But I promise you that for just $10 billion in VC funding and total indemnity against copyright infringement, I will happily deliver a 64K 8-bit microcomputer with the BASIC programming language preinstalled!
This is the future of AI folks! Feel the singularity approaching!
Help please.
I am trying to see how far my posts on this platform go.
If you see this post can you please like it.
Please do NOT boost it, as I want to see its natural coverage.
I am thinking of posting more often on here and I am just wanting to see what the current reach is like.
@davidallengreen
Are you sure you don't want boosts, On Mastodon / Activity pub there is no algorithm to promote posts, the only way for a post to spread is by users who follow you, boosting it
@BrianSmith950 I am sure - else I would not have typed it.
I tend not to type things about which I am not sure, unless I say "I am not sure".
@davidallengreen i'm not entirely certain how likes federate. it may be a poor measure.
@davidallengreen Interesting. If I do "Expand this page" I see 7 likes. If I do "Open original page" I see 138 likes (and one boost, not me!). I do tend to forget how compartmentalised the like/fave number is; I think we mostly just see the number on our own server!
@davidallengreen in my head the options are boost or favourite so "like" confused me for a split second but I managed to figure it out :)
Hardly any activity on my instance :(
Alt...
Screenshot to capture number of likes on a post whose author I follow but who is not on the same instance as me.
@davidallengreen Reading from Japan
@EdtheChem Hello!
@davidallengreen Hello! I followed you on the old bluebird place and you were in my pocket when I moved out of the UK and across to a new network. Thanks for the fascinating legal insights!
Loving the Mastodon-style "let me explain" responses.
@davidallengreen Hi. How do you (specifically you) measure reach? (Whatever location the instance I'm on might report I'm in northern England).
@bazbt3 By seeing how many Likes hey back to me. I think that is obvious from my post, and I don’t think it needs to be over-complicated.
@davidallengreen your experiment contains the assumption that "likes" propagate back. I'm not sure how reliably that holds
Thank you for that perfect Mastodon "let me explain" response.
@davidallengreen I'm not explaining. I'm just making sure you know all the assumptions of the experiment
@davidallengreen Greetings from Antwerp, Belgium. Where the old courthouse, still in use, has a "War Justice" entrance.
@davidallengreen “Please do NOT boost it” <at least 2 people boost it>
Wonder if the boosters were bots?
boostedHow big of a fuck-up is going to need to take place for people to realise that putting lots of things all in one place and nebulously labelling it as "the cloud" isn't the best way to architect an "inherently reliable" Internet, from an end-user's perspective.
I don't even begin to see the tide turning.
It didn't turn at any of the fuckups that happened at fastly, cloudflare, etc had.
It hasn't turned with any of the amazon ones.
There have been others.
1/3
boosted2/3
At no point do I see any movement towards "is this such a good idea? Should we, I don't know, mad idea, host our own shit?"
Because every time, the forgetfulness happens rapidly thereafter.
"Oh it's working again!"
"Well, let's not forget the outage!"
"What outage? It's working again!"
3/3
What I have seen is a possibly increasing number of home users no longer wishing to rely on the cloud; people bringing back in house their NAS, or their home automation. But this is niche/hobbyist folks mainly. I really don't feel the same is true of businesses, generally.
@bloor Leaving quite a few people around the world unable to do any work so far today. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c5y8k7k6v1rt
@TimWardCam @bloor my opinion cloud is good for bursting or short lived workloads.
It still doesn't make sense for stuff running 24/7 at least not at hyper scaler pricing
@TimWardCam @bloor I can see the appeal of stuff like managed databases through if you don't have th expertise in house.
You will pay for the privilege of db as a service though
@bloor Then there are the "local systems" which won't allow you to do anything until after they have successfully checked for updates..Oh, the update server is AWOL? Good luck turning your lights on!
@rbairwell @bloor Several things I have owned have been bricked by the app disappearing from the app stores too.
BT Whole Home disks (the original white ones). lolll, update server is gone and the app won't talk to out of date discs nor will the discs update so are now unconfigurable.
Fancy car DAB / hybrid internet radio I had from RadioPlayerUK (obscure, I know).. lol can't control it and it's stuck on one radio station now because the app no longer exists.
@bloor This is certainly something I'm seriously considering.
I'm not quite on the geek/hobbyist scale, but it doesn't scare me either
@bloor I think a lot of the businesses are happy to deploy the someone else's problem field to the issue. Blaming Amazon for the outage and accepting this. I've seen this type of outage be a vehicle to get discounts on hosting costs going forward as well through sales channels.
@bloor my experience is if you tell modern software developers things like that they look at you strangely and shoo you into the corner... "OK, grandad, go play with your vintage computing or something whist we Run Fast And Break Things like proper software engineers".
Also: "But then we would have to pay someone to do that! That's so dumb."
looks at cloud computing bill that is higher than an OK salary for infrastructure I could manage with probably under 20% of my time (Not that I actually want to do that with my time TBF, but you could hire a whole competent full time person for less!)
Of course the killer argument is then: "but what if we need to scale to Facebook size overnight!?" 🤷
Cannot win.
@bloor 1/x
There's an element of 'no one gets fired for buying IBM' in this - AWS is a 'safe' default that most customers don't need you to justify using.
The managed services (the CDN, DNS, database, queues etc) are honestly quite solid and need a lot less in-house expertise than running your own.
Cost *is* more than some racks in a DC + hardware, but to do that you need someone to spec it, someone to install it, someone to look after it if drives die in the middle of the night, etc...
@bloor 2/2
It also means you don't need to plan capacity in advance or be trapped trying to run a service on limited resources until you can get hardware - and getting hardware isn't as predictable as we'd like these days either.
There *are* advantages to cloud, but I do agree that companies running their own hosting is overlooked these days.
@bloor I think more of a focus lately is how the Americans have proven conclusively - at great speed, no less - that they can no longer be relied upon, and so there is more interest - particularly among government bodies - to repatriate data away from US interests.
Part of that will hopefully include a reckoning about whether or not 'cheapest' is a wise purchasing decision, but I doubt it.
@bloor for a lot of companies their uptime on managed clouds is vastly higher than they could achieve locally. It also appeals to managers because if it breaks it's someone else's fault
@etchedpixels @bloor > for a lot of companies their uptime on managed clouds is vastly higher than they could achieve locally
That's a good point that I think is often missed in the criticism that follows incidents like this. Everything goes down for an hour or two at some point. If all the services affected today had gone down for twice as long but one at a time on different days, nobody would be talking about it.
A lot of skills for IT management/system administration in small to medium size companies in the UK have been lost, and very few of these companies are prepared to hire staff just to "look after computers" (many even baulk at getting maintenance contracts for the equipment they do have, just using commodity PCs and cloud services such as MS365 or similar)
@vfrmedia @mansr @bloor lost ? In many cases they never had them. Cobbled together IT held together by random people in the company who did computery stuff at home, and now and then bodged up by a consultant or two.
For a lot of businesses customer facing IT was always a non critical afterthought and always remotely hosted. It just moved from small co website/email hosting to big cloud aggregation.
And on a cost and returns basis totally rational not an underinvestment IMHO
For many its only recently become more critical due to the use of online banking and/or various types of cloud-based EPOS terminals as well as accounting software and staff scheduling services (which previously more often used to be run on local machines) - and its often not even that the business /couldn't/ go back to older methods, but they required more "slack" time away from the core business which smaller businesses no longer want to spare (especially as entry level jobs like office juniors have increasingly disappeared)
@penguin42 @beasts I would hazard a guess that the customers of @beasts are sufficiently clueful to not make them a single point of failure. The implicit rejection of big cloud and use of @beasts I think is a barometer of this.
@penguin42 @bloor most modern stuff seems to be engineered for MPOF (multiple points of failure). We once came across a static webpage that depended on five different CDNs for dynamically loaded resources.
@bloor I've never been in favor of having someone else manage my data. Call me possessive, but I put all of my important data on thumb drives.
@bloor I mean, solarwinds and crowdstrike are still commercially successful concerns, so clearly the threshold of business damage required to stop using a bad vendor is really, really, really high
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