Nick
@nick@shore.me.uk
179 following, 251 followers
It's Sunday evening - have a great week from the Fediverse Barista (photo from 2023)
The speakers at the third #MikroTik Professionals Conference have now been published on our website. We have selected MikroTik experts from all over the world who are coming to MTPC Prague in March to explain how to use many of the new features added to RouterOS v7 in the last few years. Tickets are still available for sale. Free beer (other drinks are available) the evening before! Plus of course, the famous free raffle! https://mtpc.world/agenda/
So excited to be sitting front row with @mellifluousbox at @neil 's talk on Online Safety Laws. 🔥
Neil is an authority on digital laws and its impact on Fediverse services (very relevant for Mastodon admins, mods etc!). #FOSDEM
Cynics might say that the UK Government have an incoherent approach to tech policy. Not so.
Sure, the AI Skills Hub is unlikely to turn Fatima the ballerina into a data scientist, but the VPN ban might create a whole lot of young cyberpunks setting up their own WireGuard networks and administering VPS endpoints for their friends.
At which point, they'll start developing opinions about Arch vs Debian, btrfs vs ZFS, BSD jails vs OCI containers—then we've guaranteed the next-gen of devops talent.
I tried the government's new 'AI Skills Hub'. Let's just say I was underwhelmed.
https://tommorris.org/posts/2026/turn-it-off-and-run-upskilling-for-the-ai-age/
@tommorris I can just see NHS workers having time for this. A family member is a medic & I remember their caustic remarks when back in the day govt decreed all NHS staff must pass the European Computer Driving Licence.
There are people who are directors of five companies and that’s considered a good work ethic. But if you’re an ordinary person and work two jobs to make some more money, the powers that be start calling it “fraud”.
Palantir - "An American software company"
I suppose that's how the Labour Government try to justify it too.
They're literally a military surveillance company.
Dystopian that they have a huge NHS contract. Time to end it.
https://bird.makeup/users/heidibachram/statuses/2014299340324405553
Like seriously who the fuck would go to America right now?
What does the slang word "bop" predominantly mean to you?
| An OnlyFans creator: | 0 |
| A good song/dance move: | 39 |
| A promiscuous woman: | 0 |
| Something else or nothing (pls reply): | 14 |
@davidnjoku To dance; a style of jazz; to hit.
@bodhipaksa @davidnjoku usually these things, I'm also aware of it being slang for a social event with dancing associated with social crowds linked to Oxford University (but was never posh or clever enough to regularly associate with such folk although I didn't live that far away for much of my life)
@vfrmedia @davidnjoku I think I’ve heard that too, but there’s also a “hop” and now I’m second-guessing myself.
kinda wish i could just `dig AXFR . @192.168.88.1` against my tik to see all the static dns entries because i am in a habit of not knowing the names of even a single asset at work and just piping a cheeky little zone transfer into grep to figure out what in the fuck the hostname of that thing is today
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 upgraded to the fancy Sistema ones with the tritan plastic - these ones. https://www.sistemaplastics.com/uk/our-ranges/ultra
They have held up to freezing and dishwashers and all kinds of things so far. I've been really impressed.
@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 it is better to avoid plastic in the microwave. The lids are ok, but where the food touches the box it can get too hot and melt the plastic. The fumes et al then permeate your food, not ideal for your daily intake of plastic but obviously we’ve all been doing it for decades. 🙄
@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.
@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
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 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)!
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 At my current job, we have locked-down Linux servers where vi is the only editor. I hate vi, but knowing the basics is invaluable.
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)
…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)
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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…
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 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 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!)
@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.
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.
1/2
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 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 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 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.