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Hugh Cornwell played the Fleece recently (Rattus Norvegicus was the first “punk” album I bought) and the write up has me keeping an eye open for his next tour. The first half was all his solo stuff but after a break it was all Stranglers. Apparently the only one that didn’t work was Golden Brown as he has no keyboard player, not a problem for me.
Wilko Johnson is doing the rounds again, not near here but he will be near you for sure.
If you want a really different Hawkwind experience, and I mean really different but to the old tunes, spend £8 on Road to Utopia.
Eric Claption is on The Watcher, written by Lemmy in 1972 and on the Doremi album (Space Ritual era). You can tell it’s Clapton straight away.
Just listen to the previews, I can’t make my mind up if it’s the best thing they’ve ever done or the worst idea to do that to their classics. Some of it makes my hair stand on end (in a nice way), We Took the Wrong Step Years ago and Hymn to the Sun especially. It’s really nice to hear Dave Brock get the acoustic guitar out, he can still do it.
Yes Richard, it’s the use of generic chipsets and generic apps to access them. One of the big names used by the nail-it-to-the-wall brigade is Technomate who just rebadge everything and don’t write any of their own software. These installers can’t see the point of changing passwords from default and the kit doesn’t make them.
Their major supplier in this area tried selling IP kit from Hikvision but couldn’t get the numbers to continue (Hikvision have a strict distribution hierarchy) but analogue power over coax is gaining traction as even they can see the advantage in not having to use PSUs and shotgun cable.
The G6 is absolutely wonderful. Daughter got an Honor 9 Lite dual sim for £129 from Amazon that’s incredible for the price, especially the 1080 x 2280 screen. She’ll be abroad for most of the next University year (China and Germany / Austria) so the dual sim will come in handy.
The advice a customer of mine (an ex copper) received from his solicitor was don’t. He is having problems with his neighbour and has to write down any comments made, he cannot record them. That includes anything he can hear from inside his own house.
Apparently there was a case where someone did just that and ended up paying damages to the person he recorded.
I think the danger is in mischief making rather than espionage. Mind you the state of most ISP kit you don’t need anyone else interfering.
One thing I’ve learned is it’s reliability and not features no matter what the piece of kit is. Unfortunately that comes at a price but that is so much smaller now. Then you get the mentality that Tippon is facing, spend loads on a brand that doesn’t really fulfil your needs and skimp on the essentials.
This year the only money I’ve spent on PCs or upgrades has been 8GB ram and a 480GB SSD for the laptop I’m writing this on, both of which are probably a waste of money TBH. What I have spent my money on in the last 18 months is an Ac1300 Access Point (£90), a Draytek router (£110), a 24 port managed PoE switch (£110 second hand) and a 3MP Ultra Low Light Mini Bullet Network Camera (£95).
They have made such a difference but in a subtle way; you have to remember what it was like before when things were ropey. Once they’re set up they just work and take everything that’s thrown at them (and add features like VPNs, mobile access etc). I can now apply proper security to my network as IoT inevitably creeps in. The only thing you have to keep on top of is applying any patches but that is a good thing, they are properly supported and will be for years and all let you join support mailing lists.
So for most people you’d only need the first two for a one off cost of £200 which will last many years and be supported in that time, not abandoned by the OEM once it’s a few months old. But I’ve been trying to convince so many of you here…
VPN into my own network is easy with the Draytek supporting all the major protocols and it’s own SSL VPN. Just coming home from a job will try and look at the server project later.
I think I’ll stick to cameras that can upload to Amazon, or one of the other big names.
I’m not sure any of them do upload to “Amazon”. Watch out for “Works with Alexa” as that’s another empty phrase and from what I saw of the Arlo is pretty much just show on Fire TV or the Echo Show.
On the security side of things I’m not sure how much is “state spying” and how much is just crap product. I think it’s the latter. The noises coming out of the USA are largely propaganda and talk about pot calling kettle black! Companies like Hikvision now go to great lengths to have their products independently scrutinised. The Chinese hold all the patents on IP cameras because the once dominant USA ignored it and just stuck with analogue.
D-Dan is probably more abreast of current Linux options than me. My only exposure to Linux these days is Ubuntu server in the cloud where I can rely on the providers / app OEM backup solutions if I need them.
However AFAIK Timeshift is very much like a restore point in Windows. If it works it sounds great, but it seems it may not.
I still prefer “old school” backups like Deja Dup and “Back In Time” which I think may still be available https://github.com/bit-team/backintime
It works but it’s too slow. Probably a setting somewhere, will look tomorrow. There is a ton of very techie settings in the configuration files. Pings aren’t too bad but actual website requests fail, probably NAT or gateways.
Netflix and VPNs? My guess is they keep abreast of the IP addresses the VPN providers use. That could be simply be looking at the amount of traffic coming from an IP (or block of) address. If you had your own VPN server based in another country that isn’t going to attract suspicion on the basis of traffic.
If I get the speed sorted out we can have a look at all this, it’s not going to cost anything for another 4 – 5 weeks and even then it’s only $10 for another month. I’m not going to send the boys around for that ?
Since this thread started I’ve been looking into using a cloud server for OpenVN. It could only be in one location but even a basic Digital Ocean $5 server comes with 1TB of data transfer per month and that goes into a pool. I currently have 3TB of data transfer per month in my pool and currently use 0.09GB.
Digital Ocean are clearly up for it as they have a tutorial on their site. As I’m still in my $100 credit period I’m going to give it a go. If it’s successful maybe we could all share it.
It looks like it needs 2 VMs, 1 for the Certificate Authorization and 1 for the OpenVPN server. That would bump the monthly traffic up to 5TB. Here we go…
The free secure connection is limited to 300mb / day.
Premium Protection – Annual Subscription £20 (monthly £4) for 5 PCs unlimited and various locations http://tinyurl.com/y76etxpa
Double NAT (two routers) may stop an app working. You need something like a Draytek (may be top end home routers) that can run 2 or more subnets or if it’s a wireless camera you can set up a Guest WiFi that can only access the internet. BT Homehubs are just a pile of poo. I’ve had to swap 4 out this year and 3 of them were only months old.
This really is a case of you get what you pay for. When you look at the more reliable manufacturers of “home” kit, like Netgear Arlo, Logitech, Nest, etc. you are paying the same or more as the Hikvision but with some sort of cloud service (cloud is possible with Hikvision through a third party but I have no idea of the cost).
It takes a lot for me to move away from Hikvision, but I am about to install a battery powered Netgear Arlo system for a retired couple as we cannot use a wired camera without a lot of (labour) cost for little gain.
If I come across the “I only want to pay £x and that’s it” I will walk away as I cannot in all faith provide a product I’d be able to support. Despite the fact they know they’re probably buying a load of crap it won’t stop them coming back to me.
I remember this too Ed. Found this article
“As Peter Wright confirmed in his book Spycatcher, Wilson was the victim of a protracted, illegal campaign of destabilisation by a rogue element in the security services. Prompted by CIA fears that Wilson was a Soviet agent – put in place after the KGB had, the spooks believed, poisoned Hugh Gaitskell, the previous Labour leader – these MI5 men burgled the homes of the prime minister’s aides, bugged their phones and spread black, anti-Wilson propaganda throughout the media. They tried to pin all kinds of nonsense on him: that his devoted political secretary, Marcia Williams, posed a threat to national security; that he was a closet IRA sympathiser.
Such talk stoked up an establishment already trembling at what it saw as Britain’s inexorable slide towards anarchy, if not communist rule. Institutions were collapsing, inflation was rising, tax was at a near-mythic top rate of 98%, and Britain was losing the last outposts of empire. Above all, the trade unions, riddled with leftists and Soviet sympathisers, seemed to have the nation under their thumb. “It was no longer a green and pleasant land, England,” recalls retired Major Alexander Greenwood, Colonel Blimp made flesh.
The great and the good feared that the country was out of control, and that Wilson lacked either the will or the desire to stand firm. Retired intelligence officers gathered with military brass and plotted a coup d’etat. They would seize Heathrow airport, the BBC and Buckingham Palace. Lord Mountbatten would be the strongman, acting as interim prime minister. The Queen would read a statement urging the public to support the armed forces, because the government was no longer able to keep order.
It sounds fantastic, almost comic. But watch Greenwood talk of setting up his own private army in 1974-75. Listen to the former intelligence officer Brian Crozier admit his lobbying of the army, how they “seriously considered the possibility of a military takeover”. Watch the archive footage of troop manoeuvres at Heathrow, billed as a routine exercise but about which Wilson was never informed – and which he interpreted as a show of strength, a warning, even a rehearsal for a coup. Listen to the voice of Wilson, who five weeks after resigning summoned two BBC journalists to tell them, secretly, of the plot.”
Tippon, you can take no notice of what they claim, it’s meaningless. Think about photography and the difference between what a £50 Argos job and an SLR can do at the same resolution. Look for You Tube clips and reviews.
Then there’s cloud storage and the apps. Read carefully and look for what they don’t say. You may be able to view clips, can you download them? If so to what? How long will the service be in existence?
2 way audio is often a waste of space due to latency plus you MUST NOT record audio or YOU could be in a whole heap of trouble.
Notification of motion detection sounds great but you’ll likely get a lot of false alarms.
Cheap IR can cut off at short distances and cause under / over exposure.
Don’t record at 25fps, 8 fps is more than enough and cuts storage and bandwidth by two thirds. H265 compression is much better than H264 but at this price level I doubt you’ll find it. Avoid MPEG.
“Smart” tracking – when it’s looking one way it’s not looking in the other. Go for a 90 degree camera and put it in the corner of the room. PTZ – pan / tilt / zoom will not be of any use for the same reason.
And as Richard says, security.
£50 gets you the sort of device you’ve linked to. There’s a You Tube review here and I think it’ll do the job for you, but I’d put an SD card in for recording. However I have no idea of the functionality of the app and I can’t see it for sale in the UK!
For internal use I use the Hikvision DS-2CD2442FWD-IW with an SD card. As you can see they are £135 on Amazon but I can get one trade for you, about £95 (less if you can pick it up from Cardiff) plus £20 for an SD card and 12v PSU from Amazon.
You set them up with a browser but after that viewing and recording can be via the app, and your f-i-l can share the connection with any number of people (and revoke access too), all they need is the app and their own account. It’s wireless so just needs a 12v PSU (it has Power over Ethernet too). No fixed IP or port forwarding required, all internet streams are encrypted with a password required.
You could also install the (free) software on your PC to allow proper management of the camera (via the internet) as you may need to change motion detection or PIR sensitivity, etc. as time goes on. App and email alerts can be set up but I’d limit them to events like video tampering or scene change (if someone moved the camera). It can be sat on it’s stand or screwed to the wall.
This is a proper professional piece of kit and yes it costs a bit more but there’s a reason for that.
As the credentials and server settings will be the same on those that do and don’t work, it must be something in Microsoft land.
I think they are rolling it out as I know some are affected and some aren’t. Personally I’ve always use gmail for free accounts so I may be talking Chinese whispers, but I did have a hands on example last year with an outlook.com email address.
I think they stopped all 3rd party access to the free email products as they want to put adverts in front of you.
This affected some I know last year, perhaps they are rolling it out.
I was referring to Ed’s comments about Turkeys and Christmas. I have a grudging respect for anyone who says “I care so much I don’t care about the consequences” (heard a lot of that in the Scots ref) but those people will not listen to anything but their own views and dismiss anything to the contrary. Not helped by Cameron and Osborne’s gross over playing of the situation, but the same people believe Farage’s equally OTT immigrants are terrorists and will flood in via Turkey has some merit.
Then you point out the drop in the £ and going from the highest growth rate to the lowest and appalling productivity, but apparently that was going to happen anyway. Brexit has nothing to do with it.
I have stopped trying to persuade anyone now but ask them questions, like I have above about NI and customs posts. There is never any answer or you get “that’s the MPs job” (as long as they do what I want and what I want is the “will of the people”).
One thing I will tell you is that if there is another vote of any description (and that includes a GE) the young will be out in force this time. The resentment coming from my children’s generation (late teens to late 20s) is very real and not just about Brexit. They see no future in this country and now their escape route is being blocked too.
There will be trouble, you can feel it building up, and it’s all down the the “responsible” Conservative party. God knows I don’t think much of Corbyn’s lot either, but I can’t see them ripping the country apart in the way the right have. At least we would have something to get behind or oppose, at the moment all we have is opposition and the more certain factions are appeased, the more they want. The DUP should get on with governing their own country before they start telling others they’re doing things wrong.
Should TM go? If there were anyone competent to replace her I’d say yes, but I don’t think there is. Get the leadership out of the way and go to the Country? Probably another stalemate.
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