@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

ben

@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk

I'm Ben and I'm rubbish at writing bio's.

I'm a general geek, who's core skillsets boil down to trouble-shooting and reverse engineering.

I mostly talk about #Tech, #Monitoring, #SoftwareDevelopment, #Privacy & #Security

If you want to send messages encrypted with PGP, you can find my key in the links below.

My Toots auto-delete after a month (https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/opinion/arguments-for-and-against-auto-deleting-mastodon-toots.html)

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

ben, to thinkpad
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

Gotta love the web...

Littlun's wont power on or acknowledge a charger. Searching to make sure there's nothing I missed when I found a page that gives the following troubleshooting steps:

  1. Check cable for damage
  2. Do a power reset
  3. Update the battery driver
  4. Update your BIOS
  5. Switch to a Chromebook

It's like they wrote 4 steps and then went "ah, you're fucked mate"

ben, to Blog
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

New : Syncing notes to on

My obsidian vault is synced into but the android app kept letting me down and not keeping my phone's version up to date.

In this post, I talk about using to handle syncing between Android and Nextcloud

https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/general/syncing-notes-to-obsidian-android-with-nextcloud-and-foldersync.html

ben, to random
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

There was definitely something I intended to do this morning, I was even looking forward to it.

Can't for the life of me think what it was - I'm increasingly unsure that I didn't in fact dream it.

Odds are, I'll remember mid-afternoon when it's too late.

ben, to Blog
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

New : Disabling backfeeds

Reading a post by @robb recently set me rethinking my use of and Webmentions.

In this post, I talk a little about why I've decided to turn off backfeeds and disable the display of webmentions on my site

https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/privacy/disabling-webmention-backfeeds-on-www-bentasker-co-uk.html

Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

I'm playing around with my blog's CSS again (what else are weekends for!?)

Do you prefer <blockquote>s with or without a solid black border?

Which do you think is more readable / attractive?

Block quote with a solid black border.

ben,
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

@Edent Huh, great timing... that's exactly what I'm dealing with on mine today!

I currently have no border, and I really don't like the resulting look - just never came back to fixing it.

I think what I'm aiming for is a solid bar on the left (I think I probably also need to constrain the width to ~80%)

ben, to Blog
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

New : Querying yesterday's to-do list in with the plugin

I've recently developed a need to have todays daily note show what I completed yesterday - the dataview plugin turned out to be particularly helpful for that.

As an added bonus, it's also enabled me to add an automatically "related items" section to my note templates

https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/general/using-the-dataview-plugin-in-obsidian.html

ben, to Blog
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

New : Heating with Electricity instead of Gas

After we had installed we also moved onto Agile by

This winter, rather than using bottled gas for additional heating, we used electric heaters - this post talks a little about how we approached it, some issues we encountered and the result.

https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/house-stuff/heating-with-electric-instead-of-gas.html

lauren, (edited ) to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

AT&T is sending out letters warning they want to kill virtually all landlines (and perhaps related data circuits where fiber is unavailable) across essentially their entire coverage area throughout California. This would have devastating effects. Related CPUC meetings will be taking place through March.

Landlines provide crucial services for individuals, businesses, and other organizations in a wide variety of situations -- not just emergencies when cellular and Internet service tends to rapidly fail, but also for vast numbers of people in areas with poor, unreliable, or in many cases (even in large sections of major cities!) NO cell service, NO fiber, etc.

Landlines often provide the only available communication in a wide variety of security and safety situations, from elevators to interior spaces of all sorts where cell service simply doesn't work.

Many disabled and other persons have crucial equipment that depends on landlines. Often they are not tech-savvy and do not have friends or relatives to help them through forced technology changes.

AT&T has been shirking its public safety responsibilities for years, while still leveraging their effective monopoly on services in so many areas.

Their new effort must be stopped. I'll have much more to say about this as the situation progresses.

ben,
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

@revk @david1 @lauren @neil

I wonder if it's more about perceptions of confidentiality than a special legal status.

Back when I was in the MoD, for certain things, fax was greatly preferred over email: phone comms were handled by the MoDs network (the integrity of which was trusted/monitored).

Email was perceived as higher risk (electronic copies tend to stick around and can be duplicated without breaching physical security etc).

Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

People who rant about how terrible it is that you can't buy a non-Smart TV any more.

You know you don't have to plug the TV into the Internet, right?

I've got two. One acts as a big monitor for my laptop. The other one has a media player box & games console connected.

You're allowed to use a heavily subsidised device in a different manner from which it was intended.

ben,
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

@Edent I have a much more petty complaint about ours smart TV's.

We do exactly that - not connect them to the net.

Unfortunately, because the manufacturers knew best, the remotes are each encumbered with a big fat Netflix button - easy to knock, and connectivity or not still flicks over to the preloaded bloat.

I did say it was petty.

I've heard of TVs though, that near constantly nag if they've not been connected to Wifi, so it's worth bearing in mind when shopping.

ben,
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

@samueljohnson @Edent Nah that's no use here.

The TV's not connected to wifi - it can't access Netflix at all.

But, it came loaded with the netflix app by default (which, of course, can't be removed). When you knock the button, it opens the app (which the complains as you'd expect).

We watch TV via a HDHomeRun, so don't need now/next on the TV itself anymore

ben, to solar
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

I've gotta say, I continue to be quite disappointed with the quality of our inverter - or at least, the firmware running on it.

We have a scheduled grid charge between 00:00 - 06:30.

This morning, the battery was full at ~04:30, so stopped charging.

In the ensuing 2 hours, the battery (presumably) went to sleep and the inverter didn't realise and so didn't wake it.

Getting it out of that state was a PITA

ben,
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

I could swear there used to be a "Reboot" option in Soliscloud, but it's gone missing, so I couldn't simply power cycle the inverter - I'd need to climb up into the attic to do it on the inverter itself.

Instead I tried fiddling with settings, hoping that scheduling a discharge might do the trick - no dice.

Switching it to feed-in priority didn't do it either.

Switching back to self-use mode (and toggling the timed scheduled off/on) though, did.

ben,
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

Maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy, but things like the battery actually being able to supply energy really feels like it should be table stakes.

Solis haven't even managed to keep their interface consistent: in some views the battery showed as green (but not supplying) in others it showed as grey (suggesting it was offline).

ben,
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

Having unstuck the battery, it was only a few hours til the scheduled afternoon charge.

Unsurprisingly, the battery was full quite quickly.

It then had ~3.5 hours until the end of the scheduled charge time - plenty of time for it to fall asleep/get stuck again.

Only... it didn't - it's correctly switched over and is supplying the house.

ben, to Blog
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

New : has an Honesty Problem

In which (with the inadvertant help of ) attempt to try and screw me out of nearly £500 after someone in Amazon's delivery chain stole our order

Note: I'd greatly appreciate it if people could boost the ever-living hell out of this one to try and stop the next victim from happening

https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/opinion/amazon-parcel-contents-get-stolen-and-then-amazon-tries-to-keep-payment.html

ben, (edited ) to random
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67622998

Is it too much to hope that the "further steps" that the government are willing to take are for Jenrick to fuck off and take most of the party (along with the moral cess-pool that is the Home Office) with him?

It wouldn't reduce headcount much, but average quality would likely rise quite significantly.

Edit: got too and to backwards :)

ben, to Amazon
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

So it's now about a month since said they'd issue a refund for the Xbox their delivery driver stole.

They issued a QR so that I could return the box full of snickers.

Still no refund - in their web interface, the date for the refund to be issued just keeps drifting further out.

Talked to CS, because it's a higher value it can take a month for them to approve (and then still another 14 days to issue).

Utter fucking shambles

ben,
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

I'm done playing games with them, so I've set on them.

To be honest, they've not left me much choice - my next statement will be due soon and I'm not paying a balance that includes a high value item I didn't receive.

Even if they both now take weeks to resolve it, the charge is suspended from my bill until it's resolved.

ben,
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

Update: 's chargeback department are a bunch of lying cunts.

They emailed me quite quickly after I raised the dispute with Amex, so I sent them an email laying out timeline again, providing photos etc.

Today, got a letter from dispute closed because Amazon responded

> The customer has successfully used this shipping address for 83 number of orders that were previously processed and weren't disputed

FFS

ben,
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

I'm dissapointed with here too - when I raised the dispute I gave them everything: customer service chats, photos, all showing Amazon had accepted the issue.

So they've not done their part investigating either, just taken Amazon's word without challenge.

Both have just got a bee in their ear and the dispute has been reopened.

How fucking hard is it... really?

ben, to Youtube
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

Cheeky fuckers.

have deployed Javascript that delays video load if the user is using

https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/17z8hsz/youtube_has_started_to_artificially_slow_down/

ben, to Amazon
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

Some absolute fucking cunt has stolen my item - this was supposed to be an Christmas present.

Their one-time-password system really isn't fit for purpose, all it's actually doing is marking parcels as being worth the risk.

ben,
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

@ninkosan I've been transferred 4 times so far - each time it's been to someone who's then decided it needs a specialist.

The way it's currently going, I guess, ultimately, it might end with me going to my CC provider and using s75

ben, to random
@ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    ben,
    @ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

    @plambrechtsen Yep, pretty much covers it. Finally managed to get an appointment, got there and there are signs up warning they've currently got 8 staff off sick (with only 1 person left in the pharmacy).

    That sucks, the UKs just been through years of austerity and wrecked everything.

    soatok, to random
    @soatok@furry.engineer avatar

    After reading like 800 Hacker News comments and nearly as many Reddit comments (across both /r/programming and /r/workreform) about my latest blog post, I've come to two conclusions:

    1. Most of them didn't read past the title.

    2. Nobody actually understands what my job was, or is.

    ben,
    @ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk avatar

    @soatok Some of the HN comments are just weird - sometimes it's like people are going as far out of their way as possible to misunderstand.

    There's a thread that started of saying that interrupting someone elses work by walking to their desk is better than a quick IM and has devolved into "but soldiers in battle..."

    Normal for HN I guess, but still.

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