Finally made some real progress in getting connected to fibre - They started laying the micro-duct for it :)
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Exciting! I can't remember the pre-fibre times, but I'm pretty sure they were dark times.
Golf clap
I still remember tying up our phone line all day to download Counter Strike over 56K.
Anyone remember when Telecom/Spark offered an unlimited ADSL plan around maybe 2010?? It didn’t last for very long, I was sad when they got rid of it and I had to go back to a 60Gb data cap.
Haha oh my god, bought be back to the days of having to pay (parents did the paying...) fees each month for going over the cap
Oh yeah, it was great when we transitioned to plans where you get slowed down once you're over the cap, but man was it painfully slow.
I always remembered the data cap cycle so on the last day you could just download overnight and blow over the cap as much as you could and it gets reset the next day.
Oh yeah! haha, that was definitely a thing. I remember getting nervous, wondering if I had the date correct, or if the plan would actually be rolling over exactly at midnight :)
You have to reset the router at about 11:45pm to make sure according to telecom/spark.
Source: I'm on one of those horrible plans right now. 60gb limit. Their estimate lags and then we suddenly overshoot and have to pay $5 or $10. It sucks.
I don't know what you're paying but it almost seems like getting an unlimited mobile plan and hotspotting your phone would be better. Unlimited plans can be had for about $40 a month, and they tend to allow hotspotting. It seems that the cheapest broadband plans are around this level, but then have you pay for a router which if it's on Spark is probably connecting to the mobile network anyway.
Of course the down side is you have to have your phone near whatever else you want to connect to the internet, and hotspotting will drain your battery. But then you will also not have to pay for a separate mobile plan. I feel like a spread sheet is in order to work out what's a good deal.
Interesting suggestion. Unfortunately decisions about shared utilities aren't mine to make, these days. I'm sure there are better plans out there.
Weird fact about the router though, it's a very old Vodafone one and when we set it up the one thing it would not let me change was the dns so it still uses Vodafone servers on a Spark plan!
Interesting suggestion. Unfortunately decisions about shared utilities aren’t mine to make, these days. I’m sure there are better plans out there.
Ah that's a shame. 60GB these days doesn't go a long way.
Weird fact about the router though, it’s a very old Vodafone one and when we set it up the one thing it would not let me change was the dns so it still uses Vodafone servers on a Spark plan!
That is weird! I'm starting to remember how locked down routers used to be. These days we have quite a bit of control over what we can do with ISP routers. I can change DNS, do port forwarding of HTTP ports, etc.
Yeah that must be cool! Tech has just got so much better lately and there's so much cool stuff. I think if I had money and capability I would want to muck around with running stuff through a raspberry pi.
The Pi is cool but if you have a PC/laptop you can probably just run a VM for messing around. If you don't have a computer then the cost of the Pi is just the beginning, with the need for a keyboard and mouse, HDMI mini adapter, SD card (I just use the TV for the monitor when needed, plugging in with HDMI).
You can get a kit like this but, well, it's $200.
Honestly it's probably cheaper to get a VPS when OVH has their VPNs on sale for $2 a month for 12 months. But you'd probably need a PC to SSH to it (you can do it on mobile but it doesn't sound like fun).
Sorry to be ignorant but do VPS do ad blocking? I was daydreaming about a raspberry pi if I won lotto because a) I used to like trying to build my own computers and b) pi-hole to block ads for non tech savvy people in the house.
With a VPS it gets a bit more complicated, I probably wouldn't try to do pi-hole on a VPS though I think it would technically be possible. Regardless, I think your major blocker will be that you mentioned your router doesn't let you change the DNS server. pi-hole is a DNS server from the point of view of your router. You need to be able to change the DNS server for it to work. And if you can change your DNS server, then Adguard free plan might be an easier and cheaper (but less fun) way to get that.
I thought you might be able to pick up a really old Pi for cheap, I have pi-hole running on an original Raspberry Pi model B, but there aren't that many and even the ones that are there are more than I thought they would be (e.g. I can see a Pi 2 for $40).
People often use old laptops as a server, if you have one of those lying around.
Yes and no, I'm still using my 2014 laptop as, well, my laptop!
All this is super interesting. I'm filing it away in the back of my mind.
We had a no internet before 9pm (in case someone wants to call) rule at home. Explaining to the kids what it was like in ancient times is really hard. How we couldn't just watch Bluey whenever we wanted. If we wanted to listen to music at a time we wanted, we used to have to record from the radio onto a cassette tape, and the DJ always talked over the start/end of the song. And later, we had CDs and would rip them onto a PC and then copy to an MP3 player. Or go on file sharing programmes (was it Limewire and something starting with K? The napster thing was all over by the time I caught up).
And how if we wanted to play music in the car we had this thing that went in the tape player with a cord coming out to play music from an MP3 player or discman.
These days with Spotify and bluetooth we just play whatever song we like whenever we like and it magically plays through the car speakers. It's normal to them but it still feels like magic to me 😆
Haha yeah come to think of it, I wonder how many phone calls my parents missed throughout the day when I'd leave the internet on to download something.
Yeah the kids don't understand rushing home to watch Dragonball Z or any other after school cartoons. And having to watch like 3 ad breaks in a 23 minute show.
No internet before 9PM is crazy! I used to tie up the line to play Rainbow 6: Rogue Spear or TFC online. You couldn't even do it sneakily because of the modem noise when connecting. Even MP3's took ages back then on 56K, when we finally got ADSL was like the transition from ADSL to fibre now.
And having to watch like 3 ad breaks in a 23 minute show.
My kids only know what ads are because we visit the grandparents, they love them lol.
No internet before 9PM is crazy!
My Auntie and Uncle had a second phone line for internet! Unfortunately they lived in another city, but my Auntie used to play Quake 2 online and introduced me to it. I remember being on a 56K modem and you'd often come across people on what I think they called a T1 connection? They would normally clean up. Hard to say if the faster connection helped them win or the more dedicated players would have the better connections, but I'm guessing a little of column A, a little of column B.
I don't really play twitch games or even online ones anymore, but over the years I've played the occasional game of Quake 3 for nostalgia's sake.
That sounds familiar. I think T1 lines were more common with businesses or universities, not sure how common they were in residential here? I was pretty young then so I would have had no clue. I do remember seeing those with much better ping than what I could get on our connection.
I don't have much time for online either nowadays. I still get the urge to try playing once in awhile and realise how terrible I am at shooters now 😅
Haha oh boy am I bad at shooters. Well, all games really. I play them on easy and treat them like an interactive movie.
Haha it really has been the dark ages
Update: After all the horror stories I've seen online, Super happy (apart from the months it's taken to get to this point) with the exterior build work they've done.
Hopefully now it wont take too long to do the internal ONT Connection :)
Yay!
We went to look at a house we might buy on the weekend, and the exterior fibre cable pipe thing goes from the wall not straight down, but 20cm out into the path. In case you felt you weren't getting your money's worth out of ACC
On some jogs around the area, I've seen some shocking Fibre Installs. Saw one that had the black micro-duct that the fibre optic cable goes into just loosely wrapped around the power pole, and a few that had excess micro-duct just spaghettied, and tied to the middle of the pole.
Everyone in the house is grumpy today, so good thing they all got sent off to school/daycare/work and it's just me working from home. I think we are all tired from a poor night's sleep.
I understand this well.....one more kid to get to the sleeping through stage...just one more
Ours all sleep through most of the time. The issue was the older ones didn't go to sleep early enough, then had to get up early because of a before school club today - which they missed out on because of refusing to do anything to get ready on account of their bad moods. The 3yo went to sleep on time but was awake at 5 for some reason.
For some reason my 7yo was awake when I was getting ready for work at 5:45....and he is the grumpy one that usually clings on to the bed at 7:45 telling hes brother to close the curtains.
Kids are strange sometimes
That is quite the understatement.
Thought for the day
How do you see the modification of literature; where the authors intent is changed or censored. Some books are outright banned, but that isn't really what I'm thinking about. I'm more interested in your thoughts on how books are more subtly modified, this kind of modification has been happening for thousands of years. Modern examples are Roald Dhal's stories being changed, but the Victorians modified Chaucer in similar ways.
Obviously autocratic censorship is terrible; anything that restricts general access to knowledge is bad (in my opinion).
I'm conflicted on the practice, for example reading the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton in the original and the modern reinterpretation; the modern versions flow better because the more familiar language. I haven't gone through with a fine tooth comb to see if the story hasn't changed.
I'm not really sure where I stand on this. Sitting here waiting for someone else to tell me what to think 😆
I think there is probably an element of judgement here. Some I'll be ok with, others not. A rewriting of the Famous Five I think would be ok if it's clear that's what it is (the same as there is a more modern version of the Willy Wonka movie - but I'd be upset if I went into the movie thinking I was seeing Gene Wilder and ending up with Jonny Depp).
With regards to editing Roald Dahl to make them more PC, I think I'm ok with it if the edits are minor. But I'm eager to have my mind changed if there's something I haven't thought of.
I think the problem with this is the line where updating becomes censoring; this is a good example of the decision point fallacy.
e.g. the paradox of the heap: A typical formulation involves a heap of sand, from which grains are removed individually. With the assumption that removing a single grain does not cause a heap to become a non-heap, the paradox is to consider what happens when the process is repeated enough times that only one grain remains: is it still a heap? If not, when did it change from a heap to a non-heap?
The fallacy is assuming that since no definitive point can be drawn when the edits become censorship; then either all edits are censorship or none are. Thus since we can all agree that continuing to edit a book until there are no words left, is clearly censorship, therefore all edits are censorship.
This is difficult because my personal view is that editing becomes censoring when the authors intent is changed or the edits remove the style of the authors voice. e.g. in the Roald Dhal case, the intent of the author (my interpretation) is to entertain children and teach vocabulary, the edits are not changing that intent and his style is maintained; thus they are not censorship.
There is a lot more to say on this also, when does updating become "white washing the past"? When does updating change the meaning of a word, and thus a sentence and how that relates to the text around it?
This is similar to the issues when translating between languages, how do you deal with translating a word in one language to another when there is no word that fits and it is context dependent? This I think also comes down to intent.
Oh and there is only one version of the Willy Wonka movie. There is also Captain Jack Sparrow in a industrial chocolate facility.
Yeah I think the Roald Dahl example is probably the easiest. Change it because it's just a fun story.
When you get into nonfiction works, or fiction works that address societal problems, it becomes harder to say whether to edit them.
Agreed, in the case of nonfiction, the intent test should be very stringent. As for fiction, it would very much depend on the themes covered.
Yeah I have an issue with the heap paradox. It's not that there are two states, heap and not heap. There are three. Heap, not heap, and an in between murky state where you could consider it a heap or not a heap and each interpretation could be valid. The fact you cannot identify whether it's a heap or not does not change that if you start with something that is very clearly a heap then remove one grain, it's still clearly a heap.
If you change a couple of words in a book that at the time were not considered an issue but now they are, I think that's clearly not censorship. There's a grey area one you start pulling out more, but I think we still have a "clearly not censorship" state.
That is the point of the paradox, it is to highlight the fallacy. The fallacy is to assume a binary when there is a continuum.
The hipster example: When does stubble become a beard? At some point the hair gets long enough to be considered a beard, but when does this happen?
Just because there are two states at the end, doesn't mean that there are two states from a continuous observation point of view. There is a difference between showing a million people one picture each of a bunch of pictures (taken 10 minutes apart) and asking "stubble or beard?" And asking one person every 10 minutes "is it a beard yet?"
I think it really depends on both the text and the reason for it.
I have been involved in some publications and I always insist that the moral rights of the authors are asserted alongside copyright. ("Moral rights" are things like the right to have no one change it without your permission or excerpt it without attribution, and unlike copyright you do have to actually assert them in order to have them).
Simple english versions of novels for the purpose of having something to teach adult literacy with, I have no problem with.
Readers Digest Condensed novels for the purpose of allowing people to think they have read these books without ever having to encounter unusual words or long chapters, I think is regrettable but to each their own.
Bowdlerizing (removing objectionable material to make it more palatable) is something I disagree with entirely and see as an act of moral cowardice that probably flattens people's understanding of history and context.
I think Bowdlerising children's books isn't really a problem, but anything aimed at a more sophisticated audience; 14-15yo and up; should not be edited at all.
I was mainly thinking on the context of kids books, I the a lot of these at the moment.
Oh ok, that's a bit different. I think it's okay. Young children lack the ability to contextualise things like racism or misogyny.