KhunHeineken

I hope I am wrong. Those that are renting out a house in Australia will be forced to live in it. Then there are boarding houses, group homes, aged care facilities etc. There's been talk of pushing grandpa or grandma out of their 60's model house on a quarter acre in the suburbs to free up homes for young families for some time now. Federal and State governments don't care too much for where seniors end up living, even if it is under a bridge. Cutting the pension off would be drastic, so why not scoop them up in the 183 day law and class them as non-residents for taxation purposes? In reality, we are outside of Australia for more than 183 days a year, spending money that was generated in Australia, by whatever means. Therefore, easy targets. The government looks good, as the haven't cut any pensions off, just taxed the money at non-resident rates, which the 183 day law will allow. When's the last time you took the trouble to go to the Australian Embassy in Bangkok and cast a vote? Do you think the government cares about expat retirees who don't vote anyway?

I doubt there will be any Grandfather clause or concessions. The law will simply be, you are an Australian citizen outside Australia for more than than 183 days, so you will be deemed a non-resident for taxation purposes and will be taxed accordingly on every Australian dollar you receive, regardless of where it comes from. Simple, effective, easy to prove, and impossible to deny, and they haven't stopped the pension payments, just taxing them at non-resident rates. This will scoop up hundreds of thousands of people, and net billions of Australian dollars.

At least you have a Plan B to engage. Many don't.

The other side to that argument is that pension money is not circulating in the Australian economy. Ok, so pensioners get cheap rego, discounted public transport, Medicare, some utility bill subsides etc, but pretty much all of that pension money is spent on the cost of living. Eg. rent, food, utilities, transport, entertainment, goods, and services etc. Putting that pension money back into the economy creates jobs, which earns the government income tax from the barman or cook who is serving a beer or meal to a pensioner at the local RSL, for example. Now if that RSL is big enough, they will have to pay Payroll tax, not to mention work cover insurance, superannuation, maternity leave etc etc, which all keeps employees off Centerlink now, and later in life. There are taxes that the government get back from their pension money being spent in the economy. Taxes like GST, alcohol and tobacco taxes, fuel excise etc. That $1 of pension money put back into the economy is good for the government. How happy do you think the Australian government is with seeing their pension money going to assist another country's economy, and not Australia's? How happy do you think the Australian government is that they see zero return on their fortnightly handout? Now ask yourself this question, "Do you think that will try to stop this in the future?" The new changes to the resident and non-resident for taxation purposes are being discussed in another thread. It's pretty clear the ATO is going to be relying on the 183 day rule as the primary test. This is because it's so simple to prove, and can't be denied. The Immigration data base know if you are inside, or outside Australia, and for how long. All they would have to do is deem non-residents for taxation purposes ineligible for any Centerlink payments and many, if not all of those pensioners, and their pension money, will be forced back into the Australian economy. Australia is in record debt. Not only will they need every dollar, but they will be desperate for it.

There it is again, the 183 day rule becoming the primary test, and stricter. "The most significant change is that a stricter 183-day “primary” test would replace the existing one, which would mean that if someone is in Australia for at least 183 days in a year they would always be treated as a tax resident." It clearly says if you are inside of Australia for 183 days, you will be treated as a tax resident. However, that leads me to believe that in the near future when these changes come in, if you are outside of Australia for 183 days of the year, you will be treated as a non-resident, and that is going to hurt many expat retirees, with some not being able to afford to be classified a non-resident for tax purposes.

Any gains are well overtaken by the huge increase in cost of living.

Did it occur to you that a guy could leave his user name and password for the app to his missus, in the same way he can leave his ATM card and PIN, so the money keeps flowing long after he is dead? The approved person is used to see you are still breathing.

I have said in another thread that many Aussie expat retirees are going to be in for a shock at some stage in the not so distant future as the ATO, Centerlink, and Immigration data bases spit out the names of people outside of Australia for more than 183 days of a year. Many will be cut off, or taxed at the non resident rate, which is a killer.

How do you send it to them, by Thai Post, or scan and email?

This is an interesting article. A Korean company looking to sell Novavax to Thailand and Vietnam. https://www.kedglobal.com/covid-19_vaccine/newsView/ked202112240013

Ok. I didn't know mirroring was given a RAID category, but you are correct. One thing I don't quite understand is "parity." You can have a 4 bay NAS, and somehow, on the the 4th HDD for example, the data of the other 3 HDD's is stored on it to rebuild a HDD should it go down. How can one HDD store the same data as the other 3 HDD's, or, have I got it wrong and the data of each HDD is spread over the other HDD's, so all of the other HDD's can rebuild the HDD that went down? In some of my research they talk about needing a HDD for parity, and I took this to mean one whole HDD will be used for nothing else but parity.

They have quite a comprehensive suite of programs in the package center. I have no use for a lot of them, but will use several of them. I recently connected the NAS to my UPS. I was lucky, my UPS was supported by Synology.

I haven't tested remote access yet, but will do shortly. I tried with hotspotting my phone, but I don't think my celluar data speed was good enough. I have set up Open VPN back to my NAS. I was under the impression that once I connected to my home network via VPN, I could just go into the NAS by clicking on the Synology Assistant app and entering username and password. Being the connection is via VPN, I thought this was safe. I have set this up. Thanks for the tip. What I mean was, can't a virus be encrypted and decrypted over a VPN, just like all the other data you send over a VPN tunnel? Ok.

Good question, and I'll explain my reasoning. You are correct, a 4 bay NAS was an overkill for me, but I always wanted more than one bay. A single HDD NAS would not provide the redundancy I would like. The logical solution was to look at a 2 bay NAS, and while they can't do a RAID configuration, they can mirror, so if one HDD goes down, you have the mirror and all is good. The chances of both HDD's going down, at the same time, would be slim. When I started looking at 2 bay NAS units, I quickly discovered the 4 bay units were less than $100 more, and sometimes only $50 or $60 more than the 2 bay units. I thought this was strange, so compared many websites, but it was correct. I guess the processor and RAM and OS is the same, and it's not much more to just add two extra bays, so I paid the extra and got a 4 bay NAS. You must have a minimum of 3 bays for a RAID configuration, so I have a 4 bay NAS with 3 HDD's in it and running SHR. If I need more storage in the future, I can add a fourth HDD. I viewed the NAS as a device that would meet my needs for years to come, so went bigger and better to offer some future proofing. To keep the price down, I went for the DS918+ which was superseded by the DS920+, so I got it cheaper, but the previous models do hold their value. Also, I preferred the 918+ over the 920+ for reasons I set out in another post. I don't think I have wasted my money, especially as I learn more and more about the capabilities of this NAS.

Remote access is one of the main features why I purchased my NAS. I travel a lot, and take a lot of photos. I was backing up photos, and a small amount of music, to a large USD drive which I would carry on a key ring. This meant the laptop and camera were in the hotel room / condo, and the USB drive was on my person, so I had the data on two different devices, in two different locations. The USD drive only held photos, video, and a small amount of music, but I wanted to back up system images and large folders, so I went for a NAS. I set up the VPN to the NAS, as you have done. Couldn't a virus or malware just be encrypted and decrypted in the VPN tunnel? I have made the two user accounts also. I haven't done the Recycle Bin setting yet. That sounds like a good idea. Thanks. I understand that any device on the internet is vulnerable. We access so many servers in our daily life that I thought I would set up a small one of my own. I have a large HDD at a relative's place, but that would not get backed up until a return from my travels, and while it's still handy to have, I would like a system that is more instant, at the time of camera upload.

Cheers. The more I learn about my NAS, the more versatile it becomes.

My paid sports streaming service has an app. They apply very strict geo blocking to the app. The servers to my home country have been blacklisted on two paid VPN companies. I'm hoping they can't geo block / blacklist a decentralized VPN so easily, and if they did, you would just be re-routed to another node in the country of your choice, not playing the never ending game of emailing your VPN company and asking them for new IP address, only to find their IP addresses are blacklisted again a few weeks later.

I enabled the Synology AV, and it took hours to scan. My question is, does it offer any protection while the NAS is just sitting idle, 24/7?

I've been reading up on decentralized VPN's. It's an interesting concept, but I have more to learn. If I understand correctly, people all around the world can rent their unused bandwidth on their home or business network, and instead of connecting to a company's VPN server, as most of us have been doing for sometime, you connect to someone's house, or business, and go through their network, which means you are given an IP address that's most likely not blacklisted or geo blocked, which means it would be great for streaming services, which is why I am considering it. With a decentralized VPN you are not on a server with many other people, so just about zero chance of the IP address being blacklisted because it's just a house or business in the suburbs you are connecting to. Is anyone using a decentralized VPN? Is anyone renting out their network to a decentralized VPN? I'm thinking of trying it, but a bit concerned that even though the connection is encrypted, the owner of the node can see all my traffic. Also, what if the owner of the node is up to no good by drug dealing, child porn, terrorism etc and is under surveillance, could your device, and therefore yourself, be flagged? The other side to that is say the decentralized VPN user is up to no good, could the owner of the node be in some trouble? I can VPN back to my house in my home country, but I have a slow internet connection, so not great for streaming. This guy's quick review of the Mysterion DVPN is pretty good.

I am not saying every guy in Issan is like this, but there are quite a lot, but talk to them, and like most guys here, they will say they have never been scammed in Thailand or made a wrong decision. ????

Thanks for the explanation. I was more concerned about the way these hackers scan for ports, not so much what I look at on the internet. I'm pretty careful about opening a link in an unsolicited email. If they can get into an open port, they will have my NAS. I purchased the NAS mainly so I could do some offsite back up, so I am in Thailand, but can store photos and things on my NAS that is back in my home country. I suppose if I am not doing anything on the internet on my home network because I am overseas, that's a considerable less chance of becoming a victim by downloading a malicious file, but that also means the network I am using in Thailand could pose a risk. I do have AV on my laptop, so maybe it's just same same.

I suppose it helps that they are outside of the NAS. From what I read if you use standard hard drives in the NAS the vibration from the spinning discs shorten their life, unless they are specific NAS hard drivers that have been made to handle it.

Do you leave them on 24/7?

Bumping the thread. My NAS has been running for a while now and I am now familiar with some basic features. I'm learning about new features all the time. The NAS is quite a versatile device. I have a few questions, but will start with this question that I asked before, but never received a reply, and that is, antivirus on a NAS. The Synology came with AV, and I enabled it, but all it seems to do is scan the files I am storing. What about some type of attack? The Synology AV doesn't seem to run the same way as my PC antivirus, and the NAS is online 24/7. What do you guys do to protect your NAS from some type of attack, particularly ransomware?

EDIT: 12TB's of storage, not 8TB's.