IslandLover

5 hours ago, nrasmussen said:

I don't remember what date/time formats where used here before, but since this is a forum read by people with backgrounds from all over the world it really would be most appropriate to use ISO 8601 everywhere instead of ambiguous date formats and AM/PM nonsense.

Looks like it is the American date and time format now - month/day/year and AM/PM.  As far as I can tell, this is how it's always been, looking back at some old posts I had saved for posterity.  

18 hours ago, mstevens said:

I imagine there is sympathy from users towards ThaiVisa for what has happened with this site. The problem is, just what has happened? Some say a hack. Some say migrating to a new server. Some say a server crash. Just come out an be straight with us and tell us what has happened and what the plan is to get things back to normal. Do that and you will probably find most people are supportive. But so far, that doesn't seem to have happened or at least if there has been such an announcement, it has been buried deep in some sub-forum and most of us have not seen it and are therefore not aware of what is going on. And that just adds to the frustration of it all and may cause us to look for other forums or Facebook groups to use instead.

Am I right in thinking that ThaiVisa and the company that owns The Nation newspaper have parted ways?  I see no announcement to this effect but noticed recently that there has been no content from The Nation posted in the forums.

On the day I found out the website was down (about 3 days ago) I received a notification through Facebook that the ThaiVisa Facebook page had changed its name.  I saw immediately that the ThaiVisa logo had changed and if you look carefully, you can just make out the previous logo underneath (I still miss the old dark blue & yellow logo).  So what is really going on here?

8 hours ago, lopburi3 said:

Not on mine!  Too thin and weak to view properly for these old eyes (only headlines and poster in a good font).  And the black alert notices are totally unreadable more than 3 inches from screen (total black). 

OK, you win ????.  The text on the black alert notices is indeed extremely feint.  I don't log in to TVF much nowadays so any changes have less of an impact for me.  I only noticed something was wrong when I stopped receiving the daily e-mail newsletters a few days ago.  I then checked the Facebook page and saw the post about the website hack, which incidentally has now been removed.

What really happened here will probably remain a mystery as no official announcement seems to be forthcoming from the Admins.  A website I was involved in was also taken down by malicious people so I know something about the problems caused.  It really isn't funny.

58 minutes ago, lopburi3 said:

Very little is normal.  Format changed.  Font changed.  Date changed.  Background changed.  Colors changed.  Alerts unreadable.  Font nearly so.  They either do not have previous settings available or have not had time to implement them yet (software has always been modified for this forum).

OK, I accept there have been other changes.  The forum certainly has a different look and layout now.  However, I see no problem with the fonts.  I guess it depends on what device you are using to view the forum. They are perfectly readable on my desktop monitor.

6 hours ago, bwpage3 said:

Still see all kinds of formatting errors today.

These formatting errors are to do with the lack of the user's avatar.  Once you upload your avatar again, the formatting returns to normal.

3 hours ago, Puccini said:

And it is now the third day of November in the year of the Lord twothousandandtwentyone:

"On 3/11/2021 at 6:34 AM, Bangkok Barry said"

Was the same time format used before the outage?

British English date format = 11th March 2021.  Duh. ????

1 hour ago, donnacha said:

No. If I was, the forum would not be back up now.

It has well over a dozen vulnerabilities. I would consecutively hammer them all, causing at least a couple of weeks of intermittent downtime to ensure that their Google rankings would never recover.

Such an action on my part is, however, unnecessary. They are perfectly capable of destroying this forum on their own.

Their current Cloudflare settings alone are going to decimate their traffic. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. They really haven't thought this through.

 

????????

2 hours ago, JetsetBkk said:

Thank you! I've got my Mustang back! Can't remember what the "Cover Photo" was though. ????

(Seems like the smileys need a little work...)

You're welcome!  I don't think we ever had a "Cover Photo" before.  I'm not sure what that is in the context of this forum.

7 hours ago, poohy said:

This was posted on the TV FB page yesterday seems you are right 

 ThaiVisa Servers are suffering from a DDOS attack at the moment. And it will continue so for 7 days. After 7 days they will have the chance to correct the behavior of their snowflakes moderators and it won't happen again. Else, I will pull the plug on ThaiVisa Forum for them
You see how they delete the comments which they don't like? Second day of my DDOS attack. I am giving them a holiday of 7 day. Those mods who feel they are god, now will feel like they are nothing without their pathetic forum ????

That's what I saw too, along with a graphic (meme) with Chinese writing on it saying China has nuclear bombs too.

8 hours ago, donnacha said:

My guess would be that one individual, annoyed by his treatment, set up monitoring to alert him if a non-Cloudflare IP was ever revealed, even for a minute. He would then have set up his own server to bombard that IP or, more likely, paid a service a few dollars (probably around $50) to do it, most likely using a botnet of hacked servers.

None of this requires skill. Any idiot can find a tutorial on how to do it.

On the other hand, recovering from this sort of attack is relatively easy. You simply flip over to another server, as I described in an earlier post. Some sites even keep a second server running with the latest backup already running and automatically switch to it when their system detects a problem with the first server. The expense is justified because any downtime at all can permanently damage your search engine rankings.

An actual hack is far more damaging but requires far more skill to carry out.

 

Are you the culprit by any chance? ????

8 hours ago, polpott said:

By whom? A rival forum? Thai government? The Russians?

According to what I saw on the ThaiVisa Facebook page, it was someone with a grudge against the moderators ????

13 hours ago, Bob12345 said:

I've stayed there before (not related to covid), its a nice place and you got a better chance not going mad there than in a normal hotel room with the walls closing in on you.

I've stayed there (Aleenta) too.  It's a very comfortable resort and quarantining in a pool villa would be a bearable, if very expensive option.  Most I could afford there was 1 week.

3 hours ago, NoComment said:

They have allowed him to cover his face!!!????

Lets see how things unfold and if anymore is said about this.

Brown envelopes come to mind!!!

If he goes to court he will be lucky to see the outside world for a very long time if at all.

 

Just read The Thaiger or the Daily Mail.  His face (as well as the rest of him) is shown in all its glory. Also his full name and age.  And in the case of the Mail, how much his house is worth (just joking).

17 minutes ago, Bkktodd said:

Oh well. There’s Bali   

Bali is deporting people for breaking Covid rules.

"The mass arrest was the latest in the series of crackdowns across Southeast Asia as the authorities lose patience with foreigners breaking public health rules. A Russian social media star with millions of followers was deported from Bali, Indonesia on Monday after holding a party on the tropical island."

Thai police raid island resort arresting 89 foreigners, including Britons, for violating coronavirus regulations (yahoo.com)

24 minutes ago, evadgib said:

Since when has Andy hall been a lawyer, let alone one practicing in Thailand?

Andy Hall isn't a lawyer.  He is just relaying the fact the the BBC article has been corrected at the request of the Thai lawyers for Wai Phyo and Zaw Lin.

This statement has appeared on both Andy Hall's Facebook page and his Twitter account. 

On 8/17/2020 at 12:25 AM, IslandLover said:

As far as I understand the Thai justice system, a person has to admit guilt before the King's clemency can be granted.  Make of that what you will.

Setting the record straight:

Grateful to the BBC for editing their original story on the Koh Tao murder case royal pardon issue (story at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-53797951) to reflect their reporting error whereby a BBC journalist in London accepted without questioning the following Miller family statement which was both unsubstantiated and false: ‘"Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo finally admitted to the rape and murder of Hannah Witheridge and the murder of our son." "The final admittance of their guilt has allowed this act of clemency to become possible," they continued.

On 8/16/2020 at 6:45 PM, evadgib said:

The Beeb say the pair have coughed:

Backpacker's family 'grateful' for Thai king's clemency

Setting the record straight:

3 hours ago, brewsterbudgen said:

True.  And when they did in 2009 it was two Thai drug dealers.  Barbaric.

There was another one a couple of years ago.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thailand-execution-death-penalty-lethal-injection-amnesty-international-a8405711.html

4 hours ago, Hi Tea said:

Wow, "the real story"?  An anonymous Reddit post with so many unknown and anecdotal elements.  It's credibility, taken on it's own without influence from unsubstantiated internet rants, is less than zero.

 

Examples of the total lack of rational credibility from that anonymous Reddit poster...

"I have no idea..."

"For the life of me I can't remember..."

"...and can find no reference to it on the Internet..."

"I was never explicitly told..."

"I don't know..."

"Here's my take on what happened..."

"I don't remember exactly the time..."

"I'm fairly sure..."

"I asked what had happened, he wasn't 100% sure..."

I can't remember exactly...

but I didn't know them well enough to comment on them...

I genuinely think she is telling the truth...

...the facts which I believe to be true..."

"I can only guess..."

"I personally think..."

"I believe they met up whilst drunk..."

"I think one, or both of them said or did something..."

"I doubt the definitive version of the story will ever emerge..."

"I think this conclusion..."

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are certain inaccuracies in that Reddit post concerning the B2 that make the whole story less believable to me.  The only parts which are believable is that the guy was a diving instructor and living on Koh Tao at the time of the murders. As such, he would have had some local knowledge. I don't doubt he glimpsed Hannah's body too (David's was in the water and presumably outside his line of vision).

4 hours ago, maxcorrigan said:

Plus the sister of the murdered girl died of cancer not so long ago, so they have lost both daughter one being murdered one of cancer, terribly unfortunate i believe the two girls were their only offspring, after going through that i don't think i would want to talk to anybody either!

Correction the family have a son as well!

 

Correction: The Witheridges have another surviving daughter as well as a son.  And, Laura Witheridge Daniels did not die of cancer, she died of a heart condition.

4 hours ago, Hi Tea said:

The UK police could not investigate this case, or any other case out of their jurisdiction, it was not in the UK.

Yes, they were in Thailand as observers only.

4 hours ago, Hi Tea said:

"Scrape goats" [sic].  Animal abuse. 

 

By the way, they were men, not boys.

By the way, "Boys" is often a colloquial expression for young men - ditto "kids".  "Boys" when referring to the cops can mean men of any age, e.g. BIB (Boys In Brown, Boys In Blue).

As the B2 were in their early 20s when the murders were committed, they can rightly be described as boys.

4 hours ago, maxcorrigan said:

The girls parents did not believe the Burmese were the killers Hanna's (sp.) sister came out to Thailand and to Kho Tao to try and find out more she was first offered money to forget it which she refused then warned to keep her mouth shut and leave Thailand with the kind words to tell her parents to make another daughter!

Only partly true.  Hannah's entire family came to Thailand after the murders and attended the start of the trial in Koh Samui.  They did not visit Koh Tao (although the Millers did).  They were abused by the Thai authorities with insensitive comments and allegedly offered blood money (which they refused) whilst in Thailand and Hannah's sister, Laura, later wrote about it when back in the U.K.  Laura's comments were widely reported in the U.K. press and consequently she was threatened by the chief of the RTP with being prosecuted under the Computer Crimes Act!  Laura sadly died last year but right up until her passing, she doubted the two Burmese were guilty.