dave s

3 hours ago, SooKee said:

My question is where is this elusive app? Good luck to anyone that has a need to go to a participating venue and wants to prepare for this by downloading their app.  Not one single report about this app, be it from Thai news channels or Government departments (even the one that designed and are promoting it), contains a link to any play store from where it might be downloaded or any other information so you can "just simply use the bar code reader" as they suggest.  Searching for it turns up jack too, and the site that business owners are supposed to use also has zero useful info for the customer / user end.  Bit late in the day given it's supposed to start at 6am tomorrow. The 6Ps principle  'Proper planning prevents pi55 poor performance' seems to have passed them by!!

If you want to look at the Android version, try Google Play:

    <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thaialert.app&hl=en">MorChana - หมอชนะ - Apps on Google Play</a>

Note that it is sometimes referenced in English as two words "Mor Chana", and sometimes run together without spaces like a Thai sentence is, "MorChana". You can also search for its Thai language name "หมอชนะ". The initial "H" is not pronounced (it shifts the consonant class of the "M"), and the letter "r" in the English name is an artifact. Warning: the Google Play page is mostly in Thai, but at least if you open it in Chrome the browser should offer to translate it.

I'm sorry, I don't have any Apple equipment, but you should be able to find it in the Itunes store by its application name.

4 hours ago, grantbkk said:

My question is on which super secure server is my super secure info stored? Is all the info in my phone mined by the government or can it be accessed by a hacker? Who pays when the system is breached? Asking for a friend.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/5787-reader-suppose-you-were-an-idiot-and-suppose-you-were

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” ― Mark Twain

To paraphrase good ol' Sam: "Now reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Thai programmer. But I repeat myself." It's possible to graduate with a computer degree from a Thai university without ever actually touching Oracle or MySQL or MS SQL Server or whatever, to actually create an actual database, however tiny and simple. So how can you have any expectations whatsoever of database security or integrity (in fact, one of the first things you are told in class is to completely turn off relational integrity) against hacking, if you can't even expect a working, functional database from such a graduate? Isn't everything produced by Thai immigration overwhelming proof of that?

Suppose that the design of this new toy didn't require breaking in? Suppose it actively published all the information it had on every infected person in Thailand to the Internet, for the convenience of its programmers. You, and any of your family and friends also infected, would be famous!!! Wouldn't that be great!?! And all at no cost to you.  Oh, other than that everyone you know would run away at sight screaming "Disease! Plague! Infection! Run for your life!" Well, OK, they do that now at Anutin's urging, but .....

On 5/15/2020 at 9:51 AM, Jingthing said:

So does that mean running the tracking app and checking in and out with QR codes is going to be required to enter the malls or not?!? 

In an English language news article on Sunday, May 10, a government person said the tracking app would be mandatory (contradicting an earlier announcement that it would be voluntary), and promising details about how the app works on Monday, which I could find no sign of. It was also claimed that the phone number would be used to locate and detain anyone possibly exposed, at least until the lab results of a mandatory COVID test were ready. "No app, no entrance." If people don't know they will need a modern, up to date smart phone with that app installed to enter a mall or grocery store starting tomorrow, and the crowds for the lock-down being relaxed resemble the unruly mobs fighting for booze when its lock-down ended, tomorrow could bring lots of chaos.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30387615
 

It was claimed here on TVF that Richard Barrow's Twitter feed pointed to a government video on how the app works internally, but I couldn't find anything.

Later responses to this TVF discussion item talk about luetooth and Apple's IBeacon shopping interaction; but without more information from the government, or release and re-engineering of the app itself, it's difficult to know what's really going on. Note that a check-in only app means you have to suspect and trace/investigate all shoppers in a store the size of a Tesco Extra or Central Festival during the entire period an infected Thai was also in the store, whereas Bluetooth broadcasts have other problems.

1 hour ago, unblocktheplanet said:

Your choice. But if I walked by you & caught Covid, I'd want you quarantined for everyone's safety.

I haven't seen anything about how this would work internally. Do both person's phones always have bluetooth turned on, and constantly yell "hello there" over it, on a channel assigned to this function? That could eat up a lot of battery fast, you won't mind carrying a big power pack everywhere as well as your cell phone, right? How long does it take to infect another person? Have medical researchers even established that number yet, for sure? Does it depend on the distance between the two people? How exactly? Can bluetooth measure the distance to the other person accurately enough to calculate the minimum infection time for that distance? If your phone "contacts" someone else's phone for less than that minimum infection time, nothing should be recorded. What is the range and accuracy of a "contact"? If I'm sitting at a table along the wall of a restaurant, and you're sitting along the wall of the restaurant next door, the radio waves may pass through that wall well enough to register a close "contact" for the length of the meal, but nothing chemical like the virus will get through the wall. So you're willing to spend two weeks in a detention center because you had "contact" with a person you've never seen or heard? It's just for everyone's safety, you know. On BTS, on MRT, on many other kinds of public transportation, "social distancing" flies right out the window, but how many "contacts" will such an app record for just one trip on the skytrain? And Thailand's pathetic excuse for a police force will carefully and accurately do tracing all those "contacts"?

So how do you make all of this mandatory? Who gets to inspect my cell phone? When? How often? What can they look at, and what is forbidden to poke around at? Suppose I have an old, beat up cell phone that barely works, and I put the app on that, but keep it turned off, except when I whip it out to show some brainless minimum wage security guard that it has the app installed? Then the new cell phone that I actually use isn't tracking with the app. Will the app insure somehow that the phone it lives on is never turned off, never runs the battery out, is never left at home or in the car? And if the Thai computer morons who can't make 90 day reporting and TM-30 work worth <deleted> figure out how to do that, what's to stop someone who can use the Android developer kit from developing a fake version of their app that shows the 7-11 security guard everything that he wants to see?

Time to make some more popcorn.

2 hours ago, Don Mega said:

Where do I find the daily release figures from the government ?

data.csv

Both Firefox and Chrome were impossible to use for TVF on my machine. Switched to Brave just to read the forums, and everything is fine. It seems to be a modification of the Firefox source code, because the add-ons important to me also work just fine. So I would highly recommend that you try it out.

14 minutes ago, snoop1130 said:

giving consent to allow authorities to install a monitoring application on their smart phone.

which the visitor then deletes the instant that they step outside the airport?!?

"Consent to keep the phone functioning as identified at the airport, and to allow the app to remain in place," is a much different English sentence.

This was clearly filmed in Pattaya. All through it the message of the visuals is "Oh, touch me, touch me, touch me you hansummman! Touch me again!" Yet in addition to the total lack of masks on these <deleted> Thais, there is not a single image of a bottle of hand sanitizer, something that is recommended and actually works. And every one of these Thais is totally filthy and disgusting: not a single one of them is naked in the shower.

A new version 1.0.28 of Immigration eServices for Android was posted to Google Play on March 1; an APK appeared on March 4. Has anyone who the old 1.0.18 version didn't like tried the latest one, and did you succeed?

The latest nonsense, starting this evening: it appears that the small centered previously static ads between user responses have been replaced by dynamic ads with the Google "O X" in teir upper right corner, and you interact with Google if you click on the "X". But these ads are dynamic, they change suddenly, for no apparent reason, probably on an internal timer. And when they do, another window on the desktop gets the focus. If you alt-tab to return to the previous window, it shows the one that was two positions back. So you have to alt-tab twice to get back to the frame you were reading. And then almost before you can let go of the alt-tab key combo, it swaps frames again. I don't believe that this is a Google problem, if their software was this bad with all the ads they serve up world-wide, they would be long ago out of business. It appears that recent bad modifications to TVF have trashed it up, to the point of it becoming totally unusable. I don't particularly mind ads (that don't shove themselves in your face), and have resisted installing something like AdBlock because now and then I see a new, interesting thing that I wouldn't have learned about by chucking everything from every site.

Oh, and I was counting: just while typing this response, the frame was grabbed away from me and I had to do the alt-tab, release, alt-tab, alt-tab, release voodoo 41 times. That is obscenely stupid.

And now, the transparent Google ad, no content, that won't go away, but blocks the bottom of the screen.

And there's nothing wrong with the image rendering in Google Chrome, because it may start out showing the VDO video, but it always quickly crashes, which didn't happen until today. At that point, the navigation controls of the browser become unreliable, or just stop working completely. Then the Google ad pops up .....

OK, this is stupid beyond words. Not only is the VDO ad window blocking a good chunk of the screen, but it has crashed into a black "X" instead of a video. On every single page load. In Google Chrome, not Firefox, because of the other current stupid problem, the screen contents jumping up and down, and just about when your eyes get hold of the point where you were reading before the jump, the screen jumps away again. And then on top of it all, Google is now putting its ads across the bottom of the screen, ref the naked boxer from Krabi, and you have to dismiss the VDO before you can access the go-away box for the Google ad. ON EVERY SINGLE PAGE LOAD!!!!!!!!!! This is beyond stupid. For weeks now, since the VDO started then went away then came back again.

A friend from France is on his annual visit here. We stopped at BigC Phuket on the way home today from lunch at Central Festival. He presented his member card and cash at the checkout. She wanted to see his passport. The register screen did show a discount of 10 baht in English. I had told him about this article, and he had his passport with him. The register did not like it when she entered his passport number. After a discussion in Thai, he dug out his previous passport, and it was happy when she entered that number. She apparently suggested he stop at the service desk on the way to the car, so I expect that next time there will be no problem with his current passport.

Then I told her "no have" when she asked me for a member card, I paid her in cash, no problem. Except that I have now eaten too many of the jelly donuts, and don't feel so good.

On 1/8/2020 at 1:27 PM, Pravda said:

OK, back on topic. 

Has anyone else noticed how napkins are a precious commodity at McDonald's Thailand ONLY. 

You spend 250 baht on the set and they give you 1 napkin. I noticed this trend at most McDonald's branches except perhaps some very touristy area. 

This is why I'll always support Starbucks over McDonald's in Thailand. At least you don't have to beg for napkins and condiments. 

Absolutely pathetic.. 

When you "up-size", you used to get 2 of the little round dishes for catsup (not the reddish water dispenser, not the chili pepper sauce dispenser: good ole'-fashioned, red-blooded, anti-communist American catsup). But lately, only 1. Wow! Thailand is so consumed with greed they're even being bird-sh!t cheap with a tiny piece of plastic, or a lousy napkin. It must be the Buddhist influence, espousing wallowing in hedonistic sensuality at all costs: my profit margin is more obscene than your profit margin; my BMW is bigger than your BMW (and it's smarter too -- it has a 1993 laptop bolted to the dashboard, not a 1989 laptop).

Has anyone with a yellow book, and pink card with a 13 digit ID, been able to use the Lazada wallet? I wonder if the problem is an actual government prohibition of foreigners (every single one of whom are pedophiles, terrorists, money launderers and tax evaders -- whereas not one single Thai person has ever committed such a crime, and so deserves the overwhelming financial power of a Rabbit card or an online wallet) using the wallet, or just a Lazada programmer being too stupid or too lazy (or both) to accept input other than a 13 digit number. The government certainly knows your identity by the time you jump through whatever hoops your local city requires to get the pink card. So my 13 digit number should be just as good as any Thai person's 13 digit number, if Lazada actually checks your identity against some central online government database. Unless, of course, it's just more Thai xenophobia. [insert photo op of 20 Thai police pointing at an obviously criminal space alien's picture on a massive vinyl wall poster].

5 hours ago, jimgilly said:

I'm a bit confused on "a minimum of 200 baht and a maximum of $5 here".  At 30 baht to the US dollar 200 baht is around $6.67 which I get but could you explain what the maximum of $5 is?

The commercial Bangkok Bank office in New York accepts a US $ amount from the retail USA bank branch where you have your USA account. It subtracts either US$5 or US$10 from that amount, as a sending fee, and moves the remaining money to Thailand.  Bangkok Bank converts the US $ amount to a Thai baht amount (usually at a reasonable exchange rate, this month B30.11 to US$1), and subtracts 0.25% of that Thai baht amount as a receiving fee. But if the receiving fee is less than B200, they charge the minimum fee of B200. Similarly, if the calculated receiving fee is more than B500 (not US$5!!!),  they only charge the B500 maximum receiving fee.  The remaining Thai baht amount is deposited into your local Bangkok Bank savings account, and hopefully marked "FFT" for immigration. The total cost of the transfer depends on all these different numbers. The cost to send through Transferwise depends on a whole different set of numbers. And so on, for SWIFT transfers, for Western Union transfers, etc. To accurately compare methods, you must work out the exact calculation for each transfer method. The result can vary a lot, and the input numbers to this calculation can change over time. Pib regularly posts spreadsheet output with example calculations, and the "break point" amounts where one method becomes better than another. Search for items on this subject and look through his responses. For example, searching Google for "thaivisa forum pib compare money transfer costs" brings up, among others:

Bangkok Bank has 2 kinds of SMS alerts you can sign up for: local activity (too "noisy" for me), and all the numbers of a foreign transfer (this month, the SMS said "SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTR has transferred THB... ([email protected] minus THB200) from abroad into account number ...").

8 hours ago, ubonjoe said:

That is not correct. Only Thais and those with permanent residency can be  registered in a blue house book.

I am an American citizen on a non-O retirement extension of stay. I had been renting a condo from a Thai citizen. When I needed a TM30 his rental agent (also Thai) in the condo office provided the blue book and some other stuff that we took down to immigration, and then returned to the agent. But the Thaiowner has just sold the condo I live in to a German foreigner on a non-O retirement extension of stay. Will the new German owner have a yellow book or a blue book for the condo where I live? Can I get a yellow book now, and therefore a pink card? If the German owner has a yellow book already, can there then be 2 yellow books? Does it matter if he changes his non-O from retirement to marrriage with a Thai wife?

Alternatively, my best friend, who lives down the street, offered to list me in the blue book for his house. Would that be legitimate? Does not sound like it, from your response above.  Could I get the yellow book preceding pink card that way?

The only call sign I know of back home that is this short is KA9Q, Phil Karn. I learned Internet internals by reading his NOS code, on an IBM PC with an Ethernet adapter that must have been much better than sliced bread, because it was much bigger than a loaf thereof. ????

XZ2A? Very short call sign. Did you get your license about the time deForest invented the triode vacuum tube? ????

On 11/25/2019 at 6:57 PM, Speedo1968 said:

Thanks for the planet info.
Perhaps I cannot see it's earlier position in the sky but it doesn't seem to move towards the north west, it is moving down below south of the setting sun.
Have checked rough positions with a compass.

If I am not seeing the ISS + it's companion what am I seeing ?

Yesterday, Sunday, the objects positions were the almost the same as Saturday.

Today, Monday, the positions have changed with the smaller object to the right ( 2metres ! ) and slightly below the bigger brighter object.
I have seen the larger object for 2 - 3 years now, in early Winter they are to the East South East and lower in the sky, passing overhead within a few hours.   

Really puzzled as to what they are.

 

NASA has 2 useful "Spot the Station" toys.

1) Sign up for official alerts from NASA of good ISS sighting times. At:
    https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/signup.cfm
Drag the map background around to Thailand. Click on the box with 3 horizontal lines in the upper left corner of the map and select Thailand as the country, Bangkok as the city (closest to Khon Kaen). Click on the square with the left pointing arrow. Choose e-mail (best for Thailand) or SMS text alerts, enter the rest of the information, SUBMIT.

2) Where is the ISS right now?
    https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/tracking_map.cfm

Get an app for your cellphone, if you have one. For Android:
    https://www.space.com/32387-satellite-space-station-skywatching-mobile-apps.html
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.runar.issdetector&hl=en

Unfortunately, I have no Apple toys, so cannot advise about them. ????

Download and install Stellarium. 0.19.2 is the current Windows version.
    https://stellarium.org/
    https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/releases/download/v0.19.2/stellarium-0.19.2-win64.exe
Launch plain "Stellarium" from the start menu, unless you have an odd graphics card. May be slow starting, the first launch. Defaults to full screen mode, but you can play with the controls and browse the manual. Run the cursor against the left middle edge of the screen, and click on the "Location Window" icon. Scroll down to "Khon Kaen, Thailand" in the list, and click on it, it will stay set from then on. Move the cursor to the bottom center edge, and click on the rightmost icon to exit he program. The fifth icon on the bottom edge turns on "Azimuthal grid". Second icon on the left edge lets you set a particular date and time. Drag the mouse on the background, to change the view direction. In response #40 you say that on Sunday, November 24 about 18:00 you saw the object to the south of the sun, which was setting in the west. The first screenshot of the program is set to this: about 15 degrees up, on the 240 degree line, the column of grid squares after the "SW" direction mark, you can see Jupiter and Venus almost on top of each other. Saturn is just past 30 degrees up, along the 230 degree line. If I have interpreted your response #40 correctly, you are seeing 2 planets, not the ISS. Mystery solved and verified.

"Satellite hints" are turned on by default. The last line of ISS sightings in response #32 is for Wednesday, November 20 from 18:11 to 18:14. The bigger an item is shown on the screen, the brighter it is in the sky. In the second screenshot, notice the bright star Vega at 40 degrees up, 310 degrees over: this will help you locate the correct part of the sky, when you are outside on the lane. The fat white object at 20 degrees up, 280 degrees is the ISS. Sit and watch the screen until 18:14, and you will see the ISS move in real time to 20 degrees up, 335 degrees over, as in the third screenshot. Click on the ISS object, and all the information text appears: the ISS is magnitude -1.77, Vega is only magnitude 0 (it's a logarithmic scale, the smaller the number, the brighter the object). Right click on an object to hide all the text again. Venus is magnitude -3.86, Jupiter is magnitude -1.85 and Saturn is dim, only 0.59 in the Sunday screenshot. Sirius (the "soi dog" star, as it's called in Thailand) is the brightest stellar object, at -1.45 magnitude. The moon was -12.12 at that time.

18:00 Friday, December 6, as in response #53: in the last screenshot, again we see Venus and Jupiter, not the ISS.

Have fun!

I sent you a "private message" or "PM". At the upper right of your web page is a green bell icon and a green envelope icon. Do not post any personal data here on the discussion item, nor send it to anyone here on TVF.