asiacurious

1 hour ago, mrfill said:

Does he mean they should update their Windows XP to Windows 7 ?

No.  I think they mean Windows 3.1 to Windows 95.  That would put them ahead of the curve by about 74 years!

• Kirkland, Kirkland, Kirkland - especially their hard cheeses (which are imported from Italy) that can be frozen long term.  (Typically 1/4 the price and 10X the quality of what you can get here).
• Anything computer related.  But not phones, which I've found cheaper here. (MBK FTW!)
• Clothes - last a lot longer than local clothes and fit better.
• Joy of exploration!
• Did I mention Kirkland products?!

Does anyone know if the pipe size/threads here are the same as in the US?  I mean for finished fixtures.  I'd like to bring a water filter (and replacement filters) that attaches to a kitchen faucet.  Much cheaper in the US.

The one thing I miss, is my sodastream.  Anyone know if CO2 tanks here use the same size/threading as in the US (or Australia)?  I'd buy one of these kits and get a tank locally if it'd work: 

1 hour ago, fdsa said:

this is correct.

 

In the perfect world both Mr. Barrow and web site programmer would be sued, but in our clown world it's much more likely Mr. Barrow alone.

To shoot the messenger (or any messenger) is to no longer have messages delivered.

1 hour ago, fdsa said:

well, quite correct analogy.

 

I've thought of one for our topic: imagine a post office, you got told that your letter is in box number 12345. While taking the letter out of your post box you see that all post boxes have no doors and there is a letter in post box number 12344. You took the letter out and saw the name, address, and phone number of the recipient (but still you've put the letter back so no information was deleted or tampered with)

Is it your fault to obtain someones private information in unauthorized way or post office's fault that boxes have no doors?

 

In that hypothetical I would say it's the post office's fault for not providing doors on the mailboxes, though I'm not sure the outside of the envelope actually contains any private information .  A person's name on a piece of mail is certainly not private.  Nor is the address (which happens to be the address of the post office, though even if it had their home address, it isn't private).  Even a person's phone number could be considered as not private, as anyone who has ever had a landline can attest to the fact that their name has appeared in public phone directories.

However, what is inside the sealed envelope would be private, and that is one important piece of security that the website did not have.  The only way to view whatever was sealed inside would be to break or circumvent (steam?) that seal.  To do so would be illegal.

I'd suggest that what happened here is that the post office took whatever private information was given to them and wrote it on a card.  They then placed that card - without sealing it in an envelope - into a post office box with no door that anyone could access at any time.

Thanks for the thought provoking example!  I love thinking about these kinds of issues and trying to reason them out.

How much data will you be transferring?  If you need to backup a lot of data, plugging in to a computer via USB will work, but it can be painfully slow.

If you're even just a little bit technical, using something called adb can be much faster.  Specifically, you initiate an adb pull from your computer to pull all the data from the phone to the computer.  (You can also do an adb push to push data from your computer to the phone.)

Note that speed also depends on the type of USB connection you have.  If it's 2.0 (very well might be) then that will slow things down.

Here's a page that explains it and tells you how to do it.

https://www.thecustomdroid.com/adb-push-pull-commands/

I had about 20GB of photos/video I needed to back up.  Doing the old drag and drop said it would take several hours.  Doing an adb pull took only minutes (over USB 3).

I've seen beer being served in restaurants.  Order one and they deliver it to you in a large insulated tumbler (with ice).

30 minutes ago, Crossy said:

PCs "should" be zero rated for duty, so you ought to just get charged VAT at 7% on the CIF value.

 

But in all honesty, I'd just get a machine here unless it's really top end.

 

Either way don't just ship it, the expansion boards won't be well enough supported, you need to get it stripped and the boards individually bubble-wrapped. Maybe just send the mainboard, HDD (make a backup first) and GPU then buy a box and PSU here.

I'd definitely Mylar and wrap the GPU separately.  The CPU and memory are probably fine in place.  

The idea about buying anew box/PSU here is a good one.  Much less weight.  Also, shipping a few old used components won't likely incur the same kind of attention with customs (and resulting tariffs) as a complete system.

I'd still backup the drive and get a new drive here.  It cuts weight, gives you a refreshed drive (they don't last forever!) and keeps your data safe.  You could even image the drive and then transfer that image here over the cloud and avoid the whole re-installation thing.   (Though I would suggest also doing a separately backup of files in case the image fails.)  As an extra added bonus, keeping your old HD overseas means you've got a serious off-site backup!

1 hour ago, fdsa said:

you are so good at describing things, would you be this guy's advocate in the court?

 

https://robdyke.com/howto-disclose/started   

 

https://robdyke.com/howto-disclose/cma

It sounds like he found a book sitting on a bookshelf in a public library and looked at the book.  He saw that the book contained private information that should never have been in a book on bookshelf that anyone could access.

He was under no obligation to tell the librarian about the book (although at some point he may have had an affirmative duty to do so) but he elected to do so.

An interesting hypothetical (to me) is what to do if the library has a history of carelessly doing this sort of thing.  If it happened once, maybe the library can excuse it away, like by saying the book was only there for 10 minutes while they were doing maintenance work in the back room.  But what if it happens repeatedly?

16 minutes ago, ohyesiam said:

A few years ago I paid 21 US dollars to receive $140 tablet from amazon.com so it was $161 all in. On the other hand, with a used computer the only really cherishable items maybe the hard drive or drives which may be worth shipping. Most of the rest will be pretty much dead weight that you can replace here quite easily, especially the case fan/power supply. FYI any hard drives that come in as used can be subjected to deep scan, so if you have any serial numbers and passwords and banking information on them it's accessible; that said I'm sure they got better things to do than to look at your bank information lol.

Also, hard drives don't last forever, and there's no guarantee of the hard drive making it here with data intact.  (Or if he shipped the whole PC, that the PC makes it here intact.)

If it is only after the data he's after, best might be to have a friend connect the computer to the internet, then use remote access software (like Teamviewer or Chrome remote desktop) to connect to it, and then use something like Dropbox, Google Drive, MS One Drive, iCloud... and upload all the data and then download it here to a local drive.  That's probably the easiest, cheapest (free!) and safest way to do it.

10 minutes ago, rabas said:

 

But, was it illegal to film them without their consent and post it on the internet for all to see?

 

Good question!  I'd suggest that such an action was not only not illegal, it was also morally justified in order to warn others and secure a prompt resolution.

Another person above mentioned that they had already heard about the immigration site issue weeks ago from someone else, so it's not like it was unknown to anyone else.

For those who say this goes on everywhere....

In other places, they normally make an effort to secure sensitive data and when someone does get hacked, the entry point is often through social engineering.

But here....

Well, you can't unlock an unlocked door.

1 hour ago, bluejets said:

Going on everywhere, not just Thailand so I wouldn't be too quick to judge any of Thailands setups.

1 hour ago, Russell17au said:

....they cannot and will not admit to all the "Data Leaks" from banks, social security organisations and other government departments that occur in their first world home countries like America, UK, Australia and Europe.

49 minutes ago, sandyf said:

Data breaches happen and it is certainly not unique to Thailand as many would make out. Grow up and learn to live with it.

2 hours ago, condobrit001 said:

If you discover that it is possible to look inside a neighbours bedroom with a telescope, this is illegal. So the correct course of action would be to refrain from looking and discreetly inform that neighbour to close their curtains, NOT to tell the whole street that the view is on offer!

The simile doesn't really work.  I'd suggest this might be more apt....

Frequently while walking your dog at night, you walk by your neighbor's house and see them having sex under a bright light with the curtains wide open for everyone to see.  They've done this kind of thing before and know this kind of behavior is harmful to the community but they either don't get it, or they don't care.

Instead of pulling the curtains closed, turning out the lights, or taking some other basic preventative actions to shield other people from this harmful situation THEY'VE created, they keep right on doing the same kind of thing time and time again.

29 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

Let's look at Dictionary.com...  Underlining is my emphasis...

 

Computers.

to modify (a computer program or electronic device) or write (a program) in a skillful or clever way:

• Developers have hacked the app.
• I hacked my tablet to do some very cool things.

to circumvent security and break into (a network, computer, file, etc.), often with malicious intent:

• Criminals hacked the bank's servers yesterday.
• Our cybersecurity team systematically hacks our network to find vulnerabilities.

White hat hacks are still hacks.  He entered the website in a manner not intended by the developer.  To do that, he manipulated the URL.  That's a hack.  Not a very sophisticated one, for sure.

Where the claim of hacking fails ALL of the definitions of hacking that have been offered, including the definition that I provided based on the actual laws in Thailand about hacking (this post),  is with the circumventing of security.

The site had NO security.

If the site admin/developer had used an SSL cert then there could be a claim that the site had at least some kind of security.  Though even that would simply be security to prevent man in the middle snooping/hacking.   Changing a URL would not be circumventing SSL security.

The admin/developer needed to have something set up to secure the data in order for there to be someone for a person to circumvent/hack!

12 minutes ago, Phuketshrew said:

22 minutes ago, impulse said:

If he had to change aspects of the URL to see the data, that's a hack. 

Exactly.

Now you're just ignoring your own definition of hacking!  By your own definition, there was no hacking!

8 minutes ago, JetsetBkk said:

30 minutes ago, asiacurious said:

So again, why collect all that data and then treat it so cavalierly?

 

Have you looked at the back of your Immigration forms, recently.

 

(I did the "blanking out", for security purposes of course).

I know.  It's shocking the insecurity that happens here.  I know it's probably carelessness or perhaps something to do with culture.

Sometimes it almost seems intentional, but it always is reckless.

2 hours ago, Phuketshrew said:

Had Mr Barrow had legal permission to perform the hack (as an Ethical Hacker) the correct course of action should have been to inform the owner of the website/database of the breach so that they could take immediate remedial action.

Seems as though his publishing of the information resulted in a pretty quick fix by immigration.  Does anyone here think a quick fix would have happened had it not been made public?  The current government isn't really know as being responsive to much of anything unless it's public (and even then, not so much).

Bad on immigration for having this data publicly accessible via a simple URL.

Good on immigration for immediately correcting the problem once it was made public.  (Public being the key word here.)

FYI....

The Immigration appointment website for Bangkok Immigration is ALSO insecure.  You can see everyone's name, date of birth, passport number...  everything you enter into the site, simply by playing around with the URL string that is returned after submitting information.

There's something seriously wrong a national government can't build a site with simple security.  (Oh, and of course, no SSL on the immigration booking site either, so even accessing the site isn't secure.)

A one-quarter dose of the Moderna mRNA vaccine has almost the same efficacy as a full dose.  This has huge implications for getting more people vaccinated, sooner. 

The same review also finds that, "for countries choosing between approved but lower efficacy vaccines available immediately and waiting for mRNA vaccines, using immediately available vaccines typically reduces mortality."

It's probably safe to expect we'll hear a lot more about dose stretching in the future.

Here's a graph that lays out the efficacy rates for partial doses of all the major vaccines:

Here's a video presentation by the authors:

And here's a link to the page announcing this data: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/06/a-half-dose-of-moderna-is-more-effective-than-a-full-dose-of-astrazeneca.html

Finally, here's the full pdf for those who want to read the working paper.

2 hours ago, dingdongrb said:

So why Makro make your repeat customers have to wonder around longer than desired to find what they had always bought before? Perhaps they are thinking that while looking you may buy more?

You partly answered your own question with your second question.

Another reason is that an old store can have new competition in a market.  New competition can draw the interest of customers away from the old store.  Moving things around is a way to freshen up the shopping experience for customers.

Yet another reason is that the popularity of products (or product categories) changes over time.  For example, the old layout may have prioritized home appliances by putting them up front when you first enter the store.  Those appliances may no longer be a big draw for customers (who can easily research and buy online) or may no longer offer as big a margin for the store to justify the amount of space or the position they occupy in the store.

On 6/9/2021 at 8:57 PM, faraday said:

Anyone tried the BK Impossible Burger. I was tempted the other day, then common sense prevailed. ????????????

Pretty tasty with a good texture.  It doesn't really feel or taste like meat, though it does have a smoky flavor to it.  And it has a nice chew and mouth feel.  It's better than their old veggie burger.