Paulaew

I've been dealing extensively with the Federal Benefits Unit in Manila for more than 3 years, and I've found them to be very helpful via email. (I'm not an American, so there are some complexities in receiving SS benefits, particularly for dependent children).

Paul Laew

I bought the Brother 1610W laser printer from a seller on Lazada for less than 4k THB. I run Linux, so I was concerned about driver support. But it worked like a charm and the Android printer driver works fine too. I needed to copy and scan as well, so this unit is about the cheapest quality multi-function printer on the market. The print quality is not all that great, but if you print in fine quality for anything important, it's quite acceptable.

Paul Laew

There are seven levels.

I don't think I need say more.

Paul Laew

Are you bored with mediocre weed?

I've tried quite a lot of the lower end product on offer in Thailand, and some of it was decent at prices as low as 100 baht/gram. I've built up a stash of that stuff that will last quite a while.

But now I'm looking for recommendations for killer buds, where quality is more important than price. Given the prices asked for premium weed, I can't afford to sample a lot of random product, so the experience of others would be a big help. The stronger the better.

Any recommendations would be appreciated. Please be so kind as to include pricing and supplier info.

Paul Laew

1 hour ago, Whale said:

I may be 30 in my head and look OK in the mirror but when someone takes a photo of me, I think it must have been a bad angle.

I've noticed that the frequency of bad angles and bad lighting have really increased since I passed 60. Yet my wife looks 20 years younger in her Instagram photos.

Fortunately I've maintained my kindly personality (wish I could say the same for the wife).

PauL Laew

16 minutes ago, ozimoron said:

It's best to stick with the LTS versions. Had you left it much longer then an update would not have been possible. Non LTS versions are only supported for something like 18 months. Not all *.04 versions are LTS. Soon 22.04 will be released and I highly recommend upgrading to that. You can set your software updater to upgrade only LTS versions.  Always accept all updates and update them when offered. I have used Ubuntu as my main o/s for 12 years and my full time job is Ubuntu based so I'm a big fan of Ubuntu. I'm going to have a play with nixos when I can find time.

The reason I went to 21.04 is because this version supports a new kernel version that includes the Mediatek Wifi drivers. This has been a longstanding issue with Linux -- I previously had to manually compile a kernel with those drivers and had to do it each time I had a kernel upgrade. So I had switched to Ethernet at home instead, but I still need the Wifi drivers when I'm on the road.

I did a clean install with 21.04 rather than an update, but then had to find a new desktop environment (I was previously running lubuntu). Then there are all those little details like a screen brightness control. Fortunately I've been through all this before. But I can see why the average user may still find Linux frustrating.

Paul Laew

6 minutes ago, Roger That said:

It's supported if you have ESM. Do you have that? If not, it's not supported.

 

And, as you can see, using old software introduces bugs of its own...

 

Without Firefox updates it's likely that you'll get more and more issues going forward.

Yes, I have the extended security maintenance for 16.04 LTS. It's free for personal use. Wish they offered it for wives.

Paul Laew

2 minutes ago, Roger That said:

OK. I think you have to update Firefox then. If that is not straightforward because it's an old version of Ubuntu, then update Ubuntu.

 

You mentioned that Ubuntu 16.04 is LTS - from what I can see, Ubuntu 16.04 is end of life, unless you specifically sign up for Extended Security Maintenance. This seems to be free for personal use, but you have to register.

 

Why not just upgrade?

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is supported until 2026. It's a very stable release. I'm sort of old school, I don't need the latest bugs.

Since AN is the only website that seems to cause any problems, Chrome is a reasonable workaround. Chrome memory management seems better than it used to be.

Paul Laew

Paul Laew

7 minutes ago, Roger That said:

Can you hotspot to your phone and test in a private browsing session in Firefox to see whether it's the same behaviour or not on a different internet connection?

I ran a test and USB tethered my laptop to my phone and ran through the True cellular data network with a private browsing session. Still blocked.

I had previously determined that the block did not depend on a specific source IP address, since rebooting my router assigned a new IP.

Another thing I had tried was assigning a different User Agent (using one of the Firefox extensions).

The best hypothesis I have is that the problem is somehow cookie-related, since I can connect to the AN homepage if I clear the cache and cookies. But as soon as I try to load another page (with the new cookie) I am blocked.

Paul Laew

2 minutes ago, Roger That said:

You mentioned about trying to update Firefox - have you tried it yet?

And yes, like someone mentioned, Firefox uses its own root certificate store rather than the OS's which may (or may not!) be relevant.

I tried to upgrade to Firefox 97, but it requires different versions of some libraries than those in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Firefox 88 is the current version supported by Ubuntu for this release.

I have verified that this issue is not a general problem with Cloudflare since I have tested with other sites using Cloudflare and they load normally.

Paul Laew

9 minutes ago, Pedrogaz said:

I'm wondering what the tense of the headline is? I have 'o' level English but can't figure it out.

"Might fall" is a simple modal, indicating something that might happen in the future.

The article should have used the perfect form ("might have fallen") to indicate that the action happened in the past (if indeed it happened).

As my son would say, this is like way too pedantic. Sorry.

Paul Laew

54 minutes ago, fdsa said:

I still believe there is some problem with your IP rather than the browser, as I have never experienced the same problem with two different versions of Firefox (although not 88/91/97 - much more older ones)

 

Have you verified that Chrome and Firefox have the same IP addresses?

Yes, the IP addresses are identical for Firefox and Chrome.

Cloudflare doesn't actually block my IP address if I load the AN homepage from Firefox after clearing my cache and cookies. It's only once a get a cookie and try to load another page that I am blocked. 

Paul Laew

So far we have very few facts and a boatload of speculation. My wife is entertaining the most elaborate conspiracy theories about the event, worthy of any Thai soap opera. In fact if you watch the Thai news, it has already become a kind of soap opera.

What do we really know at this point? We know we have a speedboat trip up the Chao Praya river (for uncertain reasons) and a dead actress in the river with a deep cut on one leg. We're not even sure what stories the people on the speedboat are telling the authorities, and whether they've colluded on their stories.

The only thing that people are reasonably confident about at this point is that the Thai police will likely invent some story that will be to the benefit of the highest bidder.

Paul Laew

25 minutes ago, MJCM said:

On that https://1.1.1.1/help

 

is a "Purge Cache" option. Maybe try that for AN????

 

Edit :

 

from the help page

 

 

 

Thanks for your advice, I appreciate it.

I tried that purge for the A and CNAME records for aseannow.com

But I'm still blocked from Firefox. The Firefox Browser Console doesn't really provide any useful information, just that the page returned a 403.

This has been a problem reported to Mozilla by many Firefox users trying to access Cloudflare sites, but I haven't seen a solution posted yet (but still looking).

I can't report the problem directly to Cloudflare, since they only allow their customers to open tickets. But I have emailed AN support again in hope they can get the blacklist removed.

Paul Laew

1 minute ago, MJCM said:

Then IMHO the problem isn't with Firefox!

 

Did you check if the ISP issueed IP address is on Blocklists? I am with 3BB (on CGN) and have many issues with getting an iP address that has been flagged! A reboot of the router usually solves that!

Since I can load AN pages successfully with Chrome (using the same IP address), that would seem to indicate the problem is not with my IP address.

Paul Laew

5 minutes ago, MJCM said:

Do you get any errors here?

 

https://1.1.1.1/help

I don't get any errors when connecting to that Cloudflare Connection Information page.

I can also connect successfully to other sites using Cloudflare, such as seo.com.

It seems like something happened that led Cloudflare to put me on their blacklist for AN. Maybe I need to request that they remove me, but they seem to push that function back to the website owner.

Paul Laew

3 minutes ago, MJCM said:

^ I have the same and no issue using FF 91.6.0 ESR (but under the Windows 10)

 

And what happens if you disable it? (or change to NextDNS)

I just ran tests with DoH with NextDNS and DoH disabled, and also fail in the same way with those configurations.

Paul Laew

1 minute ago, MJCM said:

Check In Firefox about:preferences#general

 

If Enable DNS over HTTPS is checked

and in Use Provider "Cloudflare" is selected

Yes, I have DoH enabled, with Cloudflare as the DNS provider.

Just to add, this was a working setup for many months and just started to fail recently.

Paul Laew

6 hours ago, Oxx said:

This may be completely wrong, but I seem to recall that Firefox has SSL certificate info. hard coded into the program, whilst Chrome dynamically loads the info..  This would cause an old version of Firefox to fail, whilst Chrome would be OK.

When I clear the cache and cookies in Firefox 88, I can load the AN homepage with https. This means that Firefox can recognize the AN SSL certificate.

When I load the AN homepage, I don't yet have a cookie from the site. But after receiving a cookie, when I try to load other content, I immediately get an access denied page from Cloudflare. I reported the problem to AN support more than a week ago, but didn't even receive the courtesy of a reply.

Paul Laew