Strange Phenomenon

A little bit late reply, but the battery is very easy to change in these small UPSes. You just turn i upside down, take a philips screwdriver and open the bottom case. There you find a battery of a standard type and size. Search Lazada or Ebay for a lead-acid battery of the same size, or go to a local electronics warehouse and you will find an exact replacement. I modified mine to get 4x bigger battery so it can last through a little bit longer time. it only powers a router and PoE IP cameras so the power draw is only a few 10's of watts. If you have bigger draw than that you can add a fan to the case. These UPSes are pretty crappy, I found out, because they provide the batteries with 13.98 V float voltage, where it should be maximum 13.8 V, even a bit lower to maximize battery life. So really if I were you I would buy a better UPS with better specs.

No worries. Your initial question was how to make sure the online services (government, banks?) you are using can not easily see that you are located in Thailand, right? By using the method I described along with doing your browsing from inside a virtual machine there are literally no realistic way the services you use can see that you are browsing from a computer in Thailand, unless you have a skilled forensic team analyzing your activities with exotic methods. If you want to be really sure you tunnel your traffic through a residential internet connection as I described, so the services cannot see you are connecting from a cloud-provider's IP range or a commercial VPN. Make sure you use a common browser inside the VM, one that millions of people use, like a recent updated version of Google Chrome with minimal configuration done. That way your browser fingerprint blend in to the crowd and you will not stand out like a sore thumb. Of course you must isolate your activities so that this VM only is used for sensitive activities and not anything else.

I didn't have time to read the whole thread, but the solution is very simple. There are basically two options here: Option 1 which involves a one-time cost and have the prerequisite that OP (or a friend) already has a decent internet connection at home. OP buys a cheap router (like TP-Link Archer C7), or any other small single-board computer supported by OpenWrt. OP changes the stock firmware to OpenWrt by following a very simple instruction and then install the Wireguard package. Here OP set up one peer for each of OP's devices, set the AllowedIPs to tunnel all internet traffic through the routers WAN internet connection. Then OP send the config file to each one of his devices through a secure channel like a encrypted chat app (or by scanning a QR code with his phone if he has physical access to the router). He then installs on his devices the Wireguard app and add the configuration files (or scans the QR code) generated by OpenWrt. The outcome of this is that every time he wants to connect to a service that requires OP to have a non-shared IP adress, he estabilish VPN tunnel through the wireguard app. That way the server OP connect to will see OP's home IP adress and cannot determine OP's physical location. This is also good if connecting on public wifi-hostpots while not using any other encrypted protocol like HTTPS or encrypted DNS. The drawback of this is that residential internet connections have most often higher latency and lower speed than datacenter internet connections. All traffic has to be tunneled from Thailand, to say, USA if that is OP's home country, and then to the destination server. If the destination server is in Asia it introduces severe latency. OP can also rent a cheap VPS with a dedicated public IP that is located somewhere else (or his home country) and use the same process there. Install Wireguard on a Linux distribution (there are automatic scripts for this) and create your own private VPN tunnel that is not on a IP range that is known to be associated with publc VPN providers. But as stated by other members, be aware that sites can track you with other tracking methods than just IP address. The most serious is browser fingerprinting which can be mitigated by using a separate device, a Linux OS on a live-USB or a virtual machine.

Hi! When the house was built, we installed a 1500 liter water storage tank standing on a 2.5 meter high steel rack together with a pressure booster pump. The poor water quality resulted in that EVERYTHING got destroyed from the extreme limescale buildup. After one year we had to change all taps and shower set. We decided to install a water softener which made a huge improvement of the water quality. A contractor came and installed the softener unit and he mounted everything in this flow direction: Inlet water -> softener -> storage tank -> booster pump -> house. This was also the order of installation the instruction booklet suggested. Now afterwards I think this is a bit strange. It happens quite often, especially as we are not here most of the year and during the rest of the year my wife's father that is more inexperienced have to take care of the filter backwash procedure, which is surely a guarantee for it to not be performed as regularly as ideal. If the tank is mounted after the softener and the water quality (salt content) start to degrade, go through the backwash/brine regeneration process. But then we have 1500L water that has to be consumed and diluted with clean water every time which last time took about one week of normal water consumption. I know in the best of worlds it is to be done every week, but I think it will sometimes be forgotten since it has to be done manually. Our budget did not allow for the automatic backwash filter system unfortunately. So my question is, are there any disadvantages of re-plumbing it in a different order? Inlet water -> storage tank -> booster pump -> water softener -> house. This way if we notice that the water quality start to diminish, we just run through the regeneration process and we have clean water immediatley. The shop recommended that we go through the regeneration once a week, but when we are not here, the water consumption is much lower so if he see salt buildup on glassware, he can just flush the filter and get clean water again. As it is now if he forget to regenerate regularly , he will have 1500 L corrosive water to consume that will degrade the hardware. It´s actually even more than 1500L since the water gets diluted gradually, and I think this way we will never have really clean water, just a varying grade of quality that increase and decreases gradually as time goes. And if possible to improve the quality even more also I have a filter set since before with sediment and carbon filter at hand: Inlet water -> sediment filter -> storage tank -> booster pump -> carbon filter -> house. The sediment pre-filter is to keep tank and water softener clean from particles, and carbon post-filter is to improve smell. The water is of course not supposed to be consumed without additional under-sink reverse osmosis filter system. The only thing I can think about is the water flows more steadily and slower through the softener since the pressure in the water supply line from the street is lower than out from the pump, and the pump works more intermittently than the tank filling float valve. And perhaps the tank itself is somewhat protected from limescale buildup with the original method, but what does it matter if the water out from the tank is softened anyway. Let me hear your thoughts!