Investigatory Powers Act on EuroNews

http://www.euronews.com/2017/01/27/adrian-kennard-challenging-surveillance

This was the day I coughed so hard an ambulance crew was called - not sure if cracked rib or badly pulled muscle, but this interview was literally as ambulance crew and their "gas & air" left and before I was on the pain killers...

Moving

It is strange...

I was born in Worcester, and have lived in Birmingham, Chalfont St Peter, Slough, London, Harlow, Newcastle Under Lyme, and Bracknell. I think that is it. I may have missed some. The idea of moving is always a challenge but at no point in my life did I ever consider that there may be some reason I could not simply move. The hassle was renting or buying somewhere, and that was basically it, after getting a job (which usually came first).

For me the idea of moving to say, Glasgow, or Cardiff, or anywhere else in the UK all fell in to the same category. Of course I could. It was obvious.

To be honest, it only occurred to me, maybe 20 years ago, I could move somewhere else, when a friend moved to Finland. The EU has opened things up, and yes, until recently, I would have said that it was obvious I could do the same, or Germany or France or whatever. I assumed the language issues, cultural differences, and availability of Marmite would be my only issues really.

I always assumed moving to US or Canada or some other place would be harder and need a visa and becoming a national - emigrating, basically. I have skills and money so they would be possible, but would be harder, and I always assumed that.

Over the last year I realise some of these assumptions are not as clear cut.

• Moving to US? Why the fuck would I right now? Why would anyone?
• Moving to Canada? Interesting idea - but clearly needing some work, visa, money, something.
• Moving to mainland EU? Well, yes, or maybe no - with brexit that could break once I have moved.
• Moving to Edinburgh? I always assumed yes, but what if Scottish independence was to happen?

How long before moving to the other side of Bracknell needs a visa?

What is the world coming to?

Lulzbot TAZ 6 - when things go wrong

Too be fair, this has happened at one time or another with every 3D printer we have had, I even did a video for sorting it on a Makerbot Replicator 2.

Well, sadly, it happened on my new TAZ 6, and was basically the same. At the top of the hot end, above the cooling fan, there is a removable brass bush. If you leave a print jammed up, it carries on with the filament stuck. Eventually that causes a plug to form in the bush, and you are screwed. That bush is not meant to get hot enough to melt the plastic, so it won't clear when that happens.

The fix is removing the extruder assembly (one Allen bolt), and disconnecting the hot end assembly (two Allen bolts). This allowed me to access the blocked bush.

I removed the bush (it unscrews). A soldering iron helped as it allowed me to push a 2.5mm Allen key in and use that to unscrew the whole thing and remove the filament down to the hot end. The hot end had to be warm enough to allow it to be removed.

It could then remove the plug (some use of soldering iron, 2.5mm Allen key, and a pen-knife), and re fit. Now filament could feed all the way to the hot end.

I thought I was done, but trying to print still resulted in it jamming up. I stopped the print before another plug formed this time. I was stuck, nothing seemed to work. I adjusted tension on the feed roller, but no joy. It would feed, but too slowly and hence jam up and strip the filament with the feed roller.

The final fix was a very fine "beading" needle which my wife provided, 0.45mm diameter, pushed in to the (hot) hot end nozzle (which is 0.5mm) to clear it. After that printing was fine.

It is worth checking things like the size of the needle, obviously, else you could damage things. I have a nice set of digital callipers for that.

I can only assume some contaminant, perhaps from the 6 year old reel of PLA I was using, had blocked it in the first place. Always worrying when something is not quite plug and play.

I have a partly printed TARDIS!

I have ordered some new plastic, and we'll see how that goes. For now, the ABS I have is working well. A print of a pangolin is going well at 8 hours so far.

Even so, I am still impressed with the TAZ 6 and feel it outstrips the Makerbot Replicator 2 in pretty much every way.

P.S. blaming the 6 year old PLA I was using is not unreasonable. Since this, many hours of printing using ABS and new PLA, and no sign of nozzle clogging up at all. Back to being plug and play...

Lulzbot TAZ 6 vs Makerbot Replicator 2

For a long time the Makerbot Replicator 2 has been seen as the plug and play workhorse for 3D printing. I was disappointed with their next generation after the Makerbot Replicator 2, as I have blogged before. I think they lost the plot, personally.

We (A&A) have now got a Lulzbot TAZ 6. It has some differences, and I hope to explain them here. However, overall, I think the TAZ 6 from Lulzbot is actually a good choice and value for money.

Price

A good starting point in any comparison is price, and Makerbot Replicator 2 seems to be listed for around £1500 at the moment. The TAZ 6 I got was a little under £2000, but oddly they are often listed nearer £2500 (inc VAT). The price I paid seemed quite good, and I got it from Amazon. DPD screwed delivery so a working day late.

Unpacking and getting ready

The Makerbot pretty much was complete (though later versions needed some assembly), but the TAZ 6 is not far off. The bed+carriage needed fitting, which was 4 thumb screws, and the extruder needed fitting which was one screw with a (provided) Allen key. It came with a tool kit even. Very simple and easy and very clear instructions. A few connectors needed plugging in along the way, but all simple and obvious. I was originally concerned that the TAZ 6 was more "hobby" style than the "plug and play" style of the Makerbot, but I really cannot fault the packaging and installation instructions much. It really was simple and took maybe 10 minutes from opening the box, if that.



Print area

The Makerbot 2 is a closed frame, and has a print area of 280 x 153 x 155. The TAZ 6 is an open frame and has print area of 280 x 280 x 250, so way more. This is pretty major in terms of features - being over 2.6 times the volume!

Print bed

The print bed on the Makerbot is acrylic but on the TAZ 6 it is glass (with PEI surface?), and importantly on the TAZ 6 it is heated. This is important as it can ensure large prints do not curl up - this happens a lot on the Makerbot. So far not needed to print any sort of raft on the TAZ 6, unlike the Makerbot. Getting prints off the bed has been easy on the TAZ 6 - not so much on the Makerbot.

Resolution

Checking the Internet the layer resolution of the Makerbot can be as good as 50µm, but the software appears to only go down to 100µm. Even at 100µm we found the prints to be "stringy" (fine threads between parts of the print). The TAZ 6 can go down to 50µm but the quality is much the same as 100µm, and very good. My practical tests suggest the quality of the TAZ 6 is at least as good as the Makerbot Replicator 2. As usual it is simply a trade off between quality and speed.

Filament

The Makerbot uses 1.75mm PLA, but the TAZ 6 uses 2.85mm PLA, or ABS. The fact it can print ABS is a definite plus point for stronger prints.

Speed

The TAZ 6 manages 200mm/s. I am struggling to find the Makerbot spec. It seems similar. We may have to do a race between the two some time soon!

Bed levelling

The Makerbot Replicator 2 has a zero Z axis only, bed levelling is a manual process to go through with turning thumb screws. The TAZ 6 has built in levelling. Unlike the Makerbot which means making the bed level, the TAZ 6 measures the bed and builds that in to the X/Y/Z plotting on every print - never a bad print that way. Nice feature.

Moving bed

I was not really that happy with a moving bed - seems to be asking for trouble somehow, but to be honest the TAZ 6 seems fine. Yes the bed and the whole of the print so far moves, but it seems to not break anything, so fair enough. It has the side effect, along with an open frame, of making video of the print process a lot easier.

Dual extruder

There is a dual extruder for both of these, not tried either, but that is a key feature for dissolvable supports. More on that when I eventually try that. The open frame of the TAZ 6 could mean no loss of print size though, to be tested.

Applications

The Makerbot app is very good, and easy to use, but to be honest the open source Cura used by the TAZ 6 is at least as easy to use! There is nothing really to tell them apart here.

Any criticisms?

The TAZ 6 lacks maybe on thing. The on device menu should have load and unload filament for totally off line operation. I think it may be possible with movement command. Could be clearer. At present that works well via USB from the Cura app. That is pretty much my only criticism of the TAZ 6 so far!

The only other issue on the TAZ 6 was that when it arrived, probably down to vibration in transit, the two Z axis screws were not aligned meaning I could not do the auto bed levelling. My left/right Z axis was skewed! It was a simple matter of turning one screw a few turns, but the manual did not seem to cover this simple flaw. They could easily improve that.

Conclusion

I prefer the TAZ 6, not much more in price but a lot more in features, and just as easy to use as the Makerbot Replicator 2. Well done Lulzbot.

I am also quite impressed with how much of the TAZ 6 is in fact 3D printed parts!

"Alternative" Dispute Resolution

We have ADR in the telecoms industry and it is creeping in to other areas from what I can see.

My issue here is simple, why "alternative"? Surely that simply means the "original" is not fit for purpose? If that is so, why not fix the "original" rather than making an "alternative".

So what is the "original"

Well, to for most civil low level disputes that ADR may cover it is the county courts system under the small claims track.

I have used the courts may times. I have seen them work, and (in my opinion) go wrong. I have been the one making the case, and the defender. I have learned a lot of lessons. In some ways, the fact that I have had to learn lessons is an issue. It should be a process the novice can handle without learning lessons from the past.

The process, and I mean the "small claims process" here,  has some really good features.

• Fixed costs, starting very low, in the tens of pounds
• Loser pays (up front if making the claim, so costs known and spent in advance)
• Lawyers can get involved but their costs are not claimable (and they are looked down on)
• Judgement is binding (either way)

There are however issues. It is normally a court hearing, in a location where one of the parties may have to travel at some cost (what with so many contracts over the Internet and not face to face). This itself is a problem, and daunting.

There are some things to help - the county court at Reading, and I assume many others, have a system of free (once you have made a claim) arbitration. This is a one hour phone call (so no travelling) alternating the parties, to try and resolve the issue.

This is huge - it removes the travel and the scary court appearance. It will not always work, but I bet it works a lot - anyone got stats on that?

But if that fails the process is not hard. It may seem scary, it is just you, the other side, and a judge, in a room (an office), and discussion. That is all. Not really a problem (apart from travel).

Can we make it better?

The arbitration is good, but we could do more. How about a remote (email) based arbitration as next step. Each party emails arguments and evidence to the judge to consider. If the parties accept that ruling then all done, if not then a court appearance.

I would be in favour of this, even if it has a small additional fee over the telephone arbitration.

Why is ADR bad?

The only ADR we have had was a fucking nightmare. We were not even allowed to see the details of the case against us - what the hell? That is mental and would never be allowed in a court. The judgement was made with no discussion and no appeal. It was final.

Also ADR for ISPs, and others, is cost one-sided, only the ISP pays either way. It allows customers to threaten ADR with no risk even when they know they are wrong. The cost is way more than the county court, by a factor of around 10. How is "alternative" justice so much more expensive than "real" justice? ADR only makes sense if it is cheaper.

My proposal?

Well, the emailed resolution to add to the phone call arbitration for a start.

In some cases we could err on the side of the consumer, maybe having some limits on cost that are more skewed towards ADR. My suggestion is end user must have a risk and up front cost of maybe £5 or £10, so as to remove the frivolous claims. Then maybe up to a certain level for large claims that is all their cost, with company paying the rest (tens of pounds).

Even so, I think cases need to allow counter claims. If ISP says "they have not paid bill", that should be valid. ISP pays fee to counter claim, and adds that to claim if they win. At present ADR is one-sided and cannot act against end user. Why have any one-sided system?

Conclusion

We could make the "real" dispute resolution better and remove the need for "alternative" dispute resolution in so many areas. Let's do that!

Aliens killing the network?

Just sharing a story from long long ago...

We had racks in a data centre, as you do, and we had a load of new supermicro servers all set up and ready to be deployed to do useful things (like spam filtering).

And we lost power - killing the whole service for some minutes until power was restored and everything booted.

The reason - aliens!

Well, actually, more a question of load testing the new servers running the SETI stuff. I think we managed a passable ranking at one point with that.

I remember running the SETI command on the last box, and oddly not getting any response to my command, or, well, anything.

Moral of story - always make sure you put kit in well within the current limit of the supply and the circuit breakers, FFS. A lesson to learn early on.

These days we have racks full of FireBricks which are hard pushed to use 0.1 amps even on dual supply when running flat out and shifting 2Gb/s of traffic, so not such an issue.

Calling all small ISPs: Fixing broadband faults

There is a big problem in the industry with broadband faults and getting them fixed. Some of this has leaked out to end users who get charged to fix broadband faults, but mostly it is the smaller ISPs buying from wholesale back-haul providers that are suffering and have been for years.

This video below explains it in terms of BT Wholesale, as of today. But this is just the current ploy with BTW. The issues exists with other carriers, and we even see moves to actually try and formally charge to fix faults for which the carrier is responsible (is that even legal?).

It has been going on for years, and has changed over time - with some crazy inventive logic like "engineer charge applies if he visually inspects the end user equipment" (i.e. looks at the router) and charge applies even if router is actually hidden away in a cupboard - that is how crazy it has been. You'll see from the video how bad it is getting now. Next year it will be some new stupidity, I am sure.

This needs sorting, and it may have to be sorted in a court to finally fix it. Like many smaller ISPs we challenge these invalid charges, and we always win. But if it went to court properly then every ISP ever charged incorrectly to fix faults going back at least 6 years (maybe more) could reclaim what they paid. I'm not after back dating the solution (as we have always been successful in every dispute of charges to fix faults, eventually) but it would be a blow if any case went to court. What I would like is this whole issue knocked on the head and sorted once and for all - each party in the the whole broadband Internet Access supply chain taking responsibility (including financial responsibility) for the part of the service they provide, simple as that. Not unfair or unreasonable - simple.

We have created a Facebook group called "Wholesale Broadband Buyers Forum". If you are an ISP buying from a wholesale provider, please apply to join. We want to encourage an open and frank discussion with you [Chatham House rule]. We want to solve the issue of paying to fix faults. We are happy to share arguments and techniques to get disputes resolved. We want to make working with back-haul carriers work for us, you, and them. We want to save everyone the hassle of these disputes. Some of this will mean wholesale carriers changing their ways and taking proper responsibility. Some will mean Openreach taking some responsibility. Some may even mean OFCOM and political public policy issues if that is what it takes. But it needs fixing or else broadband in the UK is doomed.

We are after people happy to engage in debate, and I cannot rule out meetings in pubs even...

Watch the video, and if you are a UK small ISP using carriers like BT Wholesale, Talk Talk Business, Vodafone, or others, please do apply to join the Facebook group.



P.S. we did try this before, with an actual (mutual) company and web site, but to be honest Facebook works well as a forum and means to discuss such things, so we are trying again. Thank you for your support.