DNS, Duplicity, Rambling, Edge Discovery, Books, Online Banking, Sigfox Finland

Post date: Oct 9, 2016 5:19:15 AM

• I wondered what's wrong with my Internet connection for a while. After quick analysis it was painfully clear, TeliaSonera's DNS was running slow as (bleep). Ok. That's it. It's nice to have a fast connection, but if DNS queries will take several seconds to resolve / query, that's not great at all. To remedy that, even yet it still causes lag. I'll always add third DNS server which isn't the ISPs own server. Choose one near you with reasonable latency and resolve times.
• Duplicity even more problems, it seems that they've broken compatibility with old include-globbing-filelist option. Well, I've fixed my file list format to meet the new standards and now that's working too. Also added monthly cleanup to the management scripts. I know it shouldn't be necessary, unless there are errors. But as usual, errors are something normal at least on some level.
• “The one thing busy people can’t stand most is rambling,” - “Make your point and move on.” - Sure. But without details and careful mapping it's often possible to be an expert in anything. Because the expert knows the details and why, instead of being able just to say "Make things secure" or make things "lot cheaper" or something similar. Anyone can do that. Expert knows exactly how and why. But it's also required to figure out what the customer or boss or anyone whom you're executing the task for actually wants. Often finding that out is anything but easy. We're building this building, we need to make it a lot cheaper. Ok, we got tents, why not to use those? What are the exact requirements for savings etc. Building things doesn't differ too much from normal integration project, the hardest part is to figure out what the clueless customer actually wants and if they're willing to pay what it takes to build their 'dream' or of it's even technically possible. Finding the edges of the case is also important. That car is too expensive, we need cheaper mobility. Ok, is used scooter enough? How about used bicycle? Ok. Why this is hard, that usually the one making the requests doesn't even them selves know what they really want for. If they can't specify what they want, then it's your task to figure out what's required. And that's usually not so simple task at all. Sometimes when checking if people are on map, I'll try to find BOTH edges. The upper and lower edges for whatever is being done. I've found out that this is especially annoying for people whom are pushing things from single point of view. Especially people in politics are very good at this. Our server costs are too high? Ok, I can cut those to zero in an hour by stopping all services immediately. But is that what you really want, or was it something else?
• The rambling issue also spans to many 'professional books'. In most of cases the whole book could be condensed in two pages of simple statements. The rest of the book, is just explaining the background information and experiences, which the statements are formed from. I've seen things in most of 'single topic' professional books. Is it personal finance management, money and happiness or project management, leadership, data, system and personnel security etc. All the same, the key findings are really simple. Yet they've made a book about it versus a single quite short blog post. - On the other hand, saying that something is really simple, probably means that you just don't know the intricacies related to the problem. It's just so easy to say, secure messaging, no problem: 'Encrypt All The things!'.
• One bank just recommended using HTTP (not HTTPS) for accessing their site in an email they sent. Neat. As said, business as usual. Nobody really cares about that. Was it a scam or phishing? No, not this time. I cross checked everything including email headers etc. It's totally legitimate. Of course the actual login form is submitted over HTTPS but that's way too late as we all well know.
• Connected Finland is extending Sigfox IoT network around Finland. There's also LoRa / LoRaWAN are available from Espotel ad Digita. These also known as Low Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWAN) are mostly used for IoT devices or for M2M as it was before IoT boom called. Same stuff, new name.