rwillett

So after a lot of thinking over Xmas, I decided I didn't like the pedalboard that I downloaded from elsewhere and wanted to design my own so that's its smaller in height, quicker to print, looks a lot better and has exactly the same surface areas as before. I might even sell them if I get any interest Here's the design, its about 20mm lower than before, prints around twice as quick as before, is just as strong as before. Each piece can take 100Kg of weight, so between them, that's over 600Kg so it'll support the corner of a small car, it uses less filament (50%) than before and has the same surface area as the old design. It still uses the same 20x40mm aluminium extrusion but now it looks a lot neater as the extrusion fits into the sides rather than sits on top of the sides. I also raised the back by 25mm so there is no need for risers under a pedal. This is now designed properly so I can easily adapt it to make it wider or taller or longer. The Cioks power supply will still go underneath it and be bolted to the bottom of the extrusions. I'm printing this up now and will post pictures when it's done. Rob

Are you Spinal Tap by any chance...?

Good question to which I have zero answers but have wondered about this myself. If this was expensive hifi cables, the answer would probably be something to do with the way that the electrons move better due to the premium highly directional electric cable.

Done

The numbers grow: @neepheid @ossyrocks @doomkeeper @Richard R @peterjam @Frank Blank @rwillett Rob

So we have confirmed as opposed to not 100% sure... @rwillett @neepheid @ossyrocks @doomkeeper

RWB guitars are very laid back. They have a lovely Vintage (the brand not aged) semi acoustic which was very nice to play. Quite decently priced as well. There was also a nice reliced non Fender Telecaster which played nicely. T'other half rang me whilst I was there so had to hot foot it out to meet her. Didn't have a chance to look at anything else. Back in York centre now so may have a second trip. If you go, say hi to them. There's zero pressure to buy. Indeed I think they should push more IMHO. Rob

We're in York today. Just popped into RWB guitars and managed to avoid spending lots of money

My family is from Chesterfield so if you organise one that area, I'll pop down.

Most Ethernet cable is sold core so is not designed to be constantly reconnected, coiled, uncooled etc. As previous posters have said, I'd be amazed it lasts a year. It will also go wrong at just the wrong time. Cabling has this inherent property of knowing the worst possible time to fail to cause the maximum chaos. Rob

You are more than welcome to come down

I've now confirmed the NW Bass Bash for Sat 10/5/25. Format will be much as before unless people have a better idea. If people do want a place to stay Fri night, please let me know as I do have space in the house. We can fit a fair amount in real and actual comfortable beds and we will still have space for camp beds and the like. People are welcome to turn up late as well. There's plenty of space to store gear safely. I'll get the ball rolling with gear I may bring along. As I live next door, it's easy to change. Fender Jazz Bass Fender Mustang Bass Fender Telecaster - Yep six strings, I have no shame 3d printed Jazz Bass 3d printed headless bass Maybe a 3d printed reverse Thunderbird headless bass if I can pull my finger out. Ibanez short scale bass - ex building site by the looks of it Yamaha HS7 monitor A weird and unusual pedalboard setup. That'll probably change anyway.

Not sure if anythuing has been arranged for this but the NW Bass Bash (which is in Yorkshire, albeit North Yorkshire) will be on Sat 10th May 2025. It will be in Clapham, North Yorkshire and be all day. We have the village hall basically from the night before to as late as we want it on Saturday. Here's the village hall: https://claphamyorkshire.co.uk/locals/clapham-village-hall/ Here's a link to Google Maps which shows you where we are: https://maps.app.goo.gl/vGE1aCW3TDPBPFVcA If you are interested, let me know Thanks Rob

Nope, i am not proud that we don’t have a absolute right of free speech. Please do NOT tag me with that. I am a great believer in the right to say most of the time most of what I want to say. i was pointing out that the right of free speech is not and should not be an absolute right regardless of what was said. Words can have serious consequences and that people deliberately use words in certain ways to deliberately create chaos and disorder (disorder here is not legal disorder). We see this with people retweeting things that are made up lies to further their own agenda. I chose an extreme example to illustrate how this happens. Americans have their first amendment which gives people a lot more protection than people in this country, as to what they can say, however even that has limits on what people can say, you defame somebody and it can have serious consequences as Rudy Gilliarno has found out. Fox News settled a legal case for libel for circa $700M for stating that voting machines were fixing the election. Where should free speech sit on the censorship continuum of you can say anything without any consequences whatsoever up to the other end where you can say nothing unless it's govt prescribed? I personally am a long way down the say as much as you can end of the spectrum. I have actively supported free speech by speaking at meetings about it, by demonstrating against laws that try to limit it, Section 28 anyone? I donate to free speech campaigns as well. However we are now finding that people are abusing that privilege. It is not a right in this country as its not enshrined simply in a law or constitution. We have a patchwork of laws governing what can be said and what cannot be said. Sophisticated actors take advantage of that to promote hate through various arguments, such as "I was just asking the question that everybody wants to know" when really they are knowingly lying through their teeth to further their own agenda. Free speech is very difficult, people are constantly pushing the boundaries as to what is legal and what isn't. I find a lot of what some people say about immigrants very, very hard to take, I have a lot of close friends from many countries around the world, but I recognise that the law doesn't make it illegal. I also realise that other people have different views to mine and that for me to have my views, other people will have views contrary to mine. That's what a more or less free society encourages. We are not all the same. Laws on free speech have evolved in this country over the last four hundred or so years. I have no doubt they will continue to evolve as our society evolves and that the free speech pendulum will swing back and forwards. (Note I deliberately did not say left and right) America has the first, second and other amendments guarantjng certain rights such as free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to vote and so on. In.this country we do not have those amendments as our civil and criminal laws have changed over time. I do not know which system is better as I can often find contradictory comparisons. However as I have said before, even in the USA, the first amendment right to free speech is not absolute as defamation is against the law. You can say a lot of things that are brutal and hateful and not be prosecuted in the USA which if you said in this country would lead to a prosecution. I worry that we criminalise things that we shouldn't but I also worry that we allow unfettered hate speak that creates violent riots. We can't have it both ways but I don't know the answer. However I am not against free speech, quite the opposite, but I do not know the answer, if there even is one, of how we address the lies that some people clearly make up to stir hatred and violence. I want people to say what they think, I do not want those thoughts and words to create the violence that ensued last time. I really don't want anybody to think I'm against free speech as I'm not. We have now gone way off topic. Possibly more than any other thread. I am happy to have this discussion elsewhere but

Would love to see that build. 2 x 6" sounds interesting. Rob

I'll take you up on that and throw in a slap up meal at Mrs Miggins Pie Shop...

... The TTL is very low and the retry timer is probably a few months for the next brood Rob

No. Never been suggested as the UK economy would halt. The govt keeps trying to open up encrypted traffic as they think that this will let them catch paedophiles and drug traffickers. The govt thinks that if they have their own encryption keys and back door to WhatsApp and Telegram then they'll keep it secure and no one would ever break in and abuse the system. Mmm... I believe but do not know, that every tech company has said they will pull their products out of the UK if the govt passes legislation to do this. They will not break their products just for the UK. The EU has also looked at doing something similar. The USA hasn't as most of the elected officials take huge sums of money from the tech companies for their election campaigns so it doesn't come up.

Most IT companies will work within the local laws in which they operate. Note the word local. Xwitter makes a big fuss of saying that they are only concerned with freedom of speech, but the moment the local law enforcement knocks on their doors, they wring their hands, shout about it and the quietly do what's asked. See recent cases of Xwitter in India and Brazil. Indeed since President elect Musk took over, it appears to have got worse for users. Facebook is the same. Not one of them will refuse a legal warrant as they can't afford to. The law is against them. VPN operators will work within the law but unless the law says they must keep logs and specify exactly what is in those logs (highly unlikely), they don't keep logs apart from when they lie and do keep logs. For accountancy purposes, they keep logs of who pays them, so that's a good start for law enforcement. In most cases, law enforcement follows the money trail as everybody keeps that information. Sensible people will have a number of VPN's when using TOR, so the use of TOR is slightly hidden in the encrypted traffic. As previously stated TOR was set up to avoid censorship by having multiple data paths such that it is impossible to track. FBI successes against the Silk Road and other Dark Web operators seem to indicate it's not quite as anonymous as people think. I'm not sure what to believe here though. Still can't see how the UK can ban VPN's though. Rob

As would the hawks and other birds of prey

I'll bow to your greater experience here. I have done it on Linux a few times when working abroad, but it tended to be ad-hoc, then it got to be a fag, so I set it all up on a dedicated laptop and took that with me. I have a tiny matchbox sized unit I use now, which does all the hard work and gives me a private wifi network abroad with a VPN home. One day I'll go back to a sensible simple home network, I'm currently upgrading my Netgear Orbi 5 mesh network to OpenWRT, but until then I'll play. Anyway, I'm off to investigate how to run a true VPN over pigeons Rob

My pfsense VPN took around 15 mins to setup as I had to read the documentation, I then had to transfer files safely to my devices. I do feel I was letting the side down by reading the docs though https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/openvpn-server-pfsense/ Not sure if thats a "true" VPN or not. Looks like one to me, works like one as it uses stuff like Tunnelblk, OpenVPN and Viscosity, all VPN clients. Works on my iPad, iPhone and Macbooks. I don't use Windows at home so can't comment on that. Its not advertised anywhere though. I also sometimes change the ports as some foreign ISP's in ski hotels have blocked the more common VPN ports. The French seem to like to do this for some reason, I have a feeling there's a law. Took a few seconds to sort that out. Thats how easy it is.

How is the ISP going to do this? Who is going to tell the ISP the block list that changes every second? Who is going to pay for the hardware and the software to do this? The second it's published it's out of date, mind you it was never accurate to start with. Who.is going to collate all the VPN'S in the first place? No obligation of foreign VPN'S to even publish their IP addresses they use, so how's an ISP going to know? The UK govt wouldn't know. How are you going to know that an https request to a non UK website isnt actually a vpn tunnel? The ISP can't know as it appears to be on port 443. How do you stop somebody tunneling through an ssh session? I run some of my ssh sessions on different ports as it's easier to configure on the firewalls. You'd have to do a man in the middle hijack to look at the initial handshaking, however to do that you'd have to spoof the TLS certificates. You see this with some WiFi connections as they try to manage the certificates and get it wrong. Also not everybody has an ISP. I've setup direct leased lines between businesses. Some people buy their lines. Some people pay to lay dedicated lines. I've had them explicitly laid down that follows certain routes in the road for redundancy so they go through roads. Some large companies have direct international lines. Some companies lease capacity on their lines at different times of the day and night. None of these use an ISP as they want to control what they do. How are you going to control those? The VPN genie is out the bottle now, its like saying to the ISPs to block porn. Too late, you can block the main sites but there are 10,000s of sites out there. You can't put the onus onto the ISP to do this, it would cost 10's of billions. The govt looked at this and backed off years ago. Netflix has tried to block VPN's and failed. There are simply too many and they change all the time. Also setting up a VPN on a home server is a true VPN. Just because its not sold or advertised doesn't make it any less of a VPN. It uses high grade encryption, if I wanted to use even higher grade, i'd probably go for dedicated hardware which isn't that expensive. There are so many different and easy ways to get around anything your ISP puts in place. Never underestimate the skills of a 16 year old boy wanting to look at adult sites.