Wireless broadband [2]

So in my last post I wrote about Skinny 4G wireless broadband. I have had this for about 10 days and it's been really good. I have two computers connected to it, one in each main room of the house, and using a proper computer with it instead of a limited Raspberry Pi is really the key to getting the most out of it. But just as relevant is the observation that it is way better than the Vodem that I used to plug into one of my PCs via the USB port. There were plenty of times when that wouldn't connect reliably and it was often very slow especially in daytime. I was half expecting the same sort of challenges with Skinny but like my earlier evaluation of the new Spark wireless broadband for a relative, I was left pleasantly surprised by the performance and reliability of Skinny Wiress Broadband.

It so happens the same product is available as Skinny Jump at a much cheaper cost for people who have various forms of economic or social constraints that make it difficult for them to pay for a full wireless product, and certainly paying $10 for 60 GB is quite a lot cheaper than my $39 plan for the same volume. However although I can qualify for the Jump product and would not have to pay upfront for a modem as I have, I will continue with what I have purchased as I believe I am able to afford it and therefore the Jump funding subsidy can be directed to those most in need of it.

I don't have the modem running the whole time, it gets turned on and off with the computer - and it comes on and connects itself up pretty quickly without any issues at all. It took very little effort to get it in a position where it gets 3 bars of signal (maximum strength) and the speeds it is giving me are really good, easily comparable with Jetstream (ADSL) and way better than the throttled speeds I have been getting on my free connection from the school. The Huawei B618 modem is not quite as full featured as the Nanobridge that connects to the school - the B618 can issue DHCP addresses for example but can't handle address reservations and some of the other bells and whistles that the Nanobridge manages. But it is quite satisfactory for home use. I have turned off its WLAN because I don't as yet need to be able to connect to it wirelessly and also to avoid interfering with the existing wireless network in the house from the Unifi AP Pro. 

At the moment Skinny have granted us extra free data because of the COVID-19 lockdown but I will still have to pay $39 at the end of the month whether I use the extra data or not but at least I don't have to worry about going over cap for the next month or two. But so far usage is going well and I don't have to worry about going over cap in any case because most days would average less than 2 GB.

Overall therefore Skinny 4G Wireless Broadband is highly recommended.

Wireless broadband [1]

For the past four years I have had the privilege of a free internet connection shared from a corporate site next door to me where I used to work. It has been and in fact still is good and I intend to keep using it. However in order to supplement it and work around some of its limitations I am now planning to sign up for Skinny Wireless 4G Broadband. This has only recently become available in my area and appears to be limited to the Spark network (not Vodafone).

Skinny have a few plans starting with $39 for 60 GB of data with a downlink speed around 36Mbps and uplink 10Mbps. This is slow by fibre standards but a lot faster than my throttled 1Mbps Wifi connection from next door. According to a current deal they will give the first month free but you have to pay for the modem which costs $99, however their overall rates are the cheapest - Vodafone where available starts at $53 (albeit for 120GB which Skinny charges $49 for) whilst Spark starts at $65 for 60 GB but they don't charge you for the modem. So the first month would cost $99 and each month thereafter $39.

Up until now when I have needed an independent connection I have used either a laptop or a Raspberry Pi tethered to my mobile phone. The problem is that these mobile data connections are throttled quite severely during busy times (i.e. daytime) and the Pi is too slow to manage very much without grinding to a halt. Under the new arrangement I will have a regular computer that gets its internet exclusively from the wireless modem but will still be connected to the internal network as well except that it will have a different default gateway from the rest so that it won't connect to the corporate internet. Its internal network connection will generally be used just for file transfers and remote access.

Of course now there is the question of do I need my relatively expensive mobile plan with its large amount of data, and in reality I don't. However incorporated into that plan is two free tablet shares that let me use my tablet and second phone on the same data connection without an additional cost. So that is the reason I will probably stick with my current mobile plan but it is tempting to think I could switch to a cheaper prepay plan if I was willing to drop the tablet shares. One day perhaps Vodafone will stop letting me use my current plan but they are probably doing alright on it for now as it is pretty rare for me to use anything like my full data allocation and it will be even less likely with the wireless broadband installed. This is a backup to the corporate connection which is still going to be used for the rest of my needs.

Integromat as an alternative to IFTTT

For the last few years I have made a lot of use of IFTTT for automated web integration between my blogs and Facebook pages. IFTTT is quite good for this and I still use it to this day, with multiple IFTTT accounts as each account can only work with one Facebook page at a time, for example. One issue with IFTTT is that it doesn't have its own Facebook Groups action to post to a Group. Instead you have to use Buffer to do the actual posting. The key issue with Buffer is the free edition only allows you to post to one group. Even if you set up multiple Buffer accounts, only one Facebook connection is allowed between them, so in effect you can only use one Buffer account at a time unless you are prepared to pay the huge sum of $15 per month for multi account support.

I did some digging around and discovered Integromat, which is a complete alternative to IFTTT/Buffer combination. It is set up the same sort of way as IFTTT but incorporates its own Facebook Groups action. It looks it can do most of what IFTTT and Buffer together can do. One thing that is different is it doesn't allow in the free edition for you to schedule posting times - I have Buffer set up to post at two hour intervals so it can take a queue of posts and spread them out with one post every two hours. 

So that looks like a good alternative as the Buffer deliberate cripple to gouge you for $150 a year for their services has stopped me from being able to use Buffer with a second Wordpress blog that has a Facebook group receiving its posts and that means I actually have a backlog of posts that I need to catch up on for that group.

OpenID sidelined for FB/Google identity lockin

OpenID is a great concept: to help you create a single identity that works across a range of Internet sites. However, it has been falling out of favour in the past few years because both Facebook and Google have provided their own replacements for it.  The reasons for these are supposedly for user convenience. However, the fact is that this convenience comes at a cost. It enables Facebook or Google to collect more information about you for their commercial purposes. It also has the downside that it gives information about you to the third party website, and in some cases a rogue site can use it to post to your social media account without your permission.

Facebook's site originally supported OpenID, but some time ago they replaced it with Facebook Connect, the API that allows you to sign in with Facebook credentials on third party sites. This is good for Facebook that they can drive people to get a Facebook account that they can also use to log into sites. However people have found they are giving too much information and in some cases security privileges to the sites that receive the oAuth token from Facebook.

I wrote this post when I learned that Blogger had dropped support for OpenID. I have never used OpenID for anything at all, but now there won't be much point in using it if all these sites are going to drop it.

The primary concern I have with using Facebook or Google credentials to log into a site is that it represents the same concerns about using a single username and password to log into a lot of sites. Most of the time this will not be an issue, but if there is a problem with your Facebook or Google login, you may find that your access to third party sites is restricted or blocked. 

My own experience is of inappropriate misuse of information released from a social media profile. I remember signing up to the Stuff website with my Facebook credentials. Nek minnit the Stuff website was using my Facebook profile photo and some other details that I didn't want appearing on comments. At that point I deleted the Stuff profile and created another one using a local login.

About the only good thing about using FB or Google credentials to log in is their security is very good and there is less likelihood of your username or password being stolen.

How to stop Chrome from offering to save credit card information

If you use Chrome you'll hopefully know there are settings that can control the information that it stores and syncs. I always turn off the offer to sync passwords - and also credit card details. But although you can stop syncing your credit card details, Chrome will still popup a message each time you enter a credit card number to ask if you want to save those details in the browser - and it doesn't provide an option to turn this off.

However, the following undocumented settings might be able to turn off the credit card details save prompt.

• Type chrome://flags into the address bar of the browser
• Search on the resulting page for "Google Payments card saving checkbox"
• Change the setting to Disabled

I am not sure that this works because I was still prompted to save when I put in a credit card number the other day.