whs's recent activity
-
Comment on Tips for becoming a tea person in ~food
-
Comment on Google backpedals on new Android developer registration rules in ~tech
whs Link ParentIt's quite common in Thailand. Most people have their personal information breached from somewhere nobody can identify (my personal hunch is that somewhere along e-commerce chain is breached or...It's quite common in Thailand. Most people have their personal information breached from somewhere nobody can identify (my personal hunch is that somewhere along e-commerce chain is breached or even intentionally sold to black market actors - likely the last mile courier selling)
The attacker calls you saying they're from a major bank (that you're likely a customer of) or they're a police/postal agency and you're under investigation in a remote location. They often tell part of your information like your full name. If it's e-commerce retailer breach they tell you the item you just bought has an issue, along with the item description. (The e-commerce shop in question got a slap on the wrist fine. It was their employee that sold user data) I got a call like that once and they got me to this point, then I realized I should call back and verify.
Then the attacker adapts to various restrictions with new tricks. You can't disable Play Protect while phone calls are ongoing, so they direct you to add them on LINE (a chat app popular in the country) with account using name and logo of the real agency, then move to VoIP. They may have several people using different persona to threaten you to either transfer the money yourself (eg. your money is under investigation, you'll have to transfer to me or get arrested). If it is scam apps, it may use techniques similar to clickjacking to do that - draw on top of real bank apps acting as other app. For example, the electric company needs to verify you to refund your power meter charge, which the app actually draw on top of the bank's facial recognition page.
By this point most government agency are keen on stopping this (I'm not getting into politics much - some people think the top scammers have top politicians in their pocket), you'll see court ruling that banks are at fault here so that the bank apps start spying on your phone more, the Bank of Thailand regulation start cracking down on online banking with transfer limits (that my friends says if you need to increase its very hard to ask than adjusting your credit card limit - and that is limit to your own cash!) and face recognition (ignoring that they block all the blind people from using online banking now)
Unlike the west, I've never seen anyone here asking for any software freedom - it's your phone and your money but you'll need to follow bank's security policy. At least my major bank doesn't check that ADB is enabled, but every single banks barred two do now (as you'd imagine smaller banks don't have actually good security team that actively protest against checklist based security) so it's not like I have much choice to support banks that align with my policy.
-
Comment on Tips for becoming a tea person in ~food
whs LinkPiggy-bagging on the thread, does anyone know how to get tea without manually brewing? Usually I'd drink Itoen-brand jasmine tea. It's ฿30 per bottle which I feel is expensive for just tea leaves...Piggy-bagging on the thread, does anyone know how to get tea without manually brewing?
Usually I'd drink Itoen-brand jasmine tea. It's ฿30 per bottle which I feel is expensive for just tea leaves and water in a PET bottle (sugary tea is less than this) and I could get better tea leaves for the same price. Sometimes I "upgrade" to imported Ayataka from Japan - I really like the drink when I was in Japan around 2018 and it is just ~120 yen but the imported ones I bought this year (~฿70) I felt the quality has dropped. Bottled tea is not an option when you want to drink tea as a replacement for plain old water.
Then I bought an automated tea machine. It has three compartments - you fill water into a reservoir, then press a button. The machine pump the water into hot water and fill the top compartment, which you've added tea leaves. After a minute or so (depending on which button you press) the liquid inside will flow to the lower compartment. This ensures that you don't oversteep the tea which was a problem when I use manual brewers - I'd brew the tea and forgot about it until half an hour later.
The problem with this machine is that the water is only about 75C hot and is non configurable. Its small top compartment only brew about a cup. I wish it would just repeat the process until the bottom compartment is full or allow me to queue orders. Finally, it is past its end of sale and the top compartment broke today.
-
Comment on Blogging in ~comp
whs LinkI rarely blog now. I think Facebook's editor make it easy to write wall of text, compared to my self hosted WordPress blog where I need to upgrade it to latest version and syndicate posts. I'm not...I rarely blog now. I think Facebook's editor make it easy to write wall of text, compared to my self hosted WordPress blog where I need to upgrade it to latest version and syndicate posts. I'm not sure about the engagement on Facebook vs. my blog because some people had told me they read my blog-like Facebook post but didn't drop a like so I don't have the engagement metrics.
The other thing Facebook does well is I could more casually write about in-progress project, rather than summarizing my experience with a project.
My Facebook posts are friends only. I had to do that almost a decade ago where a few "tech influencers" were ridiculed by the Thai tech community as they write bad contents like optimizing an SQL project to make it way faster (by removing correctness!), bad crypto advice and now performance review by ChatGPT. Now when I blog every other paragraphs probably has a link as I had to fact check a lot of things in the blog - just in case it become viral and people start correcting me.
I'm planning that I might revamp the blog soon, but personal projects are very low on my hobby list nowadays as I don't like maintaining software. The current idea is that I add a public folder to my Obsidian vault. A software regenerate public facing pages from the folder. It could also be both blog-like or wiki-like where there's a listing of blog pages but the blog pages can link to other unindexed pages. My previous idea was to rebuild the blog in Gemini (the protocol) and have the web version be a Gemini client. I built a Gemini protocol server, but that's where I lose interest.
-
Comment on What are some interesting landmarks in your neck of the woods? in ~talk
whs LinkMy work is located at one of the office towers at One Bangkok, Wireless Road, Bangkok. It's probably the coolest English road name in Thailand as the Thai name is วิทยุ (Witthayu, meaning Radio)....My work is located at one of the office towers at One Bangkok, Wireless Road, Bangkok. It's probably the coolest English road name in Thailand as the Thai name is วิทยุ (Witthayu, meaning Radio).
Apparently the One Bangkok site were a historical site, and when they were excavating the underground parking lot for the project they also have found parts of the original building that give the name to the road - Saladaeng Radio Telegraph Station, one pair of the first telegraph station in Thailand. If you visit the shopping mall today you can visit the Wireless House which the design is influenced by the original building. This small museum exhibit the history of the original buildings, and show objects found during the excavation. At the back of the building is the actual original radio mast, now reduced in height (you can see the top on 4th floor of the shopping mall - voted one of the most labyrinthine mall in Thailand)
Another lesser known thing of this mall is that the next door of the site is the Australian embassy, which shares a street exit with the project. The driveway is called "Soi Arun McKinnon" (ซอยอรุณมักกินนอน / Arun likes to eat and sleep). The story was that the Australian ambassador Allan McKinnon met with the current king to announce that the embassy has moved. Since the driveway had no name, the king blessed the ambassador's name as the official name.
-
Comment on Humble Choice - October 2025 in ~games
whs (edited )LinkI played V Rising 1.0 in coop (custom server). I'm surprised that I really like it - I don't like survival games (like Minecraft or Valheim) in general. There's no character level - your level is...I played V Rising 1.0 in coop (custom server). I'm surprised that I really like it - I don't like survival games (like Minecraft or Valheim) in general.
- There's no character level - your level is tied to your gear
- Progression in the game is tied to unlocks from bosses
- What the two points above means is that catching up to your friend is ridiculously fast - just ask them to craft you the latest gear and you're up to speed even if they're at late game and you just starting over.
- As for boss unlock, most bosses are very easy if you're +10 gear level over them that you can go solo all of them within a minute each
- There's a late game upgrade from a winged boss that is very incredible. I didn't expect that any game would be this wide open.
- The combat is challenging but not too punishing up until late game bosses and you can get carried - if you die in the boss area you do get the upgrade. Can't do that with the last boss, however.
- I really like the base building system with larger building blocks and top down view. It make beautiful base very easy to build. I've never built a base this beautiful
- The day-night aspect is interesting. You have to stay in the shade in day time, but there are bosses that you can only fight at day/night. The map layout is well designed with shades so that you aren't technically blocked from making progress at daytime.
-
Comment on What game is your personal "Silksong"? in ~games
whs Link ParentI didn't think a Monkey game would be a coming-of-age story, but here we go.I didn't think a Monkey game would be a coming-of-age story, but here we go.
-
Kojima's OD | Knock teaser trailer
25 votes -
Comment on Musings on "Developer Mode" in ~comp
whs LinkFirefox has a Developer Edition which is actually the beta version. The major difference is that the normal version of Firefox do not run extensions not signed by Mozilla. There is no "developer...Firefox has a Developer Edition which is actually the beta version.
The major difference is that the normal version of Firefox do not run extensions not signed by Mozilla. There is no "developer mode" - even if you go to about:config and disable it it does nothing. Presumably, this is due to how prevalent spyware installers in the past used to inject browser addons that add ads/toolbars to browser in early 2000 and now become extinct after browsers starting to block them and Chrome never supported toolbars. Some "antivirus" also injected browser extensions to do various things like adding trust meters to search engine result.
-
Comment on My guess and opinion on the common blockers to Linux adoption in ~tech
whs LinkMy work machine run Arch on WSL2. I'm happy now that I can simply pretend that I work in a Linux environment and I don't have to administrate Windows too much past winget. Nowadays I don't...My work machine run Arch on WSL2. I'm happy now that I can simply pretend that I work in a Linux environment and I don't have to administrate Windows too much past winget.
Nowadays I don't recommend people to run Linux desktop. Back when Compiz & Kiba Dock was a thing, people thought Linux interface was ahead of Windows, but I believe Microsoft didn't actually try. With Windows 7 and later I feel like they actually gave it a try and it surpassed Linux in many areas (while adding antifeatures in the process). Personally I run MATE - I feel like GNOME 2 was the best Linux experience I had, and MATE felt exactly like that, which also means it haven't improved much in the past decade.
I tried donating to MATE Patreon, which I think the entire amount I paid is more than a Windows license, but it doesn't feel like it mattered. Fractional HiDPI doesn't work, Xorg use the lowest refresh rate across monitors, Qt apps use white font on white UI because it didn't care that my GTK is dark themed, WebP/AVIF images not previewing. At this point I gave up - if there's a Linux desktop suite that is paid, yet freedom friendly and be as good as other commercial competitors I might have paid. I suppose that is what stopping people from Linux too - they don't have problem paying for Windows or Apple tax, why use an inferior operating system to cheap on cost and waste their time.
-
Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
whs (edited )LinkI think it was some comment on Tildes that got me hooked to FarmRPG about 2 months ago. With many RPG games with quests, I dreamt of making an auto solver for those games. I tried making one for...I think it was some comment on Tildes that got me hooked to FarmRPG about 2 months ago.
With many RPG games with quests, I dreamt of making an auto solver for those games. I tried making one for the second league of Old School RuneScape, but I don't like to build the dataset so it didn't work out.
Turns out for FarmRPG there's a site called Buddy.farm that has all the info I need. They even have an open GraphQL endpoint, but with how much I'm querying I'm avoiding that and I use the cached JSON instead.
The first solver I did when I started playing was an OpenWebUI tool that fetch data, so I can ask question about the game to LLM. It worked for really early game (before sawmill silver become online). As with any LLM, it lose context fast and OpenWebUI tool calling is either non-native or buggy.
Then I try n8n as it turns out quests and inventory list is important. I use Gemini 2.0 to extract quest list and item list from HTML (which I copy in by hand) to Google Sheet, then feed them to Gemini 2.5 Flash to help me solve them, with buddyfarm as tools. This approach is very unreliable and I think feeding the entire inventory to LLM doesn't work well.
The third version I wrote it in Go, which connect to the Sheets I made and try to solve it with hand written item cost. It worked really well and I made a lot of progress in game quickly. I then realize the bottleneck is now that game data is outdated very fast and Gemini is too slow and manual.
The fourth and current version is a Firefox extension. It runs a content script to parse the pages (it do not have UI or send any request to the game, only to buddyfarm). Then I rewrote the solver with recursion. For example, if a quest needs White Parchment, it will look into the crafting recipe and know that obtaining Feather slightly advances the quest. It does have limitations, but I'm satisfied of it knowing that I don't have immediate solution to many of them without exploding the search tree.
Currently I'm working on a void avoidance feature. The game has a per-item inventory cap, which the solver ignores and lots of items are permanently lost. The way I think to solve this is to find a way to remove those items from your inventory first, then retry the same action. Turns out balancing the item sink is very hard. Buddyfarm doesn't have item sell price (it does, but only in GraphQL and not json) and some actions do not generate any tracked resource - giving them to NPC for relationship XP, for example.
The code is on my GitHub by the way.
-
Comment on What's your go-to hot sauce? in ~food
whs Link ParentI find the other Tabasco not up to my Thai taste bud. The garlic one too light (I add like 5% of the bottle and it is still not spicy), the Hanabero one taste exotic, I don't like the green one,...I find the other Tabasco not up to my Thai taste bud. The garlic one too light (I add like 5% of the bottle and it is still not spicy), the Hanabero one taste exotic, I don't like the green one, etc. Haven't try their Sriracha though - afterall why would I buy a non-Thai Sriracha.
I tried the original Tabasco with everything Thai-Chinese food I got bored of the original flavor. It's like an override button for flavor. Turns out it goes really well with egg fried rice that I can't live without it now the same way Uncle Roger can't live without MSG. Noodle soup - don't do it. Pad Thai & Pad See ew - it's ok but I think Sriracha is better. Stewed Pork Knuckles - it's really good, the dipping they serve in many shops are vinegar + chilli anyway so it's just the same thing but even better.
-
Comment on CGA-2025-09 🕹️🚂 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 The Last Express in ~games
whs Link ParentPersonally I played all Monkey games with walkthrough and find it very enjoyable (except for EMI), probably more than without it and getting lost in the game. It'd help too if I were told that the...Personally I played all Monkey games with walkthrough and find it very enjoyable (except for EMI), probably more than without it and getting lost in the game. It'd help too if I were told that the game is safe to randomly talk to people, but only on the ScummVM version as you could skip the walk to not waste time.
-
Comment on CGA-2025-09 🕹️🚂 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 The Last Express in ~games
whs LinkWould a walkthrough be recommended for first playthrough of this game? I don't like the "you've been eaten by a grue" or "use a literal monkey wrench on the pipe" in old games, and so for those...Would a walkthrough be recommended for first playthrough of this game? I don't like the "you've been eaten by a grue" or "use a literal monkey wrench on the pipe" in old games, and so for those types of game I'd say a walkthrough is required for enjoyment.
-
Comment on Nantida Kaewbuasai - Wi Mahn Din (วิมานดิน) (1992) in ~music
whs LinkTry the live version with just a piano released this week. She still sounds amazing 34 years laterTry the live version with just a piano released this week. She still sounds amazing 34 years later
-
Comment on What are some great actual comedies made in the last twenty years? in ~movies
whs LinkI recently watched Ted 1&2 on Netflix Comedies always perform well in Thai cinema - people outside large metros don't like complicated movies. I don't really watch them, but I ran into Bus Lane...I recently watched Ted 1&2 on Netflix
Comedies always perform well in Thai cinema - people outside large metros don't like complicated movies. I don't really watch them, but I ran into Bus Lane (2007) on YouTube (legally) and I already watched it twice. The movie is set entirely on a bus, which turns out with a colorful cast you could make it work.
-
Comment on Question - how would you best explain how an LLM functions to someone who has never taken a statistics class? in ~tech
whs LinkNot exactly the same question, but I was reading on how Diffusion models work. Diffusion models generate text, but unlike traditional models they generate it in random order so you could...Not exactly the same question, but I was reading on how Diffusion models work.
Diffusion models generate text, but unlike traditional models they generate it in random order so you could parallelize it. Inception Mercury could reach 900 token/sec with this technique. I thought that was crazy, you can't write things from the middle.
-
Comment on Tilde is kill? in ~tildes
whs (edited )Link ParentAWS Route53 allows for IAM policy that matches the name the user is allowed to write using conditional policy. I set it to _acme-challenge.* + type TXT Policy document { "Version": "2012-10-17",...AWS Route53 allows for IAM policy that matches the name the user is allowed to write using conditional policy. I set it to
_acme-challenge.*+ type TXTPolicy document
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Resource": [ "arn:aws:route53:::hostedzone/*", "arn:aws:route53:::change/*" ], "Action": [ "route53:ListResourceRecordSets", "route53:GetChange" ] }, { "Effect": "Allow", "Resource": [ "arn:aws:route53:::hostedzone/*" ], "Action": [ "route53:ChangeResourceRecordSets" ], "Condition": { "ForAllValues:StringLike": { "route53:ChangeResourceRecordSetsNormalizedRecordNames": [ "_acme-challenge.*" ] }, "ForAllValues:StringEquals": { "route53:ChangeResourceRecordSetsRecordTypes": [ "TXT" ] } } }, { "Effect": "Allow", "Resource": "*", "Action": [ "route53:ListHostedZonesByName", "route53:ListHostedZones" ] } ] } -
Comment on Recommendation Request: New Mouse in ~comp
whs Link ParentI'd second this. I'm using SteelSeries Prime Mini in its 3rd year, which is too small (but I bought it because MX Master 2s was too big). The mouse show almost no sign of wear except the shininess...I'd second this. I'm using SteelSeries Prime Mini in its 3rd year, which is too small (but I bought it because MX Master 2s was too big). The mouse show almost no sign of wear except the shininess and dust buildup in the side buttons.
The rubber (plastic?) feet doesn't seems to wear and it seems to have notch for removing the feet (although idk if they sell replacements). And the button use light sensor so it should be more resistant to double clicking.
The only two things I didn't like it are the size, and it's quite loud even though the mechanism is optical based.
-
Comment on Brazil's publicly funded payment system is pretty cool in ~finance
whs LinkDuring the Fintech disruption, Thai banks were afraid of disruption from the Fintech startups, with how AliPay and WeChat Pay succeeded in China. They jointly launched PromptPay which, once a...During the Fintech disruption, Thai banks were afraid of disruption from the Fintech startups, with how AliPay and WeChat Pay succeeded in China. They jointly launched PromptPay which, once a major bank subsidized the transfer fee, all banks now do and so intraborder transfers are free up to 500k baht (but you can just do multiples)
The effect is now people go cashless with some shops also go cashfree (although credit card accepted with minimum 100-1500 baht - Thais don't like any fee).
The government uses this data to detect tax dodging and so some mom and pop shops that don't pay tax no longer accept QR payment.
As for tourism, you can now buy a prepaid card that is combined with an app you can pay like a local now. Thai people using some banks also can use PromptPay cross border with merchants accepting LAO PAY, Singapore's NETS and some Japanese merchants accept Thai QR. Some banks are also part of the AliPay+ or UnionPay QR payment network and their EDC does accept those payments. There are no fees, which are hidden into the exchange rate.
Update: My dad replaced it with the second generation of the device after the same vendor said they no longer have spare parts for the first one.
This version looks a lot smaller than the first one, fixed some of its issues and added some new ones.
The reservoir seems to have the same capacity, although it look much smaller. When you start the machine, it keep pumping water into the upper bowl until it runs dry. They removed the timer, so you're in control of the steep time now - but you'll have to steep it yourself by pushing a button. The water seems to be still at 75C hot. Finally, they added a hot plate at the bottom pot. Since it start warming when the machine start, I assume that if you forgot to steep not only you get worse tea but you will also risk breaking the bottom pot.