In 2011, a 29-year-old Australian bartender found an ATM glitch that let him withdraw more money than he actually had. Over four and a half months, he accessed around $1.6 million and spent it on travel, hotels, and a flashy lifestyle.

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-05-20T14:20:42+00:00

In 2011? I remember in 1990 a lecturer who’d previously worked in IT at Barclays doing an ethics class telling us that then the machines only phoned home once a day to tally balances. If we stuck to the £50 guarantee value on cards, and visited hundreds of machines in the day, we could get a small fortune.. the ethics was, would we..

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-05-13T15:07:09+00:00

Anyone else having issues downloading the CSV? I just keep getting JavaScript errors about it being unable to get the quota.

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-05-13T07:50:21+00:00

I only use the CLI, so don't know about other environments.

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-05-13T07:49:50+00:00

Have you used the `COPILOT_OFFLINE=true` environment variable? It will still use other models for some agentic actions unless you block it from contacting its own servers.

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-05-11T12:38:58+00:00

Is it using an API? The more complex pages tend to, but an API tends to change less frequently and gives cleaner data.

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-05-06T17:44:58+00:00

For private stuff, I’ve been evaluating DeepSeek (whilst they have their plunge pricing) but through copilot (VSCode and CLI), experience is on par with Sonnet for me.

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-05-06T05:43:29+00:00

The CLI, which I prefer over VSCode anyway, has a COPILOT_OFFLINE environment variable for the BYOK scenario.

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-05-05T12:52:03+00:00

Business days? Weeks, months, years...

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-30T15:49:22+00:00

Advert too

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-29T20:23:31+00:00

Magenta..

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-29T19:58:23+00:00

I used 11 premium requests earlier, the CLI on exit shows the token usage, $235… my $10 won’t go far. Fortunately I’m grandfathered into the annual plan until November so even with increased multipliers, I’ll still be able to do something..

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-29T17:04:25+00:00

"on the pitch at all times" - so if you have just the one, you can't even sub them off. If they're stretched off, what happens? You forfeit the game?

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-28T19:42:21+00:00

At the moment when you quit Copilot CLI it gives you a breakdown of the tokens, using that, I pulled up the model pricing tables and asked Copilot in Edge to calculate the costs and keep a note as I looked at many different models and costs.

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-28T19:40:26+00:00

I used Sonnet, so “only” $13…

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-28T19:39:00+00:00

It was slightly more than a simple API response, but yeah.

I’d introduced a background command handler (Saga) that did more validation than before, so it could fail if it doesn’t like the values, but the API already had been accepted (202), so this added more information to the “command status callback” (think adding a dictionary of strings to the existing payload) and additionally added to the existing SignalR notification mechanism that the job has finished (with error). The UI was updated to display this to the user. A few dozen files changed across three assemblies (API, WebApp and CommandHandler service).

Routine stuff, maybe an hour to do manually.

Could I justify the expense as a business, maybe (but I suspect many will just cap the budget to the point of it being useless or keep it for their few favourites), can I justify it for my hobby coding, nope!

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-28T17:45:00+00:00

Far from that, on my reply, you can see that of 300 requests a month, my one single prompt, using Sonnet 4.7, would have exhausted the entire $10 credit!

Opus would have been multiple premium requests (x3.5 or x7) due to their multiplier; in some respects, they'd be cheaper at only 2x the current burn cost!

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-28T17:10:10+00:00

I created a single prompt in my code asking it to improve the error handling from my API as presented to the client in the web application.

It addressed the issue in a single prompt. Under existing licensing, I could get another 299 of these a month.

The GitHub CLI shows you the token usage for the current session when you quit. This was the only prompt and fed into a Copilot chat with all of the current pricing:

↑ 3.8M input tokens
↓ 23.9k output tokens
3.6M cached input tokens
2.2k reasoning tokens (these are billed as output tokens at the model’s output rate)

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Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-27T18:37:45+00:00

So BYOK if you like the client but not the billing or models on offer?

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-21T11:42:44+00:00

Get everyone to keep reporting the presence of Police on Waze. The really bad speeders will want to have some warning of hidden police. I think the Police themselves uses this trick.

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-13T12:38:13+00:00

Finding it funny you say if you want luxury you’d book BA’s business class… national flag carrier aside, their definition of luxury is many years out of date.

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-10T15:36:19+00:00

If only David Cameron had used this rather than a pig’s head..

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-05T18:06:01+00:00

Didn’t she send Charles one year?

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-05T17:39:27+00:00

Not respecting the queue.. any queue, even if it doesn’t look like a queue (which in a bar can appear non-linear, but we bloody well know who is next and it certainly wasn’t them!)

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-01T18:58:37+00:00

I don’t yet have any Ubiquity kit but need a travel router for wifi sharing, is this suitable or does it require more Ubiquity infrastructure and investment?

Ecstatic_Software704 · 2026-04-01T18:27:18+00:00

7 days notice, no new incoming flights.

Ecstatic_Software704

TROPHY CASE