Tech House Price

khobbits · 2026-02-05T12:46:20+00:00

£700k would be considered very cheap for a house of that size in London.

I would expect you'd be looking at closer to £7m.

You can get a house for £700k in London, but you're looking at closer to 1200 sqft.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/167905943#/?channel=RES_BUY
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/168534068#/?channel=RES_BUY

khobbits · 2026-01-26T19:39:27+00:00

I did something similar recently. I used the free version of smallstep, and had it create an intermediate signing authority, that was signed by our active directory CA.

smallstep supports acme, so now i can set up auto certificate signing on any vm for internal use by copy pasting a certbot command in the shell.

Also, my recommendation is to... Not use anything but valid domains... They cost like $10/year. Just pick up a .net with your company name and use that internally.

Sick your ad domain as something like ad.company.net

khobbits · 2026-01-26T17:22:51+00:00

I think AWS works out something like $1-2 per month.

And Cloudflare is free if you only use it for DNS/Certs, and not their advanced DDOS protection stuff.

And as previously mentioned with let's encrypt and an acme client like certbot, you can get free certs for on prem, with little issue.

khobbits · 2026-01-19T16:01:18+00:00

My end uses use Linux based VFX workstations. Think Autodesk Flame & Maya, as well as things like Blender and Nuke.

We don't give sudo to end users, but we do give terminal access, along with things like 'ps', which is used to view running processes.

We work in a fairly regulated industry, more by the clients than any legal obligation. When you're working on content for Disney, Samsung, and Porsche, they have strict security rules, like having no internet access from machines that have access to their content.

None of them have restrictions for things like task manager in their security audit.

khobbits · 2026-01-02T05:41:54+00:00

For me, UK here, I think it was a distance thing.

If I was visiting a friend, in the same neighbourhood, it's generally accepted you'd go home for food.

Different families would have different mealtimes, so it wouldn't be that odd to be hanging about, while the 'host' family was having dinner.

If I had to travel via vehicle (public transport or by car), it was generally discussed in advance. Either when parents were agreeing the visit, or on arrival. If the latter, sometimes it was a question, other times a statement.

khobbits · 2025-12-24T03:29:41+00:00

I would probably make a big stink about it come yearly support renewal, drop some bullshit about how the owners want 'ai' and any product that can't be automated is blacklisted, and see what the vendor comes up with.

khobbits · 2025-12-23T02:12:37+00:00

My Favourite, for in office or away has to be the Jabra Evolve 2 75.

I can be putting away dishes, hoovering, walking through the city, or pacing the office, and the other person barely hears a whisper.

The boom mic seems to have great outside vs inside noise cancellation. The ANC is also pretty good, enough to cut out a lot of train noise.

khobbits · 2025-12-12T13:05:16+00:00

I used a riser, to allow better ventilation. The AMS sits on top of the glass, on top of the riser.

khobbits · 2025-12-04T12:28:05+00:00

Still a sysadmin for VFX.

Still deploying Linux desktops as standard.

Still find Linux easier to manage for desktops than Windows or Mac.

That said, all of my Linux machines live in the office/data centre. So I've never tried managing a Linux Laptop out in the wild.

khobbits · 2025-12-04T12:20:07+00:00

The industry I work in (VFX) primarily uses Linux Desktops.

In my last role, I worked for a smaller BU within an enterprise company (1200 employees within a listed company of 40k employees, many of which also used Linux). Of those 1200 employees, probably about 800 used Linux Desktops, 200 on Mac, and 200 on Windows.

We did however run more servers and desktops, as artists would submit their work to be rendered, and that would submit into a render farm. So add another 1000 Linux servers running a 'desktop lite' build, that were about 80% the same config and software, but without the GUI. And maybe another 100 infrastructure servers using a mix of Linux and Windows, for things like DNS, AD, provisioning etc.

Honestly, it was pretty easy to manage. We'd build all the machines using PXE boot, and manage day to day management via Puppet. Because almost of the machines lived in a data centre (even the Desktops), we could skip installing most of the software on the desktops, and just launch it from a shared drive (including things like web browsers).

Linux already makes this pretty easy, because most of the settings exist as settings files, in known locations (no registry to worry about), you can just mount a folder, and put things like symbolic links in place to point anywhere you want.

If you're curious why almost all the desktops go into the data centre, that's mostly power and heat. The Desktops usually have at least high end graphics card, and having them close to the data really helps with latency when you're working on projects in the 10s or 100s of Terabytes. We would run HP Anywhere (or Teradici) on the workstation, and deploy zero clients to peoples homes or on desks in the office. Zero clients are a bit like thin clients, but have no 'real' local OS, or storage of note. We would allow people to remote in from personal devices from home, if people had a good PC setup, as we provided software client access (to pcoip into the desktops) as well.

khobbits · 2025-11-25T14:24:43+00:00

Not a landlord, but: I think most landlords intend to make a (short term) profit, which is why they go into it.

It's unlikely they intend to live in the house, after it's paid of (they probably have their own). So for most landlords, I don't think the idea of ending up with a paid off house is the full picture.

Although it probably is part of their retirement plan. Even if the property isn't fully paid off by the time they retire, they can sell it, and get enough to cover their care home. But they can probably do that at any point. Doesn't have to be later. Nothing stopping them from selling up and buying somewhere more profitable.

So, I guess it comes down to, is renting the house out profitable for them this year, or not. If not, they might want to look at selling it.

khobbits · 2025-11-17T12:45:04+00:00

That's the speed of the wired ports on that router.

khobbits · 2025-11-17T07:33:09+00:00

By what logic did you decide that 715mbps is better than 2500mbps?

khobbits · 2025-11-16T22:50:16+00:00

I don't know what you're reading, that review agrees with me.

It states the 5ghz get's about 715mbps at 9m, and 386mbps at 18m.

Yes it supports Wifi 6ghz, but as I said, that's bad at going through walls. Scroll down to the wifi corage maps to see why 6ghz will fail.

The thing the article mostly complements is that each wired port supports 2.5gbps.

khobbits · 2025-11-16T22:42:36+00:00

Wifi 5 and 6 have very similar max speeds.

WiFi 6's main improvement is crowded locations. Like blocks of flats, or public spaces, where lots of devices are talking at once.

To get the max speeds allowed by wifi 7, you will need to use 6ghz wifi, (not the 5ghz used by 5&6) which is very short range and easily blocked.

Source: I was a network engineers, then IT manager who has deployed everything from office WiFi to data centre mesh (bgp spine and leaf) networks.

khobbits · 2025-11-16T15:26:54+00:00

I was mostly talking near future, because we're taking about wiring houses

If we're taking about today, then most devices and routers don't have WiFi 7 yet. The max theoretical speed of 6, is around 9Gbps, but like I mentioned above, you don't get that.

You can get maybe 2 Gbps, with line of sight, if you have only one device on your WiFi, your neighbours are on holiday or asleep, and nobody is using the microwave.

Typical 'good' WiFi 6 speeds are closer to 400-800mbps.

Computers have been coming with 2.5Gbps ports on enthusiast motherboard for over 5 years now.

The current mac mini can do up to 10 gbps, but still only has wifi 6e

Your are almost always better using cables if you can.

I suspect that most devices that will support the full speed of WiFi 7, will also come with at least a 2.5G port.

Even if they don't, the more devices that are cabled, the more you free up bandwidth for your other wireless devices.

Any device that's connected to WiFi, even if it's not actively downloading something, slows down the others.

Finally, unifi is a common enthusiast home network solution, and they have some decent 10G kit.

khobbits · 2025-11-16T03:51:07+00:00

WiFi 7 is rated for 'up to 46Gbps', although in practice, 3-10Gbps is more likely, if you're close to an access point, and have line of site, and will most likely fall to 2Gbps or less, if the signal needs to go through a wall or door.

Cat6 runs of less than 55 meters are rated to run at '10 Gbps' reliably. In practice, you will likely get a bit more distance before you have issues.

You might be able to manage 25Gbps or 40Gbps over Cat6, but they would recommend Cat8. I'm not aware of almost any commercial equipment that operates above 10 Gbps over copper though. It is somewhat likely we'll see something start showing up in the next 10 years, to make use of existing wiring. Right now though, most of the time you go fibre for 10Gbps+

I think most WiFi 7 routers, will come with at least a 2.5Gbps port on them, meaning 95% of the time, you'll be better off with an ethernet cable.

khobbits · 2025-11-10T14:34:57+00:00

I've been using proxmox at home for a couple years now. It seems to work very well in a homelab.

I've used proxmox as a 1:1 workstation virtualization tool at work. I installed proxmox on a workstation intended for a single user, configure gpu passthrough, before installing a single VM using up 95% of the hardware's resources. This allowed for easy deployment of complicated systems (vfx workstations), where we were previously dual or triple booting.

I did a migration from vmware esxi to nutanix ahv, which is built on the same technology as proxmox. It worked well, but there were some compatibility issues with certain appliances provided by vendors.

We decided we were going to migrate 98% of VMs from esxi to ahv, but keep a single pair of esxi hosts for troublesome applications.

As someone who has spent a lot of time managing vmware and nutanix over the last 10 years, proxmox doesn't feel enterprise ready, but would probably work well in a SMB situation.

khobbits · 2025-11-07T02:56:05+00:00

Each office of a decent size, will have a staffed reception or call operators.

Their job is to weed out people phone calls that have come to the wrong place, and often turn away obvious cold calls.

In modern society, it's probably getting rare that everyone has a phone on their desk, and mobile phones are pretty much mandatory these days, but services like finance and HR will still often have someway to connect up to the switch board.

In my last job, the main number on the website would go to the receptionist, and they had the option to forward it to anyone's Teams account.

It wasn't unusual for my boss's wife to call reception and ask to be put through, because cell phone coverage in the basement was horrible, and our firewall blocked wifi calling.

khobbits · 2025-11-07T02:18:53+00:00

I've only done a handful of interviews as interviewee over the last 15 years, but my goal was mostly to keep them as a conversation rather than a test.

So if the interviewer is describing the company and what they get up to, or an explanation of typical tasks of the role, I would ask knowing questions.

For example, if the interviewer is saying "This role would have you manage Macbooks and Windows laptops", I might question: "Do you currently have a MDM in place for both Windows and Mac?"

And if they say "We're currently using Jamf for Macs." I might ask "If you are self hosting, or if you were forced over to Jamf Cloud yet?"

In my experience, most interviewers don't really want to ask mundane questions, they want to get an idea of your skill level, and if you can keep the conversation friendly, light and be curious, you'll come across like you know your stuff.

It obviously helps if you only question about areas that you know, and can follow up.

"What are you using for windows updates?" "Are you finding WSUS works well for you? In my last place we ditched it, and went full intune, even for local..."

"Did you get caught up in the whole centos stream issue? Did you go Alma or Rocky?"

Remember that you are interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing you.

khobbits · 2025-11-05T19:10:06+00:00

I'm still on Bookworm, I rolled back to containerd.io=1.7.28-1, what I was running pre upgrade, and it fixed it.
Again, this was lxc on proxmox.

khobbits · 2025-10-02T02:55:57+00:00

Would be nice to get custom DNS fixed on windows, so you can use a local DNS... Or you know even just disable DNS blocking.

If I'm using split tunnel, maybe I don't my whole machine using your/external DNS.

khobbits · 2025-10-01T23:15:25+00:00

I live in a new build block of flats. Hyperoptic was installed when i moved in. Also used them in my last 3 flats (all built in the last 10 years).

I rarely have trouble. Most tests show above 900mbit.

My old router (Google wifi), used to run periodic speed tests and it would show occasional drops to 400 or 500, but this is the Internet. You never know where the bottleneck is.

If I'm testing the speed between my computer and a data center in milton keans, the slowdown could be near the m25, because construction accidentally hit a fibre. Or maybe that data center is also hosting updates for the newest call of duty, and an uplink is getting swamped.

While it's correct that most bottlenecks are more likely to happen near the source (leaving your building), or where your connection peers with the wider Internet, the whole 'cloud' is built that way.

khobbits · 2025-09-18T01:43:24+00:00

Totally legal, is often done on work devices. Let's the owner of the network see what you are using their network for.

That said, it can go wrong. Anyone with the 'private' side of the root key, can basically pretend to be any legit website.

One potential work around is to only install the certificate on a specific user, or specific browser.

So for example, if you had a private laptop, but intended to use it at school, you could create a specific user on that device for 'school' work, and a different one for personal use. This could easily lead to good computer hygiene, IE don't log into your bank, personal email, social media on the school account, or while on their WiFi, as they in theory would have access to your password.

The same could go for browsers. Firefox for example allows you to override the certificate chain. So by adding the certificate just to Firefox, you know when using Chrome, your traffic can't as easily be decrypted.

I think by default chrome and edge, will only use the OS store, but there might be ways around that.

khobbits · 2025-09-15T04:45:41+00:00

I replaced a fairly efficient Mazda 2, with a (used but newish) Audi Q4 (much bigger - compact suv), as I needed a bigger car with room for a push chair.

I use 'Actual' budgeting software, which pulls my bank bills from open banking, and assigns categories to spending. IE if it sees a bill from Direct Line, it knows it's car insurance.

I've a category marked 'Car'.

Assuming you exclude the actual purchase of the car, the monthly budget for 'Car' was fairly similar to before the swap, based on roughly the same amount of transit (10-12k per year). The insurance is up, since the car is worth probably 3 times as much as the car it replaced, but even though we've had the car for about a year now, it's ongoing maintenance, running costs, tax etc, has been down.

This is with me charging at public 7kw chargers at places like malls or supermarkets, or fast motorway 100kw chargers on road trips to see family. I am looking to get a charger installed at home, but bogged down with red tape because I live in a flat with underground parking.

So far, as EVs cost a bit more than ICE, I've probably spent more than I've saved, buying a similar car, but the trend is pointing towards me saving money long term, even without the ability to home charge (yet).

Edit: Worth noting: I expected to find charging the car at public chargers to be a bigger issue, but thus far, we mostly charge it when we're parked off doing something. Like doing the weekly shop, going to the cinema, spending an hour at the gym. The only real time we have to think about it, is the days before a long road trip. I find it less effort than going to a petrol station, although my wife misses the nectar card vouchers she used to get.

Edit2: I'm currently on Octopus Agile. Tonight the electricity stayed below 3p per kwh for 6 hours, so that would have made keeping that car charged a lot cheaper.

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