Update: More4LessPlans Worries Me 2021-01-1

Shit, not only is the site using the wrong TLS cert, all the listings are gone too and it just says this:

I may be looking for a new Internet connection soon

The billing was happening every 30 days and today is the 30th day since the last payment went through. Tomorrow may suck. :-(

More4LessPlans Worries Me 2020-12-23

My plan is to buy some land in the woods, build a weird house on it, and just disappear. The idea is to relieve myself of as many dependencies as I can. You know, shit like the propane company, the electricity company, even the food store. I know I won't be able to get rid of ALL of my dependencies, but I want to see how many I can dump. One that I won't be able to dump is an Internet provider. Even though the Internet is mostly just used for cat pics, dick pics, and cat memes... it is still in some ways The Great Educator for some of us.

What makes this especially troubling is that here in Canada the population density isn't so high. Most Canadians live within a couple hundred kilometers of the US border, but there is often a lot of space between homes. As a result, Internet service here sucks. You see, big asshat telecom companies like Bell, Rogers, and Telus don't want to run cables to places that only have a few houses. They also like to bully the pussy CRTC in to bending to their defacto power by allowing them to continue their oligobbley and hammer us with ridiculous prices, bandwidth caps, and "customer service" - whatever that means. So what is my plan for Internet service? Well, I found More4LessPlans a few months ago... and am hoping it may be the answer. It is basically a SIM card on the AT&T network ('murikan) with unlimited LTE and no roaming fees. Here in Canada that means I am on the Rogers network and can use it all month without the bullshit 3G slowdowns I would get if I bought directly from Rogers. However, it's not all rainbows and unicorns.

You see, one problem is that AT&T are notorious for having shitty privacy policies. If you click it, they'll track it baby. I was able to get past that with various network workarounds like proxies and tunnels. Another problem is that my traffic actually hits a local Rogers cell tower, then travels through the AT&T network in the US, then heads out to whatever server or service I was trying to reach. It slows things down and makes it seem like I am in the US (which, as amazing as it may seem is NOT desireable). There is nothing I can do about this, I just have to learn to come to peace with it. Surfing around on web sites isn't so bad, but phone conversations can suck because of the extra latency. The most worrying problem though is probably this:

Oh shit.

Today when I went to look at their web site I was greeted with this. Does this mean the guy (and I assume it is ONE guy) who runs this business is going to disappear on me and I'll be scrambling to get something else? Something that will probably have a shitty bandwidth cap and which costs even more? That would suck. Hard. If I'm in town when it happens then at least I'll have access to other Internet connections to go looking for a replacement, but if I am in the woods that'll be a big pain. Bah!