To my surprise, it appears that my website is still listed as the AS owner's website this entire time! I have forgotten much about the BGP/ASN thingy, and a quick check on RIPE DB doesn't show the website details and the ownership info is all up to date. I tried to remember where else the "website" data is populated from, as I know that the info comes from various places such as the Internet Routing Registry (IRR) like RADB but still, the website data is not there. Then I remembered PeeringDB, and it looks like old details were still kept intact. I can confirm now that this is indeed the source of the "website" data, and I'm just curious what I can do with this...

Update 2/7/2023

Out of curiosity as to why my website was still displayed in the ASN info, I decided to conduct a small experiment as I still had access to PeeringDB. I changed the 'company website' field to a new value, replacing my original website. Within 24 hours, the updates were detected by BGP.Tools, and subsequently by HE. Interestingly, this means I can freely manipulate the ASN website details to my liking. This is essentially a form of disinformation attack towards the legit ASN owner. Although this manipulation is a high-level activity that might only be noticeable or impactful to those with specialised knowledge, and it doesn't affect the infrastructure or operation, it does have the potential to create misleading information about the ASN. This could be particularly problematic for those who rely on these major aggregators for accurate information.

Anyway, on 10 February I got the ChatGPT Plus subscription available to my account (limited invite) but it was of no use to me as the subscription was only available to the US, and limited to a US address and US-issued credit card. I've tried using like 10 different CC from my bank, Revolut, and Wise with a US-based address (shipping forwarder) but all were unsuccessful, so I gave up.

Come the next day, 11 February in the morning, the subscription button disappeared from my account for a while, and I thought I'd missed the early invite and had to wait for the GA (General Availability), but then when checking again sometime in the evening, I was presented with a prompt, "ChatGPT Plus is available in Australia".

However, this hasn't come without a catch! Like my previous experience, now that I'm allowed to select Australia and local addresses, I was still having issues making payments. Stripe just wouldn't accept any of my CC and asked me to change to a debit card, but that too wasn't successful. I was quite frustrated and saw similar issues raised by many on Reddit and OpenAI discord channel. It looks like a bug on the OpenAI end, and from the many reports being lodged, it doesn't look like the issues will be resolved in the near time.

Around 11:00 pm before I went to bed, I tried again to create a new account under the "Organization members" to see if it was something related to my account issue, and then, lo and behold, I was able to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus! I guess my "old" account was the problem, and for whatever reason, the new account doesn't have issues making the payment.

Nevertheless, my immediate experience using the PLUS version was disappointing. I encountered heaps of errors, even worse than using the free version. In fact, I run the free version side by side, and most of my sessions on the PLUS version had at least one error (network error, capacity limit, etc.) which I didn't experience in the free one. I guess a lot of people were flocking to the hyped PLUS version and leaving the free ones under utilised!

For the past few days, I've been using ChatGPT a lot to justify if it's worth continuing my subscription the following month. Unfortunately, it was quite disappointing, at least for now. I tried comparing the answer of the free version against PLUS, and while I had a clear response from PLUS (with the assumption it was up-to-date compared to the free), it was inconsistent. I asked the same question again the next day, and it just throws me the standard "I do not have access to real-time information or news…" rubbish.

Regardless, I still use it to help me with day-to-day stuff, which saves me a lot of time from going through search engine results, and then figuring out how to piece the information together.

Is it convenient? YES! No doubt it is! Would AI like ChatGPT makes people dumber as a result of less using their critical thinking? This is what ChatGPT thinks.

As an AI language model, I am here to assist you and provide you with information to the best of my ability. Interacting with me should not have any effect on your IQ, as intelligence is a complex and multifaceted trait that is not easily impacted by a single activity or experience.

It's important to note that while I can provide you with answers to your questions, my responses are based on my training data and algorithms, and may not always be perfect or complete. Additionally, critical thinking and problem-solving skills are still important for developing a deeper understanding of complex topics, and these skills are not necessarily replaced by using an AI language model.

So, while interacting with me may help you get quick answers to certain questions, it is still important to continue developing your critical thinking and problem-solving skills to become a well-rounded and knowledgeable individual.

The tech stacks involved are based on Cloudflare's Pages, R2, D1, and Zero Trust with GitHub Action as the deployment medium, all free (as long as you stay under their free tier usage) and easy to deploy with simple and clear instructions provided.

The development is still in Alpha, but it doesn't really matter to me. I've been using Cloudflare for many years since ~2010 and having all the serverless functions under one roof truly is a delight. And yes, I dislike Azure and AWS, as they're unnecessarily complicated for personal use and their free tier is not that generous.

Anyway, a little bit of backstory, I start/stopped blogging around ~2006-2010. I was using the free WordPress-hosted platform and then moved on to self-host as I wanted to use my own domain as I was learning PHP, web stacks, etc., and was so enthusiastic to self-host everything on my own, from the web server, email, etc. you name it, I have it. However, over the years, I was struggling with the incompetence of the web hosting providers. At that time, website defacement was rampant, with providers constantly having to fight off web shells, and my site was no exception. There were no OOBE solutions to web hosting providers to tackle the issue, and the providers who have custom solutions (CloudLinux OS, chroot jail, etc.) were just a handful and not really affordable for me. In the end, most providers would just blame the customers for having an exploitable website, using outdated plugins, etc. and they didn't even bother to secure their hosting server, especially if they have a large client base (overselling of course!). I was just sick of having to repeat the same complaints every week, and I decided to take down my site, as I was spending too much time securing it than actually blogging.

And now, almost 13 years later, here I am using custom serverless solutions without having to worry about all the unnecessary setup! 😁