India BSNL - KYC Frauds Beware - Add complaint

If somebody has BSNL number be aware of frauds wrt disabling sim if "KYC not done". This is a fraud - Do not call any number in such unsolicited messages.

I will add formal complaint and update the reply from BSNL.

How to figure that this is fraud ?

1) The sender is not BSNL but a private looking number.

2) The number they are asking to call is a BSNL Private number - and not call center.

Think how a BSNL customer care which is notorious for it's customer care service will provide you a private number to reach out to ? 

Highly unlikely - and these are fraud.

(Screenshots pasting as received.)

Bluetooth Audio Quality - SBC XQ Codec - Linux Pipewire Support

How often you use a bluetooth headset and never satisfied with quality of Audio reproduction 

you get ?

Now often there could be few reasons.

1) Bluetooth Headset earpiece quality itself.

2) Audio codec supported / in use. (SBC, AptX, AptX HD, AAC, LHDC, LDAC and more).

Normal Solution: Buy a better bluetooth audio headset with better audio codec support for better audio quality. LDAC, LHDC , AptX HD etc.

Possibly Better Solution: Use SBC-XQ audio codec on existing HW allowing higher bitrate on existing Hardware, which can save you from just throwing away your headset. 

On Linux:

Pipewire is in-place replacement library for PulseAudio (default on any Linux Distro till now) and thanks to better Bluetooth Support in pipewire and SBC-XQ - it just blows on the quality of sound reproduction that you can get from your existing Bluetooth Hardware. 

On Android custom ROM (Lineage OS and derivatives). SBC-XQ is supported - read here.

More details on SBC-XQ here. It allows bitrate as high as CBR, 551.2 kbit/s.

Things to know - 

1. Archlinux(and Manjaro) and Opensuse Tumbleweed include latest Pipewire in their repository as default replacement to PulseAudio (Old library for Linux till now). And in my experience this works great on Manjaro. (search Pipwire in your Package manager)
2. Windows 10 / MacOS do not support  SBC-XQ as of now. Anyhow they do not allow to force the audio profile that should be used. See google and there are requests open for both OS. Something Linux does really well.
3. Screenshot below on once the Year 2015+ Bluetooth Hardware is connected. Linux can show SBC-XQ audio profile.

Image 1: Pipewire on Linux supports SBC-XQ with bitrate as high as 551.kbit/s

Let me know in comments if this works for you or any other further improvements / hack around this.

Why not to buy Macbook Pro in 2021

At the start want to mention that this is not a fanboy bashing against Apple / Macbook Pro Devices, But recently the quality and reliability has gone down on Apple Products.

What works for all these human interface devices is to have a device which can work in and out reliably as you need it. Apple has been doing that with their unibody design MacBook Pro up until 2016 - post which we had the touchbar design MacBook Pro with filmsy butterfly keyboard without magsafe charger and all down the drain features.

Here are the things that you should consider / account before deciding on next apple device.

1. Display issues : Horizontal - vertical flicker lines on screen - There is definite design issue with macbook pro sol from 2016 and 2017 also. Apple has acknowledged the issue for 2016 Models but have been declining that issue exists in 2017 models.
• Here is the link to Apple Advisory for 2016 Model Thunderbolt Port Mac - here
• 2017 MacBook pro users have been informing apple about it but to no avail.
• ifixit forums - here and other places too.
2. Graphics issues : Apple is known to have graphics issue with their MBP line of product which again they never accepted it early on. Only to launch advisory after 6 years of manufacturing defective devices. 
• All external graphics card Mac from 2009 and 2010 had graphics issues. with defects as bad as graphic chips becoming loose over time due to usage.
• for 2010 Macbook pro models with Nvidia 330m - Macworld Article here & Cnet reporting it here
• Same is the case for 2009 AMD Radeon Models - a quick Google search on this would show up forums filled with this.
• Also the issues were not only with MacBook Pro But the iMac's also.
• This was all later taken care by an advisory but that the service program is closed now.
3. Butterfly keyboard issue: If you are Power user of 2016 Mac book pro you would have seen this already. extra keyboard presses showing up and making the device unusable for the moment and this can happen again and again.
• Apple already has advisory for this. If not already replaced visit the Apple service center already. Applicable to Macbook Pro, Air and normal macbook models.
• Again a quick google search with Terms - Butterfly keyboard Apple extra key - will lead to forums filled with apple users cribbing about design of this.
4. Battery not charging issue in Big Sur: here you go - so your battery can get discharged and may not get charged back again, due to a bug in Big sur.
• Mac9to5 links here.
5. Other apple advisory for Battery issues:
• Apple 13" Mackbook Pro no touchbar Macbook Pro battery advisory
• Another 15" Macbook pro Battery Advisory

Considering the list of issues hogging behind the Apple MacBook Pro series, My personal opinion is to stay away from Macbook Pro Series. They are costly and reliability that existed before and demanded the higher price is no more applicable.

A good read also is from Macrumors folks mentioning that they also don't suggest to buy and wait for suture mac devices - But then again new devices will show newer issues if Apple continues to not take cognizance of issues seen and just pulling them under the carpet.

I expect 2017 Macbook pro devices to also have an advisory for their manufacturing defect - but I am not in World's richest country to make that claim to them directly. Sigh!

Disclaimer: These are personal views and the links provide views of respective owners.

Amazon Pay is unsafe to use on other sites. (No OTP for consecutive Transaction)

Amazon Pay is unsafe to use.
RBI mandated OTP authentication for online transaction but Amazon pay still doesn’t do the same and this is really unsafe. 







Seemingly, lot of bookmyshow.com accounts are hacked and they have sent mail as above but Amazon pay not having 2 factor authentication causes bigger problem.

My Bookmyshow.com account was hacked and a Ticket in Diamond class was booked at a different city. Somebody booked ticket at Friday 11:30pm for a 9am show next day.

Update: I will write separate post on what happened with bookmyshow.com and why it isn't a very safe. But Amazon Pay not having 2 Factor Authentication also is unsafe.


Remove Auto Login for Amazon Pay.

Here is what you can do to atleast remove Amazon Pay login - so that you are not defrauded in any way.

Go to Amazon.in -> Your Accounts -> and look for "Login with Amazon"

Clicking should get to page where it will show all Accounts that you have Amazon pay linked with. Domino's, Swiggy, Bookmyshow.



I removed all of them and don't intend to use thru Amazon Pay on any other site till they have 2 factor Authentication.

update: 5/21/2019
Amazon has reverted the charges. but they still do not have a answers with respect why no OTP. Also I have removed any login I had for Paytm account.

Call Drops - Airtel issue. Set to 2G only - not an issue on vodafone.

I have had a set of Call failures on Airtel number, these have been happening and I decided to check some details.

Call Failure on Airtel, Sigh! :

Voice coverage on old Operators(Vodafone, Idea, Airtel) is better in 2G than on 3G or 4G towers. So decided to force 2G as preferred on Iphone 5s for airtel sim. Checked settings and there is no option which allows 2G on a Airtel sim. see screenshot 2:

No option to select 2G on Airtel, why ?:

Now checking the same setting on Vodafone sim this allows setting 2G as preferred sim on iPhone 5s.
And there I have no call drops when Vodafone sim is used.



See the full signal when Vodafone 2G is selected and that just works. No call drop on my secondary number.


Now decided to reach Airtel on all of this, But they aren't able to understand the issue. Reached them on twitter - they checked and still not able to root cause or provide the solution.

For now I will just use Vodafone as a temporary secondary sim.

Facebook delete Account ? Mostly not, but do fix Apps permissions access

So Elon Musk deleted Facebook accounts for his Companies. So i decided to check what more privacy thing is available that I can take care in my Facebook account. Since all the Leak of user data had happened thru the developer Apps - I decided to check which Apps have access to my Facebook data. Funny(/Scary) to see I had some stupid app back from 2009 also still having access to my Friends list and Pages I like. Why they need this.

Removed all the Apps and kept to bare minimal Strava and few more.

This link provides to see what app you have as connected.

https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications

1. Removed many apps and now it looks like this below.

2. Further more there is settings box which shows up like this below:

Simply put - this controls Apps how they use Facebook authentication etc. Just turned it to off for my account. 

This setting should take care how my data is shared by my authentication, but this doesn't answer as to how if one of the friend has provided access to some app - would that mean the App would still have my demographic data ? 

Awaiting to reach out some folks to have an answer on this.

Windows Multiple desktop like Linux

I definitely prefer atleast dual desktops to work with and coming from the world where have used Linux and Mac OS both support Multiple Desktops in full glory - I was bit disappointing with my Windows 7 Installation that i am working with these days.

Gave a quick google to find if a full 3rd Party solution is present for dual(or Multiple) desktop in Windows. But I din't need to go further. Microsoft bought a company Sysinternals which has a tool which enables this hidden capability in Windows 7.

So yes you have Windows Multi-desktop support by default in OS but looks they disabled it.

Here it goes - download this 61k utility (yes its not in MB's only in KB's) 

I am still working with kinks of moving an open App from one desktop to other - but this is good to start with.