Which is actually an interesting point. Is gas always supplied at a guaranteed constant pressure? What if the pressure varies? Does the meter take that into account?
You really think it varies significantly post-regulator? That would make a nonsense of any volumetric meter reading and be positively dangerous for many gas appliances.
I am with you on this as it drives me mad the amount of variables although I can now get within a couple of pence of my estimate with the actual monthly bill they send me. This is the nearest I have got for other info:
*Tangent Alert^ My son has set up a VPN through which I am currently connected. Having clicked the above link, a box appears saying British Gas want to know my location. I click OK, and a little map appears, showing where I live. I thought the whole point of the VPN was to prevent anyone knowing where I am. I assumed that even if I clicked OK as above, BG would get some random address anywhere. What have I misunderstood?
No, the primary point of the VPN is to allow information to be transferred over the public internet in a way that prevents the information being read during transit.
A side effect of that is that is that the IP address presented to web servers etc will usually be that of the termination point of the VPN rather than that of the computer at the far end of the VPN.
I think you are assuming that the web site is deducing your location based solely on your IP address. Needless to say its a good deal more complicated than that these days since all modern web browsers support geo location functionality.
If you allow your browser to send your actual location, then any amount of obfuscation that occurs later is rather too late in preventing your location being passed on.
How your browser gets your actual location varies depending on what information it has access to and what hardware its running on. Needless to say if its on hardware with GPS available, then its easy. Failing that it may use a geo location service provider like google, lob it your IP, and the names of any WiFi access points in the area that it knows of (remember the street view cars also hoover up the access point names of any wifi networks they find while driving - and so can match wifi network names to places)
I regularly get Google insisting that I'm in France several days after I have returned from a trip there. It seems to use the data stored in its history to guess where you are. So if you do lots of searches for something in Chile (I did this recently) it will think you are in Chile for a while.
If you clear out entries from the places.sqlite database file in the browser configuration (Firefox, I guess others may be similar) then your 'location' will revert to somewhere nearer home.
How well the location facilities work depend on a number of factors. On a GPS enabled phone, they will usually be spot on. Without GPS, they are usually still fairly accurate. With wifi connected PCs they are usually also fairly good if there are a few networks visible. For a hard wired desktop machine they may be quite poor in comparison.
If the web site in question is using a third party location provider then its anybody's guess as to what information gets included into the final mix. So for example having a GPS phone attached to your wifi, may allow a third party location service to associate a physical location with your ISPs IP. That may then be cached and used later when responding to a query to locate your desktop machine even though itself it can't provide GPS or wifi network information.
Yup, I have noticed that on mine in the past. Seems like it makes inferences, presumably like "he was driving, now seems to be walking, must have left the car!"
(although the other day it seemed convinced I drove somewhere, and then motor cycled back - not sure how it worked that out).
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.