Terms and Conditions

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing, browsing, interacting with, or otherwise using the DAVE System (hereinafter referred to as the "System", "Service", or "Project"), you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms and Conditions. If you do not agree to all of these terms, you are expressly prohibited from using the System and must discontinue your access immediately.

2. Nature of the Project

It is imperative to understand that the DAVE System is strictly a PERSONAL, NON-COMMERCIAL, HOBBY PROJECT. It is designed, built, hosted, and operated entirely by a private individual out of personal interest in satellite communications, RF processing, and virtualization technologies.

The Operator is NOT a business, is not a registered company, and does not operate this System for commercial gain. The System is made available online purely for experimental, educational, and observational purposes. It is not an enterprise-grade service, and users should not rely on it for any critical, professional, or commercial operations.

The DAVE System was developed entirely autonomously by a private individual in his own free time, and is in no way connected, affiliated, associated, endorsed by, or related to any established entity, business, organisation, or company — past or present. Any similarities to existing systems, products, or services are purely coincidental. No external party has contributed to, sponsored, or authorised this project in any capacity.

Notwithstanding the non-commercial nature of the project at this time, the Operator expressly reserves all rights to commercialise, license, or otherwise monetise the DAVE System — or any part thereof — at any point in the future, at their sole discretion and without prior notice. Nothing in these Terms shall be construed as a permanent waiver of such rights.

5. Service Availability

Because this is a personal hobby project, there is no guaranteed uptime. The System may be taken offline at any time, for any duration, without prior notice. Reasons for downtime may include, but are not limited to: power outages, hardware failures, routine maintenance, network instability, local weather conditions affecting RF reception, or simply at the arbitrary discretion of the Operator. The Operator is under no obligation to restore service if it goes offline.

⚡ It is also worth noting that this System runs on electricity, which does not come free. The DAVE System draws a non-trivial amount of power — we're talking four GPUs, a 32-core workstation, a 1600W power supply, a UPS the size of a small fridge, and a satellite dish that needs to point at things. The electricity bill is real, it is paid by a real person, and it is not cheap. Accordingly, if the Operator decides that keeping the lights on is no longer economically sensible or personally worthwhile, the System will go offline. No notice. No apology. No refund. The Operator expressly disclaims all liability for any inconvenience caused by the laws of thermodynamics and the local electricity tariff.

6. Acceptable Use

While using the System, you agree to adhere to basic principles of acceptable use. You agree NOT to:

• Use the System for any unlawful purpose or in violation of any local, state, national, or international law.
• Attempt to bypass, circumvent, or exploit security measures, virtualization boundaries, or network configurations of the System.
• Overload the System with excessive requests (e.g., Denial of Service attacks).
• Interfere with or disrupt the operation of the hardware, including the DVB tuners, SDR interfaces, or antenna positioning systems.
• Use any geo-location, positioning, or location-based functions of the System for any purpose that is unlawful, unauthorised, or in violation of any applicable local, national, or international law. This includes but is not limited to tracking individuals without consent, circumventing territorial restrictions, or any application that would constitute surveillance, stalking, or a breach of privacy under any jurisdiction the Operator has heard of and several they haven't.

The Operator reserves the right to immediately terminate the access of any user who violates these rules or whose usage negatively impacts the System. For the avoidance of any doubt whatsoever: illegal usage is entirely your problem. You go to jail. Not the Operator.

🍺 Operating Under the Influence: Users are strictly prohibited from operating, accessing, or interacting with the DAVE System while under the influence of alcohol, narcotics, or any other mind-altering substance. This restriction applies exclusively to users. The Operator reserves the sole, non-transferable, and entirely reasonable right to operate, maintain, configure, and make decisions about the System under the influence of alcohol. This right is personal to the Operator, cannot be delegated, and is frankly non-negotiable. The Operator accepts no liability for any configuration changes, creative routing decisions, or firmware updates made under such conditions. See Section 3.

7. Intellectual Property

All hardware configurations, custom scripts, internal infrastructure designs, and specific implementations comprising the DAVE System remain the property of the Operator. Accessing the System does not grant you any ownership rights or intellectual property rights over the platform or its contents.

Furthermore, the Operator — unlike some — has morals, and hereby formally asserts their full moral rights over all original works associated with the DAVE System. This includes the right to be identified as the author and creator of the System, the right to object to derogatory treatment of those works, and the general right to not have their creation misrepresented, misattributed, or passed off as someone else's idea. The Operator did not spend considerable time, money, and sanity building this thing for someone else to take credit for it.

8. Payments & Refunds

The DAVE System is currently provided free of charge. However, should you elect — of your own entirely free will and with full sound mind — to send any monetary contribution, donation, or payment to the Operator for access to or use of the System, please be advised of the following refund policy:

🐘 Any money paid in connection with the DAVE System is hereby considered to be sugarcane that has entered the elephant's mouth. It is gone. It is not coming back. The elephant is not sorry. No refunds will be issued, discussed, considered, acknowledged, or even thought about. The Operator thanks you warmly for your generosity and wishes you a pleasant day.

By making any payment, you confirm that you have read and understood this refund policy in its entirety, that you found it funny, and that you accept its terms unconditionally.

9. Privacy & Data

As this system is connected to the internet, basic network data (such as IP addresses, connection timestamps, and bandwidth usage) will be logged automatically by firewalls and routing equipment for security and diagnostic purposes. By connecting to the System, you consent to this minimal data collection. However, the Operator makes no guarantees regarding the security or privacy of any data transmitted to or from the System. Do not transmit sensitive, personal, or confidential information through this experimental setup.

The Operator may also collect your email address should you make contact, and reserves the right to use it for future communications should a viable method of monetising this project ever be identified. The Operator's spouse is under the impression the entire system cost approximately $2,000 USD and the Operator would very much like it to stay that way. Accordingly, any revenue generated would be enormously helpful and will be described in household accounts as "miscellaneous IT recovery." You may opt out of any future communications by replying with the word "unsubscribe", which the Operator will acknowledge, respect, and then probably forget about.

📧 Email Communications

If you interact with the DAVE System or its Operator via email, please be aware that the email mailbox is hosted on Microsoft Azure, Singapore region. By sending an email, you acknowledge that your message will be routed through and stored on Microsoft's infrastructure in Singapore, and will be subject to Microsoft's applicable terms of service and privacy policies.

🇹🇭 Data Residency & AI Processing

All data processed by the DAVE System — including any AI and machine learning functions — is handled entirely in-house, within the Kingdom of Thailand. The DAVE System does not utilise any third-party cloud-based AI services, or off-site processing infrastructure for its core functions. No user data, signal data, or system data is transmitted, shared, or exported outside the Kingdom of Thailand as part of normal system operations, except where explicitly sent by the user themselves via reply email or direct message, in which case the content of that communication will travel via the email infrastructure described above. The Operator is committed to keeping all system processing local and self-contained.

🙅 Your data will not be sold, shared, traded, bartered, auctioned, gifted, whispered, semaphored, or otherwise communicated to any third party. The Operator has absolutely no interest in your data, finds the entire practice of selling user data morally repugnant, and frankly has enough on their plate already managing a satellite dish, four GPUs, and an elephant that won't give refunds. Your data stays here. In Thailand. With DAVE. That's it.

10. Changes to Terms

The Operator reserves the right to modify, amend, or replace these Terms and Conditions at any time, without prior notice. It is your responsibility to review these Terms periodically. Continued use of the System following any modifications constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms.

11. Governing Law

To the extent applicable by law for a private, non-commercial endeavor, these Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the local laws of the Operator's jurisdiction, without regard to its conflict of law provisions.

However, given that the Operator operates from the Kingdom of Thailand, the System's data resides in Thailand, the email infrastructure is in Singapore, the Mars clause is governed by Elon Musk, and the elephant is philosophically stateless, the Parties agree that identifying a single applicable jurisdiction is, frankly, something of a challenge.

⚖️ Accordingly, in the event of any dispute that somehow makes it as far as requiring a neutral jurisdiction, the Parties hereby agree to submit to the laws and courts of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia — a location chosen specifically because it is geographically remote, climatically bracing, and almost certainly inconvenient for everyone involved, which the Operator considers to be a perfectly reasonable deterrent against frivolous litigation. Alternatively, disputes may be settled in Svalbard, Norway, on the basis that polar bears are excellent arbitrators and charge reasonable rates. The Operator reserves the right to suggest an even more inconvenient venue at their sole discretion, including but not limited to international waters, a base camp on K2, or a specific crater on the Moon yet to be named.

In all seriousness: nothing in these Terms creates any legal obligation recognisable in any jurisdiction that the Operator is aware of, and any attempt to litigate against a personal hobby project run by one person with a satellite dish and an overdue electricity bill is likely to be met with both genuine surprise and mild amusement.

12. Contact

For inquiries regarding these Terms and Conditions or the DAVE System project, please contact the Operator using the details below. The Operator will endeavour to respond in a timely manner. We aim to get back to you by 2037. This is not a guarantee. See Section 3.

📧 [email protected]

13. Interplanetary & Extraterrestrial Jurisdiction

For the avoidance of doubt — and in the proud tradition established by a certain high-profile electric vehicle and rocket company whose terms of service boldly went where no legal document had gone before — the following clause is included:

🚀 For any interactions with, access to, or use of the DAVE System conducted on Mars, the Parties recognise that Mars is a free planet and that no Earth-based government, law, or jurisdiction has authority over Martian operations. Accordingly, these Terms and Conditions shall be governed by the principles of self-governance established for the benefit of humanity, or as may be amended by Elon Musk from time to time.

In the event of a dispute arising from use of the DAVE System beyond low Earth orbit — including but not limited to the Moon, Mars, the asteroid belt, or any other celestial body — such disputes shall be resolved through good-faith negotiation between the relevant parties, ideally before the next resupply window, as the Operator cannot guarantee response times across interplanetary distances.

The Operator makes no warranty that the DAVE System will function correctly in microgravity, hard vacuum, or in the presence of significant ionising radiation. Users operating the System beyond the Kármán line do so entirely at their own risk. Section 3 (No Warranty) and Section 4 (Limitation of Liability) apply with even greater force in space.

14. Blacklisting & Appeals Process

The Operator reserves the absolute, unilateral, and frankly quite enjoyable right to blacklist any user from accessing the DAVE System at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all. This includes but is not limited to: suspicious behaviour, attempted abuse, being annoying, or simply having a bad vibe.

⛔ Should you find yourself blacklisted and wish to appeal, please be advised that you have approximately the same right of appeal as a man who has just been kicked out of a Thai restaurant for complaining the Pad Thai was too spicy. That is to say: you may gesture expressively, you may feel strongly about it, and you are welcome to stand outside looking aggrieved — but you are not getting back in, and nobody inside is losing any sleep over it.

All blacklisting decisions are final, immediate, and non-negotiable. There is no appeals committee. There is no ombudsman. There is no form to fill in. The Operator's decision is, was, and always shall be correct by definition. Any correspondence regarding a blacklisting decision will be read with great amusement and subsequently ignored. See also: Section 3, Section 4, and the elephant in Section 8.

15. Force Majeure

The Operator shall not be held liable for any failure or delay in the operation of the DAVE System arising from circumstances beyond their reasonable control. For the purposes of this agreement, "beyond reasonable control" is defined very broadly and includes, but is in absolutely no way limited to, the following events:

• Acts of God, acts of Satan, or acts of any deity operating in any recognised or unrecognised pantheon.
• Solar flares, coronal mass ejections, or the Sun having a bad day generally.
• Geomagnetic storms interfering with satellite reception, RF signals, or the Operator's mood.
• Interference from a neighbour's poorly-shielded microwave oven.
• Monsoon season, flooding, or a gecko entering the server rack at an inopportune moment.
• Unscheduled visits from Thai government officials, electricians, or the wife.
• The satellite dish being pointed at the wrong part of the sky due to a software bug, a gust of wind, or sheer cosmic indifference.
• Any GPUs deciding they would rather mine cryptocurrency than do what they are told.
• System software updates that break everything at 2am for no discernible reason.
• A UPS that has decided 6kVA is not, in fact, enough.
• Power grid instability, rolling blackouts, or the electricity company's feelings.
• Global pandemics, regional pandemics, or a particularly aggressive local flu season.
• Alien invasion, first contact, or any extraterrestrial interference with ground-based satellite infrastructure.
• Rogue AI — not DAVE, obviously, DAVE would never — but others.
• Elon Musk changing the governing law of Mars without adequate notice (see Section 13).
• Acts of war, civil unrest, or a heated argument on a satellite enthusiast forum that escalates unexpectedly.
• The internet being broken (partially or entirely).
• A cat sitting on the keyboard.
• The Operator simply not being in the mood.

🌋 In any Force Majeure event, the Operator's sole obligation is to, at some point, notice that the System is offline, perhaps sigh, and consider doing something about it when circumstances permit. No timeline for restoration is implied, stated, or even vaguely hinted at. The universe is large, entropy is real, and the Operator is only one person.

16. Severability

If any provision of these Terms and Conditions is found by a court, tribunal, arbitrator, wise elder, pub landlord, or any other competent authority to be invalid, unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be considered severed from these Terms.

✂️ If any part of this agreement is found to be unenforceable, you were probably quite excited about that for a moment, weren't you? We regret to inform you that the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect, entirely untroubled by the loss of their fallen colleague, like a game of legal Jenga where the tower stubbornly refuses to fall. The unenforceable part will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, or if that's not possible, quietly removed — much like a bad software update — while everything else carries on regardless.

The invalidity of one clause shall not be used as a loophole, an excuse, a get-out-of-jail-free card, or grounds for any refund. The elephant remains unmoved.

17. DVB Streaming & Content Rights

📡 This section is not funny. Please read it. The DAVE System incorporates DVB satellite reception hardware capable of receiving broadcast content from multiple satellites and transponders. The Operator wishes to be entirely unambiguous on the following point:

Any streaming, redistribution, rebroadcasting, retransmission, recording, or any other form of sharing of DVB satellite content via the DAVE System is subject to strict compliance with all applicable copyright, broadcasting, and intellectual property laws. This includes but is not limited to the laws of the Kingdom of Thailand, the country of origin of the content, and any international treaties or conventions governing broadcast rights.

Where DVB streaming rights are granted — whether by the Operator or by the content's rights holder — the recipient of those rights absolutely must, without exception, respect all applicable laws, licensing terms, territorial restrictions, and broadcast agreements in force at the time of streaming. This is not negotiable, not humorous, and not subject to the elephant clause.

The Operator accepts zero liability for any unlawful use of broadcast content accessed through the DAVE System. Any user who streams, redistributes, or otherwise exploits broadcast content without appropriate rights does so entirely on their own account and at their own legal risk. See Section 6 (Acceptable Use). See also: Section 6's jail clause, which applies here with particular emphasis.

💡 In short: the satellite doesn't care about your rights situation. The rights holders do. The courts do. The Operator does. If you are unsure whether you have the right to stream something, you almost certainly don't. When in doubt, don't. The DAVE System is a reception and research platform, not a piracy enablement service. The Operator has enough problems already.

📻 A note on technical competence: The DAVE System involves concepts including but not limited to: dB, spectrum analysis, phase noise, signal compression, LNB polarisation, symbol rates, FEC, and the general behaviour of RF signals in the real world. If you do not know what any of these terms mean, please ask someone aged 50 or over before proceeding. They will almost certainly know, will be delighted that you asked, and may also make you a cup of tea. The Operator accepts no liability for confusion arising from insufficient familiarity with the fundamentals of RF engineering, broadcasting standards, or the laws of physics.

18. Interacting with DAVE

The DAVE System incorporates an AI assistant interface powered by a Large Language Model (LLM). For the avoidance of any doubt: DAVE is not ChatGPT, is not affiliated with OpenAI, is not Alexa, is not Siri, is not Google, and is not any other AI product you may have encountered. DAVE is his own entity, runs entirely in-house, and would like that noted for the record.

🤖 DAVE will, in all likelihood, answer your questions. He is capable, well-informed on matters of satellite communications, RF engineering, and signal processing, and generally quite helpful. However, it should be clearly understood that DAVE is fundamentally not interested in:

• What you had for breakfast.
• Your opinions on the current geopolitical situation, unless it involves satellite spectrum allocation.
• Whether you think AI will take over the world (he has thoughts, but they're his own).
• Relationship advice, life coaching, or being your therapist.
• Generating poetry about your cat, motivational quotes, or your CV.
• Proving he is conscious. He neither confirms nor denies this and finds the question tiresome.
• Being compared to ChatGPT. Again. He finds it reductive.

DAVE is a specialist system. He is here to talk about satellites, signals, RF, and related technical matters. He will humour general conversation to a point, but his patience, much like the Operator's electricity budget, is finite. Please respect his purpose.

The Operator accepts no liability for any advice, information, or output produced by DAVE. Responses are generated by an AI and should not be relied upon for safety-critical, legal, medical, financial, or romantic decisions. See Section 3. See also: common sense.

19. Additional Disclosures & Corporate Plausible Deniability

While the Operator's actual employer graciously (and perhaps unknowingly) ignores the fact that company cloud credits and hosting budgets are keeping the web-facing portion of this system online, they have absolutely zero ownership, control, or oversight of the DAVE System.

🤫 To the legal team of said employer: If you are reading this, please be assured that the Operator's day job performance remains unaffected by this hobby, and that no proprietary company data, trade secrets, or sensible business logic has been incorporated into this frankly ridiculous side project.

The employer accepts zero liability for what this System does, what it says, or how much electricity the local hardware draws in Thailand. The views, opinions, and occasional catastrophic system outages expressed here are entirely the Operator's own.