Categories
Covid-19 Politics

The Disconnect Between the Stock Market and the Real Economy Is Destroying Our Lives – In These Times

This political choice is also a moral choice. It is a choice of whether or not to value fairness. Either the incentives of everyone in society are aligned, or they are not. In America, they are not. In fact, they are the opposite: the incentives of the rich, who live through stocks and the accumulation of corporate power, are in fact opposed to the incentives of the vast majority of people, whose existence is reduced to nothing more than labor income to be minimized as much as possible. An economy devised to prop up stock prices is an economy devised not to encourage widespread public wealth, but rather the concentration of private wealth. That is a choice. That is the incentive structure we have built in this country. The mystifying government response that allows a crisis of unemployment and sudden poverty to happen and then refuses to solve it even while doling out trillions of dollars to business is in fact just American capitalism working as we have designed it to.

The Disconnect Between the Stock Market and the Real Economy Is Destroying Our Lives – In These Times

Brilliant post, start to finish. Highly recommended. Found via the reliably-excellent Eschaton.

Categories
EVlife recommendations Uncategorized

First ebike ride

My neighbor is in our COVID-19 pod and kindly let me try out his Specialized Turbo Vado. It’s his commute bike.

I just finished a 16.4 mile ride with 1,300 feet of vertical and I feel great. This would have left me mostly dead if not for the motor.

Torrey Pines State beach

I’ve been wanting the Luna bikes Enduro X-1, mostly based on this review as well as this one by a man who’s nearly my height at 6’9”. Sold out now but I am feeling the want. It’s magical to blast up hills again. At 3 to 5 thousand for a nice one, they’re expensive but as I said, I’m a convert.

Categories
recommendations

iPhone or iPad on Ethernet

This falls between stupid party trick or total clutch move. Two apple dongles plus a lightning cable and your iDevice is online at 100megabits.

Part numbers are A1277 (usb Ethernet) and A1619 (lightning to usb). I’ve heard of sysadmin uses for this, you could combine with the Prompt app for ssh for example.

Categories
Covid-19 Uncategorized

Five days of Mondays…

And two Sundays. Poetic, isn’t it?

taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/07/26/2045

Categories
recommendations

Ways to get an RSS feed

As I’ve written about before, I use RSS several times a day to keep track of news from hundreds of feeds. A key part of making that work is the underlying question of “Where’s the RSS feed for this?”

Usually the Fever bookmarklet can find it, there’s a defined HTML tag that it can parse from a page. But sometimes the page doesn’t have a feed. Here are a couple of ways to find or create one.

Categories
Photography Watches

Tiny machines

Springs and gears and levers, painstakingly made and finished.

Playing with the Moment macro lens during a long Zoom call.

It’s hard to make these and the fine details add cost. But dang they’re beautiful.

Categories
Site news

Theme changed

I had a couple of complaints about the previous theme, so now you’re looking at the Twenty Twenty (free) theme. I wanted a cleaner page, with full posts and fast page loads. The header is uglier, alas.

Mobile now looks and works properly.

What do you think?

Categories
recommendations Weather

Backyard weather station

I love sensors. Measure all the things! Home power generation/consumption, air quality, CO2, airplanes flying overhead, infrared, ultraviolet, RF… yah.

So here’s the latest, which I’m immediately adding to the “you should buy” list:

Weather station, installed in my back yard.

That’s the WeatherFlow Tempest Weather System, and it’s awesome. Briefly:

  • Smartphone and web-based displays
  • Simple network protocol, so there’s lots of open source to capture data
  • Innovative, clever sensors – ultrasonics for wind speed and direction, piezo for rainfall. No moving parts!
  • Solar powered
  • Works with or without the internet
  • Also has cool stuff like a lightning sensor (useless in San Diego)
  • Calibrated to lux and watts per square meter
  • Reports UV levels too
  • Precise temp/humidity of course.

Here’s a picture from the vendor:

Basically a does-everything solution. I found it via this TechHive review and got one ordered. It took a few weeks to arrive, but having just installed it, like I say, I’m already a fan. You have to pay more ($329) for the better tech, but having bought and had fail any number of $50 to $100 ‘weather stations,’ I’m ready to buy it once and enjoy it.

You can see my data right here on the web. Buy your own from the vendor here.

Categories
recommendations

Inexpensive indoor air quality monitor

These are $38 on Banggood. It measures temperature, humidity and airborne particulates. Laser light scattering technique, the same as in my more expensive Purple Air I wrote about previously. These are display only, two screens, no connectivity but perhaps that’s all you need for something you place on a shelf.

Thanks to my friend Roger for finding these. I bought two and loaned one to our neighbor who promptly used it to check in vs out and verified his AC filters.

Neighbor readings

Anyway, it’s well made and cheap, so if you want one I say get it.

https://m.banggood.com/PM1_0-PM2_5-PM10-Detector-Module-Air-Quality-Dust-Sensor-Tester-with-2_8-Inch-LCD-Display-for-Monitoring-Home-Office-Car-Tools-p-1588436.html

Categories
Covid-19 Politics recommendations

Domestic surveillance and police riots

San Diego has so far escaped the worst of the 2020 police riots, but I’ve still been keeping an eye out. My primary tool for doing so is ADS-B aircraft broadcasts and the OpenADSB iOS app. Here are some sample traces, showing the police helicopters over the city:

It’s notable that the helicopter probably has unbelievably good cameras (gyro stabilizers with long zoom lenses are better than you think) and could well have infrared also. And yesterday, Timothy Shea brought in the DEA to surveill the protests too. That’s not just human intelligence and AT&T’s massive data; it’s also flying dirt boxes.

What the heck is a dirtbox?

TL;DR – it mimics a cell tower and grabs the unique IDs from a phone. They can also intercept text messages and phone calls, and you should assume that they see all non-encrypted communications. All.

Yesterday, I saw this on the app:

That’s a Cessna 206, owned by the DEA, flying out of Montgomery field and meandering over San Diego. I should have gotten more screenshots, but it flew around for a while and followed the coastline north. I consider this high-probability that they’re flying dirtboxes over our cities and recording who’s at the protests.

Take action

  • If you go to a protest, read this EFF guide before leaving home.
  • The ACLU has a good primer on your legal rights.
  • Then read this Wired guide.
  • If you need a device, consider this one (I got one for Android testing and projects and it’s excellent). Strongly consider not installing a SIM card in it. That flying dirtbox will grab it and link you to it via the cell providers’ database of who’s paying for the account. Maybe keep the SIM card taped to the phone for an emergency or later call?
  • Read this about photography.

Consider donating to the EFF and/or ACLU. Vote when you can.