As I keep saying, RSS is awesome.
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Category: recommendations
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You should’ve asked | Emma
Even before COVID-19, our home was wrestling with the division of chores, emotional labor and of course money. This comic brilliantly lays it out. Here’s a single pane from the middle:
Seriously, go read the whole thing. It’ll change your mind.
Expensive mistake that their site encourages: only the models (typically the ‘plus’ ones) with Intel CPUs can run Docker and the much-improved btrfs. My DS1817, despite having 10gigabit Ethernet and eight drive slots, cannot and that’s an expensive and frustrating mistake.
Their site ellides this when shopping so, caveat emptor, and save yourself money.
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Internet speed tests
So you’re online and you wonder how your network is doing. How do you measure it? I’m here for you.
- Fast.com is my go-to for quick checks. It measures using only Netflix connections so bypasses some ISP fuckery with DPI and slowdowns. Elegant UI.
- Speed.cloudflare.com is the best by a long shot. Detailed and capable of saturating my 400mbit downlink.
- Testmy.net is decent but uglier.
- Speedtest.net is ad laden.
- Sourceforge.net/speedtest is ok and used to be my favorite. Lots of ads now.
As explained in my series of gigabit posts, making a fast, reliable network takes time and effort, and these sites don’t magically make it happen. However, having a way to measure your changes is super helpful, and I probably use these weekly.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
- YouTube – create an RSS feed from a content creator. Don’t forget to pair this with YouTube-dl.
- RSS Box handles Twitter, YouTube Instagram and others.
- RSS Hub – bookmarked but haven’t tried it yet.
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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:
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.
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.
Anyway, it’s well made and cheap, so if you want one I say get it.
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.
