The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for the ‘General’ Category.
It’s a point of pride that Cheeseboard Pizza in Berkeley was named Best Pizza in America by Yelp! We go there when we can because it IS the best pizza! I used to live across the street from Arizmendi Pizza in the Mission, which is a very close relative of Cheeseboard. They serve very similar, amazing, sweet, sauceless, veggie, one-style-per-day slices!
Here is the letter I wrote to Sunbeam today
Data Privacy Enquiry
Attn: Data Protection Director
6655 Peachtree Dunwoody Road
Atlanta, Georgia 30328
2-19-22
Lee Sonko
[address redacted]
Dear Data Protection Director,
Holy Moley! I did not expect my new Sunbeam electric blanket to be stealing my data!
I bought your Sunbeam LoftTec Wi-Fi Connected Heated Blanket and installed the required Sunbeam app. Every time I start the app on my Android phone to control my electric blanket, I see a message from Android saying “Sunbeam pasted from your clipboard.” Why is your electric blanket app scraping my clipboard? An electric blanket does not need to know what is in my phone’s clipboard!
Please tell me you will fix this insane privacy and security hole!
I looked through the Privacy Policy of the app and you made no argument for capturing my clipboard. In fact, the Privacy Policy reads:
5. SENSITIVE PERSONAL DATA
Unless specifically requested, we ask that you not send us, and you not disclose, on or through the Sites or otherwise to us, Sensitive Personal Data (e.g., religion, ethnicity, political opinions, ideological or other beliefs, health, biometrics or genetic characteristics, criminal background, trade union membership, or administrative or criminal proceedings and sanctions) unless specifically requested by us or required by law.
So you don’t want my sensitive personal data, and I don’t want to give it to you, but you make it impossible when you’re grabbing snippets of my clipboard!
I’ve already returned the electric blanket. I would love to buy a version that doesn’t violate your own Privacy Policy. It could be the best electric blanket on the market but as it stands, it literally can’t be trusted.
What is “clipboard scraping”? It’s when an app grabs the contents of your clipboard. Sometimes it is a convenience feature so a user doesn’t have to copy-and-paste data themselves. But if the app obviously doesn’t need the data, the only reasons are nefarious ones. An electric blanket does not need to know what is in anyone’s phone’s clipboard! Tik-Tok stopped the practice promptly after it was exposed in 2020. I hope you do the same.
Most sincerely,
Lee Sonko
I’m continuing to make progress on my Flickering Light Project! In brief, lots of new LED lighting flickers and I’m one of the 5-10% of people that thinks they look like horrid strobe lights.
I went to Portland last week to work with a US Department of Energy researcher and her team that are developing new lighting standards designed to eliminate visible flicker in lighting. The industry wants a good standard and we aim to provide it!
Now I might start working with some academic researchers as well to investigate how some eyes see differently than others!
This is very exciting stuff!
Read more about what I’m talking about here. If you’re bothered by flickering lights, drop me a line. We can do more together than apart!
Someone asked for printer advice. My response:
For simplicity and reliability, get any low end black and white laser printer. Double-sided printing and wifi are good upgrades. They just work. Don’t get an inkjet. Don’t get an all-in-one. Don’t get an inkjet. If you’re frugal, get refill kits from tonerrefillkits.com (but have a spare new one just just in case). I’ve got two Brother HL-L2350DW printers. It’s good to have multiples of the same printer so you can economize/standardize on toner. I hear color laser printers are good these days, I don’t know but I’d expect them to work well but be large and little spendy on the toner.
I made these two videos to walk you through installing OBS and DroidCam on PC and Android from start to finish in about 20 minutes so you can do good picture-in-picture video presentations on Zoom. Installing on Mac and iPhone would be similar: look for different instructions for OBS VirtualCam, Droidcam isn’t available for iPhone but there is similar software available for it.
And here’s a little guide to looking your best on Zoom:
– raise your camera to just below eye height
– don’t have bright lights in the background
– have diffuse, off-center light in front of you
Our wildflower garden is flourishing! In January!
Holy Moley! I did not expect my new Sunbeam electric blanket to start stealing my passwords!
After I installed the Sunbeam app on my Android phone to control my electric blanket, I saw that it scrapes my clipboard every time it starts up! I see a message from Android saying “Sunbeam pasted from your clipboard.”
What is “clipboard scraping” you ask? It’s when an app grabs the contents of your clipboard. Sometimes it is a convenience feature, pasting automatically after you copied something. But what the hell does my electric blanket need with the contents of my clipboard? No! My electric blanket does not need to know what is in my phone’s clipboard!
This app is made by the “reputable” Newell Rubbermaid company. They make good garbage cans and Mr. Coffee, and Crock-Pots, for Christ’s sake!
WTF, seriously! This is a serious security and privacy issue!
El Cerrito High School sent a balloon up into the sky last week. The beautiful high altitude trip reminds us all to keep looking up!
A note from Elan, the physics teacher at El Cerrito High School:
For those of you curious about the high altitude balloon adventure Wednesday (1/12/22 :)
tl;dr: Enjoy this video edited by the Berkeley Astronomy researcher who helped us, Steve Croft. My favorite part starts at ~8:05 when you can see the moon over the snow-capped Sierras and watch as the camera turns over California to see the Bay Area and Pacific Ocean bathing in sunlight. The balloon pops shortly after 9:35 and you can see footage from our recovery at the end. Unfortunately the GoPro cameras ran out of battery, so we did not get footage of the landing over Sacramento.
The full story:
We launched at lunchtime ~11:30am, and then 8 students and I pursued in a van using GPS from the balloon’s payload to guide us… except the GPS immediately stopped working! So we drove to the area where we thought it was going to land, at the Western Railway Museum about a 45 minute drive northeast of us. We looked up hopefully. To our dismay we saw nothing, so drove around ruefully looking at road debris that might be a wayward space balloon. We were just about to head home (with a possible consolation stop at the Jelly Belly factory) when Lyric exclaimed “it’s back!” The GPS had returned! And the balloon appeared to be moving quickly northward! Very far from us! Had someone picked up the balloon’s payload, with its two GoPros, GPS receiver and Milky Way bar and stepped on it? We weren’t gonna let them get away that easily! After high suspense and drama (and a painful amount of driving), we retrieved the balloon in a park just off of I-5 in SACRAMENTO! It had caught itself in a leafless tree, hanging by its parachute, just high enough off the ground that the freshmen had to jump to reach it. After an obligatory stop at the Davis In-N-Out we returned, exhausted but safe, to El Cerrito High at 6:30pm… The distance from the ground to outer space is roughly the same as the distance between the East Bay and Sacramento. And indeed, it was difficult to tell who had had the more incredible adventure: the space balloon or ourselves.
Keep Looking Up (or Down from Up)!
Love,
Elan
And so it begins. I set my very first gopher trap today.
I planted a wildflower meadow in my backyard and it’s looking terrific except for… An increasing number of gopher holes!
Last year, I finally got approval from the wife and child to set traps after the gophers destroyed THEIR plants. We are done with repellants and thoughts like “there’s enough plants for everyone to share”.
It’s on!
Same day Update!
Holy moly! I just caught my first gopher!
This year I wanted our family to donate to a worthy cause. A few factors went into my choice of who to donate to:
This year, our family donated a sizable amount to Khan Academy to promote early science education.
The goal is to help helping to raise the science literacy of the most number of people. Originally, I set a goal of finding an organization that teaches the fundamentals of science to adults, but that, sadly, sounds like a political act these days.