Tech

WireGuard is a modern VPN that’s designed to be easy to configure, performant, and secure. The ease-of-configuration is really important. If you’ve ever set up IPsec, you know what I mean. OpenVPN isn’t awful, but it isn’t good, either. WireGuard has both a Linux kernel implementation as well as a Go-based portable implementation that works on Mac and iOS. Official Windows support doesn’t exist yet, but is on the way. [Read More]

I picked up a Vizio PQ65-F1 4K TV during the holiday sale season, and it’s a tremendous upgrade from our old LCD, an almost 10-year-old Sharp. The color and dynamic range are amazing and I don’t regret skipping OLED at all. I haven’t played with the built-in TV app platform at all, preferring instead to use an Apple TV 4K as the sole source device. Sadly, TV’s continue to be anything but plug-and-play. [Read More]

I’ve been playing a lot with home automation recently, and in particular I’ve been installing a lot of cheap ESP8266-based Wi-Fi relays, such as the Sonoff Basic, Sonoff SV, Sonoff S31, Sonoff iFan02, and Shelly1, which have all been flashed to run the open-source Tasmota firmware. These communicate with Home Assistant through an MQTT message broker over Wi-Fi. Home Assistant, in turn, allows the devices to work with schedules, timers, voice-activated cylinders, and so on. [Read More]

I terminated my Yahoo account on June 24. It was only used for Flickr. Flickr has been in a sad state for years, and is unlikely to improve under Verizon ownership. Yahoo sent the following as a confirmation: It’s strange that the final date is approximate. The 40 days concluded yesterday, August 3. I’ve received several emails recently of spambots liking photos on Flickr, including one this morning (August 4): [Read More]

Our LG LFXS30766S refrigerator is broadcasting an open Wi-Fi access point. I’m sure it’s doing that so LG’s Android app can connect to it and deliver pairing instructions for another AP. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any way to disable this feature. LG: If you’re listening, nobody asked for this garbage. Making the door shelves adjustable would be pretty great, though. A $2,300 fridge should have adjustable shelves. I also see LG recently posted a firmware update for this fridge to their website. [Read More]