Pro-choice scientist confirms unborn children feel pain during abortions as early as twelve weeks:

lifenews.com/2020/01/20/scient…

June 30 to July 2nd, 1936

"A very heavy rain fell over the upper Guadalupe River Basin, west of Korrville, from June 30 to July 2. This rein amounted to over 36 inches 1in about 36 hours at the State Pish Hatchery above Ingram. Record-break- ing stages were experienced on all streams above Kerrville, and on the Guadalupe River to a point below Spring Branch. Along the streams in the hills above Kerrville are many sumer homes, resorts, and camps for boys and girls. Most of these places were damaged by the floods, many of them being almost completely destroyed. There was much apprehension for the safety of the people in these camps, especially for the younger boys and girls, but fortunately all were safe. The fact that the flood occurred in the day rather than at night no doubt accounts for no loss of 1ife in the camps. "

(Major Texas Floods of 1936, US Department of the Interior, Geological Survey Water -Supply Paper 816)

#history #disasters #TXwx #Kerrville

DNS Esoterica - Why you can't dig Switzerland

shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/07/dns-e…

As part of my new job, I'm learning a lot more about the mysteries of the Domain Name System than any mortal should know I thought possible.

The humble unix dig command allows you to query all sort of DNS information. For example, to see name server records for the BBC website, you can run:

dig bbc.co.uk NS

Which will get you:
;; Got answer:;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 35614;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 8, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 17;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232; COOKIE: 097db2ee4c92b84982083ecf62b5b5f2007906e616035113 (good);; QUESTION SECTION:;bbc.co.uk. IN NS;; ANSWER SECTION:bbc.co.uk. 900 IN NS ddns1.bbc.com.bbc.co.uk. 900 IN NS dns0.bbc.co.uk.bbc.co.uk. 900 IN NS ddns1.bbc.co.uk....
And a whole lot more. But you can go further down the DNS tree. What are the nameservers for .co.uk?

dig co.uk NS

And you'll get your answer. You can go one further and see the nameservers for the Top Level Domain:

dig uk NS

Which replies with:
;; Got answer:;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 54061;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 8, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 17;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232; COOKIE: 880427eda8ff71de2ab4f43862b5b65f95e317d29cc10a8e (good);; QUESTION SECTION:;uk. IN NS;; ANSWER SECTION:uk. 159692 IN NS nsc.nic.uk.uk. 159692 IN NS dns1.nic.uk.uk. 159692 IN NS nsd.nic.uk....
And that works with every TLD. Countries like de, generic names like museum, and internationalised domains like 在线. All of them work!

Except Switzerland.

Switzerland's country code is ch - after the name Confoederatio Helvetica. Let's run the dig on it: dig ch NS
YAML;; Got answer:;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: REFUSED, id: 31910;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available
We have been refused and warned. But why does this only happen with Switzerland?

The blame - as with most modern ills - lies in the mid-1970s. The Bee Gees were storming the charts with "Jive Talkin'", the Rocky Horror Picture Show was gathering a cult following, and MIT scientists were causing chaos. Literally.

Chaosnet was an early network protocol designed for local networks. It was technically very clever but, sadly, never really took off.

However, it found its way into DNS records. Let's go back to the answer to dig bbc.co.uk NS:
YAML;; ANSWER SECTION:bbc.co.uk. 900 IN NS ddns1.bbc.com.
OK, the first part is the domain name. The number is the TTL. The IN is the class. The NS says this is a nameserver record. And, finally, we get the domain of the nameserver.

But, in the class, what does IN stand for?

"Internet", obviously. Wait... Isn't the DNS on the Internet? Why do we need to specify that these DNS records are for Internet?

Well, isn't it obvious? Because you might want records of a different network. Like, for example, Chaosnet.

And if Internet is abbreviated to IN, what is Chaosnet shortened to? That's right! CH.

So, dig sees you enter ch for Switzerland, but thinks you're asking about CH for Chaosnet. And so it fails.

In order to query the records for ch we need to provide an absolutely fully-qualified domain name. It's as simple as sticking a dot at the end of the domain name:

dig ch. NS
;; Got answer:;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 64932;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 5, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 11;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232; COOKIE: e19b9c23cdfa0f7bcf82750462b5c16b47744386c7974ffb (good);; QUESTION SECTION:;ch. IN NS;; ANSWER SECTION:ch. 164894 IN NS e.nic.ch.ch. 164894 IN NS a.nic.ch.ch. 164894 IN NS f.nic.ch.
And there we go. A failed 1970s experiment like bell-bottoms and Betamax videos - but with much longer lasting consequences.

You can see some CH records by running like:

dig ch txt @f.root-servers.net version.bind

That will get you something like:
YAML;; ANSWER SECTION:version.bind. 86400 CH TXT "cloudflare-f-root-20190930"
Of course, DNS doesn't only have IN and CH class records.

There's also Hesiod - HS. But you already knew that, right...?

#dns #internet #trivia

DNS Esoterica: BIMI - SVG in DNS TXT WTF?!

shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/08/dns-e…

You've been on the Internet a long time, right? Of course you know what BIMI is. All the cool kids do. But, for those of you who aren't hip to the jive of the Infobahn...

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is a new standard that can curb the issue of online impersonators. ... BIMI is a new standard that enables you to include your company’s logo alongside the emails you send. That way, your brand stands out among other emails, and your customers are sure that the emails are legitimate.How To Create a BIMI record

Wow! Much innovation! Such security! There's no way a fraudster could put a bank's logo on their dodgy spam, right?

*sigh*

OK, so in order for this not to be abused, most email providers require brands to pay for an expensive Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) - a digital certificate which says that you are the trademark owner of the logo.

How much does it cost?

US$1,499.00

Per year! No wonder no one is using BIMI.

Then it's just a case of sticking something like this in your DNS TXT records:
TXTv=BIMI1;l=https://example.com/logo.svg;a=https://example.com/certificate.pem
That's nice, and all, but I don't think I've ever seen one in the wild. Even the BIMI Group haven't bothered paying for the VMC!

One of the few organisations who have set this up correctly is DigiCert. Because they're one of the orgs you can buy this service from.

dig txt default._bimi.digicert.com will get you:
TXT;; ANSWER SECTION:default._bimi.digicert.com. 3600 IN TXT "v=BIMI1; l=https://www.digicert.com/resources/DigiCertLogo_WhiteOnBlue.svg; a=https://cacerts.digicert.com/digicert_com_vmc_WhiteOnBlue.pem"
You can read the PEM certificate using:openssl x509 -in digicert_com_vmc_WhiteOnBlue.pem -noout -text

Inside, you'll find this nugget:

data:image/svg+xml;base64,H4sIAAAAAAAACo1XXW/jRhJ8tn8FwzwF4NDzzaFhb3BRckmADRAgwL4eHFoxhePZhqiVN/…

Hmmm… H4sIAAA is the start of a base64 encoded zipped string.

Once decoded and unzipped, we find… the SVG logo!

It's fairly obvious that people want a nice logo next to their email in your inbox. If you're on GMail, you're probably used to seeing your friends faces smiling back at you. But that only works if everyone is on the same email system. So BIMI is a reasonable idea for a cross-provider standard.

Downsides

There are several problems with BIMI.

The first is cost. If it were free then AbsolutelyYourBank@trust_me.biz could use the HSBC logo with impunity. I'm sure an extremely dedicated fraudster could spend the $1.5k and fool DigiCert into certifying their illegitimate use of someone else's logo. But it's unlikely to happen.

There's also a privacy issue. Because the BIMI logos are stored on a website, the website owner could track when they were downloaded and use that to work out who was reading their emails. Thankfully, both GMail and Yahoo proxy the images - so the provider doesn't get any additional analytics benefit.

Support is poor in GMail. Here's an email from LinkedIn:As you can see, the BIMI logo is displayed by the email address - but is absent in the contact view.

Finally, DNS TXT records are limited to 255 bytes of data. That's why logos are restricted to being (fairly short) links.

Is it worth it?

I think the marketplace of ideas has answered this with a fairly resounding "no".

You can track adoption at BIMIBRadar.

It would be great to stick your face, logo, or picture next to every email you send. But the risk from fraudsters is just too high.

The cost of certification is necessary to stop misuse - but that also means that smaller brands and individuals are locked out. Which isn't what we want from an open Internet.

There's no worldwide brand registry which can certify your use of an image. And, even if there were, it would be a huge single-point-of-failure.

The conversation about BIMI chugs on in IETF mailing lists. Do get involved if you think you have something of value to add.

#dns #internet

Get the location of the ISS using DNS

shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/07/get-t…

I love DNS esoterica. Weird little things that you can shove in the global directory to be distributed around the world instantly(ish).

Domain names, like www.example.com usually resolve to servers. As much as we think of "the cloud" as being some intangible morass of ethereal Turing-machines floating in probability space, the more prosaic reality is that they're just boxen in data centres. They have a physical location.

Got a tricky machine which is playing silly-buggers? Wouldn't it be nice to know exactly where it is? That way you can visit and give it some percussive maintenance.

Enter the DNS LOC record!

The snappily titled RFC 1876 is an experimental standard. It allows you to create a DNS record which specifies the latitude and longitude of your server. Of course, some data-centres are very tall and some are underground. So it also contains an altitude parameter.

The standard allows for a minimum altitude of -100,000 metres - deep enough for any bunker! The maximum altitude is 42,849,672 metres which is high enough to allow it to be used on satellites in geostationary orbit.

So, as a bit of fun, I decided to create where-is-the-iss.dedyn.io

It isn't a website. You can't ping it. There's no way to interact with it except by using DNS. Yup! You can use a DNS query to get the (approximate) location of the International Space Station!

Linux and Mac users⁰ can run:

dig where-is-the-iss.dedyn.io LOC

And receive back the latest position of the ISS:
;; ANSWER SECTION:where-is-the-iss.dedyn.io. 1066 IN LOC 47 24 53.500 N 66 12 12.070 W 430520m 10000m 10000m 10000m
The DNS records are updated every 15 minutes on a best-effort basis¹.

How

The lovely people at N2YO have a website which allows you to track loads of objects in orbit. They also have an easy to use API with a generous free tier.

Calling https://api.n2yo.com/rest/v1/satellite/positions/25544/0/0/0/1/&apiKey=_____ gets back the latest position:
JSON{ "info": { "satname": "SPACE STATION", "satid": 25544, "transactionscount": 7 }, "positions": [ { "satlatitude": -21.25409321, "satlongitude": 140.3335763, "sataltitude": 420.09, "azimuth": 292.92, "elevation": -70.95, "ra": 202.69300845, "dec": -32.16097472, "timestamp": 1751366048, "eclipsed": true } ]}
Note that the altitude is in Km, whereas the LOC format requires m.

The latitude and longitude are in decimal format - they need to be converted to Degrees, Minutes, and Seconds.

There were only a few free domain name providers who offer an API for updating LOC records. I went for deSEC a charity from Berlin. They have comprehensive API documentation.

Adding the initial LOC record is done with:
Bashcurl desec.io/api/v1/domains/where-… \ --header "Authorization: Token _______" \ --header "Content-Type: application/json" --data @- <<< \ '{"type": "LOC", "records": ["40 16 25.712 S 29 32 36.243 W 427550m 0.00m 10000m 10m"], "ttl": 900}'
However, updating the record is a little trickier. it needs to be sent as an HTTP PATCH to a subtly different URl. The PATCH only needs to send the data which have changed.
Bashcurl -X PATCH desec.io/api/v1/domains/where-… \ --header "Authorization: Token _______" \ --header "Content-Type: application/json" --data @- <<< \ '{"records": ["40 16 25.712 S 29 32 36.243 W 427550m 0.00m 10000m 10m"]}'
I set the Time To Live at 900 seconds. Every 15 minutes my code runs to update the record². That keeps me well within the API limits for both services. I could add TXT records showing when it was last updated, or other sorts of unstructured data, but I think this is enough for a quick proof-of-concept.

There you have it! A complex and silly way to demonstrate how DNS can be used to hold the most unlikely of records³. Say, I wonder how you'd represent the co-ordinates of the Mars Rover…?

Further Reading

For more DNS weirdness, please see my other posts:

• BIMI - SVG in DNS TXT WTF?!
• Why you can't dig Switzerland

1. I don't think there's a way for Windows users to look up LOC records using PowerShell or the Command Prompt. ↩︎
2. Look, I'm not NASA, OK? If you're using this to help you dock then I cannot be held responsible. ↩︎
3. I suppose you could build an API with unlimited request limits by distributing data via DNS TXT records. Would best suit static or infrequently updating data. Push it once to DNS and let everyone query it semi-locally. ↩︎
4. See if you can find the other interesting record I've added to DNS! ↩︎

#dns #internet #trivia

Percussive Maintenance

Also known as "Technical Tap", this is a method of repairing malfunctioning devices by hitting 'em really hard. This is a case of Truth in Television, as many people will often do this with malfunctioning machinery, frequently with surprisingly …

^{Contributors to TV Tropes (aka Tropers) (TV Tropes)}

Musk forms new political party after split with Trump over president's signature tax cuts law
https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-political-party-92353942308fee929a937b17113e077e?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Politics @politics-AssociatedPress

Russia and Ukraine trade drone strikes, disrupting air travel
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-drones-ad1ab4ca595189e3c367f4fe7a1bfa97?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into International News @international-news-AssociatedPress

"I think that centrist suppression of the left has pushed 90 percent of the energy for major change into right wing nihilist movements, but the anti-corporate, #antimonopolist energy has not dissipated. It's formed a kind of invisible political wind that has filled the sails of these #antimonopoly projects all over the world."
@pluralistic

pluralistic.net/2025/06/28/mam…

An Alabama elementary student and a camp director among those killed in devasting Texas floods
https://apnews.com/article/texas-floods-missing-hill-country-victims-camp-68b25cdb4d72f7eddff576af4ef7d400?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into U.S. News @u-s-news-AssociatedPress

I believe I read that the gas tax in Ca. went up 65 cents per gallon.

rvmnews.com/2025/07/california…

California Gas Prices Spike Again Under Newsom’s Green Energy Agenda [WATCH]

Gasoline prices in California rose again on Tuesday following regulatory changes to the state's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program, raising renewed

^{RVM News Staff (RVM News)}

The EU: because Soviet Union wasn't real communism. We make it gay and it will sure work out just fine this time around!

Sorry, I'm lazy on Sundays. Only text-based memes 😂

Wikipedia about the Washington Monument:

"In the lower third, marble from Baltimore County, Maryland, followed by a narrow zone of marble from Sheffield, Massachusetts, and, in the upper part, the so-called Cockeysville Marble."

What it doesn't say is that the MD Grand Lodge of Freemason's HQ, established in 1787, is in Cockeysville. None of this is proof, but connections are interesting, and I'm having a hard time believing it's a conspiracy theory.

Western nations pretended to be shining cites on hills, beacons of freedom, but as the genocide against Palestinians has revealed, they are actually giant mounds of horseshit, nothing more than violent arbiters of a global racial caste system.

theguardian.com/us-news/ng-int…

The destruction of Palestine is breaking the world

The rules of the institutions that define our lives bend like reeds when it comes to Israel – so much that the whole global order is on the verge of collapse

^{Moustafa Bayoumi (The Guardian)}

New York Times had "an errant outbreak of journalism." 😂

jonathanturley.org/2025/07/06/…

New York Times Struggles to Explain Why It Reported News to Traumatized Readers

This week, the New York Times experienced an uprising in its ranks and among its readers. The paper was denounced by its own staff and liberal pundits called for the entire editorial staff to be ca…

^{JONATHAN TURLEY}