Scamperings

This past Saturday night, our whole household came down sick. Close to midnight, Elusiveat had a sudden onset nausea and weakness, I suddenly had drainage and coughing, and between the two I only got about 4 hours of sleep.

Sunday was awful. I got what felt like tension and soreness in my bronchi when I inhaled too fast, and deeper inhales provoked a cough. I coughed a bunch in the morning, and it was eventually productive, after which the coughing stopped -- which was like the daily routine I had had for a month or so late in the winter. I also developed a low fever, maxing out at 101.0°F, complete with chills. Lethargy, headache, sore hips, sensitive skin, anhedonia. Elusiveat and I basically spent the whole day either sleeping or lying around. Even the kid was a bit sick, although just with the chest discomfort.

And then by evening it was lifting, and on Monday we felt fine. So what the heck was that all about?

My first guess had been influenza, but we all would have to have been exposed at the same time, and the only plausible route would have been food-borne/fomite from a takeout meal. Even then *all* of us catching it that way wouldn't be plausible. Another possibility was some kind of allergen, but nausea didn't fit the pattern. And there was a previous episode of this a couple months ago, prompting us to get COVID-19 tests, but only I experienced it then. Maybe the mold from the shiitake grow block that was starting to die? Not real likely.

My best guess at this point is that it was Legionnaires' disease. I had had the humidifier on in the living room for a big chunk of the winter, and I eventually fell out of the routine of cleaning it one or two times per week. The antimicrobial bar inside it is also pretty old and likely no longer working. Legionella bacteria grow in warm, stale water and the humidifier stays a bit warm thanks to having an internal transformer; Legionella is also primarily spread via aerosolized soil or water. (It's named for an outbreak at an American Legion conference, traced to the hotel's HVAC.) And I had just switched the humidifier back on the day before after a long break, which I think might line up with the morning cough I had for a while. It might be something else that was growing in the water, but... close enough for an explanation, and enough to give me confidence that it's not something contagious.

So. Yes. I'll definitely be better at following the instructions for the humidifier in the future, and maybe be a little more cautious about using it.

Dreamwidth is a little unusual in giving everyone their own subdomain. Off the top of my head, I can only think of three other sites that do this: Its predecessor (Livejournal), Tumblr, and DeviantArt. There are almost certainly others, but it's uncommon.

Even though all communications to the site are done over a secure connection, so the *contents* of the pages are hidden from your ISP, any government interlopers, nosy parents who have installed spyware on the home router, and people snooping on your use of insecure café WiFi... the domain name you're visiting (here, squirrelitude.dreamwidth.org) is still being broadcast in two ways:

• When your computer asks the Domain Name System for the IP address of the site, it sends the domain name out in the clear[1], and the DNS server of course knows what domain you're asking for
  
• When your computer then connects to that IP address, it mentions the domain name in the initial message to the server[2]
  

That means that within a few minutes of poking around on Dreamwidth, anyone who can watch your internet traffic likely knows 1) who your friends are, and 2) by that token, who *you* are. (If you stick to just your Reading Page, you are not leaking your circle's usernames to any watchers, but you are leaking your own.)

I feel like this is maybe something that could and should be changed, since DW is already a centralized service and doesn't *need* separate domain names. (My social media prototype will *need* it, to some extent, which is a sobering thought.) I don't know if I believe this strongly enough to advocate for it,

Another option is to access DW via Tor! I just fired up TAILS and confirmed that I can log in to Dreamwidth just fine. [3] (No captchas or other nonsense.) Unlinking your home IP from the domain you're visiting (and those domains from each other) in the eyes of someone snooping on network traffic is *precisely* what Tor is for. So regardless of whether DW takes action on this, if this is a privacy issue for you, there is a way you can protect yourself. (Also applies to Tumblr, DeviantArt, etc.)


[1] This first part does not apply for people using experimental DNS-over-HTTPS—only the DNS server can read the request

[2] The Server Name Indication TLS header, which is unencrypted in current versions of TLS. TLS 1.3 allows encrypting it, but that's still being rolled out.

[3] Tor is quite safe to use as long as you're visiting HTTPS websites, which is most sites these days. But advice to heed browser warnings about invalid certificates applies doubly so over Tor. If you ignore those, Tor becomes *less* safe than using the internet directly. So don't. :-)