Giant Airplanes Flying Low at 3am

Why yes, a Boeing 747 flying low directly over our house at 3am does wake us up. Who could possibly have predicted it?

Deleting Pokémon GO data

My final Pokémon

I was an enormous fan of Pokémon GO for several years, zealously playing no matter where I was. It spurred me to do interesting things like visit parks in my area to which I had never been, to capture the Pokestop. I joined in legendary battles. I recall captuing MewTwo at a local park with about a dozen other players. I'd been a player of Niantic's earlier game Ingress, and thought of Pokémon GO as a newer, shinier take on the concept.

As happens, my interest in catching Pokémon waned and eventually stopped by the summer of 2019. We went to LEGOLand and there is exactly one Pokémon screenshot in my photos, in what was surely a target rich environment. Emailed entreaties from Niantic to come back started a couple months later.

I knew that location data was the main economic reason for the game's existence. I wasn't especially concerned about it at the time, I felt confident that my visits to parks and monuments and fountains wouldn't be something to be concerned about.

 

That was then, this is now. The world seems more threatening, and Niantic's announcement of the sale of its games and location data to Scopely, which is owned by the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, is enough to trigger my spidey sense.

One can request deletion of the account and associated data from within the app if still installed, but it is not necessary to reinstall if already gone. Niantic has a request form to delete a Pokémon GO account. If you don't remember your account name, search your Inbox for the pleading entreaties to come back to the game — it went on for years.

After submitting the deletion request, Niantic sent an email requiring that I reply with a code to confirm the deletion within 30 days. Right now I'm trusting that they will actually delete the data: one person's information is valueless, there isn't a reason to lie about doing so.

Ausland Urkunden, Berlin Standesamt 1

In 2023 my wife and our children became German citizens via a declaration process called Staatsangehörigkeit § 5. The official paperwork came in the form of a document, an Urkunde über den Erwerb der deutschen Staatsangehörigkeit durch Erklärung, which we used to apply for Reisepässe.

The Urkunde durch Erklärung is very important, and will be needed to renew the passports. It is possible to replace it if something happens like fire or theft, but it isn't very straightforward to obtain the replacement. We decided to additionally file for birth certificates in Germany. These would be straightforward to re-order in the future as needed, and would serve as proof of citizenship. While at it, we also registered our marriage.

A civil records office in Germany is called a Standesamt, and registrations of foreign births are handled by Standesamt 1 in Berlin. The Berlin Standesamt 1 is famously backed up in processing submissions, we were advised to expect 2-3 years to process our forms.

Happily though, it effectively only took 5 months.

 

I say "effectively" because we missed the email of invoices to pay the Standesamt, until the Consulate sent them again 3.5 months later. So overall it took 8.5 months, three and a half months of which was on us.

Jun 17, 2024	Submitted forms at San Francisco Consulate.
Aug 2, 2024	Consulate forwards invoices from Standesamt in Berlin, which we missed seeing.
Nov 18, 2024	Consulate re-sends the invoices from Standesamt in Berlin, we paid the next day.
Jan 17, 2025	Recording date listed on the certificates.
Feb 7, 2025	Consulate receives the certificates from Germany.
Feb 28, 2025	Certificates delivered to us.

If you decide to do something similar, be aware that it is an expensive undertaking. Registering four births and one marriage cost 334 US Dollars in fees to the Consulate and a total of 630 Euros to Berlin Standesamt I. Altogether, the fees came to about a thousand US Dollars. One is not required to register the births in Germany, only do so if you believe it will be worth it.

German Mothers Prior to 1975

My spouse's mother was German and emigrated to the United States in 1958. Until 1975 German mothers did not pass on citizenship to children born in wedlock. When that policy changed there was a process where parents could declare the citizenship of their children born before 1975, but it ended in 1977 and we think her mother never even knew of it.

So my wife was not born a German citizen.

 

Staatsangehörigkeit § 14

As the result of a court case in 2019, the modern state of Germany decided that this gender discriminitory practice where fathers would pass on citizenship and mothers would not had been unconstitutional. In 2020 an existing discretionary naturalization process called Staatsangehörigkeit § 14 ("StAG 14") was extended with a Muttererlass or mother's redress provision which relaxed some of the requiremens for descendants of German mothers in this circumstance.

We spent much of 2020 gathering documents and conducting genealogical research to prove her mother's German citizenship, as we no longer had the passport. The packet of documentation reached 77 pages altogether. We mailed it in December 2020, and waited. The queue to process applications was several years long.

Hannover Neues Rathaus

 

Staatsangehörigkeit § 5

In August of 2021 while our StAG 14 application sat in the queue, a new and much simpler process to address historic gender discrimination in citizenship practices was introduced called Staatsangehörigkeit § 5 ("StAG 5"). It is a declaration, one declares one's German citizenship and provides evidence that one meets the criteria for StAG 5. The requirements are much simpler and the application is vastly shorter.

• In May 2023 our original StAG 14 packet reached the front of the queue for processing. We received a letter from Germany noting the subsequent creation of StAG 5 and providing guidance if we chose to switch to it. We filled out the new forms to send in, relying on the documentation from the original StAG 14 submission for the rest of the evidence.
• In September 2023 we received a letter describing several mistakes we'd made with details of how to correct them, and one last bit of evidence needed. We submitted a response within a week.
• In December 2023 we received notice that the Declaration had been accepted. My spouse and our children were now dual citizens of Germany and of the United States. It was effective as of the date the declaration was made, in June 2023 when the StAG 5 forms arrived in Germany.
• We made appointments in February 2024 for each of them to apply for German passports, their Reisepässe.

If you are in a similar circumstance or a descendant, born to a German mother prior to 1975, the StAG 5 process is straightforward and can be done on your own. The cost is minimal, the application is free and obtaining needed documentation will generally cost in the tens to about a hundred Euros.

 

Getting Help

There are several available avenues for help:

• Reddit's /r/GermanCitizenship subreddit is amazingly helpful in advice and instructions. It unfortunately didn't exist when we started this process, and I only discovered it after we'd completed the entire thing. If I'd found it earlier it probably would have avoided the mistakes we had to correct in September 2023.
• It is absolutely possible to obtain documents from Germany on your own, and I wrote two blog posts about our experiences in doing so: #1 and #2.
• There are professional genealogists based in Germany active on /r/GermanCitizenship and available for hire, who can help obtain documents.
• One can hire a legal firm, though I won't link to any because I think that is a poor use of money. Legal firms won't help you gather the documentation you need, they will at most hire a genealogist on your behalf and then substantially mark up the fee. Hiring a lawyer is the most expensive way imaginable to fill out the StAG 5 form.

Google Photos Takeout Download using Firefox

Four months ago I exported all photos from Google Photos to import into immich, and scheduled followon Takeout runs every two months. I had naively assumed the subsequent exports would be incremental changes from the first one, but they are instead complete exports again. Two months later, download of the first scheduled Takeout repeatedly failed until Google disabled the download links, leaving me unable to download my photos at all.

After another two months, I made another attempt with the next scheduled export. I tried downloading the first archive using Chrome, and it failed twice. I switched to Firefox to download instead of Chrome, and it worked much better. Firefox appears to not give up so quickly and keeps trying. I was able to download all fifteen ZIP archives, fifty Gigabytes each, with only one download failure where I had to start it again.

Hurray!

Electrified USPS Fleet

In its initial proposal for a refreshed fleet of delivery trucks in 2022, the US Postal Service and its contractor Oshkosh Defense proposal listed a combined vehicle + cargo weight of 8501 pounds. This is a remarkably specific number, exactly one pound heavier than emissions rules would constrain. Were the vehicle 1 pound lighter it would be required to be considerably cleaner — and likely electric, to meet those requirements.

With more effort, and additional $3 billion in funding from the Biden administration, by the following year this proposal was revised and proposed that most of the fleet be electric. A gasoline version would be used for long routes in rural routes, areas without sufficient charging infrastructure. Initial electric vehicles were delivered in September of 2024, apparently to excellent reviews by postal workers using them.

Oshkosh has delivered only 100 electric trucks thus far, production was expected to ramp up from the initial deliveries a few months ago. The Oshkosh Defense CEO now says they'd be happy deliver the rest of the order as solely gasoline vehicles. It is difficult to see this in any positive way.

Google Cloud Four Cent Bill

I'd say not to spend it all in one place but I think the maximum number of places they could possibly spend it is four, so... go ahead. Live your best life, Google, with my compliments.

OPNsense 25.1 and ZFS

OPNsense 25.1 has been released. I'll update in a week or two, it looks neat.

My OPNsense instance is a VM running on a Proxmox host, where Proxmox uses ZFS as its storage. I doubt the ZFS support within OPNsense will be applicable, I think it sees a raw block device. I wouldn't want OPNsense to create a ZFS filesystem using the blocks which reside within the Proxmox ZFS filesystem. While I'm sure it would work, it seems like it would just be confusing without really being beneficial.

YOLO Credit Union

This is a legitimate credit union in Davis, California, I just find it amusing.

:cpu: emoji reaction

I agree, Slackbot.

California Driver's License reciprocity status 1.2025

Reciprocal driver’s license agreements allow a license in one participating nation to be exchanged for the other — either in whole or in part by waiving the practical driving exam and any mandatory driving lessons and requiring only a written/eyesight/etc exam.

Twenty-eight US States and territories have reciprocal driver’s license agreements with Germany. Similar agreements exist between US states and South Korea and with Taiwan. California is not a party to any such agreement. California Vehicle Code §12804.9 does not allow the DMV to negotiate reciprocity agreements with foreign governments.

I am seeking a California legislator willing to author legislation enabling foreign driver’s license reciprocity in the 2025-2026 legislative session.

Prior legislative activity

Several prior attempts have been made to pass enabling legislation:

• AB 639 in 2023-2024: did not leave committee
• AB 723 in 2021-2022: left committee but timed out in Assembly
• AB 629 in 2019-2020: did not leave committee
• SB 1360 in 2017-2018: left committee but timed out in Senate

AB 639 and AB 723, the most recent, were submitted by the Honorable Evan Low who will not be returning to the California House in 2025.

In 2021 the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators published a best practices guide for foreign license reciprocity, including suggested language for enabling legislation, at: https://www.aamva.org/topics/driver-license-foreign-reciprocity

Why we will succeed

• Immigration is at the top of the national agenda. Steps demonstrating a positive approach to immigration help counterbalance the news cycle.
• Three organizations representing >100,000 Americans living overseas are willing to canvas their members registered to vote in California who would list themselves as supporters of the legislation at https://calegislation.lc.ca.gov/Advocates/
• Advertisements on Reddit subs and Facebook pages for US immigrants and expatriates can also seek more supporters registered to vote in California. The website to use in these ads has been created: https://sites.google.com/view/ab-123456-advocacy/home by foreign.license.reciprocity@gmail.com

OPNsense and sonic.net DHCPv6

I love the Sonic Fiber-optic Internet Service and use it in northern California. Their support is great, the price is reasonable, and the throughput is good.

One area where they were a little behind the curve is in IPv6 support. I used a 6IN4 tunnel until just a few weeks ago, after Sonic completed rollout of DHCP6 support in my neighborhood sometime last year. An issue I ran into was in receiving NoAddrsAvail in response to the DHCP6 Solicit send by my router.

14:59:58.681985 IP6 (class 0xc0, hlim 64, next-header UDP (17) payload length: 204) fe80::5e5e:abff:fed5:a1c0.547 > fe80::a236:9fff:fe59:19b0.546: [udp sum ok] dhcp6 advertise (xid=42fee3 (client-ID hwaddr/time type 1 time 656596109 a0369f5919b0) (server-ID vid 0000058335633a35) (IA_NA IAID:0 T1:0 T2:0 (status-code NoAddrsAvail)) (IA_PD IAID:0 T1:10800 T2:17280 (IA_PD-prefix 2001:5a8:xxxx:xxxx::/56 pltime:21600 vltime:21600)) (DNS-server 2001:5a8::11 2001:5a8::33))

As a result, my router did not get an IPv6 address.

igb0: flags=1008843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> metric 0 mtu 1500
        description: WAN (wan)
        options=4800028<VLAN_MTU,JUMBO_MTU,HWSTATS,MEXTPG>
        inet 135.180.x.x netmask 0xfffffc00 broadcast 135.180.x.x
        inet6 fe80::a236:9fff:fe59:19b0%igb0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
        media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
        status: active
        nd6 options=23<PERFORMNUD,ACCEPT_RTADV,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>

 

Sonic answered the question in their support forum that their DHCP6 rollout only delegates prefixes. My router needs to only send an IA_PD, not an IA_NA. With OPNsense this is done in the Interfaces setting, "Request prefix only."

 

Voila! IPv6 works from within the house.

Google Lens Determining the Year

"This is a photo of the Justizpalast (Palace of Justice) in Munich, Germany, taken around 1970."

Ok, that is impressive from Google Lens. The photo was taken in 1969. Presumably the metadata about images in the training set includes the year when the image was taken often enough for it to have associated the shape of automobiles with a range of years.

I absolutely understand the belief that Google rushed out its AI too early, resulting in embarassing snafus. I do however wonder, had Google not gotten its work into the field, whether it would have the opposite problem now: being perceived as incompetent, hopeless, obsolete. Google's AI work at DeepMind has been very strong and done very early, were they to demonstrate an inability to bring feature to market that would also be damaging.

Personally: I value the AI features but do not yet trust them. I'm willing to give it time.

Nextdoor Emails Ads to Non-Users

I received an email from Nextdoor, clearly a paid advertisement targeted at people who live in my town.

The person who paid for the ad is asking something fairly innocuous, trying to build their business by generating enthusiasm on Nextdoor. Fake enthusiasm, but that is the way capitalism works nowadays.

I decided to obscure the name of their business because I don't really consider them to be a bad actor in this. Nextdoor is.

I am not a user of Nextdoor.
I have never been a user of Nextdoor.
I have no account there.

However, my mother was an active user and, as I learned today, likely allowed Nextdoor to access her contacts. Nextdoor's privacy policy article about this mentions names, email addresses, phone numbers, and "other information" will be harvested from uploaded contact information. Clearly it includes the postal address as well since Nextdoor targeted a geographical ad at me.

Nextdoor is selling access to me, without any kind of relationship with me and never having provided any value to me whatsoever. Someone had an account, therefore my information is free for them to monetize and do with as they please.

This stuff mostly fades into the background. Even while drafting this post, LinkedIn sent an email of "Denton, this top CEO is answering your questions live" which is clearly also a paid email advertisement targeted at me. I pay for LinkedIn Premium, but my information is nonetheless still used to juice some additional revenue. I receive this stuff regularly enough that don't even think about it, but Nextdoor stood out.

privacy@nextdoor.com

I wrote to privacy@nextdoor.com:

Referencing https://help.nextdoor.com/s/article/Information-for-people-who-don-t-use-Nextdoor-Products, may I have a copy of the information Nextdoor has for my email address?

They responded:

We’re sorry to hear that this email was unwelcome.
 
Upon review, there is no account associated with your email address, therefore we cannot provide a copy of your information.
 
From time to time, Nextdoor receives information from third parties about non-users. In your case, we received your information from a third-party partner and used this information to invite you to join your Nextdoor Neighborhood.
 
I can confirm that we have deleted from our systems the personal information associated with the email address that you used to contact us.
 
Let me know if you have any questions.

I didn't mention anything about an email. Apparently they get enough complaints about this practice that they just assume it is so.

Rent Then Versus Now, 32 Years Later

When I first moved to California in 1992 I rented a one bedroom apartment in Mountain View at a complex called The Shadows. I remember it being $900 for a 700-750 square foot apartment with one bedroom and a small kitchen.

The apartment complex is still there. Rent for that apartment now starts at $3295 per month.