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Archive for 2018

The tragedy of FireWire: Collaborative tech torpedoed by corporations | Ars Technica

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/26

Another piece of history: FireWire also known as IEEE-1394 [WayBack].

[WayBack] The tragedy of FireWire: Collaborative tech torpedoed by corporations | Ars Technica

I still have that iPod, cables and IEEE-1394 adapters to communicate with it (:

It didn’t help that by now various types of connections – including FireWire, USB and others – are also used for DMA hacking. One less connection type, one less risk of entry:

[WayBack]Inception | Break & Enter :Inception is a FireWire physical memory manipulation and hacking tool exploiting IEEE 1394 SBP-2 DMA. The tool can unlock (any password accepted) and escalate privileges to Administrator/root on almost* any powered on machine you have physical access to.
[WayBack] SLOTSCREAMER (PCI) – NSA Playset

via: [WayBack] Firewire and what could have been.. – Roderick Gadellaa – Google+ and [WayBack] Fred Dresken (Maverick) – Google+

–jeroen

Posted in Development, FireWire, FireWire, Hardware, Hardware Interfacing, History, Power User, USB, USB-C | Leave a Comment »

A 90-byte “whereis” program – The Old New Thing

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/23

I needed a “get only the first result” of WHERE (which is present after Windows 2000, so XP, Server 2003 and up), so based on [WayBack] A 90-byte “whereis” program – The Old New Thing I came up with this:

@echo off
:: based on https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050120-00/?p=36653
::for %%f in (%1) do @echo.%%~$PATH:f
for %%e in (%PATHEXT%) do @for %%i in (%1 %~n1%%e) do (
  @if NOT "%%~$PATH:i"=="" (
    echo %%~$PATH:i
    goto :eof
  )
)
:: note: WHERE lists all occurrences of a file on the PATH in PATH order
goto :eof

Two changes:

it takes into account the extension if you specify it (unlike WHERE.EXE)
it bails out at the first match (like WHERE.EXE)

References:

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, The Old New Thing, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

O&O ShutUp10: download free antispy tool for Windows 10

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/23

I’m not surprised this free product is from German origin:

With O&O ShutUp10 you have full control over which functions under Windows 10 you wish to use, and you decide when the passing on of your data goes too far.

[WayBack] O&O ShutUp10: download free antispy tool for Windows 10

Download: [WayBack] dl5.oo-software.com/files/ooshutup10/OOSU10.exe

Run it after each update as well.

–jeroen

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »

Shark stepping on LEGO brick

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/23

A while ago I found [WayBack] Rare image of a shark stepping on a LEGO – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+ via [WayBack] Roderick Gadellaa – Google+.

I did some research for the origin, which turned out to be very interesting:

The original picture below is from Mike Coots and published at [Archive.is] Pew Environment on Instagram: “I still love sharks even after being attacked—maybe more than ever, since I know how important they are for the ocean…”
Mike lost a leg from a shark attack. Now he helps protecting sharks.
This viral tweet [WayBack] Robert Petersen on Twitter: “Rare image of a shark stepping on a Lego. https://t.co/xkadJmPkRg” got posted
Many others put the meme text on the picture

More background information:

A toothy tweet takes a bite out of social media, but did you know the photo was taken by a shark-attack survivor?[Archive.is] ‘Shark stepping on a Lego’ photo goes viral; here’s the real story – CNET
[WayBack] Rare image of a shark stepping on a Lego | The Poke

More stunning pictures by Mike:

Mike Coots lost his leg to a tiger shark at age 18 while surfing off Kauai, Hawaii. But the experience didn’t shake his love for riding waves, the ocean—or sharks.

[WayBack] Stunning Photos by Shark Attack Survivor Capture Predators’ Beauty

–jeroen

https://twitter.com/Sonikku_a/status/781469409281921024

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Fun | Leave a Comment »

New official Embarcadero forums online http://community.idera.com/devel- initially only had non-TLS http URLs

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/23

If you are not a company good at infrastructure, then do not start hosting new things yourself. This is why I like the DelphiPraxis forums (both English and German), as they really know what they are doing.

Of course, forums never have all the features in a way that each user wants, but DelphiPraxis is secure, has well maintained and public moderators, and a history if quality posts.

But the G+ group did move there for a reason (: [WayBack] We have moved to https://en.delphipraxis.net ! Starting January 1st, 2019 – the G+ Delphi Developers Community will be closed for new posts and new mem… – Lars Fosdal – Google+

After a long series of goofing around with infrastructure (old forums, new forums, now newer forums, years of TLS trouble, selling software or which the infrastructure has been down for a long time), last week, finally they had the [WayBack] New official Embarcadero forums online http://community.idera.com/developer-tools/ The sign-up/login is a bit prickly at first, so keep your login name… – Lars Fosdal – Google+.

The announcement already has a the catch in the title: initially they were http only, so totally insecure for your logon data. They could have easily circumvented that by deploying some LetsEncrypt renewal, for instance the commercial one in Delphi ([WayBack] Execute’s Online Store), of which this is a demo: [WayBack] GitHub – tothpaul/LetsEncryptDelphi: Let’s Encrypt component for Delphi Tokyo 10.2.3

I have not added them to embarcaderomonitoring.wiert.me, as they are now on the Idera.com domain, so I will likely start a special monitoring page for those subdomains.

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Power User, Security, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Delphi 10.3 Rio got released; I’ll wait a while hoping to see more positive comments

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/22

The first messages on G+ saw about Delphi 10.3 Rio are these:

[WayBack] Delphi 10.3 is online. – Ralf Stocker – Google+
[WayBack] The platform selection in Delphi Rio seems to be down. – Gert Scholten – Google+
[WayBack] license.embarcadero.com is down. Perhaps this is a good sign, because of overwhelming interest in Rio, but it does not make a great impression. Can thi… – Johan Bontes – Google+
[WayBack] Great new feature of 10.3 – Tomasz Kunicki – Google+
[WayBack] Just installed Delphi 10.3 and used migrationtool.exe to import 10.2 settings, and my projects fail to compile with the following error (I am not even c… – Eric Grange – Google+
[WayBack] FMX minimize bug fix for Delphi Rio Community. The two screenshots show you how. https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-17322 You at home would ne… – Gustav Schubert – Google+
- [RSP-17285] Window minimize-restore via taskbar icon click is broken in all Windows flavours – Embarcadero Technologies (10.1/10.2 problem that was supposedly fixed in 10.3)
- [RSP-17322] Window minimize-restore via taskbar icon click is broken in all Windows flavours – Embarcadero Technologies has the fix for 10.3, but did not make it in 10.3
- [WayBack] I think I figured it out and here is my unofficial update to FMX.Platform.Win ready for beta testing. Improvement claims: 1) click on task bar button w… – Gustav Schubert – Google+
[WayBack] … but I am working on it. I have already installed the new version and it compiles on my machine. But don’t hold your breath, there are some issues. Unt… – Thomas Mueller (dummzeuch) – Google+
[WayBack] I’m having serious problems with the license registration. Have submitted a support case this morning but did not get a reply yet, and now it is weekend… – Reinier Sterkenburg – Google+
[WayBack1/WayBack2] RIO – First thoughts: No additional downloads, no interbase (I check install everything). No love for the Win64 C++ compiler. First time I can recall th… – Joe C. Hecht – Google+
[WayBack] I’ve had quite a few enquiries about when the Parnassus plugins (Bookmarks and Navigator) are coming to 10.3 Rio. The answer is soon! Ideally, they’d … – David Millington – Google+
- Stefan Glienke+1
  
  “I would have preferred to have the plugins ready at the same time Rio shipped, but shipping Rio itself took precedence.” – if you would have done that you would have seen for yourself where it still has some glitches and what is problematic for third party plugin developers before the release, but hey…
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food
[WayBack] Are these menus removed in 10.3 Rio? “The context menus for the code editor tabs and files in the Project Manager now have a “Show In Explorer” menu it… – Zhan Wang – Google+
- Stefan Glienke
  
  They got lost during the IDE revamp – known but not fixed yet. -.-
[WayBack] I have just downloaded 10.3 and after less than 1 minute I already have found an issue. Does this happen to you too? It seems that code insight does n… – Alberto Miola – Google+ about [RSP-21719] Error insight incorrectly marks inline var as error – Embarcadero Technologieswhich has a nice discussion on inline variables (for me, inline variables often indicate a refactor-to-method should take place, but I do like the type inference part), including:
- Dalija Prasnikar
  
  +Ralf Stocker On the contrary. Inline variables reduce scope, make code more readable and remove a whole range of potential bugs.
  
  You can make fine mess out of your code with or without inline variables. And if you do it will not be their fault but yours.
- Dalija Prasnikar
  
  +Darian Miller So we should never get any new features because existing tutorials will be broken and we will have to learn something new?
  
  If you are confused by reading code with inline variables more than five minutes after you have learned about existence of that feature, maybe you are in the wrong profession.
  
  And no, reducing scope is not code smell. You cannot always refactor into another method. Small methods are good, but they must have some logical organization.
  
  Too much granulation can be equally bad as too less granulation.
- Dalija Prasnikar
  +Darian Miller First of all, you don’t have to use inline variables if you don’t like them. Cost of readability, departure from historical context/documentation, lack of backward compatibility will equal to zero. Even the tooling will not be broken if you don’t use it (unless, of course you don’t write tools)
  
  Some benefits, there are too many to write them all:
  - loop variables – they definitely belong into loop scope, and they do pollute variable declaration block with unnecessary cruft.
  - Other temporary variables you may need, that also don’t belong into main declaration block, like explicit references for better handling and more control over compiler introduced implicit references – those are especially useful for controlling ARC references – and we do have ARC in classic compiler, too.
  - skip unnecessary automatic initialization/finalization of managed variables in code paths that will not execute – speed optimization.
  - Preventing errors (for some you have compiler hints, but if you miss the hint…) – some examples
  You cannot forget to initialize variable before use
  procedure Test1; begin var sl := TStringList.Create; try finally sl.Free; end; end;
  You cannot use variable that belongs to wrong scope and might be uninitialized – this code will not compile
  procedure Test2; begin try var sl := TStringList.Create; finally sl.Free; end; end;
  5. Type inference – repeating type two times, especially with generics makes code harder to read because while you are skipping reading redundant information, you may skip important one.
  
  This is just the tip of the iceberg. Inline variables are without a doubt extremely valuable feature.
- Clement Doss
  Coding will be a lot simpler as Dalija explained. Here an example using generics:
  TYourType = TDictionary<String, Cardinal>; TYourClass = class fSomeDic : TYourType public procedure DoSomething; end; implementation procedure TYourClass.DoSomething; begin for var lItem in fSomeDic do litem.Value := 10; end;
  As you see this is very easy to read. And litem belongs to the for loop. It doesn’t exists outside. Any reference to it will raise an error.
  
  If you need to change your base type to
  
  TYoutype = TDictionary<string, uint64>;
  
  There’s nothing else to change. No need to hunt every tpair<K,V> declaration.
  
  You have the tools, use it at you see fit!

Darian Miller

+Dalija Prasnikar Not sure why I waste the time… but to say cost is zero is just pontification which is sometimes hard to ignore. Say I don’t use the new feature myself as I need to stay on an older version… now, say there’s a new tool just posted to GitHub and it highly leverages this functionality. I cannot use that tool without some effort. The cost is not zero. Say you are on the latest version, but you rely on tooling that cannot parse this new form of variable definition. Your tooling for code documentation, coverage analysis, static code analysis could be completely broken the second any of this code gets introduced into the project. I simply object to saying there’s zero associated cost. That’s really not true. There are actual, real-life difficulties introduced with a major change like this. For me, the costs (all of them) are not worth the benefits (which I acknowledge are present.) But this is a really moot because it wasn’t my decision to introduce this feature at this time (which I would have vehemently voted against – at this time.) I haven’t checked to see if Peganza’s tools were upgraded to handle this version. My assumption is they haven’t, so this coding style is forbidden in new code until such time as the tooling catches up.
So Error Insight got no changes, which means old bugs are still there: [WayBack] 7 Major versions later and Delphi hasn’t improved a bit! Delphi IDE’s error insight complains about this perfectly valid code: if aHeader.RecType…. – Graeme Geldenhuys – Google+
[WayBack] +Marco Cantù is unstoppable. I can’t keep up LOL – Clement Doss – Google+
- Clement Doss
  
  I’m wondering why use zlib 1.2.8 when 1.2.11 is available since January 15, 2017? zlib.net – zlib Home Site
- [WayBack] zlib Home Site: Current release: zlib 1.2.11 January 15, 2017
[WayBack] I have one application, which when I compile it for Win32, ends its compile with: F2084 Internal Error: C2527. This is in Delphi 10.3 Rio. When compili… – Reinier Sterkenburg – Google+
- [RSP-21806] F2084 Internal Error: C2527 – Embarcadero Technologies
```
program Test_C2527;
{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}

uses
  Generics.Collections;

type
  TData = record
    Z: Integer;
  end;

var
  Q: TThreadedQueue;
begin
end.
```
  - I’ve checked: Adding a string to the record helps.
    Making it a class instead of a record also helps.
- [RSP-21790] Records & Int64 [dcc32 Fatal Error] F2084 Internal Error: C5551 – Embarcadero Technologies
  - I also noticed that the error when deactivating the optimization in the project options, no longer occurs .
    Project > Options > Delphi Compiler > Compiling -> [ Optimization := False ] works
    Project > Options > Delphi Compiler > Compiling -> [ Optimization := True ] doesn’t work
- [RSP-19558] F2084 Internal Error: C2489 – Embarcadero Technologies
```
program Project3;

{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}

uses
  Generics.Collections,
  Types;

type
  TDateAndRawData = record
    Values : PDouble; // pointer to the data 'array'
  end;

  TDataQueue = TThreadedQueue<TDateAndRawData>;

begin
end.
```
  - Changing “record” to “class” makes the error disappear.
  - I also get the error with “values : integer”.
    It seems to fail with any non-managed items. Adding a managed field (e.g. x: string) to the record helps!
  - It fails for 32-bit Windows target platform.
    For 64-bit Windows target platform it compiles without issue.
    Other target platforms not tested…
[WayBack] Delphi IDE Explorer is broken in Delphi 10.3 Rio – twm’s blog because the Project Options dialog now uses the Screen.OnActiveControlChange event itself and does not bother to call the original event.
- Via [WayBack] I just found out what is wrong with my Delphi IDE Explorer in Delphi 10.3 Rio. The symptom is that the Follow Focus option and the Select Active button … – Thomas Mueller (dummzeuch) – Google+
- Related (conference worthy!): [WayBack] Safe event hooking for Delphi IDE plugins revisited – twm’s blog
[WayBack] Andreas on Twitter: “What’s with the Delphi Rio Debugger? The CPU view shows the wrong XMM registers in the disassembly. The blue dots in the RTL/VCL (rtl.bpl/vcl.bpl) are at the correct position but when debugging (breakpoints, stop over/in) the debugger jumps like crazy through the code.”
[WayBack] I’m wondering today after receiving my renewal quote which is 50% of the value of a new license, do we ever get the right to force Embarcadero to do wha… – Andrew Pratt – Google+

[WayBack] Delphi 10.3 Rio – Language Changes – VSoft Technologies blog via [WayBack] Blogged – Delphi 10.3 Rio Language Changes – Vincent Parrett – Google+:

So lets take a look at which suggestions made the cut for 10.3 – referencing my original post.

Feature Implemented Comments

… No

Type Inference Yes! For inline variables only, Confuses code insight!

Inline variable declaration, with type inference and block scope Yes, Yes and Yes! Confuses code insight!

Loop variable inline declaration Yes! Confuses code insight!

… No

Feature	Implemented	Comments
…	No
Type Inference	Yes!	For inline variables only, Confuses code insight!
Inline variable declaration, with type inference and block scope	Yes, Yes and Yes!	Confuses code insight!
Loop variable inline declaration	Yes!	Confuses code insight!
…	No

[WayBack] Andreas on Twitter: “Using Delphi Rio and wondering why the IDE behaves differently. Well, while making DDevExtensions compatible with Rio there is no DDevExtensions for Rio.”

I think I will wait a while before installing until more positive messages are being published.

If you do want to try, the hashes of delphicbuilder10_3_0_94364.iso are these:

crc32  157b6e36
md5    0882d58cb53a7d0a828cc45d06c6ecd0
sha1   21579b530f781895885923809d9e670b439ebf9d
sha256 9213de93c2abdd6a2ee23aa84fc7e63a87d62d0344f0d0f0ee162d0e7dce7c7d

and for the radstudio10_3_0_esd_94364.exe they are:

crc32  033aeb53
md5    b25fab9d5f0724fb1d59ea77deff6702
sha1   289bbf33c90ae43b151af116e1e7c7a5348591e6
sha256 fb9a825ddaf235441ff72c10fbb03d2cf94adb3f037508e69f0978a37dc95773

––jeroen

PS: [WayBack] How to verify file hashes on macOS | ModMy

Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Development, Event, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

How is JavaScript used within the Spotify desktop application? Is it packaged up and run locally only retrieving the assets as and when needed? What JavaScript VM is used? – Quora

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/22

[Archive.is] How is JavaScript used within the Spotify desktop application? Is it packaged up and run locally only retrieving the assets as and when needed? What JavaScript VM is used? – Quora

For my archive via a private share.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

SSH: Connection Reset by Peer – Server Fault

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/22

One occasion I had SSH throw a Connection Reset by Peer on my when was the SD-card of a Raspberry Pi started failing and the ext4 filesystem got mounted in read-only mode.

Then sshd was still listening on port 22, but since it could not write to disk any more, it threw a Connection Reset by Peer to the client.

It was on OpenSuSE Tumbleweed, but would failed just as well using Raspbian.

Lessons learned:

IoT hardware will fail.
ext4 breaks when the hardware breaks.

–jeroen

Reference:

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Debian, Development, Hardware Development, IoT Internet of Things, Linux, Network-and-equipment, openSuSE, Power User, Raspberry Pi, Raspbian, SuSE Linux, Tumbleweed | Leave a Comment »

FRITZ!Box call http://fritz.box/cgi-bin/system_status

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/22

While researching what the cgi-bin of Fritz!Box devices expose, I found this post on http://fritz.box/cgi-bin/system_status:

[WayBack] FRITZ!Box „Service Code“ auslesen und dekodieren – Antary

FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7390–B–041711–000121–533176–734744–147902–840604–28179–avm

FRITZ!Box Modell (Name)

Annex

Gesamtlaufzeit der Box (Stunden, Tage, Monate, Jahre)

Neustarts

Hash

Status

Firmwareversion

Sub-Version

Branding

The site has the entries colour coded, but WordPress doesn’t allow for that.

I found out that on a Fritz!Box 7490 you do not need to logon, but on a Fritz!Box 7360 you have to.

The site has a few other interesting Fritz!Box posts as well:

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Fritz!, Fritz!Box, Internet, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Delphi sorcery: Loop wars – measuring performance

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/21

Interesting read: [WayBack] Delphi sorcery: Loop wars – measuring performance.

It is on optimisation of for…in constructs. More comments at [WayBack] Since there was this offtopic argument going on about performance of for-in versus for-to. – Stefan Glienke – Google+, including penalties for TStrings, string handling and inline methods.

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for 2018

The tragedy of FireWire: Collaborative tech torpedoed by corporations | Ars Technica

A 90-byte “whereis” program – The Old New Thing

O&O ShutUp10: download free antispy tool for Windows 10

Shark stepping on LEGO brick

New official Embarcadero forums online http://community.idera.com/devel- initially only had non-TLS http URLs

Delphi 10.3 Rio got released; I’ll wait a while hoping to see more positive comments

How is JavaScript used within the Spotify desktop application? Is it packaged up and run locally only retrieving the assets as and when needed? What JavaScript VM is used? – Quora

SSH: Connection Reset by Peer – Server Fault

FRITZ!Box call http://fritz.box/cgi-bin/system_status

Delphi sorcery: Loop wars – measuring performance

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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