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Archive for 2023

De akoestiek is in veel Amsterdamse horeca beroerd – en dat kost klanten: ‘Als ik moet schreeuwen, haak ik af’

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/03/20

Herkenbaar. Hoe geweldig het eten en bediening ook: herrie in de horeca sluit mensen met een beperking uit.

[Archive] De akoestiek is in veel Amsterdamse horeca beroerd – en dat kost klanten: ‘Als ik moet schreeuwen, haak ik af’

–jeroen

Posted in About, Personal | Leave a Comment »

Windows: investigating error code 0x80073701 and 0x800f081f while updating; some DISM and CBS log things to search for

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/03/20

A while ago when applying KB5008212* through Windows Update, I got errors. It was odd, as until now, all other upgrades had worked fine.

Often Windows update errors are because of lack of disk space (I try maintain 10 gigabytes or more free space on virtual machines, but that sometimes fails because some software – despite user files being on a different drive – sometimes insists on filling the system drive).

This time, Windows Update would show 0x80073701, of course right after reaching 100%, but actually it was a 0x800f081f in disguise.

My usual modus operandi didn’t solve it (with a retry after every step):

Reboot
Cleanup of the system drive using built-in CleanMgr.exe (Disk cleanup)
Scan all corrupted system files and replace them from cache: SFC /ScanNow (System File Checker)
Cleanup and repair the Windows image using DISM /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth (Deployment Image Servicing and Management)

All failed, but in the last step, DISM would consistently show error 0x800f081f.

Even a local DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:C:\Windows\WinSxS /LimitAccess would fail.

Each DISM run will actually log in two log files, and this is the trick to figure out what the next step would be.

Examples from my case:

Read the rest of this entry »

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

mess with dns: a cool site to directly mess around with subdomains of messwithdns.net.

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/03/17

[Wayback/Archive] mess with dns: a cool site at messwithdns.net that allows you directly mess around with subdomains of messwithdns.com (yup: these are on different top level domains by intent, see [Wayback/Archive] mess with dns: about/FAQ).

Her blog post [Wayback/Archive] New tool: Mess with DNS! has a cool insightful explanation with lots of gifs showing what is going on. The below gif is just one of them:

In addition, it has a cool [Wayback/Archive] mess with dns: DNS dictionary explaining common DNS related terms.

The backend is written in Go, and has a snapshot of the initial source code on github at [Wayback/Archive] jvns/mess-with-dns-backend (mainly so you can file issues or submit ideas).

Oh, and this is a cool video that shows you how DNS works assuming the protocol is phone based: [Archive] Max Meier👨🏻‍💻🛡⚔️ on Twitter: “DNS Server …” / Twitter.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in DNS, Internet, Power User | Leave a Comment »

llamasoft/polyshell: A Bash/Batch/PowerShell polyglot!

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/03/16

PolyShell is a script that’s simultaneously valid in Bash, Windows Batch, and PowerShell (i.e. a polyglot).

[Wayback/Archive] llamasoft/polyshell: A Bash/Batch/PowerShell polyglot!

Need to check this out, as often I have scripts that have to go from one language to the other or vice versa.

Maybe it enables one language to bootstrap functionality in the other?

The quest

The above polyglot started with a quest to see if I can could include some PowerShell statements in a batch file with two goals:

if the batch file started from the PowerShell command prompt, then execute the PowerShell code
if the batch file started from the cmd.exe command prompt, then have it start PowerShell with the same command-line arguments

The reasoning is simple:

PowerShell scripts will start from the PATH only when PowerShell is already running
Batch files start from the path when either cmd.exe or PowerShell are running

Lots of users still live in the cmd.exe world, but PowerShell scripts are way more powerful, and since PowerShell is integrated in Windows since version 7, so having a batch file bootstrap PowerShell still makes sense.

Since my guess was about quoting parameters the right way, my initial search for the link below was [Wayback/Archive] powershell execute statement from batch file quoting – Google Search.

I have dug not yet into this, so there are still…

Many links to read

These should give me a good idea how to implement a polyglot batch file/PowerShell script.

[Wayback/Archive] powershell execute statement from batch file quoting – Google Search
- [Wayback/Archive] How to execute PowerShell commands from a batch file? – Stack Overflow was a step up into getting to the right queries and got me to:
  - [Wayback/Archive] PowerShell script in a .bat file | Dmitry’s Blog: Cloud, PowerShell and beyond has convoluted solutions (encoding as base64 or into a single string), but are intriguing as these means are often used to disguise code during attacks (be it from red teams or bad guys).
[Wayback/Archive] hybrid powershell batch file – Google Search
- [Wayback/Archive] How to run a PowerShell script within a Windows batch file – Stack Overflow has a first answer that does not support parameters, but does show that quoting enables the use of scripts that have spaces in their filenames (always a pain, but still important to support):
  - This one only passes the right lines to PowerShell:
    
    dosps2.cmd:
```
@findstr/v "^@f.*&" "%~f0"|powershell -&goto:eof
Write-Output "Hello World" 
Write-Output "Hello some@com & again" 
```
    The regular expression excludes the lines starting with @f and including an & and passes everything else to PowerShell.
```
C:\tmp>dosps2
Hello World
Hello some@com & again
```
  but the second answer got me in the below polyglot search query
  - It sounds like you’re looking for what is sometimes called a “polyglot script”. For CMD -> PowerShell,
```
@@:: This prolog allows a PowerShell script to be embedded in a .CMD file.
@@:: Any non-PowerShell content must be preceeded by "@@"
@@setlocal
@@set POWERSHELL_BAT_ARGS=%*
@@if defined POWERSHELL_BAT_ARGS set POWERSHELL_BAT_ARGS=%POWERSHELL_BAT_ARGS:"=\"%
@@PowerShell -Command Invoke-Expression $('$args=@(^&{$args} %POWERSHELL_BAT_ARGS%);'+[String]::Join([char]10,$((Get-Content '%~f0') -notmatch '^^@@'))) & goto :EOF
```
    If you don’t need to support quoted arguments, you can even make it a one-liner:
```
@PowerShell -Command Invoke-Expression $('$args=@(^&{$args} %*);'+[String]::Join([char]10,(Get-Content '%~f0') -notmatch '^^@PowerShell.*EOF$')) & goto :EOF
```
    Taken from http://blogs.msdn.com/jaybaz_ms/archive/2007/04/26/powershell-polyglot.aspx. That was PowerShell v1; it may be simpler in v2, but I haven’t looked.
- [Wayback/Archive] PowerShell polyglot | Microsoft Docs
[Wayback/Archive] powershell polyglot – Google Search
- [Wayback/Archive] Command Line Interpreters: POSIX Shell, Cmd.exe, PowerShell – Hyperpolyglot (a great table with differences between the various command-line interpreters / scripting engines)
- [Wayback/Archive] PowerShell embedded in a batch script, AKA Polyglot script – Microsoft Tech Community (this solution looks very unreadable to me, but that might be because the listing in it is neither indented, nor syntax highlighted)
- [Wayback/Archive] PolyShell: a Bash/Batch/PowerShell polyglot template for input injection : programming
  - [Wayback/Archive] Polyshell : A Bash/Batch/PowerShell Polyglot 2020 gave much insight, especially on the how:
    …
    
    There are quite a few quirks that were leveraged or had to be worked around:
    - All three languages have different escape characters:
      
      Bash: backslash (\)
      
      Batch: caret (^)
      
      PowerShell: backtick (`)
    - Escape characters work inside Bash and PowerShell strings, but not batch strings.
    - Redirects (i.e. < and >) have special meaning in all three languages unless quoted.
    - Redirects don’t have to be at the end of a command.
      
      This is valid Bash/Batch/PowerShell: echo >output.txt "Hello World"
    - Batch is the only language without multi-line strings or comments.
    - Batch treats > as a redirect even when it directly touches a string, but PowerShell doesn’t.
    - Batch script GOTO statements only work when run as a script, not when run interactively.
    - PowerShell’s multi-line comment (<#) must be immediately preceded by whitespace.
    - Bash’s here documents may begin anywhere so long as it’s unquoted and not a comment.
    …
    It also pointed me to the above repository on GitHub, so lets include it here as well:
    - [Wayback/Archive] llamasoft/polyshell: A Bash/Batch/PowerShell polyglot!
[Wayback/Archive] koma-private/Polyglots: PowerShell scripts encapsulated into batch files
I had a short play around with it from a cmd.exe prompt, and it hides that prompt after finishing. Need to figure out why, and if it can be prevented or undone.

The culprit is the below call in [Wayback/Archive] Polyglots/PSWrapper.cmd at master · koma-private/Polyglots · GitHub:
```
hideWindow $script:cmdPid   # Prevent user from closing command prompt
```
- [Wayback/Archive] Embed PowerShell inside a batch file : Dave Amenta
[Wayback/Archive] windows – Strange redirect in Batch/Powershell polyglot – Stack Overflow basically asks all the questions I have (how does a polyglot actually work?)
- [Wayback/Archive] Powerglot – encodes offensive powershell scripts using polyglots
  - [Wayback/Archive] mindcrypt/powerglot: Powerglot encodes offensive powershell scripts using polyglots . Offensive security tool useful for stego-malware, privilege escalation, lateral movement, reverse shell, etc.
    
    Powerglot encodes several kind of scripts using polyglots, for example, offensive powershell scripts. It is not needed a loader to run the payload.
    
    It basically is a Python script that allows you to generate a polyglot from multiple separate scripts.
[Wayback/Archive] powershell batch polyglot – Google Search (still need to check out the results there if I bump into issues creating one myself)
[Wayback/Archive] powershell batch hybrid – Google Search
- [Wayback/Archive] batch-file Tutorial – Batch files and Powershell hybrids
[Wayback/Archive] powershell batch hybrid iex – Google Search (to see if some part of the script could be automatically downloaded by iex, aka [Wayback/Archive] Invoke-Expression (Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility) – PowerShell | Microsoft Docs)
[Wayback/Archive] How to enable execution of PowerShell scripts? – Super User
- [Wayback/Archive] command line – Set up PowerShell Script for Automatic Execution – Stack Overflow
  - [Wayback/Archive] PowerShell polyglot – jaybaz [MS] WebLog – Site Home – MSDN Blogs, which does not exist any more, but this does:
    - [Wayback/Archive] Wrapping some other scripting language inside a batch file – The Old New Thing showing how to do polyglot with Batch Files and either Perl or JavaScript.

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, bash, Batch-Files, Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Perl, Polyglot, Power User, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

For my reading list: some links on Twitter bookmarklets

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/03/15

Yup, web browser bookmarklets, though hardly published about any more, I still like them (and wrote about them before). With a little bit, usually unreadable, JavaScript, they can add magical functionality to your browser.

So here are some links on Twitter related bookmarklets:

[Wayback/Archive] Send to Twitter Bookmarklet (uses document.title and URL as content) with this URI:

javascript:location.href='http://twitter.com/share?url='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href)+'&text='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)

which I reworked into:

javascript:window.open('http://twitter.com/share?url='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href)+'&text='+encodeURIComponent(document.title))

These are all from the same author:
All code from the above links seemed to give corrupted tweets, which I thought was because of quote beautification, but was just me doing the whitespace removal wrong.
This is the right one:
```
javascript:(function(){n=getSelection().anchorNode;if(!n){t=document.title;}else{t=n.nodeType===3?n.data:n.innerText;}t='“'+t.trim()+'”\n\n';window.open(`https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=${encodeURIComponent(t)}${document.location.href}`)})();
```
which I reworked using «» quotes into:
```
javascript:(function(){n=getSelection().anchorNode;if(!n){t=document.title;}else{t=n.nodeType===3?n.data:n.innerText;}t='«'+t.trim()+'»\n\n';window.open(`https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=${document.location.href}&text=${encodeURIComponent(t)}`)})();
```

[Wayback/Archive] A Couple of Quick Bookmarklets For Viewing a Suspended / Deleted Twitter User – ResearchBuzz with two “Twitter” jail search bookmarklets, of which I created a third (as Archive Today often saves tweets better than the WayBack Machine):

Twitter jail Google Search cache:

javascript:q = "" + (window.getSelection ? window.getSelection() : document.getSelection ? document.getSelection() : document.selection.createRange().text); if (!q) q = prompt("Please enter a Twitter handle", ""); if (q!=null) location="http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:https://twitter.com/" + escape(q).replace(/ /g, "+"); void 0

Twitter jail WayBack Machine:

javascript:q = "" + (window.getSelection ? window.getSelection() : document.getSelection ? document.getSelection() : document.selection.createRange().text); if (!q) q = prompt("Please enter a Twitter handle", ""); if (q!=null) location="https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://twitter.com/" + escape(q).replace(/ /g, "+"); void 0

Twitter jail archive.today:

javascript:q = "" + (window.getSelection ? window.getSelection() : document.getSelection ? document.getSelection() : document.selection.createRange().text); if (!q) q = prompt("Please enter a Twitter handle", ""); if (q!=null) location="https://archive.md/https://twitter.com/" + escape(q).replace(/ /g, "+"); void 0

[Wayback/Archive] A simple bookmarklet that searches Twitter with the URL you are on.

javascript:var u = window.location.protocol + '//' + window.location.host + window.location.pathname; var l = document.getElementsByTagName("link"); for (var i = 0; i < l.length; i ++) { if (l[i].getAttribute('rel') === 'canonical') {u = l[i].getAttribute('href')}}; window.open('https://twitter.com/search?q=' + encodeURIComponent(u) + '&src=paulmwatson');
Finally, there is [Wayback/Archive] Twitter Publish, which has a complicated unclear set of user experience combinations for sending out various kinds of tweets.
Hopefully I will have sometime later to dig into these. The below links likely will get me started:

All via [Wayback/Archive] twitter bookmarklet – Google Search.

–jeroen

Posted in Bookmarklet, Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Web Browsers, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

On my list of things to try: Live Share – Visual Studio Marketplace

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/03/14

I need to try [Wayback/Archive] Live Share – Visual Studio Marketplace and get a feel for how it is to live share code: is it a way of working that fits me well?

This installs Live Share for Visual Studio Code:

code --install-extension MS-vsliveshare.vsliveshare
code --install-extension MS-vsliveshare.vsliveshare-pack

The second extension is for [Wayback/Archive] Live Share Extension Pack – Visual Studio Marketplace, which got released about a year after the first one.

Live Share was introduced in 2017, a period when most of my work was outside the Visual Studio realm, Visual Studio Code was just starting to gain momentum over Atom (which was mul multi-platform editor of choice back then; I wrote about it in a few blog posts), and my then main development environment did not allow live sharing at all. so I missed all this (:

For my reading list:

Uses search queries:

The first query was my initial goal to accomplish, but I rather have the markdown files available off-line, so these did not help:

–jeroen

Posted in atom editor, Development, Power User, Software Development, Text Editors, vscode Visual Studio Code | Leave a Comment »

Way easier to fix on Intel MacBook machines than I thought: macos kernel_task high cpu dual screen

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/03/13

The links found via [Wayback/Archive] macos kernel_task high cpu dual screen – Google Search were daunting.

In the end, the issue ways way easier to fix than I thought: open up your Intel MacBook (you need pentalobe screwdrivers for that), then with some compressed air, clean the dust (especially from the fans).

This post saved my day [Wayback/Archive] kernel_task takes up 500% of my CPU when plugging in external monitor – MacBook Pro 15″ Retina Display Mid 2015 – iFixit

Things I haven’t tried yet:

Cleaning out more free space from HDD

Using plain HDMI cable into the HDMI cable port

Taking MBP apart and cleaning any potential dust

…

I faced the very same issue that you guys are facing and based on input from another forum decided to get my 2016 MPB fans cleaned out.

This made an immediate impact where when I connected my external display to the MBP.pre-cleaning, it would overheat causing the fans to spin at 6000 rpm or thereabout and the kernel_task would eat up 500%-900% of the CPU rending the system unusable.

This simple cleanup of the fans has allowed me to connect the monitor with no kernel panic anymore and even though the fans run around 5000 rpm now the CPU and GPU are running around 10 degrees cooler now.

The same picture is in [Wayback/Archive] macos – MacBook Pro high CPU with external monitors – Ask Different.

An even dirtier MacBook was at [Wayback/Archive] External Display – High CPU Usage – MacBo… – Apple Community.

Links that were interesting but unhelpful:

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Apple, Mac, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Jvc Compulink Control Cable are just mono mini audio jacks

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/03/10

[Wayback/Archive] Jvc Compulink Control Cable | Home Theater Forum

The jvc compulik cables are mono 1/8 inch miniplugs. You can get them at radio shack. Hope this helps.
[Wayback/Archive] JVC “Compulink” cables… – Ars Technica OpenForum

I’ve got an ancient JVC CD player hooked up to an old JVC receiver. The cable, which came original with the CD player, looks like mono mini-jack to me. The CD player advertises itself as Compu Link-1 and the receiver advertises itself as Compu Link-3, and the both function as expected.

I can’t help you with the configuration, but you should have the right cables and Compu Link is at least partly backwards compatable.
[Wayback/Archive] Hacking Wired Remote Control Jacks Into A/V Equipment

–jeroen

Posted in Hardware, Home Audio/Video, Power User | Leave a Comment »

My little tray with neodymium magnets for holding little screws while servicing equipment

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/03/09

From an interesting thread where Iris Classon had laptop overheating problems (just like I had with a 2015 Retin MacBook Pro in Cleaning the cooling fans of a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro 2015 model):

My tray is from the lid of a broken container.

I love repurposing the remains of old household items..

The actual problem: dust, just like my MacBook had.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, DIY, Hardware Development, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

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Archive for 2023

De akoestiek is in veel Amsterdamse horeca beroerd – en dat kost klanten: ‘Als ik moet schreeuwen, haak ik af’

Windows: investigating error code 0x80073701 and 0x800f081f while updating; some DISM and CBS log things to search for

mess with dns: a cool site to directly mess around with subdomains of messwithdns.net.

llamasoft/polyshell: A Bash/Batch/PowerShell polyglot!

The quest

Many links to read

For my reading list: some links on Twitter bookmarklets

On my list of things to try: Live Share – Visual Studio Marketplace

Way easier to fix on Intel MacBook machines than I thought: macos kernel_task high cpu dual screen

Jvc Compulink Control Cable are just mono mini audio jacks

My little tray with neodymium magnets for holding little screws while servicing equipment

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

Subscribe

Archives

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Blog Stats

Meta title

Tag Cloud Title

Top Clicks

Top Posts

My badges

My Flickr Stream

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Archive for 2023

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