The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

  • My badges

    Mastodon

  • Twitter Updates

  • My Flickr Stream

    20140508-Delphi-2007--Project-Options--Cannot-Edit-Application-Title-HelpFile-Icon-Theming20140430-Fiddler-Filter-Actions-Button-Run-Filterset-now20140424-VMware-Fusion-6.0.3.-no-reclaimable
    More Photos

  • Pages

  • All categories

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 1,830 other subscribers

Archive for the ‘History’ Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

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:

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 »

This two-year-old X.org give-me-root hole is so trivial to exploit, you can fit it in a single tweet • The Register

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/02

If you run X.org, then patch now because of [WayBack] This two-year-old X.org give-me-root hole is so trivial to exploit, you can fit it in a single tweet • The Register

Overwrite arbitrary files? Load arbitrary code? As setuid root? Sure, why not!

This one got introduced in 2016, which is a lot more recent than an issue discovered in 2014 that was “ancient”: [WayBack] ‘Critical’ security bugs dating back to 1987 found in X Window • The Register:

27-year-old flaw and others slain in open-source patch batch

Via eXploit X: Give Me Root” – Computerphile

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History, Power User, Security | Leave a Comment »

Thread by @MaxFagin: “November is here, and that means a massive shift is coming. And by “massive” I am of course referring to the redefinition of the kilogram unit of mass […]”

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/02

Good read: Thread by @MaxFagin: “November is here, and that means a massive shift is coming. And by “massive” I am of course referring to the redefinitilogram unit of mass that the world has been building up to for more than 100 years. Let me explain: 1/ I’ve h […]” [WayBack]

via: [WayBack] Das Urkilogrann wird arbeitslos. Es wird durch eine Definition ersetzt, die auf physikalischen Effekten statt auf einem Sample basiert. – Kristian Köhntopp – Google+

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History, LifeHacker, Power User, science | Leave a Comment »

Hear Marvin Gaye Sing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” A Capella: The Haunting Isolated Vocal Track | Open Culture

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/10/30

Because Marvin Gaye’s mega-hit single, ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine,’ turns 50 this today: [WayBack/Archive.is] Hear Marvin Gaye Sing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” A Capella: The Haunting Isolated Vocal Track | Open Culture

Media below.

Via: [WayBack] Meredith Frost on Twitter: “Marvin Gaye’s isolated vocals for “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” Simply incredible.”

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History | Leave a Comment »

xkcd: Free Speech

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/10/29

[WayBack] xkcd: Free Speech is worth repeating every now and then:

Title text: I can’t remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you’re saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it’s not literally illegal to express.

Transcript

Cueball: Public Service Announcement: The Right to Free Speech means the government can’t arrest you for what you say.
Cueball: It doesn’t mean that anyone else has to listen to your bullshit, or host you while you share it.
Cueball: The 1st Amendment doesn’t shield you from criticism or consequences.
Cueball: If you’re yelled at, boycotted, have your show canceled, or get banned from an Internet community, your free speech rights aren’t being violated.
Cueball: It’s just that the people listening think you’re an asshole,
[A picture of a partially open door is displayed.]
Cueball: And they’re showing you the door.

Be sure to read [WayBack] 1357: Free Speech – explain xkcd too.

–jeroen

Posted in History, Opinions | Leave a Comment »

Map of the internet precursor ARPA network as of May 1973 – David Newbury

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/10/29

Today’s internet day anniversary only started in 2005. But the networks leading to the internet are a lot older and date as far back as the late 1960s. In fact [WayBack] Internet Day, October 29th refers to the first ARPA network communication taking place in 1969.

About two years ago, David Newbury published this piece of history from 1973: a map of the ARPA network (later called ARPANET).

[WayBack] David Newbury: “Going through old papers my dad gave me, I found his map of the internet as of May 1973. The entire internet. https://t.co/0krvYoRGav”

The resulting thread has loads of more interesting pictures which I tried to save in the Wayback Machine as not even Wikipedia seems to have them.

It also includes a discussion on the meaning of the zig-zag line to Hawaii, the connection to London (UK that is, not USA) later that year and even earlier state of the late 1960s.

Worth reading (:

Here are some references to messages and links from the Twitter thread:

via [WayBack] Well, that’s changed quite a bit in the meantime https://twitter.com/workergn…

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History | Leave a Comment »

121 – NOS Teletekst: xs4all and T-mobile internet outage

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/10/28

This time I was not affected, but many people were by the [WayBack] 121 – NOS Teletekst: xs4all and T-mobile outage:

                      NOS Teletekst 121 

    Kort nieuws binnenland              
                                        

 Tienduizenden mensen zijn getroffen  
 door een internetstoring.Abonnees van  
 verschillende providers zoals T-Mobile 
 en XS4ALL,hebben er last van.De        
 problemen begonnen om 2.30 uur en doen 
 zich verspreid over het land voor.Een  
 technisch team van KPN is op zoek naar 
 de oorzaak van de storing.XS4ALL meldt 
 dat 35.000 abonnees zijn gedupeerd.    
                                        
 In Barneveld zijn bij een schuurbrand
 20.000 kippen omgekomen.De brand brak  
 vanmorgen vroeg uit;de oorzaak is nog  
 onbekend.De brandweer wist te voorkomen
 dat een tweede schuur ook vlam vatte.  
 Dit jaar zijn al veel dieren gedood    
 door stalbranden.Zo kwamen bij twee    
 branden in Limburg 35.000 kippen om.   

 volgende  nieuws  weer&verkeer  sport
Ga terug naar de navigatie, het begin van de inhoud.

Trying to grab the above page as PNG, made me find the old teletekst web-interface is directory browseable, but dysfunctional: [WayBack] Directory Listing For /webtekst.html/

Lots of people were affected as you can see at

[Archive.is] Storingsoverzicht | Allestoringen Realtime overzicht van storingen. Problemen? Wij helpen je verder.

They are powered by Downdetector which has a world-wide monitoring service [Archive.is] Status overview | Downdetector, and seems situated in Haarlem. Cool thing: they have similar sites for many other countries:

allestörungen.at | allestörungen.ch | allestörungen.de | allestoringen.be | allestoringen.nl | aussieoutages.com | canadianoutages.com | downdetector.ae | downdetector.cl |downdetector.co.nz | downdetector.co.za | downdetector.com | downdetector.com.ar | downdetector.com.br | downdetector.dk | downdetector.es | downdetector.fi | downdetector.fr |downdetector.hk | downdetector.ie | downdetector.in | downdetector.it | downdetector.jp | downdetector.mx | downdetector.no | downdetector.pl | downdetector.pt | downdetector.ru |downdetector.se | downdetector.sg | downdetector.co.uk | downdetector.web.tr |

Usually uptime robot warns me on time, and this time my connections were OK:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Likely the end of a tradition… ᴊᴏᴏsᴛ su Twitter: “Dear Mr. Juncker, you may not know this but here in Holland we have Dirk-Jan and it is tradition to read this comic twice a year don’t take this away from us it’s the only non-racist tradition we have!!!! Please!!!!!…”

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/10/28

[WayBack] ᴊᴏᴏsᴛ su Twitter: “Dear Mr. Juncker, you may not know this but here in Holland we have Dirk-Jan and it is tradition to read this comic twice a year don’t take this away from us it’s the only non-racist tradition we have!!!! Please!!!!!… https://t.co/wRIkBcQtnV”

It is about moving the clock forward in the Dutch comic DirkJan – Wikipedia by , which is done transitioning to Summer time – Wikipedia:

[WayBack] Annelies Hofstede on Twitter: “… “ posted the mirror image of moving the clock backwards:

I tracked the mirroring down to [WayBack] Reddit: Vannacht moet de klok weer verzet worden! : thenetherlands

Vannacht moet de klok weer verzet worden!
byu/—E inthenetherlands

Posting one of the above pictures was a long standing tradition in The Netherlands, usually resulting in other comics to be posted as well, like at

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Fun, History | Leave a Comment »

Retr0bright – Wikipedia

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/10/12

For removing the yellowing of ABS plastics:

In addition to homemade gel mixtures, hydrogen peroxide-based hair bleaching creams available at beauty supply stores can also be used as a ready-made mix.

[WayBack] Retr0bright – Wikipedia

More background information:

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

A refefernce to 6502 by “Remember that in a stack trace, the addresses are return addresses, not call addresses – The Old New Thing”

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/09/11

On x86/x64/ARM/…:

It’s where the function is going to return to, not where it came from.

And:

Bonus chatter: This reminds me of a quirk of the 6502 processor: When it pushed the return address onto the stack, it actually pushed the return address minus one. This is an artifact of the way the 6502 is implemented, but it results in the nice feature that the stack trace gives you the line number of the call instruction.

Of course, this is all hypothetical, because 6502 debuggers didn’t have fancy features like stack traces or line numbers.

Source: [WayBack] Remember that in a stack trace, the addresses are return addresses, not call addresses – The Old New Thing

Which resulted in these comments at [WayBack] CC +mos6502 – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+:

  • mos6502: And don’t forget the crucial difference in PC on 6502 between RTS and RTI!
  • Jeroen Wiert Pluimers: +mos6502 I totally forgot about that one. Thanks for reminding me
    <<Note that unlike RTS, the return address on the stack is the actual address rather than the address-1.>>

References:

[WayBack] 6502.org: Tutorials and Aids – RTI

RTI retrieves the Processor Status Word (flags) and the Program Counter from the stack in that order (interrupts push the PC first and then the PSW).

Note that unlike RTS, the return address on the stack is the actual address rather than the address-1.

[WayBack] 6502.org: Tutorials and Aids – RTS

RTS pulls the top two bytes off the stack (low byte first) and transfers program control to that address+1. It is used, as expected, to exit a subroutine invoked via JSR which pushed the address-1.

RTS is frequently used to implement a jump table where addresses-1 are pushed onto the stack and accessed via RTS eg. to access the second of four routines.

–jeroen

Posted in 6502, 6502 Assembly, Assembly Language, Development, History, Software Development, The Old New Thing, Windows Development, x64, x86 | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »