The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for the ‘Power User’ Category

The end of an era: after more than 25 years, XS4ALL/AS3265 is leaving AMS-IX

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/30

Via [Wayback/Archive] Nick Bouwhuis on Twitter: “😢 “ (with OCR text below) via [Wayback/Archive] Kirsten Verdel on Twitter: “:(“:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History, Internet, ISP, KPN, Power User, xs4all | Leave a Comment »

chocolatey-community/chocolatey-test-environment: A testing setup related to how the Chocolatey Package Verifier runs testing. Used for manual testing or prior to submission

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/29

On my list of things to play around with: [Wayback/Archive.is] chocolatey-community/chocolatey-test-environment: A testing setup related to how the Chocolatey Package Verifier runs testing. Used for manual testing or prior to submission

It sort of is a standalone version of the [Wayback] Chocolatey Software Docs | Package Verifier Moderation Service that you can use to check Chocolatey package that you develop/modify.

From the github repository README:

Requirements

You need a computer with:

  • a 64-bit processor and OS
  • Intel VT-x enabled (usually not an issue if your computer is newer than 2011). This is necessary because we are using 64bit VMs.
  • Hyper-V may need to be disabled for Virtualbox to work properly if your computer is a Windows box. NOTE: This may actually not be required.
  • At least 10GB of free space.

Setup

To get started, ensure you have the following installed:

  • Vagrant 1.8.1+ – linked clones is the huge reason here. You can technically use any version of Vagrant 1.3.5+. But you will get the best performance with 1.8.x+. It appears you can go up to Vagrant 2.1.5, but may have some issues with 2.2.2 and Windows guests (newer versions may be fine).
  • Virtualbox 4.3.28+ – 6.1.6 (this flows in the selection of Vagrant – 5.2.22 seems to have some issues but newer versions may work fine)
  • vagrant sahara plugin (vagrant plugin install sahara)

NOTE: If you decide to run with version 1.8.1 of Vagrant, you are going to need to set the VAGRANT_SERVER_URL environment variable as described in this forum post, otherwise, you will get an HTTP 404 error when attempting to download the base vagrant box used here.

Related: people wanting to do a similar thing for Linux: [Archive.is] chocolatey/choco: Has anyone ever tried to set up virtual box with linux (e.g. ubuntu) for choco testing ? – Gitter

Yes, it should work for choco newchoco pack, and choco push, running on mono.
[Wayback/Archive.is] https://github.com/chocolatey/choco/runs/3660684196?check_suite_focus=true

There is also a dockerfile available here:
[Wayback/Archive.is] https://github.com/chocolatey/choco/tree/develop/docker

However, as @AdmiringWorm said, there are not any official builds or official support at this time.

In my own private fork of choco however I’m using such interfaces as RestartManager

    //https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/restartmanager/nf-restartmanager-rmstartsession
    [DllImport("rstrtmgr.dll", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
    static extern int RmStartSession(out uint pSessionHandle,
                                     int dwSessionFlags,
                                     string strSessionKey);

    //https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/restartmanager/nf-restartmanager-rmendsession
    [DllImport("rstrtmgr.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    static extern int RmEndSession(uint pSessionHandle);

    //https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/restartmanager/nf-restartmanager-rmgetlist
    [DllImport("rstrtmgr.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    static extern int RmGetList(uint dwSessionHandle,
                                out uint pnProcInfoNeeded,
                                ref uint pnProcInfo,
                                [In, Out] ProcessInfo[] rgAffectedApps,
                                ref uint lpdwRebootReasons);

those will be windows specific indeed, but I’ll reach them later on.

Tarmo Pikaro

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Chocolatey, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Illustrations for Bowel resection for colorectal cancer

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/24

I finally found some great illustrations having to do with my lower anterior resection.

They are from [Wayback/Archive] https://www.uvmhealth.org/healthwise/topic/zm6206 (Bowel resection for colorectal cancer)

The most important for me is this one (as I have end-to-side where “end” is on the very tiny bit of rectum left and “side” is on the descending colon):

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About, Cancer, Health, LifeHacker, Personal, Power User, Rectum cancer | 1 Comment »

CyberChef: The Cyber Swiss Army Knife – a web app for encryption, encoding, compression and data analysis.

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/23

[Wayback/Archive.is] CyberChef:

a simple, intuitive web app for carrying out all manner of “cyber” operations within a web browser. These operations include simple encoding like XOR or Base64, more complex encryption like AES, DES and Blowfish, creating binary and hexdumps, compression and decompression of data, calculating hashes and checksums, IPv6 and X.509 parsing, changing character encodings, and much more.

Source code at [Wayback/Archive.is] gchq/CyberChef: The Cyber Swiss Army Knife – a web app for encryption, encoding, compression and data analysis.

Via [Archive.is] Jilles🏳️‍🌈 on Twitter: “Hidden in plain sight. Rot13 cross word. Hidden Barcodes. Qr codes. Barely any InfoSec skill required. Still a hand full. Usually my to go place is: Cyberchef. I did a fun one for cyberklaas using ansi art.… “

Jilles also pointed to the solving part in [Archive.is] Jilles🏳️‍🌈 on Twitter: “See also, for solving: SCWF… “

The [Wayback/Archive.is] Solve Crypto with Force! needs to run without most script blockers, so best run it in an anonymous/private browser window.

Source code for SCWF is at [Wayback/Archive.is] DaWouw/SCWF: CTF tool for identifying, brute forcing and decoding encryption schemes in an automated way.

Screen shot of Cyberchef example “Perform AES decryption, extracting the IV from the beginning of the cipher stream” [Archive.is]:

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Posted in Cyberchef, Development, Encoding, Encryption, Hashing, Power User, Security, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

To Favor Microsoft VS Code, Microsoft’s GitHub is Killing GitHub’s Atom Editor – time to prepare switching to another open source editor with a rich ecosystem in less than half a year

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/21

If you are still on Atom, try to see if other cross platform open source editors suit your needs.

Myself, I have moved to Visual Studio Code quite some time ago as, though based on Electron – the core of Atom, it is way faster and much better supported than Atom.

The official announcement is at [Wayback/Archive] Sunsetting Atom | The GitHub Blog.

Various sites reported it in different phrasings:

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Posted in .NET, atom editor, Development, Missed Schedule, Power User, SocialMedia, Software Development, Text Editors, vscode Visual Studio Code, WordPress | Leave a Comment »

Interactive @waybackmachine achievement unlocked while manually archiving 4 pages.: HTTP 429 Too Many Requests

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/20

[Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers on Twitter: “Interactive @waybackmachine achievement unlocked while manually archiving 4 pages. web.archive.org/429.html.

The below error took a few hours to recover from. The submitted URLs were indeed already archived when checking if they were.

It was about the URLs in my blog post earlier today: Vanaf 1 juli kost opheffen oude spaarrekening EUR 75, dus wees er snel bij: Beëindig je oude spaarproduct – ING – Sparen.

I really wish Archive.org had a status page to show system status, as right now you have to guess by pages like below about their status.

You can find the error page at [Archive] https://web.archive.org/429.html (but not all HTTP response codes have pages like this and some respond in a different way like [Archive] https://web.archive.org/404.html).

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Posted in Internet, InternetArchive, Power User, WayBack machine | Leave a Comment »

Inclusie/toegankelijkheid voor het @LUMC_Leiden: een tabel in HTML in plaats van plaatje zonder alt-text – #a11y

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/20

Voor inclusie en toegankelijkheid heb ik het plaatje van de tabel met voedingsmiddelen op [Wayback/Archive] Coloscopie | LUMC onderstaand in een HTML versie gegoten dankzij Google Lens die voor mij de tekst via OCR eruit gehaald heeft.

Dit vanwege een ingreep die binnenkort plaatsvindt waarbij een laxeerprotocol met Picoprep bij hoort.

De tabel als plaatje

De tabel is niet leesbaar voor mensen met een visuele beperking, en is afgedrukt bovendien zo klein dat zelfs voor mensen met een normaal zicht dit bijna niet leesbaar is.

Vanuit oogpunt van (verplichte, zie onder) toegankelijkheid en inclusie van mensen met een beperking is dit onwenselijk.

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Posted in accessibility (a11y), Awareness, Development, Health, Hospital, Inclusion / inclusive society, LifeHacker, LUMC, Power User, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Vanaf 1 juli kost opheffen oude spaarrekening EUR 75, dus wees er snel bij: Beëindig je oude spaarproduct – ING – Sparen

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/20

[Wayback/Archive] Beëindig je oude spaarproduct – ING – Sparen: tot 1 juli kan dit nog zonder EUR 75 aan kosten.

De flow bestaat uit een stap of 30 (als je kiest voor online identificatie via IDIN) en eindigt heel onverwachts niet op ing.nl, maar op digitaal.id:

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Posted in Banking, Development, LifeHacker, Power User, User Experience (ux) | Leave a Comment »

Windows: require UAC elevation to enter password instead of a simple “Yes” helps preventing USB HID attacks

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/17

Of course you should be careful inserting random USB devices. Apart from USB HID attacks, they could perform other attacks like DMA ones.

To help preventing automated UAC elevation, you can make it harder to activate UAC by requiring a password. I think the below registry trick and policy is supported as of Windows 7, but it could be more recent (i.e. Windows 8.1).

The video below shows the trick, but does not document it in text. So here we go [WayBack] Windows doesn’t ask for your password when changing settings – Windows 10 Forums

reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" /v "ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f
reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" /v "ConsentPromptBehaviorUser" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f
reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" /v "EnableInstallerDetection" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f
reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" /v "EnableLUA" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f
reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" /v "EnableSecureUIAPaths" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f
reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" /v "EnableUIADesktopToggle" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f
reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" /v "FilterAdministratorToken" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f
reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" /v "PromptOnSecureDesktop" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f

(A more elaborate batch file with lots more hardening is at [WayBack] Win 10 edits · GitHub)

The registry trick is especially useful for Home editions of Windows which do not allow you to run the Security Policy control panel applet secpol.msc.

The first two values explained at [WayBack] How to configure Windows UAC prompt behavior for admins and users – gHacks Tech News:

ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin

This key defines the User Account Control behavior for system administrators. The default value is set to prompt but do not require credentials to be entered. Here are all possible values:

  • 0: A value of 0 allows administrators to perform operations that require elevation without consent (meaning prompts) or credentials (meaning authentication).
  • 1: A value of 1 requires the admin to enter username and password when operations require elevated privileges on a secure desktop.
  • 2: The value of 2 displays the UAC prompt that needs to be permitted or denied on a secure desktop. No authentication is required.
  • 3:  A value of 3 prompts for credentials.
  • 4: A value of 4 prompts for consent by displaying the UAC prompt.
  • 5: The default value of 5 prompts for consent for non-Windows binaries.

ConsentPromptBehaviorUser

  • 0: A value of 0 will automatically deny any operation that requires elevated privileges if executed by standard users.
  • 1: The value of 1 will display a prompt to enter the username and password of an administrator to run the operation with elevated privileges on the secure desktop.
  • 3: The default value of 3 prompts for credentials on a secure desktop.

The changes should take effect immediately. You can for instance set the admin behavior to 0 so that no prompts are displayed, and user behavior to 0 as well to prevent them from running operations that require elevated privileges.

Related:

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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 | Leave a Comment »

How can you export the Visual Studio Code extension list? (via: Stack Overflow)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/16

Adapted from [Archive.is] How can you export the Visual Studio Code extension list? – Stack Overflow, presuming that code is on the PATH:

  1. From the command-line interface on MacOS, Linux, BSD or on Windows with git installed:
    code --list-extensions | xargs -L 1 echo code --install-extension
  2. From the command-line interface on MacOS, Linux, BSD or on Windows without git installed:
    code --list-extensions | % { "code --install-extension $_" }

    or, as I think, more clearly (see also [WayBack] syntax – What does “%” (percent) do in PowerShell? – Stack Overflow):

    code --list-extensions | foreach { "code --install-extension $_" }

    or even more explanatory:

    code --list-extensions | ForEach-Object { "code --install-extension $_" }
  3. From the command-line interface on Windows as a plain cmd.exe command:
    @for /f %l in ('code --list-extensions') do @echo code --install-extension %l
  4. On Windows as a plain cmd.exe batch file (in a .bat/.cmd script):
    @for /f %%l in ('code --list-extensions') do @echo code --install-extension %%l
  5. The above two on Windows can also be done using PowerShell:
    PowerShell -Command "code --list-extensions | % { """""code --install-extension $_""""" }"

    Note that here too, the % can be expanded into foreach or ForEach-Object for clarity.

All of the above prepend “code --install-extension ” (note the trailing space) before each installed Visual Studio Code extension.

They all give you a list like this which you can execute on any machine having Visual Studio Code installed and its code on the PATH, and a working internet connection:

code --install-extension DavidAnson.vscode-markdownlint
code --install-extension ms-vscode.powershell
code --install-extension yzhang.markdown-all-in-onex

(This is about the minimum install for me to edit markdown documents and do useful things with PowerShell).

Of course you can pipe these to a text-file script to execute them later on.

The double-quote escaping is based on [Wayback/Archive.is] How to escape PowerShell double quotes from a .bat file – Stack Overflow:

you need to escape the " on the command line, inside a double quoted string. From my testing, the only thing that seems to work is quadruple double quotes """" inside the quoted parameter:

powershell.exe -command "echo '""""X""""'"

Via: [Archive.is] how to save your visual studio code extension list – Google Search

--jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, .NET, bash, Batch-Files, CommandLine, Console (command prompt window), Development, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Software Development, Visual Studio and tools, vscode Visual Studio Code, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Development, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, WSL Windows Subsystem for Linux, xargs | Leave a Comment »