The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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The state of malware today: From Highly Obfuscated Batch File to XWorm and Redline – SANS Internet Storm Center

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/10

A very interesting read, where it keeps me wondering how batch files like these are being generated (making them by hand feels very surreal): [Wayback/Archive] From Highly Obfuscated Batch File to XWorm and Redline – SANS Internet Storm Center

VirusTotal entry: [Wayback/Archive] VirusTotal – File – 453c017e02e6ce747d605081ad78bf210b3d0004a056d1f65dd1f21c9bf13a9a

The day after the article was written, only Kaspersky and ZoneAlarm detected it; in the past ZoneAlarm used the Kaspersky engine, but that stopped a while ago: [Wayback/Archive] ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus Review | PCMag.

The malware uses at least these technologies:

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Posted in Antivirus, Batch-Files, Development, Power User, PowerShell, Python, Scripting, Security, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Thread by @troyhunt: the Internet Archive was breached, DDoSed and defaced – reset your passwords (it’s the same account as for their Wayback Machine)

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/10

was it a little more than a DDoS?

Despite messages of the Internet Archive and Wayback Machine were fully up again after the DDoS in the last few days (usually starting at around 20:00 UTC, lasting for hours at a time, but today at 10:00 UTC), countermeasures of their password breach at the end of September and defacement yesterday, today they still had Wayback Machine archiving issues:

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

Documentation should be easily searchable (No documentation | CommitStrip)

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/10

Nowadays software development documentation is usually sparse and distributed, which means it should be well searchable.

[Wayback/Archive] No documentation | CommitStrip

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

The Deadlock Empire: end-screen

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/09

Forgot to schedule this back in the days, but this was the end screen of [Wayback/Archive] The Deadlock Empire (blog about it before, see links below):

Congratulations!

Two threads were in a critical section at the same time.

In the end… victory!

The Parallel Wizard is destroyed and his fortress crumbles at your feet. You have won. Never again will programmers over the world have to endure the difficulty of correct multithreaded programming because in defeating the Parallel Wizard, you have banished concurrency. The world will be as it was decades ago, with computer running at a reasonable speed and in the right order, as prescribed by the wise programmers.

‘Although,’ you wonder, ‘the tricks I used were somewhat useful… and I did feel quite a bit faster when parallelized. Perhaps there is something to this whole parallelism thing.’

Indeed, perhaps there is, commander. Perhaps parallelism is useful, after all, Master Scheduler. The points you make are valid and maybe you should not be so quick to dismiss the advantages of parallelism and faster execution. After all, with the skills you gained fighting The Deadlock Empire, don’t you think that you have become…

…an even greater Parallel Wizard?

Thank you, dear Scheduler, for playing The Deadlock Empire. We hope you had as much fun playing this game as we had making it. Concurrency programming is hard but it’s also beautiful in a way and the world can always use more people learned in its ways. You are to be congratulated for making it this far. We are looking forward to the new software or games you will create using your knowledge of multithreading.

You mastered all the lessons of The Deadlock Empire. Thank you for playing!
Any thoughts about the game or ideas for improvement? We’d like to hear those! Just fill out this form.

The “this form” link likely dies in 2025 because of the Googl shortener sunset earlier. It pointed to [Wayback/Archive] The Deadlock Empire feedback.

Blog links:

--jeroen

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

40 Years Ago, Drexel Made Computer — and Apple — History

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/09

Not having lived in the USA, I was unaware this was major step there: [Wayback/Archive] 40 Years Ago, Drexel Made Computer — and Apple — History.

A big part of the importance – giving them away for free – fails in the above link title, but the content makes up for that very well.

Boy, this was so different from my education era (:

I you want to see how this worked 40 years ago, be sure to read [Wayback/Archive] In Pictures: When Drexel gave every student a Mac in 1980s – Interesting Engineering.

This great VCF East recapitulation pointed me to the Drexel Macintosh: [Wayback/Archive] VCF East 2024 – A Whirlwind of Retro Shenanigans! – YouTube.

There is even this beautiful video: [Wayback/Archive] 1984 ‘Drexel’ Macintosh 128K- Restoration and History! – YouTube

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Posted in Apple, Classic Macintosh, History, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Downloading a file from the Windows console without first installing a command-line tool

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/09

Note that the below methods likely will cause security warnings if a Windows machine has been properly configured, but in most cases at least one of them works.

  1. using cURL (Widows 10 and up)
    curl --url https://speed.hetzner.de/100MB.bin --output %TEMP%\100MB.bin
  2. using [Wayback/Archive] certutil | Microsoft Docs (at least Windows 7 and up; needs UAC elevation)
    certutil.exe -urlcache -split -f https://speed.hetzner.de/100MB.bin %TEMP%\100MB.bin
  3. using PowerShell (at least Windows Vista and up)
    powershell.exe -Command (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('https://speed.hetzner.de/100MB.bin','%TEMP%\100MB.bin')

I think it works for all versions of curl, certutil, and PowerShell though I did not have anything older than up-to-date Windows 7 (having PowerShell version 3) and recent to test on.

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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, .NET, Batch-Files, CommandLine, cURL, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Development, Windows Vista | Leave a Comment »

Online Paste to Markdown (in JavaScript + HTML)

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/08

Apparently I was living under a stone since the 2015 introduction of [Wayback/Archive] Paste to Markdown:

Paste to Markdown

Instructions

  1. Find the text to convert to Markdown (e.g., in another browser tab)
  2. Copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+C, or ⌘+C on Mac)
  3. Paste it into this window (Ctrl+V, or ⌘+V on Mac)
  4. The converted Markdown will appear!

The conversion is carried out by to-markdown, a Markdown converter written in JavaScript and running locally in the browser.

The “to-markdown” I did already know (see A few HTML to Markdown converters written in javascript, Python, Ruby, PHP and C#) but has been renamed from [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – domchristie/to-markdown: An HTML to Markdown converter written in JavaScript into then “turndown” repository below.

More links:

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Posted in Development, HTML, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Lightweight markup language, MarkDown, Scripting, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Fixing the Google Calendar item editor CSS so the title 40% of my window width

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/08

When working on larger screens, I am always amazed at how little window estate most web sites actually use.

For sites that just try to look nice that is not so much or a problem, but for productivity sites it is.

The go-to solution for this is to manually modify the CSS. This can often be a pain because the CSS is either deeply nested or – even worse – uses semi-random HTML class attribute values.

This post is a reminder to myself to check if the below CSS modification in my Stylus library still works (gist link is at the bottom of this post):

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Posted in CSS, HTML, HTML5, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Is it OK to lure a telemarketer into resetting their phone?

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/07

The below link was on G+, and is usually posted as alt-text less image so the text has mostly disappeared from search engines.

Every now and then, I see it posted as a meme, but I wonder if it is OK to pull such a trick to lure a telemarketer into resetting their phone.

Thoughts?

The G+ post: [Wayback/Archive] Chris Blasko, G+, 20150804: Today is a good day. I just had a call from a telemarketer. Did I yell and sc…

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

“Macrogol en electrolyten ratiopharm 13.7g poeder voor drank” definitief uit de handel: hopelijk is die van Teva niet alleen uit dezelfde fabriek, maar ook exact hetzelfde.

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/07

Al eerder schreef ik over hoe mijn lichaam niet lekker reageert op verschillende leveranciers van Macrogol: Linkjes rondom Macrogol: die van Ratiopharm verdraag ik het beste.

Zomer dit jaar was ineens Ratiopharm niet verkrijgbaar. Een maand later alsnog, dus ik probeerde een ijzeren voorraad aan te leggen (zie tweets verderop *). Dat laatste is mislukt: bij de bestelling in september bleek de Macrogol van Ratiopharm opnieuw niet leverbaar en kreeg ik Teva geleverd (omdat die als tweede uit mijn testlijst kwam).

Ik was in het begin overrompeld, en schreef daarom deze Facebookberichten in private groep:

  1. post

    Weet iemand of “Macrogol en electrolyten ratiopharm 13,7 g, poeder voor drank” nog verkrijgbaar is in Nederland?

    Die van Ratiopharm verdraagt mijn lichaam het beste, maar mijn eigen apotheek kan er niet meer aan komen en heeft nu Teva in levering.

    3 maanden terug duurde het ruim een maand om wel Ratiopharm geleverd te krijgen en schreef ik deze blog-post: wiert.me/…/linkjes-rondom-macrogol-die-van…/

    Weet iemand of de Macrogol van Ratiopharm en Teva uit dezelfde fabricagelijn komen (Teva heeft Ratiopharm in 2010 overgenomen)?

    (Edit: de apotheker kreeg via hun leverancier hier helaas geen duidelijk antwoord op; de vorige keer werd er door de leverancier ook een beetje omheengedraaid en kwam het uiteindelijk toch goed)

  2. comment

    Ik lijk mazzel te gaan krijgen: Teva Nederland B.V., hoewel telefonisch een beetje vreemd bereikbaar (ik kwam op via Google maps.app.goo.gl/7qdCESPwS7KckJ6j9 op het centrale nummer +31235147147 eerst bij een heel norse snelsprekende security medewerker uit die me gelukkig wel doorverbond met een veel duidelijk sprekender customer care medewerker).

    Macrogol en electrolyten ratiopharm 13.7g poeder voor drank: www.geneesmiddeleninformatiebank.nl/bijsluiters/h113558.pdf

    «

    Fabrikant
    Hermes Pharma Ges.m.b.H.
    Schwimmschulweg 1a
    9400 Wolfsberg
    Oostenrijk

    Klocke Pharma-Service GmbH
    Strassburger Straße 77
    77767 Appenweier
    Duitsland

    »

    Macrogol en electrolyten Teva 13.7g poeder voor drank: www.geneesmiddeleninformatiebank.nl/bijsluiters/h115509.pdf

    «

    Fabrikant
    Hermes Pharma Ges.m.b.H.
    Schwimmschulweg 1a
    9400 Wolfsberg
    Oostenrijk

    Klocke Pharma-Service GmbH
    Strassburger Straße 77
    77767 Appenweier
    Duitsland

    »

    Ik had de boel getest in deze volgorde (met telkens 2 weken afzien bij wisseling):

      1. Teva (bijna even goed als Ratiopharm)
      2. Apothex (heel slecht)
      3. Sandoz
      4. Ratiopharm

    Met deze uitslag (van goed naar slecht):

      1. Ratiopharm
      2. Teva (bijna even goed als Ratiopharm)
      3. Sandoz
      4. Apothex (heel slecht)

    Ratiopharm en Teva zaten toen niet na elkaar in de testvolgorde (ik had 2 jaar lang Teva gebruikt wat ineens door Ratiopharm/Aurobindo die heel slecht viel).

    Mijn sterke vermoeden is dat Teva en Ratiopharm uit dezelfde productielijn vandaan komen, dus hopelijk wordt het minder afzien dan toen tijdens de test.

Met deze query lijkt het dat 1 product van Auro/Aurobindo ook bij deze fabrikanten betrekt: [Wayback/Archive] site:https://www.geneesmiddeleninformatiebank.nl/bijsluiters/ macrogol hermes Klocke -Salutas – Sök på Google

[Wayback/Archive] www.geneesmiddeleninformatiebank.nl/bijsluiters/h124472.pdf (bevat helaas geen goede lijst bestanddelen, maar staan gelukkig wel in [Wayback/Archive] Macrogol en electrolyten Auro 13,8 g, poeder voor drank | Geneesmiddeleninformatiebank | College ter Beoordeling van Geneesmiddelen; andere bijsluiters en overzichten staan in de blogpost gelinkt in de eerste alinea).

Maar let op: Auro/Aurobindo levert ook een andere variant van een andere fabrikant – dit was degene die heel slecht viel bij mij:

[Wayback/Archive] www.geneesmiddeleninformatiebank.nl/bijsluiters/h117543.pdf (met bestanddelen in )[Wayback/Archive] Macrogol en elektrolyten Aurobindo 13,7 g, poeder voor drank | Geneesmiddeleninformatiebank | College ter Beoordeling van Geneesmiddelen)

Macrogol lijkt een wirwar van leveranciers en fabrikanten. Hopelijk hoef ik de komende jaren niet nog eens te wisselen van product.

IJzeren voorraad

Dit is niet de eerste keer dat ik tegen problemen met geneesmiddelen en aanverwante producten loop. Ik probeer dus een ijzeren voorraad aan te leggen zodanig dat ook als levering via apotheek enige maanden uitblijft ik niet zonder producten kom te zitten.

Ik tweette eerder hierover: [Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers @wiert@mastodon.social on X: “@JW_VLD Het is inmiddels gelukt, en mijn ijzeren voorraad met Ratiopharm ga ik groter maken.”.

Na succesvol overschakelen op Teva ga ik dit doorzetten.

(Gearchiveerde) links

--jeroen

Posted in About, Health, LifeHacker, Personal, Power User | Leave a Comment »