Author Topic: A random thread for small computing things that don't really warrant a thread of their own  (Read 296376 times)

Gattopardo

  • Lord of the sith
  • Overseaing the building of the death star
Amazon solved the problem, which annoys me as am loathed to use amazon.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
You know when you have an Asus EeePC, yeah, and it's, like, nine years old, yeah, and it's got Windows 10, yeah, and it like hasn't been switched on since like October 2016?

Yes, exactly like that...
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
I'm impressed that an Eee will run (well, walk) Windows 10.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Fresh-ish install back then, cruft pared back to the minimum and very limited number of applications.  It's updating itself ATM so natch it'll put all the crufty apps back on  :'(
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Gattopardo

  • Lord of the sith
  • Overseaing the building of the death star
Win 10 works fine, just needs the memory maxed out to 2gb!!!!!!!

woollypigs

  • Mr Peli
    • woollypigs
The latest version of win10 has given life in one old laptop. So there might be hope for the eee yet, if it survives nearly 3 years of updates :)
Current mood: AARRRGGGGHHHHH !!! #bollockstobrexit

Gattopardo

  • Lord of the sith
  • Overseaing the building of the death star
Or the obsolescence of bits like wifi cards.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
In my current job, I have a wireless Apple keyboard. It has just occurred to me that I have not yet had to plug it in to recharge it. That's pretty impressive, considering I have been using it for several hours a day five days a week since 22nd October, with just a few days off for Christmas - much better than the cheap shit Anker wireless keyboard I use at home, which also drops the connection regularly.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Does anyone know anything about TOR?

I run a public website for aircraft enthusiasts at Heathrow (yes, yes, I know!) and I don't have any problem with visitors with web browsers using the data it displays on arrivals and departures (that's what it's there for), but it's become clear that it's also being accessed by someone running a screen-scraper bot that hoovers up the data at regular intervals (despite the banner on the site saying that no automated scripts or bots are allowed).

The client IP addresses of the bot used to access the site vary, and a reverse DNS search on any of them typically comes up with something like "this-is-a-tor-exit-node.filepit.to", so it's clear that the perpetrator is using TOR to disguise their actual IP address, which I would otherwise block.

I know there are public lists of TOR exit nodes, but they don't seem particularly complete.  Is there any way of detecting TOR access programmatically from the server log (IIS) so that my application can use that to decide whether to allow/disallow access?

I'd stress that I have nothing against TOR as a concept, I appreciate that it's a lifesaver in less enlightened countries, but I'm not willing to accept it being used for what is, essentially, hacking my website.

ian

In my current job, I have a wireless Apple keyboard. It has just occurred to me that I have not yet had to plug it in to recharge it. That's pretty impressive, considering I have been using it for several hours a day five days a week since 22nd October, with just a few days off for Christmas - much better than the cheap shit Anker wireless keyboard I use at home, which also drops the connection regularly.

Pretty good aren't they? I think I have to recharge about once every six months (same for the mouse and trackpad). Also rock solid, which I simply don't expect from Bluetooth

I run a public website for aircraft enthusiasts at Heathrow (yes, yes, I know!) and I don't have any problem with visitors with web browsers using the data it displays on arrivals and departures (that's what it's there for), but it's become clear that it's also being accessed by someone running a screen-scraper bot that hoovers up the data at regular intervals (despite the banner on the site saying that no automated scripts or bots are allowed).

They're just using TOR to prevent you from banning a specific IP address.

I'd gather as much info as you can about the thing doing the scraping.

i.e. log all of the headers presented (e.g. user-agent[1]), timing info (does it make several queries in a row, does it make the queries at the same times, etc)

You might find that there's something specific about that client you can use to detect it.

If you outright ban it then you can expect them to work out how and make it harder for you to detect it in the future, so it becomes an endless game of whack-a-mole.

You can be much sneakier. I've written a bunch of things to scrape other sites (honouring their robots.txt and other wishes) and what annoyed me most was when the format of the response changes.

If you detect the annoying client then change the format of the page you return, add in new divs, add an extra column, that kind of thing.

One other fun thing is if you can reliably detect this client amongst all of the legitimate clients then occasionally send it incorrect data.

1. I know these can be trivially faked, but that person having to do that will cost them some time. At some point in the whack-a-mole game you'll either exhaust their (or your) patience or technical ability.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
You can be much sneakier. I've written a bunch of things to scrape other sites (honouring their robots.txt and other wishes) and what annoyed me most was when the format of the response changes.

If you detect the annoying client then change the format of the page you return, add in new divs, add an extra column, that kind of thing.

Having had the misfortune to have to dabble in scraping things[1] from time to time, I second that approach.  Assuming it won't break things for the legitimate users, you can do it without having to detect the scraper.


[1] Usually to get data out of embedded devices, rather than from public websites.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Newly relocated PC starts making expensive noises every time graphics card breaks out of a stroll.  Dive (more like, "bomb", TBH) under desk with torch, pull off side panel, poke errant disk drive cable away from one of graphics card's fans.  Peace and normal heart rate restored.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Would anyone like:

- a Wacom Graphire  ET-0405-U usb tablet with pointer and mouse?  vintage is likely 2001 or thereabouts.

- a Sharp Zaurus SL5500 with gubbins (including a 64!!1! Mb!!1!, count 'em, SD card)

- Also on offer JVC-JRS100 receiver, mostly works, vintage....'75? probably only fit for spares, has a hefty PS in it but unlikely worth any shipping cost. anyone got an actual use for it I'll cover shipping headed dumpwards

Headed dump-wards shortly (prob not the Zaurus)

Steph

  • Fast. Fast and bulbous. But fluffy.
Just a simple question, coming from the lunatic TERF fringe of Twitter.

They keep posting the construction "&amp" after various insulting words. Anyone have a translation for me?
Mae angen arnaf i byw, a fe fydda'i

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
No idea what the TERFs are doing, but ampersands are a special character in HTML[1] (to embed arbitrary characters by their code point[2] - for example Y gives you a 'Y').  Consequently, if you just stick an ampersand in, the parser tries to interpret what follows as something special rather than simply generating an ampersand character.   To embed an ampersand without the parser interpreting it as a command, it gets encoded as &

Consequently, lots of systems that are designed to process normal text for use on the web will escape the ampersands.

Many buggy systems get this stuff wrong, for all sorts of tedious reasons, but a popular example is taking input where the ampersands are *already* escaped as & and naively escaping it again (so it becomes &) and you end up seeing &-related rubbish in the output.

TL;DR: It might simply be a result of copy&pasting in software[4] that's a bit clever, but not clever enough.  But I'm not discounting the possibility of a new internet slang that I'm not aware of.


[1] Certainly the older standards - it think the current ones allow an un-escaped ampersand?
[2] This is more useful for symbols and characters used in non-English[3] languages.
[3] For USAnian values of English.  £ is useful to Brits, for example.
[4] Possibly a troll-bot?

Feanor

  • It's mostly downhill from here.
Thought I'd just killed my 8 port USB charger which does Fast Charging to my Samsung phone.

I had it connected to my new Suunto watch, which connects via a USB using contact pads much like the Garmin units.  The Garmin units have a crocodile clippy arrangement to clamp the cable to the pads.  The Suunto is magnetic.  The cable end has a strong magnet which clamps itself to the back of the watch, which works very well.  There are ridges which make the thing self-aligning, so you don't need to manually jibble it so much.

I disconnected the watch, and the cable end then clamped itself firmly to the metal base of the lamp on the bedside table.
Whilst the cable was humping the lamp, it was shorting out all its connector pins.
Also, the lamp has a touch dimmer, so goodness knows what low current mains voltage AC was present on the lamp base.

The charger died.

But after I came back in from the restaurant and pub, it had come back to life!
Yay!

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
It being the 30th anniversary of the launch of that most iconic of small computing things - the Macintosh SE/30 - we thought we'd dig barakta's one out for a play.

Sadly, while the screen still worked in that beautifully sharp way that only mono CRTs can, it failed to boot with classic symptoms of a memory error.  Opening up the case (made easier by past-us having not replaced the bastard-awkward torx screws from hell last time we had it open) we discovered a large clump of corrosive powdery ick where the corner of the circuit board with the realtime clock and something ROM-related was supposed to be.

That's going on the WEEE pile then.   :(


If anyone's got an old computer gathering dust, this is your irregular reminder to remove any internal backup batteries.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
I have been struggling with a brand new MacBook Air, which would not accept a password I gave it last night and which worked last night.
Apple forums would not allow Hellymedic as a name for me, probably because it is 'profane'...

Have now managed the problem...


hellymedic

  • Just do it!
David and I bought two identical 13" MacBook Air computers from John Lewis Clearance earlier this week.

We have both had very 'interesting' experiences setting them up.

They Just Did NOT work.

David has used Apple devices for over 30 years.

He ascribed my problems to meatware until he had his own issues, which seemed harder to crack than mine.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Saw a report yesterday (Graun or NYT) that Google were planning API changes to Chrome that would scupper all advert blockers but Adblock Plus, with whom they have a contract to let Google's ads, and maybe a few others, through.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

ian

My wife killed my geriatric Macbook Air. The battery was dying and the charging somewhat haphazard, usually the light would come on after a while. Anyway, she ran it down to zero dancing around to some Body Combat rubbish.

Dead as a doornail. Poor thing. (Computer, not wife.)

It’s a bit of bummer that Google Inbox is getting killed, and at the end of March it reverts to Gmail. The Gmail page just looks like a complete mess, certainly on the web.

 :(


woollypigs

  • Mr Peli
    • woollypigs
So Peli said "oh I found a good French song, let me see if I can find it" and started to tap away on her mobile.  So for a laugh I searched for "a good french song" on youtube on my PC, and played the first result. Peli said "I got it "search for X, as I was typing that into youtube I looked at the title of the song I was playing and it was the song that I was searching for, for Peli.

here is the song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CZprPGN_3Y
Current mood: AARRRGGGGHHHHH !!! #bollockstobrexit