Darkoshi

CyberChef

2023-10-07T09:18:24Z

Is anyone here familiar with using CyberChef? I found out about it through the MoneyGame3 puzzles, and it looks very neat. But I am was having trouble with a very basic thing.

Suppose I paste a binary value such as "10001010" into the input box. I want to convert that binary value to the decimal equivalent. So I use the "To Decimal" recipe. I expect an output such as 138. Instead it treats the input as text characters and outputs the decimal values of the ASCII zero and one characters: "49 48 48 48 49 48 49 48". What am I doing wrong?

Now I finally figured it out. I need to use "From Binary" first, and then "To Decimal".

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bleachy smell in water

2019-10-27T05:46:55Z

This year I've been smelling chlorine every so often, in the tap water coming out of the faucets. Before this year, I don't remember it ever smelling that way. Granted, most of the time it still doesn't smell that way, but it is pertinent to this post.

A few times the smell was so strong that I didn't even want to shower in it. One of those times there turned out to be a possible reason for it; some issue with the water supply which may have caused them to increase the added chlorine. Other people on the Nextdoor site were complaining about it too, so I knew it wasn't only me.

This year I also started using stainless steel water bottles to take water to work, instead of the glass bottles I used before. I made the switch because glass bottles can't be cleaned as well; the top is too narrow to get a brush in. With the steel bottles, I can brush them out after each use.

This year, I also started to smell an occasional unpleasant bleachy smell in the water from my steel water bottles, when drinking it at work. This is in spite of me using a faucet-mounted filter for my drinking water, like I've always done.

Yet the drinking water that I store in liter-sized glass bottles in the fridge never has that smell. (I'm not as concerned about not being able to clean those bottles out as I never put my lips on them. I only pour water into and out of them.)

It occurred to me that maybe the chlorine in the water doesn't dissipate as quickly in steel bottles, as the steel doesn't let light through.

So I started to store the filtered tap water in a couple of big glass jars by a window for a few days, before pouring it into my steel bottles to take to work. But I still notice the smell sometimes.

So. I'm not even sure if the smell is due to the water quality, or if it is somehow due to these steel bottles. Maybe it's due to the size of the bottle opening. Glass bottles have small openings, so maybe with those, the smell never hit my nose the same way. Drinking glasses have wide openings, so maybe with them the smell dissipates much quicker, also not hitting my nose in the same way. Or maybe it has something to do with the silicone ring on the bottle's cap, or something about stainless steel itself. Or maybe I've gotten more sensitive to the smell for some reason, even though the amount of chlorine hasn't changed.

I could switch back to taking a small glass bottle to work, to see if it makes a difference or not.

Maybe I should start refrigerating the water before putting it into the steel bottles, to see if that makes a difference. I could even boil a big pot of water once a week and store it, but from what I've read, I'm not sure even that would help.

Each time I've done research on the topic, I get overwhelmed by data, when I'm really looking for a simple fix.

Chlorine test strips, to see how much chlorine is in the water... apparently they are not very accurate, and rely on you comparing colors. Knowing how much bleach is in the water wouldn't really help with my problem anyway.

The smell may be from chloramines, not chlorine. Chlorine dissipates quickly when water is boiled or even when it just sits for a while. Chloramine takes much longer to dissipate even when boiled.

Based on the city's yearly water quality reports, they've been using both chlorine and chloramines for the water treatment since at least 2009. So it's not a new thing.

Now I've just read that adding vitamin C to the water can get rid of the chloramine. But I also read on a different page that some things break down chloramine into chlorine and ammonia, or something like that, and you need to make sure the ammonia isn't left in the water...

If vitamin C works, surely vinegar would too. I wonder if a small amount of vinegar in the water would taste bad or not. But I don't think I'm going to do that. Acid isn't good for teeth.

https://www.thesprucepets.com/remove-chloramines-from-tap-water-2924183
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/does-boiling-water-remove-chloramine.857730/
https://www.morebeer.com/articles/removing_chloramines_from_water
https://waterandhealth.org/healthy-pools/smells-chlorine/

Oh, I just remembered another thing. On my recent trip, the tap water in one motel in New Jersey smelled as bad or worse than the worst it's ever smelled here. I didn't want to shower and even brushing my teeth was unpleasant. I'd hate to live in a place like that.

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win why wi-fi why win

2019-05-15T05:48:40Z

I was writing a reply to a link post, but then my house internet went down before I could submit it. Oh so bothersome. How could I go to bed when I was thwarted right in the middle of that?

It wasn't an important reply. It could have waited until tomorrow. I should have gone to bed.
I shouldn't have been reading the link post in the first place. I should have gone to bed.

But I installed PdaNet on my Mint Mobile phone, and tethered my laptop to it, and finally was able to submit the reply. So yay, win on having switched the home phone to a mobile phone with an unlimited data plan that is still $20 cheaper per month than the original land-line phone plan.

But damn I've got 8am Skype calls again for work and I really need to get more sleep. Why oh why oh why do I have such a hard time going to bed when I ought to.

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Earthlink seems to be dying more and more

2019-04-28T08:03:48Z

I've had cable internet service through Earthlink, in conjunction with Time Warner, now Spectrum, since I moved into this house in 2007. At $41.95 a month, it was cheaper than getting service directly through Time Warner/Spectrum. Before that, I had Earthlink over DSL at the old house. (This house didn't get DSL, so that wasn't an option here.)

This is the last snapshot that the Wayback Machine has, from 2016/10/04, of the cable internet plans that Earthlink offered via Time Warner, Brighthouse, and Spectrum:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161004151417/http://www.earthlink.net/access/cable_offer.faces

Somewhen in the last few years, I read that that signing up for Earthlink service through Time Warner was no longer available for new customers. I had been looking to see if my mom could get it. This is the only page now that I can find that mentions it:
https://stopthecap.com/2017/12/27/earthlink-charter-spectrum-dead-no-new-customers-allowed/

In 2017, Windstream bought Earthlink:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/windstream-earthlink-to-combine-in-673-million-all-stock-deal-1478523397
http://fortune.com/2016/11/07/windstream-holdings-earthlink/

Now in 2019, Windstream sold Earthlink to a private equity firm:
https://www.lightwaveonline.com/articles/2019/01/windstream-sells-earthlink-consumer-unit-to-trive-capital.html

I only found out about the latter because I was wondering why my website hasn't been working for the last month or two. (Based on my browser history, the last time I was able to access it was on Feb. 16 of this year. Since then it's been showing "Sorry. It looks like there isn.t a page on our website at the address you requested (or it may be temporarily unavailable)."

I'm still able to login to my Earthlink account, and apparently the email address still works (though I never used it because initially it got so much spam).

Then I found this page, last modified on April 12, 2019:
https://support.earthlink.net/articles/web-hosting/free-webspace-faq.php

which gives a number that I can call, to potentially get my website up and working again.
But then it says:

How can I make changes to my WebSpace?
You are unable to edit your WebSpace. Your website will remain as is until March 31, 2020 at which time it will be permanently removed.

What does EarthLink plan to do with the WebSpace platform?
EarthLink will be decommissioning the WebSpace platform on March 31, 2020. At that time, all websites will be removed and the information will no longer be available.

So even if I got my site restored, I wouldn't be able to make any changes to it. And it would be gone next year anyway. Meh, so much for that. You would think they'd have at least notified their customers about this before-hand. They didn't.

A few other people have complained about it (the comments by "John of Oceanside, CA" and "Stacey of Fort Lauderdale, FL"):
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/internet/earthlink.htm

I have all my website files saved off locally, so I haven't lost anything. I'll be putting them back up at a different URL.

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Amazon FireTV & German TV channels / AT&T, TWC, Spectrum

2018-09-08T08:27:04Z

Qiao is switching from AT&T to Spectrum for his TV & internet (& home phone). He was paying about $130/month with AT&T, but the initial 2 year contract period was over and they had told him his bill was going to increase substantially (wow, way for them to shoot themselves in the foot. I don't understand why they would do that when there's still a cheaper alternative in town.)

So now he's supposedly going to be paying about $120/month with Spectrum. He didn't need the home phone part, but without bundling it, his bill would have instead been $150/month. (I don't understand that part either; even though I believe someone else on my list had mentioned something similar with their bill.)

In comparison, I don't subscribe to cable or satellite TV. I only watch over-the-air channels, and internet streaming. (Though I do also watch Q's TV, when I'm over at his house.) My internet bill is $41.95/month. My home phone bill is now nearly $36/month, but I plan to drop that in the near future.

Anyway, Spectrum installed the cable line in Q's house today, and this evening we tried to get everything working again. Q had bought his own router... the wired internet connection on it was working but not wi-fi, even though the wi-fi had worked earlier. I finally figured out that the router had a wi-fi button which had accidentally been switched off.

Next problem was that the Amazon FireTV box was only partially working. We've had similar trouble with it before. The resolution was set wrong, causing the screen to be black. Because the screen is black, you can't get into the settings to change the resolution. You have to press 2 buttons on the remote for 5 seconds and then it supposedly starts switching between resolutions, so you can choose the one that works. But that wasn't working right either, until after 5 or 6 tries and unplugging and replugging and restarting, it finally did.

Then I started looking through the apps on the Amazon FireTV. Had trouble getting them to work right at first; whenever I clicked on any of them, Netflix kept coming up instead. But then finally the other apps started working too. Youtube & Vimeo, in high resolution on the big screen!

Then I found several German TV apps on it. You can watch German TV shows for free! It's mostly news shows, but there were some other non-news shows mixed in too. I'll have to explore it more. Only in one of those apps did I bump into a geographic restriction preventing it from playing some of the selections.

I guess these apps should work on Android too? I'm not sure.
ARD Mediathek
3Sat Mediathek
Deutsche Welle
ZDF Heute
ARD Tagesschau
And others.

I didn't install this one, but I'm curious about it:
YouTV videorecorder Deutsches TV german television

..

In our area, we used to have Time Warner Cable, but it was taken over by Spectrum.
I thought I had heard that Spectrum and AT&T were planning a merger too, which was concerning to me as then there'd only be one internet & TV company to choose from in this area.

Yes, there are two Time Warners, and AT&T isn’t buying the cable company - from October, 2016. This may explain some of my confusion.
AT&T agreed to buy Time Warner Inc. It is not trying to buy Time Warner Cable.
...
If AT&T wanted to buy Time Warner Cable, it would have to talk with its new owner, cable company Charter Communications that now calls itself Spectrum. It completed a $60 billion buyout of the cable company in May.

But then again:
AT&T and Spectrum To Merge??

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electric bills

2018-08-09T01:28:28Z

Conuly asked how much people pay on their electric bills. I'm linking it here for my own future reference, as I'm fascinated by the different amounts that people pay (even though the number cruncher in me wants a lot more details).

https://conuly.dreamwidth.org/2735589.html

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New Year

2018-01-04T08:09:50Z

I've seen SW:The Last Jedi a second time, and have added some updates (tagged in italics) to my review post (many spoilers).

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I've finished putting hex fencing all around the bottom of Qiao's fence, to keep the dogs from digging out. I'm not convinced it will stop them, but it should slow them down. I'm almost finished putting small-mesh fencing all along the top of Qiao's fence, to keep the small dog from climbing out.

It's been very cold here these last days (below freezing), though not nearly as cold as in other places. I've found that as long as it is dry and not windy, I can work outside without the cold bothering me. My warm hooded winter jacket, along with my headband/earmuffs and fleece or flannel-lined pants, keep me quite warm. The worst part is that my nose is incessantly runny in cold weather. I have to blow my nose every few minutes, which leads to the skin around my nose getting dry and chapped. This year I've been applying lotion and creme to the skin, which has helped a lot. Not much cracked skin so far, and hardly even any blood in my snot.

For that matter, this was the first year I can recall not having any allergies during Fall and Winter. I'm not sure why.

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Qiao's internet went out shortly before midnight on New Year's Eve, and was out for over 2 days - AT&T finally got it working again this morning. I hate that when that happens, there's no place to check to find out what caused the problem, and what the current status is, and how long it will really take to get fixed. The automated phone message you get when calling customer support just says there's an outage affecting the area that should be fixed in 24 hours (but it wasn't).

When there are power outages, SCE&G is so much better in that regard. You can call an automated number to report the problem, and you can find out how many people are affected by the outage, and how long the remaining estimated repair time is. You can even choose to get a call-back to notify you when the power has been restored.

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photos

2017-08-19T07:58:50Z

Three vultures and a crow in a dead tree. The crow seemed to be cawing at the vultures.

Impressive power lines.

I call this the "yellow brick road". Yellow flowers grow in this gravel path, and only in the path, not in the surrounding fields of grass.

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solar power

2017-07-13T03:13:42Z

Our electric company has a program where you can either buy or rent solar panels which are set up out in the countryside (rather than on your roof). They take care of all the setup and maintenance. As I want to support clean renewable energy, it sounds like a great thing for me to do. But after reading the details about the program, I have a nagging feeling that it sounds too good to be true.

Especially the part in the FAQ about renting panels, which says "Monthly credits are expected to be greater than monthly fees providing for instant saving."
I wonder if the panels provide more power when they are new, so that to begin with, the credits might exceed the fees, but in later years the reverse would be true?

Do any of you have experience, or know someone with experience, in these type of programs?

The electric company also has a rooftop solar program. Each customer can only participate in one of the programs, not both. I've seen several houses with solar panels on their roofs. My house would likely be a good candidate for that too, as it gets a good amount of sunshine. But the idea of putting solar panels on my roof worries me in that
- the panels would interfere with getting the shingles replaced, whenever the shingles eventually need to be replaced (although maybe they lengthen the life of the shingles underneath them, as the shingles would be less exposed?)
- if someone needs to walk on my roof for something (cleaning gutters, fixing leaks, trimming tree branches), the panels would be in the way
- if not installed well, they might cause roof leaks?

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Federal Subscriber Line Charge

2017-05-19T02:15:19Z

My last AT&T landline phone bill amounts to $32.81, of which $19.40 is for the residential line. Everything else is taxes, fees, and surcharges. The highest of those is $8.17 for a "Federal Subscriber Line Charge".

This FCC page says:

The Subscriber Line Charge is a fee that you pay to your local phone company that connects you to the telephone network. Local telephone companies recover some of the costs of telephone lines connected to your home or business through this monthly charge on your local telephone bill. Sometimes called the federal subscriber line charge, this fee is regulated and capped by the FCC, not by state Public Utility Commissions. It is not a tax or a fee charged by the government. The money received from the subscriber line charge goes directly to local telephone companies. To ensure that all Americans can afford at least a minimal level of basic telephone service, the FCC will not allow phone companies to charge more than $6.50 for a single line.

I have only a single line. So I'm wondering why my charge is more than $6.50. Does anyone else out there have a landline phone bill for a single line, with a monthly Subscriber Line Charge of higher than $6.50? I'm thinking maybe they increased the cap, but didn't update the web page... But even back in January 2014, I was being billed $6.78 for it. Only as far back as June 2012 was it under $6.50.

The main reason I still have a landline is for work. I haven't had many dial-in meetings lately, but there's always the possibility they can come up again. Cell phones aren't ideal for them.

Update:
This page mentions that there was talk in 2008 of increasing the cap to $8.50.

This page mentions that some companies are allowed to charge higher amounts, but it sounds to me that wouldn't apply to AT&T. A prior post in the thread indicates that this this part of the Federal Code of Regulations controls the cap. But I'm not sure if that data is up to date.

Many other people have posted about being charged more than $6.50, so it doesn't seem to be an unusual thing.

Update - 2017/05/20:
I corrected a typo above; my residential line charge is $19.40, not $17.40.

I also found the following information which explains why my Federal Subscriber Line Charge (FSLC) is higher than the $6.50 cap, even though that cap hasn't changed. The amount on my bill must be a combination of 2 charges - the FSLC and an "Access Recovery Charge".

Understanding Your Telephone Bill and Charges:

Beginning July 1, 2012, the FCC will allow Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) to assess a new Access Recovery Charge (ARC). The FCC will allow Incumbent LECs to bill the ARC separately, or to combine the ARC with the SLC for purposes of billing the two charges. The FCC will allow Incumbent LECs to assess a monthly charge of up to $0.50 per line on residential end users, single-line business customers, and non-primary residential lines. The $0.50 ARC may increase an additional $0.50 annually through 2016 or 2017...

I also found the following blurb on my old bill from July 2012, which was the first month that the amount went over $6.50:
Effective 7/3/2012, the Federal Subscriber Line Charge, regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, will increase. Your current bill reflects the change.

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OMG no internet OMG NOES

2016-10-28T06:09:15Z

This is the 2nd night in a row my internet has gone down. Yesterday it was from about 12:30am to 1:07am. Today it was from 12:20am to 1:30am.

You might think that would be a good nudge to get me to go to bed a bit earlier than otherwise. But no, it leaves me too distraught to want to go to bed. I end up staying up even later than I might otherwise. I was in the middle of looking stuff up! How can I just drop everything and go to bed? Why isn't it working? Trying to see if rebooting the modem will fix it, etc. I hadn't even gotten to the point where I could relax by reading some LJ pages, before it went down.

Without the internet, I can't even play Words With Friends, like I sometimes do while brushing my teeth.
Without the internet, I can't even look up what the weather will be tomorrow, to decide what clothes I'll wear. Though I could have brought it up on my phone.

Pondering whether I should buy an external phone modem to use when the cable modem goes down... do ISPs even still have back-up dial-up modem numbers?
Pondering whether I should open accounts with both TWC and AT&T, just so that if one of them goes down, hopefully the other one would still be up. Bah, no. Are there any other affordable options?

I suppose I could get a cell phone plan with more data, and use that for backup.

Now that the internet is working again, reading reports from other people that it must have been a fairly widespread outage, and that their internet went out yesterday too, is soothing. It's not just me. It will get fixed. Hopefully it won't happen again tomorrow.

I put that outage website link in my phone so that I can at least check it if the house internet goes down again.

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boom boom boom

2016-07-05T05:04:05Z

Fireworks noise. At least one of my dogs has been acting like the world is coming to an end, and she doesn't know what to do. I had to put them both outside earlier because the small one's non-stop barking at the noise was starting to drive me batty, and I had to cook the vegetables. Otherwise I wouldn't have time to cook them til next weekend, and they'd go bad.

Interestingly, outside (probably in the garage), she stopped barking.

I went outside to check on them a little while ago, and to look at the fireworks which were getting louder. Going back inside, they forced their way in the door with me. Inside, the little one started barking again, in between running around. They both appear to have calmed down now.

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I succeed at many things, but I feel like a failure too.
The table's a non-stop mess of stuff.
I recorded mediocre audio of the cicadas and katydids (that is what the night-time tree critters are) on Thursday/Friday, but didn't have time to edit/post it.
I put up curtain rods for my mom. I put up a shelf in the kitchen.
I wanted to finally switch to the new laptop. Like the last times, I only managed to finish the "backup my data" step. Now it's almost 1am and by the time I'll have time for it again, I'll have updated a bunch of files again, so I'll have to start back over at the "backup my data" step.
I cooked the dang vegetables and made a salad with most of the cucumbers.
We went to the Santee again on Saturday. Road trips almost always leave me with headaches, and this was no exception.

I took a shower. I made lunches. I vacuumed. I washed some clothes. I swapped some light-bulbs. Oh. The boxes. I need to decide what to do with all the old incandescent bulbs. It's not like I'm going to start using them. So I might as well give them away. But should I keep some maybe, and if so how many, and which ones?
I cleaned out the cooler and washed the dog food bin.

My internet has a sporadic speed and connection problem but I don't have time to deal with it. Is there a way to determine/prove that it's a provider problem versus a modem problem? I'm afraid if I call TWC about it, they'll say that since I'm using my own modem instead of leasing one of theirs, that it must be due to my modem.

I need to sign up with a doctor but I don't have time to deal with it.

I need to start going to bed early enough to get enough sleep. but i don't but i don't

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