Hex Messages when Reverse Engineering

One of the things I did in 2018 was a bit of reverse engineering, the company I worked for had bought a bunch of older hardware which had to be reused, the trouble being?  They had bought the hardware NOT the software.

It look a lot of USB sniffing and signal trapping but eventually I had the device handshake and could see it spew me messages, from these I saw the header format was pretty simple just a pair of bytes and then a length byte followed by whatever the message was.

Interacting with the device stimulated it into sending more messages, so we could start to map physical actions to these USB packet ghosts, eventually we had all the ones we could just prod out of the unit, so it was time to work on more advanced interactions and actually try to tell the device to carry out actions for us.

This immediately met with problems, you see the messages coming out had a counter in the footer, it turned out that if you sent a message you had to use the next number... so receiving messages 1, 2, 3 and then you send 4 and receive 5.  Keeping this in sync was a little bit of black magic, but it soon made sense the unit was serial in operation, you could only talk when it was listening, and it only listened after certain choice messages it sent to you.

This all made sense.... What didn't make sense was a four byte message I saw every few minutes, this frustrated me no end....

10111110111011111101111010101101

I converted these to two into an integer... 3203391149... It didn't ring any bells, but I persisted and was rewarded when I switched it into hex...

BEEF DEAD

This is a common message left in hex in code, as a joke, but it was also apt, the board was not going to talk until a full handshake was given again and the packet series stream started over to order things.  Cute.

I've found other hex strings, but this one was the first on this particular board

Form of Ready Player One Sequel?

I've just finished a re-read of "Ready Player One"; and I heard tell that Ernie had embarked on writing a sequel... Now before you all start I make the distinction between the film and the book, we are talking about the book.

In fact, those of you who haven't read the book... (Spoiler alert)... It starts out being written as the true story, to set the record straight... Straight up calling the movie out as wrong!  Oh yeah, love that preemptive strike on the Spielberg saga.

Anyway, the sequel eh?... Lets gather around the camp fire and think about this...

It can't be another hunt, we've had a hunt, Z is the man now, we may get a little friction between the members of the high-5 and Z maybe?... But it's going to be about what they find within the folds of the fabric of the Oasis.

Perhaps whether Halliday's Avatar was some form of personality transplant from his real-world body into the Oasis, some form of literal Ghost in the Machine?

I'd like to see some form of digital court, like a war-crimes tribunal, all accounts whom were Sixers being required to justify their existence?  Maybe some form of play on "The Odessa Files" in digital form, with IOI has the continuing evil?

Maybe there's some form of massive community lash back, everyone died on the release of the Cataclysm, Z resurrected the High-5 members, but everyone else was perma-death?

Fonts : You know that moment?

You know that moment when a script won't work?  When the compiler throws fatal error?  When you just can't make wget suck down the right file?... Yeah, you know it... I know you do...

Make sure you're not seeing that O as an 0... Damn this default font selection!

http://tobiasjung.name/profont/

Virgin Media - Getting The Service You Require

I've had a bit of a battle with Virgin Media over the last month, I noted I was suddenly, and for no reason, on a very slow connection (at least slow to my liking) it was showing up in tests as between 46 and 52 mbit... STRANGE!  Since I thought I was on 100Mbit and was trying at the time to get onto the new Vivid200 mbit.

Anyway, after doing some calling around, and basically being given the run around by sales, I got through to a chap in the right department, who was able to sell me things AND look at my account; they seem very able to sell stuff to you, and take your money, but you ask for something and you get stone walled.

So, this chap checked my account, 50M sir, you're on our 50M service?... I thought I was on the Big Bundle thing, on the tele?.. 100Mbit etc... Oh You were sir, but your contract ended in 2016...

So, did they continue charging me?.. Oh yes.. Full whack, but they slowly eroded both the channels on the TV package and the speed of the internet, I guess hoping they could provide less and charge the same, or even more!

I set about trying to rectify this, and got exactly nowhere, online chat, telephone calls, even twitter didn't budge them into action, they didn't give a hoot!

Therefore, I set about getting what I wanted the underhanded way... 

What I wanted was to jump from 50mbit to 200mbit, leaving the TV and landline telephone as was, the problem?... No human operator on any channel, in any department, nowhere could give me this, I was even told you could not order this combination!  That my kit didn't support it!  That the wires were wrong!!?!?!

When I pointed out that the wires and kit are theirs, sort it, they basically hung up on me.

Online in my account however, I could see an upgrade offer... For a free I could upgrade to some new cables.. DOCSIS or some such thing... So, I ordered that...

A week later, I checked again, the new offer was for a free upgrade from 50mbit to 70mbit.  Are you still with me here?... So I chose that.

A week yet further on and I had 70mbit, and the option to pay £1.50 more per month to upgrade to 100mbit!  So I ordered that.

And yet another week on, I finally have the option to order 200mbit for an additional £5.50 a month, with 6 months at £2.50...

I have this arriving, through the ether as we read this...

So why the delay?  Why did the humans say they could not leave my TV and landline alone to just uprade the speed?... Well, seems they could, they could all along, they were lying, or their training didn't expose them to the workings of their own systems.  Whichever it was, I was very very frustrated by the whole affair, and I've made it known.

https://twitter.com/OriginalXelous/status/725670550601867264

The rise of the frivolous Communication

In today's society with the proliferation of the mobile phone the purpose and limits of communications is being blurred.

There was a time when to communicate a message to someone quickly one had to send a telegram, or even a runner, and this was expensive stuff.  Words and meaning were eked out onto the missive and transmitted.

The postal service also played a part in the blossoming of beautiful and well thought out letters between people.  And due to the long turn around time the communicated messages were sweet and thoughtful, full of information and the spice of life.

With the birth of e-mail came a way to transmit near instantly such missives, but it slowly devolved and l33t speak became the de facto standard, along trotted SMS and the problem magnified terribly... "R U OK", the bane of any SMS, but it still has meaning.

However, with the rise of the smart phone, the multi-part SMS and contracts allowing for near unlimited, costless, communication the art of communicating is dying.  And I have an example for the day...

I have a mobile, its a very old, battered, Nokia.  I keep it because a) I hate smart phones b) I used to be the text king, sending near letter long texts and incurring HUGE phone bills and c) I only want to be disturbed at work if its important.

My importance thresholds are simple:

1. Is someone stuck/broke down?

2. Is someone Ill?

3. Is someone dead?

4. Has someone been born?

If it does not fall into these categories the rule is wait until out of office hours, or just mention it in passing...

And I established and popularised these levels with all my friends and family... They all pretty much apply them when contacting me at work.  Except for my Mother.

Now, I should explain, Mothers do get some special dispensation to contact you, but mine is taking the piss now... I'm getting messages about Eggs... and bread.... messages about the weather... and all sorts of trivial frivolous shit... Which to be frank shouldn't be a text or a mobile message... They don't warrant being delivered to me whilst I'm on the bog, let alone whilst I'm at work... They're in fact messages which would struggle to pass as small talk when face to face.

They are in short of such low magnitude of interest, I've just asked her to stop texting me at work... "Stop texting me, I'm at work".

That was the whole text reply I sent... It's short, and to the massed whom work (my parents being retired) it would make sense... But not to my Mother, oh no, she lives in this little world where everything she is doing is very very important... "We're going shopping"... "I must blog about this" sort of shit... And its pointless... Its everyday crap... I dread to think what she'd put on twitter if she ever worked it out.

But, after asking "Stop texting me, I'm at work"... you know what I get?....

"Reel your neck in, I text you because its important"....

Erm... First of all, its not important... second of all... I've asked you to stop texting and you just text'd back...

My reply was the rather generous "Get fucked, I'm at work".... emphasising my position... Did the hint get through?... Nope... Nope, I just got a seven page text... And cus she's angry, its all garbled... here's the exact text verbatim:

"Thats nr eally nice repl 2ur mum...ithink note. it'd far b appalling 2 any1 n uncalled for. but 2me is a lve 2 far"... and it goes on and on...

You can make out what's being said, but its so shite as to beggars belief... if she realised the point, that time needs to be taken, this is not urgent, eggs is not worthy of interrupting me at work, when we were kids (without mobiles) if she'd have called my Dad at work and said "pick up eggs" he'd have gone nuts, just as I'm not happy I'm being asked to sort out eggs for her... But this is all forgotten, as far as she cares the world goes into a little box and waits for her when she's not looking.

And this communication is rubbish... I'm tired of texting her, tired of texting anything but the bare essentials to people, I write letters or e-mails and I check them, and re-read them before sending them.  My previous post was decrying my hate of twitter, I blog here to pretty much get things off my chest, and that works for me... but if I had a pen pal I'd write them a nice letter...

I may call my mother out on this, I might send her a letter (large print) and make it clear that these stupid text's she sends need to be e-mails or letters, or waited on until she see's me and can talk to me... They are not worthy of the interruption they cause.