Kimputer's Weblog

With all the misinformation around, people don’t know what to believe. Here’s what hard numbers will show you (even though anti-vaxxers will not know how to handle this knowledge):

Fact: https://coronadashboard.rijksoverheid.nl/landelijk/positief-geteste-mensen
Scroll a bit down for a nice map of the Netherlands, with the amount of COVID infections per 100.000 residents

Another fact: https://coronadashboard.rijksoverheid.nl/landelijk/vaccinaties
Scroll a bit down for another nice map, now with vaccinations per 100.000 residents.

Now, how to accent both maps to show something interesting? Take the Infection map. Put an INVERTED vaccination map on top. Make the top layer LIGHTEN the lower layer. It means, the more vaccinated areas will do LESS now to the final picture. The LESS vaccinated areas will AFFECT the more infected areas more. The infected areas were mostly dark blue, so you didn’t see anything particularly interesting.

Take a look at the final picture:

Now, go back to the live infections page and the vaccination page, and look for those 3 marked areas. Look at the number it returns, and the numbers around it. The numbers are extremely clear. Only a few less points of vaccination coverage, and a clear massive higher infection rate. Draw your own conclusions!

Since we (The Netherlands) will be getting a few movies ahead of most of the world (or at least the US), I thought I’d start my spoiler free reviews again, as to hint others what they may or may not expect soon in these times where entertainment (home or in the theater, as long as you do it safely!) is a much needed form of distraction during these times.
Monster Hunter will NOT help you in any way though, sadly. Director Paul W.S. Anderson was never an artistic high flyer, churning out popcorn movies devoid of real meaty story telling. You couldn’t expect anything mildly entertaining to begin with, but in this case, he dropped the ball hard.
Extremely cringy dialogue and scenes aside, the action shots are fast paced edited chaos you’d also expect. But combine that with his 3D considerations as a post-thought (and no 2D showings available), and this incompetence becomes a burden on the viewer. The action scenes are near impossible to follow, let alone enjoy. The stark contrast with directors like James Cameron, who put the 3D thought in the very early stages of his movie making, is just heartbreakingly in your face, worthy of shedding a few tears over. Added is a waste of talent (Ron Perlman), so avoid at all costs.

Look at the overwhelming proof (click for larger image):


You don’t have to be a detective to know which rascal went rogue, and used a scissor to open the bag, then hide the evidence.
The answer I got when I interrogated the only suspect I ever had: “It happened all by itself”.
So. obviously, this happened:

After 4+ years of monthly 2 hour bath tub sessions trying to cut his hair in some form of acceptable fashion, trying not to fatally wound him, he finally dares to sit still in the real barber’s chair. Thanks to Paul at Paul’s Barbershop who’s been my barber for roughly 28 years already.

Sept 2016:

Talking about MMS:
“In Android Nougat, we’ve both hardened and re-architected mediaserver, one of the main system services that processes untrusted input. First, by incorporating integer overflow sanitization, part of Clang’s UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer, we prevent an entire class of vulnerabilities, which comprise the majority of reported libstagefright bugs. As soon as an integer overflow is detected, we shut down the process so an attack is stopped,” Xiaowen Xin of the Android security team said.

Oct 2016:

“The Tencent Keen Security Lab Team from China has won a total prize money of $215,000 in the 2016 Mobile Pwn2Own contest run by Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) in Tokyo, Japan.”

…by sending an MMS message to a fully patched Google Nexus 6P (no user interaction required) 🙁 Well, at least the code didn’t go public yet and Google will probably fix it as soon as possible.

Having the same Footlocker exclusive Nike model for a good chuck of 2 decades (obviously, a new color everytime, starting with gold/greenish, going through several blue-ish shades with light blue, with red streaks, and black variants), they now have this model in kid sizes too. Another 2 decades to follow…?

If you’re interested, I can show you how to host your own periscope replay stream (video only, no hearts, no comments).
I ripped the stream to watch replay videos on my own web server, to test if the battery drain was still happening. It wasn’t.

Just sayin’!

Drop a comment if you want to know more.

What isn’t really clear to most people, is that Apple actually doesn’t want people who are new to Apple to buy a second hand iPhone.
Probably nowhere to be found on the Apple website, is that an iOS device can only create 3 free iCloud accounts.
If you buy a second hand iOS device (iPhone/iPad), and you never had an Apple product before where you created an AppleID, along with the free iCloud account, you will run into this unsolvable issue.
Even if you follow other helpful websites on second hand buying of iPhone/iPads, this little fact isn’t taken into account.
So here’s a more complete guide:

Check pricing (sometimes too good to be true is really too good to be true).
Check serial number/IMEI (if the owner doesn’t give it to you, it’s already a sign it’s too good to be true): https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do (you will also see if the owner is truthful about the age of the device, as the end date of the warranty is displayed)
Check the Activation Lock here https://www.icloud.com/activationlock/
See if it’s locked or not. If not, you have to ask the owner to unlock it (or a full reset is enough). If the owner can’t, it’s probably a stolen device.
Check availability of original invoices/receipts (owner must be willing to give it to you, also double check if the real serial number/IMEI of the phone matches the invoice/receipt)

And here’s the part where it goes wrong because no one has it in their guide (please note, if you already use iCloud, this part can be skipped):
You have to immediately activate the device before paying!
It means, have a working nano simcard already!
It means, have power available (if device not charged).
It means, have dataplan with the sim OR have wifi available.
Walk through the WHOLE activation process.
Only after the full activation, should you pay the money. Discuss this with the owner before even setting up an appointment, so the owner knows you’ll have to sit down comfortably for 30 minutes or so, instead of the expected 30 second exchange of device/money.

Also know that since you successfully activated the device, you probably have less chance to sell it off again (there are people who value Apple because they seem more worth and keeping their worth over time, which actually doesn’t always apply as you can see)

As you can see, a lot of troubles, where Apple will be of any help to you (they can’t “reset” anything, actually they can, they just don’t want to).

What are the other ways?

Get an Android device!

Or, as lucky as I was, the owner I bought it from was willing to give up his AppleID (and hence the iCloud account) and I could change all things necessary (change email, change security questions etc). You need the owner not to only give up his accounts, he has to unlock it to with the security questions!
Obviously, this doesn’t happen often (most people use their account actively which includes backup of files, storing calendar and contacts etc). I’m betting you won’t be so lucky!

In short, Apple wants you to buy a NEW device, not a second hand. Still feel proud to associate yourself with this company?

Reading a setup manual, probably written by a fanboy.

Right in your face!

Google Maps and Streetview are useful tools. Mostly I use it to plan my route, hereby (sometimes) eliminating the need for navigation on the road (by checking crossroads, points of reference near the destination and such).
Other times, I just use it out of curiosity, when someone mentions a place, and I want to take a look around for whatever reasons.
Only this time, it was a mind boggling trip. I had to check a few times, thinking I landed in a scifi TV episode of some kind, but here you can check it yourself. I found no less than 2 time portals, hence, you will see stuff from 3 different time periods (look at the logo. One with a brown background, one without, and a total other one).
Time travel here (patience, 46MB)
Of course, it’s understandable to have some jumps here and there, but you’d expect them more far and away, not in just one spot.

For a particular company, I spit through the spam box to manually select IP numbers for IP blocking (thereby relieving the scanning engine). I do it manually to minimise false positives, so I also employ reverse DNS lookup for that. Currently it totals 5616 IP numbers, and here’s a small break down of it:

364 .in
251 .id
188 .br
163 .ru
125 .vn
52 .ar
41 .it
36 .ua
19 .es
18 .nl
17 .il
12 .fr
10 .pt

Fun fact: 259 numbers resolve to localhost, meaning there are some clever bastards with high level DNS access at work.

So here’s the quote for today: “Hey Indians, Indonesians, Brazilians, Russians, Vietnamese, Argentinians and Italians, there are free antivirus programs available, y’know”

Submitted through AH Customer Service:
https://www.ah.nl/klantenservice/veelgesteldevragen/albertheijn/article.jsp?trg=klantenservice/veelgesteldevragen/albertheijn/article.contactoverah.ah20

Al enige tijd maak ik gebruik van jullie potje Zeezout met molen. Het is maar sinds kort dat ik erachter kwam dat er behalve zeezout als ingredient een ander zeeblauw substantie (foto’s op aanvraag), puur bij toeval toen ik een zout in pan deed om pasta te koken en wat vreemds zag drijven. Vast om de regel “Volle zilte smaak” waar te maken. Toch ben ik hier niet van gediend. Mij is namelijk nooit verteld dat plastic deel uitmaakt van de welbekende “schijf van vijf”. Integendeel, ik denk zelfs dat het uitmaakt van een andere schijf (schijf van dingen die je ZEKER niet moet eten)
Als u de foto’s bekijkt denkt u vast, “die heeft zijn zoutgehalte in zijn hersens niet op orde, die vlokjes zijn lichtblauw, terwijl de molen donkerblauw is”, maar met een scherp mesje heb ik het zelf getest, het plastic komt gewoon van de molen af.
Mijn eis:
a. Zet bij de ingredienten de correcte plastic soort/samenstelling, zodat mensen zelf kunnen beslissen of ze dit willen opnemen in hun dieet.
of
b. Ontsla de genie die een plastic molen ontwerpt dat zwakker is dan zoutkorrels (de smoes, “het was een verassing dat de korrels juist van die zee waar het vandaan komt zo hard zijn !” gaat toch echt niet op hier)

Response yay!

Geachte heer Ung,
Hartelijk dank voor uw bericht van 5-6-2011.

Wij bieden u onze excuses aan voor het gegeven dat de kwaliteit van de verpakking van de zeezout molen niet in orde is, waardoor u blauw plastic van de molen heeft aangetroffen tijdens de bereiding van uw gerecht. Onze producten worden op uiterst hygiënische wijze geproduceerd. Wij hebben strikte afspraken met onze leveranciers over kwaliteit, veiligheid en hygiëne. Dat u desondanks een ongerechtigheid heeft aangetroffen vinden wij zeer vervelend. Wij hebben uw melding doorgegeven aan onze kwaliteitsmanager, zodat deze ook de leverancier op de hoogte kan brengen.

In de winkel kunt u gebruik maken van de AH kwaliteitsgarantie. U kunt het artikel bij uw volgende winkelbezoek omruilen voor een nieuw exemplaar of u ontvangt op vertoon van de kassabon het aankoopbedrag terug. Bent u niet meer in het bezit van de kassabon, dan vernemen wij graag van u in welke winkel (plaatsnaam+straatnaam) u normaal gesproken uw boodschappen doet.

Met vriendelijke groet,

Albert Heijn Klantenservice

Watching an episode of Hawaii Five-0, I did my usual routine. As I’m always curious about locations, where they’re shot, and have a look around for myself, I always do some Google Streetviewing now and then. This time however, my mind was actually curious about the distance to the US shore. But instead of using Google Earth’s measure tool, I was lazy and input Los Angeles in Google Maps instead for a quick measure. If you ever have a month long vacation, here’s how to spend it (actually, you need a bit more, Google estimates this trip at 15 days and 1 hour).