The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

[Travis B.]

All I can think of is something got goofed up with your router ─ other than that, I don't have a clue myself.

[Raphael]

I think it’s just that no-one here has a clue how to solve it. Networking is complicated.

All I can think of is something got goofed up with your router ─ other than that, I don't have a clue myself.

OK, thank you, anyway!

[Raphael]

A few days ago, I made a short audio file of a few lines of dialogue on a TV show, because I wanted to ask the ZBB about those lines of dialogue, and, thanks to Linguoboy, I got the information I was looking for. Then, on a whim and out of boredom, I opened the file in a hex editor, and discovered that, at the very end of the file, there's a long sequence consisting entirely of repetitions of the hexadecimal code "55", or, if you prefer, a lot of capital "U"s.

Any idea what all those "U"s are doing there?

(The file is here: https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... laudio.mp3 )

[Travis B.]

A few days ago, I made a short audio file of a few lines of dialogue on a TV show, because I wanted to ask the ZBB about those lines of dialogue, and, thanks to Linguoboy, I got the information I was looking for. Then, on a whim and out of boredom, I opened the file in a hex editor, and discovered that, at the very end of the file, there's a long sequence consisting entirely of repetitions of the hexadecimal code "55", or, if you prefer, a lot of capital "U"s.

Any idea what all those "U"s are doing there?

(The file is here: https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... laudio.mp3 )

I don't know off the top of my head, but if I had to guess the MP3 format may require files to be a multiple of a certain size, so if they are not extra filler data is added to the end.

[Raphael]

I don't know off the top of my head, but if I had to guess the MP3 format may require files to be a multiple of a certain size, so if they are not extra filler data is added to the end.

Oh, thank you!

[Travis B.]

I don't know off the top of my head, but if I had to guess the MP3 format may require files to be a multiple of a certain size, so if they are not extra filler data is added to the end.

Oh, thank you!

Actually, I just bothered to look it up, and long sequences of 0x55 translate to silence in MP3 files.

[Raphael]

Actually, I just bothered to look it up, and long sequences of 0x55 translate to silence in MP3 files.

Not sure I'm convinced by that - the 0x55 sequence is preceded by 0x55 0x4C 0x41 0x4D 0x45 0x33 0x2E 0x31 0x30 0x30, or, in other words, "ULAME3.100", which looks suspiciously like an end-of-file thing to me.

[Travis B.]

Actually, I just bothered to look it up, and long sequences of 0x55 translate to silence in MP3 files.

Not sure I'm convinced by that - the 0x55 sequence is preceded by 0x55 0x4C 0x41 0x4D 0x45 0x33 0x2E 0x31 0x30 0x30, or, in other words, "ULAME3.100", which looks suspiciously like an end-of-file thing to me.

That is the frame header IIRC; this is probably the final frame of the data.

[Raphael]

Why are there websites that apparently sometimes seem to have two different cookie approval thingies?

[Ares Land]

Why are there websites that apparently sometimes seem to have two different cookie approval thingies?

Do you have any examples in mind? (I know of one case at work where we put a new cookie approval form and just forgot to remove the other one)

[Raphael]

Do you have any examples in mind?

I think I've sometimes seen that on the mobile version of the BBC website.

[Ares Land]

Do you have any examples in mind?

I think I've sometimes seen that on the mobile version of the BBC website.

I checked this morning, and only got one warning. So I guess it was either a bug or human error

[bradrn]

Do you have any examples in mind?

I think I've sometimes seen that on the mobile version of the BBC website.

I checked this morning, and only got one morning. So I guess it was either a bug or human error

What kind of area are you in, where you can get more than one morning at a time?

[Ares Land]

I think I've sometimes seen that on the mobile version of the BBC website.

I checked this morning, and only got one morning. So I guess it was either a bug or human error

What kind of area are you in, where you can get more than one morning at a time?

The United Kingdom of I-Didn't-Get-Enough-Sleep and I-Need-Another-Coffee

[Raphael]

Right now, at this moment one of the partitions on my hard drive has 666.6 GB of free space. If I was superstitious, that would worry me a bit.

[xxx]

the number of the beast is a beautiful image of the power of numbers on our world,
those manipulated by our computers...

[Raphael]

It's fairly rare to see something current affairs related that's at least somewhat amusing these days, but I guess this post about one aspect of a major malware attack by Mastodon user Catalin Cimpanu qualifies:

https://mastodon.social/@campuscodi/110585150952372765

Head of cyber at the Romanian Intelligence Service: Solarwinds attack didn't impact Romania because companies didn't pay their support and were lagging behind so many versions the vulnerability didn't apply

I guess that's one way to avoid (some kinds of) malware...

[Raphael]

A few days ago, I spent several minutes frantically wondering what was wrong with my computer's screen, until I figured out that I accidentally pushed the on/off button while dusting it off.

Unrelated: I have one email address that is connected to my cellphone's OS, one email address that I use for exchanging emails with people I know in real life - though that happens almost never these days - one email address that I use for doing things on the internet that don't involve money - that's the one connected to my account here - and one email address that I use for doing things on the internet that do involve money.

How about you?

[bradrn]

Unrelated: I have one email address that is connected to my cellphone's OS, one email address that I use for exchanging emails with people I know in real life - though that happens almost never these days - one email address that I use for doing things on the internet that don't involve money - that's the one connected to my account here - and one email address that I use for doing things on the internet that do involve money.

How about you?

I have one for general use, and three separate semi-overlapping ones given to me by my university.

[hwhatting]

I have a work one and two private ones - a main private one to which I have tried to migrate all the private contacts from the other one, and the second I try to use mostly for newsletter subscriptions and similar stuff; for historical reasons, I also have a small number of private contacts on that one.