Meddling

It would’ve worked, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids!

There are 617 posts filed in Meddling (this is page 23 of 62).

Back on my old IP?

I’ve noticed more cable modem strangeness this afternoon. I reflashed my router today and noticed that my home cable modem is once again on its old 24.40.133.50 address. I have no explanation for what happened to the 24.40.133.16 address I have been using for the last 24 hours.

It’s not been my experience that TWC/Earthlink swaps out IP addresses so quickly. Normally I get an IP address for many months without it changing. It’s very unusual to have one flip in just an afternoon.

Thinking I liked my newer IP address better, I tried to force a new assignment by unplugging my cable modem for ten minutes. Apparently that wasn’t long enough to do the trick, though. I will have to consider other options.

I still have no explanation for the earlier phantom response. Well, no rational explanation, anyway. I could say it was another quick DHCP assignment but that still wouldn’t account for the missing Microsoft ports which otherwise get filtered at the cable modem of every subscriber.

Are these Time Warner Cable shenanigans?

Mystery host answers for mine

I decided yesterday morning to reflash my home firewall’s version of OpenWRT. This involved rebooting the router, of course, and when the router came up the friendly folks at Earthlink (or Time Warner Cable, depending on who runs the DHCP servers) had assigned my home cable modem a new IP address.

As I worked out a few issues with the new firmware, paring down modules and processes in order to make it all fit inside my modest little router, I decided to test the firewall rules to see whether things were working. From my server hosted outside of my network, I ran a simple nmap test to see which ports were open:

[root@tranquil /home/markt]# nmap -sT -P0 maestro.markturner.net

Starting Nmap 5.51 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2014-02-02 11:44 EST
Nmap scan report for maestro.markturner.net (24.40.133.50)
Host is up (0.035s latency).
rDNS record for 24.40.133.50: user-0c2h19i.cable.mindspring.com
Not shown: 955 closed ports, 40 filtered ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
22/tcp open ssh
25/tcp open smtp
587/tcp open submission
993/tcp open imaps
8080/tcp open http-proxy

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 6.86 seconds

That’s about what I expected, so I turned my attention to other issues, including running another test twenty minutes later:

[root@tranquil /home/markt]# nmap -sT -P0 maestro.markturner.net

Starting Nmap 5.51 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2014-02-02 12:04 EST
Nmap scan report for maestro.markturner.net (24.40.133.16)
Host is up (0.028s latency).
rDNS record for 24.40.133.16: user-0c2h18g.cable.mindspring.com
Not shown: 991 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
22/tcp open ssh
25/tcp open smtp
135/tcp filtered msrpc
139/tcp filtered netbios-ssn
445/tcp filtered microsoft-ds
587/tcp open submission
593/tcp filtered http-rpc-epmap
993/tcp open imaps
8080/tcp open http-proxy

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 38.88 seconds

For the second test you can see I’ve got a few other ports showing up (TCP 135, 139, 445). These are supposedly filtered by the ISP somewhere down the line (probably the cable modem-level) to block clueless Windows users from exposing their networks to teh Internets.

You can see that these tests produced different results. It what was the same about these results, however, that caught my eye!
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H1N-What? Wading Through the Alphabet Soup of Flu Names | Molecules to Medicine, Scientific American Blog Network

Judy Stone of SciAm explains the alphabet soup that describes flu viruses.

Muddled about all the new flu viruses?

It’s hard to keep up with the changing names in the news. H1Nwhat? Bird flu. Pig flu. MERS. SARS. Here is a quick overview of this dizzying, dyslexia inducing array, with what you need to worry about, even if some aren’t yet in your backyard.

via H1N-What? Wading Through the Alphabet Soup of Flu Names | Molecules to Medicine, Scientific American Blog Network.

Metal thieves busted!

IMG_9755

Woohoo! About an hour ago I caught these dudes stealing manhole covers from the construction site next door and called RPD. Minutes later they were rounded up. Score one for the good guys!

What’s more, I got photos and video of them on-site and was able to show the responding officers where the suspects left their footprints. As they were detained with the stolen property still in their truck, I assume the case against them is strong enough for them to plead guilty.

I probably would’ve never noticed them if the driver hadn’t been so sloppy making his u-turn, driving up into my neighbor’s yard.

Shiny craft in sky

At 7:27 AM Saturday, I was running late to meet my brothers and dad for breakfast downtown. As I hurriedly turned south onto Blount Street from Peace Street, I spotted a very bright object in the eastern sky, roughly above Oakwood Cemetery. It seemed to be stationary and extremely shiny. The bottom half glowed brilliant amber. It could’ve been catching the morning sun that was rising behind it.

Was it an airplane? Normally I’d say so, but in the second it took me to look back at the road and then back to the sky it seemed to vanish. It wasn’t shaped like an airplane but was more spherical, perhaps even oblong or diamond-shaped. It was so reflective to be almost mirror-like. There were no visible navigation lights, either, nor was this airplane on any flight path to or from RDU airport.

There are general aviation planes which are silver but these are rare in my experience. Most small planes are painted. Helicopters are normally painted as well. I don’t ever recall seeing one so reflective – certainly none of the usual TV news helicopters common around here.

Am I a little spooked by the other weird lights I’ve seen recently over Raleigh? You bet. That doesn’t mean what I saw yesterday is anything but some shiny, everyday aircraft. Even so, I sure wish I would’ve had some extra time to investigate it.

Flu shot effectiveness below 50 percent

My friends are making noise about getting a flu vaccine. I am not anti-vaccine at all, but not all vaccines are the same. And not all flu vaccines are the same, either. Each season’s flu vaccine is a coin toss whether it will actually work. According to CDC statistics, patients 65 or older who got a flu shot during the 2012-2013 season were only protected from flu an abysmally-low 9% of the time.

There is also evidence from the CDC that repeatedly getting flu shots makes you more susceptible to getting the flu.

There are a lot of claims being made about the flu vaccine, including a lot of hype. I think it’s important to pay attention to what the science tells you.

The flu vaccine was 47% effective against medically attended flu for all influenza strains in the 2011-12 season, and being vaccinated the year before lowered effectiveness, according to a study yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

US researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and elsewhere looked at complete data for the season, which was relatively mild and peaked late. They found an overall vaccine effectiveness VE of 47% for preventing medically attended flu.

VE against 2009 H1N1 was 65%, but against H3N2, which was the predominant strain during the 2011-12 season. VE was only 39%. Its effectiveness against type B strains was 58% but was actually lower against the Victoria strain included in the vaccine 52% compared with the Yamagata strain not included in the vaccine 66%.

The investigators also noted a statistically significant difference between VE for those who received a flu vaccine the year before 33% and those who did not 56%.

via Flu Scan for Nov 14, 2013 | CIDRAP.

Nasa says Mars mystery rock that ‘appeared’ from nowhere is ‘like nothing we’ve seen before’ – Science – News – The Independent

This is bizarre.

A mysterious rock which appeared in front of the Opportunity rover is “like nothing we’ve ever seen before”, according to Mars exploration scientists at Nasa.

Experts said they were “completely confused” by both the origins and makeup of the object, which is currently being investigated by Opportunity’s various measuring instruments.

via Nasa says Mars mystery rock that ‘appeared’ from nowhere is ‘like nothing we’ve seen before’ – Science – News – The Independent.

Here’s the referenced Mars status report from NASA.

The Problem with Facebook


Larry Lessig shared a video from Derek Muller of Veritasium about one of the biggest problems with Facebook: the intentional throttling of shared content.

It’s easy to take it for granted that what you post on Facebook is seen by all of your Facebook friends but that is actually far from the truth. Facebook’s business model actually requires the service to limit what people see, and to sell you the opportunity to promote your content for a fee. This video is a well-thought-out examination of what your role is as a Facebook user (hint: you’re being manipulated).

I wrote about this activity last year but it’s good to have a video which explains it so much better.

Orange orbs over Cork, Ireland

Remember those mysterious floating flares I saw over Raleigh the night of Bluegrass Wide Open in September? I never did figure out what they were, nor did the city’s 911 center have any records of anyone calling about them. Yesterday, though, I came across this video someone took that shows what is purportedly fiery orange orbs descending over Cork, Ireland in December 2012.

Now, I don’t know if these are UFOs, flares, Chinese lanterns, or simply some fancy video editing. Providing there’s no photographic trickery involved, the objects are extremely bright, probably flying at a low altitude, and seem to appear out of nowhere instantly. What’s more, they look exactly like what I saw floating at a distance back on that September night.
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