Andrew Cooke | Contents | Latest | RSS | Previous | Next

C[omp]ute

Welcome to my blog, which was once a mailing list of the same name and is still generated by mail. Please reply via the "comment" links.

Always interested in offers/projects/new ideas. Eclectic experience in fields like: numerical computing; Python web; Java enterprise; functional languages; GPGPU; SQL databases; etc. Based in Santiago, Chile; telecommute worldwide. CV; email.

Personal Projects

Choochoo Training Diary

Last 100 entries

Surprise Paradox; [Books] Good Author List; [Computing] Efficient queries with grouping in Postgres; [Computing] Automatic Wake (Linux); [Computing] AWS CDK Aspects in Go; [Bike] Adidas Gravel Shoes; [Computing, Horror] Biological Chips; [Books] Weird Lit Recs; [Covid] Extended SIR Models; [Art] York-based Printmaker; [Physics] Quantum Transitions are not Instantaneous; [Computing] AI and Drum Machines; [Computing] Probabilities, Stopping Times, Martingales; bpftrace Intro Article; [Computing] Starlab Systems - Linux Laptops; [Computing] Extended Berkeley Packet Filter; [Green] Mainspring Linear Generator; Better Approach; Rummikub Solver; Chilean Poetry; Felicitations - Empowerment Grant; [Bike] Fixing Spyre Brakes (That Need Constant Adjustment); [Computing, Music] Raspberry Pi Media (Audio) Streamer; [Computing] Amazing Hack To Embed DSL In Python; [Bike] Ruta Del Condor (El Alfalfal); [Bike] Estimating Power On Climbs; [Computing] Applying Azure B2C Authentication To Function Apps; [Bike] Gearing On The Back Of An Envelope; [Computing] Okular and Postscript in OpenSuse; There's a fix!; [Computing] Fail2Ban on OpenSuse Leap 15.3 (NFTables); [Cycling, Computing] Power Calculation and Brakes; [Hardware, Computing] Amazing Pockit Computer; Bullying; How I Am - 3 Years Post Accident, 8+ Years With MS; [USA Politics] In America's Uncivil War Republicans Are The Aggressors; [Programming] Selenium and Python; Better Walking Data; [Bike] How Fast Before Walking More Efficient Than Cycling?; [COVID] Coronavirus And Cycling; [Programming] Docker on OpenSuse; Cadence v Speed; [Bike] Gearing For Real Cyclists; [Programming] React plotting - visx; [Programming] React Leaflet; AliExpress Independent Sellers; Applebaum - Twilight of Democracy; [Politics] Back + US Elections; [Programming,Exercise] Simple Timer Script; [News] 2019: The year revolt went global; [Politics] The world's most-surveilled cities; [Bike] Hope Freehub; [Restaurant] Mama Chau's (Chinese, Providencia); [Politics] Brexit Podcast; [Diary] Pneumonia; [Politics] Britain's Reichstag Fire moment; install cairo; [Programming] GCC Sanitizer Flags; [GPU, Programming] Per-Thread Program Counters; My Bike Accident - Looking Back One Year; [Python] Geographic heights are incredibly easy!; [Cooking] Cookie Recipe; Efficient, Simple, Directed Maximisation of Noisy Function; And for argparse; Bash Completion in Python; [Computing] Configuring Github Jekyll Locally; [Maths, Link] The Napkin Project; You can Masquerade in Firewalld; [Bike] Servicing Budget (Spring) Forks; [Crypto] CIA Internet Comms Failure; [Python] Cute Rate Limiting API; [Causality] Judea Pearl Lecture; [Security, Computing] Chinese Hardware Hack Of Supermicro Boards; SQLAlchemy Joined Table Inheritance and Delete Cascade; [Translation] The Club; [Computing] Super Potato Bruh; [Computing] Extending Jupyter; Further HRM Details; [Computing, Bike] Activities in ch2; [Books, Link] Modern Japanese Lit; What ended up there; [Link, Book] Logic Book; Update - Garmin Express / Connect; Garmin Forerunner 35 v 230; [Link, Politics, Internet] Government Trolls; [Link, Politics] Why identity politics benefits the right more than the left; SSH Forwarding; A Specification For Repeating Events; A Fight for the Soul of Science; [Science, Book, Link] Lost In Math; OpenSuse Leap 15 Network Fixes; Update; [Book] Galileo's Middle Finger; [Bike] Chinese Carbon Rims; [Bike] Servicing Shimano XT Front Hub HB-M8010; [Bike] Aliexpress Cycling Tops; [Computing] Change to ssh handling of multiple identities?; [Bike] Endura Hummvee Lite II; [Computing] Marble Based Logic; [Link, Politics] Sanity Check For Nuclear Launch; [Link, Science] Entropy and Life

© 2006-2017 Andrew Cooke (site) / post authors (content).

IntelliJ Idea

From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>

Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2007 23:54:17 -0400 (CLT)

I am switching from Eclipse to IntelliJ Idea.  I have no idea whether this
will work out, but I was tired of Eclipse crashing and Codehaus have a
licence for Idea.

First impressions are that the two are generally quite comparable.  While
running checkstyle doesn't crash Idea like it does Eclipse, it does
occasionally fail on a stupid classloader problem.

However, there is one significant advantage to Idea which has impressed me
- its default analysis of code is intelligent and useful.  It flags real,
important issues rather than "nitpicking details".  In other words it
focuses more on semantics and less on syntax - it's like having an
intelligent code reviewer.  The intelligence doesn't extend to
architectural issues, but it does "understand" basic logic and flow
control.

I'm using the preview releases available from http://www.intellij.net/ -
they have a free 30 day trial licence, low price academic and free
opensource licences.

Andrew

PS It is only after writing this (I promise!) that I realise this
"intelligent analysis" may be why it's called "IntelliJ"...

Maybe Intelligent is the Wrong Word

From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>

Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 10:01:23 -0400 (CLT)

Hmmm.  My previous post was rather enthusiastic.  The advice is not
particularly "intelligent" - it's just based on simple static analysis. 
Maybe what *is* intelligent is the interface design, or the selection of
warnings.  Somehow it is useful, rather than annoying.

Another nice feature - maybe this was possible in Eclipse - is that I can
configure code highlighting in some detail.  So my text is simple black
(keywords in bold), but with mutable state (class and instance variables,
and also reassigned local variables or parameters) highlighted.

Andrew

IntelliJ Idea uses some odd ports...

From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>

Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 21:22:07 -0400 (CLT)

Don't like this much.  Idea is using the following ports:

tcp :::63342              :::*               LISTEN
tcp :::2864               :::*               LISTEN
tcp :::6942               :::*               LISTEN
tcp 200.120.169.16:16139  63.246.23.202:5222 ESTABLISHED
udp 10.2.0.1:1672         :::*
udp :::9876               :::*
udp :::2863               :::*
udp :::2863               :::*

where 10.2.0.1 and 200.120.169.16 are local addresses to my server.

Surreally, connecting via HTTP to 63.246.23.202 gives an empty page with
the title "Dick's Sporting Goods Bragging Board" (see related address
http://braggingboards.dickssportinggoods.com/)

And port 2863 regularly broadcasts "Anybody out there" to other odd
addresses.

The established link is Jabber - my machine (the editor) is making a
series of "Jabber Request" messages.

WTF?!

In related news, SuseFirewall doesn't block outgoing connections, and
Novell's AppArmour scares me.

Andrew

How to block IntelliJ Idea on SUSE (and Linux in general)

From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>

Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 21:56:21 -0400 (CLT)

OK, so on SUSE you need to go to the sysconfig editor in Yast (System
menu) and edit the firewall setting FW_CUSTOMRULES to include the custom
rules file.  Then edit that file to include the following in the first
function (fw_custom_before_antispoofing).

For other Linux distros, the same iptables commands apply but you need to
work out how best to set them.

# mess with intellij

iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 5222 -j LOG --log-level warn \
  --log-prefix "BLOCKING INTELLIJ: "
iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 5222 -j DROP

iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 2864 -j LOG --log-level warn \
  --log-prefix "BLOCKING INTELLIJ: "
iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 2864 -j DROP

iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 6942 -j LOG --log-level warn \
  --log-prefix "BLOCKING INTELLIJ: "
iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 6942 -j DROP

iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 2863 -j LOG --log-level warn \
  --log-prefix "BLOCKING INTELLIJ: "
iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 2863 -j DROP

iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 9876 -j LOG --log-level warn \
  --log-prefix "BLOCKING INTELLIJ: "
iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 9876 -j DROP

Note that the backslashes are not valid syntax - I added them above to
make the lines shorter in this email.  It's not clear to me that all the
above are needed, and I am assuming that you already block *incoming*
connections, but the above is the right idea (and does block several
outgoing connection attempts on my machine).

Andrew

re: IntelliJ Idea

From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>

Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 20:13:58 -0400 (CLT)

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: re: IntelliJ Idea
From:    "Alexandre Paterson" <alexandre_paterson@...>
Date:    Mon, May 14, 2007 8:12 pm
To:      compute@...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Andrew,

I was very happy to find your message
about IntelliJ using some strange ports...
At first I thought my machine was compromised.
However at it is a strenghtened Unix machine
behind several firewalls (the machine as its own
firewall in addition to another firewall... And it is
NATted behind a router) so I would very surprised
if it was compromised.

The UDP on port 2863 is a multicast on the LAN:

http://whois.domaintools.com/239.203.13.64

It may be followed by TCP access on 2864 and up, depending
on how many IDEA machines you have.

I was baffled too then by the attempt to connect to

63.246.23.202

A reverse IP shows that "intellijoin.org" shares that IP.

http://www.domaintools.com/reverse-ip/

Things get stranger:

 $ telnet intellijoin.org 80
Trying 63.246.23.202...
Connected to intellijoin.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.0\nAccept: */*\n\n

HTTP/1.1 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable
Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 00:03:04 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
Last-Modified: Tue, 05 Sep 2006 15:38:54 GMT
ETag: "269405-31c-a7f01f80"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 796
P3P: CP="PHY ONL CAO CURa ADMa DEVa TAIa PSAa PSDa IVAo IVDo CONo HISa
TELo OTPo OUR DELa STP BUS UNI COM NAV INT DEM
OTC",policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml"
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<html>
<head>
<title>Dick's Sporting Goods - Bragging Board</title>


But if you type www.intellij.org in your browser everything
is fine: you get to a site obviously belonging to JetBrains.

I'll post a message in the IntelliJ IDEA forum asking
what is going on.

Anyway... Instead of blocking things I want to be blocked,
my system is configured to REJECT everything, even
access to 127.0.0.1.

Then I allow what I consider to be legitimate trafic.

For example, if I want IntelliJ to be able to access my
LAN Tomcat server (that has some html Javadocs,
for example), I do:

iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp -d 192.168.2.23 --dport 80
-m owner --uid-owner 1007 -j ACCEPT

Same for SVN, CVS, JProfiler, etc.

I do it this way so closed-source programs emitting
spooky trafic are blocked in a user account (that can't
even communicate on 127.0.0.1).

This is painful with some dumbly-written plugins and
utilities that thinks that they can appropriate a great
many ports but all in all it poses no problem.

Anyway, it takes some time to set it up at first but
I honestly think it's worth it.

"Everything that is not specifically allowed is denied"

:)


Besides that upon hitting your blog (I was googling
on "63.236.202 jabber" IIRC) I recognized your blog
instantly :  I *love* your gallery.

I saw it quite some time ago and saved a few pictures.

Congratulations.




---------------------------------
 Ne gardez plus qu'une seule adresse mail ! Copiez vos mails vers Yahoo! Mail

Fwd: on blocking incoming trafic

From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>

Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 20:14:49 -0400 (CLT)

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: on blocking incoming trafic
From:    "Alexandre Paterson" <alexandre_paterson@...>
Date:    Mon, May 14, 2007 8:21 pm
To:      compute@...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re,

you wrote:

> Note that the backslashes are not valid
> syntax - I added them above to make the
> lines shorter in this email.  It's not
> clear to me that all the above are needed,
> and I am assuming that you already block
> *incoming* connections, but the above is
> the right idea (and does block several
> outgoing connection attempts on my machine).
First in a Bash shell script where you put all your iptables
rules the backslash is actually a perfectly correct syntax:
it's the one I'm using for my long iptables rules ;)

Then on a stateful firewall, you usually block *new*
incoming connections, not RELATED or ESTABLISHED
ones.

Usually people have :

iptables -I INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

which may be a problem when a rogue program decides
to establish the connection from your computer: no matter
how much you block incoming stuff, if you allow RELATED
and ESTABLISHED trafic in (which is usually how iptables
is configured), you're hosed.

To me the real best option is to "deny everything that
is not specifically allowed".

Thanks again and talk to you one of these days,






---------------------------------
 Nouveau : téléphonez moins cher avec Yahoo! Messenger ! Découvez les
tarifs exceptionnels pour appeler la France et
l'international.Téléchargez la version beta.

Comment on this post