Here’s an 80’s artifact. Trump Plaza, where Penn & Teller rose to fame, is featured prominently. Look fast for the Amazing (James) Randi.
Colbear’s Earing Problem
Last night, Stephen Colbert had a cute bit about Fat Bear Week in Alaska.
In this 2007 recording I made in New York, Colbert said he really does have a bear phobia.
Put on a Happy Facebook
Steve and Leo chat on Security Now about Monday’s Facebook outage.
Facebook Engineering’s statement.
This statement is telling, in where they feel the emphasis needs to be placed, on phones rather than PC’s. And shouldn’t it be “our” app?
“That’s where the information needed by your app gets retrieved and processed, and sent back over the network to your phone.”
Readerslip
I remember before Internet broadband took off, the total paid circulation for The Boston Sunday Globe was about 625,000 copies. The Sunday want ads were essential, as was the real estate section. The first section of the paper featured full-page display ads for department stores. Every car dealership had ads in the auto section, and every retailer had a slick flyer insert. Print circulation is now less than one quarter of what I remember, and there are only about 250,000 digital subscriptions.
Facebook Down, Down Under
Facebook’s collection of services is unavailable. Because the outage is being reported as worldwide, it’s undoubtedly a Domain Name Services issue. For the moment, a name server somewhere is responding with an IP address in Australia.
C:\WINDOWS\system32>tracert facebook.com
Tracing route to facebook.com [157.240.8.35] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms Fios_Quantum_Gateway.fios-router.home [192.168.1.1]
2 4 ms 6 ms 8 ms edge-star-mini-shv-01-syd2.facebook.com [157.240.8.35]
Trace complete.
Maybe this is a valid name server entry, and maybe it’s not. Let’s check.
C:\WINDOWS\system32>nslookup -type=soa facebook.com
Server: Fios_Quantum_Gateway.fios-router.home
Address: 192.168.1.1
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
*** Request to Fios_Quantum_Gateway.fios-router.home timed-out
Uh, oh. Can’t get an authoritative name server. The stopover in Sydney is unscheduled. Let’s make one final check.
C:\WINDOWS\system32>nslookup -type=ptr facebook.com
Server: Fios_Quantum_Gateway.fios-router.home
Address: 192.168.1.1
*** Fios_Quantum_Gateway.fios-router.home can't find facebook.com: Server failed
Oh, yeah. Zuck is stuck near Auck. I’ll share this on Facebook. Oh, uh, wait. Never mind.
For comparison, this is how the results should appear:
C:\WINDOWS\system32>nslookup -type=ptr dograt.com
Server: Fios_Quantum_Gateway.fios-router.home
Address: 192.168.1.1
dograt.com
primary name server = ns1.bluehost.com
responsible mail addr = root.box2395.bluehost.com
serial = 2021091401
refresh = 86400 (1 day)
retry = 7200 (2 hours)
expire = 3600000 (41 days 16 hours)
default TTL = 300 (5 mins)
And Now For Something Completely Accidental
More than five years ago, I read this excellent book about the history of George Harrison’s Handmade Films.
https://www.amazon.com/Very-Naughty-Boys-Amazing-HandMade/dp/1781167087/
Not only did I learn a lot about Handmade Films, I learned something I hadn’t known about Amazon. An author has the ability to give an Amazon customer free access to a Kindle edition of their book(s). Which Robert Sellers did for me, in thanks for putting him in touch with Prue. Robert’s e-mail account must have been hacked, because a few years later I began receiving occasional messages from the account that are obvious phishing attempts. Which concerns me, because I would like to contact Sellers again to talk about something.
Anyway, I’ve read Robert’s book about Handmade Films, but I have yet to see this movie. I will be doing that very soon.
https://youtu.be/0mkSn28WBbw