Stats and Info

• DOH Philippines Ncov Tracker: https://ncovtracker.doh.gov.ph/
• COVID 19 PH Govt Portal: http://www.covid19.gov.ph/
• DFA Travel Advisories: https://www.dfa.gov.ph/dfa-news/statements-and-advisoriesupdate
• Worldwide Ncov Tracker: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
  Mobile version here.
• Metro Manila Checkpoints Map: https://www.safetravel.ph/
• Worldmeters stats: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ – includes stats per million population.
• FT graphs of disease trajectory per country: https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441
• Testing Rates, around the world (Mar 20): https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104645/covid19-testing-rate-select-countries-worldwide/#statisticContainer
• Stats geeks only. Epidemic Calculator: http://gabgoh.github.io/COVID/index.html

PH Medical News

• Research Institute for Tropical Medicine: http://ritm.gov.ph/
• Department of Health (slow load): https://www.doh.gov.ph/
• RT PCR Testing centres in Manila, with cost: https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/list-prices-covid-19-pcr-tests-metro-manila

Opinion Pieces of Note

• The Hammer and the Dance: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
• Current state of COVID-19 testing: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/why-testing-for-coronavirus-antibodies-will-matter.html
• NCOV-19 and Food Safety: https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/03/food-safety-and-coronavirus-a-comprehensive-guide.html
• Dr John Campbell Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg

General News

• Rappler News: https://www.rappler.com/
• Manila Bulletin: https://mb.com.ph/
• ABS-CBN: https://news.abs-cbn.com/
• Philippine Inquirer: https://www.inquirer.net/
• Philippine News Agency (Govt News): https://www.pna.gov.ph/categories/national

Fact Checking

Use these before spreading panic with your social media posts

• AFP Philippines Fact Check: https://factcheck.afp.com/afp-philippines
• Rappler Fact Check: https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/fact-check
• Snopes (worldwide): https://www.snopes.com/

Online Shopping with home delivery

• Metromart: https://www.metromart.com/
• Rarefood shop (Meat): https://rarefoodshop.com/
• Veggies (delays expected): https://thegreengrocermanila.com/
• Veggies: https://hifred.ph/shop/
• Session Groceries: https://sessiongroceries.com/
• Freshdeals: https://freshdeals.ph/
• Probinsaymart (bulk veggies) https://www.probinsyamart.com/
• LazMart Groceries: https://www.lazada.com.ph/lazmart-onlineph/ (delivery time of 3 weeks)

Medical Delivery

• Mercury Drug: https://www.mercurydrug.com/gamot-padala.html
• Medexpress: https://www.medexpress.com.ph/
• Rose Pharmacy: https://www.rosepharmacy.com/ (delays likely)
• Watsons Online: https://www.watsons.com.ph/call-and-delivery-info (NCR only)

Outside the Philippines

Cloudflare, APNIC

1.1.1.1
1.0.0.1
2606:4700:4700::1111
2606:4700:4700::1001
[added Mar 2019. Current favourite]

Google DNS

8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4
2001:4860:4860::8888 (IPv6)
2001:4860:4860::8844 (IPv6)

OpenDNS (includes protection against malware)

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

Norton DNS

198.153.192.50
198.153.194.50

Inside the Philippines

Globe Telecom

202.52.163.6
202.52.163.7
202.52.162.39 (ns1.globeidc.com.ph)
202.52.162.40 (ns1.globeidc.com.ph)
202.52.167.70
202.52.167.71
203.127.225.10 (g-net.globe.com.ph)
203.127.225.11 (g-net1.globe.com.ph)

PLDT

210.14.4.37
112.206.232.66
119.92.150.133
122.52.136.140
119.92.233.159
58.69.254.3/58.69.254.8

Smart Bro

121.1.3.81
202.57.96.3

Sky Cable

202.78.64.83
202.78.64.84

However there is no way to remove the popup, which sits on top of your browser. There is no 'close window' button, which means your only choice is to refresh the page, or close the window and re-open it. Too bad if you were working on something and hadn't pressed the save button: that's now gone. And even after you pay, the popup sticks around for a day or two … (how hard can it be to automatically cancel it?)

So how do we block it? The frame is an iframe which uses an IP address 210.213.253.135, so we can't use DNS blocking or hostfile blocking. So changing the routing table seems to be the way to go.

On Linux, using sudo if necessary:

# check routing table
route -n
# Add rule
route add 210.213.253.135 gw 127.0.0.1 lo
# check routing table again
route -n
# check desired result
ip route get 210.213.253.135

Gotcha

Now every so often I complain about my job. No, really. I do. But then something happens to make me realise how lucky I really am. And one of those moments happened just yesterday.

I'll set the scene. Its just after two major typhoons have torn apart the Philippines. Its wet and rainy and the residual wind occasionally rattles the windows. I'm slogging away in front of my computer on a fairly mundane task, and having a bit of a hard time concentrating. I look out of the window. And I see some rope going past. Rope with a knot in it.

This particular rope  doesn't look very safe to me, but then again what do I know. I'm not a sailor, and this could be some kind of special frayed knot type thing which is actually very safe. Interested by now, I take a look out of the window.

Oh my. What's that? This is the view from nine floors up. Its seems to be a makeshift structure for hauling building materials up the side of the building. Perhaps someone is having some renovation done. Or maybe its … gulp … a stretcher for hauling bodies down from an apartment. Crazy idea, that's a bit fanciful. Well back to work for me then.

Until. After a while … (scroll down)

Are you serious! Well yes apparently they are. Having descended from the top floor these fearless workers have worked their way down, scraping away the typhoon detritus, and filling in the cracks in the building. Apparently I was right on both counts: it was used to convey building materials and bodies. Live ones. They don't seem at all concerned by their predicament, laughing and joking with one another.

Unfortunately I have a knowledge of the laws of physics which makes me entirely unsuitable for this kind of job. Consider the fact that when you lean against the building, the gantry swings away from the building. Well that can't be much fun. Lets take a closer look at the construction shall we? (scroll down)

So here we see that the whole structure is made from welded together rebar. Well OK you can't see it properly in this bad photo, but you'll have to take my word for it. The welded rebar forms the frame. Onto this, bamboo is lashed — with string — and the whole thing is covered by a sheet of plastic material, presumably so they can't see the ground while they're working and freak out. Then, and here is the kicker, the structure is hooked onto a large hook at both sides, and as far as I can see there was nothing to stop the rebar frame from coming off the hook, should a wind blow suddenly, or should the structure tip to one side.

Brave guys. I will never complain my job is boring again. ]]> https://play.datalude.com/blog/2009/10/high-jinx/feed/ 0 https://play.datalude.com/blog/2009/10/attack-of-the-mutant-lamppost/ https://play.datalude.com/blog/2009/10/attack-of-the-mutant-lamppost/#respond Sat, 03 Oct 2009 04:24:54 +0000 http://play.datalude.com/blog/?p=153 Read more]]> So I was working from home the other day, around mid-morning, when I heard a mighty crunch from outside. I looked out my window and was confronted with the scene to the left.

I snapped a picture, and watched as a crowd started to gather, and then after about 5 minutes, the driver emerged from the car, shaking his head. He made a great show of examining the lamppost and chatted happily with the assembled crowd.

Two things disturb me about this photo. The first is that I can't figure out how he managed to crash. There was no traffic around. Traffic on that road only goes about 15km/h. The lamppost was clearly visible and easy to avoid. I can only conclude he lost control of the car, or suffered some kind of seizure.

The second thing is … the lampost is in the middle of the road! I've been looking at that for the past year and it never struck me as odd until now. I am clearly innured to this sort of general strangeness.

Anyway, the conclusion to this story is that a couple of hours later a policeman wandered by and took notes. Then a guy arrived with a tin of yellow paint and painted the base of the lamppost yellow. Apparently then, the guy just hadn't seen it.

So apparently the published SMTP servers don't actually work. Yay! If you try looking on the PLDT website, where you might expect to see this kind of useful information … well just don't bother. You get seasick pretty quickly from all the flash whoopiness, and the dead ends and 404 start to piss you off after a while. So then you do a few google searches and come up with a couple of published servers, which basically don't work: smtp.info.com.ph and smtp.pldtdsl.net

So, eventually I cracked and went to the Customer Hotline. After re-phrasing my question several thousand times until I was understood, the answer was … smtpdsl4.pldtdsl.net , using port 587. Which actually works.

Port 587, yes of course, why didn't I guess that one.

The image to the right is an example. Click on the image to get a full sized view. I have more examples saved if anyone is interested.And here is the code which goes with the economist screenshot:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
	<head>
		<title>Books/displaystory.cfm</title>
		<base href="www.economist.com" />
		<meta name="description" content="Relevancy Searcher" />
		<meta name="revisit-after" content="1 days" />
		<meta name="robots" content="follow,index" />
		<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
		<!--
		<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" />
		-->
		<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style2.css" />
		<script type="text/javascript">
		window.onload = function() {
			var q = document.getElementById("q");
			q.focus();
		}
		clk = function(q,u) {
			img = document.createElement("IMG");
			img.src = "http://www.economist.com/?query_id=" + q + "&url_id=" + u;
			return true;
		}
		rndr = function(t, d, u, us, qid, uid) {
			document.write("<h4><a href=\"" + u + "\" onclick=\"clk(" + qid + "," + uid + ")\">"  + t + "</a></h4>");
			document.write("<p class=\"description\">" + d + "</p>");
			document.write("<p class=\"url\">" + us + "</p>");
		}

		getXMLHTTP = function() {
			var xmlhttp = false;
			if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
				xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
			}
			else if (window.ActiveXObject) {
				try {
					xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
				}
				catch (e) {
					try {
						xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
					}
					catch (E) {
						xmlhttp = false;
					}
				}
			}
			return xmlhttp;
		}

		</script>
	</head>
	<body>
		<div class="content">
			<span class="title"><a href="http://www.economist.com">Economist.com</a></span>

<form action="index.php" method="get">
	<div class="searchform">
		<label for="q">Find it quickly!</label><br />
		<input type="text" name="q" value="books/displaystory.cfm" id="q" />
		<input type="submit" value="Search!" id="search" />
	</div>
</form>
<div class="box">
	<div class="title">
		<h3>Related searches: books/displaystory.cfm</h3>
	</div>
	<div class="text related">
	<script>
	// Unsupported modification in the code might be changed without warning
	// To activate a parameter, just uncomment the line that contain <script> and that correspond
	// to the parameters that you want to activate. Ads-click won't be responsible for potential // errors that could happen if the parameters are wrongly defined.
	// *** Speed at which the keyword move to and in the clouds ***
	// 0 is the fastest (instant) 1 is the slowest (other values are with two decimal eg. 0.10).
	document['tc-adsclick-speedkeyword']=0.80;
	// *** Speed at which the keywords wink ***
	// 0 will never wink. 1 will be the fastest (other values are with two decimal eg. 0.10)
	document['tc-adsclick-hide']=0.02;
	// *** Probability of a keyword to be relocated ***
	// 0 will never relocate. 1 will be the fastest (other values are with two decimal eg. 0.1)
	document['tc-adsclick-relocate']=0.05;
	// Set a background image
	// URL of the image displayed in background of the Tagcloud
	document['tc-adsclick-background-image']='';
	// Minimum and maximum size of keywords.
	document['tc-adsclick-keyword-minsize']=10;
	document['tc-adsclick-keyword-maxsize']=34;
	// Show these colors
	// document['tc-adsclick-keyword-colors']= new Array('#FF0000','#00FF00','#0000FF');
	</script> <script src="http://acnetwork.flux.acsyndication.com?id=974_1390&oe=utf8"></script>
		<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->
					<a href=""></a> &nbsp;

		<!-- google_ad_section_end -->
	</div>
</div>
<br />

I can't really explain this. It happens on both my computer and my girlfriend's, but only while connected to my home network: from other networks it seems OK. It happens randomly — perhaps one page every 100 or so, and then is gone when you reload the page. We're both running Linux so I can't verify if it is OS specific, but that would make a viral / malware attack unlikely. However there seem to be other complaints around the internet, also from the Philippines here and here, from users of Mac and Windows PCs, who use different browsers.

My guess is that there's something infiltrating the DNS system at SmartBro or maybe one of their proxy servers. Leave a comment if you're similarly affected and lets see if we can piece this together. The HTML code points to an advertising network. They have a Google Analytics ID … hmmm

Update 5pm, Sunday

A user in the macafee forum suggested it might be the DNSchanger trojan, which resets the DNS entries on your router if you leave them with a default password. My reply to that was that it was unlikely:

Thanks for the suggestion melboy. I'm not entirely convinced that this can be the culprit, as

• My router runs a non-standard firmware
• I have set the password on it.
• I recently upgraded it, and in the process reset all existing settings
• The dns servers it is given by the smartbro DHCP are the three valid smartbro dns servers, namely 121.1.3.199, 121.1.3.208, and 203.84.191.216. These check out on www.robtex.com

So unless the main smartbro DNS servers have been affected, I don't think this is likely. As a sidenote, I recently tested the Smartbro DNS servers for the DNS poisoning vulnerability released at Blackhat this year, and they passed, with properly randomised ports.

So … still puzzled. I may try using OpenDNS servers for a while to see if that helps. Then at least that would tell me if it was SmartBro DNS.

Hmmmmm.

I'm continually startled by the way people use email in the Philippines. Using a Yahoo address is phenomenally popular, even for business. I could forgive a mom and pop company from using momandpop@yahoo.com.ph, but when you get top management handing you cards saying ceo_888@yahoo.com.ph there is something clearly very wrong.

In no particular order, here are a few reasons why you should NOT use yahoo for your business email address.

• It looks tacky. It looks cheap. It gives the sense that your company is run on a shoestring and has no marketing department.
• Getting your own domain is cheap and easy. You can get an email/webhost in the US for USD 3 a month, and a domainname for USD 9 a year. If you really can't bear to part from your Gmail or YahooMail, then set up your own domain to point to their service. Gmail doesn't even charge for this, and Yahoo's charge is minimal. At least you'll seem to have control of your own destiny.
• Information leakage. Despite Google's and Yahoo's best assurances, there is no guarantee that your vital business documents will stay secret. While I believe they try hard to protect your information, there is always the chance of a rogue administrator inside the company reading and using information in your account. If you run your own mailserver, this is not an issue.

So do yourself a favour, get your email hosted properly somewhere. You know who you are.

That's not to say there's no beer at all, mind. There is canned beer, which has always been inexplicably more expensive than bottled beer — around an extra 30%. And of course because of this, its the only beer left on the shelves. And there is foreign beer of course, but who in their right mind would pay 120 pesos for a can of Heineken, when the local brew is a sixth of the price and tastes much better.

I'll investigate further. Questions will be asked. Hang in there fellow Manilans.

No more. I think I'll just make my own ID card now — no one said they had to be official. Enter … auto badge generator page … http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/badge.php

Love it.