Mastodawn

Ryan Castellucci (they/them)

Coworker: ...and the IP address are compared with a string match.
Me: grinning manically
Coworker: Why are you looking at me like that?
Me: Open up a terminal and type ping 4.2.514 and hit enter.
Coworker: ...what's the fourth number?
Me: grin widens Just hit enter.
Coworker: WTF!?

Amo Bishop Rodent Apr 23, 2025

`ping 8.8.2056`

WTF how am just finding out about this today?

Allen but one of the good ones Apr 23, 2025

@pikesley @ryanc what. How?!

Amo Bishop Rodent

@uastronomer @ryanc

I mean... 2056 is 8*256 + 8, the maths makes sense, but WTFFFFFF?

Allen but one of the good ones Apr 23, 2025

@pikesley @ryanc Oh.... oh okay, I see!

WOW!

'cos a standard format IPv4 address is technically a 4 digit base256 number, so this is all just base conversions gone screwy 🤣🤣🤣

Amo Bishop Rodent Apr 23, 2025

@uastronomer @ryanc yeah, it's completely cursed

`ping 134744072`

Amo Bishop Rodent Apr 23, 2025

@uastronomer @ryanc

```
>>> (8 * pow(256, 3)) + (8 * pow(256, 2)) + (8 * pow(256, 1)) + (8 * pow(256, 0))
134744072
```

Amo Bishop Rodent Apr 23, 2025

@uastronomer @ryanc

or

```
sum(8 * pow(256, n) for n in range(4))
```

OK stepping away from the Python console now

not a martian, honest Apr 23, 2025

@[email protected] @uastronomer @ryanc huh, that's not too different from a phone number

Zimmie Apr 23, 2025

@pikesley @uastronomer @ryanc It’s actually really great, because it’s incredibly painful to do math with dotted decimal strings, especially when the netmasks don’t line up to a byte boundary. It’s much, much easier to convert them to a number and do math on the number.

For example, you can convert an interface’s IP number to an integer, convert its mask to an integer, and do a bitwise AND to get the lowest address. You can then bitwise NOT the mask integer and do a bitwise OR with the lowest address to get the highest address. And you can feed integers to seq or a for loop or whatever.

Austin Dern, Dean of Coatis Apr 24, 2025

@pikesley @uastronomer @ryanc Way back in the 90s I made someone angry with me when I gave the URL for a web site as http://[long number here]/whatever.html. Those were fun times.

Andre Apr 24, 2025

@Austin_Dern @pikesley @uastronomer @ryanc

01189998819991197253.com/help.html

Ryan Castellucci (they/them)

@leitzke @Austin_Dern @pikesley @uastronomer the guy who made the it crowd is a monster

Amo Bishop Rodent Apr 24, 2025

@ryanc @leitzke @Austin_Dern @uastronomer he is

)}]Apr 24, 2025

@pikesley @ryanc @leitzke @Austin_Dern @uastronomer
He was the second-best writer on "Father Ted".

Arthur disowned him years ago.

Amo Bishop Rodent Apr 24, 2025

@dec23k @ryanc @leitzke @Austin_Dern @uastronomer

https://mastodon.me.uk/@pikesley/111477339761221145

Give 'Em Enough Pope (@[email protected])

Johnny Marr returns from the bar carrying three pints. He, John Squires and Arthur Matthews each take a deep draught, and sigh wistfully

mastodon.me.uk

Austin Dern, Dean of Coatis Apr 24, 2025

@dec23k @pikesley @ryanc @leitzke @uastronomer Alas.

Way back before we knew about him, we got a book of Father Ted scripts with commentary and it mentioned one episode where they wanted an insert shot of Father MacDougal working out "a page of failed noughts-and-crosses" and gads, to think a mind that could produce such a perfect funny concept would be lost.

[ The episode didn't use the page because they couldn't work out a prop that did the idea justice. ]

)}]Apr 24, 2025

@Austin_Dern @pikesley @leitzke @uastronomer
It's safe to say that Arthur had most of the best and funniest 'Ted' ideas.
Way back in 1988, a band called The Joshua Trio provided a background for Ted's character to be created.
They usually had comedy skits between some of the songs, which were co-written and performed by a bunch of staff writers from the music magazine where Arthur was photo editor at the time.
https://www.paulwoodfull.com/the-joshua-trio
(that's Arthur on drums.)

The Joshua Trio | musiccomedy

musiccomedy

Austin Dern, Dean of Coatis Apr 24, 2025

@dec23k Oh, this is quite nice. Thank you!

Andre Apr 24, 2025

@pikesley @ryanc @Austin_Dern @uastronomer oh damn, I had no idea he was a bigot until now!!!

it even took me some hours to understand that "a monster" should actually be interpreted by the negative connotation.

Sorry for bringing up the reference and thanks for pointing this out so I could read about it.

Austin Dern, Dean of Coatis Apr 24, 2025

@leitzke @pikesley @ryanc @uastronomer Oh, I'm sorry to bring you the bad news.

Here's hoping we live long enough to see him fix his heart or die.

I AM BANKSY ☕ / 🗑‍🔥Apr 23, 2025

@uastronomer
That's it. I'm just going to document things in Confluence with calculated IPs like 'ping 168433938'

@pikesley @ryanc

Allen but one of the good ones Apr 23, 2025

@pikesley @ryanc Still geeking out about this hour later!

Amo Bishop Rodent Apr 23, 2025

@uastronomer @ryanc

```
>>> IP="185.53.178.54"
>>> sum(int(n) * pow(256, index) for index, n in enumerate(reversed(IP.split("."))))
3107303990
```

Thought about this all over lunchtime

Msb Apr 23, 2025

@uastronomer @pikesley @ryanc technically an IP address is just a 32bit integer. The dotted quad is just a mind hack because we can more easily remember strings of smaller numbers.

Dan O'Ginnec Apr 23, 2025

>'cos a standard format IPv4 address is technically a 4 digit base256 number,<

not exactly. if you ping 192.1 (example from below), the pinged address ist not 0.0.192.1, but (strangely) 192.0.0.1

but yes, there's some similarity. probably depending on how ping parses this numbers.

@pikesley @ryanc
@Infoseepage

Amo Bishop Rodent Apr 23, 2025

@DanKen @uastronomer @ryanc @Infoseepage

Yeah, `ping` is doing some parsing that other tools... aren't:

```
➜ ping 3107303990
PING 3107303990 (185.53.178.54): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 185.53.178.54: icmp_seq=0 ttl=51 time=30.992 ms

➜ whois 3107303990
% IANA WHOIS server
% for more information on IANA, visit http://www.iana.org
% This query returned 1 object

as-block: 402333-4199999999
organisation: Unallocated
```

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

Ryan Castellucci (they/them)

@pikesley @DanKen @uastronomer @Infoseepage I regret to inform you that inet_aton is a very popular dumpster fire.

SpaceLifeForm Apr 23, 2025

@pikesley @DanKen @uastronomer @ryanc @Infoseepage

I would not trust whois in all scenarios.

It depends upon which server you ask.

Amo Bishop Rodent Apr 23, 2025

@SpaceLifeForm @DanKen @uastronomer @ryanc @Infoseepage ok, fine, but the client doesn't know how to parse that number into an ipv4 address

SpaceLifeForm Apr 23, 2025

@pikesley @DanKen @uastronomer @ryanc @Infoseepage

It could be coded to enforce octets and return an error, but it is lazy coding. Fixing it now could create breakage.

Pick your poison.

Amo Bishop Rodent Apr 23, 2025

@SpaceLifeForm @DanKen @uastronomer @ryanc @Infoseepage I mean, this is a very stupid use-case, so 🤷‍♀️

Ryan Castellucci (they/them)

@SpaceLifeForm @pikesley @DanKen @uastronomer @Infoseepage breakage

I AM BANKSY ☕ / 🗑‍🔥Apr 23, 2025

@pikesley
Like, when I saw the resulting ping, it made sense... Even though it's insanity.

@uastronomer @ryanc