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conway.scot

conway.scot · American English

yet another human on the Internet

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  1. Making Good PDFs from Scanned Documents
    Mar 21, 2026 · original
    This is a quick post to document my personal workflow of producing nice PDF documents from scanned images.Some of my obligations and hobbies produce paper documents with no option for digital copies, so I am left to digitze the information myself.Here’s how I do it. Scanning I was lucky enough to obtain an Epson WF-7610 from my local e-waste drop-off. Although I’ve never used it to print, its 1200dpi auto-document-feed (ADF) scanner is very capable.A driver is available on the AUR under epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2 .I use SANE’s scanimage to invoke the scanner. Here are some utility functions that I use in my shell (bash): # set $EPSON_PATH to the path of the Epson scanner set_epson_path () { EPSON_PATH = $( scanimage -L | grep -oP "epson2:libusb: \d +: \d +" ) } scan_epson () { local mode = " ${ 1 ,, } " shift || true local output_format = "jpeg" local output_extension = "jpg" if [ -z "
  2. The Automotive Surveillance Hellscape of Buffalo, NY
    Jul 28, 2025 · original
    Several months ago, I heard that my local police department was proposing the purchase of a number of Flock license plate reader surveillance cameras. They had in fact been trialing these cameras for two and half years (for free), but that’s a story for another day. I did what I could to oppose it - I showed up to board meetings, said my piece, and watched as the town board unanimously voted to approve an agenda item for which they did not understand the implications, without any discussion or debate. After that, I decided that it was worth documenting just how many municipalities in the Buffalo metropolitan area were using ALPR cameras, Flock or otherwise - this is a summary of my journey. If you’re just interested in the raw data I’ve gathered, you can download it here . It includes FOIL responses including police departments’ ALPR policies, Flock camera locations, search logs, and dat
  3. Getting Started with ESPHome on Shelly Smart Switches
    Feb 28, 2025 · original
    I’ve been on another home automation kick recently. I’d heard of Shelly devices, but I hadn’t gotten around to investigating them until recently. To dip my feet in, I bought a Shelly 1 Mini gen3 and a Shelly 2PM gen3. The larger Shelly devices have 1.27mm pitch UART programming headers, whereas the “mini” series do not. I was hoping to go the OTA update route to install ESPHome anyway, so that shouldn’t be an issue! As I soon discovered however, the OTA upgrade process from Shelly stock to ESPHome is fraught with issues (as of 2025-03). Shelly 1 Mini gen3 My search engine chose this page to be my guide for flashing ESPHome over-the-air onto a Shelly 1 Mini. PLEASE DO NOT FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS PROVIDED THERE, AS THEY WILL SOFT-BRICK YOUR DEVICE. If only the poster updated their post to say that… Be aware that this guide has issues until PR has come through in esphome To be clear, the “i
  4. Preventing Spam Calls with Twilio or SignalWire
    Dec 26, 2024 · original
    Due to recent life events, I’ve been engaging with realtors, banks, and lenders. In all cases, I’m looking for information on their services and start by filling out an online form which should lead me to find such information. Typically instead of directly providing the answers I seek, the process breaks down with a statement of “we’ll get back to you”. Then, at random hours, I receive unsolicited phone calls from unknown phone numbers that are wholly unnecessary regarding the service. Better yet, even if the service provides the answers I’m looking for, salespeople often follow up regarding my interest in the service. Throughout this whole process, I keep asking myself - why can’t people just use e-mail? Well, why not force them to? I’ve recently stopped filling in my personal phone number in these web forms. If the form requires a phone number, I now supply a Twilio SignalWire phone n
  5. Airtags for non Apple Users
    Sep 25, 2024 · original
    Pointless Exposition I’m not in the Apple ecosystem, but I was quite enthused about the announcement of the airtag and the FindMy network back in 2019. The private-by-design protocol / implementation looked great, especially compared to literally any other existing tracker. And the reporting network being more-or-less all iOS devices made sure that it would have a very large userbase to begin with. I wanted to use an airtag at this time, but the software for using them outside of the Apple ecosystem didn’t yet exist. So I settled for the privacy invasive Tile tracking network. Then openhaystack came out. Awesome, arbitrary use of the FindMy network! However, it was a proof of concept more than anything, and thus didn’t really help me in my quest. Then came Macless-Haystack . It looked especially promising, and possibly usable! Laziness bred indifference, and I kept waiting to be spoonfed
  6. mDNS in Isolated Docker Containers
    May 10, 2024 · original
    I hope you’re ready for more smart home content . I’ve been wanting to get a “smart” thermostat for some time now. I put a lot of time into research, since all of the contenders suck in their own ways. Here were my requirements: Allows for physical control Has a humidistat and supports controlling a humidifier Relatively cheap ($100 USD) WiFi-enabled (I don’t want to bother setting up Zigbee or Z-Wave) Exposes functionality to the local network Works reliably without the need for an Internet connection I think that’s a relatively modest ask. However, the only product that I could find that met these criteria was the long-abandoned RadioThermostat CT-80 . I bought it as old stock from ebay, but after two attempts, had trouble finding one that worked. The seller of the second one didn’t ask for it to be returned, so I opened it up and saw some suspiciously yellow capacitors. However, they
  7. A Tour of my Overcomplicated Home Theater Setup
    Nov 8, 2023 · original
    Using a Fire Stick I bought a TV a few months ago. I hadn’t had one for a while, but I was ready to make a home theater at the time of purchase. I already had a 3.1 audio system ready, with a 4K capable Yamaha receiver. Not to mention, a trusty rooted Amazon Fire Stick 4K that had been collecting dust since the last time I had a TV. After initial setup, the equipment seemed to work well. It took a bit to set up ARC and HDMI-CEC, but once they were ready, everything seemed to operate fantastically. At first glance, the Fire Stick was a great solution to streaming content from my local Jellyfin server. However , after some time, I found a number of issues with some combination of Android, the device itself, and my heavily customized setup. First, I had a tough time finding a media player that would play well with hardware decoding 4K streams (without dropping frames). When I settled on Kod
  8. Receiving Facebook Messenger Notifications Without Compromising Your Privacy
    Aug 11, 2023 · original
    I’m not a huge fan of facebook. I had an account as a youth, deleted it in college, and then later realized that facebook marketplace was the new craigslist, and that I’d miss out on buying and selling local goods if I limited myself to the marketplace of web 1.0. Oh well, account reinstated (for marketplace purposes only). In order to sell items on marketplace, you need to use facebook messenger. Now, I have no issue with getting an email or something when I have a new message in my inbox, and then logging into facebook (in a web browser, in a container tab, on a VPN). I’ve yet to come across a 3rd party client that has all of marketplace’s functionality, so for now I’m stuck using the desktop website. However , in order to drive engagement and distribute malware, facebook doesn’t give you the option of sending external notifications for incoming messages. In order to get an alert that
  9. Using the SwitchBot Blind Tilt with Home Assistant
    Jul 24, 2023 · original
    I’m not going to go in depth regarding my Home Assistant setup at this time, but I’m generally a fan of home automation (when said automation actually makes sense and adds value). With that, I recently heard about the SwitchBot Blind Tilt. I checked its compatibility with Home Assistant and soon decided to purchase one. It was delivered a few days ago, but the setup process for Home Assistant wasn’t quite straight-forward (to me, at least). So without further ado, here’s what I had to do to set it up: Physically install the device on the blinds to be automated, following SwitchBot’s instructions Install SwitchBot’s app for Android or iOS, and calibrate the device The Android app requires Google Play Services for login (and of course you need an account) - I couldn’t get it to work with microG If you don’t calibrate the device before connecting it to Home Assistant, the device’s controls
  10. Kia Niro Modifications
    Jun 9, 2023 · original
    I recently bought a new car - a 2022 Kia Niro Hybrid. Of course, one of the first things to do with a new vehicle is to change everything you dislike about it. Here’s the list of complaints that I have with it, and what I’ve managed to change so far. Virtual Speaker (VESS) sound is way too loud (and beeps in reverse gear!) I’ve driven hybrids before, so I was expecting an annoying speaker, but this one is a bit much. The reverse beep is way too over-the-top, especially when there’s no user-facing way to ever disable it. It took some digging online, but I found that people took one of these approaches to “solve” the problem: Remove a fuse (MEMORY_2) that manages the VESS (and possibly more, depending on the car’s model/year) for the 2022 HEV/PHEV, this fuse also manages the “Active Air Flap Unit” Remove the front bumper and disconnect the VESS Add a button to toggle the VESS from existing
  11. Ditching E-ZPass for Increased Privacy and Cheaper Tolls
    May 2, 2023 · original
    As a resident of the state of New York who likes to use the I-90 interstate on occasion, I was practically required to get an E-ZPass tag in 2021, when the I-90 switched exclusively to cash-less tolling. I have a number of privacy concerns with both E-ZPass and Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems, so my decision to get one was not made lightly. Privacy concerns around E-ZPass and ALPR systems are nothing new. Pukingmonkey has a great presentation from DEFCON 21 (2013) on various forms of vehicle tracking. However, at the time of his presentation, you weren’t forced to have an E-ZPass to travel on the interstate. With cash-less tolling, NY offers you the option of either signing up with E-ZPass or getting your plate scanned by an ALPR system at each interstate plaza. If you elect for the ALPR option, you must proactively check for a bill on NY’s Tolls by Mail site. I’ve hea
  12. Simple SMS Forwarding with Gotify / ntfy
    Feb 23, 2023 · original
    tl;dr - Download this app and configure a webhook for ntfy to publish as JSON . Note that when using a public ntfy server, your topic name is essentially a password , and that you need to trust that the server admins aren’t reading your messages. Thus, I recommend self-hosting with authentication required, if possible. I travelled internationally a bit last year, and at one point in my journey, I attempted to access one of my domestic US bank accounts online. Oh, right, it only allows for 2FA via SMS message. Of course . My US SIM card was in my phone, halfway across the world from US cell service, so there was no way I was going to receive that SMS message. From this annoyance, I vowed to have some solution for the next time I went abroad (that didn’t involve switching to an international coverage plan). When I travel abroad in the future, I plan to leave my SIM card in a cell-connected
  13. A Tour of My Overcomplicated Fileserver
    Feb 6, 2023 · original
    A friend of mine is in the process of building their first NAS. It’s a beautiful thing, really. In heated discussions about system requirements and configurable options, I recalled my foray into my first (and current) hosted file server from many years ago. I made some unique design decisions that I think are worth sharing, if for nothing more than your amusement. My goals for this fileserver were simple (at least I thought so). I wanted to be able to manage all files hosted on the NAS, administer access for users, and allow those users limited access to the file server, while still being able to upload and download files, according to their group membership. Additionally, I wanted the process to be “user-friendly” - to some degree, at least. Well, SFTP exists. It’d be great if my users could use keyfiles, but I will sadly acknowledge that as not “user friendly” for most people. I don’t
  14. Proactively Monitoring TLS Certificate Deployment
    Sep 15, 2022 · original
    2022-09-15 Update This is a copy of my article from Datto’s engineering blog , originally published on 2021-09-13. As of the present, the server responds with an HTTP 502. The original text can be found on the Internet Archive . Unless you’re using the ACME protocol with a certificate authority such as Let’s Encrypt, you’re probably well aware of the annoyance of certificate rotation. Here at Datto, we use certificates in many places with a validity period of around a year, depending on the Certificate Authority . Last February, we noticed that several production hosts were providing expired certificates for one of our major Internet-facing domains - a mistake that many other companies suffer from, as well. This caused several problems, and it was decided that after the issues were addressed, we needed to take a very proactive stance in monitoring certificates for all of our TLS-enabled
  15. Remote Code Execution in Securonix Snypr (CVE-2022-37108)
    Aug 29, 2022 · original
    Over the course of the last six months or so, I’ve had the distinct pleasure of working with Securonix Snypr, an on-prem or cloud-hosted SIEM solution. I find SIEMs to be fairly boring, so after some time acting as a system administrator for the platform, I started pentesting it - and it didn’t take long to find some issues. In this post, I’ll discuss a remote code execution vulnerability that I found in the console’s syslog-ng configuration settings. But first, a brief overview on how Securonix functions in a typical cloud-hosted environment. Remote Ingesters (RINs) RINs are hosts that are tasked with retrieving logs and shipping them to the cloud-hosted (or on-prem) application back-end for collection and processing. They may be controlled by the customer or Securonix. For example, the deployment I used had an on-prem RIN for local network log collection, and a Securonix-managed cloud
  16. Reverse Engineering ShopGoodwill for Fun and Profit
    Apr 3, 2022 · original
    I’ve recently re-discovered the sheer amount of great stuff that can be found both in physical thrift stores and on ShopGoodwill . If you’re unfamiliar, it’s Goodwill’s online auction platform. Like most Internet services that I interact with, I’d love to use it in an automated fashion, but they don’t make their API documentation public. That’s no matter at all, but reversing some webapp wouldn’t be a good enough topic for me to blog about. Instead, I’m going to talk about the weird stuff that goes on interfacing with ShopGoodwill’s site. That said - the scripts that I’ve written for interacting with ShopGoodwill can be found here , if you’re interested in getting cron-scheduled query digest updates or bid sniping. When I started writing “bid_sniper”, I of course recognized that I needed to log in programmatically. So, I fired up my browser’s network console and sent my credentials to th
  17. Making a Custom Travel Adapter for My Walkman
    Jan 13, 2022 · original
    Although the Sony NW-A45 is a relatively new device (released in 2016), at its release, Sony still had yet to figure out that USB-C was the way of the future. Instead, it shipped with the long-standing proprietary Sony WM-PORT connector. It’s used for charging, data transfer, and more . Last year, I went on a week-long trip with the device, but decided against bringing a WM-PORT to USB cable, since I’d likely not consume the battery’s charge in that time. I was correct, and I was just fine without the charger. However, it made me realize that I’d much rather have a WM-PORT to microUSB or USB-C dongle as opposed to a WM-PORT to USB cable when going on longer trips. It feels a bit silly to carry a whole cable with you if you’re only going to use it once a week or so. I quickly found the now discontinued Sony WMP-NWM10 , which is exactly what I was looking for to solve this problem. However
  18. Client-side Trust in Private Messaging Services
    Dec 16, 2021 · original
    I’ve been an avid user of Signal for almost five years now. It’s a fantastic messaging platform, and brings end-to-end encryption to people that otherwise would not seek it out in a seamless fashion. A few years ago, Signal started to introduce client-side privacy features, including disappearing messages, view-once media, and remote message deletion. One commonality between these features is that the sender simply requests that the recipients deal with the message in a certain matter. If it’s a disappearing message, the recipients should delete the message after the configured amount of time. If it’s view-once media, it should be deleted after it has been been viewed by a given recipient. This sounds great in practice, but it’s not as if the recipients can be forced to heed the sender’s requests. Other messaging services (see: Snapchat) have monolithic terms of service that prohibit a u

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