#trivia

In a bit of internet #trivia. I admit I do find interesting when Pornhub or some other porn company does this kind of analysis.

> Pornhub searches for ‘office sex,’ ‘cheating’ surge after Coldplay concert kiss-cam scandal https://nypost.com/2025/07/19/lifestyle/pornhub-searches-for-office-sex-cheating-surge-after-coldplay-concert-kiss-cam-scandal/

#porn

Did #MarieAntoinette Really Say ‘#LetThemEatCake’?

https://www.history.com/articles/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake
#history #trivia

Our General Knowledge Quiz in E is now live!
This week we challenge you in our general knowledge quiz with each answer starting with the letter E.
https://youknowwhatblog.com/quizzes/general-knowledge-quiz-in-e/
.
#pubquiz #pubtrivia #quiz #trivia #triviaquestions #fact #facts #didyouknow #youknowwhat #hard #hardmode #challenge

JULY 20th.

56th anniversary of the first Moon Landing.

Remembering when #NASA was still in charge of the space program and could actually get a rocket off the ground.

#TRIVIA: The flag planted by #Apollo11 is the only one not still standing. It was "blown" over by the rocket blast as the lander lifted off back to orbit b/c they planted it too close.

Also, all 6 flags left behind have long since been bleached white by the Sun (make of that what you will.)

#MLS #Soccer #Trivia
Seattle Sounders player, Danny Musovski & Vancouver player, Tristan Blackmon, played on the same club team for a while when they were kids. At that time they both played forward. They attended different high schools & began to compete with each other for different state titles until Blackmon switched positions & began to alternate between forward & defender. Danny stayed in Vegas & attended UNLV while Tristan recv'd a scholarship & attended the Univ of the Pacific in CA.

80s night at The Pub was so much fun tonight. I am very much looking forward to doing 90s night on August 27. Hope to see even more people there.

#trivia #WinchesterVA #MartinsburgWV

Don't forget to join us at The Pub in Bunker Hill tonight for 80s night #trivia. I guarantee it will be a totally tubular night.

#WinchesterVA #MartinsburgWV

https://winchestertrivia.com/mc-events/80s-trivia-2/?mc_id=282

In a bit of #trivia and a small win for the island.

> Finca de Las Marías wins contract to serve Puerto Rican coffee in Congress https://www.sanjuandailystar.com/post/finca-de-las-mar%C3%ADas-wins-contract-to-serve-puerto-rican-coffee-in-congress

On a side note, and not sure this is still the case, but at one point PR coffee was also the Vatican's coffee.

#BackInTheUSColony #PuertoRico #coffee #USGovernment #MastodonPR

Finished writing my 80s #trivia for tomorrow night. I even made sure all of the clue songs are from the 80s (with 1 exception that was released in 1990).

Looking forward to a good time at The Pub, seeing a bunch of people dressed like they're from the 80s, and checking to see how much they remember from that decade.

#WinchesterVA #MartinsburgWV

https://winchestertrivia.com/mc-events/80s-trivia-2/?mc_id=282

> The Ultimate Columbo FAQ: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know https://mysterytribune.com/the-ultimate-columbo-faq-everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know/

A bit of #trivia. I've been watching Columbo in and out through #TubiTV. It's a lot of episodes in the series, but it is good entertainment.

#television #Columbo #mystery

Have you ever wondered where the [[wikilink]] syntax you use in MediaWiki, Obsidian, Logseq, or Roam came from?

Clifford Adams created it for UseModWiki because CamelCase doesn’t work for Wikipedia.

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-January/000007.html

#trivia

DNS Esoterica - Why you can't dig Switzerland

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/07/dns-esoterica-why-you-cant-dig-switzerland/

As part of my new job, I'm learning a lot more about the mysteries of the Domain Name System than any mortal should know I thought possible.

The humble unix dig command allows you to query all sort of DNS information. For example, to see name server records for the BBC website, you can run:

dig bbc.co.uk NS

Which will get you:

;; Got answer:;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 35614;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 8, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 17;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232; COOKIE: 097db2ee4c92b84982083ecf62b5b5f2007906e616035113 (good);; QUESTION SECTION:;bbc.co.uk. IN NS;; ANSWER SECTION:bbc.co.uk. 900 IN NS ddns1.bbc.com.bbc.co.uk. 900 IN NS dns0.bbc.co.uk.bbc.co.uk. 900 IN NS ddns1.bbc.co.uk....

And a whole lot more. But you can go further down the DNS tree. What are the nameservers for .co.uk?

dig co.uk NS

And you'll get your answer. You can go one further and see the nameservers for the Top Level Domain:

dig uk NS

Which replies with:

;; Got answer:;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 54061;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 8, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 17;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232; COOKIE: 880427eda8ff71de2ab4f43862b5b65f95e317d29cc10a8e (good);; QUESTION SECTION:;uk. IN NS;; ANSWER SECTION:uk. 159692 IN NS nsc.nic.uk.uk. 159692 IN NS dns1.nic.uk.uk. 159692 IN NS nsd.nic.uk....

And that works with every TLD. Countries like de, generic names like museum, and internationalised domains like 在线. All of them work!

Except Switzerland.

Switzerland's country code is ch - after the name Confoederatio Helvetica. Let's run the dig on it: dig ch NS

;; Got answer:;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: REFUSED, id: 31910;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

We have been refused and warned. But why does this only happen with Switzerland?

The blame - as with most modern ills - lies in the mid-1970s. The Bee Gees were storming the charts with "Jive Talkin'", the Rocky Horror Picture Show was gathering a cult following, and MIT scientists were causing chaos. Literally.

Chaosnet was an early network protocol designed for local networks. It was technically very clever but, sadly, never really took off.

However, it found its way into DNS records. Let's go back to the answer to dig bbc.co.uk NS:

;; ANSWER SECTION:bbc.co.uk. 900 IN NS ddns1.bbc.com.

OK, the first part is the domain name. The number is the TTL. The IN is the class. The NS says this is a nameserver record. And, finally, we get the domain of the nameserver.

But, in the class, what does IN stand for?

"Internet", obviously. Wait... Isn't the DNS on the Internet? Why do we need to specify that these DNS records are for Internet?

Well, isn't it obvious? Because you might want records of a different network. Like, for example, Chaosnet.

And if Internet is abbreviated to IN, what is Chaosnet shortened to? That's right! CH.

So, dig sees you enter ch for Switzerland, but thinks you're asking about CH for Chaosnet. And so it fails.

In order to query the records for ch we need to provide an absolutely fully-qualified domain name. It's as simple as sticking a dot at the end of the domain name:

dig ch. NS

;; Got answer:;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 64932;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 5, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 11;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232; COOKIE: e19b9c23cdfa0f7bcf82750462b5c16b47744386c7974ffb (good);; QUESTION SECTION:;ch. IN NS;; ANSWER SECTION:ch. 164894 IN NS e.nic.ch.ch. 164894 IN NS a.nic.ch.ch. 164894 IN NS f.nic.ch.

And there we go. A failed 1970s experiment like bell-bottoms and Betamax videos - but with much longer lasting consequences.

You can see some CH records by running like:

dig ch txt @f.root-servers.net version.bind

That will get you something like:

;; ANSWER SECTION:version.bind. 86400 CH TXT "cloudflare-f-root-20190930"

Of course, DNS doesn't only have IN and CH class records.

There's also Hesiod - HS. But you already knew that, right...?

#dns #internet #trivia

Humans can smell wet earth after rain (petrichor) better than sharks can smell blood in water.

#trivia

Reminder: If you're a fan of the 80s, come join us on Wednesday for our first themed #trivia at The Pub in Bunker Hill. We'll be doing a special 80s-themed trivia to celebrate 1 year of trivia there.

Teams will get bonus points if they dress like folks would have dressed in the 80s.

https://winchestertrivia.com/2025/05/themed-trivia-coming-to-the-pub/

#WinchesterVA #MartinsburgWV

Today, the full-moon day of the fourth month ("aashaada") of the #Hindu luni-solar calendar, is "guru poornimaa" in #India and elsewhere.

In #Sanskrit, "guru" is teacher; "poornimaa" is full moon (literally "state of fullness"). The day honors teachers. So, as they say, "shree gurubhyoh namah", or "salutation to the teacher".

#Trivia: This year's "guru poornimaa" falls on Thursday ("guru waasara"), the weekly day of teachers. There's more to the weekday name "guru waasara", but that's for a rainy day.

#teachers #appreciation #gratitude

@rbreich
A TINY BIT OF #TRIVIA:

Q: How many of the #FoundingFather's were born "American Citizens"?

A: ZERO. "America" was not a country when they were born.

Martin van Buren has the distinction of being the first "American born" president.

https://www.europesays.com/uk/249607/ Here’s What ‘Hyrox’ Really Stands For #Fitness #Health #language #trivia #UK #UnitedKingdom

@TerryHancock
For the first image, they most likely did the obvious and just placed a glass of water (about a half inch deep) over the cell (perhaps blowing on the water to add movement.)

Note: Snow White was filmed at just 12fps to reduce the work load of the animators. #Trivia

#DavidAttenborough has more letters after his name than in it. His full title is Sir David Attenborough OM GSMG CH CVO CBE FRS FSA FRSA FZS FRSGS FRSB. #trivia

Get the location of the ISS using DNS

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/07/get-the-location-of-the-iss-using-dns/

I love DNS esoterica. Weird little things that you can shove in the global directory to be distributed around the world instantly(ish).

Domain names, like www.example.com usually resolve to servers. As much as we think of "the cloud" as being some intangible morass of ethereal Turing-machines floating in probability space, the more prosaic reality is that they're just boxen in data centres. They have a physical location.

Got a tricky machine which is playing silly-buggers? Wouldn't it be nice to know exactly where it is? That way you can visit and give it some percussive maintenance.

Enter the DNS LOC record!

The snappily titled RFC 1876 is an experimental standard. It allows you to create a DNS record which specifies the latitude and longitude of your server. Of course, some data-centres are very tall and some are underground. So it also contains an altitude parameter.

The standard allows for a minimum altitude of -100,000 metres - deep enough for any bunker! The maximum altitude is 42,849,672 metres which is high enough to allow it to be used on satellites in geostationary orbit.

So, as a bit of fun, I decided to create where-is-the-iss.dedyn.io

It isn't a website. You can't ping it. There's no way to interact with it except by using DNS. Yup! You can use a DNS query to get the (approximate) location of the International Space Station!

Linux and Mac users0 can run:

dig where-is-the-iss.dedyn.io LOC

And receive back the latest position of the ISS:

;; ANSWER SECTION:where-is-the-iss.dedyn.io. 1066 IN LOC 47 24 53.500 N 66 12 12.070 W 430520m 10000m 10000m 10000m

The DNS records are updated every 15 minutes on a best-effort basis1.

How

The lovely people at N2YO have a website which allows you to track loads of objects in orbit. They also have an easy to use API with a generous free tier.

Calling https://api.n2yo.com/rest/v1/satellite/positions/25544/0/0/0/1/&apiKey=_____ gets back the latest position:

{ "info": { "satname": "SPACE STATION", "satid": 25544, "transactionscount": 7 }, "positions": [ { "satlatitude": -21.25409321, "satlongitude": 140.3335763, "sataltitude": 420.09, "azimuth": 292.92, "elevation": -70.95, "ra": 202.69300845, "dec": -32.16097472, "timestamp": 1751366048, "eclipsed": true } ]}

Note that the altitude is in Km, whereas the LOC format requires m.

The latitude and longitude are in decimal format - they need to be converted to Degrees, Minutes, and Seconds.

There were only a few free domain name providers who offer an API for updating LOC records. I went for deSEC a charity from Berlin. They have comprehensive API documentation.

Adding the initial LOC record is done with:

curl https://desec.io/api/v1/domains/where-is-the-iss.dedyn.io/rrsets/ \ --header "Authorization: Token _______" \ --header "Content-Type: application/json" --data @- <<< \ '{"type": "LOC", "records": ["40 16 25.712 S 29 32 36.243 W 427550m 0.00m 10000m 10m"], "ttl": 900}'

However, updating the record is a little trickier. it needs to be sent as an HTTP PATCH to a subtly different URl. The PATCH only needs to send the data which have changed.

curl -X PATCH https://desec.io/api/v1/domains/where-is-the-iss.dedyn.io/rrsets/@/LOC/ \ --header "Authorization: Token _______" \ --header "Content-Type: application/json" --data @- <<< \ '{"records": ["40 16 25.712 S 29 32 36.243 W 427550m 0.00m 10000m 10m"]}'

I set the Time To Live at 900 seconds. Every 15 minutes my code runs to update the record2. That keeps me well within the API limits for both services. I could add TXT records showing when it was last updated, or other sorts of unstructured data, but I think this is enough for a quick proof-of-concept.

There you have it! A complex and silly way to demonstrate how DNS can be used to hold the most unlikely of records3. Say, I wonder how you'd represent the co-ordinates of the Mars Rover…?

Further Reading

For more DNS weirdness, please see my other posts:

BIMI - SVG in DNS TXT WTF?!
Why you can't dig Switzerland

I don't think there's a way for Windows users to look up LOC records using PowerShell or the Command Prompt. 
Look, I'm not NASA, OK? If you're using this to help you dock then I cannot be held responsible. 
I suppose you could build an API with unlimited request limits by distributing data via DNS TXT records. Would best suit static or infrequently updating data. Push it once to DNS and let everyone query it semi-locally. 
See if you can find the other interesting record I've added to DNS! 

#dns #internet #trivia