Bypassing Torrent Block

Can't seem to access your favourite torrent sites lately? Getting an error page that says "Access to this website has been disabled"? That's your tax dollars at work. (Sort of.)

As requested by Foxtel and Village Roadshow, the Australian Federal Court has ordered the major ISPs (Telstra, Optus, iiNet, Dodo, TPG, etc.) to block access to 5 torrent sites, specifically:

• The Pirate Bay
• Torrentz
• TorrentHound (I thought this has already been shut down?)
• IsoHunt, and
• SolarMovie

From what I've read, Foxtel and Village Roadshow will have to pay the ISPs $50 for every domain that is blocked. Any new domains that they want blocked will have to go through the courts.

Based on my experience, Telstra and Optus are using DNS blocking. Simplest workaround is to use another DNS server, instead of your ISP's. Change your WiFi/Ethernet connection's DNS server configuration to point to for example, Google's DNS servers, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Problem solved.

2 DS in 2 Days

No, not a 2DS. What I meant was, I somehow managed to get two DS consoles in two days.

So my kid saw me playing on my Nintendo DS Lite, and he wanted one for himself. Had a quick look on eBay and Gumtree. Would you believe these things are still selling for around $50 to $100 (from DS Lites to DSi's and DSi XLs)?

Anyway, found this guy on Gumtree selling his DSi and DSi LL relatively cheap ($20 and $30, respectively). Reason why they're cheap is because they're Japanese consoles, and there's no way to switch the language to English (Yes, I checked.) They should be able to take in any region cartridge and you should be able to just play away. Between the two, I decided to get the LL. (Bigger is always better.) I probably would've also bought the other one, if only he can find it. Instead of buying game cartridges, I went to oz3ds.net and bought myself an R4i Gold 3DS flashcart. True, there are cheaper alternatives out there, but I was told this is the gold standard.

Now that I think about it, I should've bought a DS Lite (since I already have an extra R4 DS just lying around), instead of buying the DSi LL, plus the flashcart. So this time I started looking around for a DS Lite. Found one for sale on Gumtree for $5. By the time I inquired, price has gone up to $20 ("due to popular demand"). I guess a lot of potential buyers got turned off by the price increase because I managed to snag it. Heck, even comes with an M3DSReal flashcart. Not the best, but hey, it's free. For the latest firmware, go here or here.

Downloading Brightcove Videos

Got some Brightcove webinars from work that I need to download, but finding it quite challenging. Most of the blog posts talk about disabling Flash, enabling developer tools, then setting device emulation and/or user-agent spoofing to Apple iPad.

Logic here is that Brightcove typically transports videos via Flash, as this makes saving videos for offline very difficult. By spoofing the device as an Apple iPad, the theory is that the Brightcove player should fallback to HTML5 mode and we should then be able to save the file as mp4.
So the steps are:

1. Disable Flash via chrome://plugins
2. Go to Developer Tools (Ctrl-Shft-I), and switch to Apple iPad mode.
3. Go to Network tab and filter for mp4.
4. Reload the page (F5) and wait for the mp4 link to show up.

What I noticed is that disabling the Flash plug-in doesn’t really help. I’m not seeing any mp4 URL. Other blog posts talk about rtmp hacking. Again, I don’t see any reference to rtmp on the Network tab.

Now that I think about it, Brightcove probably doesn’t even use Flash anymore, as almost everyone else is now using HTML5 for video streaming. A closer look at the network traffic shows that the Brightcove player is sending over binary blobs of video using xhr (XMLHttpRequest/Response). It’s possible that the player is not falling back to mp4 mode because it assumes the Apple iPad (and Safari) can handle HTML5 XHR. To test my theory, I switched the device emulation to Google Nexus 4, and this time the tricked worked just fine – even without disabling Flash. On the Network tab, I can see the mp4 link, which can be copied and pasted to your favourite downloader.

While this worked for now, there’s no telling what Brightcove might come up next. For reference, below are some blog posts on what other people have done.

Using rtmp:
http://johntantalo.com/blog/extracting-video-from-brightcove-player-with-rtmpdump/
http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/354508-Brightcove
http://www.benfrancom.com/2016/03/17/download-brightcove-videos.html
http://mrbluecoat.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/download-brightcove-videos-tutorial.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/2ro9vn/need_help_downloading_embedded_video/

Using mp4 fallback:
http://grumblesmeckerecke.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/how-to-download-brightcove-videos.html
http://words.bombast.net/download-brightcove-videos/
http://www.mikewebguy.com/2013/08/20/save-brightcove-videos-from-google-chrome/
https://tjkelly.com/blog/how-to-download-brightcove-video/

Nougat on Grouper

Who would believe that the Nexus 7 (2012) 32GB WiFi tablet is still selling for $200 on ebay?! I mean, this thing is already 4 years old! I found someone selling it for $35 on Gumtree, so I immediately snatched it up.

Latest factory image for nakasi (a.k.a. grouper) is Android 5.1.1 (LMY47V). A check on XDA-Developers show that there's an unofficial AOSP 7.1.1_r4 Nougat build for it, so guess which one I went for?

Before anything anything else, given that this is a stock device, you have to first unlock the bootloader, root, and install a custom recovery. All these are done with WugFresh's Nexus Root Toolkit. Just tell NRT what Nexus device you have, and on what software level, and it will take care of downloading all the files that you need from the Internet. Remember to enable USB debugging on the device first!

If NRT/adb cannot detect your tablet when connected to your PC's USB port, you might have to download and install the Nexus 7 USB drivers:
https://developer.android.com/studio/run/win-usb.html
https://androidmtk.com/download-google-nexus-usb-drivers

If the drivers won't install properly on Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, you might have to disable Driver Signature Enforcement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6HbmjXONuk

Download ROM, 7.1 pico Gapps, and SuperSU here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-7/development/rom-android-7-aosp-grouper-t3467514
Gapps have to be pico or else it won't fit in the /system partition given the size of the ROM.
With SuperSU, we'll be doing a systemless install (via recovery) to prevent potential bootloops.

In summary, here are the steps:

1. Enable USB debugging on N7 (via Developer Options) and connect to PC via USB.
2. Using NRT, unlock bootloader. Takes a loooong time for the N7 to boot up. Have patience.
3. Enable USB debugging again.
4. Again using NRT, root and install customer recovery.
5. Boot to recovery using NRT's Advanced Utilities.
6. Wipe --> Factory Reset. You might also want to Format Data if you want to start fresh with no leftover crap.
7. Reboot to system. At this point, you can copy the ROM, Gapps, and SuperSU zips to the device via MTP.
8. Again, boot to recovery using NRT's Advanced Utilities.
9. Flash ROM and reboot to recovery.
10. Flash Gapps and reboot to recovery.
11. Mount the /data partition, if not already mounted.
12. Open Terminal and enter the following command: # echo "SYSTEMLESS=true" >/data/.supersu
13. Close Terminal and flash SuperSU.
14. Reboot system.

Enjoy that Nougat goodness on your grouper!