Exercise 1 solution

    data = bytes.fromhex("00 00 01 f4 ff ff ff 9c 2a 00")
    a = int.from_bytes(data[0:4], "big")
    b = int.from_bytes(data[4:8], "big", signed=True)
    c = int.from_bytes(data[8:10], "little")
    print(a, b, c)                                    # 500 -100 42
    print(int.from_bytes(data[4:8], "big"))           # 4294967196

(Run as written; the output matched the comments.)

Explanation: the first four bytes are 0x000001f4, which is 500 when read
big-endian. The next four are 0xffffff9c; read as signed they are -100, but
read as unsigned the same bytes give 4294967196 (that is 2**32 - 100). The
last two bytes, 2a 00, are little-endian: the low byte comes first, so the
value is 0x002a = 42. Reading them big-endian would give 10752, which is the
kind of silent wrong answer a byte-order mistake produces.