Hacker News: NeutronBoy

Holden assembly workers despair as last Australian car-maker exits manufacturing

NeutronBoy — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 13:31:40 +0000

Article URL: http://www.theage.com.au/business/holden-assembly-workers-despair-as-last-australian-carmaker-exits-manufacturing-20171012-gz06x2.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15465429

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by NeutronBoy in "Fast food and obesity in developing countries"

NeutronBoy — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 13:35:10 +0000

Why?

New comment by NeutronBoy in "“Use of open source software has been declining rapidly in the private sector”"

NeutronBoy — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 23:49:57 +0000

I know a few years ago when I was working on a government procurement project for some software, the (very good) lawyers were very weary of any OSS included in the proprietary product we were buying. Their reasoning was, we were buying the product from the vendor. If the vendor had incorporated the OSS code into their product and it was found that they'd breached the license conditions, then we essentially lost the license to run the software - otherwise we'd be in breach as well. Not what you want when you're spending hundreds of millions on a project.

New comment by NeutronBoy in "Google Unveils Tools to Increase Subscriptions for Publishers"

NeutronBoy — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 16:43:17 +0000

> What we desperately need is a real, useful micro-payments model where you can pay per-article

The other side of the coin is that if you're a news organisation, "the economics just don't work" with micro payments. You can't fund a month long investigative report based on micropayments, even if it produces a prize-winning piece, if you don't have guaranteed income to support it. What happens if you spend the month investigating and don't find anything?

Micro-payment per-article will only encourage "safe" journalism - articles that you know will resonate with your readers, rather than controversial pieces or in-depth, resource intensive research.

New comment by NeutronBoy in "IBM contract cost for failure-plagued Phoenix payroll system jumped to $185M"

NeutronBoy — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 14:54:53 +0000

Most governments have public portals (or you have to register with your company details but it's basically open apart from that) that they post RF{I,T,Q}s on.

New comment by NeutronBoy in "Facebook is 'silencing' Rohingya Muslim reports of 'ethnic cleansing'"

NeutronBoy — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 18:34:15 +0000

> I'd rather FB just said "we'll never pony up the wages necessary to moderate well so we're just going to make facebook a complete free speech zone."

They were literally doing this! Then they got slammed for 'censorship', so they got rid of the moderators. Now they're in the position they are now.

New comment by NeutronBoy in "Why competition in the politics industry is failing America [pdf]"

NeutronBoy — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 15:55:41 +0000

Yes.

Our compulsory voting is really "compulsory voting". It's "compulsory turn up to a polling station and get your name marked off". You can drop an empty ballot in the box, draw penises on it, or even just turn and walk out of the polling place.

Also, the OP underestimates the impact of the minor parties. While there are two major parties, one of them is a coalition between two parties (Liberals and the Nationals), and there's a significant block of smaller parties and independents that are big enough that when they vote together they can have a deciding vote on legislation.

New comment by NeutronBoy in "Learn from your attackers – SSH HoneyPot"

NeutronBoy — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 23:17:22 +0000

> Security through obscurity is not the solution, though

Security is about layers. Nothing is foolproof. It's about implementing layers of controls to reduce your attack surface to an acceptable level, with the trade-off that many controls increase the complexity of your setup or compromises the convenience for your users.

For example, for SSH, this probably includes

* changing the default port

* enforcing SSH key authentication

* enforcing passwords on SSH keys

* implementing fail2ban

* installing jump hosts for internal machines

* implementing a VPN rather than external facing hosts (and with that comes all the additional layers for the VPN)

* etc...

New comment by NeutronBoy in "Hacking Voting Machines at Defcon"

NeutronBoy — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 14:41:38 +0000

What would you question about it?

There are normally multiple observers from all parties, plus election officials, that scrutinize the counting process in real-time. Disputes are raised and resolved on the spot where possible, and it not are normally escalated. This is why elections can have provisional results on the same day/night, and the official results are a few days later.

Facebook says it shouldn’t have to stay mum when government seeks user data

NeutronBoy — Sun, 16 Jul 2017 11:51:21 +0000

Article URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/facebook-says-it-shouldnt-have-to-stay-mum-when-government-seeks-user-data/2017/07/15/759f2cd6-67dd-11e7-9928-22d00a47778f_story.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14781609

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by NeutronBoy in "The Rise of the Thought Leader"

NeutronBoy — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 18:21:46 +0000

To be fair, that's my impression of a number of people who introduce themselves as 'entrepreneurs'.

The people who run a business, or are building something or are otherwise working, will say that. People who say they're in 'business' or are an 'entrepreneur' are the ones who haven't figured out exactly what they're up to.

New comment by NeutronBoy in "Residents of Colorado Springs undertook a radical experiment in government"

NeutronBoy — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 16:00:19 +0000

There's almost two conclusions from the article:

- running government more like a business isn't necessarily a bad thing, and

- a ruthless business-man isn't necessarily the best suited person to do it

New comment by NeutronBoy in "Walmart banned alcohol and swearing from Jet's offices and it was a big mistake"

NeutronBoy — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 18:26:41 +0000

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/words

New comment by NeutronBoy in "Maersk IT systems infected with ransomware"

NeutronBoy — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 15:23:33 +0000

WaPo have just published a story about the attacks https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/ukraines-governm...

Versioning APIs at Google

NeutronBoy — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 22:41:14 +0000

Article URL: http://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/06/versioning-APIs-at-Google.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14641021

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Lost Australian cubesats have been found with help from telescope and ham radio

NeutronBoy — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 18:27:52 +0000

Article URL: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-26/australian-cubesats-lost-in-space-found-with-international-help/8651514

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14639089

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by NeutronBoy in "The Nihilism of Julian Assange"

NeutronBoy — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 20:03:26 +0000

And an odd quote from some who's claim to fame is running a website that publishes leaked information.

New comment by NeutronBoy in "Tabs, spaces and your salary – how is it really?"

NeutronBoy — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 18:59:51 +0000

It shows up in your checking account semi-monthly ;)

It's a slight difference, where the end result is a difference of 2 paychecks per year (24 for semi-monthly vs 26 for bi-weekly)

How they did it: an analysis of emissions defeat devices in modern automobiles

NeutronBoy — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 13:01:57 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/06/20/how-they-did-it-an-analysis-of-emissions-defeat-devices-in-modern-automobiles/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14594247

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by NeutronBoy in "Ask HN: How to get a job when you suck at coding?"

NeutronBoy — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 15:54:16 +0000

Is it better to be a genius programmer, or an average programmer with an good understanding of the problem domain?