Hacker News: Synthpixel

New comment by Synthpixel in "Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War"

Synthpixel — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 06:29:07 +0000

Anthropic can serve its models within the security standards required to handle classified data. The other labs do not yet claim to have this capability.

Even if they do, I assume the other labs would prefer to avoid drawing the ire of the administration, the public, or their employees by choosing a side publicly.

New comment by Synthpixel in "Federal Whistleblower Investigator Fired After Blowing the Whistle on Own Agency"

Synthpixel — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 16:51:45 +0000

Now he has been fired. The included Daily Show blurb consisted of him saying he'd probably be fired.

New comment by Synthpixel in "Spotify has been doomed from the start"

Synthpixel — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 12:27:14 +0000

The author of this article appears to be unaware that the major record companies have a significant stake in Spotify[1]. Of course they're not going to support any attempts to undercut the market.

[1] http://www.swedishwire.com/jobs/680-record-labels-part-owner...

New comment by Synthpixel in "Ross Ulbricht Convicted of Running Silk Road as Dread Pirate Roberts"

Synthpixel — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 22:43:47 +0000

It's not legal to spy on citizens. Assuming the NSA (and likely not the FBI) held illegally seized data, it still wouldn't be admissible as evidence in a trial.

New comment by Synthpixel in "Elon Musk donates $10M to keep AI beneficial"

Synthpixel — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 16:13:49 +0000

The institute and the open letter are about maximizing the societal benefits of AI by funding research that provides net positives to humanity. The goal isn't to prevent the development of potentially harmful technologies.

I believe they intend to fund positive research so that researchers do not resort to projects that do not provide net good, for example, in fields like weaponry.

Not that safely developing hyperintelligent AI isn't an interesting topic. But I don't think AI research is anywhere close to that stage, considering that programmers largely still have to hard-code any actions that an agent can perform.

New comment by Synthpixel in "CSRF in Doorkeeper OAuth2 gem"

Synthpixel — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 18:07:23 +0000

I can say that recently LinkedIn has asked me to reauthenticate on multiple occasions in the same session. I've had the same for Google but I have not tried recently. I'm aware that Twitter and Facebook allow you to do so, but I propose that none of the above give scopes without authentication that allow you to perform actions that charge an account.

That said, I agree that some of the giants are fine with using cookies for auth in OAuth2. And while that indicates that this is a possible use case, OAuth2 is capable of being used in many ways and Digital Ocean's usage still doesn't make much sense.

New comment by Synthpixel in "CSRF in Doorkeeper OAuth2 gem"

Synthpixel — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 17:23:38 +0000

While I believe that allowing CSRF is terrible practice, as a user of Doorkeeper, I think the problem here is Digital Ocean's atypical usage of OAuth2. When you request an access token for a resource owner in OAuth2, you are supposed _actually authenticate_ the owner. According to the OAuth2 spec[1], username and password are REQUIRED fields. Allowing clients to generate tokens based off of cookies is reckless.

Useful CSRF exploits depend on the server to trust session data to authenticate client actions. OAuth2 is designed for allowing external (third-party) applications to communicate with you. Cross-site requests are an expectation in OAuth2. If you ignore the spec and skip proper authentication, you're in a bad spot anyway.

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6749 (page 37 & 38)

New comment by Synthpixel in "Fairphone: Android phone that puts social values first"

Synthpixel — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 16:13:15 +0000

To be fair, there is global suspicion and scorn for Chinese manufacturing, including from Chinese people themselves.

New comment by Synthpixel in "This page is anonymous"

Synthpixel — Wed, 01 May 2013 18:19:19 +0000

Giving them fake information would be illegal and probably be breaching their ToS.

New comment by Synthpixel in "Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM"

Synthpixel — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:04:13 +0000

Your _personal_ ethics can easily get you _fired_.

New comment by Synthpixel in "I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane"

Synthpixel — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 07:38:47 +0000

Capital doesn't grow on trees.

New comment by Synthpixel in "ShowHN: GetURL - A CLI tool to get a public link for any file"

Synthpixel — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 04:04:50 +0000

It couldn't handle files with spaces, plus the link it gives initiates a download for the file instead allowing you to view it in the browser. Considering most of the time I want to quickly upload a file in this manner the file is a screenshot, this is basically useless for me.

New comment by Synthpixel in "Multi-player piano"

Synthpixel — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:05:10 +0000

Hold down shift.