Hacker News: Tecuane

New comment by Tecuane in "Melbourne professor quits after government pressure about reporting data breach"

Tecuane — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 02:51:26 +0000

Relevant article, for the curious: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/malcolm-turnbull-prime-mi...

New comment by Tecuane in "DigitalOcean raises $100M in debt as it scales toward revenue of $300M"

Tecuane — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 22:09:50 +0000

DO's branding and a lot of their offering is pretty good, but their locations for non-US customers are much worse than many of their competitors. For instance (and a particular point for me), they still don't have any presence in Australia after over half a decade of it being marked as "under review" on their customer feedback page.

Having geographical locations to back up the quality of the offering is a step forward IMO.

New comment by Tecuane in "Systemd Home Directories"

Tecuane — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 01:43:40 +0000

> Inside of the home directory a file ~/.identity contains the JSON formatted user record of the user. It follows the format defined in JSON User Records.

Why couldn't this have gone into ~/.config/? There's enough garbage cluttering my home directory.

New comment by Tecuane in "NULL license plate not such a bright idea"

Tecuane — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 02:54:24 +0000

Passwords for Blizzard accounts are also case-insensitive, as they are converted to upper case before hashing. Try it!

I first found this while working on a WoW server emulator in around 2009, but I believe it's been the case since Battle.net 1.0 was launched in 1996. In order to preserve backwards compatibility, it's never been changed.

New comment by Tecuane in "I Miss Rails"

Tecuane — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 00:22:05 +0000

I feel like as a collective set of industries across development and security we have been telling people for years not to reinvent the wheel because it's easier to stand on the shoulders of giants. Despite this, there seems to be an increasing push (from, for example, Go programmers) to go back to DIY. Is this not tearing away all the work we've done to stop people building their own auth, their own crypto, their own file read/write mechanisms and use ones that are battle-tested and safe?

New comment by Tecuane in "Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday"

Tecuane — Sun, 24 Mar 2019 01:06:46 +0000

This sort of thing could not appeal to me any more, honestly. I've been trying to work out the most cost-efficient way of doing exactly this.

Of course, I am aware that _the_ most cost-efficient way is to accept that having the brand new and shiny every year is - for the most part - utterly pointless, but hey.

New comment by Tecuane in "Farewell from Paradise Bay"

Tecuane — Sat, 23 Mar 2019 12:03:00 +0000

I've played WoW for something like 11 years, from its peak in around 2008-2010 and through its slow decline since. Logging in now and having the reality that this game is actually genuinely fading away is difficult for me to properly process. The gp comment mentioned how non-transient games such as Pokémon are, and how games that do actually fade away are a new thing. I hadn't really thought about this before until the last couple of WoW expansions and its effects on the playerbase.

It makes me really sad to think about; WoW (and video gaming in general) has been a huge part of my life and tinkering with video games under the hood was the kickstarter for my career. I don't know if I will ever find a replacement for it when it's gone.

New comment by Tecuane in "So Long, MSDN Blog"

Tecuane — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 05:41:25 +0000

My understanding of the policy matches the parent comment from communications I've had. Is this a recent policy change?

New comment by Tecuane in "A few simple steps to vastly increase your privacy online"

Tecuane — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 01:04:47 +0000

I believe that at one stage the Quad9 resolvers were owned by IBM. A brief look at the site indicates it was transferred to CleanerDNS, which is a 501(c)(3). Do you know how much involvement IBM still has in the project, if any?

New comment by Tecuane in "Go 1.12 Released"

Tecuane — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 08:14:31 +0000

This is a rather unique take on Go that I haven't seen before. A quick scan of your post history indicates you feel quite strongly (negatively) about Go. May I ask what inspired this particular take, and what language background you have?

New comment by Tecuane in "Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time"

Tecuane — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 22:58:12 +0000

That would probably be ICANN[1], and most authoritative name servers follow the policies set out there as the guiding committee is part of ICANN[2].

There are alternative DNS roots, though. I participated in running one myself for a time.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server#Root_server_s...

New comment by Tecuane in "Letter from Tim Cook to Apple Investors"

Tecuane — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 09:38:34 +0000

> I wish there were fully functional privacy focussed ROMs that was shipped by Android OEMs.

I'm sure everyone on this discussion board knows why this will never be the case, unfortunately.

With that said, are there any regularly-updated aftermarket ROMs that are privacy-focused? I've had a rough look at LineageOS[1] - a continuation of CyanogenMod - and it seems to mostly fit the bill.

I'm aware of CopperheadOS, but they had a "touch" of infighting about half a year ago[2] and mostly dissolved.

I too am moving away from Apple products, for the same reason. They are reaching expense levels (especially in my country) that I simply can't justify when I can get a HP or Lenovo business-grade laptop with drastically better hardware specifications and install simply OpenSUSE on it. Without going all-in on the Apple ecosystem to fully reap the rewards, it's simply not worth it for me to use any of them.

1. https://lineageos.org/

2. https://www.reddit.com/r/copperheados

New comment by Tecuane in "Status.github.com: “We're failing over a data storage system”"

Tecuane — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 02:31:50 +0000

> Gitlab supposedly is Google-backed, so I don't want to have my private code there.

This strikes me as odd. May I ask why usage of GCP is a deal-breaker for you? While I can understand not wanting to use Google products directly as a consumer, I believe it would be - for lack of a better term - platform suicide for Google to intercept and perform its usual analytical shenanigans on the data content of transmissions to/from their platform.

Either way, Phacility's Phabricator[1] is $20/user/mo.

1. https://www.phacility.com/pricing/

New comment by Tecuane in "Brendan Eich Writes to the US Senate: We Need a GDPR for the United States"

Tecuane — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 00:50:34 +0000

I admit I'm not an American citizen, and have never actually stepped foot on American soil, but I do see the "first amendment" and "free speech" arguments being trotted out for almost anything that involves communication between two parties being restricted. This, in my experience has been common in (privately owned) web forums when an American user is banned for misbehaviour, or rules are changed to prohibit certain types of content or speech on those forums.

The text of the amendment, as I'm sure you're aware, reads as follows:

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I admit I fail to see how this prohibits introducing a law preventing an organisation from collecting data from individuals without them explicitly opting in to it.

New comment by Tecuane in "Show HN: Sublime Merge – A Git client from the makers of Sublime Text"

Tecuane — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 23:52:09 +0000

Looks like I have to be "that one", this time:

Given there's a custom Git library in use under the hood, I don't suppose there'll be Mercurial support in the future?

New comment by Tecuane in "Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head as it eyes another fundraise"

Tecuane — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 23:50:04 +0000

I used Ulysses but I ended up moving to Bear[1]. It's still. a subscription fee, but much cheaper ($1.49/mo). It's lightweight and perfect for what I use it for - taking notes.

If I was going to suggest something for longer-form writings (e.g., journaling, blog posts) and you find that inadequate, I've heard good things about iA Writer[2].

1. http://www.bear-writer.com

2. https://ia.net/writer

New comment by Tecuane in "I don't trust Signal"

Tecuane — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 00:58:11 +0000

I really like Wire, for a large number of reasons - privacy and user experience among them. I've talked about it in the past[1].

If you get the time, please give it a proper whirl. With the recent open-sourcing of their server and proper E2EE by default[2] (but abstracted away from the "regular user"), it's shaping up to be a really solid application. As far as I'm aware they use the same double-ratchet protocol as Signal, but you don't need your cellphone number to register (a big thing for some people - myself included).

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655743

2. https://wire-docs.wire.com/download/Wire+Security+Whitepaper...

New comment by Tecuane in "Linux touchpad like a Macbook: goal worth pursuing?"

Tecuane — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 12:01:34 +0000

>I do forget to remap the esc key each time I do this, or the name of the thingie that helps you do that

I don't suppose it's Karabiner[1], is it? This is the one I'm most familiar with, as it's been around under a few names for a very long time.

If so, this is in `brew cask`[2], which I am assuming is somewhere in your script's mix.

1. https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/

2. https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/blob/master/Casks/...

New comment by Tecuane in "Telegram: 200M Monthly Active Users"

Tecuane — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 11:52:47 +0000

As far as I'm aware they consider it to be a feature, and I don't particularly disagree. The rationale is that if somehow someone else manages to add a device to your account (which you get notified about on your other devices), they cannot see your chat history up until the moment the device was linked.

Once they're all linked you don't have this issue again so it's kind of a one-time thing.

New comment by Tecuane in "Telegram: 200M Monthly Active Users"

Tecuane — Fri, 23 Mar 2018 11:33:54 +0000

In Matrix, E2EE isn't enabled by default[1], and the option to enable it is in fact marked with a warning that it comes with potentially unwanted side-effects. This isn't the same, and the arguments that call recommending Telegram for E2EE encryption disingenuous apply to Matrix/Riot recommendations too.

One other issue I have with Matrix is the fact that they're in the process of completely rewriting their reference implementation in Go despite the fact that - as far as I remember - the first one, in Python, isn't entirely complete[2]. Combined with the app-bridge song and dance[3] there's too much in flux for me to recommend in good conscience.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly (speaking as a "regular" user - the type needed to achieve mass adoption), the client is horrendous. This is especially apparent when compared with Wire, but I'd go as far as saying it's apparent even when compared with some IRC clients. At least Signal's UI/UX is passable. Encryption didn't catapult Telegram to 200 million monthly users. A slick UI, a half-decent UX, and some good marketing did.

1. Your link - https://about.riot.im/security/

2. https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse#introduction

3. https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-bridge