Hacker News: alinajaf

New comment by alinajaf in "Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way"

alinajaf — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 09:19:38 +0000

Senior management at a Japanese tech company, 2 kids, most of my daily life in Japanese here. Can confidently talk circles around most N1s.

I agree. I had plenty of strange abstractions and crutches when starting out learning Japanese, and starting in romaji was absolutely fine. While the post wouldn't benefit me now, starting out any useful mental shortcuts to producing Japanese would have been most welcome.

New comment by alinajaf in "A built-in 'off switch' to stop persistent pain"

alinajaf — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 04:04:21 +0000

Many of the comments here talk about lifestyle changes, and I think those are key, but there are some, (perhaps rarer) conditions that unfortunately won't be improved.

Trigeminal Neuralgia is one of them. The condition is just... pain. Lot's of pain. More pain than anyone should ever have to go through. When I have episodes, I often feel awe that it's even possible for someone to feel such an incredible amount of pain.

Challenges in life help to shape you, make you who you are. But I do feel that this particular challenge was one where it would have been nice to have learned the same lessons some other way. I hope sincerely that treatment based on this research can help.

Moulding Software

alinajaf — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 09:57:37 +0000

Article URL: https://najafali.blog/notes/moulding-software

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35272326

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

A developers guide to human networking

alinajaf — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 12:47:31 +0000

Article URL: https://www.happybearsoftware.com/developers-guide-to-human-networking

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15532726

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

A developers guide to human networking

alinajaf — Sun, 22 Oct 2017 12:57:24 +0000

Article URL: https://www.happybearsoftware.com/developers-guide-to-human-networking

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15526599

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by alinajaf in "Ask HN: Current Crypto Best Practices"

alinajaf — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 20:45:33 +0000

I don't know much about how a developer should try to build a secure application from the get-go. I don't think I've ever worked on or assessed a codebase where that plan worked.

I did the challenges years ago when you had to email in for them. Since then I can count at least five occasions where having done the challenges has allowed me to identify vulnerabilities in real-world crypto. I was usually able to recommend fixes that in theory made those codebases more secure. This is keeping in mind that I'm at best a hobbyist security researcher and just barely a professional developer.

I think there are about seven or eight people on Earth that I would trust to securely implement cryptography in their code. For the rest of us I'm happy with doing the best we can with libraries that make that easy (NaCl), and otherwise trying to find ways to break the thing. The cryptopals challenges help you do that, so that's where I'd recommend a developer start.

New comment by alinajaf in "Ask HN: Current Crypto Best Practices"

alinajaf — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 14:34:27 +0000

Not necessarily best practices, but I recommend the Matasano Crypto Challenges to basically everyone. I make all of the developers on our team do them too:

http://cryptopals.com

New comment by alinajaf in "British MPs’ private emails are routinely accessed by GCHQ"

alinajaf — Sat, 04 Jun 2016 08:44:56 +0000

As a fellow Brit, I find your ability to appreciate sarcasm lacking :)

The Bear Test v0.1

alinajaf — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 11:40:30 +0000

Article URL: https://www.happybearsoftware.com/the-bear-test

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11327378

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

All estimates are still lies

alinajaf — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 22:22:35 +0000

Article URL: https://www.happybearsoftware.com/all-estimates-are-still-lies

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11256126

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Multiple security vulnerabilities in Rails

alinajaf — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 20:51:29 +0000

Article URL: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rubyonrails-security

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10969843

Points: 229

# Comments: 62

Training Day

alinajaf — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 15:48:34 +0000

Article URL: https://gist.github.com/Najaf/23fa0b33599bcf3d3035

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10588327

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by alinajaf in "Ask HN: I hate my new job, Need some advice"

alinajaf — Wed, 27 May 2015 14:01:19 +0000

FYI: £26k is not average for 3 years experience. I know kids straight out of coding bootcamps that started on £10k more than that.

Training Day

alinajaf — Wed, 27 May 2015 13:56:11 +0000

Article URL: https://gist.github.com/Najaf/23fa0b33599bcf3d3035

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9611325

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by alinajaf in "Bangladesh blogger Ananta Bijoy Das hacked to death"

alinajaf — Tue, 12 May 2015 10:40:05 +0000

As an atheist ex-muslim blogger of very similar descent, I don't see how this is relevant to hacker news. I sincerely doubt it will generate any useful discussion.

New comment by alinajaf in "The Science and Art of Practicing"

alinajaf — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 14:18:41 +0000

This is a fantastic comment. I'd love to hear more about your experiences and any other insights you have about musical practice.

Since you program too, do you think there is much crossover? Some analogous form of practice that makes you a more effective coder?

New comment by alinajaf in "“I am not authorizing you to release a Ruby port of Metaphone 3”"

alinajaf — Sun, 21 Dec 2014 19:44:56 +0000

> threedaymonk behaved as a nice, well-intentioned, polite person ought to.

I work with threedaymonk and the reason that he came across this way is that he is a remarkably nice, well-intentioned, polite person.

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

alinajaf — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 20:16:48 +0000

"Nothing flies over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch them".

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

alinajaf — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 15:23:59 +0000

Ah, sorry, my mistake.

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

alinajaf — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 13:44:19 +0000

I think you probably mean canon.