Hacker News: drewfax

New comment by drewfax in "Actively exploited sandbox RCE in all Chromium versions"

drewfax — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 07:01:29 +0000

That's how the system or browser should be configured. Secure by default and any insecurity must be an opt-in. But Google won't do it because their websites are JS heavy monster trucks and millions of websites run their tracking scripts which require JIT enabled by default for optimal page load.

New comment by drewfax in "An open DNS recursive service for free security and high privacy"

drewfax — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 03:04:27 +0000

That is the point and business of Quad9. It's not their fault for you not knowing what Quad9 is.

I don't want my family to get malware from sketchy websites. Quad9 offers a simple solution for these usecases. I'll take the false positive anyday over unfiltered DNS.

New comment by drewfax in "GrapheneOS says Pixel 11 has MTE support after all"

drewfax — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 17:04:33 +0000

So other projects are not supposed to critize Google? Graphene's focus is on security and they complain about lack of security in your products. Seems valid to me.

Also security and using non-Google OS are not niche usecases. I'm not sure how you are working on Android, the most popular OS while claiming security is a niche usecase. In fact, I have less confidence in security of your work.

New comment by drewfax in "Credit Card Rewards Became a $9.2B Wealth Transfer"

drewfax — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:50:26 +0000

Credit card usage has been increasing in India.

Source: https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/articles/credit-ca...

Besides, NPCI has introduced merchant transaction fee for UPI now causing decline in UPI transactions.

New comment by drewfax in "Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin"

drewfax — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:40:29 +0000

New generations don't 'browse' web anymore. They 'consume' YouTube, Instagram, Android TV and other walled gardens. These generation don't even know they could change contents being displayed on their device to their wish. For them it's just whatever the app shows. They don't understand Web, extensions, DNS etc. I don't have hope for new generations. We're are the old men now yelling at AI and App Stores.

New comment by drewfax in "Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin"

drewfax — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:29:26 +0000

That's why Brave probably built an in-built adblocker written in Rust. Works great on both desktop and mobile.

New comment by drewfax in "Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin"

drewfax — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:27:50 +0000

Now they are doing it to Android with mandatory developer identity verification and Play Integrity. I wonder how those engineers sleep at night.

New comment by drewfax in "US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search"

drewfax — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 03:19:33 +0000

How would it work? Isn't it easy for the authorities to check the list of users on the device?

New comment by drewfax in "[dead]"

drewfax — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 07:49:00 +0000

I suspect this is either some ground work for planting a future backdoor or a noob who found out there's a ~/.cache directory.

New comment by drewfax in "Vision 50 Years Phone – Keeping old Android phones fast without root"

drewfax — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 07:43:02 +0000

Is this a joke I don't understand? Aren't Android apps sandboxed? How does these two commands supposed to make my phone fast for 50 years?

rm -rf ~/.cache/* 2>/dev/null

rm -rf /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/tmp/* 2>/dev/null

Source: https://github.com/50YearsPhone/vision-50-years-phone/blob/m...

New comment by drewfax in "UPI: Anatomy of a Payment Transaction"

drewfax — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 06:19:13 +0000

Yes, UPI works. But it's a terrible system for privacy and autonomy. It has so many intermediaries, requires phone number and linked to person's identity. It should not be called a peer-to-peer payment system in anyway. It is controlled by the government rather than Visa or Mastercard. That's the only the difference.

New comment by drewfax in "OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router"

drewfax — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 10:57:26 +0000

I too use ASUS RT-AX53U. Decent hardware. But stock firmware was terribly slow. IPv6 didn't even work.

I heard OpenWrt when I searched how to fix the stock firmware. Flashed it and never turned back. Now, OpenWrt is a critical infra in my house for adblocking, DoH, Firewall, Network Segmentation etc. None of these are possible with the stock firmware.

Android Developer Verification: Threat masquerading as protection

drewfax — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 03:00:15 +0000

Article URL: https://f-droid.org/2026/07/01/adv-malware.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48755965

Points: 1734

# Comments: 746

New comment by drewfax in "Google Hits 50% IPv6"

drewfax — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 10:17:38 +0000

Similar experience. I bought an ASUS router and enabled IPv6. It slowed down everything down. Immediately flashed OpenWrt on it, IPv6 works like charm.

It's usually bad configuration done by the router vendors. It doesn't mean IPv6 is bad.

New comment by drewfax in "GrapheneOS has been ported to Android 17"

drewfax — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 03:26:16 +0000

That completely goes against what they're working towards. I understand why you would want to root your own phone, but GOS is targeting highest security standards and root ain't one of them (for good reason).

New comment by drewfax in "Leaving Mozilla"

drewfax — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 12:20:28 +0000

Some things Mozilla could have done correctly:

    - Kept Rust and sold best-in-class tooling like IDEs to enterprises.
    - Polished Firefox OS and distributed apps in their store for a 1% commission.
    - Kept Servo and made the most secure and fast browser that no one else had made.
    - Partnered with OEMs to offer Firefox as the default browser.

Yet the best they could do was pay their CEO for nothing.

New comment by drewfax in "Leaving Mozilla"

drewfax — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 12:13:32 +0000

Firefox OS was a brilliant idea. Imagine cross platform and open apps based on HTML/JavaScript that feel native and polished. 2026 would have been amazing if Mozilla executed it right.

New comment by drewfax in "Leaving Mozilla"

drewfax — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 12:10:55 +0000

Extensions were why Firefox was so popular among those considered 'abnormal.' Chrome just copied the idea. VPNs, Pocket, and sync services are all great features; it's their implementation and execution that is so poor.

All Mozilla (and Firefox) needs is to be run by developers, not the fucking MBAs.

Firefox adds Google Play Integrity checks for it's AI features

drewfax — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:47:46 +0000

Article URL: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2015109

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48469808

Points: 6

# Comments: 4

New comment by drewfax in "Haskell Foundation 2026 Update"

drewfax — Thu, 21 May 2026 11:55:56 +0000

I tried building a cross platform shared library. I still couldn't get GHC to generate the library with Haskell's Runtime (RTS) statically linked. Tried multiple AI models and nothing could make it work. Eventually gave up after a month.

Also there's no support for Android and iOS, atleast not without spending months in recompiling GHC with haskell.nix or other third party projects.

Eventually I switched to Rust. It's tooling is so mature that I can focus on developing than compiling GHC.

Despite these demerits, I love Haskell language and lazy eval. I wish I can use it one day.