Hacker News: ekarulf

New comment by ekarulf in "Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane"

ekarulf — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 22:24:52 +0000

I use mosh over WebSockets to have a long lived connection to my home network.

I bet I could simplify out the WebSocket-to-UDP proxy by leaning into tailcat's dataplane and just speak straight UDP.

New comment by ekarulf in "Tosh: Changing your SSH server's listen address every 30 seconds based on TOTP"

ekarulf — Sat, 22 May 2021 22:02:40 +0000

Is this just spiped with MD5 instead of HMAC-SHA256?

https://www.tarsnap.com/spiped.html

New comment by ekarulf in "Git ransom campaign incident report"

ekarulf — Wed, 15 May 2019 03:40:27 +0000

SSH keys on a YubiKey

New comment by ekarulf in "Why Do Hospitals Hate Sleep So Much?"

ekarulf — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 05:50:32 +0000

Congratulations!

Talk to the charge nurse to change rooms, escalate to the admin on call if needed. Get the sleep now while you can.

New comment by ekarulf in "Bringing transparency to ER prices, one hospital bill at a time"

ekarulf — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 03:56:28 +0000

I get IVIG 3x / week for a primary immune deficiency I’ve had since birth. For my dosage, it’s billed weekly at a rate of ~$32K of which my insurance company pays around ~$3K.

I hit my max out of pocket the first month of each year and the rest of the year is “free.”

I know that all the IVIG pharmaceutical companies offer a “I can’t afford this” option if you’re going out of pocket.

Good luck, it’s stressful to get but it’s a miracle blood product for those who need it.

New comment by ekarulf in "Ask HN: What would you work on without internet access?"

ekarulf — Sun, 21 Oct 2018 20:50:25 +0000

UNIX systems programming can be accomplished by looking at man pages and referencing kernel / user land source code.

I find something cathartic writing C applications and tools. Perhaps I should seek professional help.

New comment by ekarulf in "Two Decades of Recommender Systems at Amazon.com"

ekarulf — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 23:04:29 +0000

Yes! https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/433643

New comment by ekarulf in "Two Decades of Recommender Systems at Amazon.com"

ekarulf — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 22:13:32 +0000

Just in the event someone out there is looking to work on these types of problems, Amazon's Personalization teams are absolutely hiring.

Homepage: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/teams/personalization-and-recomme...

Applied Science: https://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/372996

Software Engineering: http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/549950 http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/402127 http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/430623

Software Managers: http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/385902 http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/437405 http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/489879

If one of those don't strike your fancy but you are passionate about working in this space, feel free to send me an email: ${HN_USERNAME}@amazon.com.

New comment by ekarulf in "Wikipedia’s Switch to HTTPS Has Successfully Fought Government Censorship"

ekarulf — Mon, 29 May 2017 23:13:38 +0000

Who says they can't see the URL? A sufficiently motivate government would probably be able to create forged certificates and mass interception isn't really out of the question. Especially with browsers homogenizing on fast ciphers AES-GCM/POLY-1305, I bet it's much more economical than you would think.

Cert Pinning or HPKP is one type of solution, but it's tricky to get right especially for a large site like wikipedia.

New comment by ekarulf in "Ask HN: I got duped into working on legacy code, should I leave?"

ekarulf — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 05:39:30 +0000

I find it impossible to replace a legacy system without first understanding the legacy system. It's easy to say "X is old" or "X sucks at Y" but keep in mind that applications have a strong survivor bias. Ask yourself, "what does X do that is awesome" or "how has X lived this long" and you'll find a lot of hidden scars and requirements.

Start documenting those requirements and create a plan to map those to technologies that you prefer. Understanding how to successfully migrate platforms is a learned skill, and it's going to become useful again when React is no longer en vogue.

New comment by ekarulf in "Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush"

ekarulf — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 08:51:07 +0000

I'm a new parent and I need to track when my son eats/poops/pees etc. There are times when my hands aren't available. I built a tiny "app" that just records these things to a google spreadsheet for me.

I also like the idea of "authenticating" via being present in my home. If my in laws are watching my son while I step out for a few minutes - they can talk to Alexa as easily as I can.

New comment by ekarulf in "Ask HN: Where is AI/ML actually adding value at your company?"

ekarulf — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 21:26:00 +0000

It's a hard problem to determine the repeat purchase cadence of a product. At one end of the bell curve you have items re-purchased frequently, e.g. diapers or grocery, and on the other end you have items that are rarely repurchased.

I haven't looked at coffee tables specifically, but I know when I've looked at home products in the past I've been surprised at how frequently people will buy two large items, e.g. TVs or furniture, within a short period. That said, I agree there is room for improvement here. We're constantly running experiments to improve the customer experience, I have faith that in the limit things will improve. Again, we have no shortage of experimental power so if you'd like to join in the experimentation let me know :)

New comment by ekarulf in "Ask HN: Where is AI/ML actually adding value at your company?"

ekarulf — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 18:51:37 +0000

Amazon Personalization.

We use ML/Deep Learning for customer to product recommendations and product to product recommendations. For years we used only algorithms based on basic statistics but we've found places where the machine learned models out perform the simpler models.

Here is our blog post and related GitHub repo: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/generating-recommendat... https://github.com/amznlabs/amazon-dsstne

If you are interested in this space, we're always hiring. Shoot me an email ($my_hn_username@amazon.com) or visit https://www.amazon.jobs/en/teams/personalization-and-recomme...

New comment by ekarulf in "Show HN: Handicareers.com – A simple job board for disabled people"

ekarulf — Sat, 03 Dec 2016 14:16:57 +0000

Cool!

I would suggest changing the branding to "a simple job board for people with disabilities." For many people the disability is a part of who they are - it's not how they self identify.

See some of the existing non-profits in this space like http://www.bestbuddies.org

New comment by ekarulf in "IBM ported Go to s390x mainframes"

ekarulf — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 15:15:09 +0000

"Note that we do not accept pull requests"

Strange.

New comment by ekarulf in "The Zero-Armed Bandit"

ekarulf — Thu, 02 Jul 2015 15:59:42 +0000

I was really hoping for an retrospective about a multi-armed bandit learning algorithm that ran in production but never experimented, effectively yielding a "zero-armed bandit".

New comment by ekarulf in "Looking for security trouble spots in Go code"

ekarulf — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 04:38:38 +0000

Is it used to derive separate HMAC and AES keys or is the same key used in both contexts?

New comment by ekarulf in "Gyroscope: A personal site powered by your life"

ekarulf — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 00:58:27 +0000

This is awesome. Congrats on the launch Flo :)

New comment by ekarulf in "A Computer Scientist Tells Mathematicians How to Write Proofs"

ekarulf — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 19:07:35 +0000

My discrete math and logic undergraduate course was in Coq. It was a brutal way to learn the proof process at first but it was worth the investment by the end. It's the logic equivalent of TDD.

If you are interested in computational logic you might enjoy Aaron Stump from UIowa's work: https://queuea9.wordpress.com/

New comment by ekarulf in "Penny Arcade’s Insultingly Horrible Job"

ekarulf — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 01:29:50 +0000

For eight years of my life, I was this "Do-Everything Rockstar." I was also a student for the majority of that time. I certainly wasn't a "programming deity" -- I was just a kid that was presented with the opportunity to learn some incredible lessons about scaling, appsec, capacity planning, etc. I also learned soft skills like how to negotiate, travel, and delegate.

The skill set absolutely exists and, for the right person, it's a great job.