Hacker News: jeffrallen

New comment by jeffrallen in "Slightly safer vibecoding by adopting old hacker habits"

jeffrallen — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 08:36:06 +0000

Also, "ssh -A" is your friend. Keep your ssh key on your yubikey where you control it. Let Claude play on it's own VM and in its own clone of your repo. Only when you choose to add the -A, do you temporarily, for that one ssh connection, have the possibility to push Claude's work to your repo, where you can review it.

Treat it as a colleague, making PRs that you review.

New comment by jeffrallen in "Haunting Photos Show the Aftermath of the Kursk Submarine Disaster in 2000"

jeffrallen — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 14:42:31 +0000

Soundtrack for this post: https://youtu.be/3qF95ANVHSg

Kursk, by The Vad Vuc

New comment by jeffrallen in "Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't"

jeffrallen — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 21:43:09 +0000

This is about urban Switzerland. Way out in the country, we still have crap copper up on poles, which maxes out at 25 Mbits.

But yes, Swisscom (owners if the old crap copper) do have to let the competitors use it.

New comment by jeffrallen in "Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)"

jeffrallen — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 18:12:53 +0000

When I watch how little influence I have on my children from my spoken advice, and recall how many lessons people tried to teach me which I had to learn myself, I laugh at the eternal pointlessness of writing like this.

Carry on, world, carry on.

New comment by jeffrallen in "The Axios supply chain attack used individually targeted social engineering"

jeffrallen — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 08:55:42 +0000

I don't want to pile on this poor guy, but video conferencing software in browser works, and does not require software installation.

Use the browser sandbox to protect yourself.

New comment by jeffrallen in "Intel Assured Supply Chain Product Brief"

jeffrallen — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 19:44:33 +0000

...which is exactly the same way backdoored Cisco hardware got to China.

New comment by jeffrallen in "Signing data structures the wrong way"

jeffrallen — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 21:19:05 +0000

It's a big if because the threat model normally includes "bad guys can forge messages". Which means that the input is untrusted and you want to generate your own domain separation bytes for the hash function, not let your attacker choose them.

New comment by jeffrallen in "Signing data structures the wrong way"

jeffrallen — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 21:15:45 +0000

It is definitely not transmitted.

Domain separation happens in the input to the hash function, not on the wire. Because what arrives off the wire is UNTRUSTED input.

New comment by jeffrallen in "Signing data structures the wrong way"

jeffrallen — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 21:11:32 +0000

This is a nice explanation of an obvious idea. Both domain separation, and putting the domain signifier into the IDL are fine, but not novel.

Crypto is hard. Do it right. Get help from your tools. 'Nuff said.

Jeeze, I'm getting too old for this crap.

New comment by jeffrallen in "NASA’s Artemis II Crew Launches to the Moon"

jeffrallen — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 18:45:16 +0000

Bring back John Insprucker.

New comment by jeffrallen in "Live: Artemis II Launch Day Updates"

jeffrallen — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 18:42:16 +0000

Really hoping those of us who think NASA has jumped the shark won't have to keep ourselves from saying "I told you so" next week out of respect for the dead.

This is four people putting their lives at risk for poor engineering and bad project management.

The "right stuff" applies to the engineers too, but they've all unfortunately left Boeing and NASA.

New comment by jeffrallen in "Nobody is coming to save your career"

jeffrallen — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 14:56:53 +0000

I am responsible for my colleague's careers, and they for mine.

This guy is apparently a jerk, who apparently thrived in a jerk atmosphere. Don't listen to him.

New comment by jeffrallen in "1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History"

jeffrallen — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 09:20:44 +0000

No, no. There's no bubble here. This time it's different. :)

New comment by jeffrallen in "The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner"

jeffrallen — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 14:21:14 +0000

I hope this didn't really happen, but I loved reading it.

New comment by jeffrallen in "Niche Museums"

jeffrallen — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:31:01 +0000

The UK entrant to Eurovision Song contest, Look mum, no computer, runs a museum!

New comment by jeffrallen in "Woman who never stopped updating her lost dog's chip reunites with him after 11y"

jeffrallen — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 06:16:57 +0000

I received an email about a lost dog 10 years after I adopted her and then gave her to another family. They got her back!

Databases work!

New comment by jeffrallen in "How to Keep ICE Agents Out of Your Devices at Airports"

jeffrallen — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:17:05 +0000

Canada's ok, but only in May and October. The rest of the year is ice and/or black fly season.

New comment by jeffrallen in "Unlocking 25 Gigabit/S on 10 GbE Direct Attach Copper"

jeffrallen — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 07:40:39 +0000

Super brilliant! Great work. I could have used this when a vendor sent me cables that had incompatible codes on both ends.

New comment by jeffrallen in "Super Micro Shares Plunge 25% After Co-Founder Charged in $2.5B Smuggling Plot"

jeffrallen — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 06:36:28 +0000

Right, and it's always fun trying to figure out which chassis with serial number 123456789 is the one you are taking to.

God, SuperMicro... never change. (But also, please go bankrupt and stop making trash.)

Anyone know if MSI are better?

New comment by jeffrallen in "Despite doubts, federal cyber experts approved Microsoft cloud service"

jeffrallen — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:44:52 +0000

They have to compete in good faith for developers, which is why VS Code does not suck.

But yes, normal Office users, where the company pays the bills, pay the price.