Hacker News: johansch

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 21:58:35 +0000

Not going to answer this because

a) I already answered a very similar question of yours in a separate thread

b) you hijacked a subthread that was particularly talking about the politics involved

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 21:55:36 +0000

You are not going to convince me, or anyone else who understand the tech, that this is a fundamentally unsolvable technical problem, I promise. It all boils down to compromises between regulation vs freedom, etc.

So, I do take issue when you say things like:

> There's absolutely nothing we can do to prevent malicious people from abusing it.

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 21:29:12 +0000

Seems like a lot of people here really want VOIP to be anonymous/unregistered. You know, so that the nazis can't get you if they seize power. But they also seem loath to acknowledge this desire, particularly in this context.

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 21:21:38 +0000

Somehow, having a well-recorded connection between identity and phone line didn't lead to "fascism" in your past though.

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 21:09:43 +0000

Okay, I get that complexity, I think.

But then the question shifts to: maybe your country is too large to govern effectively - if you can't make changes like this quickly, something is wrong, I think.

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 20:30:07 +0000

>A policy decision by whom?

By your government?

> Specifically, how do you do this when IP spaces are controlled by various unfriendly countries around the world

You begin a "911-certified program" that requires your local ISPs to register their IP ranges with some central authority. The rest is a bunch of detailed but solvable details.

Your idealism when it comes to making this seem more complicatated that it really is seems misplaced.

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 20:03:47 +0000

Thanks, but I somehow get the feeling that it's more about not wanting outsiders telling them how to solve problems they know they should have solved a long time ago by themselves.

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 19:48:09 +0000

"IPs are just too ephemeral to trust for any form of location data"

That is just policy decision. It would, for example, be possible to declare that no single IP should be used for more than two customers during a single X hour block.

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 19:46:08 +0000

"0 points"

Ah, well, Jingoism is an american word. I guess I just thougt the crowd here could agree that it's retarded to not have a political policy against fake VOIP numbers.

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 19:27:14 +0000

Well, I do agree. I shouldn't take more than a few months to fix this. I don't live in the US, but I get the feeling something is terribly wrong with the way you're handling such a basic thing as a phone call, be it VOIP or not.

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 19:22:20 +0000

That's extraordinarly retarded.

New comment by johansch in "Norwegian Student Takes Secret Street Photos In The 1890s"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 19:16:59 +0000

People generally caring about declaring img size attributes died out like 15 years ago. grumble

Declaring image sizes doesn't fit into the distributed model that is that is the rage these days, so I guess people don't care since it's so hard. At least it makes their ms/req numbers look great, nevermind that the experience for the actual users sucks.

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 18:54:04 +0000

I agree; it should be technically trival to implement this. All of my comments along the lines of this are wildly downvoted though; I'm not quite sure why. Maybe privacy cowboys?

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 18:51:50 +0000

Sure, but that only works so far. Even a european-style police force would eventually snap if they had to do 100 break-ins to combat ongoing crime if 99/100 calls were fake.

Both issues need to be addressed.

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 18:37:43 +0000

Edit: Ah, after reading more from that link you provided; the issue is stuck in your dysfunctional government.

I'm so confused right now.

Does the US not have a central agency that allocates phone numbers and operators? Does that agency not have the ability to shutdown operators who don't follow the rules?

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 18:35:43 +0000

Well, then, fix it.

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 18:33:24 +0000

So the solution is to regulate the assignment via phone numbers via VOIP providers. Which I perhaps, naively assumed was already happening. WTF?

New comment by johansch in "Serial Swatter Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 18:22:58 +0000

I could actually imagine things being better if proof-of-identity was required for a phone number.

I really don't want IP access to run by the same scheme though.

How do these swatters fake phone numbers?

New comment by johansch in "Mapzen Shutdown"

johansch — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 17:54:56 +0000

They are optimistic about getting paid next month.

New comment by johansch in "How to make a rain on a windshield shader in ShaderToy [video]"

johansch — Sun, 31 Dec 2017 20:32:08 +0000

I think the technical wtf should become clear if you look at the entire comment tree starting at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16041209

But yeah, to clarify: What they primarily need is someone who gives a shit about the site being functional, secondarily money to cover operating costs. Before the first need is covered, just blindly giving some loose group money seems like it would have a high potential of going to waste.