Hacker News: mhluongo

New comment by mhluongo in "France pulls last gold held in US for $15B gain"

mhluongo — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 10:34:20 +0000

When something is "realized" is a matter of accounting. It means to make the change, they sold the gold fo currrency, then bought it back. For many of us, realizing a gain is when taxes happen, though I'm not sure what it means for a nation state.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/realizedprofit.asp

New comment by mhluongo in "I am leaving the AI party after one drink"

mhluongo — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 17:23:42 +0000

If I'm not mistaken, this was Socrates' exact perspective on writing.

Show HN: Shrouded, secure memory management in Rust

mhluongo — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:12:35 +0000

Hi HN!

I've been building a project that handles high-value credentials in-process, and I wanted something more robust than just zeroing memory on drop. A comment on a recent Show HN[0] made me realize that awareness of lower-level memory protection techniques might not be as widespread as I thought.

The idea here is to pull out all the tools in one crate, with a relatively simple API. * mlock/VirtualLock to prevent sensitive memory from being swapped (eg the KeePass dump) * Core dump exclusion using MADV_DONTDUMP on Linux & Android * mprotect to minimize exposure over time * Guard pages to mitigate under/overflows

After some battle testing, the goal here is to provide a more secure memory foundation for things like password managers and cryptocurrency wallets.

This was a fun project, and I learned a lot - would love any feedback!

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47073430

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47493845

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by mhluongo in "Why One Key Shouldn't Rule Them All: Threshold Signatures for the Rest of Us"

mhluongo — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 18:55:22 +0000

Here are a couple examples of physical access leading to key extraction. You're welcome to be pedantic (those are side channel attacks, they don't defeat the boundary!) but one way or another, physical access wins.

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/descrack/ https://ninjalab.io/eucleak/

New comment by mhluongo in "Why One Key Shouldn't Rule Them All: Threshold Signatures for the Rest of Us"

mhluongo — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 20:05:35 +0000

Again and again, we've seen that HSMs aren't secure against physical access of the device.

New comment by mhluongo in "Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice"

mhluongo — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 11:47:28 +0000

What unnecessary snark. Is a little civility too much to ask for?

New comment by mhluongo in "An Interactive Intro to CRDTs (2023)"

mhluongo — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 02:57:21 +0000

It appears to have gotten better! Sharing a project soon.

New comment by mhluongo in "An Interactive Intro to CRDTs (2023)"

mhluongo — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 02:56:35 +0000

CRDTs let you avoid leader election / strict consensus. The canonical example is a google doc with multiple editors.

New comment by mhluongo in "Show HN: Mini-Diarium - An encrypted, local, cross-platform journaling app"

mhluongo — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 13:23:36 +0000

Protected memory can be used to fix that. Working on a related project that I'm planning to share soon.

New comment by mhluongo in "I'm returning my Framework 16"

mhluongo — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 21:33:54 +0000

Direct counterpoint: I've been a Dell XPS 13 stan for years (owned 3), and my other laptop today is a System 76. I've run IT for labs at a major university (Georgia Tech), across Windows, RHEL, and MacOS. I've been a desktop Linux user since 2006, both personally and professionally.

Across those, I've repaired plenty of laptops. I mentioned the RAM above because it's recent, and because it's easy. And I don't just mean physically easy - I mean I can find the part with a quick search, and it's just like any other ecommerce thing. That's a big shift from figuring out how to upgrade most laptops, where your top search result is a forum post or pushing you to talk to a tech.

Not breathless, but it is a breath of fresh air.

New comment by mhluongo in "I'm returning my Framework 16"

mhluongo — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 00:44:38 +0000

Happy Framework 13 user here to say this.

I recently realized the 32Gb I had originally spec'd isn't enough for work lately. Easy fix, I just ordered more RAM.

Pretty straightforward value prop here. If that's not why you want, buy a different device.

New comment by mhluongo in "AirPods libreated from Apple's ecosystem"

mhluongo — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 02:01:14 +0000

Funny, I was under the impression that Apple's stuff is closed source, so no one outside their employ even could fix a similar issue?

New comment by mhluongo in "Bank of Thailand freezes 3M accounts, sets daily transfer limits to curb fraud"

mhluongo — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 16:51:20 +0000

It comes from finance - the rest of us just use "M" for million. I believe it's from Roman numerals (MM = thousand * thousand).

New comment by mhluongo in "Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver"

mhluongo — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 01:56:40 +0000

There's boilerplate in Rails too. We move the goal posts for what we define as boilerplate as we better explore and solve a class of problems.

New comment by mhluongo in "Typed languages are better suited for vibecoding"

mhluongo — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 10:37:28 +0000

Have you considered that instead, whatever LLM has the most examples of are what it's best at? Perhaps there's more well-structures Rails code in training than Go?

New comment by mhluongo in "Fintech dystopia"

mhluongo — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 10:41:01 +0000

Most stablecoin volume isn't cleared in the Bitcoin network.

New comment by mhluongo in "Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety"

mhluongo — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 17:14:56 +0000

We've incubated a private, local-first menstrual tracking app!

My partner is the founder. She's a PMDD sufferer who needed a proper, science-first tracker to treat her hormonal symptoms. After Roe, she didn't feel like she had any options but to build her own app — Embody.

We're getting ready for a security audit and to take it open source. Would love any feedback!

https://embody.space

New comment by mhluongo in "Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant"

mhluongo — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 17:31:48 +0000

Indeed, TF2 hats and gift cards appear to do something well that this system doesn't :)

New comment by mhluongo in "Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant"

mhluongo — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 11:54:40 +0000

> Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance.

Does it work internationally? Does it send USD as well, or only the real?

If it solves th same problems, why is Brazil considering banning self-custodial USD stablecoins? And why has there been an ongoing discussion about launching mBRL, and stablecoin pegged to the real?

https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2024/brazil-considers-...

New comment by mhluongo in "Hackers stole billions in crypto to keep North Korea’s regime afloat"

mhluongo — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 18:31:22 +0000

Because code had never been sanctioned before, and it's a clear freedom of speech issue?