Hacker News: notaddicted

New comment by notaddicted in "NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide"

notaddicted — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 02:07:32 +0000

I think this is of endgame for network security, I don't see a way out -- the Sony Rootkit[1] should have been the point where I realized but it is just sinking in for me now since the Snowden NSA leak.

Any network connected computer will be running an OS+Applications which are typically a gigabyte or more. This is produced by companies which are beholden to a nation state, and the companies can be coerced[2] or compelled[3] to use the software against the user. The software is also constantly being probed for vulnerabilities, which can also be exploited by law-enforcement / military [4][5].

So, if you turn on auto-update you have to trust the software maker is not being coerced by someone, or being compelled by a secret court to trojan you. If you don't turn on auto-update you can still get trojaned by any vulnerability. Lose-Lose.

[1] Sony Rootkit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootki...

[2] Qwest CEO Nacchio's claims: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30...

[3] FISA court

[4] German Govt. Trojan from 2011: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-world-from-b...

[5] FBI's TOR trojan injection: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/09/freedom-hosting-fbi...

New comment by notaddicted in "Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate?"

notaddicted — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 02:52:07 +0000

I doubt anyone would disagree that triple negatives aren't easy to parse.

New comment by notaddicted in "How to lose $172,222 a second for 45 minutes"

notaddicted — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 05:15:30 +0000

Yeah, actually now that I'm reading the SEC report it appears pretty seriously reckless, also their lack of capital thresholds.

New comment by notaddicted in "How to lose $172,222 a second for 45 minutes"

notaddicted — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 04:27:26 +0000

Yes, these criminal masterminds found a way to swindle honest hard-working themselves out of 440 million dollars and "get away with" a cool extra -12 million.

New comment by notaddicted in "How the Bible and YouTube are fueling the next frontier of password cracking"

notaddicted — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 17:40:13 +0000

I haven't been following cracking development, is anyone aware of a back of the envelope analysis of how much using a preconceived mnemonic reduces entropy versus random letters? I would expect the math has been done, I think all you need are the 1gram counts for the first letter position[1].

[1] https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1DlRnW1...

EDIT: Based on a quick spreadsheet calculation, I think uniform A-Z each letter is 4.7 bits, and a phrase constructed of random english words each letter is 4.1 bits, so maybe not all that bad. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ar03cGpoaUJ3dHp...

New comment by notaddicted in "Tumblr: ‘It Was the Biggest Game of Chicken I’ve Ever Seen.’"

notaddicted — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 22:42:59 +0000

Hilarious quote of Marco Arment from 4 years ago:

When a similar idea circulated back in 2009, Tumblr’s then–lead developer, Marco Arment, summed up the party line in a scornful blog post: “I hope they let me work on some of the many exciting projects at Yahoo … I want to move to California and get stuck in traffic every day on the way to my midlevel engineering job where I sit in a cubicle all day and can’t make any product decisions while working on something nobody will ever see to manage regional ad clickthrough stats tracking.” Thanks, but no thanks.

New comment by notaddicted in "Ship crosses Northwest Passage, sails into history"

notaddicted — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 00:04:36 +0000

For the passage in the wikipedia diagram, both of the two paths after the first bifurcation (moving westward) pass through channels less than 24 nautical miles wide. Canada would need to build observation towers but it could be defended with "cannons" e.g. the M777.

New comment by notaddicted in "Apple’s iPhone 5 touchscreen is 2.5 times faster than Android devices"

notaddicted — Sat, 21 Sep 2013 04:05:32 +0000

I've got no direct knowledge of this in particular but I've heard that the mouse movement is one of the highest level interrupts in the OS and won't be preempted -- so the number is probably very small but the response by the application when you click may be longer. Also, this is why sometimes you'll see the entire computer locked up except for the mouse movement.

New comment by notaddicted in "My Friends and I Bought an Island"

notaddicted — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 20:36:00 +0000

If their boat is more of a skiff, a couple paddles and a milk jug cut in half for bailing might be sufficient.

In terms of winter storms, this is approximately as bad as it gets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Juan .

New comment by notaddicted in "Documents Shed Light on Border Laptop Searches"

notaddicted — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 17:44:58 +0000

Carrying a burner is itself also suspicious -- the safest course it to be as normal as possible which means having a regular computer/phone with some stuff on it, or nothing. Also, it isn't sufficient to focus the the border policies for re-entry to your own country, you also have to consider every country you would travel to, all of which have their own laws, all of which can change at any moment, even while you are in transit. Carrying around "sensitive" data, along with the password (which is in your brain, thus you are carrying it) is just overall a really bad idea.

New comment by notaddicted in "Tesla Model S achieves best safety rating of any car ever tested"

notaddicted — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 02:35:10 +0000

I believe one of the tests is crashing into a wall that yields very little, so the tungsten dumptruck would fare poorly, exciting as it would be to drive.

EDIT: this one: http://youtu.be/V5R80yUUVNk

New comment by notaddicted in "[dead]"

notaddicted — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 22:54:51 +0000

Same. Chrome url box search isn't working. I just used bing unsarcastically.

EDIT: canada as well.... Aaaaand it's back.

New comment by notaddicted in "Lavabit Founder Says He Had ‘Obligation’ to Shut Service"

notaddicted — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 23:08:07 +0000

It depends what you care about more, the emails or the privacy. The privacy is now ensured, and it isn't like they've erased the emails from the users' minds, only the records of the email.

New comment by notaddicted in "Hyperloop Alpha [pdf]"

notaddicted — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 22:31:43 +0000

According to some quick youtube searching, armor-piercing rounds versus regular steel would create problems: http://youtu.be/q_zZd0NsYG4 .

New comment by notaddicted in "Thoughts on Colocation"

notaddicted — Sun, 04 Aug 2013 01:27:30 +0000

For "finding datacenters", traceroute is useful. You can just pick some websites and see where they host. For example, is seems that pinboard.in is hosted at http://he.net/colocation.html, Fremont 2, or at least that is where I am being routed.

New comment by notaddicted in "Why I hate read receipts"

notaddicted — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 23:00:12 +0000

As a matter of general principle, I strenuously object to any computer I own sending out information about my behavior without my intent or permission. The only egregious offence of the read receipt is that I don't control it.

New comment by notaddicted in "A Memory Comparison of Light Linux Desktops"

notaddicted — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 22:52:16 +0000

For this reason I have a drawer full of hard drives, its just so much easier.

New comment by notaddicted in "Using ImageMagick to make sharp web-sized photographs"

notaddicted — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 02:19:48 +0000

As long as we're bashing, it could easily be written loopless like so:

    basename -s .jpg -a *jpg | 
      xargs -I{} convert "{}.jpg" \
       -resize "900x" -unsharp 2x0.5+0.5+0 -quality 98 "{}_s.jpg"

EDIT: weird line breaking is to prevent sidescroll box

New comment by notaddicted in "How a total n00b mined $700 in bitcoins"

notaddicted — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 02:00:09 +0000

The timing of when you get the device is crucial, check out how fast the total power of the mining network is going up: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ (it is the 1st graph).

New comment by notaddicted in "Advice for ambitious 19 year olds"

notaddicted — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 19:07:32 +0000

Only people with money say "Don't worry about money".