Hacker News: problems

New comment by problems in "Every Vehicle Should Have an Electric Motor, Even If It Doesn’t Have a Plug"

problems — Tue, 28 May 2019 04:51:02 +0000

Calling a 1.5L Prius engine "expensive" is a bit of a stretch, you can buy a lightly used engine for ~$500.

Compare with say Tesla where a single motor runs you over $3000 and they call it "cheap".

New comment by problems in "Ask HN: Should I quit my job?"

problems — Tue, 28 May 2019 02:22:38 +0000

Interesting, I often drop caffeine for a week or so (without any real conceited effort, typically just when I'm sick or on vacation) and any withdrawal seems gone after a few days but then restart it within a week because it's just so damn good, especially when you only sleep 4-6 hours a night which is... every night for me.

New comment by problems in "Ask HN: Should I quit my job?"

problems — Tue, 28 May 2019 02:20:07 +0000

It's not just a nagging doubt, it's adding a "gap" to your resume - I've heard many employers view any sort of exclusive self-employment as basically that and it's something that actively keeps me hesitating.

New comment by problems in "How I Used Eve Online to Predict the Great Recession (2013)"

problems — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 03:18:13 +0000

How much is a normal % of take home pay to go to your mortgage?

I'm at about 30% and it's my only debt.

New comment by problems in "After Surgery in Germany, I Wanted Vicodin, Not Herbal Tea"

problems — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 00:34:02 +0000

I think you're confusing some sort of emotional pain which may deserve analysis with physical pain which analysis cannot bring any insights from - it's just pain. Nothing revolutionary.

New comment by problems in "After Surgery in Germany, I Wanted Vicodin, Not Herbal Tea"

problems — Sun, 28 Jan 2018 23:59:12 +0000

This seems to me to be entirely backwards. If you appreciate creativity, don't you want to have as much time as possible to experience and enjoy the world around you? To learn? To create? Why would you spend the day stuck in bed feeling like shit, unable to do anything but watch TV when you could easily solve that and do more?

New comment by problems in "After Surgery in Germany, I Wanted Vicodin, Not Herbal Tea"

problems — Sun, 28 Jan 2018 23:23:14 +0000

And in the best case (and almost 100% of the time) you'll just heal anyways, but won't give a shit about the pain and will actually be able to do stuff.

I think I'll roll that dice, thanks anyways. I'm generally able to restrict myself without the need for pain.

New comment by problems in "After Surgery in Germany, I Wanted Vicodin, Not Herbal Tea"

problems — Sun, 28 Jan 2018 18:35:42 +0000

Yeah, I question the idea that it's beneficial to experience pain - why should I? Especially if it's going to cost me days of my life that I could do something with. Maybe not go out, but at least be able to catch up on some of the more passive content... seems like a needless waste of life.

New comment by problems in "Jack White bans phones at gigs for “100% human experience”"

problems — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 15:40:19 +0000

How so? Texting someone isn't distracting to anyone around you... unless I'm missing something?

Are you really that easily bothered by other people that them enjoying something in a different way than you detracts from your experience?

New comment by problems in "Jack White bans phones at gigs for “100% human experience”"

problems — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 15:31:11 +0000

What's with the incessant need to tell other people how to enjoy an experience?

I'm reminded of this xkcd comic: https://xkcd.com/1314/

New comment by problems in "Branchless Doom"

problems — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 01:23:41 +0000

For even the nastiest of obfuscators there are often attempts at deobfuscators...

https://github.com/kirschju/demovfuscator

New comment by problems in "Union Is Formed at Los Angeles Times and Publisher Put on Leave"

problems — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 22:01:07 +0000

I'm a programmer who's currently in a union position - I want out. I pay dues and get basically nothing for them, as developers we're generally in decent negotiating positions. Unions are great when you're not in that position, but just an extra cost when you are.

New comment by problems in "CloudFlair: Bypassing CloudFlare using Internet-wide scan data"

problems — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 00:40:00 +0000

Run your mail server on a different provider and configure it to strip the relay headers - some mail relay services may also work for this purpose.

New comment by problems in "Client cheques that I rejected"

problems — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 17:57:26 +0000

I see people on this very website claim they can probably implement an Uber clone in a weekend or two - and they're probably right, the basics of such a service are quite simple, but perfecting it and marketing it are far harder.

Is that my problem though as a freelance developer? Should I invest effort in something knowing it will fail because it can't possibly be marketed successfully against competitors?

New comment by problems in "Neopets HTML Guide"

problems — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 17:29:07 +0000

Yeah, I put a good pile of reverse engineering work into this thing at one point - used Flare and Flasm along with a lighttpd proxy to replace their swfs with my own.

New comment by problems in "CloudFlair: Bypassing CloudFlare using Internet-wide scan data"

problems — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 17:13:25 +0000

Yes, CloudFlare even provides official lists for this purpose.

https://www.cloudflare.com/ips/

IPv4 space is far too small not to use this. Often times if an attacker has determined your provider in the past, they may be able to leverage that information and scan only nearby ranges.

Other common anti-DDoS proxy bypass tactics:

- direct.* subdomain used to be used by default on CloudFlare for a direct route to the server

- Check headers in outgoing emails for an origin IP (this one gets way too many sites)

- CloudFlare only recently got websocket support - check if their websocket servers are secured or not

- Check for an MX record

- Use DNS bruteforcing tools to attempt to find other services

New comment by problems in "Leap: An Online Community for Women"

problems — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 17:59:43 +0000

I fail to see how it'd be good for this use - do they require a number of friends or something? I have 4 Facebook accounts for faking out exactly this kind of stuff, but none with any real information.

New comment by problems in "Attack of the Week: Group Messaging in WhatsApp and Signal"

problems — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 06:33:20 +0000

So they didn't bother to check if the add to group message was from someone in the group?

I mean no offense to the developers, but this seems like a fairly basic oversight and quite concerning that respected and popular products didn't get this level of review until now.

No crazy cryptographic mess involving improper ordering of authentication or weird random number generation, this is a simple logic bug. One that I'm sure many of us would have considered if we were implementing it, things like this do get missed too of course, but enough eyes on the design could have caught this.

New comment by problems in "Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25"

problems — Sat, 30 Dec 2017 08:26:27 +0000

Nice method, but for future record you don't really need to mess with mains to hook up Sense or OpenEnergyMonitor, they use inductive current clamps which work by detecting the field around the a single terminal of your incoming mains. Pretty much as safe as it gets with this stuff.

New comment by problems in "Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda"

problems — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 18:04:39 +0000

30 Rock also pushed Obama a bit if I recall correctly and before the election - but they also cracked a joke about how Tina Fey's character would tell everyone she was voting for Obama but then secretly vote Republican.

So think what you will of that.