Hacker News: seanieb

New comment by seanieb in "HackerRank open sourced its ATS. My resume scored 90/100. Oh wait 74. No – 88"

seanieb — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 09:37:33 +0000

It's always amazed me that a tech company will pay $300,000+ for a good engineer, because talent is so hard hard to find... meanwhile their recruiter operates unsupported, has a very different idea about what good looks like. Their ATS black-holes >50% the resumes because it's filtering heuristics are garbage because recruiting selected the ATS system because it has a google Gmail integration or something, and the ATS's filtering technology was not reviewed by anyone in the engineering or data teams.

New comment by seanieb in "Sweden is now America's most valuable tech ally. Most Americans haven't noticed"

seanieb — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:36:05 +0000

Would Taiwan, Ireland, Israel and maybe others be higher on that list?

New comment by seanieb in "Hormuz crisis side effect: a sharp rise in container shipping rates"

seanieb — Sat, 30 May 2026 23:34:04 +0000

Sorry I don’t understand. Can you outline why trade would indicate that there isn’t a shortage of chemical fertilizer that would impact crops not yet harvested in developing countries?

New comment by seanieb in "Hormuz crisis side effect: a sharp rise in container shipping rates"

seanieb — Sat, 30 May 2026 20:39:33 +0000

There’s probably going to be a famine or famines due to lack of, and expense, of fertilizer resulting in less food for the developing world.

New comment by seanieb in "GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension"

seanieb — Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:53 +0000

Your company getting hacked because of random plugins for emerging or dysfunctional ecosystems that don’t have enterprise management solutions yet is worth it to avoid friction?

New comment by seanieb in "Security researcher says Microsoft built a Bitlocker backdoor, releases exploit"

seanieb — Sun, 17 May 2026 14:34:47 +0000

> This is not to defend Microsoft

But you are defending MS, conflating a bunch of things, mainly full disk encryption and cloud backups.

There's a big difference between Apples cloud backup which has documented behavior and a backdoor. I'm also fairly confidant in Apple's full disk encryption, they've gone to court to defend it. There also a lot more data points we can use to judge Apple vs Microsoft on privacy and security, and MS comes out looking bad.

New comment by seanieb in "Security researcher says Microsoft built a Bitlocker backdoor, releases exploit"

seanieb — Sun, 17 May 2026 14:20:29 +0000

At what point will Security professionals start turning down roles that involve “securing” MS Products? I’m already at this point.

Securing Microsoft products is busy work while waiting to have it undercut by the next wave of MS’s insane tech debt and greed. And now backdoors!

New comment by seanieb in "A 0-click exploit chain for the Pixel 10"

seanieb — Fri, 15 May 2026 15:14:14 +0000

Not low quality if it works!

New comment by seanieb in "Apple fixes bug that cops used to extract deleted chat messages from iPhones"

seanieb — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 05:05:20 +0000

The issue is only an issue if your phone is physically taken, then unlocked and the message notifications extracted from a iOS cache database. Todays update by Apple fixes issue for every app, not just Signal.

New comment by seanieb in "Apple fixes bug that cops used to extract deleted chat messages from iPhones"

seanieb — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 05:00:03 +0000

Oh please, Telegram being mentioned positively during a discussion of security, privacy or state surveillance? Telegram is a security nightmare, it’s not e2ee no mater what BS their very very untrustworthy founder keeps spouting, it’s not default and what they do offer is probably not secure. Servers owned by Russian oligarchs loyal to Putin. Durovs rebel persona, where he’s persona non grata in Russia is also BS. He was shown to be freely traveling in and out of Russia and having negotiations with the Russian government around censorship of Telegram all while Durov was telling us he couldn’t return. And the Russian FSB won’t use it because it’s known in their circles as being compromised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2eBDU5ea0A&t=392s

> "That largely depends on what an officer does outside of work. If someone is involved in corrupt dealings, and in fact, I know very few who aren't, then they reason like this. Can this messenger be monitored by internal security officers? Previously, many used WhatsApp. Almost no one used telegram because there's a wellfounded belief that this messenger is to some extent controlled by the Russian authorities. People used signal. Some use three months, but all that has now been shut down again. Why is it monitored? I think they're worried about a possible coup and trying to limit the ability to coordinate mass actions via communication channels from abroad. Hence the Max messenger. So now most security officers have switched to Chatty. That's a Dubai based messenger, but it's definitely not a universal remedy. Some have moved to Zangi, which is [clears throat] an Armenian app that markets itself as American. When it comes to targeting the opposition, the state will always find the resources. It's one of the main priorities, more important than any financial or commercial issue, even more than counterterrorism."

New comment by seanieb in "Show HN: PanicLock – Close your MacBook lid disable TouchID –> password unlock"

seanieb — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:30:08 +0000

This comment is based on one of my commits. The round-trip through Int is exactly what makes it safe.Int(value) will return nil (and be rejected) for anything that isn't a valid integer. no ; rm -rf /, no shell. String(seconds) on a Swift Int can only ever produce a decimal number. (which is probably overkill and not needed in this context.) > Please don't use slop machines to write READMEs. Trust me, they do a better job than I ever will.

Having said all that, it's probably something that could be dropped from the readme. I'll edit now.

edit: updated the readme. Thanks for taking the time to proof read it.

New comment by seanieb in "Show HN: PanicLock – Close your MacBook lid disable TouchID –> password unlock"

seanieb — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 23:51:51 +0000

Thank you!

New comment by seanieb in "Show HN: PanicLock – Close your MacBook lid disable TouchID –> password unlock"

seanieb — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 19:47:25 +0000

Correct. This is a classic security vs convenience tradeoff. I mention that trade off on the landing page, PanicLock vs Shutdown

> Use shutdown when you can, PanicLock when you can't. Shutting down is the most secure option—but when you need your Mac locked now and you'll be back in five minutes, PanicLock is your answer.

*PanicLock* - Fast "oh shit" button - Lid closed when in transit. - Instant lock (1 second). Disables Touch ID immediately - Preserves your session - Back to work in minutes

*Full Shutdown* - Maximum security - Purges encryption keys - Fully locks FileVault - Takes time to shutdown & restart - Kills your session

New comment by seanieb in "Show HN: PanicLock – Close your MacBook lid disable TouchID –> password unlock"

seanieb — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 18:10:56 +0000

That's good feedback. I just added it to the readme:

> "PanicLock fills a gap macOS leaves open: there is no built-in way to instantly disable Touch ID when it matters. Biometrics are convenient day-to-day, and sometimes preferable when you need speed or want to avoid your password being observed. But in sensitive situations, law enforcement and border agents in many countries can compel a biometric unlock in ways they cannot with a password. PanicLock gives you a one-click menu bar button, a customizable hotkey, or an automatic lock-on-lid-close option that immediately disables Touch ID and locks your screen, restoring password-only protection without killing your session or shutting down."

I've more details on the apps landing page - paniclock.github.io

New comment by seanieb in "Show HN: PanicLock – Close your MacBook lid disable TouchID –> password unlock"

seanieb — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:51:23 +0000

I wrote this after the case of a Washington Post reporter, Hannah Natanson, was compelled to unlock her computer with her fingerprint. This resulted in access to her Desktop Signal on her computer, revealing sources and their conversations.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/washington-post-raid-pro...

Edit: I've a lot more details about the legality and precedence on the apps landing page https://paniclock.github.io/