Hacker News: uncommoncense

New comment by uncommoncense in "Authorization terminology is a mess: Let's fix it"

uncommoncense — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 13:19:39 +0000

Right, but where do you get the proof to begin with? Using your OS example, it seems like the OS would need to precompute all of the possible accesses for the file picker? In this case, the OS is an authorization system.

Do you mean that the directory should not be responsible for making this decision and there should be a central authorization authority?

New comment by uncommoncense in "Authorization terminology is a mess: Let's fix it"

uncommoncense — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:21:07 +0000

What you're describing is the difference between Fine Grained Authorization (FGA) and traditional Role-based Access Control (RBAC). This article covers the difference: https://www.osohq.com/learn/what-is-fine-grained-authorizati... (disclaimer: I used to work there but continue to be a fan of their documentation).

New comment by uncommoncense in "Authorization terminology is a mess: Let's fix it"

uncommoncense — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:16:17 +0000

What you're describing is essentially what the authorization system would need to do in order to answer the question "can this subject perform this action on this object?". If you're suggesting that the program should receive a list a priori, then there are potential scale issues since that list would need to be exhaustive of both nouns and verbs, which can be a large set.

New comment by uncommoncense in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2021)"

uncommoncense — Tue, 04 May 2021 02:13:04 +0000

Rockerbox | Remote (US) or NYC | Full-time | https://www.rockerbox.com/careers

Rockerbox enables marketers to collect and consolidate all of their marketing data, including from those that don't have API's, on a single platform. We process streaming transactional and batch aggregate data to derive insights that help marketers understand which channels are most effective for them.

We're hiring for two roles:

- Platform Engineer: Join a newly established team (3 current members) that will be tackling some hard problems to enable us to scale. Projects include spinning up K8s, building out a testing platform, and enabling continuous delivery.

- Product Engineer: Join the team on a mission to make it easy for non-technical marketing teams to integrate all of their data and visualize customer journeys. We're constantly iterating and obsess over making the insights more actionable.

Feel free to reach out: mcen [at] rockerbox.com or apply directly here (job posting will be updated soon): https://www.rockerbox.com/careers?gh_jid=4418251003?gh_jid=4...