Hacker News: vrikis

New comment by vrikis in "New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior"

vrikis — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 18:16:57 +0000

I'm not surprised to be honest. In the city I currently live in, since moving here a year ago, I've never even gotten the bus because an uber is maybe twice the price but 10x more convenient and 5x as fast to get to the local train station... To get to the next city along, it's a 15min uber or >1hr public transport commute... However, if Uber didn't exist here, I don't think I'd be taking taxis because they are far more expensive.

New comment by vrikis in "LessPass: sync-less open source password manager"

vrikis — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 16:39:11 +0000

I used to use SuperGenPass[1] to do exactly this, but what you'll soon find is that every website has slightly different password rules, so you'll have to start memorizing unique settings for each site (i.e. website X can't have certain chars, website Y can't be longer than 12 chars, etc...). Then you run into the issue of multiple things you need to remember, such as secret answers for various questions, birthdays that you may lie about, etc...

Much easier to just use a vault to store all this.

[1] https://chriszarate.github.io/supergenpass/mobile/

New comment by vrikis in "iPhone SE"

vrikis — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 22:02:08 +0000

Except when you're on the home screen; long press will let you wiggle icons and force touch will let you get app shortcuts.

New comment by vrikis in "Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge"

vrikis — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 13:52:30 +0000

This is what it's like in Scotland!! People here get SO angry, thinking that you have "skipped" all the other patiently waiting people... And then they don't let you merge! And it makes absolutely no sense to me, because they cause one reallllyyyy long traffic jam then...

New comment by vrikis in "Josh Topolsky of The Verge Is Joining Bloomberg"

vrikis — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 15:23:37 +0000

I always thought of The Verge as Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, and Paul Miller... It's been kinda of a so-and-so website in the past year, so I'm not surprised he's leaving before the whole site goes downhill..

Good on him though, excited to see what he writes about. Fingers crossed we get some good podcasts though!

New comment by vrikis in "Airbnb host's horror as squatter takes over"

vrikis — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 13:42:26 +0000

I've contacted AirBnB regarding several unprofessional experiences, and I've found that AirBnB themselves were quite amateur. This has changed, and AirBnB are starting to grow up. Hopefully this sort of stuff doesn't happen again...

New comment by vrikis in "Ask HN: Do you use spreadsheets on your smartphone?"

vrikis — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 12:44:12 +0000

It's just too much work to type it all in all the time...

(Has nothing to do with spreadsheets etc... I also get fed up of calorie counting apps and fitness apps as entering data isn't fun!)

New comment by vrikis in "Ask HN: Do you use spreadsheets on your smartphone?"

vrikis — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 10:53:39 +0000

I once tried to keep a spreadsheet (Apple's Numbers) for fuel cost / consumption / mileage, etc. for my car. I found Numbers to do the job best, but still got fed up of trying to do it all...

New comment by vrikis in "Introducing Typed – Your New Favourite Markdown Editor for Mac"

vrikis — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 14:08:53 +0000

I've been looking for a nice Markdown editor on Mac. Hopefully this one will be it.

Are there any others I should look at?

New comment by vrikis in "Show HN: Pastor generates and stores passwords without storing any passwords"

vrikis — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 13:29:08 +0000

(unfortunately) The more I think about this, the more flaws I find... I looked through pastor.py and essentially you're just creating a different password. There's no difference between using this generated password and another password (you could argue that the generated password is harder to brute force, but that's it really).

New comment by vrikis in "Show HN: Pastor generates and stores passwords without storing any passwords"

vrikis — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 13:23:02 +0000

But what I don't understand is, if the password is never stored, how can you allow for logins, etc.? I mean, there must be a way of comparison, or something? I think perhaps I'm having a brain melt, or I'm misunderstanding this completely. To me, this looks like it's creating a password from hashing the pass-phrase and doorID, but that just then generates another password...

New comment by vrikis in "Show HN: Pastor generates and stores passwords without storing any passwords"

vrikis — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 13:15:05 +0000

I'm not sure if I quite understand this - so you're hashing the pass-phrase+doorID, and then storing that? Doesn't that mean that the hashed, well, generated password is always the same, regardless which website you are on?

I like the idea of supergenpass, as it's creating unique passwords on a website basis as it hashing a password+URL to create unique website passwords.

Maybe I've misunderstood this though.

New comment by vrikis in "Airbnb logo is ours... upside down"

vrikis — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 09:55:50 +0000

The AirBnB logo is far more triangular, if that makes sense. The lines coming down from the top towards the bottom left/right are very straight (EDIT: essentially it's a fancy "A" with very rigid lines), whereas the fash.io/n logo is just a regular (EDIT: rounded and very much not straight-lined) heart...

Yeah, I get it, you see a similar logo and think "ahh they copied ours", but at the end of the day, what do you expect with a single line, minimal logo? There's only so many ways a single line can loop around...

New comment by vrikis in "Cannabis really can trigger paranoia"

vrikis — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 09:24:37 +0000

Although I've never been an active cannabis user as the study describes it, I tried the drug on several occasions in high school and at university. I've always felt paranoid whilst high, and it's always been an unpleasant experience. My mind always goes into "overdrive" and I start to think far more and feel everything around me tightening in on me. To describe the feeling to my friend, I described it as the scene in The Matrix when Neo, just after choosing the red pill, touches the mirror and the mirror starts to cover up his body and go into his mouth. It's a weird feeling to describe, but it makes me super paranoid. On top of that, I always feel like I start to see everything far more white, and become far more light headed, which in turn makes me even more paranoid...

Maybe I'm a light head, but I don't like the drug at all.

New comment by vrikis in "Beware Keyloggers at Hotel Business Centers"

vrikis — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 14:36:23 +0000

I agree with the first part, but I've been pretty impressed by the security used and developed in iOS: http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.p...

At the end of the day, as you said, phones are easier lost and stolen, but there is barely a difference now in the functionality of security between a phone, laptop, and desktop; they're all the same. Now, for convenience, many users don't bother having a password on their phone. That's not functionality though, that's just how a user has decided to protect their phone's content...

New comment by vrikis in "Beware Keyloggers at Hotel Business Centers"

vrikis — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 14:25:44 +0000

You don't actually need a mobile at all. You could have this run as a browser plugin, but the point of having SQRL on a mobile is that it's seperate from what you're trying to log in with, if that makes sense..

New comment by vrikis in "Beware Keyloggers at Hotel Business Centers"

vrikis — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 14:03:43 +0000

A smartphone isn't any less secure than a laptop... I could say "lost your laptop and you give away the keys to everything" just as you said the same for smartphone... It's up to the user to decide what security they put on their devices. On iPhone at least, everything is really well encrypted out of the box. Most people don't put passwords on their laptops either.

New comment by vrikis in "Beware Keyloggers at Hotel Business Centers"

vrikis — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 09:17:44 +0000

I can't wait for Steve Gibon's SQRL [0] to take off... Would hinder keyloggers useless.

[0] https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm

New comment by vrikis in "Why Europeans Don't Refrigerate Their Eggs"

vrikis — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 09:14:46 +0000

The ONLY reason I've ever put eggs in the fridge is because my fridge has an egg tray...

I tend to put my shopping in similar places as where the supermarket had put them, so things I buy out of the fridge go in the fridge at home, and things I buy at room temperature go into my pantry at home... except for the eggs, they go into the egg tray in the fridge!

New comment by vrikis in "Show HN: Sky Data Retention Response"

vrikis — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 12:19:59 +0000

BT said the exact same, like really really similar;

Thank you for your email.

It is our understanding that the Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009 remains in force within the UK even though the European Data Retention Directive has fallen. We refer to an exchange in Parliament on 16 June 2014 in which James Brokenshire, on behalf of the Government, said “At the present time, we consider that the UK Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009 remain in force. Those in receipt of a notice under the regulations have been informed that they should continue to observe their obligations as outlined in any notice.”