Hacker News: vt_mruhlin

New comment by vt_mruhlin in "An interview question that will protect you from North Korean fake workers"

vt_mruhlin — Thu, 01 May 2025 19:47:44 +0000

You can weed these people out with basically any question. "What's the difference between an inner join and an outer join". These guys always sound like they're reading out of a textbook.

New comment by vt_mruhlin in "DOGE worker’s code supports NLRB whistleblower"

vt_mruhlin — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 22:19:54 +0000

What? They reused public packages that have been public for years. One guy made a public fork with some changes. Is that not what open source is intended for?

New comment by vt_mruhlin in "Scientists simulate backward time travel using quantum entanglement"

vt_mruhlin — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 13:11:47 +0000

> create a better tomorrow by fixing yesterday’s problems today

This is exactly the kind of tag line an evil corporation in a sci-fi movie would brand this product with.

New comment by vt_mruhlin in "Find a good available .com domain"

vt_mruhlin — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 23:15:46 +0000

Do domain names matter any more? What you need is a unique business name. Don't just name your app "bear" or something, because people are going to get search results for actual bears.

New comment by vt_mruhlin in "Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'"

vt_mruhlin — Sat, 30 Sep 2017 02:32:30 +0000

I heard about these guys on NPR's Radiolab podcast a couple months ago, and the whole thing gave me a creepy feeling.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/ceremony/

They describe the whole ceremony the guys go through to generate the random secret key that seeds their algorithm and needs to be kept secret in order to prevent anybody from counterfeiting coins. It was an elaborate setup supposedly designed to prevent people from observing any details they might be able to use to reverse engineer the algorithm. But, despite all their insistance on bespoke cloak and dagger shit, there were a lot of times the process could have been broken:

- They're supposed to be driving to a randomly selected electronics store to buy the laptop that will generate the number; but the guy makes an "unscheduled" stop at a costume store so he can buy a wizard hat (and potentially hand off information with a third party who wants to know their destination, or to pick up some kind of surveillance device)

- When the time comes to type random numbers on the laptop keyboard, the guy covers his hands and the keyboard. Arguable pro there is that nobody can see which keys he touches, but the big obvious con is that he can slip that USB device he picked up at the costume shop into one of the USB ports.

- People are using their phones while this whole process is going on? Ok, seems counterproductive to all that paranoid security they were trying to have...

- Oh look, they noticed strange indicators that strongly suggested somebody's phone got hacked and was being used to spy on their skype conversation? Somebody that paranoid should have immediately shut the process down and restarted it at a later date. They didn't do that? Something sure is fishy with the guy running this thing.

tl;dr; I don't trust 'em