Hacker News Reader

Benferhaton Google's new CAPTCHA security login raises 'legitimate privacy concerns'

I might even incorporate the request rate into a bot detection algo, maybe have it trigger temporary hellbans.

Benferhaton WarnHN: Google Cloud account suspension – no warnings and data locked down

I've used GAE since its inception, never even heard of anything like this happening. Any updates?

Benferhaton Hacking PayPal Accounts with one click

I believe he's talking about Diablo 2 (the timeframe works, and the game is notorious for duping), in which Blizzard provides shady third party companies with items, which are then sold to users.

Benferhaton “Invalid username or password” is a useless security measure

If I'm not logged into a site a that I regularly use, I'm probably not logged into my email, either. In order to log into my favorite site with Passwordless, I have to log into my email as well. With my password. One login for the price of two, and I'm still using a password.

Benferhaton HTTP vs. HTTPS

Each plugin is a potential confounder.

Benferhaton “No-CAPTCHA” reCAPTCHA

They seem to have done a small early beta over the summer, I guess they got in early.

Benferhaton “No-CAPTCHA” reCAPTCHA

I'd like to hear arguments for why it would be unfair competition for Google to put spammy ad agencies out of business.

Benferhaton “No-CAPTCHA” reCAPTCHA

Thanks for the heads up, I missed it due to adblock. I made the link non-clickable and added a warning.

Benferhaton “No-CAPTCHA” reCAPTCHA

I found a demo[0] via this old forum thread from August[1].

Obviously there are privacy concerns. That being said, this looks like a boon for anyone interested in bot detection, as you can periodically challenge your users' humanity without getting too much in their way. Nice one, Google.

From the thread:

Implemented it successfully for a website. I have to say, it works great!

it also checks if html pages are changed at runtime and how many times you "reload" the page where the captcha is. When it thinks you are a bot a captcha popups, when entered, it got checked on googles servers if it's right and fills in a hidden input. When the user submits the form, the filled in captcha coded, again, will be verifed. [sic]

[0] http://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo

[1] Edit: don't go to this url without adblock (see comment below). http://forum.ragezone com/f144/googles-captcha-recaptcha-1023607/

Benferhaton Marijuana helped shrink one of the most aggressive brain cancers

McKenna is more famous for his excessive use of psychedelics.

Terence McKenna: "There are only about 1,000 of these GBMs a year, so it's a rare disease. I never won anything before - why now?" Like everybody else, he suspected a lifetime of exotic drug use may have been to blame. [0]

[0] http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/8.05/mckenna_pr.html

Benferhaton For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

The price of bitcoins has already dropped 10% since the news.

Benferhaton TigerDirect.com Now Accepts Bitcoin Payments

>> In the checkout flow it is best practice to offer as many payment options available because it increases the likelihood of a successful conversion.

Are you sure about that? Too many choices sometimes leads to no choice at all. [0]

[0] http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...

Benferhaton Hal Finney received the first Bitcoin transaction. Here’s how he describes it.

"My bitcoins are stored in our safe deposit box, and my son and daughter are tech savvy. I think they're safe enough. I'm comfortable with my legacy."

Benferhaton We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality

You love the phrase "regulatory capture", don't you? :)

Benferhaton We Need to Talk About TED

> This Event Has Been Deleted

mirror, please?

Benferhaton Tor Appliance

How are users protected from malicious exit nodes, assuming they're visiting sites unprotected by SSL?

Benferhaton A search engine that removes the 1 million most popular web sites from its index

> "Commercial" means the site contains ads

Your idea started out good. Sometimes I want to research a product before I go looking for a merchant. Blocking all sites that contain ads? Just use adblock if you're that fanatical.

Benferhaton That 60W-equivalent LED: What no one will tell you

tl;dr: LED bulbs get too hot, lowering their life expectancy. Manufacturers need to include cheap thermistor circuits, which automatically dim the light to a safe thermal equilibrium.

Benferhaton This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan

add &yt:cc=on to the YouTube URL [0] to enable subtitles.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHGDN9-oFJE&yt:cc=on

Benferhaton Google apps whitelist hardcoded into Chromium open source project

Firefox is more performant on my Ubuntu box than Chromium, even for things like Gmail and Google Docs.

Benferhaton Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won

I'm not even asking for automatic alternate routing. How about letting me switch to a better route manually, without exiting navigation?

Benferhaton Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won

The new Google Maps on Android is terrible, as well. It's missing features, most notable of which is the ability to search for alternate routes when you hit traffic.

Benferhaton iPad from T-Mobile with free monthly 200MB data for life

Why throttle them? Let them hit the caps and pay for more data.

Benferhaton Anonymous releases NSA documents

Did you mean: recursion

Benferhaton Ask HN: Recommend a grid-based CSS framework that plays well with Bootstrap

Try something like this, off the top of my head: http://pastebin.com/srYteiXQ

Benferhaton Users don't like social login

Sure, sometimes their usernames are their primary keys. Even if the actual primary key is arbitrary, the primary identity is still exposed to the user, in that they know what their user account is, and which email addresses are linked to it.

Benferhaton Users don't like social login

> But it's one that's never exposed to the actual user.

Why not expose it to the user? Because then they'll want to change it? Are you talking about browser fingerprinting?

We already expose this on the user/email level, where users can link and log in with as many email addresses as they like, under one account (identifier).

Benferhaton Don't learn how to code, learn how to make things

I blame ruby for being a great way to go for people that don't know a single thing about programming.

Benferhaton Google Reader shutting down

> GAE in October?

AppEngine's deprecation policy:

7.2 Deprecation Policy.

Google will announce if we intend to discontinue or make backwards incompatible changes to this API or Service. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to continue to operate that Service without these changes until the later of: (i) one year after the announcement or (ii) April 20, 2015, unless (as Google determines in its reasonable good faith judgment):

# required by law or third party relationship (including if there is a change in applicable law or relationship), or

# doing so could create a security risk or substantial economic or material technical burden.

[0] https://developers.google.com/appengine/terms scroll down to 7.2

Benferhaton Inter-window messaging using localStorage

sessionStorage won't work across tabs. You have to encrypt sensitive data; I use securecookie [0].

[0] http://godoc.org/github.com/gorilla/securecookie (Go)