Hacker News Reader

aftbiton Broccoli2Shell: Brotli decoder RCE in Node.js, Python and more

It's safe to upgrade with python 3.12.16 now:

  # docker run --rm --net=host --add-host=pypi.org:127.0.0.1 --add-host=files.pythonhosted.org:127.0.0.1 python:3.12.16-slim-trixie pip install six
  WARNING: Retrying (Retry(total=4, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by 'SSLError(SSLCertVerificationError(1, '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: certificate rejected (_ssl.c:1011)'))': /simple/six/

aftbiton Sigma Says the Compact, Modular FP2 Is the Ultimate Hybrid Camera

Seems like your corp is mismanaging your device. Ad-blockers are one of the most important security improvements you can make to a modern web browser.

aftbiton Sigma Says the Compact, Modular FP2 Is the Ultimate Hybrid Camera

The standard needs a bit more baking before it's quite ready IMO

https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/1102-C...

https://hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/1077-Googl...

https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/1037-C...

https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/android-c2pa.html

aftbiton Sigma Says the Compact, Modular FP2 Is the Ultimate Hybrid Camera

I would imagine you'd need at least FP16, if not a full FP32, to get the ultimate camera.

aftbiton In Leaked Audio, Flock CEO Tells Cops Backlash to the Company Isn't Real

Ah yes, the "all criticism is fake news" strategy.

aftbiton GPT-6.1 Terra

Seems to be missing all of the 6.0 and 6.1 models?

aftbiton Removing Next.js Got My Blog to 100 on Every Lighthouse Category

What are the best static site generators for blogs these days?

aftbiton Time Nuts (2005)

My GPSDO contains a decently pre-aged (read: Chinese reuse of surplus) OCXO so it's actually likely to be more stable over the short term that a brand new OCXO. My Rubidium standard is not really trustworthy sadly, as it has shown quite a tendency to unlock at random.

aftbiton Node2Shell evolves to HTTP2Shell, blast radius affects many HTTP libs and apps

Yep! I tested it with my own vibe-coded MITM proxy that hijacks pypi installations, which I created for ~$0.30 spend on DeepSeek API.

    $ python -m pip --no-cache install "pip @ https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/3f/06/3e4420302363fbb71be3c7f35ce042f54bfca330e3e66b3a2e3c4cca579f/pip-26.2.2-py3-none-any.whl#sha256=fd7f4dfa8190e014013b9f08f3e973f4e4c26ffd179a204895533a7254813a70"
    Collecting pip @ https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/3f/06/3e4420302363fbb71be3c7f35ce042f54bfca330e3e66b3a2e3c4cca579f/pip-26.2.2-py3-none-any.whl#sha256=fd7f4dfa8190e014013b9f08f3e973f4e4c26ffd179a204895533a7254813a70
      Downloading pip-26.2.2-py3-none-any.whl (1.8 MB)
         ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1.8/1.8 MB 570.0 MB/s  0:00:00
    ERROR: THESE PACKAGES DO NOT MATCH THE HASHES FROM THE REQUIREMENTS FILE. If you have updated the package versions, please update the hashes. Otherwise, examine the package contents carefully; someone may have tampered with them.
        pip @ https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/3f/06/3e4420302363fbb71be3c7f35ce042f54bfca330e3e66b3a2e3c4cca579f/pip-26.2.2-py3-none-any.whl#sha256=fd7f4dfa8190e014013b9f08f3e973f4e4c26ffd179a204895533a7254813a70 from https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/3f/06/3e4420302363fbb71be3c7f35ce042f54bfca330e3e66b3a2e3c4cca579f/pip-26.2.2-py3-none-any.whl#sha256=fd7f4dfa8190e014013b9f08f3e973f4e4c26ffd179a204895533a7254813a70:
            Expected sha256 fd7f4dfa8190e014013b9f08f3e973f4e4c26ffd179a204895533a7254813a70
                 Got        8c448177668e735cdde7d6178694b90c084ba18559348cc394c4b1546eeec89c

The second one works too:

    $ PIP_USE_DEPRECATED=legacy-certs PIP_CERT=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt python -m pip install --no-cache --upgrade "pip>=26.2.2"
    WARNING: Retrying (Retry(total=4, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by 'SSLError(SSLCertVerificationError(1, '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:1082)'))': /simple/pip/
    WARNING: Retrying (Retry(total=3, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by 'SSLError(SSLCertVerificationError(1, '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:1082)'))': /simple/pip/
    WARNING: Retrying (Retry(total=2, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by 'SSLError(SSLCertVerificationError(1, '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:1082)'))': /simple/pip/
    WARNING: Retrying (Retry(total=1, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by 'SSLError(SSLCertVerificationError(1, '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:1082)'))': /simple/pip/
    WARNING: Retrying (Retry(total=0, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by 'SSLError(SSLCertVerificationError(1, '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:1082)'))': /simple/pip/
    Could not fetch URL https://pypi.org/simple/pip/: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:1082) - skipping
    ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pip>=26.2.2 (from versions: none)
    ERROR: No matching distribution found for pip>=26.2.2

As compared with a naive installation through the proxy:

    $ python -m pip --no-cache install 'pip>=26.2.2'
    Collecting pip>=26.2.2
      Downloading pip-26.2.2-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (4.6 kB)
    Downloading pip-26.2.2-py3-none-any.whl (1.8 MB)
       ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1.8/1.8 MB 775.3 MB/s  0:00:00
    Installing collected packages: pip
      Attempting uninstall: pip
        Found existing installation: pip 26.2.1
        Uninstalling pip-26.2.1:
          Successfully uninstalled pip-26.2.1
    Successfully installed pip-26.2.2

    $ cat venv/lib/python3.14/site-packages/sni_proxy_sentinel.txt
    SNI proxy lab sentinel. This file is inert.

aftbiton Node2Shell evolves to HTTP2Shell, blast radius affects many HTTP libs and apps

Or - you can just upgrade pip with a SHA hash pin, or set the magic env vars to use the system bundle.

You do need to be careful about creating new venvs with the old version of pip bundled in ensurepip in older Python releases. `uv` kindly patches that to newest pip, but not every Python binary does.

  python -m pip install "pip @ https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/3f/06/3e4420302363fbb71be3c7f35ce042f54bfca330e3e66b3a2e3c4cca579f/pip-26.2.2-py3-none-any.whl#sha256=fd7f4dfa8190e014013b9f08f3e973f4e4c26ffd179a204895533a7254813a70"

Or alternatively, on Debian with fixed system cert chain:

  PIP_USE_DEPRECATED=legacy-certs PIP_CERT=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt python -m pip install --upgrade "pip>=26.2.2"

https://discuss.python.org/t/avoiding-compromised-certificat...

aftbiton Is this the new cyber normal?

That's why anyone who has a lot to lose from a data breach had better either harden the shell of their system such that it's not vulnerable (very hard to do correctly) or automate the process of listening for and reacting to vulns.

aftbiton Time Nuts (2005)

There's a lot of interesting stuff in the time-nut world. There's a fun mailing list at https://time-nuts.febo.narkive.com/ and Jeff Geerling has been doing a lot of stuff with clocks lately on YouTube. An interesting intro project is to set up a GPSDO and track the long-term aging of an OXCO or Rubidium standard (many of which are surplused out of telecom applications for somewhat reasonable prices on eBay).

Also vaguely related, the precision clock kit by Mitxela - https://mitxela.com/shop/clock4

Then there's the EFOS3 Hydrogen Maser by https://www.efos3.com/

There is a very deep rabbithole in here.

aftbiton Today, we hacked what we'd set out to hack: the iPhone

Now - does the Signal 1-click work on Graphene?

aftbiton Is this the new cyber normal?

The coordinated disclosure thing will have to stop soon. Ideally, if you found a vuln from the defensive side, you'd tell all the "good guys" about it and none of the bad guys. The world doesn't work that way, so instead, the compromise was to tell a small number of important big actors who were unlikely to leak it, so the most good could be done before everyone found out.

Now the simple knowledge that there might be an exploitable memory issue in some given piece of software is enough for bad actors to point LLMs at it and find the issue in hours. That will only keep getting worse.

At some point, it's going to become a speed game. If you find a vuln, you might as well disclose to everyone immediately. Anyone who runs internet-exposed software will need an agent watching for disclosures around the clock and triaging them automatically (either by upgrading, improving filtering with some protective shell, or taking the whole service offline until humans can help) to keep up with the offensive agents watching around the clock and attacking automatically.

aftbiton OpenSSL 4.1.0

Wait, OpenSSL didn't support GREASE until now? The RFC standard landed 6 years ago...

I've been linking a lot of stuff against boringssl during that time, I suppose...

aftbiton A farewell to Arc browser

RIP Arc 2023 -> 2026

I am no longer an early adopter for browsers. Firefox is just so darn good now (and I'm so used to it) that I don't feel a desire to try other stuff.

aftbiton Woman charged with computer fraud due to scam CashApp account being in her name

I believe this is the case record and the arrest warrant:

https://caseinfo.arcourts.gov/opad/case/46CR-26-292

https://caseinfo.arcourts.gov/opad/case/46AW-26-272

aftbiton eMudhra to exit global SSL/TLS certificate business

Oh - I thought clients did. Was there some separate kind of cert pinning that clients checked that disappeared because nobody could get it right?

aftbiton SBD: We Have a Filesystem at Home

I'll be honest, I don't understand what Sprites are, or why they need their own kind of block device. All of the pain seems to come back to trying to map a linux filesystem running on a block device into an object store. They could just ... not do that?

Here's why they do:

https://fly.io/blog/design-and-implementation/

But it feels like maybe they made the wrong tradeoff here.

aftbiton eMudhra to exit global SSL/TLS certificate business

What about CAA records? And of course, browsers handle this with the Certificate Transparency log and the OneCRL, made less painful by baking a short-lived proof that the cert is not revoked into the handshake. The problem is all the other parts of the ecosystem that basically ignore all this new complex security stuff and just check the cert against a static list of vendored roots.

For example, node, java, and python all have vendored roots and don't check any CRLs.

aftbiton I told people I'm a convicted felon after 20 years of hiding it

It is not hard to figure out at all. The first chapter of the book is linked on his site.

https://buford.bg/books/buford-versus-oklahoma-1

aftbiton Mistral Large 4

I've seen this quite a bit on bad quants as well. I ran an early and very lossy quant of one of the Gemma3 models, and it loved to just stick Chinese and Korean characters into the text, sometimes without seeming to realize it had mixed languages.

aftbiton eMudhra intermediate CA compromise

    curl https://test.pki-bad.fyi

    python -m pip install --break-system-packages -i https://test.pki-bad.fyi/simple pki-bad-demo

aftbiton DeepInfer: High-performance inference framework for DeepSeek models

I'm not sure how many tokens/sec you were running through your MBP. Let's just go with 35 tok/sec for the sake of having a number. 35 tok/sec * 3600 sec/hr * 2 hr/day * 365 day/yr => 91 million (output) tokens. At DeepSeek's price of $0.60/million tokens, that's $55.18.

Of course that's assuming it was just generating flat out all the time - no prefill or anything. That's not likely. Probably much of the time (and tokens) would be in prefill and cache hits. And as you say, DeepSeek v4.1 Flash is a much stronger model than a 35B two generation old Qwen.

So yep, DeepSeek's API is pretty cheap. They're not paying anything like $0.33/kwh for one, and they're able to keep util much higher than you are, and they are subsidizing so they can get more data and code to train on.

If you were paying for Fireworks to host the model in the US with no training and ZDR, it would be $1.80 per million tokens (3x price), so a grand total of $165.56/yr.

I'd argue that at those values, the price difference really doesn't matter one way or the other. What matters is output quality, human time required, privacy, and sovereignty. Also, there's something to be said for (nearly) zero marginal cost reducing the barrier to playing with an idea. If I had to spend $40 to try out an idea over a few million files, I might think about it first. If I could just load it up on my existing server and let it cook overnight, I would not worry about it. Maybe I should consider electricity marginal costs more, but practically I don't really.

aftbiton DeepInfer: High-performance inference framework for DeepSeek models

Making fries at home is only cheaper because you already have a stove, knives, pots, cooking oil, etc.

Running a model at home is very cheap if you already have a M5 Studio lying around for some reason.

aftbiton DeepInfer: High-performance, large-scale inference framework for DeepSeek models

>But you can just go look at the market share of operating systems to see why something being free and openly available doesn't matter to executives who just wants to get things done and is willing to pay a premium to a trusted business to do the work for them.

That's why most of the internet runs on Windows IIS rather than Linux or BSD. That's why everyone here is running a VM on their Mac that hosts Windows containers to do development in.

aftbiton DeepInfer: High-performance inference framework for DeepSeek models

A single person could make french fries for themselves cheaper than McDonalds, but once they have to start including the cost of the building and equipment, charging for their labor, and complying with health codes and worker safety requirements, they will quickly find that the fixed costs swamp the variable costs.

aftbiton Lula supporters protest against Meta to denounce its 'electoral interference'

Honestly - what's immoral about someone showing their breasts? That's not going to hurt anyone, so why would it be immoral? Obsessing over how woman cover or reveal their bodies is regressive behavior, as if men can't be held responsible for controlling themselves, or children will be injured by seeing a body part that exists to feed babies.

>“My trans masculine friends were showing off their top surgery scars and living in joy, and I wanted to join them,” she said. “And because it is perfectly within the law in Washington, D.C., I decided to join them and cover my nipples just to play it safe. Because I wanted to be fully free and myself. I had zero intention of trying to be vulgar, or be profane in any way. I was simply living in joy, living my truth and existing in my body. Happy Pride. Free the nipple.”

aftbiton “bonsoir, Elliot”: How abliterated models can get you pwned

And this is why we ought to use stronger sandboxes to run our LLM agents. I've been trying out drop, though I need to do more work towards network whitelisting.

aftbiton SIGSALY: Churchill's top secret hotline to the president

Plus there's the whole alchemy thing, with the Leibniz project and the magic cigar box. It's definitely speculative fiction set in the past rather than proper historical fiction, but I enjoyed it none the less.