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alphager

660 karma · joined May 10, 2019

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alphager··on Northflank Breached
Zero Trust is expensive to implement and the business people hear "at the end, the systems will ideally work as good as before".

It will take a few bankruptcies until security is taken seriously.

alphager··on Eight Bits of Trust: eMudhra's CA keys cracked in milliseconds
1 already exists. You don't check the ctlogs; the ctlogs as their signed timestamp to the certificates. All you need to verify that a certificate has been published is to verify the timestamp signatures.
alphager··on AfD Leak: What 421,179 Hacked Emails Show about the German Far Right
The hacker can remain anonymous, the publisher is easily sued.
alphager··on AfD Leak: What 421,179 Hacked Emails Show about the German Far Right
But legally pretty perilous regarding copyright and personality rights.
alphager··on US imposes sanctions on ICC hours after former judge wins Nobel Peace Prize
There is zero mechanism by which the ICC can indict Trump. Its jurisdiction is only over signature countries and their territories; the US is not a signatory country.
alphager··on Kids turned low-traffic NPR Spotify comments into a secret group chat
FYI: you can turn off video content in the family account settings (not the parental settings).
alphager··on AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible
You are on a site that's part of the SV culture. The culture that approves if everything not explicitly lillegal done to increase the ROI on startups. The culture that celebrates negative externalities as "disruption".
alphager··on Microsoft patches Windows and Excel – breaks audio, remote access, and paste
Have you had recent experiences? I thought the same until I tried it out, on decision stable no less. The driver support nowadays is incredibly good on Linux (my desktop Bluetooth didn't work under Windows with official drivers; just works without any tinkering under Linux).
alphager··on FreeCORE TrueNAS Core – Continued
Truenas core is BSD, not GPL.
alphager··on Social media use on the rise among Australian under-16s after ban: data
France24 is a reliable news channel based in France.
alphager··on France's Anssi Will Block PQC-Free Products from Certification Starting 2027
Tell me about it! We've got slightly under 10'000 distinct software assets we are trying to catalogue. There are now a handful of vendors claiming to be able to scan for crypto, but they all suck.
alphager··on France's Anssi Will Block PQC-Free Products from Certification Starting 2027
I work as a security architect in a major European company. We're currently demanding a full cryptographic inventory of every new product purchased or service built in-house and will start demanding PQC in 2028.

Not because we expect a workable quantum computer by 2030 (current estimates are around 2035-2040), but because stuff survives for decades in large enterprises (especially if it touches hardware in any way. Think OT, think controllers for all kinds of machines).

Now that PQC is standardized, there's no gain not to demand it (it's basically a demand to use a current openSSL/libreSSL/$library), but not demanding it now will cause a major headache once/if quantum computers work.

TLS connection speed matter only for a very tiny niche of applications; those will choose according to their needs. For the general case, it just doesn't matter.

If your threat model includes store-now-decrypt-later, you should have been demanding PQC for years.

alphager··on White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report
The check for citizenship is not done at the polling place; it's done at the time of voter registration with plenty of accepted IDs.
alphager··on Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS
ZFS on Linux works great, but with most distributions, it will compile the kernel module on device upon installation. Only Ubuntu distributes binaries.

As a consequence, you don't necessarily want a rolling distro, as the ZFS module can get out of sync with the kernel.

ZFS itself is build for both BSD and Linux from the same source, so there's feature parity there.

alphager··on US holds off blacklisting DeepSeek, more than 100 firms deemed security risks
There's bias and then there's ignoring all of your own laws when it's convenient.
alphager··on Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?
There are very limited seats (a few teens of thousands). Free market logic dictates that the 100000 richest fans get the tickets.

If you don't like it, you are not a true believer in a free market. There's a reason social democrat countries heavily subsidize culture.

alphager··on An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight
*in the US
alphager··on U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse
It is absolutely bonkers to think about using UV to disinfect human skin, let alone the inside of the human body.

Any UV radiation strong enough to destroy the cells of bacteria is strong enough to destroy human cells. We know that UV-radiaton that's not strong enough to kill bacteria is already harmful to human skin (we call the phenomenon sunburn).

alphager··on Netherlands blocks US takeover of vital digital supplier
Nope. You have to possess a valid ID or passport, but you are not required to carry it. Keeping it at home is perfectly fine.

Carrying it is practical and most Germans do carry their ID, but it's not a requirement.

alphager··on IBM Spins Off the First Pure-Play Quantum Chip Foundry
We are as close as you can get, but we estimate that we're about 3.5% away from true optimum on the hardest problem we try to optimize.
alphager··on IBM Spins Off the First Pure-Play Quantum Chip Foundry
Absolutely true in the real world; I was part of a real team that explored quantum optimization algorithms as part of a strategic initiative (my day job is algorithmic optimization on classical computers).

Our problem is similar (but not identical) to the traveling salesman problem. We run on a tight time constraint (measured in days for the complex type and measured in minutes for the simple type).

We're running approximations on classic computers but estimate that we'd save billions if we could reach optimum.

alphager··on IBM Spins Off the First Pure-Play Quantum Chip Foundry
Logistics would love to optimize the traveling salesman problem.
alphager··on Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans
X$ for the ticket plus a convenience fee/service fee for standing in line.
alphager··on Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
What difficulties do you mean? We got Sepa instant transfers nowadays...
alphager··on Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0
How is that a ban?
alphager··on Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen
It's in all kinds of medicine. People take some pills and then add a cough syrup, not noticing that the syrup also contains it as an active ingredient.
alphager··on This year’s insane timeline of hacks
Stealing is one possible problem (transactions out of country are really hard to claw back), but the major fear is probably stability. You won't like the consequences if a significant percentage of your countries banks are down for a few days...
alphager··on Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers
That are paid (if not avoided) at the location of the owner, not the location of the dc.

Datacenters really aren't that good for the locals. Low property tax, just tens of jobs but very high infrastructure needs.

alphager··on Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire
Just be aware that DW is literally government propaganda. If you want news from a German perspective, it's great; however its purpose is explicitly to give the German governments POV.
alphager··on Finnish sauna heat exposure induces stronger immune cell than cytokine responses
A steam sauna originating in Turkey, popular in many Arabic countries.
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