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bsmithon Ask HN: What job boards are good these days?

Same to loving to hear more :)

bsmithon Ask HN: What job boards are good these days?

It's time to build something, and stop looking for a new master. I'm in the same boat, and it's only going to get worse (longer off season, lessening pay, worse working conditions, etc).

bsmithon Ask HN: What job boards are good these days?

Funny, because I've had a dozen or so recruiters reach out to me, and every. single. one. ghosted me after initial contact.

bsmithon Google broke reCAPTCHA for de-googled Android users

If you dont need filesharing, you can just setup wireguard, setup a network drive on your phone's files app.l, and then when connected it'll feel like native file browsing.

bsmithon The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work

All big tech companies are mandating employees to use AI for tasks. Unless there's a similar movement to open source that is AI-free, you're going to need to be tech-free of you want to avoid companies that use AI.

bsmithon Tailscale's new macOS home

I use almost plain old wireguard, hosting a wg-easy container that has a nice web gui wrapper that makes it easy with QR codes, no configuration files to create like just wireguard. It's the technology that Tailscale uses, so why would you complicate it, adding more risk?

The incident seems like it was never exploited, and it was fixed within 24 hours. However, in my opinion, the fact that this COULD happen, let alone that id DID happen, is too much risk, and why I switched immediately after hearing about it.

AI overview of the incident:

TS-2023-001:

Node Sharing Across Tailnets Without Authorization (January 2023) A bug in Tailscale's node sharing logic allowed the creation of sharing invitations by unauthorized users. A malicious individual who knew a target node's database ID could generate and accept a sharing invite for that node without being an admin of the target node's tailnet — for any node in any tailnet. Circl So in practice, a node from one unrelated tailnet could be pulled into another person's tailnet without the owner's consent. A node's ID is only visible in the API or admin console, by admins of either the node's tailnet or a tailnet to which that node has already been shared Circl — which limited exploitability, since you'd need to already know the target's internal database ID (a random 64-bit integer, not easily guessable). Tailscale fixed it server-side on 2023-01-12 and stated they verified it was never exploited. The bug reporter (Benjamin Roberts, HN user tsujamin) noted it was discovered accidentally while managing their own tailnet. The Hacker News thread praised Tailscale for deploying a fix within 24 hours:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34420142

TS-2024-002:

ACL Overwrites Across Tailnets (May 2023 – July 2024) There's also a second related incident that's perhaps even more alarming in concept: an admin user could overwrite the ACLs of one tailnet with ACLs from another tailnet. Any user who was an Admin in multiple tailnets and edited ACLs in the admin console between May 22, 2023 and July 17th, 2024 could trigger this bug after switching the active tailnet. Tailscale This one involved the tailnet-switching feature in the admin console accidentally "bleeding" policy configuration between separate, unrelated tailnets.

bsmithon Tailscale's new macOS home

I don't understand why people are still using Tailscale after the issue they had where two independent tunnels were connected together.

bsmithon A beginner's guide to split keyboards

I've been rocking the Dygma Defy since it came out and it's been amazing. Their software has been buggy though, and left me rebuilding key maps more than once. I just wished it had a rotary dial

bsmithon Notepad++ supply chain attack breakdown

Don't forget regex!

bsmithon Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2025)

Yeah, sorry about that, and thanks for the heads up!

I've struggled with the dictionary a few different times. Here's to hoping the 12dicts wordlist 2of12inf is a better choice than my previous ones :D

The new dictionary is live!

bsmithon Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2025)

https://spanara.app

Spanara - A word game inspired by the "license plate game" my wife taught me while we lived in Finland. License plates in Finland always start with 3 letters, so out on our walks we'd try to come up with a word quickly, and got more kudos for "good" words. This was a first attempt at a personal project using AI.

I am currently working on a new mode that is more like what played walking around: a few rounds in rapid fire, very little time to think before the next round.

bsmithon Thoughts on Mechanical Keyboards and the ZSA Moonlander

I love my Dygma Defy: https://dygma.com/products/dygma-defy

bsmithon Show HN: Spanara – Yet Another Word Game

Yeah, just guess I'm a bit confused, because the green sticks I've chosen are valid for both A and F, so I'm not quite getting how F got ruled out in that instance.

bsmithon Show HN: Spanara – Yet Another Word Game

Thanks for trying it out! And thanks for the word example, I'll have to find a better dictionary.

And your game was fun. I noticed it gave me a letter (A) when it still could have been another (F) https://imgur.com/a/7EU7XAo.

bsmithon Show HN: The Montana MiniComputer

"Woooo" Slaps chalk board. "Are you pumped for today's lesson?!" -Brock

Best classes ever.

bsmithon Gemini 2.5 Flash

Using AI to debug code at 2am sounds like pure insanity.

bsmithon Routine dental X-rays are not backed by evidence

Considering orthodontic treatments, no. I imagine you could damage the connective tissues under the gums though.

bsmithon What Is Entropy?

Couldn't you just add a control (PID/Kalman filter/etc) to coverage on a stability of some local "most" truth?

bsmithon What is the most useful project you have worked on?

Yes I believe you can look up anyone's salary in Finland, but you have to officially request it, and not sure how that's done. Some organization requests all the high earners and posts them online, so those above that amount can be identified. Everyone knows about it but find Finns are "if you have it, don't show it", and so it's not a problem as far as I know. It's the same as companies being transparent about salaries, it seems absurd to those not exposed to these kinds of companies, but after being part it's not a big deal. You're either not interested, or you use it as a tool to leverage yourself up.

bsmithon What is the most useful project you have worked on?

It was waterfall, but a lot of agile inside. Instead of development from waterfall, developers get a proof of concept up in front of the client SMEs as soon as possible, and then get it into their hands testing as soon as possible. In this way, the people working on the requirements were intimately familiar with the inner workings and offering feedback very quickly, to save time if solutions weren't working as intended. Each team would have 3-5 major projects so as soon as the first project didn't fill the full meeting, other priorities started getting their requirements. These meetings would be a touch base and rehash old topics if any solutions needed a pivot.

Once the SMEs and developers signed off on the solution, then it could go to the test part of waterfall, system test, everything launched once during the rollout window. And then maintenance mode.

bsmithon What is the most useful project you have worked on?

I'd love to, this is exactly the use case for digital technology; automate the stuff we can making more time for more meaningful taska for everyone. Finland is ahead of it's time for these kinds of integrations. Problem is, it requires a central authority having all of the data, and the US has absolutely zero trust in it's government to not fuck it up. With good reason

bsmithon What is the most useful project you have worked on?

Old boring tech, VB.NET and t-SQL. Never understood the hate for VB.NET, I swear it's from people misconstruing VBA, which is awful, or they had terrible infra and coding standards. The system we had was a general core product that was configurable (I mean, taxes are the same, they just have different rules), but also customizable. Finland wasn't the first international project, but it was maybe the biggest one, so a lot of the solutions ended up being custom for the project. Unfortunately been difficult to find work with the boring tech background, but it was enjoyable (especially considering it was taxes).

bsmithon What is the most useful project you have worked on?

Project started in 2014 and is still ongoing, but I think it's mostly small add-ons these days. I was on this project for nearly 6 years.

bsmithon What is the most useful project you have worked on?

I wrote multiple systems that import most of the tax return data for the Finnish Tax Administration, a system that imports payroll data (and helped with the previous version of the system), and tax payer data extraction for other government agencies. Downstream process use this data to automatically fill out taxpayers' tax returns in Finland each year, and individuals only file tax return corrections. So if everything looks good, which happens for 90+% of taxpayers, there's nothing to do each year. We even won a few awards for the project.

https://www.pry.fi/en/activities/news/the_finnish_tax_admini...

bsmithon Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

Just a bummer that these index funds are unavailable to expats :(

bsmithon The unfortunate math behind consulting companies (2011)

I'd like to hear more. It would be nice of you to write it in a comment to share with others that are interested instead of requesting DMs :)

bsmithon Ask HN: Artificial Intelligence resources/path from beginner to advance

Can you provide a forum (or a few) that you mentioned?

bsmithon Plex Users Fear New Feature Will Leak Porn Habits to Their Friends and Family

I also have Plex Lifetime and was fed up with something or another and switching to Jellyfin was pretty nice and straightforward. I'd recommend as well if you have a free afternoon/weekend.

bsmithon Aliens Are Out There – But They Probably Don't Care About Us

Multidimensional beings that transcend time and/or space. Not necessarily dieties, but it kind of is from our perspective.

Another night be that consciousness exists at many physical levels. Just like you are made of trillions of automata of cells and bacteria, which are played out by proteins and DNA, maybe the universe is a single consciousness, and we are but one part. Or a part of a part.

bsmithon Nutrient found in beef and dairy improves immune response to cancer in mice

That link recommends cutting fats, and increasing the amount of bread and vegetable oil. I can't take their advice seriously.