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eeZi

824 karma · joined June 1, 2014

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eeZi··on A list of all Android permissions
The hard part is the user interface, not the backend. The application needs to invoke a privileged UI where the user can choose which files or directories the application may access.

(many storage media are formatted using FAT, so the media API is probably not implemented using Unix permissions)

eeZi··on A list of all Android permissions
Agreed then. I'm a developer and I can't see myself developing on a mobile phone operating system anytime soon. But I still like my Android phone for taking notes, pictures, syncing PDFs and reading my mails.

It's just two different use cases and different security/freedom tradeoffs. Not sure if I'd call Android a general purpose operating system.

eeZi··on A list of all Android permissions
Android is still the (mainstream) mobile operating system which gives you the most freedom. What are you going to use instead? iOS?

This is not a hostile limitation - it's a backwards-incompatible API change that the ecosystem hasn't fully adapted to.

eeZi··on A list of all Android permissions
> Toshiba Thrive sitting here that i basically shelved after said change

You can access your media if you use a file explorer and media player which support the new API.

> If we observe Windows tablets, with the MS Surface at the forefront, many of them come with a easily accessible USB-A port

And all of the applications running on it can access all of your media. Life is easy when there's only one single flat security domain.

https://xkcd.com/1200/

eeZi··on A list of all Android permissions
Since nobody pointed it out yet: that change was done for security reasons, not due to a political conspiracy. Media access was a big hole in the otherwise fine-grained permission model.

Your camera app used to be able to access your WhatsApp backup folder and your documents. It was just a flat file system. Developers would request the permission even though all they needed was a caching folder or something, but they could read and upload all of your documents, too.

This change, while breaking a bunch of applications until they migrate to the new fine-grained API, was a necessary one.

eeZi··on Uvloop – Ultra fast implementation of asyncio event loop on top of libuv
Or Tornado, which migrated to the asyncio event loop and is a much more mature alternative.
eeZi··on Windows 10 has an undocumented certificate pinning feature
An attempt to do something similar with netfilter/Linux: https://github.com/fredburger/xt_sslpin

Recent fork: https://github.com/Enteee/xt_sslpin

Someone's blog post about it: https://duckpond.ch/networking/security/2016/09/09/xt_sslpin...

/r/netsec discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/52me9w/xt_sslpin_ma...

I like the idea.

eeZi··on Ask HN: What are the best practises for using SSH keys?
This. It's so cheap and easy to use a hardware token for your GPG and SSH keys nowadays (YubiKey 4! TPM! Smartcards!). If you're not using one, you should.
eeZi··on A Letter to the Berlin Startup Scene
Not true. As someone else already noted, you can get 4G for 15-20€/month with reasonable traffic limits.
eeZi··on A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet
Neither of these are going to happen. Closing the EU subsidiary would be a PR disaster, especially after the recent lawsuit (Max Schrems vs. Facebook).

While the EU obviously wouldn't block access to Facebook, I doubt that the cost of complying with regulation would be larger than shutting down their subsidiary. Think ad revenue, declining user base due to bad PR, and I don't think this move would go over well with their investors.

eeZi··on A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet
US companies like Facebook are doing business in Europe and have users in Europe, so they're subject to EU law.
eeZi··on A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet
We don't have section 230 in Europe yet the sky isn't falling.
eeZi··on StartCom operated solely in China: an analysis of the new StartCom website
The secrecy surrounding this is highly disappointing and means I cannot longer trust them at all. If it had been properly announced I would think differently about it, it being a Chinese company doesn't make me automatically trust them less. Now, WoSign got some bad press recently, but that's a different matter. But this? It feels like they have something to hide.

After trying to log in to their portal using my old client certificate, I realized that they have supplemented this mechanism by a simple pass code that it sent per mail. This effectively negates all of the security benefits the old approach had and means that my account has no two factor authentication and anyone who can intercept the mail or access my account, can log in. It's literally one factor since there's no account password, the code that is sent per mail is sufficient. I hope they reconsider this.

I was a happy StartCom customer in the past and I hope that the new owners safeguard my personal data/passport scan that I uploaded during validation just as well as the old owners did. The interactions with Eddy Nigg that I had were really friendly (long time customer, when the company was young he'd do the validation phone calls himself and respond to customer tickets), and StartCom was really important before Lets Encrypt existed and they did a good job at it.

StartCom has/had a policy of keeping your personal data for seven years after validation, so yeah. Makes you wonder what happens to customer data when companies get sold. Even if you trust them today, you don't know what will happen in the future.

eeZi··on Hello, I’m Mr. Null. My Name Makes Me Invisible to Computers
Python doesn't, and any language that evaluates this as true is crazy. Not even JavaScript does this.
eeZi··on Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5
Discord is just another centralized, closed platform.
eeZi··on Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5
Can confirm that Jitsi Meet works fine without headphones in Google Chrome. Google spent a lot of time optimizing WebRTC.
eeZi··on Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5
Another reminder: Jitsi Meet

https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet

Try it here: https://meet.jit.si/

It's a modern, WebRTC-based replacement for Skype, Google Hangouts and other video/audio conferencing solutions.

And it's great. The company I work for is now using it exclusively for meetings and telepresence. The echo cancellation is outstanding and you can even connect it to a SIP server. No client is required besides Google Chrome or Firefox. There's nothing that comes close to it in terms of sophistication and quality.

It works well for one-on-one and audio calls.

eeZi··on How to steal a developer's local database
This is the only advice in this threads that actually solves the issue.

Doesn't have to be SELinux, any of the frameworks will do. Or run it in a new network namespace.

eeZi··on PC-BSD Evolves into TrueOS
> TrueOS® soars above the competition with advanced security features, such as PersonaCrypt and GELI disk level encryption, to keep your important data safe and secure.

Has it got kernel/userland ASLR yet?

eeZi··on DDoS protection
I work for a hosting company. Can confirm that CloudFlare's posts help us building our own defenses and I'm grateful that they're sharing their knowledge.

So, thank you!

eeZi··on PRU tips: Understanding the BeagleBone's built-in microcontrollers
http://www.machinekit.io/

MachineKit is using the PRUs with LinuxCNC already and you can control 3D printers with it!

eeZi··on Ask HN: What should I buy? Macbook Air or Dell XPS 13?
> What's worst, however, is the deterioration of customer support. Lenovo has introduced this 'community' concept where users are expected to post their woes to a forum, hoping that a mix of other users and Lenovo affiliates (not sure whether they are employed by Lenovo, or just volunteering) would solve their problem.

... but there's still regular customer support you can call. The forums are optional.

My T460s is the best laptop I've ever used btw. They reverted to the old trackpad, it's as light as a Macbook.

eeZi··on Surfingkeys – Expand your browser with javascript and keyboard
And cVim: https://github.com/1995eaton/chromium-vim

Now how do they compare?

eeZi··on Way Cooler: A tiling window manager for Wayland written in Rust
Why shouldn't it be possible? You can just setup your agent before you start Wayland, it inherits the environment.
eeZi··on PyPy gets funding from Mozilla for Python 3.5 support
> Python is weird that it is 50% webapp hipsters ala Ruby, and 50% scientists in lab coats sitting in the lab crunching.

Don't forget about the ops guys using it for automation!

eeZi··on PyPy gets funding from Mozilla for Python 3.5 support
NodeJS/V8 is faster than CPython for obvious reasons - V8 is JIT compiled while CPython is not. PyPy closes the gap.
eeZi··on PyPy gets funding from Mozilla for Python 3.5 support
Agreed. Looking forward to the 3.5 port.
eeZi··on PyPy gets funding from Mozilla for Python 3.5 support
You still need something like MyPy to actually validate types. What happened is that there's now a standard for typing annotations - now, PyCharm, MyPy, Wing IDE and anyone else can share the same syntax.
eeZi··on Feature Request: Manual Refresh of external calendar feeds
Well the most important reason to use Chrome is its unrivalled security track record. Getting it right takes skill, resources and time, and Google is hard to match.
eeZi··on 1400 km of optical fiber connect optical clocks in France and Germany
Yes it's in the article. Pretty exciting.
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