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gjvr

34 karma · joined January 22, 2021

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gjvr··on Code-execution flaw in UEFI firmware threatens most servers on planet Earth
I really like this idea of 300 lines (asm) vs ~1M lines (C) which was possible by really understanding what you are doing and limiting to the core feature you need. In this case you had 'the luxury' of this being low level code. What I fear for is all (application) the code that runs on top of frameworks/run-times/interpreters (in reference to the recent PHP drama). We can harden our application code as much as we like, but if the underlying code is not safe we have an issue - this combined with you remark on attackers being in the advantage versus defenders. At this time the only way that I see to protect this is by using some kind of (virtual) private network. What are your ideas on this?
gjvr··on I Wanted to Own the Harness. Then Codex Desktop Won
Yep.

And, the following made me smile. Not just the em-dash.

Prompt: can you please verify that your proposals do not increase the complexity of the design and are really needed?

Response:

No—the earlier proposals were not all justified. The review found avoidable complexity and I revised Questions 62–66 accordingly:

gjvr··on AWS multiple services outage in us-east-1
Yep. It's the auditing part that is broken. As a (dangerous) workaround use --no-audit
gjvr··on Docker Hub Is Down
Thanks for sharing. Good to know. I Was considering using it for that purpose.
gjvr··on Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again
I would not go multiple Availability Zone within the same Infra/Cloud provider...
gjvr··on Launch HN: Hotswap (YC S21) – Easily migrate customers away from competitors
Love the idea! Yes there are challenges (ref: 'Embrace and extend') but there is a very clear value: both for end users (that ultimately drive value) and for paying companies (startups or other) that have have great new products but have to deal with a market in which 'the current generation' of products are used.

From a different angle (that you're probably already considering :-): What about SaaS companies that also want to give customers a smooth way out if they are not satisfied. I can imagine that there is value in having some sort of 'seal' that makes it clear that: yes you can get out of here if our product is not what you want it to be.

Final note: I just hope that we’re not going to end up in a situation where we need to do a “ReCaptcha” again after logging in because some SaaS, x, is wary of scrapes….

Good luck!

gjvr··on Cloudflare’s CAPTCHA replacement with FIDO2/WebAuthn is a bad idea
I understand from [0] that the attestation key is shared across all instances (SNs) of the same model (PN): "...For example, all YubiKey 4 devices would have the same attestation certificate; or all Samsung Galaxy S8’s would have the same attestation certificate". So you would not need to to buy them at the same time.

But of course, despite this, still a unique key is generated for each identity upon sign up [0]. I am not sure (as in 'have no knowledge of') the entropy for these devices.

[0] https://fidoalliance.org/fido-technotes-the-truth-about-atte...

gjvr··on We created a fake language to root out resume liars
Ha Ha. Thats’s even worse than the ‘C Hashtag’ that an HR dude was rambling on about.
gjvr··on Lou Ottens, inventor of cassette tape, has died
A little anecdote/legend from the Philips Research Labs (Nat. Lab.):

When the team demonstrated the first CD they drilled some holes in them, and showed: "Look how robust, they even work when they are this damaged" (paraphrased).

In reality the locations of these holes were chosen very precisely. Not sure if this is true, but this is a story that my colleagues told me in the 90's...

Rest In Peace Lou Ottens.

gjvr··on Germanium transistors: logic circuits in the IBM 1401 computer
Ken Shirriff, your blog is just awesome.

What a wealth of material you have on righto.com!

Blown away.

gjvr··on Show HN: Issue Embed – feedback fast straight to your GitHub Issues
I gave the reporting a try, and I like the flow in the demo (which is for a Public repo); easy to use.

For a private repo, I would probably also want people to be able to leave anonymous replies (to get 'as much feedback as possible'), but that's just my n=1 opinion.

Good luck.

gjvr··on Show HN: Issue Embed – feedback fast straight to your GitHub Issues
Hi,

Congratulations with your launch.

Question: must an end user (web site visitor) do a (Github or other) login? Or can they simply leave a comment?

gjvr··on Architecture.md
Yep, feedback is valuable. And the earlier the more valuable (it's like NPV...).

I love coding so much, and find it really hard to express ideas in natural language, so that in the end documentation... doesn't happen as much as it should.

What I find that really helps is the following:

1. Write down architecture specs (with interface specs etc), before coding. Not bloated, but really minimalistic. 2. Review these ideas with peers. 3. Happy coding and refine the docs.

gjvr··on PSD is not my favourite file format (2009)
ASCII? UTF-8? UTF-16? ... ...
gjvr··on Have you ever tried blocking WhatsApp from your router?
No I have not, but here's the approach I would take:

1) Use tcpdump to inspect WhatsApp packets and get an idea of what they look like

2) Use iptables or nftables to set up rules to block them.

gjvr··on Ask HN: What back end language should I learn in 2021?
1. The point regarding architecture is a good one. Choose what is best for the problem that needs solving. 2. If you want to do heavy duty server stuff that has a large RAM state (and long) running, then Go is great: - Run time is fast - It is statically typed - It has IMHO really good Garbage Collection. - It has channels (but also regular MUTEXes). - It is co-invented by Ken Thompson (who is the inventor of B which came before C). That in itself is not proof of quality of course, but it does give some idea.

Disadvantage is that you do not have the luxury of generics as in Typescript... (yet)