Hacker News Reader

souterrainon Getting 2FA Right in 2019

TOTP implemented with 1Password is not 2FA.

All TOTP devices must store the symmetric key, yes. 1Password goes a step further and provides a UI to allow the user to simply copy the symmetric key out of the login record à la a password.

TOTP clients that make opinionated design decisions prohibiting a user from getting at the symmetric key are correct implementations.

That said, if one wants to mandate 2FA for one’s users, TOTP is not the right choice, given it allows users to do the wrong thing.

souterrainon Runit Island

The Runit Dome is reportedly leaking.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/20/us-put-nucl...

souterrainon Word processors are ditching equation editors in favour of LaTeX

Repeatability.

Complex formatting, such as figure captions and figure placement, in Word documents suddenly break for no apparent reason. Troubleshooting a “broken” Word doc is akin to fixing a typewriter while one is blindfolded.

souterrainon Maine Governor Signs Strictest Internet Protections in the U.S.

To which one’s defense should be, “I did not do this, my corporation did. Arrest it.”

souterrainon US Customs Database Of Traveler Photos Was Hacked And Stolen

If CBP is not directly forthcoming with facts relating to the breach (specifically, whose information was unlawfully taken from the CBP production network) how does one seek redress for the harms created by the actions of the contractor?

souterrainon Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

I’d instead use the distinction “those who can sling code when necessary” versus “those who cannot/will not sling code.”

souterrainon Maker Faire halts operations and lays off all staff

They’ve been paid their owed wages and PTO, but did not receive any severance or two-week notice.

Are there any VC out there that have ethics standards around winding down a failed venture, especially towards termination of employees?

souterrainon A NY School District Defies State, Plans To Proceed With Facial Recognition Test

I won’t argue the challenges of the school district, but Lockport, NY is most certainly the county seat of Niagara County, NY.

https://data.ny.gov/widgets/4xc7-bukh

souterrainon TSA-style body scanners are coming to public spaces

> The point is that the idea of public millimeter wave surveillance has some amount of public support.

Does it? If anyone has data on this, I'd be very interested.

I've recently been giving some thought to pervasive electronic and video surveillance as an alternative (specifically not as a supplement) to the presence of armed police being deployed by default in public.

souterrainon A NY School District Defies State, Plans To Proceed With Facial Recognition Test

A plausible story is that Lockport is the county seat of Niagara County, NY, which has three land (bridge) crossings with Canada, and therefore has significant USCIS presence throughout the county. I can imagine a joint task force involving county law enforcement and USCIS. Most schools in NY State have armed police (“school resource officer”) present. They probably all go to the same sporting events, drink at the same pubs.

Nothing like a refreshing beverage and discussing pervasive surveillance technology for the youth of America.

souterrainon Heavily processed food like ready meals and ice-cream linked to early death

> The results suggest that 277 cases of cardiovascular disease would arise each year in 100,000 heavy consumers of ultra-processed foods, versus 242 cases in the same number of low consumers.

So, one is 14% more likely. But at 0.242% and 0.277% chance the correlation seems unusual to even mention.

I’m not a statistician. Is this typical of such studies?

souterrainon chrome.declarativeNetRequest

This API seems reasonable iff chrome.declarativeNetRequest.MAX_NUMBER_OF_RULES (currently 30,000) and chrome.declarativeNetRequest.MAX_NUMBER_OF_DYNAMIC_RULES (currently 5,000) could be expanded significantly.

Other than performance, is there a design limitation that would require Chrome to limit these arbitrarily?

souterrainon Lsd: The next gen ls command

Do you do anything to preserve the environment between calls to bash such that this behaves similarly to a typical shell?

souterrainon The rise of the sober bar

For those who have struggled with addiction or frequent over-indulgence, it often is irresistible.

That said, from my experience some bars/pubs are more suitable than others to the non-drinker.

souterrainon Alpine Linux Docker images have NULL for root password

Adding a shell seems antithetical to deploying production code as a static-linked binary, not to mention an expansion of the attack surface of the container.

souterrainon Map of Proposed US Time Zone Changes

Well, barely though. Only a tiny fragment of Maine would be in AST using standard 15° wide time zones, the boundary being 67.5° W.

souterrainon Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

And what conditions imposed by Mr. Balius' leadership contributed to this situation?

I'd like to see the federal debarment applied to all individuals within the company's executive team. There's nothing preventing them from perpetrating the same fraud tomorrow by forming a new corp or LLC. Having them named on a debarment will stop them from committing fraud against the American taxpayer in the future.

souterrainon Google Fiber to pay nearly $4M to Louisville in exit deal

When I read “exit deal” I tend to think about an agreement being reached to terminate a contract.

This is an incorrect assumption.

This is only Google making the City of Louisville whole for damage to their road infrastructure.

souterrainon How to tell a raven from a crow (2012)

For what it’s worth, Audubon members got this in the Inbox today. Also serendipitous to me, since I just passed Poe’s grave site and thought it odd he would write of ravens even if they are rare in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S.

souterrainon Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

This part of Baltimore doesn't fit this model, however, since parking was not removed. The bike lane was inserted between the parking zone and the curb. Previously, the bike lane was between the rightmost travel lane and the parking zone.

Poor driving, or factors related to poor driving, may be a contributor.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2018/08/30/dc-...

Or, it may just be an anti-cycling bias, but I don't have evidence to support this.

souterrainon Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

Also note: this same road was the location of a cyclist killed by a drunk bishop.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/us/baltimore-bishop-charg...

souterrainon Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

While Baltimore is reversing protected a bike lane implementation as a result of pressure from retail business and constituents who prefer cars. (The neighborhood in question is one of the most affluent in the city.)

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs...

souterrainon Nations of the Amazon are seeking “shared governance” of the .amazon TLD

Domain name systems are designed to be hierarchical, so it makes sense for Amazon to register within this hierarchy, which they already have, i.e., amazon.com.

The nations of the Amazon basin have a more complex situation regarding fitting within the hierarchy. Perhaps amazon.int?

souterrainon Psychiatry’s Incurable Hubris

> Imagine debugging a computer and saying, "I think your RAM hasn't enough ones in it. I am prescribing this selective ones-uptake inhibitor to restore the balance."

Yet we use encoding techniques to ensure that there precisely are a sufficient number of ones, such that clock can be recovered. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-length_limited

souterrainon AT&T CEO interrupted by a robocall during a live interview

Or the wireless and traditional wireline players will make a case to the FCC that the bad actors are the VoIP-over-public-Internet providers and such providers alone require special oversight and regulation.

souterrainon HyperCard Users Guide (1987) [pdf]

I had a similar experience 20 years prior, replacing HyperCard with Logo and the iMac with Apple IIe (aka //e.)

The class was very rigid, giving us instructions on what to do.

However, a few of us deviated from the rules and enjoyed learning on our own, finishing the assignments quicker just so we could try out new things.

Of course we got in trouble in class, but many of these same students got into trouble in other classes. (I tended to ask too many questions, I believe I was told.)

souterrainon Show HN: WebRTTY – Share a terminal session over WebRTC

I don’t like the name. RTTY[1] is a thing, and this repo is not related to that thing.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioteletype

souterrainon Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

With a blog named “The Keyword” is there any surprise they want to be AOL?

souterrainon Zoho.com CEO says domain with 40M users suspended for abuse complaint

For a SaaS company, a domain registrar is part of the critical supply chain; if it fails, it creates an existential crisis to the business.

I think that warrants CEO visibility.