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tarasmatsyk

149 karma · joined December 10, 2018

I break stuff for money

https://tarasmatsyk.com

Medium: https://towardsdatascience.com/@tarasmatsyk Twitter: https://twitter.com/tarasmatsyk

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tarasmatsyk··on Why Isn’t Telegram End-to-End Encrypted by Default (2017)
What you say makes sense, In any case, I am glad WhatsApp founder put some money into Signal, he's done an amazing job and deserves all the money.

I am from another side of messagers, as Viber concured Easter Europe - Telegram seemed like an obvious choice after VK got stolen from Durov. Signal was not that popular, that's why I did not start migration earlier

tarasmatsyk··on Why Isn’t Telegram End-to-End Encrypted by Default (2017)
Here is what puzzles me every time about telegram (which is my primary messager so far)

I can get the reasons behind not doing e2e encryption by default to reach more audience (msgs history, lack of resources on start, special backups)

What I cannot get is why Durov is blaming FB/WhatsApp that much, it seems to be the main competitor. As for me the story with WhatsApp is clear, it's Facebook and if you like being Zucked - go with it. But why so much hate on it?

On the other hand, every time Signal pops up the only answer I see: 'because it does only e2e well which is only one feature of Telegram' - wrong, Signal does secure messaging and messager has to do its job well, that's it. You need a media platform - go for Telegram/WhatsApp/Facebook, you need a messager - use Signal/Wire/etc

Does anyone else feels this bias towards WhatsApp? I cannot blame WhatsApp for being WhatsApp, that's how FB makes money

tarasmatsyk··on The Most Backdoor-Looking Bug I’ve Ever Seen
TL;DR

A TG server was sending a "salt" to clients in order to randomize keys (telegram claim) when in fact the "salt" turned out useless in terms of encryption and the only reasonable explanation for the "nonce" was using it as a backdoor to perform MITM attack.

You decide whether it was done intenionally or because of lack of sleep/understanding

PS. an original author got 100k$ for finding/exposing a potential backdoor.

tarasmatsyk··on Ask HN: Show me your half baked project
what was the main reason that made you built it? Did you want to have a QR code generator that works locally on a mac?
tarasmatsyk··on Sick of spending time on Auth, we built an open source 'Stripe for Auth'
I really love what you are doing guys. Self-hosted option with SaaS model as an alternative - sweet, perfect pricing balance.

I don't know about others but I am really tired of settings up auth over and over again for over 8 years already. Don't give me firebase it sucks so hard I can't even open my eyes when auth needs more control or extension. Im going to give you a shot in my next project

tarasmatsyk··on Apple outages affecting Mac apps, Big Sur updates, iMessage, and more
Sure,

Dell XPS is an outstanding laptop, I've not found yet better laptop if you don't like macs

However, Dell is not going to be my next machine because:

- dev edition is hard to get (at least for me) and regular version does not work well with Linux (finger scanner requires to install OS patches, WiFi is dropping ocasionally , I had some crappy WiFi adapter installed in 2017/18, scaling is a big issue etc)

- mine XPS had a weirdly placed camera (bottom left corner)

- again, mine model did not have 4k display (comparing to retina I had back then)

- 13" is too small and 15" is too heavy, I would like something in the middle which might seem weird for you

- there is no finger scanner for dev edition (Yubico is here to help)

As you see those are very minor and subjective issues. Dell is a favourite machine of a friend of mine for years already, however I find Apple winning premium laptops battle in my eyes.

tarasmatsyk··on Apple outages affecting Mac apps, Big Sur updates, iMessage, and more
you need to get Dev Edition for XPS, otherwise you are going to struggle

PS. Ex-Dell XPS user

tarasmatsyk··on Apple outages affecting Mac apps, Big Sur updates, iMessage, and more
Completely agree with all your points here, even though I bought a 2020 pro (big sur is badass).

However, every time I read comments like that I feel like someone from the System76 is monitoring HN and posting evil marketing comments :D

PS. Love System76, going to order it LOL

tarasmatsyk··on Getting a biometric security key right
yep, wearable, like a ring would be a clincher.

I really like Yubico and fingerpring scanner is an awesome idea, would be really happy to bring my fingerprint instead of relying on laptops. On the other hand, a wearable would be a whole new level, like thinking 2 steps ahead

tarasmatsyk··on Introducing the next generation of Mac
Almost exactly what I thought, however specs are too low for me to ditch the bar no matter how useless it is comparing to physical keys
tarasmatsyk··on We made our SaaS home page cookie-free
This is an awesome idea, I really love the writing and products presented (TLDR; SimpleAnalytics, BunnyCDN, Intergram). Good luck with LMA, this is an awesome product

IMO, the "cookies banner" does not help to make internet safer, only worsening UI, add a few more banners and there is no content left. How many people who don't know how internet works hit "Disagree" if we still refuse to pay for e-services

tarasmatsyk··on LibreOffice 7.1
I've tried it in the NextCloud and it's pretty usable. Of course formatting can be off if you need some advanced staff, but for basic formatting it's a pretty good alternative for Google Docs. As a 2 years Linux user in a past it's much better than LibreOffice was 5 years ago, at least I can confirm it's usable.
tarasmatsyk··on One Year with ThinkPad and Linux (From MacBook Pro)
Architecture switch is not a question whether Apple can do it, I am pretty sure they are capable of releasing it asap. Think about all software that have to migrated, it’s not just re-compile and release button click
tarasmatsyk··on One Year with ThinkPad and Linux (From MacBook Pro)
it looks very interesting, I came around purism a couple of times but never got to hardware switchers section, very nice. Is there anyone who has any experience with puri.sm?
tarasmatsyk··on One Year with ThinkPad and Linux (From MacBook Pro)
arm released is not going to happen in the next 2 years, IMO mpro 16" is going to get better and it is good enough to switch to it permanently. I was testing a few mpros before purchasing one
tarasmatsyk··on One Year with ThinkPad and Linux (From MacBook Pro)
I would put an asterisk near battery life as a downside, after switching to mpro 2020 13 realized that I overlooked batter life which is 7h at max, 5h if working aggressively (docker, builds), very disappointing. Macs always were laptops with great performance - battery life for me, so be careful with customizations and stick either to defaults or mpro 16 (which is like a plazma TV for me)

PS. moving to 14" system76/thinkpad too this year

tarasmatsyk··on Staking Claims with Scheduled Tweets
Smart,

what about using words (like a password phrase) instead of a hash? You can schedule title of the upcoming tweet, so people can like it and "subscribe" to notifications

tarasmatsyk··on Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life
Perfect timing, was just about to start migration.

My plan so far: - Gmail -> Fastmail + custom domain - GDrive -> Nextcloud + openoffice (it's really nice, includes notes and libreoffice) - Chrome -> Firefox (FF made a tremendous progress in last 5 years) - Google -> DuckDuckGo

No disrespect to Google, the whole platform is very convenient, but it's going to be a fun experiment to use services that are dedicated to one goal (email-only, storage-only b2, search only etc)

The only one I look to stop spending time at is YouTube, hard to replace, however bloggers have to start protecting their value and own their things.

tarasmatsyk··on The cost of 1GB of mobile data in 228 countries (Feb 2020)
I can confirm, internet in Ukraine (top 5) is super cheap, most people don't even realize how inexpensive it is comparing to other countries. Mobile traffic is so cheap that it gets very inconvenient to keep your internet habits when you are in other countries.

Italy seems like a great country to spend more time in, thank you for report!

tarasmatsyk··on KeePassXC 2.6.1
Yep, I saw that, the feature I was trying to describe is a popup on a username that gives you a list of all accounts tied to this domain, which is quite handy. In Bitwarden I have to either right click or copy/paste from the extension. A bit awkward IMO
tarasmatsyk··on KeePassXC 2.6.1
how is your experience in a browser?

I honestly tried to use Bitwarden, paid for premium for one time key feature and browser extensions comparing to 1pass are much less convenient. For instance, an ability to manage multiple website (e.g. google) accounts is priceless

tarasmatsyk··on Not everyone needs 8 hours of sleep: new research
The article seems to be too obvious, maybe I am missing some bits of info here.

After I read "why we sleep" all these: "sleep faster", "you need 8 hours", "I wake up at 4am" seems ridiculous to me. It's all depends, try to sleep 8 hours and if 6h works for you - lucky you, if 4am works for you - lucky you, if you need 7h or 10h - good, stick to it and adjust your schedule. Despite all the articles on how bad "why we sleep" is, it helped me a lot, at least with basics, that's all I need due to lack of ambition to get a PhD in why people sleep.

I tried everything, slept 10h, 8h, 6h, mix(night/day) and there always was only one thing that worked for me: wake up without alarm in the "late morning". No matter how hard I try, morning is just not for me, I fought with it for too many years and the war is over, my sleep always wins. Evening works best for me, no matter of what people try to convince or adjust me to.

TL;DR try what works for you and don't try to adjust with others.

tarasmatsyk··on When I raised my B2B SaaS’s prices
Always enjoy a good read, thank you Steve!

Also, this thread has some gems too, glad I found it.

tarasmatsyk··on What’s New in Thunderbird 78
It looks nice, however it feels like I am running one more browser, am I wrong here?

I really like Thunderbird and that one of options for mail clients if I am on linux, however another electron app is a no-go for me.

tarasmatsyk··on What’s New in Thunderbird 78
just curious, what do you use to host email and calendar?
tarasmatsyk··on Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?
Hard to pick between Skype and buggy apple mail client that splits my screen every few minutes just to fetch new emails (super annoying)
tarasmatsyk··on Try Linux
Sums up my experience pretty well. Here is an old joke about Linux which I remember every time I need to fix by Bluetooth or WiFi:

"In Linux, you can configure everything. And you will be configuring everything"

Despite all the "inconvenient" sides of Linux, it's really an awesome OS if you know what you are doing

tarasmatsyk··on Welcome to C# 9.0
I’ve been using Delphi before and it looks like a grown/better Pascal. C# is a c-family language which seems weird right after the switch, however you start appreciate C syntax a bit later.

I think C# was an attempt to design MS Java which is better than Java

tarasmatsyk··on Welcome to C# 9.0
I still think C# is one of, if not the best of designed languages exist. Even it moves in much smaller steps than it was before I think it's for good.

I left .NET land at 6.0 and .NET 4.x versions mostly because of Windows eco-system (small open source community, almost no alternatives to out of the MS things, bad linux support). Since that I've been working with Java, Swift,JS, Python, Golang and I still think that C# is one of the best-designed languages. Very few of them keep evolving through the decades, hopefully it can become the language of the year at some point, always liked to see how new features got implemented under the hood and what kind of features get into next release.

Well done C# team

It's amazing how the language advances over years

tarasmatsyk··on Next dream job can be in an HTTP header
I stumbled across "we hire" messages across Paypal, Techcrunch, and dozen of other websites, even no-name startups. You can find them in headers, CSS, HTML, JS and all over different places.

The thing is: the message neither changes the recruiting process nor company values, so it does not matter if you come from X-Header or company/careers. This cryptic message thing will only get you "oh cool" reply from recruiters. If you are a good engineer you'll be hired no matter of these messages, if you don't fit the company because of who knows why - you'll not get there anyway.

Engineers, thank you for giving me a bit of hope or fun ¯\(°_o)/¯

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