HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

vonskippy

131 karma · joined November 27, 2011

Molecular Biophysicist
submissionscomments
vonskippy··on Building My Own Home Router
Rolling your own firewall is almost always a bad idea. Hardening a full blown distro is a terrible place to start, and no place for a novice to "guess" that they have it locked down "enough".

There are numerous open source firewall distro's that have the advantage of being authored by people well practiced in security coding, pen testing, etc, and are continually crowd tested for loopholes and shortcomings.

It's your edge device for security - not exactly a place you want to take risks with.

vonskippy··on 9007199254740992
According to DynDNS it's a malware site.

www.csie.ntu.edu.tw is blocked in your Defense Plan Content Blocked

This is a known Spyware? website, which is blocked as specified in your Defense Plan?.

vonskippy··on Ship's cat
Why is this on HN? Trolling the Wikipedia site might be an interesting hobby, but I don't see in any way how it fits HN.
vonskippy··on Comcast vs. the Cord Cutters
"Cutting the cord, in Comcast’s universe, just doesn’t save you very much money."

And this is why (in general) Americans are in debt. They don't understand that ANY savings, is savings. And that "just" saving 20,30,50 dollars a month adds up over 5-10 years.

I went thru this with my daughters a decade or so ago. We kept track of all the "Gee Dad, it's only 10 bucks" conversations. At the end of the year we reviewed what they accumulated, which was almost nothing, their items were either used up, no longer needed/wanted, broken, or tossed away. On the other hand, the $1400+ dollars, all stacked up in a nice pile of $20's looked like (and was to them) real money, a nice weekend trip, a new bike, a new laptop, etc. I'm happy to say my daughters did much better after that living experiment.

Unfortunately for most Americans, they just can't say no to the moment, and banks (and other service providers) are all to willingly to exploit their lack of judgement.

vonskippy··on How the US Treasury imposes sanctions on me and every other "Stephen Law"
Easy solution, setup company name, use company name for all package shipments, wire transfers, checks, etc. Should solve everything but the travel.
vonskippy··on Your SaaS product is too cheap if you never lose customers because of pricing
I guess will see if that strategy works or not - Logmein will be a perfect case study. Years of free service - now its paid or use something else.
vonskippy··on Oh my god, it's a girl (2010)
OMG not this again. This has to be the most overinflated topic in tech. Just do your thing, if you're good, nobody cares what sex you are, if you're bad, don't use your sex as an excuse.
vonskippy··on How I went from 100 to 0 things (or how I was robbed of all my stuff)
Two 4TB Ext USB3 HD's and a Safety Deposit box at your Bank. Cheap, more or less convenient (get four drives and rotate your backup drives), and secure.

Easier yet if you can pair the amount of crucial stuff to under 4TB, then it's just one drive that you can rotate monthly (weekly?).

vonskippy··on Ad blockers: A solution or a problem?
If the only value your website offers is to bring eyeballs to ad's, then it's time for you to find a new vice.

If you want to serve up ads on you site, make sure they're relevant, they're absolutely 110% malware free, and respect my privacy. And unless you're willing to take responsible for when those conditions aren't met, then don't whine when I do everything technical to block out the useless malware laden offensive ads that you do serve.

The difference between net ads and tv ads are that tv ads cost enough money that people who buy tv ads spend time and energy in being very selective about their market demographics and the type of ads they run. Plus I've never had a tv ad infect my tv and stop it from going to any other channel but CMT.

If me and my eyeballs are going to be your product, then I want a little respect for my participation.

vonskippy··on Nest, Google and you
How long until Ads start showing up on your thermostat? Or on your smartphone controller app - want to change the temperature, please watch these short commercials and then we'll allow you to change your temperature settings.

"Feeling a bit warm, Sally's Soda is just three blocks away".

"Target is having a 15% off on all winter coats and jackets".

This will NOT end well.

vonskippy··on The RIAA forced me to shut down a successful website/apps I built in high school
Never take legal threats via email.

If they can't have a lawyer, send via certified mail (yes, snail mail) specifying the actual complaint, and the legal justification behind said complain, then just ignore them.

vonskippy··on Tim Draper Gives Details on Initiative to Split California into Six States
Guess he can't let Bezos and his dorky drones get all the media attention.
vonskippy··on Tim Draper Wants To Split California, Turn Silicon Valley Into Its Own State
Just another whiny rich person trying to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
vonskippy··on Google is the new Bell Labs
Google is NOTHING like Bell Labs. Bell did real research, not research that had a ROI counter tied to it.

Google researches what makes Google money - period. If this is the current generations "hero", then we're doomed.

vonskippy··on DataStickies: USB drives as sticky notes
Ummm...hate to break the bad news, but floppy disks (and the rest of the removable storage ilk) was killed off years ago by the Cloud. Better luck next idea.
vonskippy··on Apple Doesn’t Want to Pay the Feds’ E-Book Lawyer $70,000 a Week
How awful, Apple breaks the law and then whines about the pocket change ($70K x 52wks x 2years = $7.3M) charge for enforcing it's own compliance.

If Apple thinks $70K/week is high for lawyers, wait until they get the overage bills from their new HQ building contractors.

vonskippy··on Many PS4 units dead on arrival
So rushing to stand on the cutting edge might result in bloody feet - whoda thunk it?
vonskippy··on Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL
His reasoning can be applied to all free social media, which is a valid reason, and why smart people should avoid the step back in time to a central AOL-esque media hub. He has his own domain, what more does he need? Why feed the social media black hole (all things enter - nothing escapes)?
vonskippy··on Users complain their Dell 6430u laptops smell like cat piss
So Dell Laptops stink?

Hasn't that been common knowledge for at least a decade?

vonskippy··on The FreedMan Chair - A better way to sit.
Probably not the best criteria to judge a posture perfect chair - but boy is that thing fugly. Throw in the outrageous retail price and I'm guessing it will be a hard sell.
vonskippy··on Ask HN : Anyone from Facebook on HN to help my friend being bullied on Facebook?
Um... maybe get a real life and real friends instead of being addicted to social media?

It's surprisingly doable - no one has ever died from not have a facebook account. No one has never not climbed the corporate ladder from not have a facebook account (the opposite is very true). No one has ever had a family disown them, forget about them, get confused who they are from not having a facebook account. Real friends will still call, get together, do things, and go places all without the "help" of facebook. Email of any flavor still works, as does SMS, and gasp snail mail. And of course that old faithful, realtime communication either by phone or in person is still oh so wonderful.

So put down the facebook koolaid and get a real life - it's amazing what can be done in the real world.

vonskippy··on How Seinfeld's Productivity Secret Fixed My Procrastination Problem
Must be a Gen Y thing (or whatever you call 20 somethings these days). I'm afraid to me, it seems exceedingly childish to need something like a chain of Red X's in order to get something as simple as "workout" or "clean" or "do job" or "work" done on a consistent basis. It's called SELF DISCIPLINE and it's really not rocket science. Now get off my lawn.
vonskippy··on T-Mobile Rocks
T-Mobile (should be crushed by) Rocks.

Here on the Western slope they have the worst service of the big four. Here, only people shopping strictly on price choose T-Mobile. They want your business, they just don't want to spend any money on the infrastructure to make it even marginally acceptable.

vonskippy··on Linux only needs one 'killer' game to explode, says Battlefield director
Huh? Since Gamers are only a tiny fraction of the PC User space that statement makes zero sense. Linux on the Desktop is dead because most of it's common apps either suck, or are already available (with a much better UI) on Windows/Mac.
vonskippy··on Hostnames
location-service-type-number

  accting-ws-01
  email-server-01
  building1-upstairs-switch-01
  eastgroup-noc-router-01
Why go cutesy when you can actually define what they do and where they are?
vonskippy··on Go Away PayPal
So is this really just another rant about PayPal - which would be hardly unique or unusual.

Or....

Is this just a ploy to get yet another stupid social media site some visibility traction on HN?

Hmmmmmmm?

vonskippy··on Domains4Good: Redirect your unused domains to social causes
Like antibiotic resistance bacteria, if you continue to flood the internet with begging, people will become completely immune to those types of requests (no matter what the cause or how worthy they might be).
vonskippy··on How do you turn a chunk of glass into a telescope mirror?
Brings back memories - I ground a 30 cm reflector back in my teens. Was interesting to read how they no longer use two glass blanks, instead use one blank and one tile grinding tool. Took me most of the summer to get the mirror ready for coating, and that was working on it most every day for at least an hour. All very worth it when everything was finished and assembled and we pointed it up into the night sky. Nothing like a clear cool fall night and a decent (if amateurish) scope to contemplate extremely large numbers.
vonskippy··on Gravity – The Best Movie in “A While”
The hype on this movie is unbelievable. If it was a true science fiction movie, perhaps suspending belief would be possible. Instead it's about current technology, and basic orbital mechanics and simple physics. The number of errors this movie had are horrific. The storyline is dull, the characters are flat, the science (for all the claims that experts and astronauts were employed) is atrocious. I wish I would have suspended by cash and not wasted my money. Yeah for impressive CGI, now can I have my $9 bucks back?

My tinfoil hat guess - NASA's funding is so far in the dumps that anyone and everyone associated with real space science is hyping this dish rag in an effort to woo over the general public who are clueless about simple math and physics in an effort to pump up NASA's visibility for better funding. Hope it's worth selling out science to do so.

vonskippy··on After neighbor’s death, first-time filmmaker declares war on suicide
"Rene Duignan is passionate about life"

No, he's passionate about control.

Where do people get off telling others what they can and can't do with their life. Who better then the ACTUAL PERSON to decide when and if it's the right time to call it quits (for whatever reason - once again it's nobody elses business on the why).

With 7 billion people and counting, why are people making such a big deal when someone decides their time on the ride called "human life" should be over. For most, there is little choice, you live, then you die. For some, they would rather take personal control over the when. Why is that a bad thing?

The world has turned into a huge nanny - butting into the smallest of things that should remain completely in control of the individual.

Over the last 12 years, twice I've fought with cancer and won (or at least had it declared a tie) but you can bet that I have a exit plan in hand (and yes, that includes taking care of the people I'll leave behind). Withering away in excruciating pain is not for me (does that make me weak? a coward? or just prudent in deciding how I WANT to end MY LIFE).

Page 1 of 3Next →